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26 through life. Of his college career no record has been preserved; but that he soon gave indications of the talent which afterwards raised him to eminence, may be inferred from his having secured the friendship of Dr. Erskine, Lady Glenorchy, and other distinguished Christians of that day, who formed a high estimate of his abilities, and entertained sanguine expectations of his success as a preacher. In 1774, he was ordained to the ministry of the gospel in the small rural charge of Lecropt, near Stirling. Here he laboured with much acceptance and usefulness for five years, not inattentive meanwhile to his personal improvement, and in his pulpit duties giving no doubtful presages of the professional distinction and influence to which he was destined to rise. In June, 1779, he was translated to the Outer High Church of Glasgow, then vacant by the removal of Mr. Randal (afterwards Dr. Davidson) to Edinburgh.

At the time of Dr. Balfour's settlement in Glasgow, evangelical religion was at a low ebb in the Established Church throughout Scotland, and a blighting Moderatism was in the ascendant. Dr. Balfour, from the outset of his ministry, warmly espoused the evangelical cause, which he recommended alike by the power of his preaching, and by the active benevolence and consistency of his life. His ministry in Glasgow gave a fresh impulse to the revival and diffusion of pure and undefiled religion in the west of Scotland. Christian missions were then in their infancy, and in Scotland met with much opposition from the dominant party in the Established Church. In the General Assembly of 1796, missionary enterprise to the heathen was denounced as corrupting the innocence and happiness of savage life, and missionary societies as "highly dangerous in their tendency to the good order of society" in this country. It was on this memorable occasion that Dr. Erskine, then in his seventy-fifth year, vindicated the scriptural claims and obligations of missions to the heathen, in a speech which has become famous for its exordium—"Moderator, rax me that Bible!" Dr. Balfour was one of the founders of the Glasgow Missionary Society, which was established in 1796, a few months after the institution of the London Missionary Society. He preached a striking sermon at the commencement of the Society, which was one of the few discourses he ventured on publishing; and one of his last public acts, twenty-two years afterwards, was to sign a circular letter as its president. The following passage from the discourse just mentioned, bears testimony to the earnest interest he felt in the missionary cause, and affords an example of a style of appeal, which, with the aid of his melodious voice, keen eye, and graceful and fervid elocution, must have proved singularly animating. After describing the true missionary spirit and character, he proceeded—"We invite and press all of this description to come forward full of the Holy Ghost and of faith. We cannot, we will not tempt you with worldly prospects—if you are right-hearted men according to your profession, you will not seek great things for yourselves—you must not think of an easy life—you must labour hard—you must encounter difficulties, opposition, and dangers; for these, however, you are not unprovided. * * * We will follow you with our prayers, and with every blessing in our power to bestow. But what is of infinitely greater moment and advantage to you is, that the Lord Jesus, whose religion you are to teach, will be with you, and that he is greater than all who can be against you. Depending, then, on Him alone for your own salvation, and for the salvation of the heathen, seeking not your own pleasure, profit, or honour, but that he may be glorified in and by you, and by sinners converted from the error of their way, be not afraid—be strong and of good courage. To all who thus