The annual Fast Day, still a national institution in Scotland, although it has lost much of its solemnity and sacredness in some places, was originally associated with the Lord's Supper, and was observed with great strictness in the matter of eating and drinking; and in Indian Lands, as in all congregations of that part of the country, the custom of celebrating the Fast Day was kept up. It was a day of great solemnity in the homes of the people of a godly sort. There was no cooking of meals till after “the services,” and indeed, some of them tasted neither meat nor drink the whole day long. To the younger people of the congregation it was a day of gloom and terror, a kind of day of doom. Even to those advanced in godliness it brought searchings of heart, minute and diligent, with agonies of penitence and remorse. It was a day, in short, in which conscience was invited to take command of the memory and the imagination to the scourging of the soul for the soul's good. The sermon for the day was supposed to stimulate and to aid conscience in this work. For the communion service Mr. Murray always made it a point to have the assistance of the best preachers he could procure, and on this occasion, when the church opening was combined with the sacrament, by a special effort two preachers had been procured--a famous divine from Huron County, that stronghold of Calvinism, and a college professor who had been recently appointed, but who had already gained a reputation as a doctrinal preacher, and who was, as Peter McRae reported, “grand on the Attributes and terrible fine on the Law.” To him was assigned the honor of preaching the Fast Day sermon, and of declaring the church “open.” The new church was very different from the old. Instead of the high crow's nest, with the wonderful sounding-board over it, the pulpit was simply a raised platform partly inclosed, with the desk in front. There was no precentor's box, over the loss of which Straight Rory did not grieve unduly, inasmuch as the singing was to be led, in the English at least, by John “Aleck.” Henceforth the elders would sit with their families. The elders' seat was gone; Peter McRae's wrath at this being somewhat appeased by his securing for himself one of the short side seats at the right of the pulpit, from which he could command a view of both the minister and the congregation--a position with obvious advantages. The minister's pew was at the very back of the church. It was a great assemblage that gathered in the new church to hear the professor discourse, as doubtless he would, it being the Fast Day, upon some theme of judgment. With a great swing of triumph in his voice, Mr. Murray rose and announced the Hundredth Psalm. An electric thrill went through the congregation as, with a wave of his hand, he said: “Let us rise and sing. Now, John, Old Hundred.”