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The
change from Episcopacy to Presbyterianism at the Revolution left much bitter
feeling in the south-west and in the region north of the Tay, where the
Episcopalians were very strong. This feeling survived till well into the
first half of the eighteenth century, when a new generation of clergy
had taken possession of the parishes and the old animosities begotten of the
persecution of the Presbyterians by the Episcopalians before, and of the
Episcopalians by the Presbyterians after, the Revolution died down, and were
only revived for a brief period by the excitement of the Forty-Five. Their
place was taken by the outbreak of ecclesiastical contention within the
Church, which caused no little ferment among the people, in certain
districts at least, and resulted in a series of small schisms. Religion
entered deeply into the life of the people. There were long services on
Sunday, which it was obligatory to attend, and on at least one week day,
whilst the minister carried the instruction of the pulpit to the homes of
his parishioners by systematic visitation and examination in the Cathechism
and the Scriptures. The churches in which they worshipped were often mean
and miserable hovels, ill-lighted, ill-ventilated, and for long unheated and
unseated, which the parsimonious heritors neglected to keep in repair.
"Dark, damp, dirty hovels" is the description which the minister of
Glenorchy applies to many of them even at the end of the eighteenth century.
The great "occasion" of the
year in the religious life was the celebration of the Communion, when the
people flocked from the neighbouring parishes to the parish church in which
the Sacrament was to be held. The services extended over several days in
addition to Sunday. Popular ministers drew great crowds, and in ii The Holy
Fair " Burns has rather irreverently given a vivid description of the scene.
It was no easy matter to provide food and shelter for such a concourse, and
the attraction consisted for many in such excitement and good cheer as were
to be had. These assemblies were for the preachers with a popular gift
regular field days. The church or the tent was crowded to overflowing during
their long harangues, whilst the man who had no unction or little action had
the mortification to find that the ale barrels and the bread and cheese
outside had more attraction for the crowd than his unsensational oratory.
Though these celebrations were the nurse of genuine religious feeling, Burns
hardly exaggerates the right human failings which he hits off, and the
change to a more decorous order of things which, under the influence of
Moderatism, took place during the century, was certainly a change for the
better.
The century witnessed a
gradual change in religious use and wont. In some respects it was a change
for the better, though it greatly distressed the minds of the old-fashioned
who strove to keep alive the religious fashions and forms of an older time.
The stem Calvinism in creed and life was losing its hold on the educated
classes. Superstitions like witchcraft and ghost appearances were becoming
relics of past beliefs. Ministers who had in their Arts course attended the
lectures of professors like Hutcheson and Adam Smith, Adam Fergusson and
Thomas Reid were better educated and more liberal and sensible, and this
clerical type gradually displaced the narrow remnant of Covenanting days.
The name attached to this more liberal thinking section—the Moderates—is
significant of the broader spirit in the Church, which presents such a
contrast to that of the previous century. Even the party which in theology
championed the old doctrines and was known as the Evangelicals shed the
extreme narrowness of former days. The Moderate influence is apparent in the
relaxation of ecclesiastical discipline with its obtrusive and tyrannical
methods. It was losing its harsher features when Bums arose to satirise it
and the theological narrowness with which it was associated. The reaction to
which he gave such telling expression had many representatives among the
more cultured clergy. Religion became more human; the Sabbath less of a
tyranny and a terror. It gained in charity what it lost in fervour and
severity. A remarkable evidence of the growth of this more tolerant spirit
is afforded by the change of attitude towards the drama and the playhouse.
In the middle of the century the theatre was still under the ban of the
Kirk, and great was the scandal when John Home, minister of Athelstaneford,
ventured in 1750 to produce his tragedy of Douglas—which the philosopher
Hume too fondly judged superior to Shakespeare—in Edinburgh, and even
ministers like Jupiter Carlyle dared to witness. The Edinburgh Presbytery
sounded a warning note against these "dangerous entertainments" and "such
seminaries of vice and folly," and to escape deposition Home was fain to
resign his charge, whilst
Jupiter Carlyle manfully
faced the "libel" of the Presbytery of Dalkeith. The Presbyteries fulminated
in vain against this scandalous and illegal conduct, and in 1764 Edinburgh
at last got its licensed theatre. Towards the end of the century it was no
longer a crime for even ministers to be seen at the playhouse, and when Mrs
Siddons came to Edinburgh the General Assembly was half deserted by its
members. Dancing assemblies also became fashionable in spite of pulpit
denunciations, and music, both vocal and instrumental, had many amateur
devotees in Edinburgh, who performed at the concerts given in St Cecilia's
Hall in the Cowgate.
On the other hand, the
preaching of the Moderates, as represented by the affected and formal
oratory of a Blair, failed to make the pulpit the potent force in popular
life that it had been in less enlightened, but far more explosive days, when
religion was a real, if to some extent a misdirected power in both public
and private life. From this point of view there was force in the reproach of
the Evangelical party that Moderatism with its commonsense morality ("
legalism ") was tending to deaden the spiritual life based on the more
experimental apprehension of the Gospel. Certain it is that, if the services
became more decorous and refined, the churches were far less crowded than
formerly. Moderatism by its insistence on the legal rights of patrons in the
face of popular opposition to unwelcome presentees tended, too, to alienate
the democratic spirit that was still a power in the religious, if not in the
political sphere in Scotland. Whilst comparatively liberal in thought, it
was strongly conservative and reactionary in ecclesiastical politics and
ranged itself on the side of " law and order." Hence the secessions which,
under the Erskines, took place in 1733 (the Associate Presbytery) and under
Gillespie in 1761 (the Relief Presbytery). The former represented the old
narrow spirit which had lingered in its purity among the Cameronians, the
direct descendants of the Covenanters, who had refused to acknowledge an
uncovenanted Revolution settlement. In 1747 they took to quarrelling among
themselves over the question of taking the oath, imposed on citizens taking
office in certain towns after the Forty-Five, to defend "the true religion
presently professed," and went asunder into Burghers and Anti-Burghers„ The
Burghers further divided into "Auld Lichts" and "New Liehts" over the
question of maintaining the Solemn League and Covenant, according as they
affirmed or denied its continued obligation. The old religious temper, which
laid such stress on the minutiae of ecclesiastical beliefs, thus continued
to colour the social life of the people despite the growing tendency to
relegate them to the realm of things indifferent. |
