Dr Clarke continued those researches which do honour to his name. He fell a victim to the cholera when that fatal pestilence visited our shores.

REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON.

successive splendours of the scene; and while we forget for a time the obscurity of earthly concerns, we feel that there are ' yet greater things than these.'

There is, in the second place, an 'eventide' in the year-a season, as we now witness, when the sun withdraws his propitious light, when the winds arise and the leaves fall, and nature around us seems to sink into The REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON (1757-1839) was decay. It is said, in general, to be the season of melansenior minister of St Paul's Chapel, Edinburgh. choly; and if by this word be meant that it is the time After a careful education at Glasgow University of solemn and of serious thought, it is undoubtedly the and Balliol College, Oxford-where he took his season of melancholy; yet it is a melancholy so soothdegree of B.C.L. in 1784—Mr Alison entered into ing, so gentle in its approach, and so prophetic in its sacred orders, and was presented to different influence, that they who have known it feel, as instinctlivings by Sir William Pulteney, Lord Lough-ively, that it is the doing of God, and that the heart of borough, and Dr Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury. man is not thus finely touched but to fine issues. Having, in 1784, married the daughter of Dr John When we go out into the fields in the evening of the We regard, even Gregory of Edinburgh, Mr Alison looked forward year, a different voice approaches us. to a residence in Scotland; but it was not till the time. A few days ago, and the summer of the year was in spite of ourselves, the still but steady advances of close of the last century that he was able to grateful, and every element was filled with life, and the realise his wishes. In 1790 he published his sun of heaven seemed to glory in his ascendant. He Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste; and is now enfeebled in his power; the desert no more in 1814 two volumes of Sermons, justly admired blossoms like the rose; the song of joy is no more for the elegance and beauty of their language, and heard among the branches; and the earth is strewed their gentle, persuasive inculcation of Christian with that foliage which once bespoke the magnificence duty. On points of doctrine and controversy the of summer. Whatever may be the passions which author is wholly silent: his writings, as one of society has awakened, we pause amid this apparent his critics remarked, were designed for those who desolation of nature. We sit down in the lodge of the 'want to be roused to a sense of the beauty and wayfaring man in the wilderness,' and we feel that all the good that exist in the universe around them, and who are only indifferent to the feelings of their in a few years will be our own condition. The blossoms fellow-creatures and negligent of the duties they into decay; and the pulse that now beats high with of our spring, the pride of our summer, will also fade impose, for want of some persuasive monitor to virtuous or with vicious desire, will gradually sink, and awake the dormant capacities of their nature, and then must stop for ever. We rise from our meditations to make them see and feel the delights which pro- with hearts softened and subdued, and we return into vidence has attached to their exercise.' A selec- life as into a shadowy scene, where we have 'disquieted tion from the Sermons of Mr Alison, consisting ourselves in vain.' of those on the four seasons, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, was afterwards printed in a small volume.

From the Sermon on Autumn.

There is an eventide in the day-an hour when the sun retires and the shadows fall, and when nature assumes the appearances of soberness and silence. It is an hour from which everywhere the thoughtless fly, as peopled only in their imagination with images of gloom; it is the hour, on the other hand, which, in every age, the wise have loved, as bringing with it sentiments and affections more valuable than all the splendours of the day.

Its first impression is to still all the turbulence of thought or passion which the day may have brought forth. We follow with our eye the descending sunwe listen to the decaying sounds of labour and of toil; and, when all the fields are silent around us, we feel a kindred stillness to breathe upon our souls, and to calm them from the agitations of society. From this first impression there is a second which naturally follows it : in the day we are living with men, in the eventide we begin to live with nature; we see the world withdrawn from us, the shades of night darken over the habitations of men, and we feel ourselves alone. It is an hour fitted, as it would seem, by Him who made us, to still, but with gentle hand, the throb of every unruly passion, and the ardour of every impure desire; and, while it veils for a time the world that misleads us, to awaken in our hearts those legitimate affections which the heat of the day may have dissolved. There is yet a further scene it presents to us. While the world withdraws from us, and while the shades of the evening darken upon our dwellings, the splendours of the firmament come forward to our view. In the moments when earth is overshadowed, heaven opens to our eyes the radiance of a sublimer being; our hearts follow the

we witness is the emblem of our own fate. Such also

Yet a few years, we think, and all that now bless, or all that now convulse humanity will also have perished. The mightiest pageantry of life will pass-the loudest notes of triumph or of conquest will be silent in the grave; the wicked, wherever active,' will cease from troubling,' and the weary, wherever suffering, 'will be at rest.' Under an impression so profound, we feel our own hearts better. The cares, the animosities, the hatreds which society may have engendered, sink unperceived from our bosoms. In the general desolation of nature we feel the littleness of our own passions-we look forward to that kindred evening which time must bring to all-we anticipate the graves of those we hate as of those we love. Every unkind passion falls with the leaves that fall around us; and we return slowly to our homes, and to the society which surround us, with the wish only to enlighten or to bless them.

REV. JOHN BROWN-DR JOHN BROWN. JOHN BROWN, of Haddington (1722-1787), was a learned and distinguished divine of the Associate Secession Church of Scotland, and author of He was born at Carvarious theological works. pow, Perthshire, of poor parents, both of whom died before he was eleven years of age. 'I was left,' he says, 'a poor orphan, and had nothing to depend on but the providence of God.' He was first employed as a shepherd, and afterwards undertook the occupation of a pedler or travelling merchant-the nearest approach, perhaps, ever made to the ideal pedler in Wordsworth's Excur

sion:

Vigorous of health, of hopeful spirits, undamped
By worldly-mindedness or anxious care,
Observant, studious, thoughtful, and refreshed
By knowledge gathered up from day to day.

Before he was twenty years of age, John Brown had taught himself Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, to which he afterwards added the modern and oriental languages. He was for some time schoolmaster of Kinross, and in 1748 entered on the study of philosophy and divinity in connection with the Associate Synod-a dissenting body subsequently merged in the United Presbyterian Church. In 1750 he was ordained pastor of the Secession Church at Haddington, and in 1768 was elected Professor of Divinity under the Associate Synod, which appointment he held for twenty years. Mr Brown's principal works are his Dictionary of the Holy Bible (1769), his Selfinterpreting Bible (1778)— -so called from its very copious marginal references-his General History of the Christian Church (1771), A Compendious View of Natural and Revealed Religion (1782), Harmony of Scripture Prophecies (1784), and a great number of short religious treatises and devotional works. Mr Brown's most valuable and popular work is the Self-interpreting Bible, which is still highly prized both in this country and in America, and is invaluable to Biblical students.

A grandson of the foregoing divine, DR JOHN BROWN (1784-1858), was also an eminent minister and professor in the Scottish Secession Church, and celebrated as a Biblical expositor. In 1806 he was ordained pastor of a church at Biggar, and in 1822 transferred to Edinburgh, where he became Professor of Pastoral and Exegetical Theology in connection with the Associate Synod. Both as a preacher and lecturer, Dr Brown is described as a divine of the highest order, 'vigorous, pure, fervent, manly, and profoundly pathetic.' He was considered the ripest Biblical scholar of his age. He was also an extensive theological writer, and among his works are Expository Discourses on the Epistles of St Peter, the Epistle to the Galatians, and the Epistle to the Romans. In 1860 a Life of Dr Brown was published by Dr John Cairns, to which Dr Brown's son, John Brown, M.D.-a distinguished littérateur and medical practitioner in Edinburgh --made some interesting additions, published in Hora Subseciva, 1861. We subjoin a brief extract:

four miles. He reached his destination in the morning, and went to the bookseller's shop, asking for a copy of the Greek New Testament. The master of the shop, surprised at such a request from a shepherd boy, was disposed to make game of him. Some of the professors coming into the shop questioned the lad about his of them desired the bookseller to bring the volume. employment and studies. After hearing his tale, one He did so, and, drawing it down, said: "Boy, read this and you shall have it for nothing." The boy did so, acquitted himself to the admiration of his judges, and carried off his Testament, and when the evening arrived, was studying it in the midst of his flock on the braes of Abernethy."

I doubt not my father regarded this little worn old book, the sword of the Spirit which his ancestor so nobly won, and wore, and warred with, with not less honest veneration and pride than does his dear friend James Douglas of Cavers the Percy pennon, borne away his life-his loss of father and mother before he was at Otterbourne. When I read his own simple story of eleven, his discovering (as true a discovery as Dr Young's of the characters of the Rosetta stone, or Rawlinson's of the cuneiform letters) the Greek characters, his defence of himself against the astonishing and base charge of getting his learning from the devil (that shrewd personage would not have employed him on the Greek Testament), his eager indomitable study, his running miles to and back again to hear a sermon, after folding his sheep at noon, his keeping his family creditably on never more than £50, and for long on £40 a year, giving largely in charity, and never wanting, as he said, lying money'-when I think of all this, must have had.* I feel what a strong, independent, manly nature he

DR ANDREW THOMSON-DR CHALMERS.

DR ANDREW THOMSON (1779-1831), an active and able minister of the Scottish Church, was author of various sermons and lectures, and editor of the Scottish Christian Instructor, a periodical which exercised no small influence in Scotland on ecclesiastical questions. Dr Thomson was successively minister of Sprouston, in the presbytery of Kelso; of the East Church, Perth; and of St George's Church, Edinburgh. In the annual meetings of the General Assembly he displayed great ardour and eloquence as a debater, and was the recognised leader of one of the Anecdote of the Early Life of John Brown. church-parties. He waged a long and keen warFor the heroic' old man of Haddington my father fare with the British and Foreign Bible Society had a peculiar reverence, as indeed we all have-as for circulating the books of the Apocrypha along well we may. He was our king, the founder of our with the Bible, and his speeches on this subject, dynasty; we dated from him, and he was hedged though exaggerated in tone and manner, proaccordingly by a certain sacredness or divinity. I well duced a powerful effect. There was, in truth, remember with what surprise and pride I found myself always more of the debater than the divine in asked by a blacksmith's wife, in a remote hamlet among his public addresses. The life of this ardent, the hop-gardens of Kent, if I was 'the son of the Self-impetuous, and independent-minded man interpreting Bible.' I possess, as an heirloom, the New Testament which my father fondly regarded as the one his grandfather, when a herd-laddie, got from the professor who heard him ask for it, and promised him it if he could read a verse; and he has, in his beautiful small hand, written in it what follows: He (John Brown of Haddington) had now acquired so much of Greek as encouraged him to hope that he might at length be prepared to reap the richest of all rewards which classical learning could confer on him, the capacity of reading in the original tongue the blessed New Testament of our Lord and Saviour. Full of this hope, he became anxious to possess a copy of the invaluable volume. One night, having committed the charge of his sheep to a companion, he set out on a midnight journey to St Andrews, a distance of twenty

was

brought suddenly to a close-in the prime of health and vigour, he fell down dead at the threshold of his own door.

The most distinguished and able of Scottish divines during this period was THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. and LL.D., one of the first Presbyterian ministers who obtained an honorary degree from the university of Oxford, and one of the few Scotsmen who have been elected corresponding members of the Royal Institute of France. He was a native of Anstruther, in the county of Fife, and born March 17, 1780. His father was a shipowner and general merchant in the town, and

Hora Subseciva, Second Series, p. 264.

Commercial Discourses; seven, Astronomical Discourses; eight, nine, and ten, Congregational Sermons; eleven, Sermons on Public Occasions ; twelve, Tracts and Essays; thirteen, Introductory Essays, originally prefixed to editions of Select Christian Authors; fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen, Christian and Economic Polity of a Nation, more especially with reference to its Large Towns; seventeen, On Church and College Endowments; eighteen, On Church Extension; nineteen and twenty, Political Economy; twentyone, The Sufficiency of a Parochial System without a Poor-rate; twenty-two to twenty-five, Lectures on the Romans. In all Dr Chalmers's works there is great energy and earnestness, accompanied with a vast variety of illustration. His knowledge was more useful than profound; it was extensive, including science no less than literature, the learning of the philosopher with the fancy of the poet, and a familiar acquaintance with the habits, feelings, and daily life of the Scottish poor and middle classes. The ardour with which he pursues any favourite topic, presenting it to the reader or hearer in every possible point of view, and investing it with the charms of a rich poetical imagination, is a striking feature in his intellectual character. It gave peculiar effect to his pulpit ministrations; for, by concentrating his attention on one or two points at a time, and pressing these home with almost unexampled zeal and animation, a distinct and vivid impression was conveyed to the mind, unbroken by any extraneous or discursive matter. His pictures have little or no background-the principal figure or conception fills the canvas.

Magazine gives a graphic account of Dr Chalmers's appearance in London: 'When he visited London, the hold that he took on the minds of men was unprecedented. It was a time of strong political feeling; but even that was unheeded, and all parties thronged to hear the Scottish preacher. The very best judges were not prepared for the display that they heard. Canning and Wilberforce went together, and got into a pew near the door. The elder in attendance stood close by the pew. Chalmers began in his usual unpromising way, by stating a few nearly self-evident propositions neither in the choicest language nor in the most impressive voice. "If this be all," said Canning to his companion, "it will never do." Chalmers went on the shuffling of the congregation gradually subsided. He got into the mass of his subject; his weakness became strength, his hesitation was turned into energy; and, bringing the whole volume of his mind to bear upon it, he poured forth a torrent of the most close and conclusive argument, brilliant with all the exuberance of an imagination which ranged over all nature for illustrations, and yet managed and applied each of them with the same unerring dexterity, as if that single one had been the study of a whole life. "The tartan beats us," said Mr Canning; "we have no preaching like that in England." Chalmers, like the celebrated French divines-according to Goldsmith-assumed all that dignity and zeal which become men who are ambassadors from Christ. The English divines, like timorous envoys, seem more solicitous not to offend the court to which they are sent, than to drive home the interests of their employers. The style of Dr Chalmers The style of Dr Chalmers is far became the rage in Scotland among the young from being correct or elegant-it is often turgid, preachers, but few could do more than copy his loose, and declamatory, vehement beyond the defects. His glowing energy and enthusiasm bounds of good taste, and disfigured by a singular were wanting. In Glasgow, Chalmers laboured and by no means graceful phraseology. These incessantly for the benefit of his parishioners blemishes are, however, more than redeemed by ('excavating the practical heathenism" of the city, his piety and eloquence, the originality of many as he termed it), and he organised a system of of his views, and the astonishing force and ardour Sabbath-schools and pauper management which of his mind. His Astronomical Discourses (1817) attracted great attention. He was strongly op- contain passages of great sublimity and beauty. posed to the English system of a legal provision His triumphs are those of genius, aided by the for the poor, and in his own district of Glasgow, deepest conviction of the importance of the truths voluntary contributions, well managed, were for he inculcates. After the death of this popular many years found to be sufficient; but as a law of divine, no less than nine volumes were added to residence could not be established between the his works-Daily Scripture Readings, Sabbath different parishes of the city, to prevent one Scripture Readings, Sermons, Institutes of Theparish becoming burdened with a pauperismology, and Prelections on Butler's Analogy, &c. which it did not create, his voluntary system was ultimately abandoned. In 1823 Dr Chalmers removed to St Andrews, as Professor of Moral Philosophy in the United College; and in 1828 he was appointed Professor of Divinity in the university of Edinburgh. This appointment he relinquished in 1843, on his secession from the Established Church. He continued an active and zealous member of the rival establishment, the Free Church, until his death, May 30, 1847. His death, like that of his friend, Dr Andrew Thomson, was very sudden. He had retired to rest in his usual health, and was found next morning dead in bed, 'the expression of the face undisturbed by a single trace of suffering.'

The collected works of Dr Chalmers published during his life fill twenty-five duodecimo volumes.

Of these the first two are devoted to Natural Theology; volumes three and four to Evidences of Christianity; five, Moral Philosophy; six,

These were edited by the son-in-law of the deceased, the Rev. Dr Hanna, who also wrote a copious and excellent Life of his illustrious

* Robert Hall seems to have been struck with this peculiarity. to Dr Gregory's Memoir, we find the following criticism, underto Dr, and always in terms of great esteem as well as high admiration of his general character, exercising, however, his usual free and independent judgment. The following are some remarks on that extraordinary individual: "Pray, sir, did you ever know any man who had that singular faculty of repetition possessed by Dr? Why, sir, he often reiterates the same thing ten or twelve times in the course of a few pages. Even Burke himself had not so much of that peculiarity. His mind resembles that optical instrument lately invented: what do you call it?" "You mean, I suppose, the kaleidoscope?" "Yes, sir; an idea thrown into his mind is just as if thrown into a kaleidoscope. Every turn presents the object in a new and beautiful form; but the ... His mind seems to move object presented is still the same. on hinges, not on wheels. There is incessant motion, but no progress. When he was at Leicester, he preached a most admirable sermon on the necessity of immediate repentance; but there were only two ideas in it, and on these his mind revolved as on a pivot."

In some Gleanings from Hall's Conversational Remarks, appended stood to refer to the Scottish divine: Mr Hall repeatedly referred