And whom could he not abjure? Does not this question point to Him who is the central Person and Power of the past eighteen hundred years of history?--to Him who will be the central Person and Power of the whole future of history?--to Him who came into the world in the form of a young man, and whom a young man announced, crying in the wilderness?--to Him who clasps in his thought and in his love the whole humanity whose troubled annals history recounts, and who divinized the spirit of youth when He assumed its form?
We had come from Dumbarton, (my temporary home,) the Bailie, Christie, and I, for a week's tour along the western coast and among the Highlands. Sallying forth from Strathleven cottage one sunny morning in August, we had footed it to the river-side, (I learned the full use of my feet in Scotland.) had stepped on board a wee bonnie boat, just large enough for us and our light baggage, exclusive of the space occupied by a single oarsman,--and dropping down the Leven, and past the Castle, had gained the broad Clyde, drifted into mid-stream, and there, lying on our oars, had patiently waited until the great puffing steamer of the Hutcheson line, from Glasgow, hove in sight. Then, raising one oar as a signal, we had hailed the monster, which, condescendingly relaxing her speed, had suffered our boat, tossing like a feather on the steamer's mighty swell, to come in palpitating, timid fashion under the shadow of her paddle-box, where the strong arms of men stationed on the portable ladder let down from her side had caught our skiff by the prow and held the inconstant thing for one instant firmly enough to suffer us to spring to their precarious stairway and so secure our passage to Ardrishalg. Thence, after two hours' sail by track-boat through the Crinan Canal, and a second passage by steamer,--literally an ocean passage, for it took us out into the deep Atlantic,--we had bent our course awhile among the islands that lie nearer the rocky shore, and had at length, just at nightfall, gained the little land-locked harbor of Oban,--sweet, smiling Oban, nestling securely within her rocky bulwarks, the glistening curve of her white sea-wall, her little fleet of safely moored vessels, her clustering cottages, her neat tempting inns, all challenging our wonder and delight, as, skirting the headland which had hitherto jealously hidden the mimic seaport, the entire picture flashed instantaneously on our view.