A SPIRITUAL HISTORY OF THE ROYAL MILE
By Paul James-Griffiths
Latent Publishing. 58 pages. £6.99. ISBN 0-9548821-2-1
Available from Edinburgh City Mission office (0131 554 6140)
No 58-page booklet covering the entire Christian history of Scotland from the Culdees to the present can hope to be anything more than a sketch — the more so when each page is one-third illustrations! Nevertheless, it is a valuable introduction and shouldn’t be missed. The text is clear and interesting, the photographs attractive, the entire product a treat to handle. It would make a wonderful gift — another reminder that our roots do lie in the Christian not the pagan past.
The author uses Edinburgh as a focus. He himself leads regular walks through the Royal Mile and is quite right to weave together the various threads that make it such a fascinating tapestry of Christian influence generally. Intriguing nuggets appear throughout: that Glasgow means ‘dear family’ because of Mungo’s gracious influence after the founding of the first church there; that the word ‘culdees’, the earliest name for the Christians up north, means ‘Friends of God’ (making the Quakers merely an echo rather than an innovation!) — and so on.
