“Perfect trash—a lot o’ lees,” burst forth the old man.
“Aye, but just look at some o’ thae pictures in the ‘Monastery,’ Willie.”
The mason, in spite of his narrow views, was really fond of books, and in his own way was a hard student; but his reading was mainly confined to Puritan theology and to such church histories as Calderwood and Wodrow. The perusal of any work of a lighter character he would deem a waste of time. Still, he laid down his trowel, seated himself beside me, wiped his hands on his coarse linen apron, and carefully turned over the leaves of the little volume. The first picture that turned up was the interior of a mediaeval church. I could see that he was impressed with the beauty of the architecture. There was the great east window, filled with stained glass, intersected with delicate stone tracery; below it the altar, surmounted by a stone reredos, with a series of bas-reliefs depicting scenes in our Lord’s ministry. On the super-altar stood a cross, flanked by two tall candlesticks. In the foreground of the picture was the chancel-arch, Norman with dogtooth ornaments, while between that and the Holy Table were the choir stalls with richly carved canopies, on either side of the central passage. To me the whole was a thing of beauty. I could not understand the meaning of it all but, taken along with the narrative, it had cast quite a glamor over me. The old man gazed intently on the picture for a few moments, then pushed it towards me with a gesture which said plainly: “Yes, these old churches are very fine, but I must not admire them too much. The ‘Auld Licht’ notion of a church as plain as a barn, without any pretentions to architectural beauty, must be right. We must not think of these things at all. God can surely be, perhaps better, worshipped in a plain barn than in a magnificent cathedral.” Willie was by no means an unreasonable man, but his attachment to the Seceder Kirk, of which he was an elder, kept him from giving vent to his own personal impressions in this regard.
The reading of Scott may have sometimes interfered with my studies when it should not have done so, but it gave me an idea of the Church’s corporate life, that had never been set before me, at school or in church. Without any intention on Walter Scott’s part, he was doing then, and he certainly is doing still, an excellent work as an exponent of the religious life of the past. The perusal of his works has done for many what it did for me, that is, it has implanted a certain knowledge respecting church matters, and men have felt constrained to study the Book of Common Prayer and to compare its usages with those of the various ages described in the novels and metrical romances.
I could not go to school again that day, and so I slipped home by a back road and found our mother knitting busily, but quite ready for a chat.
“You’ve surely got out sooner this afternoon, Alan,” said she as I entered the cottage. One look at my mother’s face showed me she knew something was wrong. I sat down beside her, showed her the wales on my hands, and told her the whole story. No matter what trouble I might get into, I could always go to her in the full assurance of receiving the sympathy that my case needed, and perhaps more than it deserved. If I was in the wrong, who could point out the fault, so gently and yet so convincingly, as she!
“Preserve me, laddie,” she said, “the master’s been ower sair on ye the day. We’ll say as little aboot it as possible, for ye see ye were in the wrang, and ye ken, Alan, I wad be the last to approve of your disobeying Mr. Angus, even if he is a bit narrow-minded and tyrannical. I’ll call in and see him this evening, and we’ll get a’thing made right.”
And so she did. The harshness and severity of the master could not stand against my mother’s gentle persuasiveness. I never heard what she said to Mr. Angus, but I can remember, many years afterwards when I went to visit him, he asked for my mother and said: “Ye were blessed in a good mother, Alan; I never was in her presence yet but I felt a better man for it. No one could be merrier than she; and yet with it all there was an atmosphere of unconscious saintliness ever about her that had a wonderful influence upon everyone who knew her.”
When I returned to school on the following day nothing was said of my escapade. In the playground there were some who would have liked to lionize me as a bit of a hero, but somehow or other I shrank from any reference to the subject.
I never again took any such books to school, but I continued to read the Waverley Novels—very often aloud for the benefit of others. In the long winter evenings we would sit around a blazing peat fire, in our stone-flagged kitchen, and listen while father and Mr. Lindsay discussed current topics of the day. An old college friend used regularly to send his copy of the Edinburgh “Courant” to the dominie, and the news it contained formed the subject of many a warm discussion. One matter which at this time was causing considerable disturbance, in certain circles, was the movement for the final extinction of the disabilities against Episcopalians. On this the two took opposite sides. Mr. Lindsay, although not actually an Anglican, was fully in sympathy with the movement; my father, on the other hand, had been brought up a rigid Presbyterian and knew nothing of any other faith. He saw no need, he said, for the existence of the “English Kirk” in Scotland. The Reformers had abolished prelacy and all that appertained thereto, root and branch. The voice of Scotland for over three hundred years had been in favor of the Presbyterian faith and the Presbyterian form of worship. Why could not everybody be content to worship as the godly followers of the Covenant had done, without all the outward show and ceremony, and read prayers, that were considered necessary in England? Like many of his fellow-countrymen, my father held in the greatest abhorrence any cringing to English customs. To imitate the people of the south seemed to him a giving up of the independence that Scotland had striven so hard to maintain. In our home I never dared to join in the discussion of my elders, but, when Mr. Lindsay and I were in his study one evening, I broached this subject and asked him to tell me how and when the “English Kirk” came to Scotland.