The Diary of the Reverend John Mill; Minister of the Parishes of Dunrossness, Sandwick and Cunningsburgh in Shetland, 1740-1803 Volume 5 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The old parish church, the Cross Kirk of Dunrossness, long in a decaying state, was allowed to go to ruin; and, after prolonged contention with the heritors, the present church was erected about fifty years after Mill entered upon the charge (1790-1791). Encroachments upon the glebe by neighbouring proprietors were also cause of continuous irritation, as entries in the Diary, and especially the extracts in the Appendix from the Records of the Presbytery, abundantly show. Mill's career having been spent almost entirely in the district of which he had the spiritual oversight, the Diary discloses little of personal incident or variety of experience of very striking kind, beyond what was usual and natural in the circumstances of the time and place. His whole life and energies were devoted to the wellbeing of the people and the advancement of genuine religion among them. The ' Renewal ' of his ' Covenant Engagements,' 1770, and the reflections on the recurrence of successive birthdays and on other occasions, exhibit a devout consecration to the high aims which were ever before him. In the denunciation of sinners and backsliders, constantly recorded in the Diary, he seems almost to wear the garb and to wield the pen of a Hebrew prophet; in his efforts at self-mortification and conflicts with Satan he reminds us of a saint of the middle ages; while his hatred of Popery, Prelacy, and all systems of supposed abounding error, bears the flavour of a stern and zealous Covenanter. These characters interblended, combined with the worldly astuteness of a modern business man, go to make up the personality of our author as he appears before us in the pages of the Diary and in his other writings. His pastoral duties at home were varied only by occasionally officiating in other parishes, and b...