to apply to it. In this state I was at my last birth-day. I was gradually becoming more thoughtful and reserved; and though that was observed by my friends, yet I could assign no cause. I was also becoming more concerned about the spiritual interests of others. I felt occasionally more earnest in prayer. My father's letters and company, when I met with him, left some favourable impressions on my mind. About this time I met with Mr. G- and his fervent and simple piety forced itself still more upon me. By my conscience also, and by some dear friends, I had been led to think seriously of the duty of communicating, and I fixed a time for it: this also called for serious thought. Now, all these things were gradually breaking down and softening my heart, under the Divine hand of a merciful Father. But still it might be said to me, 'One thing thou yet lackest.' At length a brighter day dawned. In June two tracts were given me by Mr. G- --, which led me, under the Divine blessing, to clearer views of the Gospel. I was brought to feel my own guilt, ignorance, and insufficiency, and to cry unto the Lord for mercy. For a week or two I was in a dejected state, and had to struggle with my heart; but for ever blessed be the name of the Lord!-I was enabled to cast myself on redeeming love, and to taste somewhat of the joy and peace of believing. I could then only read my Bible-everything else was thrown aside; and nothing could satisfy my thirst but the milk of the Word. I began to be concerned for the glory of God; I became zealous, but, alas! began also to look for comfort to my works. I became then again unhappy, and was obliged to go back to Jesus, as at first. My mind since then has had many phases and changes—I have had light and darkness. But all along my grand complaint has been pride. I have been exalting myself above measure before God. To cast myself at His feet, I find a hard task. I cannot keep from comparing myself with others, and whilst I see myself respected and beloved by those around me, oh! I feel myself detestably elevated before God. Oh! what a vile worm I am, when I think of all that has been and is in my heart-how much insult I have offered to the Heavenly Majesty, and how lightly I have thought of the transgression of His law! What

darkness should close in light? Yet still, with all my pollutions, I feel that I must cleave to Jesus-that I must go to Him whom I am still grieving by my neglect, and seek more grace from Him.”

Referring to the book those who would trace the brightening of his views and the maturing of his faith, we cannot forbear from copying the following paragraphs written six months subsequently. They remind us of Haliburton, Brainerd, and Edwards,-grave or even melancholy natures, who, by dint of doctrinal soundness, arrived at great mental serenity. Mr. Macdonald was now upon the Rock. His footing was solid, and the firmament calm :

"I. I have felt a complete change as to the element or atmosphere in which I have moved. I have felt an air of peace and reconciliation around me-no terrors of hell, nor the wrath of God, but a secret satisfaction and happiness of mind -a feeling that everything is safe in the hands of my God. In short, I feel as if breathing freely a pure and enlivening atmosphere; whereas, formerly, I felt afraid to draw breath-to look behind me or before me; I saw nothing but darkness and a cloud.

"II. As to my regulating principle of action, I feel as if it were a something pointing to God. I cannot define it—it is sometimes strong, sometimes feeble; but at the feeblest it would not let me set anything above Him; or if my corruption did for a moment master it, that was followed by grief and repentance. I see everything as being connected with Him-every event of my lot, small or great, as ordained by Him for my good— every circumstance as a part of His providence. Saints I love, as being his; sinners I lament over and pity, and seek to save, as being in the hands of God. Means of grace and instruments I value only as from Him. My own exertions seem as nothing in the sight of Him, and my prayers worthless but as He is present with me. Far be it from me to say that such is uniformly the case with me; ah! no-often have I to loathe and abhor myself for my alienation of soul from God; but I mean to say, that God seems the prevailing end of my actions, and a looking to Him the ruling principle of my mind.

"III. As to the power of sin, I feel it still lamentably great. I cannot think one thought as I ought to do. I cannot do one deed without a mixture of corrup

tion in the motive. I cannot begin to pray without wandering. I cannot instruct without the intrusion of self. But the difference is here, that, whilst I once was indifferent when I was far deeper in sin, now my sin is a burden to me. I am coming daily to the Lord with it. I have no delight in it, but reckon it a bondage. "All these things I must own, to the praise of Divine grace. But I say them only comparatively. I am still a poor sinner, a miserable believer."

Qualified by such experience of redeeming and renovating grace, Mr. Macdonald was licensed to preach the Gospel in 1830. And many of our readers remember how he preached. Not striving nor crying nor causing his voice to be heard in vehemence, they can recall the gentle emphasis and enchaining solemnity of his address. They remember how he uttered every sentence so believingly and holily,-preaching as in his Master's presence. They have not forgotten the sharpness of Bible sayings as he aimed them, the pungency of those word-arrows always shot with the barbed end foremost. And if they have treasured up some memorable remarks, profound intuitions, happy elucidations, good matter concerning the king,"they also know that in his sermons and his prayers there was a conscience-swaying and heart-subduing power which God's Spirit only could impart. Few have ever come nearer his own aspiration, or done more to exhibit in the world a ministry "breathing Christ, reflecting Christ, diffusing Christ, savouring of Christ, and glorifying Christ."

Soon after licence Mr. Macdonald received the invitation which ended in his becoming, for nearly seven years, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church then assembling in Chadwell-street, and afterwards in River-terrace. His first impressions of the professing Church in London were very unfavourable. Like Dr. Love fifty years before, he seems to have regarded it as mostly a "vain show;" and, with a temperament not naturally sanguine, it was extremely trying to return to his pulpit Sabbath after Sabbath, and find only a few scores" in the house of God. But as he began to be known in the congregations where he occasionally officiated, devout and spiritual men drew round him, and refreshed him with their fellowship. And as a sufficient number did not resort to his place of preaching, he went out into the highways and broad places of the

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streets, and on Sabbath mornings addressed to the careless passengers the word of everlasting life. One of his haunts was Farringdon-market, another was Islington-green. The writer of this notice recollects that among the new communicants who joined his own congregation soon after his settlement in a neighbouring place of worship, was an interesting young man who owed his first impressions to one of these "Morning Exercises."

He had come to London from the north of Scotland, and, like most of the young men who came to it then, no pains had been taken to attach him to a Christian Church. And, as he was rambling about one Sabbath, near Islington turnpike, he saw a crowd of persons gathered round a preacher. In idle curiosity he drew near, but was SO solemnized by the speaker's earnest looks and penetrating utterance, that he could not pass away. At the close of the discourse he ascertained that this minister regularly preached at River-terrace, and thither he followed him. The arrows were sharp in his conscience, and after a season of deep awakening, he began to hope in God's mercy; though it was not till years afterwards that he took the decisive step of joining himself to the Lord's people. By that time Mr. Macdonald had gone to Calcutta; and now, we trust, this "brand plucked from the burning," and the honoured instrument of his salvation, are celebrating together the praises of the Lamb that was slain.

In a letter addressed to Mr. Noel, who then, as ever since, was earnestly alive to every effort towards the evangelization of our great cities, the following account is given of his street-preaching labours:

My dear Sir,-You expressed a wish that I should set down in writing what little information I can give you as to my experience in out-door preaching. I regret I can be of so little use in this matter; for my special pastoral duties, a degree of anxiety for my health, till lately very insecure, and, above all, a baneful habit of spiritual sloth in reference to my Master's real work, have much impeded me in the discharge of those duties out of season,' to which I am as certainly bound as to those which are generally considered 'in season.' During the summers and autumns of 1831, 1832, and 1834, but chiefly of this year, I have deemed it my duty and my privilege to

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embrace the opportunities afforded me to preach in the open air in various parts of London; and my testimony, feeble as it may be, is most decidedly in favour of that most necessary mode of reaching the mass of our irreligious population, to which, with primitive simplicity, you have called the attention of the Church. I confine myself strictly to my own experience and observation; and if my testimony should in any respect differ from that of others, I can only say, under the inspection of witnesses, that it is mine.

"In Farringdon-street, at the gate of the market, at seven in the morning, I have had a congregation varying from 200 to 400, perhaps 450. At White Conduit Fields, within a tent (where I have generally found the congregation to be smaller, and perhaps more select than could be desired), from 100 to 300 persons. On Islington-green, during this summer, I have marked a considerable increase. I have preached four times there during the season, on the Sabbath afternoons on the last two occasions to congregations not much under 500 persons. Here there was a considerable nucleus of well-disposed persons, members of my own and other churches, which is an advantage in attracting others, and in preventing, perhaps in some degree, such minor interruptions as may be checked by the presence of external respectability.

"As to the general demeanour of such congregations, so far as my experience extends, it has been of the most satisfactory kind. I have not personally met with any interruption worth calling such. I have met with uniform attention, and have often witnessed a most striking change of expression, and sometimes deep emotion, in persons who were hearers, not by design but accident. The fluctuation of hearers I have not found to be great; true, there are passers by, who stand perhaps only for a minute and then proceed on their way; but of those persons who have remained for a few minutes, I have found that a very small proportion depart in general before the conclusion of the service. I should say that fifty out of five hundred is an overstatement of the number of such persons. "In Farringdon-street, I have often been gratified in being surrounded by a congregation, the greater part of whom were evidently of the very lowest order, in every sense of that term-wan, grisly, ragged, diseased, profligate, debauched, hardened, and apparently inclined to

scoff through ignorance-they seemed a present realization of our blessed Lord's favourite audience when on earth; and yet I must say, that my reception among them has been uniformly of such a kind as to encourage my heart, and banish such cowardly misgivings as might be excited by the silly, but cruel remarks of those Pharisees who are to be found within a Voluntary as well as an Established Church. The trembling limb, the reddening eye, the declining of the head, or the fixed gaze and the gaping mouth, have often evinced the temporary impression produced by the simple appeal to heart and conscience among those who were truly of the 'publicans, sinners, and harlots' of London. Nay, I will add, though formerly accustomed to all the comfortable peculiarities of an Established Church, though not wholly a stranger to the intellectual pleasure of addressing a well-educated audience, and though richly enjoying the present endearments of an attached flock, I have felt as if I could even part with all these for the pure, sober, spiritual, humbling, bracing, and Christ-conforming pleasure felt in addressing the multitude of those poor and wretched persons whom human pride casts off, and Christian love does not take up-for whom the voluntary cannot, and the Church will not, make provision. I pray God, that the awful statements which you have made on this subject, may prove as a conducting-rod for heaven's fire to consume and quicken -to consume all hindrances, and quicken all activities in the Church. There is an evident crisis in Zion's warfare-there is a clear breach made, and still left, for her armies to enter by. If they will not, oh! is there no forlorn hope' among her sons that will peril all for Christ's sake? Excuse my boldness in thus expressing myself-for the subject is one on which I have felt, and still feel, strongly, You only asked for a few facts, I have also given you feelings; but these latter you know how to detach from the former, for any purpose save inward experience.

"There are some further observations which I had thought of making in connexion with the subject of your request; but they are not new, and have nothing of the importance of discovery. What I have written, you are at liberty to make any use of, in any shape or degree you please.

"That the Lord may bless you with a strong heart and an unflinching hand, in