At Pollokshaws certain tunes were so associated with certain psalms that when my father attempted the innovation of singing “I waited for the Lord my God” to some other tune than “Balerma”[1] there was almost a godly riot, and his religious experience was critically sounded for the graver symptoms of heresy. The sentiment engendered by my father’s endeavour to vary a tune has had no parallel in my experience, I think, except in the astonishment with which some politicians in the maritime provinces regarded the amazing doctrine that the job of a section man should not be dependent upon his vote at the last general election. The outward form of much of the Presbyterianism of Scotland in the sixties and seventies was hard, bare, unlovely to the modern eye. It grates upon our present sense of spiritual contentment. But it developed a fibre in the people who revelled in theological exactitude, for which we, their descendants, are seldom sufficiently grateful. It will be true of multitudes of other Canadians besides myself, who were brought up in the moral rigours of a most positive Puritanism, that their retrospect combines a little resentment against the overclouding of their youth by unnecessary prohibitions, with much thanksgiving for the immovable foundations on which character was built. We are none too worthy citizens of the state, as things are. Heaven alone knows what we might have been if we had not been told, with stern, but kindly repetition, “This is the way, walk ye in it.” Our grudge to our Presbyterian upbringing is infinitesimal. Our debt is infinite. Sometimes one hears what sounds like ungrateful criticism of the thoroughness with which a theology that was sometimes confounded with religion was drilled into the children of the nineteenth century. A better attitude, surely, even for those who would not hold their children’s noses closely to the Calvinistic grindstone, is to appreciate the excellences which were so relentlessly pressed upon us. It may be well that, for us, the old days have gone for ever. But for family discipline, and the homage that was paid to the unseen, could anything be better than the attendance at church of the whole family every Sunday, at Pollokshaws, for services that lasted from eleven till a quarter to four, with an hour’s intermission for lunch; then Sunday school at five o’clock? After a quiet evening there was the second family worship of the day, beginning at ten o’clock, when whoever happened to be in the house was not allowed to depart without sharing in the exercises--expounding of the Word and a somewhat lengthy prayer by father, and psalmody by all present. Religious duty was imperious duty--in private as well as in public. Except the precentor, in church we sat to sing, and we stood while the preacher prayed. The long prayer of an ordained Original Seceder would often continue for half an hour.