EFORE undertaking the Maryhill School, I had applied to be taken on as
an agent in the Glasgow City Mission; and the night before I had to
leave Maryhill, I received a letter from Rev. Thomas Caie, the
superintendent of the said Mission, saying that the directors had kept
their eyes on me ever since my application, and requesting, as they
understood I was leaving the School, that I would appear before them the
next morning, and have my qualifications for becoming a Missionary
examined into. Praising God, I went off at once, passed the examination
successfully, and was appointed to spend two hours that afternoon and
the following Monday in visitation with two of the directors, calling at
every house in a low district of the town, and conversing with all the
characters encountered there as to their eternal welfare. I had also to
preach a "trial" discourse in a Mission meeting, where a deputation of
directors would be present, the following evening being Sunday; and on
Wednesday evening they met again to hear their report and to accept or
reject me.

All this had come upon me so unexpectedly, that I almost anticipated
failure; but looking up for help I went through with it, and on the
fifth day after leaving the School they called me before a meeting of
directors, and informed me that I had passed my trials most
successfully, and that the reports were so favorable that they had
unanimously resolved to receive me at once as one of their City
Missionaries. Deeply solemnized with the responsibilities of my new
office, I left that meeting praising God for all His undeserved mercies,
and seeing most clearly His gracious hand in all the way by which He had
led me, and the trials by which He had prepared me for this sphere of
service. Man proposes--God disposes.

I found the district a very degraded one. Many families said they had
never been visited by any Minister; and many were lapsed professors of
religion who had attended no church for ten, sixteen, or twenty years,
and said they had never been called upon by any Christian visitor. In it
were congregated many avowed infidels, Romanists, and drunkards,--living
together, and associated for evil, but apparently without any effective
counteracting influence. In many of its closes and courts sin and vice
walked about openly--naked and not ashamed.

After nearly a year's hard work, I had only six or seven
non-church-goers, who had been led to attend regularly there, besides
abo