Taking the district in which I have usually laboured as a centre, I have been far more north than south; but in giving even an outline of my experience among our Churches, I must pay some little attention to the south.

For many years I was present at the anniversary services and annual social meeting at Spittal. For many of the members there I have the highest regard; it was a pleasure to know them. Their devotion to the cause of Christ impressed me deeply; though the bulk of those I knew at first have gone over the River, I expect to meet them later on. I dare not begin to mention names lest I might not know the proper place to stop; still I think no one will blame me even at Spittal, if I name one and stop there. I have met many earnest speakers, but James Rutherford of Spittal threw his heart and soul into his singing in a fashion that I have never seen excelled. He sang nicely, but it never occurred to you that he was trying to do so. In him you had an example of the melody of the heart rushing out in a natural song of praise to God. I never knew a preacher who threw his heart and energy into his speaking to more purpose than James Rutherford did into his singing. He has gone, but his singing is with me still. I once asked him, "Do you ever sing a secular song at all, Bro. Rutherford?" "Well, no, Bro. Anderson. I do not say that there is any harm in it, you know, but since the Lord put a 'new song' into my mouth, I have never sung any other."

One year I spent a good part of the bathing season at Spittal. On a Sunday evening, I gave an address on Repentance. After dealing with what it was and how produced, I called attention to the fact that God had made it a condition of pardon, and you must repent or perish. I supported this point with a number of passages, and said, "Some persons are in the habit of telling sinners that they have only to believe and they will be saved. But the passages just quoted prove that God has as certainly connected repentance with remission of sins as He has connected faith with the remission of sins. That being so, if I am addressing any who have been in the habit of telling sinners to 'only believe and they will be saved,' I hope that they will do so no more."

These closing remarks gave offence to a gentleman in the audience, who with his family were at Spittal for the bathing season. He remained in the chapel after the close of the meeting and talked to the elders. He thought I should be called in question for what I had said. He offered to meet me in public debate, and show that I was mistaken. The elders had conversation with me. They thought that it would be advisable that I should accept his challenge. But they added, "We think that you must keep a firm hold of that man; we have spoken to him before, and we think that he is too sure of himself." I was surprised at this advice, for the elders were very quiet men. But I could not but respect their judgment, for they were cautious, intelligent men, and their quiet nature made me sure that they considered the advice needful or they would not have given it. So my friend on the other side had to thank those elders for having to meet a much firmer man than he otherwise would have done. Our chapel was granted for the debate. We had ten-minute speeches, and I think that two hours was the entire time given to it. My friend had nothing that was really new or hard to meet. The only thing which seemed a little unusual was that once when he rose he devoted nearly the whole of his ten minutes to reading the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. This, of course, was to show what was done by faith. In following him, I also gave the most of my time to the same chapter, and the greater part of that time, like him, I also gave to reading the chapter. But in reading I kept on inserting the word alone so as to make it fit his theory. For example, I read "By faith alone Noah ... prepared an Ark." "By faith alone Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not knowing whither he went." "By faith alone he sojourned in the land of promise." "By faith alone Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac." "By faith alone Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau concerning things to come." "By faith alone Jacob, when he was dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph." "By faith alone Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones." "By faith alone they passed through the Red Sea as on dry land. "By faith alone the walls of Jericho fell down, after they were compassed about seven days." These are samples of my reading of the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. I need not add that my friend on the other side did anything but enjoy it. I called special attention to the fact that my friend was only losing his time when he was quoting passages to prove that salvation is by faith. We believed that as firmly as he did. It was the alone that was in dispute; and there was nothing in the eleventh chapter of Hebrews about blessings coming by faith alone. It was very evident throughout the evening that our friend had a harder task in hand than he had anticipated. He left the meeting-place not too well pleased with himself.

He called at my lodgings next day. We made him welcome, and when he was seated, he said, "I do not think that it was very nice for one Scotchman to handle another the way you did me last night. Of course, I could have done the same to you, but I did not feel inclined to do it." I said, "You are mistaken, my friend, it was not in your power to handle me as I handled you; you had not the ground to stand upon, the facts were against you." "Anyhow," he said, "I have to admit that I could not make as good a use of my time as you could. The people, I think, understood you better than they understood me. I have to leave Spittal in a day or two, but before I go I would like to take a hall and give a lecture so as to get my mind fairly and fully before the people. But I would like you to be present, lest the people might think that I was doing it behind your back. I have not looked for a hall yet, but I shall try and get one." "Well," I replied, "I see no harm in your doing as you suggest. It is a free country and freedom of speech is allowed to all. I shall attend your lecture, if I can, and if you will permit me, I shall go to our elders and try if I can get our chapel for your lecture; and if you will let me, I shall come and be chairman for you, and then the people will be sure to know that I am there." He thanked me for taking so liberal a view of matters, but he hardly expected that I would manage to get the chapel for him. However, I agreed to try, and would let him know that evening. I got the chapel for his lecture, and, an evening or two after, I took the chair at his lecture and introduced him to a good audience. He could not begin his lecture without making some remarks on the circumstances in which he was placed. He said, "I consider this the most gentlemanly treatment ever I received in my life. I came into this place as a hearer on Sunday evening, I found fault with their preacher and challenged him to debate. We met in debate. I did not think that I managed to put my position fairly and clearly before you, and I wished a lecture all to myself to put my mind more fully before you. They offer me their meeting-place, my opponent takes the chair, and I am here with full liberty to say what I please, and they do not even ask to be allowed to reply. I may differ from what these people believe, but I must say that this is very fair treatment." He delivered his lecture and I closed the meeting without a word of criticism. But our friend could not leave the platform without again thanking us for the manner in which we had treated him.

I fear I cannot give any more space to my visits to Spittal, though many things occur to me that I would like to mention. But when I have the subject of repentance in hand I had better say a little more in regard to that, apart from my visits to Spittal.

That repentance is a prominent theme in the New Testament is beyond question. Very few people entirely miss its meaning, but very many fail to fully and clearly grasp it. It is associated with sorrow, but sorrow does not exhaust it. You may have sorrow and you may not have repentance. "Godly sorrow worketh repentance;" here sorrow is a cause and repentance an effect. "Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance." Here you have repentance as a cause and reformation of life as an effect. Repentance then comes after sorrow for sin and goes before reformation of life. Repentance, therefore, can be nothing less and nothing else than a resolution to be done with all that is wrong and to devote yourself to all that - it is a making up your mind to be done with sin and to serve God. To be a child of God without this is inconceivable. Hence the uniform teaching of the Bible is that you must repent or perish. But when you thus give repentance its scriptural place, you get into conflict with those who teach that salvation is by faith alone. If repentance is needful, then salvation is not by faith alone. I was at one time staying in a room containing a bookcase with a good many books in it. I took a commentary out of it, and turned to Luke 13:3, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." The author said, "You would think that this and some other passages teach that repentance is needful for salvation, but that would never do, for it would contradict the great Protestant principle of justification by faith alone." When a passage of Scripture and the great Protestant principle came into conflict, that author did not hesitate as to which would have to give way. The passage must die or confess that it did not really mean that. That author is only a sample from a very large stock.

Our Methodist friends try to modify the difficulty by placing repentance before faith. If they place repentance before faith, they may then, according to their theory, preach that you are saved "the moment you believe." But so long as they hold that you must repent or perish, they are not free to preach salvation by faith alone. If God has made repentance a condition of pardon, then, no matter whether repentance goes before or after faith, salvation is not by faith alone.

But is it true that repentance must go before faith? "Faith comes by hearing." Where there is no testimony there can be no reasonable faith. But I cannot think of anything which must go before faith except testimony or evidence. To say that we cannot believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God until we repent is to contradict what we know to be true. Some of us were as sure about the main facts of the Gospel before we repented as we are today. On the other hand, I cannot think of anything which I repented of until I had believed something about it.

All this is so self-evident that some of those who teach that repentance goes before faith, admit that "there is a kind of faith which goes before repentance." These same people sometimes tell you that "saving faith is not the effect of evidence." The faith which comes apart from evidence has more delusion connected with it than you could rehearse in a long summer day. The faith which God approves of comes by hearing, and "hearing by the Word of God." The faith which some people call saving faith does not come by believing anything about Christ at all, but by believing something about themselves. Let me illustrate. I once delivered a discourse on repentance in the open air at a mining village. A Methodist entered into conversation with me at the close of the meeting. He said, "I rather think that you are right, Mr. Anderson. Most Scotchmen believe, and they will be condemned because they do not repent." "That is my conviction," I said; "but if they believe and are not saved, why do you teach that they have only to believe in order to be saved?" He saw that what he had admitted did not fit in with what he was in the habit of teaching, and then he began to draw back. He replied, "They do not really believe - they do not believe that they are saved." "No," I said, "they do not believe that they are saved, and it is best so. Why should they believe that they are saved when they are not?" "But," he said, "that is what you ought to teach them, you should teach them to believe that they are saved." "That is what you do teach them," I replied, "but I question if it is what you ought to teach them. To convince you that I understand your position, I shall make a brief statement of it. You preach to men that they are lost; that they are on their way to everlasting destruction; that should they die as they are living, they would find themselves on the wrong side for ever. When men believe this, and become anxious about salvation, then you begin to tell them that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost; and that He finished the work which He came to do. And then you begin to reason with them after this fashion: 'Now, if Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, and He finished the work which He came to do, then He must have sought and saved you. So you must be saved. Can you not see that?' In like manner you sometimes quote from Isa. 53:6, 'The Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.' And then you reason, 'Now, if the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all, there can be no iniquity left on you - you must be free.' This is how you often deal with anxious souls in trying to get them to find peace." When I had given this brief statement, I asked him if I had stated his case fairly. He answered that I had. "Then," I said, "you admit that in dealing with the anxious, your main object is to get them to believe that they are saved. Now, while you are thus urging them to believe that they are saved, do you yourself believe that they are saved, at the moment at which you are urging them to believe that they are saved?" He answered, "No, I do not believe that they are saved at that moment; I believe that they are only in an anxious state." "And though you believe that they are only in an anxious state, you are urging them to believe that they are saved. That is, you are urging them to believe what you do not believe yourself. Let me put it another way. You are urging a person to believe that he is saved when he is not saved in order to get saved. You are thus teaching that a person comes to a knowledge of the truth by believing what is not true." I pressed my friend on this point, but he had no clear way out. Before leaving this subject, I again pressed the point, that those who find peace in this way, find peace not by believing anything about Christ but by believing that they are saved. If you can persuade a man that he is saved, he will, of course, find peace. But there is such a thing as false peace, and every one should be careful that in regard to remission of sins he finds peace on reasonable and scriptural grounds.

When preachers are telling us of the love of God or what Christ by His life and death has gone for us, they are generally sound and easily followed. But when they begin to tell the sinner what he has to do to be saved there is no end of error and confusion in the world.

Year by year at the Anniversary Services at Spittal I used to met friends from Newcastle-on-Tyne. This led to me being invited to Newcastle. The Annual Conference of the North-Eastern Division is held at Newcastle on Good Friday. For quite a number of years I was at Newcastle on Good Friday, took part in the social meeting in the evening, preached in Newcastle on Easter Sunday, returning to Scotland early in the week. In this way I made the acquaintance of many highly esteemed brethren in the North-Eastern Division. Though unable now to keep up the acquaintance, it adds to the pleasure of life to keep them in memory. A considerable number of them have gone where I must soon follow, but I have not so much the impression that I once knew them, as I have the sweet impression that I know them still. We were co-workers in a work that had eternity rather than time in view, and we formed an acquaintance that will never grow old. Though it is very pleasant for me to think about my visits to Newcastle, nothing occurs to me that calls for special mention, still I feel that I cannot give even an outline of my life and leave my visits to Newcastle altogether out of it. I could fill the space that remains to me in writing things which were very pleasant to me in connection with my visits to Newcastle and Gateshead, for I have had very pleasant visits to both places.