"And now, dear A., I must be done, for it is very late. May your people share in the quickening that has come over Dundee! I feel it a very powerful argument with many: 'Will you be left dry when others are getting drops of heavenly dew?' Try this with your people.
"I think it probable we shall have another communion again before the regular one. It seems very desirable. You will come and help us; and perhaps Horace too.
"I thought of coming back by Collace from Errol, if our Glasgow meeting had not come in the way.
"Will you set agoing your Wednesday meeting again, immediately?
"Farewell, dear A. 'Oh man, greatly beloved, fear not; peace be to thee; be strong; yea, be strong.' Yours ever," etc.
To Mr. Burns he thus expresses himself on _December 19_: "My dear Brother,--I shall never be able to thank you for all your labors among the precious souls committed to me; and what is worse, I can never thank God fully for his kindness and grace, which every day appear to me more remarkable. He has answered prayer to me in all that has happened, in a way which I have never told any one." Again, on the _31st_: "Stay where you are, dear brother, as long as the Lord has any work for you to do.[16] If I know my own heart, its only desire is that Christ may be glorified, by souls flocking to Him, and abiding in Him, and reflecting his image; and whether it be in Perth or Dundee, should signify little to us. You know I told you my mind plainly, that I thought the Lord had so blessed you in Dundee, that you were called to a fuller and deeper work there; but if the Lord accompanies you to other places, I have nothing to object. The Lord strengthened my body and soul last Sabbath, and my spirit also was glad. The people were much alive in the Lord's service. But oh! dear brother, the most are Christless still. The rich are almost untroubled."
[16] Mr Burns was at that time in Perth, and there had begun to be some movement among the dry bones.
His evidence on this subject is given fully in his answers to the queries put by a Committee of the Aberdeen Presbytery; and in a note to a friend, he incidentally mentions a pleasing result of this wide-spread awakening: "I find many souls saved under my own ministry, whom I never knew of before. They are not afraid to come out now, it has become so common a thing to be concerned about the soul." At that time, also, many came from a distance; one came from the north, who had been a year in deep distress of soul, to seek Christ in Dundee.
In his brief diary he records, on December 3, that twenty anxious souls had that night been conversing with him; "many of them very deeply interesting." He occasionally fixed an evening for the purpose of meeting with those who were awakened; and in one of his note-books there are at least _four hundred_ visits recorded, made to him by inquiring souls, in the course of that and the following years. He observed, that those who had been believers formerly had got their hearts enlarged, and were greatly established; and some seemed able to feed upon the truth in a new manner,--as when one related to him how there had for some time appeared a glory in the reading of the word in public, quite different from reading it alone.
At the same time he saw backslidings, both among those whom believers had considered really converted, and among those who had been deeply convicted, though never reckoned among the really saved. He notes in his book: "Called to see ----. Poor lad, he seems to have gone back from Christ, led away by evil company. And yet I felt sure of him at one time. What blind creatures ministers are! man looketh at the outward appearance." One morning he was visited by one of his flock, proposing "a concert for prayer on the following Monday, in behalf of those who had fallen back, that God's Spirit might re-awaken them,"--so observant were the believers as well as their pastor of declensions. Among those who were awakened, but never truly converted, he mentions one case. "_Jan. 9, 1840._--Met with the case of one who had been frightened during the late work, so that her bodily health was injured. She seems to have no care now about her soul. It has only filled her mouth with evil-speaking."