in the square family pew in the gallery. My father closed his eyes
tightly all through the sermon, leaning his head on his hand.

The Scottish Sabbath still held its own in my youth; and when I
heard that Ribblesdale and Charty played lawn tennis on Sunday
after they were married, I felt very unhappy. We had a few Sabbath
amusements, but they were not as entertaining as those described
in Miss Fowler's book, in which the men who were heathens went
into one corner of the room and the women who were Christians into
the other and, at the beating of a gong, conversion was
accomplished by a close embrace. Our Scottish Sabbaths were very
different, and I thought them more than dreary. Although I love
church music and architecture and can listen to almost any sermon
at any time and even read sermons to myself, going to church in
the country remains a sacrifice to me. The painful custom in the
Church of England of reading indistinctly and in an assumed voice
has alienated simple people in every parish; and the average
preaching is painful. In my country you can still hear a good
sermon. When staying with Lord Haldane's mother--the most
beautiful, humorous and saintly of old ladies--I heard an
excellent sermon at Auchterarder on this very subject, the
dullness of Sundays. The minister said that, however brightly the
sun shone on stained glass windows, no one could guess what they
were really like from the outside; it was from the inside only
that you should judge of them.

Another time I heard a man end his sermon by saying:

"And now, my friends, do your duty and don't look upon the world
with eyes jaundiced by religion."