Life of the Rev. John Milne of Perth

It is not a eulogy that I wish to write, but a record. I should like to show the man, not to execute a piece of sculpture.
In doing this, it will be needful to introduce ‘companions in labour,’—from him who died first, Robert M‘Cheyne, to him who went last, William Burns; with others still serving here below. Some names may have been left out; but it was found impossible to make mention of all. The religious history of the last forty years in Scotland remains to be written. Biographies, like the present, are contributions to this.
I fear I may not have been quite accurate chronologically at times; but the narrative is not at all affected by this. As very few of Mr. Milne’s letters are fully dated, I was occasionally at a loss in regard to order and time. Several things have been thrown in purposely out of order, because needing to be grouped, for the illustration of some particular feature of character.
I have to thank the brethren who have so kindly trusted me with their correspondence, and thereby enabled me to sketch the course of one so ‘greatly beloved’ by us all.
In a day of bustle and whirl, like ours, it may be well to study the life of one who stood in the midst of all this, yet was not of it; who was never for an hour drawn into it; but sought all his days to draw others out of it, into the calm and joy which he himself so fully knew.
In an age of false ideals and hero-worship, it will be found good, also, to mark one who took, as his great model, both in service and suffering, the Son of God; who knew, above most, what intimacy with Him could do, in moulding character, and in producing a true and telling life.
The Grange, Edinburgh,
October 1868.