rious and divine.[*]

[*Note: See "Revivals in Scotland," published by the Board of
Publication.]

It was with great pleasure that he received any intelligence of a like
kind from England, whether the clergy of the Established Church or
dissenting ministers, whether our own countrymen or foreigners, were the
instruments of it. Whatever weaknesses or errors might mingle themselves
with valuable qualities in such as were active in such a work, he
appeared to love and honour them in proportion to the degree he saw
reason to believe that their hearts were devoted to the service of
Christ, and their attempts owned and succeeded by him. I remember, that
mentioning one of these gentlemen who had been remarkably successful in
his ministry, and who seemed to have met with some very unkind usage, he
says, "I had rather be that despised, persecuted man, to be an instrument
in the hand of the Spirit in converting so many souls, and building up so
many in their holy faith, than I would be emperor of the whole world."
Yet this steady and judicious Christian, (for such he most assuredly
was,) at the same time that he esteemed a man for his good intentions,
and his worthy qualities, did not suffer himself to be hurried away into
all the singularity of his sentiments, or to admire his imprudences or
excesses. On the contrary, he saw and lamented that artifice which the
great father of fraud has so long and so successfully been practising,
and who, like the enemies of Israel, when he cannot entirely prevent the
building of God's temple, does, as it were, offer his assistance to carry
on the work, that he may thereby get the most effectual opportunities of
obstructing it. The colonel often expressed his astonishment at the wide
extremes into which some whom on the whole he thought very worthy men,
were permitted to run in many doctrinal and speculative points, and
discerned how evidently it appeared from hence that we cannot argue the
truth of any doctrine from the success of the preacher, since this would
be a kind of demonstration which might equally prove both parts of a
contradiction. Yet when he observed that a high regard to the atonement
and righteousness of Christ, and to the free grace of God in him, exerted
by the operation of the Divine Spirit, was generally common to all who
had been peculiarly successful in the conversion and reformation of men,
(how widely soever their judgments might differ in other points, and how
warmly