Thursday May 21/68
Dear Mamma,
Your letter has come to hand, & I add a few lines in haste before posting. The Crest & another I enclose. I certainly don’t mean to vex myself, as I had the faintest hopes of the B.Q.[2] How stupid the people are about the Sermon! I fear I can hardly get up to Glasgow; esp. in Mr McK’s absence.
I am much disposed to fear that a personal introduction would be very desirable at least. Yet I would like to be published, for one must make a beginning. I think the Jour: Sac: Lit[3]: wd. take it but never mind for the present. We may think over it & get someone’s advice. Wd. Brit. & For. Ev. be more accessible?[4]
A wretched wet day, only fit for grinding!
Your aff. Son
Wm R Smith
[1] CUL ADD 7449 C149 MS
[2] WRS refers here to the rejection by the British Quarterly Review of his paper on Prophecy and Personality. However, his first theological paper, “Prophecy in the Critical Schools of the Continent”, was indeed published by BQR in April, 1870.
[3] The Journal of Sacred Literature.
[4] The British Journal of Foreign and Evangelical Review, which was to become a major vehicle for the theological writings of WRS in the early 1870s.