328 THE HIDDEN LIFE. 



God, how much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved 

 by His life!'" 



Of human helps, the first and greatest undoubtedly was 

 his excellent wife ; and the consolations to which he was 

 introduced under her gentle guidance became unspeakably 

 precious, when he was again left alone in the house of his 

 pilgrimage. " Christianity is the religion of the sorrowful," 

 and the balm which then healed his wounded spirit left a 

 deepened tincture in all his after history. Nor amongst 

 the outward influences which tended to confirm his faith 

 and mature his piety, can we omit a faithful and 

 earnest ministry, and the ecclesiastical events of 1843. 

 Like every ordeal, the Disruption was an application of 

 first principles. Few of his personal friends saw the 

 matter in the same light; but if the sentiments which, as 

 a Presbyterian, he had hitherto professed were not mere 

 ecclesiastical phrases, but the expression of solemn truths, 

 he saw no alternative but to carry them out, and quit, with 

 all its immense advantages, the old and time-honoured 

 Establishment. His minister, the Rev. Dr Julius Wood, 

 excepted, he and another elder were the only members of 

 New Greyfriars' Session who took this step ; and, like every 

 other step in his career, he took it quietly and unobtru- 

 sively : but the taking of it was not without significance 

 at the moment, nor, as will be at once conceded by the 



