what appears to me, after carefully studying his life
and his character, a far likelier if a far less creditable
reason. After the Restoration Brodie’s
life, if life it could be called, was spent in a constant
terror lest he should lose his estates, his liberty,
and his life in the prelatic persecution; but, with
his sleepless management of men, if not with the blessing
of God and the peace of a good conscience, Alexander
Brodie died in his own bed, in Brodie Castle, on the
17th of April, 1680.
There were some things in which Alexander Brodie ran
well, to employ the apostle’s expression; in
some things, indeed, no man of his day ran better.
To begin with, Brodie had an excellent intellect.
If he did not always run well it was not for want
of a sound head or a sharp eye. In reading Brodie’s
diary you all along feel that you are under the hand
of a very able man, and a man who all his days does
excellent justice to his excellent mind, at least
on its intellectual side. The books he enters
as having read on such and such a date, the catalogues
of books he buys on his visits to Edinburgh and London,
and the high planes of thought on which his mind dwells
when he is at his best, all bespeak a very able man
doing full justice to his great ability. The
very examinations he puts himself under as to his
motives and mainsprings in this and that action of
his life; the defences and exculpations he puts forward
for this and that part of his indefensible conduct;
the debate he holds now with the presbyterian party
and now with the prelatist; the very way he puts his
finger down on the weak and unsound places in both
of the opposing parties; and, not least, his power
of aphoristic thought and expression in the running
diary of his spiritual life, all combine to leave the
conviction on his reader’s mind that Lord Brodie
was one of the very ablest men of a very able day
in Scotland. I open his voluminous diary at
random, and I at once come on such passages as these:
’If substantial duties are neglected or slighted
it is a shrewd suspicion, be the repentance what it
will, that all is not right. Lord, discover Thyself
in the duties of the time, and in every substantial
duty. At the same time, hang not the weight
of our wellbeing on our duties, but on Christ by faith.
I am a reeling, unstable, staggering, unsettled, lukewarm
creature. For Thy compassion’s sake forgive
and heal, warm, establish, enlighten, draw me and
I will follow. I am full of self-love, darkness
in my judgment, fear to confess Thee, or hazard myself,
or my estate, or my peace. . . . We poor creatures
are commanded by our affections and our passions;
they are not at our command; but the Holy One doth
exercise all His attributes at His own will; they
are all at His command; they are not passions or perturbations
in His mind, though they transport us. When
I would hate, I cannot. When I would love, I
cannot. When I would grieve, I cannot.
When I would desire, I cannot. But it is the
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