He
tried English preaching too, but his throat was still tender, and he
felt very nervous, as he had done at Ongar. "What a little thing," he
writes to Mr. Moffat, "is sufficient to bring down to old-wifeishness
such a rough tyke as I consider myself! Poor, proud human nature is a
great fool after all." A second effort was more successful. "I
preached," he writes to his wife, "on the text, 'Why will ye die?' I had
it written out and only referred to it twice, which is an improvement in
English. I hope good was done. The people were very attentive indeed. I
felt less at a loss than in Union Chapel[35]." He arranged with a
mercantile friend, Mr. Rutherfoord, to direct the operations of a native
trader, George Fleming, whom that gentleman was to employ for the
purpose of introducing lawful traffic in order to supplant the
slave-trade.
[Footnote 35: The manuscript of this sermon still exists. The sermon is
very simple, scriptural, and earnest, in the style of Bishop Ryle, or of
Mr. Moody.]
It was not till the 8th of June that he left the Cape.
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