Congregations stood loyally by their pastors, and discussion was strictly intramural.

If the Methodists handed theirs on at the end of three years with a breath of relief, they exhaled it among themselves; after all, for them it was a matter of luck.

The Presbyterians, as in the case of old Mr Jamesion of St Andrew's, held on till death, pulling a long upper lip: election was not a thing to be trifled with in heaven or upon earth.
It will be imagined whether Dr Drummond did not see in these conditions his natural and wholesome element, whether he did not fit exactly in.
The God he loved to worship as Jehovah had made him a beneficent despot and given him, as it were, a commission.

If the temporal power had charged him to rule an eastern province, he would have brought much the same qualities to the task.

Knox Church, Elgin, was his dominion, its moral and material affairs his jealous interest, and its legitimate expansion his chief pride.