216 Two Irongray Traditions. 



suade him to relinquish his purpose and remain in Scotland, 

 where his learnings and piety mig-ht be of use in upbuilding 

 the church. For this end they led him among the memorials 

 of the saints of the Covenant in Nithsdale and Galloway. 

 Once in a solitary wandering he found himself at the Com- 

 munion Stones of Irongray, where he seemed to hear a voice 

 saying, " What doest thou here, Elijah?" A few days after- 

 wards a deputation of the heads of Irongray parish, which 

 was then vacant, waited on him and besought him to become 

 their minister. From this he gathered that God had called 

 him to lay aside his private grief and undertake his public 

 duties. He was accordingly ordained minister of Irongray 

 by the Presbytery. 



For thirty years he remained unmarried, faithful to the 

 memory of the dead, but at length he yielded to the affections 

 of the living and married a wife. " Of which marriage," 

 says Edward Irving's venerable informant, " I am the fruit." 



This romantic story comes to us with the very best 

 guarantees for its truthfulness. The teller is the daughter 

 of the hero, and Edward Irving prefaces his account by 

 saying : — " You may depend on my faith as a Christian man 

 and a minister that I have invented nothing and altered 

 nothing in what I am about to relate, whether as to the 

 manner of my receiving the story or as to the story itself." 

 Yet the story is not only grossly inaccurate in details, but 

 frankly impossible. 



To begin : the minister of Irongray called Guthrie was 

 James, not "William." James Guthrie was minister of 

 Irongray from September 13th, 1694, till June 25th, 1756, 

 a period of 62 years. This mistake about the name may be 

 a pardonable lapse of memory. I lay no stress on it. 



But mark the dates. James Guthrie, the proto-martyr 

 of the Covenant, was hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh 

 on June ist, 1661, about the hour of two o'clock in the 

 afternoon.* If he had a nephew ripe for the ministry he 

 must have been about 21 years of age when his uncle was 

 hanged. That would throw his (the nephew's) birth about 



* Wodrow, I., 192. 



