assurance of his innocence, and admiration of his worth. It was held on the
16th of January, and was joined by ministers from far and near, as well as of
almost every denomination, while the presentation of a rich and beautiful silver
tea service graced the occasion. In his address to the meeting, he thus adverted
to the stigma that had been cast upon him:—"I have felt it not a little hard—I am far from meaning on the part of God, who has his own ways and his own
instruments of trial to his servants and people, and who does all things well,
but on the part of man—at this advanced period of my life and ministry, to be
assailed as I have been. When a young man's character is maligned, he has
time, as the phrase is, to live it down; but when one has come to be a septuagenarian, such a process of self-vindication seems next to hopeless, unless,
indeed (if we may borrow a figure from our neighbours of the Emerald Isle),
he may be so happy as to have lived it down before it came—by anticipation."
This, indeed, was exactly his own case, notwithstanding the oddity of the expression, and his character only shone out the brighter from the cloud that had attempted to obscure it. In February, 1853, when he had completed the fiftieth year of his ministry, and when a great anniversary was held in the City Hall, Glasgow, on the occasion, he was thus enabled to advert to the harassing incident:—"It is just three years since I was called to pass through the heaviest trial of my life, and it is just three years since, mercifully to myself, and to others marvellously, that my strength for official duty was renewed. He whose it is to turn the shadow of death into the morning, has dispelled the darkness, and has made it only to contribute to augment the serenity and cheerfulness of the light which has succeeded."
It was with this renewed frame, and in this cheerful spirit, that he was visited only ten months after by his last sickness. That sickness was also of brief continuance, for only three weeks before his death he was able to discharge his usual pulpit duties, and administer the sacred rite of the Lord's Supper to the members of his flock. He died on the 17th of December, 1853, at the age of seventy-four. A public funeral, attended by thousands, repaired to the Necropolis, where his remains were interred; while the harmonizing of all denominations of Christians in this last solemn duty, and the deep sorrow that was settled on every countenance, proclaimed that every heart felt the loss they had sustained that a father in Israel had departed.
Dr. Wardlaw was survived by his widowed partner, who has already been mentioned; and by a large family, of whom one son is a missionary at Bellary, in the East, and another a merchant in Glasgow. Two of his daughters were also engaged in missionary enterprise with their husbands, and of these, one is now a widow, resident with her family in Glasgow.
WELSH, D.D., Rev. David.—This distinguished scholar and divine, whom a great national event made the mark of general attention, notwithstanding his recluse studious habits and unobtrusive disposition, was born at Braefoot, in the parish of Moffat, Dumfriesshire, on the 11th of December, 1793. His father, a substantial farmer and small landholder, had a family of twelve children, of whom David was the youngest. Being at an early period intended for the ministry, David, after receiving the earlier part of his education at the parish school of Moffat, went to Edinburgh, where he attended the high school for a year, and afterwards became a student at the university. Here his progress, though considerable, was silent and retired, so that at first he was little noticed among his ardent competitors in Latin and Greek; it was not words,
