A HISTORIC SCOTTISH CHURCH.*
THE historic value of this book lies in the fact that it is in a sense an epitome of the history of the Church of Scotland, and its author, Dr. J. Cameron Lees, has attained the great success with which he must be credited through his having the good sense or the literary tact to allow that history to speak for itself through events and the spoken and written utterances of pro- minent Scotch personages. There are more picturesque eccle- siastical buildings, and still more picturesque ecclesiastical ruins, than St. Giles's Church, Edinburgh, notably Dean Stanley's "mine own St. Andrews ;" but there is none which is so closely associated with the storm and stress of Scotch religions and ecclesiastical life, with the labours and the triumphs of John Knox, and with the con- flict between Presbyterianism and Episcopacy. It even played its part—the part, as a rule, of the patient sufferer— in the struggles of Scotch patriotism. Nor is the latest chapter in the history of St. Giles's the least important. Up till within a few years ago, it was internally in a state of scandalous disrepair,—due, it must be allowed, to Scotch Presbyterian irreverence as much as to municipal carelessness. Under the pretence of "restoration," and between 1829 and 1834, "the ancient monuments of distinguished ecclesiastics and states- men that adorned the walls, were broken to pieces to make bedding for the floor. Even the monument erected by his countrymen to the Regent Murray was destroyed, the sepul- chres of the dead were desecrated, tombstones broken to pieces, lead coffins were taken away, and, it is believed, sold; and cartloads of ornamental stones were removed, some of which still adorn the rockeries of suburban gardens." When Dr. Lees was a young man, he preached before the Lord High Commissioner in St. Giles's on the text, "How dreadful is this place !"—a text which that dignitary regarded as singularly appropriate. The exterior of the building has, indeed, been irretrievably ruined, but Dr. Lees, as Minister of St. Giles's, has seen the work of genuinely aasthetic internal restoration accom- plished by the late Dr. William Chambers, the publisher, and one of the most public-spirited of Edinburgh citizens. Dr. Lees's hope is that the hand of time may deal gently with St. Giles's ; and as the story of the church is "the story of Scotland's poetry, romance, religion—the story of her progress through cloud and sunshine, the story of her advance from barbarism to the culture and civilisation of the present day," that hope will surely be realised.
The history of " Sanct Geilles' Kirk" takes one back to the time when Edinburgh was "a hamlet of Angles clustering
* St. Giles's, Ecitnburgh, Church, College, and Cathedral, from the Earliest Times to the Present Dag. By J. Cameron Lees, Di)., LL.D., RBA. Soot., Minister of St. Giles's. Edinburgh and London W. and R. Chambers. 1889. together on the slope that leads down from the gate of the Castle, and the sides of the ridge that lies between it and Edinburgh." The hamlet which developed into the capital of Scotland had, in 854, a parish church called " Edwinsburch " which belonged to Lindisfarne, a monastery established by the monks of Iona. This seems to have been the origin of St. Giles's, which as far back as 1150 is found in the posses- sion of a monastic house. For a time it seems to have been attached to various monasteries, and was superintended by a vicar. It suffered greatly in the early wars between Scotland and England, and about the end of the fourteenth century was burned by the English along with Edinburgh itself. Only after it was rebuilt can St. Giles's really be said to have a history, "one of the oldest written specimens of the Scottish tongue" being the contract entered into between the Provost of Edinburgh and certain masons in 1387 to rebuild the chapels on the south side of the nave. For a period St. Giles's was attached to the Abbey of Scone, having been given to the monks as compensation for the damage done to their crops on the occasion of the coronation of Robert III. But St. Giles's naturally grew in importance with Edinburgh, especially after it became the depository of the arm-bone of its patron saint, which was brought from France by William Preston of Gortoun. Dr. Lees has been able to bring to light the Papal Bulls of 1467 and 1470, removing St. Giles's from under the authority of the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and erecting it into an independent Collegiate Church, with a provost, a curate, a minister of the choir, a sacristan, fourteen prebendaries, and four chorister-boys. For a time, however, the church and its incumbents were poorly supported by the public, and all sorts of curious devices were tried to raise the wind. Still, it gradually grew in importance, attracting to it as patrons or visitors various eminent persons, including Walter Chepman, who holds in the history of Scotch printing the position that Caxton does in England, and who built a chapel at his own expense. Flodden Field was—up to the Reformation period—the Black Friday in the history of St. Giles's. James IV. was the patron of St. Giles's, and when the news came of his defeat, the church was filled with wailing women.
Dr. Lees shows great judgment in his treatment of the immediately pre-Reformation and post-Reformation periods of his Church's history. The great Scotch ecclesiastical change came very much in the character of a storm, so far as St. Giles's was concerned, and the conflict between the Roman Catholics and the Lords of the Congregation is embraced between 1557, in which year the arm-bone of the patron saint was stolen, and March 31st, 1560, when the last Mass was said. The Lords of the Congregation obtained possession of St. Giles's, and " purged " it of " idolatry ;" but it is uncertain even yet whether they had the bulk of the laity with them. At all events, when regard is had to a very recent event in the history of Edinburgh, it is rather curious to find the leaders of the reforming party declining to favour the idea of ascertaining by means of a plaiscite on which side in the religious strife the majority of the people were. Of the reforming preachers with whose memory St. Giles's is most associated, the best known are John Willock, John Craig, and John Knox. There, towards the close of 1572, Knox preached his last sermon, the occasion being the installation of a successor to himself in the person of James Lawson, previously Sub-Principal of Aber- deen. Having preached it, he went home to die.
St. Giles's was the head-quarters of the Kirk in its bitter quarrel with James VI.--subsequently First of England—which culminated in the disastrous attempt of his son, Charles I., to establish Prelacy in Scotland, and the throwing hy Jenny Geddes of her cutty-stool at the head of Dean Hanna when he began reading the new service-book,—a story which Dr. Lees is disposed to regard as authentic. In the time of Crom- well, the people of St. Giles's were horrified by the spectacle of Independent officers entering the pulpit armed with swords and pistols. Besides, "great numbers of that damnable sect, the Quakers,' made their appearance in St. Giles's, and interrupted the sermons, to the great annoyance of the preachers, whose cup of bitterness was full." For six years the Presbyterian communion was not administered in St. Giles's. Then came the Restoration and persecution, and finally the Revolution—with peace, dullness, dirt, and dilapidation. Among the eminent Scotch ministers associated with the post-Revolution period of Scotch history, are Carstares, the adviser of William III., the
convivial and Evangelical Dr. Alexander Webster, and Dr. Hugh Blair, whose sermons Samuel Johnson loved, "though the dog is a Scotchman and a Presbyterian, and everything he should not be." Dr. Lees's book, although he, too, is a Scotch- man and a Presbyterian, is not loaded 'with stories good, bad, and indifferent, like so many similar works executed by countrymen of his own. This is not the least of its many merits.
Previous page
