His last sermons to the people of Larbert and Dunipace were on Hosea 14:1, “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God;” and Jeremiah 8:20, “Harvest is past.”  In the evening he writes, “Lord, I feel bowed down because of the little I have done for them which Thou mightest have blessed!  My bowels yearn over them, and all the more that I have done so little.  Indeed, I might have done ten times as much as I have done.  I might have been in every house; I might have spoken always as a minister.  Lord, canst Thou bless partial, unequal efforts?”

I believe it was about this time that some of us first of all began our custom of praying specially for each other on Saturday evening, with a reference to our engagements in the ministry next day.  This concert for prayer we have never since seen cause to discontinue.  It has from time to time been widened in its circle; and as yet his has been the only voice that has been silenced of all that thus began to go in on each other’s behalf before the Lord.  Mr. M’Cheyne never failed to remember this time of prayer:  “Larbert and Dunipace are always on my heart, especially on the Saturday evenings, when I pray for a glorious Sabbath!” On one occasion, in Dundee, he was asked if the accumulation of business in his parish never led him to neglect the season of prayer on a busy Saturday.  His reply was, that he was not aware that it ever did.  “What would my people do if I were not to pray?”

So steady was he in Sabbath preparations, from the first day to the last time he was with them, that though at prayer-meetings, or similar occasions, he did not think it needful to have much laid up before coming to address his people; yet, anxious to give them on the Sabbath what had cost him somewhat, he never, without an urgent reason, went before them without much previous meditation and prayer.  His principle on this subject was embodied in a remark he made to some of us who were conversing on the matter.  Being asked his view of diligent preparation for the pulpit, he reminded us of Exodus 27:20:  “Beaten oil—­beaten oil for the lamps of the sanctuary” And yet his prayerfulness was greater still.  Indeed, he could not neglect fellowship with God before entering the congregation.  He needed to be bathed in the love of God.  His ministry was so much a bringing out of views that had first sanctified his own soul, that the healthiness of his soul was absolutely needful to the vigor and power of his ministrations.

During these ten months the Lord had done much for him, but it was chiefly in the way of discipline for a future ministry.  He had been taught a minister’s heart; he had been tried in the furnace; he had tasted deep personal sorrow, little of which has been recorded; he had felt the fiery darts of temptation; he had been exercised in self-examination and in much prayer; he had proved how flinty is the rock, and had learned that in lifting the rod by which it was to be smitten, success lay in Him alone who enabled him to lift it up.  And thus prepared of God for the peculiar work that awaited him, he had turned his face towards Dundee, and took up his abode in the spot where the Lord was so marvelously to visit him in his ministry.