e can receive such honour and success in his ministry,
except it be given him from heaven, I rejoice that Christ is preached
and that his kingdom and interest is getting ground, for I am content to
be any thing or nothing that Christ may be all and all."

And indeed Mr. Gray had a notable and singular gift in preaching, being
one experienced in the most mysterious points of a Christian practice
and profession; and in handling of all his subjects, free of youthful
vanity, or affectation of human literature, though he had a most
scholastic genius and more than ordinary abilities; that he did outstrip
many that entered into the Lord's vineyard before him, his experience
being every way warm and rapturous, and well adapted to affect the
hearts of his hearers, yea he had such a faculty, and was so helped to
press home God's threatenings upon the consciences of his hearers, that
his contemporary the foresaid Mr. Durham observed, That many times he
caused the very hairs of their head to stand up.

Among his other excellencies in preaching (which were many) this was
none of the least, that he could so order his subject as to make it
relish every palate. He could so dress a plain discourse as to delight a
learned audience, and at the same time preach with a learned plainness,
having so learned to conceal his art. He had such a clear notion of high
mysteries, as to make them stoop to the meanest capacity. He had so
learned Christ, and being a man of a most zealous temper, the great bent
of his spirit and that which he did spend himself anent, was to make
people know their dangerous state by nature, and to persuade them to
believe and lay hold of the great salvation.

All which singularities seem to have been his peculiar mercy from the
Lord, to make him a burning and shining light in the western climate,
for about the space of two years[80] only, the Spirit of the Lord as it
were stirring up a lamp unto a sudden blaze, that was not to continue
long in his church. On which a late prefacer of some of his sermons has
very pertinently observed,----"Yea, how awakening, convincing and
reproving may the example of this very young minister be to many
ministers of the gospel, who have been many years in the vineyard, but
fall far short of his labours and progress! God thinks fit now and then
to raise up a child to reprove the sloth and negligence of many
thousands of advanced years, and shews that he can perfect his own
praise out of th