TO THE YOUNG READER.

66

YOUNG READER,- "Our fathers of the Scottish nation," says one who was himself an illustrious Scotsman, were a mighty and valiant people who dwelt in the face of all their enemies, nor were afraid to encounter the might of them all. God put within them an indomitable spirit which would not be enforced by the power of man. Our fathers may be said to have lived for centuries in the tented field; yea, and to have slept by night with arms in their hands: and had they not been of such a temper, long ere this the name of Scotland would have been lost among the nations." How they contended against the might of England-unsurpassed in armsled by the mightiest of her kings, in the days of William Wallace and Robert Bruce, these two mighty men of war, thou already knowest. This know, however, that even the wars of the Scottish kingdom are less worthy of admiration than the wrestlings of the Scottish Kirk. Against what enemies, dost thou ask, did the Kirk of Scotland wrestle with such valiancy? against the Papacy; the head of which mighty system of error and evil, superstition and slavery, being originally nothing more than an ordinary minister of Christ, did set himself to reign in Christ's stead, pretending that all power had

First,

been given him over earth, heaven, and hell, and that of these three worlds he had the keys. To the dominion of this wicked man whom men call the Pope, but whose designation in Scripture is Antichrist, and of that mightiest conception of error and evil, that "master-piece of Satan," the Papacy, Scotland was the last among the nations to submit. Yet submit even she at length did. There were multitudes, however, who did not. In the cells of the Culdees there existed not only confessors for the old faith, and the old forms, but from these retirements there went forth over the land, and even into other lands, protesters against the Papacy as an utter corruption and subversion of both. The opposition thus made for centuries came to a head in 1560. In this memorable year, by one indignant and simultaneous heave of the whole nation, this cruel and cursed superstition was overthrown, and the Kirk of Christ in Scotland— Protestant in its doctrines and Presbyterian in its constitution, according to the apostolic model -was established on its ruins.

The next enemy with which the Kirk of Scotland had to wrestle, was the Prelacy, or, more properly speaking, the Papacy seeking to regain its old supremacy, and putting on for this end the guise of Prelacy. The wrestlings of the Kirk with the Papacy in this form began as early as the year 1621, when James VI. introduced the Five Acts of Perth. They continued under Charles I. till the year 1638, when, by the taking of the Covenant, in which all ranks, for themselves and posterity, swore to "adhere unto and defend the true religion in its purity and liberty, as established at the Reformation;" and by the Acts of the famous Assembly that

met at Glasgow, they were crowned with triumph.

The twelve years that followed these contendings, called the Twelve Reforming Years, were the best days that the Kirk of Scotland ever saw. For the purity of her doctrines, the simplicity and scripturalness of her forms, both of worship and government, for the strictness of her discipline, and above all, for the apostolical success of her ministers, and the holiness of her members, she was the model and marvel of all the Reformed Churches.

The next of her witnessing and wrestling periods, was from the Restoration of Charles II. in 1660, to the glorious Revolution in 1688, a period of twenty-eight years.

What those principles and privileges were, for which, during this period, the Kirk of Scotland witnessed and wrestled, for which her children wandered as outlaws on the mountains, pined in dungeons, fell in battle, or perished on the scaffold, may be seen in Wodrow's History. When the father of the historian was on his death-bed, it is said that it lay heavy on his heart that he had not recorded what he knew of these witnessings and wrestlings, and that he took a vow of his son that he would write the history of the period. How faithfully he kept his vow, how nobly he performed his task, needs not to be told. Robert Wodrow, historian of The Martyr Church of Scotland, was minister of Eastwood parish. In its lone and still churchyard his mortal remains lie buried. The spot is undistinguished by any mark or memorial. His work, it is true, is his monument, more durable than brass or marble; yet surely it were no unmeet thing that he who did so much to