d of the cordial welcome which he received from the venerable
Principal Haldane and the other members of the professorial staff, and
of the harmony with which they co-operated in the work of the College.

It was not then a common thing that so young a minister should be called
to occupy such a position of dignity and responsibility, nor was Hebrew
then so popular a branch of study as it has, for various reasons, since
become in our Divinity Halls; but the ability and success with which the
Professor discharged the duties of his chair, and the salutary influence
which he exerted in many ways upon the students, more than justified the
appointment. He was one of the first in Scotland to introduce a
scientific method in the teaching of Hebrew, and his class-room became a
place of very real work, necessitating careful preparation on the part
of the students. Some of these, perhaps, thought him rather exacting,
and the strict discipline which he enforced was not altogether to their
liking; but there were very few who did not value his good opinion, or
who would not have considered it a kind of degradation to incur his
displeasure; while many, imbued with something of his own spirit,
attained under his guidance to such a degree of proficiency in the
knowledge of the sacred tongue as made the reading of the Old Testament
in the original a source of interest and pleasure to them in subsequent
years. Dr William Wright, one of the greatest of Orientalists, was one
of his students, and two others of them are occupants of Hebrew Chairs
in Scottish Universities.

The appointment of the Professor to the Convenership of the Committee on
the Mission to the Jews in 1856 marked a new era in its history, in
respect both of the method of its operations and the field in which
these have ever since been carried on. One of the results of the Crimean
war, which had then but recently closed, was the opening of the Turkish
empire for evangelistic enterprise; and it may be said that the
Professor laid the foundations of the Mission in the Levant at the
several stations occupied by the Church of Scotland, which are now known
not only as places of great historic interest but as important centres
of missionary activity in which the Church bears an honourable part. In
the autumn of 1857 he undertook a journey to the East at the request of
the Committee, and in the course of his travels there visited not only
the principal Turkish cities on the coast,