and, but for the direct and powerful assistance of the Court, they never could have overcome the resistance to their settlement. Hence the subjection of Western Asia to Babylon laid the foundations of a power competent to force a quiet settlement; and the accession of the Persian dynasty to the throne, but a few years before the termination of the captivity, converted that power, at the very time it was needed, into an agent favourable to the execution of the Divine purpose in the restoration of the Jews. Again, it is observable that the spirit of propagandism appears to have animated all the governments of the East. During the Assyrian empire it is seen at its rise, in all its progress, and at its fall. In Chaldea we see the image of its power, on the plains of Dura, converted into an effigy on its folly; and mark it lingering, like a belated ghost, till the dawn of the Persian dynasty, when it vanishes like 'a dream of the ages of darkness and blood.' But even this slight exception proves the general rule; for Darius is easily persuaded to issue a decree forbidding the polytheists to pray to any of their gods for a certain time. At the rise of the Grecian power, the spirit again revives, and though the Jews were tolerated for a season, yet they also fell under the scourge of the Syro-Grecian princes. Under the Maccabean dynasty, though Judas, the Wallace and the Tell of his country, successfully battled for the right to worship the God of his fathers, yet, in succeeding reigns, the same rights were denied to others. The reluctant Jews were pelled to circumcise their children, and John Hyrcanus forced the Edomites and Itureans to embrace Judaism, persecuted the Samaritans, destroying their temple and subverting their worship, and left the Jews the most bigoted opponents and bitter persecutors of every religion but their own. It is, therefore, a remarkable fact that the Romans were the first con

com

querors who allowed every nation to observe their own religion; and though Christianity was the first they persecuted, still their sword was sheathed until the success of the new religion had paralyzed and prostrated the power of the old. Had the power of the Jew been equal to his bigotry, Christianity would have been crushed in its cradle. But God so ordered it that the fulness of the times' should, with its other adaptations, be also a time of toleration, and it was the prevalence of this principle in other lands which gave a shelter to the Chaldeans when Judea was too hot to hold them. In all the previous periods of history, intolerance has been allowed full scope, for it was well that one error should suppress another. Only at

the captivity it was restrained, so that truth might spread; and, during the half of the first century, only as much was allowed as was useful to separate the chaff from the wheat, and scatter the seed in other lands. It is in the combination and co-operation of second causes like these that we discover the best proofs and illustrations of a Divine providence. 'Whoso is wise and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.' G. B., C.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.*

JOHN REID, M.D.

IT has often struck us as wonderful that scepticism and religious indifference should so frequently accompany scientific research and intellectual culture. It is far from being a rare thing to see men of eminence and genius, whose profession or delight is to study the works and wonders of nature, entirely devoid of true piety, or at least whose greatest attainment in this respect is an amiable disposition and formal morality, the natural results of constant contact with the purity and beauty of those objects they examine. What a proof this of the necessity for a divine revelation, and the defective character of mere natural religion. Men have wandered for years amid the works of God, without recognising, or at least acknowledging, loving, and obeying the great Creator of them all, till affliction comes, or till, by the dispensations of providence, death and eternity are pressed unresistingly upon them; they desire no closer acquaintance with the Divine Being than through the works of his hands. It is only in extremity that they are driven to his Word, and through that to himself, when they are themselves astonished at their former conduct, and amazed at that goodness and forbearance which pardoned such gross and blind neglect. The following biography presents a vivid illustration of this general yet strange truth. May its perusal lead many to the fountain of true happiness, and convince all that only in Christ does this fountain reside!

John Reid was the sixth child of Henry Reid and Jean Orr, and was born at Bathgate, in Linlithgowshire, on April 9, 1809. His father was a man of great shrewdness and sagacity, who, in spite of many disadvantages, raised himself to a position of repute and comparative wealth among his townsmen. He was a farmer, and also dealt largely in cattle, and his success was such, that he was able to secure for his

*Life of Dr John Reid. By George Wilson, M.D. Edinburgh: Sutherland & Knox.

children, and especially for the subject of this Memoir, a much better education than it had been his own fortune in early life to enjoy.

No marvellous tales are told of John Reid's youthful days-so far, at least, as intellectual precosity is concerned. He was a quiet, healthy, rather heavy-looking child, affecionate and very obedient. Infant schools were unknown in the beginning of the century, and John's first instructions were received in the midst of a circle of little girls, who were learning to sew. I had some conversation with the venerable dame who, forty years before, presided, along with a sister, over this sewing-school. She had known John Reid from his very birth, and received him as a pupil before he was able to walk. She thought him gentle in his manners, singularly docile, and fond of books,-above all, of a folio copy of Ralph Erskine's works. To his parents he was specially dutiful and obedient. It is remembered in his family that on one occasion he had incurred punishment for some boyish offence. A sister advised him to run away, but he went up to his mother and submitted to chastisement. Such incidents would not be worth recording, did they not illustrate the earliest indications of two of the most strongly marked features of John Reid's mature character. The incipient bibliomania, which made the child prefer the tall folio to any smaller volume, grew with his growth, and became ingrained in his nature. In latter life he was a great reader, as well as a considerable writer of books, but he retained almost to the last a love for a book merely as a book, and, next to his relatives and friends, he named his library as the object from which it cost him the sorest pang to part. His filial obedience also ripened with his years. Throughout life the will of his father and mother was in all minor matters his law, and long after he had reached an age when even dutiful children think more of loving than of obeying their parents, he continued to yield them a cheerful submission on every point which did not interfere with his own conscientious convictions. Till his strength totally failed him, he wrote at frequent intervals from his deathbed to his mother, and to her, his only surviving parent, his latest letters were addressed.

At school John Reid was not remarkable for great quickness or vivacity, nor, in spite of his health, strength, and courage was he a ringleader in the sports of the playground. What he cared to learn he mastered by patient study, and retained firmly, but his schoolfellows did not anticipate for him the distinction which he afterwards attained, and a certain shyness and reserve, which did not desert him in latter life, led to his keeping by himself.

After profiting for some years by the instructions received at the Bathgate school, he was transferred to the University of Edinburgh at the age of fourteen.

For the first two or three years of his residence in Edinburgh, he attended the literary classes, and was chiefly engaged in the study of Greek and Latin, and, to a less extent, in the acquisition of mathematics, for which, however, including arithmetic, he had no great liking. He was under the guardianship of the Rev. Peter Learmonth, now of Stromness, who writes to me thus in reference to his pupil :-' Endowed with talents of a very superior order, he early attained habits of close and persevering study. He was an excellent scholar, and his attainments varied and extensive for his age. That he did not appear among the foremost, nor attain high academical honours, arose, I am confident, more from a modest diffidence in himself, and a want of that ambition which has elevated to a high and distinigushed position, scholars of far inferior talents and acquirements.'

What induced John Reid to select medicine as a profession is not precisely known. His first inclinations, or rather, perhaps, those of his friends in his behalf, were towards the Church, but he was induced, chiefly, I believe, by the influence of Dr Weir of Bathgate, to turn his attention to Medicine, and from the moment when he entered on its study, he devoted himself to it with the greatest ardour. His medical studies commenced in 1825, and were formally prosecuted till 1830, when he nominally ceased to be a student, and acquired the titles of surgeon and physician. From the wide circle of subjects included in the round of medical study, he ultimately selected anatomy and physiology as his favourite pursuits, but at first he took great interest also in medicine as a practical art.

On August 1st, 1830, his student life may be said to have ended. On that day, along with one hundred and six other candidates, he was publicly invested with the title of Doctor.

Before he received his degree, he wrote to his father (27th July 1830), informing him that he had some faint hope of an appointment in the navy. He had no wish for a permanent connexion with the naval service. I should like,' writes he, 'to remain above three years. I think I would be very much the better of such a situation for that time. I would see a little of the world, and even the name of being in the navy would be of great advantage to me afterwards.. Names go a great deal in a person's favour in our profession.'

He was not destined, however, to tread the quarter-deck; and too honest and independent to remain idle, he became a clerk, or assistant-physician, in the clinical wards

of the Edinburgh Infirmary. Writing to his mother, November 29, 1830, he says, 'I like my clerkship very much, and I could not be under a more agreeable master than Dr Alison.'

At this period the mind of Dr Reid already showed its love of original research, which was evinced by his constant pursuit of anatomical and chemical investigations at the Infirmary, and in his own rooms, in connexion with the cases which were under his care.

In the autumn of 1831, Dr Reid set out for Paris, to profit by the advantages of its medical schools. He visited Dublin first, but stayed there only a few days.

He crossed from thence to Liverpool, and visited Manchester and London, reaching Paris in October, where he devoted himself with the greatest ardour to his favourite studies.

He returned to Edinburgh in 1832, where he had not long to wait before he found professional employment. In the antumn of 1832, cholera was devastating Great Britain, and fell with special severity upon the inhabitants of Dumfries. The resident medical men soon found themselves unable to cope with the rapid increase in the number of their patients, and four physicians, of whom Dr Reid was one, were sent to their aid from Edinburgh. The risks and horrors of this disease, which his Parisian experience had made so familiar to him, did not deter him from proceeding to the plague-stricken city; nor did an attack of inflammation, whilst resident there, which greatly increased his peril, induce him to desert his post. All men fond of their callings are professionally courageous, even though in other relations timid and cautious. But to professional daring Dr Reid united, as the mournful sequel will most amply show, a rare amount of personal courage. He arrived in Dumfries in the first week in October, and continued there for about a month.

He left Dumfries in the end of October, and spent the next two months chiefly at Bathgate, seeking in vain for professional employment, and anticipating nothing better when employment should come, than to enter upon the dull drudgery of a country Doctor's life, which for him, as we have seen, had no charms. Of this period of unwilling idleness he always spoke with regret, almost with horror. His sister remembers him, after an unsuccessful en

deavour to find a sphere of labour, lying upon the sofa, sad and gloomy, for two days. The new year brought an unexpected and most welcome deliverance from this condition.

Early in January, 1833, the large and flourishing School of Anatomy in Old Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh, was so crowded

with students from all quarters, that it over-tasked the strength and energies of its superintendents, Dr Knox and Mr Fergusson. Proposals accordingly were made to Dr Reid, whose anatomical skill was already conspicuous, to become a partner in the School, which ended in his accepting the offer made to him.

After discharging, for three years, with unequalled ability and success, the duties of Anatomical Demonstrator, Dr Reid was unexpectedly and reluctantly summoned, by the unanimous call of his brethren in Edinburgh, to undertake the higher duties of Lecturer on Physiology in the Extra-Academical Medical School.

His introductory lecture was grave and earnest—in keeping with the character of the author and the expectations of his friends, and full of the promise which his future progress amply realized.

The duties of lecturer occupied Dr Reid only during the winter session; i.e., from November till the close of April; so that although a considerable portion of the summer and autumn months was dedicated to the improvement of his lectures, a large period of time could also be devoted to special scientific study and to original research. In both, Dr Reid largely and successfully engaged. The first fruits of his diligence and ability appeared in a very elaborate paper on the Anatomy and Physiology of the Heart, which was written in great part in 1836; and in an experimental investigation into the functions of certain important nerves, of the first part of which an epitome was read by the author at the meeting of the British Association in September 1837.

In the spring of 1837, a formidable attack of bleeding from the lungs interrupted his lectures, and placed his life in imminent danger; but in a few months he recovered, and in the succeeding winter session delivered his second course of academical lectures, and the first course In the summer of 1838 he resumed his of popular lectures already referred to. inquiry into the functions of the nerves, and read a paper on the subject at the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle in the autumn of that year. An attack of illness disabled him from lecturing at the commencement of the ensuing session, and a friend took his place for some weeks; but he was able to resume his duties before Christimas.

Pathologist, and, in the succeeding year, In the spring of 1838 he was appointed superintendent to the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, the duties of which required him to reside in the Infirmary; and he early paid the penalty exacted from nearly all who spend the greater part of the day in an Hospital containing fever wards.

A severe attack of typhus fever laid him aside for some time; but his strong constitution bore him comparatively easily through this illness.

Dr Reid's reputation was now such as to entitle him to promotion to some academic appointment, and on the occurrence of a vacancy in the Chair of Anatomy in St Andrews, he was elected Professor.

He was at this period in the prime of life, athletic and vigorous. Even a casual observer would have been struck with his tall, strong figure, lessened a little in stature, but not rendered ungraceful, by a slight stoop, such as studious men acquire by long leaning over microscopes, or books, or the work of their scalpels His countenance was not less conspicuous, with its fresh, ruddy complexion, its long locks of black hair, of a southern darkness of shade, its broad elephantine forehead, and small bright black eye. The prevailing expression of his face was compounded of strength, earnestness, firmness, and good temper.

He could wear at will, and sometimes involuntarily put on, when deep in thought or intensely occupied, an air of great sternness and severity, but these were not congenial to his nature; and when his features changed, it was more frequently by the corners of the mouth rising into a smile, or the lips parting for a hearty laugh, than by the brows knitting into a frown. He was in his thirty-third year when he became Professor, and every one anticipated for him a long and famous career.

On first October of the latter year, Dr Reid married Miss Ann Blyth of Edinburgh, and from that time, as the comforts of a happy home gathered round him, and especially after he became a father, he grew quite reconciled to St Andrews as a place of permanent residence, and again devoted himself to original inquiry, which for a considerable period had been laid aside. In 1848, he collected into one volume the greater part of the Researches which, during the preceding thirteen years, he had contributed to various periodical Journals: these, according to Dr Heugh, contain more original matter and sound physiology, than will be found in any work that has issued from the British Press for many years.

We now come to the most interesting part of this remarkable biography-viz, the conversion of Dr Reid, an event which must be considered the most momentous of his life, though it was brought about through much suffering.

In the month of November 1847, a small blister appeared on his tongue, which before long opened into an ulcer, betraying the symptoms of cancer-a

disease which, in spite of the advancement of medicine, is still almost synonymous with protracted, unappeasable torture, and painful, lingering death.

Some period elapsed before the true nature of the affection of the tongue was put beyond doubt. There can be no question, however, that from the first, Dr Reid looked with some anxiety on what so great a pathologist knew to be a suspicious malady, trifling though it might appear to an unprofessional eye. It is remembered by those who were about him at that time, that so early as December 1847, he frequently consulted the looking glass to watch the progress of the complaint, and himself applied caustic to the diseased part. He was careful, nevertheless, not to betray his suspicions to any of his relatives, although the ulceration visi- | bly spread. At length, in the spring of 1848, it was so sensibly worse, that he proceeded to Edinburgh and consulted his medical friends. His appearance awakened graver apprehensions than they cared to think aloud, or almost to express to each other. But there was yet hope, and Dr Reid, provided with a gold shield to protect the tongue from the irritating contact of the teeth, returned to St Andrews, and submitted faithfully to the regimen and prescriptions recommended to him. They were of no avail in retarding the progress of the complaint, and as soon as the close of the winter session of 1847-48, relieved him from his more pressing University duties, he prepared to try new

measures.

In May 1848, he proceeded to Edinburgh, and had interviews with his former fellow-students and attached friends, Drs James Duncan and Simpson, who deliberated with anxious and affectionate care on his case. By their advice, in compliance with his own suggestion, he resolved to try the effect of change of scene, and total silence for a week or two, and if these failed to be of service, to proceed to London and consult the surgeons there. Keswick in Cumberland was selected as the place of his retirement, and that he might as much as possible be spared the necessity of speaking, he went alone, leaving his wife and children behind him. He afterwards thought that he suffered in these objects of affection than he gained some respects more from the absence of by the enforced silence, and he was never again willingly separated from them.

Within a few weeks of the first appearance of the malady in his tongue, a presentiment of approaching death had darkened every faculty and desire. I call it a presentiment, without seeking, meanwhile, to justify the term. It was partly, no doubt, only a logical inference from the

physical symptoms of a disease, in relation to which he was at once surgeon and patient. But in its profound intensity it laid hold on something more than the mere logical faculty, and hid the whole soul within an atmosphere of solemn awe, to which the dread of suffering, or the animal fear of death, contributed very little. Against submitting to these, the stoical and courageous spirit of Dr Reid rose in instinctive defiance; but he surrendered his heart to a feeling which, with rapidlyincreasing distinctness he came to realize, as a message from God bidding him make ready to depart. The mere presentiment began to overshadow him in St Andrews, and deepened in gloom in Edinburgh, but it did not acquire the character of a religious emotion till he went to Cumberland; and he rarely referred to it till a later period. On his way to the Lakes, he spent a night in Edinburgh with his sister, Mrs Taylor. He scarcely spoke a syllable; and his countenance wore such an expression of cheerless gloom, that his desponding, almost despairing look, haunted her through a long night which it rendered sleepless. It equally pained another near relative who, like Mrs Taylor, believed it to betoken an agonizing mental struggle. When he returned from England this painful look was gone, nor did it ever return, although the probability of a fatal issue to his malady had much increased, and his physical sufferings were daily becoming more severe. The wan expression, which bodily exhaustion, and nights rendered sleepless by unquenchable agony, imprint upon the countenance, and the peculiar indescribable aspect which is occasioned by malignant disease, were afterwards seen too plainly on the sufferer's face. But the despairing look which is begotten of the conflict between the heart crying 'Peace! peace!' and the conscience replying 'There is no peace!' was never witnessed on John Reid's noble countenance again. Keswick was the scene of a great spiritual change, in which, so far as the mightiest objects that can interest mankind are concerned, all old things became for him new. It would be very satisfactory, merely as the solution of a curious psychological problem, much more from its value as a moral example, could we explicitly trace the steps by which he passed from the sceptical, critical domain of things visible, in which, using the intellect as the only needful weapon, he had so long walked by Sight, to that higher region of things Invisible, in which he was hereafter to walk by Faith. Had he long survived the transition, he would probably have dwelt upon the steps that led to it. But although there was a temporary recovery of health, he regarded

himself all throughout (although he betrayed the feeling to few), as little else than a dying man. He was always thus in the condition of one preparing to die, and never far enough removed from the great crisis in his moral history which lay behind him, and the final struggle which lay before, to sit down and trace the development of his feelings at the period, when first in his life he could say, 'the darkness is past, and the true liglit now shineth.'

For a brief space he appears to have been too much staggered to think whence help could come. But in his travelling trunk his wife had been careful to place a Bible, and one of his earliest letters to her was full of gratitude for the thoughtful kindness. This Bible was his daily companion in his lonely walks. He studied it with an intensity such as he had never displayed in the study of any book before. He studied it as a book which only those who have the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who inspired it, can understand; and he was earnest in prayer to God for the gift of His Spirit. Nor did He who loveth to be entreated, forget His promise to give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. Within some three weeks at farthest, a peace, composure, contentment, and joy, which John Reid had never known in the most healthful and prosperous season of his past life, pervaded his soul, and his heart began to fill with 'the perfect love that casteth out fear.' It was the old and wondrous, but true tale. For years he had been doubting the wisdom of prayer, holding it to be presumptuous for an individual to look for special favour from God-arguing concerning the irreconcilability of free will and predestination, the dilemma of liberty and necessity, and the like theological problems. He had built round his soul outworks of doubt which he could not unbuild, nor any other man take down for him; but at one breath of God's Spirit they fled away, and no place was found for them. He came to God fully realizing for the first time that 'He is, and that He is a rewarder of those that diligently seek Him; and God filled him with good things, and sent him not empty away. There was not explained to him how to the Ruler of the universe, prayer does not clash with foreknowledge; and he knew no better than he did before how the Creator's infinite omnipresence coexists with man's finite individuality; what the bond is which reconciles predestination and free will, or what the link which resolves necessity into liberty. He does not, probably, even now know how to reconcile these mysterious opposites; perhaps he never will, nor any other child of man. But he was made certain that God