The Annals of the Parish / Or, the Chronicle of Dalmailing During the Ministry of the Rev. Micah Balwhidder

Transcribed from the 1910 T. N. Foulis edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
OR THE CHRONICLE OF DAL- MAILING DURING THE MINISTRY OF THE REV. MICAH BALWHID- DER. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF AND ARRANGED AND EDITED BY JOHN GALT ILLUSTRATED IN COLOUR BY HENRY W. KERR, R.S.A.
T.N.FOULIS London & Edinburgh 1 9 1 0
September 1910
Printed by Turnbull & Spears , Edinburgh
At the close of the worship, and before the blessing, I addressed them in a fatherly manner; and, although the kirk was fuller than ever I saw it before, the fall of a pin might have been heard—at the conclusion there was a sobbing and much sorrow. I said,
“My dear friends, I have now finished my work among you for ever. I have often spoken to you from this place the words of truth and holiness; and, had it been in poor frail human nature to practise the advice and counselling that I have given in this pulpit to you, there would not need to be any cause for sorrow on this occasion—the close and latter end of my ministry. But, nevertheless, I have no reason to complain; and it will be my duty to testify, in that place where I hope we are all one day to meet again, that I found you a docile and a tractable flock, far more than at first I could have expected. There are among you still a few, but with grey heads and feeble hands now, that can remember the great opposition that was made to my placing, and the stout part they themselves took in the burly, because I was appointed by the patron; but they have lived to see the error of their way, and to know that preaching is the smallest portion of the duties of a faithful minister. I may not, my dear friends, have applied my talent in the pulpit so effectually as perhaps I might have done, considering the gifts that it pleased God to give me in that way, and the education that I had in the Orthodox University of Glasgow, as it was in the time of my youth; nor can I say that, in the works of peace-making and charity, I have done all that I should have done. But I have done my best, studying no interest but the good that was to rise according to the faith in Christ Jesus.