"[18]

[18] Ministers, being public men, are, of course, as Mr.
Macdonald means to point out, exposed to the criticism,
frequently so absurd, that eminence entails. I recently examined
the bye-laws of a literary association in Ross-shire, of which
the president is a sheep-farmer, and the secretary, a postman. It
is a rule of this association that no minister is ever to be
president, the reason assigned being that ministers would try to
elevate the natives _too hurriedly_. The people do not object to
be elevated, but they wish the process to be performed without
unnecessary haste.

THE SABBATH.

I was not a little surprised during my attendance at Highland churches
to hear the ministers devoting much strong rhetoric to the sin of
Sabbath-breaking. Taking the air on the first day of the week for quiet
meditation and the good of one's health, has always seemed to me a
laudable practice, but in many Highland parishes, a Sunday stroll
implies ungodliness, even although the stroller may have attended one or
more diets of worship earlier in the day. Such a state of matters is
preposterously absurd, and, to my thinking, quite irreligious--it at
least tends to make hypocrites. Some years ago, I spent a week in a
typical insular village, lodging in the local inn. It was noticeable
that on Sundays, the front blinds of the house were never drawn up. When
the church-bells tolled the hour for public worship, the solemn devotees
could be seen (through holes in the blind) pacing along, looking fixedly
at the toes of their boots. The landlord of the house thought it no sin
to observe the passers-by, so long as he could do so in a clandestine
way. He had no desire to mend the blind.

The restfulness and peace of a British Sunday is a blessed thing, as
every Briton who has been long resident abroad, will readily admit.
There is, however, a reasonable medium to be found between the unnatural
Calvinistic Sabbath (with its limited view of the world through a torn
blind) and the Continental Sunday, gay with skipping and junketing.
Within recent years, to some extent owing to the bicycle and motor-car,
the Sabbath has become rather too animated and bustling. The change is
perhaps not entirely regrettable. The terrible Sunday dulness of some of
our large towns has been, of late years, rendered less oppressive by the
opening of museums and art galleries. I heard a man of fifty confess
that in his bo