One of the interesting features of his early labours was the missionary spirit with which he sought to imbue his people. That period was the birthday of modern missionary societies, and Mr. Brown entered so warmly into their evangelistic enterprises as to raise congregational collections to aid them. His zeal in this cause soon attracted public attention, and we find the Secession minister of Biggar preaching the annual sermon in his own metropolis for the Edinburgh Missionary Society, in 1816, and for the London Missionary Society, in 1821, in imperial London.

In 1807 he entered into the marriage relation, and found a congenial partner; but in 1816 he was bereaved of his wife. He felt his loss deeply then and throughout all the time he remained at Biggar.

During the latter half of the seventeen years of his country pastorate, Mr. Brown appeared before the public on several occasions as an author. We shall refer to these efforts when we give a summary of his literary labours.

In the year 1822 he was translated to Edinburgh, to succeed the Rev. Dr. Hall in Rose Street Church. He was then in his thirty-eighth year, and in the full vigour of his manhood. His style of preaching attracted a large audience; and many not accustomed to attend Seceding meeting-houses became frequent hearers. In the metropolis of his country he found social fellowship of the most superior kind, and he was fitted to adorn the circles to which he had ready entrance. After seven years' ministry in Rose Street, he was called again to succeed Dr. Hall in Broughton Place. In his new sphere a large tide of prosperity followed him. He soon gathered round him some 1,200 communicants, and a regular audience of 1,600-as many as the church could hold. He continued his practice of giving an expository lecture in the morning, when all his exegetical ability came out. In the afternoon he preached a more didactic sermon; but his keen analysis was manifest even amidst his glowing paragraphs and earnest appeals. Many ingenuous youths, not a few of them students, received life-long impressions from his able and faithful ministry. Dr. Brown ministered to this congregation until his death in 1858, though for sixteen years he had the assistance of a colleague of distinguished ability.

In 1834 he was appointed Professor of Exegetical Theology to the United Secession Church. He entered upon this work con amore, and for twenty-three years met with the candidates for the ministry. The sessions cccupied only two months in each year, and stretched over five years. Much work was done, however, in the limited time. He inaugurated a new era in the Divinity Halls of Scotland. The critical study of the sacred word, for which the Presbyterian clergy of Scotland were once well equipped, had been much neglected. As a master of the art, he sought to create a taste for it, and to aid the rising ministry to cultivate it. The zeal with which he entered into his class duties infected his students, and he succeeded in gaining many to his favourite pursuit. He was to them all a father and a friend. He had an apparatus criticus quite equal to his office. The sacred languages and their cognate dialects were sufficiently at his command. His library was full of editions and versions of the Scriptures, and with treatises of commentators belonging to Patristic, Scholastic, Reformation, Puritan, and Modern ages. There was scarcely any writer on exegesis with which he was not familiar, and scarcely a text in the Bible on which he had not formed a critical judgment. The grand aim of his study, his ministry, and his professorship, was to ascertain the mind of God in his Word. There could not be a nobler consecration of learning.

Though so studious and academic, he did not escape the controversies of his day, or pass unscathed amidst the strife. In the Apocrypha agitation he

occupied a conspicuous place, and on the Voluntary question he held the utmost anti-state church views, and suffered the spoiling of his goods in holding them. The most painful controversy in which he took a part was concerning the Atonement. This arose in 1841, in connection with Mr. Morison, of Kilmarnock, whose views have obtained great notoriety. Considerable agitation prevailed in the Secession Church on the subject of the extent of the Atonement, not so much with regard to the redemption of the elect, as with regard to the general reference to the world to whom the Gospel is preached. Mr. Morison was condemned by the Synod, and soon adopted extreme Arminian, and even Pelagian views; but this did not extinguish the controversy. Dr. Brown was suspected of Arminian tendencies, and was publicly accused before the Synod. The libel was not proved, and the professor was acquitted of the charge of holding unsound doctrines. A minority, however, thought that some of his expressions were inconsistent with the received doctrines of the Church.

The ordeal through which Dr. Brown passed on this occasion was very trying, and he felt it deeply. Some of his expressions-clear enough, perhaps, to his own mind to be free from Arminianism, but not so to others--had afforded grounds for suspicion; but the subject was then thoroughly met, discussed, and exhausted. Dr. Cairns is of opinion that "the general results of the controversy were in a high degree salutary. The Gospel was not preached more freely in the pulpits of the church, for that was not possible. But relief was brought to many minds hampered and disturbed by the apparent inconsistency between a universal offer of salvation and a limited atonement on which to rest it; and an example was afforded of Christian largeheartedness and charity, in giving to the terms of ministerial communion the intact comprehension consistent with truth and sincerity." There can be no doubt that the offer of salvation is universal. The atonement has also an infinite efficacy. These are sufficient warrants for a frank and honest proclamation of the Gospel, and any one holding the Westminster Confession is as free thus to preach as were the apostles themselves. No Arminian can preach a fuller or a freer Gospel than a Calvinist of the Westminster creed.* Dr. Brown began Christian authorship while residing at Biggar, and from time to time continued to send forth works of considerable ability. Up to the year 1848 as many as thirty-nine separate publications had flowed from his pen. Most of them, however, were sermons, pamphlets, and sketches, which were in their nature ephemeral. It was in the year just noticed that his theological authorship began. From that period until his death he continued to issue those exegetical works which have made his name famous as a divine. The first was "Expository Discourses on the first Epistle of Peter," in three volumes. During sixteen years he had been occupied with their delivery to his congregation. He had also read them to the students under his care. For fulness of exposition, nicety of critical analysis, evangelical unction, and practical application, they have not a superior. Akin to these was his next work, "The Discourses and Sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ," in three volumes. This study had been begun forty years before, and had occupied his mind throughout that lengthened period. In 1850 appeared "An Exposition of our Lord's Intercessory Prayer," a work of rare merit. In 1851 he issued "The Resurrection of Life," an exposition of 1 Cor. xv. In 1852, "The Sufferings and Glories of the Messiah" were discussed in a volume of expositions on Psalm xviii. and Isaiah liii. In 1853 he published a work on the Epistle to the Galatians, "the fruit of almost incredible labour, * On this question our readers may consult with great profit Dr. Candlish's able volume, which is quite to our mind.

not less than a hundred and fourteen critical and hermeneutical treatises, according to his own statement, having been consulted by him in the course of his preparations." This was followed by a volume on the Epistle to the Romans, in 1857. Unfinished, there was in his desk, " An Exposition of the Epistle to the Hebrews," which, it is hoped, will yet be given to the Church through the press. Besides these, he published several volumes of discourses and lectures, and edited a few reprints of valuable theological works. It now came near his closing scene. He had already buried a second wife, whom he had taken nineteen years after the death of his first. He had taken a part in important public matters-the union of two branches of the Secession in 1820, and the still greater union of the two churches of Secession and Relief, constituting the United Presbyterian Church, in 1847. He had enjoyed a jubilee of his ministry in 1856, when the highest mark of esteem was given him by his people, his church, and the Christian community generally. He had been honoured as a divine, having been made D.D. in 1830, and respected as a voluminous expositor of Holy Writ. He had passed about a thousand candidates for the ministry through his training, and had thus largely bequeathed his influence to succeeding time. Now, though continuing to love his work, and to labour at it, it became evident that the frame could not bear more tension or toil.

In 1857 he became very weak. Early in 1858 he began to sink. The word of God, which he had so closely and fondly studied, was his joy and support in his declining days. His remarks were full of holy unction and of ecstatic hope. "The sovereign love of God, the infinite atonement of the Redeemer, the omnipotent power of the Divine Spirit-that is sufficient for any; it is sufficient for me,' was the utterance of his faith when about to die. In July, of 1858, he sent a farewell letter to his church. These words occur in it: "For my own part, looking onward to the judgment-seat, I must declare that I have no hope but in mere mercy, no dependence but on the testimony of God.' 'Sovereign grace,' as Rutherford says, 'is the port that I airt at.'" To his students he sent a copy of his grandfather's Address, with notes. He still loved the society of his books, and among the last he perused were "Owen's Meditations on the Glory of Christ,"-a study most appropriate before entering the beatific vision.

His funeral was

He fell asleep in Jesus on the 13th October, 1858. attended by the magistrates of the city, the professors of the University, many ministers, students, and people, who all mourned as they realised the fact that a great man and a prince had fallen in Israel.

His early piety retained its beauty throughout the course of a long life. His was a career of unbroken Christian consistency. "His mind," says Dr. Cairns, was of the Pauline type, with masculine intellect, ardent temperament, and unyielding will, brought under the decisive influence of the Cross, and expending all its energies in subduing other minds to the same obedience of faith."

The Presbyterian Church has reason to embalm the memory of this distinguished ornament of her ministry, and to be grateful to God for raising up one so eminently gifted by scholarship and grace for directing the studies of those who are called to expound the Holy Scriptures. On this field the battle of the faith has now to be fought, and it eminently becomes all preachers and students to be well armed for the conflict. Throughout his long career Dr. Brown had a pastoral charge, yet he found time for studies which have made him one of the most successful exegetes of the Word. All he did was directed to the one aim of his life, and he grudged no labour, whether of linguistic or critical research, in order that he might fulfil that aim. Blended

with this was the simplicity of a humble Christian, and the fidelity of a watchman on the towers of Zion.

Let the Presbyterian Church encourage scholarship in her clergy, and in the coming crisis it will be seen that those best prepared will be most influential in settling the convictions of inquiring minds, and in moulding the piety of the Church of the succeeding age. When Presbyterians unite together, which we trust they will soon do, they will be able to encourage the cultivation of Biblical and ecclesiastical literature more than at present, and they will be able to reward it. They could not do better than found an Annual Lecture, like those at Oxford and in London, where Episcopal and Congregational divines have brought forth valuable treatises on various branches of Theological Science.

Cheltenham.

R. S.

Extracts from New Publications. victs, the red cloak, the shaving of the hair

PROTESTANT GALLEY SLAVES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. SOME years ago Admiral Baudin gave a description of the condition of the Protestant galley slaves in the eighteenth century, drawn from the best sources of information, while he was making a military inspection of the ports of Marseilles and Toulon.

One circumstance which lends additional interest to the researches and communications of M. Baudin is the fact that this superior officer of the French navy, who died a few years ago at Paris, a good Protestant and Christian, was born and educated in the Romish communion.

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"The regulations of the galleys," he says, were then excessively severe. This fact explains the vast amount of mortality in proportion to the numbers condemned. The convicts were chained in couples to the benches of the galleys, and they were employed in moving long and heavy oars, an exceedingly painful service. In the centre of each galley, between the benches of rowers, extended a kind of gallery, on which the overseers constantly walked, having each as a whip the nerve of an ox, with which they struck the shoulders of the unfortunate men who did not row with sufficient energy to please them. The galley slaves passed their lives on their benches; they ate and slept there, without being able to move farther than the length of their chain permitted, and having no other shelter from the rain and the heat of the sun, or the cold of the night, than a cloth, which was stretched as an awning over them when the galley was not in motion and the wind was not too violent."

Add to this the hideous livery of the con

and eye-brows, the cork gag, suspended round the neck; for in certain manoeuvres all the convicts were gagged. And to such sufferings, to this horrible coupling with the vilest criminals, thousands of men were condemned whose only crime was their religious belief, their fidelity to a proscribed worship. Extreme youth and grey-headed age were mingled there, for on the benches of these hateful floating prisons were seen young lads of fifteen and octogenarians.

Among the latter, in 1753, was Isaac de Grenier de Lasterme, an ennobled glass manufacturer of Gabre, in Languedoc, sentenced to the galleys for life for attending religious meetings. Isaac de Lasterme was not the first nobleman clothed by his persecutors in the infamous garb of the galley slave witness the Baron de Salgas, the respected chief of one of the most ancient families of the Cevennes, condemned, in 1703, on a false accusation of holding communication with the Camisards. As for M. de Lasterme, his only crime was, that he had been seen peaceably attending the meetings for worship, a common and trifling offence. In the condemnation of this septuagenarian in 1746, virtue, rank, and grey hairs were all smitten at once. Like his predecessor at the galleys, the Baron de Salgas, he accepted his fate in the spirit of a Christian martyr.

"We see by your letter," wrote M. de Lasterme to the Pastor of the Desert, who had been commissioned to convey to the sufferers at Toulon consolation and assistance from their brethren, "we see the concern you feel for the poor Protestant captives. . . Our circumstances depend on those who are placed over us, and vary according to the caprice of their whimsical and ferocious tempers. You have had, sir, a statement of the clothes which are given us, with which we have to endure the rigour of the cold and the heat of summer. Occupied in the labours of

in the ceiling, issuing upon the platform of the tower. Besides these two openings for air, the two rooms are only lighted by narrow loop-holes, pierced through the vast thickness of the walls. It is just possible to read there when the eye has been accustomed to this funereal twilight. Here languished, year after year, unfortunate women who were nearly all apprehended, like the prisoners at the galleys, for the sole fact of being present at religious meetings.

which you have been informed, having no food but bread and water, we can only obtain any amelioration by paying a halfpenny every morning to the keepers; without this we are liable to remain fastened to a beam by a heavy chain. If the honoured society at Marseilles did not give two halfpence to each, the greater number of us would be subjected to this cruel punishment: there are many whose more pressing necessities oblige them to submit to it. . . . . I pray that the great God may crown the grace he has communicated to you with more grace; that he may sustain you in your labours and prosper the talents he has given you for the glory of his name. I have the honour to be, sir, with all the respect which I owe to your character, your very humble and obedient servant, Lasterme. I beg you to pardon, at my age, the interlineations and other defects of i Anne Saliége, daughter of the late Antoine writing." Saliége, a labouring man, of the diocese of Monde, seized in her house by order of the king, on account of religion; aged sixty-five years; in prison since 1719. (Her captivity had lasted thirty-five years).

Alms for the captives were collected not only in France, but also in foreign countries, Holland, Germany, and Switzerland. The refugees who had found on a friendly soil peace, security, and religious liberty, did not forget their less fortunate brethren. The pulpits sent forth fervent prayers and eloquent appeals on behalf of the confessors suffering for the faith, and the lapse of time did not exhaust the charitable solicitude of their Christian brethren.

It was not till 1775, at the beginning of Louis XVI.'s reign, that the galleys released their two last Protestant prisoners, Antoine Rialle, a tailor, condemned for the offence of attending a religious meeting, and Paul Achard, for having concealed a minister from pursuit. These victims owed their deliverance to the active efforts of Court de Gébelin, the son of the illustrious Pastor Antoine Court. The learned author of "Le Monde Primitif" combined with his literary labours the functions of agent in Paris for the churches, and was thus able to render numerous and signal services to his fellow Protestants.

But it was not men only who suffered for the persecuted Protestant Church. How many daughters were torn from their mothers!

How many mothers torn from their children! Corresponding to the convict prisons of Marseilles and Toulon, stands the dismal Tower of Constance, with its unfortunate prisoners. . . . There we shall find the same barbarity and the same courage.

Near Aigues-Mortes, and at a little distance from the Mediterranean, rises the massy fort called the Tower of Constance; it is 100 feet high and 200 feet in circumference. The interior forms two circular rooms, situated one above the other. An opening in the centre of the floor forms a communication between the upper and lower apartment. The former has also an aperture

We possess a list of twenty-five Protestant women who were prisoners there in 1754. This list, written by one of the unfortunate inmates, who had herself been detained there twenty-four years, is in a handwriting trembling and ill-formed, but still legible; we will give some of the particulars contained in it.

Marie Beraud, of the diocese of Viviers, blind from four years of age, seized in her house by order of the king, on account of religion; aged eighty years; a captive since 1727. (This poor blind woman had been in prison twenty-seven years, having been confined there when fifty-three years of age.)

Madeline Ninard, widow of Antoine Savanier, a master-mason, of the city of Nismes, seized for having attended a prayermeeting; sixty-five years old; a captive since 1739. She has four daughters. (Here, then, is a widow snatched away from her four daughters. Who took charge of these children thus doubly bereaved? Doubtless they were committed to some convent, in order to be taught to curse the religion of their mother.)-The Pastor of the Desert and his Martyr Colleagues. Nisbet & Co. 1861.

A ROSS-SHIRE MINISTER AND
HIS COADJUTOR.

"ON the night of his first arrival at Lochcarron, an attempt was made to burn the house in which he lodged, and for some time after his induction, his life was in constant danger. But the esteem he could not win as a minister, he soon acquired for his great physical strength. The first man in Lochcarron, in those days, was the champion at the athletic games. Conscious of his strength, and knowing that he would make himself respected by all, if he could only lay big Rory on his back, who was acknowledged to be the strongest man in the district, the minister joined the people