DR. MALAN OF GENEVA. 37 early as 1816 the darkness was removed from his mind, and Christ the Saviour was made known to him in so blessed a manner, with so much assurance and joy, that he felt as if the delight which filled his own soul, by the view of the grace of God in Jesus, must certainly be experienced likewise by all who heard him. But he was greatly mistaken. His views were deemed new, strange, and erroneous; he was ordered not to repeat them; then the churches interdicted him, and at length, on preaching in the cathedral a discourse in proof of the doctrine of justification by faith, he was finally deprived of the use of the pulpits. This was in 1817. The severity with which he was treated, being expelled from all employments in the College and the Church, together with the boldness and firmness of his bearing, the fervour of his feelings, and the power of his discourses, drew crowds after him; men were converted by the grace of God; and in 1818 an independent church was formed, and a chapel built in a lovely spot, a short walk outside the city, of which he continues the pastor to this day. He has been often in England, and the friendship and prayers of warm-hearted English Christians have greatly sustained and animated him; they in their turn have also found in Geneva the conversation and holy example of the man, together with the exercises of divine worship in his chapel, as a fountain of home religious life in a foreign country. He and his family have become imbued with the language, the literature, and the friendships of England, without losing their Swiss republican simplicity and frankness. All his life he has been indefatigable and remarkably successful in the use of the press as well as the pulpit. His writings in the shape of tracts and books have been numerous and useful, especially in revealing the Saviour to men in the errors of Romanism. Some of his tracts are like the Dairyman's Daughter of Leigh Richmond, for simple truth and beauty. They present the living realities of the Gospel in a manner most impressive and affecting to the mind, in narratives, in dialogues, in familiar parables and illustrations. He loves to dwell upon the bright persuasive side of Truth Divine, and leads his flock in green pastures beside still waters; though some of his peculiar speculative views and shades of belief may sometimes not be received even by the very hearts he is so successful in winning and comforting. His extensive missionary tours have been attended with a great blessing. Indeed, of all men I ever met with, he seems most peculiarly fitted for familiar conversational effort to win men to Christ. With a deep fountain of love in his heart, an active mind, full of vivacity and impulse, an extraordinary fertility of illustration, a strength of faith which makes upon the minds of his hearers the most successful impression of argument and conviction, and with great sweetness and happiness in his own Christian experience, he goes about among the mountains, pouring forth the stores of thought and feeling for the guidance and the good of others, comforting the tempted soul, and pointing the distressed one to the Saviour. In his encounters with the Romanists, nothing can withstand his pa tience, his gentleness, his playfulness, his fulness of Christ. The Romanists well know him, and the clergy fear him, on account of the manner in which he wins his way among them, fearlessly opposing them, appealing to the Bible, and winning them by argument and love. When I was among the Waldensian Christians of Piedmont, I asked them if it would not be exceedingly pleasant and profitable for Dr. Malan to make one of his Missionary visits among them? Ah, said they, the Romanists know him too well to suffer that. Probably they would not let him pass the frontier; certainly they would not suffer him to preach or to teach in the name of Jesus; and if he attempted to do it, the least they would do would be to put him under the care of gens d'armes, and send him back to the Canton of Geneva. Dr. Malan traces his own ancestry to the Waldenses, says he is one of them, and pleasantly remarks, "We are not of the Reformed Christians; we have always been evangelical; a true Church of Christ before the Reformation. He frequently expressed a desire to visit the Waldenses, but told me an anecdote of his personal experience of the tender mercies of Sardinia, which I have seen in Dr. Heugh's excellent book on DR. MALAN'S CONVERSATION. 39 religion in Geneva. If I remember correctly, he was on a visit at Chamouny, and had given a Bible to some of the peasantry; certainly he had talked with them of the Saviour and Divine Truth; he would not be anywhere without doing this. He was, however, accused of distributing tracts pernicious to the Roman Catholic faith, and under this charge was arrested, put in the custody of two gens d'armes, and sent to prison. It was a bold step; but, not being able to prove their accusation, they were compelled to let him go; not, however, till they had unwittingly afforded him an opportunity, of which he gladly availed himself, to preach the Gospel to the soldiers who attended and guarded him. Probably they never before listened to such truth; and Dr. Heugh remarks that "there is good reason for believing that one of these soldiers, employed to incarcerate the ambassador of Christ, was himself brought to the Saviour, and introduced into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." Very many have been the incidents of this nature in the experience of Dr. Malan, and sometimes among the Romanists he has had very narrow escapes. The dealings of God with him have been abundant in mercy, though at first he had to pass through a great fight of affliction, and his own peculiarities in the Christian faith, or rather in the manner of presenting it, may be traced probably to the discipline of the divine Spirit with his own heart, and the manner in which the Saviour was first revealed to him. He has said most beautifully that his conversion to the Lord Jesus might be compared to what a child experiences when his mother awakes him with a kiss. A babe awakened by a mother's kiss! What a sweet process of conversion! Now if all the subsequent teachings and dealings of the Spirit of God with his soul have been like this, who can wonder at the earnestness and strength with which he presses the duty of the assurance of faith and love upon other Christians, or at the large measure of the Spirit of Adoption with which his own soul seems to have been gifted. His conversational powers are very great, in his own way, and he leads the mind of the circle around him with such perfect simplicity and ease, like that of childhood, to the sacred themes which his heart loves, that every man is pleased, no one can possibly be offended. What in him is a habit of life, proceeds with so much freedom and artlessness, that a personal address from him on the subject of religion, in circumstances where from any other man it might be intolerably awkward and offensive, becomes appropriate and pleasing. Great and precious is this power, and great is doubtless the amount of unrevealed good which Dr. Malan has thus accomplished in the course of his life. The stream of his conversation through the world has been like the streams from his native mountains running through the vales, and then being the fullest and the sweetest, when all common rivers are the lowest. Before I saw Dr. Malan, I had heard him described by Christian friends, who had met him in England. An account was given me of an evening spent in his presence in Edinburgh, which might bring to mind the familiar lines of Cowper. "When one that holds communion with the skies, On this occasion a most interesting instance of conversion was said to have occurred through the instrumentality of Dr. Malan. A licentiate of the Church of Scotland was present, of whom Dr. Malan had enquired personally, if he possessed the love of Christ. The young gentleman opposed the Doctor's views with great heat and argument, and at length begged of him to go into a private room, that they might converse together with more freedom. When they had shut the door, the licentiate proposed prayer. "No," said Dr. Malan, "I will not pray with you, for I am convinced that you know not the love of Christ; but I will pray for you;" and they knelt in PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 41 prayer. The argument was then continued for a great length, but such was the effect of Dr. Malan's address, that when they returned to the company the licentiate was in great agitation, and did not conceal his excitement. When he went to his lodgings, instead of retiring to bed, he sat down to write a refutation of Dr. Malan's views, with a clearness and power of argument, as he thought, such as he could not command in conversation, and he continued writing till four o'clock in the morning. Then, when he rose and looked at his manuscripts, and ran over his train of reasoning, a sudden flash of conviction, a light like that which shone on the mind of Paul in his way to Damascus, poured upon him, that he had been fighting against God, and was indeed a guilty, wretched, perishing sinner. He threw himself upon his knees, implored forgiveness through the blood of Christ, and that very hour obtained peace in his Redeemer. When he arose, and looked at his watch, he found that it wanted but little of the time when Dr. Malan was to take his departure in the morning's coach. He hurried away, and finding him at the door of his house, just ready to set out, embraced him as his spiritual father, declaring that he had never known Christ till that morning. That same individual I was told is now a devoted minister of the Lord Jesus in the city of Glasgow. From all that I knew of Dr. Malan during my delightful residence in Geneva, I could easily credit this narration. In the bosom of his own family, he shines the man of God; delightful is that communion. I shall never forget the sweet Sabbath evenings passed there. A charm rested upon the conversation, an atmosphere as sacred as the Sabbath day's twilight. At tea a text of Scripture had been always written for each member of the family, as well as for the Christian friends who might be present, and was placed beneath the plate, to be read by each in his turn, eliciting some appropriate remark from the venerable pastor and father. The evening worship was performed with hymns which Dr. Malan had written, to melodies which he had himself composed, sung by the voices of his daughters, with the accompaniment of instrumental music. It would have been difficult anywhere to have witnessed a |