le
explanation is, that in town I met with a steeple in every street, and
a good-going clock upon it; and so any aberrations in my watch were
soon noticed and easily corrected. And just so I sometimes think it
may be with that inner watch, whose hands point not to time but to
eternity. By gradual and slow changes the wheels of my soul lag
behind, or the springs of passions become too powerful; and I have no
living timepiece with which I may compare, and by which I may amend my
going. You will say that I may always have the sun: And so it should
be; but we have many clouds which obscure the sun from our weak
eyes."--(_Letter to Rev. H. Bonar, Kelso._)

From the first he fed others by what he himself was feeding upon. His
preaching was in a manner the development of his soul's experience. It
was a giving out of the inward life. He loved to come up from the
pastures wherein the Chief Shepherd had met him--to lead the flock
entrusted to his care to the spots where he found nourishment.

In the field of his labor he found enough of work to overwhelm his
spirit. The several collieries and the Carron Ironworks furnish a
population who are, for the most part, either sunk in deep
indifference to the truth, or are opposed to it in the spirit of
infidelity. Mr. M'Cheyne at once saw that the pastor whom he had come
to aid, whatever was the measure of his health, and zeal, and
perseverance, had duties laid on him which were altogether beyond the
power of man to overtake. When he made a few weeks' trial, the field
appeared more boundless, and the mass of souls more impenetrable, than
he had ever conceived.

It was probably, in some degree, his experience at this time that gave
him such deep sympathy with the Church Extension Scheme, as a truly
noble and Christian effort for bringing the glad tidings to the doors
of a population who must otherwise remain neglected, and were
themselves willing so to live and die. He conveyed his impressions on
this subject to a friend abroad, in the following terms: "There is a
soul-destroying cruelty in the cold-hearted opposition which is made
to the multiplication of ministers in such neglected and overgrown
districts as these. If one of our Royal Commissioners would but
consent to undergo the bodily fatigue that a minister ought to undergo
in visiting merely the sick and dying of Larbert (let alone the
visitation of the whole, and preparation for the pulpit), and that for
one month, I would eng