oken cisterns, and to taste the
wormwood of many earthly streams, in order that in after days, by the
side of the fountain of living waters, he might point to the world he
had forever left, and testify the surpassing preciousness of what he
had now found.

Mr. Alexander Somerville (afterwards minister of Anderston Church,
Glasgow) was his familiar friend and companion in the gay scenes of
his youth. And he, too, about this time, having been brought to taste
the powers of the world to come, they united their efforts for each
other's welfare. They met together for the study of the Bible, and
used to exercise themselves in the Septuagint Greek and the Hebrew
original. But oftener still they met for prayer and solemn converse;
and carrying on all their studies in the same spirit, watched each
other's steps in the narrow way.

He thought himself much profited, at this period, by investigating the
subject of Election and the Free Grace of God. But it was the reading
of _The Sum of Saving Knowledge_, generally appended to our Confession
of Faith, that brought him to a clear understanding of the way of
acceptance with God. Those who are acquainted with its admirable
statements of truth, will see how well fitted it was to direct an
inquiring soul. I find him some years afterwards recording:--"_March
11, 1834._--Read in the _Sum of Saving Knowledge_, the work which I
think first of all wrought a saving change in me. How gladly would I
renew the reading of it, if that change might be carried on to
perfection!" It will be observed that he never reckoned his soul
saved, notwithstanding all his convictions and views of sins, until
he really went into the Holiest of all on the warrant of the
Redeemer's work; for assuredly a sinner is still under wrath, until he
has actually availed himself of the way to the Father opened up by
Jesus. All his knowledge of his sinfulness, and all his sad feeling of
his own need and danger, cannot place him one step farther off from
the lake of fire. It is "he that comes to Christ" that is saved.

Before this period he had received a bias towards the ministry from
his brother David, who used to speak of the ministry as the most
blessed work on earth, and often expressed the greatest delight in the
hope that his younger brother might one day become a minister of
Christ. And now, with altered views,--with an eye that could gaze on
heaven and hell, and a heart that felt the love of a reconciled
God,--he