ment due to every evangelical minister-but that, in a full and felicitous way, he made Scripture its own interpreter. He had a special tact in "comparing spiritual things with spiritual;" and his frequent and favourite illustrations of Scripture were taken from Scripture. The emphatic way in which he quoted a clause was often a striking commentary upon it. We remember, for example, hearing him many years ago on Heb. viii. 1, and on the clause, "We have such an high priest." He was telling how the sacerdotal office of Christ had been modified, explained away, and denied; how the Socinian spoke of having a friend, a counsellor, and a sympathizer, and how the Jew imagined that Christianity had no one like Aaron to stand between the living and the dead, when he gradually warmed to a white heat, and, repeating the clause, pronounced "We have" with such a resolute accent, and in a tone of such assertatory vehemence, that the delivery of the two words not only contained the whole sermon within it, but gave edge and life to the subsequent illustration. His sermons were rich in apposite quotations, the "golden pot" was filled to overflowing with the precious manna. While his discourses ranged through every portion of the Bible, its central truths were his chosen theme. To him the cross was the centre of revelation, to which all its doctrines are united in happy harmony, and from which emanate their life and splendour. He delighted to expatiate on the Gospel as the Divine scheme of mercy, and often said of the Law, in contradistinction from the Gospel, "The law never made a bad man good, nor a good man better." "Law doctrine was never in his blood," said one of his venerable rustic admirers. His was no negative Gospel-no tossing of Christ's cross out of view into His tomb. He had great faith in the old Gospel-the Gospel of Peter and Paul-and had no sympathy with those philosophical harangues which sometimes either take its place, or profess to adapt it more thoroughly to the wants and tendencies of the present age. If such an attempt was only to simplify the system or improve its nomenclature, he might not object; but if, with insidious change of terms, there was also a change of belief, then he would "give place by subjection, no, not for an hour." He held that what had achieved such triumphs in the first century could repeat them in the nineteenth century; and that the Gospel was not to be set aside by civilisation as unnecessary or superseded by philosophy as antiquated. For the spiritual relations of man to his Maker are unchanged by such adventitious circumstances; so that what was preached in Antioch, Athens, Corinth, and Rome, must be preached still in Edinburgh, London, Paris, and New York. The moral disease being radically the same, the same benign remedy must still be applied. The enlightenment of these times no more

alters man's relation to God, than it changes the elements of his humanity; and there is no need, therefore, for "another Gospel, which is not another."

Lastly, Dr Brown's preaching was, as his biographer also remarks, distinguished by its tone of authority. Not that there was any assumption of sacerdotal prerogative in it, or any attempt to acquire or wield dominion over men's faith. It was not dogmatism, on the one hand, nor the feeble and uncertain teaching of the scribes, on the other. But he did not speak in hesitation, as if he doubted what he said, or needed formally and cautiously to prove it. He was not for ever appealing to evidence, and fencing with logical parade, as if his statements were liable to challenge; but, with his open Bible before him, he solemnly and boldly announced its truths as eternal and indisputable verities. His own mind was made up; and he could not but appropriate the Apostle's motto, "We believe, therefore we speak." He was never like one arguing a case, resting it on probabilities, or placing it at the hazard of succeeding experiments; for he knew that the Gospel has a witness in every man's conscience, and he fearlessly appealed to what Tertullian has called testimonium animæ naturaliter Christianæ. Therefore his teaching was, to use the epithet which Longinus applies to the style of Paul, anapodeictic, undemonstrative-not searching for truth, but pointing it home; not deducing it, but applying and commending it as "worthy of all acceptation."

According to universal testimony, Dr Brown's preaching differed much in his riper years from what it was at the commencement of his ministry. Not that, as was the case with Chalmers at Kilmany, it ever wanted the evangelical element, or was only ethical and discursive; but it was couched in scholastic phrase, and embroidered with juvenile ornament. As the style of Edmund Burke, from its naked simplicity in his youth, grew more and more luxuriant in imagery, till in his old age it had the stiffness and the almost ungraceful richness of brocade, so Dr Brown's preaching became more and more wealthy in evangelical statement and unction, and had shed around it more and more the incense of a devotional spirit. Some of his later sacramental addresses, in tenderness and simplicity, equal, if they do not surpass, the apostolic pastorals of the late Principal Lee. We should not, therefore, call Dr Brown's preaching philosophical, in the ordinary acceptation of the term, or in the sense in which it might be applied to the sermons of Archer Butler, which, in magnificence of thought and in moral grandeur, have rarely been surpassed. Nor should we call it intellectual, in the vulgar acceptation of the epithet, as when it is applied to a style of discoursing which apes the "enticing

words of man's wisdom," and strives to mitigate the offence of the cross by obscuring the view of it, or speaking of the agonies endured upon it more as a tragedy than as an atonement, rather as a martyrdom than as a propitiation. But if the meaning be, that there is grasp of thought, visible and positive vigour of mind put forth-no dull or jejune repetition of commonplaces, but mental action creating sympathy with itself, and calling forth a hearty response and acquiescence-then Dr Brown's preaching was intellectual beyond that of many. He never neglected nor tampered with pulpit preparation, self-indulgence or procrastination was not among his sins. His commission was, Give ye them to eat," and he strove to store up nutriment for them, in the hope and dependence that He who gave the commission would lay liberally to his hand. He never, at any period of his life, trusted to extemporaneous utterance. Every discourse was carefully thought out, and the ideas, and often the exact words, were committed to memory. A sermon was to him a solemn work, involving immense responsibility, and not merely a task to be got over on Sabbath as easily and as passably as he could. The pulpit was the scene of his power; and he would not weaken its influence by negligent preparation; "saying away," as the phrase is; filling up the prescribed period with a succession of words and sentences so loosely strung together, and so utterly inane and devoid of consecutive thought, that if a hearer falls asleep and in the course of twenty minutes wakens again, he will find the preacher much about where he left him. Dr Brown was always roused into unwonted rage when he referred to such slovenly and unfaithful practices. To show his idea of the importance of a sermon, and the anxious care and toil which it of necessity demanded, he used to quote a saying of Robert Hall's to himself: "A man of genius, sir, may produce one sermon in the week; a person of average talent may compose two; but nobody but a fool, sir, can write three." "This witness is true," though couched in the form of a paradox. Every one remembers how Lord Brougham, in his recent inaugural address as Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, insists on earnest and continuous preparation and study as indispensable to successful public speaking.

Conscientious and incessant preparation was all the more needed by Dr Brown, for he was not an orator in the high sense of the word, or in the sense that Mason, Hall, and Waugh were orators. To speak of the last, as he belonged to Dr Brown's own communion, there was no comparison in many points between the two men. Dr Waugh was not simply a consummate speaker he was an orator. While he prepared sermons with care, and could deliver them with ease and effect, still he could, on the inspiration of the moment, throw off gleaming thoughts, and pour

Oratory-Dr Waugh.

31

out streams of tenderness. He did not need, in such moods, to think continuously what he was to add, or to ponder prospectively how he was to get to a rounded conclusion. What next to say, never troubled him; how to say it, was born with him. Idea led on to idea, sentence linked itself with sentence, image rose after image, his eloquence baptized into the Spirit of Christ, and his sermons as devout as other men's prayers. His subject hurried him along, and he yielded to the impulse. Ordinary speakers, though they are good speakers, never venture far from shore, or lose sight of the headlands; but orators such as Dr Waugh, fearlessly leave all known landmarks, and commit themselves to the deep, assured that they will neither sink nor lose their way, but can return at will after their adventurous wanderings. A great deal of our best preaching, even when not given from a paper, is but the reading of manuscript by the eye of memory; but in genuine oratory, every power is brought into tense and vigorous play: not only are previous trains of cogitation brought up, but new trains are suggested and ardently pursued; the reasoning faculty soaring on the pinions of imagination, and having a wider sweep of view from its height; every fact within reach being laid under contribution, and many a stroke suggested by the consciousness that an impression is being made; language all the while starting up as it is wanted, and not waiting to be pressed into service, the right word leaping into the right place without effort or confusion. Dr Waugh often realized this description. Earnest, self-possessed, and imaginative, he often surprised his audience by some felicitous and unexpected allusion, frequently a Scottish one,-as when illustrating the second verse of the 46th Psalm, he exclaimed, "What!" says distrust or weak faith," were the Cheviot hills to be cast into the sea, could the shepherds be blamed for trembling?" or when, describing the revulsion of soul in the prodigal, he pictured him casting a glance at his squalid countenance and tattered robes reflected in the streamlet, then starting, looking up to heaven and shrieking in panic, "God of Abraham, is it I? To what a wretched plight have I brought myself." We might also have referred to Shanks of Jedburgh, spoken of by the elder brethren as unsurpassed in vivid description and appeal-" an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures" when preaching from a tent at a sacrament; to Jameson of Methven, a man of uncommon stamp, sometimes creeping indeed, but majestic when on the wing; and to Young of Perth, whose ardent and philosophical mind did its grandest achievements of oratory when left to itself, and unfettered by the notes of preparatory meditation.

From what has been said, it will be inferred that Dr Brown's mind was distinguished more by its vigour and clearness, than

by its depth and acuteness. His ideas were always judicious, if not always original or profound. He cared not to range among subtle and daring speculations, and though he could appreciate and admire them, he did not indulge in them. His devotion to the useful kept him from being fascinated by the novel and the recondite, by what was too high to be bound down to immediate utility, or too fine to be yoked to every-day business. Locke and Edwards seem to have been his favourite metaphysicians, on account of their clear and palpable reasonings. We say not, that he held all their views, but he reckoned them masters of thought, and maintained that it was only by a wicked and one-sided interpretation of Locke, that Condillac, Helvetius, and Comte could claim him as a patron of Sadducean sensationalism. Idealism of every form he could not away with; Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, or Ferrier, had no attractions for him. Owen, Howe, and Baxter were a triumvirate which, from familiar knowledge, he delighted to extol. Dugald Stewart also moved his admiration, though he had not been allowed to attend his class, there being the impression among evangelical men of that day-an impression not without foundation-that teachers of moral philosophy were often little better than baptized pagans. It was apparently forgotten, however, that moral obligations spring out of man's nature, and exist independently of Christianity, though it is very far wrong to refuse the light which Christianity casts on man's being and relations, and ignore the existence of that new motive power to which faith gives existence and permanence within him. Dr Brown relished the elegance and culture of Stewart's mind, the grace and purity of his style, and the precision and distinctness of his views; for he never hides himself in cloudland, or vanishes from view amidst transcendental subtleties. Dr Brown was fond of poetry in his youth, and some of the minor poets, such as Langhorne, Penrose, and especially Charlotte Smith, were among his favourites. But his tastes grew more select as he advanced in years, though we do not think that the ethereal beauties of Wordsworth, Shelley, or Tennyson, could ever captivate him. In his later writings, as we have already intimated, there was little of the garniture of fancy. He rarely employed imagery; his illustrations were plentiful, but usually homely, and it is surely a mark of his good sense that he did not strew his pages with faded garlands. He coveted beauty of form more than luxuriance of drapery-the severer beauty of unity and life which belongs to just or striking conceptions. His mind was not like the orchard in the rich bloom of spring, but like the orchard plenished with fruit in autumn; not like the parterre, gay with colours and laden with perfume, but like the field of grain which presents a harvest to the sickle.