and as we walked home, we dinned Mr. Windrush's praises one into each of Mackaye's ears. The old man, however, paced on silent and meditative. At last—

"A hunder sects or so in the land o' Gret Britain; an' a hunder or so single preachers, each man a sect of his ain! an' this the last fashion! Last, indeed! The moon of Calvinism's far gone in the fourth quarter, when it's come to the like o' that. Truly, the soul-saving business is a'thegither fa'n to a low ebb, as Master Tummas says somewhere!"

"Well, but," asked Crossthwaite, "was not that man, at least, splendid?"

"An' hoo much o' thae gran' objectives an' subjectives did ye comprehen', then, Johnnie, my man?"

"Quite enough for me," answered John, in a somewhat nettled tone.

"An' sae did I."

"But you ought to hear him often. You can't judge of his system from one sermon, in this way."

"Seestem! and what's that like?"

"Why, he has a plan for uniting all sects and parties, on the one broad fundamental ground of the unity of God as revealed by science—"

"Verra like uniting o' men by just pu'ing aff their claes, and telling 'em, 'There, ye're a' brithers noo, on the one broad fundamental principle o' want o' breeks.'"

"Of course," went on Crossthwaite, without taking notice of this interruption, "he allows full liberty of conscience. All he wishes for is the emancipation of intellect. He will allow every one, he says, to realize that idea to himself, by the representations which suit him best."

"An' so he has no objection to a wee playing at Papistry, gin a man finds it good to tickle up his soul?"

"Ay, he did speak of that—what did he call it? Oh! 'one of the ways in which the Christian idea naturally embodied itself in imaginative minds!' but the higher intellects, of course, would want fewer helps of that kind. 'They would see'—ay, that was it—'the pure white light of truth, without requiring those coloured refracting media.'"

"That wad depend muckle on whether the light o' truth chose or not, I'm thinking.