He made protest against the title as being forbidden in the Gospels, but the lads insisted that it must be understood in the sense of scholar, whereupon Saunderson disowned it on the ground of his slender attainments. The lads saw the force of this objection, and admitted that the honourable word belonged by rights to MacWheep, who was a "gude body," but it was their fancy to assign it to Saunderson--whereat Saunderson yielded, only exacting a pledge that he should never be so called in public, lest all concerned be condemned for foolishness. When it was announced that the University of Edinburgh had resolved to confer the degree of D.D. on him for his distinguished learning and great services to theological scholarship, Saunderson, who was delighted when Dowbiggin of Muirtown got the honour for being an ecclesiastic, would have refused it for himself had not his boys gone out in a body and compelled him to accept. They also purchased a Doctor's gown and hood, and invested him with them in the name of Kilbogie two days before the capping. One of them saw that he was duly brought to the Tolbooth Kirk, where the capping ceremonial in those days took place. Another sent a list of Saunderson's articles to British and foreign theological and philological reviews, which filled half a column of the _Caledonian_, and drew forth a complimentary article from that exceedingly able and caustic paper, whose editor lost all his hair through sympathetic emotion the morning of the Disruption, and ever afterwards pointed out the faults of the Free Kirk with much frankness. The fame of Rabbi Saunderson was so spread abroad that a great cheer went up as he came in with the other Doctors elect, in which he cordially joined, considering it to be intended for his neighbour, a successful West-End clergyman, the author of a Life of Dorcas and other pleasing booklets. For some time after his boys said "Doctor" in every third sentence, and then grew weary of a too common title, and fell back on "Rabbi," by which he was known until the day of his death, and which is now engraved on his tombstone.