vast majority of His children. In time, no
doubt (and the sooner the better), the results of modern theological
thought will penetrate into the uttermost nooks of the land.

MUSIC AND RELIGION.

It is not easy to see why religion should be associated with gloom and
disheartening ugliness. The long-drawn music of an Old Testament psalm
is not without a certain doleful impressiveness, but the human soul
needs occasional stimulus, even on Sundays, of something less
lugubrious. Certain congregations hate hymns: they consider them carnal
and uninspired. As for organ-music in a church, that would be _praising
God by machinery_, a preposterous and intolerable approximation to
Popery. Not long ago, a poor crofter in a Hebridean township, came to
his minister, requesting that good man's offices for the christening of
a child. The crofter in question was the possessor of an asthmatic old
concertina, and the clergyman, before the rite of admission to the
visible church could be performed, insisted on the annihilation of the
ungodly instrument of music. The minister, in person, visited the croft,
and disabled the concertina with a hammer. The child was then
christened, and the clerical zany strode off victorious, feeling he had
done a good day's work for Heaven. "Who ever heard of the Apostle Paul
playing on an organ?" was the question once propounded by Dr. Begg. The
argument was a splendid _reductio ad absurdum_, and resembles the old
reason for the reluctance of the peasantry to eat potatoes, because no
mention was made of them in Holy Writ. But songs and music are filtering
into the glens, in an official way, by the agency of the Scotch
Education Department. Musical drill is a feature of the school-room, and
it is a joy to think that such is the case. Some of the old folk,
however, look on astounded and shocked; they shake their heads, and
would, if they could, abolish such frivolity. "Why all this singing and
tramping?" said a Skyeman to me once. "What good will all the songs of
the world do to a man when he comes to his death-bed? I would rather,
this very moment, sit down in a public-house, and drink till I was
intoxicated, than screech and howl these worldly airs." Life was not so
absurd in the days of the Catholic ascendency. But human nature is
slowly asserting itself, and the days of the glum tyrannical zealot are
assuredly numbered.

ETHICAL TEACHING IN SCHOOLS.

In some districts of the North, the inspectors ha