Immersed in darkness and in death, and see
A better country. Ah! how oft that eye
Would turn on me, with pity's tenderest look,
And, only half-upbraiding, bid me flee

From the vain idols of my boyish heart! It was about the same time, while still feeling the sadness of this bereavement, that he wrote the fragment entitled “ THE RIGHTEOUS PERISHETH, AND NO MAN LAYETH IT TO HEART." A grave I know

Unknown in life, Where earthly show

And far from strife, Is not-a mound

He lived :-and though Whose gentle round

The magic flow Sustains the load

Of genius played Of a fresh sod.

Around his head, Its shape is rude,

And he could weave And weeds intrude

“ The song at eve," Their yellow flowers

And touch the heart, In gayer bowers

With gentlest art; Unknown. The grass,

Or cares beguile, A tufted mass,

And draw the smile Is rank and strong,

Of peace from those Unsmoothed and long.

Who wept their woes ; No rosebud there

Yet when the love Embalms the air;

Of Christ above No lily chaste

To guilty men · Adorns the waste,

Was shown him—then Nor daisy's head

He left the joys Bedecks the bed.

Of worldly noise, No myrtles wave

And humbly laid Above that grave;

His drooping head Nor heather-bell

Upon the cross; Is there to tell

And thought the loss Of gentle friend

Of all that earth Who sought to lend

Contained-of mirth,
A sweeter sleep

Of loves, and fame,
To him who deep

And pleasures' name-
Beneath the ground

No sacrifice Repose has found.

To win the prize, No stone of woe

Which Christ secured, Is there to show

When He endured The name, or tell

For us the loadHow passing well

The wrath of God! He loved his God,

With many a tear,
And how he trod

And many a fear,
The humble road

With many a sigh
That leads through sorrow

And heart-wrung ir
To a bright morrow

of timid faith.

Nothing could more fully prove the deep impression which the event made than these verses. But it was not a transient regret, nor was it the “sorrow of the world.” He was in his eighteenth year when his brother died; and if this was not the year of his new birth, at least it was the year when the first streaks of dawb appeared in his soul. From that day forward his friends observed a change. His poetry was pervaded with serious thought, and all his pursuits began to be followed out in another spirit. He engaged in the labours of a Sabbath school, and began to seek God to his soul, in the diligent reading of the word, and attendance on a faithful ministry.

How important this period of his life appeared in his own view, may be gathered from his allusions to it in later days. A year after, he writes in his diary : “On this morning last year came the first overwhelming blow to my worldliness; how blessed to me, Thou, O God, only knowest, who hast made it so." Every year he marked this day as one to be remembered, and occasionally its recollections seem to have come in like a flood. In a letter to a friend (8th July 1842), upon a matter entirely local, he concludes by a postscript : “ This day eleven years ago, my holy brother David entered into his rest, aged 26.” And on that same day, writing a note to one of his flock in Dundee (who had asked him to furnish a preface to a work printed 1740, Letters on Spiritual Subjects), be commends the book, and adds : “ Pray for me, that I may be made holier and wiser-less like myself, and more like my heavenly Master ; that I may not regard my life, if so be I may finish my course with joy. This day eleven years ago, I lost my loved and loving brother, and began to seek a Brother who cannot die.”

It was to companions who could sympathize in his feelings that he unbosomed himself. At that period it was not common for inquiring souls to carry their case to their pastor. A conventional reserve upon these subjects prevailed even among lively believers. It almost seemed as if they were ashamed of the Son of man. This reserve appeared to him very sinful; and he felt it to be so great an evil, that in after days he was careful to encourage anxious souls to converse with him freely. The nature of his experience, however, we have some means of knowing. On one occasion, a few of us who had studied together were reviewing the Lord's dealings with our souls, and how He had brought us to himself all very nearly at the same time, though without any special instrumentality. He stated that there was nothing sudden in his case, and that he was led to Christ through deep and ever-abiding, but not awful or distracting, convictions. In this we see the Lord's sovereignty

In bringing a soul to the Saviour, the Holy Spirit invariably leads it to very deep consciousness of sin ; but then He causes this consciousness of sin to be more distressing and intolerable to some than to others. But in one point does the experience of all believing sinners agree in this matter, viz. their soul presented to their view nothing but an abyss of sin, when the grace of God that bringeth salvation appeared.

The Holy Spirit carried on his work in the subject of this Memoir, by continuing to deepen in him the conviction of his ungodliness, and the pollution of his whole nature. And all his life long, he viewed his original sin, not as an excuse for his actual sins, but as an aggravation of them all. In this view he was of the mind of David, taught by the unerring Spirit of Truth. See Psalm li. 4, 5.

At first light dawned slowly; so slowly, that for a considerable time he still relished an occasional plunge into scenes of gaiety. Even after entering the Divinity Hall, he could be persuaded to indulge in lighter pursuits, at least during the two first years of his attendance; but it was with growing alarm. When hurried away by such worldly joys, I find him writing thus :-“ Sept. 14.May there be few such records as this in my biography.” Then, “ Dec. 9.–A thorn in my side-much torment.” As the unholiness of his pleasures became more apparent, he writes :-“ March 10, 1832.- I hope never to play cards again.” “ March 25.Never visit on a Sunday evening again.” “ April 10.-Absented myself from the dance; upbraidings ill to bear. But I must try to bear the cross.” It seems to be in reference to the receding tide, which thus for a season repeatedly drew him back to the world, that on July 8, 1836, he records : “ This morning five years ago, my dear brother David died, and my heart for the first time knew true bereavement. Truly it was all well. Let me be dumb, for Thou didst it: and it was good for me that I was afflicted. I know not that any providence was ever more abused by man than that was by me; and yet, Lord, what mountains Thou comest over ! none was ever more blessed to me.” To us who can look at the results, it appears probable that the Lord permitted him thus to try many broken cisterns, and to taste the wormwood of many earthly streams, in order that in after days, by the side of the fountain of living waters, he might point to the world he had for ever left, and testify the surpassing preciousness of what he had now found.

Mr Alexander Somerville (afterwards minister of Anderston Church, Glasgow) was his familiar friend and companion in the gay scenes of his youth. And he, too, about this time, having been brought to taste the powers of the world to come, they united their efforts for each other's welfare. They met together for the study of the Bible, and used to exercise themselves in the Septuagint Greek and the Hebrew original. But oftener still they met for prayer and solemn converse; and carrying on all their studies in the same spirit, watched each other's steps in the narrow way.

He thought himself much profited, at this period, by investigating the subject of Election and the Free Grace of God. But it was the reading of The Sum of Saving Knowledge, generally appended to our Confession of Faith, that brought him to a clear understanding of the way of acceptance with God. Those who are acquainted with its admirable statements of truth, will see how well fitted it was to direct an inquiring soul. I find him some years afterwards recording :-“ March 11, 1834.—Read in the Sum of Saving Knowledge, the work which I think first of all wrought a saving change in me. How gladly would I renew the reading of it, if that change might be carried on to perfection !” It will be observed that he never reckoned his soul saved, notwithstanding all his convictions and views of sin, until he really went into the Holiest of all on the warrant of the Redeemer's work; for assuredly a sinner is still under wrath, until he has actually availed himself of the way to the Father opened up by Jesus. All his knowledge of his sinfulness, and all his sad feeling of his own need and danger, cannot place him one step farther off from the lake of fire. It is “he that comes to Christ” that is saved.

Before this period he had received a bias towards the ministry from his brother David, who used to speak of the ministry as the most blessed work on earth, and often expressed the greatest delight in the hope that his younger brother might one day become a minister of Christ. And now, with altered views,—with an eye that could gaze on heaven and hell, and a heart that felt the love of a reconciled God,-he sought to become a herald of salvation.

He had begun to keep a register of his studies, and the manner in which his time slipt away, some months before his brother's death. For a considerable time this register contains almost nothing but the bare incidents of the diary, and on Sabbaths the texts of the sermons he had heard. There is one gleam of serious thought—but it is the only one-during that period. On occasion of Dr Andrew Thomson's funeral, he records the deep and universal grief that pervaded the town, and then subjoins : “Pleasing to see so much public feeling excited on the decease of so worthy a man. Ilow much are the times changed within these eighteen centuries.