from all parts of the country were sent in. Wherever he went he was received with kindness and cordiality; in many places with that deep respect and veneration which had grown up in the minds of those who had admired his works and had heard of his labours; and in many places he was welcomed with feelings of ardour rising to enthusiasm."

Dr. Macleod was almost incessantly engaged either in public services or private investigations and interviews, but before he had worked out his plan of operations, he was prostrated by sickness, and after a hasty visit to Benares, Agra, Delhi and other noted cities, embarked for home. He was met at Alexandria by Mrs. Macleod, and returned to Scotland by Malta, Naples, Rome and Paris. He writes:

"That night I returned was indescribable-so unreal and yet so real. Never was there to me so dreamlike a thing as when dear friends, deacons, elders and members of my church, and working people, met me at the railway, and shook me by the hand. Spectres Icould not have been more unreal. It seemed as if it could not be they, and that I was not myself, and home again. India seemed to follow me up till that moment, and Scotland did not seem real. The present was not as the past; and then the evermemorable supper in my own house, with my mother and aunts, and sisters and brothers, and children! What! was I at home?

Was I

alive? Had I returned? Perhaps the feeling of never returning to which I clung, somehow, as necessary for my peace, made the return the more strange and incomprehensible. I cannot describe the feeling. It was not excitement, but calm, dumb, dreamlike wonder! . . . O, my dear Father! how I thank and bless Thee, and record Thy goodness. But it is the old story of Love!"

The General Assembly of 1869,

unanimously elected Dr. Macleod to the Moderatorship. This was the highest ecclesiastical honour that could be awarded him, and was a fitting recognition of his great services in the pulpit, and in the Home and Foreign Missions of the Church. Whatever influence the office gave was used by him in the advocacy of schemes for the enlargement of the Church, and especially of its Indian Mission. The claims and necessities of the latter work were frequently urged by him with all his power of argument and eloquence. India had taken hold of his heart, and he went on pleading for funds and missionaries, even when in bodily suffering which he might justly have assigned as a reason for perfect rest. His health was so shattered that in 1872 he was compelled to give up his Convenership. He made his final appeal for the Mission in a long and memorable speech before the Assembly.

This was nearly the last scene of his public life. He preached once in the Barony Church on the following Sabbath, taking for his text, "We have forsaken all, and followed Thee; what shall we have therefore?" All that he had written of the sermon was on a sheet of note paper; but from a full heart he exhorted his hearers to accept the guidance of Christ, assuring them that if they did so, they would at the last be able cheerfully to give up life and all into His keeping. With that sermon his work ended. The Monday was his sixtieth birthday, and he thus wrote to his friend, Principal Shairp: Principal Shairp: "I am threescore years to-day! John, dear, I cannot speak about myself. I am dumb with thoughts that cannot be uttered As I feel time so rapidly passing, I take your hand, dear old friend, with a firmer grip. I

...

have many friends; few old ones! O that I loved my oldest and truest, my Father and Saviour, better! But should I enter heaven as a forlorn ship, dismasted, and a mere log-it is enough-for I will be repaired. But I have been a poor concern, and have no peace but in God's mercy to a miserable sinner." He suffered severely through the week, but was often engaged in audible or silent prayer. heard of the birth of a nephew, he said, "I have been praying for this little boy of Donald's; that he may live to be a good man, and by God's grace be a minister in the Church of Christ-the grandest of all callings."

Having

On Sunday morning, June 16th, he asked his wife to sit beside him, and spoke to her freely of his joy and confidence in God, telling her to write down what he said that his words might be a comfort to her in her day of sorrow. Two of his daughters went to him to kiss him before going to church. Taking the hand of one of them he said, "If I had strength, I could tell you things would do you good through all your life. I am an old man and have passed through many experiences, but now all is perfect peace and perfect calm. I have glimpses of heaven that no tongue, or pen, or words can describe.' About an hour after, with a gentle sigh, his soul escaped to heaven.

He was buried beside his father in the Campsie graveyard. Civic and University dignitaries, ministers and members of numerous churches, preceded or followed the hearse to the outskirts of the city; while crowds of working people watched

the procession as it passed along the streets, and testified by their sorrowful faces how they loved and lamented him who had been to them so true a friend, and whose labours had tended so much to their social and religious improvement. At Campsie the shops were closed, and the whole population united in paying respect to the son of their former minister. As the coffin was about to be lowered into the grave, three wreaths were placed upon it bearing inscriptions showing that they were from Her Majesty and other members of the Royal Family.

On

"The spot where he sleeps is a suggestive emblem of his life. the one side are the hum of business and the houses of toiling humanity; on the other, green pastoral hills, and the silence of Highland solitudes. More than one eye rested that day on the sunny slope where he had so lately dreamt of building a home for his old age-more than one heart thanked God for the more glorious mansion into which he had entered."

Unqualified approval cannot be given to all Dr. Macleod's opinions and public movements, but he was a good and great man, intent on the honour of Christ and the moral improvement of his fellow men. He presented a fine combination of manly power with philanthropic Christian zeal. He was, to quote the inscription on one of the two painted windows placed by Her Majesty in Craithie Church as memorials of his ministry, "a man eminent in the Church, honoured in the State, and in many lands greatly beloved."

VOL. VI. FIRST SERIES.

2 A

James V., was at first held in scarcely disguised captivity, surrounded by the allies and retainers of Angus. Seizing at last an opportunity, he escaped in disguise during the night to Stirling Castle, where his mother was residing, put himself in the hands of the enemies of the Douglases, summoned a Parliament, and procured a decree of banishment against Angus, who made his escape into England. This was the commencement of a reign whose principal policy was to weaken and depress the always inordinate power of the nobles. Consequently the King had to ally himself closely with the clergy, who alone could furnish him with the moral and material support necessary to maintain the contest. In course of years the continual opposition of noble and priest disposed the aristocrats to favour the Reformation; but for the time the clergy were checked in their persecuting course only by the inconstant lenity of the King.

The first distinguished victim after the death of Hamilton* was his convert, the Canon Alesius. Returning to the Priory at St. Andrew's, he began deeply to lament "the pitiable state of the Church, with the Holy Scriptures shut up, with no competent teachers, the doctrine of Christ buried in thick darkness, and pious folk subjected to horrible tortures." At the same time he steadfastly refused, in conversation with his brother canons, to condemn the opinions for which Hamilton had died. Hepburn, the Prior, reported these sayings to the Archbishop, who, laying a snare for Alesius, appointed him to preach before the clergy assembled at St.

* See this Magazine for January, 1876.

young preacher delivered an earnest exhortation to all priests to be examples to the flock, and reform themselves of their scandalous illliving. Such was the effect of the sermon that several of the canons joined together to prefer to the King a formal complaint against their shamelessly licentious Prior. While they were thus engaged, Hepburn entered their assembly at the head of some men-at-arms, and ordered the seizure of Alesius. The canons interfered; Hepburn drew a sword, and attempted to attack his supposed accuser, who fell at his feet beseeching him not to shed blood. The passionate priest, disdaining to use his sword on a prostrate foe, kicked the suppliant with such force that he fainted on the floor. When he came to himself, the soldiers, taking him and the other canons, thrust them into a dungeon.

This violent scene being known in the city, caused great excitement, and some of the nobles made appeal to the King to check the Prior's tyranny. James ordered the immediate liberation of all the prisoners, adding that he would go himself and set them free with his own hand, if he did not know that the place was infected with the plague. Hepburn released the other canons, but removing Alesius only from one prison to another, had him cast into a horrible hole full of filth and vermin. After twenty days a rumour of this reached the King's ears, who, summoning the Prior, commanded him at once to liberate the captive. Hepburn swore by all the saints that Alesius was free, and hastening back to the priory, ordered him to be brought out, washed and clothed in clean garments. He commanded him to say nothing of the

way in which he had been treated, and then sent for the magistrates of the city, and, pointing to Alesius, requested them to give the lie to the calumnies which said that he was kept in prison. The magistrates, distrusting the Prior, requested Alesius to tell them the whole truth, which he did to the confusion of his superior, who, however, promised that, as he was now free, he should remain at liberty. But no sooner had the council withdrawn than, turning with furious reproaches upon the poor canon, he ordered him back to the same loathsome dungeon, where he lay for more than a year. An appeal to the Archbishop was in vain. He only observed in reply that he noticed a leaning to Lutheranism in Alesius's sermon, and that he deserved the penalty imposed on him.

Still he had friends in the priory, who, assuring him that his death was intended, urged him to make his escape and flee the country. With great reluctance he consented. "Nothing," he writes, "is dearer to well-nurtured souls than their native land; but the Church," he adds, "is the Christian's country far more than the place which gave him birth."

He left the convent at midnight, and alone made his way to the shore of the Firth of Tay, and crossed to Dundee, where lay a vessel whose captain was a German Protestant. Alesius went on board at once, and had barely put to sea when Hepburn and a company of horsemen rode into the town in hot pursuit. Their victim was beyond their reach. He was taken safely to Sweden, and passing thence to France, finally found refuge with the liberal Hermann, Archbishop of Cologne.

It was not only in the Priory of St. Augustine that the reformed doctrine found advocates amongst the clergy. The next exile was

the King's confessor, a Dominican named Alexander Seaton. Bold almost to recklessness, he feared neither to denounce the vices of the priests nor to rebuke the immoralities of the King. Preaching one Lent in the cathedral at St. Andrew's, he openly proclaimed salvation through faith in Christ alone, and when during his absence the Archbishop appointed another Dominican to refute him, he hastened back, ordered the bells to be rung to gather a congregation, and ascending the pulpit reiterated and confirmed his former teaching. Summoned before the primate for this offence, he defended himself in a tone of contemptuous frankness. Witnesses deposed that he had called bishops dumb dogs and idle pastors. "Consider," he replied, "what ears these asses have who cannot discern Paul, Isaiah, Zechariah and Malachi from friar Alexander Seaton. I of my own head affirmed nothing, but declared what the Spirit of God had before pronounced." It might be the King's confessor thought himself secure in the royal favour, but this he soon found he had lost by his fearless conscientiousness. When Beatoun denounced him to James, the prince replied at once, "I know more than you of his audacity," and left him to his fate. Seaton perceived his danger and escaped across the border to Berwick, and ultimately making his way to London, was appointed chaplain to the Duke of Suffolk and attracted large crowds by his eloquence.

Being thus rid of the evangelical preachers the Scottish bishops directed their attack against the Gospel itself, and issued a decree, to be published in every parish, forbidding any to sell or read the New Testament. The second Scottish martyr of the Reformation, Henry Forrest, a Benedictine monk of Lin

lithgow, was condemned on this accusation, and was burnt at St. Andrew's, on the north of the Abbey Church, the place being specially chosen, says Foxe, "to the intent that all the people of Forfar might see the fire, for it was known that the new faith had many friends in that county."

It was from Forfarshire indeed that its next confessor came; but seldom has a stranger recruit been brought by more unlikely means into the army of martyrs. David Straiton, of Lauriston in the neighbourhood of Montrose, was widely known for his rude and eccentric manners. Born of a noble house, he found his pleasure in no way usual among men of his rank. His delight was to be out on the sea in the stormiest weather, handling his boat himself, and proud to surpass the roughest fisherman in the toilsome management of the sail and the net. His success in this strange occupation excited the avarice of Prior Hepburn, who sent to demand tithe of his spoils. The reckless sportsman answered "He shall find them ready for him if he'll come and take them on the spot; " and from that time whenever the nets were drawn in, the men were bidden to pay the Prior of St. Andrew's his tithe, and every tenth fish was scrupulously returned to the sea. A neighbouring priest was ordered to go and take the dues. He went; but as soon as Straiton saw him he began contemptuously to pitch the fish to, or rather at him, not caring where they struck, nor that some of them fell into the water. Hepburn, looking round for means of revenge on his unceremonious foe, could find nothing more promising than to institute proceedings against him for heresy. The charge, purely unfounded and prompted by private malice, had an unexpected

effect. The defiant seaman's pride gave way before the terrible meaning and penalties of heresy. In his humiliation he began to examine his own heart, acknowledged his sins, felt the need of forgiveness and inquired eagerly for instruction. Meetings for the secret reading of the Gospel had for some time been held in Dun Castle, the seat of Erskine, Provost of Montrose, who, while studying abroad, had become converted to the Protestant faith. Hearing of the change which had come upon his singular neighbour, Erskine visited him. They had frequent conversations and soon Straiton was regularly seen at the meetings, where before long the truth took hold upon him and he was "transformed," says John Knox, as by a miracle.”

He now was much in company with his nephew, the young laird of Lauriston, who possessed a New Testament, and in lonely places would read to his uncle, who was himself ignorant of letters. One day the portion chosen was the tenth chapter of St. Matthew. At the words, "Whosoever shall deny Me before men, him will I also deny before My Father which is in heaven," Straiton started, fell on his knees and remained a long while earnestly gazing upward but without speaking. At last he prayed aloud, "Lord, I have been sinful, and Thou wouldst be only just, wert Thou to withhold Thy grace from me. Nevertheless for the sake of Thy mercy suffer not the dread of pain or of death to lead me ever to deny Thee or Thy truth." From that time he began to preach the Saviour he had found, but was soon seized, carried to Edinburgh, and, after a short trial, burnt, along with a priest named Gourlay, on Calton Hill.

Beside these executions, banishments were frequent. Sir James,