The kirk door was nailed up and we were obligated to go in by the window, making the Lord’s house like an inn on a fair-day with their grievous yelly hooing.  Thomas Thorl, the weaver, a pious zealot, got up at the time of the induction and protested, and said, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that entereth not by the door of the sheepfold, but climbeth up some other way, the same is a thief and a robber.”

When the laying on of the hands upon me was adoing, Mr. Given, minister of Lugton, a jocose man, who could not get near, stretched out his staff and touched my head, saying, to the great diversion of the rest, “This will do well enough—­timber to timber.”

After the ceremony we went to the manse, and there had an excellent dinner.  Although my people received me in this unruly manner, I was resolved to cultivate civility among them; and next morning I began a round of visitations.  But, oh! it was a steep brae to climb.  The doors in some places were barred against me; in others the bairns ran crying to their mothers, “Here’s the feckless Mess-John.”  But Thomas Thorl received me kindly, and said that this early visitation was a symptom of grace, and that not to condemn me without trial he and some neighbours would be at the kirk at the next Lord’s day, so that I would not have to preach just to the bare walls and the laird’s family.

As to Mrs. Malcolm, she was the widow of a Clyde shipmaster that was lost at sea with his vessel.  A genty body, she never changed her widow’s weeds, and span frae morning tae nicht to keep her bairns and herself.  When her daughter Effie was ill, I called on her in a sympathising way, and offered her some assistance frae the Session, but she refused help out of the poor’s-box, as it might be hereafter cast up to her bairns.

It was in the year 1761 that the great smuggling trade corrupted the west coast.  Tea was going like chaff, and brandy like well-water.  There was nothing minded but the riding of cadgers by day and excisemen by night, and battles between the smugglers and the king’s men, both by sea and land; continual drunkenness and debauchery, and our Session had an awful time o’t.

I did all that was in my power to keep my people from the contagion.  I preached sixteen times from the text, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”  I visited, exhorted, warned, and prophesied, but the evil got in among us.  The third year of my ministry was long held in remembrance.  The small-pox came in among the poor bits o’ weans of the parish, and the smashing it made among them was woeful.  When the pestilence was raging, I preached a sermon about Rachel weeping for her children, which Thomas Thorl, a great judge of good preaching, said, “was a monument of divinity whilk searched the heart of many a parent that day”—­a thing I was well pleased to hear, and was minded to make him an elder the next vacancy.  But, worthy man, it was not permitted him to arrive at that honour; for that fall it pleased Him that alone can give and take to pluck him from this life.