M'Cheyne

Since the hour when the “Beloved Disciple” went up to lay his head once more — and forever — on the bosom of his Lord, the church has beheld no lovelier spirit than that of Egbert Murray McCheyne. His beautiful biography, which is finding its way into every hamlet in the land, is one of the richest treasures which the Great Head of the Church has given to his drooping and hungered flock in this century of time. I know not where such another “living epistle” can be found as the record of this young saint’s shining pilgrimage. The biography of the apostolic Brainerd saddens u by its pervading tone of melancholy. Heroic Martyns life is too painful to be read without tears. To spend an hour “witH Payson is almost like sitting at the feet of the great apostle; but his piety was mournfully tinged by a sombre reflection from a mind somewhat too morbid. But to McCheyne was vouchsafed their heavenly spirit, without their trials to sadden it or to shade its beauty. His piety was eminently cheerful and lightsome. He dwelt, while here below, far away from the damps that rise about Doubting Castle, and hard by the Beulah where the su.nlight ever falls. Through all the animating record of his life there is almost nothing to pain or to dishearten us. As most of my readers doubtless know, Robert Murray McCheyne was a young preacher of the Scotch national church wtio was called away to his crown just before the church had been sundered by the memorable, and glorious “Exodus” from the Erastian establishment. He entered the vineyard at twenty-one, and labored nine years. The scene of his apostolic toils, and prayers was Dundee. There he sowed his precious seed, and every returning season of communion witnessed some sheaves brought in with rejoicing. To pray, and to search the word of God — to prepare the beaten oil for the sanctuary, and to saturate his soul with divine truth — to plead with dying men, and to stand between the living and the dead; these formed the varied but yet unchanging employment of his fervid spirit.

We have never been brought in contact with a heart that seemed to be more deeply impregnated with earnest love for

Christ. This was the master-passion of the soul. His Saviour’s business was his, and he was continually about it. “This one thing” he did. Every day he gave to Christ. His biographer tells us that he used to seal his letters with a sun going down behind the mountains, and the motto over it, “The night cometh.” For the souls of men he was intensely watchful; and like our own Harlan Page he had a word in season for every one. Prayer was his vital breath. The secret of that vigorou.s and blooming piety whose “leaf never withered” is to be found in the perpetual baptisms which his soul received at the mercy-seat. Prayer, instead of being a penance, was his most chosen delight. He “gave himself” to it. He prayed before he sat down to his studies — before he went out to visit the sick — before he entered on any work for his Master great or small. Like good John Welsh he rose from his bed to commune with the Saviour in the night-watches. He speaks also of having a “scheme of prayer,” and of marking the names of missionaries on the map that he might pray for them in course and by name! His Bible he loved like the mercy-seat; and when he read it, it was with the eager avidity of one who is delving in a golden mine with the shining ore laid bare at every stroke of the mattock. “When you write,” said he to a friend, “tell me the meaning of Scriptures. One gem from that ocean is worth all the pebbles of earthly streams.” r- Conversing with one of his parishioners not long since, I was not surprised to learn that the striking peculiarity of his preaching was persuasive tenderness. His sermons were “artless spillings of the heart,” Once when a brother minister told him that he had been preaching from that awful passage, “The wicked shall be turned into hell,” he inquired with some emotion, “Were you able to preach it with tenderness V^ The sermons which McCheyne has left behind him are imbued with this warm, affectionate spirit, and to those young men who “fry the unction out of their sermons” by long lamp-labor we can recommend no happier specimens of simple and pungent preaching.

It is now eight years since this devoted young saint went up to be with Jesus. His fatal sickness was brought on by visiting the victims of a prevailing epidemic. He lingered for many days, and the closing hours of his life were overshadowed by the delirium of the fever. In his rational moments he listened to the reading of the word, and even the wanderings of his mind were broken by occasional ejaculations of fervent prayer. On the morning of the twenty-fifth of March (1843) he sank gently into a sleep which deepened, and deepened until his spirit passed without a groan, to the presence of his God. The tidings of his death fell cold on many a heart, and every eye in his parish was red with weeping. The road was thronged by the thousands who gathered to his burial; they laid him in his narrow bed amid sobs, and gushing tears, and even to this day his smitten flock often speak his name with moistened eye, and lips trembling with emotion.

“Oh! star untimely set,

“Why should we weep for thee?
Thy bright and dewy coronet
Is rising o’er the sea!”