OLD CHURCH-LIFE IN SCOTLAND.* THE author of this interesting, excellent,
and unpretentious book is the minister of the parish of Manchline, and he very truly says:--
"Stith a centre of classic ground as the old kirkyard of Manchline will scarcely be found in all Scotland ; for, in addition to the imme- diate surroundings, you look out from the church.tower on Mossgiel and Balloohmyle, the Ayr and the Lugar, the banks of the Afton, and the braes of Doan ; and in the churchyard lie many that were known and endeared to Burns. Two of his children are buried there, within the railed enclosure belonging to the Armours. Gavin Hamilton sleeps there too, in another railed enclosure on the left- hand as you enter the church. A few paces behind Mr. Hamilton's burial•place is the grave of Mary Morrison ; and close by the side of her grave is the resting-place of Holy Willie. Elsewhere in the churchyard lie the remains of Poosie Nanoy, Racer Jess, the bletherin' bodie, Richmond the clerk, and a host of others that were either the companions of the poet or the subjects of his songs."
But while Manchline is, of course, most interesting for the memories of Burns which it enshrines, it is neither more nor less than a typical Scotch village—what Disraeli would have termed a Scotch microcosm—and as such Mr. Edgar writes of it. This book consisted, in the first instance, of lectures delivered to his parishioners in 1884, on " Our Parish Church and Parish Records, from 1669 to the Present Time." Mr. Edgar, having thought of publishing certain of these, compared the records of his own parish with a number of others in Ayrshire, and in various ways has lengthened and strengthened his original writings. He has not dealt with either theological movement or ecclesiastical con- troversy in Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies, nor has he republished—this, we think, is a mistake —his lectures on the Church's dealings with education and the poor. But he gives a very pleasant and accurate picture of Scotch Church-life iu the old parishes of Scotland, so far as it was represented and directed by the. Kirk Sessions. He tells us as much as we need to know of churches, manses, church- yards, public worship, communion services, and, above all, church discipline.
The early chapters of this book illustrate the poverty, which only religions earnestness prevented from being sordid, of Scotch Presbyterianism when it emerged victorious—but land- less—from its struggles with Papacy and Prelacy. An Ameri- can lady who visited Manchline a few years ago, described the present church as " a barn-like place." Mr. Edgar does not deny this impeachment, although he mentions the fact that "in 1837 it was described in a book (the New Statistical Account of Scot- land) , which may be called a national work, as " the most elegant church in this part of Ayrshire." If Manchline Church is a barn in 1885, what must it not have been in 1685 ? Up till recently the progress of ecclesiastical architecture in Scotland might be accurately described by saying that congregations pulled down their barns and built greater. "It was not till 1775 that fixed tables and seats for communion were erected. Previous to that date the centre of the area was an open space, filled on communion days with removable tables and benches. And at a still earlier date there were, strictly speaking, no sittings at all. Pews are of modern origin. People at one time either stood and knelt by turns during the service, or they brought stools with them to church for their own accommodation." Again, "in 1703 there was no seat for the minister's family, and we may be very sure that when such was the case there would be many other families in the parish without seats in church." What sort of houses the Scotch ministers lived in two hundred years ago may be judged from the official description of an Ayrshire manse in 1705 as " a hall with a laigh chamber and another high chamber, a barn, and a brewhouse." We have a strong suspicion that Scotch church-going people consoled themselves for the poverty of their surroundings by bouts of self-indulgence. The orgies of "The Holy Fair " are founded on fact, as Mr. Edgar admits and, speaking of the ordinary and orthodox communion services, he says :—" The wine used long ago was claret, and the quantity of it consumed at a sacrament was enormous. It was at the cost • Old Church-Life in Scotland : Lectures on Kirk Session and _Presbytery Records. By Andrew Edgar, Minister:4 Meacham,. London and Paisley ; Alexander Gardner. 1885.
of the city that the communion elements for the churches of Edinburgh were in the sixteenth century provided, and in the Dean of Guild's accounts for 1590 the following entries occur 1st communion, ane puncheon of claret wine, £36 10s. 9d. ; nine gallons mair, £16 16s. ; 2d communion, ane puncheon of claret wine, cost 235 6s. ; two gallons mair, £14 6s.' Coming down to the times of the Covenant, we find that in 1641 there was paid by the town of Glasgow, to Robert Campbell and others, for wyne to the communion,' the sum of £84 10s. 8d. ; while, in 1656, there was purchased by the same liberal Corporation, for the same good purpose, a hogshead of wine at the cost of £160." The Covenanters were evidently no more total abstainers than Cromwell's Ironsides. Not that they were what one of Dean Ramsay's heroes calls " Drucken religions bodies ;" they were merely moderate drinkers—on a.
large scale.
Fully more than a half of this book is devoted to the well- known subject of Church Discipline. Knox's system was a theocracy of an almost perfect character ; and under it the Kirk Sessions of the Scotch parishes looked after the life and conduct of their parishioners so carefully, that Kirkton, the Church historian, was able to say in 1650 :—" No scandalous person could live, no scandal could be concealed, in all Scotland, so strict a correspondence there was between ministers and con- gregations." As everybody knows, Burns was " disciplined" for what most legal authorities now consider to have been only his Scotch marriage with Jean Armour. Bathe ScotchKirk Sessions, in the height of their power, and before they became lax or latitudinarian, passed censure on whatever they regarded as an offence. In 1703, a woman confessed to the Session of Mauch- line that she "was almost washing yarn on the Sabbath ;" but she wished to exculpate herself of such a dreadful approxima- tion to sin by alleging a mistake in her reckoning of the days of
the week. Again:— "The Kirk Session held it inexcusable that any person in this parish should not know Sunday from Saturday. Strange to say, a similar mistake was made by a married couple in Mauchline parish so recently as 1777. One John Hunter and his wife went to the harvest rig and cut corn till they were checked by a neighbour that was better versed in the calendar. In 1780 a strange complaint, and an equally strange counter-complaint, were sent in to the Kirk Session. The complaint was by a man who alleged that a woman whom be named had paid him a visit in men's clothes, and told him several falsehoods. The counter-complaint of the woman was that her accuser had been guilty of sundry immoralities, particularly of profaning the Sabbath by employing a barber on that day.' For this particular offence the barber was, of course, as much to blame as the man whose beard had been trimmed, and indeed rather more so, for he had previously been brought to book for the same offence, and had been made to sign a bond, which still stands in the Session records, that he would never again exercise his craft on the Sabbath. But what signifies a bond to a man without a conscience ? The barber had been too long accustomed to do evil to take kindly to well-doing. Both the restraints and the services of the Sabbath were irksome to him. In 1781 he was reported to have become negligent in his attendance on ordinances,' and the minister was instructed to speak to him on the subject. in 1784 his negli- gence was again commented on, and he was named in the Session along with a gentleman widely known from his connection with Barns, as requiring to be admonished."
In the parish of Lumphanan, "a man, in 1785, was taken to task by the Kirk Session for going to see his mother on a Sabbath-day, and carrying a stone of meal to her. He refused to admit that that conduct was any breach of the Sabbath, and for his obstinacy in maintaining that view he was, the present minister writes to me, solemnly excommunicated." William Fisher, so dreadfully immor- talised by Burns as "Holy Willie," figures in this book. But we are rather glad to find he was not so black as he was painted. It seems from the Mauchline records that he was censured for drunkenness, but not for appropriating money intended for the poor. The equally famous "Daddy Auld," too, seems to have been a sincere if also severe Evangelical minister ; and Mr. Edgar says quite truly, " The Sabbatarianism of Mr. Auld and the Kirk Session of Mauchline, between 1784 and 1788, was part of the religions spirit of the age ; and if that Sabbatarianism seems to ns rigid and oppressive, illiberal and inexpedient, it must be allowed to have at least the virtue of logical con- sistency." Readers of Burns will do well to remember that his " Daddy Aalds " and " Holy Willies " are not photographs, but works of art, and owe as much to his imagination as—in a very different way—do his Marks and his Nannies, his Chloes and his Phyllises.
Previous page
