In wholesome fear of mistake, one would hesitate to put church matters either before or after politics among the preoccupations of Elgin.  It would be safer and more indisputable to say that nothing compared with religion but politics, and nothing compared with politics but religion.  In offering this proposition also we must think of our dimensions.  There is a religious fervour in Oxford, in Mecca, in Benares, and the sign for these ideas is the same; we have to apply ourselves to the interpretation.  In Elgin religious fervour was not beautiful, or dramatic, or self-immolating; it was reasonable.  You were perhaps your own first creditor; after that your debt was to your Maker.  You discharged this obligation in a spirit of sturdy equity:  if the children didn’t go to Sunday school you knew the reason why.  The habit of church attendance was not only a basis of respectability, but practically the only one:  a person who was “never known to put his head inside a church door” could not be more severely reprobated, by Mrs Murchison at all events.  It was the normal thing, the thing which formed the backbone of life, sustaining to the serious, impressive to the light, indispensable to the rest, and the thing that was more than any of these, which you can only know when you stand in the churches among the congregations.  Within its prescribed limitations it was for many the intellectual exercise, for more the emotional lift, and for all the unfailing distraction of the week.  The repressed magnetic excitement in gatherings of familiar faces, fellow-beings bound by the same convention to the same kind of behaviour, is precious in communities where the human interest is still thin and sparse.  It is valuable in itself, and it produces an occasional detached sensation.  There was the case, in Dr Drummond’s church, of placid-faced, saintly old Sandy MacQuhot, the epileptic.  It used to be a common regret with Lorne Murchison that as sure as he was allowed to stay away from church Sandy would have a fit.  That was his little boy’s honesty; the elders enjoyed the fit and deprecated the disturbance.

There was a simple and definite family feeling within communions.  “They come to our church” was the argument of first force whether for calling or for charity.  It was impossible to feel toward a Congregationalist or an Episcopalian as you felt toward one who sang the same hymns and sat under the same admonition week by week, year in and year out, as yourself.  “Wesleyans, are they?” a lady of Knox Church would remark of the newly arrived, in whom her interest was suggested.  “Then let the Wesleyans look after them.”  A pew-holder had a distinct status; an “adherent” enjoyed friendly consideration, especially if he adhered faithfully; and stray attendants from other congregations were treated with punctilious hospitality, places being found for them in the Old Testament, as if they could hardly be expected to discover such things for themselves.