he middle of his sermon,
threw it off. The discourse was delivered with extremely awkward
gestures, but in a voice of great sweetness. The text was: "My soul
thirsteth for the Living God." He described an arid wilderness, hot and
parched, and down beneath it a mighty vein of water into which an
artesian well was bored, and forthwith the waters gushed up through it
and swept over all the dry desert, making it one emerald meadow. "So,"
said he, "it is the incarnate Jesus flowing up through our own dusty,
barren desert humanity, and overflowing us with Heavenly life and grace,
until what was once dreary and dead becomes a fruitful garden of the
Lord." The discourse was like a chapter from one of Hamilton's savory
volumes. Five years afterwards, I dined with Hamilton, and the Rev.
William Arnot (who afterwards was his biographer), and I went to his
church to deliver the preparatory discourse to the sacrament on the next
Sabbath.

On my way up to London, I halted one night at Birmingham, and while out
on a stroll, came upon the City Hall, which was crowded with a great
meeting in aid of foreign missions. The heroic Robert Moffat, the
Apostle of South Africa, was addressing the multitude, who cheered him
in the old English fashion. Two years before that, Robert Moffat had met
a young man in a boarding house in Aldersgate Street, London, and
induced him to become a missionary in Africa. The young man was the
sublimest of all modern missionaries, David Livingstone. Two years after
that evening, Livingstone married Miss Mary Moffat (daughter of the man
to whom I was listening), in South Africa, and she became the sharer of
his trials and explorations. After Moffat had concluded his speech, a
broad-shouldered, merry-faced man, with thick grey hair rose on the
platform. "Who is that?" I inquired of my next neighbor. With a look of
surprise that I should ask such a question in Birmingham, he said: "It
is John Angell James." He was the man whom Dr. Cox wittily described as
"An angel vinculated between two Apostles." He spoke very forcibly, in a
hearty, humorous vein, and I could hardly understand how such a jovial
old gentleman could be the author of such a serious work as "The Anxious
Inquirer." But I have since discovered that many of the most solemn and
impressive preachers were men of most cheery temperament who could laugh
heartily themselves when they were not making other people weep. Mr.
James looked like an old sea captain;