sible man, and like the Apostle James, he laid
more stress on "practice and on morals" than on lip-worship and faith.
"Faith without works is dead" is a dictum that needs to be incessantly
emphasised, and nowhere more than in certain ultra-orthodox localities
of Scotland at the present day.

The Established Church is, with few exceptions, a negligible
denomination in the Hebrides. For some reason it is regarded as the
modern representative of the Moderate or Broad type of Calvinistic
Christianity, and, as such, an abomination to the zealots. To show what
a poor hold the Establishment has in Lewis, it is enough to remark that
there are in that island only 183 Auld Kirk communicants out of a
population of 32,947. Figures almost equally striking could be given for
the Presbyteries of Uist, Skye, and Glenelg. The chief occupation of
some parish ministers in insular Scotland must be that of killing time.
I once met one of these reverend gentlemen in one of the hotels in
Stornoway. He seemed to take a pleasure in running contrary to all the
darling prejudices of the islanders. Dancing he approved of; he did not
believe in prefacing his prayer or homily with a sanctimonious whine;
and he actually was willing to admit that a few Catholics might get to
heaven. An equally glaring fault--in the eyes of bigotry, I mean--was
that he _dropped into poetry_ at stated times, and sent his Gaelic
verses to one of the Highland newspapers. The Parish Church buildings,
in many localities of the West Highlands, are in a woeful state of
disrepair. They have a prevailing odour of must and damp; the seats are
hard deal, unkind to the human anatomy; doors and windows rattle and
shake during the service; creeping things move along the walls;
sometimes the floors are nothing but the uneven and unconcealed Scottish
earth. In such churches, there is some credit in being devout.

A SAVOURY BOOK.

An outstanding member of the clan Macdonald, for some time minister at
Applecross, deserves a cordial vote of thanks for a savoury book he has
written on the social and religious condition of the Highlands. He is
not a bit scared by the Darwinian theory of evolution. "We have a good
deal in common," he says, "with the brute creation, and have no cause to
feel ourselves degraded on that account. The lower animals, not
excluding the much-despised monkey, are specimens of divine workmanship
which _reflect the highest honour on the skill and power of the Make