seldom absent from these scenes of edification. They were at the last diet; and they contemplate attending the next, though the place may be widely distant; they wish to hear the discussion of the next subject in the order of the general plan which the minister is pursuing; and they are in this way going through a systematic course of tuition in divinity." "Devotional exercises close; and with lingering salutations, and friendly inquiries between pastor and flock, the people betake themselves to their respective homes."

Visitation was often in the country attended with a considerable amount of fatiguing exertion, in consequence of the families that belonged to a congregation being scattered over an extensive district, and the roads in many places being bad. "In former times," says the writer of the "Life of a Scottish Probationer," "the first equipment for his work which the probationer had to provide was a horse, on which he rode from church to church, with his sermons and changes of raiment in his saddle-bags." Thus the young preacher became, as the late Dr Harper "was accustomed laughingly to say, with allusion to the Church militant, one of the Church's mounted cavalry.'" It was usual for country ministers to furnish themselves with the same means for performing their journeys in the visitation of their flocks, and the discharge of other ecclesiastical duties. Sometimes, there was but little work for the minister's horse; and the loan of it was often asked, and easily obtained,-in which case, not unfrequently, the animal was made to know that there

1 Life, by Dr Thomson, p. 20.

are different kinds of riders; for, whether good equestrians or not, the ministers in general failed not to exemplify the character of "a righteous man" in "regarding the life of their beasts." Excellent horsemen some of them were. Mr Moncrieff of Abernethy was intense and ardent in his riding, as in everything else he did. John Brown, M.D., in his inimitable letter to Dr Cairns, speaking of his father, says, "The exercise and the excitement he most delighted in was riding. With the exception of that great genius in more than horsemanship, Andrew Ducrow, I never saw a man sit a horse as he did. He seemed inspired, gay, erect, full of the joy of life, fearless, and secure." One of Dr Brown's colleagues in the Divinity Hall of the Secession Church, a minister in the country, usually rode with a very moderate degree of celerity; but in his younger days, he would sometimes indulge in a gallop. On one occasion, when he visited a brother minister in the north, the latter, who had a horse of his own, got the loan of another for his friend, and they rode out together on the highway, and, after a while, "tried a race." As they were galloping along an individual whom they passed cried out to them, "A merciful man is merciful to his beast." The rider on the borrowed horse replied, "This is not my beast." "Ah! but,” said his friend, "it is his."

II.

BEHAVIOUR IN CHURCH.

When Paul preached at Troas, "there sat in the window a young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep." "This," says Barnes, "is an instance of sleeping in public worship that has some apology. The late hour of the night, and the length of the service, were the excuse. But, though the thing is often done now, yet how seldom is a sleeper in church furnished with an excuse for it. No practice is more shameful, disrespectful, and abominable than that so common of sleeping in the house of God." "If," says Hall, "the apostle so indignantly inquires of the Corinthians whether they have not houses to eat and drink in, may we not, with equal propriety, ask those who indulge in this practice, whether they have not beds to sleep in, that they convert the house of God into a dormitory?"

So far as I know, this practice has never been made a subject of formal discipline. But very often censure has been administered by the preacher; and such rebuke has not unfrequently had a degree of humour in it, which, however, only rendered it more severe and effective, though it may sometimes have been not quite becoming. "The minister," it is stated in the Memoir of Mrs Somerville, "would sometimes startle the congregation by calling out to some culprit, "Sit up there; how daur ye sleep i' the kirk?" Sometimes the mode of address was, 66 Sit up, or I'll name ye oot."1 Mr Shirra 1 Dean Ramsay's "Reminiscences," p. 185.

of Kirkcaldy, seeing a young man asleep in the gallery one Sabbath afternoon, called to the people who were sitting near the sleeper to awaken him; "for," said he, "if he fall down dead, as the young man did in Paul's days, he may lie dead for me; I am not able, like Paul, to raise him to life again." I remember a minister telling me of the following reproof, which he administered one afternoon. The weather was very warm, and he said he did not wonder much that some of his hearers should feel drowsy,—those, especially, who had been working hard in the fields during the week. "But," he added, "I was surprised to see some sound asleep, just now, who, I observed, had a good nap in the forenoon." This minister was found fault with by one of his hearers, who was a notorious sleeper in church, for not concluding his discourse with separate applications of the subject to the two cases of saints and sinners. “Well,” he said, “I shall do that next Sabbath, when I trust you will be present." So, next Sabbath, in concluding his sermon, he said he would address each of the two great classes into which his hearers might be divided. "I shall begin," he said, "by addressing sinners; and, first, I shall speak to persons who sleep in the house of God." I have heard of another minister who, having in his sermon used the word "hyperbole," said, "Perhaps some of you may not know what this word means; I

1 "Memoir," by Dr J. B. Johnston, p. 46. Something similar was said by Dean Swift, if I remember right, on one occasion. Some striking instances of reproof of sleepers are given in the Sword and Trowel, in a paper, "Odds and Ends about Preaching and Hearing."

will explain it to you; it is a figure of speech which expresses more than is really intended. For instance, were I to say that the whole of you were asleep just now, that would be a hyperbole ; for probably not more than the half were so."

In times long past, it seems to have been part of the duty of the beadle or church officer to awaken sleepers. Speaking of the Scottish Church in the early part of the seventeenth century, M'Crie says, "As to the people generally, they seem to have conducted themselves during divine service with suitable decorum; though the following extract from the Minutes of the KirkSession of Perth would indicate that clergymen were occasionally exposed to annoyances similar to those of which they have had to complain in more modern times: 'John Tenender, Session-officer, is ordained to have his red staff in the kirk on the Sabbath-days, therewith to wauken sleepers, and to remove greeting bairns furth of the kirk.'" 1 In more recent times, gentler methods were sometimes adopted. I have heard of an old minister who, when he observed drowsiness overcoming many in his audience, would kindly say,-pointing to a particular part of the church,-" Send round the mulls there." Quite lately, the snuff-box was used for this purpose, and perhaps the practice still exists, in some of the churches in the north. Mr Spurgeon, having preached at a High

1 "Story," &c., p. 168. Robert Chambers, in his "Illustrations of the Author of Waverley," gives an amusing account of the usefulness in this way of a rustic "natural," the counterpart of "Davie Gellatley.

M