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Rh act was passed in 1581, which made provision for the parochial clergy, and, inter alia, directed that “a sufficient and competent” district should be appropriated to each church as a parish (1581, cap. 100). Thereafter, by a series of special acts in the first place, and, subsequent to the year 1617, by the decrees of parliamentary commissions, the creation of suitable parochial districts was proceeded with. In the year 1707 the powers exercised by the commissioners were permanently transferred to the court of session, whose judges were appointed to act in future as “commissioners for the Plantation of Kirks and Valuation of Teinds” (Act, 1707, cap. 9). Under this statute the areas of parishes continued to be altered and defined down to 1844, when the act commonly known as Graham’s Act was passed (7 & 8 Vict. c. 44). This act, which applied to the disjunction and erection of parishes, introduced a simpler form of procedure, and to some extent dispensed with the consent of the heritors, which had been required under the earlier statute.

The main division of parishes in Scotland was into civil and ecclesiastical, or, to speak more accurately, into parishes proper (i.e. for all purposes, civil and ecclesiastical) and ecclesiastical parishes. This division is expressed in legal language by the terms, parishes quoad omnia (i.e. quoad civilia et sacra) and parishes quoad sacra — civilia being such matters as church rates, education, poor law and sanitary purposes, and sacra being such as concern the administration of church ordinances, and fall under the cognizance of the church courts. There are other minor divisions which will be noticed below, (1) The Parish Proper.—In a number of instances it is difficult to determine the exact areas of such parishes at the present day. The boundaries of the old ecclesiastical parish were nowhere recorded, and the descriptions in the titles of private properties which appear to lie in the parish have sometimes to be taken as evidence, and sometimes the fact that the inhabitants attended a particular church or made payments in favour of a particular minister. Where there has been a union or disjunction and erection of parishes the evidence of the boundaries is the relative statute, order in council, or decree of commission or of court of teinds. The parishes proper vary to a great degree both in size and population. For ecclesiastical purposes, the minister and kirk session constitute the parochial authority. The minister is vested with the manse and glebe, to be held by him for himself and his successors in office, and along with the kirk-session he administers church ordinances and exercises church discipline. The oldest governing authority was the meeting of the heritors or landowners of the parish. Though gradually shorn of much of its old importance, the heritors' meeting retained the power of imposing an assessment for the purpose of providing and maintaining a church and churchyard and a manse and glebe for the minister. It also possessed power to assess under the Parochial Buildings Acts of 1862 and 1866. Kirk-session and heritors were the educational authority until the establishment of school boards in 1872. (2) Quoad Sacra Parishes.—The ecclesiastical or quoad sacra parish is a modern creation. Under Graham’s Act, above mentioned, a parish may be disjoined and erected quoad sacra tantum on the application of persons who have built and endowed a church, and who offer securities for its proper maintenance. By the Education Act of 1872 the quoad sacra parish was adopted as a separate school district. (3) Extra-Burghal Parishes.—For sanitary purposes, highways and some others, certain classes of burghs were made separate areas from the parishes in which they lay. This fact created a set of incomplete parishes, called extra-burghal. (4) Burghal, Landward and Burghal—Landward (or Mixed) Parishes.—This division of parishes depends, as the names imply, upon local character and situation of the parochial districts. The importance of the distinction arose in connexion with the rule of assessment adopted for various parochial burdens, and the nature of the rights of the minister and corresponding obligations of the parishioners. (5) Combined Parishes.—Under the Poor-Law, Education and Registration Acts power was given to the central authority to combine parishes for purposes of local administration. The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1894 reformed parish government, although not to the same extent as the corresponding English act. It established a local government board for Scotland, with a parish council in every parish, and abolished all parochial boards. The number of councillors for a parish council was fixed at not less than five nor more than thirty one, the number being determined, in the case of landward parishes, by the county council; in the case of burghal parishes by the town council and, in the case of mixed parishes, by county and town councils jointly.

The Parish in the United States.—The term “parish” is not in use as a territorial designation except in Louisiana, the sixty parishes of which correspond to the counties of the other states of the Union. In the American Episcopal Church the word is frequently used to denote an ecclesiastical district.

.—The principal records from which information may be gained as to the oldest parochial system in England are the records called Nomina villarum, the Taxatio papae Nicholai made in 1291, the Nonarum inquisitiones relating to assessments made upon the clergy, the Valor ecclesiasticus of Henry VIII., the lay subsidies from the reign of Edward III. to that of Charles II., the hearth-tax assessments and the land-tax accounts. On the subject of the parish generally see Stubbs’s Constitutional History; Glen’s Parish Law; Steer’s Parish Law; Toulmin Smith’s work on the Parish; S. and B. Webb, English Local Government, vol. i.; Kedlich and Hirst, Local Government in England; O. J. Reichel, Rise of the Parochial System in England (1905). For fuller information regarding the Scottish parish see Connell on Teinds; Duncan’s Parochial Ecclesiastical Law; the Cobden Club essays on Local Government and Taxation in the United Kingdom (1882); Goudy and Smith’s Local Government in Scotland; Atkinson, Local Government in Scotland.

 PARISITE, a rare mineral consisting of cerium, lanthanum, didymium and calcium fluo-carbonate (CeF)2Ca(CO3)3. It is found only as crystals, which belong to the hexagonal system and usually have the form of acute double pyramids terminated by the basal planes; the faces of the hexagonal pyramids are striated horizontally, and parallel to the basal plane there is a perfect cleavage. The crystals are hair-brown in colour and are translucent. The hardness is 4 and the specific gravity 4.36. Light which has traversed a crystal of parisite exhibits a characteristic absorption spectrum. Until recently the only known occurrence of this mineral was in the famous emerald mine at Muzo in Colombia, South America, where it was found by J. J. Paris, who re-discovered and worked the mine in the early part of the 19th century; here it is associated with emerald in a bituminous limestone of Cretaceous age (see ).

Closely allied to parisite, and indeed first described as such, is a mineral from the nepheline-syenite district of Julianehaab in south Greenland. To this the name synchysite (from Gr. , confounding) has been given. The crystals are rhombohedral (as distinct from hexagonal; they have the composition CeFCa(CO3)2, and specific gravity 2.90. At the same locality there is also found a barium-parisite, which differs from the Colombian parisite in containing barium in place of calcium, the formula being (CeF)2Ba(CO3)3: this is named cordylite on account of the club-shaped form (, a club) of its hexagonal crystals. Bastnäsite is a cerium lanthanum and didymium fluoro-carbonate (CeF)CO3, from Bastnäs, near Riddarhyttan, in Vestmanland, Sweden, and the Pike’s Peak region in Colorado, U.S.A.

PARK, EDWARDS AMASA (1808–1900), American Congregational theologian, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on the 29th of December 1808, the son of Calvin Park (1774–1847), a Congregational minister, professor from 1804 to 1825 at Brown University, and pastor at Stoughton, Massachusetts, in 1826–1840. The son graduated at Brown University in 1826, was a teacher at Braintree for two years, and in 1831 graduated from Andover theological seminary. He was co-pastor (with R. S. Storrs) of the orthodox Congregational church of Braintree in 1831–1833; professor of mental and moral philosophy at Amherst in 1835; and Bartlett professor of sacred rhetoric (1836–1847), and Abbot professor of Christian theology (1847–1881) at Andover. He died at Andover on the 4th of June 1900. An ardent admirer of Jonathan Edwards, whose great-grand-daughter he married, Park was one of the most notable American theologians and orators. He was the most prominent leader of the “new school” of “New England Theology.” He left his theological impress on the Bibliotheca sacra, which he and Bela B. Edwards took over in 1844 from Edward Robinson, who had founded it in 1843, and of which Park was assistant editor until 1851 and editor-in-chief from 1851 to 1884. As a general statement of the position of orthodox Congregationalism he drew up and annotated the “Associate Creed of Andover Theological Seminary” (1883), and the anonymously published “Worcester Creed” of 1884 was his popularized and simplified statement. He edited in 1860 The Atonement, a collection of essays by various hands, prefaced by his study of the “Rise of the Edwardean Theory of the Atonement.” Dr Park’s sermon, “The Theology of the Intellect and that of the Feelings,” delivered in 1850 before the convention of the Congregational ministers of Massachusetts, and published in the Bibliotheca sacra of July 1850,