THE KING’S BUSINESS
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in.’ For weeks before he was full o f prayer; he seemed to care for nothing but to pray. In the daytime, alone or with others, it was his chief delight, and in the night watches he might be overheard pray ing aloud. Yet during this time the power that rested upon himself did not affect his preaching; it was sensible, clear, orthodox, unobjectionable; and in that indeed he never altered; for in the midst o f what ever excitement, there was never any eccentricity or extravagance of doctrine, or even the extreme pressing o f any one point; but a steadfast keeping within lines o f received truth, as not expecting con version by any special way of stating the Gospel, but by the power of the Spirit accompanying it. For a season, however, before the Kilsyth communion, he seemed two different men in private and public— his own spiritual strength so far exceeding what appeared in the pulpit. . . . He had been asking, seeking, knocking, for the Holy Spirit; that Spirit came upon him with power; and the Lord added unto the church daily such as should be saved, mul titudes both o f men and women.” CONTINUOUS PRA ISE Persons o f all classes and conditions were the subjects o f this work o f grace, poor colliers and comfortably situated farmers, young« people and people well advanced in years. Salvation was the common topic o f conversation. The sweet psalms o f Israel in the beloved metrical version were heard at all times and on all days throughout the district. The ordinary services o f the churches were crowded and special meetings had to be held to allow the people an opportunity for praise and worship o f the God who had so wonder fully manifested Himself. Ministers from other parishes and from the city o f Glas gow came to see and heat for themselves, and to return to their own churches with the glad tidings. The pastors in the dis trict were careful to distinguish between those who were really converted and those who were merely awakened, and like the faithful ministers they were they followed
as a shout in the thick o f battle. Another moment o f intense and uncontrollable emo tion I vividly remember. In urging sin ners to an immediate closing with Christ in the offers o f His grace, he had made use o f the obvious and very common figure of a lifeboat bringing hope and deliverance to. the side o f a foundering vessel; when in developing the idea and dwelling on.it, the whole scene seemed to pass in living reality before his eyes—the doomed bark rolling helplessly amid the wild waves, and rapidly settling down; the crouching, trembling throng clinging to the gunwale, and the light buoyant skiff leaping up toward them amid the blinding spray, so near that they might almost touch it; and as he saw them still hesitating and wasting in final inaction the last moments o f opportunity, he cried aloud as one might do from the summit o f a neighboring headland on the shore, ‘Are ybu in? Are you in? Flee for refuge to lay hold o f the hope set before you; now or never.’ There was in his whole style and manner at this moment, as fre quently afterwards at similar times, a dramatic vividness and energy, which reminded one o f what we read o f in White- field—a vividness and energy, however, which in my brother’s case was not in any measure due to a graphic poetic fancy, but simply to an intense and awful realization o f eternal truth. As to the scene itself which followed, I can think o f no better description than the account o f the day of Pentecost, in the second chapter of the Acts, o f which both in its immediate feat ures and in its after results, and in every thing except the miraculous gift o f tongues, it seems to me to have been an exact coun terpart” SP IRIT OF THE MAN The man himself—his spirit, temper and manner outside the pulpit are thus described by his close friend Mr. Moody Stuart: “ At Kilsyth there was fulfilled in him the promise, ‘the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come' to his temple, even the Mes senger o f the Covenant whom ye delight
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