May your bow long abide in strength! and the evening of your days be calm and peaceful, bright with the sure and certain hope of that better world, where, I hope, we shall meet to be for ever with the Lord!  With the greatest respect and affectionate regards, yours ever,

     THOMAS GUTHRIE.

I cannot fix the date of the following anecdote, nor does the date much matter:—­Some years ago a child, the son of the U.P. minister of Dunblane, was so dangerously ill, that a neighbouring lady, the wife of the Episcopal clergyman, who was much interested in the little boy, asked her husband if it might be permitted to beg the prayers of the congregation for his recovery.  The clergyman readily assented; and when the facts came to the knowledge of Dean Ramsay, and that it was a suggestion of a dear friend of his, he sent the lady a copy of his Reminiscences, with a letter to her husband, in which he says—­“I was greatly charmed with your account of prayers offered up for poor little Blair.  Tell your Mary I love her more than ever.  It has quite affected me, her proposing it.”  The husband is the Rev. Mr. Malcolm; the lady his wife, daughter of the Dean’s dear friend, Bishop Terrot.

But the end was approaching.  In December 1872 it was noticed with sorrow that for the first time since the commencement of the Church Society (1838), of which Ramsay was really the founder, the Dean was absent from the annual meeting of the general committee.  Soon it became known that his illness was more than a mere passing attack.  During its continuance the deepest interest was manifested in every quarter.  Each day, and “almost from hour to hour, the latest tidings were eagerly sought for.  In many churches and in many families besides those of our communion, prayers were offered for his recovery.  And when at last it became known that he had indeed passed away from this life, it was felt that we had lost not only a venerable Father of the Church, but one whose name, familiar as a household word, was always associated with kindly loving thoughts and deeds—­one who was deservedly welcome wherever he went, and whose influence was always towards peace and goodwill.”  The Rev. Mr. Montgomery, our present Dean of Edinburgh, whose words I quote, truly says that “he was a Churchman by conviction, but was ever ready to meet, and, where occasion offered, to act with others upon the basis of a common humanity and common Christianity.”

FOOTNOTES: 

[9] The margin seems to show that this page of the journal was not written till 1843.

[10] The Bishop said that the two impediments to profitable or amusing conversation were humdrum and humbug.

On another occasion, the Bishop having expressed his doubt of the truth of spirit-rapping, table-turning, etc., and being pressed with the appeal, “Surely you must admit these are indications of Satanic agency,” quietly answered, “It may be so, but it must be a mark of Satan being in a state of dotage!”