A Pastor
A recent conversation about Gregory of Nyssa’s De hominis opificio, a treatise for our times, taught me that the best Greek edition is still reckoned to be that of the Reverend George Hay Forbes (1821–75). I found an obituary of this singular man appended to a memoir of his brother. ‘An illness in early childhood had left him an incurable weakness of the limbs, […] but his ardent soul could not be satisfied without reaching onward to the highest form of service possible to him.’ This service was not least a matter of loving the Lord with all the resources of his mind. He was immersed throughout his life in the study of ancient texts. That did not make him aloof. People did not experience him as distant. This appears from the moving account of the day of his funeral: ‘While every window was darkened and every bell tolling, the whole population of the place, headed by the municipal authorities, followed the coffin down to the water’s edge where the steamer awaited it that was to convey it to the beautiful cemetery at Edinburgh. They watched the vessel quit the shore and then when they turned away there was many a touching token of the sad sense of bereavement which smote upon their hearts, as they felt that they should look upon his face no more.’
