er. This day
thirty years, my late dear brother was born. Oh for more love, and
then will come more peace!" That same evening he wrote the hymn, "_The
Barren Fig-tree_."

"_Oct. 17._--Private meditation exchanged for conversation. Here is
the root of the evil,--forsake God, and He forsakes us."

Some evening this month he had been reading _Baxter's Call to the
Unconverted_. Deeply impressed with the affectionate and awfully
solemn urgency of the man of God, he wrote--

Though Baxter's lips have long in silence hung,
And death long hush'd that sinner-wakening tongue,
Yet still, though dead, he speaks aloud to all,
And from the grave still issues forth his "Call:"
Like some loud angel-voice from Zion hill,
The mighty echo rolls and rumbles still.
Oh grant that we, when sleeping in the dust,
May thus speak forth the wisdom of the just!

Mr. M'Cheyne was peculiarly subject to attacks of fever, and by one of
these was he laid down on a sick-bed on November 15th. However, this
attack was of short duration. On the 21st he writes: "Bless the Lord,
O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Learned more and more of
the value of _Jehovah Tzidkenu_." He had, three days before, written
his well-known hymn, "_I once was a stranger_," etc., entitled
_Jehovah Tzidkenu, the Watchword of the Reformers_. It was the fruit
of a slight illness which had tried his soul, by setting it more
immediately in view of the judgment-seat of Christ; and the hymn which
he so sweetly sung reveals the sure and solid confidence of his soul.
In reference to that same illness, he seems to have penned the
following lines. November 24th:--

He tenderly binds up the broken in heart,
The soul bowed down He will raise:
For mourning, the ointment of joy will impart:
For heaviness, garments of praise.

Ah, come, then, and sing to the praise of our God,
Who giveth and taketh away;
Who first by his kindness, and then by his rod,
Would teach us, poor sinners, to pray.

For in the assembly of Jesus' first-born,
Who anthems of gratitude raise,
Each heart has by great tribulation been torn,
Each voice turned from wailing to praise.

"_Nov. 9._--Heard of Edward Irving's death. I look back upon him with
awe, as on the saints and martyrs of old. A holy man in spite of all
his delusions and errors. He is now with his God and Savi