work which neceſſarily derolved upon me in this place, after the loſs of my brother colleague, ſtill intending, when time allowed to ſay ſomething by way of preface: but the ſame ſtrait continuing upon me, I am obliged after all, through the importunate cries of many who have heard of it, to let it go with ſaying little or nothing. Only I regard it as a piece of honour put upon me in holy providence, not only to be the unworthy ſucceſſor of that great man but the publiſher of the laſt ſermon that ever he preached in the pulpit of Stirling: where it is my deſire, the ſame teſtimony of Jeſus, for which he ſuffered unto death, may be maintained into the lateſt poſterity.
What may be in the womb of this providence of the reſurrection of Mr Guthrie's laſtt ſermon in Stirling, after it is been ſo long buried with himſelf in the duſt and rubbiſh, God only knows, and time muſt diſcover: only conſidering the way of its reſurrection and convayance, it looks like a cry from the dead, to the whole land, but in a particular manner, to the congregation of Stirling upon whoſe watch towers it was delivered.
I have thonght the manner of the conveyance of this ſermon to public view at this time of day, one of the curious links of the great chain of divine providence. The reverend Mr Alexander Hamilton, when he was but a youth at the college of Edinburgh, from a juſt regard he had to the memory of Mr. Guthrie, and the cauſe in which he ſuffered, was excited at the peril of his life to take down with his own hand Mr Guthrie's head from the Netherbow-Port of Edinburgh, where it had ſtood as a public ſpectacle for about twenty ſeven or twenty eight years. The very ſame perſon is ordered thirty eight years thereafter to ſucceed him in the miniſtry, and uphold his teſtimony in the pulpit of
