Biography of Dr Cairns.

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sitions had lain in his repositories twice the Horatian period. His earliest productions, too, are the smallest; he made no precocious effort to astonish or dazzle the world when a younger man. He walked in the river when "the waters were to the ankles," ere he threw himself on the deeper billows and swam. In a word, this wondrous and successful industry sprang from the profound and unsleeping consciousness of his being a servant, with whom sloth is treason, and whose hiding of the talent is as wide a breach of trust as the squandering of it, for he felt himself bound to trade to the best advantage with all his gifts, in the hope of being greeted at length with his Lord's approval. Few men have better realized, or more steadily laboured and prayed to realize, what it is to "serve his own generation by the will of God," ere he "fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers," than he whose life, character, and works, are the subject of the following paragraphs.

Few incidents are furnished to a biographer by the life of a faithful and diligent minister, especially if he has not kept a diary, engaged in an extensive correspondence, or been tossed into stormy prominence by the current of events, but has clung to his proper functions, and tried to fulfil his course, or, like Dr Brown, has lived in his library, and not gone much into the stirring world around him. His Life, written by a devoted and admiring pupil, himself of no mean eminence and promise, will not startle any of its readers. Dr Cairns has not made an idol of his minister and theological teacher. He does not place him in a niche, bend the knee, and call upon others to emulate his idolatry. He has evidently written under great self-restraint, and has studiously kept himself out of view. He never kindles as he narrates, or deviates into eulogy as he advances. He breaks into no enthusiasm, but has compiled a plain unvarnished tale chiefly about the outer life of Dr Brown. He has tracked him from home to school and college, from the Divinity Hall to license and ordination, from Biggar to Rose Street and Broughton Place, from the pulpit to the professorial chair, and from health to sickness and death, and has briefly and honestly chronicled how he did his duty in these successive scenes,-what trials he met with, and how bravely he rose above them; how he preached, visited, and lectured, and what success attended his labours; how he gathered, loved, and handled his numerous books, and entertained visitors and students in his library; what volumes he has published, and what their character and their general reception. We dissent from scarcely a single word which Dr Cairns has written; but we confess we should have liked some fuller exhibition of Dr Brown's mental and spiritual progress, something more than the mere footprints of his visible career, some deeper glimpse into his inner nature,

some analysis of those minute and complex elements that make a man what he is, and which, in carving out his work for him, gird him with ability to do it. Dr Cairns will, however, be thanked by the Christian public for his calm, impartial, and graceful story, in which he simply narrates without pronouncing a verdict, presents the premises quietly and unaffectedly, and permits his readers to form their own conclusions.

The Browns have been a famous name in Scottish Dissent, or perhaps, as we may be allowed to call it, Scottish theology. The name has passed through more than one generation, like that of the Casaubons, Scaligers, Buxtorfs, Vitringas, and Turretines of other times, and the Lawsons, Heughs, Bonars, M'Cries, Gilfillans, Cooks, Vaughans, and Hills of a more recent period. The first John Brown of Haddington, so well known for his "Dictionary of the Bible" and his "Self-interpreting Bible," was a self-taught man, cradled in hardship and battling with difficulty, while he gathered in boyhood his Latin and Greek as he followed the sheep on the braes of Abernethy. Though never within the walls of a college, he acquired remarkable erudition, and was chosen at length to occupy a chair of theology. He was known throughout Scotland for his piety and learning, his retired and studious habits, and his earnest desire to throw such light on the sacred volume as should make all ordinary readers feel it to be an instructive and blessed book. It may, indeed, be said of his literary and biblical labours, as was said of his Divine Master's preaching, "the common people heard him gladly." The second John Brown, of Whitburn, was a man of primitive worth and manners, who lived and laboured in a rural district with quiet, lowly, and unostentatious zeal. The doctrines and the memory of the "Marrowmen," and other divines of Boston's period, were dear to him, and he laboured to spread and perpetuate them; for those spiritual heroes of his admiration did good work in a former day, and bore up the banner of evangelical theology when it was about to fall from other and feebler hands. His sermons were filled with quaint and pithy illustrations of Divine truth, hallowed with a savoury unction, and delivered with that musical cadence and modulation which the older people lovingly called a song.

The third and greatest John Brown has left a name more illustrious than that of his father or grandfather. Having finished his academic course at the age of sixteen, when he should have been only commencing it, he was sent out into the world to fare as best he might; for, like the majority of Scottish students, he was obliged to support himself by teaching during his theological curriculum. Leaving home with a guinea and his good father's benediction, the stripling went to Elie, on the east coast of Fife, and there taught himself and the village boys and girls

His Coming to Edinburgh.

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for several years. The plan so largely followed by English Nonconformists, of giving gratuitous board and education to young men studying for the ministry, is the other extreme to our thrifty mode. The Anglican way is, however, very expensive, and is attended with many failures; for after the term of study is completed, many lads of piety and promise are found to be deficient in such gifts as are essential to popular preaching. True, indeed, with us the prime student does not always turn out the prime preacher, while he who passed through the Hall unnoticed may astonish by his audacious elocution, and his self-command in the pulpit. Still, the youth who in early life is left to his own resources, and thrown into the current either to sink or to swim, is drilled into the best of lessons-that of self-reliance under the Divine blessing; for he is brought face to face with wants which nothing but his own ceaseless toil can relieve: is taught how to value money rightly, and to calculate how best to spend it, for he has earned it; and thus comes to learn what nerve and resolve are in him, and to take the measure of himself by means of those suggestive experiences and conflicts through which he has passed. Such to a young man is the lesson of lessons, and he can get it only by a process which may humble him far oftener than it may flatter him. Cramming for a competitive examination cannot impart it, and success in such rivalry is no proof that it has been mastered; for a competitive trial, which from its very nature shows the possession only of cleverness and memory, but not of general talent, leaves ungauged the noblest elements of moral tuition and discipline.

On being licensed, John Brown became at once a popular preacher, and was called to Stirling, but by Synodical decision was ordained at Biggar, 6th February 1806, the congregation there having also chosen him. Thence, after fifteen years' service, was he removed to Rose Street, and thence, after a ministry of seven years, to Broughton Place, in the pastorate of which he spent the remaining thirty years of his long life. His removal to Edinburgh gave the Secession Church a position which it had not hitherto enjoyed in the critical and literary metropolis of Scotland. Hall, indeed, was there, a man of popular gifts and dignified eloquence; and Peddie, proverbial for the ingenious inferences and the keen practical sagacity of his expositions,-qualities not confined to his discourses, for his reply to Dr Porteous of Glasgow was declared by Dugald Stewart to be one of the best specimens of the reductio ad absurdum in the English language. Jamieson was there too, renowned for his Scottish erudition, and not less noted for the massive thought and the earnest gravity of his sermons. We abstain on purpose from saying a word on others not belonging to Dr Brown's denomination, or we might

have referred to the shrewd and discriminative preaching of the historian M'Crie, one of whose printed discourses Dr Brown declared to be among the best ever published; to Henry Grey, so tender, impressive, and catholic; to the fervid and spiritual Gordon; and to Andrew Thomson, whose robust genius clothed itself in a fitting masculine style, and spoke with a fresh and manly elocution. Dr Brown's pulpit appearances soon attracted large audiences, many of whom came to enjoy his discourses as a literary treat; for they were clear, accurate, sober, and ratiocinative-now working out some thought with steady skill and accelerating progress, now proving some doctrine from Scripture with accumulative energy, and now urging truth on heart and conscience with the honest vehemence and majestic authority of one who felt it to be his function to "persuade men," to "pray them in Christ's stead."

ness.

Dr Brown's preaching, then and afterwards, had four marked characteristics. It was clear, always clear. Its clearness was its brightness. No hearer was ever at a loss for his meaning: every paragraph stood out with mathematical precision and distinctIt was the truth given out with luminous prominencenot delicately shaded off, on the one hand, into clouded obscurity, or feebly fading away, on the other hand, into dim and intangible vagueness and uncertainty. He felt with good old Richard Baxter, that "it takes all our learning to make things plain." He spoke of God's grace, man's guilt, Christ's love, the Spirit's influence, and the nature and necessity of faith and holiness, so lucidly, that nobody could misunderstand him, or wonder what he meant. No paragraph ever resembled the impalpable image of which Eliphaz says, "It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof." Dr Gillies, in his biography of his father-inlaw, the eminent Maclaurin, says that his style, which was clear in his younger days, grew more obscure as he grew older. No one could make such a complaint about Dr Brown. Even in those critical dissertations in which he sometimes, perhaps too often, indulged, he was easily followed step by step by a trained and intelligent audience. He had no long and involved constructions, like those of Milton, Hooker, or Sir Thomas Brown, "with many a winding bout of linked sweetness long drawn out," but clause came after clause, each very distinct in itself and in its connection. His expositions of Divine truth were, in their uniform clearness, like the sharply-defined edges and ridges of a hill seen against the cloudless sky of a summer evening. His preaching was also "with power." Even when, in advanced years, he took to the slavish reading of his manuscript, his "natural force was not abated." Nothing was weak, tawdry, or effeminate about him in the pulpit: all was vigo

Character of His Preaching.

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rous, elevated, and effective. A living energy pervaded all his discourses. His style was felicitous, because it was the exact transcript of his thoughts, without any spasmodic abruptness, or any affectation of classic purity and grace. In the mere manufacture of periods he had no pleasure. He was a slave neither to the chaste and tuneful charms of Addison, nor the sonorous and measured parallelisms of Johnson-the twin-gods of literary homage at the commencement of the century. He did not imitate the concealed art of the one, or the open effort and laboured sweep of the other. His loud, hale, and hearty tones were no less in keeping, while his quick eye, noble form, symmetrical figure, and snowy "crown of glory," contributed to the general impression. At the same time, he employed no rhetorical arts of intonation and gesture. He would not stoop to discharge such mimic thunder. Occasionally he raised his voice to such a pitch. that one might call it a shout, and the ceiling rang again; and occasionally, as he warmed into a climax of argument or indignation, he stamped his foot so lustily, that it stilled and overawed the congregation. He preached the Gospel in its simplicity and majesty. He knew full well that the giving of mere instruction was not his whole duty, but that men's spirits must be aroused and dealt with, and that the preacher must use every effort, work on every passion, enlist every motive, and bring every appliance to bear on those to whom he appeals. In doing this, he trusted to the power of the truth. He never entranced his audience by a series of dissolving views of marine or rural scenery. He did not wander among woods and meadows, and tell of the song of the bird or the hum of the bee, the hue of flowers or the scent of herbs; nor did he ever flit like a meteor over regions on which hovered a light that "ne'er was seen on sea or shore." You never thought of complimenting any sentence by saying, "That's fine;" but you were often inclined to say of a paragraph, "That's masterly." His power was not that of imagery, passion, or pathos, but that of ripe and solid thought. Every listener felt that the preacher had something to say, for the "burden of the Lord" was upon him, and that he must say it. His occasional hesitancy for want of the right word or selected epithet, made him all the more emphatic and memorable. A sermon of his, when in his better days, was not like a lazy rivulet, creeping in stillness through a level English landscape, but like a Scottish stream, that battles its way over every obstacle, sometimes leaps and foams, and is always showing itself to be "living water," by its forcible current and visible speed.

Dr Brown's preaching was eminently scriptural. We mean, not merely that he preached the truth of Scripture-a compli