THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND DIARY OF SAMUEL DAVIDSON D.D., LL.D. WITH A SELECTION OF LETTERS FROM ENGLISH AND DAVIDSON CONTROVERSY OF 1857 BY J. ALLANSON PICTON, M.A. EDITED BY HIS DAUGHTER WITH A PORTRAIT EDINBURGH T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET 1899 LONDON SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT, AND CO. LIMITED. EDITOR'S PREFACE THESE reminiscences and reflections were undertaken, as my father himself states, at the suggestion of my mother, but only after her death-and were intended as a tribute to her memory. In selecting parts of the MS. for publication, I have therefore felt bound to include portions of those anniversary memorial-notices which my father never omitted till the failure of sight and strength took from him the power of writing, but which, owing to their sacred and intimate character, I should not otherwise have published. Those friends who knew my father well, will recognise how truly they represent his feelings. The same friends will, I think, feel how inadequately these records of my father's thoughts and opinions portray that gentleness which was so marked a trait in his personal intercourse. The fact that they were written at various times between his sixty-seventh and his eighty-ninth year, as also their diary-form, will account for some looseness of style and repetition. The narrative of that part of his career in which his loyalty to truth had to endure the severest test, was intrusted by him to other hands. To him that story was a "prophecy," and, like other prophecies, "not of any private interpretation." His attitude in memory of it was one of serene detachment, and, though he spoke plainly on that as on most other things, and considered that he had been treated very unjustly, he shrank from recording the story himself. But the account was written in his lifetime, and submitted to him while his memory still retained its vigour. So far as the statement of facts is concerned, he entirely approved it. For the view taken, and the feelings expressed, the writer of it alone is responsible. It was my father's desire to make a strong protest against persecution for so-called heresy, and to emphasise his conviction of the innocence of intellectual error, where the conduct is good. The rectitude, sweetness, and simplicity of his own. character can be most fully estimated by those who knew him best. HAMPSTEAD, April 1899. ANNE JANE DAVIDSON. |