ANDREW GRAY (PERTH)

Gray's Letters to His People

The leaders of the Free Church had been known to the public chiefly as eager combatants on the field of controversy, or able business men in building up the fabric of the Church after the Disruption. All the time, however, as the Diary of Dr. Chalmers, for example, fully shows, these engrossing conflicts and toils had been uncongenial work, from which they were glad to escape and find relief in seasons of devout and earnest prayer.
We see this in the case of the Rev. Andrew Gray of Perth, one of the Church's most formidable champions on the Field of argument. What nerved him for the struggle was the conviction that, "deep at the foundation of the Ten Years' Conflict lay the question whether godlness in its living power and genuine evangelical development was to prevail in the Church." And hence the spirit in which his work was lone. He was extremely solicitous about his people's players in connection with the Church's struggles and his own part in them. While in Edinburgh, attending to his duties as a member of Assembly, his practice was, during the years 1840-44, to write daily to the West Church prayer-meeting, so as to keep his people informed of the Assembly's proceedings, " thus making their petitions on its behalf more pointed and precise than they would otherwise have been."
The direct breathings of his soul come out in these letters in connection with each step that was taken in the progress of the conflict. He frequently also, acknowledges, in warm terms, the assurances which he receives in these prayer-meetings being numerously attended and pervaded by a spirit of deep earnestness and seriousness."

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