He was convener of the committee which issued the Free Church hymn book, and he threw into this work the same energy and catholicity of mind which marked the rest of his activities.
For three years before his death he was convener of the church interests committee of the Church of Scotland, which had to deal with a great agitation for disestablishment.
It is not, however, as a conqueror that Kanishka mainly lives on in tradition, but as a Buddhist monarch, second in reputation only to Asoka, and as the convener of the celebrated council of Kashmir already mentioned.
Here he advocated an improved ritual in the Scottish church, his action resulting in the appointment by the general assembly of a committee, with Boyd as convener, to prepare a new hymnal.
Isolated examples in the early middle ages of metropolitans dealing with their suffragan bishops by imprisonment in chains were extra-canonical abuses, connected with the perversion of Church law which treated the metropolitan (who originally was merely convener of the provincial synod and its representative during the intervals of sessions) as the feudal " lord " of his comprovincials.