ld take
refuge in such obvious devices for filling up the time unless he was
short of sermon material. One unfortunate, indeed, ruined his chances
at once by a long petition for those in danger on the sea--availing
himself with some eloquence of the sympathetic imagery of the 107th
Psalm--for this effort was regarded as not only the most barefaced
padding, but also as evidence of an almost incredible blindness to
circumstances. "Did he think Kilbogie wes a fishing village?" Mains
inquired of the elders afterwards, with pointed sarcasm. Kilbogie was
not indifferent to a well-ordered prayer--although its palate was
coarser in the appreciation of felicitous terms and allusions than that
of Drumtochty--and would have been scandalised if the Queen had been
omitted; but it was by the sermon the young man must stand or fall, and
Kilbogie despised a man who postponed the ordeal.

Saunderson gave double pledges of capacity and fulness before he opened
his mouth in the sermon, for he read no Scripture at all that day, and
had only one prayer, which was mainly a statement of the Divine Decrees
and a careful confession of the sins of Kilbogie; and then, having
given out his text from the prophecy of Joel, he reverently closed the
Bible and placed it on the seat behind him. His own reason for this
proceeding was a desire for absolute security in enforcing his subject,
and a painful remembrance of the disturbance in a south country church
when he landed a Bible--with clasps--on the head of the precentor in
the heat of a discourse defending the rejection of Esau. Our best and
simplest actions--and Jeremiah was as simple as a babe--can be
misconstrued, and the only dissentient from Saunderson's election
insisted that the Bible had been deposited on the floor, and asserted
that the object of this profanity was to give the preacher a higher
standing in the pulpit. This malignant reading of circumstances might
have wrought mischief--for Saunderson's gaunt figure did seem to grow
in the pulpit--had it not been for the bold line of defence taken up by
Mains.

"Gin he wanted tae stand high, wes it no tae preach the word? an' gin
he wanted a soond foundation for his feet, what better could he get
than the twa Testaments? Answer me that."

It was seen at once that no one could answer that, and the captious
objector never quite recovered his position in the parish, while it is
not the least of Kilbogie's boasting, in which the Auld Ki