_TIBBIE_. On rainy evenings Roderick had to accommodate his Bible-class in his study. The books and pamphlets piled on the floor were removed, and stools and chairs brought in from all the neighbouring cottages. The attendance was large, the room but small, and the window could not be opened without admitting the rain. The sole ventilation therefore was by the chimney, for Roderick's chest was delicate and could not endure open doors or draughts. The breaths of the people and the steam from their plaids and umbrellas made an atmosphere almost too dense to breathe, but no one stayed away on account of that. Discomfort in fact was the chosen salt and relish of popular piety in those days. The old stories of the covenant and the persecutions had been brought out afresh after lying hid for a century under the dust of time and 'moderatism,' so called, which perhaps means only the new ideas begotten of newer circumstances in advancing civilization. These tales told in modern language and addressed to the people from hundreds of pulpits and platforms, and scattered by the thousand in illustrated tracts and broad sheets over the country, roused the best instincts of the people into a sort of fanaticism; common sense appeared sinful latitudinarianism, and there seemed a very hunger for austerity and persecution in a small way, which raised an uncomfortable church-going into a meritorious claim on divine favour. Like other artificial revivals of obsolete feeling with their inevitable unreality and exaggeration--for the one begets the other, seeing that each individual, knowing his own earnestness to be below the standard, compensates by intensity of expression for what is lacking in depth--all that has now passed away. No better cushioned pews now-a-days invite to repose in the green pastures of the word, than those which the Free Church supplies, and the erewhile battle cry of 'Christ's Crown and Covenant' has moderated down into a demand for Disestablishment. These cottage services were far more exhausting to their conductor than the regular preaching, and after struggling through them under the oppression of heat and bad air, he found when his apartment was left to him, that it had become uninhabitable for the rest of the evening. Whenever, therefore, the weather at all permitted, he conducted his Bible-class in the open air.