men belonging to other denominations
standing fast until their turn comes to move. It is said that a new
officer once gave the command, 'Church of Scotland, right about face,
quick march! Fancy releegions, stay where ye are!'
Just as we were being told this story by an attendant squire, there was
a burst of scarlet and a blare of music, and down Castlehill and the
Lawnmarket into Parliament Square marched hundreds of redcoats, the
Highland pipers (otherwise the Olympian gods) swinging in front, leaving
the American female heart prostrate beneath their victorious tread. The
strains of music that in the distance sounded so martial and triumphant
we recognised in a moment as 'Abide with me,' and never did the fine
old tune seem more majestic than when it marked a measure for the steady
tramp, tramp, tramp, of those soldierly feet. As 'The March of the
Cameron Men,' piped from the green steeps of Castlehill, had aroused in
us thoughts of splendid victories on the battlefield, so did this simple
hymn awake the spirit of the church militant; a no less stern but more
spiritual soldiership, in which 'the fruit of righteousness is sown in
peace of them that make peace.'
As I fell asleep on that first Sunday night in Edinburgh, after the
somewhat unusual experience of three church services in a single day,
three separate notes of memory floated in and out of the fabric of my
dreams; the sound of the soldiers' feet marching into old St. Giles' to
the strains of 'Abide with me'; the voice of the Reverend Ronald
ringing out with manly insistence: 'It is aspiration that counts, not
realisation; pursuit, not achievement; quest, not conquest!'--and the
closing phrases of the Friar's prayer; 'When Christ has forgiven us,
help us to forgive ourselves! Help us to forgive ourselves so fully
that we can even forget ourselves, remembering only Him! And so let His
kingdom come; we ask it for the King's sake, Amen.'
Chapter X. Mrs. M'Collop as a sermon-taster.
Even at this time of Assemblies, when the atmosphere is almost
exclusively clerical and ecclesiastical, the two great church armies
represented here certainly conceal from the casual observer all
rivalries and jealousies, if indeed they cherish any. As for the two
dissenting bodies, the Church of the Disruption and the Church of the
Secession have been keeping company, so to speak, for some years, with
a distant eye to an eventual union. In the light of all this pleasant
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