Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/180

208 vote himself to the ministry, "for to that he judged the Lord had called him." During the engagement, Mr Durham met with two remarkable deliverances, and accordingly, considered himself bound to obey the stranger's charge, " as a testimony of his grateful and thankful sense of the Lord's goodness and mercy to him."

With this resolution, he came to the college of Glasgow, where he appears to have taken his degree, and to have studied divinity under his celebrated friend David Dickson. The year 1647, in which he received his license, was one of severe pestilence. The masters and students of the university removed to Irvine, where Mr Durham underwent his trials, and received a recommendation from his professor to the presbytery and magistrates of Glasgow. Though now only about twenty-five years of age, study and seriousness of disposition had already given him the appearance of an old man. The session of Glasgow appointed one of their members to request him to preach in their city, and after a short period, "being abundantly satisfied with Mr Durham's doctrine, and the gifts bestowed upon him by the Lord, for serving him in the ministry, did unanimously call him to the ministry of the Blackfriars' church, then vacant." Thither he removed in November, the same year. In 1649, Mr Durham had a pressing call from the town of Edinburgh, but the general assembly, to whom it was ultimately referred, refused to allow his translation. In his ministerial labours he seems to have exercised great patience and diligence, nor was he wanting in that plainness and sincerity towards the rich and powerful, which is so necessary to secure esteem. When the republican army was at Glasgow, in 1651, Cromwell came unexpectedly on a Sunday afternoon to the outer high church, where Mr Durham preached "graciously and well to the time, as could have been desired," according to principal Baillie; in plainer language, "he preached against the invasion to his face." The story is thus concluded by his biographer:—"Next day, Cromwell sent for Mr Durham, and told him, that he always thought Mr Durham had been a more wise and prudent man than to meddle with matters of public concern in his sermons. To which Mr Durham answered, that it was not his practice to bring public matters into the pulpit, but that he judged it both wisdom and prudence in him to speak his mind upon that head, seeing he had the opportunity of doing it in his own hearing. Cromwell dismissed him very civilly, but desired him to forbear insisting upon that subject in public. And at the same time, sundry ministers both in town and country met with Cromwell and his officers, and represented in the strongest manner the injustice of his invasion."