Biggar and the House of Fleming

NORTH AND SOUTH UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES. 267
spectator of Dr Brown's ordination. On the morning of that
day I sat at the fireside wrapped up, and ready to be placed
by my father in a nook of the conveyance in which he and a
friend were going to the ordination at Biggar. There had
been a heavy fall of snow through the night ; and the friend
I speak of used to remind me that there was a little face in
the corner that had its own share of gloominess as well as the
weather, when a messenger, who had been sent out to ascer-
tain the state of the roads, reported that it was doubtful
whether a horse and gig could pass. There was no help but
to leave me behind." Mr Brown's own father preached the
ordination sermon ; and on the Sabbath following he was in-
troduced by the Kev. James Ellis of Saltcoats. The congre-
gation at Biggar, to which Mr Brown ministered, was charac-
terized by great spiritual devotion and general intelligence.
Some of the members were his equals, if not his superiors, in
classical knowledge and literary attainments ; while many of
them were as deeply versant as himself in the abstruse tenets
of Calvinistic theology, and in the history and principles of the
religious body to which they belonged. He was thus stimu-
lated, in the highest degree, to diligence in his preparations
for the pulpit, and the diets of examination which he held in
the houses of his members. He studied carefully everything
that he delivered in public. He wrote out at full length, and
mandated his discourses, prayers, and casual addresses. Be-
sides the ministrations in his own pulpit, he was in the habit
of preaching in barns and school-rooms in the adjoining villages,
and not unfrequently in the open air. His son John, in his
supplementary chapter to Dr Cairns' Life of his father, gives an
anecdote illustrative of his achievements on his good grey mare
in fulfilling an engagement of outdoor preaching. " He had,"
he says, " an engagement to preach somewhere beyond the
Clyde on a Sabbath evening, and his excellent and attached
friend and elder, Mr Kello, Lindsaylands, accompanied him on
his big plough horse. It was to be in the open air on the
river side. When they got to the Clyde, they found it in full
flood, heavy and sudden rains at the head of the water having
brought it down in a wild spate. On the opposite side were
the gathered people and the tent. Before Mr Kello knew
where he was, there was his minister on the mare swimming