Kilbogie was not indifferent to a well-ordered prayer--although its palate was coarser in the appreciation of felicitous terms and allusions than that of Drumtochty--and would have been scandalised if the Queen had been omitted; but it was by the sermon the young man must stand or fall, and Kilbogie despised a man who postponed the ordeal.
Saunderson gave double pledges of capacity and fulness before he opened his mouth in the sermon, for he read no Scripture at all that day, and had only one prayer, which was mainly a statement of the Divine Decrees and a careful confession of the sins of Kilbogie; and then, having given out his text from the prophecy of Joel, he reverently closed the Bible and placed it on the seat behind him.

His own reason for this proceeding was a desire for absolute security in enforcing his subject, and a painful remembrance of the disturbance in a south country church when he landed a Bible--with clasps--on the head of the precentor in the heat of a discourse defending the rejection of Esau.

Our best and simplest actions--and Jeremiah was as simple as a babe--can be misconstrued, and the only dissentient from Saunderson's election insisted that the Bible had been deposited on the floor, and asserted that the object of this profanity was to give the preacher a higher standing in the pulpit.

This malignant reading of circumstances might have wrought mischief--for Saunderson's gaunt figure did seem to grow in the pulpit--had it not been for the bold line of defence taken up by Mains.
"Gin he wanted tae stand high, wes it no tae preach the word?
an' gin he wanted a soond foundation for his feet, what better could he get than the twa Testaments?
Answer me that." It was seen at once that no one could answer that, and the captious objector never quite recovered his position in the parish, while it is not the least of Kilbogie's boasting, in which the Auld Kirk will even join against Drumtochty, that they have a minister who not only does not read his sermons and does not need to quote his texts, but carries the whole book in at least three languages in his head, and once, as a proof thereof, preached with it below his feet.
Much was to be looked for from such a man, but even Mains, whetted by intercourse with Saunderson, was astonished at the sermon.

It was a happy beginning to draw a parallel between the locusts of Joel and the mice of Kilbogie, and gave the preacher an opportunity of describing the appearance, habits, and destruction of the locusts, which he did solely from Holy Scripture, translating various passages afresh and combining lights with marvellous ingenuity.