A RIVERSIDE BAPTISM
To this baptismal experience another may be added, where the rite was celebrated in the face of great natural obstacles. Dr. Hanna relates that a Highland minister once went to baptise a child in the house of one of his parishioners, near which ran a small burn or river. When he came to the stream it was so swollen with recent rains that he could not ford it in order to reach the house. In these circumstances he told the father, who was awaiting him on the opposite bank, to bring the child down to the burn-side. Furnished with a wooden scoop, the clergyman stood on the one side of the water, and the father, holding the infant as far out in his arms as he could, placed himself on the other. With the foaming torrent between the participants, the service went on, until the time came for sprinkling the babe, when the minister, dipping the scoop into the water, flung its contents across at the baby’s face. His aim, however, was not good, for he failed more than once, calling out to the father after each new trial: ‘Weel, has’t gotten ony yet?’ When he did succeed, the whole contents of the scoop fell on the child’s face, whereupon the disgusted parent ejaculated, ‘Ach, Got pless me, sir, but ye’ve trownt ta child.’ Dr. Chalmers, in telling this story, used to express his wonder as to what the great sticklers for form and ceremony in the sacraments would think of such a baptism by a burn-side, performed with a wooden scoop.[7]
A certain parish church in Carrick, like many ecclesiastical edifices of the time in Scotland, was not kept with scrupulous care. The windows seemed never to be cleaned, or indeed opened, for cobwebs hung across them,
And half-starv’d spiders prey’d on half-starv’d flies.
There was an air of dusty neglect about the interior, and likewise a musty smell. One Sunday an elderly clergyman from another part of the country was preaching. In the midst of his sermon a spider, suspended from the roof at the end of its long thread, swung to and fro in front of his face. It came against his lips and was blown vigorously away. Again it swung back to his mouth, when, with an indignant motion of his hands, he broke the thread and exclaimed, ‘My friends, this is the dirtiest kirk I ever preached in. I’m like to be pusioned wi’ speeders.’
It is recorded of an old minister in the west of Ross-shire that he prayed for Queen Victoria, ‘that God would bless her and that as now she had grown to be an old woman, He would be pleased to make her a new man.’
The same worthy divine is said to have once prayed ‘that we may be saved from the horrors of war, as depicted in the pages of the Illustrated London News and the Graphic.’
A DIET OF CATECHISING
One of the most serious functions which the Presbyterian clergymen of Scotland had formerly to discharge was that of publicly examining their congregation in their knowledge of the Christian faith. Provided with a list of the congregation, the officiating minister in the pulpit proceeded to call up the members to answer questions out of the Shorter Catechism, or such other interrogatories as it might seem desirable to ask. Nobody knew when his turn would come, or what questions would be put to him, so that it was a time of trial and trepidation for old and young. The custom appears to be now obsolete, but reminiscences of its operation are still preserved.
‘WHAT IS A SACRAMENT?’