Scotch places of worship are much alike inside and out. Outside, the roofs are more or less pointed; inside, the singing is more or less out of tune.
Let us go into the first we come to.
Four whitewashed walls, with a ceiling to match, or a roof supported by bare rafters; no pictures, no statues; just straight-backed benches, and a high desk or pulpit: it is a lecture-room. Not a single outer sign of fervour: no kneeling, no clasped hands, or other sign of supplication. The faces are cross-looking and forbidding, or else apathetic.
It is curious to reflect that these unmoved faces belong to people who would die to defend their liberty of conscience.
Drawling hymns, psalms and canticles sung in the twelve different semi-tones of the chromatic scale; sermons full of theological subtleties, objections raised and explained away.
The preacher does not seek to appeal to the soul by eloquence, to the heart by tenderness and grace, or to the taste by style. He addresses himself to the reason alone.
Some preachers read their sermons, some recite them, others give them ex tempore. These latter are the most interesting.
Here and there I heard sermons that were enough to send one to sleep on one's feet; you can imagine the effect upon an audience who had to hear them in a sitting posture. But Scotland has not the monopoly of this kind of eloquence; from time immemorial it has been the custom of a certain proportion of church-goers to shut their eyes to listen to the sermon.
Religion is still sterner in Scotland than in England. It is arid, like the soil of the country; angular, like the bodies of the inhabitants; thorny, like the national emblem of Scotland.
One Sunday I went to a church in Glasgow. The preacher chose for his text the passage from St. Matthew's Gospel commencing with "No man can serve two masters," and ending "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon."