seven times more than it is wont, makes a pure soul.  Twenty years, hiding under the shadow of the Most High, makes a powerful preacher.  It was said of him, as of his Master, though in a lesser sense, “Never man spake like this man.”  His voice reached wide circles, resounded across broad glades, and echoed from rugged mountain sides.  Thousands were melted by his tender words, and many were swung into line with the Covenant by his forceful logic.  He spoke out of deep experience, pleading as a man who stood in the glare of Christ’s judgment seat.  While he preached, the eternal world seemed irradiant about him.  Some of his discourses have been preserved by the press.

Cargill’s sermons and prayers were usually short.  He once received a gentle reproof for his brevity.  He was holding a Conventicle; the people had come a long distance for the preaching; they hungered and thirsted for God and His Word.  The great congregation was feasting on the rich abundance of the Gospel, and hanging on the lips of the minister, when he suddenly stopped.  He had finished.  One of the hearers, who felt that only a slice of bread was given, when a loaf was needed, approached him and said, “Oh, sir, ’tis long betwixt meals, and we are in a starving condition, and it is sweet and good and wholesome which ye deliver; but why do ye straiten us so much for shortness?” Cargill replied, “Ever since I bowed the knee in good earnest to pray, I never durst pray or preach with my gifts; and when my heart is not affected, and comes not up with my mouth, I always thought it time for me to quit.  What comes not from my heart, I have little hope that it will go to the heart of others.”  He was able to distinguish between the product of his own gifts and that of the Holy Spirit.  The one is like bubbles on the water for hungry souls; the other like the grapes of Eschol.

[Illustration:  Earlston castle

This castle is very ancient.  The Earlstons were zealous reformers for many generations.  They suffered much in the persecution, and furnished at least one martyr, William Gordon, a young man who was apprehended on his way to the battle of Bothwell Bridge, and shot on the road.]

The most notable event in the career of Cargill was the excommunication of the king, and six of his accomplices, from the Covenanted Church.  These seven men were the chief persecutors at that time.  Formerly they had been Covenanters, but had abandoned the Covenant, and had fallen into excessive wickedness.  The Church had never dealt with their cases; she had lost the power.  The Church courts were controlled by the king.  But shall discipline, therefore, fail?  Can the Church no more sustain her laws, and administer her censures?  Is she incapacitated?  Extraordinary conditions justify extraordinary methods.  Cargill conceived the bold purpose of issuing these cases, and inflicting the censures, solitary and alone, as a minister of Christ Jesus.  Not in the spirit of revenge, nor as a vain anathema, but by the authority of God, in the name of Christ, and with profound sense of responsibility did he mete out the spiritual penalty unto these blood-stained and impenitent transgressors.  The indestructible vitality of the Church thus reappeared in that dread act.