William Guthrie, the eldest son and sole heir of the laird of Pitforthy, might have had fishing and shooting to his heart’s content on his own lands of Pitforthy and Easter Ogle had he not determined, when under Rutherford at St. Andrews, to give himself up wholly to his preaching.  But, to put himself out of the temptation that hills and streams and lochs and houses and lands would have been to a man of his tastes and temperament, soon after his conversion William made over to a younger brother all his possessions and all his responsibilities connected therewith, in order that he might give himself up wholly to his preaching.  And his reward was that he soon became, by universal consent, the greatest practical preacher in broad Scotland.  He could not touch Rutherford, his old professor, at pure theology; he had neither Rutherford’s learning, nor his ecstatic eloquence, nor his surpassing love of Jesus Christ, but for handling broken bones and guiding an anxious inquirer no one could hold the candle to William Guthrie.  Descriptions of his preaching abound in the old books, such as this:  A Glasgow merchant was compelled to spend a Sabbath in Arran, and though he did not understand Gaelic, he felt he must go to the place of public worship.  Great was his delight when he saw William Guthrie come into the pulpit.  And he tells us that though he had heard in his day many famous preachers, he had never seen under any preacher so much concern of soul as he saw that day in Arran, under the minister of Fenwick.  There was scarcely a dry eye in the whole church.  A gentleman who was well known as a most dissolute liver was in the church that day, and could not command himself, so deeply was he moved under Guthrie’s sermon.  That day was remembered long afterwards when that prodigal son had become an eminent Christian man.  We see at one time a servant girl coming home from Guthrie’s church saying that she cannot contain all that she has heard to-day, and that she feels as if she would need to hear no more on this side heaven.  Another day Wodrow’s old mother has been at Fenwick, and comes home saying that the first prayer was more than enough for all her trouble without any sermon at all.  ’He had a taking and a soaring gift of preaching,’ but it was its intensely practical character that made Guthrie’s pulpit so powerful and so popular.  The very fact that he could go all the way in those days from Fenwick to Haddington, just to have a case of real soul-exercise described to him by the exercised man himself, speaks volumes as to the secret of Guthrie’s power in the pulpit.  His people felt that their minister knew them; he knew himself, and therefore he knew them.  He did not pronounce windy orations about things that did not concern or edify them.  He was not learned in the pulpit, nor eloquent, or, if he was—­and he was both—­all his talents, and all his scholarship, and all his eloquence were forgotten in the intensely practical turn that his preaching immediately took.  All