Autograph letter signed : Leeds, to William Angus Knight, 1873 October 28.

Commenting on Knight's "withdrawal from the Free Kirk;" saying "I can well believe that this step has caused you not only much earnest thought, but also a long and painful struggle: and I know well the gravity of the issue between devotion to truth and the ties and affections of a life. Yet I trust that this period of anxiety is not already without its fruit in the consciousness that you will be able once more to pursue your high vocation without feeling yourself watched at very step: and the support and confidence of your people must have been at a season of such trial a real comfort and assistance to you...I do not sufficiently understand your ecclesiastical law to know precisely the position in which you are at present placed by the refusal of the appellants to withdraw their appeal. Dr. Wilson seemed to me very unwilling to lose the prospect of seeing his victim worried: but if the other side (as seemed to be hinted) pretend to be acting on behalf of free thought within the Kirk, let them try their experiment on some one else, and find out for themselves the limits of toleration, without dragging you through an ordeal to which they have no moral right (and cannot surely have a legal claim) to force you to submit...I trust you will persuade your Congregation to remain in this independent position; and will prove to Scotland how rich and fruitful it may become when it is adopted with deep conviction and maintained with open mind & reverent heart. You will not, at any rate, subscribe again the old creeds, or take on yourself once more the old Confessions, now that thought and speech have no obligations but to truth."