The Oban Times, Saturday, 5 May, 1923
Pipes in St. Paul’s Cathedral
London, 25th April, 1923 Sir,– While watching the solemn ceremony at St. Paul’s Cathedral on the anniversary of St. Michael and St. George, and particularly that part of it where to the weird strains of the bagpipes–heard for the first time in this great lane of London–the banners of the deceased Knights were moved to and from the Chapels of S. Dunstan and Ss. Michael and George (“Lord Lovat’s Lament” and “The Flowers of the Forest” being the tunes played by the King’s Own Scottish Borderers’ pipers) my mind reverted to the various Christian dogmas held touching our dead. Protestantism has only two alternatives, Heaven and Hell, while Catholicism holds the belief that “the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God.” The Roman Catholic Church goes farther than the Anglican, for it holds the doctrine of “purgatorial fire.” Both Anglican and Roman agree in an “intermediate state,” before final Heaven or Gehenna is fixed at the great Judgment Day. Who knows? “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”–I am, etc., Virtue
