The Directors of Glasgow City Mission along with the Great Hamilton Street congregation, had made every effort to find a suitable successor to me in my Green Street work, but in vain. Despairing of success, as no inexperienced worker could with any hope undertake it, Rev. Mr. Caie, the superintendent, felt moved to appeal to my brother Walter,—then in a good business situation in the city, who had been of late closely associated with me in all my undertakings,—if he would not come to the rescue, devote himself to the Mission, and prepare for the Holy Ministry. My brother resigned a good position and excellent prospects in the business world, set himself to carry forward the Green Street Mission and did so with abundant energy and manifest blessing, persevered in his studies, despite a long-continued illness through injury to his foot, and became an honoured Minister of the Gospel, in the Reformed Presbyterian Church first of all, and now in the Free Church of Scotland, at Chapelton, near Hamilton.
On my brother withdrawing from Green Street, God provided for the district a devoted young Minister, admirably adapted for the work, Rev. John Edgar, M.A., who succeeded in drawing together such a body of people that they hived off and built a new church in Landressy Street, which is now, by amalgamation, known as the Barrowfield Free Church of Glasgow. For that fruit too, while giving all praise to other devoted workers, we bless God as we trace the history of our Green Street Mission. Let him that soweth and him that reapeth rejoice unfeignedly together! The spirit of the old Green Street workers lives on too, as I have already said, in the new premises erected close thereby; and in none more conspicuously than in the son of my staunch patron and friend, another Thomas Binnie, Esq., who in Foundry Boy meetings and otherwise devotes the consecrated leisure of a busy and prosperous life to the direct personal service of his Lord and Master. The blessing of Jehovah God be ever upon that place, and upon all who there seek to win their fellows to the love and service of Jesus Christ!
When I left Glasgow, many of the young men and women of my classes would, if it had been possible, have gone with me, to live and die among the Heathen. Though chiefly working girls and lads in trades and mills, their deep interest led them to unite their pence and sixpences and to buy web after web of calico, print, and woollen stuffs, which they themselves shaped and sewed into dresses for the women, and kilts and pants for men, on the New Hebrides. This continued to be repeated year by year, long after I had left them; and to this day no box from Glasgow goes to the New Hebrides Mission which does not contain article after article from one or other of the old Green Street hands. I do certainly anticipate that, when they and I meet in Glory, those days in which we learned the joy of Christian service in the Green Street Mission Halls will form no unwelcome theme of holy and happy converse!
That able and devoted Minister of the Gospel, Dr. Bates, the Convener of the Heathen Missions, had taken the deepest and most fatherly interest in all our preparations. But on the morning of our final examinations he was confined to bed with sickness; yet could not be content without sending his daughter to wait in an adjoining room near the Presbytery House, to learn the result, and instantly to carry him word. When she, hurrying home, informed him that we both had passed successfully, and that the day of our ordination as Missionaries to the New Hebrides had been appointed, the apostolic old man praised God for the glad tidings, and said his work was now done, and that he could depart in peace,—having seen two devoted men set apart to preach the Gospel to these dark and bloody Islands in answer to his prayers and tears for many a day. Thereafter he rapidly sank, and soon fell asleep in Jesus. He was from the first a very precious friend to me, one of the ablest Ministers our Church ever had, by far the warmest advocate of her Foreign Missions, and altogether a most attractive, white-souled, and noble specimen of an ambassador for Christ, beseeching men to be reconciled to God.