January 2nd 1884

This morning I received a remarkable letter from dear Alexander Morrison, elder, Dornoch. I felt refreshed by it, and immediately wrote an answer. I have been too slack in writing to friends. We should endeavour to increase brotherly love by every means. The Gospel Magazine came to hand today. There are excellent things in it, and as the leading article bore upon a subject on which my kind friend Mrs Morgan was thinking, I sent it off to her. This night I trust it may be helpful to her as it often was to me. I have had it over thirty years, being almost the only periodical read by me. The worthy editor seems to know the tribulations and consolations by the way, and there are also many other excellent correspondents to the magazine. I am surprised it is not more generally known in Scotland.
Several of my family have gone to Mr ___'s (no name supplied here) weekly prayer meeting where the poor and needy ones expect to gather crumbs. He has been preaching here over two years. He is an experienced Christian, and well fitted to edify and terrify. May the Holy One work through him! If ministers of Satan and graceless professors got their own way he would soon be sent across the Ord as one not fit to be left on earth. They cannot bear his plain faithfulness in testifying that their deeds are evil, and that they shall have to give an account at the great day for yielding to Satan and their own corrupt natures in swallowing greedily all sorts of deceitful innovations, while professing to worship in spirit and in truth. Eyes unsealed see these things to be the snares of the devil to deceive the bewitched, the blind leading the blind. For, if they walk not according to the divine will it is because there is no light in them. The newspapers are also not slack in doing their special work, viz., reviling what is spiritual and trying to bolster up carnal deceptions. Some about the public press say that they know that they are not doing right, but nothing else will sell or be read. The people will not endure sound doctrine, and as printing is a mercantile affair, they must suit their customers who are taught in our churches. The papers are doing their full share in corrupting society, though they may not be able to say, "Is there not a lie in my right hand?" They have no fear of the millstone. May they be convinced that they know not what they do, and that they would preach what they once destroyed!