services and the exaltation of the sacraments, is a mediæval invention. Norman Macleod held that Christianity was instituted for the ritual of good actions. Indeed, for æsthetic and ceremonial (since there must be forms) he had too little care. Of the Barony Church a certain noble lord remarked, ‘I have seen one uglier’; and once Macleod had to admonish the congregation in these terms: ‘Scripture commands us to sing, not _grunt_; but if you are so constituted that it is impossible for you to sing, but only grunt, then it is best to be silent.’ But here were people who met to engage in practical beneficence, not for the luxury of sensuous emotion, or the hundredth hearing of a good advice. ‘A Christian congregation,’ he says, ‘is a body of Christians who are associated not merely to receive instruction from a minister or to unite in public worship, but also “to consider one another and to provoke to love and good works,” and as a society to do good to all as they have opportunity.... The society of the Christian Church, acting through its distinct organisations or congregations like an army acting through its different regiments, is the grand social system which Christ has ordained not only for the conversion of sinners and the edification of saints, but also for advancing all that pertains to the well-being of the community.’ Having made himself personally acquainted with his congregation, he organised, with the kirk session for the centre, an army of workers, by whom the religious, educational, and social needs of the parish should be met. The population was caught in a sort of missionary network. By means of meetings, for which given agents were responsible, the minister came in contact with his parishioners in every quarter. He set up numerous Sunday schools, and himself taught a Bible class. For four chapels which, on being transferred from the Free Church by a legal decision, had been left empty, he furnished both pastors and congregations. In the first ten years of his ministry, from funds which he collected, six churches were built. He had a large staff of missionaries. Not content with efforts for the welfare of the Church within his own parish, he kept his people in constant touch with the foreign field, and annually raised from the congregation, which was one of the poorest in the city, large sums for the conversion of the heathen. Nor was this all. He provided school-buildings for thousands of children; with evening classes for adults, where husbands and wives were to be seen at their A B C. He started congregational savings banks, and (to keep men out of the public-house) refreshment-rooms attractive with books and amusements; in which things, as in others more conspicuous, he was a pioneer.