unto the house of God in company,-Henderson and Dickson, Gillespie and Bailie, Livingstone and Rutherford, are gone. Providence, it is said, packs up its best goods first. As God would not suffer Luther to see the evils that were coming upon Germany, neither would he suffer them to see the evils that were coming upon Scotland. Happy has their lot been compared with mine. They lived just long enough to see the Kirk in her high noon.' I have lived to see the nightfall that is at hand, yea, that is already on. The star of her second Reformation they lived to see as it ascended the highest point in the heavens, where for years it continued to shine in such peerless beauty and brightness as to attract the gaze, and kindle the admiration of foreign lands. I have lived-wo is me!-to see it set in darkness and blood."

My father ceased. He was affected to tears; we wept with him. Conversing on subjects suggested by the narrative to which we had listened,

-on the men and measures of that remarkable period, and on the tide of defection setting so darkly and rapidly in, the evening wore on till the hour of worship, with which, as was our wont, it was solemnly and serenely closed.

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CHAPTER II.

MY EDUCATION.

AMONG the ejected ministers who found refuge at Knockdailie, I have mentioned Mr. Gilbert Traill. Mr. Traill had been ordained to the sacred office of the ministry, at Rutherglen, in 1656, where he continued to labour with great success till his ejection in 1662. Wandering about for some time, after many troubles, he came to Knockdailie, where he abode for several years. At my father's request he undertook the education of myself and my only sister, Alison. Never had parent or pupils more cause to be grateful for a preceptor. Mr. Traill was one of God's giving. To the fidelity of a tutor, he added the affection of a brother. He was at

once a scholar and a saint. Grave in appearance beyond his years, for he was yet young, he was at the same time cheerful, and even joyous. Suffering, it was evident from him, is not synonymous with sorrow. It is so only when it is the fruit of sin. Then it is sorrow upon sorrow. When it is for righteousness' sake it is a source of consolation. The outward man it may cause to decay-but the inward man it causes to revive. Like darkness, it descends on the path of the Christian, and it is night; but in the depth of that night we discover his soul shining like a star in serenity undisturbed, and in beauty undecaying. The joyousness, however, of Mr. Traill

was not of this world. It was not a spark of this world's kindling. It was kindled by the breath, and it was kept alive by the oil of heaven. It was thus like the fire on the altar of old, which never went out. That he must have had his inward sorrows, as well as his outward sufferings, every man knows who knows himself, and no one else can. For it is through the knowledge of ourselves alone that we can arrive at the knowledge of others. Of this knowledge I had indeed at that time little or none. The sorrows of Mr. Traill, however, were not even to me a secret. Often have I heard him at midnight pouring out his heart to God in prayer, "with strong crying and tears," and with such moving expressions, that I have been constrained to rise and go to my knees, and mingle my supplications and my tears with his. Often when my heart was growing hard, has the overhearing of him at prayer, and the thought that perhaps he was at that moment praying for myself, caused it to melt. Much of his time was spent alone; in his own chamber, and in a neighbouring glen. Thither my father and he went regularly twice a-day, but each alone. Nor did any other member of the family venture to enter it when either of them was there. The cave of Glengarlie was doubtless, to both, the chamber of divine communion; and there, in the clefts of its rocks, doubtless they often met Him whom they so diligently sought, the Rock of their salvation. It is needless to say, that while in common with every Christian he had cause of continual sorrow on his own account, bearing about with him a "body of sin and death," his chief cause of sorrow, as it was to all the truly godly of the time, was the broken and buried Covenant, and the decaying state of

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the church. For the work of education Mr. Traill was eminently qualified. Education in his hands was not a cultivation of the understanding only, but also of the will and the affections. He sought not to teach the knowledge of things only, but also of principles and duties. With that great poet and puritan Milton, "the end of education," he used to say, was to repair the ruins of the fall; to communicate to the soul of a child the knowledge of God, so that out of that knowledge the child might love, imitate, and and obey Him." With another great English writer he believed the "chief end of education" to be "virtue;" and that to this, all other considerations and accomplishments ought to give way. He used frequently to repeat the sentiment of a foreign divine, which he admired greatly, "I had rather be the means of saving one soul, than making a hundred learned." In his own quaint but graphic words, "the end of education was not so much to make great scholars, as good children;" and this he sought with much pains, and with many prayers. The Bible was our chief school-book. While we read its contents, he explained to us as we could receive them, its credentials-its evidence from prophecy and from miracles-from its internal character and its saving power. As one directs the waters of the ocean into the empty pools along the shore, so did he from this great ocean of truth, direct the waters of life into our dark hearts, and into our empty souls. While he suffered us to neglect none of the usual and useful subjects of study, while we read with him the histories of ancient and modern times-the poets of England, from Chaucer to Spenser and Milton,-the divines of both countries, such as Taylor and

Hall, Howe and Baxter, Owen and Bates, and Flavel, of England; Guthrie and Durham, Grey and Binning, Rutherford and Brown, of Wamphray, of Scotland, of which his library consisted chiefly;—while he read to us the Book of nature with its three leaves,-the sky, the sea, and the earth, which, marred and mutilated as they are, are legible records of the being, greatness, and glory of God; and seal the truths of Scripture, though they could never have discovered them, -still our principal study was the Word of God. We were students of the Scriptures. Our favourite science was the science of salvation. "This," said he, "is the sublimest, and in reality the most useful of all the sciences. You might know the history of all nations, the situations and the sizes, the languages and the laws of all countries. You might be able to tell the names of the plants and of the flowers-to tell of the suns and stars that be near or afar in the heavens; to count their number, and to describe their paths. You might know, in one word, the laws of mind and matter; but what would all this avail, if ignorant of the truth; that truth through the knowledge and belief of which we are sanctified and saved; if ignorant of the Scriptures which are able to make us wise unto salvation. The knowledge of other things is useful and ornamental-but this is necessary; other studies may please and profit for a time -this will please and profit for ever; other studies may make us great-this makes us good; other studies may qualify us for stations on earth -this qualifies us for stations in heaven."

While the Word of God was thus the chief subject of our study; and while he taught us to regard it as a sufficient, the only sufficient rule