care every animate and inanimate thing not mentioned specifically in
the foregoing supplications. It was in the middle of this compendious
petition, "the lang prayer," that rheumatic old Scottish dames used to
make a practice of "cheengin' the fit," as they stood devoutly through
it. "When the meenister comes to the 'ingetherin' o' the Gentiles,' I
ken weel it's time to cheenge legs, for then the prayer is jist half
dune," said a good sermon-taster of Fife.

The organ is finding its way rapidly into the Scottish kirks (how can
the shade of John Knox endure a "kist o' whistles" in good St.
Giles'?), but it is not used yet in some of those we attend most
frequently. There is a certain quaint solemnity, a beautiful
austerity, in the unaccompanied singing of hymns that touches me
profoundly. I am often carried very high on the waves of splendid
church music, when the organ's thunder rolls "through vaulted aisles"
and the angelic voices of a trained choir chant the aspirations of my
soul for me; but when an Edinburgh congregation stands, and the
precentor leads in that noble Paraphrase,

"God of our fathers, be the God
Of their succeeding race,"

there is a certain ascetic fervor in it that seems to me the
perfection of worship. It may be that my Puritan ancestors are mainly
responsible for this feeling, or perhaps my recently adopted Jenny
Geddes is a factor in it; of course, if she were in the habit of
flinging fauldstules at Deans, she was probably the friend of truth
and the foe of beauty, so far as it was in her power to separate
them.

There is no music during the offertory in these churches, and this,
too, pleases my sense of the fitness of things. It cannot soften the
woe of the people who are disinclined to the giving away of money, and
the cheerful givers need no encouragement. For my part, I like to sit,
quite undistracted by soprano solos, and listen to the refined tinkle
of the sixpences and shillings, and the vulgar chink of the pennies
and ha'pennies, in the contribution-boxes. Country ministers, I am
told, develop such an acute sense of hearing that they can estimate
the amount of the collection before it is counted. There is often a
huge pewter plate just within the church door, in which the offerings
are placed as the worshipers enter or leave; and one always notes the
preponderance of silver at the morning, and of copper at the evening
services. It is perhaps needless to say that before Franc