He was not a popular preacher; he had never published a book, nor even a sermon, and he had taken no part in the theological controversies of the time.

He was content to let other men fight about Christianity; he only lived it, spending himself for naught, some might think, in his own country parish and among his poor country people, the pastor and father of them all.
He had never striven after this world's good things, and they never came to him in any great measure; but better things did.

He always had enough, and a little to spare for those who had less.

In his old age this righteous man was not "forsaken," and his seed never "begged their bread." His youngest, Duncan, was always beside him, and yearly his four other sons came to visit him from the various places where they had settled themselves, to labor, and prosper, and transmit honorably to another generation the honest name of Cardross.
For the minister's "ae dochter," she was, as she had been always, his right hand, watching him, tending him, helping and guarding him, expending her whole life for him, so as to make him feel as lightly as possible the gradual decay of his own; above all, loving him with a love that made labor easy and trouble light--the passionately devoted love which we often see sons show to mothers, and daughters to fathers, when they have never had the parental ideal broke, nor been left to wander through life in a desolation which is only second to that of being "without God in the world." "I think he has a happy old age--the dear old father!" said Helen one day, when she and Lord Cairnforth sat talking, while the minister was as usual absorbed in the library--the great Cairnforth library, now becoming notable all over Scotland, of which Mr.Cardross had had the sole arrangement, and every book therein the earl declared he loved as dearly as he did his children.
"Yes, he is certainly happy.

And he has had a happy life, too--more so than most people." "He deserved it.