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THE

Emperial Magazine;

OR, COMPENDIUM OF

RELIGIOUS, MORAL, & PHILOSOPHICAL KNOWLEDGE.

JAN.

"THE TORCH OF LITERATURE ILLUMINATES THE PATHS OF WISDOM."

MEMOIR OF

THE REV. JAMES KIDD, D.D. &c.

(With a Portrait.)

[1826.

resting fields of knowledge, many individuals have acquired much honourable distinction in the Christian church; and, embalmed in the writings with AMONG the public characters which which they have enriched the world, present themselves to the notice of the their names will descend to posterity biographer, the pious divine occupies with undiminished lustre. Many others the foremost rank. To him, the events, are still pursuing the same glorious cathe incidents, and the revolutions which reer, and in due time they will reap the the world calls magnificent and glori- | harvest of all their toil. ous, are only objects of inferior consideration. He views them as fluctuating in their nature, limited in their extent, and transitory in their duration. He therefore mounts above their influence, penetrates futurity, mixes with spiritual agents, and holds communion with God.

In his boundless excursions of thought, he ranges through the empires of intellect and morals, explores the latent motive in its dark recess, traces its influence in the production of overt action, and, connecting effects with their proximate and distant causes, learns to estimate the importance of those consequences, which, in all their greatness, can only be perceived by the light that beams from revelation on the realities of eternity.

Illuminated by the inspired volume, he passes the bridge which it throws across the gulf of death; and, leaving the mutations of time, expatiates in the regions of immortality. From perceiving simple existence, he proceeds to inquire into its mode, and finds it connected with everlasting happiness or misery. In his development of moral principle, he discovers a path by which he ascends to the divine perfections, and, combining earth and heaven together, be beholds man in an immediate connexion with the justice and mercy of God.

Awed into reverence at the discoveries he has made, he learns also, from the inspired volume, how God is accessible to man; and it is the business of his life to direct sinners to the throne of mercy, through the Saviour whom the scripture reveals. Traversing these ample and inte

85.-VOL. VIII,

But among the divines of the present day, few have been more indefatigable in their researches, or have prosecuted their inquiries with a greater degree of spirit and acuteness, than the subject of this memoir, of whom we now proceed to give some brief account.

The REV. JAMES KIDD was born near Loughbrickland in the county of Down, Ireland, on the 6th day of Nov., 1764. His parents were of humble situation in life, yet highly respectable in their station. Soon after Mr. Kidd's birth, he had the misfortune to lose his father;-and his mother, who was left with three sons, of whom he was the youngest, removed to her native place, Broughshane, in the county of Antrim. Here he received the first rudiments of his education, from the careful attention of his mother, and of an uncle who was considerably better informed than most country farmers at that period.

From the first leaf of the Shorter Chatechism, agreed upon by the assembly of divines at Westminster, and appointed by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, he was taught the alphabet; and after spelling and reading each question in rotation, he committed the whole to memory. Thus was he grounded, in the early years of childhood, in the doctrines of that church of which he was destined to become so distinguished a member. His memory, too, was cultivated by exercise, at a period when that faculty is rarely called into action; and to this circumstance may be mainly attributed those wonderfully retentive powers which supply at will, to his

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