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The history of Robert Walker, however, is calculated to teach a much more important lesson than this; although it be one which seems so obvious to reason, that it could hardly have been expected that any example should be required, even to enforce it. It appears quite evident, at the first glance, that as Faith can only be illustrated, proved, and confirmed by good works, so Doctrine can only be impressed, ingrafted, and made practical by discipline. It is true that it may be conveyed into the mind, and painted on the imagination, by distinct and impressive oral teaching alone; but it can only become useful and even intelligible to the great masses of men, by their being required to show, by some outward act of their own, that they understand its utility, and make a personal application of the truths which it conveys. When our Saviour Himself combined—never to be separated—outward acts and observances with inward graces in the two holy Sacraments of His religion, He taught us, at once by precept and example, that even the most solemn and mysterious doctrines of His Church can only be properly impressed on the heart and understanding by the observance of some corresponding and outward act, as at once a sign of obedience, and a channel of further grace. This is the system on which our Prayer Book is constructed. Are men to pray?—it tells them when and how. Are they to believe certain facts in their religion?—it impresses them on the heart and memory by periodical commemorations. Are they to believe certain doctrines?—it brings these prominently forth at fixed times and seasons. And so on. Doctrine and discipline, with the Church, go hand in hand, like faith and practice, the result of both. Now all this seems so reasonable, that it might hardly appear to require the test of experience to give it further sanction; yet to that test we may fairly appeal; and the author has, in his own mind, been constantly in the habit of doing so by the cheering history of Robert Walker. Let us first look at the opposite side of the picture, in the illustrious instance of Newton, the pious, laborious, and eloquent minister of Olney. Here is a favourable specimen of the system of spreading the Gospel by instructing the mind, and sanctifying the feelings of the hearer, principally by oral teaching, without laying much stress upon the necessity for prescribed outward observances. Yet what is the result? No one can read Cowper’s beautiful letters with regard to that place and time, and not be painfully convinced of the evanescent nature of all impressions which are merely made by individual teaching on individual minds, without some external bond of union by which a religious society may be held together when the hand that first combined it has been withdrawn; and some supply of fuel to rouse and rekindle the slumbering embers, when the first light has been extinguished or removed. Thus, nearly all traces of the teaching of that good man disappeared almost as soon as his warning voice had ceased to sound in the ears of his at the time willing hearers. [xii] But how different has been the result in the case of the liturgical teaching and Prayer-Book discipline of the humble Robert Walker! Even in his native valleys, not only a pious remembrance of his character, but a willing obedience to his precepts, still lingers. But especially in his descendants, numerous, and scattered, and often in humble circumstances as they are found to be, it is there that we find,—as we might most expect to find,—the impress of his character, deeply, the author hopes, indelibly impressed; and showing itself in a manner most edifying to the observer, and most confirmatory of the far-seeing wisdom with which our own Church’s system of discipline has been constructed. It has been the author’s good fortune, at different periods of his life, to see, or to hear of-various members of this favoured family, in almost every variety of station to which one single race can well be supposed liable; but the result of his observation has been always the same. Walker’s great-grandson, the Rev. Robert Bamford, Vicar of Bishopton, who first brought this venerable patriarch into notice beyond the boundaries of his native hills, by a sketch of his character in the columns of the Christian Remembrancer, (though partial attention had many years previously been drawn to him by some letters in the Annual Register) was himself a clergyman of the highest character and promise. One of Walker’s daughters, Mrs. Borrowdale, who became a resident of Liverpool, retained to the last the habits of obedience to the Prayer Book which she had been taught in youth, and attended the daily service of St. Thomas’s in that town, till it finally expired for want of the rubrical number of worshippers. But, by a singular coincidence, the author was brought into contact with this family in a way still more interesting to himself; and gladly would he wish to convey to his readers’ mind that sympathy with his feelings, which is necessary to enter fully into the moral of this little narrative. The author, some years ago, was presented by a friend to a living, and found there as curate one who had married the great-grand-daughter of Robert Walker. Here generations had passed away between the early stock and the last shoot of the tree; yet the connexion between the two was by no means dissevered. The tree might still be known by its fruit! She was one—(we may speak freely of the dead, as they then become the common property of the Church)—she was one whom it was not possible to know and not to love. With the liberal education which a town residence affords, she yet retained much of the freshness of manner and unaffected simplicity of address which belong to the better-educated class of females in a country place, and which win the heart more than the finest polish of artificial manners. Her real anxiety for the comfort and pleasure of others, and total forgetfulness of self, formed that highest species of flattery which no one can resist; while her attention to domestic duties, her care for the poor, and her punctual observance of religious services, combined to render her all that one wishes to find in that most important of all stations—a curate’s wife. She was proud—in the best sense of the word—of her descent from Robert Walker; and Robert Walker would have been proud of her. She was so attached to the place—and a less promising or more laborious post could hardly be conceived—that she had often been heard to declare that nothing should remove her from it, even should any chance deprive them of the curacy. At length the author resolved to resign the living; and among other reasons for doing so, one (of which he has the least reason to be ashamed) was that he might be instrumental in procuring the succession to it for those who were so well worthy to hold it. But, alas! how mysterious are the ways of Providence! She, who had looked up to this event as the highest point of her earthly ambition, was destined never to enjoy the object of her hopes. Within a very few weeks after this resignation, she was taken off by the immediate stroke of death, by a complaint of which she had long entertained reasonable fears. Yet she died, as she had lived, in the service of her Master and His Church. She was found by her husband dead on the sofa, with the Prayer Book beside her, open at the place where she had just been hearing her only child, a boy of about eight years of age, read aloud to her, according to her custom, the service for the day. Thus departed a true descendant of Robert Walker! Thus the author’s leave-taking of his late flock was converted into her funeral sermon. He need not add what topics would naturally suggest themselves as appropriate to the melancholy occasion!