But what is the voice to us?  Has this been sent as the stroke of wrath, or the rebuke of love?  “His way is in the sea, and his path in the great waters, and his footsteps are not known.”  Only this much we can clearly see, that nothing was more fitted to leave his character and example impressed on our remembrance forever than his early death.  There might be envy while he lived; there is none now.  There might have been some of the youthful attractiveness of his graces lost had he lived many years; this cannot be impaired now.  It seems as if the Lord had struck the flower from its stem, ere any of the colors had lost their bright hue, or any leaf of fragrance.

Well may the flock of St. Peter’s lay it to heart.  They have had days of visitation.  “Ye have seen the right hand of the Lord plucked out of his bosom?  What shall the unsaved among you do in the day of the Lord’s anger?” “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong to thy peace!”

It has been more than once the lot of Scotland (as was said in the days of Durham) to enjoy so much of the Lord’s kindness, as to have men to lose whose loss has been felt to the very heart—­witnesses for Christ, who saw the King’s face and testified of his beauty.  We cannot weep them back; but shall we not call upon Him with whom is the residue of the Spirit, that ere the Lord come.  He would raise up men, like Enoch, or like Paul, who shall reach nearer the stature of the perfect man, and bear witness with more power to all nations?  Are there not (as he who has left us used to hope) “better ministers in store for Scotland than any that have yet arisen?”

Ministers of Christ, does not the Lord call upon us especially?  Many of us are like the angel of the church of Ephesus:  we have “works, and labor, and patience, and cannot bear them that are evil, and we have borne, and for his name’s sake we labor, and have not fainted;” but we want the fervor of “first love.”  Oh how seldom now do we hear of fresh supplies of holiness arriving from the heavenly places (Eph. 1:3)—­new grace appearing among the saints, and in living ministers!  We get contented with our old measure and kind, as if the windows of heaven were never to be opened.  Few among us see the lower depths of the horrible pit; few ever enter the inner chambers of the house of David.

But there has been one among us who, ere he had reached the age at which a priest in Israel would have been entering on his course, dwelt at the Mercy-seat as if it were his home,—­preached the certainties of eternal life with an undoubting mind,—­and spent his nights and days in ceaseless breathings after holiness, and the salvation of sinners.  Hundreds of souls were his reward from the Lord, ere he left us; and in him have we been taught how much one man may do who will only press farther into the presence of his God, and handle more skilfully the unsearchable riches of Christ, and speak more boldly