Page:A history of booksellers, the old and the new.djvu/369

AND JAMES NISBET. 329 the call, and pressing through the crowd that thronged the doorway and the aisles he thundered : " Stand forth ! stand forth ! what, will ye not obey the voice of the Holy Ghost ? As many as will obey the voice of the Holy Ghost, let them depart!" Onward he 'went to the door, and then came to the last words : " Prayer, indeed, oh !" and thus he left his church for ever. Thousands and almost millions of tracts and small books did Nisbet scatter broadcast, freely to those who could not pay, with small charge to those who could. And at the period of the " Disruption " he circulated at his own expense, not only in Scotland and Ireland, but all over England, great multitudes of Dr. James Hamilton's " Farewell." But even in the midst of these labours the ungodly were busy, and a rumour was circulated that James Nisbet had gone over to the Church of Rome ; and this, in spite of his well-known antipathies, gained considerable credence. The following is from a letter from Mr. Wolff : " I, a few days ago, read in the Morning Post that an emi- nent and successful bookseller had entered the Church of Rome. I thought that this bookseller must be one of the Tractarian party (the Rivingtons), but to my utter astonishment I heard it whispered that the bookseller was nobody else than Mr. James Nisbet, his whole family, and my old friend Mr. Murray, with the observation that ' one extreme leads to the other ex- treme,' . . . My dear Nisbet and Murray, what could induce you to do such a spite to your John Knox, Chalmers, and Gordon, and join with a rotten church ? Nobody is more impatient in acknowledging the good things to be found in the Church of Rome than my- self, yet I would rather see the Pope and all his 21