Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/262

 prosecutes the same business with you, or whether friends in the country may not have it in their power to serve him? The precaution in my former concerning the balance of accounts between us was not taken from any fear of its appearing against my relations, but that you might recover it with greater ' ease from myself during mine own life. Once more I must ask pardon for the length and subject of this letter; but if you continue to favour me as a correspondent, my future answers shall be less tedious and more cheerful. As you are now more disengaged from secular business, the demands of your friends to hear from you will proportionably increase; and as you have now long taught me to think myself of that number, I can no more resign the claim which it gives than the tenderness which it inspires,—a tenderness which shall ever be felt in the highest degree, by your most sincere friend, and humble servant,

In 1762, the Earl of Selkirk procured from the Crown a presentation to the parish of Kirkcudbright in favour of Mr Blacklock; who, having thus the prospect of a competent income, married Mrs Sarah Johnston, daughter of Mr Joseph Johnston, surgeon in Dumfries. But though not disappointed in the happiness he expected to derive from this union, the gleam of fortune which seems to have induced him to form it, forsook him immediately after the step was taken. He was ordained a few days after his marriage; but the people of the parish refused, on account of his blindness, to acknowledge him as their pastor, and a lawsuit was commenced, which, after two years, was compromised by Blacklock retiring upon a moderate annuity. From the first moment of opposition, it had been his wish to make this arrangement, not from any conviction of incompetency to the duties of a parish minister, but because he saw it was needless to contend against a prejudice so strongly maintained. "Civil and ecclesiastical employments," he says, "have something either in their own nature, or in the invincible prejudices of mankind, which renders them almost entirely inaccessible to those who have lost the use of sight. No liberal and cultivated mind can entertain the least hesitation in concluding that there is nothing, either in the nature of things, or even in the positive institutions of genuine religion, repugnant to the idea of a blind clergyman. But the novelty of the phenomenon, while it astonishes vulgar and contracted understandings, inflames their zeal to rage and madness." His own experience, it is evident, suggested this observation. Blindness is certainly not in itself a sufficient reason for debarring those afflicted with it from the ministerial office; it does not incapacitate a man for the acquirement of the requisite knowledge, nor exclude from his bosom the glow of holy zeal. On the contrary, worldly cares and ambition are not so apto intrude. " The attention of the soul, confined to those avenues of perception which she can command, is neither dissipated nor confounded by the immense multiplicity, or the rapid succession of surrounding objects. Hence her contemplations are more uniformly fixed upon herself, and the revolution of her own internal frame," and hence a greater fitness in her for the growth of devotion. The want of sight would, indeed, put inconveniences in the way of a clergyman's intercourse with his parishioners, but they are small; and it is not easy to conceive any thing more affecting and impressive than for those in the full enjoyment of their faculties to hear lessons of submission to the divine will, and of gratitude for the blessings of providence, from the mouth of one upon whom the hand of God has been laid. Such were not, however, the opinions of those with whom Blacklock had to deal; and he acquiesced. This effort could not but be painful; the sense of exclusion from all the business of life had long oppressed him, and the moment that patronage was extended towards him, and