d amply made good the opinion
here expressed. He spoke of him like a warm and stedfast friend, but not
like that worst of enemies, an indiscreet one; he did not challenge a
scrutiny by the extravagance of his praise, nor break, by his precious
balms, the head he was most anxious to honour. Dr. Parr's death was
tedious, and his faculties, except at intervals, disturbed. He took
an opportunity, however, afforded him by one of these intervals, of
summoning about his bed his wife, grand-children, and servants;
confessed to them his weaknesses and errors, asked their forgiveness for
any pain he might have caused them by petulance and haste, and professed
"his trust in God, through Christ, for the pardon of his sins." One
expression, which Dr. Johnstone reports him to have used on this
occasion, is extraordinary--that "from the beginning of his life he was
not conscious of having fallen into a crime." Far be it from us to
scrutinize the words of a delirious death-bed--These must have been
uttered (if, indeed, they are accurately given) either in some peculiar
and very limited sense, or else at a moment when a man is no longer
accountable to God for what he utters. The latter was, probably, the
case: for in the same breath in which he declares "his life, even his
early life, to have been pure," he sues for pardon at the hands of his
Maker, and acknowledges a Redeemer, as the instrument through which he
is to obtain it.

That quickness of feeling and disposition to abandon himself to
its guidance, which made Parr an inconsistent man, made him also a
benevolent one. Benevolence he loved as a subject for his contemplation,
and the practical extension of it as a rule for his conduct. He could
scarcely bear to regard the Deity under any other aspect. He would have
children taught, in the first instance, to regard him under that aspect
alone; simply as a being who displayed infinite goodness in the
creation, in the government, and in the redemption of the world.
Language itself indicates, that the whole system of moral rectitude is
comprised in it--_[Greek: energetein], benefacere_, beneficencethe
generic term being, in common parlance, emphatically restricted to works
of charity. Nor was this mere theory in Parr. Most men who have been
economical from necessity in their youth, continue to be so, from habit,
in their age--but Parr's hand was ever open as day. Poverty had vexed,
but had never contracted his spirit; money he despised,