nd faith that possessed the hearts of our forefathers. The
architect's design could never have been realised apart from their
offerings of devotion to the Christian religion. When Emerson visited
Carlyle at Craigenputtock, the latter, pointing to the parish church,
said to his American friend, "Christ's death built Dunscore Church
yonder." It is a deep, true utterance, for Christ's death has built
every church in Christendom, and these embodiments of beauty not least
of all. In this light we see what is at the heart of these ancient
Scottish churches, and what has created the affection that treasures
them. The ruined walls of so many of them ought to have been the home of
the reformed faith, life, and work, linking the present to the past by
natural piety, and visibly reminding the worshippers of the church that
endureth throughout all generations. The present revival of interest in
them is like a new-discovered sense, and is undoing the spoliation and
neglect of an age subsequent to the Reformation, and for which the
Scottish Reformers are not to blame. Theirs was no easy work, and
history has vindicated its results in the progressive genius of the
Scottish people. The Reformation saved religion, but the alienation of
the religious endowments to secular purposes, often by unworthy hands,
is the chief cause of the ruins which tell of a beauty that has left the
earth, and it has deprived the Church of so many of its venerable
heirlooms. Otherwise there might have been said of the Scottish as was
said of the English Reformation that but for it there would have been
little Norman or Early English left in the cathedrals, for it just came
at a time when the early styles were being pulled fast down to make room
for the later.[479] It was the Scottish Reformers' aim to make all the
churches parish churches, and each church the centre of the life and
work of each parish. Their grievance against monasticism arose from the
corrupt lives of the monks and from its intrusion on the parochial
system with the alienation of the parish teinds to the use of the
monastery. But the idea of _a church in the centre of a residence_, is
one not without suggestiveness to the life of to-day, with its many
activities, as a training home for workers; as a temporary retreat for
rest, meditation, and prayer to the hard-wrought ministers in the city
parishes; as a place for conference on the religious problems; as a
theological hall and settlement for