Volume 3 > Half-Volume 5

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town and city missions in Ireland as well as Scotland,
and having seen the prospect of their increase in
England, Mr. Nasmith resolved to attempt the same
experiment in America. He accordingly went to New
York on the 4th of September, 1829. By the 2Oth
of the same month he had established a city mission
in New York, and soon after a town mission in
Newark, in the state of New Jersey. To New
York he had gone without any pecuniary stipulation
whatever, although his private resources were so
scanty that at first he was unable to keep a servant,
so that his public labours were sometimes alternated
with the office of nursing his infant child. It was
the spirit of Paul the apostle and tent-maker, who
would labour with his hands rather than be a burden
to the church. After this hopeful beginning in
New York, he commenced the work of itinerating
through the principal towns of America and Canada,
preaching, exhorting, and conversing wherever he
came upon the great purpose of his visit, urging
the establishment of city missions�and everywhere
strengthening the ardent, rousing the sluggish and
indifferent, animating the desponding, and leaving
behind him those footprints on the religious soil of
America which time will not easily efface. Often
also, while thus travelling from place to place, we find
him going dinnerless, to save time and the expense of
innkeepers' bills. The particulars of such a lengthened
tour we must omit, but the result is thus summed up
by his biographer: "Our philanthropist has now
reached the limit of his purpose, and we are enabled
to glance over the mighty expanse of his laborious
pilgrimage, and to form a general estimate of his
travel and toil. He has visited forty cities and
towns of America, and two of Canada. In the States
he has been instrumental in forming sixteen city
missions, the American Young Men's Society, and
eight or ten auxiliaries to it: to which must be added
several associations in behalf of coloured people, and
also various benevolent associations for supplying
the temporal wants of the poor. In Canada he
visited Quebec, Montreal, St. Andrews, Fox Point,
New Glasgow, Kingston, Buffalo, and York, form-
ing among them in all fifteen societies. These are
matters of fact; but there is another view of David's
labours, far more difficult to be estimated, and in its
results perhaps far more important�the moral in-
fluence he exerted on a multitude of the moving and
leading minds of the Christian church. Who can
calculate the sum of this influence? Who can esti-
mate the effects which may flow from it for centuries
to come?" How disinterestedly this great work was
performed may be seen from David Nasmith's re-
ceipts and expenditure. In Ireland he spent .�366,
and received �216. In the United States he spent
�271, and received �98. In Canada he spent �25,
and received �16. He returned to Scotland poorer
by �,232 than when he left it, independently of the
toil he had bestowed, which of itself might have
won a fortune, while he was content the while to de-
pend upon the chance contributions of the friends of
city missions for his very economical style of living.
Although he knew that the labourer is worthy of his
hire, he refused to present any claim, lest the cause
which he had so much at heart might be misrepre-
sented ; and the Americans, thinking from the nature
of his labours that he was a gentleman of indepen-
dent fortune, would not insult him with the offer of
repayment.
Having completed his appointed mission in Ame-
rica, and feeling that his own health and that of his
wife required the benefits of their native climate, Mr.
and Mrs. Nasmith returned to Scotland in December,
1831, and immediately on his arrival he resumed his
wonted tasks in Glasgow and Dublin alternately.
The effect of this activity was, that only five months
afterward he had succeeded in forming a monthly
distribution tract society, a maternal association,
a young ladies' society, an Irish young men's so-
ciety, and a Dublin young men's society, with the
prospect of other associations of a similar descrip-
tion being speedily formed. His attention while in
America having been directed to France, and the
necessity of such societies for that country, he went
there in June, 1832. On landing at Boulogne his
papers were examined; and finding them filled with
outlines of his proceedings, and the plans of strange
associations that they had never heard of, and were
unable to comprehend, the French authorities at first
suspected that he was some desperate and dangerous
conspirator, and were with some difficulty penetrated
by an inkling of his harmless purposes. As he had
letters of introduction to some of the principal French
and British Protestants in Paris, he was soon enabled
to break ground in that famed capital, and there a
city mission was formed, and funds collected for a
school for English children, and a young men's
society. At Havre also, during this short visit, he
formed both a city mission and a young men's
society; and returning home by the way of London,
he there reconnoitred the ground, with a view to
his future operations, as it was there that he finally
hoped to spend his days. He returned to Glasgow
in the beginning of August, and only two months
after he was thus enabled to write to a friend in
that city:�"Since I had the pleasure of seeing
you I have been in Ayrshire, at Campsie, and other
places, and had the satisfaction of seeing about six-
teen new societies formed. The number of new
tract societies formed since my return from America
is about seventeen, and these together issue almost
83,000 tracts per month, or one million annually."
Being prevented from settling in London at present
by circumstances over which he had no control, the
same circumstances required that he should now take
steps to support his family by his own efforts. For
this purpose he rented a large house in Glasgow,
which he occupied as committee-rooms, offices, read-
ing-room, &c., for the purpose of acting as a general
agent to religious or philanthropic individuals or
societies who might be pleased to employ him. But
although it was a generous, it was a rash, specula-
tion: it was one that to succeed would have required
capital, and of this the self-denying David Nasmith
had none whatever; and when he tried to obtain
for the purpose a loan from some moneyed citizens,
these men buttoned up their prudential pockets,
and would advance nothing on such a venture.
After a trial of eighteen months the unfortunate
experiment was abandoned, but at the same time
one of his friends had obtained for him the situa-
tion of secretary to the Continental Society in Lon-
don, to which city he repaired with his family in
March, 1835. His chief work was to establish a
city mission in the metropolis, and his Irish friends
of Dublin had promised to contribute for him a salary
of �200 per annum for three years�a modicum for
the expense of living in the great metropolis with
which Mr. Nasmith was more than content. Of the
need of such a society for London the following
extracts from one of his recommendatory testimonials
will suffice to show:�"He organized the first mis-
sion in Glasgow in the year 1826, where there are
now upwards of twenty missionaries engaged in the
instruction of the neglected portion of the popula-
tion. Similar institutions have been established
extensively throughout Scotland. Mr. Nasmith
then repaired to Ireland, and formed a mission in