and the first sermon he preached there was upon the text, Jer. iii. 19, "How shall I put thee among the children?" His pulpit was a tent erected in the fields, where there was a vast concourse of people. Towards the conclusion of his discourse, catching up the words of his text, Cameron exclaimed, "How shall I put thee among the children?” "Put you among the children, the offspring of robbers and thieves!" and, working up the idea, made a very powerful address. The impressive manner of the preacher, as well as the highly important matter of his discourse, not only arrested the attention of the audience during its delivery, but to numbers it proved the means of bringing convictions of sin, which afterwards worked repentance unto life. "Some of them," says his biographer, "got a merciful call that day," and told afterwards that it was the first field-meeting they had ever attended. Curiosity, they confessed, had been their motive for going to that place, and not love for the Gospel; nevertheless, the Lord blessed the preaching to the good of their neverdying souls. This uncompromising conduct of Cameron's was most obnoxious to the time-serving party, and it was not long until he and a few others were brought to trial, and threatened with punishment, if they did not abstain from preaching what gave such offence. Cameron was prevailed upon for a time to be silent, but soon found that he could not keep his promise to refrain from declaring what he thought to be the whole counsel of God. To a mind so single and upright as his, this engagement to silence was, on further reflection, a source of profound distress. He evidently felt that he had done violence to his conscience, in agreeing to withhold part of his Divine commission; that he "had been a dumb dog," "a false ambassador, "-the very character for which he had censured others; and so, in an agony of selfreproach, and to unburden his mind to the venerable fathers of the Church in Holland-who were the most learned and eloquent of the Scottish ministershe betook himself to Rotterdam, towards the close of 1678. In that place he received a cordial welcome from the Dutch refugees, who had found, under that Republic, the liberty denied them in their native land; and his services were much prized by his brethren there. One sermon, or course of sermons, in Hicular, is recorded, from Matthew XI. 28, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." He never touched upon controversial topics in his sermons in Holland, but, in prayer, lamented over the sad case of Scotland, trodden down by oppression. He was ordained some time in the autumn of 1679, by M'Ward, Brown, and Koilman (a worthy Dutch minister, who translated into his own language "Rutherford's Letters," Guthrie's "Christian's Great Interest," and other works of the British Divines). When their hands were lifted up from his head, Mr M'Ward still kept his upon it, and cried out "Behold, all ye beholders, here is the head of a faithful minister of Jesus Christ, who shall lose the same for his Master's interest, and it shall be set up before sun and moon, in the public view of the world." About this time, M'Ward is also said to have addressed him in these words, "Richard, the public standard is now fallen in Scotland; and if I know anything of the mind of the Lord, ye are called to go home and lift the fallen standard, and display it publicly to the world. But before ye put your hand to it, ye shall go to as many of the field ministers as ye can find, and give them your hearty invitation to accompany you; and if they will not, then go alone, and the Lord will be with you." Scotland was at this time (1679) in a state of great excitement. On the 29th of May, the day appointed to commemorate the restoration of Charles II., a band of Presbyterians, to the number of eighty men, led by Robert Hamilton, brother to Sir William Hamilton of Preston, entered Rutherglen, a village near Glasgow, put out the bonfires kindled in honour of the day, burned at the cross the Acts which had been issued against the Covenanted Reformation, and published a declaration condemning all the proceedings of Government since the Restoration. This deed has been called the Rutherglen Declaration; it was boldly done if it could have been carried out; but Claverhouse was at hand, and he came sweeping along at the head of a body of dragoons, and surprised fifteen of the Presbyterians at Hamilton. He drove them before him on his way to Loudon Hill, where he heard that a large field meeting was to be held, expecting to scatter the people quickly, but instead of this he had to fight a battle, and be beaten at Drumclog. The country around Drumclog is a dreary, desolate place, full of moors and quagmires, with occasionally high knolls, amongst which streams wind, disappearing into deep morasses. In the heart of these dark and gloomy wolds there were gathered, on Sabbath morning, the first of June, a mixed and singular assembly of neighbouring peasants and armed fugitives on horseback. The services of the day had just commenced, when a watchman, posted upon a neighbouring height, fired his carbine, and ran to the meeting. It was the signal of danger, and the preacher pauses while the armed men fall into position, placing the women and children in the rear; and when Claverhouse and his men cross Calderhill, they find the Covenanters posted to the utmost advantage, with a morass in front, and a hill behind. The Royalist general sends a flag, summoning them to surrender. It is answered by a shout of defiance; and, after a short silence, the Covenanters break out into the grand old battle psalm D "In Judah's land God is well known, His name's in Israel great; In Salem is His tabernacle, |