the
Epistle to the Romans, and when the reader came to the passage, 'I will
have mercy on whom I will have mercy,' the listener burst into tears, and
exclaimed, 'James, James, halt there, for I have nothing but that to
lippen to.' And then, on the ladder, and before a great crowd of
Edinburgh citizens: 'I own that I am a sinner--yea, and one of the vilest
that ever made a profession of religion. My corruptions have been strong
and many, and they have made me a sinner in all things--yea, even in
following my duty. But blessed be God, who hath showed His mercy to such
a wretch, and hath revealed His Son unto me, and made me a minister of
the everlasting Gospel, and hath sealed my ministry on the hearts of not
a few of His people.' James Guthrie's ruling passion, as Cowie remarked,
was still strong in his death.

On one occasion Guthrie and some of his fellow-ministers were comparing
experiences and confessing to one another their 'predominant sins,' and
when it came to Guthrie's turn he told them that he was much too eager to
die a violent death. For, said he, I would like to die with all my wits
about me. I would not like eyesight and memory and reason and faith all
to die out on my deathbed and leave me to tumble into eternity bereft of
them all. Guthrie was greatly afraid at the thought of death, but it was
the premature death of his reason, and even of his faith, that so much
alarmed and horrified him to think of. He envied the men who kneeled
down on the scaffold, or leaped off the ladder, in full possession at the
last moment of all their senses and all their graces. 'Give me a direct
answer, sir,' demanded Dr. Johnson of his physician when on his deathbed.
. . . 'Then I will take no more opiates, for I have prayed that I may be
able to render up my soul to God unclouded.' And when pressed by his
attendants to take some generous nourishment, he replied almost with his
last breath, 'I will take anything but inebriating sustenance.'

But in nothing was good James Guthrie's tenderness to sin better seen
than in the endless debates and dissensions of which that day was so
full. So sensitive was he to the pride and the anger and the ill-will
that all controversy kindles in our hearts that, as soon as he felt any
unholy heat in his own heart, or saw it in the hearts of the men he
debated with, he at once cut short the controversy with some such words
as these: 'We have said too much on this matter already; let