442

DEATH OF EARLY FRIENDS.

will excuse me for making such a request, and that it may not be forgotten." And after the lapse of twenty years, he resumes the subject: "I owe you more than I do any other man in existence. It is not in my power to do any thing for you personally; but should the Sovereign of the universe be pleased to order that I should survive you, it may be in my power to act the part of an efficient friend to some of your children." In 1836, the Rev. Conrad Speece, D. D., another companion of his youth, already named in these pages, was suddenly taken to his rest. These and similar events had an obvious effect upon the temper of his mind; not in the way of gloom, but as producing an elevated solemnity and habitual expectation of the time when his own change should come. Yet he urged forward all his pursuits with unabated vigour, and rejoiced to see others rising up to vindicate the truth which he loved. That some of these persons belonged to other denominations, did not seem to diminish his regard for them. When in 1839, Dr. Nettleton spent some time in Princeton, Dr. Alexander found much satisfaction in observing the coincidence of their views on the great and contested points of evangelical theology. And in the same year, when the accomplished and pious Joseph John Gurney exercised his public gifts among us, he took equal pleasure in the remarkable approaches which this good Quaker made to the doctrines of sound faith. At the age of sixty-seven, no feeling of religious warmth manifested any abatement.

We suppose that no one was ever long conversant with

TOPOGRAPHICAL FACULTY.

443

Dr. Alexander, without being astonished at his turn for the particulars of localities, and his topographical knowledge. In the estimate of those who knew him most closely, this was by far the most remarkable of his endowments. It was doubtless fostered by his living in boyhood in a wild country, and by the continual and often solitary journeys of his early manhood. However much he might seem to be otherwise employed, his eye was always directed to the surface of the country and its natural configuration. To have travelled a road once was to know it, with all its landmarks for the whole of his life. Wherever he had wandered, he knew the direction of all the streams, their rise and flow, the chains of hills or mountains, the nature of soils, timber and crops, and the ridges which mark and divide the watersystems. And he had the faculty of extracting the same sort of information from travellers and others coming from regions which he had not visited. It was a standard topic of merriment with him to banter his children upon their occasional blunders in determining the species of a forest tree. As he began his eager inquiries on these subjects when our States were few in number, he was able to add to his knowledge as new countries were settled; so that we suppose there was no man living whose acquaintance with the geography and topography of America was more extensive or exact. In times when private modes of travel were common, we have known him to draw plans of journeys, extending through several hundred miles, for missionaries leaving home, with a note of distances and a specification of every night's sojourn; without the consultation of book or map. This

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KNOWLEDGE OF CHURCHES.

knowledge reached also, far beyond what is common, to foreign countries, and was perpetually increasing by his study of every thing new in the shape of voyages and travels. For the same reason he took a lively interest in all that belongs to the natural delineation of the earth, and in his later years perused with much zest the works of Mrs. Somerville and Professor Guyot on Physical Geography.

As connected with what has just been mentioned, and in some degree falling under the same faculty, we may note his acquaintance with all the churches and pastors of our Presbyterian connection. If we did not know that hundreds now living can bear witness to what we say, we should be led to modify the strength of the statement which we are about to make. The whole territory of the Church was so mapped out in his head, that it is scarcely too much to affirm that he knew who was the pastor of every Presbyterian Church in the United States. Notices in journals and elsewhere, which made little impression on others, seized his attention, and seemed to fall into the right places and fill up the proper blanks. In most cases he knew also the whole line of incumbents from the beginning. This knowledge extended quite largely to other branches of the Church. As his pupils from year to year spread themselves over the country, he followed them in their wanderings, and particularly kept his eye upon those who went to foreign lands. There was not a missionary, of either our own Church or the American Board, with whose locality he was not perfectly familiar.

CHAPTER SEVENTEENTH.

1840-1851.

DECLINING YEARS-UNABATED STRENGTH OF MIND-CORRESPONDENCE RE

SPECTING DEATH-STUDIES-EXTRAORDINARY LABOURS IN WRITINGDOCTOR JOHN BRECKINRIDGE-SLAVES AND SLAVERY-VISIT TO VIRGINIA -LOSS OF FRIENDS-PUBLICATIONS-ACTIVITY AND HAPPINESS OF HIS OLD AGE.

FRON

ROM part of his public duty he was now to be relieved, in consequence of the resolution of the General Assembly of 1840, that Dr. Hodge should be made Professor of Exegetical and Didactic Theology, and that his own title should hereafter be Professor of Pastoral and Polemic Theology. The closing period of his life occupies somewhat more than ten years, and begins about his sixty-ninth year. When we speak of him however as declining, the word must be received as applicable rather to body than to mind. No one could perceive any abatement of his intellectual vigour, and in regard to professional and literary labour he never was more abundant. His was in the highest sense a happy

old age; and the remembrance of it fills his surviving friends with satisfaction and thankfulness.

He had lived to see the institution to which his life had been devoted, not merely established, but at its very highest prosperity; and during these years the number of students attained its maximum. In every part of the country, and in the missions of other lands, were men of piety and distinction, who looked back with affectionate veneration to his paternal care.

As the horizon of his view was thus extended, he seemed to glow with a larger benevolence, and at no time manifested more lively interest in every new proposal for the spread of the Redeemer's kingdom, than now when he felt that his days on earth were numbered. It was a common observation concerning him, that while his judgment was cool and his policy conservative, he never rejected any scheme because it was novel; and no man was more sanguine in hope than he, with regard to great enterprises from which even younger persons were disposed to recoil. Yet he was not slow to recognise the tokens of decaying nature, and to draw from them appropriate reflections. In 1840, he thus begins a letter. "This day, forty-nine years ago, I was licensed to preach. You may know from this that I am growing old, and of course approaching the end of my pilgrimage. My health, however, is as firm as it has been for years; only I am still distressed with weakness of nerves. Dr. Miller has had several attacks of low fever this year, but is now restored to his usual health. My family have been blessed with un