tate. I hold it a duty not to
abandon those honest ministers that have stuck to the Reformation. And
if the Lord would strengthen me, I would desire to confess the truth like
them. . . . I questioned whether I might not safely use means to decline
the cross and to ward off the wrath of the Lords and the Magistrates.
Shall I begin to hear Mr. William Falconer? Shall I write to Seaforth
and Argyll to ask them to clear and vindicate me? Shall I forbear to
hear that honest minister, James Urquhart, for a time, seeing the storm
is like to fall on me if I do so? What counsel shall I give my son?
Shall I expose myself and my family to danger at this time? What is Thy
will? What is my duty?' And then this able and honest hypocrite has the
grace to add: 'A grain of sound faith would easily answer all these
questions.' I have a sheaf of such passages. It is sickening work to
speak and hear such things. But they must sometimes be spoken and heard,
if only to afford a reply to Paul's question in the text: 'Ye did run
well: what did hinder you?' How well Alexander Brodie ran for a time,
and how well he might have run to the end but for those two sins that did
so easily beset him--the love of money and the fear of man! But under
the arrest and overthrow that those two so mean and so contemptible vices
brought on Brodie, we see his spiritual life, or what might have ripened
into spiritual life, gradually but surely decaying, even in his diary,
till we read this last entry on the day of his death: 'My darkness has
not taken an end, nor my confusions.'

Alexander Brodie being long dead yet speaketh with terrible power in
every page of his solemnising diary. Young men of Scotland, he says,
young statesmen, young senators of the College of Justice, young
churchmen, young magistrates, young landlords, and all young men of
talent and of influence, sons of the Cavaliers and the Covenanters
alike--seek the right and the true, the just and the honourable, in your
day; choose it for your part, and take your stand firmly and boldly upon
it. Make hazards in order to stand upon it. Read my humbling life, and
take warning from me. And when your times are confused and perplexed;
when truth and duty are not wholly and commandingly clear; give a good
conscience the benefit of the doubt, and suspect the side on which safety
and promotion and public praise lie. Pray without ceasing, and then live
as you pray. And then my diary shall no