copied out his System of Divinity, before its publication, for the use of her Ladyship's theological seminary in Wales. He had remarkable facility in the acquisition of languages; and of this species of knowledge, the key to every other, he possessed an extraordinary amount. Besides the three commonly called the learned tongues, he was acquainted with Arabic, Syriac, Persic, and Ethiopia; and of the "modern languages, with the French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and German. In the various departments of real as distinguished from verbal knowledge, his reading was very wide in range and various in subject. His favourite pursuits were history and divinity^ but every subject, which more nearly or more remotely bore on the literature of his profession, he considered worthy of his attention. He afterwards saw reason to repent of the wideness of his aims in. this respect, and to regret "the precious time and talents," to use his own words, "he had vainly squandered in the mad attempt to become a universal scholar." His reading, though thus extensive, was at the same time very exact and accurate. In order to render it so, he in many cases adopted the tedious and laborious method of compiling regular abridgments of important and voluminous books. Among the works he thus epitomized, were Judge Blackstone's Commentaries, and the Ancient Universal History.
In the month of September 1753, about two years after his ordination, Mr. Brown married Miss Janet Thomson, daughter of Mr. John Thomson, merchant at Musselburgh. For eighteen years he enjoyed in her a "help meet" for him in his Christian course, and at the end of that period he surrendered her, as he himself expresses it, "to her first and better Husband." They had several children, of whom only two survived their mother John and Ebenezer, both of whom their father had the satisfaction before his death of introducing as ministers into the church of Christ, the former at Whitburn, and the latter at Inverkeithing. Two years after the death of his first wife, which took place in 1771, he was married a second time to Miss Violet Crombiej daughter of Mr. William Crombie, merchant, Stenton, East Lothian, who survived him for more than thirty years, and by whom he left at his death four sons and two daughters, of whom only the half are now alive. In his domestic economy and discipline, Mr. Brown laboured after a strict fidelity to his ordination vow, by which he promised to rule well in his own house. His notions in regard to the authority of a husband and a father were very high, and all the power which as such he thought himself to possess, was faithfully employed in maintaining both the form and the power of godliness.
In the year 1758, Mr. Brown, for the first time, appeared as an author. His first publication was entitled "An Help for the Ignorant, being an Essay towards an Easy Explication of the Westminster Confession of Faith, and Catechisms, compiled for the use of the young ones of his own congregation." In addition to this, he published, six years after, two short catechisms one introductory to, the other explanatory of, the Shorter Catechism. All these publications have been very extensively useful. In 1765, he published, what was at the time by far the most popular and successful of his works, entitled "The Christian Journal, or Common Incidents Spiritual Instructors." This work, though it has some of the literary defects which, on such a subject, might have been expected from an author so circumstanced, such as the occasional indulgence of unrefined images, the excess of detail in tracing the analogies, and a certain monotonous rhythm of style, in many cases scarcely distinguishable from blank verse nevertheless displays an extraordinary richness and ingenuity of fancy, and in many instances rises into a most impressive and heart-warming eloquence. In 1766 he published a History of the Rise and Progress of the Secession, and the year following, a series of Letters on the Constitution, Discipline, and Government of
