207 contributed by ladies. Having thus tested the ex- periment, and proved its efficiency, Mr. Nasmith wrote to his correspondents, and afterwards printed 2000 circulars explanatory of the design and plan of the society, with recommendations appended from Dr. Chalmers and other influential clergymen; and these were sent to the principal cities and towns of Scotland, England, Ireland, France, and other places on the Continent, also to Asia, Africa, and America. Various circumstances now made it necessary for Nasmith to resign his charge at the Institution House. He was a married man, and the scanty salary was insufficient for the maintenance of a family. Its so- cieties were already organized and in full working trim, and might be carried on by a less experienced agent. And above all, his health required relaxation and change. In writing of his condition, he states, "My desires were unbounded, and my mind got so con- stantly engrossed with the thirty machines at work in devising and attempting to execute plans for ren- dering them efficient, that the feeble frame could no longer endure it. To have continued in the situa- tion and taken things more easy was impossible without injury to my mind, for I considered that a proper discharge of my duties did not admit of it without positive injury to the general cause." In 1828 he accordingly sent in his resignation of office, which was regarded by the institution as a heavy calamity, and accepted with regret. Another field of occupation must be found, but connected with missionary enterprise, which had now become to him a necessary of life; and being invited to visit a friend in Dublin, he went there the same year. Here he addressed himself with his wonted zeal to the establishment of city missions, and their auxiliary, the institution of Scripture-readers; and while thus employed he was offered the situation of assistant- secretary to the Scripture-reader Society in Dublin, to visit the poor and ignorant of the city, and read to them the Bible three hours a day, with a salary of eighty pounds per annum attached to it. This, however, he declined, and added, "I do so from a persuasion that the situation would not afford suffi- cient scope for the expansion of my mind, the exer- cise of those habits which have been formed by the experience of many years, and the satisfying of the desire for more extensive and varied usefulness which the great Head of the church has been pleased to give me." It was afterwards proposed to appoint him secretary of their city mission, with a salary of £100 a year, but this also he rejected, upon the fol- lowing conscientious grounds: " I. The funds of the society may not exceed £400 the first year, and to give ;£100 of that to any man for merely working the machinery would be quite too large a proportion of the whole. 2. It would lead people to say that I had come to form a society that I might get a bit of bread by it. 3. My influence in society and con- sequent usefulness would be retarded. And 4. Many would make it an excuse for not contributing to the funds of the institution." His temporary visit in Dublin being ended, Mr. Nasmith repaired to London, where he spent a few days, and during that short period not fewer than six situations were offered to him, one of which was the secretaryship of a city mission for London, with a salary of £200 per annum. But the condition of Ireland and its need of evangelistic agencies were so impressed upon his mind, that he accepted in preference an offer from Dublin, where only one-fifth of that amount was insured to him as secretary of its city mission society. And this was the deliberate choice of a man who was solicited by his friends to enter into business, and to whose remarkable talents, in all its departments, no amount of success seemed impossible. On the 3d of September, 1828, he set sail for Ireland, and the spirit in which he went thither the following entry in his diary will indi- cate :—"Two days more and I bid adieu to Scotland, to Glasgow, to relations, to friends, to spheres of usefulness in which I have been enabled, through grace, to walk for some time, and to the dear church in Nile Street; and I go to a land of comparative darkness; not that I may be richer as to this world; not that I may be more esteemed and honoured; not that I may be idle: but I go seeking only the glory of God, and the advancement of his salvation amongst the inhabitants of that land. Whether I shall be long or usefully employed the Lord knows; I go forth leaning upon the Lord for temporal and spiri- tual support, believing that he will open to me a door of usefulness, that he will provide me with bread in it, and give me grace to be faithful. I desire to be extensively useful to the church with which I may be connected;—to the circle of acquaintance that may be given to me;—to children;—to young men;—to students of divinity;—to the poor;—to the inhabitants of Dublin;—to the inhabitants of Ireland at large." On arriving in Dublin Mr. Nasmith addressed himself heart and soul to his beloved and appointed work—and Sabbath-schools, Scripture-readers, and city missionaries soon showed the impulse they had received from his arrival. In his new sphere of action he made little account of the premature decay both of mind and body which his marvellous exer- tions in Glasgow had superinduced, and still less of the poverty which his change to Dublin had occa- sioned. He was now constrained, from the expen- siveness of that city and his small precarious allow- ance, to inhabit a house of only two rooms and a kitchen, and to keep no servant. And this he had freely and cheerfully exchanged for the £300 a year which his various resources in Glasgow had brought him. Even with these reductions he was contented and happy, and only annoyed by the impediments that were offered to his work. These impediments were partly owing to the peculiarities of his field of labour. The ascendency of Popery in Ireland was especially hostile to Protestant city missions, and could make its hostility be felt Dublin also was so different from Glasgow, that the former city could not supply as many missionary agents as could be drawn from a single congregation of the latter, so that they had to be brought from a distance, or im- ported from Great Britain. But the chief difficulty experienced by the city missions in Dublin arose from the coldness or positive dislike of the clergy themselves. They were suspicious of every religious movement, unless it originated in the church and was superintended and directed by its authority; and they were jealous of the missionaries and Scripture- readers, as intruders into those kinds of teaching which ought exclusively to belong to the ministry. They taught, but they also preached while they taught. But what else could be done so long as the church itself rejected the work, and refused to become a missionary institution? "I have known," writes Nasmith, "so much of the coldness and hostility of ministers to the advancement of the Redeemer's glory, unless the effort was made by themselves, or their church, that I have ceased asking the co-opera- tion of any minister; besides, I conceive that, in general, the ministers have quite too much to do, either with the things of the world, or what are called our religious societies, and the effects are too obvious in the neglect of their flock." After the establishment by his personal labours of