TEE PARABLE OP JOTHAM. 89 



lignite, or rather black Devil's charcoal the sap of the birks 

 of Aberfeldy become cinder, and the blessed juices of them, 

 deadly gas, you may know in its pure blackness best in the 

 work of the greatest of these ground-growing Scotchmen, 

 Adam Smith. 



13. No man of like capacity, I believe, born of any other 

 nation, could have deliberately, and with no momentary 

 shadow of suspicion or question, formalized the spinous and 

 monstrous fallacy that human commerce and policy are natur- 

 ally founded on the desire of every man to possess his neigh- 

 bour's goods. 



This is the 'release unto us Barabbas,' with a witness ; and 

 the deliberate systematization of that cry, and choice, for 

 perpetual repetition and fulfilment in Christian statesmanship, 

 has been, with the strange precision of natural symbolism 

 and retribution, signed, (as of old, by strewing of ashes on 

 Kidron,) by strewing of ashes on the brooks of Scotland ; 

 waters once of life, health, music, and divine tradition ; but 

 to whose festering scum you may now set fire with a candle ; 

 and of which, round the once excelling palace of Scotland, 

 modern sanitary science is now helplessly contending with 

 the poisonous exhalations. 



14. I gave this chapter its heading, because I had it in my 

 mind to work out the meaning of the fable in the ninth chap- 

 ter of Judges, from what I had seen on that thorny ground 

 of mine, where the bramble was king over all the trees of the 

 wood. But the thoughts are gone from me now ; and as I 

 re-read the chapter of Judges, now, except in my memory, 

 unread, as it chances, for many a year, the sadness of that 

 story of Gideon fastens on me, and silences me. This the end 

 of his angel Tisions, and dream-led victories, the slaughter of all 

 his sons but this youngest,* and he never again heard of in 

 Israel ! 



You Scottish children of the Kock, taught through all your 

 once pastoral and noble lives by many a sweet miracle of dew 

 on fleece and ground, once servants of mighty kings, and 



* ' Jotham,' 'Sum perfectio eornm,' or ' Consumnsiatio eorum.' (In- 

 terpretation of name in Vulgate index.) 



