BACKSLIDINGS OF THE FREE KIRK.
To those who remember the Cameronian antipathy to ecclesiastical adornments that used to pervade the West of Scotland, "Free St. John's Church" in Glasgow, recently opened, suggests a cu- rious train of thought. The genuine old Cameronian or Macmillanite could not be persuaded that divine ordinances administered within a house built with hands possessed any efficacy. The bleak hill-side was his favourite place of worship. Even the Establishment con- formists insisted upon a meagre style of ecclesiastical building. Scarcely half-a-dozen years have elapsed since the introduction of a bit of stained glass into one of the windows of St. Enoch's Kirk set the half of Glasgow by the ears for a fortnight ; and over the whole of Scotland, the recent practice of terminating the gable-peaks of churches and chapels with a cross to distin, guish them from barns, has occasioned much sighing and groaning.
But now, even the pure and rigid Free Kirk has contracted the vain and frivolous taste for Papistical adornments. "Free St. John's" is not merely decorated with a beautiful stained win- dow, remarkable for the elegance of taste" and "richness and harmony of colour" it displays : it is more bedizened with graven images than the Roman Catholic chapel in Clyde Street.
Effigies of Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Brown are placed over the large window to the East of the door-way ; and over the window to the West of it are effigies of Dr. M'Farlane and Dr. Gordon ; while over the great entrance door-way, considerably higher up, are effigies of Luther, Knox, Calvin, and Melville. On the West side of the church are the Marquis of Argyle and Wickliffe, and on the East, Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart." These area the Saints of the new Catholic Church in Scotland.
The Scotch Covenanter was something intermediate between the believer in Walhalla and him who had imbibed all the mild- ness of Christianity. It is scarcely possible to avoid fancying that his grim spirit may still be borne about in the Scotch mists once tenanted by Ossian s spirit of Loda. The stern concentrated indignation of the ghost on beholding the vain adornments or the churches reared by men who call themselves his especial de- scendants and representatives, must be terrific. The very shabbles - that did the work on Magus Muir or kept the pass at Bothwell Brig must rattle in their sheaths from indignation ; and many a broad blue bonnet will be pulled more deeply over the hard fea- tures beneath it, as the old peasant looks away from " the fearless fuleries" with which his pastors have allowed their church-walls to be desecrated.
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