Covenanted Reformation seemed to be ready for burial. The floodtide of
Indulgence had almost submerged the testimony of the Covenanters. Many
of the ministers had been caught in that Satanic snare. The remainder
were overawed, or disabled with disease and old age. Yet there was a
host of brave men and honorable women, thousands in number, who without
a leader faced the increasing' fierceness of the persecution, and
continued their testimony for Christ in defiance of the king's wrath.
These were called the Society People, and Cameron during his public
ministry was their standard-bearer.

Cameron and the Society People, afterward known as the Cameronians, have
been severely criticised for their exclusiveness. They refused to hold
fellowship with the Indulged ministers who had assented to the king's
supremacy over the Church, and likewise with the Field-ministers, who
had become mute on the Covenanted testimony. They are often represented
as having been stern, censorious, and uncharitable in the extreme. A
glance at Cameron's commission will show how baseless is the charge.

Richard Cameron received ordination in Holland, four months after the
battle of Bothwell Bridge. The ordination service was very solemn and
touching. The presbytery felt that they were commissioning a servant of
God to do a work that would cost his life. While the ministers rented
their hands on Cameron's head in the act of ordination, he was told by
one of them, that the head whereon their hands were laid would one day
be severed from his body and set up before the sun and moon for public
view. Such was the vision of blood that moved before his eyes during the
eight months of his ministry. At that same time he received also the
exhortation: "Go, Richard; the public Standard of the Gospel is fallen
in Scotland; go home and lift the fallen Standard, and display it
publicly before the world. But before you put your hand to it, go to as
many of the Field-ministers as you can find, and give them your hearty
invitation to go with you."

True to his commission Cameron went. He sought out the Field-ministers.
They now numbered about sixty. These were keeping close to their
hiding-places; their voices scarcely went beyond the mouth of their
caves; they counted their blood more valuable than their testimony for
Christ and His Covenant. Twenty years of unabating hardships had
unnerved them; the late avalanche of the king's wrath had overwhelmed
them; they were