| Description | Letter from Amelia Nyasa Laws, 7 Via Venti Settembre, Rome, to her relatives, on Palm Sunday, regarding the weather; Mr. Smith's Bible meeting, thankfully a rare thing; he implies that there is only one language in Central Africa and only one man who ever translated the Bible into it; nothing new was learned; Mr. Smith thinks he knows everything; Mr. Lowrie is against such meetings, and though he agreed to speak at this one, he left town without notice and was not there; Archdeacon Sissons refused to participate because 'the Bible is not authorised by the Pope'; Amelia dislikes the way he criticises his wife in front of strangers; Smith is annoyed that the Americans are distributing Gospels by way of the Scottish Society; a smooth meeting for once at Leghorn; Mr. Fincham has replaced Mr. Henderson as treasurer; Irving and Miller are against Crozier becoming an ordained minister as he has no degree, only a short time at 'some Baptist College in England'; he does not want to wait and study for the examination set by the Assembly for such cases; Blake advised him to bluff through it all, which does not help; Cairns [of the Continental Committee] is behind Crozier so it will probably go through; Crozier expects the church to furnish his house for him, though Uncle explained that each furnished his own manse; new Low church opened on the Via Romagna, near the Boncompagni; Mr. Courtenay has been begging fuel to heat the building; the engineer who built it has sold off the contents of the old building to his own profit and refuses to account for some other monies; they had to borrow collecting plates for the opening service; Aunt went but did not enjoy it; criticism of Lowrie's sermon; Mr. Courtenay has tried to attract members away from the other Protestant churches and many go to more than one; Aunt's visit to Mrs. Cardinali; no one had remembered to tell her about the service, though she had been churchwarden in the old church for 30 years; concert at the Augusteo, to which they were invited by Mr. and Mrs. Audigier; they took them in a motor because of the bad weather; old Italian sacred music was played; the audience talked too much and they came home tired; visit to the Russian church to hear music there, out of curiosity after Tonia's descriptions of Russian worship; it is in the Piazza Cavour, next to the Waldensian Church and in the Russian Embassy; description of the church; the service a fine performance; description of the vestments; practice of the congregation; a sense of mysticism but too much formality; good voices chanted; death of Dr. Milne Rae; he was to resign at the coming Assembly; death of Mr. John Grant, bookseller; Muriel Brock's tonsillitis was better but after a motoring expedition she now has quinsy; she has a Blue Nun all night, awkward in a cramped flat. |