Every Scot is a born preacher. Even his conversation has a certain smack of the pulpit. By dint of preaching and listening to preachers, his conversation gets a sermonising turn.
That familiarity with which Donald keeps up his relations with his Maker—a familiarity which comes from the good-humoured frankness of the Scotch character—shows itself above all in the ministers of the various religious sects of the country.
Thus a pastor of the Free Church, wishing to explain how Jesus had performed a miracle in walking across the waves to join His disciples, hit upon this forcible way of bringing it home to his hearers:
"My dear brethren, to walk on the sea is a very wonderful thing: you would find it just as difficult as to walk across this ceiling with your head downwards."
Another, wishing to illustrate how God is everywhere and sees everything, told his congregation:
"The Lord is like a moose in a dry stane dyke, aye keekin' out at us frae holes and crannies, and we canna see Him."
The Scotch preachers of the old school knew how to recommend their parishioners to the care of Heaven—and occasionally to the shop of a friend.
A Scotchman told me that he remembered to have heard, when a boy, a Free Church minister thus express himself in the pulpit: