The descendants of Cameron and Cargill continued faithfully to preserve the principles of the Covenants. For many years, however, M'Millan was left almost alone to bear up their banner. When the Seceders left the Establishment, it was thought that they might amalgamate with the men who had always kept aloof from it as an enslaved and Erastian thing; but, instead of peace, there was soon war between them. A controversy arose in regard to the obedience due to an uncovenanted State, written by pens dipped in wormwood. Thomas Nairn of Abbotshall, one of the eight ministers who formed the Secession Presbytery,1 left the Seceders and joined the Cameronians; and this convert, joined to M'Millan and some ruling elders, enabled a presbytery to be formed in 1743, under the name of the Reformed Presbytery. In 1745 they renewed the Covenants-never to be renewed again. From time to time they gave their testimony against what they conceived to be prevailing sins, but they never greatly multiplied among the people.2 The Episcopalians still continued to linger on, notwithstanding the terrors of proscription. They had greatly diminished, however, in numbers and strength. The Established Church had, in a great measure, proselytised the Episcopal districts of the north; but many of the gentry everywhere still clung to a Church which, even in its humiliation, had more imposing forms than Presbytery. Ever since the debates about the Usages, there had been a tendency among the Scotch Episcopalians to depart from the Liturgy of the Church of England, and to adopt what were considered more primitive forms. In 1764 a new Communion Office was published, and speedily came into use. It is based upon the First Service-Book of Edward VI., and the Liturgy of Laud; and Scotch Episcopalians delight to tell that in all its peculiarities it is rather Oriental than Roman. It consists of seven parts-A Eucharistia, or Thanksgiving: A Commemoration of our Lord's Words and Actions at the Institution: An Oblation of the Elements to God: An Invocation or Prayer for the Descent of the Holy Ghost, that so the Bread and Wine may become the Body and Blood of God's Son: A Prayer for the whole Church: The Lord's Prayer: The Communion.3 So it is arranged, we are told, in the most 1 He finally went back to the Established Church. ancient liturgies; but to common minds it appears to differ from the simple arrangements for the First Supper, as recorded by the Evangelists. On the 31st of January 1788, Charles Edward Stewart, grandson of James VII., died at Rome; and the Episcopal clergy, although the Cardinal York, brother of the deceased prince, still lived, believed themselves set free from their allegiance to the Stewarts. They resolved to pray for George III. by name, in the words of the English Liturgy. Some of the sturdy old Jacobites, however, regarded this as a surrender of principle. Bishop Rose of Dunblane, and the Episcopal minister of Montrose, refused compliance. "Well do I remember," says an old Jacobite, "the day on which the name of George was mentioned in the Morning Service for the first time-such blowing of noses-such significant hums: such half-suppressed sighs-such smothered groans and universal confusion, can hardly be conceived." Loyal, after the lapse of a century, they resolved to seek the protection of the law. Presbyterian ministers and Presbyterian laymen showed their catholicity by forwarding their wishes; and in 1792 they were relieved of the disabilities under which they had groaned.1 Popery still lingered in its ancient haunts. There were parishes in the Highlands and Islands where almost the entire population was Catholic. In truth, during the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth, while Presbyterians and Episcopalians were devouring one another, Papists were multiplying. There were some remote districts neglected by the Establishment, with no church and no minister, which 66 1 Skinner's Annals of Scotch Episcopacy. Stephen's History of the Church, vol. iv. There was a strange instance, at this crisis in the Episcopal Church's fate, of the way in which the apostolical succession may be secured. The Rev. James Brown of Montrose, mentioned in the text, put himself at the head of the discontented Jacobites, and, says Skinner, not only took upon himself the pastoral charge of them, but also made a most daring attempt to perpetuate the schism, by invading the rights of the episcopate itself; having the hardihood to repair to the village of Doune, in Perthshire, where Bishop Rose resided, in the extreme of dotage, and causing him to perform the office of consecration. When questioned soon after whether the case were so, the venerable prelate, in all the simplicity of childhood, made answer- 'My sister may have done it, but not I.'" (See Annals, p. 183.) This almost matches the story told by Eusebius of the man in the third century, who inveigled "three bishops, rustic and very simple men," into bad company, where they got intoxicated, and then persuaded them, while "in a crapulous state," to lay their hands on him. (See Hist. Eccles., lib. vi. chap. xliii.) the priests took possession of, and managed to proselytize the whole population. On a small scale, there was such a reaction as took place on so large a scale in other countries of Europe. But the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge had now been in existence for nearly a century; its teachers had opened their schools in many a sequestered hamlet; its itinerants had penetrated many a lonely glen, carrying with them Protestant truth; and Popery began again to give way. Some of the Hebridean chiefs, hitherto Romanists, became converts to Protestantism; and, exercising their patriarchal authority, drove their caterans before them to the parish church, that they might be converted too. Without justifying this forcible mode of conversion, we may believe that after all no great violence was done to the consciences of a people too rude to understand the theological dogmas which separate Papists from Protestants, and too devoted to their chief to question his authority even in matters of faith. The increase of dissent had produced a result which was not at first anticipated—it drained the treasury out of which the poor were provided for. The Reformed Church of Scotland had always made the infirm and the indigent a source of solicitude. The support of the poor was one of the great objects for which it claimed the Church's patrimony. Disappointed in this, it fell back upon the voluntary alms of the people. The apostles had recommended the first Christians to make collections for their poorer brethren when they met together on the first day of the week. Following the apostolic precept, the Church of Scotland has always given its worshippers an opportunity of making their alms as well as their prayers go up before God when they assemble in His house. The fund thus collected was managed by the minister and kirk-session, who took the whole poor of the parish under their care; and so long as there was no secession from the Established Church, this fund was generally found to be enough. There was no regular assessment for the poor before 1755. After that date, however, the heritors in parish after parish were obliged to raise a voluntary assessment among themselves, to supplement the deficiency in the sessions' 1 1755 is the year mentioned by Sir Henry Moncreiff in his Life of Dr Erskine (see the Appendix); and he is substantially correct. There were a few, and only a few, parishes in which there was an assessment for the poor prior to that date. Thus, in Jedburgh, there was an assessment in 1742; in Hamilton in 1750; but these were exceptional cases; and in the funds.1 Still, however, the minister and his elders bore the burden of administering the poor's-money; and in general the assessment of the heritors was comparatively small. The condition of many of the country churches at the close of the eighteenth century was very melancholy. In some the roof was in daily danger of falling down; in some there were no seats; in very many the earthen floor sent agues and rheumatisms into the feet of the worshippers. Some are described as much more like sheds for cattle than temples consecrated to God. The damp air which met the parishioner as he entered was like the noxious atmosphere of a burial vault, or an underground cellar. In stormy weather the wind came whistling through the broken panes, the wet streamed down the unlathed walls, or penetrating the roof, dripped upon the floor.1 It had long been so in Scotland. An Englishman, who visited our country shortly before the Union, and wrote an account of what he saw and heard, in order that his countrymen might know something of the unknown land with which they were so soon to be united, remarks, that while the churches in the towns were in general spacious and good, the churches in the country were like the subterranean caves in which the early Christians met to worship. At it was at the beginning of the century, so it was at the close. The eighteenth century was certainly the dark age of ecclesiastical architecture in Scotland. Scarcely a single example can be quoted of even a decent church being reared during its course. In the western Highlands there were many large parishes without churches at all, and they had been so since the time of the vast majority of parishes it was after 1755 before an assessment became necessary. See the Original Statistical Account, 1797. Anciently the kirk-sessions did much more than aliment the poor. They gave contributions to build bridges, to repair roads, to erect harbours, to support deserving students at college, etc.; for all these were considered as "pious uses. The following is a specimen from the accounts of the kirk-session of Crieff : 1704, Oct. 8. For the redemption of John Thomson, a slave, 3 O O 1 Original Statistical Account, vol. viii. p. 352; vol. x. p. 271; vol. xi. p. 129; vol. xv. p. 575. See also Report of Drs Hyndman, Dick, etc., appointed by the General Assembly 1760 to visit the Highlands and Islands, and the places where itinerants and catechists were employed. (Scots Magazine, vol. xxviii. pp. 457, 513, 573.) Reformation.1 The heritors who held the teinds first starved the Church, and then made its miserable condition the pretext for abandoning it. Though an act of parliament, passed soon after the Revolution, made it imperative upon the heritors of every parish to erect a school and provide a salary for the schoolmaster, in many parishes, especially in the Highlands and Islands, the law had been evaded. In 1758 the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge represented to the General Assembly that there were in the Highlands no fewer than a hundred and seventy-five parishes without schools. This representation did good; it called attention to the evil, and led, not only to the establishment of many schools in destitute localities, but to the erection of about forty chapels in districts far distant from any parish-church. But everywhere the parish schoolmasters were miserably ill paid. It was only by holding a great plurality of offices they could live. In many parishes they were at once schoolmaster, session-clerk, precentor, beadle, and, in a few cases, grave-digger.1 The Scotch have always been regarded as a peculiarly religious people. This is partly to be ascribed to the national character. There is a native earnestness in the Scottish mind. It is serious, almost solemn. Hence religious ideas can easily be engrafted upon it. But it is also partly to be ascribed to the national history. For the last three hundred years, the national history has been almost exclusively ecclesiastical. The old feuds with England were gone; more bitter feuds arose among the Scots themselves. Since Knox lifted up his voice at St Andrews, there has been a constant struggle with Popery, with Prelacy, with patronage. Nor has this contest been carried 1 The commissioners quoted above say in their report "The want of churches in parishes legally erected, which is so common in the western Highlands and Islands, makes a considerable addition to the other disadvantages of these countries. The inhabitants are obliged to attend divine service in the open fields, or in houses which, from their inconveniency and meanness, are improper for the purposes of religion. The aged and infirm cannot well support this attendance, and the appearance of a public religion is destroyed. In almost all those counties where churches are now wanting we saw the ruins of decent edifices, which had been anciently devoted to sacred use. These had been built before the Reformation. We observe with concern, that since that period, in many parishes, the house of God hath continued to lie waste." Scots Magazine, vol. xxiii. p. 576. 1 In the Statistical Account of Heriot it is said of the schoolmaster:"He is also precentor, session-clerk, beadle, and gravedigger, and yet his whole income does not exceed £8 per annum." (Original Statistical Account of Scotland, Heriot, 1795.) |