The Court of Session had adopted a line of procedure that was at once arbitrary and unconstitutional.  And now that Court interdicted, under the penalty of fine or imprisonment, all the ministers of the Church of Scotland from administering ordinances or preaching the word in any of the seven parishes of Strathbogie, whose former incumbents had been suspended from office by the General Assembly for ecclesiastical offences.  The church saw it to be her duty to refuse obedience to an interdict which hindered the preaching of Jesus, and attempted to crush her constitutional liberties.  Accordingly, ministers were sent to these districts, fearless of the result; and under their preaching the gross darkness of the region began to give way to the light of truth.

In the month of August, Mr. M’Cheyne was appointed, along with Mr. Cumming of Dumbarney, to visit Huntly, and dispense the Lord’s Supper there.  As he set out, he expressed the hope, that “the dews of the Spirit there might be turned into the pouring rain.”  His own visit was blessed to many.  Mr. Cumming preached the action sermon in the open air at the Meadow Well; but the tables were served within the building where the congregation usually met.  Mr. M’Cheyne preached in the evening to a vast multitude at the well; and about a hundred waited after sermon for prayer, many of them in deep anxiety.

He came to Edinburgh on the 11th, to attend the meeting of ministers and elders who had come together to sign the Solemn Engagement in defence of the liberties of Christ’s church.  He hesitated not to put his hand to the Engagement.  He then returned to Dundee; and scarcely had he returned, when he was laid aside by one of those attacks of illness with which he was so often tried.  In this case, however, it soon passed away.  “My health,” he remarked, “has taken a gracious turn, which should make me look up.”  But again, on September 6, an attack of fever laid him down for six days.  On this occasion, just before the sickness came on, three persons had visited him, to tell him how they were brought to Christ under his ministry some years before.  “Why,” he noted in his journal, “Why has God brought these cases before me this week?  Surely He is preparing me for some trial of faith.”  The result proved that his conjecture was just.  And while his Master prepared him beforehand for these trials, He had ends to accomplish in his servant by means of them.  There were other trials, also, besides these, which were very heavy to him; but in all we could discern the Husbandman pruning the branch, that it might bear more fruit.  As he himself said one day in the church of Abernyte, when he was assisting Mr. Manson, “If we only saw the whole, we should see that the Father is doing little else in the world but training his vines.”

His preaching became more and more to him a work of faith.  Often I find him writing at the close or beginning of a sermon:  “Master, help!” “Help, Lord, help!” “Send showers;” “Pardon, give the Spirit, and take the glory;” “May the opening of my lips he right things!” The piercing effects of the word preached on souls at this season may be judged of from what one of the awakened, with whom he was conversing, said to him, “I think hell would be some relief from an angry God.”