Page:Three introductory lectures on the study of ecclesiastical history.djvu/58

50 the scenes of the events, their aspect, their architecture, their geography; the tradition which has survived the history, the legend which has survived the tradition; the mountain, the stream, the shapeless stone, which has survived even history, and tradition, and legend.

Take two examples instead of a hundred. There are few more interesting episodes in modern Ecclesiastical History than that of the Scottish Covenanters. But the school in which that episode must be studied is Scotland itself. The caves, and moors, and moss-hags of the Western Lowlands; the tales which linger still, of the black charger of Claverhouse, of the strange encounters with the Evil one, of the cry of the plover and peewit round the encampments on the hill-side, are more instructive than many books. The rude gravestones which mark the spots where those were laid who bore testimony to "the covenanted work of reformation, and Christ's kingly government of His house," bring before us in the most lively, because in the most condensed, authentic, original form, the excited feeling of the time and the most peculiar traits of the religion of the Scottish people; the independence, the fervour, the fierceness of the age, national alike in its patience of suffering, in its thirst for vengeance, in its investment of the narrowest questions of discipline and ceremony with the sacredness of universal principles. We almost fancy that we see the survivors of the dead spelling and