The long list of books, great
and small, learned and popular, exegetical and doctrinal, experimental and
polemical, tracts tor the times and discussions on truths of permanent
moment, proves their author to have been, at least, a busy man. But when it
is borne in mind that he was, during the period of this prolific production,
pastor of a very large congregation in Edinburgh, doing constant duty, and
liable to perpetual interruptions, teaching it "publicly and from house to
house,” occupied also with ecclesiastical matters, and bearing his part in
such religious and benevolent associations as every great city sustains, the
preceding catalogue shows him to have been a man of incessant and
extraordinary labour. Nor was it with Dr Brown as with men of an earlier
period, who seem to have published all they wrote as a thing of course; for
large stores of his manuscripts remain behind, not in the shape of
note-books, discourses, meditations, or diaries jotted down “at sundry
times,” but treatises and commentaries, formally and finally prepared for
the press. Nor are these books named at the head of this article collections
of sermons first preached, and then cunningly remoulded and thrown into
printed circulation. Each of them has a specific object,—is the elaborated
defence of some truth, or the definite exposition of some book of Scripture.
We could name several series of popular books, both practical and prophetic,
which resemble stucco images flung out of the same mould, all very like, but
none of any value, and scarce to be distinguished from one another by some
slight variations of feature or attitude. But Dr Brown’s works are like a
gallery of statues, in which, indeed, you may see the style and mannerism of
the same hand; but each piece has a history, unity, individuality, and
purpose of its own. The mere ambition of authorship aid not move him to this
fertile diligence—it was not in youth, but in age, when he was midway
between sixty and seventy, that he published the majority of his works—not
to let the world see what he could do, or what he had been doing, and what
now was the harvest of his life. No; he employed the press, as solemnly and
prayerfully as he had used the pulpit, for the work of his Master, the
welfare of the Church, and the service of the age. And he had been in no
haste to assume the responsible task—one of his finished Expositions had
lain in his repositories twice the Horatian period. His earliest
productions, too, are the smallest; he made no precocious effort to astonish
or dazzle the world when a younger man. He walked in the river when a the
waters were to the ankles,” ere he threw himself on the deeper billows and
swam. In a word, this wondrous and successful industry sprang from the
profound and unsleeping consciousness of his being a servant, with whom
sloth is treason, and whose hiding of the talent is as wide a breach of
trust as the squandering of it, for he felt himself bound to trade to the
best advantage with all his gifts, in the hope of being greeted at length
witti his Lord’s approval. Few men have better realized, or more steadily
laboured and prayed to realize, what it is to “serve his own generation by
the will of God,” ere he a fell on sleep, and was laid unto his fathers,”
than he whose life, character, and works, are the subject of the following
paragraphs.
Few incidents are furnished to a biographer by the life of a faithful and
diligent minister, especially it he has not kept a diary, engaged in an
extensive correspondence, or been tossed into stormy prominence by the
current or events, but has clung to his proper functions, and tried to
fulfil his course, or, like Dr Brown, has lived in his library, and not gone
much into the stirring world around him. His Life, written by a devoted and
admiring pupil, himself of no mean eminence and promise, will not startle
any of its readers. Dr Cairns has not made an idol of his minister and
theological teacher. He does not place him in a niche, bend the knee, and
call upon others to emulate his idolatry. He has evidently written under
great self-restraint, and has studiously kept himself out of view. He never
kindles as he narrates, or deviates into eulogy as he advances. He breaks
into no enthusiasm, but has compiled a plain unvarnished tale chiefly about
the outer life of Dr Brown. He has tracked him from home to school and
college, from the Divinity Hall to license and ordination, from Biggar to
Rose Street and Broughton Place, from the pulpit to the professorial chair,
and from health to sickness and death, and has briefly and honestly
chronicled how he did his duty in these successive scenes,—what trials he
met with, and how bravely he rose above them; how he preached, visited, and
lectured, and what success attended his labours; how he gathered, loved, and
handled his numerous books, and entertained visitors and students in his
library; what volumes he has published, and what their character and their
general reception. We dissent from scarcely a single word which Dr Cairns
has written; but we confess we should have liked some fuller exhibition of
Dr Brown’s mental and spiritual progress, something more than the mere
footprints of his visible career, some deeper glimpse into his inner nature,
some analysis of those minute and complex elements that make ft man what he
is, and which, in carving out his work for him, gird him with ability to do
it. Dr Cairns will, however, be thanked by the Christian public for his
calm, impartial, and graceful story, in which he simply narrates without
pronouncing a verdict, presents the premises quietly and unaffectedly, and
permits his readers to form their own conclusions.
The Browns have been a famous name in Scottish Dissent, or perhaps, as we
may be allowed to call it, Scottish theology. The name has passed through
more than one generation, like that of the Casaubons, Scaligers, Buxtor's,
Vitringas, and Turretines of other times, and the Lawsons, Heughs, Bonars,
M‘Cries, Gilfillans, Cooks, Vaughans, and Hills of a more recent period. The
first John Brown of Haddington, so well known for his "Dictionary of the
Bible” and his “Self-interpreting Bible,” was a self-taught man, cradled in
hardship and battling with difficulty, while he gathered in boyhood his
Latin and Greek as he followed the sheep on the braes of Abernethy. Though
never within the walls of a college, he acquired remarkable erudition, and
was chosen at length to occupy a chair of theology. He was known throughout
Scotland for his piety and learning, his retired and studious habits, and
his earnest desire to throw such light on the sacred volume as should make
all ordinary readers feel it to be an instructive and blessed book. It may,
indeed, be said of his literary and biblical labours, as was said of his
Divine Master’s preaching, “the common people heard him gladly.” The second
John Brown, of Whitburn, was a man of primitive worth and manners, who lived
and laboured in a rural district with quiet, lowly, and unostentatious zeal.
The doctrines and the memory of the "Marrowmen,” and other divines of
Boston’s period, were dear to him, and he laboured to spread and perpetuate
them; for those spiritual heroes of his admiration did good work in a former
day, and bore up the banner of evangelical theology when it was about to
fall from other and feebler hands. His sermons were filled with quaint and
pithy illustrations of Divine truth, hallowed with a savoury unction, and
delivered with that musical cadence and modulation which the older people
lovingly called a song.
The third and greatest John Brown has left a name more illustrious than that
of his father or grandfather. Having finished his academic course at the age
of sixteen, when he should have been only commencing it, he was sent out
into the world to fare as best he might; for, like the majority of Scottish
students, he was obliged to support himself by teaching during his
theological curriculum. Leaving home with a guinea and his good theris
benediction, the stripling went to Llie, on the east coast of Fife, and
there taught himself and the village boys and girls for several years. The
plan so largely followed by English Nonconformists, of giving gratuitous
board and education to young men studying for the ministry, is the other
extreme to our thrifty mode. The Anglican way is, however, very expensive,
and is attended with many failures; for after the term of study is
completed, many lads of piety and promise are found to be deficient in such
gifts as are essential to popular preaching. True, indeed, with us the prime
student does not always turn out the prime preacher, while he who passed
through the Hall unnoticed may astonish by his audacious elocution, and his
self-command in the pulpit. Still, the youth who in early life is left to
his own resources, and thrown into the current either to sink or to swim, is
drilled into the best of lessons—that of self-reliance under the Divine
blessing; for he is brought face to face with wants which nothing but his
own ceaseless toil can relieve: is taught how to value money rightly, and to
calculate how best to spend it, for he has earned it; and thus comes to
learn what nerve and resolve are in him, and to take the measure of himself
by means of those suggestive experiences and conflicts through which he has
passed. Such to a young man is the lesson of lessons, and he can get it only
by a process which may humble him far oftener than it may flatter him.
Cramming for a competitive examination cannot impart it, and success in such
rivalry is no proof that it has been mastered; for a competitive trial,
which from its very nature shows the possession only of cleverness and
memory, but not of general talent, leaves ungauged the noblest elements of
moral tuition and discipline.
On being licensed, John Brown became at once a popular preacher, and was
called to Stirling, but by Synodical decision was ordained at’Biggar, 6th
February 1806, the congregation there having also chosen him. Thence, after
fifteen years’ service, was he removed to Rose Street, and thence, after a
ministry of seven years, to Broughton Place, in the pastorate of which he
spent the remaining thirty years of his long life. His removal to Edinburgh
gave the Secession Church a position which it had not hitherto enjoyed in
the critical and literary metropolis of Scotland. Hall, indeed, was there, a
man of popular gifts and dignified eloquence; and Peddie, proverbial for the
ingenious inferences and the keen practical sagacity of his
expositions,—qualities not confined to his discourses, for his reply to Dr
Porteous of Glasgow was declared by Dugald Stewart to be one of the best
specimens of the reductio ad abmrdum in the English language. Jamieson was
there too, renowned for his Scottish erudition, and not less noted for the
massive thought and the earnest gravity of his sermons. We abstain on
purpose from saying a word on others not belonging to Dr Brown’s
denomination, or we might have referred to the shrewd and discriminative
preaching of the historian M‘Crie, one of whose printed discourses Dr Brown
declared to be among the best ever published; to Henry Grey, so tender,
impressive, and catholic; to the fervid ana spiritual Gordon; and to Andrew
Thomson, whose robust genius clothed itself in a fitting masculine style,
and spoke with a fresh and manly elocution. Dr Brown’s pulpit appearances
soon attracted large audiences, many of whom came to enjoy his discourses as
a literary treat; for they were clear, accurate, sober, and
ratiocinative—now working out some thought with steady skill and
accelerating progress, now proving some doctrine from Scripture with
accumulative energy, and now urging truth on heart and conscience with the
honest vehemence and majestic authority of one who felt it to be his
function to “persuade men,” to “pray them in Christ’s stead.”
Dr Brown’s preaching, then and afterwards, had four marked characteristics.
It was clear, always clear. Its clearness was its brightness. No hearer was
ever at a loss for his meaning: every paragraph stood out with mathematical
precision and distinctness. It was the truth given out with luminous
prominence— not delicately shaded off, on the one hand, into clouded
obscurity, or feebly fading away, on the other hand, into dim and intangible
vagueness and uncertainty. He felt with good old Richard Baxter, that “it
takes all our learning to make things plain.” He spoke of God’s grace, man’s
guilt, Christ’s love, the Spirit’s influence, and the nature and necessity
of faith and holiness, so lucidly, that nobody could misunderstand him, or
wonder what he meant. No paragraph ever resembled the impalpable image of
which Eliphaz says, “It stood still, but I could not discern the form
thereof.” Dr Gillies, in his biography of his father-in-law, the eminent
Maclaurin, says that his style, which was dear in his younger days, grew
more obscure as he grew older. No one could make such a complaint about Dr
Brown. Even in those critical dissertations in which he sometimes, perhaps
too often, indulged, he was easily followed step by step by a trained and
intelligent audience. He had no long and involved constructions, like those
of Milton, Hooker, or Sir Thomas Brown, “with many a winding bout of linked
sweetness long drawn out,” but clause came after clause, each very distinct
in itself and in its connection. His expositions of Divine truth were, in
their uniform clearness, like the sharply-defined edges and ridges of a hill
seen against the cloudless sky of a summer evening. His preaching was also
“with power.” Even when, in advanced years, he took to the slavish reading
of his manuscript, his “natural force was not abated.” Nothing was weak,
tawdry, or effeminate about him in the pulpit: he was vigorous, elevated,
and effective. A living energy pervaded all his discourses. His style was
felicitous, because it was the exact transcript of his thoughts, without any
spasmodic abruptness, or any affectation of classic purity and grace. In the
mere manufacture of periods he had no pleasure. He was a slave neither to
the chaste and tuneful charms of Addison, nor the sonorous and measured
parallelisms of Johnson—the twin-gods of literary homage at the commencement
of the century. He did not imitate the concealed art of the one, or the open
effort and laboured sweep of the other. His loud, hale, and hearty tones
were no less m keeping, while his quick eye, noble form, symmetrical figure,
and snowy “crown of glory,” contributed to the general impression. At the
same time, he employed no rhetorical arts of intonation and gesture. He
would not stoop to discharge such mimic thunder. Occasionally he raised his
voice to such a pitch that one might call it a shout, and the ceiling rang
again; and occasionally, as he warmed into a climax of argument or
indignation, he stamped his foot so lustily, that it stilled and overawed
the congregation. He preached the Gospel in its simplicity and majesty. He
knew full well that the giving of mere instruction was not his whole duty,
but that men’s spirits must be aroused and dealt with, and that the preacher
must use every effort, work on every passion, enlist every motive, and bring
every appliance to bear on those to whom he appeals. In doing this, he
trusted to the power of the truth. He never entranced his audience by a
series of dissolving views of marine or rural scenery. He did not wander
among woods and meadows, and tell of the song of the bird or the hum of the
bee, the hue of flowers or the scent of herbs; nor did he ever flit like a
meteor over regions on which hovered a light that u ne’er was seen on sea or
shore.” You never thought of complimenting any sentence by saying, "That’s
fine but you were often inclined to say of a paragraph, “That’s masterly.”
His power was not that of imagery, passion, or pathos, but that of ripe and
solid thought. Every listener felt that the preacher had something to say,
for the “burden of the Lord” was upon him, and that he must say it. His
occasional hesitancy for want of the right word or selected epithet, made
him all the more emphatic and memorable. A sermon of his, when in his better
days, was not like a lazy rivulet, creeping in stillness through a level
English landscape, but like a Scottish stream, that battles its way over
every obstacle, sometimes leaps and foams, and is always showing itself to
be “living water,” by its forcible current and visible speed.
Dr Brown’s preaching was eminently scriptural. We mean, not merely that he
preached the truth of Scripture—a compliment due to every evangelical
minister—but that, in a full and felicitous way, he made Scripture its own
interpreter. He had a special tact in “comparing spiritual things with
spiritual;” and his frequent and favourite illustrations of Scripture were
taken from Scripture. The emphatic way in which he quoted a clause was often
a striking commentary upon it. We remember, for example, hearing him many
years ago on Heb. viii. 1, and on the cause, “We have such an high priest.”
He was telling how the sacerdotal office of Christ had been modified,
explained away, and denied; how the Socinian spoke of having a friend, a
counsellor, and a sympathizer, and how the Jew imagined that Christianity
had no one like Aaron to stand between the living and the dead, when he
gradually warmed to a white heat, and, repeating the clause, pronounced “We
have” with such a resolute accent, and in a tone of such assertatory
vehemence, that the delivery of the two words not only contained the whole
sermon within it, but gave edge and life to the subsequent illustration. His
sermons were rich in apposite quotations, the “golden pot” was filled to
overflowing with the precious manna. While his discourses ranged through
every portion of the Bible, its central truths were his chosen theme. To him
the cross was the centre of revelation, to which all its doctrines are
united in happy harmony, and from which emanate their life and splendour. He
delighted to expatiate on the Gospel as the Divine scheme of mercy, and
often said of the Law, in contradistinction from the Gospel, “The law never
made a bad man good, nor a good man better.” “Law doctrine was never in his
blood,” said one of his venerable rustic admirers. His wras no negative
Gospel—no tossing of Christ’s cross out of view into His tomb. He nad great
faith in the old Gospel—the Gospel of Peter and Paul—and had no sympathy
with those philosophical harangues which sometimes either take its place, or
profess to adapt it more thoroughly to the wants and tendencies of the
present age. If such an attempt was only to simplify the system or improve
its nomenclature, he might not object; but if, with insidious change of
terms, there was also a change of belief, then he would “give place by
subjection, no, not for an hour.” He held that what had achieved such
triumphs in the first century could repeat them in the nineteenth century;
and that the Gospel was not to be set aside by civilisation as unnecessary
or superseded by philosophy as antiquated. For the spiritual relations of
man to his Maker are unchanged by such adventitious circumstances; so that
what was preached in Antioch, Athens, Corinth, and Rome, must be preached
still in Edinburgh, London, Paris, and New York. The moral disease being
radically the same, the same benign remedy must still be applied. The
enlightenment of these times no more alters man’s relation to God, than it
changes the elements of his humanity; and there is no need, therefore, for
“another Gospel, which is not another.”
Lastly, Dr Brown’s preaching was, as his biographer also remarks,
distinguished by its tone of authority, not that there was any assumption of
sacerdotal prerogative in it, or any attempt to acquire or wield dominion
over men’s faith. It was not dogmatism, on the one hand, nor the feeble and
uncertain teaching of the scribes, on the other. But he did not speak in
hesitation, as if he doubted what he said, or needed formally and cautiously
to prove it. He was not for ever appealing to evidence, and fencing with
logical parade, as if his statements were liable to challenge; but, with his
open Bible before him, he solemnly and boldly announced its truths as
eternal and indisputable verities. His own mind was made up; and he could
not but appropriate the Apostle’s motto, “We believe, therefore we speak.”
he was never like one arguing a case, resting it on probabilities, or
placing it at the hazard of succeeding experiments; for he knew that the
Gospel has a witness in every man’s conscience, and he fearlessly appealed
to what Tertullian has called testimonium animce natur-cJiter Christiana.
Therefore his teaching was, to use the epithet which Longinus applies to the
style of Paul, anapodeictic, undemonstrative—not searching for truth, but
pointing it home; not deducing it, but applying and commending it as “worthy
of all acceptation.”
According to universal testimony, Dr Brown’s preaching differed much in his
riper years from what it was at the commencement of his ministry. Not that,
as was the case with Chalmers at Kilmany, it ever wanted the evangelical
element, or was only ethical and discursive; but it was couched in
scholastic phrase, and embroidered with juvenile ornament. As the style of
Edmund Burke, from its naked simplicity in his youth, grew more and more
luxuriant in imagery, till in his old age it had the stiffness and the
almost ungracefiil richness of brocade, so Dr Brown’s preaching became more
and more wealthy in evangelical statement and unction, and had shed around
it more and more the incense of a devotional spirit. Some of his later
sacramental addresses, in tenderness and simplicity, equal, if they do not
surpass, the apostolic pastorals of the late Principal Lee. We should not,
therefore, call Dr Brown’s preaching philosophical, in the ordinary
acceptation of the term, or in the sense in which it might be applied to the
sermons of Archer Butler, which, in magnificence of thought and in moral
grandeur, have rarely been surpassed. Nor should we call it intellectual, in
the vulgar acceptation of the epithet, as when it is applied to a style oŁ
discoursing which apes the "enticing words of man’s wisdom,” and strives to
mitigate the offence of the cross by obscuring the view of it, or speaking
of the agonies endured upon it more as a tragedy than as an atonement,
rather as a martyrdom than as a propitiation. But if the meaning be, that
there is grasp of thought, visible and positive vigour of mind put forth—no
dull or jejune repetition of commonplaces, but mental action creating
sympathy with itself, and calling forth a hearty response and
acquiescence—then Dr Brown’s preaching was intellectual beyond that of many.
He never neglected nor tampered with pulpit preparation, self-indulgence or
procrastination was not among his sins. His commission was, “Give ye them to
eat,” and he strove to store up nutriment for them, m the hope and
dependence that He who gave the commission would lay liberally to his hand.
He never, at any period of his life, trusted to extemporaneous utterance.
Every discourse was carefully thought out, and the ideas, and often the
exact words, were committed to memory. A sermon was to him a solemn work,
involving immense responsibility, and not merely a task to be got over on
Sabbath as easily and as passably as he could. The pulpit was the scene of
his power; and he would not weaken its-influence by negligent preparation;
“saying away,” as the phrase is; filling up the prescribed period with a
succession of words and sentences so loosely strung together, and so utterly
inane and devoid of consecutive thought, that if a hearer falls asleep and
in the course of twenty minutes wakens again, he will find the preacher much
about where he left him. Dr Brown was always roused into unwonted rage when
he referred to such slovenly and unfaithful practices. To show his idea of
the importance of a sermon, and the anxious care and toil which it of
necessity demanded, he used to (juote a saying of Robert Hall’s to himself:
“A man of genius, sir, may produce one sermon in the week; a person of
average talent may compose two; but nobody but a fool, sir, can write
three.” 66 This witness is true,” though couched in the form of a paradox.
Every one remembers how Lord Brougham, in his recent inaugural address as
Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh, insists on earnest and continuous
preparation and study as indispensable to successful public speaking.
Conscientious and incessant preparation was all the more needed by Dr Brown,
for he was not an orator in the high sense of the word, or in the sense that
Mason, Hall, and Waugh were orators. To speak of the last, as he belonged to
Dr Brown’s own communion, there was no comparison in many points between the
two men. Dr Waugh was not simply a consummate speaker—he was an orator.
While he prepared sermons with care, and could deliver them with ease and
effect, still he could, on the inspiration of the moment, throw off gleaming
thoughts, and pour out streams of tenderness. He did not need, in such
moods, to think continuously what he was to add, or to ponder prospectively
how he was to get to a rounded conclusion. What next to say, never troubled
him ; how to say it, was born with him. Idea led on to idea, sentence linked
itself with sentence, image rose after image, his eloquence baptized into
the Spirit of Christ, and his sermons as devout as other men’s prayers. His
subject hurried him along, and he yielded to the impulse. Ordinary speakers,
though they are good speakers, never venture far from snore, or lose sight
of the headlands; but orators such as Dr Waugh, fearlessly leave all known
landmarks, and commit themselves to the deep, assured that they will neither
sink nor lose their way, but can return at will after their adventurous
wanderings. A great deal of our best preaching, even when not given from a
paper, is but the reading of manuscript by the eye of memory; but in genuine
oratory, every power is brought into tense and vigorous play: not only are
previous trains of cogitation brought up, but new trains are suggested and
ardently pursued; the reasoning faculty soaring on the pinions of
imagination, and having a wider sweep of view from its height; every fact
within reach being laid under contribution, and many a stroke suggested by
the consciousness that an impression is being made; language all the while
starting up as it is wanted, and not waiting to be pressed into service,—the
right word leaping into the right place without efibrt or confusion. Dr
Waugh often realized tnis description. Earnest, self-possessed, and
imaginative, he often surprised his audience by some felicitous and
unexpected allusion, frequently a Scottish one,—as when illustrating the
second verse of the 46th Psalm, he exclaimed, “What!” says distrust or weak
faith, “were the Cheviot hills to be cast into the sea, could the shepherds
be blamed for trembling it” or when, describing the revulsion of soul in the
prodigal, he pictured him casting a glance at his squalid countenance and
tattered robes reflected in the streamlet, then starting, looking up to
heaven and shrieking in ruic, "God of Abraham, is it I? To what a wretched
plight have brought myself.” We might also have referred to Shanks of
Jedburgh, spoken of by the elder brethren as unsurpassed in vivid
description and appeal—“an eloquent man and mighty in the Scriptures” when
preaching from a tent at a sacrament; to Jameson of Methven, a man of
uncommon stamp, sometimes creeping indeed, but majestic when on the wing;
and to Young of Perth, whose ardent and philosophical mind did its grandest
achievements of oratory when left to itself, and unfettered by the Dotes of
preparatory meditation.
From what has been said, it will be inferred that Dr Brown’s mind was
distinguished more by its vigour and clearness, than by its depth and
acuteness. His ideas were always judicious, if not always original or
profound. He cared not to range among subtle and daring speculations, and
though he could appreciate and admire them, he did not indulge in them. His
devotion to the useful kept him from being fascinated by the novel and the
recondite, by what was too high to be bound down to immediate utility, or
too fine to be yoked to every-day business. Locke and Edwards seem to have
been his favourite metaphysicians, on account of their clear and palpable
reasonings. We say not, that he held all their views, but he reckoned them
masters of thought, and maintained that it was only by a wicked and
one-sided interpretation of Locke, that Condillac, Helvetius, and Comte
could claim him as a patron of Sadducean sensationalism. Idealism of every
form he could not away with; Berkeley, Kant, Hegel, or Ferrier, had no
attractions for him. Owen, Howe, and Baxter were a triumvirate which, from
familiar knowledge, he delighted to extol. Dugald Stewart also moved his
admiration, though he had not been allowed to attend his class, there being
the impression among evangelical men of that day—an impression not without
foundation—that teachers of moral philosophy were often little better than
baptized pagans. It was apparently forgotten, however, that moral
obligations spring out of man’s nature, and exist independently of
Christianity, though it is very far wrong to refuse the light which
Christianity casts on man’s being and relations, and ignore the existence of
that new motive power to which faith gives existence and permanence within
him. Dr Brown relished the elegance and culture of Stewart’s mind, the grace
and purity of his style, and the precision and distinctness of his views;
for he never hides himself in cloud-land, or vanishes from view amidst
transcendental subtleties. Dr Brown was fond of poetry in his youth, and
some of the minor
Poets, such as Langhome, Penrose, and especially Charlotte imith, were among
his favourites. But his tastes grew more select as he advanced in years,
though we do not think that the ethereal beauties of Wordsworth, Shelley, or
Tennyson, could ever captivate him. In his later writings, as we have
already intimated, there was little of the garniture of fancy. He rarely
employed imagery; his illustrations were plentiful, but usually homely, and
it is surely a mark of his good sense that he did not strew his pages with
faded garlands. He coveted beauty of form more than luxuriance of
drapery—the severer beauty of unity and life which belongs to just or
striking conceptions. His mind was not like the orchard in the rich bloom of
spring, but like the orchard plenished with fruit in autumn; not like the
parterre, gay with colours and laden with perfume, but like the fiela of
grain which presents a harvest to the sickle.
From the days of Knox, and Melville, the Church of Scotland had endeavoured
to secure a learned ministry, trained to a knowledge of the sacred tongues
and of the languages of the earliest and best versions of Scripture, and
instructedin the canons of criticism, as well as in the principles, history,
and application of exegetical erudition. The First Book of Discipline
sketched a plan of study, wiser and wider by far than had hitherto been
attempted. The literary history of the University of Glasgow begins with
Melville’s regency. An improved curriculum, which had been advocated by no
less a man than Buchanan, was introduced into St Andrews; the College of St
Mary, with four professors, was to take charge of theological tuition, in
which the interpretation of the Old Testament and comparison of it with the
Chaldee paraphrases and Septuagint, and the interpretation of the New
Testament and collation of the original text with the Syriac version,
occupied a prominent place. But the example set by the early reformers was
lost in succeeding troublous times. None rose up second to Buchanan, the
translator of the Psalms, and none appeared like Andrew Melville, the
reformer and principal of two universities—qui Athena* et Solymam in Scotiam
induxit. Thus the original purpose of these noble remodellers was neither
definitely nor successfully carried out. No chair for the special study of
the New Testament existed in any of the colleges. Systematic Theology became
the engrossing study; and so minute, metaphysical, and protracted was the
treatment of it occasionally, that the story goes of an Irish student, who
had been a session under Dr Finlay, at Glasgow College, and who, on being
asked by his presbytery, preparatory to examination, what theme had occupied
the professor's time, naively answered, “Half an attribute.” At the period
of the first Secession, theological tuition was a subject anxiously
pondered. Wilson, the first professor, was the most scholarly of the u Four
Brethren but his life was short, and the Professorate was held from time to
time bv different persons, as by )wn of Haddington on the one side,
Moncrieff of Alloa and Bruce of Whitburn on the other. Lawson of Selkirk,
the Christian Socrates, as Dr Brown terms him, held a chair for above thirty
years. Paxton, author of the well-known “Illustrations of Scripture,” was
teaching at the period of the union of the Burgher and Antiburgher parties,
but did not join the united church; in connection with which, and by an
extension of the system, Biblical Literature was first formally lectured on
by Dr Mitchell, who in 1804 had won the Claudius Buchanan prizefor the best
essay on the Civilisation of India, and whose praise is yet in all the
churches; while Dogmatic Theology was taught by Dr Dick, whose published
system has gained for itself general approval. At Dr Dick’s death, the
Synod, urged mainly by Dr Brown, appointed a committee to consider the whole
subject of theological education; and that committee, guided also by him,
proposed an enlarged scheme which was at once adopted. Four chairs were
agreed on: one of Hermeneutics, that of Dr Mitchell; one of Exegesis, to
which Dr Brown was chosen; one of Systematic Theology, filled by Dr Balmer;
and one of Pastoral Theology, occupied by Dr Duncan. The arrangement still
continues, but is so far modified that Pastoral Theology is joined to
Systematic Theology; and to the fourth chair is appointed the important
subject which the Germans call Dogmengesch ichte, or the history of
doctrine, ritual, and government.
Dr Brown had a special talent for exegesis, and it is by his exegetical
labours and publications that his name will be perpetuated. It was not till
some time after his ordination that he turned his mind to the critical study
of Scripture, and there seem to have been few previous symptoms of such a
latent taste within him. What first developed the liking it is difficult to
say, but once developed, it never paused—was never satiated. Onward and
onward for forty years did he advance, day after day being given to the
careful and prayerful exposition of the word of Goo. Commentary, either more
popular or more academic, became “everywhere and in all things” the business
of his life, and “This one thing I do,” might have been inscribed over his
study. Not only were his lectures in the pulpit exegetical, but his sermons
had no little of the same aspect and character. His thoughts and
conversations ranged round the unvarying themes,—editions of the Greek
Testament, introductions, grammars, dictionaries, concordances,
commentaries, disputed passages, difficult clauses, reconciliation of
textual difficulties, better translations, and comparative merits of
expositors. Dr Brown had many qualifications for an expositor besides his
ardent attachment to the study—that attachment being itself the sure token
of possessed qualification. The Bible was the book on which his life’s
labour was spent. He felt the necessity of such a record and disclosure of
God’s purposes and acts, and was wholly and vehemently opposed to all
theories which taught the possibility of subjective piety without an
objective revelation,—a form of spiritualism which places all religions on
the same low level, and pictures each as the native outgrowth of the soul
modified by temperament, experience, and education. In the inspiration of
Scripture he had a firm faith. Perhaps he had no precise theory which he
could minutely and scientifically expound, but he held the Bible to be God’s
book—not in thought only, but in language—prophets, evangelists, and
apostles, being guided by the Divine Spirit to those words by which ideas
divinely communicated were expressed without any possibility or shade of
error. Therefore, in his view, the Bible could not deal loosely with facts,
or fallaciously with arguments. In the Old Testament the religious
revelation is imbedded in the common history, but it is never, as some
pretend, like truth set in falsehood. The one cannot be disengaged from the
other. If the prophet deliver a religious message not m naked purity, but in
connection with some event in the annals of the people, then if the outer
illustration is liable to error, the thing illustrated is not secure against
corruption. How can we accept the truth expounded, if we may not receive the
expository material with implicit confidence? Dr Brown therefore held to a
plenary inspiration producing a book of universal and unchanging truth.
Unchanging we say, for though the books of Scripture were specially adapted
to the age in which they appeared, they never me their adaptation to all
ages. They may be stripped of their Hebrew costume, but eternal truth
remains behind. The altar, victim, blood, vail, and priest may be taken
away, but there remains behind a foreshadowed atonement in the Old
Testament, and an actual propitiation in the New. Dr Brown, therefore, could
not yield to the theory of Jewett, which regards the Bible as behind the
age, and he has entered his stout protest in the preface to his Exposition
of Homans.
As an expositor, Dr Brown had but one desire, and that was to discover the
mind of the Spirit in His own word. Few expositors have felt this desire so
uniformly, or have so consistently carried it out. His two questions were,
What was this oracle in sense to those who first received it, and what is it
still to us? And he was patient in coming to a conclusion. As when Luther
and Melanchthon, in translating the original Scriptures into German,
sometimes spent a month over a word, so anxious were they to select the
proper term, so Dr Brown, in lecturing through a book, sometimes paused in
his course for weeks, when he came to some dark or difficult passage, so
conscientious was he in seeking to ascertain its true meaning. This dictum,
too, was often on his lips, when referring to some current but false
exegesis, “This is truth, important truth, and truth taught elsewhere in
Scripture, but not the truth contained in this passage.” No one was better
aware than he of the mischief done to interpretation by the application of
any reigning philosophy, whether it be Aristotelian, Flatonic, or
Neoplatonic, whether it be that of Kant, or Locke, or Hegel; for it twists
and tortures revelation to its own uses, and carries with it the sense which
it proudly imposes on Scripture. Few expositors, indeed, can thoroughly
divest themselves of philosophical or theological predilections, and their
exegesis is unconsciously warped. They iee as they wish to see, ana find
what they secretly hope to find.
What is in them, they read as being without them. We are bound to say that
we find little or nothing of this in Dr Brown’s, commentaries. There are
many things with which we may not agree, many points on which others seem to
have led him astray, but we do not discover that any statement is the result
of a foregone conclusion. These lines of Cowper were often quoted by him:
"Of all the arts sagacious dnpes invent,
To cheat themselves and gain the world’s consent,
The worst is Scripture warped from its intent.”
He valued systems very highly, and had studied the best of them, as
Turretine, Mastricht, Stapfer, and Pictet. He estimated creeds and
confessions at their due value, but he felt that often, when right in
doctrine, they were wrong in the interpretation of many of the passages by
which they defended it. He could not, therefore, linger on the cistern,
where the water is apt to stagnate, but pitched his tent under the green
oak, and by the living fountain. To say that he admitted the necessity of
the Holy Spirits influence and enlightenment for the correct understanding.
91 the lively oracles, would be a very feeble and inadequate statement,
because his soul was filled with such a conviction, and it surrounded and
hallowed all his Biblical toils. For the author of 9 book best knows the
meaning of it, and the Spirit of truth is promised to guide into all truth.
Bene ordsse est bene studuisse is oftener quoted to point a paragraph, than
actually believed and realized. But Dr Brown’s friends knew that he was
always as earnest and continuous in asking light from on high, as he was
diligent in seeking it by literary study and research. He lived, and
laboured in faith, for no man is saved by theology, or a theoretic knowledge
of religion. The beggar by the wayside gets as much of the sun’s radiance as
the astronomer who studies and understands its physical laws and
constitution. Learning is no less indispensable to honest and accurate
exposition of Scripture. Dr Brown’s erudition was immense and varied; ever
growing, and stretching out into many spheres. For his time, his scholarship
was good. In his youth, the means now at hand were not to be had; and the
study of the classic tongues was, and, alas, is, pot pursued in our northern
universities, till authors are mastered, and the soul of the language is
caught; a crude acquaintance with flections and syntax being all that is
ever dreamed of. In those days, so far as Greek was concerned, Matthiae,
Thiersch, Buttman, Kithner, Madvig, Bernhardy, and Kruger, had not given the
fruits of their grammatical studies to the world. Nor did there exist many
other philological treatises, that now form the best implements of the
exeget. Not a few of them, either written in Latin or translated into
English, Dr Brown could use at a later period; and he did use some of them
to great advantage. But his scholar* ship was not what it would have been,
had such instruments and appliances been found in his earlier years. It was
not till 1810 that Planck definitively settled the nature of New Testament
Greek; and Winer’s Greek Grammar, now in its sixth edition, appeared first
in 1822. The first edition of the Hebrew-German Lexicon of Gesenius appeared
in 1810, and the first of his Latin Manuals in 1833; his smaller Grammar was
published in 1813, and his larger in 1817, but both in German, No one will
suppose us to mean that Dr Brown was deficient in scholarship; out it wanted
somewhat of edge, precision, and familiarity with minutiae, which nothing
but early culture can furnish. Nor do we think that scholarship forms the
distinctive excellence of his commentaries. While there is, generally, the
manifestation of it, the exegesis is indebted more to a sound head than to
acute linguistic erudition; relies more on a searching and thorough analysis
than on grammatical and lexical investigation; and appeals more to what the
writer has been saying for the meaning of what he now says, than to the
subtle doctrine of cases and particles, idioms and mysteries of syntax. But
of this again. Though he was not a Hebrew scholar, like the men of other
days, such a9 Lightfoot, Pocock, and Robertson, yet it may be safely asked,
who of his contemporaries approached him in Hebrew exegesis, or has even
published anything that may afford ground for comparison with his able
exposition of the eighteenth Psalm, and of the fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah, in his u Sufferings and Glory of the Messiah?” The system of Masclef,
Parkhurst, and Wilson, so popular in his youth, had well-nigh banished the
study of Hebrew from our country; and we believe that Dr Mitchell was among
the first, if not the first, who publicly taught Hebrew as expounded by
continental Hebraists. In all the universities at the time it seems to have
been taught without points, as the technical phrase is, that is, in a meagre
and miserable form.
And for this work Dr Gown had furnished himself with a magnificent library.
When in Biggar he originated a ministerial library, which was provided by
the congregation, and augmented yearly through its liberality. The plan was
adopted in 1852 by the United Presbyterian Synod; and now there are 150 such
libraries, each the property of the congregation, yet selected by the
minister and kept solely for his use. But his own library was the growth of
a lifetime," and its augmentation never ceased. It consisted at his death of
about nine thousand volumes,—not confined to one department of literature,
but having books of all kinds and ages. Many volumes of rare pamphlets
issued in connection with various old Scottish controversies and the
stirring questions of the day, are to be found in it; and will make it of
great value at some future period, to any plodder given to such researches.
By far the larger portion of it, however, was biblical hosts of
commentaries; the best grammars, lexicons, and concordances; with
seventy-two different editions of the New Testament, and more than a hundred
copies of it altogether. There are also in it rare and costly editions of
works: nine editions of Thomas a Kempis; first editions—editiones principes
of many foreign and English classics. The great majority of these books are
in the best order—his tasteful eye liked a fine binding—and one in unison
with the age or the character of the book. His library was deficient in the
department of the Fathers—for what reason we know not. In the enumeration,
in his preface to “Galatians,” of commentators on the Epistle consulted by
him, he quotes Chrysostom, with an English title (Oxford, 1845), and makes
no mention either of the Latin Jerome or the Greek AEcumenius and Theodoret.
Of this immense collection of books he had a perfect mastery; a mastery in
our experience unequalled, and as the redundancy of his notes to many of his
volumes testifies. This tendency to a farrago of appended notes is peculiar
to some men, and seems to grow with them. They tell first what they have to
say, and then what all other men have said. We do not refer to such
supplementary notes as are attached to Hare’s “Mission of the Comforter,” or
to Magee’s “Dissertation on the Atonement" but to Dr Brown’s “Law of
Christ,” or to “Parr Spital Sermon,” which last, according to Sydney Smith,
had “an immeasurable mass of notes about every learned thing, every learned
man, and almost every unlearned man, since the beginning of the world.” In
Dr Brown’s volume referred to, notes are found from all sources,—from Hutten
and Marvell, Cartwright and Chatham, Atterburyand Clarendon, Gower and Simon
Browne, King James and Lord. Melbourne, Sully and Adam Smith, Chillingworth
and Usher, with crowds of others far too numerous to be specified.
But we refer to a more special mastery than this ability to gather notes,
which may be done from a general knowledge of the contents of a book, and by
means or an index—an instrument that often produces a specious and cheap
array of erudition. Dr Brown seemed to know not only where each book was,
but what was in it. His visitors were usually received in his library, and
it was the resort of his evening parties. As the conversation wandered from
point to point, or questions were started, or the opinions of other men were
doubted or canvassed, he was in the nabit of taking down volume after
volume, to verify, illustrate, or diversify the topics of discourse. There
might be on the part of some one a reference to John Newton; and then he
would lay hold of some forgotten volume, or bound up series of magazines,
and read of Newton’s quaint and hu-morons conversations with an aged dame,
who lived by keeping poultry, and who, though very poor, yet never lost
faith in Goa, her provider, for she felt that He would not feed His
chickens, and allow His children to starve. Or he would next, if the theme
were started, read one after another of numerous English and Scottish rhymed
versions of the Psalms, of which he had a unique collection, and compare
their beauties and merits* Or a lady might doubt the propriety of her son’s
going to study in Germany; and he would open for her at once one of
Tholuck’s most beautiful passages on the Ascension. Or some young aspirant
might speak of the rich and gorgeous style of the older English philosophy;
and he would immediately bring Henry More, ana recite one of his Platonic
paragraphs in his own emphatic style. Or the reformers and their mutual
relations might be spoken of; and then would he, with a smile which so well
became him, turn to Luther’s apologetic Latin preface to Melanchthon, for
stealing and publishing his notes on Homans, and give it with great relish.
Or he would show an original copy of the Areopagitica, with what he
complacently believed to be John Howe’s autograph upon it. Or he might hand
round for admiration some copy or an Elzevir or Foulis classic, which he had
recently picked up. Or he would take some book, and give you its pedigree,
tell you to what collection it had belonged, and how much it fetched at
Pinelli’s, Macarthy’s, Heber’s, or the Duke of Sussex’s sales, and how it
had passed from one to another, till it reached himself. Or, in fine, if his
favourite studies were asked about, and editions of the New Testament
lovingly inquired after, he would open with delight the first edition of
Erasmus, the earliest published in 1516; then Stephen’s first, the 0
Mirifica, in 1546; then Beza’s first, in 1565, based on the third of
Stephens; then the first Elzevir, in 1624; and then the second Elzevir,
which called itself, Textum ab omnibus rsesptum, out of which mendacious
statement sprang the received text. No man in Scotland was better acquainted
with authors and the various editions of their works. With books out of the
way he had uncommon familiarity, and when occasion came he could employ them
with astonishing success. It did one’s heart good to see him kindle up in
this antiquarian field, for its dust dia not suffocate him, and the rarity
of its lore did not unduly elate him.
Dr Brown had not studied German, and knew little of modem treatises written
in that marvellously flexile and expressive tongue. But for many years, up
till within the last forty years, the German literati mostly wrote in Latin,
and Latin was as familiar to him as English. The recent German commentaries
were therefore neglected by him, even for his last work, such as Philippi
and Umbreit on Romans, two of the best of their class. Bat with all the
divines and critics of the period succeeding the Reformation he had an
intimate acquaintance,—Witsius, Deyling, Vitringa, Lampe, Marck, Calovius,
Calixtus, CarpzofF, Schultens, Turretine, the elder Michaelis, the authors
contained in the immense tomes of the Critici Sacri, and the accompanying
Thesauri of tracts and dissertations. He was the first in this country to
give an account of the New Testament edited and annotated by Koppe and his
coadjutors, Heinrichs and Pott,— an account which, in the form of an extract
from the “Christian Monitor,” has been reprinted by Home in the various
editions of his “Introduction.” This mass of books was stored and valued
chiefly for its connection with Scripture. For its illustration did he
become a scholar, and gather large and varied erudition. He had read much,
and his reading was at his command; critics and commentators were his daily
tributaries. He had many rare books, many old books, many curious and costly
books, but the Bible was his book. His delight was with all helps in his
power to exhibit the mind of Goa as found in it, so that his literary
labours were all professional, and all he wrote was on the Bible or about
the Bible. Its life enlivened his own composition; and even other men’s
opinions, when reviewed, as must be often done, by the interpreter, appear
on his pages, not as a collection of dry twigs without leaves, but rather
like so many fruit-bearing branches engrafted into the trunk, and partaking
“of the root and fatness.” The wonder is, that among so many books he did
not get confused. But he had a very tenacious memory, and, we believe, he
would say something of the history and contents of every volume in his vast
collection. So quietly did he do the work of consultation, that nobody seems
to have caught him at it, even at simultaneous consultation when he was
writing his expositions. No one seems to have found him with piles of opened
volumes about him. The floor of his study was at no time covered with such
miscellaneous litter as often lies about in other literary workshops. He had
no slovenly habits; neatness and elegance characterized his book-rooms, his
clothes, his handwriting, and his manuscripts.
As the early Manichean notions of Augustine, though formally renounced by
him, seem still to mould and modify some of his latest thoughts and images,
so we have often thought that some of those commentators whom Dr Brown
studied in his first love of Biblical Science, exercised an unfavourable
influence over him. Those interpretations which are the least to be
commended, are usually found in Koppe or his co-editors. He could instance,
in the Exposition of Peter, his making of the phrase, "sufferings of Christ”
(1 Peter i. 11), mean u sufferings of the people of God till Christ should
come,”—a notion different from that of many who yet identify Christ and His
people; and in the Commentary on Galatians his reluctance in some clauses to
give to the word "Spirit” its high and distinctive personal sense of the
Spirit of God. From the same school he seems to have learned also his habit
of transposing clauses, in order, as he thought, the better to bring out the
meaning, though he sternly condemned Lowth’s perpetual emendations of the
text as unscholarly and unwise; for, as Gesenius has observed, there is not
one of the Bishop’s pressing difficulties that a more thorough knowledge of
Hebrew Grammar would not have enabled him to solve. Among scholars and
exegets, Storr was his special favourite. The two had much in common. Both
were untrammelled and patient critics, and both bowed to the supreme and
final authority of Scripture, as a Divine and infallible record. The
Scottish and German minds resembled each other in the characteristic
production of broad and vigorous thought. Both had a singularly full and
accurate knowledge of Scripture, especially of illustrative words and
clauses, their memory being stored like a volume of marginal references; but
both so misled occasionally by the application of parallels as to content
themselves with a verbal connection ana analysis, as if one were to trace a
river, not by the sight of its water, but by the verdure and willows on its
banks.
The exegetical studies begun by Dr Brown in the calm retreat of Biggar were
long cultivated by him, ere he thought of publication. Many years passed by,
nay, he had been fourteen years a professor, before he sent any learned work
to press. But from 1848 to 1857 eleven octavo volumes were issued by him in
rapid succession, besides some minor tractates; and all this when he was
beyond the grand climacteric. His delight in publishing was equal to what it
had been in studying. He did not live, however, to fulfil his task; and
there remains among his papers a commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews, a
work which he sentenced "to sleep till he slept.” To pass a critical and
discriminative judgment on all these volumes, would carry us beyond due
bounds. A few remarks, therefore, must suffice.
The "Expository Discourses on the First Epistle of Peter” was the
first-fruits of the coming harvest. The Epistle had for sixteen years
occupied his attention in a variety of ways, while he was expounding it to
his people, and it has probably on that account a great fulness of
illustration. He had been preceded by Leighton, whom he used so often to
call the “good Archbishop” in his course of pulpit lectures, that he did not
need to name him. Leighton was a man of refined and spiritual taste and
insight, with no little of that holy tact which supplies the want of
erudition. Passages occur in him of great depth and penetration, in which
the beauty of the thoughts breathes itself into the style—thoughts not
unlike those of Anselm and Augustine in their serene unction and ardent
piety. Besides hosts of writers of the class with which he was most
familiar, Steiger had also gone before Dr Brown; but his work, like many
juvenile performances, is ambitious and discursive. Dr Brown’s lectures have
many excellencies. They are elaborate and thorough, while they are popular
in form. The meaning has been anxiously sought for, and is clearly given out
without the parade of learning or the technicalities of exegesis. The spirit
of the inspired writer is often vividly caught and reproduced—that bold and
chivalrous spirit that stamped its image on every sentiment and action. He
loved the Apostle's constitutional ardour, chastened in his age by the
memory of his failings. He sympathized with that sanguine spirit which,
though sometimes in error as to judgment, always obeyed its first promptings
without fear or reserve. He gladly followed him in his numerous allusions to
the Old Testament; for, as the Apostle of the Circumcision, he unconsciously
clothed his conceptions in the diction and imagery of his nation’s oracles.
He was not disturbed by the absence of lengthened demonstration in the
Epistle, or by its apparent want of aim,—the marks of an unlettered mind;
and he admired the rapid interchange of doctrine with direct and desultory
precept and warning, springing out of the old and open-faced honesty of the
Galilean fisherman. The commentary is marked by its sound and consecutive
arguments; and if there are not many great passages standing out in relief,
there is nothing flat or feeble. Though there are no heights in it, a tone
of spiritual elevation pervades it. The author says, “If he has been able in
any good measure to realize his own idea, grammatical and logical
interpretation have been combined, and the exposition will be found at once
exegetical, doctrinal, and practical.” But while, from their didactic and
practical nature, these volumes do not show a fair specimen of Dr Brown’s
critical abilities, they show a marvellous power of putting erudite
statement in a plain and unlearned form, and teach us that an expositor
needs not be always showing his learning while he is bringing out its
results, and that Scottish lecturing, entering so deeply into the subject,
and not merely skipping over the surface of the water and only now and then
wetting the wing, is the most solid and instructive form of ministerial
teaching, it is but right to add what is so touchingly said in the preface:
u The author would probably never have thought of offering these
illustrations to the world, had not a number of much respected members of
his congregation earnestly solicited him, before increasing age should make
h difficult, or approaching death impossible, to furnish them with a
permanent memorial of a ministry of considerable length, fall of
satisfaction to him, and he trusts not unproductive or advantage to them.”
But ten years of constant labour were yet before him; and in 1856 he
published "Parting Counsels,”—“more last words”—an exposition of the first
chapter of 2d Peter—remarking in the preface, that “from the nature of its
contents it seems peculiarly fitted to form the subject of a communication
from a pastor who has passed more than half a century in official labour to
those whose spiritual interests he has ministered to.” He would not,
however, venture to expound the remaining chapters till “better informed,
and more rally assured,” for many difficulties occurred in them; a token
that he was now feeling one of the symptoms of age, in being “afraid of that
which is nigh.”
In 1807 Dr Brown had begun to lecture on the Gospel of John; and during the
intervening 43 years—that is, till 1850— the Gospels, especially the
discourses of Christ other than the parables, had occupied much of his time.
In 1850 he published "Discourses and Sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ,
illustrated in arteries of Expositions.” The sayings of our Lord—what awe
and joy one feels at the phrase! The sayings of our Lord—what He said who
spake as never man spake, what words flowed from the lips of incarnate Love,
words laden with wisdom and fraught with truth for all ages—words ever
repeated, and never losing their bloom and freshness—words familiar as the
sunbeam, ana yet, like the sunbeam, bright and welcome every morning—words
that find an echo in the heart, and lodge themselves in it as the term and
nutriment of a new and spiritual existence—words that ave passed into
proverbs, Christendom feeling their weight and edge, and the toil and sorrow
of every-day life lightened and cheered by them—words which, like winged
seeds wafted by an invisible power, plant themselves where no one dreams of^
and bear such fruit as no one anticipates—words that thrill in their
unearthly tone and volume as they burst from the Speaker, looking up to His
Father on the hill-top, in the upper room, or on the cross—words that touch
us with more than woman’s tenderness, as when He says to the distressed
Magdalene, “Why weepest thou!”—words that astound us by their superhuman
energy, as when, rising in the storm-tossed skiff, and His locks streaming
for a moment in the breeze, He speaks to the billows, and their foaming
crests crouch under Him into stillness—words which flashed and pierced like
lightning among the masses of people surrounding Him—words, too, of Divine
reach and penetration, and serene pathos and charm as he unbosomed Himself
to His inner circle—or words, in fine, clothed in those vivid and memorable
stories which are read and relished by the child for their simple beauty,
and by the sage for their unfathomed depth and disclosures, 'apples of gold
in pictures of silver.”
Dr Brown’s volumes on the “Discourses and Sayings of our Lord” are freer and
less elaborate than some of his other volumes of exposition. Independent
judgment is seen in all the opinions; but a good deal of foreign material,
as from Brewster on the Sermon on the Mount, is woven, as indeed he
intimates generally in the preface. Dr Brown never plagiarized; he quoted
from others when it suited his purpose, and thanked the original owners. At
the same time, while much of a popular and practical nature fills these
pages, a deep critical vein, cropping out in a thousand ways, underlies all
the discussions. Were we to characterize the work in a few clauses, we
should say that it is distinguished by mature thought and just
discrimination; that many passages of stirring and hearty eloquence occur in
it; that in the portions explaining the Sermon on the Mount there is a keen
and thorough search into the train of the Divine argument as it moves in
majesty from topic to topic, with searching descriptions of character and
analyses of motive based on a knowledge of human nature which a sagacious
and self-recording experience only could furnish; that the sections treating
of the Discourses in John are not only solemn and weighty, as is most due,
but earnest and joyous, exhibiting intellectual skill and exegetical acumen
with a softened splendour, as if they were vailed while illumined by the
Sheckinah; and that the entire work, while it presents a full body of
evangelical truth, and shows the perfect harmony of law and gospel, as it
develops and adjusts the various doctrines of theology, is exuberant in
wealth of instructive notes from many a source, striking excerpts from the
best of authors, and multitudinous references from Holy Scripture.
Especially in the supplemental volume, on the "Intercessory Prayer,” is the
fulness of Dr Brown’s heart manifested; for he felt that the place on which
he stood was holy ground, and that an exposition on that marvellous prayer
was like drawing aside the vail, and passing with unsandalled foot into the
inner and awful shrine. It is adventurous to construe such an Intercession,
to subject such a Farewell to exegetical handling. "The disposition to
inquire,” as he says in the preface, “is lost in the resistless impulse to
adore.” These four volumes also show us that the Kedeemer’s Person was to
him of living central interest; since He whose words are expounded is not
some being far removed beyond the stars, but an ever-present Sympathizer and
Saviour. For the Bible does not expound a religion, but it teaches of God;
and the New Testament does not vaguely lay down the tenets of Christianity,
but it portrays Christ, The merits of Dr Brown in this work are his
own,—though there had been before him, as expositors of the whole or parts
of these sections of Scripture, such writers as Kuinoel, whose notes, with a
show of learning, are often superficial, and sometimes worse than
superficial; and Olshausen,-whose merit, as Tholuck says, is his “presenting
the thought in its unfolding,” and who is always fresh and spiritual, if not
always lucid and conclusive. Lucke had also written his Commentary on
John—sincere, learned, masterly, and minute; Tholuck, too, had published
several editions of his work on the same Gospel, not tne fullest or most
learned of his many worker but simple and delightful, enriched with a
glowing spirit of earnest meditation, a true knowledge of the spirit of the
Gospel and its adaptation to the spirit of man. The elder Tittmann and Lampe
had commented on John years before,—their books very different in form and
size as well as materials,—Tittmann excelling in acuteness, and Lampe in
breadth,—the one resting moreon strict grammatical investigation and the
literal sense, and the other more on the scope and connection which he
elaborates patiently and illustrates ponderously in his three quartos.
Stier’s "Words of the Lord Jesus” have been given to the world since Dr
Brown’s u Discourses and Sayings;” and though he could have no great
sympathy with his brilliant peculiarities, they delighted him on his dying
bed. For Stieris mind is very singular; subtle and creative, penetrating and
profound, rich in allusion, fertile in. suggestion, audacious in deduction,
scorning opposition, attracted by the odd and the angular; sparkling and
scholarly in his exegesis; often asserting that to be the truth contained,
which after all is only an inference; his nervous system so finely strung as
to be easily jarred; his thoughts ever and anon blossoming into poetry;
inclined to a devout mysticism and looking more to Christ within as Life,
than to Christ without as Mediator and Sacrifice; while a fervent piety is
ever welling up, and throwing from many jets its prism-tinted spray over all
his arguments, vindications, and criticisms.
In 1852 Dr Brown published the "Resurrection of Life,” an exposition of the
fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians. A wondrous chapter truly,—in which the
Apostle, starting from first principles, soars away on daring wing to the
heights of ineffable glory ; argues out the truth of Christianity from Uie
empty grave of the Reaeemer, and affirms that His resurrection was the
pledge, and is the pattern too, of that of His people; describes m sentences
dim to us by reason of their splendour the relation of the psychical to the
spiritual, and of the animal nature that now is to the ethereal frame that
shall be; and then sweeps away in rapture to sing his psean over the death
of death, when it “shall be swallowed up in victory.” This expository volume
excels incompacted analysis and in wealth of illustration, and, touching
many mysteries, occasionally lifts the curtain, if it does not throw it
aside. The difficulties are boldly faced; there is no attempt to evade them,
or to write round them. If the knot cannot be untied, there is never
exhibited the impiety of attempting to cut it. In the course of the
exposition many points start up of a kind which Dr Brown delighted to
discuss by the light ot the context, the analogy of faith, and the help of
previous expositors,—such as “baptism for the dead,” and the “delivering up
of the kingdom.” Those sudden changes of person and appeal, not unlike
conversational turns, which occur m the chapter, he opens up with great
facility—with equal clearness and power. But these mysteries are not as yet
to be fully comprehended; and it is to such paragraphs that Peter seems to
refer, when he says that in the epistles of his “beloved brother Paul,” when
he speaks of “these things,” are “some things hard to be understood.” “These
things” transcend all experience, and may not be known till we enjoy them.
The life to come is so unlike the present life,—for it shall not be under
the same restrictions of time and space; the spirit being freed also from
all physical hindrances, so that its powers are augmented and its capacities
multiplied; still in contact with matter, but without sensation, and waiting
to put on its "house from heaven,”—a lovely pavilion for a lovelier tenant.
The commentary on Galatians, a special favourite with Dr Brown himself, is
more academic in its structure than those volumes now referred to, and is
marked by its clearness and precision, its terseness and learning, its
careful review of opinions, and its firm and decided conclusions. Reasons,
brief but strong, are assigned for differing or agreeing with any other
commentator, and there is no dogmatic or one-sided exegesis. Every kind of
help has been consulted, and his opinions were revised and modified during a
long series of years. He had long been fascinated by the Epistle, not more
by its vehement and vigorous arguments on behalf of a free and unmutilated
gospel than by the glimpses it presents of the Apostle’s mind as he was
writing it. For his emotions cannot be suppressed,—surprise that his
Galatian converts had been so soon and so easily seduced, sorrow at their
perilous state, and indignation at the vile arts by which the Judaizing
teachers had imposed upon them. The pains and labour bestowed on the
exposition have been immense, though they da not in every case lead to a
satisfactory result. Yet if any one read him on the verse, of which above
three hundred interpretations have been given, "Now a mediator is not a
mediator of one, but God is one,” he will see how lucidly he can arrange
discordant judgments, and classify and dispose of them; how he can show the
weakness of this one and the mere plausibility of that one; point out how
one group of opinions is tainted by a radical fanlt, and another group must
be given up for want of harmony and adjustment, even though after all he has
not adopted what we reckon the view least cumbered with difficulties. He
traces very perspicuously and accurately the connection between the law and
the gospel; maps out their boundaries, where they seem to touch and where
they are remote from each other; smites legal bondage, and vindicates
zealously and oft the spiritual freedom and elevation of the Church of
Christ. He was not wedded to old opinions or old books: what a hearty
welcome he gives in one of his notes to the magnificent quartos of Conybeare
and Howson! The only things we object to in Galatians come plainly from the
school in which he first studied exegesis, and the influence of that school
he was never able entirely to shake off. The volume, it may be added, is
very different from the rugged and resolute commentary of Martin Luther, and
is a mighty advance upon such expositions as those of Dickson, Slade,
M'Knight, Pyle, or Ferguson.
The “Analytical exposition of the Epistle to the Romans” differs wholly in
character from the commentary on Galatians. Its history is somewhat
singular. He had prepared a regular commentary on the Epistle,—“Grammatical,
historical, and logical,” —but he felt that he might not live long enough to
complete it; "yet,” as he says, “I was unwilling to go hence without leaving
tome traces of the labour I have bestowed on this master-work of the
Apostle. Forbidden to build the temple, I would yet do what I can to furnish
materials to him who snail be honoured to raise it. For the last twelve
months my principal occupation has been, so to condense and remodel my work,
as to present, in the fewest and plainest words, what appears to me to be
the true meaning and force of the statements contained in this Epistle of
the doctrine and law of Christ, and of the arguments in support of the one
and the motives to comply with the other; and to do this in such a form as
to convey, so far as possible, to the mind of the general reader,
unacquainted with any but the vernacular language, the evidence on which I
rest my conviction, that such is the import of the Apostle’a words.” Dr
Brown confines himself in the main to logical exposition. He tells us, that
for more than forty years the Epistle had been an “object of peculiar
interest, and the subject of critical study.” He adds, too, that his early
illustrations, “corrected and enlarged by an increasing acquaintance with
the inexhaustible subject, have in substance been repeatedly, though in
different forms, presented to Christian congregations and to classes of
theological students.” We believe that even in its present compacted form
the exposition was delivered to his congregation; and surely it must have
been "strong meat” even to "them that are of full age.” For it naturally
assumes the varying character of the Epistle, which is so rich in
evangelical statement and so masterly in concatenated demonstration; so
melancholy in first pressing home so staunchly and without a word of
whispered sympathy, its awful indictment against fallen humanity, ana then
so exuberant in reasoning out a free and complete justification,—the
previous gloom relieving and yet intensifying the brightness.
We have been careful to give Dr Brown’s own account of the origin and
character of this work, so simple and unpretentious in his estimate, because
he seems to be unconscious that it is really his greatest and most
successful effort. It was his last work and it is certainly his best. He was
far up in years, and had nigh reached his zenith, when he published it,—his
path resembling the sun, who, when highest and farthest from us in summer,
pours most light and lustre on the earth. The Analytical Exposition brings
out his best powers and peculiarities as an inter-perter. His forte was not
in discussing separate words and shades of meaning. His mind, like Calvin’s,
was better fitted to trace the course of ideas, and develop the chain of
argument; and this he has done with unparalleled clearness, terseness, and
cogency. Step by step does he mark out the Apostle’s line of thought, and
exhibit it in all its bearings, or, separating from it what is subordinate
in detail or parenthetical in position, he throws it out into bold relief.
Brevity and maturity characterize the illustrations—one stroke and no
repetition, one flash and the cloud closes again. The entire comment shows
the perfect mastery of the commentator, his long familiarity with and close
study of the book, and his psychological oneness with its author. The book
had been the delight of his youth when he began to essay his critical
strength, and this was his last work and comfort when he was “an old man and
covered with a mantle,” soon to pass into that land where theology is waited
on by the eternal melodies, where Scripture has been crowned by higher
revelations in a tongue that needs no interpreter, and where logic and
analysis are for ever eclipsed and superseded in that light diffused by the
throne of God and the Lamb. From explaining and defending a gratuitous
justification, as maintained by the Apostle in the earlier chapters, he
ascended to enjoy its fruits without pause or end; from insisting on the
necessity of sanctification effected by the Spirit of God and inseparably
connected with the pardon of sin, as detailed in the wondrous seventh and
eighth chapters, he was translated to enjoy for ever its purity and triumph;
and from dwelling in profound veneration on the sovereignty of God, in the
choice, rejection, and future ingathering of His people, as the Homan
Epistle represents it, he was taken to the “general assembly and church of
the first-born,” where the hundred and forty and four thousand sealed ones
of the tribes of Israel stand side by side with the great multitude which no
man can number, out of all the races and kindreds of the Gentile world.
No one can read these voluminous commentaries without perceiving manifold
traces of inordinate industry, patient investigation, and independent
thought. How consistent and uniform he is even in his errors, as in taking
“righteousness” to denote always the plan or way of a sinner's
justification, while in many laces it means very plainly not the method but
the basis of justification I Dr Brown dealt very cautiously and honestly
with the views of other critics, and took special pains to show what was to
be accepted and what was to be avoided in them. His aim was, by all means to
discover folly and to tell plainly the sense of Scripture. If he wrote much
about any clause, it was not for ornament or ostentation, but to set out
clearly what was in it, and how he came to hold his expressed views about
it. He hammered every inch of the quartz, that he might lose no particle of
the precious ore. Learned interpretation was with him the source and fence
of true interpretation. Yet his commentaries are to us defective, in that
they try to hold a medium between a popular and an academic style, between
the concio adplebem and the condo ad clerum. That he has made the compromise
as well as it can be made, may be admitted; but our opinion is, that it
should never be attempted at all, that what is meant for the people should
be in material and texture written for the people, and that what is intended
for the scholar should in basis and structure be adapted to the scholar. We
grant that in the case of men who, like the Professors in the United
Presbyterian and other churches, are unwisely obliged to bear the double
burden of a pulpit and a chair, there is a strong temptation to adopt such a
diagonal course. And yet it is to be noted to their honour, that some of the
greatest Biblical critics and expositors have composed their works while
doing duty as ministers. Calvin was as laborious in the pulpit, as he was
prolific from the press. Bochart ministered daily while building and filling
his erudite storehouses, his Phaleg and Hierozoicon,—his Sabbath lectures on
Genesis leading to the one, and his week-day addresses to his people
preparing materials for the other places. Owen was incessant in preaching
while his Exposition of Hebrews was in progress; Lightfoot never failed in
parochial duty while he was amassing his wealth of Talmudic literature;
Lardner and Pye Smith had a charge in London, and so has Hartwell Home;
Bloomfield is a vicar; Trench, Alford, and Ellicott were among the working
clergy when they planned their learned works, and published a large portion
of them; Stier was a pastor till lately, and Ebrard is so still; Henry,
Scott, Doddridge* and Adam Clarke were assiduous and able ministers. We do
not forget that a mere scientific theology is a dead thing ever to be
shunned and deplored, and that a working pastor is not liable, as a
professor, to adopt and teach it. For, as he is daily brought into contact
with humanity sinking and dying and tossing about for comfort, and sees how
eagerly it grasps the promises and leans steadily on them,—when he observes
how the simplest truths are laid hold of by it in implicit confidence, and
in their first and plainest meaning, and how, when it comes to die in this
faith, it as nothing to do but to die,—then he surely learns, after all his
analysis and penetration, his erudite labour and critical inspection, that
it is not truth in its sublimer but in its humbler aspects that blesses and
saves—that it is not truth stoled in philosophic phrase, or traced to first
principles or ultimate relations, that pacifies a stricken conscience, or
soothes a wounded spirit, but the truth which a child may comprehend, and
which may be all told in monosyllables. Still we think, that while all this
is true in practice,—for theology ought never to be divorced from religion,
and while none but a religious man is qualified to interpret a religious
record, the case is different in the publication of a work ; for in
proportion as it is composed for two opposite circles of readers, it is
fitted for neither. The one purpose neutralizes the other. Dr Brown
succeeded in this difficult task better than any other man, and he far
outstrips such men as Doddridge, Chandler, Pierce, or Benson. That his
commentaries will live we have little doubt, though a great portion of
theological literature is ephemeral. Books may be popular in one age, as
being adapted to it, but wholly uncared tor by another age, not being fitted
for it; just as Dr Brown’s early appearance in the pulpit in “ light-coloured
corded knee-breeches and Hessian boots ” belonged to a fashion which in his
last years would have created blank dismay. But what is written on
Scripture, if at all deserving the name of exposition, partakes somewhat of
the vitality of Scripture. Chrysostom is more read now than he was for three
centuries after he died. What Buchanan says of bards may be applied to
divine :—
“Sola doctorum monumenta vatnm Nesciunt fati imperium severi,
Sola contemnunt Phlegethonta et orci Jura superbi.”
Thus, while Matthew Henry is as popular as ever he was, who ever thinks of
reprinting “Whitefield’s Discourses” or “Harvey’s Meditations”? “The grass
withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of the Lord
endureth for ever,” and all words inspired by it partake of its life and
permanence.
The last ten years of Dr Brown’s life were thus passed in extraordinary
diligence, and in the quiet of his “Tusculan” retreat, at the base of
Salisbury Crags. His work was incessant, and not done in fits. Every day saw
its appointed task completed, but no visitor ever caught him as if oppressed
by labour. He had none of the littlenesses of some students, and few of the
habits of many of them. He was never ink-stained, slovenly, or unkempt in
appearance. He neither rose early nor sat late, but he gave the day to the
day’s work. His fame and usefulness are owing as much to toil as to original
gift; and, indeed, the love of toil is a special gift of itself. True,
without talent there is nothing to trade with, but trading is essential to
outcome and "usury.” Genius demands hard study, bends to it, supports under
it, and vitalizes all its fruits. The sculptor’s ideal is realized by the
patient labour of the chisel and mallet. Dr Brown’s love or labour was with
him identical with love of usefulness— as may be seen from his first
attempts at village-preaching during his sojourn at Biggar, and his editing
two magazines in succession, to his last literary efforts in gathering and
publishing three volumes of scarce and excellent tracts, and in 1857
annotating an edition of Culverwel’s “Discourse of the Light of Nature.” His
fondness for literature brought him relaxation— his relish for the best
productions of our literature and our English classics secured him relief
from severer studies—as the virtue of the soil is preserved by rotation of
crops. There were few new books of any note that did not find their way to
his library table, a literary passion which has come down by intellectual
entail to the gifted autnor of the genial and popular “Horae Subsecivae.” At
the same time, composition was an easy work with him, and his fluent
employment of words in writing was quite in contrast to his want of them in
speaking. Usually he had carefully thought over the subject on all sides,
and had not to search for ideas and illustrations when he took pen in hand.
So that he rarely blotted, though he might interline; he added, but he
seldom altered. His three volumes on the “Discourses and Sayings of our
Lord” were printed from the first copy, which itself was prepared for the
pulpit, and his small and elegant handwriting was a luxury for compositors.
Nor must it be forgotten that for by far the greater part of his official
life Dr Brown had abundance of work out of doors in visitation, and in the
performance of other parts of the pastoral office,—all of which he
discharged to the best of his ability. Not that he excelled equally in all
departments of official duty, or had the ease, versatility, or
conversational fluency which distinguish some men as visitors and preachers
to the household. He was somewhat formal both in speech and act in this
subordinate sphere of labour, for as in duty bound he gave himself
"constantly to prayer and to the ministry of the word.” Yet so for did he
strive to make and keep himself acquainted with his large congregation, that
he realized what He whom he served gives as the characteristic of a good
shepherd, “he calleth his own sheep by name.” And of his congregation, who
for so many years joined in prayers so eloquent in tneir formal quaintness,
and listened to sermons delivered with his bold and impassioned utterance,
it might be said, “they knew his voice.”
We will not affirm that Dr Brown founded an exegetical school in Scotland,
but wTe may say that he inaugurated a new era. Commentators and scholars of
no mean note had been before him, such as Principals Rollock, Boyd (Bodius),
Malcolm, Row, and Cameron, the last one of the most noted scholars and
theologians of his time, who, though he taught in the colleges of Bourdeaux,
Sedan, and Saumur, held a chair also, at one period, in the University of
Glasgow, the city of his birth. One of the Simpsons was the first in
Scotland to publish on Hebrew literature, two others of them were devoted to
biblical studies, and Weemse made himself useful by various treatises on the
illustration of Scripture. We might refer to Cockbum, Ferme, the younger
Forbes, Ker, Brown of Wamphray; and to Gerard, Campbell, and Macknight of a
more recent period. But no permanent influence was produced by these men,
who flourished at various periods during the last three centuries. Dr
Brown’s lot was cast in more favourable times, and by his expository
discourses from the pulpit, and his prelections from the chair—by his
published commentaries, and the impulse and shaping he gave to other and
younger minds—he has certainly given popularity to exegetical study. Nay, we
read the other day such a sentiment as this in a contemporary journal, that
now there was danger lest systematic theology should be neglected in the
more favourite and general pursuit of exegesis.
Dr Brown more than once in his life felt the disturbing influence of
controversy. In the Apocryphal Controversy he took a part against the
British and Foreign Bible Society, but ultimately clung to them when they
resolved to abandon the course which they had been following in the
circulation of the Apocrypha. Dr Brown was a Dissenter because he was a High
Churchman, and therefore took an active part in the Voluntary Controversy,
not for any political reasons, but on the great spiritual ground of
ecclesiastical independence. The extreme view, which he often and
emphatically propounded, that church courts should have dealings with
Government at no time and on no subject, was never endorsed by many of his
brethren. His refusal to pay the Annuity Tax subjected him to no little
obloquy, and he nobly defended himself against the most virulent of his
detainers in his u Law of Christ respecting Civil Obedience,”—a treatise
which vindicates civil liberty on scriptural grounds, and breathes the old
Scottish spirit of protest and defiance against tyranny in all its shapes.
Well might Lord Brougham write to the late Lord Cunninghame—“I have never
seen the subject of civil obedience and resistance so clearly and
satisfactorily discussed.” The slavish theories of Hobbes, Parker, and
Filmer are exposed and blasted with scorching eloquence; for certainly some
of the theories which he refutes vilified the martyrs and murdered patriots
of all times, and would, if strictly carried out, have ordained the hundred
and twenty members of the Church at Jerusalem to pay an assessment to defray
the expense of the execution of their Friend and Master, had Pilate or
Caiaphas seen fit to impose it.
Dr Brown’s theology was eminently Calvinistic. We have never heard higher
Calvinism from any pulpit than from that of Broughton Place. It was
Calvinism after Calvin’s own type, and not after that of some of his
successors. The Atonement Controversy in the United Secession Church clearly
showed that he held firmly to Calvinism, but held it in perfect harmony with
what most other men practically preached, but to which they do not give such
theoretic prominence. He did not hold the hypothetic universalism of Cameron
and Amyrauld, which had disturbed the Reformed Churches in France, and
against which, in 1675, was launched the famous Swiss Formula Consensus. He
taught the theology of Boston, of the Erskines and Adam Gib, and taught it
in the language of the minor symbolical books of the church to which he
belonged. Dr Balmer also, who, as Dr Brown’s colleague, was implicated in
certain charges, cheerfully and eloquently defended himself, but was soon
removed from the scene of quarrel, hidden by the Master in His “pavilion
from the strife of tongues.” We cannot, however, in this journal review the
controversy, only remarking, as we pass, that the dispute became at length a
logomachy, and that Calvin, in whose system the elective Divine sovereignty
holds such prominence, in his testament made four weeks before his death,
prays to be purified and washed, sanguine sum mi illius Redemptoris effuso
pro hutnani generis peccatis— universal applicability with limited
application. Dr Brown, indeed, had peculiar views as to the nature of faith,
and it is said that his worthy father was wont to tell him that he had
“clipped its wings.” His knowledge of all the various forms and
modifications of Calvinistic theology was minute and extensive, and his
writings remain a witness that he held tenaciously by the leading tenets of
Scottish theology, and regarded it as a system thoroughly compacted, and as
imparting strength and symmetry to vital godliness. Yet it is a system
which, while disowned by the creeds of some other churches, may yet be read
in their hymns and heard in their prayers, for it probes man’s deepest
spiritual necessities and supplies them.
Dr Brown was no mere man of books, though he had such delight in them. He
loved the scenery of nature—hill and dale, wood and water. During his
residence at Biggar, when a thunderstorm occurred, he used to throw up his
window, gaze with great delight on the conflict of the elements, and
listened to its reverberations among the hills. His soul could not be
confined to sect or party; he was a lover of all good men. He hailed the
Evangelical Alliance at its origin, and always adhered to it. On the
memorable day of the Disruption, he was in Tanfield Hall ready to welcome Dr
Welsh and the protesting phalanx which followed him. In the missionary
enterprise he was ever fervent, and, along with Dr Heugh, contributed not a
little to give the United Presbyterian Church that impulse which is still
far from being exhausted.
He was very conscientious, and yet very charitable. But he could not bear
pretence and affectation, nor could he admire some German commentators with
“their unduly high estimate of themselves, and their unduly low estimate of
the sacred books and their authors.” His absorbing interest in his own
studies did not weaken his interest in all his friends—in all, especially,
who were afflicted or bereaved. Many letters of condolence and sympathy were
written by him, in a simple and scriptural style, without extravagance of
phrase or feeling. One of these letters he sent to one of the bluntest of
his accusers, on whom a severe domestic affliction had fallen; and it so
melted him that he spoke of the writer of it in unbounded eulogy, as if up
to that period he had grievously misunderstood him. At some inconvenience,
and in peculiar circumstances, he went to the funeral of one of the two
brethren who had formally libelled him; and it is remarkable that, in the
biography of that venerable minister, published some years after, there is
not a syllable of allusion to the most momentous and responsible act of his
life,—his formal accusation of one of the professors of his Church for
holding and teaching grave theological error. Dr Brown’s bearing was manly,
generous, and noble, and his smile was a benediction. A prince in Israel, he
was a kind and genial host in his own house. He had little outflow of words,
and his conversation soon became a professional monologue on books and
authors. He was often ludicrously hampered in expressing himself, and seemed
sometimes helpless for want of topics of common interest. Key-words, oft
recurring, characterized both his sermons, prelections, and ordinary talk.
He seemed almost unable to express the same thought in two different
Phrases. When he had formed an opinion of a man or a book, e delivered it
usually in the same unvarying words. To his old age he retained much of the
sensibility and fervour of youth— "a young lamb’s heart amidst the full
grown flocks.” Humour sometimes gleamed in his conversation, as when some
one, speaking of a certain individual, said, "Some say he is a little vain,”
and he replied, "Some say he is not a little vain.” This species of humour
depends mainly on the position of words, and the accent given to them. Thus
too, after he and Dr James Buchanan exchanged cordial salutations in the
Hall at Tanfield on the day of the Disruption, the latter said, "Dr Brown, I
am glad to see you here,” he at once replied, "And I am glad, sir, to see
you here.” He had passed his ministerial jubilee, which was solemnly
celebrated, and at which he gave a last and striking proof of his generous
nature, when he became enfeebled, and his constitution began to break up.
Yet, as he lay on that couch of suffering, his mind was ever active, and
literaiy plans were begun and so far prosecuted, for his faith never
wavered, and his hope was never clouded. His was calm and unruffled
assurance. Doubts, fluctuations, and uncertainties never perplexed him, for
he had the confidence that knows no shaking, and the "perfect love” that "casteth
out fear.” After passing through a crisis in which death seemed imminent, he
remarked to his daughter how near eternity he had been, but, alluding to the
Pilgrim, added, "I felt the bottom, and it was good.” Nor did he ever mourn,
as Niebuhr did in his want of faith and spiritual support. Counting himself
an unprofitable servant, he still felt that he could not be accused to his
Lord of having “wasted his goods,” though he might murmur with Tycho Brahe,
Ne frustra vixisse videar. He used to say that the lives of Jeffrey and
Sydney Smith were a reproof to Christians, for these men seem to have acted
up to their imperfect religious convictions. His bed was often filled with
books, but a large print Bible had always the post of honour at his head. He
felt, probably as most men do, that he was willing to work, but he was not
so sure if he was as willing to suffer. As often happens, too, the simple
and more devotional parts of Scripture were his last and favourite readings,
so much so, that he remarked to a friend that he thought David was going to
displace Paul. At length he passed away peacefully, on the morning of
October 13, in the seventy-fifth year of his age, and the city of Edinburgh,
with ministers from many churches and denominations in Scotland, did honour
to his remains on the day of their interment.
In conclusion, and in estimating Dr Brown’s influence, we are far from
affirming that studious minds are incapacitated for active exertion. With
Brougham and Gladstone before us as living examples of the combination of
scholarship and aptitude for public business, and with the reproof of
Socrates to "the handsome and clever Hippias” ringing in our ears, we will
not make the assertion. But we must add that it is a common but a fallacious
measurement, when it is supposed that a man who has lived more in thought
has less influence for good than another who has lived more in action. The
latter maxes a more immediate impression, but his own hands may reap the
entire harvest which he has sown; whereas the former, by the silent tuition
he has imparted to other minds, often transmits through them his influence
to distant lands and other ages. The pulpit wields a greater energy than the
platform; more power is generated in the study than in the committee room,
but the press of to-day may perpetuate thoughts which shall not have grown
obsolete or feeble at the end of a century. Few are or can be equally great
in all these departments, and little choice of spheres is left to a diligent
Scottish clergyman. Dr Brown appeared in all the three spheres. He was good
on the platform, better far in the pulpit, and his wisdom was listened to in
the midst of counsellors framing modes of business. But though these
opportunities have gone, by his printed writings, “he, being dead, yet
speaketh,” and will speak. And in years to come, when the children’s
children of those who enjoyed his ministry shall have passed away, and
traditionary anecdotes of his person and character shall have waxed faint
and few, he will yet hold his place as an expositor of Scripture, and wear
the title first proudly given to the Grecian Alexander and then to the
Arabian Averroes, for he has earned it in a higher sphere than theirs—the
title of the Commentator. In a word, it was his consecration to the Master
of himself and all his mental endowment and furniture, that made him what he
was, one of the most accomplished divines of his age and country; for, to
use inspired language, "if such brethren be inquired of, they are the
messengers of the churches, and the glory of Christ.” How delightful, then,
the thought, that they who have served Him on earth shall be assembled with
Him in the skies, where no alienation shall happen, and no cloud overshadow
their intercourse; where they can part from each other no more than they can
part from Him; where the coffin, the procession, and the sepulchre, shall
never be witnessed; where the services never terminate, and the song never
loses its newness; and where the complaint shall never be raised in surprise
or sorrow, “Our fathers, where are they, and the prophets, do they live for
ever!” |