Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/121

Rh own statement, six times over. A favourite practice, which he continued to the end of his life, was to write short daily meditations, in a regular series, upon connected passages of Scripture. These, as well as his sermons, were written in short- baud, and therefore unintelligible, until the key to his alphabet was found; and from this discovery several of his posthumous discourses were published, which otherwise would never have seen the light.

Having finished the appointed course of study at college, and undergone the usual trials of presbytery, Mr. Love was licensed as a preacher in 1778, being then only in his twenty-first year. Soon afterwards he was employed as assistant by the Rev. Mr. Maxwell, minister of Rutherglen, near Glasgow; and in 1782 he was transferred to Greenock, where he officiated in the same capacity to the Rev. David Turner, minister of the West or Old parish; and here he continued till the death of Mr. Turner, in 1786. It will thus be seen, that while Mr. Love had no church patron, or at least an efficient one, he had not that kind of popular talent which secures the greatest number of votes among town-councillors or seat-holders His, indeed, was that superior excellence which can only be appreciated by the judicious few, and after a considerable term of acquaintanceship. After leaving Greenock, Mr. Love, toward the close of 1786, was called to the ministerial charge of the Scottish Presbyterian congregation in Artillery Street, Bishopsgate, London, and here he continued to labour for nearly twelve years. It was, indeed, no inviting field for one of his peculiar talents. His massive and profound theology, his sententious style of preaching, in which every sentence was an aphorism, and the very impressive, but slow and almost monotoned voice in which his discourses were delivered, were not suited to the church-going citizens of London, who required a livelier manner, and more buoyant style of oratory. From these causes, added to the ignorance of the English about Presbyterian - ism in general, and the tendency of the Scotch in London to forsake the church of their fathers, Mr. Love's place of meeting was but slenderly attended, while his name, as a preacher, was little known beyond its walls. One important work, however, was committed to the hands of Mr. Love, from which, perhaps, more real usefulness redounded, than could have been derived from mere pulpit popularity. He was one of those honoured men who rolled away the reproach from Protestantism, as not being a missionary, and, therefore, not a genuine church of Christa serious charge, that had often been brought against it by the Papists by his exertions and effective aid in founding the London Missionary Society. This occurred during the latter part of his residence in London. Often he afterwards reverted with delight to the fact of his having written the first circular by which the originators of this important society were called together, for the purpose of forming themselves into a directory, and organizing their plan of action; and when the society was embodied, he was very properly appointed one of its secretaries. One important duty which he had to discharge in this capacity was, to select the fittest agents for missionary enterprise over the newly-opened field of the South Sea Islands. Not resting satisfied with this onerous and somewhat critical duty, he endeavoured to qualify the missionaries for their trying office, by planning such a series of discourses upon the principal doctrines of revelation as he judged would be best fitted to persuade a primitive, simple-minded people, and which would serve as models, or at least as suggestions, for the use of the Christian teachers who were to be sent among them. With this view, he wrote and