JOHN BROWN, Esq. M.D.
His conviction of the sole right of God to be Lord of the conscience,
and his sense of his own absolute religious independence of every one
but his Maker, were the two elements in building up his beliefs on all
Church matters; they were twin beliefs. Hence the simplicity and
thoroughness of his principles. Sitting in the centre, he commanded the
circumference. But I am straying out of my parish into yours. I only add
to what you have said, that the longer he lived, the more did he insist
upon it being not less true and not less important, that the Church must
not intermeddle with the State, than that the State must not intermeddle
with the Church. He used to say, "Go down into the world, with all its
complications and confusions, with this double-edged weapon, and you can
cut all the composite knots of Church and State." The element of God and
of eternity predominates in the religious more than in the civil affairs
of men, and thus far transcends them; but the principle of mutual
independence is equally applicable to each. All that statesmen, as such,
have to do with religion, is to be themselves under its power; all that
Christians, as such, have to do with the State, is to be good citizens.
The fourth epoch of his personal life I would date from his second
marriage. As I said before, no man was ever happier in his wives. They
had much alike in nature,--only one could see the Divine wisdom of his
first wife being his first, and his second his second; each did best in
her own place and time. His marriage with Miss Crum was a source of
great happiness and good not only to himself, but to us his first
children. She had been intimately known to us for many years, and was
endeared to us long before we saw her, by her having been, as a child
and girl, a great favorite of our own mother. The families of my
grandfather Nimmo, and of the Crums, Ewings, and Maclaes, were very
intimate. I have heard my father tell, that being out at Thornliebank
with my mother, he asked her to take a walk with him to the Rouken, a
romantic waterfall and glen up the burn. My mother thought they might
take "Miss Margaret" with them, and so save appearances, and with Miss
Crum, then a child of ten, holding my father's hand, away the three
went!
So you may see that no one could be nearer to being our mother; and she
was curiously ingenious, and completely successful in gaining our
affection and regard. I have, as a boy, a peculiarly pleasant
remembrance of her, having been at Thornliebank when about fourteen, and
getting that impression of her gentle, kind, wise, calm, and happy
nature--her entire lovableness--which it was our privilege to see
ministering so much to my father's comfort. That fortnight in 1824 or
1825 is still to me like the memory of some happy dream; the old
library, the big chair in which I huddled myself up for hours with the
New Arabian Nights, and all the old-fashioned and unforgotten books I
found there, the ample old garden, the wonders of machinery and skill
going on in "the works," the large water-wheel going its stately rounds
in the midst of its own darkness, the petrifactions I excavated in the
bed of the burn, _ammonites_, etc., and brought home to my museum (!);
the hospitable lady of the house, my hereditary friend, dignified,
anxious and kind; and above all, her only daughter who made me a sort of
pet, and was always contriving some unexpected pleasure,--all this feels
to me even now like something out of a book.
My father's union with Miss Crum was not only one of the best blessings
of his life,--it made him more of a blessing to others, than it is
likely he would otherwise have been. By her cheerful, gracious ways, her
love for society as distinguished from company, her gift of making every
one happy and at ease when with her, and her tender compassion for all
suffering, she in a measure won my father from himself and his books, to
his own great good, and to the delight and benefit of us all. It was
like sunshine and a glad sound in the house. She succeeded in what is
called "drawing out" the inveterate solitary. Moreover, she encouraged
and enabled him to give up a moiety of his ministerial labors, and thus
to devote himself to the great work of his later years, the preparing
for and giving to the press the results of his life's study of God's
Word. We owe entirely to her that immense _armamentarium libertatis_,
the third edition of his treatise on Civil Obedience.
One other source of great happiness to my father by this marriage was
the intercourse he had with the family at Thornliebank, deepened and
endeared as this was by her unexpected and irreparable loss. But on this
I must not enlarge, nor on that death itself, the last thing in the
world he ever feared--leaving him once more, after a brief happiness,
and when he had still more reason to hope that he would have "grown old
with her, leaning on her faithful bosom." The urn was again empty--and
the only word was _vale!_ he was once more _viduus_ bereft.
"God gives us love; something to love
He lends us; but, when love is grown
To ripeness, that on which it throve
Falls off, and love is left alone.
This is the curse of time"--