Scottish Church; and it ought not to be overlooked by those who are disposed to blame her for inefficiency or remissness. It is not to be expected, nay it is impossible, that the natural results of all these disadvantages could be removed at once. It ought to be satisfactory that they are now acknowledged, and that there exists an ardent desire to restore all things to a proper footing, and to use every fitting opportunity for this purpose.

We beg, however, not to be misunderstood as if wishing to palliate any abuse in the Church. We are willing to acknowledge with all humility, while our love to her is unabated, her various backslidings and shortcomings. Our very object in now writing is to draw attention to some of these, and to suggest means for their removal. Among her difficulties we must regret a want of sufficient unity of action in her clergy. This is to be deplored, because they are a small body, and differences among them are the more unseemly. Yet in many things this is to be attributed to their isolation rather than to any real or essential difference of opinion. Each is thus compelled to act very much for himself, without the advantage of consultation with his brethren. In this way evils once begun are perpetuated, without almost any consciousness of their existence. At the same time, we must acknowledge that some slight differences of opinion do unhappily exist. All do not equally see the necessity of consistently and firmly acting up to the principles of the Church, and carrying out her system; and this is the foundation of much of her weakness. Others again from a too great facility of disposition give way to custom, where their better judgment would incline them to follow the wiser teaching of the Church. Then also there is an established system in Scotland, which is inconsistent with Scriptural and Catholic teaching, but the people have become so familiarised with it, that they readily acquiesce in the miserable traditions to which it has given rise and this is of all, perhaps, the greatest foundation of the Church's past weakness. But let us be thankful that it is rapidly losing its influence.

For the present we mean to confine our observations to the Burial of the Dead, and the irregularities in an Ecclesiastical point of view connected with that solemn act. Here we would, however, at the outset, remark that the trying affliction of surviving relatives renders it more difficult in this than in any other case to depart from established habits, however absurd, and however gross the outrage which they inflict on the principles of the Church. They are thus, to the great

injury of the living, permitted to continue. It requires a courage, mingled with courtesy, on the part of the clergy, with which every one is not gifted, to act with firmness and consistency in such a case, especially when they are aware that their people can point to other estimable men among their brethren, who quietly follow the prevailing usages without seeking to direct the practice in conformity with the teaching and discipline of the Church. This also shows the necessity that there is for the clergy to act together; and to be directed by principles, not by fashion, in their official conduct.

It is well known to all who are acquainted with the laws and history of the Scotch Establishment that it repudiates all religious service in connexion with the Burial of the Dead. In former days the members of this body exhibited the keenest hostility to the Church and her services. Nor was this to be wondered at. They had superseded her in her property and position; and as her adherents were still numerous and influential, it was their interest to excite prejudice against her principles, that they might thereby, as rapidly as possible, reduce the people to the presbyterian obedience. They, therefore, threw every obstacle that they possibly could in her way. Nor do we much blame them. For in those days the principles of religious toleration were but little understood. The following fact which we have learned from a very old member of the Church, illustrates the state of feeling on the one side, and the relative strength of the two principles. The Rev. Mr Erskine, who was incumbent of Muthill from 1734 to 1783, was on one occasion performing the Burial Service publicly at Auchterarder, when the presbyterians raised a riot, and began to throw stones with a view to interrupt the service and force a retreat. But there were many members of the Church present, and others in the town flocked to the protection of their pastor, and in a short time, by the active use of the same weapons of warfare, compelled the enemy to retreat, and the service was finished without farther interruption. So recently as the beginning of the present century, when the late schismatical minister at Perth, soon after he came there, made an attempt to perform the service publicly, the presbyterians used the same solid arguments against it, as in the case of Mr Erskine, but with a very different result. Mr Skeate was obliged to retreat ingloriously, and did not for many years afterwards incur a similar risk.

In consequence of this hostile feeling in part, but still more in consequence of the necessity for concealment during the period of

state persecution, it became the prevailing custom in Scotland to read the Burial Service at the time of placing the body in the coffin an act which is there designated the chesting.' Forgetting the necessity which led to this unmeaning ceremony, and overlooking the fact that the Burial Service when thus performed in private, loses much of its significance, the people have become wedded to it, as a traditional usage, with which they are unwilling to part. They speak of wishing to do all that is right, and just to follow the usual custom, without considering whether that custom be good or bad. There is often, too, a fear of exciting sectarian irreverence—a fear which is fostered by the small numbers of Churchmen in a given locality, and their reluctance publicly to confess Christ before men. This mode of hiding the candle of the Church under a bushel, of keeping her services in the background, has done her an infinite deal of mischief. The mass of the people are thus kept in ignorance of her teaching and her rites; and the necessary result is, that they look upon her as a mass of corruption, or as some undefinable organisation of popery. Catholic truth and catholic services, as opposed to the errors and superstitions of modern Rome, they cannot comprehend, because they have not had the opportunity of either hearing the services, or being instructed in their sacred import. We have heard related of the late Rev. A. Cruickshank of Muthill a characteristic anecdote, which strongly illustrates the unmeaning character of the service when performed in private, and the superstitious bigotry of the Presbyterians of a former generation. An infirm parishioner of his had been placed with an old relative, that she might be properly attended to; and after being bed-ridden for two years, she died. Mr Cruickshank attended at the chesting, as usual, to perform the service, there being few present besides the old nurse. The old woman listened with patience to the service till he came to the words 'earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,' but when he took up the plate containing a little earth, and began to cast it upon the body as he repeated these words, she seized him violently by the arm, exclaiming 'Hold, hold, I say, ye're to play nane o' your cantrips here, sir.' It was only after assuring her that he was not using any incantations to raise the dead, that she would allow the service to proceed. For he fancied that she was heartily sick of her labours as a nurse, and was afraid lest he should, by bringing back the spirit of the departed, renew them!

But this gross ignorance and superstitious hostility to the services

error.

of the Church have long since passed away. There is at least a predisposition to hear them calmly; and generally speaking the Presbyterians are very much affected on first listening to the Burial Service. They seem equally pleased and surprised to find in it nothing to which they need object. A few of the more ignorant, or bigotted, may stand aloof and shake their heads, at what they consider, at best, but an useless mummery, but in almost every such case the persons are eaten up with self-conceit, and wish to exhibit to their neighbours their greater zeal and their readier perception of The worst, however, that we ever heard any one say of the service was—'Well, I can see nothing bad in that, but I cannot perceive the use of it.' How could he 'except some one had taught' him! One of the first times that the late revered Bishop of Brechin performed this service in public, there were present all the dissenting ministers of the city. Two of them stood somewhat aloof as if afraid of touching the unclean thing, yet anxiously listening to every word, and when the service was concluded, they entered into conversation. One was heard to say-' Well, after all what is there objectionable in that?' and the other to reply, I can see nothing wrong. They had neither of them probably ever seen a book of common prayer, or read the burial service, or they might long before have discovered its unobjectionable character. They were blind guides leading the blind, and no wonder if both had fallen into the ditch of a humanly devised system; and the Church having never fully exhibited to them the bright torch of the Divine light entrusted to her keeping, cannot be said to be guiltless of their wandering into error.

But to return: we have often heard presbyterians, after they had the opportunity of witnessing the performance of the Burial Service, express great admiration of it, and strongly condemn their own irreverent mode of committing the remains of their departed relatives to the ground. They cannot help feeling the justice of the English sarcasm, that the Scotch bury their dead as they would a dog, without giving utterance to a sentiment of hope, and without one word of prayer and admonition. Such was indeed the principle upon which the Scotch Kirk long acted; but it is a principle wholly repugnant to the better feelings of the devout mind. The practice has been for some time altered. The dread of the services of the Church has given way before a desire to imitate her practice.* The fashion now It is repugnant to the laws of the Scotch Kirk to use any religious ceremony, or say any prayer, with a view to the consecration of a burial ground.

is to distribute a glass of wine and a morsel of cake to each of the guests, just before the procession begins to move of from the house. Before and after this distribution a grace is said; but this grace is invariably converted into a long prayer adapted to the melancholy occasion, with more or less of good taste, according to the talent and disposition of the performer. In all this there is evidently a desire to approximate towards the practice of the Church as far as the system will permit.

It is in vain, therefore, that the more fashionable of the clergy, especially in the metropolis, defend the continuance of the old practice, which was the result of a stern necessity, on the plea that the public performance of the service would give needless offence to the Presbyterians. We have had such ample experience as to convince us that this is a perfectly groundless fear, and that, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, its public performance would give great satisfaction.

The most plausible argument used by those who act in this manner, contrary to the intention of the Church and the meaning of the service itself, is that the burial grounds now belong to the Presbyterians, and that the members of the Church are still so far under proscription, that they have no right to these burial grounds, otherwise than to cast their dead into the pit dug for them! This is, however, a very great mistake, if it is not the excuse merely for keeping the Church in the background, by those who have not the courage openly to profess her faith before men. The churchyard is not in Scotland, as in England, the freehold of the Established minister. It is here held in trust by the heritors, or landed proprietors, for behoof of the whole parish; and as the services of the Church are now tolerated and fully sanctioned by law, her clergy and people have a legal right to bury their dead with their own religious rites. Any neglect of her system, or withholding of her services from any such notion, is a gratuitous and totally uncalled for degradation of the Church in the eyes of the people, the more blameworthy in that it proceeds from her clergy, who are To do this is a punishable offence, which the General Assembly has, on various occasions, treated accordingly. But in this liberal age there are young men who think the General Assembly hath in this matter erred. It was only last summer that one such very composedly assumed episcopal powers, and contrary to the laws by which he is bound, delivered himself of a long prayer, with the full purpose and intent of thereby consecrating a burial ground! This was done to please a member of the Church more pious than well informed, who was as well satisfied with this act of sinful presumption as if the ground had been actually consecrated by the Bishop!