RELIGIOUS LIFE AND TENDENCIES IN SCOTLAND.

Evening Star, Volume IX, Issue 2707, 20 October 1871, Page 2

RELIGIOUS LIFE AND TENDENCIES IN SCOTLAND.

±i> fwibany. To the Editor. Sir,— For th,e first time in my life I drank tea on two successive nights, in two Christian Churches. I cannot say that I was either amused or edified. But on the last occasion, 1 must say that I was much moved to indignation at having to listen to senile twaddle divested of every ray of culture. But what is culture, it may he asked ? Culture, according to Matthew Arnold, consists in turning a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits. This is precisely what the Church, in the fulness of its multiplex jargon will not allow. When ministers of the stamp of the J.lev. W. Will, of the East Taieri, and his colleagues, denounce the use of our reason on matters of faith, and with a fixed programme of addresses and music, tea and toast, cakes and f<uit, offensively attack men who exercise their reason and intellect, and who are precluded, out of regard to the proprieties, from defending themselves, and opening the eyes of the stolid and superstitious men and women who draw their pabulum of information from such unctuous and ghostly sources—-when 1 say they do this with impunity, and launch their anathemas —as Mr Will did against myself, then, Sir, I can only say that I had rather have one infallible Pope, than a multitude of petty Popes that support their crotchets on tea and bazaars, and inflame the most unholy passions of human nature against such as will not swallow their crude notions. “To the law and to the Gospels, and “ the truth as it is in Jesus,” will not s;.fsfy the mind of man, when he discovers that during the first four centuries there were neither the Gospels nor Popes—only a few earnest men —no doubt regarded by the rest of the world as lull 1 els and Atheists. There are 2884 Presbyterian churches in Scotland. Except in Ireland, the clergy there hitherto have held more sway than in any other land. Now, however, if Mr Will and his platform will take the trouble to read an article in the last number of the Westminister Review on the “Religious life and tendencies in Scotland,” they will see that north as well as south of the Tweed, “young men of talent do not seek the Church. They consider churches to be, in point of culture and thought, far behind the times, and, indeed, as places in which an antiquated theology is taught, without feeling and without intelligence, to stolid peasants and superstitious women ; the clergy they look upon as partially hypocrites who never think, and read only antiquated newspapers. ” The writer, who is well posted up in his theme, goes on to say that “ the Scotch people, although highly sceptical, are slow to move in religious matters, but when they are impelled to act, they do so with a vengeance, and in a radical manner unknown south of the Tweed.” Personally, I do not mind what Mr Will may say about me ; I would, however, advise caution, Jest he stir up the perfen'idam ingenium Scotoram, and thus, unfortunately for him, cause Presbyterians to cast off John Knox just as their sires threw off Cardinal Beatoun. If Mr Will chooses, I shall meet him and his at any time and on any platform, and give a reason for the faiths thit is in me.—l am, Ac. J, G. S. Grant, Oct. 20, 1871.