Page:History of John Brown of Priesthill.pdf/22

 attending the curate, and he several miles distant? The first who arrived on the spot was David Steel's wife, one well fitted to comfort in the most trying dispensation. She ran up to the group, and throwing her arms around them, saluted Isabell thus, "Wow, woman! and has your master been taken from your head this day? and has God taken you and your children under his own care, saying, I will be a husband to the widow, and a father to the fatherless? No wonder though ye are overcome and astonished at his doings." This salutation aroused and strengthened the widow. She remembered the words of Mr Peden, and she arose from the ground to search out the linen he had warned her to prepare. About this time, David Steel, and William Steel with his wife, arrived, and assisted Isabell to bring in and wrap up the precious dust. All was done, while the silence of death reigned over the household.

As was said of the proto-martyr Stephen, devout men carried him to his burial: in like manner was John Brown, for literally God's hidden ones carried him forth, and laid him in his grave, on the very spot where he fell.

Renwick writes, on one occasion, to Sir R. Hamilton, after a field-reaching, "that if ever God could be tied to any place, I think it is to the muirs and mountains of Scotland." Rutherford many a time declares, "Sweet, sweet is the cross; and no wonder, when Christ bears both us and it." The sorrow of the righteous is better far than the joys of the wicked, that are only like the crackling of thorns under a pot, and worketh death. Had a miracle opened the eyes of Claverhouse, as it did the eyes of the prophet's servant,