Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/69

Rh flock, who had been waiting for his coming. Still, a congregation was to be gathered, for while on the forenoons of Sabbath his stated audience mustered from fifty to seventy persons, those in the evenings, when chapels in Edinburgh, as elsewhere, are commonly crowded, were not above two or three hundred hearers. As for the real congregation who would have joined in membership out of this miscellaneous assemblage, they did not amount to more than fourteen or fifteen. "I cannot as yet decide," he writes in this state of matters, "as to whether it would be my duty to settle here for life. A sphere of usefulness is what I desire, and it still must require time to ascertain whether it is such a sphere. I think another winter will show me how I ought to proceed, if it does not appear sooner." This hesitation on account of the doubtful state of affairs was increased by the avowed wish of many of his friends in England to secure his services among them as their pastor. At length he received a regular call from his congregation to be their minister at the close of the year, and although it was signed by only thirteen persons, he felt it his duty to comply, and his ordination took place on the 21st January, 1808. Thus brought to a decision, he laboured with diligence and faithfulness; and although slowly, the cause to which he had engaged himself continued to grow and prosper, so that in ten years the handful over which he originally presided had swelled into an attendance too numerous for the small chapel to contain. In 1818 he accordingly moved from Richmond Court to Charlotte chapel, a larger building, formerly belonging to the congregation of Bishop Sandford, which he purchased, and altered to his own taste and convenience. While his ten years' labours had been so successful, his cares had not been exclusively confined to the city of Edinburgh. His missionary zeal, through which he had originally devoted himself to the ministerial work, still continued unabated; and although he could no longer hope to traverse the opposite side of the earth in the conversion of Hindoos and Parsees, he found that there were people within the limits of the four seas equally benighted, and in need of his apostolic labours. The success, too, which had attended the evangelistic enterprises of the Haldanes and John Campbell in Scotland, encouraged him to follow their example, more especially as a lull had succeeded, so that the good work needed to be renewed. With all this he had been impressed so early as the period of his ordination; and, on accepting the ministry of the congregation of Richmond Court chapel, he had stated to them his purpose of itinerating from time to time as a preacher in his own country and in Ireland. Accordingly, his first tour for this purpose was to Perthshire, in March, 1808, and his second to Ayrshire soon after. In August and September of the same year, he made a preaching tour through Ireland; and in 1810 another in the north of Scotland as far as Dingwall. Finding, however, that the length and frequency of these journeys were likely to be prejudicial to the interests of his own congregation in Edinburgh, he organized a home mission for the support of a few itinerants in the Highlands, the expense of which, in the first instance, and the responsibility in after years, rested wholly upon himself. This society, which existed for seventeen years, and was productive of great benefit to the more remote districts of the Highlands, had found in Mr. Anderson so generous a benefactor, notwithstanding the limitation of his means, that at the closing of its accounts, his pecuniary advances to it as secretary, amounted to £240, independently of his periodic liberal donations. The sum above-mentioned was a fourth of the society's whole expenditure. A still more distinguished achievement was his originating the Edinburgh Bible Society, the plan V.