“Aye, but just look at some o’ thae pictures in the ‘Monastery,’ Willie.” The mason, in spite of his narrow views, was really fond of books, and in his own way was a hard student; but his reading was mainly confined to Puritan theology and to such church histories as Calderwood and Wodrow. The perusal of any work of a lighter character he would deem a waste of time. Still, he laid down his trowel, seated himself beside me, wiped his hands on his coarse linen apron, and carefully turned over the leaves of the little volume. The first picture that turned up was the interior of a mediaeval church. I could see that he was impressed with the beauty of the architecture. There was the great east window, filled with stained glass, intersected with delicate stone tracery; below it the altar, surmounted by a stone reredos, with a series of bas-reliefs depicting scenes in our Lord’s ministry. On the super-altar stood a cross, flanked by two tall candlesticks. In the foreground of the picture was the chancel-arch, Norman with dogtooth ornaments, while between that and the Holy Table were the choir stalls with richly carved canopies, on either side of the central passage. To me the whole was a thing of beauty. I could not understand the meaning of it all but, taken along with the narrative, it had cast quite a glamor over me. The old man gazed intently on the picture for a few moments, then pushed it towards me with a gesture which said plainly: “Yes, these old churches are very fine, but I must not admire them too much. The ‘Auld Licht’ notion of a church as plain as a barn, without any pretentions to architectural beauty, must be right. We must not think of these things at all. God can surely be, perhaps better, worshipped in a plain barn than in a magnificent cathedral.” Willie was by no means an unreasonable man, but his attachment to the Seceder Kirk, of which he was an elder, kept him from giving vent to his own personal impressions in this regard. The reading of Scott may have sometimes interfered with my studies when it should not have done so, but it gave me an idea of the Church’s corporate life, that had never been set before me, at school or in church. Without any intention on Walter Scott’s part, he was doing then, and he certainly is doing still, an excellent work as an exponent of the religious life of the past. The perusal of his works has done for many what it did for me, that is, it has implanted a certain knowledge respecting church matters, and men have felt constrained to study the Book of Common Prayer and to compare its usages with those of the various ages described in the novels and metrical romances. I could not go to school again that day, and so I slipped home by a back road and found our mother knitting busily, but quite ready for a chat.