HURST AND BLACKETT, PUBLISHERS,
SUCCESSORS TO HENRY COLBURN,

13, GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET.

1854.

249. x. 120.

LONDON:

Printed by Schulze and Co., 13, Poland Street.

MATHEW PAXTON.

CHAPTER I.

I WAS very busy all the rest of that week, preparing a new lecture and sermon for the Sabbath. Commonly, men in my situation -about to preach for the first time to a regular congregation - just preach to the people one of the discourses they have before read in the Presbytery; but I resolved that I should not do so, I determined to write

VOL. II.

B

new ones altogether. Oh, the weary labour it cost me, committing them to memory after they were written ! I was resolute to do without the paper, and after I had learnt page after page, and thought I knew the words so well that I could speak them fluently, I often found that I had forgotten them altogether, when I put the sermon aside and tried myself. I was once or twice nearly despairing of ever being able to preach extemporally, at least on that occasion, when it occurred to me to write down on a slip of paper the chief words of each important sentence. When I had done so, I found it would be a great help, and would enable me much more comfortably to get over that trying day. I stayed at home all the week till the Saturday, to the great delight of my father and mother, who were greatly uplifted, and though both of them very sincerely

pious, not a little vain of their Mathew being at last a regular preacher; and though the place, I was to begin my preaching at, was better than twenty miles across the hills, nothing would satisfy them, but that they should be present, though it was much against my will.

On the Saturday, after an early dinner, I set out on my own pony, and arrived at Hoprig about seven in the evening. Hoprig, I found, was a very wild place, far away from any large village. The Meeting and the Manse stood by themselves, on one side of the road, just where it descended from the hill, on the margin of the lower, though still wild and rugged country, and there was an air of desolation and wild solitude about the place, which was painful to me, and struck a chill upon my heart. The nearest houses were better than half a mile off, and there