but Jerusalem and other
places in Palestine and Syria, collecting information with a view to
find openings for the planting of the Mission at suitable stations in
addition to the two which had been already occupied. The report which he
presented on his return led by degrees to a great expansion of the
Mission, and several of his own students and others were through his
influence induced to enter the service of the Committee. With many other
claims on his attention, he ungrudgingly gave up a great part of his
time to the administration of the affairs of the Mission, over which for
nineteen years he continued to preside with great zeal and wisdom,
pressing its claims on the members of the Church, and guiding and
encouraging the missionaries by an intelligent and sympathetic interest
in their arduous work. When in 1875 he retired from the Convenership,
the General Assembly expressed its sense of the value of the
distinguished services which he had rendered to the Church in this
department of her work in the following terms: "The Assembly are
satisfied that the present prosperity of the Jewish Mission, and the
remarkable progress which it has made, has been mainly owing to the
great labour, the learning, enthusiasm, and warm and intelligent
Christian interest which Dr Mitchell has devoted during these years to
the cause of Jewish conversion in connection with the Church of
Scotland." After his retirement from the Convenership he but seldom
attended the meetings of the Committee, for the reason, as he was once
heard to say, that he did not wish to appear to hamper his successors;
but he never ceased to take a deep interest in the Mission, and none
rejoiced more than he in its growing prosperity.

While the Professor still occupied the Hebrew Chair, he had shown a
special aptitude for another branch of learning, in which he was yet to
make a reputation for himself in the Churches not only of Britain but of
America. In 1866 he published a lecture, primarily addressed to his
students, on 'The Westminster Confession of Faith: A Contribution to the
Study of its Historical Relations and to the Defence of its Teaching,'
which, as a reply to views then current in certain quarters, attracted
no little notice at the time of its publication, and which is not only
of special interest as illustrating his theological standpoint, and the
calm and temperate, yet earnest and vigorous, manner in which he could
defend it, but is of permanent v