I have just now learned by a letter of April 25, from brother L. P. Streator, that Walter Scott was seized, one week before he wrote to me, with a severe attack of Typhoid Pneumonia, at his own house, which, in seven days, terminated his pilgrimage on this earth. . . .

      No death in my horizon, out of my own family, came more unexpectedly or more ungratefully to my ears than this of our much beloved and highly appreciated brother Walter Scott; and none awoke more tender sympathies and regrets. Next to my father, he was my most cordial and indefatigable fellow-laborer in the origin and progress of the present reformation.

      We often took counsel together in our efforts to plead and advocate the paramount claims of original and apostolic Christianity. His whole heart was in the work. He was, indeed, truly eloquent in the whole import of that word in pleading the claims of the Author and Founder of the Christian faith and hope; and in disabusing the inquiring mind of all its prejudices, misapprehensions, and errors. He was, too, most successful in winning souls to the allegiance of the Divine Author and Founder of the Christian Institution, and in putting to silence the cavilings and objections of the modern Pharisees and Sadducees of Sectariandom. [548]

      He, indeed, possessed, upon the whole view of his character, a happy temperament. It is true, though not a verb, he had his moods and tenses, as men of genius generally have. He was both logical and rhetorical in his conceptions and utterances. He could and he did simultaneously address and interest the understanding, the conscience, and the heart of his hearers; and in his happiest seasons constrain their attention and their acquiescence.

      He was, in his palmiest days, a powerful and a successful advocate of the claims of the Lord Messiah on the heart and life of every one who had recognized his person and mission; and especially upon those who had, in their baptism, vowed eternal allegiance to his adorable name.

      He, without partiality or enmity in his heart to any human being, manfully and magnanimously proclaimed the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so far as he understood it, regardless of human applause or of human condemnation. He had a strong faith in the person, and mission, and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. He had a rich hope of the life everlasting, and of the inheritance incorruptible, undefiled and unfading.

      I knew him well. I knew him long. I loved him much. We might not, indeed, agree in every opinion nor in every point of expediency. But we never loved each other less because we did not acquiesce in every opinion, and in every measure. By the eye of faith and the eye of hope, methinks I 'see him in Abraham's bosom.

A. C., vol. 1861, page 296.      

Source:

Alexander Campbell. "Elder Walter Scott's Demise." The Millennial Harbinger 32 (May 1861): 296-297.

[MHA2 548-549]