Church of Scotland since the Reformation. In the first book of discipline,
compiled by Knox and others in 1560, it is stated that "to the churches
where no ministers can be had presentlie must be appointed the most apt
men that distinctly can read the common prayers and the Scriptures to
exercise both themselves and the church till they grow to greater
perfection." In accordance with this recommendation there were, in
parishes where ministers could not be procured to preach and administer
the sacraments, a class of men employed in the Church under the name of
"readers," whose office was to read the Scriptures and a liturgy of
printed prayers such as is used in the public service of the Church of
England. After the Church became more fully plenished with ministers,
readers were still in many places continued. In parishes supplied with
both a reader and a minister there were two distinct services in the
church on Sundays. There was, first of all, a preliminary service
conducted by the reader. The service consisted of reading the public
prayers and portions of Scripture. It usually lasted an hour, and when it
ended the minister entered the church and conducted his service of
extempore prayer and preaching. In the year 1580 the General Assembly
declared that "the office of a reader is not an ordinary office in the
Kirk of God;" and the following year it was expressly ordained that
readers should not be appointed in any church. It is evident, however,
that readers continued to be employed in the Church of Scotland long after
that date, both during the episcopacy that subsisted from 1606 to 1637,
and during the ascendency of Presbytery from 1637 to 1645.
The Westminster Assembly of Divines ignored the office of reader, and when
the Westminster Directory for Public Worship was adopted by the Church of
Scotland in 1645, it may be said that the service of the reader was
ostensibly and almost practically brought to an end in Scotland. It has to
be stated, however, that readers were, nevertheless, employed in some
parishes long after their office had ceased to be recognised in the
constitutions of the church. Mr More, in his account of Scotland in 1715,
describes the Sunday service in Scottish churches as follows:--"First the
precentor, about half an hour before the preacher comes, reads two or
three chapters to the congregation of what part of Scripture he pleases,
or as the minister gives him directions. As soon as the preacher gets into
the pulpit the precentor leaves reading, and sets a psalm-singing with the
people, till the minister by some sign orders him to give over. The psalm
over, the preacher begins confessing sins and begging pardon ... then he
goes to sermon, delivered always by heart, and, therefore, sometimes
spoiled by battologies, little impertinences, and incoherence."
The reader was usually also precentor, and it will be a natural
transition, therefore, to pass on now to an account of that part of the
Sunday service which the precentor conducted. In the Reformed Church of
Scotland a very limited space was originally allotted to the service of
praise in public worship. "There is perhaps no country in Christendom,"
says Dr Cunningham, "in which psalmody has been as little cultivated as
in Scotland. Wherever the Church of Rome reared her altars, music grew up
under her shadow, and gave a new charm to her sensuous services. But
Presbytery gave little countenance to such a hand-maid." The use of
instruments in the service of praise was repudiated or almost abjured.
Organs were not even allowed standing room in church. In 1574 the Kirk
Session of Aberdeen gave orders "that the organis with all expedition be
removit out of the kirk and made profeit of to the use and support of the
puir." On his visit to Scotland in 1617 King James endeavoured to
inaugurate a more aesthetic and cultured form of worship in Scotland, after
the manner of what he had seen in England. Among other innovations he set
up an organ in the Chapel Royal at Holyrood. "Upon Satterday, the 17th
May," says Calderwood, "the English service was begun in the Chapel Royal
with singing of quirristers, surplices, and playing on organes." The
popular feeling, however, that in 1637 was aroused against the service
book was turned against the organ also, and among the outbreaks of 1638
Spalding records that "the glorious organes of the Chapell Royall were
maisterfullie broken doune, nor no service usit thair bot the haill
chaplains, choristis, and musicians dischargeit, and the costlie organes
altogether destroyit and unusefull."
The old doctrine of the Church of Scotland in regard to psalmody is
tersely expressed in the first book of discipline. "There be two sorts of
policie," it is said in that book; "the one of these sorts is utterlie
necessary, as, that the word be preached, the sacraments ministered, and
common prayers publicly made. The other sort of policy is profitable, but
not necessarie, as, that psalms should be sung and certain places of
Scripture read when there is no sermon." And in accordance with this
doctrine there is very little singing of psalms prescribed as part of
public worship in either Knox's Liturgy or the Westminster Directory. In
each of these manuals of worship there are only two psalms appointed or
supposed to be sung during the minister's service--one before the sermon
and another before the benediction. It is possible, however, that there
was, from an early period, a third psalm sung in the church by the
congregation, although that psalm was not included in the service. Just as
in modern churches where instrumental music has been introduced, there is
a voluntary played on the organ during the time that the congregation are
assembling, so in very ancient times, long before the Reformation, it was
customary over a large part of Christendom for the people "to entertain
the time with singing of psalms" till the congregation had gathered. And
in Scotland within quite recent times the epithet of the "gathering psalm"
was commonly applied to what is now called the first psalm.
Pasdoran states that, "It was the ancient practice of the Church of
Scotland, as it is yet of some Reformed Churches abroad, for the minister
or precentor to read over as much of the psalm in metre as was intended to
be sung at once, and then the harmony and melody followed without
interruption, and people did either learn to read or got most of the
psalms by heart." What is here called the ancient practice of the Church
of Scotland in the rendering of praise is just the practice that is
observed at the present day. But soon after 1645 a different practice
arose and continued long in the church. The Westminster Directory for
Public Worship recommends that, "for the present, where many in the
congregation cannot read, it is convenient that the minister or some
other fit person appointed by him and the other ruling elders, do read the
psalm line by line before the singing thereof." The practice was
accordingly introduced into the Church of Scotland soon after of giving
out the psalms in instalments of one line at a time, and so popular did
the practice become, and so essential a part of revered use and wont, that
very great difficulty was found long afterwards in getting it
discontinued. Indeed, the practice of reading the line was pretty general
until the beginning of this century.
Loud objections were raised to the singing of hymns and what, in Scotland,
are commonly called paraphrases; and even within living memory this
innovation gave rise to bitter controversy. Not a few persons maintained
that the only proper subjects for divine praise in public worship are the
metrical versions of the Old Testament Psalms. But from the date of the
Reformation down to the sitting of the Westminster Assembly, not only were
metrical versions of the psalms, but hymns and doxologies also, generally
sung in the public worship of the church. The year 1650, however,
witnessed a change in that respect. The present version of the psalms was
that year printed for use in public worship, and no hymns nor paraphrases
were appended. It was not until 1781 that a Committee appointed by the
General Assembly submitted "such a collection of sacred poems as they
thought might be submitted to the judgment of the church." It is this 1781
collection of paraphrases that is still, after the lapse of more than a
hundred years, bound in Scottish Bibles along with the metrical version of
the Psalms of David. The paraphrases have established a secure place in
the psalmody of all the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland. But it was not
without contention and controversy, strife and bitterness, that the
paraphrases made their way into use in the services of public worship. The
writer has seen a worthy elder violently close his Bible on the giving out
of a paraphrase, and remain seated while it was being sung.
Having described the reader's and precentor's service, there remains the
service that specially devolved on the minister. It is well known that a
liturgy was at one time, and for a long time, used in the Church of
Scotland. Knox's liturgy continued to be used by some ministers and
readers down to the year 1637 at least. Its use was by no means universal,
however, during that period. Extempore prayers were always popular with
the general public, but when young and raw readers, however sparely gifted
and not more than half-educated, took on themselves, as they often did, to
treat congregations to extempore prayers, the guardians of public manners
were shocked. It was a shame to all religion, said King Charles I., to
have the majesty of God so barbarously spoken to; and, as a remedy for
this deformity, as he termed it, in the public worship of the Church of
Scotland, Charles issued a new service book to be used as a liturgy by all
preachers and readers. But neither minister nor people would take the
king's liturgy, and extempore prayers became more established in use and
favour than ever.
It is well known that in Protestant churches generally, and in the Church
of Scotland particularly, the preaching of the word has always been
reckoned the chief part of the service of the sanctuary. The quantity of
preaching that ministers had to give and people had to take in olden
times was enormous. There were commonly two diets of worship on the
Sabbath and very often what was termed a week-day sermon besides. It was
customary for ministers to take up a subject or text and on that subject
or text to preach for six or eight Sabbaths consecutively. It seems not to
have been uncommon for ministers to take an hour to their sermon. And to
keep preachers right in this matter, it was customary to set up a sand
glass in the church.
[Illustration: PREACHER'S HOUR GLASS.]
It is doubtful if in olden times there was as much good order observed in
church during divine service as there is now. In some of the old
ecclesiastical records, we find curious regulations for the preservation
of order in church. In the Kirk Session records of Perth we find an
instruction minuted that the kirk-officer "have his red staff in the Kirk
on the Sabbath days wherewith to waken sleepers and remove greeting
bairns." In 1593 complaint was made at Perth of boys in time of preaching
running through the church clattering and fighting.
[Illustration: HOUR GLASS STAND.]
The hours of church service on Sundays were much earlier long ago than
they are now. In 1615 the Kirk Session of Lasswade appointed nine o'clock
as the hour on which service should begin in the summer months, and
half-past nine as the hour of service in winter.
The neglect of public ordinances has at all times been a subject of
lamentation. In olden days many devices are said to have been tried to
remedy or abate these evils. Those resorted to by the Covenanters in
Aberdeen in 1642 were perhaps as ingenious as any that have ever been
adopted. "Our minister," says Spalding, "teaches powerfullie and plainlie
the word to the gryte comfort of his auditores. He takes strait count of
those who cumis not to the communion, nor keepis not the kirk, callis out
the absentis out of pulpit, quhilk drew in sic a fair auditorie that the
seatis of the kirk was not abill to hold thame, for remeid quhair of he
causit big up ane loft athwart the body of the kirk."
Mr Cant did not go quite so far, but being annoyed that his afternoon
diets were sparsely attended, he naively dismissed his forenoon audience
without a benediction, and reserved his blessing for those that returned
to the second sermon.
Church Music.
BY THOMAS FROST.
Though the use of instrumental music in the services of the Church fell
into disfavour after the Reformation, the existence of a sculptured
representation of an organ in Melrose Abbey shows that instrument to have
been known as early as the fourteenth century. That "regals," as they were
then called, were placed in some of the principal churches, and used in
worship, is also evidenced by documents still in existence. That these,
however inferior they may have been to similar instruments of the present
day, were carefully constructed, and at considerable cost, appears from
the payments made to William Calderwood for "a pair of organs" for the
Chapel Royal at Stirling in 1537, and for "a set of organs" for the King's
Chapel at Holyrood in 1542. But the Reformation led to these instruments
being everywhere discarded as partaking too much of Romanism to be
acceptable to the followers of Knox.
The organs of the royal chapels kept their places for a time, but
elsewhere the "kists of whistles," as they then came to be called, were
broken up and the materials sold in aid of the fund for the poor. But no
long time elapsed before the Earl of Mar, as captain of Stirling Castle,
caused the organ in the Royal Chapel to be removed and broken up; and in
1571 the Scottish Parliament expressed approval of the act. The prevailing
feeling against the organ was intensified when, in 1617, orders were given
by James VI. that carved figures of the Apostles should be affixed to the
seats of the choir in the Chapel at Holyrood, where the organ was then
being repaired, after a long period of disuse and neglect. Instrumental
music thus became associated in the public mind with what was regarded as
idolatry, and so much excitement prevailed that the bishops advised that
the restoration of the organ and the choir stalls should be delayed until
it subsided.
In 1631 Charles issued an order for the erection of an organ in every
cathedral and principal church, and thereby renewed the agitation against
the instrument. The order was disregarded, and in 1638, when popular
opposition to the introduction of the Anglican prayer-book was being
strongly manifested, the General Assembly ruled that the attempt to
introduce instrumental music into the services of the Church should be
resisted. Spalding, speaking of the agitation of that period, says that
"the glorious organs of the Chapel Royal were masterfully broken down, nor
no service used there, but the whole chaplains, choristers, and musicians
discharged, and the costly organs altogether destroyed and unuseful." Six
years later, the General Assembly recorded in their minutes the gladness
with which that body had received the news from their commissioners at
Westminster of the taking down of the great organs of St. Paul's Cathedral
and Westminster Abbey.
Psalmody was little more in favour than the gilded pipes of the organ. The
Westminster Directory for Public Worship, adopted by the General Assembly
in 1645, recommends that "for the present, where many in the congregation
cannot read, it is convenient that the minister, or some other fit person
appointed by him and the other ruling officers, do read the psalm, line by
line, before the singing thereof." Before this time, in 1642, there had
been much controversy in the western Lowlands concerning the singing of
the doxology at the end of a psalm, a practice which was popularly
regarded as a commandment of men, not to be accepted as a divine
ordinance. The General Assembly, in 1643, took the matter into
consideration, and ordered the dispute to be dropped. In 1649, however,
the subject was again before the Assembly, which then resolved that the
singing of the doxology should be discontinued.
In 1647, a committee was named by the General Assembly to examine and
revise Rous's paraphrase of the Psalms, and Zachary Boyd was requested to
make a metrical version of the other Biblical songs; but nothing was done
in the latter direction, probably due to the desire for uniformity with
the Presbyterian Church in England, and in 1650 the present metrical
version was printed for use in public worship, without the addition of any
hymns or paraphrases. Nothing further was done for the improvement of
congregational singing for more than half a century.
The question of instrumental music was revived in 1687, by the erection in
the Royal Chapel at Holyrood, by order of James II., of a large and
magnificent organ, which was regarded as a step towards the introduction
of the Romish service. So convinced were the people of this that the
clergy of even the Episcopal churches discontinued the use of the organ in
public worship. In the following year, when James had abdicated, and the
fear of Popish devices had become allayed, the mob of Edinburgh testified
to the national joy, and at the same time indulged their latent propensity
to mischief by breaking down the organ and burning the materials.
As in England down to a much later period, so also in Scotland, a metrical
version of the Psalms was alone in use in worship, though several attempts
were made at different times in the last century to introduce hymns of a
more distinctively Christian character, as well as more poetical than the
old paraphrases of Hebrew psalmody. The matter was before the General
Assembly in 1707, and again in 1742, when a committee was appointed to
prepare some paraphrases of passages in the Bible, "to be joined with the
Psalms of David, so as to enlarge the Psalmody." Three years afterwards,
some examples of religious poetry were submitted by the committee for the
judgment of the Assembly; but, as before, nothing was done, and the matter
remained in abeyance until 1775, when it was suggested by the Synod of
Glasgow and Ayr that the Assembly should take such measures as might be
judged necessary to introduce the paraphrases of 1751 into the Psalter of
the Church. These were, in consequence, again examined and revised by a
committee, but it was not until 1781 that the committee made their report
and the Assembly ordered copies of the collection (which had been printed
in 1751) to be submitted to the Presbyteries. Pending the Presbyterial
judgment, the Assembly allowed the collection to be used in public worship
"where the minister finds it for edification."
The permission to use this collection of Biblical paraphrases was never
recalled by the Assembly, but it has also never been made a permanent act.
It appears to have been given reluctantly, and only as a measure of
policy, in concession to popular feeling in favour of the collection; for
it appears to have been previously used in several churches. "Use and
wont," says Dr Edgar, in his "Old Church Life in Scotland," "have now
given as valid an authority for the singing of the paraphrases in church
as a special Act of Assembly could do. The paraphrases have, on the
strength of their own merits, established a secure place in the psalmody
of all the Presbyterian churches in Scotland."
Instrumental music had, in the meantime, continued to be banished from
public worship. The psalm to be sung was announced by the minister, and
the precentor, who occupied a smaller pulpit below him, placed in a slit
in a lyre-shaped brass frame in front of him a card bearing the name of
the tune in large letters, so as to be visible to all the congregation.
The minister then repeated the first two lines of the verses to be sung,
and the precentor struck his tuning-fork on the desk. It was a custom of
long standing, probably dating from a time when few of the congregation
could read, for the precentor to read and sing a line alternately, which
must, to persons unaccustomed to it, have sounded strange, and certainly
have destroyed what little harmony there might have been if the psalm had
been sung differently.
It was not until the first decade of the present century that the organ
was called to the aid of the volume of praise in the Scottish Church. To
Dr Ritchie, minister of St. Andrew's Church, Glasgow, belongs the honour
of this innovation. With the approval of the congregation, he introduced
an organ, which was played for the first time on the 23rd of August, 1807,
not without producing a sensation and a protest. The Presbytery was
convened, and the Lord Provost appeared before that grave body, at the
head of a deputation of influential citizens, to protest against the
minister's innovation on long established custom. The Presbytery ruled,
"that the use of organs in the public worship of God is contrary to the
law of the land, and to the law and constitution of our Established
Church." The organ was summarily silenced, therefore, and the grand tones
of that instrument were not again heard in accompaniment of sacred song in
the Presbyterian churches of Scotland for more than twenty years.
The ineffective character of unaccompanied congregational singing was very
slowly recognised. In 1829, however, the congregation of the Relief
Church,[11] at Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh, with the approval of their
minister, had an organ erected in their place of worship. The act was
clamorously opposed outside his own following, and the Relief Presbytery
called upon the minister, John Johnston, to remove the offending
instrument, under pain of deprivation. The response of minister and
congregation to this command was the severance of their connection with
the Synod. In 1845, a Congregational Church in Edinburgh set up an organ
in their place of worship, and as each congregation in that denomination
is an independent body, no outside opposition or interference was in that
case possible.
The progress of the movement continued, however, to be very slow. A large
proportion of the older men in the ministry still regarded instrumental
music in churches as associated with Romanism, and when Dr Lee, the
minister of the Old Greyfriars' Church, in Edinburgh, ventured, in 1863,
to introduce a harmonium there, it was rumoured that he was a disguised
Jesuit, seeking to Romanise the Reformed Church. He was well able to
defend himself, however, and he did so with such ability and power that,
in the following year, the General Assembly ruled that "such innovations
should be put down only when they interfered with the peace of the Church
and the harmony of congregations." The cause was won. The Old Greyfriars'
congregation subscribed four hundred and fifty pounds for an organ, which
replaced the harmonium in 1865.
The Free Church lingered long in the rear of the movement, mainly owing to
the opposition of Dr Begg, but in 1883 the General Assembly recorded a
resolution similar to that adopted by the Assembly of the Established
Church of Scotland in 1864, and opposition to instrumental music is now
practically at an end. The prejudice against it still lingers, however, in
some districts remote from the life and light of the larger towns. A story
is told of a lady of the old school of religious thought, that, having
been induced by some friends to attend an Episcopalian service, and being
asked on her return how she liked the music, she replied, "It was verra
fine, but waes me! yon's an awfu' way of spending the Sawbath."
Discipline in the Kirk.
BY THE REV. GEO. S. TYACK, B.A.