[66] Aphorism 248.
[67] Select Sermons, p. 153.
[68] Ibid. p. 21.
[69] Several Discourses, ii. p. 329.
[70] John Tulloch's Rational Theology in the Seventeenth Century, ii. p. 115.
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CHAPTER XVI
JOHN SMITH, PLATONIST—"AN INTERPRETER OF THE SPIRIT"[1]
Principal Tulloch, in his admirable study of the Cambridge Platonists, declares that John Smith was "the richest and most beautiful mind and certainly by far the best writer of them all."[2]
There can be no doubt, in the thought of any one who has come into close contact with him, of the richness and beauty of his spirit. He leaves the impression, even after the lapse of more than two hundred and fifty years, of having been a saint of a rare type. Those who were nearest to him in fellowship called him "a good man," "a Godlike man," "a servant and friend of God," "a serious practicer of the Sermon on the Mount"; and we who know him only afar off and at second hand feel sure nevertheless that these lofty words were rightly given to him. His scholarship was wide—he had "a vastness of learning," as Patrick says; but his main contribution was not to philosophy nor to theology, it consisted rather of an exhibition of religion wrought out in the attractive form of a beautiful spiritual life: "He was an Exemplar of true Christian Vertue of so poized and even a life that by his Wisdom and Conscience one might live almost at a venture, walking blindfold through the world."[3]