habits of laborious application by which he was trained to his future work of
historical and antiquarian research. This progress, however, was somewhat
alarming to his cautious father, who saw no reason for impoverishing a whole
family to make his first-born a finished scholar ; and had his paternal purposes
been carried out, perhaps the future biographer of Knox and Melville would have
become nothing better than a thriving Berwickshire store-keeper, or, it may
be, a prosperous mercantile adventurer in London. But kind relatives interposed, and the boy was allowed to follow his original bent. This he did so
effectually, that before he had reached the age of fifteen, he was himself able to become a teacher in two country schools successively, and thus to proceed in his studies without occasioning the apprehended incumbrance.
It was soon settled that aptitudes so decided, and acquirements which had already brought him into notice, should be devoted to the work of the ministry; and accordingly, at the age of sixteen, Thomas M'Crie left home to be enrolled as a student in the university of Edinburgh. His pious, affectionate mother, accompanied him part of the way; and when the painful moment of farewell had arrived, she took him aside into a field upon Coldingham Moor, and there, kneeling down with him behind a rock, she solemnly commended him and his future career to that God who gave him, and to whose service she now willingly resigned him. In a year after she died; but the memory of that prayer abode with him, while its answer was attested in his future life and labours. His favourite studies at the university, as might be surmised, were those allied with ethics, philology, and history all that is closely connected with the development of human character, and the most effectual modes of delineating its manifold and minute phases. It is no wonder, therefore, if, among the professors who at this time were the ornaments of the college, Dugald Stewart was his favourite instructor. In this way his course went on from year to year, his studies being frequently alternated with the laborious work of the schoolmaster, but his mind exhibiting on every occasion a happy combination of student-like diligence, with healthful elastic vigour. In September, 1795, he was licensed to be a preacher by the Associate Presbytery of Kelso; and in this capacity his first public attempts were so acceptable, that in little more than a month after being licensed, he received a call from the Associate congregation in the Potter Row, Edinburgh, to become their second minister. Thus early was he settled in the precise sphere, where not only his talents as a minister could be turned to best account, but the proper facilities afforded for that important literary career in which he was destined to become so eminent.
A short time after he had entered the work of the ministry, he married Miss Janet Dickson, daughter of a respectable farmer in Swinton, to whom he had long been attached, and found in her a suitable domestic friend and comforter, until death dissolved their union.
At the outset of his ministry, Mr. M'Crie's sermons were distinguished by a careful attention to those requirements of eloquence and rules of oratory, in which he was so well fitted to excel. Indeed, the more aged of his brethren seem to have been of opinion that he carried these to such an undue length, as to be in danger of recommending himself more highly than the great subject of which he was but the herald and messenger. He soon appears to have been of the same opinion himself, more especially after a missionary tour through the Orkney Islands, hitherto in a state of grievous spiritual destitution, but now eager to hear the word of life, in whatever form it was proclaimed; and there
