between the two districts in their general features of character ; but equal labour was bestowed on both by the minister and his assistant ; and often did their prayer ascend that the windows of heaven might be opened over the two sanctuaries. Souls have been saved there. Often, however, did the faithful pastor mingle his tears with those of his younger fellow-soldier, complaining, “Lord, who hath believed our report?” There was much sowing in faith; nor was this sowing abandoned even when the returns seemed most inadequate.

Mr M‘Cheyne had great delight in remembering that Larbert was one of the places where, in other days, that holy man of God, Robert Bruce, had laboured and prayed. Writing at an after period from the Holy Land, he expressed the wish, “May the Spirit be poured upon Larbert as in Bruce's days.” But more than all associations, the souls of the people, whose salvation he longed for, were ever present to his mind. A letter to Mr Bonar, in 1837, from Dundee, shows us bis yearnings over them. “What an interest I feel in Larbert and Dunipace! It is like the land of my birth. Will the Sun of Righteousness ever rise upon it, making its hills and valleys bright with the light of the knowledge of Jesus ?"

No sooner was he settled in his chamber here, than he commenced his work. With him, the commencement of all labour invariably consisted in the preparation of his own soul. The forerunner of each day's visitations was a calm season of private devotion during morning hours. The walls of his chamber were witnesses of his prayerfulness, I believe of his tears as well as of his cries. The pleasant sound of psalms often issued from his room at an early hour. Then followed the reading of the word for his own sanctification; and few have so fully realized the blessing of the first Psalm. His leaf did not wither, for his roots were in the waters. It was here, too, that he began to study so closely the works of Jonathan Edwards, reckoning them a mine to be wrought, and if wrought, sure to repay the toil. Along with this author, the Letters of Samuel Rutherford were often in his hand. Books of general knowledge he occasionally perused; but now it was done with the steady purpose of finding in them some illustration of spiritual truth. He rose from reading Insect Architecture, with the observation, “God reigns in a community of ants and ichneumons, as visibly as among living men or mighty seraphim !”

His desire to grow in acquaintance with Scripture was very intense; and both Old and New Testament were his regular study. He loved to range over the wide revelation of God. “He would

be a sorry student of this world,” said he to a friend, “who should for ever confine his gaze to the fruitful fields and well-watered gardens of this cultivated earth. He could have no true idea of what the world was, unless he had stood upon the rocks of our mountains, and seen the bleak muirs and mosses of our barren land ; unless he had paced the quarter-deck when the vessel was out of sight of land, and seen the waste of waters without any shore upon the horizon. Just so, he would be a sorry student of the Bible who would not know all that God has inspired; who would not examine into the most barren chapters to collect the good for which they were intended ; who would not strive to understand all the bloody battles which are chronicled, that he might find bread out of the eater, and honey out of the lion.'”—(June 1836.)

His anxiety to have every possible help to holiness led him to notice what are the disadvantages of those who are not daily stirred up by the fellowship of more advanced believers. “I have found, by some experience, that in the country here my watch does not go so well as it used to do in town. By small and gradual changes I find it either gains or loses, and I am surprised to find myself different in time from all the world, and, what is worse, from the sun. The simple explanation is, that in town I met with a steeple in every street, and a good-going clock upon it; and so any aberrations in my watch were soon noticed and easily corrected. And just so I sometimes think it may be with that inner watch, whose hands point not to time but to eternity. By gradual and slow changes the wheels of my soul lag behind, or the springs of passions become too powerful ; and I have no living timepiece with which I may compare, and by which I may amend my going. You will say that I may always have the sun: And so it should be; but we have many clouds which obscure the sun from our weak cyes.”--(Letter to Rev. H. Bonar, Kelso.)

From the first he fed others by what he himself was feeding upon. His preaching was in a manner the development of his soul's experience. It was a giving out of the inward life. He loved to come up from the pastures wherein the Chief Shepherd had met him-to lead the flock entrusted to his care to the spots where he found nourishment.

In the field of his labour he found enough of work to overwhelm his spirit. The several collieries and the Carron Ironworks furnish a population who are, for the most part, either sunk in deep indifference to the truth, or are opposed to it in the spirit of infidelity. Mr M.Cheyne at once saw that the pastor whom he had come to aid, whatever was the measure of his health, and zeal, and persever.

ance, had duties laid on him which were altogether beyond the power of man to overtake. When he made a few weeks' trial, the field appeared more boundless, and the mass of souls more impenetrable, than he had ever conceived.

It was probably, in some degree, his experience at this time that gave him such deep sympathy with the Church Extension Scheme, as a truly noble and Christian effort for bringing the glad tidings to the doors of a population who must otherwise remain neglected, and were themselves willing so to live and die. He conveyed his impressions on this subject to a friend abroad, in the following terms: “ There is a soul-destroying cruelty in the cold-hearted opposition which is made to the multiplication of ministers in such neglected and overgrown districts as these. If one of our Royal Commissioners would but consent to undergo the bodily fatigue that a minister ought to undergo in visiting merely the sick and dying of Larbert (let alone the visitation of the whole, and preparation for the pulpit), and that for one month, I would engage that if he be able to rise out of his bed by the end of it, he would change his voice and manner at the Commission Board.”

A few busy weeks passed over, occupied from morning to night in such cares and toils, when another part of the discipline he was to undergo was sent. In the end of December, strong oppression of the heart and an irritating cough caused some of his friends to fear that his lungs were affected ; and for some weeks he was laid aside from public duty. On examination, it was found that though there was a dulness in the right lung, yet the material of the lungs was not affected. For a time, however, the air-vessels were so clogged and irritated, that if he had continued to preach, disease would have quickly ensued. But this also was soon removed, and, under cautious management, he resumed his work.

This temporary illness served to call forth the extreme sensitiveness of his soul to the responsibilities of his office. At its commencement-having gone to Edinburgh “in so sweet a sunshine morning that God seemed to have chosen it for him”-he wrote to Mr Bonar : “If I am not recovered before the third Sabbath, I fear I shall not be able to bear upon my conscience the responsibility of leaving you any longer to labour alone, bearing unaided the burden of 6000 souls. No, my dear sir, I must read the will of God aright in his providence, and give way, when He bids me, to fresh and abler workmen. I hope and pray that it may be bis will to restore me again to you and your parish, with a heart tutored by sickness, to speak more and more as dying to dying.” Then, mentioning two of the sick : “Poor A. D. and C. H., I often think of them. I can do no more for their good, except pray for them. Tell them that I do this without ceasing.”

The days when a holy paswor, who knows the blood-sprinkled way to the Father, is laid aside, are probably as much a proof of the kindness of God to his flock as days of health and activity. He is occupied, during this season of retirement, in discovering the plagues of his heart, and in going in, like Moses, to plead with God face to face for his flock, and for his own soul. Mr M.Cheyne believed that God had this end in view with him ; and that the Lord should thus deal with him at his entrance into the vineyard made him ponder these dealings the more. " Paul asked," says he, 6. What wilt Thou have me to do?' and it was answered, 'I will show him what great things he must suffer for my name's sake.' Thus it may be with me. I have been too anxious to do great things. The last of praise has ever been my besetting sin; and what more befitting school could be found for me than that of suffering alone, away from the eye and ear of man?” Writing again to Mr Bonar, he tells him : “I feel distinctly that the whole of my labour during this season of sickness and pain should be in the way of prayer and intercession. And yet, so strongly does Satan work in our deceitful hearts, I scarcely remember a season wherein I have been more averse to these duties. I try to build myself up in my most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keeping myself in the love of God, and looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus unto eternal life.' That text of Jude has peculiar beauties for me at this season. If it be good to come under the love of God once, surely it is good to keep ourselves there. And yet how reluctant we are! I cannot doubt that boldness is offered me to enter into the holiest of all; I cannot doubt my right and title to enter continually by the new and bloody way; I cannot doubt that when I do enter in, I stand not only forgiven, but accepted in the Beloved; I cannot doubt that when I do enter in, the Spirit is willing and ready to descend like a dove, to dwell in my bosom as a Spirit of prayer and peace, enabling me to pray in the Holy Ghost;' and that Jesus is ready to rise up as my intercessor with the Father, praying for me though not for the world, and that the prayer-hearing God is ready to bend his ear to requests which He delights to hear and answer. I cannot doubt that thus to dwell in God is the true blessedness of my nature; and yet, strange unaccountable creature! I am too often unwilling to enter in. I go about and about the sanctuary, and I sometimes press in through the rent vail, and see the blessedness of dwelling there to be far better than that of the tents of wickedness; yet it is certain that I

do not dwell within.”—“My prayers follow you, especially to the sick-beds of A. D. and C. H. I hope they still survive, and that Christ may yet be glorified in them.”

On resuming his labours, he found a residence in Carronvale. From this pleasant spot he used to ride out to his work. But pleasant as the spot was, yet being only partially recovered, he was not satisfied; he lamented that he was unable to overtake what a stronger labourer would have accomplished. He often cast a regretful look at the collieries; and remembering them still at a later period, he reproached himself with neglect, though most unjustly. “ The places which I left utterly unbroken in upon are Kinnaird and Milton. Both of these rise up against my conscience, particularly the last, through which I have ridden so often.” It was not the comfort, but the positive usefulness of the ministry, that he envied ; and he judged of places by their fitness to promote this great end. He said of a neighbouring parish, which he had occasion to visit : “ The manse is altogether too sweet; other men could hardly live there without saying, “This is my rest. I don't think ministers' manses should ever be so beautiful.”

A simple incident was overruled to promote the ease and fluency of his pulpit ministrations. From the very beginning of his ministry he reprobated the custom of reading sermons, believing that to do so does exceedingly weaken the freedom and natural fervour of the messenger in delivering his message. Neither did he recite what he had written. But his custom was to impress on his memory the substance of what he had beforehand carefully written, and then to speak as he found liberty. One morning, as he rode rapidly along to Dunipace, his written sermons were dropped on the wayside. This accident prevented him having the opportunity of preparing in his usual manner ; but he was enabled to preach with more than usual freedom. For the first time in his life, he discovered that he possessed the gift of extemporaneous composition, and learned, to his own surprise, that he had more composedness of mind and command of language than he had believed. This discovery, however, did not in the least degree diminish his diligent preparation. Indeed, the only use that he made of the incident at the time it occurred was, to draw a lesson of dependence on God's own immediate blessing rather than on the satisfactory preparation made. “One thing always fills the cup of my consolation, that God may work by the meanest and poorest words, as well as by the most polished and ornate,-yea, perhaps more readily, that the glory may be all his own."

His hands were again full, distributing the bread of life in fellow