he would enjoy being next Archdeacon Farrar, so he took his seat: He talked a good deal to Farrar principally upon ecclesiastical history. I could not catch much of what he said. Then he began to talk of the Italian preacher who is creating so much enthusiasm just now, and asked if I had read some of his sermons. He did not hear him. Then he said to Dr. Farrar and me that he could find no preachers in Italy or France now; that when he had greater powers of locomotion and of hearing that he always sought out the good preachers, but they did not seem to exist now; that he enjoyed hearing them as they were all chosen men and only preached a few times a year and so made a great effort. Now, he said, people complained in our country that the preaching was poor. "I marvel that it is so good; I cannot understand how men can preach such sermons as they do two and three times a week, and that all the year round. I think that at one of the services Scripture should be expounded." I remarked that many clergymen found it more difficult to do this than to preach. "Yes, but it is the people I am considering. It is most important to have their minds stored with Scripture-to have Scripture well expounded to them." (Do many Prime Ministers or Ex-Prime Ministers talk this way?) I asked him if he knew that Toftcombs, which for about two hundred years belonged to the Gladstones, was for sale ? We went on from this into the family pedigree, into the burial place of the Gledstanes, then how sorry he was the name had been changed-especially as the old name was much finer-that it was not like Jones, Robinson or Williams-I added "or Smith." "No," he said, "that is a very fine name. Do you not know”’ (quite excited) "the meaning of it? Why we have had goldsmiths, silversmiths, blacksmiths, etc., from the earliest times, and I have no patience with people who change Smith into Smythe and spoil the name; one man even put in a j." I told him my father-who was the clergyman of Biggar parish, in which Toftcombs is, for fifty-two years, and had a beautiful pre-Reformation church-lived with a Mr. Gladstone when he went to the parish till his manse was ready. Then I said the last Gladstone left the place about fifteen years ago, and he said he had met him in Glasgow at a meeting, and was very eloquent, so I said I knew him and described him so as to be sure he was the He was a licentiate of the Free Church. Then he said there was a watchmaker who was one of the last there, and I said “and very good watches and clocks he made," and that I had seen one two years ago which belongs to a daughter of Dr. Chalmers. He said he was a second cousin twice removed. We had quite an animated discussion, and I told him one of my father's stories about a man who lived near Biggar, who, Mr. G. said, was a distant connection, and where he had once gone to tea. Every one seemed happy and pleased. Miss Pitt found Mr. Childers very pleasant and inclined to talk. After we three ladies left the table Mr. G. spoke half an hour on the licensing question and on some other points of the Local Government Bill which had been brought in that day. It was a very stormy night, snowing hard, and Mrs. G. came for him about a quarter to

same.

eleven, so Sam did not propose he should come upstairs again as he evidently did not wish to keep her waiting. We were delighted wth Archdeacon Farrar. He took Amy down, and courteously asked if she would not like to sit next Mr. Gladstone; however, she kept to her own seat. Then in the drawing-room he spoke to Gordon (he asked before dinner if he was our son, and said he had noticed him in church), and asked if he would like to go over the Abbey with him, and offered to do so yesterday, and said he might bring any one he liked; so he fixed a quarter to two, and said he would stay till three when the service begins. Gordon and his father, Mr. Lawrence, Jamie and I went and had a delightful time. He has such a memory and knows every stone of the Abbey. He offered to go again later in the season after the service, when he would be able to stay longer. It was such a delicate compliment. So we are all elated with our past week's experiences, and no one will rejoice with us more than you, only I feel you should have had all this and not we as you could have made so much more of it. I have been rather minute in my descriptions, but I knew you would like it. Mr. Gladstone looked really beautiful and quite juvenile with a pretty rose in his button hole, and his crush hat under his arm, and his courtesy seeming to belong to a past generation.

Yours affectionately,

(Signed) MELVILLE SMITH.

P.S.-I forget what we were talking about, but Mr. G. said very emphatically: "I am a very strong conservative, Mrs. Smith; I like to conserve all that is ancient and good, not to demolish, only to reform." "Yes," I said, "Mr. Smith always says you are the most conservative man in the House, and the safety-valve of the party.” He seemed quite pleased and said, Who says so?" Of course I replied, "Mr. Smith."

"

Appendix XIII

Reminiscences of W. P. LOCKHART

You have asked me to give some reminiscences of the early days of my dear friend, W. P. Lockhart, and I gladly comply with your wishes.

Our friendship commenced in the year 1861, when he was greatly used by God to revive religion among young men in Liverpool and the neighbourhood. I think it was in the year before that he commenced to preach. He was then a noble-looking young man, in the freshness and enthusiasm of youth, twenty-five years of age, and gifted with remarkable powers alike of body and mind.

I well remember how he impressed many of us in those early years. It was an inspiration to listen to him; he spoke with such directness and assurance of faith that his words went home to every heart. My recollections of him chiefly centre around Egremont, but I also remember well his Hope Hall addresses, and his work in Birkenhead. He twice paid visits to my native parish of Borgue, in Kirkcudbrightshire, and conducted a series of meetings in the Free Church there. It never was so crowded in my recollection, and deep and permanent results followed his faithful preaching of the gospel. There are persons still living there who attribute their true conversion to these services. I still remember one sermon of extraordinary power which he preached from the words, "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life" (1 John v. 12). His prayers were even more remarkable than his sermons; his intense pleading with God, the holy boldness with which he claimed fulfilment of God's promises, wrought a solemn awe in the congregation. He preached in the surrounding towns, and may be said to have started a revival of religion in those parts.

In

Yet withal he was a most genial and light-hearted companion. his intervals of leisure he was almost frolicsome, and no one ever had less of sanctimoniousness. I well remember him vaulting over a gate alongside the Church just before his meeting, to the great dismay of the austere Scotch Presbyterians. He combined naturalness and reality in a most winning manner, and seemed wholly delivered from that bugbear of self-consciousness which oppresses so many good people. His doctrine in these early days was an intense belief in the "finished work of Christ "; on the ground of that he preached a full and immediate salvation. He believed with all his soul that Christ had made a full atonement for sin on the cross, and that "faith in

the Beloved" brought immediate peace and pardon to the sinner. It seemed to me as if he had received a kind of revelation on the subject of Christ's "finished work." I always understood that he traced his own conversion to a sudden flash of light on those dying words of our Saviour," It is finished," and this was the keynote of his ministry all through his life. He held the old Calvinistic creed with this addition, that he believed in a free salvation offered to all; he drew the line between the saved and the unsaved in every address, and warned the latter that they were under condemnation, and would be eternally lost if they rejected the Saviour. I never remember a deeper feeling of solemn reality than in those early years of his work.

It is not needful for me to dilate on his later work, as you are far more competent than I am to speak of it. I was less associated with him after the sixties. Each of us had a busy life, and we moved in different channels, so that we did not meet so often, except in his autumn holidays, when he often was a visitor at my house. He passed through that process of mind which is common to all men, and became interested in a wider range of subjects. In his later years he was quite as much a pastor as an evangelist, and he showed the same skill as before in dividing the word of truth, and applying the principles of the Bible to all kinds of men and all conditions of life. Those who were accustomed to hear him will testify that few men equalled him in expounding the Word of God. His knowledge of the Scripture was almost unrivalled; he must have been well trained in youth. Like Timothy, "From a child he had known the Holy Scriptures," and this enabled him to start at once a full-fledged theologian when the truth which lay in his mind was vitalized by Divine grace.

His reverence for the Word of God was the foundation alike of his character and his teaching. He was utterly opposed to those rationalistic views which degrade the Bible to a collection of human ethics, partly fabulous and partly true. It was all alike-Old Testament as well as New-a Divine revelation. He heard the voice of God speaking in Genesis as well as in John; the miracles of Moses were as real to him as the miracles of Christ. He treated the Bible as a living organism, instinct with Divine life, the product of the Divine mind, and adapted to man at all stages of his history. Yet he was not what I would call a slavish traditionalist or a slavish literalist. He recognized the laws of historical perspective, and well understood that Divine revelation was a growth and development and had to be interpreted with reference to the age in which it was written and the people to whom it was addressed. His mind was essentially conservative in matters of religion, but he was not what may be called an obscurantist. He watched the progress of thought and criticism, and if he rejected modern Broad Church views it was not because he was ignorant of them, but because he believed they were false.

His religion was experimental as well as biblical. He believed in man's fallen estate because he felt the strength of sin within himself. He believed in Divine grace because it had saved him. He believed in salvation through the blood of Christ because his soul found pardon

and peace through the belief of that truth. The strength of his religion lay in the mixture of faith and experience; he could truly say : "We speak that we do know, and testify that we have seen."

Perhaps I may be allowed to glance at some other sides of his character. He was all his life a keen and interested observer of public affairs. He held that a pious citizen was called upon to take his full share in public duties, and not to immure himself in a cloister. His whole conception of religion was the antipodes of sacerdotalism; he hated priestcraft in every form, and viewed with dread the ascendancy of the High Church Party in the National Church. He often expressed to me his alarm at the Romeward movement of English Church life, and this not merely on religious grounds, but on civic as well. He held with all his soul that "the Reformation " was the foundation on which the liberties and greatness of the country were based, and he looked with dread to the obscuration of those great principles.

He was a Radical in politics. He believed in the essential equality of men, and opposed privilege in every form; but he was a loyal subject of Queen Victoria, and had no preference for republicanism over monarchy. He was contented with our institutions, believing that they were capable by adaptation to meet all the necessities of our national life. In the general structure of his mind and character he greatly resembled John Bright; and, like that great tribune of the people, he became more conservative in later years. He parted company with the Liberal Gladstonian Party when their great leader adopted "Home Rule for Ireland," and was a strong opponent of this policy to the end of his life. Had Mr. Lockhart gone into the political arena as his sphere of life, no one can doubt that he would have made his mark. He had astonishing powers of speaking, and an admirable voice, capable of reaching the largest audience, with a command of homely Saxon hardly excelled by John Bright himself. His lucidity of thought and expression was such that no one ever doubted what he meant. He always went straight to the point, was a hard hitter, and almost always carried his audience enthusiastically with him. It is well known that many years ago he might have been the accepted candidate of the Liberal Party in Liverpool, but he wisely chose the better part, and kept his strength for the work to which God had specially called him. The writer would be wanting in generosity if he forgot to add that he owed much to Mr. Lockhart at the time when he entered public life in Liverpool; his counsel and his speeches did much to secure success in that stirring contest.

Mr. Lockhart, like most strong characters, had the defects of his virtues. His intense individuality rather disqualified him from working on joint committees, or in associated enterprises. He was better fitted for personal and individual work, and he got on best with those who submitted to his powerful personality. This led him to tread sometimes on the toes of those who truly loved and admired him, but it was readily forgiven for the sake of his eminent services and perfect honesty. It may be questioned whether such a career as that of Mr.