More than once in these pages the writer has let the reader shy away from a thistly exposition, which we may here yoke to and have done with it. Nothing puzzles strangers more than the fact that till recently a Scottish parish would have three Presbyterian Churches, differing not at all in ritual, in discipline, or in such points of doctrine as are visible to the naked eye unprovided with theological spectacles. It would be difficult to give southron Gallios the faculty for splitting controversial hairs possessed by minds trained to subtleness on the Shorter Catechism; but an outline of the divisions of the Scottish Church may perhaps be made plain to the meanest capacity. At least I will try to be fair, which is more than have been all exponents of such matters. Like most Scotsmen, I have an hereditary bias in these controversies. One of my forebears was a Covenanter extolled among Howie’s _Scottish Worthies_, who, after being persecuted under Cromwell for loyalty to Charles, came to be hardly dealt with for conscience’ sake at the hands of that ungrateful king. I am proud to think of the ancestress who, urged to move him to safe submission, answered like a true Presbyterian wife, “that she knew her husband to be so steadfast in his principles, that nobody needed deal with him on that head; for her part, before she would contribute anything that would break his peace with his Master, she would rather choose to receive his head at the Cross.” Other friends were not so scrupulous, “two ladies of the first quality” going so far as to send “a handsome compliment in plate” to the “advocate’s lady,” who had the honesty to return this bribe or ransom when she judged it impossible to save the prisoner’s life. All the same it was saved, and he lived on till the Revolution year in a state of proscription, sometimes hunted into hiding, but throughout a most “faithful and painful” preacher, who “left many seals of his ministry,” and steadily refused to put himself at ease by leaving the country, for, “in his pleasant way,” he used to say “he would suffer where he had sinned.” His son followed in his steps; and his grandson took a leading part in the early movement of dissent which is presently to [Illustration: KILCHURN CASTLE, LOCH AWE, ARGYLLSHIRE] be shown as legacy from the Covenanting spirit. But if the memory of these worthies weighs with me, I was brought up at an English knee, in a church that held them much mistaken; and I was confirmed by the Anglican Bishop of Gibraltar, within whose diocese the very Pope is a dissenting minister. Since then I have sat at the feet of teachers from whom may be learned that to know and to speak the truth of one’s fellow-men is the only sure foundation for sound divinity. And perhaps an outsider may be in a better position for taking the altitude of even the most celestial bodies of faith.