My mother who came from an area where people still worshipped in the covenanter tradition used to tell me to use a lang stick when measuring the lives of others. This came from the big rulers used on blackboards.

They were a yard long often marked in inches,as you moved to other classroom rulers the marks got closer together quarter, eighth,twelfth, sixteenth and thirty seconds of an inch.

The bigger the stick the more forgiving the measurement. Her words were a Scottish paraphrase of the text judge not lest ye be judged for as you judge others so shall ye be judged. The bible also says that ALL have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

The slippy stane