Rev. James Thomson, of Quarrelwood. 45 



about four o'clock in the afternoon. Some of his .sermons and 

 table addresses were remembered by those who heard them till 

 long after, and were referred to with peculiar pleasure as services 

 from which they had received great benefit. Mention is made 

 of an action sermon at Quarrelwood in which he excelled in 

 vindicating the universal supremacy of Christ, and in confounding 

 its adversaries from the words, " He shall drink of the brook in 

 the way; therefore shall He lift up the ihead." It is said that 

 some of its impugners who were present reported to their 

 associates the signal discomfiture which they had sustained. 

 The communion seasons were times of great gatherings, people 

 coming not only from neighbouring parishes but from neighbour- 

 ing counties to such preachings, where the minister was usually 

 assisted by two, three, and even four brother ministers, and the 

 jireaching lasted often for a week. 



Mr Thomson lived at a remarkable period of European 

 history, during the P'rench Revolution and War, when all eyes 

 were turned to tl>e continent, and when at home there was practi- 

 cally no representation of the people in Parliament, and the 

 deism of the 18th century was rampant everywhere. " He was 

 not the man to be a silent spectator. He .spoke out and became 

 a dreaded if not a marked person by some on the wall of Zion, 

 and yet he continued respected and unscathed to the end. He 

 was the true friend of social order and of law, of religion, and of 

 liberty, though opposed to civil and ecclesiastical despotism and 

 deadness and the practical fighting of the battles of anti-Christ. 

 Ultimately the greater part of his charge in the Stewartry was 

 ecclesiastically disjoined with the contiguous part of Newton- 

 Stewart, and the two were organised into a separate congrega- 

 tion, called the congregation of the Water of Urr. Notwith- 

 standing this disjunction, he continued to cherish a warm 

 attachment to the people of that district, and they to him — nor 

 was he backward to serve them when in his power. With laudable 

 zeal they soon erected a place of worship in Dalbeattie and 

 another at Springholm. Though the territorial sphere of his 

 labour was now narrowed, \ et it was abundantly ample. " Nor 

 was it long," we are told, "till Hightae became a preaching 

 station, more so perhaps than Quarrelwood itself. Possibly the 

 novelty and freshness of his ministrations might account for it. 

 For a time he was kindly accommodated with the place of 



