they are known, you see the spirit of wisdom and benignity which characterise the Gospel. Nothing narrow, mean, or illiberal had a place in his bosom. Even when you are compelled to dissent from his conclusions, you cannot fail to admire the motives which actuate him-the end he pursues the means he employs. His works, therefore, are a rich repository of quickening, elevating, purifying thought. He loves to dwell on those views of human nature, and on those scenes of man's history, which are pleasant to the eye and improving to the character. And so mild was he in his judgments, that he carried extenuations even to an extreme, and was severe only on compulsion.

He was a mortal, and therefore was not guiltless. We may even admit that his sins of omission were unusually numerous and heavy; for as few have possessed his means of usefulness, and few have had so lofty a standard of duty, so few could have been liable to so many failures. But when we think of what he actually effected in the work of self-improvement and of general usefulness, and compare that with what some-his equals in opportunity-have done and have left undone, it is then that we feel the full extent of a weakness which prompted the utterance of his many self-reproaches; and are made to love the man almost as much in connexion with his failures as with his benevolent exertions.

In fact, a deep and lively sense of responsibility was at the foundation of his character. He was less than most men under the influence of that cheat which the imagination plays upon the feelings, when it invests literary acquirements and mental power with the appearance of being the pure product of our own exertions, and consequently a possession in our own right. Whatever he had, he held as a trust. He felt and acted under the recognition of the fact, that every good and perfect gift, both of the intellectual and the moral nature, cometh down from the Father of Lights. Hence he held himself accountable for his time, his talents, his opportunities; and hence, though the whole bearing of his heart was to literary ease, he laboured diligently for the good of his kind; and when, as was too often the case, conscience reproved him for his comparative inefficiency, he listened in humility to its upbraidings, and renewed his strivings after fuller measures of obedience. Failure with him did not issue in defeat. From his falls he rose with renewed strength, because his sense of duty was sustained in its elasticity by the felt presence of God. Progress was the aim of his

existence.

ter.

The sketch I have given is surely that of a religious characI wish I could believe that there was no pre-eminence in his excellence; but I am afraid that few, even of those who made larger professions of religion than Sir James Mackintosh,

have been found his equal. It would be a benefit, indeed, to our common Christianity, and an honour to human nature, were the multitude of believers of a kindred spirit.

I proceed to remark, that he acknowledged the power by which he was obviously swayed. He was a Christian in profession as well as reality. That he was a professed believer in Christ, in his last illness, can be doubted by no one who has perused the account his son has given of his feelings during its continuance :

His nights were very wakeful, and spent in much uneasiness of body; he became very silent and thoughtful-had his Bible frequently open before him-spoke more than usual upon religious subjects-perhaps it would be more correct to say, upon God and his disposition towards man. His mind seemed less occupied with speculations, and more with his own personal relationship to his Creator.'-vol. ii, p. 484.

'He was often very thoughtful, and it was evident he was contemplating the probability of his death. The character of his conversation, when he did speak, was most affecting; he talked of his own past life with so much humility, and so much severity-seemed so little conscious of his great and good qualities, and so desirous that his children should profit by what he called his errors.

'At other times, he would speak of God with more reverence and awe than I have almost ever met with. His voice fell-his whole person seemed to bow down, as if conscious of a superior presence—while, in a subdued, solemn, deeply thoughtful manner, he slowly expressed himself.'

I one day read to him the 29th chapter of Proverbs, which affected him to tears. Our Lord Jesus Christ was very frequently the subject of his thoughts; he seemed often perplexed, and unable to comprehend much of his history. He once said to me, "It is a great mystery to me, I cannot understand it." At another time he told me, that during the many sleepless nights he passed, the contemplation of the character of Jesus Christ, and thoughts concerning the Gospel, with prayer to God, was his chief occupation. He spoke of the delight he had in dwelling upon his noble character. I have heard his voice falter as he repeated, "He went about doing good"; but he added, "There is much connected with him that I cannot understand." I cannot attempt to give his own words, but his difficulty lay in the account given of the manner in which Jesus becomes the Saviour of men.

'I have already mentioned that he suffered much pain. One morning he told me that he had been praying to God to deliver him from his sufferings, and to permit him to die. I spoke of the solemnity of death and the awfulness of meeting God; and that I felt we ought first to seek of God to be prepared by him to meet him. He was silent a little, and thoughtful, and then answered, "I thought we might have such perfect confidence in God, that we might even venture to make known to him all our sufferings and all our wants, and that he would not be offended; it was in this belief I asked him to put an end to my sufferings-with submission, however, I desire to ask it." On another occasion, I told him a friend had prayed for him; he seemed pleased, and said, "The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”

I must here observe, that the full force of such quotations of Scripture by my father, will not be felt in a country where they are so common; except, I further add, that it was no habit of his; and whenever he used Scripture language as the expression of his feelings, he did so with much thought and great solemnity of manner.

At one time he suddenly stopped, and said, "What is the name of that man who writes upon decrees, and upon election?" None of us could satisfy him; and after repeating his question, he paused some time, and then added, with a smile, "He cannot frighten me now."

'Whenever a word from the Scriptures was repeated to him, he always manifested that he heard it; and I especially observed, that at every mention of the name of Jesus Christ, if his eyes were closed, he always opened them and looked at the person who had spoken them. I said to him at one time, "Jesus Christ loves you;" he answered slowly, and pausing between each word, "Jesus Christ-love-the same thing." He uttered these last words with a most sweet smile. After long silence, he said, "I believe."-We said, in a voice of inquiry-" in God?" He answered" in Jesus." He spoke but once more after this Upon our inquiry how he felt, he said he was happy.'-vol. ii, p. 485 et seq. Religious sentiments, such as might be embodied in his own confession, that there was nothing in this world so right as to cultivate and exercise kindness-the most evangelical of all doctrines-the principle of Jesus Christ"-and which led him to look forward with ardent hope and humble faith, to the days when tears shall be "wiped from all eyes."-vol. ii, p. 507.

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66

The same fact will appear, if we adduce some passages from his biography, referring to earlier periods of his life :

I have just glanced over Jeremy Taylor on the Beatitudes. The selection is made in the most sublime spirit of virtue. To their transcendant excellence, I can find no words to express my admiration and reverence. "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall find mercy." "Put on my beloved, as the elect of God, bowels of mercy." At last the Divine speaker rises to the summit of moral sublimity: "Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake."

For a moment, "O teacher blessed," I taste the unspeakable delight of feeling myself to be better. I feel as in the days of my youth, that "hunger and thirst after righteousness," which long habits of infirmity and the low concerns of the world, have contributed to extinguish.'-p. 124, vol. ii.

The philosophy which I have learnt only teaches me that virtue and friendship are the greatest of human blessings, and that their loss is irreparable. It aggravates my calamity, instead of consoling me under it. My wounded heart seeks another consolation. Governed by these feelings, which have in every age and region of the world actuated the human mind, I seek relief, and I find it in the soothing hope and consolatory opinion, that a benevolent wisdom inflicts the chastisement, as well as bestows the enjoyments of human life; that superintending goodness will one day enlighten the darkness which surrounds our nature and hangs over our prospects; that this dreary and wretched life is not the whole of man; that an animal so sagacious and provident,

and capable of such proficiency in science and virtue, is not like the beasts which perish; that there is a dwelling-place prepared for the spirits of the just, and that the ways of God will yet be vindicated to man. The sentiments of religion which were implanted in my mind in my early youth, and which were revived by the awful scenes which I have seen passing before my eyes in the world, are, I trust, deeply rooted in my heart by this great calamity. I shall not offend your rational piety, by saying, that modes and opinions appear to me matters of secondary importance, but I can sincerely declare, that Christianity, in its genuine purity and spirit, appears to me the most amiable and venerable of all the forms in which the homage of man has ever been offered to the Author of his being.'-Leller on the death of his wife, to Dr. Parr, vol. i, p. 97.

*

Mackintosh was not without a reason of the hope that was in him. Religious questions engaged his earliest and his latest attention. In the closing period of his life, a friend remarks, 'his conversation then fell on poetry, which, next to religious subjects, is his favorite topic.' Not long previous to this, we find him engaged in a correspondence with the Bishop of Llandaff, on the subject of the Divine decrees.† Of theology, he was a careful, if not an habitual, student. In his journal occur the following passages:- Finished the third volume of Eichorn. It is a reproach to English literature, that bigotry has hindered this work from being translated.' Read Brown (On Causation,' probably) before breakfast. Found the true answer to Hume's Essay on Miracles, which I had discovered twenty years ago.'§ I have just read Priestley's Life of Himself. It is an honest, plain, and somewhat dry account of a well-spent life.'

6

Yesterday and this morning, I have glanced over the first and part of the second volume of Lardner's Credibility, which seems to prove very well, the antiquity and very general reception, at least of the four gospels.'-vol. i, p. 244. In spite of my resolution, Lardner led me to look through the famous fifteenth and sixteenth chapters of Gibbon. I could not lay them down without finishing them. The causes assigned in the fifteenth chapter, for the diffusion of Christianity, must, no doubt, have contributed to it materially; but I doubt whether he saw them at all. Perhaps those which he enumerates are among the most obvious. They might all be safely adopted by a Christian writer, with some change in the language and manner. The tenth chapter I cannot help considering as a very ingenious and specious, but very disgraceful extenuation of the cruelties perpetrated by the Roman magistrates against the Christians. Dr. Robertson has been the subject of much blame for his real or supposed lenity towards the Spanish murderers and tyrants in America. That the sixteenth chapter of Mr. Gibbon did not excite the same or greater disapprobation, is a proof of the unphilosophical, and indeed fanatical animosity against Christianity, which Vol. i, p. 396.

*Life, vol. ii, p. 467.

§ Ibid. p. 397.

+ Ibid. 424.

|| Ibid. p. 349.

was so prevalent during the latter part of the nineteenth century.'vol. i, p. 246.

At one time in his youth, he devoted eight days of intense study to obtain a mastery over the controversy between Dr. Priestley and Bishop Horsley.'

'I have little recollection of the first two years at school. An usher of the school, Duncan, who boarded in the same house with me, was suspected of some heretical opinions. The boarding mistress, who was very pious and orthodox, rebuked him with great sharpness; and I remember her reporting her own speech to her husband and the other boarders, with an air of no little exultation. I have a faint remembrance of the usher even quoting the Savoyard creed, and having heard of Clarke's Scripture Doctrine of the Trinity. This infant heresy was silenced by the emigration of the poor usher to Jamaica, where, I believe, he soon after died. I rather think it contributed to make my mind free and inquisitive. Theological controversy has been the general inducement of individuals and nations to engage in metaphysical speculation. It was at least the circumstance which directed my curiosity towards those objects, which have vainly exercised it during my subsequent life. I have now a distinct recollection of the great impression which Burnet's Commentary on the Thirty-nine Articles made on me.'vol. i, p. 4. I became a warm advocate for free-will, and before I was fourteen I was probably the boldest heretic in the county.'-vol. i, p. 5.

Perhaps no influence was greater than that which he received from the celebrated Robert Hall. They were fellow-collegians, and of a kindred spirit; and both deeply intent on the quest of truth, and the work of self improvement, they passed much of their time in the interchange and conflict of thought, and doubtless contributed much to each other's highest welfare.

Robert Hall (then at College) displayed the same acuteness and brilliancy, the same extraordinary vigour, both of understanding and imagination, which have since distinguished him, and which would have secured him much more of the admiration of the learned and the elegant, if he had not consecrated his genius to the far nobler office of instructing and reforming the poor.'-vol. i, p. 13.

His (Hall's) society and conversation had a great influence on my mind; our controversies were almost unceasing. We lived in the same house, and we were both very disputatious. He led me to the perusal of Edwards' book on Free-will, which Dr. Priestley had pointed out before. We formed a little debating society, in which one of the subjects of dispute was, the duration of future punishment. Hall defended the rigid, and I the more lenient opinion.'-vol. i, p. 14.

Among those evidences which serve to show that Mackintosh was a Christian on enquiry and conviction, may justifiably be placed some passages which exhibit him as feeling and acting as a sincere unbeliever could scarcely have done.

Sunday. The day is mild and beautiful; the shrubs continue to

* Vol. i, p. 16.