g the hearts of those
he spoke to. But from the day of his preaching in St. Peter's, tokens
of success began. His first day there, especially the evening sermon
on Ruth, was blessed to two souls in Dundee; and now he sees souls
begin to melt under his last words in the parish where he thought he
had hitherto spent his strength in vain.

[6] See this characteristic sermon in the Remains.

As he was now to leave this sphere, he sought out, with deep anxiety,
a laborer who would help their overburdened pastor, in true love to
the people's souls. He believed he had found such a laborer in Mr.
Somerville, his friend who had shared his every thought and feeling in
former days, and who, with a sharp sickle in his hand, was now
advancing toward the harvest field. "I see plainly," he wrote to Mr.
Bonar, "that my poor attempts at labor in your clear parish will soon
be eclipsed. But if at length the iron front of unbelief give way, if
the hard faces become furrowed with the tears of anxiety and of
faith, under whatever ministry, you will rejoice, and I will rejoice,
and the angels, and the Father and God of angels, will rejoice." It
was in this spirit that he closed his short ten months of labor in
this region.

His last sermons to the people of Larbert and Dunipace were on Hosea
14:1, "O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God;" and Jeremiah 8:20,
"Harvest is past." In the evening he writes, "Lord, I feel bowed down
because of the little I have done for them which Thou mightest have
blessed! My bowels yearn over them, and all the more that I have done
so little. Indeed, I might have done ten times as much as I have done.
I might have been in every house; I might have spoken always as a
minister. Lord, canst Thou bless partial, unequal efforts?"

I believe it was about this time that some of us first of all began
our custom of praying specially for each other on Saturday evening,
with a reference to our engagements in the ministry next day. This
concert for prayer we have never since seen cause to discontinue. It
has from time to time been widened in its circle; and as yet his has
been the only voice that has been silenced of all that thus began to
go in on each other's behalf before the Lord. Mr. M'Cheyne never
failed to remember this time of prayer: "Larbert and Dunipace are
always on my heart, especially on the Saturday evenings, when I pray
for a glorious Sabbath!" On one occasion, in Dundee, he was asked if
the accumu