The Assembly is past, but the time of rest has not yet come. Dr. Chalmers hurries back to Glasgow. Now that he has got breathing-time, his heart returns to the great experiment which he had begun there, and an unrestrainable eagerness takes possession of him to help it on. The next six weeks are spent in incessant labour in the old field. In looking back on this period he remarked in his peculiar phraseology, ’I think that I never spent a season of more crowded occupancy.’ On his way to Glasgow he took Perth, where he preached a missionary sermon on a week-day, the collection amounting to £81, 8s. In Glasgow he preached steadily in the chapel of ease, and he had the great satisfaction, though of course it was but a temporary one, of adding four hundred to the sittings let, no doubt to accommodate the many persons who were bent on hearing him during the few weeks of his stay. During these six weeks he preached ten times in the chapel, writing all the lectures, and apparently the sermons too—seven of his texts being from the Epistle to the Romans, part of the exposition afterwards published. Apart from spiritual impulse and spiritual fruit, his six weeks in Glasgow benefited the chapel to the tune of £200. In the midst of his incessant public work he contrived to write to his wife a full journal of all his proceedings, and he gave her most explicit instructions to give the children a feast of strawberries on the arrival of each letter, and to let them know that they were from him. With all his greatness and eloquence, it is amusing to find him showing that nervousness in the prospect of a speech at a public dinner which but few men have been able to overcome. ’It kept me anxious all day.’ One is reminded of Sir Robert Peel, who could hardly eat anything at public dinners when a speech was forthcoming, but sat in misery, crumbling his bread. ’One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.’