At the unusually early age of forty-five Alexander Duff was, in 1851, called by acclamation to the highest ecclesiastical seat in Scotland, that of Knox and Melville, Henderson and Chalmers. His immediate predecessor had declared that what the Preacher of the Old Testament calls “the flourish of the almond tree” had been the chief recommendation in his case. The still young missionary found his qualification in “the office which it has been my privilege, however unworthily, amid sunshine and storm, for nearly a quarter of a century, to hold—the glorious office of evangelist, or that of ‘making known the unsearchable riches of Christ among the Gentiles’.

“Wholly sinking, therefore, the man into the office, and desiring to magnify my office, I can rejoice in the appointment. In the early and most flourishing times of the Church, the office of the apostle, missionary, or evangelist, who ‘built not on another man's foundation,’ was regarded as the highest and most honourable. Those who thus went forth to the unreclaimed nations were the generals and the captains of the invading army in the field, while bishops or presbyters were but the secondary commandants of garrisons planted in the already conquered territory. And even in later times, when, in the progress of degeneracy and amid the increasing symptoms of decrepitude and decay, the bishop came to mount the ladder of secular ambition over the more devoted and self-denying missionary, the office of the latter still continued to be held in considerable repute.