thy dispensations are, they would be darker still; Psal. lxxiii. 16-20. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment! They are utterly consumed with terrors. As a dream when one awaketh, so, O Lord, when thou awakest, thou shalt despise their image,' &c. Dr Mackail was obliged to leave St Andrews, and travel back to Edinburgh with, doubtless, a heavy heart. Though there was a letter from the king prohibiting any more executions, Archbishop Sharp of St Andrews, or Burnet of Glasgow, or both, kept it up till Mackail was executed. He died most triumphantly, after uttering these words"Farewell, sun, moon, and stars; farewell, world, and all its delights; farewell, kindred and friends: welcome, eternity; welcome, angels and saints; welcome, Saviour of the world; and welcome, God, the Judge of all." There were ten hanged on one gibbet at Edinburgh in one day, and four on another. There were thirty-five sent to the country, and hung up before their own doors. Their heads and arms were ordered to be cut off, and fixed on posts at the gates of burghs and other public places, at Edinburgh, Lanark, Hamilton, Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, and other places. Seven were hanged at Ayr, and many more suffered death in various ways, of which we can give no account. Dearly did the Lord's people pay for the rising at Pentland; but it had the intended effect it served for a testimony.

The account of these great and good men, who were (at least two of them, Messrs Macward and Wallace,) to be Mr Brown's bosom friends in a foreign land, may have seemed long; they comprise, however, an account of mostly the whole lives of men singular in their attainments, and singular in their conditions. They are three men whose equals it will not be easy to find. Every one of them had his proper gift of God, but it will only be when they are seen walking together in all the radiance of celestial glory, that it will be discovered who shines brightest. It will only be when they are singing the song of the redeemed, that it will be heard who sings loudest and sweetest. We shall constantly meet with Messrs Macward and Wallace, for their lot and Mr Brown's were so completely mingled, that they might be said to be almost the same. Of the heavenly Livingston, though he was near Mr Brown for nine years, and they doubtless

frequently met, we shall hear no more. He seems to have lived quite secluded, if he was generally in the same place with the other three. Cold will be the heart that does not read, with a kind of ecstacy, of the man who, upon two occasions, turned so many to righteousness, and who seems in his temper, and perhaps his manner, to have much resembled the disciple whom Jesus loved.

CHAPTER III.

MR BROWN, as we have stated, arrived in Holland, March 12, 1663, where he would be welcomed by Mr Macward and others, who had arrived before him. With all the kindly and Christian greetings he would receive upon landing, from his companions in tribulation, there would be something by day and by night, which he could not easily forget. He had not now the beautifully sloping hills of Wamphray, nor the picturesque and romantic dell through which the water flows and falls down, forming numerous cascades; he had not the Annan, clear and broad, gently and fully flowing, and sometimes rushing over its pebbly bed; he had not under him the full expanse of Annandale, from Erickstane to the Solway, embosomed in Scottish and English hills; he did not see the tops of Queensberry or Hartfell, now enveloped in mist, then capped with snow, In lieu of all these and many more, he had only the flat uniform surface of a country wrenched from the sea, and which Old Ocean, when angry, seemed sometimes determined to reclaim. He would, and must feel the change, and long for the cooling gales that blow from Scotia's hills, and the many limpid streams that flow down her mountain sides. He was, too, among people of a strange language, and of totally different manners, habits, and dress. He had left some behind him whom he longed for and tenderly loved. The known house, the kindly voice, he was no more to behold or to hear. Many tender cords of family and Christian affection were rudely and recklessly torn asunder. The wounds would be bleeding profusely, while there was nothing to stanch them. Christian friends might and would try to soothe the stranger's woe; but, alas! the heart knoweth its own bitterness, and there are griefs which no human power can alleviate. He would forget the local

scenery, and the different countenances, and manners, and dress, but there would be something he could almost never forget. He had one consolation, and it was a great one. When he read over the passages which he was accustomed to read on sacramental occasions, he would find that there were many immoralities which are not the subjects of discipline in the Church, with which he was chargeable; yet he was banished by men for adhering too closely to the law of his God. He was not called to suffer for evildoing, but for well-doing. He would, doubtless, in his exile, remember his faults, but they were not allowed, and they were all washed away in the fountain open for the house of David. His heart was sprinkled from an evil conscience. Being justified by faith, he had peace with God, through his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, through whom also he had received the atonement. Besides, he had the Scriptures to read and to meditate upon, day and night. He had the Sabbath weekly occurring, and the ordinances freely and purely dispensed. Moreover, the God of his father and his mother was there. Jesus, the Mediator and Intercessor between God and man, the only physician who can bind up the brokenhearted, was there. The Holy Spirit the Comforter was there. He was as near heaven, and had the same way to it that he had in Wamphray. He would therefore pray for the peace and prosperity of the country that had given him a shelter from the storm, and a shadow from the heat of persecution. In the multitude of his thoughts within him, the divine consolations would delight his soul. The cup which his heavenly Father had put into his hand, with all submission and resignation, he would drink. Had we but seen him when he got into his own abode, and got the door shut, so that no eye might see him but God's, and had we but heard the fervent and ardent prayer which, unheard by mortal ear, he poured into the ever attentive ear of his Father in heaven, we would have heard a specimen of confession, petition, and thanksgiving and intercession, seldom equalled, and more seldom excelled. He would survey all the way by which his Heavenly Father had led him. He would thank him for all the goodness and mercy he had made to pass before him. He would cast himself humbly. yet confidently, upon his gracious providence. He would see and confess his failings and short-comings, and unallowed iniquities. He would plead for his bereaved flock, for his desolate country, from which the glory was departed. Her sensual king, and his corrupt and cruel coun

sellors, and her careless and blood-thirsty prelates, we believe, would not be forgotten. Little would be forgotten, and nothing that he could remember, would be neglected. Like his Divine Redeemer, he would spend the greater part of the livelong night in pouring out his heart before the Lord God of Sabaoth. Like Jacob of old, he would wrestle with the Angel, and would prevail, for he would not let him go until he blessed him. Let none of my Christian readers think I am exaggerating. It can be of no service to him now to praise him, but it may do good to us to ponder, and remember what is recorded by his companion in patience and tribulation. Alas! we are apt to measure these men of other days by ourselves, and think that in these lauded and boastful times, we surpass them. Where are now our Jeremy Taylors, our Howes, our Owens, and our Baxters, on the other side of the Tweed? and where are our Guthries and our Bostons, and many others, on this side of the ideal line? But leaving others about whom there may be various opinions, what lady, like Lady Culross, would now hear all day, and converse and pray all night? What lady of any rank would now maintain the spirit, or even furnish the matter of prayer for more than three hours? No marvel that our ever-blessed Redeemer said, "Enter ye in at the strait gate-because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it." What minister now in Scotland or Ireland, can preach with the effect of Mr Livingston? We admit he drew the bow at a venture, but who now can smite so many between the joints of the harness in which sinners are incased. Our quarter of an hour prayers, and half-hour sermons, would not have satisfied the people of these days. We are not pleading for long prayers for a pretence, or long discourses, merely to please or to proclaim our apparent zeal for the Lord; but let us be hungering and thirsting after righteousness, panting after God, as the hart panteth after the water-brooks. Let our souls be following hard after God, and we would not be content with such scanty meals. Moreover, let us be walking in the furnace, even accompanied by the Son of God, and our longing desires will not be so easily satisfied. We would then need copious draughts, not because we are tormented, but because our spiritual desires are singularly enlarged. We do not know how long Mr Brown prayed to his people, nor how long he preached, but if we may judge by what is recorded of more recent times, the sand-glass would be often turned. And when he was warning his people of

the downward, though falsely reckoned pleasing ways of vice or when he was urging them onward in the ascending, and unjustly called difficult paths of holiness, he would forget himself, and not be trammelled by the measured progress of time. The curtains of the evening would be dropping around them in winter sometimes before they dismissed, and the sun would be descending behind Queensberry in summer ere they parted. The people then hung upon the preacher, while he was pointing out to them the pathway to heaven, and they were learning the law from his lips. Alas! they did not know how soon their eyes might be deprived of the sight of their preachers, and they might be as sheep without a shepherd. There have been many burning and shining lights in Annandale, but, perhaps, few of them have equalled, and, may be, none of them have surpassed the once faithful and fruitful minister of Wamphray. As to the time he remained in Holland, it was longer far, perhaps, than he expected. The king whose restoration, strange to tell, is still commemorated, might be called to resign his earthly crown. Assassination, though never to be commended, might instantaneously end his inglorious reign. Poison, which has preyed upon the vitals of many a prince, and which latterly shortened his days, might do its deadly work. He might go down into the battle, even, and fall by the sword. There are many doors at which death can enter, and finish the days of the mightiest monarchs. In July 1666, there was a plot to have surrendered the castles of Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dumbarton, but the chief contrivers failing, nothing was done. Had it been carried into execution, their high mightinesses were pledged to expedite to these towns and places arms and ammunition and money, the only support and sinews of war. Mr Brown might hope that by some means of this kind he might be restored to his beloved country, and his dearly beloved and longed for flock; but God's ways are not as man's ways, nor his thoughts as man's thoughts. Year passed after year, and no change took place. Hope deferred, doubtless, made his heart and the hearts of many more, sick. Not that he or they wished for any violent change. A good man cannot desire any thing contrary to the revealed will of God. What they sometimes have done which seemed to contravene that will, is not to be drawn into a precedent, nor are we to suppose that they deliberately planned what, when occasion offered, they hastily perpetrated. We can never allow that a good man will pray for evil to be repaid his enemies, nor will he, unless unguardedly,

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