During these years to 1830
"phenomena began to appear in Scotland". Mary Campbell, an
invalid, in Row, Gair Loch, Port Glasgow one Sunday in March, of
1830, broke out into speaking in tongues of an unknown language for
about an hour. Margaret MacDonald, an acquaintance, was aided to
health by her brothers, James and George MacDonald, of Port Glasgow.
They wrote to Mary Campbell and the same thing happened to her.
Erskine and friends, Robert Story, and Macleod Campbell, Ministers in
the area, went to check out Mary Campbell's circumstances. Erskine,
convinced, for the time being, put to paper "the gifts of the
Holy Spirit" at the end of that same year. Erskine, later
retracted his conviction that these happenings were identical to
those mentioned in the book of Acts. Most interestingly, he did say
"I still continue to think, that to anyone whose expectations
are formed by, and founded on the declaration of the New Testament,
the disappearance of these gifts from the Church, must be a greater
difficulty than their reappearance could be".
Here we have an acknowledgement of a
loss to some of the Christian practice of the New Testament and
recognition that it was still required. He concluded more difficult
to comprehend the loss of the gifts than the reappearing of them.
