from a minister in the neighbourhood of Loch
Awe. "A clergyman of my acquaintance was stationed in a poor parish near
my own, and he called on the local laird for financial aid to help on
some of the church schemes. This laird was a well-known philanthropist,
but the call was made at the wrong psychological moment, for he chanced
on this particular day to be in a very bad humour. He listened to the
minister with great impatience, and at last, bounding to his feet and
pointing to the door, he shouted: 'Silver and gold have I none, but such
as I have, give I unto thee: in the name of Beelzebub, rise and
_walk_!'"

It was my unfortunate experience to witness a great amount of sectarian
strife in the north and west during my various visits. Sometimes my
prospective chairman was unable to preside, owing to his having taken
part in a doctrinal scuffle, and having his coat torn, and his church
captured. These fantastic doings are in no way edifying, and are
extremely shocking to our national pride.

Theologically, many districts of the Highlands have not advanced beyond
the stage occupied by Lowland Scotland in the time of Burns. In certain
parishes, the communion is dispensed in the open air, in the way
familiar to readers of the "Holy Fair." Sky overhead, grassy turf
beneath, solemnity, sobs, and sighs all around, certainly make up a most
impressive whole. The sermon is unmercifully long--two hours, at least:
probably, if translated into English, and shorn of repetitions, it could
be given in one-fourth of the time. If you or I, dear Lowlander, should
stand on the outside of the crowd, and appear more curious than devout,
we should certainly be alluded to in the sermon as _those wicked
people_. The discourses are no gilt-edged harangues dealing with the
"larger hope," and larded with quotations from Tennyson and Browning.
They are, on the contrary, full of Tartarean sulphur and strange fire,
and rich in grotesque illustrations, of which this is a sample: "My
friends, crowds of loathsome fiends are sent by the Prince of the Power
of the Air to tempt us to our destruction. They hang over us waiting for
their opportunity, just like a regiment of black crows hovering over a
potato-field."

I am afraid that crude Calvinism, as preached in certain parts of the
north, is nothing less than monstrous. The good God, beneficent Father
of us all, is unrecognizable when eternal reprobation is represented as
the inevitable fate of the