manly, yet beautiful; his eye clear and true, able to flash with quick fun or kindling thought; he had a smile of rare sweetness, and a voice of unusual richness and melody. Add to all, the winning manners of a Christian gentleman, a mind endowed with talents of a high order, a heart brimful of tenderness, modesty, and truth, and no wonder that all men loved him. School-mates, classfellows, those on the same Probationers' Roll, his co-presbyters, the people of his charge, his fellow-townsmen,- -we know none who ever said a harsh word of John More. Of what he was within the sacred circle of home, we dare not attempt to speak. As husband, father, son, and brother, his name is graven deep on sorrow-stricken hearts.

The writer witnessed his ordination by the laying-on of the hands of the presbytery, and heard him preach his first sermon to his people. On the last Sabbath he spent in Scotland—the last but one he was to spend on earth-we sat in the old church he loved so well, and heard the minister read to the sorrowing congregation a farewell from their beloved pastor. Little did they think, as they recognised his pen in the - graphic turn of the sentences, and his heart in the loving words, that neither with the living voice nor through this colder medium should he ever speak to them again.

The text of his first sermon to them was from the passage beginning, “We preach Christ, and Him crucified;" and upon his sick-bed, on that last sad Sabbath, lay the manuscript of a farewell discourse, on the appropriate words, "The grace of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." And thus in literal truth, as one has said, "Christ was the Alpha and the Omega of his pulpit themes."

Between these two discourses lay seven years of happy and successful ministerial labours. The ability and the love for his work increasing every year, a brilliant future appeared to be opening before him, when behold the voice, "The Master is come, and calleth for thee. And when he heard that, he arose and went to Him." We were asking life for him, and God

gave it—even length of days for ever

more.

We might have wished that we could have followed our friend's remains to their last resting-place, and that the Scottish daisies might have bloomed and faded on his honoured grave; but it was not to be so. All that was mortal of him rests beneath the cloudless blue of a southern sky, and the great sea guards his quiet sepulchre. We dare not sorrow as those who have no hope; but such parting is sore to flesh and blood. The bygone years of very many were the brighter because he shared their daily happiness and daily toil. We hoped to have him by our side for many a coming day. But now we know that we shall meet his answering glance of love no more; be clasped in the strong grasp of his friendly hand no more; hear the melodious accents of his voice, whose memory still rings upon our ear, no Silently past his foreign grave

more.

"The stately ships go on

To their haven under the hill;
But O for the touch of a vanish'd hand,
And the sound of a voice that is still!"

Yet it is well with him. His warfare is accomplished; his journey is ended; he is HOME. We have seen him go down into the dark river, and so vanish from our gaze. Let us not mourn for him as though we did not know that, the darkness past, the pain forgotten, on the farther shore the shining ones have met him, and that within the pearly gate “all the bells of the city have rung again for joy."

May God grant to all who weep for him to all who read these lines-like precious faith!-a readiness like his whose loss we mourn, to work while it is called to-day with all their heart, and soul, and strength, and mind; so that, come the night early, or come it late, at evening time" it may be light with them, as, thanks be to God, it was light with him!

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"It matters little at what hour of the day. The righteous falls asleep: death cannot

come

To him untimely who is fit to die.
The less of this cold world the more of
heaven;

The briefer life, the earlier immortality."
W. J. S.

ALTAR LIGHT; A Tribute to the Memory of the Rev. ALEXANDER FLETCHER, D.D., London. By the Rev. JOHN MACFARLANE, LL.D., Glasgow, Author of "Altar Gold," "The Night Lamp," "The Mountains of the Bible," etc.

London: James Nisbet and Co., 21, Berners Street. 1860.

THE 30th September last, being Sunday,

when the London Sabbath bells ceased ringing for the morning service, was Dr Fletcher's time to die.'

Few ministers had answered to the weekly summons of those bells so often and so long as Dr Fletcher; and there were few indeed whose entrance to the pulpit, in the hush of expectation at their close, was more heartily hailed by the assembled congregation.

Upon the Monday eight days following, i.e. the 8th October, the large funeral halted at Abney Chapel; and after some heartfelt and heart-stirring words from Mr Binney, of the Weighhouse, and after a most thrilling burst of wailing music from the assembled children, which has been described as peculiarly affecting, crowding mourners, young and old, thronged into the cemetery, and saw the grave close over this truly noble man.

On the Sabbath ensuing, the blackdraped pulpit in the large chapel at Finsbury was entered, after the ringing of those morning bells, by Dr Macfarlane; and what was then spoken, amid the suppressed weeping of thousands, has here found permanent record, under the title of "Altar Light."

We have not met with anything, even of Dr Macfarlane's, finer in its way, than this graceful tribute, in memoriam, to the "old man eloquent," of Finsbury. Though painting is not perhaps the author's highest, or most earnestly coveted gift, yet we must class him with our "Modern Painters," not only by his landscape pictures, and his scenic groups, as in the "Mountains of the Bible," but by his biographic portraits too. Here we have a really fine miniature of Dr Fletcher-a miniature it needs must be, from the small space (some sixty pages 12mo) allotted to work in; but it is a miniature full of characteristic feature-of life-like touches-most lovingly, yet not too warmly coloured, and all inlaid on a rich ground of sacred truth, like the faces of saints in old Christian pictures, inlaid on a ground of gold.

The companion picture from the Scriptures (for the custom of having a twin

picture from among the holy men of old in these cases is here adhered to) is that of John the Baptist, and the text, "He was a burning and a shining light."

The ministry of the Baptist is described as, 1st, A transition ministry-he was a light for a season; 2d, A ministry of destruction," a burning light;" and, 3d, A ministry of enlightenment,- a shining light."

The triplet is handled in Dr Macfarlane's own masterly way; and the form of the later Elijah, stern, ardent, fearless, rises upon our view from the wilderness remarkably truthful, and clearly defined :

:

The

"He was a Jew, but not a Jewish priest. He lived apart from the temple and the temple service. He was a temple to himself, and in his course he had no colleague nor competitor. He appeared just when the Mosaic dispensation was becoming dead and effete, and just as the elements of the new economy were rising into order and beauty. The 'old things' were not away yet, and the 'new things' were not yet come; but John stands midway between them, to pronounce the doom of the one and to herald the advent of the other. one had served its purpose by embodying the Saviour in types and prophecies. These types were about to meet their great antitype, and these prophecies their divine substance. As they were ascending to their final and sublime repose, they were met by the Baptist, who, heading the solemn procession, led them on to Him of whom Moses in the law and the prophets did write.' John found them, as it were, glimmering in the sockets of temple lamps, and merged all their lights in the blaze of the Rising Sun. He heard their feeble and stammering voices dying away into silence among the almost deserted choirs of Zion, and waved them all into the grand diapason of the Gospel. Then all things began to assume a new position, to present a new aspect, and to sing a new song. It was new to shed no more the blood of bulls and of goats-it was new to have only one priest, one altar, and one sacrifice in the Church-it was new to hear no more the voice of holy seers predicting a coming Shiloh-it was new to be saved by faith, and not by hope, by looking back, and not forward, to the Messiah's advent and death-it was new to be no longer a peculiar people, and to have Jew and Gentile amalgamated-and it was new to have Jehovah worshipped, neither in Gerizim nor Jerusalem exclusively, but wherever in spirit and truth men were found to adore the God of Israel. Now the ministry of John was during the brief transition period of this radical revolution work, which was at once finished or wound up when these new things were clearly presented to the faith and obedience of mankind. You have seen the narrow isthmus or neck of land that connects some peninsula

with a great continent-or you have seen some stately bridge spanning a vast abyss, and linking together two opposite shores; in like position stood the Baptist's mission to the past and the future-he brought and bound them together-by and through him they were run into one glorious period. After this he disappears-the isthmus is absorbed into main land-the bridge sinks, and the separated become one. John dies, and Jesus lives. Preparatory economies are dissolved, and the great spiritual fabric of the Church slowly but sublimely rises into view. . . . He was a stern and uncompromising moral reformer. He found the men of that age to be no better than a generation of vipers. He seized every one of them by the throat, and cast them all into the burning fiery furnace of his terrible dispensation. No wonder, then, that, short though it was, his ministry soon made itself felt over Judea, and that the cheeks of Rabbis grew pale, as they listened to the deathknell of their crimes and their power. The servants of the dying law-the priests of the old altars-were even overtaken by the supernatural darkness, and all had been well if they had only gone to the Baptist, saying, 'Give us of your oil, for our lamps are gone out; but this was their condemnation, they loved the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds were evil.'"

The text of " Altar Light" does not, like that of its precursor, "Altar Gold,"

arrest us with a sudden flash and revelation of a hidden meaning, not before perceived; as that text-" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive riches"-is said at its announcement to have done by the great audience, lay and clerical, assembled to hear the famous missionary sermon, -so sounding a bold key-note at its outset, and half preaching the sermon or ever it was begun.

In fact, Dr Macfarlane's sympathy with such a character as John the Baptist, and therefore, too, his comprehension of such a character through sympathy with it, are far greater and more genuine than Dr Fletcher's own were ever likely to have been. So, every here and there we have incipient outbursts of impassioned zeal against the modern school of negative theology, like glimpses of the leathern girdle from underneath the mourner's weeds. They do not spoil the composition in the least, but rather impart a peculiarly rich flavour to it, as "wild honey;"-these fine half-suppressed outbursts of indignant zeal for truth reminding us of Luther's characteristic one at the funeral service for his little daughter Magdalene, against "that still existing scandalous outrage of the mass."

When Dr Macfarlane visits London, as he cannot do too frequently, he feels that he is set for the defence of the Gospel. So, even in painting the likeness depicting his

departed friend and father, he paints, like the old Byzantine painters, on a shield; and if the ground, as aforesaid, be gold, no danger, we should say, in his hands of its becoming reduced, as the gold ground did become in theirs, into a mere nimbus, or halo round the forehead of the saint.

It is not meant nor attempted in the discourse to run a parallel between that stern preaching hermit of the desert, and this good, genial, social pastor of Finsbury, -between that thunderer of Bethabara and this teacher of babes,-between that youthful martyr, dying in the lonely prison beneath the stroke of the headsman's axe, and this aged minister, dying among friends, in the sound of the Sabbath morning bells. Though truly there are points, too, of resemblance, if one should go to seek them, in the fidelity of each to the "greater than he,"-in his willingness to be as no man," but only as the voice of one, or finger of one, pointing to "the Lamb of God,"-his humble willingness to stand aside out of sight, and have his "joy fulfilled" in hearing the Bridegroom's own voice talking with the bride; then also in the unusual popularity of both, and in their loneliness too, perhaps in the wilderness of Jordan's sands or London streets. Nevertheless, they belong to quite different types of man-the one to a narrower, the other, though on a much inferior grade, to a broader school.

66

There seems to be no direct road by parallel lines from Cesarea to Finsbury, nor from the banks of the Jordan to the Bridge of Teith. Nor does Dr Macfarlane seek to cut one. If comparison were needed, he would rather have likened him to "such an one as Paul the aged," or Simon the "feeder of the lambs," or John, that other John, the loved and lover of the "little children," and seeming tarrier till Christ came. And so in the sequel, the allusion to the Baptist having served its purpose admirably, is abruptly dropped; and, for the rest, through the description of a ministry that carried with it a special face of sweetness and a special benediction to the young, we come rather into the presence of that "Mightier than he," who "feeds His flock like a Shepherd, and gathers the lambs in His arms."

The Life Story of more than threescore years and ten, Dr Macfarlane has briefly but most graphically told. It has enabled us to correct and complete our own idea of Dr Fletcher, which had hitherto been somewhat dim and broken;-only that we remember distinctly enough, from childhood, having run a gleeful race, with greater zest than ever we chased butterflies or rabbits, among the pattering of

some thousand other tiny feet alongst the street (the church having been found, as usual, too small for the assembling audience), to where, outside the town, on a green summer hill-side, in the golden sunset, a venerable man, as then he seemed to us, was discoursing from a tent, and a pulpit Bible opened at the middle before him, on other venerable men and their tents, and shepherdesses, Rebecca and Rachel watering their white flocks at the well, by way of guiding us-as we were then too young perhaps, or too naughty at the time, exactly to understand "those wells of salvation mentioned in the text." And only once again we saw him-just a year since, on the platform of a London meeting; and as he rose to speak, we whispered to a friend, "There stands a princely man," and as he went on speaking, observed that his eloquence had more of Ciceronian pomp and elegance than of Demosthenic fire.

-to

But we revert upon the biographic sketch before us. Born in the green month of April, 1787, in his father's manse at the romantic Bridge of Teith, doubly educated in his letters and the catechism in-doors, and in love for the beauties of nature through boyish rambles outside, his young life-not, perhaps, of the highest order, yet broad, healthful, and sunny-develops under favourable influences, and yields rich promise for the ministry, to which, from the first, it seemed to be ordained. It is some three miles to Dunblane, where his uncle Gilfillan (the gifted) may walk across sometimes, to help his father to indoctrinate him deeper in the "Marrow;" it is eight miles to Stirling, to which he can almost run to grammar school in the morning, and home again at night; it is twenty-five more to Glasgow, where he goes to college; and we cannot say exactly how many more to Selkirk, where, on "the classic banks of the Ettrick," Dr Lawson, "the Christian Socrates," completes the education in theology of the young Apollos. And already, at the early age of twenty, we find him co-pastor at Bridge of Teith, serving as a son with his now aged father, and by his extraordinary popularity in the district, imperilling the truth of the proverb, that "a prophet is not without honour save in his own country and in his own house."

The old meeting-house at Bridge of Teith was none of the largest, "but there is a beautiful park immediately adjoining, whither he led the little ones, and there, all ranged up on the greensward, beneath the blue sky and beside-not the still, but the gurgling waters of the adjacent stream, he often addressed as large congregations

as ever assembled beneath this (Finsbury Chapel) roof."

"The young pastor of Teith, with stately form, bushy raven locks, keen eye and full-toned voice," shepherding the lambs on the green knolls beside the waters, is the same with that "old man eloquent in Finsbury, with bending figure, sage look, and tremulous voice, and with thousands of Sabbath-school children drinking in streams of heavenly wisdom from his lips;" and it is well said by Dr Macfarlane, that his love to children can have been no fitful outburst or desperate throe (throw?) for popularity, since, like a uniting key-tone, it bound together those first and last efforts, through a period of fifty years, on to one complete psalm of life.

He is translated to London in 1811, through the invitation of discerners of pulpit talent in the metropolis, and the overruling decision of the Synod; and while those "children of the park" at Teith are growing, in their rural quiet, into grandfathers and grandmothers, he steadily evermore, through the stir and din of that great Babel, London, is holding on his way to the highest places of popularity and real success; chapels, overflowing with his audiences, have to give place to roomier ones, till at lengththrough triumphs that are told, and some troubles that are not told to the swarming adherents settled down around him in Finsbury, his name gets known to the' suburbs, and through the provinces; and when, from time to time, he visits the north, the largest churches are found too small. So late as February last, he preached to 3000 children in Surrey Chapel-the same in which his mission to the London children was inaugurated half a century ago. And beneath and behind all this, he is a man that walks with God, and that goes sighing "for a closer walk with God," "-most amiable in private life, and with a hand and heart ever open to the needy. And so we find him compiling "Family Devotions for the Household, and Closet Devotions for the Young,"- planning Skye-boat schemes, visiting Newgate felons, eloquent on missionary platforms, and so on-full of life and labour-on to that 20th of September, and the ringing of the Sabbath morning bells.

"Dr Fletcher's studies of 'the great mystery of godliness' were prosecuted amid the supernatural phenomenon and darkness of the ninth hour. In no other way can we account for his fifty years of unbroken and undiminished ardour in preaching the Gospel. The whole 'place called Calvary' was to him one spacious