The survivors of a convulsion of nature, for instance, might have learned from his lips the cause and kind of their disaster traced back forcibly to local acquiescence in iniquity, and drawn unflinchingly from the text, “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”  The militant history of his Church was a passion with him; if ever he had to countenance canonization he would have led off with Jenny Geddes.  “A tremendous Presbyterian” they called him in the town.  To hear him give out a single psalm, and sing it with his people, would convince anybody of that.  There was a choir, of course, but to the front pews, at all events, Dr Drummond’s leading was more important than the choir’s.  It was a note of dauntless vigour, and it was plain by the regular forward jerk of his surpliced shoulder that his foot was keeping time: 

   Where the assemblies of the just
   And congregations are.

You could not help admiring, and you could not help respecting; you were compelled by his natural force and his unqualified conviction, his tireless energy and his sterling sort.

It is possible to understand, however, that after sitting for twenty-five years under direction so unfailing and so uncompromising, the congregation of Knox Church might turn with a moderate curiosity to the spiritual indications of the Reverend Hugh Finlay.  He was a passionate romantic, and his body had shot up into a fitting temple for such an inhabitant as his soul.  He was a great long fellow, with a shock of black hair and deep dreams in his eyes; his head was what people called a type, a type I suppose of the simple motive and the noble intention, the detached point of view and the somewhat indifferent attitude to material things, as it may be humanly featured anywhere.  His face bore a confusion of ideals; he had the brow of a Covenanter and the mouth of Adonais, the flame of religious ardour in his eyes and the composure of perceived philosophy on his lips.  He was fettered by an impenetrable shyness; it was in the pulpit alone that he could expand, and then only upon written lines, with hardly a gesture, and the most perfunctory glances, at conscientious intervals, toward his hearers.  A poor creature, indeed, in this respect, Dr Drummond thought him—­Dr Drummond, who wore an untrammelled surplice which filled like an agitated sail in his quick tacks from right to left.  “The man loses half his points,” said Dr Drummond.  I doubt whether he did, people followed so closely, though Sandy MacQuhot was of the general opinion when he said that it would do nobody any harm if Mr Finlay would lift his head oftener from the book.

Advena Murchison thought him the probable antitype of an Oxford don.  She had never. seen an Oxford don, but Mr Finlay wore the characteristics these schoolmen were dressed in by novelists; and Advena noted with delight the ingenuity of fate in casting such a person into the pulpit of the Presbyterian Church in a young country.  She had her perception of comedy in life; till Finlay came she had found nothing so interesting.  With his arrival, however, other preoccupations fell into their proper places.