e and even approve in myself: plunged in deep snares of self-love,
not loving others nor judging nor acting for others as I do for myself
and for my relations.' And then a passage which might have been taken
from _The Confessions_ itself: 'Ere I come to glory and to my journey's
end, I shall have spent so much of Thy free grace--what in pardoning,
what in preventing, what in convincing, what in enlightening, what in
strengthening, and confirming, and upholding; what in watering and making
me to grow; what in growth of sanctification, knowledge, faith,
experience, patience, mortification, uprightness, steadfastness,
watchfulness, humiliation, resolution, and self-denial; what for public,
what for private, and what for the family; what against snares on the
right hand and on the left;--O Lord, the all-sufficiency of Thy grace!'
Surely the man must run well and must make a good goal at last who can
write about sin and grace in himself in that fashion! And that is not
all he wrote on that subject and in that style. You have no idea of the
wealth of personal and experimental matter there lies buried in Alexander
Brodie's diary. When I first read Brodie's big diary I said to myself,
What a treasure is this I have stumbled upon! Here is yet another of
Scotland's statesmen, scholars, and eminent saints. Here, I thought, is
an author on the inward life to be set beside Brae and Halyburton, if not
beside Shepard and Edwards themselves.

In the religious upbringing also, and lifelong care of his orphaned son
and daughter, Brodie was all we could wish to see. In the sanctification
and wise occupation of the Sabbath-day; in the family preparation for
communion seasons; in the personal and private covenants he encouraged
his children to make with God in their own religious life; in the company
he brought to his house and to his table; in his own devotional habits at
home--in all these all-important matters Brodie was all that a father of
children too early bereft of their mother ought to be. Till we do not
wonder to find his son commencing his diary on the day of his father's
death in this way: 'My precious, worthy, and dear father! I can hardly
apprehend the consequence of it to the land, and the Church, and his
family. The Lord give instruction. I have seen the godly conversation,
holy and Christian walk of a father, his watchfulness and fruitfulness,
his secret communion with God, and yet I cannot say that my heart has
b