uses, but runs out on a discourse on some common head, in a high,
romancing, and unscriptural style, tickling the ear for the present, and
moving the affections in some, but leaving, as he confesses, little or
nought to the memory and understanding. This we must misken, for we cannot
help it."(52)

It has been said that Binning himself, when on his death bed, regretted to
one of his friends, that his sermons had been framed after a different
model from that to which his countrymen had been accustomed, and had he
lived, that "he was fully resolved to have followed that way of preaching
by doctrine, reasons, and uses, and he declared he was then best pleased
with."(53) We can easily believe this. The faithful Christian minister is
not a man that is likely to be pleased with his own performances, in any
circumstances, and more particularly, when he sees the hour approaching,
when he expects to be called upon, to render an account of his stewardship
and should his hopes of usefulness have been disappointed, he will be more
disposed, even than others, to blame the teacher. Binning, it is not
improbable, thought he had done wrong, in discarding from many of his
sermons formal divisions altogether, and, like many English preachers who
came after him, that in passing from one extreme, he had sometimes
proceeded to another. He may likewise have discovered, when catechizing
some of his simple parishioners, that from want of the usual landmarks to
guide them, they were not always able to follow him, when addressing them
from the pulpit, or to give such a good account of his sermons, as of the
discourses of some other ministers, who in preaching adhered to the rules
and method of the period.(54)

A small volume, having for its title "Evangelical Beauties of the late
Rev. Hugh Binning," was prepared for the press, by the Rev. John Brown of
Whitburn, and published at Edinburgh, in the year 1828. Along with this
interesting little work, a letter from the late Dr M'Crie was printed, in
which that judicious and popular writer says, "I am fond of Binning, he is
thoroughly evangelical, is always in earnest and full of his subject,
abounds in new and striking thoughts, and has many natural and unaffected
beauties in his style and manner of writing. Had he paid a little more
attention to order and method, and lived to correct his sermons for the
press, he would, in my opinion, have carried every point of a good and
great preacher. As it is