Addressing Him With,
"How Ever Did These Shells Come Into These Rocks?" "When God Made The Rocks,
He Made The Shells In Them," Was The Damping Reply.
What a deal of trouble
geologists might have saved themselves by adopting the Turk-like philosophy
of this Scotchman!
My reading while at work was carried on by placing the book
on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so that I could catch
sentence after sentence as I passed at my work; I thus kept up
a pretty constant study undisturbed by the roar of the machinery.
To this part of my education I owe my present power of completely abstracting
the mind from surrounding noises, so as to read and write with perfect comfort
amid the play of children or near the dancing and songs of savages.
The toil of cotton-spinning, to which I was promoted in my nineteenth year,
was excessively severe on a slim, loose-jointed lad, but it was well paid for;
and it enabled me to support myself while attending medical and Greek classes
in Glasgow in winter, as also the divinity lectures of Dr. Wardlaw,
by working with my hands in summer. I never received a farthing of aid
from any one, and should have accomplished my project of going to China
as a medical missionary, in the course of time, by my own efforts, had not
some friends advised my joining the London Missionary Society on account of
its perfectly unsectarian character. It "sends neither Episcopacy,
nor Presbyterianism, nor Independency, but the Gospel of Christ
to the heathen." This exactly agreed with my ideas of what
a missionary society ought to do; but it was not without a pang
that I offered myself, for it was not quite agreeable to one
accustomed to work his own way to become in a measure dependent on others;
and I would not have been much put about though my offer had been rejected.
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