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.