TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 1872. the basis of their belief and action - The debate lasted three consecutive nights and excitement ran very high - Tempers were lost and all but blows were exchanged by the backers of each - I was there every night but of course the debate "per se" made but a slight impression on my youthful brain - I mind of the terms "Voluntaries and Socialists" being hurled from "our side of the house" - "Erastians and State paid clergy" resounded from the other - "The lads in Fustian" (the Woodside Weavers) who at that time were as intensely "Established" as they afterwards became "Free" gave a hearty encore, when the half Poetic half Prophetic Rhapsodies of Isaiah were quoted as proving the base on which rested our State Churchism - "Lengthen the cords & strengthen the stakes" - for Kings & Queens shall be nursing Fathers & nursing Mothers (so they held to be the evident meaning of the passage) to this our "Established Kirk of Scotland" - while a clapping of hands and a shuffling of feet followed on Honest John Haggart laying down as an incontrovertible plank of his belief that "the example of the Apostle Paul was of far more importance to us as Christians," "who labored with his hands and was chargeable to no man" - This much of the general drift of the debate I do remember but little else - The "sword of the Civil Magistrate" and the Spiritual Power of the Head of the Church, were to me alike (in those days) a "Terra incognita" and I had no wish to explore, satisfied, like many of my elders with, what "our side" held was the truth and all else error - Strange freaks, however, were played with these "solid foundations" of belief during the next decade, and many a cherished opinion