J.C.
Meiklejohn, had come to live in Edinburgh two years before for the
better treatment of what proved to be a mortal disease, passed away.
And in the autumn he lost the last and the dearest of the friends
that had been left to him in these later years, William Graham. These
losses brought him yet closer than he had been before to the unseen
and eternal world.
He was habitually reticent about his inner life and his habits of
devotion. No one knew his times of prayer or how long they lasted.
Once, indeed, his simplicity of character betrayed him in regard to
this matter. The door of his retiring-room at the College was without
a key, and he would not give so much trouble as to ask for one. So,
in order that he might be quite undisturbed, he piled up some forms
and chairs against the door on the inside, forgetting entirely that
the upper part of it was obscure glass and that his barricade was
perfectly visible from without. It need not be said that no one
interrupted him or interfered with his belief that he had been
unobserved by any human eye. But it did not require an accidental
disclosure like this to reveal the fact that he spent much time in
prayer. No one who knew him ever so little could doubt this, and no
one could hear him praying in public without feeling sure that he
had learned how to do it by long experience in the school of private
devotion.
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