PREFACE.
HE following Sketches of portions of Scottish Church History were, in substance, read in Aberdeen in the course of 1875, before the Scottish Church Union. Hence the form in which the lecture is cast, without the measured tread of formal history, and with a preponderating element of local allusion and personal reminiscences. There is also, no doubt, a somewhat unusual incisiveness and frankness in the treatment of certain disputed points, which might probably have been toned down to some extent had the writer thought that the lecture would ever appear before a wider public. In particular, an occasional acerbity may, no doubt, be perceived,—which, however, he has allowed to stand as originally written, as being, he thinks, justifiable,—in speaking of the Covenanting religionists and their times; for it appears to him that it is impossible to exhibit these enthusiasts in their true colours, of whom even the genial and gentle-hearted Walter Scott felt impelled to make use of a contemptuous expression, which it is needless to reproduce, without employing the language in question. We do not, however, hold our Presbyterian friends and fellow-countrymen responsible for the sayings and doings of their forefathers. They have inherited their religion, with all its qualities, good, bad, and indifferent, and cannot help its history. Many of them, we rejoice to know, condemn their Covenanting ancestors and their ways as heartily as we ourselves do. They are fast drifting from their old moorings. Increasing numbers of them are beginning to realize something of the beauty of liturgical worship. Many are deploring our unhappy divisions, which give such occasion to infidels to blaspheme, and are longing for the blessedness of a corporate re-union, which would present an Established Church of Scotland, with peer and peasant worshipping side by side; and which would, we believe, exhibit a power and a strength which at no period of its history has it yet possessed.
