m spoke--and said, "Moderator, I have something
personal to myself to say. I have often said, that real kindness belongs
only to true Christians, but"--and then he told the story of these men;
"but more true kindness I never experienced than from these lads. They
may have had the grace of God, I don't know; but I never mean again to
be so _positive_ in speaking of this matter."

When he was on a missionary tour in the north, he one morning met a band
of Highland shearers on their way to the harvest; he asked them to stop
and hear the word of God. They said they could not, as they had their
wages to work for. He offered them what they said they would lose; to
this they agreed, and he paid them, and closing his eyes engaged in
prayer; when he had ended, he looked up, and his congregation had
vanished! His shrewd brother Thomas, to whom he complained of this
faithlessness, said, "Eben, the next time ye pay folk to hear you
preach, keep your eyes open, and pay them when you are done." I
remember, on another occasion, in Bristo Church, with an immense
audience, he had been going over the Scripture accounts of great sinners
repenting and turning to God, repeating their names, from Manasseh
onwards. He seemed to have closed the record, when, fixing his eyes on
the end of the central passage, he called out abruptly, "I see a man!"
Every one looked to that point,--"I see a man of Tarsus; and he says,
Make mention of me!" It must not be supposed that the discourses of
"Uncle Ebenezer," with these abrupt appeals and sudden starts, were
unwritten or extempore; they were carefully composed and written
out,--only these flashes of thought and passion came on him suddenly
when writing, and were therefore quite natural when delivered--they came
on him again.

The Rev. John Belfrage, M. D., had more power over my father's actions
and his relations to the world, than any other of his friends: over his
thoughts and convictions proper, not much,--few living men had, and even
among the mighty dead, he called no man master. He used to say that the
three master intellects devoted to the study of divine truth since the
apostles, were Augustine, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards; but that even
they were only _primi inter pares_,--this by the bye.

On all that concerned his outward life as a public teacher, as a father,
and as a member of society, he consulted Dr. Belfrage, and was swayed
greatly by his judgment, as, for instance, the choice of a pr