Even if I'd believed my own argument, I was, theologically speaking, skating on thin ice, which was what earned me the rebukes of folk like Peter Macmurray. There are some, in the Kirk and out of it, who have always been suspicious of skating ministers. Macmurray thought I was undoing the work of 450 years, by opening up that old debate between justification by faith and justification by good works. 'Without faith, he once said, when the Session was discussing my latest plans for fund-raising for this or that cause, and he felt that too long had gone by without God getting a mention, ' without faith, we are nothing. I think we need to remember that.' 'Faith, hope and charity, Peter,' I replied. 'We need all three, according to Paul. But the greatest of them all is charity.'