These can all be taught, and are actually taught, by every conscientious teacher in the country. They constitute not the whole of duty, indeed, but the most difficult part of it--certainly all that need come into the realm of pedagogy. [17] How differently the items in the Sacred Canon are regarded in scholastic circles in the South! A Glasgow teacher, discussing the Origin of Evil with a Government official, expressed great resentment at the loss of paradise through Adam's sin, and added: "It comes specially hard on me, seeing that I don't care a _docken_ for apples." THE MODERATES. _Ami lecteur_, have you ever heard of the _Moderates_? If, by chance, you have dipped into the interminable controversies that gyrated round the Disruption year, it is probable you may have heard more than enough of them. One gets the impression that they were an unimpassioned, easy-going, anti-brimstone, but highly estimable body of men. They were blamed for preaching morality and not the penetrating mysteries of the faith. In "The Holy Fair," Burns gives us an inimitable picture of the moral philosopher in the pulpit:-- "But hark! the tent has changed its voice, There's peace an' rest nae langer, For a' the real judges rise-- They canna sit for anger. Smith opens out his cauld harangues On practice and on morals, An' aff the godly pour in thrangs To gie the jars an' barrels A lift that day. "What signifies his barren shine Of moral powers an' reason? His English style and gesture fine Are a' clean out o' season. Like Socrates or Antonine, Or some auld pagan heathen, The moral man he does define, But ne'er a word o' faith in That's richt that day." I confess to a certain liking for Smith. He knew what was good for the Holy Willies and the other "chosen samples" and "swatches o' grace" in his auditory. Like a sensible man, and like the Apostle James, he laid more stress on "practice and on morals" than on lip-worship and faith. "Faith without works is dead" is a dictum that needs to be incessantly emphasised, and nowhere more than in certain ultra-orthodox localities of Scotland at the present day.