JOHN BROWN of Haddington, in his last illness and shortly before his death, looking back on all the way by which the Lord his God had led him, exclaimed—”Now, after near forty years’ preaching of Christ, and His sweet and great salvation, I think that I would rather beg my bread all the labouring days of the week, for an opportunity of publishing the Gospel on the Sabbath to an assembly of sinful men, than, without such a privilege, to enjoy the richest possessions on earth. ‘By the gospel do men live, and in it is the life of my soul.’ O the kindness of God! Notwithstanding He left me a poor orphan, without any relations on earth who were able to help me to any purpose, many whose parents have been spared with them far longer than I had mine, are now in deep poverty, or what is infinitely worse, are abandoned to all manner of wickedness, while by strange means the Lord hath restrained and preserved me. . . . In this how plainly hath the Lord appeared as the Father of the fatherless, and the orphan’s stay. ‘He chose me to be His servant, and took me from the sheepfold, from following the ewes with young’ (in his youth he was a shepherd-boy); ‘He brought me to feed Jacob His people, and Israel His inheritance,’ Lord, what am I, and what is my father’s house, that thou hast brought me hitherto?’ Shortly before the end he was heard to exclaim—”O to be with God, to see Him as He is, it is worth dying for to see a smiling God.” Again, “I desire to depart and to be with Christ, which is far better; and though I have lived sixty years very comfortably in the world, yet I would gladly turn my back upon you all to be with Christ. I am sure Christ may say of me, ‘These sixty years this wretch hath grieved me.'” Some days after a friend inquiring of his welfare, “I am weak,” he answered, “but it is delightful to feel one’s-self weak in everlasting arms.”
“Oh what must Christ be in Himself,” he exclaimed, “when it is He that sweetens heaven, sweetens Scriptures, sweetens ordinances, sweetens earth, and even sweetens trials! Oh what must Christ be in Himself!” The last words he was heard to utter were these—”My Christ.” About four hours after, he slept in Jesus. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord! They rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.”