SEPTEMBER 239 



But for three hundred and fifty years the Reformed 

 Kirk of Scotland has enjoyed immunity from the 

 miserable squabbling about prayers and vestments, 

 postures, and lights, which at this day so deeply vex 

 the children of her English sister children who seem 

 to be wasting half their playtime in disputes about 

 the rules of the game. For that immunity the Kirk 

 has to thank John Knox. When his flock at Frankfort- 

 on- Maine fell to quarrelling about the rules of the game 

 surplices, audible responses, kneeling at Communion, 

 and so on and would not play according to his rules, 

 he left them. Returning to Scotland, he took care 

 that, however many and warm might be the disputes 

 on questions of doctrine, there should be none within 

 his fold on these external ceremonies, and he swept 

 them all away. Clear and chill his stamp remains on 

 the national worship to this hour. What though there 

 be traced in populous places some timid renascence of 

 ceremonial display of gay university hood on sombre 

 gown, praiseworthy intolerance of bad music? Did 

 you want to realise the effect of Knox's work the 

 shuddering recoil from all semblance of sacerdotalism 

 you should have stood beside me on that September 

 afternoon. 



It was in grey Galloway not grey, then, so much as 

 green, for there, during all the months you in the south 

 had been gasping for rain, the clouds had been dropping 

 fatness; while your pastures were shrivelled to the 

 colour and texture of bast matting, ours were lush 

 and dank with herbage; while the tongues of East 



