apparent connexion with the sins punished, and which could not be recognised as judgments had not He himself told that such they were, the Edinburgh fires, of which He had told nothing, might be properly regarded--seeing that they had in the same way no connexion with the oratorios, and had wrought no mischief to the people who had patronized the oratorios--as special judgments on the oratorios. The good old Papist had said, "I believe because it is impossible." What the Doctor in this instance seemed to say was, "I believe because it is not in the least likely." If, I argued, Dr. Colquhoun's own house and library had been burnt, he would no doubt very properly have deemed the infliction a great trial to himself; but on what principle could he have further held that it was not only a trial to himself, but also a judgment on his neighbour? If we must not believe that the falling of the tower of Siloam was a special visitation on the sins of the poor men whom it crushed, how, or on what grounds, are we to believe that it was a special visitation on the sins of the men whom it did not in the least injure? I fear I remembered Dr. Colquhoun's remarks on the fire better than aught else I ever heard from him; nay, I must add, that nothing had I ever found in the writings of the sceptics that had a worse effect on my mind; and I now mention the circumstance to show how sober in applications of the kind, in an age like the present, a theologian should be. It was some time ere I forgot the ill savour of that dead fly; and it was to beliefs of a serious and very important class that it served for a time to impart its own doubtful character. But from the minister whose chapel I oftenest attended, I was little in danger of having my beliefs unsettled by reasonings of this stumbling cast. "Be sure," said both my uncles, as I was quitting Cromarty for the south, "be sure you go and hear Dr. M'Crie." And so Dr. M'Crie I did go and hear; and not once or twice, but often. The biographer of Knox--to employ the language in which Wordsworth describes the humble hero of the "Excursion"-- "was a man Whom no one could have passed without remark."