frail and sinful man, and give unto God the glory of all the benefits which you receive through such an unworthy instrument.

Being in such a spirit towards one another, the preliminaries were soon arranged; indeed, I may say needed no arrangement; and I came up on the day before the Christmas of 1821, to make trial and proof of my gifts before the remnant of the congregation which still held together. Wherewith beingsatisfied, I took my journey homewards, waiting the good pleasure of the great Head of the church. Many were the difficulties and obstacles which Satan threw in the way, and which threatened hard to defeat altogether our desire and our purpose of being united in one. Amongst others, one, which would have deterred many men, was my inability to preach in the Gaelic language, of which I knew not a single word; but, such was the steadiness of purpose with which I desired to preach the Gospel in London, and to be your Pastor, that this impediment cost me not a thought, and I resolved forthwith to domesticate myself in the Highlands, and master their ancient tongue.. God, having proved our willingness, was pleased to remove this obstacle out of the way. And another obstacle to my ordination, arising out of the rule of the Scottish Church not to ordain without an assurance on the part of the people calling the Minister to give him a livelihood,

your readiness, without any request of mine, removed out of the way. To those brethren who came forward so voluntarily, and so liberally, on that occasion, the Church, and the Minister of the Church, are much beholden; and all of us are beholden to God, who useth us in any way, however humble, for the accomplishment of his good purposes.

Having received ordination from the Presbytery, and in the church in which I was baptized, in which, I may likewise add, I was lately honoured first to preach the Advent of our Lord in my native land; and having experienced of my dear friend, Dr. Chalmers, the singular honour of administering the sacrament to his parish flock, being my first act as an ordained minister; I set out, on this very morning six years ago, on my way to London: so that I may say my seventh year of labour begins with this record of God's dealings with us during six years of constant and unceasing work. May it prove unto us as a Sabbatical year of rest, wherein our souls shall yield abundant fruit, through the free-will operation of the Holy Ghost!-For one year, or nearly so, beginning with the second Sabbath of July 1822, our union went on cementing itself, by mutual acts of kindness, in the shade of that happy obscurity which we then enjoyed. And I delight to remember that season of our mutual love and confidence; because

the noisy tongues of men and their envious eyes were not upon us. And you know, and can bear testimony, whether the public opinion, or the desire of it, had any thing to do with the nature of my pulpit discourses or private ministrations. I can say with a safe conscience, that to this hour it never cost me a thought to gain it, nor to keep it, nor to lose it. I count it so volatile and so wicked, that, upon the whole, I would rather have it against me than with me. Yet can I not look back, upon the second, and third, and fourth years of my ministry, without astonishment and amazement, that God should have honoured a man unknown, despised, and almost outcast (save by you and a small, small remnant of my native church), to preach his Gospel to every rank and degree of men, from the lowest, basest of our press hirelings, up to the right hand of Royalty itself. Of this honour I will boast, and none shall prevent me boasting of it, in that spirit, I trust, of foolishness for Christ's sake in which Paul boasted before the churches of Achaia. My God honoured his servant, whom the religious world despised. By a man spoken against, reviled, suspected, and avoided, by those who usurp the Evangelical name as if it were all their own, my God did speak unto the heads and representatives and nobles and princes of this nation. In the review of which high and ho

nourable distinction, I desire again to humble myself before God, as his most unworthy servant; and especially to acknowledge that power which he gave me to speak, without fear or dread, his holy word unto princes. It was his doing, and for his own ends was it done. He glorified himself in mine infirmities. His work was not acknowledged by those who should have acknowledged it; and therefore, though late, I do tender unto him hearty acknowledgments for the witness and the testimony to his truth which he enabled me to lift up, in ears, alas! too little accustomed to hear it. These things I should be the last to say; but they should not remain unsaid, they should not remain unacknowledged to the Doer of all things.

After our church was honoured to do this service for God and the commonwealth, we were rewarded by larger openings of Divine doctrine, and closer fellowship of the Holy Ghost, and greater increase of the flock. The doctrine especially of the blessed Trinity, and the offices sustained by the Persons thereof in our salvation, I desire, for my church and for myself, to acknowledge, was then opened to us, and remained no longer, as it is to most, a believed but unknown mystery. Next, the doctrine of the Gentile Apostasy, as exhibited in the Papal superstition, and in Protestant beralism, was made instrumental, under God,

to deliver the church from the false hope of converting a world which standeth ripe and ready for judgment; and did set us free from the spirit of expediency, that spirit which now worketh in the religious world.-To a right understanding of the present condition of the church, and its immediate judgment, we were greatly helped by attaining unto the mystery of Baptism, as constituting a people in cove nant, and responsible for the privileges of the covenant. This doctrine, which the infatuated church either fondly adopts, or maliciously represents, as baptismal regeneration,' is, in fact, the only one which puts a difference between us and a heathen nation: and while it is not apprehended, it is impossible for the deluded people to believe that we shall be judged before or beyond the heathen, or that we shall be judged at all; seeing, to speak nothing but the truth, we are, after all, the best portion of the earth. But, being measured by our obligations as a baptized nation; being measured by our privileges as a Protestant nation; into what an awful depth below Papists, Mohammedans, and Heathens, do we at once sink! I bless God, in behalf of my people, that he did open to us the mystery of the grace, the privilege, and the obligation of the baptismal covenant.-Next in the order of God's mercies to us, we have to acknowledge his instructing of us in the true humanity of