HIS FATHERS' PEW. 383 



use of the hollow was promptly and somewhat indig- 

 nantly refused/ 



* Sunday morning. 



' There has been a night of weighty rain ; the streets 

 have been swept clean, and the kennels show their ac- 

 cumulations of sand and mud high over their edges. I 

 awoke several times during the night to hear the gush 

 from the eaves and the furious patter on the panes ; and 

 I thought of the many poor congregations in Scotland 

 who would have to worship to-day in the open air. 

 But the rain is now over, and a host of ragged clouds 

 are careering over the heavens before a strong easterly 

 gale. I do begrudge the Moderates our snug comfort- 

 able churches. I begrudge them my fathers' pew. It 

 bears date 1741, and has held by the family, through 

 times of poverty and depression, a sort of memorial of 

 better days, when we could afford getting a pew in the 

 front gallery. But yonder it lies, empty within an 

 empty church, a place for spiders to spin undisturbed, 

 while all who should be occupying it take their places 

 on stools and forms in the factory close. 



' I felt, by the way, when listening to Mr Stewart 

 last Sunday, that our out-door congregations would re- 

 quire a style of preaching for themselves. His discourse 

 was in his average style, very ingenious, but not very 

 powerful, and with more of point than breadth. I 

 thought it would have told better in a moderately-sized 

 church than in the open air. The cabinet picture re- 

 quires to be placed in a cabinet ; I felt as if he were 

 hanging his cabinet picture in a vast gallery. The 

 times require that the power should be great, but the 

 finish, perhaps, not very nice. In an hour from this 

 the post will be in. If disposed to forget how I used 

 to watch his arrival at Linlithgow when expecting a 



