points was most instructive. While reserving ample time for thorough pulpit preparation, he applied himself assiduously to every branch of professional literature. He was a great economist of time, so that, while doing full justice to the many claims which a large parish had upon him, he still commanded leisure for his favourite pursuits. The consequence was that, even before he left Campsie, he had acquired a very great store of that theological and critical knowledge which he afterwards turned to so much account. He was at the same time very earnest in his searching after truth. With pains and prayers he strove to find it, and to hold it, for himself. And to no less worthy motive than that innate love of truth must be ascribed whatever views he held, which some might think peculiar. But the fact is, that to all the leading doctrines of the Bible I believe he was sincerely and devotedly attached-and to the many conversations which I had with him about them I shall ever feel indebted, under God, for much enlightenment, in regard both to the fulness and the freeness of the Gospel.

ence.

In his influence with his people there was something very striking. It was shown very notably at the time of the secession. In the movements and discussions which preceded that event, he took, as you may well suppose, a very keen interest, and he bore himself through all with characteristic independBut although, in common with many others on that occasion, he had to mourn the estrangement of some valued friends and brethren and co-presbyters, his parishioners adhered to him with a marvellous unanimity. Every effort was of course made, from Glasgow and elsewhere, to persuade them to withdraw from the Church of their fathers, but in vain. In that large parish, of some 6000 people, to the end of his incumbency, and for several years thereafter, there was not only no Free Church, but scarcely even a Free Churchman. I question much if such another case occurred throughout all Scotland. And the result was mainly due to the ability and the honesty and the manliness with which our friend explained the points at issue. In his sermons, and by lectures, and in private conversation, he took pains to set the thing in its true light before his people, and he had the satisfaction of succeeding with them. perfectly. When he left, and though the country, near to Glasgow more especially, was still tossed with all the tumult

of the recent agitation, there was not the least secession in that very populous parish.

"I may add that, while undoubtedly that was owing in the first place to the special efforts made by Dr. Lee for the purpose, the success of these may also be ascribed indirectly to the standing which his general ministrations had obtained for him. In his preaching he was then, as ever, able and most acceptable. I may give a little anecdote which serves to illustrate that. He was going through the parish, taking leave of the people, on the eve of his removal to the church of Old Greyfriars, when a worthy parishioner took occasion to suggest that they would all greatly like to have a volume of his sermons to remind them of himself and of his ministry among them, and he specified a certain course of lectures on the Hebrews, which would seem to have been listened to with great satisfaction. "Oh, but, John," said the minister, "those lectures are not extant; they were preached by me from notes, which I have since thrown aside." 'Weel, sir, it's a pity,' was the answer, 'they would have immortaleezed ye!' In his other parish work, too, he was faithful and laborious. I remember the astonishment which I felt on one occasion, when I saw him for some purpose turning up a large folio, in appearance not unlike a very portly merchant's ledger, which was filled from end to end with an account, in his handwriting, of the names and all particulars which a minister cares to know, of all the families in that large and somewhat shifting population. He kept that record for his guidance in his usual visitations, which were frequent and minute, and always highly prized and welcomed by all classes and by all denominations in the parish.

"I should have mentioned, as one way in which he tried to be of use, that he arranged with some of his younger clerical neighbours to have monthly meetings at each other's manses, for prayer and the critical study of the Scriptures, with a view to mutual improvement, and it was only from his efforts in that direction not being zealously seconded that the plan was after a time given up.

"Of Dr. Lee in private intercourse, I need to say but little. From the very first, and through all my long and close friendship with him for more than seven-and-twenty years, I found him ever the same-cheerful and kind and affectionate. For

ignorance and bigotry he had little toleration, and his caustic way of speaking was at times more plain than pleasant; but, even to those from whom he had the bitterest opposition, I believe he never cherished any feeling of ill-will; while, by all who had the privilege of his intimate acquaintance, he was known, beloved, and trusted as a most sagacious counsellor, a most delightful companion, and a warm-hearted, constant, and most valuable friend. Such was my experience of him in an eminent degree."

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CHAPTER III.

LIFE AT CAMPSIE.-PARISH AND PUBLIC WORK. "Not slothful in business; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord." S. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, xii. 11.

His life, during these years at Campsie, was singularly active, bright, and happy-shining with a clear light of heart and intellect, full of well-done work and of kindly affection and friendship, with the sacredness, then as ever, of a real and quiet piety pervading all.

His heart rejoiced in his home, more almost than that of any man I ever knew. And his home was just beginning then to brighten into beauty and echo with music. His marriage was a most happy one; and he delighted in his children. He always seemed to stand entranced before the innocent beauty-the "sancta simplicitas" of childhood. "People generally do not consider how great a boon and help a child is," he writes to a friend. "I have found them so in a degree which I had no conception of." "May God bless the mother and child," he wrote to me long afterwards-in 1866. "It is the beginning of a new life to you both; 'the perpetual Messiah,' as the Chelsea Prophet has spoken-s ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ.” The affection of parents," he says, in one of his common-place books, "comes down upon their children in floods. It ascends from children to their parents, but in drops, like the descending cataract,

which sends nothing back to the mountain whence it pours, but some exhalations and mists.”* Those who knew him well know how his life was bound up in his family, and how amidst all his troubles from without he sought and found rest and gladness there.

In his general activities-in his own parish and elsewhere his influence was most wholesome and invigorating. "You never find Mr. Lee flat," said one of the most intelligent of his parishioners, agreeably stirred by his ceaseless mental energy; and again, "I never met with any man who read so much that remembered so much." "My recollections of him are of a most delightful kind," writes a friend who met him first in 1841. "He came over to preach on the evening of the first Communion Sunday I had been in Scotland, and spent a considerable time with us after the service. I can never forget how refreshing his conversation was to us,-he seemed so thoroughly to enter into and enjoy the truths he had been preaching, and he appeared to me one of the most spiritually-minded men I had ever known. It was about that time, I think, he began to dwell much upon the extent of the atonement, for all men; and this was the more striking because at that time this great truth, now happily so generally taught, was considered almost a heresy. I remember his writing several letters to my husband on the subject, and little short notes-with just a thought that seemed to have occurred to him at the moment. He was anxious that we should enter as

I suspect this must be an adaptation, or possibly an unconscious reminiscence of Jeremy Taylor, who says in his "Duty of Nursing Children in Imitation of the Blessed Virgin-Mother," "If love descends more strongly than it ascends, and commonly falls from the parents upon the children in cataracts and returns back again up to the parents but in gentle dews, &c."