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In his personal habits he was austere: severely clean, sparing in his food so far as to count butter an unnecessary luxury; once a moderate user of cider and wine—then a strong teetotaler; a lover of horses with harassing scruples as to breeding race-horses. All this gave an air of sedateness and maturity to John Brown’s earlier manhood which belied his years. Having married at twenty, he was but twenty-one years older than his eldest son; and while his many children and his varied occupations made him seem prematurely aged, he was, in fact, during this period, during the years from twenty to forty, experiencing the great formative development of his spiritual life. This development was most interesting and fruitful.

He was not a man of books: he had Rollins’ Ancient History, Josephus and Plutarch and lives of Napoleon and Cromwell. With these went Baxter’s Saints’ Rest, Henry On Meekness and Pilgrim’s Progress. “But above all others the Bible was his favorite volume and he had such perfect knowledge of it that when any person was reading he would correct the least mistake.”^[16]