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and if ever thereafter he should break, he said he should be content his father should disclaim him for ever. his father carried him home, and put him to the college, and there he became a diligent student of great expectation, and showed himself a sincere convert, and so he proceeded to the ministry."

Mr. Welsh became a distinguished minister in the Church of Scotland, and proved his fidelity to the cause of Christ by suffering boldly in defence of the truth. We shall select, however, a different example of the domestic affections, from the life of a humbler sufferer and martyr in the same good cause.

The death of John Brown, the Covenanter, is justly cherished in the heart of every true Scotsman as a noble incident of Christian fidelity and conjugal affection. It is thus related in the "Biographia Presbyteriana:"

"The next morning, between five and six hours, the said John Brown, having performed the worship of God in his family, was going with a spade in his hand to make ready some peat ground; the mist being very dark, he knew not until bloody cruel Claverhouse com passed him with three troops of horse, brought him to his house, and there examined him. Though he was a man of a stammering speech, yet he answered him distinctly and solidly; which made Claverhouse examine those whom he had taken to be his guides through the moors, if ever they had heard him preach? They an

swered, 'No, no, he never was a preacher.'

He said,

'If he has never preached, much has he prayed in his time;' and then said to John, 'Go to your prayers, for you shall immediately die.' When he was praying, Claverhouse interrupted him three times. One time that he stopped him, he was pleading that the Lord would spare a remnant, and not make a full end in the day of his anger. Claverhouse said, 'I gave you time to pray, and you are begun to preach.' He turned about upon his knees, and said, 'Sir, you know neither the nature of preaching nor praying, that call this preaching;' and then continued without confusion. When ended, Claverhouse said, 'Take good night of your wife and children.' His wife standing by, with her child in her arms, that she brought forth to him, and another child of his first wife's, he came to her, and said, 'Now, Isabel, the day is come that I told you would come, when I spake first to you of marrying me.' She said, 'Indeed, John, I can willingly part with you.' Then he said, 'That's all I desire; I have no more to do but die-I have been in case to meet with death for so many years.' He kissed his wife and bairns, and wished purchased and promised blessings to be multiplied upon them, and his blessing. Claverhouse ordered six soldiers to shoot him; the most part of the bullets came upon his head, which scattered his brains upon the ground. Claverhouse said to his wife, 'What thinkest thou of thy husband now, woman?" She

said, 'I thought ever much good of him, and as much now as ever.' He said, 'It were but justice to lay thee beside him.' She said, 'If ye were permitted, I doubt not but your cruelty would go that length; but how will you make answer for this morning's work?' He said, 'To man I can be answerable; and for God, I will take him in my own hand.' Claverhouse mounted his horse, and marched, and left her with the corpse of her dead husband lying there; she set the bairn upon the ground, and gathered his brains, and tied up his head, and straightened his body, and covered him with her plaid, and sat down and wept over him; it being a very desert place, where never victual grew, and far from neighbours. It was some time before any friends came to her; the first that came was a very fit hand, that old singular Christian woman in the Cummerhead, named Jean Brown, three miles distant, who had been tried with the violent death of her husband at Pentland, afterwards of two worthy sons, Thomas Weir, who was killed at Drumclog, and David Steil, who was suddenly shot afterwards, when taken. The said Isabel Weir, sitting upon her husband's grave-stone, told me, that before that she could see no blood but she was in danger to faint, and yet was helped to be a witness to all this, without either fainting or confusion, except when the shots were let off her eyes dazzled. His corpse was buried at the end of his house where he was slain."

A monument has been erected on the spot to commemorate the heroic death of John Brown; but a far more worthy and enduring monument is the faithfulness with which his memory is cherished by those who have inherited the Christian liberty for which he died.

Both

The remarkable incidents in the early life of the eminent Scottish minister, John Welsh, have already furnished one instance of the returning prodigal; and that of the well-known John Newton, one of the most faithful ministers of the Church of England, has been referred to as another and no less striking one. of these were destined to become, like the great Apostle of the Gentiles, distinguished as the honoured preachers of that gospel which once they had despised and scorned. Numerous other incidents of a similar character might be referred to, supplying no less striking examples of the restoration of the prodigal in answer to a parent's prayers, though their fulfilment is not, in many cases, granted until the fond parent by whom they had been uttered was at rest in his grave.

But sufficient space has already been devoted to the illustration of the self-sacrificing character of parental love. Both in Welsh and Newton, we see the good fruits which rewarded a Christian parent's prayers; and many are the instances which might be recorded in illustration of the same assurance, that prayer is not made in vain.

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Doubtless, a future day will reveal thousands of instances in which the secret prayers of Christian parents have received their abundant answer, though those who offered them in faith went sorrowing all their days, and had often their gray hairs brought down with sorrow to the dust by those with whom they will rejoice through eternity in singing of the unmerited mercy and redeeming love of God in Christ.

Leaving, however, these delightful evidences of parental affection, manifested, in its noblest forms, under the guidance of Christian principles, we shall select an instance in illustration of the domestic affections, as shown in the fidelity of conjugal love. It is well calculated to teach a lesson to many a sorrowing wife, suffering under one of the most terrible of all human trials, by showing her how she may overcome by love, and enjoy the fulfilment of the apostolic injunc

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