urch in which he had been brought up, and of which he
was now a minister, entered into a union with another of the Scottish
non-Established Churches, the Synod of Relief. There was thus formed
the United Presbyterian Church, with which his name was afterwards to
be so closely associated. The United Church comprised five hundred
and eighteen congregations, of which about fifty were, like those in
Berwick, in England; the nucleus of that English Synod which, thirty
years later, combined with the English Presbyterian Church to form
the present Presbyterian Church of England. References in his
correspondence show that this union of 1847, which afterwards had such
happy results, excited at the time little enthusiasm, and was entered
into largely as a matter of duty. "It is," he writes, "like the union,
not of two globules of quicksilver which run together of themselves,
but of two snowballs or cakes of mud that need in some way very tough
outward pressure. I hope that the friction will elicit heat, since
this neither cold nor hot spirit is not to edification."

The other letters of this period range over a wide variety of
subjects. With John Clark he compares experiences of ministerial
work; with John Nelson he discusses European politics as these have
been affected by the events of the "year of revolutions," 1848; with
George Wilson he discourses on every conceivable topic, from abstruse
problems of philosophy and theology to the opening of the North
British Railway; while his mother and his brothers, William and David,
the latter of whom about this time left his work in the Dunglass woods
to study for the ministry, are kept in touch with all that he knows
they will best like to hear about. But in all this wide field of human
life and thought and activity, which he so eagerly traverses, it is
quite evident that what attracts him most is the relation of it all
to a higher and an eternal order. With him the main interest is a
religious one. Without an atom of affectation, and without anything
that is at all morbid on his part, he reveals this at a hundred
points. In this connection a letter which he wrote to Sir William
Hamilton and which has since become well known, may be quoted here;
and it, with Sir William's reply, will fittingly conclude the present
chapter. This letter bears date November 16, 1848, and is as
follows:--

"I herewith enclose the statement respecting the Calabar Mission of
our Church, which I take blame