1813-36-] EARLY YEARS. 17 



mornings he would go through the village ringing a bell 

 to rouse the people that they might attend an early 

 prayer-meeting which he had established. His tempera- 

 ment was far too high for most even of the well-disposed 

 people of Blantyre, but Neil Livingstone appreciated his 

 genuine worth, and so did his son. David says of him 

 that " for about forty years he had been incessant and 

 never weary in good works, and that such men were an 

 honour to their country and their profession." Yet it was 

 not after the model of Thomas Burke that Livingstone's 

 own religious life was fashioned. It had a greater resem- 

 blance to that of David Hogg, the other of the two 

 Blantyre patriarchs of whom he makes special mention, 

 under whose instructions he had sat in the Sunday- 

 school, and whose spirit may be gathered from his 

 death-bed advice to him : " Now, lad, make religion 

 the every-day business of your life, and not a thing 

 of fits and starts ; for if you do, temptation and other 

 things will get the better of you." It would hardly 

 be possible to give a better account of Livingstone's 

 religion than that he did make it quietly, but very really, 

 the every-day business of his life. From the first he 

 disliked men of much profession and little performance ; 

 the aversion grew as he advanced in years ; and by the 

 end of his life, in judging of men, he had come to make 

 somewhat light both of profession and of formal creed, 

 retaining and cherishing more and more firmly the one 

 great test of the Saviour — " By their fruits ye shall know 

 them." 



