NEWS FROM THE PEWS
From: Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush by Ian Maclaren.
…..but our intellectual life centred on the weekly sermon.  Men thought about Sabbath as they followed the plough in our caller air, and braced themselves for an effort at the giving out of the text.  The hearer had his snuff and selected his attitude, and from that moment to the close he never moved nor took his eyes off the preacher.  There was a tradition that one of the Disruption fathers had preached in the Free Kirk for one hour and fifty minutes on the bulwarks of Zion, and had left the impression that he was only playing round the outskirts of his subject.  No preacher with anything to say could complain of Drumtochty, for he got a patient, honest, critical hearing from beginning to end.
It was the birthright of every native of the parish to be a critic, and certain were allowed to be experts in special departments – Lachlan Campbell in doctrine and Jamie Soutar in logic – but as an all round practitioner Mrs Macfadyen had a solitary reputation.  It rested on a long series of unreversed judgments, with felicitous strokes of description that passed into the literary capital of the Glen.  One felt it was genius, and could only note contributing circumstances - an eye that took in the preacher from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot; an almost uncannie insight into character; the instinct to seize on every scrap of evidence; a memory that was simply an automatic register; an unfailing sense of fitness; and an absolute impartiality regarding subject. 
It goes without saying that Mrs Macfadyen did not take nervous little notes during the sermon - all writing on Sabbath, in kirk or outside, was strictly forbidden in Drumtochty - or mark her Bible, or practise any other profane device of feeble-minded hearers.  It did not matter how elaborate or how incoherent a sermon might be, it could not confuse our critic.
" There's not much escapes you," I dared to say, and although the excellent woman was not accessible to gross flattery, she seemed pleased. 
" A'm thankfu that aa can see withoot lookin'; an a'll wager nae man ever read his sermon in Drumtochty Kirk, an aa didna find him oot.  Noo, there's the new minister o Netheraird, he writes his sermon on ae side o ten sheets o paper, an he's that carried awa at the end o' ilka page that he disna ken what he's daein', an' the sleeve o his goon slips the sheet across tae the ither side o the Bible.