gaining much. From Geneva he writes to a friend :-"It would be difficult to give the result of my winter's residence here in so many words; for it consists more in an enlarged horizon, mentally, theologically, and spiritually, than in definite acquisitions. Still my mind has gone through a process in many points, which must have been useful, even though it has only brought me back, I am happy to say, to what I held before, but which I now hold more intelligently, more thankfully, more humbly. I speak especially with regard to the evidences for the truth of Christianity, and the inspiration of the Sacred Record. I do think it is well for certain minds, and especially those which are to guide and guard others, to be shaken out of traditions, and brought to accept and welcome the truth as though they were the first to whom it had been presented. It becomes then a living element in our minds and hearts, and every after detail, as well as every action of our lives, must feel this influence: commonplaces, unreal opinions, unreal words vanish, and we feel the freshness of the truth, and diffuse its savour all around."

The following letter to his biographer shows how carefully he observed and how deeply he reflected: "May it not be said that the movement of our age is towards life? I sometimes fancy that I can discern three epochs in the Reformed Churches, corresponding in the main to those three weighty epithets,-via, veritas, vita. The Reformers themselves, no doubt, laid the stress chiefly upon the first (via). It was on this Popery had gone most astray, obscuring the doctrine of justification by faith alone. The epoch following was essentially dogmatic (veritas), when the Doctors drew up systems' of the truth. It was now, indeed, Christ as veritas; but the dogma taken alone led to coldness, dogmatism, sectarianism, and formality. Happy will it be for the Church, if, not forgetting the other two,

she shall now be found moving on to the third development of Christ as vita,-the life, which will regulate the two former aspects, while it consummates and informs them This life must develope the individual, and on individuals the Church depends; for in God's sight it is no abstraction." In the same spirit he writes to another friend: "There is first the kernel to be possessed and held fast in the adorable person of the Lord Jesus-God historically manifest in the flesh, and profoundly adapted to all the wants of our spiritual being; then there are the Scriptures which set Him forth in His person, character, and teaching. I feel we very much require to get back from doctrines and systems crystallised, into a more living and life-giving form of the truth. In other words, we must know, love, and have constant intercourse with Christ as our God, Saviour, Friend, and Brother; and all the rest must and will emanate from this. We must begin at the centre, and not at the circumference, -which all systems are liable to do. Religion is love even more than light. I believe a more diligent study of the Scriptures, with the Spirit and prayer, will eminently lead to this." And to the same effect he concludes a letter to his mother: "My Lord and my God.' Yes, it is to address Christ thus as if seeing Him face to face, conversing with Him as a man with his friend; it is this that overpowers our souls, humbles us in the dust, under a sense of unlimited love and kindness, and makes us daily taste of heaven upon earth. What majesty, what beauty, what purity, what compassion, what grace, what tenderness, what strength! Ah! yes, He is our all in all. Without Him, undone; when we come to Him, vile; when we are with Him, vile, but not despised, not abhorred, not cast off-no; welcomed, washed, clothed, justified, sanctified, presented with a new heart and new affections fitted to reflect His own image, and to live and do something for His glory. Alas! that we

should ever leave His feet, and be content to live without hearing His voice, and experiencing His sweet regard."

Such was the life which he strove to realise. It was not only in teaching his Sabbath-class and attending the Students' Missionary prayer-meeting, and visiting his district of the West Port, that he felt himself the servant of Jesus Christ; but in writing a College theme, or reading a work of philosophy, he would not be content unless he felt that he had the approving eye of his Master; and amidst Alpine grandeur and Italian enchantment his rapt spirit seldom rested till it bore its exulting tribute to their wonderful Creator. On the top of Highland mountains, and in spots of surpassing beauty, he would read chapters of the Bible, and so give to them a reciprocal enhancement,setting the Revelation in a frame-work of created loveliness, and brightening the landscape with beams from the upper sanctuary; and, although on a different principle, we find him under the dome of St. Peter's reading through Paul's Epistle to the Romans.

In the fatigue of a pedestrian journey, he brought on a pulmonary hemorrhage, which ended in a quick decline. His afflicted relatives found him at Tübingen dying, but for a few weeks it was their privilege to enjoy his society and hear his testimony to the Saviour's preciousness. "Love Jesus," was his last charge to each of the friends who stood around his dying bed; and on the 11th of March, 1851, he went to be with that Saviour, "which is far better."

AN OCTOBER EXCURSION TO THE SALÈVE.

I

I LOVE regularity. All that divides time, all that serves as a frame-work to life, has for me the greatest charms. love to convert into a law occupations the most insignificant; they become thus, in my eyes, chains to keep back the progress of time, or, at least, landmarks to direct its course.

It is with this feeling that, every year towards the end of October, I make a little excursion to the Salève.* I go to salute thence the last fine days, the last verdure. I go to gather up poetic stores; and though I carefully abstain from venturing a rhyme on " Autumn Leaves," these dead leaves, whether motionless in the road, or tossing at the north wind's pleasure, fill my soul with a mild melancholy, with a sadness exquisitely sweet. I contemplate, with anxiety, those that are still struggling. I interest myself in their last efforts. It seems as though they leave, with regret, the branch which gave them birth! Now I would strengthen their tottering stalks; now I laugh within myself at this useless compassion; I approach the tree; I shake it; and before the poor leaves are at my feet, I am shocked at my barbarity.

In 1835 my annual excursion had new charms. It was the year of the Jubilee.† In all the festivals of that grand epoch, one idea had pursued me, and, in my eyes, hovered over all those rejoicings,-the sublime and sombre idea that,

* The Salève consists of two mountains, the Great and the Little Salève. It is two leagues from Geneva, and is a favourite resort of the citizens, on the same principle that Hampstead is a resort of the Londoners and Arthur's Seat of the inhabitants of Edinburgh.

†The commemoration of the Reformation in Switzerland.

at the preceding Jubilee, not one of us was in being, and that at the next not one that would not have ceased to be. Well, after those days, in which so many emotions, so many remembrances, had taught us, with eloquent voice, that all is fleeting, fragile, evanescent, I was fain to be alone with myself in some spot as little subject, as might be, to the empire of change; I wished to say to myself somewhere, "Thus it was a century ago, and thus it will be a century hence." Mountains only can inspire this language. Clothed with a short thick grass, which seems ever the same; used by time, like all things else, but in a manner imperceptible to us; ever crumbling, yet ever erect, they behold generations and ages pass away at their feet. Their birth is shrouded in mystery; the epoch of their destruction is lost in the night of ages to come, almost in eternity. They link the past to the future-mute witnesses of our grandeur and of our decay-awful sentinels placed there by the Creator to remind the children of men of their insignificance and utter nothingness.

This was not my sole reason. At the foot of the Salève, on the borders of Savoy, is a little village, whither people seldom resort save to disport themselves or to die. Singular village, where common life is unknown, where you meet none but joyous bands of vigorous pedestrians, or some few pale invalids sadly strolling on their asses!

These spots, so smiling and so melancholy, offered me, at the close of 1835, a special interest. Some inhabitants of southern France, chased from their fatherland by a terrible scourge (the cholera), had sought there an asylum; and though I had found among them neither relations nor friends, yet they were my countrymen; and the village had received, in my eyes, a sort of consecration. Thus, wending my way towards the mountain, I involuntarily connected the humble Savoyard hamlet with the remembrances