BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 229
wages were to be given away in charity. One day, while engaged with his fellowbarrowman
in carrying up stones to the masons, as might have been expected
he felt much fatigued; and a passage of Scripture-“Do thyself no harm’-
coming opportunely to his recollection, he at once laid down his portion of the
barrow. His companion behind, still holding the shafts, and provoked by the
untimely delay, broke out into a volley of dreadful oaths and imprecations ; to
prevent which Andrew resumed the burden sooner than he intended. When
the labours of the day were over, he was asked by a friend, to whom he
repeated the occurrence, if he had forgot the sum of the second table of the
law, which says, “ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself 1” Andrew replied
that it did not occur to him at the time. On his friend reminding him that,
had he been the undermost bearer of the barrow, his own safety would have
dictated a different course, he cordially assented--“ You say right ; that is very
true.’’
His opposition to the prevailing customs of society arose from an indiscriminate
and rigid interpretation of particular portions of the Sacred Writings ; and
probably the same cause led to his dissent from the ordinary modes of public
worship. He used to say that he had read of a church in Ethiopia, where the
service chiefly consisted in reading the Scriptures. ‘‘ That,” said he, “ is the
church I would have attended.” He preferred reading the Bible in the original ;
and to his extreme fondness for expounding the Scriptures, the attitude in which
he is portrayed in the Print evidently refers. At the time the building of the
South Bridge was in progress, Andrew has been often seen at a very early hour
on the Sabbath morning-long before his fellow-citizens were roused from their
slumbers-seated in the fresh air to the south of the Tron Church, with hie
Hebrew Psalter in his hand.’
He frequented those churches where the greatest portion of Scripture were
read, and generally visited more than one place of worship in the course of a
forenoon. He repaired first to the Glassites, who met in Chalmers’ Closethen
to the Baptists, in Niddry Street, or to the Old Independent Church in
the Candlemaker Row, The former he preferred for their Scripture reading,
and the latter for the doctrines taught. In short, the Bible was the standard
to which he seemed desirous of assimilating himself, not more in faith than in
manners ; and his language formed on the same model, abounded in Scripture
phrases and quotations, applicable to almost every circumstance in life, Mistaken
he might be in some of his views, and over rigid in others; but in
1 On the fint leaf of a Hebrew Grammar, which he occasionally used, he had inscribed two lines
“ I rise each day from my bed with the impression that it may be, and with the purpose of spendof
classical Latin, copied from Melancthon, somewhat to the following effect :-
ing it aa if it were to be, my last.”
After which was mitten, as under :-
‘‘ Nothing but GOD, and GOD done you’ll find,
Can fill a boundless and immortal mind.”
