Barclay’s Bereans

visit and with the help of neighbouring farms the stooks would be thrashed and then sorted into bags and stored in granary.

“That was then, now it is completely different. I was at Goudie Farm, at

Spittalfield, and watched how it is done, In the field was a New Holland C90 combine, two tractors and bogies driving the grain from the combine to the farm, another tractor with a baler and, as quick as the grain was cut, it was baled.

“In that particular field the job was done within an hour, then they set off to the next field. So different now.”

“Donald Abbott has commented in this column (Craigie, September 8) on the number of former churches in Errol”, writes the Rev Gordon Campbell of Kingoodie.

“In 1763, John Barclay moved to Fettercairn, after being dismissed as assistant minister at Errol for teaching ‘obnoxious doctrines’.

“Barclay ended up falling foul of the church authorities there also.

“When he appealed (unsuccessfully) to the Kirk’s General Assembly, his advocate was James Boswell, biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson.

“Barclay went on to form a new denomination, the Bereans (so called because the Bible at Acts 17 records that the people of Berea studied the scriptures with great eagerness). By the mid-19th Century there were just four Berean ministers left, and the churches in England had all closed.

“In 1775, the Edinburgh Bereans sent a letter to the Sauchieburn Bereans, seeking contributions to allow one of Barclay’s books to be published.

“Incredibly, this letter states that this is ‘a matter of importance to the Berean cause, which is the only Christian cause on the face of the earth’.

“Unfortunately, it would be another 11 years before Burns would write: ‘O was some Pow’r the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!’”