The Glory of the Christian Dispensation

The following pages contain a few gathered crumbs from a table once richly spread—a few drops of pure water from a fountain now for ever sealed. To those who in days past were privileged to feed at that table, and to draw water with joy out of that well of salvation, these brief reminiscences of a peculiarly holy, solemn, and blessed ministry, will doubtless be felt sweet and precious. To others, they can be of comparably little interest. They are from their nature imperfect. The discourses were at best in a great measure extempore addresses, and never received the finishing touch of the author’s gifted mind; and here only a few brief, hasty, and scattered notices are preserved. As a picture, therefore, of the author’s mind, or a specimen of his ministry, they are wholly without value. Still, it is believed, that, as fragments, they are genuine and faithful; and if the Master be present at the gathering of them, some souls may feed as richly, as if they had been present when the full repast was spread. Two defects will at once strike and probably offend the fastidious reader. The style in these discourses is throughout somewhat diffuse and desultory, and there is occasionally repetition. But, to the simple followers of the Lord Jesus. these blemishes will probably only render them the sweeter. Here we have not the set and formal speech of man’s wisdom, but the free and unconstrained utterance of lips touched by the Spirit of Grace; and if the author speaks much of the same things, it was because they were so much in his heart. His footsteps lie thick and close, and there is a beaten path before the rent vail and within the holiest of all, because his life was hid with Christ in God, and so much of his nights and days were spent with Jesus there. He is now before the throne of God, serving him day and night in his temple, standing beside that glorious High Priest, and gazing on the unclouded glory of that reconciled countenance of which he testified so sweetly here. Let us follow him as he followed Christ; and as we mark the faint and fast fading traces of that path which led him by such a bright and rapid course to glory, let us hear the voice they speak to those behind—"Remember those that have had rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God; whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever."

Dundee, December 25, 1844.