Cumming preached the action sermon in the open
air at the Meadow Well; but the tables were served within the building
where the congregation usually met. Mr. M'Cheyne preached in the
evening to a vast multitude at the well; and about a hundred waited
after sermon for prayer, many of them in deep anxiety.

He came to Edinburgh on the 11th, to attend the meeting of ministers
and elders who had come together to sign the _Solemn Engagement_ in
defence of the liberties of Christ's church. He hesitated not to put
his hand to the Engagement. He then returned to Dundee; and scarcely
had he returned, when he was laid aside by one of those attacks of
illness with which he was so often tried. In this case, however, it
soon passed away. "My health," he remarked, "has taken a gracious
turn, which should make me look up." But again, on September 6, an
attack of fever laid him down for six days. On this occasion, just
before the sickness came on, three persons had visited him, to tell
him how they were brought to Christ under his ministry some years
before. "Why," he noted in his journal, "Why has God brought these
cases before me _this week_? Surely He is preparing me for some trial
of faith." The result proved that his conjecture was just. And while
his Master prepared him beforehand for these trials, He had ends to
accomplish in his servant by means of them. There were other trials,
also, besides these, which were very heavy to him; but in all we could
discern the Husbandman pruning the branch, that it might bear more
fruit. As he himself said one day in the church of Abernyte, when he
was assisting Mr. Manson, "If we only saw the whole, we should see
that the Father is doing little else in the world but _training his
vines_."

His preaching became more and more to him a work of faith. Often I
find him writing at the close or beginning of a sermon: "Master,
help!" "Help, Lord, help!" "Send showers;" "Pardon, give the Spirit,
and take the glory;" "May the opening of my lips he right things!" The
piercing effects of the word preached on souls at this season may be
judged of from what one of the awakened, with whom he was conversing,
said to him, "_I think hell would be some relief from an angry God._"

His delight in preaching was very great. He himself used to say that
he could scarcely ever resist an invitation to preach. And this did
not arise from the natural excitement there is in commanding the
attention of thousands; for he