very pulpit effort is thoughtfully and carefully prepared beforehand.
His readiness to preach and assist in every good work has been largely
taken advantage of by the numerous charitable and religious societies in
Glasgow, which have, perhaps, rather ungenerously taxed his good nature
and anxiety to make himself useful.

Although Dr. Ker has seldom been prominently before the public in
connection with political or social agitations, he has all along taken
an active part in the establishment and advancement of Sunday and day
schools and missionary schemes. At the same time he has been ready to
assist in any movement of a political kind that presented itself to his
view as one worthy of support and encouragement. While he is always
earnest and conscientious in his pulpit and platform labours, he can
out-Spurgeon Spurgeon in his gift of pointing a moral, with an amusing
illustration. His alternations between grave and gay are always in
season; he takes good heed to Solomon's admonition that "there is a
time for everything." But while he sometimes condescends to tickle the
midriff of his hearers, consciously or unconsciously--for his quaint yet
pungent remarks are not unfrequently the inspirations of the moment--he
can afford to indulge his relish for humour without let or hindrance at
a select party or by his own fireside. In either of these situations his
solid and volatile qualities appear to vie with each other for the
mastery. With quips and jokes, apposite and sparkling, he "is wont to
set the table in a roar." Hence his society is much courted.

As a preacher, Dr. Ker has few if any superiors in Glasgow. His
imagination is very fine and subtle, although not so exuberant and
flowery as many other speakers who have an equally ready flow of
language. He is apt in illustration, and he generally contrives to set
forth his arguments in the most intelligible and convincing form; but he
does not introduce illustrations for the mere sake of rhetorical effect.
He rather makes every figure of speech to arise as it were by a natural
sequence in the course of his reasoning, and few men have a greater
facility for making "crooked paths straight, and rough places plain."
The most abstruse and knotty points he makes so obvious and clear that
his hearers are inclined to wonder why they did not think of them in
that light before--giving to themselves, or to the merits of the
question in hand, a credit that is only due to the preacher