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The Rev, John McMillan, Member of the Deputation from The Free Church of Scotland, Reports to the Colonial Committee

July 24, l845

There are three thousand persons, chiefly Scottish Highlanders, who are followers of one M ————— , an ordained missionary in the Church of Scotland, who about twenty years ago, departed for America, and who landing on the island set up as teacher or religion with great pretensions to intimate intercourse with God. The effect of his incoherent and wild addresses is to throw his audience into convulsive fits which are regarded as a sure Sign of conversion and of the power of the Spirit by the Word, and from which they recover and receive, as they say, W, and they express their thankfulness by dancing, to which they are invited by their teacher in obedience to the exhortation, "Quench not the Spirit", and in imitation of David, "the man according to God's own heart". He has deluded our poor countrymen there by the wildest fanaticism and grossest Antinomian principles maintaining among other things that none but the seed of Abraham according to the flesh shall be saved, kindly including, however, in the number, the Highlanders as descendants of Joseph who wore the first tantan or chequered coat on record, This belief has undoubtedly increased his followers among the Gaels of the Island, in