Another excellent person, whose name we are unwilling to pass over entirely in this connexion, though little can now be recovered of his history, is Dr. Ebenezer Latham. He was born in 1688; his father, from whom he received a religious, virtuous, and liberal education, was a worthy dissenting minister, settled at Wem, in Shropshire. He was early destined, both by his parents and his own inclination, to the work of the ministry; but being for some time apprehensive lest a weakness of voice, brought on by the small-pox, might disqualify him for it, he applied himself also to the study of medicine, and graduated as M. D. at the university of Glasgow. He lived, however, to be very useful and acceptable in both capacities; and added to them that by which his name is now chiefly remembered, the tutorship of a private academy, from which proceeded several of the most valuable and distinguished ministers among the Presbyterian dissenters of the last century. He settled at Findern, near Derby, where the academy had previously been conducted by Mr. Hill. Here he exercised his function as physician both to the souls and bodies of his neighbours, and appears to have been one of the few examples of the successful union of two professions, which might seem well fitted to go together, if the failure of most of the attempts to combine them did not shew that there were considerable practical difficulties in the way. But when we learn, that, not content with this double character of physician and pastor, Dr. Latham was also for a long series of years an active and successful labourer in another important
