Letter by James Hamilton on death of McCheyne
James Hamilton wrote a letter to McCheyne’s father which is recorded in Smellie’s life of McCheyne. In it, he said this about McCheyne: ‘This is the most solemn event which has happened since I became a minister. It has made the last two days days of darkness and gloominess. For besides your loss and his people’s, and the loss to us who loved him as a brother, it is a heavy stroke to the Church and land. The removal of so bright a light at such a time, is a righteous but terrible judgment. I do not wish to lose the personal in the public warning; for I feel that I greatly needed it. Indolence and levity and unfaithfulness are sins that beset me; and his living presence was a rebuke to all these, for I never knew one so instant in season and out of season, so impressed with the invisible realities, and so faithful in reproving sin and witnessing for Christ. His feeble frame made his labours the more wonderful, and his sensitive spirit made fidelity more difficult to him than it would ha...