How important this period of his life appeared in his own view, may be gathered from his allusions to it in later days.  A year after, he writes in his diary:  “On this morning last year came the first overwhelming blow to my worldliness; how blessed to me, Thou, O God, only knowest, who hast made it so.”  Every year he marked this day as one to be remembered, and occasionally its recollections seem to have come in like a flood.  In a letter to a friend (8th July 1842), upon a matter entirely local, he concludes by a postscript:  “This day eleven years ago, my holy brother David entered into his rest, aged 26.”  And on that same day, writing a note to one of his flock in Dundee (who had asked him to furnish a preface to a work printed 1740, Letters on Spiritual Subjects), he commends the book, and adds:  “Pray for me, that I may be made holier and wiser—­less like myself, and more like my heavenly Master; that I may not regard my life, if so be I may finish my course with joy.  This day eleven years ago, I lost my loved and loving brother, and began to seek a Brother who cannot die.”

It was to companions who could sympathize in his feelings that he unbosomed himself.  At that period it was not common for inquiring souls to carry their case to their pastor.  A conventional reserve upon theses subjects prevailed even among lively believers.  It almost seemed as if they were ashamed of the Son of man.  This reserve appeared to him very sinful; and he felt it to be so great an evil, that in after days he was careful to encourage anxious souls to converse with him freely.  The nature of his experience, however, we have some means of knowing.  On one occasion, a few of us who had studied together were reviewing the Lord’s dealings with our souls, and how He had brought us to himself all very nearly at the same time, though without any special instrumentality.  He stated that there was nothing sudden in his case, and that he was led to Christ through deep and ever-abiding, but not awful or distracting, convictions.  In this we see the Lord’s sovereignty.  In bringing a soul to the Saviour, the Holy Spirit invariably leads it to very deep consciousness of sin; but then He causes this consciousness of sin to be more distressing and intolerable to some than to others.  But in one point does the experience of all believing sinners agree in this matter, viz. their soul presented to their view nothing but an abyss of sin, when the grace of God that bringeth salvation appeared.

The Holy Spirit carried on his work in the subject of this Memoir, by continuing to deepen in him the conviction of his ungodliness, and the pollution of his whole nature.  And all his life long, he viewed original sin, not as an excuse for his actual sins, but as an aggravation of them all.  In this view he was of the mind of David, taught by the unerring Spirit of Truth.  See Psalm 51:4, 5.