ght the honour of their laurel on his
brow, and from one of the best he accepted his Doctor's hood. City
congregations coveted him with pious envy, but he hearkened to few and
coquetted with none. He had assumed the cure of St. Cuthbert's when it
was almost entirely (as it was still considerably) a country
congregation, revelling in solitude and souls, both of which were nearer
here to Nature's heart than amid the sweltering throng. Here he
cherished his mighty heart and gave eternal bent to hearts only less
mighty than his own.

"Remote from towns he ran his godly race,
Nor e'er had changed nor wished to change his place."

Throughout my ministry in St. Cuthbert's the mention of his name was the
signal for a cloud of witnesses. Forty years had elapsed since the
countryside followed him to his grave, shrouded in gown and bands, a
regalia more than royal to their loving eyes. But they had guarded his
memory with the vigilance which belongs only to the broken heart, and
the traditions of his greatness were fresh among them still.

"I likit the ither twa fine," said a shrewd sermon taster to me soon
after my arrival, "but their sermons didna plough the soul like the
Doctor's; we hae na had the fallow grun' turned up sin' he dee'd."

And so said, or thought, they all.

V

_My KIRK SESSION_

He would need a brave and facile pen who would venture to portray the
kirk session of St. Cuthbert's Church. For any kirk session is far from
commonplace, let alone the session of such a church as mine. Kirk
sessions are the bloom of Scottish character in particular and the crown
and glory of mankind in general. Piety, sobriety, severity, these are
the three outstanding graces which they illustrate supremely; but
interlocked with these are many other gifts and virtues in varying
degrees of culture.

In St. Cuthbert's, the pride of eldership was chiefly vested in their
wives and daughters.

"Ye mauna be ower uplifted aboot yir faither's office," was the
oft-repeated admonition of the elder's wife to the elder's children, and
the children were not slow to remark that her words were one part rebuke
and ten parts pride. For to mothers and bairns alike he appeared as one
of God's kings and priests when he walked down the aisle with the
vessels of the Lord.

Many of these men were poor, grandly and pathetically poor, but none
was poor enough to appear at the sacramental board without his "blacks,"
radiant with th