Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/122

386 published a volume, under the title of "Addresses to the Inhabitants of Otaheite." It was a series of short discourses upon the chief and simplest points of Christian theology, and such as were thought best suited, by their earnest, impassioned style, to be addressed to the poetical children of nature, seated beneath the spreading shadow of their palm-tree, or around the genial glow of their council-fire. And eloquent indeed were these strange model discourses, and such as the Christian world especially the young, who devoured them with delight and wonder have seldom seen within the range of theological authorship. But little as yet were the South Sea Islanders known, for whose behalf these sermons were written, and it was soon enough discovered that they were more prone to eat a missionary than to digest his doctrines. But that such ravening anthropophagi should be changed into men, such besotted idolaters into Christians, and the principles of humanity, civilization, and order be established among them, and that, too, in the course of a single generation, was certainly the greatest, as well as the most encouraging achievement which modern missionary enterprise has yet accomplished. Mr. Love was permitted to witness the dawn of this bright morning of promise, after so deep a midnight of despondency; and he saw his poor Otaheiteans christianized, although the process had differed from his plans and anticipations.

In 1798 Mr. Love's official connection with London and the Missionary Society terminated, and two years afterwards he was called to the ministerial charge of a chapel of ease newly formed in Anderston, one of the suburbs of Glasgow. He must have felt it a happy change from the echoes of the lonely walls in Artillery Street, to a populous city, in which his training for the ministry had commenced, and where he could find a congenial people, by whom his worth would be fully appreciated. In Glasgow, accordingly, he soon gathered a congregation, by whom he was enthusiastically beloved, and who rejoiced under his pastoral charge to the close of his valuable life. Here, also, he selected for his friend and chief companion the Rev. Dr. Balfour, a congenial spirit in learning, talent, piety, and apostolic zeal. Besides his labours in the pulpit, to which he brought all his powers of study and close application, as well as the resources of a singularly vigorous and richly endowed intellect, Mr. Love held the office of secretary of the Glasgow Missionary Society, and presided in its chief enterprise, the establishment of the mission to Caffraria. Notwithstanding his habitual reserve, and dislike of popularity, his reputation as a scholar and theologian was so fully acknowledged, that in November, 3815, he was invited to be one of the candidates for the professorship of divinity, at that time vacant in King's College, Aberdeen. Mr. Love complied; but notwithstanding his fitness for the chair, which was tested by long trial and examination, the question was one not so much of ability and learning, as of party feeling; and the Moderates being still in the ascendant, were enabled to return a candidate of their own election. Soon afterwards Mr. Love was honoured with the degree of doctor in divinity. . After this the quiet unostentatious course of the good man went on in its wonted tenor, until the cares and toils of the Caffre mission, already giving tokens of those dangers by which it was afterwards all but overthrown, tasked the sensitive spirit of Dr. Love for the last four years of his life, until December 17, 1825, when death terminated his anxieties, in the sixty-ninth year of his age.

From his retiring spirit, that shrunk from popular distinction, and from the general state of his health, that agreed best with retirement and tranquillity,