other kind of cup or teapot.

By the time I got home to the manse, I had been three whole weeks
and five days absent, which was more than all my absences together,
from the time of my placing; and my people were glowing with
satisfaction when they saw us driving in a Glasgow chaise through
the clachan to the manse.

The rest of the year was merely a quiet succession of small
incidents, none of which are worthy of notation, though they were
all severally, no doubt, of aught somewhere, as they took us both
time and place in the coming to pass, and nothing comes to pass
without helping onwards to some great end; each particular little
thing that happens in the world being a seed sown by the hand of
Providence to yield an increase, which increase is destined, in its
turn, to minister to some higher purpose, until at last the issue
affects the whole earth. There is nothing in all the world that
doth not advance the cause of goodness; no, not even the sins of the
wicked, though, through the dim casement of her mortal tabernacle,
the soul of man cannot discern the method thereof.



CHAPTER XXI YEAR 1780



This was, among ourselves, another year of few events. A sound, it
is true, came among us of a design, on the part of the government in
London, to bring back the old harlotry of papistry; but we spent our