nicety bearing a little resemblance to the labour and finish we sometimes see bestowed on the tricking out of an only child. It should, at the same time, be allowed, that the consistency of the figures, whether common or unusual, is in general accurately preserved. The reader will be taught, however, not to reckon on this as a certainty. We have just opened on the following sentence: Death is the gate which, at the same time that it closes on this world, opens into eternity.' (Sermon on Death.) We cannot comprehend the construction and movement of such a gate, unless it is like that which we sometimes see in place of a stile, playing loose in a space between two posts; and we can hardly think so humble an object could be in the author's mind, while thinking of the passage to another world.

"With respect to the general power of thinking displayed in these sermons, we apprehend that discerning readers are coming fast toward an uniformity of opinion. They will all cheerfully agree that the author carries good sense along with him wherever he goes; that he keeps his subjects distinct; that he never wanders from the one in hand; that he presents concisely very many important lessons of sound morality; and that in doing this he displays an uncommon knowledge of the more obvious qualities of human nature. He is never trifling or fantastic; every page is sober, and pertinent to the subject; and resolute labour has prevented him from ever falling in a mortifying degree below the level of his best style of performance. He is seldom below

a respectable mediocrity, but, we are forced to admit, that he very rarely rises above it. After reading five or six sermons we become assured that we most perfectly see the whole compass and reach of his powers, and that, if there were twenty volumes, we might read on through the whole without ever coming to a bold conception, or a profound investigation, or a burst of genuine enthusiasm. There is not in the train of thought a succession of eminences and depressions, rising towards sublimity, and descending into familiarity. There are no peculiarly striking short passages, where the mind wishes to stop awhile, to indulge its delight, if it were not irresistibly carried forward by the rapidity of the thought. There are none of those happy reflections back on a thought just departing which seem to give it a second and a stronger significance, in addition to that which it had most obviously presented. Though the mind does not proceed with any eagerness to what is to come, it is seldom inclined to revert to what is gone by; and any contrivance in the composition to tempt it to look back with lingering partiality to the receding ideas, is forborne by the writer; quite judiciously, for the temptation would fail.

"A reflective reader will perceive his mind fixed in a wonderful sameness of feeling throughout a whole volume; it is hardly relieved a moment, by surprise, delight, or labour, and at length becomes very tiresome; perhaps a little analogous to the sensations of a Hindoo while fulfilling his vow, to remain in one certain posture for a month. A sedate formality of manner is invariably kept up through a thousand pages, without the smallest danger of ever luxuriating into a beautiful irregularity. We never find ourselves in the midst of any thing that reminds us of nature, except by that orderly stiffness which she forswears, or of freedom, except by being compelled to go in the measured paces of a dull procession. If we manfully persist in reading on,

we at length feel a torpor invading our faculties, we become apprehensive that some wizard is about turning us into stones, and we can break the spell only by shutting the book. Having shut the book, we feel that we have acquired no definable addition to our ideas; we have little more than the cousciousness of having passed along through a very regular series of sentences and unexceptionable propositions; much in the same manner as perhaps, at another hour of the same day, we have the consciousness or remembrance of having just passed along by a very regular painted palisade, no one bar of which particularly fixed our attention, and the whole of which we shall soon forget that we have

ever seen.

"The last fault that we shall allege, is some defect on the ground of religion; not a deficiency of general seriousness, nor an infrequency of reference to the most solemn subjects, nor an omission of stating sometimes, in explicit terms, the leading principles of the theory of the Christian redemption. But we repeatedly find cause to complain that, in other parts of the sermon, he appears to forget these statements, and advances propositions which, unless the reader shall combine with them modifications which the author has not suggested, must contradict those principles. On occasions, he clearly deduces, from the death and atonement of Christ, the hopes of futurity, and consolations against the fear of death; and then, at other times, he seems most cautious to avoid this grand topic when adverting to the approach of death, and the feelings of that season; and seems to rest all the consolations on the review of a virtuous life."

James Macknight, D.D.

BORN A. D. 1721.-died A. D. 1800.

THIS distinguished Biblical critic was born on the 17th of September, 1721. His father was minister of Irvine, in Ayrshire. He received his theological education at Glasgow and Leyden, and became minister of the parish of May bole in 1753. In 1756 he published a 'Harmony of the Gospels,' which was very favourably received; and soon after a work entitled The Truth of the Gospel History,' which still further advanced his reputation as a theologian.

In 1769 he was translated to the parochial charge of Jedburgh, and, in 1772, to one of the Edinburgh charges. From the period of his settlement in Edinburgh, he addressed himself with unremitting assiduity to the preparation of his last and most important work, on the Apostolical Epistles, which was first published in 1795, in 4 vols. 4to. This is a truly valuable work. It is Arminian in sentiment, but is replete with able and accurate criticism.

Dr Macknight died on the 13th day of January, 1800.

Alexander Geddes, B.B.

BORN A. D. 1737.-DIED A. D. 1802.

DR GEDDES was born at Arradowl, in the county of Banff, September 4th, 1737, O. S. His father was the second of four brothers, respectable but not opulent farmers, all of whom still adhered to the ancient religion of the district. His first schoolmistress was a Mrs Sellar, whose notice of him, he was accustomed to say, was the earliest mental pleasure he remembered to have felt. He was next put under the care of Mr Shearer, a young man from Aberdeen, whom the laird had engaged to educate his two sons, and with whom the subject of this memoir, and the late Roman Catholic Bishop Geddes, of Edinburgh, were admitted to take lessons. He was afterwards removed to Sealan, an obscure Roman Catholic seminary in the Highlands, at which those young persons were brought up who had been devoted to the priesthood, and who were destined to finish their studies at some foreign university. At this seminary, we have reason to believe, young Geddes laid the foundation of that superior skill in the learned languages for which he was afterwards so eminently distinguished. In October, 1758, he was sent from Sealan to the Scotch college in Paris, where he arrived about the end of December, after having narrowly escaped shipwreck in his passage. Mr Gordon was then principal of the college. In a few days after his arrival he began to attend the lectures in the college of Navarre, and entered immediately into rbetoric. He soon got at the head of the class, although there were two veterans in it. Vicaire was then professor, and contracted a friendship for him which lasted all his life.

At the beginning of next schoolyear, he should have entered on a course of philosophy; but was persuaded to study philosophy at home at intervals, and to enter in divinity. He attended the lectures of M. M. Buré and De Saurent at the college of Navarre, and L'advocat, for Hebrew, at the Sorbonne. L'advocat was particularly attentive to him, and wished much to have him remain at Paris: but other counsels prevailed, and he returned to Scotland in the year 1764. On his arrival at Edinburgh, he was sent to Dundee, to officiate amongst the Catholics in the county of Angus. But he did not remain long in that station; being removed in May, 1765, to Traquaire, where he resided nearly three years as domestic chaplain to the earl of Traquaire. this connection he was always accustomed to speak with satisfaction and gratitude, as having afforded him much leisure for literary pursuits, and the use of a well furnished library admirably adapted to assist him in his favourite studies.

Of

He left Traquaire in the autumn of 1768; and, after a few weeks' stay in Angus, returned to Paris, where he remained the following winter, during which he was mostly in the king's and other libraries, making extracts from rare books, particularly Hebrew ones. In the spring of 1769, he returned to Britain; and undertook the charge of a considerable Roman Catholic congregation at Auchinhabrig in Bauffshire; where, in the summer of 1770 he projected and built a new

chapel on the same spot where the old one stood; and soon after made the old house at Auchinhabrig one of the most neat and convenient belonging to the Roman Catholic clergy in Scotland. This and other anavoidable expenses encumbered him with debt; from which he was, however, relieved by the generosity of the late duke of Norfolk. He then thought that a little farm would help him to live more comfortably; but the result was quite the reverse; he was obliged to borrow money to stock it, and the failure of three successive crops plunged him into deeper and deeper difficulties. Another chapel, too, which he built at Fochabers, added considerably to his burdens. The publication of his Satires' that year, brought him in some money, but not enough. Still, however, he had spirit and hopes, and he was not in the end disappointed. In 1779, he left Auchinhabrig, after having continued during ten years in the assiduous discharge of the various duties belonging to his pastoral office. When he retired, it was with the most sincere and unfeigned regret of all those among whom he had ministered. The attention which he paid to the instruction of the young had never been surpassed, and but rarely equalled by any of his predecessors.

His great learning-which began now to be universally known among the literati of the North-obtained for him, in the year 1780, a diploma, creating him Doctor of Laws, from the university of Aberdeen, an honour that had never, since the Reformation, been confer red by that body on a Roman Catholic.

About this period Dr Geddes went to London, and officiated for a few months as priest in the Imperial ambassador's chapel, till it was suppressed at the end of the year 1780, by an order from the emperor Joseph II. Dr Geddes afterwards preached occasionally at the chapel in Duke street, Lincoln's inn Fields, till Easter, 1782, when, it is believed, he totally declined the exercise of clerical functions.

It was at a much earlier period than this that he formed a design of giving a new translation of the whole Bible. About the year 1760 he began to read with this view; he was then acquainted with only two versions of that book, the vulgar Latin, and the vulgar English; with the latter he became dissatisfied because it was too literal. "When," he says, "from the ancient I turned to the modern versions, my opinion was soon strengthened into conviction. There were seven modern versions to which I had then access-the French, the Italian, the Dutch; and in Latin, those of Munster, Castalio, Junius, and Pagninus. Of these seven, the one which I opened with prejudice, was the one which I read through with the greatest pleasure. I had been taught to consider Castalio's translation as a profane burlesque of holy writ. What was my surprise to find, that he had seized the very spirit of the original, and transfused it into elegant Latin. I saw, indeed, and was sorry to see, that, through his excessive refinement, a part of the simplicity of his original had evaporated in the operation; and, in this respect, his version is inferior to the Vulgate: but still the spirit of the original is there; whereas, that of his contrast, Pagninus, appears like an almost breathless body, dragging along its limbs in the most awkward and clumsy manner; yet this Pagninus has been the general model of vernacular versions."

Dr Geddes now resolved to execute a free translation of the Scrip

tures.

After he had spent much of his life in Biblical studies, he com. plains of having met with a long and cruel interruption to them, and says, "I had but little hopes of ever being in a situation to resume them, when Providence threw me into the arms of such a patron as Origen himself might have been proud to boast of-a patron, who, for these ten years past, has, with a dignity peculiar to himself, afforded me every conveniency that my heart could desire, towards the carrying on and completing of my arduous work."

While Lord Petre's generosity secured to our author all the comforts of life, and all the means necessary to proceed with his work, it was nevertheless inadequate to indemnify him in the expenses of the press. The subscribers were few in comparison of the magnitude of his undertaking; and the volumes were finished in a style so handsome, and even expensive, that little or perhaps scarcely any profit could have accrued to the author had the whole impression been sold. In the year 1792, the first volume of this work, dedicated to his patron, Lord Petre, and containing the first six books of the Old Testament, was published. This, he informed the public, had been delayed more than a year by a combination of causes and circumstances, which he could neither foresee nor prevent; the principal of which was a long series of bad health, and a lowness of spirits which accompanied it. "A dangerous fever," says he, "and its lasting consequences put a stop to the press-work for a whole year. This was to be submitted to with Christian resignation; but the rubs I have received from human malignancy are a trial of patience not casily borne. Will it be readily believed that these rubs have chiefly been raised by professed Catholics, -by members of that very body which 1 principally meant to serve,— by mine own brethren, if brethren they may be called, who sit down and speak against their brother, and slander their own mother's son !' Ignorance, envy, and malice, in the various shapes of Monks, Friars, and Witlings, have been busy these ten years in depreciating my labours, and assassinating my reputation."

Soon after the publication of this volume, three Vicars Apostolic, styling themselves the bishops of Rama, Acanthos, and Centuriæ, issued a Pastoral Letter, addressed to their respective flocks, warning them against the reception and use of Dr Geddes' version. This episcopal stretch of power, as Dr Geddes conceived it to be, occasioned a correspondence between him and the bishop of Centuriæ; in the course of which the prelate, availing himself of the authority belonging to his office, declared the doctor suspended from the exercise of his ecclesiastical functions, unless within the course of a few days he should signify his submission to an injunction contained in the Pastoral Letter. The doctor was not a whit deterred by this threat, and in a short time afterwards he published a much longer letter to the bishop with a short preface addressed to the English Catholics, in which he says: "I trust ye will not deem it presumption in me to grapple with the bishops; indeed, I would boldly grapple with popes, if popes dared to injure me. Our Catholic ancestors frequently grappled with them, and sometimes came off victorious. A pope, and consequently a bishop,-may do wrong, and if he do wrong, may be told of it even by an inferior." It was not till the year 1797, that the second volume of the Translation' was given to the world. It was dedicated to her royal highness