S. R. Crockett

“ In Lady Nixon's Wynd there was division. On the one side were ranged the heads of families generally, the folk staid and set in the old ways—"gospel-hardened" the Gullibrandites called them. With the Doctor were the old standards of the Kirk, getting a little dried, maybe, with standing so long in their post-holes, but, so far as in them lay, faithful unto death.
But the younger folk mostly followed the new light. There were any number of Societies, Gospel Bands, Armies of the Blue Ribbon, and of the White—all well and better than well in their places. ”

“ The silver cups, ancient as Drumclog and Shalloch, so they said, shone on the table of communion, and we all looked at them when the Doctor said the solemn and mysterious words, "wine on the lees well refined."
For there are no High Churchmen so truly high as the men of the little protesting covenanting remnants of the Reformation Kirk of Scotland; none so jealous in guarding the sacraments; none that can weave about them such a mantle of awe and reverence. ”

“ Then there was a kind of commotion all over the congregation. One after another rose and spoke after their kind, some vehemently, some with shamed faces.
"And I!" "And I!" "And I!" cried a dozen at a time. "Bide with us, Doctor! We cannot want you! Pray for us!"
Then Henry Walker, the white-haired, sharp-featured treasurer and precentor of Nixon's Wynd, stretched out his hand. The Doctor had been speaking, as is the custom, not from the pulpit, but from the communion table about which the elders sat. He had held the Gullibrand manifesto in his hand ”

“ Gullibrand had gone a step too far. The Doctor could be a Boanerges also upon occasion, though he walked always in quiet ways and preferred the howe of life to the mountain tops.
"No, sir," he said firmly; "no unqualified or unlicensed man shall ever preach in my pulpit so long as I am minister and teaching elder of a Covenant-keeping Kirk!" ”

“ There were teas also at "Mount Delectable," the residence of Gullibrand, where, after the singing of many hymns and the superior blandishments of the Misses Gullibrand, it was openly said that if the Kirk in Lady Nixon's Wynd was to be preserved, the Doctor must "go." He was in the way. He was a fossil. He had no modern light. He took no interest in the "Work." He would neither conduct a campaign of street-preaching nor allow an unordained evangelist into his pulpit. The Doctor must go. Mr. Gullibrand was sure that a majority of the congregation was with him. ”

“ One hundred and six years Marcus Lawtons have ministered in this place. From to-day they shall serve tables no more. Once—and not so long ago, it seems, looking back—I had a son of my body, a plant reared amid hopes and prayers and watered with tears. ”

“ There was but one fly in their apothecary's ointment-pot when my father grew too stiff to attend the Kirk of the Covenants even once a year, and that was that the Doctor, unable to live and bring up a family on a sadly dwindling stipend (though every man and woman in the little kirk did almost beyond their possible to increase it) , had been compelled to bind himself to spend part of the day in a secular pursuit. ”

“ Then, having gathered to him a party, recruited chiefly from the busybodies in other men's matters and other women's characters, Jacob Gullibrand turned him about, and set himself to drive the minister and folk of the Kirk of the Covenant as he had been wont to drive his clerks and shop-assistants.
He went every Sabbath into the vestry after service to reprove and instruct Dr. Marcus Lawton. His sermons (so he told him) were too old-fashioned. They did not "grip the people." They did not "take hold of the man on the street." ”