The crime, however, of listening peacefully in the fields to the truths of the Gospel became, in the sight of the persecutors, every day more and more heinous, and they gave themselves up to the conscience-soothing tyranny of legal ordinances, as if the enactment and execution of bloody laws, contrary to those of God, and against the unoffending privileges of our nature, were not wickedness of as dark a stain as the murderer's use of his secret knife. Edict and proclamation against field-preachings and conventicles came following each other, and the latest was the fiercest and fellest of all which had preceded. But the cause of truth, and the right of communion with the Lord, was not to be given up: "It is not for glory," we said in the words of those brave Scottish barons that redeemed, with King Robert the Bruce, their native land from the thraldom of the English Edward, "nor is it for riches, neither is it for honour, but it is for liberty alone we contend, which no true man will lose but with his life;" and therefore it was that we would not yield obedience to the tyranny, which was revived with new strength by the death of James Sharp, in revenge for his doom, but sought, in despite of decrees and statutes, to hear THE WORD where we believed it was best spoken. The laws of God, which are above all human authority, require that we should worship him in truth and in holiness, and we resolved to do so to the uttermost, and prepared ourselves with arms to resist whoever might be sent to molest us in the performance of that the greatest duty. But in so exercising the divine right of resistance, we were not called upon to harm those whom we knew to be our adversaries. Belting ourselves for defence, not for war, we went singly to our places of secret meeting in the glens and on the moors, and when the holy exercise was done, we returned to our homes as peacefully as we went thither. Many a time I have since thought, that surely in no other age or land was ever such a solemn celebration of the Sabbath as in those days. The very dangers with which we were environed exalted the devout heart; verily it was a grand sight to see the fearless religious man moving from his house in the grey of the morning, with the Bible in his hand, and his sword for a staff, walking towards the hills for many a weary mile, hoping the preacher would be there, and praying as he went that there might be no molestation. Often and often on those occasions has the Lord been pleased to shelter his worshippers from their persecutors by covering them with the mantle of His tempest; and many a time at the dead of night, when the winds were soughing around, and the moon was bowling through the clouds, we have stood on the heath of the hills and the sound of our psalms has been mingled with the roaring of the gathering waters.