mpelled me. This book will speak, not so much of what
has been done, as of what still remains to be performed, before the
Gospel can be said to be preached to all nations.

In the glow of love which Christianity inspires, I soon resolved to
devote my life to the alleviation of human misery. Turning this idea
over in my mind, I felt that to be a pioneer of Christianity in China
might lead to the material benefit of some portions of that immense
empire; and therefore set myself to obtain a medical education, in order
to be qualified for that enterprise.

In recognizing the plants pointed out in my first medical book, that
extraordinary old work on astrological medicine, Culpeper's "Herbal",
I had the guidance of a book on the plants of Lanarkshire, by Patrick.
Limited as my time was, I found opportunities to scour the whole
country-side, "collecting simples". Deep and anxious were my studies on
the still deeper and more perplexing profundities of astrology, and I
believe I got as far into that abyss of phantasies as my author said he
dared to lead me. It seemed perilous ground to tread on farther, for the
dark hint seemed to my youthful mind to loom toward "selling soul and
body to the devil", as the price of the unfathomable knowledge of the
stars. These excursions, often in company with brothers, one now in
Canada, and the other a clergyman in the United States, gratified my
intense love of nature; and though we generally returned so unmercifully
hungry and fatigued that the embryo parson shed tears, yet we
discovered, to us, so many new and interesting things, that he was
always as eager to join us next time as he was the last.

On one of these exploring tours we entered a limestone quarry--long
before geology was so popular as it is now. It is impossible to describe
the delight and wonder with which I began to collect the shells found
in the carboniferous limestone which crops out in High Blantyre and
Cambuslang. A quarry-man, seeing a little boy so engaged, looked with
that pitying eye which the benevolent assume when viewing the insane.
Addressing him with, "How ever did these shells come into these rocks?"
"When God made the rocks, he made the shells in them," was the damping
reply. What a deal of trouble geologists might have saved themselves by
adopting the Turk-like philosophy of this Scotchman!

My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book on a portion
of the spinning-jenny, so that I could ca