to make of that knowledge; it was his sound knowledge what to say, when to say it, and how to say it,—­it was all this that decided his Prince to make him the minister of Mansoul.  How excellent and how rare a gift is judgment—­judgment in counsel, judgment in speech, and judgment in action!  ’I am very little serviceable with reference to public management,’ writes the parish minister of Ettrick, ’being exceedingly defective in ecclesiastical prudence; but the Lord has given me a pulpit gift, not unacceptable:  and who knows what He may do with me in that way?’ Who knows, indeed!  Now, there are many parish ministers who have a not unacceptable pulpit gift, and yet who are not content with that, but are always burying that gift in the earth and running away from it to attempt a public management in which they are exceedingly and conspicuously defective.  Now, why do they do that?  Is their pulpit and their parish not sphere and opportunity enough for them?  Mine is a small parish, said Boston, but then it is mine.  And a small parish may both rear and occupy a truly great divine.  Let those ministers, then, who are defective in ecclesiastical prudence not be too much cast down.  Ecclesiastical prudence is not in every case the highest kind of prudence.  The presbytery, the synod, and the assembly are not any minister’s first or best sphere.  Every minister’s first and best sphere is his parish.  And the presbytery is not the end of the parish.  The parish, the pastorate, and the pulpit are the end of both presbytery and synod and assembly.  As for the minister of Mansoul, he was a well-read man, and also a man of courage to speak out the truth at every occasion, and he had a tongue as bravely hung as he had a head filled with judgment.

4.  But there was one thing about the parish pulpit of Mansoul that always overpowered the people.  They could not always explain it even to themselves what it was that sometimes so terrified them, and, sometimes, again, so enthralled them.  They would say sometimes that their minister was more than a mere man; that he was a prophet and a seer, and that his Master seemed sometimes to stand and speak again in His servant.  And ‘seer’ was not at all an inappropriate name for their minister, so far as I can collect out of some remains of his that I have seen and some testimonies that I have heard.  There was something awful and overawing, something seer-like and supernatural, in the pulpit of Mansoul.  Sometimes the iron chains in which the preacher climbed up into the pulpit, and in which he both prayed and preached, struck a chill to every heart; and sometimes the garment of salvation in which he shone carried all their hearts captive.  Some Sabbath mornings they saw it in his face and heard it in his voice that he had been on his bed in hell all last night; and then, next Sabbath, those who came back saw him descending into his pulpit from his throne in heaven.

   ’Yea, this man’s brow, like to a title-page
   Foretells the nature of a tragic volume. 
   Thou tremblest, and the whiteness in thy cheek
   Is apter than thy tongue to tell thine errand.’