1844-54. ADDRESS TO STUDENTS. 367 



mission lecture carried the arrow of conviction to one careless 

 doctor's heart. So few particulars reached me that I fear to 

 build upon the statement, but the very possibility of its being- 

 true is enough to urge one to new endeavours." 



Of a similar address, in 1853, unpublished, he tells Mrs. J. H. 

 Gladstone," On Thursday last we had a very pleasant meeting 

 of the medical students and practitioners, for religious purposes. 

 I was far from well, and went to it, repeating from my heart 

 the recurring prayer, that Christ would at least not permit me 

 by anything I said, to throw a stumbling-block in the way of 

 any present, or to hinder them in their strivings towards right- 

 eousness. And my prayer was answered, I trust. I spoke with 

 freedom and earnestness to a most attentive set of listeners, 

 some sixty in number ; and many came up after I had finished, 

 to speak encouraging words to me. My subject was, the ' Ex- 

 ample supplied by the Lives of Christian Physicians.' I took 

 four who stand in special relation to our medical school here, 

 Dr. Turner, the chemist ; Dr. James Hope, author on Diseases 

 of the Heart ; Dr. Abercrombie, our physician of highest repu- 

 tation among recent medical men here; and Dr. John Eeid. 

 They are the latest famous Edinburgh students of medicine who 

 have died. The great points I insisted on were, that all those 

 four professed to have, 1. Undergone a great spiritual change ; 

 in connexion with which they were, 2. Great Bible readers ; 

 3. Great offerers of prayer ; and, 4. Faithful keepers of the 

 Sabbath. 



" I urged the desirableness of us all imitating their example 

 in these things, addressing my entire audience, although it in- 

 cluded many seniors, and one of our professors, as my fellow- 

 students ; and claimed for the title of student that it w T as the 

 highest of all titles given by Christ, and intended to apply to 

 His disciples as students throughout eternity, of all God's works 

 and ways. 



" I closed with a solemn reference to the world of woe, as a 

 place where they have ceased to study, and have but the awful 

 page on which God's denunciations of the ungodly are written 

 to gaze upon for ever ; or, if they read, it is only backwards, 

 in the mournful indestructible volume which memory has pre- 



