Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/336

600 thoroughly refined gentleman, blended with the meekness and tolerance of the Christian. He writes not in hatred hut in love; to convince and win, not to irritate and defeat: he writes to show the greatness and the excellence of the truth he advocates, and not his own; and even when he runs most keenly upon his adversary, it is to extinguish his garments, that have caught fire, where another would have thrown him into the kennel. And thus, although he had assailed so many parties in turn, yet all united in esteeming or loving him, because all had experienced his warm-hearted catholic philanthropy, as well as been convinced of his sincerity. By such gentleness, too, he was no loser, for he was one of the most successful of disputants. Only on one of these occasions he suffered a signal defeat; this was in the well-known Apocrypha Controversy, waged with such keenness thirty years ago, and which so completely divided the Christian world, that the wise, the learned, and the good were parted from each other, and only brought together for mutual conflict. In this terrible discussion which was waged with a fervour, and even with a rancour, up to the fighting-point of which, Dr. Wardlaw could never, by any possibility, have been fully kindled it is not wonderful that he should have failed, more especially when he adopted what is now recognized as the wrong side of the question, and had Dr. Andrew Thomson for his antagonist.

We must now hasten to the closing period of Dr. Wardlaw's uneventful but most useful and well-spent life. A rapid review of it was thus briefly but correctly given at the beginning of 1850, by the Rev. Dr. Alexander of Edinburgh:—"As a minister of the gospel, he has, for nearly half a century, laboured in connection with the same church with the most honourable diligence, the most judicious and blameless deportment, and the most gratifying success. As a theological professor, he has devoted the energies of his remarkable mind, and the resources of his extensive reading and thinking, to the education of the rising ministry in his own denomination, and that for more than a quarter of a century, without any remuneration from man, than the gratitude of his pupils and the thanks of the churches. As an author, he has long held the first rank among theological polemics, and no mean place in other departments of religious literature. Unrivalled as a master of logic, he has shown himself also possessed of eloquence of the purest order, and of a breadth and practicability of view which are often denied to great dialecticians. And as a man, he has passed through a long life, in a position where many eyes were upon him, with an unblemished reputation, and has descended into the vale of years, surrounded by the love, the respect, and the confidence of all good and generous men." Will it be believed, however, that the occasion which called forth such an honourable and truthful testimony, was an aspersion of the worst kind which was attempted to be fastened upon the character of Dr. Wardlaw. After having lived and laboured so well from youth to old age, an accusation was raised against him, more fit to be hurled against a sordid money-broker or fraudulent shopkeeper, than a man of such high and well-tried excellence. But it fared as it deserved; it was met with universal scorn; and the answer everywhere was—"Dr. Wardlaw?—impossible!" The principal Congregational churches of Scotland held meetings on the occasion, to express their firm conviction in his integrity; the leading ministers of English Independency, to the number of sixty-six, signed a joint address to him to the same effect; while—what was perhaps more gratifying to his feelings—a meeting of the members of his own congregation was held in their chapel of West George Street, to testify their