The style adopted was early English; and being one of the first edifices constructed in that style since the revival of it in Scotland, it is scarcely amenable to severe criticism. The internal arrangement, however, has some faults. The space allotted within the altar rails is much too limited; and the two unseemly boxes, elevated to a preposterous height (nearly eleven feet) on each side of the chancel, in one of which the officiating priest offers the prayers over the heads of the congregation, and from the other delivers his sermons, are highly objectionable. The pews, also, have too much of the old style of exclusiveness, and in some respects are badly arranged, as those in the north and south aisles, instead of facing the altar, in correspondence with the central rows, and thus directing, as it were, the devotion of the occupants to the one centre of adoration which should unite the worship of the whole congregation, face each other across the centre of the Church; an arrangement as disagreeable to the rest of the worshippers, as inconsistent with genuine Church principles. These incongruities struck us particularly on examining the Church, but they excite no surprise, when we consider how little attention was paid to such matters in this country when the edifice was erected, and might be corrected at a trifling expense. And in justice to the liberality of those who, as we have been informed, promptly subscribed a large sum for the completion of the building, a churchman may be well satisfied to adopt, with regard to it, the Horatian maxim of contentment Ubi plura nitent-non ego paucis We must not, however, omit to mention the chancel window of three lights, which is filled with handsome stained glass, executed by Warrington of London, and erected in 1846, at the expense of the principal members of the congregation. As before mentioned, Mr Inglis succeeded Bishop Drummond in this parish, and was the last legally appointed clergyman, having been deposed by the Privy Council after the Revolution, although his flock never left him. He had several curates or assistants, as appears by the record previously quoted. In his time the town of Muthill was burnt, on the 28th of January 1716, by King James's troops, under the command of the Earl of Mar, in their march to Crieff, after the battle of Sheriffmuir, that it might not give shelter * Where much is excellent, I will not be offended with a few blemishes. to the enemy. At the same time, the bridge of Crieff was broken down, to impede their march. Mr Inglis died in 1732, and was buried in the church-yard. In the porch of the new church is a Latin epitaph to his memory. A vacancy of two years then occurred, during which Mr James Lauder, who had long been schoolmaster and session-clerk, acted as reader of the Scriptures. He joined Prince Charles Edward in 1745, and was subsequently imprisoned for a long time. In 1734 the Rev. William Erskine succeeded, and held the charge for forty-nine years, many of which were years of danger, difficulty, and persecution. We find the following entries in a baptismal register kept by him : : '1746. "The confusion of the times, occasioned by a civil war raging in this country, and the persecution that followed in great severity, often driving me from attending my charge, make a chasm here that cannot now be filled up; for, though many baptisms were performed, the inserting of them was not attended to in proper time, but some room is left for such as may be recovered. '1750. 'W. E.' Helen, lawful daur. of Andrew Moir and Ann Grey, in Crofthead of Farmtown, born the 18th, was baptized the 20th day of March 1750. 'N.B. With such excessive severity were the penal laws executed at this time, that Andrew Moir having neglected to keep his appointment with me at my own house this morning, and following me to Lord Rollo's house of Duncruh, we could not take the child into a house, but I was obliged to go under the cover of trees in one of Lord Rollo's parks, to prevent our being discovered, and baptise the child there.' Mr Erskine was obliged, for four years, to wander about from place to place, and remain in concealment, and could only in secret visit his people, by whom he was much beloved. Once a-month he went to a place called 'The Broom,' near Dunning, where on festivals there were from twenty to thirty communicants. This congregation afterwards met at Gask House. Occasionally, too, in dangerous times, the Episcopalians of Strathearn, who were hunted 'like a partridge on the mountains,' assembled at a retired spot among the hills, in the parish of Maderty, near to the present situation of Tri nity College. The Presbyterians talk loudly of their persecuted conventicles among the mountains; but mark the difference: They went, with arms in their hands, to preach sedition, rebellion, and violence! the Episcopalians in the peace and quietness of Apostolical worship! In Mr Erskine's time, the Drummond family made over to the Episcopal communion at Muthill a piece of land at the east end of the village, including, we believe, the site of the present church; but owing to the confusion of the times, themselves not being in actually legal possession of their own estate, and the Church not being recognised by the existing government, a regular charter could not be granted, though such was promised when the state of the country should be more settled, and permit a regular transaction to take place. In the meantime, the affair of 1745 occurred, which again dispersed the Drummond family; and the donation has never been completed.* Mr Erskine died in 1783, aged 74, and was buried in the churchyard. There is a mural tablet to his memory in the porch of the new Church. Mr Erskine was succeeded by the Rev. Alexander Cruickshank, who was ordained as assistant to the Right Rev. John Alexander, Bishop of Dunkeld, in the parochial cure of Alloa. To that charge Mr Cruickshank succeeded in 1776, and in 1783 was appointed to Muthill, which he held till his death in 1834, a period of fifty-one years his own and his predecessor's incumbency thus exactly completing a century, and three successive incumbents having lived to see nine occupants of the British throne. When Mr Cruickshank entered the ministry, the penal laws had become nearly a dead letter, but the Church was still in a depressed and impoverished state; and although the ferocity of the laws was happily lulled to sleep, vulgar prejudice was unabated. Once in a month Mr Cruickshank went to Gask House, where a congregation met him, which formerly had assembled near Dunning. After divine service, the whole congregation were hospitably entertained by Mr Oliphant, whose family were then true and faithful members of the Church. 'Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur ab illis.'t *From the information of the late Mr Cruickshank, who derived it from his predecessor, Mr Erskine, to whom the gift was made. ↑ Times are changed, and our people are changed with them. Mr Cruickshank died November 12, 1834, in the 83d year of his age, and was buried in the churchyard. A mural tablet in the porch. of the new church records his virtues. He was succeeded at Muthill by his great-nephew, the Rev. Alexander Lendrum, M.A., who had previously been for a short time his assistant. TO THE EDITOR OF THE CHURCHMAN'S REVIEW. DEAR SIR,-Most of your readers, as well as myself, have been, I presume, solicited, within the last few weeks, to lend their support to a new religious league, which styles itself, 'The Sabbath Alliance.' It appears to me, therefore, that the following inquiry into the law of the Sabbath and the Lord's Day, may be neither unseasonable nor unserviceable. Among Churchmen I presume there will be little difference of sentiment in regard to its leading proposition. For any minor peculiarity of argument or illustration, the writer alone is responsible.-I am, Dear Mr EDITOR, with much esteem, your faithful Servant, PRESBYTER. SABBATH AND SUNDAY. PART I. THAT Sabbath and Sunday are distinct institutions—the obligation of the former ceasing with Judaism, the obligation of the latter created by Christianity-is the fact I aim at establishing in the present essay. And I offer with this view the following arguments :— I. The typical character of the Sabbath is an index to its limited duration. There is not a Between the Law and the Gospel the great difference is, that the one is full of types, the other of corresponding realities. I instance in particular the Christian principles of sacrificial atonement and spiritual agency. Both of these are clearly revealed in the letter of the New Testament: they are concealed in the letter, and only dimly foreshadowed in the ceremonial, of the Old. word in the Books of Moses respecting the great sacrifice for sin; but there is a complex system of animal oblations in which the doctrine lay. There is not a word announcing the purifying Spirit who was even then present in holy hearts, and who was to be shed forth, in the plenitude of His grace, in the latter days; but there is a vast variety of cleansings and ablutions, all pointing to the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost.' Just so there is no express revelation in the Mosaic Scriptures of a life beyond the grave; but that great Christian tenet was, in manner analogous, embedded in the rest of the Sabbath. The meaning and final cause of the appointment are announced by St Paul: Sabbaths are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ There remaineth, therefore, a Sabbatism for the people of God' (Col. ii. 17, Heb. iv. 4-10). And indeed, if this relation be not allowed, it follows that the elder dispensation was unfurnished with any type of immortality. If, however, the Sabbath, in its principal aspect, was a type, we must believe that, like other types, it merged in Christian realities, and vanished at the advent of the Gospel, as the stars at the approach of day. When our Saviour died, the Jewish sacrifices (as matter of obligation) ceased; when the Holy Ghost was given, the Jewish washings became worthless; and just so, when life and immortality were brought to light,' the use of the type was at an end-it lost its propriety, it lost its meaning with the others. And if to offer Jewish oblations, or to practise Jewish purifyings, would be to avow our ignorance of the sacrifice on the cross and the gift of the Spirit; so in the same way, and for exactly the same reason, to keep the Jewish Sabbath as the Jews were bidden keep it, would be, under present circumstances, to confess ourselves in the dark in regard to the promised rest of eternity. We have the thing, and so we do not need the sign of the thing. We have the doctrine, and so we can dispense with the type. The Sabbath was the silent legal index to the evangelical tenet of immortality. But, of course, the greater has superseded the less, the clearer the more obscure. The same development of divine mercy which has swept away bloody sacrifices and ritual washings, has swept away the Sabbatic rest. The latter institution, being homogeneous, was also contemporaneous, with its associates; of like kind and use, it was equally obnoxious to repeal; and having, like other types, lasted its time and served its purpose, like them, too, passed away. II. In maintaining that the Sabbath was peculiarly Jewish, and that the Lord's day is peculiarly Christian-that as the Jews had no Lord's day so we have no Sabbath-we can allege, however, not only the general plea that the Sabbath belonged to a wide system of types which has been confessedly abolished, but also the specific presump |