tyme requires for our Soveraine Lord
and his Army, and neichbouris being thereat."

That proclamation stirs the blood! They are dust, these fathers of
ours, but their spirit is all alive, throbbing in the heart of
us--their far-away children. Never did a race meet its Sedan in a
sublimer spirit than that. The strong, at toll of bell and tuck of
drum, manned the ramparts, and the women filled St. Giles' and sent
heavenward their cries. The bodies of such a race may for a brief
season be brought to subjection, but their souls are invincible--and it
is the soul that always conquers.

And here to-day it is the same. From every part of Scotland men have
come, and they passed "to the kirk to pray for our Sovereign Lord and
his Army." True, there has been no Flodden and no Sedan; but it is by
the good hand of God upon us that the enemy was frustrated in his
eagerness for another Sedan. And it is in part the prayer of
thanksgiving that is laid to-day upon His altar, and in part the
petition that His mercies may be continued to the nation in the cruel
days to come.

***

What a sanctuary for a nation's prayers, this church, where Kings have
prayed and gone forth to die in battle; where Queens have wept as the
voice of judgment, grim and stern, untouched by tenderness or love,
sounded in the ear; where three thousand people dissolved in tears as
the good Regent, foully slain, was borne to his grave. Over it passed
wave after wave of fanaticism and barbarism; and at last it fell into
the hands of the restorers--more ruthless far than Goths or Vandals!
But, through it all, the house of God survived; and, apparelled once
more in some of its pristine glory, it opens its doors to a nation that
once more seek after its God.

And above us, as we sit there, hang the colours of our Scottish
regiments stirring our patriotism, assuring us that the men who guarded
these flags on many bloody fields were guarded by God, and that we are
still in His keeping.

What a place this is in which to set vibrating that note of patriotism
which now quivers from Maiden Kirk to John o' Groat's. These colours
there--they are the most eloquent things on earth, for they pertain to
the realm of symbols. Words are poor compared to tears, and that is
because tears belong to the world of symbols. That tattered banner
there belonged to the Gordon Highlanders, and was carried through the
Peninsula and the Crimea. Woven in faded letters you can r