is

must be fresh in public recollection. These scenes at Lairg were well fitted to remove the mistaken opinion of many people across the Border and farther off, that the Scottish nation is singularly destitute of humour. We are supposed to have a complement of good qualities which, in their main characteristics, bear a resemblance to the granite rocks of which so much of our mountain scenery composed. They say we are a strong, hard-principled race, much given to meditating upon the sterner features of a somewhat gloomy theology, whereby our very countenances have assumed a cognate severity of expression, which strikes the milderfeatured Southerner when he comes among us in the autumn to shoot grouse and inhale the mountain air. We are credited with a shrewd aptitude for business, which shows itself in pawky trading by Gaelic-speaking 'merchants' in the glens with the 'gentry' who annually resort thither, and in successful transactions on a larger scale wherever the canny Scot pits himself against competing men of business in the great metropolis or throughout the colonial world. But our range of interest is supposed to be confined to money-making and theological metaphysics. By the one we endeavour to satisfy our minds as to the chance of a good footing for ourselves

in the next world, and by the other we contrive to obtain fully our own share of the good things of the present. So that our theological bent and our keen eye to business spring from a common root, namely, a determination, as far as in us lies, to make the best of both worlds; of course, like sensible people, taking consideration for these correlated interests in the order of time. That there is a measure of truth in this criticism of the Scottish character we need not take the trouble to deny. But the criticism is made from a wrong point of view, and rests upon an imperfect conception of the true nature of humour. Superficially regarded, our national type of beauty is hard-featured, and little suited for the sort of comedy that amuses with a grin. We are not inordinately given to light entertainments in theatres and concert rooms. We do not giggle away our little hour upon the stage of life as some people do. Our humour is deeper down and of a richer quality, although it may not catch the eye of a passing stranger. There is comedy and comedy. There is the farce, which makes no serious demand upon the skill of the actor or the attention of the audience. There is the higher work of genius, which produces its effect without the individual characters being aware of the contribution they are making to it,

Contrast an ordinary farce with a high-class comedy put upon the stage by such a company as Mr Irving's. In the latter, each actor will probably be throughout as grave as a judge. It is better he should be so. The less conscious he seems to be of the effect he is producing, the truer he is to nature, and the greater is the triumph of author and actor, while the enjoyment of the cultured audience will be more intense as the dénoûment approaches. Now that is the strong rich quality of our Scottish humour. It possesses what Carlyle considered the hall-mark of true genius in being unconscious. Do not look for it in places of amusement, as you might be led to do by your experience of other countries. Seek it in the solemn assemblies of the people-in Town Councils, at meetings of Kirk-Sessions, in Presbyteries, even in the high Parliament of the Kirk itself. It is in scenes like these that Scottish humour is to be found, and the actors display as high excellence as any of Mr Irving's training. Never a man of them shows any consciousness of the fine part he is playing. With grave faces and solemn utterance they say and do the raciest things. The Town Council, if not a nursery of statesmen, is a fine stage for the unconscious humorist. The Kirk is the national academy of unconscious humour."

CHAPTER X.

THE CHURCH OF THE FUTURE.

THE Church has drifted away in the course of her history from her original anchorage in the Ethic of Nature. The teaching of Christ was ethical through and through. He came not to destroy the natural law, but to fulfil it. It is because He is the one perfect incarnation of the ethical power that governs the universe that He is divine. But the Church, in her, it may be, inevitable surrender to a natural tendency, lost sight of the spirit of the Master's teaching by too much pondering the letter. When He spoke of His Father with whom He was one, the Church lost touch with the rich ethical significance of the words, and ran away in vain quest of metaphysical abstractions. The logical understanding began early in the Church's history to play false with the reason, and led people away from the genuine teaching of Jesus to ingenious theories about it which immediately began to be framed. The result has been that the teaching of the Church, except so far as she is

represented by the really great minds of every age, who have been able to penetrate to the spirit of the gospel, has degenerated to a dogmatic system which is at the opposite pole from the Spirit of Christ. If humility was the chief strain in His life, pride has been the governing principle of hers. He came "not to be ministered unto, but to minister." The Church has too persistently claimed, not to minister, but to be ministered unto. Every student of history knows that clericalism is a synonym for grasping ambition. My kingdom is not of this world,” said Jesus. "The kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ," the Church has piously quoted; and she has interpreted it to mean that, as far as in her lies, she shall, as a duty, bring every other authority in submission to her feet. Nothing illustrates better her neglect of the Ethic of Christianity than her treatment of the heretic. She never excommunicated men for those offences which Christ said would bring down sentence on a man at God's judgment seat. The vilest moral offender, especially the grasping hypocrite whom Christ held most in scorn, might return, might even occupy the highest seat in Zion. But the man who offended against one tittle of the dogmatic system, could only be reponed when