FullReads

Forth from the place of furrows

To the Town of the Many Towers;

Full many a lad from the ploughtail

Has gone to strive with the hours,

Leaving the ancient wisdom

Of tilth and pasturage,

For the empty honour of striving,

And the emptier name of sage.

” Shadows.”

Without blared all the trumpets of the storm. The wind howled and the rain blattered on the manse windows. It was in the upland parish of Blawrinnie, and the minister was preparing his Sabbath’s sermon. The study lamp was lit and the window curtains were drawn. Robert Ford Buchanan was the minister of Blawrinnie. He was a young man who had only been placed a year or two, and he had a great idea of the importance of his weekly sermons to the Blawrinnie folk. He also spoke of “My People” in an assured manner when he came up to the Assembly in May:

“I am thinking of giving my people a series of lectures on the Old Testament, embodying the results of–“

“Hout na, laddie,” said good Roger Drumly, who got a D.D. for marrying a professor’s sister (and deserved a V.C.), “ye had better stick to the Shorter’s Quastions an’ preach nae whigmaleeries i’ the pairish o’ Blawrinnie. Tak’ my word for it, they dinna gie a last year’s nest-egg for a’ the results of creeticism. I was yince helper there mysel’, ye maun mind, an’ I ken Blawrinnie.”

There is no manner of doubt that Dr. Drumly was right. Since he married the professor’s sister, he did not speak much himself, except in his sermons, which were inordinately long; but he was a man very much respected, for, as one of his elders said, “Gin he does little guid in the pairish, he is a quate, ceevil man, an’ does just as little ill.” And this, after all, is chiefly what is expected of a settled and official minister with a manse and glebe in that part of the country. Too much zeal is not thought to become him. It is well enough in a mere U.P.

But the Reverend Robert Ford Buchanan had not so settled on his lees as to accept such a negative view of his duties. He must try to help his people singly and individually, and this he certainly did to the best of his ability. For he neither spent all his time running after Dissenters, as the manner of some is; nor yet did he occupy all his pastoral visits with conversations on the iniquity of Disestablishment, as is others’ use and wont. He went in a better way about the matter, in order to prove himself a worthy minister of the parish, taking such a vital interest in all that appertained to it, that no man could take his bishopric from him.

Among other things, he had a Bible-class for the young, in which the hope of the parish of Blawrinnie was instructed as to the number of hands that had had the making of the different prophecies, and upon the allusions to primitive customs in the book of Genesis (which the minister called a “historical synopsis”). There were three lassies attending the class, and three young men who came to walk home with the lassies. Unfortunately, two of the young men wanted to walk home with the same young lass, so that the minister’s Bible-class could not always be said to make for peace. As, indeed, the Reverend Doctor Drumly foretold when the thing was started. He had met the professor’s sister first at a Bible-class, and was sore upon the subject.

But it was the minister’s Bible-class that procured Mr. Ford Buchanan the honour of a visit that night of storm and stress. First of all there was an unwonted stir in the kitchen, audible even in the minister’s study, where he stood on one leg, with a foot on a chair, consulting authorities. (He was an unmarried man.)