Perhaps she was thinking of her last interview with him, when she descanted at length on that superfluity of naughtiness and Biblical pedantry which, she asserted, made Scottish ministers preach from out-of-the-way texts.
"I've never been able to find my place in the Bible since I arrived," she complained to Salemina, when she was quite sure that Mr. Macdonald was listening to her; and this he generally was, in my opinion, no matter who chanced to be talking. "What with their skipping and hopping about from Haggai to Philemon, Habakkuk to Jude, and Micah to Titus, in their readings, and then settling on seventh Nahum, sixth Zephaniah or second Calathumpians for the sermon, I do nothing but search the Scriptures in the Edinburgh churches,—search, search, search, until some Christian by my side or in the pew behind me notices my hapless plight, and hands me a Bible opened at the text. Last Sunday it was Obadiah first, fifteenth, 'For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen.' It chanced to be a returned missionary who was preaching on that occasion; but the Bible is full of heathen, and why need he have chosen a text from Obadiah, poor little Obadiah one page long, slipped in between Amos and Jonah, where nobody but an elder could find him?" If Francesca had not seen with wicked delight the Reverend Ronald's expression of anxiety, she would never have spoken of second Calathumpians; but of course he has no means of knowing how unlike herself she is when in his company.
To go back to our first Sunday worship in Edinburgh. The church officer closed the door of the pulpit on the Reverend Ronald, and I thought I heard the clicking of a lock; at all events, he returned at the close of the services to liberate him and escort him back to the vestry; for the entrances and exits of this beadle, or "minister's man," as the church officer is called in the country districts, form an impressive part of the ceremonies. If he did lock the minister into the pulpit, it is probably only another national custom, like the occasional locking in of the passengers in a railway train, and may be positively necessary in the case of such magnetic and popular preachers as Mr. Macdonald or the Friar.
I have never seen such attention, such concentration, as in these great congregations of the Edinburgh churches. As nearly as I can judge, it is intellectual rather than emotional; but it is not a tribute paid to eloquence alone, it is habitual and universal, and is yielded loyally to insufferable dullness when occasion demands.
When the text is announced, there is an indescribable rhythmic movement forward, followed by a concerted rustle of Bible leaves; not the rustle of a few Bibles in a few pious pews, but the rustle of all of them in all the pews,—and there are more Bibles in an Edinburgh Presbyterian church than one ever sees anywhere else, unless it be in the warehouses of the Bible Societies.
The text is read twice clearly, and another rhythmic movement follows when the books are replaced on the shelves. Then there is a delightful settling back of the entire congregation, a snuggling comfortably into corners and a fitting of shoulders to the pews,—not to sleep, however; an older generation may have done that under the strain of a two-hour "wearifu' dreich" sermon, but these church-goers are not to be caught napping. They wear, on the contrary, a keen, expectant, critical look, which must be inexpressibly encouraging to the minister, if he has anything to say. If he has not (and this is a possibility in Edinburgh, as it is everywhere else), then I am sure it is wisdom for the beadle to lock him in, lest he flee when he meets those searching eyes.
The Edinburgh sermon, though doubtless softened in outline in these later years, is still a more carefully built discourse than one ordinarily hears out of Scotland, being constructed on conventional lines of doctrine, exposition, logical inference, and practical application. Though modern preachers do not announce the division of their subject into heads and sub-heads, firstlies and secondlies and finallies my brethren, there seems to be the old framework underneath the sermon, and everyone recognizes it as moving silently below the surface; at least, I always fancy that as the minister finishes one point and attacks another the younger folk fix their eagle eyes on him afresh, and the whole congregation sits up straighter and listens more intently, as if making mental notes. They do not listen so much as if they were enthralled, though they often are and have good reason to be, but as if they were to pass an examination on the subject afterwards; and I have no doubt that this is the fact.
The prayers are many, and are divided, apparently, like those of the liturgies, into petitions, confessions, and aspirations; not forgetting the all-embracing one with which we are perfectly familiar in our native land, in which the preacher commends to the Fatherly care every animate and inanimate thing not mentioned specifically in the foregoing supplications. It was in the middle of this compendious petition, "the lang prayer," that rheumatic old Scottish dames used to make a practice of "cheengin' the fit," as they stood devoutly through it. "When the meenister comes to the 'ingetherin' o' the Gentiles,' I ken weel it's time to cheenge legs, for then the prayer is jist half dune," said a good sermon-taster of Fife.
The organ is finding its way rapidly into the Scottish kirks (how can the shade of John Knox endure a "kist o' whistles" in good St. Giles'?), but it is not used yet in some of those we attend most frequently. There is a certain quaint solemnity, a beautiful austerity, in the unaccompanied singing of hymns that touches me profoundly. I am often carried very high on the waves of splendid church music, when the organ's thunder rolls "through vaulted aisles" and the angelic voices of a trained choir chant the aspirations of my soul for me; but when an Edinburgh congregation stands, and the precentor leads in that noble Paraphrase,
"God of our fathers, be the God
Of their succeeding race,"