he dram-drinker, or his pernicious drug to that of
the inveterate opium-eater; and so, to procure the supply of the
unwholesome pabulum, without which he could not continue to exist, he
launched into a perilous ocean of heterodoxy and extravagance, and
made shipwreck of his faith. His originality formed but the crooked
wanderings of a journeyer who had forsaken the right way, and lost
himself in the mazes of a doleful wilderness. Not such the originality
of the higher order of minds; not such, for instance, the originality
of a Newton, of whom it has been well said by a distinguished French
critic, that 'what province of thought soever he undertook, he was
sure to change the ideas and opinions received by the rest of men.'
One of the most striking characteristics of Mr. Stewart's originality
was the solidity of the truths which it always evolved. His was not
the ability of opening up new vistas in which all was unfamiliar,
simply because the direction in which they led was one in which men's
thought had no occasion to travel, and no business to perform. It was,
on the contrary, the greatly higher ability of enlarging, widening,
and lengthening the avenues long before opened upon important truths,
and, in consequence, enabling men to see new and unwonted objects in
old, familiar directions. That in which he excelled all men we ever
knew, was the analogical faculty--the power of detecting and
demonstrating occult resemblances. He could read off as if by
intuition--not by snatches and fragments, but as a consecutive
whole--that older revelation of type and symbol which God first gave
to man; and when privileged to listen to him, we have recognised, in
the evident integrity of the reading, and the profound and consistent
wisdom of what the record conveyed, a demonstration of the divinity of
its origin, not less powerful and convincing than that to be found in
any department of the Christian evidences yet opened up. Compared with
even the higher names in this department, we have felt under his
ministry as if, when admitted to the company of some party of modern
_savans_ employed in deciphering a hieroglyphic-covered obelisk of the
desert, and here successful in discovering the meaning of an insulated
sign, and there of a detached symbol, we had been suddenly joined by
some sage of the olden time, to whom the mysterious inscription was
but a piece of common language written in a familiar alphabet, and who
could read off fluent