of horse.

Women of high rank worked at the fortifications. Humbler matrons came forth with their plenishing of sheeting, and made tents for the army; whilst almost the whole plate of the country was so liberally devoted to the service, that scarcely any traces of it were to be met with for years, though Scotland had been rich in plate. £100,000 were collected in a few weeks--not so much by the contributions of the great, as by the preaching of the ministers among the people. It is related by Livingstone, that the army in the neighbourhood of Dunse, in 1640, needing supplies of food and clothing, the celebrated Alexander Henderson, and a few others, were sent to Edinburgh—" and within a few days brought as much meal and cloth to the soldiers, by the gift of well affected people there, as sufficed the whole army,"amounting to many thousand men. Livingstone adds, that his parish of Stranraer, though little and poor, sent a complement of fifteen men; and, on a single Sabbath-day, collected £45. An interesting anecdote of a poor Irish woman, (five hundred of whose countrymen have been known to pass over and partake of the communion at Stranraer, under Livingstone,) is recorded. She " gave seven twenty-two shilling sterling pieces, and an eleven pound piece. When, the day after, I inquired of her how she came to give so much; she answered 'I was gathering, and had laid this up to be a part of a portion to a young daughter I had; and as the Lord hath lately been pleased to take my daughter to himself, I thought I would give him her portion also." " The liberalities of the Church and people of Scotland afforded a striking contrast to the difficulty with which money was raised by the king, even with the aid of unlawful means. Chaplains, consisting of leading ministers, were sent forth with the army; and while they gave encouragement and spirit to the troops, by their instructions and prayers, they exerted such a moral influence upon the soldiers, as to present the army in aspects it had never worn before. The Covenanters would not accept the services of excommunicated or profane men. This was well; but they went further. They anxiously laboured that the whole army should be animated and governed by a religious spirit. In Blair's Memoirs it is said--" Amongst all the Scots' army there was scarcely a man who wanted a Bible--and a great part of them were devout and religious persons-so that when they came to their quarters, there was little else to be heard but reading, prayer, and solemn melody." The numbers of the army were from twenty-three

thousand to twenty-four thousand. How striking a testimony is this to their character; and how impressively does the result show, that there is no inconsistency between a devout attention to the claims of religion, and profound military counsel, and vigorous military achievements. On Lord Burghley applying to the Synod of Fife for a chaplain to the regiment which he raised in that country, a choice of five parochial ministers was given him. This was not accounted too great a sacrifice. Four years after, (1644) when Lord Elcho went to the North to put down the "impious rebellion" of Montrose against the kirk and kingdom, he requested the aid of two ministers to go along with him; and two were sent for forty days. Their places, in the meantime, were supplied by brethren of the Presbytery, who were to relieve them. Similar applications were made by Lord Balcarras, for his regiment of horse, which were at once attended to. Collections were made in parishes for the maintenance of the army. We read of six hundred, and eight hundred, and eighteen hundred merks, being sent in by a few Presbyteries; and of two thousand one hundred and fifty merks being contributed by the Presbytery of Cupar, for the support of the regiment of horse maintained by the ministry of the Church. Sums of money, also, were collected for the widows and orphans of those who had fallen in the war. same Presbytery sent £694 to the sufferers in Argyle. Fasts were held when the army suffered defeat: days of thansgiving when successful. In short, every movement indicated both that the men and the war were religious.

The

It is no satisfactory answer to these facts, to recall the cruelties which were committed by the Covenanting army. Not to remind the reader, that the whole Presbyterian people are not to be held responsible for the proceedings even of their army or their leaders, it must never be forgotten that these were very rare, and prompted by the severest provocation, if not inflicted in actual self-defence. It is notorious that the perjured Montrose, the favourite general of Charles I., was the aggressor, and that his atrocious cruelties were most wanton. The simple fact that, in his six victorious battles-gained by twelve hundred Irish foreigners-chiefly Papists, he only lost one hundred men, while he slaughtered sixteen thousand, is a plain proof that there must have been the most unprovoked sacrifice of life. Hundreds who had no connection whatever with the war, were massacred in cold blood. At Kilsyth, seven thousand were slain without

resistance, fleeing for fourteen miles before their merciless pursuers. So deeply were the general population affected by their fate, that they went into mourning. It is estimated that in two years, thirty thousand Covenanters "were wrapt in their winding-sheet"-five thousand from the county of Fife. It would have been wonderful, if, after such excesses as these, the Scottish army had shown no severity against the Irish foreigners, who had invaded their country in the name of the king. But nothing is plainer, than that had it not been for the presence and power of true religion among the Covenanters, their severities would have been a hundredfold more keen and extensive than they were. It was their Christianity which restrained them.

Nor was it only in connection with the war into which they had been driven, that they showed their religion; the Church, during the whole course of those years of trial, abounded in the labours of a great Christian institution. She was not so engrossed with the claims of self-preservation, as to forget every thing else—she did not postpone her duties to the souls of men to a more convenient season. Incessant and vigorous exertions were made to sweep away all remains of Popish idolatry from the few remaining ecclesiastical buildings which retained them; and so successful was the Church in her efforts against Popery, as a whole, that in 1642, it could be recorded in the Synod Book of Fife, that there was not so much as one excommunicated Papist in that large synod, which ecclesiastically embraced a much wider circuit than the present county. Exertions not less laborious were directed to the protection and better observance of the Sabbath; and the education of the young was made a chief object of care, and was carried into effect to an extent in which it had hitherto been altogether unknown in Scotland, and which even to us is marvellous. Nor, if we may judge from particular presbyteries and synods, was there any falling off in the number of ministers, at a season when fear or other motives might have reduced the number; on the contrary, Church extension went forward with wonderful rapidity vacant parishes were supplied, and there was a greater, a growing number of ministers. The Rev. Mr. Begg, of Liberton, in his excellent pamphlet on the Antiquity of Church Extension, has most conclusively shown that the multiplication of churches and ministers was one of the leading objects of the Church, particularly from 1638, onwards to 1649, the very years of severest national struggle. It ap

pears from the records of these days, that both Presbyteries and Synods laboured with all zeal and perseverance for the division and subdivision of parishes, which now would not be accounted large or unmanageable-that ministers deeply felt and complained of the burden, and sacrificed part of their humble stipend to be relieved—that heritors and leading men were earnestly dealt with for their assistance that poor men liberally contributed both for the building of the church and the maintenance of the minister-that the most eminent ministers, such as Henderson, Douglas and Gillespie, members of the Westminster Assembly, did not account it beneath them to be engaged in this work—that the Church thought herself called upon to provide for so small a number of destitute persons as two hundred; nay, to make provision for the religious instruction of temporary concourses of people, such as the herring fishery collected. It appears, too, that where these Church extension efforts were unsuccessful, it was from no want of zeal or perseverance on the part of Church courts, but from the speedy overthrow of the Presbyterian establishment, by the violence of persecution. Mr. Begg's interesting historical facts are drawn from the Synod of Lothian and Tweeddale, and refer to the parishes of Falkirk, Borrowstounness, Linlithgow, St. Cuthbert's, Inveresk, Haddington, Tranent and Dunbar; but it cannot be doubted that the spirit was general, yea, universal. The excellent Robert Blair, in 1642, found his burden among the people of St. Andrews insupportable," by reason that his congregation was vastly numerous," &c. He obtained a division of the parish-parted with a considerable share of his own provision, so as to form a competent stipend; and then, by a voluntary contribution, built an additional church and manse. A minister was ordained in 1646, whereby Mr. Blair" was much eased of the weighty burden laid upon him." Not wearied out with such labours and sacrifices, this good man, in 1660, attempted to get another parish erected out of St. Andrews. But the infamous Sharpe, afterwards the archbishop, saw that this might interfere with his hoped for living" at St. Andrews, and had sufficient influence at Court to prevent the disjunction-a sad omen of the worldly and persecuting days which were to follow.

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The case of the second charge of Dunfermline is a good illustration of the Church extension of the middle of the seventeenth century. It appears from the records, that the Synod took up the case, and called a meeting of heritors and

parishioners to assemble on a certain day. They did so; and all concurred in the importance of having another minister for the parish, and also in making a competent provision for him from the "rents and lands." A leading heritor, lord Dunfermline, being in England, commissioners are appointed to deal with a lord Callander, who acts for him in his absence. He declares that his lordship, "shall not be deficient for his part." At the request of the heritors, a suitable provision is appointed by the Civil Court, and in eight short months from the beginning of the proceedings, the Rev. Mr. Kay of Dumbarton is settled minister of the second charge of Dunfermline. The Church acted in the most systematic way in her extension movements. She did not wait till cases of emergency occurred, and the people complained of destitution. She sent down a list of queries to ascertain where there was a deficiency, that she might take steps for immediately supplying it. Thus, in 1649, the Commission of the General Assembly write a letter to the Presbytery of Cupar, complaining, that two years before, a list of questions had been sent, which had not been attended to. The Presbytery is now required to set down all the parishes within its bounds that have ministers, and which not-the extent of the parishes the commodious or incommodious situation of the parish kirk-the number of communicants-the patrons, where there are patrons-the present provision for ministers, and what room there is for further ministers. diate answer to these inquiries is demanded.

An imme

But there are, if possible, still more unequivocal proofs of spiritual progress than these things afford. In 1639, when the people were actually engaged in war with their king, we find that lists of topics were drawn up for trial of Presbyteries within the bounds of the Synod of Fife, a very importtant Synod in these days; and, doubtless, the spirit of reformation was not confined to one county. They are embraced under such questions as these: "If ministers keep faithfully the ordinary meetings of the Presbytery, for doctrine and discipline-if they have monthly discussions (viz. on theological topics,) according to the Act of Assembly-if all the churches are visited between every Synod-if Presbyteries are careful in planting and providing their kirks-if attentive in the admission of ministers, previously to try them-if any Papists live within the bounds-if they are careful for the provision of the poor-if catechising be universal in burgh