The St. Andrews Seven

I recently finished reading this book published by The Banner of Truth Trust. My friend Emily in Edinburgh, Scotland gave it to me couple of years ago. ("St. Andrews Seven is about a university Professor and six of his students. The story of their years together at Scotland's oldest university is a record of the most remarkable flowering of evangelistic and missionary enthusiasm in the history of Scottish Christianity"-- from the Preface of the book). There is a quote that I want to share regarding biblical decision-making that was very simple, clear and God-honoring. It is so rare to see such clarity these days. So here it is:

Unlike Nesbit and Adam, Duff took a wife. This was a remarkable achievement since he had given no thought to marriage until after accepting his missionary call. He had been studying too hard before then even to let the idea cross his mind, as he explained to an old Blairgowrie friend, Patrick Lawson. The patriarch replied:

Well…my advice to you is, be quietly on the look-out; and if, in God’s providence, you make the acquaintance of one of the daughters of Zion, traversing, like yourself, the wilderness of this world, her face set thitherward, get into friendly converse with her. If you find that in mind, in heart, in temper, and disposition, you congenialise, and if God puts it into her heart to be willing to forsake father and mother and cast in her lot with you, regard it as a token from the God of providence that you should use the proper means to secure her Christian society.

Himself a master of circumlocution, Duff grasped the meaning of this, and on 9 July 1827 he married Anne Scott Drysdale. They ‘congenialised’ for almost forty years until her death.

The St. Andrews Seven by Stuart Piggin and John Roxborogh (page 104)