PREFATORY NOTE TO SECOND EDITION

The Author has satisfaction in acknowledging the very cordial welcome which the "Missionary of Kilmany" has received. Among other testimonies which have reached him, he cannot forbear selecting a single example. In a letter, dated "London, April 4, 1853," and quoted, by permission, in this place, the Earl of Shaftesbury writes:

"These are the records which do more to prove the truth of Christianity than all the logic and all the books of evidences thrown into one. But if they prove the truth of Christianity, they prove also show how few real Christians there are; and how the best and purest of these are found in the humblest and the poorest walks of life. It puts to shame all of us who figure away in public, and obtain some praise, aud much abuse, in the part we take. Where have we, in 'conspicuous' life, any one to approach the physical and spiritual labors of this humble saint? He entered, without reserve, into the apostolical counsel to avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law, and adopted the determination to know nothing but Jesus Christ and Him crucified!

Here is the true secret of the ministerial power, whether it be in the palace of Caesar, in the deserts of Africa, or in the foul dens of Glasgow and London. May God, in His mercy, give us many such! They are 'the salt of the earth.'"

These are weighty words. They are quoted, not for mere empty compliment, but in the hope that others may be stirred up to imitate the pattern of self-denying labor and of self-forgetting zeal, which those paragraphs so vividly describe.

14th April, 1853.

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