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(viz. on the 21st of Sept. 1745,) he was aged 57 years, 8 months, and 11 days.
The annual return of his birth-day was observed by him in the latter and better years of his life, in a manner very different from what is commonly practised; for instead of making it a day of festivity, I am told, he rather distinguished it as a season of more than ordinary humiliation before God, both in commemoration of those mercies which he received in the first opening of life, and under an affectionate sense, as well of his long alienation from the Great Author and support of being, as of the many imperfections which he lamented in the best of his days and services.
I have not met with many things remarkable concerning the early years of his life, only that his mother took care to instruct him with great tenderness, and affection in the principles of true Christianity. He was also trained up in human literature at the school in Linlithgow, where he made a very considerable progress in the languages. I remember to have heard him quote some passages in the Latin classics very pertinently, though his employment in life, and the various turns which his mind took under different impulses in succeeding years, prevented him from cultivating such studies.
The good effects of his mother's prudent and examplary care were not so conspicuous as the willed and hoped in the younger part of her son's life; yet there is great reason to believe they were not entirely lost: as they were probably the occasion of many convictions which, in his younger years, were overborne; so, I doubt not, that when religious impressions took that strong hold of his heart, which they afterwards did, that stock of knowledge which wad been so early laid up in his mind, was found of considerable service: And I have heard him make the observation, as an encouragement to
