Life of James Hamilton

“A TRAP to catch a sunbeam,” — the playful title of a liction, strangely presents itself here as the fittest phrase to express the aim, sober, grave, and tender, of this real and recent history. Great and good lives, — lives that are at once manly and godly, where the affections that spring from the earth are imbued with the holiness that distils from heaven, — are like rays of sunlight which gladden the world while they shine, but leave it dark and chilly when they depart. 0 for an art in the moral sphere, equivalent to that of the photographer in the material, whereby we might seize, and fix, and perpetuate those rarer rays which stream through the mass of human history like veins of felspar in a quarry!

This Ls the specific task assigned to the biographer. Feeble and faint at best must be the image of a life transferred to a printed page, in comparison with that life itseK, a.s it was felt by friends while it lasted, and is remembered still; but, if the original were indeed a sunbeam sent from heaven to cheer a portion of this dull earth, a copy, to some extent true and suggestive, may be taken and kept. The negative which a biogi-aphy may fix for the use of posterity will fail indeed to reproduce the vital colours; but if it be at once fond and faithful it will secure a true outline, and help surviving friends to recall the vanished life.

The family from which James Hamilton sprang can be traced for several generations, some as proprietors and some as cultivators of the soil, in the middle ward of Lanarkshire. About the middle of the last century, John Hamilton, laird of Barnside and East Quarter, had reached an advanced age, and was unmarried. In these circumstances it was natural that James, the son of his deceased brother, should, in his youth, permit himself to be buoyed up with the hope of becoming in due time a country gentleman, and so being able to live on his rents without care or labour of his own. The marriage of the old gentleman, however, and the appearance of an heiress on the stage, effectually extinguished the young man’s fondly cherished hopes. But that which came in the form of a calamity turned out a blessing in disguise: it supplied the stimulus which was needed to mould and invigorate his character. The event that spoilt his prospect of an inheritance tore him away, before it was too late, from a career of idle sport, already begun, and projected his life upon a course of honourable industry. In 1761, at the age of twenty-three, he married Mary, daughter of Andrew Hamilton of Avondale, who had suffered much in person and property from incursions of the rebels in 1745. Thomas, their youngest son, originator and head of the eminent publishing house of Hamilton, Adams, and Co., London, still survives at a patriarchal age, in full possession of all his faculties, a pattern at once of the successful merchant, the accomplished gentleman, and the humble yet hopeful disciple of Christ.

William, an elder son, Dr. James Hamilton’s father, was horn on the 4th of February 1780, at Longridge in the parish of Stonehouse. The course of his early education is summed up in two short sentences of his autobiography, “The Bible was my class book. My mother was my tutor.” Somewhat imperfectly equipped, according to his own account, for want of a competent classical instructor within reach, he entered the University of Edinburgh in November 1796. Prosecuting each successive branch of his studies with extraordinary zeal, he completed with great credit his course of philosophy and theology, and was licensed as a probationer of the Scottish Church by the Presbytery of Hamilton in December 1804. After having served about three years as assistant successively in the parishes of Broughton and New Kilpatrick, he was ordained minister of St, Andrew’s Chapel, Dundee, in December 1807. There, with a wide sphere and abundant opportunities, he threw himself with his whole heart into the work of the ministry; but as the chapel was unendowed, and did not confer on its minister the privilege of a seat in any ecclesiastical court, he judged it his duty, within a period of two years, to accept a proffered presentation to the parish of Strathblane in the county of Stirling. In this place he continued serving God in the gospel with signal devotion and with much practical success till his death in 1835. As notices of his character and work from almost the beginning of his ministry in Strathblane will naturally emerge as we proceed, and entwine themselves round our own proper narrative, it is not necessary at this stage to prolong the sketch of his course. In the meantime, however, and by anticipation, it may be well to introduce the estimate of that gifted father, which was formed and expressed in mature life by his still more gifted son: —

“In that manse the animating presence was a ’ house-mother,’ who filled every corner with her kindly, cheerful influence; but somewhat awfully enshrined in his studious sanctuary, sate with brief interval his uncle,^ the Rev. William Hamilton, D.D. August in an altitude of six feet two, with raven locks brushed down on his high brow, with the darkest of eyes flashing terrible disdain on all shabbiness, as well as indignation at all sin, he was an object of uneasy respect to ‘moderate’ and temporizing CO -presbyters, and to some of the more jovial spirits amongst his own parishioners was so formidable, that rather than encounter him they would escape from his approach by a retreat more rapid than dignified. At the same time, his affections were so warm, his heart so tender, his standard of Christian attainment so lofty, his spirituality of mind was in such grand harmony with his intellectual majesty, his whole nature was so noble, that it was with an admiring, uplooking aff’ection that he was beloved by those who sufficiently knew him. His greatest failing

1 This sketch occurs in a memoir of his cousin, the Rev. James Hamilton, only son of the publislier, a most devoted and exemplary minister of the Church of England, Rector of Beddington, Surrey.

was a morbid sense of time’s precious n ess. Every moment was grudged which he did not give to his parish or his library. Even during the hasty repast his mind would be absorbed in the Magdeburg Centuriators or Owen on Perseverance; and what with forced journeys, and rising excessively early, and the absence of all recreation, he may be said to have shortened his days in redeeming the time. For, in regard to this as well as the other talent?, the maxim holds true — ‘There is that scattereth, and yet increaseth.’

“Although most generous in distributing his books, his money, and his influence, it must be confessed that his reluctance to part with a minute was miserly. Even the snatches surrendered to his family and friends were given with a grudge; and forgetful of the good which through his vast acquirements and conversational powers he could confer on others, it seemed never to strike him that in this form of beneficence he might after all be lending to the Lord, and fulfilling an important ministry.

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