niversal, and is yielded loyally to
insufferable dulness when occasion demands.

When the text is announced, there is an indescribable rhythmic movement
forward, followed by a concerted rustle of Bible leaves; not the rustle
of a few Bibles in a few pious pews, but the rustle of all of them in
all the pews,--and there are more Bibles in an Edinburgh Presbyterian
church than one ever sees anywhere else, unless it be in the warehouses
of the Bible Societies.

The text is read twice clearly, and another rhythmic movement follows
when the books are replaced on the shelves. Then there is a delightful
settling back of the entire congregation, a snuggling comfortably into
corners and a fitting of shoulders to the pews.--not to sleep, however;
an older generation may have done that under the strain of a two-hour
'wearifu' dreich' sermon, but these church-goers are not to be caught
napping. They wear, on the contrary, a keen, expectant, critical look,
which must be inexpressibly encouraging to the minister, if he has
anything to say. If he has not (and this is a possibility in Edinburgh,
as it is everywhere else), then I am sure it is wisdom for the beadle to
lock him in, lest he flee when he meets those searching eyes.

The Edinburgh sermon, though doubtless softened in outline in these
later years, is still a more carefully built discourse than one
ordinarily hears out of Scotland, being constructed on conventional
lines of doctrine, exposition, logical inference, and practical
application. Though modern preachers do not announce the division of
their subject into heads and sub-heads, firstlies and secondlies and
finallies, my brethren, there seems to be the old framework underneath
the sermon, and every one recognises it as moving silently below the
surface; at least, I always fancy that as the minister finishes one
point and attacks another the younger folk fix their eagle eyes on him
afresh, and the whole congregation sits up straighter and listens more
intently, as if making mental notes. They do not listen so much as if
they were enthralled, though they often are, and have good reason to be,
but as if they were to pass an examination on the subject afterwards;
and I have no doubt that this is the fact.

The prayers are many, and are divided, apparently, like those of the
liturgies, into petitions, confessions, and aspirations; not forgetting
the all-embracing one with which we are perfectly familiar in our native
land