[Introduction] When on 25 March 1843, Robert Murray M'Cheyne died at the age of twenty-nine, it was inevitable that men should turn to Andrew Bonar for a memoir of the one whose brief ministry of seven-and-a-half years had 'stamped an indelible impress on Scotland.'

In the midst of the restless activity of such a day as ours, it will be felt by ministers of Christ to be useful, in no common degree, to trace the steps of one who but lately left us, and who, during the last years of his short life, walked calmly in almost unbroken fellowship with the Father and the Son.