Mrs Patterson, "Oh! this constant rack of mind is terrible! If I had any prospect of getting through my work, that would be some consolation; but although my strength is taxed to the uttermost, still I see before me duties that I cannot possibly overtake!" In such a frame of mind be could not refrain from exerting his energies even beyond his strength, and, as the natural consequence, his health began gradually and almost imperceptibly to give way. For a time no symptoms were apparent to others, but he himself appears to have been conscious of increasing weakness. He was observed more particularly in his aspirations at the family altar, and occasionally, also, in his conversation, to long, with peculiar intensity, for that higher, and nobler, and more peaceful state of being "where the weary are at The period was now fast approaching when this faithful servant of God must, at length, cease from his labours, and enter upon the enjoyment of his everlasting reward. To the lust, however, he was faithful to the trust committed to him.. "The labours of my dear husband on the last Sabbath of his ministry," says Mrs Patterson, in one of her communications to the biographer," will show how arduous were his exertions for the spiritual welfare of his flock. On that day-how little conscious were we that it was to be his last of ministration to his dear people!-he preached twice in Church; and between the morning and afternoon services he went to the vestry, where he read and expounded a chapter to the country people, who assembled there during the interval of service, instead of loitering about the churchyard, or wandering | through the town, as is too frequently the custom in country parishes. This occupied him until the bell began to ring for afternoon service. In the evening he walked to Grangemouth, a distance of about three miles, where he preached in the school-room, and afterwards visited some families who were in affliction. The evening was wet, but he walked home in the dark and the rain, and arrived in a state of great exhaustion. On entering the parlour, he threw himself on a sofa, with his wet clothes still upon him, and immediately dropped asleep." On the day following Mr Patterson left Falkirk for Edinburgh, to attend the General Assembly. On reaching town he took up his residence at the house of his mother. The weakness and exhaustion of his body was immediately obvious to the eye of his affectionate parent, who employed all the means in her power to avert the too evident approach of a regularly formed disease. The attempt, however, was unsuccessful. He was seized with an attack of fever which, though severe and protracted, terminated, in the first instance, favourably. During his apparent convalescence, a cloud seems to have, for a time, obscured his spiritual prospects. Such temporary obstructions o the influx of the peace of God into the soul, are by no means rare in the history of believers, and, as frequently happens in cases of this nature, Mr Patterson emerged from the cloud of darkness and of doubt, to the enjoyment of the unclouded radiance of the Sun of Righteousness. "I can but faintly describe," Miss Patterson writes, "the spiritual and heavenly temper my brother now remained in. Often, when I was about to read in the Prophetical books, or the Psalms, he would check me, and desire me to read to him about Jesus.' Speak to me,-speak to me,' he would say, about Jesus.' On one occasion, when my sister-in-law approached the bedside with the Bible in her hands, he said to her, Now let me see Jesus Christ. One evening I read to him the sixth chapter of John's Gospel. He appeared perfectly enraptured with it; but when I came to that verse, Jesus said unto them, I am the Bread of Life; he that cometh to me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst,' he was utterly un able to restrain the expression of his own experience of these blessed words. When I had finished reading, he appeared quite absorbed in the contemplation of the truths contained in that wonderful chapter, and in deep thankfulness for its gracious declarations.' Alluding to his sufferings during his nights of delirium, he said to his wife: How difficult,-how almost impossible, would it be to induce me voluntarily to suffer again the agonies of these two nights.' But how wonderful was the love of Christ! He saw clearly before him the full weight of his tremendous sufferings, and yet, har. ing them full in his view, he chose to go forward,-to endure the whole! O the surpassing love of Christ!' "He was much distressed at the idea of returning again to his overwhelming ministerial duties. Oh!' he said, 'I dare not, I cannot, again undertake the responsibility to God of that parish! When I look round my Church, and see the multitudes who flock to it every Saobath, and ask myself of how few of them I dare entertain the hope that they are Christians indeed,-I feel an anguish I cannot express! Oh! how can I resume their spiritual charge !'' Once his fortitude in this prospect entirely gave way; and he exclaimed in a tone of deep est earnestness, Would that I were safe in heaven!"" For a time, Mr Patterson's partial recovery excited fond hopes that his useful life would be prolonged. The hope was vain. He again relapsed, under symp toms which, to his medical attendants at least, appeared fatal. But we cannot better describe the closing scene than in the language of his biographer. "The mental restlessness of the sufferer had a cha racter of elevation and grandeur about it, which astenished and overawed all who approached him. His fevered mind seemed thronged and hurried with a rapid succession of vast thoughts, and vivid images, and ineffable emotions, to which he gave expression in lan guage which, in point of energy and grandeur of conception, surpassed all that they had ever conceived him capable of in his happiest efforts. Some one has said, 'Genius is a fearful gift, for which I should not have the boldness to pray:' the fearfulness of the gift was awfully felt by all who surrounded the deathbed of this accomplished man and pious Christian. At times his mind shone out with surpassing brightness, and again it sunk into sudden and painful eclipse; now he seemed as if absorbed in silent devotion, and again a scene mental excitement, followed by one of mortal agony, took place. And yet, amidst all this preternatural 26tivity of mind, and while his words seemed to be revealing the deepest secrets of his soul, there was a be liness and purity about his conceptions, a piety in his very wanderings,-which indicated how closely his mind still cleaved to God. The few bright intervals that now occurred-in one of which he named and e versed a little with his younger brother, who had turned in time from the country to attend his de bed-were passed in a state of comparative tranquility and composure: and perhaps he enjoyed an inward con sciousness and sense of consolation-perhaps the ritual was in him invisibly triumphant over the mortal There is at least no reason to doubt, that had he beet permitted to meet death in the calm exercise of his f culties, his faith would have been triumphant in the last hours of mortality, and have bid defiance to the mortal powers of agony and the grave; and that, with perfect serenity of soul, in full reliance upon the merits and mediation of his Saviour, he would have rendered up his spirit to Him from whom it came.' Nature was at length exhausted, and at three o'clock on the morn of Monday, the 29th of June 1835, Mr Patterson expired Mysterious, indeed, are the ways of Provide and in nothing more mysterious than in suddenly ting short the life of one whose talents, and chararet, and extensive usefulness, were of such signal import ance, not merely to the parish with which he was not immediately connected, but to the world in general. It is no small consolation under a loss which has been so keenly felt, that an opportunity is afforded, by the recent publication of his Discourses, of still profiting by the taste, the genius, and the piety of a pastor so richly gifted. In point of fervid eloquence, glowing imagination, and holy feeling, those remains are strikingly characteristic of Mr Patterson's accomplished, and elegant, and pious mind. The memoir prefixed to the Discourses, from which the inaterials of our present Sketch have been obtained, is drawn up with singular taste and judgment; the pieces selected are some of the author's happiest efforts; and the work, as a whole, is so highly creditable to his memory, that we sincerely hope it will be extensively welcomed as a valuable accession to the ample stores of our religious literature. STRAY LEAVES FROM THE JOURNAL OF BY THE REV. DAVID Waddell. THE INDIANS. ence. He affected compliance with their request, and promised to send a detachment of soldiers to afford them protection. But this was far from his intention. It was resolved that, to put an end to their clamours, the whole race of Indians in the country should be extirpated. And as they lived in their miserable huts at a considerable distance from one another, the Spaniards, that they might collect them all into a body, and thus cut them off at one blow, invited them to join their troops in a predatory incursion, which they alleged they had long meditated, upon Rio Grande. The Indians, tempted by the hope of plunder, easily fell into this stratagem; and, having left the aged and helpless in a neighbouring wood, every one capable of bearing arms proceeded to the place of meeting. As soon as they came within musket-shot of the Monte Videan troops, the signal of attack was given, and a general carnage ensued. The Indians, determining not to die unrevenged, fought with desperate courage, till, overpowered by the superior numbers of Don Frutos' soldiers, they were all cut down except five men, who were taken alive, and, with the females and children, sent to Monte Video. Such was the perfidious treatment this brave Indian band received for the services they had rendered to Don Frutos. Such was the horrid cruelty of this petty governor of Monte Video, having himself Indian blood flowing in his veins. "This man devotes his brother, and destroys; Ir is curious to observe the different feelings with which the Spaniards at Monte Video regard the aboriginal inhabitants of the country, and the natives of Africa. To the latter they are usually kind and humane; but their treatment of the former, though the rightful proprietors of the soil, is characterised by the most merciless ferocity. This deep-rooted aversion to the Indians prevails, to a greater or less extent, over all the continent of South America, and rankles, not only in the breast of the old Spaniard, but in the more gentle and humane heart of the Creole. They seem, indeed, to have waged against them a war of extermina-shivering with cold, (for it was during a winter pamtion, and, in many places, with but too much success. Whenever they begin, in any part of the country, to ap-children in their hands, and carrying their babies on pero, and they were all nearly naked;) leading their pear in considerable numbers, "the dogs of war' are immediately let loose upon them; and, after murdering the men, the women and children are conveyed into the towns, and disposed of as servants among the inhabitants. "Thus, where their carnage and their conquests cease, They make a solitude, and call it peace.' This cruel and treacherous policy towards the Indians has been pursued by the Spaniards ever since they took possession of the country; and, as the same system has been adopted in the northern division of the continent, there is reason to apprehend that the whole race will, erelong, become extinct. The present rulers of this republic act upon the same barbarous and perfidious principles as their predecessors. The provinces of Monte Video were, at one time, thickly peopled with Indians; but, having been either hunted down to the death, or forced to seck shelter in the unfrequented and unexplored wilds of the interior, their number does not now exceed two or three hundred. In the beginning of the year 1831 Don Frutos Ravera, the president, caused nearly five hundred of these poor unfortunate creatures to be slain. He had, a few years before, decoyed them into the states, and trained them as soldiers, for the purpose, it is alleged, of enabling him to overcome the opposite faction, and to maintain his ascendency in the government. Having selected the most robust of the men for his army, he left the rest to wander in the interior, and to be hunted by the peasantry from province to province, till they found a restingplace in some destitute district of the country, where neither food nor shelter could be obtained. In these wretched circumstances, they sent a deputation to the president, soliciting him to redress their griev ances, and provide them with the means of subsist The Creoles are those who have been born in the country, and are descended from Europeans. I saw the remnant of these Indians, about ten days after the massacre, driven into Monte Video like a herd of cattle. Wearied and worn out; wet and * their backs; their long elotted raven hair hanging loosely over their shoulders, and streaming in the winter blast; some of them lagging behind, wrinkled with years, and stooping under the infirmities of age, and but ill able to endure the fatigues of the journey:-the group, motley and grotesque as it was, presented a spectacle so appalling, that I involuntarily started back from the window in horror. I prevailed on myself, bowever, a few days after, to visit them at the barracks, where they were exposed to the inspection of the public, who were allowed to select such as pleased them for domestic servants. Most of the children had already been disposed of; and scarce any remained, but such as were either decrepit with age, or of too indomitable a character ever to become serviceable. I observed, at a little distance from the rest, a young woman in great distress. And, on inquiring the cause of it, I was informed, that she had been appropriated by one individual, and that another heartless wretch had robbed her of her sucking child, and nobody would tell her where it was. The spectators, indeed, seemed to regard the hapless creatures with as little commiseration, as they would have done so many wild horses of the plain. While standing in the crowd, bewailing their melancholy situation, an old Spaniard turned round to me, and coolly remarked, that "they ought to be carried away to some desert island, and burned;" and scarce had I shrunk back in silent disgust from this dastardly fellow, when another came up to me, and with equal coolness made a similar remark. The number of Indians residing in the different towns, who have been reclaimed from the desert by this barbarous process, is now very considerable. Many of A strong wind, so called from its blowing over the Pampas of Buenos Ayres. them have become soldiers, and some domestic ser- By far the greater portion, however, of this ill-fated But the worst remains yet to be told. The discovery of America by the Christian world has proved to its inhabitants the source only of suffering, and their greatest calamities have been inflicted under the guise of Christianity. Columbus, indeed, was actuated by the most benevolent views, and prosecuted his discoveries upon the most enlightened and liberal principles, seeking to benefit, not to destroy, the human species. the death of that great and illustrious man, the policy But after of Spain towards the Indians was completely changed. One crowd of profligate adventurers arrived after another, and, under pretence of propagating the Christian faith, the most dreadful excesses of rapine and cruelty were committed. violence, walked hand-in-hand, and spread over the Superstition, avarice, and length and breadth of the continent terror, devastation, and death. Christianity, indeed, was introduced among met, only at the point of the bayonet. The knowthe ignorant heathen, but, like the religion of Maholedge of the true God was occasionally offered to them, that the avaricious hand of power might the more easi but only in the spirit of the arch-destroyer of our race, ly grasp the treasures they possessed. The kingdon of Christ was sometimes proclaimed amongst them, alleged vicegerent, might the more readily be acknowbut it was only that the sovereignty of the Pope, his ledged, and the will of the conquerors more subinissively obeyed. The cross was held up as an object of worship to those who had never heard of the name of Jesus; and millions of human beings were deliberately butchered for not embracing tenets which they could not understand. When Pizarro invaded Peru, be car Valverde, a Dominican friar, addressed to the Inca a ried the sword in one hand, and the cross in the other. tianity, which he pressed him to embrace, and urging long discourse, unfolding to him the principles of Chrishim to submit to the king of Spain, to whom the Pope tience, replied thus to his pious monitor:-" How had given Peru. Atahualpa having listened with paextravagant is it in the Pope, to give away so liberally that which does not belong to him! God the Holy Ghost: these are all your gods: and the you own, to God the Father, to God the Son, and to He is inferior. gods only can dispose of kingdoms. I am willing to be played his power by sending armies to such distant a friend to the King of Spain, who has sufficiently discountries; but I will not be his vassal. to no mortal prince; I know no superior upon earth. I owe tribute The religion of my ancestors I venerate, and to renounce it would be foolish and impious, until you have convinced me that it is false, and that yours, which you would have me to embrace, is true. dies. who died upon a tree; I worship the sun, who never You adore a God, " The Spanish soldiers; "vengeance, my friends; kill these "Vengeance!" cried Valverde, turning towards the dogs, who despise the religion of the cross." word of command was given, and instantly obeyed. The slaughter was dreadful, and the pillage immense. Pizarro, having seized the person of the Inca, drained him of his treasure, under pretence of a ransom for his liberty, and then condemned him to the flaines as an ther Valverde, he obtained a mitigation in his punishobstinate idolater. But through the mediation of Fa ment, on condition that he would die in the Christian faith. Atahualpa was accordingly baptized, and then strangled at the stake. The ve allow the perpetrators of such atrocities as these to But it is impossible that Divine Providence could escape with impunity. The only son of the man who suggested to Don Frutos the massacre of the Indians described above, was the only officer that fell in the engagement. Pizarro, Valverde, and many of the most active and ruthless oppressors of that persecuted geance of heaven has, indeed, long since fallen uprace, perished by a miserable death. conquest of Mexico and Peru put that people i on the whole of the Spanish nation. possession of more specie than all the other nations of Though the Europe, yet from that period they have been contingally declining in population, industry, and vigour. They are poor amid their treasures; while other nations, prowants. fiting by their indolence, grow wealthy by supplying theat ed all ranks of their people, and enervated the nation The vices attendant upon riches have corruptEurope, has become one of only secondary importans spirit. Portugal has, from the operation of the same cad And Spain, from being the first kingdom passage to India by the Cape of Good Hope, a experienced a similar fate. On the discovery settlement of Brazil, the sudden influx of wealt, and the increase of luxury, began to enervate the 1 tional mind, and the spirit of enterprise, for which the Portuguese had been so long distinguished, soon vanished; the fruits of her perfidy and rapacity being thus converted, by a wise constitution of things, into an instrument of divine punishment. The same righteous retribution, which has thus visited the parent states, seems also to have overtaken their descendants in South America. And it is a remarkable fact, and one that appears to furnish a living and lasting proof of an all-presiding and overruling Providence, that Portugal and Spain, notwithstanding all the treasures that have been poured into them, are the most impoverished and degraded countries in Europe; and that the Spanish and Portuguese states in South America, though they possess the richest lands and the loveliest climates, are, nevertheless, the poorest and the feeblest in the whole world. How justly has it been remarked, that when human policy fixes one end of a chain round the ankle of a slave, divine justice rivets the other round the neck of his tyrant! DISCOURSE. and crown to the wonders by which the period of ed. That miracle was the resurrection of Lazahis personal ministry had been irradiated and adornrus; of whose death, though at the distance of many miles, he had been informed by the omniscience which dwelt within him, and from the sphere of which no interval, either of space or time, could remove the slightest object, or the most trivial event. This melancholy occurrence, melancholy to natural apprehensions in general, and especially to the feelings of the bereaved and desolate sisters, Jesus here announces to his disciples, though in the tenderest and most soothing terms, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth." O blessed and illustrious title which here adorns the name of Lazarus-the friend of Jesus and of the followers of Jesus. What glory and happiness are implied in being thus loved by Christ, in being the object of such kind regard to him, the most exalted being BY THE LATE REV. JOHN BROWN PATTERSON, A.M., who ever wore the human form-the Incarnate Minister of Falkirk. "After that he saith unto them, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep," &c,-JOHN Xi. 11-23. Only-Begotten of the Father-and, as the most exalted, so the most powerful and affectionate of friends, armed with infinite might, and prompted by infinite love, and pledged by infinite faithfulTHE preceding context exhibits our Lord and hisness, to protect, to bless, to save his people even disciples engaged in conversation, at Bethabara to the uttermost, from henceforth and for ever! beyond Jordan, respecting the propriety of return- Nor is it Lazarus alone that Jesus condescends to ing to Judea. They had left that district of the call his friend, but all who, like Lazarus, believe, Holy Land about four months before, in conseand trust, and love, and serve him. "Ye are my quence of the imminent peril of their lives from friends," he says to every one of us, “if ye do the persecuting violence of the rulers and popu- whatsoever I command you." "Henceforth, lace at Jerusalem. The disciples, accordingly, says he, and that to men, the brethren of the dust, who were still weak and timid men,-not yet enHenceforth I call you not servants, but friends." dued with that "power from on high" which But observe, it is not Lazarus only whom the lips made them soon after resolute, in the cause of into which " grace was poured" decked, in this their beloved Master, to brave the world's scorn memorable saying, with a beautiful and blessed and rage, the tyrant's brandished steel, the lion's name. Behold how, by the Saviour's word, even gory mane, and all the ghastly forms of death death-the spectral destroyer-the king of terwith which man's ingenious cruelty could arm his rors-becomes fair to look upon! "Our friend batred of the truth, with sufficient plainness inti- Lazarus sleepeth." The image of sleep, indeed, mated their disinclination, for the present, to exis one which, in all languages, has been employed pose themselves or their Lord again to such dan- as a gentler name for dissolution, in order to assist ger as they had but recently escaped. Their ob- the mind in escaping from the abhorred ideas of jections, however, were overruled by Jesus, from suffering and dishonour with which the naked the consideration-expressed under a very strik-name of death is commonly associated. There ing and significant image-that the time of opportunity was brief and infinitely important, and when once allowed to pass, could never be retrieved; that his own term of labour, in particular, was now hastening to a close, and that the work appointed for it, which required his presence in Judea, must be done now or left undone for ever. That work consisted of a great variety of most important transactions, which, crowded in all their multitude and magnitude into the few days now left of his illustrious life, made them beyond comparison the most memorable period in the history of our world. Of these, not the least striking and interesting in its circumstances was the demonstration which he intended to give of his own glory, and the glory of the Father, who had sent him, by the performance of a miracle of such surpassing splendour, as might form a worthy close are resemblances enough between the outward symptoms and accompaniments of slumber and of dissolution, the shut eyelid, the closed ear, the stillness, the unconsciousness, the inactivity by which both alike are marked,—to have readily suggested the metaphor in question to those who were in search of some such bland and soothing image. But then the effect of the gentle appellation, when founded only on the circumstances which sense contemplates, was apt to be much impaired to meditative and inquiring minds, by the doubt and apprehension which forced itself upon their thoughts, that that repose might not be altogether what poets termed it," a dreamless sleep; " that while the body slumbered motionless and still, the soul, the ever-active soul, might perchance be overwhelmed with visions more terrible, might be tossed on billows of more fiery agitation, than had made life a storm or an agony. The apprehen- | mourn-whom you profess to mourn because you works do follow them." But while there is every reason to believe, that in all the emphasis in which the gentle name of sleep is applied to the departure hence of every true believer, it was applicable to the death of Lazarus, though no earlier awakening had been prepared for him than for his fellow-dwellers " in the congregation of the deed;" still the fact, that his continuance in that state was to be so brief, and followed by so speedy a revival, imparted a peculiar nerve to the image of slumber, as employed in his particular case. It was with reference to this early awakening in reserve for her, that Jesus said of the daughter of Jairus, "The damsel is not dead, but sleepeth ;" and, doubtless, the same idea of a temporary and short continuance in the state of the departed, was one thing implied in the expression now before us, "Our friend Lazarus sleepeth," followed as it is immediately with the declaration, "But I go that I may awake him out of sleep." "O that such words might now be added," methinks I hear the widow, the fatherless, the bereaved, exclaiming," O that such words might now be added to the intimation, Our friend sleepeth! O that he who added them yet dwelt upon the earth, and yet exerted his power in like manner as of old, for the consolation of the desolate mourners!" A natural wish, my brethren, but, as you know, a vain one. The slumbers of those whom you have laid to rest within the narrow-house, with the deep dust for their pillow, and the green sod for their covering, is the slumber of a long, long night; "Till the heavens be no more they shall not arise, nor awake out of their sleep." But with regard to those that "sleep in Jesus," let this consideration check the idle, the selfish, although, as I admitted, natural desire, that its fulfilment were loss to those whom you | loved them. To them to die was gain; for them Meanwhile we know, that the time, though dis- |