ience of the
English Church of that age before them as an object lesson of the evil
effects of ritualistic worship, the Presbyterian Church was not
unwilling to abandon the use of all imposed forms, and to give itself
rather to the cultivation and development of a truly spiritual worship.

And finally, the spirit thus planted and fostered in Scotland, was
intensified during the persecutions which followed the restoration of
Charles the Second. So firmly was this opposition to an imposed form
of worship implanted in the hearts of Presbyterians that, alike at the
Revolution and again at the time when the terms from the "Act of Union"
between England and Scotland were under consideration the most earnest
representations were made, to the end that there should be no change in
the worship of the Scottish Church, but that the freedom in this
matter, so prized and so dearly won, should be secured to the people of
Scotland.

The Church of Scotland then, it may safely be said, moved ever in the
direction of securing greater liberty in worship, rather than towards
an increase of ritual and an imposition of form. Every succeeding
period in her history, whether we judge from the general spirit
characterizing the people or from the official acts of the Parliament
and the Church, shows a growing distaste for a liturgical worship and
an increasing appreciation of liberty in all matters pertaining to the
approach of the soul to God. The Church of Scotland rejected, on the
one hand, the extreme positions of sectaries who condemned alike a
combined system of Church government, the celebration of marriage in
the Church, the use in worship of the Lord's Prayer and all regulations
even of the order of Divine worship, and on the other hand it resisted
successfully the strongest Anglican influences which would have
deprived it of the liberty it prized and would have circumscribed that
liberty by a ritual. It retained dignity and order, while it rejected
both the license of extravagance and the bondage of form.

Presbyterian Worship Outside of the Established Church of Scotland.

Whether they were right or wrong ... no man of fairness will fail to
allow that the record of the Seceders all through the period of
decadence was a noble one, a record of splendid service to the cause of
Christ and the historic Church of Scotland.--M'CRIE.

Chapter VIII.

Presbyterian Worship Outside of the Established Church of Scotland.

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