and fulfilled the function of an
Encyclopaedia, with occasional amazing results, as when information was
asked about some Eastern sect for whose necessities the Presbytery were
asked to collect, and to whose warm piety affecting allusion was made,
and Jeremiah showed clearly, with the reporters present, that the
Cappadocians were guilty of a heresy beside which Morisonianism was an
unsullied whiteness. His work as examiner-in-general for the court was a
merciful failure, and encouraged the students of the district to return
to their district court, who, on the mere rumour of him, had transferred
themselves in a body to a Highland Presbytery, where the standard
question in Philosophy used to be, "How many horns has a dilemma, and
distinguish the one from the other." No man knew what the minister of
Kilbogie might not ask--the student was only perfectly certain that it
would be beyond his knowledge; but as Saunderson always gave the answer
himself in the end, and imputed it to the student, anxiety was reduced to
a minimum. Saunderson, indeed, was in the custom of passing all
candidates and reporting them as marvels of erudition, whose only fault
was a becoming modesty--which, however, had not concealed from his keen
eye hidden treasures of learning. Beyond this sphere the good man's
services were not used by a body of shrewd ecclesiastics, as the
inordinate length of an ordination sermon had ruined a dinner prepared
for the court by "one of our intelligent and large-hearted laymen," and
it is still pleasantly told how Saunderson was invited to a
congregational soiree--an ancient meeting, where the people ate oranges,
and the speaker rallied the minister on being still unmarried--and
discoursed, as a carefully chosen subject, on the Jewish feasts,--with
illustrations from the Talmud,--till some one burst a paper-bag and
allowed the feelings of the people to escape. When this history was
passed round Muirtown Market, Kilbogie thought still more highly of their
minister, and indicated their opinion of the other parish in severely
theological language.

Standing at his full height he might have been six feet, but, with much
poring over books and meditation, he had descended some two inches. His
hair was long, not because he made any conscious claim to genius, but
because he forgot to get it cut, and, with his flowing, untrimmed beard,
was now quite grey. Within his clothes he was the merest skeleton, being
so thin tha