How heartily he entered into this scheme may be seen from the following extract.  In a letter of an after date to Mr. Roxburgh, he says:  “Every day I live, I feel more and more persuaded that it is the cause of God and of his kingdom in Scotland in our day.  Many a time, when I thought myself a dying man, the souls of the perishing thousands in my own parish, who never enter any house of God, have lain heavy on my heart.  Many a time have I prayed that the eyes of our enemies might be opened, and that God would open the hearts of our rulers, to feel that their highest duty and greatest glory is to support the ministers of Christ, and to send these to every perishing soul in Scotland.”  He felt that their misery was all the greater, and their need the deeper, that such neglected souls had no wish for help, and would never ask for it themselves.  Nor was it that he imagined that, if churches were built and ministers endowed, this would of itself be sufficient to reclaim the multitudes of perishing men.  But he sought and expected that the Lord would send faithful men into his vineyard.  These new churches were to be like cisterns—­ready to catch the shower when it should fall, just as his own did in the day of the Lord’s power.

His views on this subject were summed up in the following lines, written one day as he sat in company with some of his zealous brethren who were deeply engaged in the scheme: 

      Give me a man of God the truth to preach,
      A house of prayer within convenient reach,
      Seat-rents the poorest of the poor can pay,
      A spot so small one pastor can survey: 
      Give these—­and give the Spirit’s genial shower,
      Scotland shall be a garden all in flower!

Another public duty to which, during all the years of his ministry, he gave constant attention, was attendance at the meetings of presbytery.  His candor, and uprightness, and Christian generosity, were felt by all his brethren; and his opinion, though the opinion of so young a man, was regarded with more than common respect.  In regard to the great public questions that were then shaking the Church of Scotland, his views were decided and unhesitating.  No policy, in his view, could be more ruinous to true Christianity, or more fitted to blight vital godliness, than that of Moderatism.  He wrote once to a friend in Ireland:  “You don’t know what Moderatism is.  It is a plant that our heavenly Father never planted, and I trust it is now to be rooted up.”  The great question of the Church’s independence of the Civil Power in all matters spiritual, and the right of the Christian people to judge if the pastor appointed over them had the Shepherd’s voice, he invariably held to be part of Scripture truth, which, therefore, must be preached and carried into practice, at all hazards.  In like manner he rejoiced exceedingly in the settlements of faithful ministers.  The appointments of Mr. Baxter to Hilltown, Mr. Lewis