Some time in the year 1732, a pious Scottish clergyman who resided in England--a Mr. Davidson of Denham, in Essex, visited some of his friends who lived in Cromarty. He was crossing the Firth at this time on a Sabbath morning, to attend the celebration of the Supper in a neighbouring church, when a person pointed out to him a thoughtful-looking little boy, who sat at the other end of the boat. “It is Andrew Lindsay,” said the person, “a poor young thing seeking anxiously after the truth.” “I had no opportunity of conversing with him,” says Mr. Davidson in his printed tract, “but I could not observe without thankfulness a poor child, on a cold morning, crossing the sea to hear the Word, without shoe or stocking, or anything to cover his head from the inclemency of the weather.” He saw him again when in church--his eyes fixed steadfastly on the preacher, and the expression of his countenance varying with the tone of the discourse. Feeling much interested in him, he had no sooner returned to Cromarty than he waited upon him at his mother’s, and succeeded in engaging him in a long and interesting conversation, which he has recorded at considerable length. “How did it happen, my little fellow,” said he, “that you went so far from home last week to hear sermon, when the season was so cold, and you had neither shoes nor stockings?” The boy replied in a bashful, unassuming manner, that he was in that state of nature which is contrasted by our Saviour with that better state of grace, the denizens of which can alone inherit the kingdom of heaven. But, though conscious that such was the case, he was quite unaffected, he said, by a sense of his danger. He was anxious, therefore, to pursue those means by which such a sense might be awakened in him; and the Word preached was one of these. For how, he continued, unless I be oppressed by the weight of the evil which rests upon me, and the woe and misery which it must necessarily entail in the future, how can I value or seek after the only Saviour? “But what,” said Mr. Davidson, “if God himself has engaged to work this affecting sense of sin in the heart?”--“Has he so promised?” eagerly inquired the boy. The clergyman took out his Bible, and read to him the remarkable text in John, in which our Saviour intimates the coming of the Spirit to convince the world of _sin_, of righteousness, and of judgment. Andrew’s countenance brightened as he listened, and, losing his timidity in the excitement of the moment, he took the book out of Mr. Davidson’s hand, and, for several minutes, contemplated the passage in silence.