nner raised in life on weekdays as he was in the pulpit on Sundays.
He had what one might call prestige; some form of authority still
survived in his person, to which the spiritual democracy he presided
over gave a humorous, voluntary assent. He was supposed to be a person
of undetermined leisure--what was writing two sermons a week to earn
your living by?--and he was probably the more reverend, or the more
revered, from the fact that he was in the house all day. A particular
importance attached to everything he said and did; he was a person whose
life answered different springs, and was sustained on quite another
principle than that of supply and demand. The province of public
criticism was his; but his people made up for the meekness with which
they sat under it by a generous use of the corresponding privilege in
private. Comments upon the minister partook of hardiness; it was as
if the members were determined to live up to the fact that the
office-bearers could reduce his salary if they liked. Needless to say,
they never did like. Congregations stood loyally by their pastors, and
discussion was strictly intramural. If the Methodists handed theirs on
at the end of three years with a breath of relief, they exhaled it
among themselves; after all, for them it was a matter of luck. The
Presbyterians, as in the case of old Mr Jamesion of St Andrew's, held
on till death, pulling a long upper lip: election was not a thing to be
trifled with in heaven or upon earth.

It will be imagined whether Dr Drummond did not see in these conditions
his natural and wholesome element, whether he did not fit exactly in.
The God he loved to worship as Jehovah had made him a beneficent despot
and given him, as it were, a commission. If the temporal power had
charged him to rule an eastern province, he would have brought much the
same qualities to the task. Knox Church, Elgin, was his dominion, its
moral and material affairs his jealous interest, and its legitimate
expansion his chief pride. In "anniversary" sermons, which he always
announced the Sunday before, he seldom refrained from contrasting
the number on the roll of church membership, then and now, with the
particular increase in the year just closed. If the increase
was satisfactory, he made little comment beyond the duty of
thanksgiving--figures spoke for themselves. If it was otherwise Dr
Drummond's displeasure was not a thing he would conceal. He would wing
it eloquently on the sha