* * * * *

He was an orator in its specific and highest sense. We need not prove this to those who have heard him; we cannot to those who have not. It was a living man sending living, burning words into the minds and hearts of men before him, radiating his intense fervor upon them all; but there was no reproducing the entire effect when alone and cool; some one of the elements was gone. We say nothing of this part of his character, because upon this all are agreed. His eloquence rose like a tide, a sea, setting in, bearing down upon you, lifting up all its waves—"deep calling unto deep;" there was no doing anything but giving yourself up for the time to its will. Do our readers remember Horace's description of Pindar?

"Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres Quem super uotas aluere ripas, Fervet, immensusque ruit profundo Pindarus ore:

—'per audaces nova dithyrambos Verba devolvit, numerisque fertur Lege solutis.'"

This is to our mind singularly characteristic of our perfervid Scotsman. If we may indulge our conceit we would paraphrase it thus. His eloquence was like a flooded Scottish river,—it had its origin in some exalted region—in some mountain-truth—some high, immutable reality; it did not rise in a plain, and quietly drain its waters to the sea,—it came sheer down from above. He laid hold of some simple truth—the love of God, the Divine method of justification, the unchangeableness of human nature, the supremacy of conscience, the honorableness of all men; and having got this vividly before his mind, on he moved—the river rose at once, drawing everything into its course—

"All thoughts, all passions, all desires,— Whatever stirs this mortal frame,"

things outward and things inward, interests immediate and remote—God and eternity—men, miserable and immortal—this world and the next—clear light and unsearchable mystery—the word and the works of God—everything contributed to swell the volume and add to the onward and widening flood. His river did not flow like Denham's Thames,—

"Though deep yet clear, though gentle yet not dull; Strong without rage, without o'erflowing full."

There was strength, but there was likewise rage; a fine frenzy—not unoften due mainly to its rapidity and to its being raised suddenly by his affections; there was some confusion in the stream of his thoughts, some overflowing of the banks, some turbulence, and a certain noble immensity; but its origin was clear and calm, above the region of clouds and storms. If you saw it; if you took up and admitted his proposition, his starting idea, then all else moved on; but once set a-going, once on his way, there was no pausing to inquire, why or how—fervet—ruit—fertur, he boils—he rushes—he is borne along; and so are all who hear him.

To go on with our figure—There was no possibility of sailing up his stream. You must go with him, or you must go ashore. This was a great peculiarity with him, and puzzled many people. You could argue with him, and get him to entertain your ideas on any purely abstract or simple proposition,—at least for a time; but once let him get down among practicals, among applications of principles, into the regions of the affections and active powers, and such was the fervor and impetuosity of his nature, that he could not stay leisurely to discuss, he could not then entertain the opposite; it was hurried off, and made light of, and disregarded, like a floating thing before a cataract.

To play a little more with our conceit—The greatest man is he who is both born and made—who is at once poetical and scientific—who has genius and talent—each supporting the other. So with rivers. Your mighty world's river rises in high and lonely places, among the everlasting hills; amidst clouds, or inaccessible clearness. On he moves, gathering to himself all waters; refreshing, cheering all lands. Here a cataract, there a rapid; now lingering in some corner of beauty, as if loath to go. Now shallow and wide, rippling and laughing in his glee; now deep, silent, and slow; now narrow and rapid and deep, and not to be meddled with. Now in the open country; not so clear, for other waters have come in upon him, and he is becoming useful, no longer turbulent,—travelling more contentedly; now he is navigable, craft of all kinds coming and going upon his surface forever; and then, as if by some gentle and great necessity, "deep and smooth, passing with a still foot and a sober face," he pays his last tribute to "the Fiscus, the great Exchequer, the sea,"—running out fresh, by reason of his power and volume, into the main for many a league.

Your mere genius, who has instincts, and is poetical and not scientific, who grows from within—he is like our mountain river, clear, wilful, odd; running round corners; disappearing it may be under ground, coming up again quite unexpectedly and strong, as if fed from some unseen spring, deep down in darkness; rising in flood without warning, and coming down like a lion; often all but dry; never to be trusted to for driving mills; must at least be tamed and led off to the mill; and going down full pace, and without stop or stay, into the sea.

Your man of talent, of acquirements, of science—who is made,—who is not so much educed as edified; who, instead of acquiring his vires eundo, gets his vires eundi, from acquirement, and grows from without; who serves his brethren and is useful; he rises often no one knows where or cares; has perhaps no proper fountain at all, but is the result of the gathered rain-water in the higher flats; he is never quite clear, never brisk, never dangerous; always from the first useful, and goes pleasantly in harness; turns mills; washes rags—makes them into paper; carries down all manner of dye-stuffs and feculence; and turns a bread-mill to as good purpose as any clearer stream; is docile, and has, as he reaches the sea, in his dealings with the world, a river trust, who look after his and their own interests, and dredge him, and deepen him, and manage him, and turn him off into docks, and he is in the sea before he or you know it.

* * * * *

Though we do not reckon the imagination of Dr. Chalmers among his master faculties, it was powerful, effective, magnificent. It did not move him, he took it up as he went along; its was not that imperial, penetrating, transmuting function that we find it in Dante, in Jeremy Taylor, in Milton, or in Burke; he used it to emblazon his great central truths, to hang clouds of glory on the skirts of his illustration; but it was too passionate, too material, too encumbered with images, too involved in the general melee of the soul, to do its work as a master. It was not in him, as Thomas Fuller calls it, "that inward sense of the soul, its most boundless and restless faculty; for while the understanding and the will are kept as it were in libera custodia to their objects of verum et bonum, it is free from all engagements—digs without spade, flies without wings, builds without charges, in a moment striding from the centre to the circumference of the world by a kind of omnipotency, creating and annihilating things in an instant—restless, ever working, never wearied." We may say, indeed, that men of his temperament are not generally endowed with this power in largest measure; in one sense they can do without it, in another they want the conditions on which its highest exercise depends. Plato and Milton, Shakspeare and Dante, and Wordsworth, had imaginations tranquil, sedate, cool, originative, penetrative, intense, which dwelt in the "highest heaven of invention." Hence it was that Chalmers could personify or paint a passion; he could give it in one of its actions; he could not, or rather he never did impassionate, create, and vivify a person—a very different thing from personifying a passion—all the difference, as Henry Taylor says, between Byron and Shakspeare.

In his impetuosity, we find the rationale of much that is peculiar in the style of Dr. Chalmers. As a spoken style it was thoroughly effective.[50] He seized the nearest weapons, and smote down whatever he hit. But from this very vehemence, this haste, there was in his general style a want of correctness, of selectness, of nicety, of that curious felicity which makes thought immortal, and enshrines it in imperishable crystal. In the language of the affections he was singularly happy; but in a formal statement, rapid argumentation and analysis, he was often as we might think, uncouth, and imperfect, and incorrect: chiefly owing to his temperament, to his fiery, impatient, swelling spirit, this gave his orations their fine audacity—this brought out hot from the furnace his new words—this made his numbers run wild—lege solutis. We are sure this view will be found confirmed by these "Daily Readings," when he wrote little, and had not time to get heated, and when the nature of the work, the hour at which it was done, and his solitariness, made his thoughts flow at their "own sweet will;" they are often quite as classical in expression, as they are deep and lucid in thought—reflecting heaven with its clouds and stars, and letting us see deep down into its own secret depths: this is to us one great charm of these volumes. Here he is broad and calm; in his great public performances by mouth and pen, he soon passed from the lucid into the luminous.

[50] We have not noticed his iterativeness, his reiterativeness, because it flowed naturally from his primary qualities. In speaking it was effective, and to us pleasing, because there was some new modulation, some addition in the manner, just as the sea never sets up one wave exactly like the last or the next. But in his books it did somewhere encumber his thoughts, and the reader's progress and profit. It did not arise, as in many lesser men, from his having said his say—from his having no more in him; much less did it arise from conceit, either of his idea or of his way of stating it; but from the intensity with which the sensation of the idea—if we may use the expression—made its first mark on his mind. Truth to him never seemed to lose its first freshness, its edge, its flavor; and Divine truth, we know, had come to him so suddenly, so fully, at mid-day, when he was in the very prime of his knowledge and his power and quickness—had so possessed his entire nature, as if, like him who was journeying to Damascus, a Great Light had shone round about him—that whenever he reproduced that condition, he began afresh, and with his whole utterance, to proclaim it. He could not but speak the things he had seen and felt, and heard and believed; and he did it much in the same way, and in the same words, for the thoughts and affections and posture of his soul were the same. Like all men of vivid perception and keen sensibility, his mind and his body continued under impressions, both material and spiritual, after the objects were gone. A curious instance of this occurs to us. Some years ago, he roamed up and down through the woods near Auchindinny, with two boys as companions. It was the first burst of summer, and the trees were more than usually enriched with leaves. He wandered about delighted, silent, looking at the leaves, "thick and numberless." As the three went on, they came suddenly upon a high brick wall, newly built, for peach-trees, not yet planted. Dr. Chalmers halted, and looking steadfastly at the wall, exclaimed most earnestly, "What foliage! what foliage!" The boys looked at one another, and said nothing; but on getting home, expressed their astonishment at this very puzzling phenomenon. What a difference! leaves and parallelograms; a forest and a brick wall!

What, for instance, can be finer in expression than this? "It is well to be conversant with great elements—life and death, reason and madness." "God forgets not his own purposes, though he executes them in his own way, and maintains his own pace, which he hastens not and shortens not to meet our impatience." "I find it easier to apprehend the greatness of The Deity than any of his moral perfections, or his sacredness;" and this—

"One cannot but feel an interest in Ishmael, figuring him to be a noble of nature—one of those heroes of the wilderness who lived on the produce of his bow, and whose spirit was nursed and exercised among the wild adventures of the life he led. And it does soften our conception of him whose hand was against every man, and every man's hand against him, when we read of his mother's influence over him, in the deference of Ishmael to whom we read another example of the respect yielded to females even in that so-called barbarous period of the world. There was a civilization, the immediate effect of religion, in these days, from which men fell away as the world grew older."

That he had a keen relish for material and moral beauty and grandeur we all know; what follows shows that he had also the true ear for beautiful words, as at once pleasant to the ear and suggestive of some higher feelings:—"I have often felt, in reading Milton and Thomson, a strong poetical effect in the bare enumeration of different countries, and this strongly enhanced by the statement of some common and prevailing emotion, which passed from one to another." This is set forth with great beauty and power in verses 14th and 15th of Exodus xv.,—"The people shall hear and be afraid—sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestina. Then the dukes of Edom shall be amazed—the mighty men of Moab, trembling shall take hold of them—the inhabitants of Canaan shall melt away." Any one who has a tolerable ear and any sensibility, must remember the sensation of delight in the mere sound—like the colors of a butterfly's wing, or the shapeless glories of evening clouds, to the eye—in reading aloud such passages as these: "Heshbon shall cry and Elealeh—their voice shall be heard to Jabez—for by the way of Luhith with weeping shall they go it up—for in the way of Horonaim they shall raise a cry. God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Is not Calno as Carchemish? is not Hamath as Arpad? is not Samaria as Damascus? He is gone to Aiath, he is passed to Migron; at Michmash he hath laid up his carriages: Ramath is afraid; Gibeah of Saul is fled—Lift up thy voice, O daughter of Gallim: cause it to be heard unto Laish, O poor Anathoth. Madmenah is removed; the inhabitants of Gebim gather themselves to flee. The fields of Heshbon languish—the vine of Sibmah—I will water thee with my tears, O Heshbon and Elealeh." Any one may prove to himself that much of the effect and beauty of these passages depends on these names; put others in their room, and try them.

We remember well our first hearing Dr. Chalmers. We were in a moorland district in Tweeddale, rejoicing in the country, after nine months of the High School. We heard that the famous preacher was to be at a neighboring parish church, and off we set, a cartful of irrepressible youngsters. "Calm was all nature as a resting wheel." The crows, instead of making wing, were impudent and sat still; the cart-horses were standing, knowing the day, at the field-gates, gossiping and gazing, idle and happy; the moor was stretching away in the pale sunlight—vast, dim, melancholy, like a sea; everywhere were to be seen the gathering people, "sprinklings of blithe company;" the country-side seemed moving to one centre. As we entered the kirk we saw a notorious character, a drover, who had much of the brutal look of what he worked in, with the knowing eye of a man of the city, a sort of big Peter Bell—

"He had a hardness in his eye, He had a hardness in his cheek."

He was our terror, and we not only wondered, but were afraid when we saw him going in. The kirk was full as it could hold. How different in looks to a brisk town congregation! There was a fine leisureliness and vague stare; all the dignity and vacancy of animals; eyebrows raised and mouths open, as is the habit with those who speak little and look much, and at far-off objects. The minister comes in, homely in his dress and gait, but having a great look about him, like a mountain among hills. The High School boys thought him like a "big one of ourselves," he looks vaguely round upon his audience, as if he saw in it one great object, not many. We shall never forget his smile! its general benignity;—how he let the light of his countenance fall on us! He read a few verses quietly; then prayed briefly, solemnly, with his eyes wide open all the time, but not seeing. Then he gave out his text; we forget it, but its subject was, "Death reigns." He stated slowly, calmly, the simple meaning of the words; what death was, and how and why it reigned; then suddenly he started, and looked like a man who had seen some great sight, and was breathless to declare it; he told us how death reigned—everywhere, at all times, in all places; how we all knew it, how we would yet know more of it. The drover, who had sat down in the table-seat opposite, was gazing up in a state of stupid excitement; he seemed restless, but never kept his eye from the speaker. The tide set in—everything added to its power, deep called to deep, imagery and illustration poured in: and every now and then the theme,—the simple, terrible statement, was repeated in some lucid interval. After overwhelming us with proofs of the reign of Death, and transferring to us his intense urgency and emotion; and after shrieking, as if in despair, these words, "Death is a tremendous necessity,"—he suddenly looked beyond us as if into some distant region, and cried out, "Behold a mightier!—who is this? He cometh from Edom, with dyed garments from Bozrah, glorious in his apparel, speaking in righteousness, travelling in the greatness of his strength, mighty to save." Then, in a few plain sentences, he stated the truth as to sin entering, and death by sin, and death passing upon all. Then he took fire once more, and enforced, with redoubled energy and richness, the freeness, the simplicity, the security, the sufficiency of the great method of justification. How astonished and impressed we all were! He was at the full thunder of his power; the whole man was in an agony of earnestness. The drover was weeping like a child, the tears running down his ruddy, coarse cheeks—his face opened out and smoothed like an infant's; his whole body stirred with emotion. We all had insensibly been drawn out of our seats, and were converging towards the wonderful speaker. And when he sat down, after warning each one of us to remember who it was, and what it was, that followed death on his pale horse,[51] and how alone we could escape—we all sunk back into our seats. How beautiful to our eyes did the thunderer look—exhausted—but sweet and pure! How he poured out his soul before his God in giving thanks for sending the Abolisher of Death! Then, a short psalm, and all was ended.

[51] "And I looked, and behold, a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him."—Rev. vi. 8.

We went home quieter than we came; we did not recount the foals with their long legs, and roguish eyes, and their sedate mothers; we did not speculate upon whose dog that was, and whether that was a crow or a man in the dim moor,—we thought of other things. That voice, that face; those great, simple, living thoughts; those floods of resistless eloquence; that piercing, shattering voice,—"that tremendous necessity."

* * * * *

Were we desirous of giving to one who had never seen or heard Dr. Chalmers an idea of what manner of man he was—what he was as a whole, in the full round of his notions, tastes, affections, and powers—we would put this book into their hands, and ask them to read it slowly, bit by bit, as he wrote it. In it he puts down simply, and at once, what passes through his mind as he reads; there is no making of himself feel and think—no getting into a frame of mind; he was not given to frames of mind; he preferred states to forms—substances to circumstances. There is something of everything in it—his relish for abstract thought—his love of taking soundings in deep places and finding no bottom—his knack of starting subtle questions, which he did not care to run to earth—his penetrating, regulating godliness—his delight in nature—his turn for politics, general, economical, and ecclesiastical—his picturesque eye—his humanity—his courtesy—his warm-heartedness—his impetuosity—his sympathy with all the wants, pleasures, and sorrows of his kind—his delight in the law of God, and his simple, devout, manly treatment of it—his acknowledgment of difficulties—his turn for the sciences of quantity and number, and indeed for natural science and art generally—his shrewdness—his worldly wisdom—his genius; all these come out—you gather them like fruit, here a little, and there a little. He goes over the Bible, not as a philosopher, or a theologian, or a historian, or a geologist, or a jurist, or a naturalist, or a statist, or a politician—picking out all that he wants, and a great deal more than he has any business with, and leaving every thing else as barren to his reader as it has been to himself; but he looks abroad upon his Father's word—as he used so pleasantly to do on his world—as a man, and as a Christian; he submits himself to its influences, and lets his mind go out fully and naturally in its utterances. It is this which gives to this work all the charm of multitude in unity, of variety in harmony; and that sort of unexpectedness and ease of movement which we see everywhere in nature and in natural men.

Our readers will find in these delightful Bible Readings not a museum of antiquities, and curiosities, and laborious trifles; nor of scientific specimens, analyzed to the last degree, all standing in order, labelled and useless. They will not find in it an armory of weapons for fighting with and destroying their neighbors. They will get less of the physic of controversy than of the diet of holy living. They will find much of what Lord Bacon desired, when he said, "We want short, sound, and judicious notes upon Scripture, without running into commonplaces, pursuing controversies, or reducing those notes to artificial method, but leaving them quite loose and native. For certainly, as those wines which flow from the first treading of the grape are sweeter and better than those forced out by the press, which gives them the roughness of the husk and the stone, so are those doctrines best and sweetest which flow from a gentle crush of the Scriptures, and are not wrung into controversies and commonplaces." They will find it as a large pleasant garden; no great system; not trim, but beautiful, and in which there are things pleasant to the eye as well as good for food—flowers and fruits, and a few good, esculent, wholesome roots. There are Honesty, Thrift, Eye-bright (Euphrasy that cleanses the sight), Heart's-ease. The good seed in abundance, and the strange mystical Passion-flower; and in the midst, and seen everywhere, if we but look for it, the Tree of Life, with its twelve manner of fruits—the very leaves of which are for the healing of the nations. And, perchance, when they take their walk through it at evening time, or at "the sweet hour of prime," they may see a happy, wise, beaming old man at his work there—they may hear his well-known voice; and if they have their spiritual senses exercised as they ought, they will not fail to see by his side, "one like unto the Son of Man."



DR. GEORGE WILSON.

Among the many students at our University who some two-and-twenty years ago started on the great race, in the full flush of youth and health, and with that strong hunger for knowledge which only the young, or those who keep themselves so ever know, there were three lads—Edward Forbes, Samuel Brown, and George Wilson—who soon moved on to the front and took the lead. They are now all three in their graves.

No three minds could well have been more diverse in constitution or bias; each was typical of a generic difference from the others. What they cordially agreed in, was their hunting in the same field and for the same game. The truth about this visible world, and all that it contains, was their quarry. This one thing they set themselves to do, but each had his own special gift, and took his own road—each had his own special choice of instruments and means. Any one man combining their essential powers, would have been the epitome of a natural philosopher, in the wide sense of the man who would master the philosophy of nature.

Edward Forbes, who bulks largest at present, and deservedly, for largeness was of his essence, was the observer proper. He saw everything under the broad and searching light of day, white and uncolored, and with an unimpassioned eye. What he was after were the real appearances of things; phenomena as such; all that seems to be. His was the search after what is, over the great field of the world. He was in the best sense a natural historian, an observer and recorder of what is seen and of what goes on, and not less of what has been seen and what has gone on, in this wonderful historic earth of ours, with all its fulness. He was keen, exact, capacious,—tranquil and steady in his gaze as Nature herself. He was, thus far, kindred to Aristotle, to Pliny, Linnaeus, Cuvier, and Humboldt, though the great German, and the greater Stagirite, had higher and deeper spiritual insights than Edward Forbes ever gave signs of. It is worth remembering that Dr. George Wilson was up to his death engaged in preparing his Memoir and Remains for the press. Who will now take up the tale?

Samuel Brown was, so to speak, at the opposite pole—rapid, impatient, fearless, full of passion and imaginative power—desiring to divine the essences rather than the appearances of things—in search of the what chiefly in order to question it, make it give up at whatever cost the secret of its why; his fiery, projective, subtile spirit, could not linger in the outer fields of mere observation, though he had a quite rare faculty for seeing as well as for looking, which latter act, however, he greatly preferred; but he pushed into the heart and inner life of every question, eager to evoke from it the very secret of itself. Forbes, as we have said, wandered at will, and with a settled purpose and a fine hunting scent, at his leisure, and free and almost indifferent, over the ample fields—happy and joyous and full of work—unencumbered with theory or with wings, for he cared not to fly. Samuel Brown, whose wings were perhaps sometimes too much for him, more ambitious, more of a solitary turn, was forever climbing the Mount Sinais and Pisgahs of science, to speak with Him whose haunt they were,—climbing there all alone and in the dark, and with much peril, if haply he might descry the break of day and the promised land; or, to vary the figure, diving into deep and not undangerous wells, that he might the better see the stars at noon, and possibly find Her who is said to lurk there. He had more of Plato, though he wanted the symmetry and persistent grandeur of the son of Ariston. He was, perhaps, liker his own favorite Kepler; such a man in a word as we have not seen since Sir Humphry Davy, whom in many things he curiously resembled, and not the least is this, that the prose of each was more poetical than the verse.

His fate has been a mournful and a strange one, but he knew it, and encountered it with a full knowledge of what it entailed. He perilled everything on his theory; and if this hypothesis—it may be somewhat prematurely uttered to the world, and the full working out of which, by rigid scientific realization, was denied him by years of intense and incapacitating suffering, ending only in death, but the "relevancy" of which, to use the happy expression of Dr. Chalmers, we hold him to have proved, and in giving a glimpse of which, he showed, we firmly believe, what has been called that "instinctive grasp which the healthy imagination takes of possible truth",—if his theory of the unity of matter, and the consequent transmutability of the now called elementary bodies, were substantiated in the lower but essential platform of actual experiment, this, along with his original doctrine of atoms and their forces, would change the entire face of chemistry, and make a Cosmos where now there is endless agglomeration and confusion,—would, in a word, do for the science of the molecular constitution of matter and its laws of action and reaction at insensible distances, what Newton's doctrine of gravitation has done for the celestial dynamics. For, let it be remembered, that the highest speculation and proof in this department—by such men as Dumas, Faraday, and William Thomson, and others—points in this direction; it does no more as yet perhaps than point, but some of us may live to see "resurgam" inscribed over Samuel Brown's untimely grave, and applied with gratitude and honor to him whose eyes closed in darkness on the one great object of his life, and the hopes of whose "unaccomplished years" lie buried with him.

Very different from either, though worthy of and capable of relishing much that was greatest and best in both, was he whom we all loved and mourn, and who, this day week, was carried by such a multitude of mourners to that grave, which to his eye had been open and ready for years.

George Wilson was born in Edinburgh in 1818. His father, Mr. Archibald Wilson, was a wine merchant, and died sixteen years ago; his mother, Janet Aitken, still lives to mourn and to remember him, and she will agree with us that it is sweeter to remember him than to have converse with the rest. Any one who has had the privilege to know him, and to enjoy his bright and rich and beautiful mind, will not need to go far to learn where it was that her son George got all of that genius and worth and delightfulness which is transmissible. She verifies what is so often and so truly said of the mothers of remarkable men. She was his first and best Alma Mater and in many senses his last, for her influence over him continued through life. George had a twin brother, who died in early life; and we cannot help referring to his being one of twins, something of that wonderful power of attaching himself, and being personally loved, which was one of his strongest as it was one of his most winning powers. He was always fond of books, and of fun, the play of the mind. He left the High School at fifteen and took to medicine; but he soon singled out chemistry, and, under the late Kenneth Kemp, and our own distinguished Professor of Materia Medica, himself a first-class chemist, he acquired such knowledge as to become assistant in the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Graham, now Master of the Mint, and then Professor of Chemistry in University College. So he came out of a thorough and good school, and had the best of masters.

He then took the degree of M. D., and became a Lecturer in Chemistry, in what is now called the extra-academical school of medicine, but which in our day was satisfied with the title of private lecturers. He became at once a great favorite, and, had his health and strength enabled him, he would have been long a most successful and popular teacher; but general feeble health, and a disease in the ankle-joint requiring partial amputation of the foot, and recurrent attacks of a serious kind in his lungs, made his life of public teaching one long and sad trial. How nobly, how sweetly, how cheerily he bore all these long baffling years; how his bright, active, ardent, unsparing soul lorded it over his frail but willing body, making it do more than seemed possible, and as it were by sheer force of will ordering it to live longer than was in it to do, those who lived with him and witnessed this triumph of spirit over matter, will not soon forget. It was a lesson to every one of what true goodness of nature, elevated and cheered by the highest and happiest of all motives, can make a man endure, achieve, and enjoy.

As is well known, Dr. Wilson was appointed in 1855 to the newly-constituted Professorship of Technology, and to the Curatorship of the Industrial Museum. The expenditure of thought, of ingenuity, of research, and management—the expenditure, in a word, of himself—involved in originating and giving form of purpose to a scheme so new and so undefined, and, in our view, so undefinable, must, we fear, have shortened his life, and withdrawn his precious and quite singular powers of illustrating and adorning, and, in the highest sense, sanctifying and blessing science, from this which seemed always to us his proper sphere. Indeed, in the opinion of some good judges, the institution of such a chair at all, and especially in connection with a University such as ours, and the attaching to it the conduct of a great Museum of the Industrial Arts, was somewhat hastily gone into, and might have with advantage waited for and obtained a little more consideration and forethought. Be this as it may, Dr. Wilson did his duty with his whole heart and soul—making a class, which was always increasing, and which was at its largest at his death.

We have left ourselves no space to speak of Dr. Wilson as an author, as an academic and popular lecturer, as a member of learned societies, as a man of exquisite literary powers and fancy, and as a citizen of remarkable public acceptation. This must come from some more careful, and fuller, and more leisurely record of his genius and worth. What he was as a friend it is not for us to say; we only know that when we leave this world we would desire no better memorial than to be remembered by many as George Wilson now is, and always will be. His Life of Cavendish is admirable as a biography, full of life, of picturesque touches, and of realization of the man and of his times, and is, moreover, thoroughly scientific, containing, among other discussions, by far the best account of the great water controversy from the Cavendish point of view. His Life of John Reid is a vivid and memorable presentation to the world of the true lineaments, manner of life, and inmost thought and heroic sufferings, as well as of the noble scientific achievements of that strong, truthful, courageous, and altogether admirable man, and true discoverer—a genuine follower of John Hunter.

The Five Gateways of Knowledge is a prose poem, a hymn of the finest utterance and fancy—the white light of science diffracted through the crystalline prism of his mind into the colored glories of the spectrum; truth dressed in the iridescent hues of the rainbow, and not the less but all the more true. His other papers in the British Quarterly, the North British Review, and his last gem on "Paper, Pens, and Ink," in his valued and generous friend Macmillan's first number of his Magazine, are all astonishing proofs of the brightness, accuracy, vivacity, unweariedness of his mind, and the endless sympathy and affectionate play of his affections with the full round of scientific truth. His essay on "Color Blindness" is, we believe, as perfect a monogram as exists, and will remain likely untouched and unadded to, factum ad unguem. As may be seen from these remarks, we regard him not so much as, like Edward Forbes, a great observer and quiet generalizer, or, like Samuel Brown, a discoverer and philosopher properly so called—though, as we have said, he had enough of these two men's prime qualities to understand and relish and admire them. His great quality lay in making men love ascertained and recorded truth, scientific truth especially; he made his reader and hearer enjoy facts. He illuminated the Book of Nature as they did the missals of old. His nature was so thoroughly composite, so in full harmony with itself, that no one faculty could or cared to act without calling in all the others to join in full chorus. To take an illustration from his own science, his faculties interpenetrated and interfused themselves into each other, as the gases do, by a law of their nature. Thus it was that everybody understood and liked and was impressed by him; he touched him at every point. Knowledge was to him no barren, cold essence; it was alive and flushed with the colors of the earth and sky, and all over with light and stars. His flowers—and his mind was full of flowers—were from seeds, and were sown by himself. They were neither taken from other gardens and stuck in rootless, as children do, much less were they of the nature of gumflowers, made with hands, wretched and dry and scentless.

Truth of science was to him a body, full of loveliness, perfection, and strength, in which dwelt the unspeakable Eternal. This, which was the dominant idea of his mind—the goodliness, and not less the godliness of all science—made his whole life, his every action, every letter he wrote, every lecture he delivered, his last expiring breath, instinct with the one constant idea that all truth, all goodness, all science, all beauty, all gladness are but the expression of the mind and will and heart of the Great Supreme. And this, in his case, was not mysticism, neither was it merely a belief in revealed religion, though no man cherished and believed in his Bible more firmly and cordially than he; it was the assured belief, on purely scientific grounds, that God is indeed and in very truth all in all; that, to use the sublime adaptation by poor crazy Smart, the whole creation, visible and invisible, spiritual and material, everything that has being, is—to those who have ears to hear—forever declaring "Thou Art," before the throne of the Great I AM.

To George Wilson, to all such men—and this is the great lesson of his life—the heavens are forever telling His glory, the firmament is forever showing forth His handiwork; day unto day, every day, is forever uttering speech, and night unto night is showing knowledge concerning Him. When he considered these heavens, as he lay awake weary and in pain, they were to him the work of His fingers. The moon, walking in brightness, and lying in white glory on his bed—the stars—were by Him ordained. He was a singularly happy, and happy-making man. No one since his boyhood could have suffered more from pain, and languor, and the misery of an unable body. Yet he was not only cheerful, he was gay, full of all sorts of fun—genuine fun—and his jokes and queer turns of thought and word were often worthy of Cowper or Charles Lamb. We wish we had them collected. Being, from his state of health and his knowledge of medicine, necessarily "mindful of death," having the possibility of his dying any day or any hour, always before him, and "that undiscovered country" lying full in his view, he must—taking, as he did, the right notion of the nature of things—have had a peculiar intensity of pleasure in the every-day beauties of the world.

"The common sun, the air, the skies, To him were opening Paradise."

They were to him all the more exquisite, all the more altogether lovely, these Pentlands, and well-known rides and places; these rural solitudes and pleasant villages and farms, and the countenances of his friends, and the clear, pure, radiant face of science and of nature, were to him all the more to be desired and blessed and thankful for, that he knew the pallid king at any time might give that not unexpected knock, and summon him away.



ST. PAUL'S THORN IN THE FLESH: WHAT WAS IT?

If the 15th verse of the fourth chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians, instead of being taken in a figurative sense, as it generally has been, be understood literally, it will be found to furnish the means of determining, with a tolerably near approach to certainty, the particular nature of the disease under which St. Paul is supposed to have labored, and which he elsewhere speaks of as the "Thorn in his flesh." And that the literal interpretation is the true one, may, I think, be shown, partly from the general scope of the paragraph to which the 15th verse belongs; partly from some peculiarities of expression in it, which could only have been used under an intention that the verse in question should be taken literally; and partly also from the fact that there are statements and allusions elsewhere in the New Testament, which assert or imply, that St. Paul really was affected in the manner here supposed to be indicated.

"Brethren, I beseech you," says the Apostle, "be as I am; for I am as ye are: ye have not injured me at all. Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel unto you at the first. And my temptation (trial) which was in my flesh ye despised not, nor rejected; but received me as an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus. Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me."

The last words of this passage, "Ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me," have usually been taken in a hyperbolical or proverbial sense, as if a merely general meaning was conveyed, amounting simply to—"There was no sacrifice, however great, which ye would not have made for me." But it is plainly open to inquiry, whether the sense is not of a more special kind; whether (viz.) St. Paul does not here, as in the preceding verses, intend to remind the Galatians of pure matter of fact—to recall to them, not in mere general terms, the depth and warmth of their feelings and professions of regard for him, but to repeat to them perhaps the very words they had used, and to revive in their memories the actual and express import of their desires and anxieties. If this be the case, if it really was a common and habitual thing with them to express a wish that it were possible for them to pluck out their own eyes, and to transfer them to the apostle, the only way of reasonably accounting for so strange and outre a proceeding, is to suppose that St. Paul actually labored either under entire deprivation of vision, or under some severely painful and vexatious disease of the eyes: The meaning being, that so keenly did the Galatians sympathize with the apostle in his affliction, that they would willingly have become his substitutes by taking all his suffering upon themselves, if only it were possible, by doing so to relieve him.

That there is at least no prima facie objection to this explanation of the words, will, I think, be readily enough admitted. It is perfectly simple and unforced, and it conveys a lively and touching representation of the feelings which would naturally spring up in the minds of a grateful and warm-hearted people, to their great benefactor and friend, who, amidst disease, and pain, and weakness, had made the greatest and most unwearying exertions to communicate to them the invaluable truths of Christianity.

But, in addition to this, it will be found, I think, that under the literal interpretation of the 15th verse, a peculiar point and force belongs to the apostle's appeal, and a closely connected and harmonious meaning is imparted to the whole paragraph, all of which, it seems to me, are lost if the figurative explanation is adhered to. In the previous part of the chapter, St. Paul had been arguing against the foolish predilection which the Galatians had taken up for forms and formalisms and ceremonial observances, and strongly exhorting them to abandon this pernicious and unchristian propensity. And now, in the paragraph quoted, he takes up new ground, and appeals to them by the memory of their old affection for him, to listen to his arguments and entreaties, and to be of one mind with him. The general meaning of what he says is plain enough, but there are difficulties of detail, both in particular expressions, and in the train of thought. The words, for example, "Be as I am, for I am as ye are," at once strike the ear as a peculiar and unusual style to adopt in an invitation to unity of thought and feeling. But if the last clause of the 15th verse be taken literally, I think it will appear that this expression has a special fitness and propriety. The words, "for I am as ye are," imply a reference, I imagine, to his being, in respect of his bodily affliction, not as they were; and what follows is intended to remind them how anxious they were, when their love to him was fresh, to be "as he was," even although it would have been necessary to accept bodily pain and mutilation to attain that object. If I am correct in thinking the first clause of the 12th verse, and the last of the 15th, to be thus closely related and corresponsive, it will be seen that they mutually explain each other; and the apostle's argument, as I understand it, may then be thus stated:—If you were so willing and eager, when I was with you, even at the cost of plucking out your eyes, to "be as I am," surely you will hardly refuse me the same thing now in this other matter, wherein there is no such difference between us as to raise any impediment in the way of your compliance, where no such sacrifice as ye were formerly ready to make is required of you, and where all that is asked from you is to give up your false opinions and evil practices, and simply "be as I am" in believing and obeying the truth revealed.

In another respect, the ordinary explanation involves, I think, an unnatural rupture of the continuity of thought, which is completely avoided by the literal interpretation of the passage. In the 13th verse, we find the apostle introducing, in a somewhat formal and special manner, the subject of his bodily affliction. "Ye know," he says, "how through infirmity of the flesh I preached the gospel to you at the first." And it cannot but strike the reader as strange that, after this, all he should have to say about the matter, is that the Galatians "despised not nor rejected it." The very vagueness, and merely negative character of this expression, excites a sort of instinctive expectation that he will forthwith proceed to state something more positive and specific. But instead of this we are taught by the common explanation, to suppose that an abrupt transition is at once made from the subject of his "temptation" altogether; the statement about the attachment of the Galatians, instead of becoming more distinct and special, as we naturally expect it to do, suddenly merges into the widest possible generality; and their affection, instead of being described by any further reference to the facts of its manifestation, is now represented to us under a strong (it is true) but rather fantastic figure, which leaves an impression of its character and aspect just as undecided and imperfect as before.

But a closer examination of the words at once throws doubt on this conception of their meaning. In the 13th and 14th verses, the associated ideas are, the apostle's disease or affliction, and the affectionate concern of the Galatians with reference to it. In the 15th verse, the reference to the Galatians' display of affection is still continued, and now the idea connected with it is, that of their giving him their plucked-out eyes. But this is not necessarily a change of association, for, as already intimated, their plucking out their eyes and giving them to the apostle, naturally and readily suggests the thought that their design was, "if it had been possible," to supply them to him as substitutes for his own, under the assumption of the latter being diseased or defective. If this be the reference, then the missing idea reappears, the lost association is recovered; bodily affliction in the apostle, and the affection of the Galatians towards him, are still the connected thoughts, the only change being just what might naturally be expected to take place as the discourse proceeded, viz.:—that the ideas are more distinctly developed, and that what was previously alluded to in general terms, is now, not indeed directly stated, but specifically indicated and implied. The "temptation" in the one verse, and the disease hinted by implication in the form assumed by the passionate sympathy of the Galatians, are therefore identified; and thus, the whole paragraph, from the 12th to the 15th verse, instead of presenting an agglomeration of abrupt transitions and disconnected thoughts, evolves a close, natural, and continuous meaning throughout.

Something more, however, is required than merely to show that the interpretation which I propose exhibits a better arrangement, and connection of the thoughts. The apostle may have written in haste, and that explanation of his meaning which attributes to him imperfect connectedness, may after all be the correct one. I shall therefore proceed to inquire whether some further light may not be thrown upon the subject, by a more minute investigation than I have yet attempted, of particular words and turns of expression in the passage.

The phrase, "I bear you record," could only have been used with propriety in reference to a positive fact; something that the apostle had actually witnessed. He could not have employed this language in announcing a mere inference (as the common interpretation would make it) from the conduct of the Galatians towards him, as to the strength and extent of their regard; for a man's testimony can only bear reference to facts which have actually come under his observation. The apostle's language, let it be observed, is not the declaration of a belief that the Galatians would have plucked out their own eyes in his behalf, if circumstances had arisen to make such a sacrifice necessary; it is the announcement of a testimony ({martyro}), on the assumption that those circumstances had actually arisen. And the testimony is not to the effect that the Galatians entertained strong affection to him, and as a consequence of that affection; that he is assured they would have plucked out their eyes for him (for these must have been the terms of his declaration, upon the ordinary understanding of the passage); but it is direct to the point, that if it had only been possible, "they would have plucked out their own eyes, and have given them to him." Such language, it appears to me, would be absurd, unless we are to understand by it, that the Galatians had actually expressed a wish, and demonstrated a desire to perform the very act which the apostle speaks of! And if so, I think it is obviously necessary to infer that some circumstance must have existed to give occasion to a wish of so peculiar a kind, in the minds of those who were attached to the apostle's person; and the only circumstance which I can conceive of as calculated to excite such a wish, is St. Paul's suffering under some painful affection of the eyes.

The expression, "if it had been possible," has also, I think, a peculiar significance. If the sentence in the 15th verse, beginning, "I bear you record," &c., is thoughtfully considered, it will be seen that three suppositions may be made as to the apostle's meaning and reference: 1st, The language may be understood (as has usually been done) in a figurative or proverbial sense, and as containing no allusion to any really existing circumstances; 2d, It may be taken literally, but with reference rather to what might happen than to circumstances actually existing; as if the writer had said, "If I were to lose my eyes, I bear you record that you would willingly have plucked out yours to supply their place;" or, 3d, The words may be understood as giving a plain matter-of-fact representation of what the Galatians really thought and felt in reference to the apostle's bodily affliction. Now, I think it may be made out quite distinctly that the words "if it had been possible," could only have been used under the last of these hypotheses; for in no other case would the contingency of possibility have presented itself to the writer's mind. If, for example, we are to understand the language as literal, but with reference to the future or conceivable, rather than the present or actual, the expression would obviously have been,—"I bear you record that if it had been necessary" or, "if such a thing had been required of you for my benefit, ye would have plucked out," &c.[52] If, on the other hand, we suppose the language to be figurative or proverbial, no contingency would have been mentioned at all, for it is characteristic of such language that it is always absolute and unconditional. For example, in the expressions, "If thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee;" "If thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee;" every one at once recognizes the purely proverbial or figurative character of the language, and this simply because its form is absolute and unconditioned. The moment you introduce anything like a condition, and make the removal of the sinning eye or the offending hand dependent upon some circumstance, you are compelled to understand the words according to their strictly literal meaning. Thus, if our Lord, instead of saying what he did in this case, had used such an expression as this,—"If thy right hand offend thee, and if the tendency to offend be insuperable, cut it off;" or, "If thy right eye offend thee, and its extraction would not endanger life, pluck it out," it is clear that the expressions could only have been taken in their strictly literal sense. So, in the words under review, it is also obvious that the introduction of the "if it be possible" takes the phrase out of the class of figures or proverbs, and necessitates its interpretation in a close, literal, matter-of-fact manner.

[52] This seems to have been the view taken by Calvin, but with that logical acuteness which was characteristic of him, he at the same time perceived that it was inaccordant with the expression, "if it had been possible." In his commentary upon the passage, therefore, he substitutes "si opus sit" for the apostle's words; thus, of course, assuming that St. Paul had adopted an inapt phrase to express his meaning. But I need scarcely say that such a mode of interpretation is altogether inadmissible, the only legitimate rule being to take the words of the text as they stand, and thence to infer the circumstances or conditions under which they were used.

Perhaps a slight incident which lately occurred in my presence will better illustrate what I wish to convey than any elaborate exposition could do. One day, a poor simple-hearted married couple, from the country, called on a medical friend of mine, to consult him about a complaint in the eyes of the husband, which seemed to threaten him with total blindness. The wife entered at great length into all the symptoms of the complaint, and was extremely voluble in her expressions of sympathy and of anxiety that something should be done to remove the disease. It was difficult to repress a smile at the scene, and yet it was touching too; and the doctor, looking in the old woman's honest affectionate face, quietly said, "I suppose you would give him one of your own eyes, if you could:" "That I would, sir," was the immediate answer. Now, it is clear that my friend's words could only have been used under the particular circumstances which called them forth. Had the affection of the old woman been exhibited upon some other occasion than her husband's threatened blindness, he might have said (though, of course, the allusion to eyes at all would not very naturally or probably have suggested itself), "I suppose you would give him one of your own eyes if he required it," but he could never have used the words, "if you could." The application of this to the language used by St. Paul is sufficiently obvious.

Another expression in this paragraph seems to me still further to discriminate the nature of the complaint under which St. Paul suffered. I mean the words, "and have given them to me." Admitting that the Galatians might, under other circumstances than diseased vision in the apostle, have thought of such a way of demonstrating their affection to him as plucking out their own eyes, I cannot imagine how the notion of "giving them to him" could ever have occurred to them, unless his organs of sight were in such a state of disease as in the natural association of ideas to give rise to this vain and fanciful wish. For the very fact of its being thus vain, fanciful, and far-fetched, makes it necessary to assume that there were some peculiar circumstances in the case to occasion a thought so odd and out of the way. If the language had really been what it has so generally been supposed to be—figurative or proverbial—I can conceive the apostle putting it in this way, "Ye would have plucked out your own eyes for me," or, "to show the strength of your affection for me;" but it seems to me that it is absurd and unmeaning to say, "and have given them to me", unless under the idea of such giving being of some service to the apostle, as a kindly fancy would naturally dwell upon the thought of its being, if St. Paul's own eyes were injured or destroyed. And, further, we are compelled, I think, to conclude that the idea of substitution is conveyed by the word "given," from this fact, that the clause, "if it had been possible," has actually no meaning at all, unless it is to be understood as referring to the supposed attempt of the apostle to make use of the Galatians' eyes. It is clear that the writer could not have used the words, "if it had been possible" in reference to the "plucking out," because there the obstacle of impossibility did not present itself; there was nothing to hinder the Galatians from plucking out their eyes if they had been so disposed. Neither could the reference have been to "giving" in the simple sense of that word; if they could pluck out their eyes there was no impossibility in merely giving them to the apostle. The only thing about the possibility of which there could be any question was their being so given—so made over to him as to be of any service as substitutes for his own.

One other expression in the paragraph still requires to be noticed, but I must defer alluding to it until I have referred to some other points which seem to me to have a bearing upon the question. In the mean time, having thus shown how exactly the whole of the language of this passage tallies with the idea of the apostle having been affected with some distressing complaint in his eyes, it is surely very remarkable to learn, from a totally different source, that St. Paul actually had at one period of his life lost the power of vision. I allude, of course, to what is recorded, in the ninth chapter of Acts, of the strange occurrence which took place when he was on his way to Damascus. And although we are informed that he shortly afterwards recovered his sight, it is obvious that this is quite compatible with the existence of much remaining disease and imperfection of vision. Indeed, I am not sure but his own language in giving an account of the extraordinary event actually favors the idea that the miraculous cure effected by Ananias went barely to the restoration of sight, and did not amount to a complete removal of the injury which his eyes had sustained. In his address to the Jews at Jerusalem, when he stood upon the stairs of the castle (Acts xxii. 13), all that he says is, "Ananias came unto me and stood and said unto me, Brother Saul, receive thy sight. And the same hour I looked up upon him." In Acts ix. 18, the words are, "Immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales, and he received sight forthwith." In neither passage at least is there anything inconsistent with the idea that his eyes, though they had not lost the power of vision, may yet have been seriously and perhaps permanently injured. And although it is perhaps scarcely legitimate to bring it forward as an argument for the view which I have adopted, yet it is impossible to overlook the fact that a most important end was served by the apostle's eyes being permitted to retain the marks of disease and severe injury, for a standing proof was thus afforded to the Church and to the world that the extraordinary vision, so confirmatory of the truth of our holy religion, was not, as some might otherwise have been inclined to think it, a vain fancy of the apostle's own mind. Often, no doubt, when St. Paul told of that remarkable meeting with the Lord Jesus, he was met by the reply, "'Paul, thou art beside thyself;' delusion, a heated imagination, has deceived and betrayed you." But he had only to point to his branded, half-quenched orbs, and to ask the objectors if mental hallucinations were accustomed to produce such effects on the bodily frame. To such a question there could obviously be no answer And if the objectors were satisfied of the apostle's veracity in alleging the one thing to be the effect of the other, it was hardly possible for them to gainsay the claim of a Divine origin for Christianity.

This hypothesis as to the cause and occasion of St. Paul's infirmity, receives from another part of Scripture, where allusion is made to it, a somewhat remarkable confirmation. In the 12th chapter of Second Corinthians, it cannot, I think, after what I have just stated, but be regarded as very singular that the "thorn in the flesh" is mentioned in immediate connection with "visions and revelations of the Lord." The ordinary idea, indeed, has been that this connection is merely incidental; but a little consideration, I think, will show that this cannot be the case. In the 7th verse he says, "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh," &c. Now, I contend that unless there was some such intimate relation between the thorn in the flesh and the revelations in question, as that of the one being immediately occasioned by the other, the humbling effect here attributed to the bodily infirmity could not have been produced on the apostle's mind, because the cause assigned would have been unsuitable and inadequate to such an effect. It is true that every affliction, bodily or otherwise, has a tendency to produce a feeling of humiliation, but it does so only in so far as it cuts away the ground on which we are disposed to build up matter of pride or boasting. If a man is proud of his strength or personal beauty, it would humble him to lose a limb, or to have his features disfigured by loathsome disease. But these afflictions would not produce the same effect if they befell another person who valued himself exclusively upon his learning and mental endowments. The pride of learning and of intellect would, in such a case, remain as strong as ever. Accordingly we find that deformed persons, so far from being distinguished by the grace of humility, are very frequently rather remarkable for the opposite characteristics of vanity and self-conceit; so natural is it for the mind to take refuge from what tends to produce a sense of degradation, in something that the humbling stroke does not directly smite. It does not, therefore, distinctly appear, in any explanation of St. Paul's affliction which would refer it to disease of an ordinary kind, how it should have had the effect which he attributes to it,—that of preventing him from being unduly exalted by the abundance of the revelations made to him. But when it is pointed out that his affliction was the immediate consequence of his close intercourse with Deity, the relation of the two things assumes an entirely different aspect, and a sufficient cause of humiliation appears. For, if at any time the apostle was disposed to glorify himself on his superiority to his fellow-men, and on being the peculiar favorite and friend of God, his real insignificance, and the infinite distance that lay between him and the Divine Being, must have been sent home with irresistible power to his mind, by the recollection that the mere sight of that terrible majesty had struck him to the ground, and had left an ever-during brand of pain and disfigurement on his person. I shall just add, that in Second Corinthians xii. 7, the words, {te hyperbole ton apokalypseon} may with quite as much propriety be construed with {edothe moi skolops te sarki}, as with {hina me huperairomai}; the meaning being thus given,—"and that I might not be exalted, a thorn in the flesh [caused] by the exceeding greatness (for this rather than 'abundance' seems to me the proper translation of {hyperbole}) of the revelations, was given me."

If the account I have thus given of the connection between St. Paul's "thorn in the flesh," and the visions or revelations with which he was favored, be the correct one, we are now furnished with the means of explaining a somewhat obscure expression in the 14th verse of the fourth chapter of Galatians, to which I promised to return: "And my trial which was in my flesh, ye despised not, nor rejected." If we are compelled to abide by the belief, that St. Paul's "trial" was merely some bodily affliction of the ordinary kind, we can understand the meaning of his saying that the Galatians did not "despise" it (although, by the way, it seems rather a microscopic basis on which to found a laudation of a body of Christian men and women, to say that they were so good as not to despise him on account of a natural bodily infirmity), but it is impossible, on this assumption, to attach any consistent sense to the word "rejected." It has, therefore, been taken as simply synonymous with "despise," an interpretation which is objectionable, both because it is at variance with the well-ascertained meaning of the Greek word {exeptusate} (spit out, not spit at), and also because it involves the imputation of needless tautology to St. Paul's language, from which, almost more than from any other fault of style, the whole of his writings prove him to be singularly free. But if my explanation of the nature of the apostle's trial be the true one, every word of the sentence has a clear and intelligible meaning. St. Paul came among the Galatians proclaiming to them the glad truth, that Jesus Christ was risen from the dead. How did he know it? Because he himself had seen him alive after his passion, "when he came near to Damascus." Was he quite sure that the vision was not a dream, or a delusion? He pointed to his eyes in proof that it was a great certainty, a terrible as well as joyous reality. And this evidence the Galatians "despised not, nor rejected."

This explanation of the reference of "rejected," has also the advantage of removing a difficulty which has hitherto been felt in the translation of the preceding verse. It is there said, "Ye know how through infirmity of the flesh I preached," &c. Now, it so happens, that the Greek words {di astheneian}, cannot, in accordance with the common usage of the language, be translated "through" (in the sense of during) "infirmity." Had this been the meaning which the apostle intended to convey, he would have used the genitive {di astheneias}. With the accusative, the reference of {dia} is generally found to be to the instrument, ground, or cause of anything, and its meaning is—by, on account of, by means of, on the ground of, &c.[53] The literal and strictly correct translation of St. Paul's words, therefore, is: "By the infirmity of my flesh, I proclaimed to you the good news," i. e., I adduced the fact of my bodily affliction, as giving indisputable evidence of the truth which I told you about the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus Christ, and this evidence "ye despised not, nor rejected." Thus, not only a specific meaning is attached to the word "rejected," but a much more close, distinct, and consistent sense is given to the whole passage, than upon any other understanding of the reference it could possess.

[53] See Robinson's Lexicon to the New Testament, sub voce {dia}.

There are one or two other passages in St. Paul's Epistles, in which reference, I think, is implied to this subject of his bodily affliction, and all of them seem to me to afford incidentally some confirmation of the particular view of the matter which I have endeavored to establish. At the close of the Epistle to the Galatians (chap. vi. verse 11), we find him saying, "Ye see how large a letter I have written to you with my own hand." Now, the letter is not a very large one; on the contrary, it is one of the shorter of the apostle's productions. And, then, why should he take credit for having written it with his own hand? Under ordinary circumstances, it would scarcely occur to any one in the habit of writing at all, to speak of this as any remarkable achievement. But, if the Galatians knew him to be laboring under impaired vision, and perhaps severe pain in his eyes, the words are peculiarly significant, and could not fail to make a touching impression on the quick, impulsive temperament, so vividly alive to anything outward, of the Celtic tribe to which they were addressed. And thus too, we obtain an explanation of what would otherwise be rather unaccountable, how a man of St. Paul's active habits, and whom we have difficulty in conceiving of as accustomed in anything to have recourse to superfluous ministrations, seems to have almost uniformly employed an amanuensis in writing to the various churches.[54]

[54] It has been suggested to me that the state of St. Paul's eyesight might also furnish an explanation of his mistake in not recognizing the High Priest, which is recorded in Acts xxiii. 5, and about which some difficulty has been felt by commentators. One can picture the great apostle, who was a thorough gentleman, stretching forward, and shading his eyes, to see better, and saying, "Pardon me, I did not see it was the High Priest." "I wist not."

Again, at the very conclusion of the Epistle, we have what I cannot help regarding as another allusion to his affliction: "From henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." It has been customary to regard these words as referring to the marks of scourging, stoning, &c., which had been imprinted on the apostle's body by the enemies of the gospel, in the course of the persecutions to which he had been subjected in consequence of his firm adherence to the faith. But though the fact of his having undergone severe persecution was a strong proof of his sincerity, it was no proof at all of his bearing any authority over the Galatians. Yet this is what he must be understood as asserting here. And I cannot help thinking, that the words, "marks of the Lord Jesus," are chosen with a reference to that relationship which was established between St. Paul and his Master and Lord, on the occasion of that extraordinary meeting on the way to Damascus, for it was then he received his commission to bear Christ's name to the Gentiles. {Stigmata} were the brands with which slaves were marked in order to prove their ownership. So, if I am right in my understanding of the meaning of the word here, the apostle intends to intimate that the blasting effect produced on his eyes by the glory of that light, constituted the brand which attested his being the servant ({doulos}) of Jesus Christ, and of his being commissioned by him to communicate to others the truth of the gospel. This gives a force and fulness of meaning which corresponds exactly with the peculiar energy of the expression, while, according to any ordinary explanation of the passage, it seems rather to be strong language used without any adequate occasion for it.[55]

[55] It may be worth mentioning here, that an opinion prevails in the Roman Catholic Church, that persons who have been favored with Divine visions, or to whom God wishes to give a token of his peculiar love, are frequently marked by what are specifically called stigmas. I have not met with any account of the grounds on which this opinion is founded: but the stigmas are explained to be the marks of the Saviour's five wounds. It is very likely that the notion is nothing more than a fantastic and superstitious explanation of the passage in Galatians vi. 17. But it is not altogether impossible that it may be the faint and imperfect echo of some early tradition in the Church as to the physical effect produced upon St. Paul by Christ's miraculous appearance to him near Damascus. Whatever be its origin, the existence of such an opinion is not without a certain degree of curiosity and interest.

I think the circumstance of the expression, "marks of the Lord Jesus," occurring just where it does, at the close of the Epistle, is worthy of remark. From what he says at the 11th verse of the same chapter ("Ye see how large a letter I have written to you with my own hand") it is obvious that, to whatever cause it is to be attributed, the act of writing was one of considerable effort to the apostle. His zeal, and anxiety, and Christian affection, however, had borne him up, and carried him through with his task. But just as he was concluding, I imagine that he began to feel that the effort he had made was greater than his infirmity was well able to bear. If my idea as to the nature of that infirmity be correct, his weak, diseased eyes were burning and smarting more than ordinarily, from the unusual exertion that had been demanded from them; and this, at once leading his mind to what had been the cause of that exertion, the misconduct of the Galatians and their teachers, naturally wrung from him an assertion of his authority, in the impetuous and reproachful, but at the same time deeply pathetic exclamation: "From henceforth let no man trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." And so he concludes his Epistle.

In pursuing the above inquiry, certain further conclusions, naturally flowing out of what I have attempted to establish, and yet involving results considerably remote from it, have presented themselves to my thoughts. I am inclined to regard them as calculated in some degree to simplify the mode of presenting the Christian scheme to the mind, and to impart to its claims upon the understanding and belief more of logical directness, and less of the liability to evasion, than appear to me to characterize some of the more ordinary modes of its presentation. But I must leave the development of this, the most interesting, as I think, and important part of my subject, to some future opportunity, should it be granted me.



THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES.

... "If thou wert grim, Lame, ugly, crooked, swart, prodigious."

KING JOHN.

These gnarled, stunted, useless old bones, were all that David Ritchie, the original of the Black Dwarf, had for left femur and tibia, and we have merely to look at them and add poverty, to know the misery summed up in their possession. They seem to have been blighted and rickety. The thigh-bone is very short and slight, and singularly loose in texture; the leg-bone is dwarfed, but dense and stout. They were given to me many years ago by the late Andrew Ballantyne, Esq. of Woodhouse (the Wudess, as they call it on Tweedside), and their genuineness is unquestionable.

As anything must be interesting about one once so forlorn and miserable, and whom our great wizard has made immortal, I make no apology for printing the following letters from my old friend Mr. Craig, long surgeon in Peebles, and who is now spending his evening, after a long, hard, and useful day's work, in the quiet vale of Manor, within a mile or two of "Cannie Elshie's" cottage. The picture he gives is very affecting, and should make us all thankful that we are "wiselike." There is much that is additional to Sir Walter's account, in his "Author's Edition" of the Waverley Novels.

"HALL MANOR, Thursday, May 20, 1858.

"MY DEAR SIR,—David Ritchie, alias Bowed Davie, was born at Easter Happrew, in the parish of Stobo, in the year 1741. He was brought to Woodhouse, in the parish of Manor, when very young. His father was a laborer, and occupied a cottage on that farm; his mother, Anabel Niven, was a delicate woman, severely afflicted with rheumatism, and could not take care of him when an infant. To this cause he attributed his deformity, and this, if added to imperfect clothing, and bad food, and poverty, will account for the grotesque figure which he became. He never was at school, but could read tolerably; had many books; was fond of poetry, especially Allan Ramsay; he hated Burns. His father and mother both died early, and poor Davie became a homeless wanderer; he was two years at Broughton Mill, employed in stirring the husks of oats, which were used for drying the corn on the kiln, and required to be kept constantly in motion; he boasted, with a sort of rapture, of his doings there. From thence he went to Lyne's Mill, near his birth-place, where he continued one year at the same employment, and from thence he was sent to Edinburgh to learn brush-making, but made no progress in his education there; was annoyed by the wicked boys, or keelies, as he called them, and found his way back to Manor and Woodhouse. The farm now possessed by Mr. Ballantyne, was then occupied by four tenants, among whom he lived; but his house was at Old Woodhouse, where the late Sir James Nasmyth built him a house with two apartments, and separate outer doors, one for himself exactly his own height when standing upright in it; and this stands as it was built, exactly four feet. A Mr. Ritchie, the father of the late minister of Athelstaneford, was then tenant; his wife and Davie could not agree, and she repeatedly asked her husband to put him away, by making the highest stone of his house the lowest. Ritchie left, his house was pulled down, and Davie triumphed in having the stones of his chimney-top made a step to his door, when this new house was built. He was not a little vindictive at times when irritated, especially when any allusion was made to his deformity. On one occasion, he and some other boys were stealing pease in Mr. Gibson's field, who then occupied Woodhouse; all the others took leg-bail, but Davie's locomotion being tardy, he was caught, shaken, and scolded by Gibson for all the rest. This he never forgot, and vowed to be avenged on the "auld sinner and deevil;" and one day when Gibson was working about his own door, Davie crept up to the top of the house, which was low, and threw a large stone down on his head, which brought the old man to the ground. Davie crept down the other side of the house, got into bed beside his mother, and it was never known where the stone came from, till he boasted of it long afterwards. He only prayed that it might sink down through his "harn-pan" (his skull). His personal appearance seems to have been almost indescribable, not bearing any likeness to anything in this upper world. But as near as I can learn, his forehead was very narrow and low, sloping upwards and backward, something of the hatchet shape; his eyes deep set, small, and piercing; his nose straight, thin as the end of a cut of cheese, sharp at the point, nearly touching his fearfully projecting chin; and his mouth formed nearly a straight line; his shoulders rather high, but his body otherwise the size of ordinary men; his arms were remarkably strong. With very little aid he built a high garden wall, which still stands, many of the stones of huge size; these the shepherds laid to his directions. His legs beat all power of description; they were bent in every direction, so that Mungo Park, then a surgeon at Peebles, who was called to operate on him for strangulated hernia, said he could compare them to nothing but a pair of corkscrews; but the principal turn they took was from the knee outwards, so that he rested on his inner ankles, and the lower part of his tibias.

'An' his knotted knees play'd aye knoit between.'

"He had never a shoe on his feet; the parts on which he walked were rolled in rags, old stockings, &c., but the toes always bare, even in the most severe weather. His mode of progressing was as extraordinary as his shape. He carried a long pole, or 'kent,' like the Alpenstock, tolerably polished, with a turned top on it, on which he rested, placed it before him, he then lifted one leg, something in the manner that the oar of a boat is worked, and then the other, next advanced his staff, and repeated the operation, by diligently doing which he was able to make not very slow progress. He frequently walked to Peebles, four miles, and back again, in one day. His arms had no motion at the elbow-joints, but were active enough otherwise. He was not generally ill-tempered, but furious when roused.

"ROBERT CRAIG."

"HALL MANOR, June 15, 1858.

"MY DEAR SIR,—I have delayed till now to finish Bowed Davie, in the hope of getting more information, and to very little purpose. His contemporaries are now so few, old, and widely scattered, that they are difficult to be got at, and when come at, their memories are failed, like their bodies. I have forgotten at what stage of his history I left off; but if I repeat, you can omit the repetitions. Sir James Nasmyth, late of Posso, took compassion on the houseless, homeless lusus naturae, and had a house built for him to his own directions; the door, window, and everything to suit his diminished, grotesque form; the door four feet high, the window twelve by eighteen inches, without glass, closed by a wooden board, hung on leathern hinges, which he used to keep shut. Through it he reconnoitred all visitors, and only admitted ladies and particular favorites; he was very superstitious; ghosts, fairies, and robbers he dreaded most. I have forgotten if I mentioned how he contrived to be fed and warmed. He had a small allowance from the parish poor-box, about fifty shillings; this was eked out by an annual peregrination through the parish, when some gave him food, others money, wool, &c., which he hoarded most miserly. How he cooked his food I have not been able to learn, for his sister, who lived in the same cottage with him, was separated by a stone and lime wall, and had a separate door of the usual size, and window to match, and was never allowed to enter his dwelling; but he brought home such loads, that the shepherds had to be on the lookout for him, when on his annual eleemosynary expeditions, to carry home part of his spoil. On one occasion a servant was ordered to give him some salt, for containing which he carried a long stocking; he thought the damsel had scrimped him in quantity, and he sat and distended the stocking till it appeared less than half full, by pressing down the salt, and then called for the gudewife, showed it her, and asked if she had ordered Jenny only to give him that wee pickle saut; the maid was scolded, and the stocking filled. He spent all his evenings at the back of the Woodhouse kitchen fire, and got at least one meal every day, where he used to make the rustics gape and stare at the many ghost, fairy, and robber stories which he had either heard of or invented, and poured out with unceasing volubility, and so often that he believed them all true. But the Ballantyne family had no great faith in his veracity, when it suited his convenience to fib, exaggerate, or prevaricate, particularly when excited by his own lucubrations, or the waggery of his more intellectual neighbors and companions. He had a seat in the centre, which he always occupied, and a stool for his deformed feet and legs; they all rose at times, asking Davie to do likewise, and when he got upon his pins, he was shorter than when sitting, his body being of the ordinary length, and the deficiency all in his legs. On one occasion, a wag named Elder put up a log of wood opposite his loophole, made a noise, and told Davie that the robbers he dreaded so much were now at his house, and would not go away; he peeped out, and saw the log, exclaimed, 'So he is, by the Lord God and my soul; Willie Elder, gi'e me the gun, and see that she is weel charged.' Elder put in a very large supply of powder without shot, rammed it hard, got a stool, which Davie mounted, Elder handing him the gun, charging him to take time, and aim fair, for if he missed him, he would be mad at being shot at, be sure to come in, take everything in the house, cut their throats, and burn the house after. Davie tremblingly obeyed, presented the gun slowly and cautiously, drew the trigger; off went the shot, the musket rebounded, and back went Davie with a rattle on the floor. Some accomplice tumbled the log; Davie at length was encouraged to look out, and actually believed that he had shot the robber; said he had done for him now, 'that ane wad plague him nae mair at ony rate.' He took it into his head at one time that he ought to be married, and having got the consent of a haverel wench to yoke with him in the silken bonds of matrimony, went to the minister several times, and asked him to perform the ceremony. At length the minister sent him away, saying that he could not and would not accommodate him in the matter. Davie swung himself out at the door on his kent, much crestfallen, and in great wrath, shutting the door with a bang behind him, but opening it again, he shook his clenched fist in the parson's face, and said, 'Weel, weel, ye'll no let decent, honest folk marry; but, 'od, lad, I'se plenish your parish wi' bastards, to see what ye'll mak o' that,' and away he went. He read Hooke's Pantheon, and made great use of the heathen deities. He railed sadly at the taxes; some one observed that he need not grumble at them as he had none to pay. 'Hae I no'?' he replied, 'I can neither get a pickle snuff to my neb, nor a pickle tea to my mouth, but they maun tax 't.' His sister and he were on very unfriendly terms. She was ill on one occasion; Miss Ballantyne asked how she was to-day. He replied, 'I dinna ken, I ha'na been in, for I hate folk that are aye gaun to dee and never do't,' In 1811 he was seized with obstruction of the bowels and consequent inflammation; blisters and various remedies were applied for three days without effect. Some one came to Mrs. Ballantyne and said that it was 'just about a' owre wi' Davie noo.' She went, and he breathed his last almost immediately. His sister without any delay, got his keys, and went to his secret repository, Mrs. Ballantyne thought to get dead-clothes, but instead, to the amazement of all present, she threw three money-bags, one after another, into Mrs. Ballantyne's lap, telling her to count that, and that, and that. Mrs. B. was annoyed and astonished at the multitude of half-crowns and shillings, all arranged according to value. He hated sixpences, and had none, but the third contained four guineas in gold. Mrs. B. was disgusted with the woman's greed, and put them all up, saying, what would anybody think if they came in and found them counting the man's money and his breath scarcely out,—took it all home to her husband, who made out L4 2s. in gold, L10 in a bank receipt, and L7 18s. in shillings and half-crowns, in all L22. How did he get this? He had many visitors, the better class of whom gave him half-crowns, others shillings and sixpences; the latter he never kept, but converted them into shillings and half-crowns whenever he got an opportunity. I asked the wright how he got him into a coffin. He replied, 'Easily; they made it deeper than ordinary, and wider, so as to let in his distorted legs, as it was impossible to streek him like others.' He often expressed a resolve to be buried on the Woodhill top, three miles up the water from the church-yard, as he could never 'lie amang the common trash;' however, this was not accomplished, as his friend, Sir James Nasmyth, who had promised to carry this wish into effect, was on the Continent at the time. When Sir James returned, he spoke of having his remains lifted and buried where he had wished; but this was never done, and the expense of a railing and plantation of rowan-trees (mountain ash), his favorite prophylactic against the spells of witches and fairies, was abandoned. The Woodhill is a romantic, green little mount, situated at the west side of the Manor, which washes its base on the east, and separates it from Langhaugh heights, part of a lofty, rocky, and heathery mountain range, and on the west is the ruin of the ancient peel-house of old Posso, long the residence of the Nasmyth family. And now that we have the Dwarf dead and buried, comes the history of his resurrection in 1821. His sister died exactly ten years after him. A report had been spread that he had been lifted and taken to dissecting-rooms in Glasgow, which at that period was the fate of many a more seemly corpse than Davie's; and the young men—for Manor had no sexton—who dug the sister's grave in the vicinity of her brother's, stimulated by curiosity to see if his body had really been carried off, and if still there what his bones were like, lifted them up, and carried them to Woodhouse, where they lay a considerable time, till they were sent to Mr. Ballantyne, then in Glasgow. Miss Ballantyne thinks the skull was taken away with the other bones, but put back again. I have thus given you all the information I can gather about the Black Dwarf that I think worth narrating. It is reported that he sometimes sold a gill, but if this is true the Ballantynes never knew it. Miss Ballantyne says that he was not ill-tempered, but on the contrary, kind, especially to children. She and her brother were very young when she went to Woodhouse, and her father objected to resetting the farm from Sir James, on account of the fearful accounts of his horrid temper and barbarous deeds, and Sir James said if he ever troubled them that he would immediately put him away; but he was very fond of the younger ones, played with them, and amused them, though when roused and provoked by grown-up people, he raged, stormed, swore terrifically, and struck with anything that was near him, in short, he had an irritable but not a sulky, sour, misanthropic temper. The Messrs. Chambers wrote a book about him and his doings at a very early period of their literary history. Did I tell you of a female relative, Niven (whom he would never see), saying that she would come and streek him after he died? He sent word, 'that if she offered to touch his corpse he would rive the thrapple oot o' her—he would raither be streekit by Auld Clootie's ain red-het hands.'—Yours, truly obliged, R. C."

This poor, vindictive, solitary, and powerful creature, was a philocalist: he had a singular love of flowers and of beautiful women. He was a sort of Paris, to whom the blushing Aphrodites of the glen used to come, and his judgment is said to have been as good, as the world generally thinks that of Oenone's handsome and faithless mate. His garden was full of the finest flowers, and it was his pleasure, when the young beauties

"Who bore the blue sky intermixed with flame In their fair eyes,"

came to him for their competitive examination, to scan them well, and then, without one word, present each with a flower, which was of a certain fixed and well-known value in Davie's standard calimeter.

I have heard that there was one kind of rose, his {kallisteion}, which he was known to have given only to three, and I remember seeing one of the three, when she was past seventy. Margaret Murray, or Morra, was her maiden name, and this fine old lady, whom an Oxonian would call a Double First, grave and silent, and bent with "the pains," when asked by us children, would, with some reluctance, and a curious grave smile, produce out of her Bible, Bowed Davie's withered and flattened rose; and from her looks, even then, I was inclined to affirm the decision of the connoisseur of Manor Water. One can fancy the scene in that sweet solitary valley, informed like its sister Yarrow with pastoral melancholy, with a young May, bashful and eager, presenting herself for honors, encountering from under that penthouse of eyebrows the steady gaze of the strange eldritch creature; and then his making up his mind, and proceeding to pluck his award and present it to her, "herself a fairer flower," and then turning with a scowl, crossed with a look of tenderness, crawl into his den. Poor "gloomy Dis," slinking in alone.

They say, that when the candidate came, he surveyed her from his window, his eyes gleaming out of the darkness, and if he liked her not he disappeared; if he would entertain her, he beckoned her into the garden.

I have often thought that the Brownie, of whom the south country legends are so full, must have been some such misshapen creature, strong, willing, and forlorn, conscious of his hideous forbidding looks, and ready to purchase affection at any cost of labor, with a kindly heart, and a longing for human sympathy and intercourse. Such a being looks like the prototype of the Aiken-Drum of our infancy, and of that "drudging goblin," of whom we all know how he

"... Sweat To earn his cream-bowl daily set, When in one night, ere glimpse of morn, His shadowy flail hath thresh'd the corn, That ten day lab'rers could not end; Then lies him down, the lubber[56] fiend, And stretch'd out all the chimney's length, Basks at the fire his hairy strength, And cropful out of doors he flings, Ere the first cock his matin rings."

[56] Lob-lye-by-the-fire.

My readers will, I am sure, more than pardon me for giving them the following poem on Aiken-Drum, for the pleasure of first reading which, many years ago, I am indebted to Mr. R. Chambers's Popular Rhymes of Scotland, where its "extraordinary merit" is generously acknowledged.

THE BROWNIE OF BLEDNOCH.

There cam' a strange wicht to our town-en', An' the fient a body did him ken; He tirl'd na lang, but he glided ben Wi' a dreary, dreary hum.

His face did glow like the glow o' the west, When the drumlie cloud has it half o'ercast; Or the struggling moon when she's sair distrest, O sirs! 'twas Aiken-drum.

I trow the bauldest stood aback, Wi' a gape an' a glow'r till their lugs did crack, As the shapeless phantom mum'ling spak, Hae ye wark for Aiken-drum!