Theologically, many districts of the Highlands have not advanced beyond the stage occupied by Lowland Scotland in the time of Burns. In certain parishes, the communion is dispensed in the open air, in the way familiar to readers of the "Holy Fair." Sky overhead, grassy turf beneath, solemnity, sobs, and sighs all around, certainly make up a most impressive whole. The sermon is unmercifully long—two hours, at least: probably, if translated into English, and shorn of repetitions, it could be given in one-fourth of the time. If you or I, dear Lowlander, should stand on the outside of the crowd, and appear more curious than devout, we should certainly be alluded to in the sermon as those wicked people. The discourses are no gilt-edged harangues dealing with the "larger hope," and larded with quotations from Tennyson and Browning. They are, on the contrary, full of Tartarean sulphur and strange fire, and rich in grotesque illustrations, of which this is a sample: "My friends, crowds of loathsome fiends are sent by the Prince of the Power of the Air to tempt us to our destruction. They hang over us waiting for their opportunity, just like a regiment of black crows hovering over a potato-field."
I am afraid that crude Calvinism, as preached in certain parts of the north, is nothing less than monstrous. The good God, beneficent Father of us all, is unrecognizable when eternal reprobation is represented as the inevitable fate of the vast majority of His children. In time, no doubt (and the sooner the better), the results of modern theological thought will penetrate into the uttermost nooks of the land.
MUSIC AND RELIGION.
It is not easy to see why religion should be associated with gloom and disheartening ugliness. The long-drawn music of an Old Testament psalm is not without a certain doleful impressiveness, but the human soul needs occasional stimulus, even on Sundays, of something less lugubrious. Certain congregations hate hymns: they consider them carnal and uninspired. As for organ-music in a church, that would be praising God by machinery, a preposterous and intolerable approximation to Popery. Not long ago, a poor crofter in a Hebridean township, came to his minister, requesting that good man's offices for the christening of a child. The crofter in question was the possessor of an asthmatic old concertina, and the clergyman, before the rite of admission to the visible church could be performed, insisted on the annihilation of the ungodly instrument of music. The minister, in person, visited the croft, and disabled the concertina with a hammer. The child was then christened, and the clerical zany strode off victorious, feeling he had done a good day's work for Heaven. "Who ever heard of the Apostle Paul playing on an organ?" was the question once propounded by Dr. Begg. The argument was a splendid reductio ad absurdum, and resembles the old reason for the reluctance of the peasantry to eat potatoes, because no mention was made of them in Holy Writ. But songs and music are filtering into the glens, in an official way, by the agency of the Scotch Education Department. Musical drill is a feature of the school-room, and it is a joy to think that such is the case. Some of the old folk, however, look on astounded and shocked; they shake their heads, and would, if they could, abolish such frivolity. "Why all this singing and tramping?" said a Skyeman to me once. "What good will all the songs of the world do to a man when he comes to his death-bed? I would rather, this very moment, sit down in a public-house, and drink till I was intoxicated, than screech and howl these worldly airs." Life was not so absurd in the days of the Catholic ascendency. But human nature is slowly asserting itself, and the days of the glum tyrannical zealot are assuredly numbered.
ETHICAL TEACHING IN SCHOOLS.
In some districts of the North, the inspectors have considerable trouble with certain teachers of the devout type who, from conscientious scruples, refuse to read to the children anything in the nature of a fairy tale. While examining a class in a remote Sutherland school, an inspector requested the schoolmaster to narrate to the children, in Gaelic, the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and get them thereafter to put it into English. But the teacher most emphatically refused: "No, no, I cannot do that: it is all a lie; wolves do not speak; no animal speaks." The inspector, to refute him, unwisely alluded to the Scripture account of Balaam's ass in the twenty-second chapter of Numbers; whereupon, the dominie nearly swooned at the impiety of comparing that inspired animal with a secular beast like Grimm's wolf. For some time after, the inspector was bombarded with anonymous letters, accusing him of habitually sitting in the scorner's chair. He was terrified lest some Member of Parliament, eager for a grievance, should be got to move the adjournment of the House of Commons, with the righteous object of directing the attention of Government to Little Red Riding Hood and the naughty inspector of schools.[17]
The question of religious teaching in schools is capable of an easy solution, and we in the south have come pretty near solving it. The best solution is to have no dogma at all in the school-room. The Catechism and Prayer-book are excellent in their way, but the school is no place for them. We have a very complete and extensive organisation of churches in the land, and an army of officials ordained to teach doctrines and tenets: let them take up the inculcation of creeds and rites, but don't let us perplex the school children with catechisms and metaphysical definitions. It is easy to make a distinction between morality and doctrine—a distinction which is alike clear and reasonable. Morality is an earthly and secular affair, and has to do with matters of elementary honesty such as every responsible citizen of a free country ought to practice. Religion is a higher affair, dealing with our relationship to the unseen: it is outside the province of the teacher, and should not be thrust into the school programme along with history and geography and grammar. Morality is of this world: religion of the next. Let everything be kept in its proper place. As to that division of duty which deals with right conduct, there is no controversy whatever. Thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not bear false witness—these, and the like elementary rules of conduct, are universally admitted to be right, for they are the groundwork of society. Take these away, and the world lapses into chaos. The following virtues are capable of being taught in schools:—(1) a strict adherence to the truth; (2) the application of the golden rule; (3) cheerful obedience at the call of duty; (4) reverence and respect for everything noble and great in the history of the world. These can all be taught, and are actually taught, by every conscientious teacher in the country. They constitute not the whole of duty, indeed, but the most difficult part of it—certainly all that need come into the realm of pedagogy.
THE MODERATES.
Ami lecteur, have you ever heard of the Moderates? If, by chance, you have dipped into the interminable controversies that gyrated round the Disruption year, it is probable you may have heard more than enough of them. One gets the impression that they were an unimpassioned, easy-going, anti-brimstone, but highly estimable body of men. They were blamed for preaching morality and not the penetrating mysteries of the faith. In "The Holy Fair," Burns gives us an inimitable picture of the moral philosopher in the pulpit:—
"But hark! the tent has changed its voice,
There's peace an' rest nae langer,
For a' the real judges rise—
They canna sit for anger.
Smith opens out his cauld harangues
On practice and on morals,
An' aff the godly pour in thrangs
To gie the jars an' barrels
A lift that day.