ART. IV. - Memoirs of Mrs William Veitch, Mr Thomas Hog of Kiltearn, Mr Henry Erskine, and Mr John Carstairs,―issued by the Committee of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland for the Publication of the Works of Scottish Reformers and Divines.

THIS little work-the supplementary volume for the first year of the Free Church Assembly's Committee on Cheap Publications— has, we believe, given very general satisfaction to the great mass of readers into whose hands it has fallen. It contains a short account of four exceedingly devoted and tried Scottish Worthies, and very fully records the cardiphonia of one of them, testifying amply to the fact, that when the Lord's hand afflicts, his Spirit supports and comforts his own people, making them feel, amidst all their tribulation,

"A joy which want shall not impair,

Nor death itself destroy."

It is a book which peculiarly illustrates the nearness and the faithfulness of God; the security and the peace of those that love him; the necessity of the believer's adding to his faith virtue, and seeking to become strong in the Lord, and the power of his might; and his unvarying experience, that the enjoyment of God is the highest happiness which man can know.

It opens with a memoir of the wife of that distinguished clergyman of the seventeenth century whose life has already been given to the world by the biographer of John Knox, namely, the Rev. William Veitch of Dumfries. This pious lady, who was in many particulars a sharer of her husband's troubles after his ejection from his living in 1664, seems also in many points to have been a partaker of the shining graces with which he was endowed. Her memoirs (which are written by herself) evince very singular discernment of the hand of the Lord in the events that befel her, and a peculiar readiness of spirit to be guided singly by the signs which she conceived to indicate His will. Well does she seem to have understood the meaning of the Scripture, The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him,' and much does her understanding of it seem to have conduced to her happiness. The breathings of her spirit are a continual testimony to the nearness and loving-kindness of her Maker, and to the value of his holy word as a lamp and light in the hour of darkness. Perhaps, in some instances, she laid too much stress on the occurrence of certain texts to her remembrance, as indicating the path of duty. But it becomes those who would act the part of censors, to bear in mind that she was a person

much given to prayer and fasting, and that they who seek to maintain the closest possible walk with God become much more skilful in apprehending what is His mind, than those who are more careless in using these means. It was certainly no mean testimony that was borne both to herself and memoirs by her husband's first biographer, when he penned the following paragraph, to be found in M'Crie's Life of Veitch:-' A manuscript of her own which I once did see, contains as strong actings of faith upon the word of God, answers of prayer, and revelations of the mind of God, as peradventure the age she lived in can parallel; and that both with respect to the public work of God, and also her husband and family's case under their long and great sufferings, will abundantly evince."

Next in order to the Memoirs of Mrs Veitch, our little volume sets before us brief notices of the Rev. Thomas Hog of Kiltearn, the Rev. Henry Erskine, and the Rev. John Carstairs, whose lives, commencing, like that of Mrs Veitch, in the second and third decades of the seventeenth century, and only terminating near its close, extended through one of the most memorable and stormy periods in the annals of Presbytery. Of the memoirs of all the three it may be said, in the words of the preface to Hog's Life, that they are well qualified to supply the want of those sacred intercourses whereby Christians have been accustomed to edify one another, and enable us to partake the fellowship of the saints, and learn for spiritual improvement the exercises of their hearts under the various dispensations of Divine Providence, and their happy experience of the Lord's care over them.'

The MS. autobiography of Mr Hog had been long vainly inquired after by the editor of the sketches before us. Some time after this little volume had been issued by the Free Church Committee, however, this interesting relic was unexpectedly brought to the editor by an individual who had picked it up on a book-stall. Should it possess the interest which it has been supposed to do, it will no doubt be given to the public.

There are two passages in the life of Mr Henry Erskine (p. 130 and 140,) which are repugnant to good taste, and which, in a work intended for general use, ought to have been omitted; the more so as the story would not have been thereby at all injured.*

The memoir of Mr Carstairs, with which the volume closes, is an extract from Wodrow's Analecta, though not composed, as the editor supposes, by that indefatigable writer himself, but by

At p. 129, the village of Cornhill, where Mr E. exercised his ministry, is said to be in Durham, and to be 10 miles from Dryburgh; whereas it is in Northumberland, and 20 miles from that village.

one Stirling, in all probability the same who was at one time Principal of Glasgow College. It was inserted merely to fill up some blank leaves which occurred at the end of the volume after the printing of the other memoirs. Upon the expediency of thus unceremoniously dealing with the biography of one whom his contemporaries vied with one another in eulogizing, and who, though last, was certainly not the least of the four Worthies to whom our volume introduces us, we shall not stop to offer an opinion. We would rather employ the space allotted to us in giving a somewhat connected though brief sketch of this' eminently learned and pious' divine.

Mr John Carstairs was born on the 6th of January 1623, most probably in the city of St Andrews, of a good and ancient family, that had long been resident in the county of Fife. One of his biographers seems to have all but proved that his father and mother were of the same name, and branches of the same family, and that whilst she was a sister of Sir John Carstairs of Kilconquhar, he was resident in St Andrews, and of considerable wealth. Mr John was at all events educated in that city, and he entered its university, as the matriculation-books testify, in the very same month that the celebrated reforming assembly met in Glasgow, viz. in November 1638. It is noticed by his last biographer, that ere his college curriculum had been completed, the affairs of Dunse Law and Newburn had taken place between the troops of Charles and the Covenanters,-the bloody massacre of the Protestants had been perpetrated in Ireland, the Westminster Assembly had met, and drawn up the Confession of Faith, the Solemn League and Covenant had been entered into between Scotland and England,-the great Montrose had been totally defeated by General Lesslie at Philiphaugh, and King Charles' army worsted at Marston Moor and Naseby.'

It happened also that during Mr Carstairs' attendance at college, the learned and sainted Mr Samuel Rutherford was appointed Professor of Divinity in St Andrews, and entered upon those labours which doubtless conduced, through the blessing of God, in no small degree to the best interests of religion, and of the Presbyterian cause.

Pursuing knowledge at such a time, and studying theology under such a master, and having as fellow-students such exemplary youths as Donald Cargill and Robert Macward, it might naturally have been expected that Mr Carstairs would be brought into the family of God in the same city in which he had been born after the flesh. But it is the glory of the Lord to conceal a matter, and the following extract from Wodrow's Analecta informs us that it was not till after he had left college

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altogether that Carstairs was savingly brought to Jesus:"I have heard that worthy Mr John Carstairs, late minister of Glasgow, said, that though he had been so many times with worthy Mr Rutherfourd at St Andrews, yet he never clearly and distinctly knew what it was to believe in Christ till he came and conversed with famous Mr Dickson at Glasgow; for young men get more true edification and profit by conversing with him than by all his dictates and writings.'

Shortly after receiving licence as a preacher, Mr Carstairs was called to the parish of Cathcart in Renfrewshire, and was commended to the people by an old minister as a young man of many meditations.' Having responded to the call, he soon became so exceedingly attached to his flock (notwithstanding that his fearless and faithful manner of dealing with them from the pulpit occasioned against him the hostility of some of them,) that it was like the tearing of his very heart from its seat, when he was removed, in 1650, to the Inner High Church, Glasgow,

Mr Stirling notices, that one Peebles told him, that, on this occasion he thought Mr Carstairs would have killed himself with weeping; that he never saw any man weep so much, he was so desirous to stay in that small and mean congregation.

It was most probably in the year 1648, and not long after his settlement at Cathcart, that Carstairs married Janet, daughter of William Mure of Glanderston, a younger branch of the family of Caldwell, of his day, and ancestor of the present head of that house.* Among all the daughters of Mr Mure, we question if there was one to be compared in Christian attainments to Mrs Carstairs, the love and fervour of whose private correspondence shows that she must have been as superior a woman as ever formed the help-meet to a servant of God.

How much his marriage with her conduced both to his comfort and usefulness, we find Carstairs himself fully and feelingly testifying in two letters which he wrote to her fifteen years after they were united. God,' says he, might very justly for my sins deprive me of such a wife, such a mother, such a friend, such a counsellor, yea of all relations sweetly centered in such a one.. I have been in many things an undutiful husband to a most dutiful wife-forgive me my dear heart

I

* This William Mure, who was exceedingly devoted to the Presbyterian cause, had other two daughters married to ministers, besides Janet; viz. Bessy, who was wife of the Rev. Alexander Dunlop of Paisley, and Margaret, who was first married to Mr Zachary Boyd, and afterwards to the Rev. James Durham, (Carstairs' colleague.) He had also other two sons-in-law, very stanch defenders of Presbytery, viz., Porterfield of Quarrelton, and Ralston of that ilk.

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desire to bless him that ever he was pleased to cast our lot to be together, and that he found you out a help-meet for me. You were never a temptation to me, nor an obstruction of me either in my ministerial or Christian course, though you have been little furthered, but much obstructed by me,' &c.

It was whilst this worthy couple was still at Cathcart that their eldest child was born, afterwards so much renowned as Principal William Carstairs of Edinburgh College. We have not space here either to notice his history or the various opinions which have been formed of his character by historians, clerical and lay. Certain entries in our little volume tend to confirm the fact, that oftentimes he was the cause of much grief to his parents, by those very proceedings which rendered him so admirable in the eyes of many others; but it ought not, however, readily to be forgotten, that the following was the testimony given to his integrity by that distinguished Prince,* to whom it was his lot to be chaplain for a long series of years, and with whom he enjoyed an intimacy to which but very few subjects are ever admitted: · I have known him long, and I have known him well, and I have always known him to be an honest man.'

In the year 1650, Mr John Carstairs was translated from Cathcart to Glasgow, and, along with Guthrie, and other celebrated Presbyterian clergymen, got into trouble by joining the Covenanting army under General Lesslie. At the battle of Dunbar he was left among the slain, and severely handled by those harpies, who, after such an onset, prey upon the dead, and despatch the wounded. He was stripped, and so fearfully trodden upon, that he had to summon all his fortitude to refrain from crying aloud in agony.

In his deplorable condition he was observed, pitied, and helped by a poor woman, and in process of time became so far restored as to be able to join the rest of his brethren in the profession of arms and the ministry, within the Castle of Edinburgh, to which they had retreated. There he remained greatly honoured by the governor (as may be gathered from the Cromwelliana,) until the surrender of the fort, which happened in the course of a few months, after which he was set free, along with an Aberdeen bailie, in exchange for certain prisoners confined in Dumbarton castle. It is noticed by historians, that the liberation of the clergy might have been sooner effected, had it not been for their own conduct in refusing Cromwell's offer of safety, and rating him for the threefold evil of being an Independent, and not only violating the Covenant by his pro