Rabbi Saunderson | Page 4

first; and his sermons were heard to within
measurable distance of the second head by an exact quorum of the
exhausted court, who were kept by the clerk sitting at the door, and
preventing MacWheep escaping. His position in the court was assured
from the beginning, and fulfilled the function of an Encyclopaedia,
with occasional amazing results, as when information was asked about
some Eastern sect for whose necessities the Presbytery were asked to
collect, and to whose warm piety affecting allusion was made, and
Jeremiah showed clearly, with the reporters present, that the
Cappadocians were guilty of a heresy beside which Morisonianism was
an unsullied whiteness. His work as examiner-in-general for the court
was a merciful failure, and encouraged the students of the district to
return to their district court, who, on the mere rumour of him, had
transferred themselves in a body to a Highland Presbytery, where the
standard question in Philosophy used to be, "How many horns has a
dilemma, and distinguish the one from the other." No man knew what
the minister of Kilbogie might not ask--the student was only perfectly
certain that it would be beyond his knowledge; but as Saunderson
always gave the answer himself in the end, and imputed it to the
student, anxiety was reduced to a minimum. Saunderson, indeed, was
in the custom of passing all candidates and reporting them as marvels
of erudition, whose only fault was a becoming modesty--which,
however, had not concealed from his keen eye hidden treasures of
learning. Beyond this sphere the good man's services were not used by
a body of shrewd ecclesiastics, as the inordinate length of an ordination
sermon had ruined a dinner prepared for the court by "one of our
intelligent and large-hearted laymen," and it is still pleasantly told how
Saunderson was invited to a congregational soirée--an ancient meeting,
where the people ate oranges, and the speaker rallied the minister on
being still unmarried--and discoursed, as a carefully chosen subject, on
the Jewish feasts,--with illustrations from the Talmud,--till some one
burst a paper-bag and allowed the feelings of the people to escape.
When this history was passed round Muirtown Market, Kilbogie
thought still more highly of their minister, and indicated their opinion

of the other parish in severely theological language.
Standing at his full height he might have been six feet, but, with much
poring over books and meditation, he had descended some two inches.
His hair was long, not because he made any conscious claim to genius,
but because he forgot to get it cut, and, with his flowing, untrimmed
beard, was now quite grey. Within his clothes he was the merest
skeleton, being so thin that his shoulder-blades stood out in sharp
outline, and his hands were almost transparent. The redeeming feature
in Saunderson was his eyes, which were large and eloquent, of a
trustful, wistful hazel, the beautiful eyes of a dumb animal. Whether he
was expounding doctrines charged with despair of humanity, or
exalting, in rare moments, the riches of a Divine love in which he did
not expect to share, or humbly beseeching his brethren to give him
information on some point in scholarship no one knew anything about
except himself, or stroking the hair of some little child sitting upon his
knee, those eyes were ever simple, honest, and most pathetic. Young
ministers coming to the Presbytery full of self-conceit and new views
were arrested by their light shining through the glasses, and came in a
year or two to have a profound regard for Saunderson, curiously
compounded of amusement at his ways, which for strangeness were
quite beyond imagination, admiration for his knowledge, which was
amazing for its accuracy and comprehensiveness, respect for his
honesty, which feared no conclusion, however repellent to flesh and
blood, but chiefly of love for the unaffected and shining goodness of a
man in whose virgin soul neither self nor this world had any part. For
years the youngsters of the Presbytery knew not how to address the
minister of Kilbogie, since any one who had dared to call him
Saunderson, as they said "Carmichael," and even "MacWheep," though
he was elderly, would have been deposed, without delay, from the
ministry--so much reverence at least was in the lads--and "Mister"
attached to this personality would be like a silk hat on the head of an
Eastern sage. Jenkins of Pitrodie always considered that he was
inspired when he one day called Saunderson "Rabbi," and unto the day
of his death Kilbogie was so called. He made protest against the title as
being forbidden in the Gospels, but the lads insisted that it must be
understood in the sense of scholar, whereupon Saunderson disowned it

on the ground of his slender attainments. The lads saw the force of this
objection, and admitted