Durisdeer Church

Durisdeer Church in the Scots county of Dumfriesshire sits above Carron Water in that lovely countryside well north of the border, and looks stately in its early Georgian style. From afar, it appeared rather English, with its square, stone tower overlooking the higgledy-piggledy village nestling at its foot, rather than the more usual stark, grey kirk presiding over the long, neat rows of low houses. On closer inspection, it was thoroughly Scottish, the tower thinner than its English cousins and boasting large, symmetrical windows on almost every wall. The insides were locked (sadly, but typically), though an aristocratic mausoleum of a periwigged Duke and Duchess of Queensbury was accessible, which dripped with baroque opulence while accompanied by a faintly ridiculous baldacchino, all from the early eighteenth century. Although the kirk looked elegant in its presbyterian simplicity, the ducal monuments appeared the very opposite- grandiose, extravagant, and, dare I say, rather Roman Catholic. Whether James Douglas, 2nd Duke of Queensberry and 1st Duke of Dover, was a believer in Jesus Christ rather than just a builder and extender of churches, one cannot say. He helped to mastermind the Act of Union between the kingdoms of Scotland and England, creating the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, but whether he was himself united to the Kingdom of Christ, only the Great Day shall reveal.

As a general rule, though there will doubtless be exceptions, those with the grandest funerals receive the coldest (or hottest) eternal receptions, while those who humbly follow the Lord Jesus and even pass with neither notice nor fuss will receive the warmest and noblest of heavenly welcomes. Better to be Lazarus and be received like a son, than die like Dives and be sent to the place of ignominy and perdition where even a drop of water is worth more than diamonds.