The minister at this time was the Rev. David M’Quater Inglis, a man of rugged appearance and of original and vigorous mental powers.  He was a good scholar and a stimulating preacher, excelling more particularly in his expository discourses, or “lectures” as they used to be called.  When he tackled some intricate passage in an Epistle, it was at times a little hard to follow him, especially as his utterance tended to be hesitating; but when he had finished, one saw that a broad clear road had been cut through the thicket, and that the daylight had been let in upon what before had been dim.  “I have heard many preachers,” said Dr. Cairns, in preaching his funeral sermon nearly forty years later, “but I have heard few whose sermons at their best were better than the best of his; and his everyday ones had a strength, a simplicity, and an unaffected earnestness which excited both thought and Christian feeling.”  Nor was he merely a preacher.  By his pastoral visitations and “diets of examination” he always kept himself in close touch with his people, and he made himself respected by rich and poor alike.

The shepherd’s family occupied a pew at Stockbridge in front of the pulpit and just under the gallery, which ran round three sides of the church.  That pew was rarely vacant on a Sunday.  There was no herding to be done on that day, and in the morning the father looked the sheep in the parks himself that the herd-boy might have his full Sabbath rest.  He came back in time to conduct family worship, this being the only morning in the week when it was possible for him to do so, although in the evening it was never omitted, and on Sunday evening was always preceded by a repetition of the Shorter Catechism.  After worship the family set out for church, where the service began at eleven.

The situation of Stockbridge, it has been already said, was solitary, but on Sundays, when the hour of worship drew near, the place lost its solitude.  The roads in all directions were thronged with vehicles, men on horseback, and a great company on foot; the women wearing the scarlet cloaks which had not yet given place to the Paisley shawls of a later period, and each carrying, neatly wrapped in a white handkerchief, a Bible or Psalm-book, between whose leaves were a sprig or two of southernwood, spearmint, or other fragrant herb from the cottage garden.

The service lasted about three hours.  There was first a “lecture” and then a sermon, each about fifty minutes long; several portions of psalms were sung; and of the three prayers, the first, or “long prayer,” was seldom less than twenty minutes in length.  In summer there was an interval of half an hour between the lecture and the sermon, “when,” says Mr. William Cairns, “there was opportunity for a delightful breathing-time, and the youths who were swift of foot could just reach the bottom of a hill whereon were plenteous blaeberries, and snatch a fearful joy if one could swallow without leaving the tell-tale marks on the lips and tongue.”