I have sometimes been astonished to see how this superstitious veneration for the Sabbath has blinded intelligent men and women, otherwise liberal and enlightened in their views, to the real meaning and use of the day. Having been taught from their youth to deem certain things unlawful and reprehensible if done on that day, they studiously refrain from these, but at the same time they unconsciously allow themselves to say and do other things which on due reflection they would admit to be no better than those which they condemn, if not indeed much worse. I once spent a Sunday in a Highland Free Kirk manse, and in the afternoon was entertained by the minister’s wife, who was as kindly in disposition as she was narrow in her views. We discussed the whole parish. Some Roman Catholics had come to the district, which filled her mind with dismay. She was grieved, too, that a well-known dignitary of the Church of England had called the day before on her husband, a broad-minded and accomplished scholar, and had carried him off to examine some ecclesiastical ruins in the neighbourhood. She gave me an account of various marriages which were in contemplation, and of the changes that were imminent in the tenancy of the farms. At last I asked her to excuse me as I had some letters to write which I was anxious should go by the early post in the morning. ‘What?’ she exclaimed in surprise, ‘Do you mean to say that you write letters on the Sabbath?’ I could not resist the temptation to assure her that I thought writing to my friends and relatives on that day was at least as allowable as to spend the afternoon over parish gossip. A story is told of a young clergyman on the mainland who had not been long placed in his charge when rumours began to circulate about his orthodoxy. Some of his friends hearing these reports set themselves to enquire into the grounds for them. But they could only elicit vague hints and suggestions. At last they came upon an old woman who declared roundly that the minister was ‘no soun’.’ ‘Not sound! what makes you think that?’ ‘Weel then,’ she answered, ‘I maun tell ye. I wass seein’ him wi’ my ain een, standin’ at his window on the Lord’s Day, dandlin’ his bairn.’ [Sidenote: QUEEN VICTORIA AND SABBATARIANISM]