confer
the degree of D.D. on him for his distinguished learning and great
services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was delighted when
Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an ecclesiastic, would
have refused it for himself had not his boys gone out in a body and
compelled him to accept. They also purchased a Doctor's gown and hood,
and invested him with them in the name of Kilbogie two days before the
capping. One of them saw that he was duly brought to the Tolbooth Kirk,
where the capping ceremonial in those days took place. Another sent a
list of Saunderson's articles to British and foreign theological and
philological reviews, which filled half a column of the _Caledonian_, and
drew forth a complimentary article from that exceedingly able and caustic
paper, whose editor lost all his hair through sympathetic emotion the
morning of the Disruption, and ever afterwards pointed out the faults of
the Free Kirk with much frankness. The fame of Rabbi Saunderson was so
spread abroad that a great cheer went up as he came in with the other
Doctors elect, in which he cordially joined, considering it to be
intended for his neighbour, a successful West-End clergyman, the author
of a Life of Dorcas and other pleasing booklets. For some time after his
boys said "Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too
common title, and fell back on "Rabbi," by which he was known until the
day of his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone.

Saunderson's reputation for unfathomable learning and saintly simplicity
was built up out of many incidents, and grew with the lapse of years to a
solitary height in the big strath, so that no man would have dared to
smile had the Free Kirk minister of Kilbogie appeared in Muirtown in his
shirt-sleeves, and Kilbogie would only have been a trifle more conceited.
Truly he was an amazing man, and, now that he is dead and gone, the last
of his race, I wish some man of his profession had written his life, for
the doctrine he taught and the way he lived will not be believed by the
new generation. The arrival of his goods was more than many sermons to
Kilbogie, and I had it from Mains' own lips. It was the kindly fashion
of those days that the farmers carted the new minister's furniture from
the nearest railway station, and as the railway to Kildrummie was not yet
open, they had to go to Stormont Station on the north line; and a
pleasant procession they made pa