A Remarkable Circle of Friends

Introduction

secured when Knox arose. And in like manner the triumphant issue of the evangelical revival might have been foretold, when first Andrew Thomson and then Thomas Chalmers appeared as its champions.’ By 1825, then, God was visibly at work in the Church of Scotland. The number of evangelical ministries was growing, a new day had dawned for many of the Church’s congrega tions, whilst the church as a whole was beginning to look beyond its borders to the foreign mission field. But there was also something God was doing that was as yet invisible. Growing up in Scottish homes were boys whom, from the mid-to-late 1830s onwards, God would use in remarkable ways. They would be converted, train for gospel ministry, serve in Church of Scotland parishes, and be the instruments in God’s hands of a spiritual awakening more powerful than had as yet been felt. A number of them are introduced to us in the following pages: Robert Murray M‘Cheyne, William Chalmers Burns, Andrew Bonar, Alexander Moody Stuart, Horatius Bonar, Robert Macdonald, James Hamilton, John Milne, and Alexander Somerville. These young men, along with others, were friends as well as fellow ministers. Many of them were students together. When they were settled in congregations they wrote to one another, prayed for one another, and preached for one another. Their lives and ministries significantly intertwined. Extensive scholarship, prayerfulness, holiness of life, strong faith, and an intense passion for the gospel marked each of them. The first chapter is devoted to their great mentor, Thomas Chalmers. The friends were united in their admiration and love for Chalmers and in their indebtedness to his teaching and example. In the chapters that follow something of the life and ministry of each of the friends is sketched. So, too, of their friendship with each other. A few other sketches have

[xi]