THE Reverend John Brown, like many other men of eminence, owed little to descent. He was born A. D. 1722, in a small village named Carpow, in the parish of Abernethy,
of parents inty of Perth, North Britain,
obscure circumstances, and remarkable for nothing but their good sense and piety. At an early period he was deprived of their care, and cast on the world, with no other dependence but the providence of that God who is "the Father of the fatherless, and the orphan's stay." Having no more a father's house, he engaged himself in the service of a neighbouring farmer, and was for some time employed in tending the "ewes with young." He dates his first impressions of religion in his eighth year; and he frequently afterwards recollected with pleasure the "kindness of youth." About this period, he repeatedly said, a few years before his death, he experienced more clear and delightful discoveries of divine truth, than ever afterwards he had enjoyed, or ever on earth expected to enjoy. Even then appeared that ardent thirst for knowledge, and that indefatigable industry, which, with the