Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/21

 challenge a valid ministry, and the integrity of the succession, seems always to have been used at ordinations, and at the consecration of Bishops. As I have indicated, there were no priestly vestments; not even the surplice, which a choir boy now wears. And this continued to the days of my own youth, when the black gown was still in all but universal use at all services, including the celebration of the Holy Eucharist. Probably Bishop John Skinner of Aberdeen, whom I faintly remember to have seen at a Confirmation in a County Chapel arrayed in a black gown and a huge pair of bands, never wore a surplice, and certainly not the Episcopal robes; neither did Bishop Jolly, whom I have often seen conducting all the services at Fraserburgh in a black gown and bands. Once, and once only, did I see Bishop Torry vested as a Bishop at an Ordination, not in his own diocese, but in a chapel where a brother Bishop was incumbent, and which probably accounted for the fact; and once habited in a surplice at a public baptism, also out of his own diocese; and in both cases within a few years of his death. I distinctly remember the introduction of the surplice in the rural congregations of the Diocese of Aberdeen, about the years 1819 and 1820. It was not much relished by the flocks; nor, for that matter, by some of the older clergy. The Dean of the diocese, Mr. Sangster of Lonmay, continued, as I have often seen him, to wear his home-spun black serge gown to the time of his death in 1826. For many years after the introduction of the surplice, it was the universal practice to preach in the black gown. In most of the chapels there was no vestry, and the awkward puttings off and on before the people during the singing of a couple of verses of "Tait and Brady," intensified the dislike.

And it was a Prelacy such as I have described; so maimed, and so crippled; so timid and unobtrusive; and so little in it of "lording it over God's heritage," as it was accused of doing by the Covenanting preachers; and a worship so diluted and colourless, and shorn of all liturgical dignity and grace, that the fanatics rejected. Not content with the legal exemption and toleration accorded to them, and which the more sober-minded Presbyterians thankfully accepted, they assembled themselves tumultuously in open conventicles, the hearers armed, and the preachers thundering out treason, and exhorting them to fight for "Jesus and a broken Covenant." Need it excite any surprise that the Government found itself compelled to meet force with force, and to suppress the insurrection at the point of the sword? But even had the policy of the State been blameable, and deserving of all the execration which it meets with in our popular histories, on the platform, and in the current thought and expression of many of our fellow-countrymen, the Church was blameless. She was doing her work, so far as her maimed and crippled condition would allow, among a loyal and contented people, in three-fourths of Scotland. But the fanatical disturbance in the western shires was chronic and