Muthill has another connection, now almost forgotten, with the religious life of Scotland. About the time of the Original Secession, to an Earnside farmer in this parish was born a son named John Barclay, who became a probationer in the Kirk, but soon fell out with its fathers upon his interpretation of saving doctrine. He founded a sect which took the name of the Bereans, as searching the Scriptures with peculiar zeal, where they seem to have found assurance of salvation as a leading tenet, on the strength of which they cultivated a grace of cheerfulness not too common among Calvinist believers. “Rejoice evermore” is the suggestive title of one of their founder’s books. Their communion spread over several parts of Scotland, even into England and across the Atlantic. When Mr. Hall was at Abernethy he heard of theirs as one of the most flourishing congregations at Newburgh, having for its head Alexander Pirie, who for a time had been professor of divinity at the Seceders’ rustic college, then from an Anti-burgher softened down into a Burgher, from which he passed on to the Relief Church, and finally found rest among the Bereans. The English parson, who goes out of his way for a sneer at Robert Haldane’s missionary devotion, is rather satirical on those dissenters, whom he inclines to lump with the Sandemanians, and hints at accusations of sinning that grace may abound. They are, he says, “drunk or sober, as merry as grigs.” What struck him most about their ceremonies was the social love feast in which they copied the Sandemanians; and he repeats a scandalous story of the Crieff congregation sending to a public-house to get wine on trust for this function. At Crieff, which may be called its native soil, the body held together till the middle of last century, when its property was divided by lot among the members; and, so far as I know, the Bereans are now everywhere extinct, unless, perhaps, in America, where so many sects have taken fresh root on virgin soil.