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Title: Theological Essays and Other Papers v2

Author: Thomas de Quincey

Release Date: October, 2004  [EBook #6660]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on January 10, 2003]

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS V2 ***




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THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS AND OTHER PAPERS

By THOMAS DE QUINCEY, AUTHOR OF

_'CONFESSIONS OF AN ENGLISH OPIUM-EATER,' ETC. ETC._

IN TWO VOLUMES.

VOL. II.





CONTENTS



SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND
TOILETTE OF THE HEBREW LADY
MILTON
CHARLEMAGNE
MODERN GREECE
LORD CARLISLE ON POPE




SECESSION FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND.

[1844.]



A great revolution has taken place in Scotland. A greater has been
threatened. Nor is that danger even yet certainly gone by. Upon the
accidents of such events as may arise for the next five years, whether
fitted or not fitted to revive discussions in which many of the
Non-seceders went in various degrees along with the Seceders, depends
the final (and, in a strict sense, the very awful) question, What is
to be the fate of the Scottish church? Lord Aberdeen's Act is well
qualified to tranquillize the agitations of that body; and at an earlier
stage, if not intercepted by Lord Melbourne, might have prevented them
in part. But Lord Aberdeen has no power to stifle a conflagration once
thoroughly kindled. That must depend in a great degree upon the
favorable aspect of events yet in the rear.

Meantime these great disturbances are not understood in England; and
chiefly from the differences between the two nations as to the language
of their several churches and law courts. The process of ordination
and induction is totally different under the different ecclesiastical
administrations of the two kingdoms. And the church courts of Scotland
do not exist in England. We write, therefore, with an express view to
the better information of England proper. And, with this purpose, we
shall lead the discussion through four capital questions:--

I. _What_ is it that has been done by the moving party?

II. _How_ was it done? By what agencies and influence?

III. What were the _immediate results_ of these acts?

IV. What are the _remote results_ yet to be apprehended?

I. First, then, WHAT _is it that has been done?_ Up to the month of
May in 1834, the fathers and brothers of the 'Kirk' were in harmony
as great as humanity can hope to see. Since May, 1834, the church has
been a fierce crater of volcanic agencies, throwing out of her bosom
one-third of her children; and these children are no sooner born into
their earthly atmosphere, than they turn, with unnatural passions, to
the destruction of their brethren. What can be the grounds upon which
an _acharnement_ so deadly has arisen?

It will read to the ears of a stranger almost as an experiment upon
his credulity, if we tell the simple truth. Being incredible, however,
it is not the less true; and, being monstrous, it will yet be recorded
in history, that the Scottish church has split into mortal feuds upon
two points absolutely without interest to the nation; first, upon a
demand for creating clergymen by a new process; secondly, upon a demand
for Papal latitude of jurisdiction. Even the order of succession in
these things is not without meaning. Had the second demand stood first,
it would have seemed possible that the two demands might have grown
up independently, and so far conscientiously. But, according to the
realities of the case, this is _not_ possible; the second demand grew
_out_ of the first. The interest of the Seceders, as locked up in their
earliest requisition, was that which prompted their second. Almost
everybody was contented with the existing mode of creating the pastoral
relation. Search through Christendom, lengthways and breadthways, there
was not a public usage, an institution, an economy, which more
profoundly slept in the sunshine of divine favor or of civil prosperity,
than the peculiar mode authorized and practised in Scotland of
appointing to every parish its several pastor. Here and there an
ultra-Presbyterian spirit might prompt a murmur against it. But the
wise and intelligent approved; and those who had the appropriate--that
is, the religious interest--confessed that it was practically successful.
From whom, then, came the attempt to change? Why, from those only who
had an alien interest, an indirect interest, an interest of ambition
in its subversion. As matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron
of each benefice, acting under the severest restraints--restraints which
(if the church courts did their duty) left no room or possibility for
an unfit man to creep in--nominated the incumbent. In a spiritual sense,
the church had all power: by refusing, first of all, to '_license_'
unqualified persons; secondly, by refusing to '_admit_' out of these
licensed persons such as might have become warped from the proper standard
of pastoral fitness, the church had a negative voice, all-potential in
the creation of clergymen; the church could exclude whom she pleased.
But this contented her not. Simply to shut out was an ungracious office,
though mighty for the interests of orthodoxy through the land. The
children of this world, who became the agitators of the church, clamored
for something more. They desired for the church that she should become a
lady patroness; that she should give as well as take away; that she should
wield a sceptre, courted for its bounties, and not merely feared for its
austerities. Yet how should this be accomplished? Openly to translate
upon the church the present power of patrons--_that_ were too
revolutionary, that would have exposed its own object. For the present,
therefore, let this device prevail--let the power nominally be
transferred to congregations: let this be done upon the plea that each
congregation understands best what mode of ministrations tends to its
own edification. There lies the semblance of a Christian plea; the
congregation, it is said, has become anxious for itself; the church
has become anxious for the congregation. And then, if the translation
should be effected, the church has already devised a means for
appropriating the power which she has unsettled; for she limits this
power to the communicants at the sacramental table. Now, in Scotland,
though not in England, the character of communicant is notoriously
created or suspended by the clergyman of each parish; so that, by the
briefest of circuits, the church causes the power to revolve into her
own hands.

That was the first change--a change full of Jacobinism; and for which
to be published was to be denounced. It was necessary, therefore, to
place this Jacobin change upon a basis privileged from attack. How
should _that_ be done? The object was to create a new clerical power;
to shift the election of clergymen from the lay hands in which law and
usage had lodged it; and, under a plausible mask of making the election
popular, circuitously to make it ecclesiastical. Yet, if the existing
patrons of church benefices should see themselves suddenly denuded of
their rights, and within a year or two should see these rights settling
determinately into the hands of the clergy, the fraud, the fraudulent
purpose, and the fraudulent machinery, would have stood out in gross
proportions too palpably revealed. In this dilemma the reverend
agitators devised a second scheme. It was a scheme bearing triple
harvests; for, at one and the same time, it furnished the motive which
gave a constructive coherency and meaning to the original purpose, it
threw a solemn shadow over the rank worldliness of that purpose, and
it opened a diffusive tendency towards other purposes of the same
nature, as yet undeveloped. The device was this: in Scotland, as in
England, the total process by which a parish clergyman is created,
subdivides itself into several successive acts. The initial act belongs
to the patron of the benefice: he must '_present_;' that is, he notifies
the fact of his having conferred the benefice upon A B, to a public
body which officially takes cognizance of this act; and that body is,
not the particular parish concerned, but the presbytery of the district
in which the parish is seated. Thus far the steps, merely legal, of
the proceedings, were too definite to be easily disturbed. These steps
are sustained by Lord Aberdeen as realities, and even by the
Non-intrusionists were tolerated as formalities.

But at this point commence other steps not so rigorously defined by
law or usage, nor so absolutely within one uniform interpretation of
their value. In practice they had long sunk into forms. But ancient
forms easily lend themselves to a revivification by meanings and
applications, new or old, under the galvanism of democratic forces.
The disturbers of the church, passing by the act of 'presentation' as
an obstacle too formidable to be separately attacked on its own account,
made their stand upon one of the two acts which lie next in succession.
It is the regular routine, that the presbytery, having been warned of
the patron's appointment, and having 'received' (in technical language)
the presentee--that is, having formally recognised him in that
character--next appoint a day on which he is to preach before the
congregation. This sermon, together with the prayers by which it is
accompanied, constitute the probationary act according to some views;
but, according to the general theory, simply the inaugural act by which
the new pastor places himself officially before his future parishioners.
Decorum, and the sense of proportion, seem to require that to every
commencement of a very weighty relation, imposing new duties, there
should be a corresponding and ceremonial entrance. The new pastor,
until this public introduction, could not be legitimately assumed for
known to the parishioners. And accordingly at this point it was--viz.
subsequently to his authentic publication, as we may call it--that,
in the case of any grievous scandal known to the parish as outstanding
against him, arose the proper opportunity furnished by the church for
lodging the accusation, and for investigating it before the church
court. In default, however, of any grave objection to the presentee,
he was next summoned by the presbytery to what really _was_ a
probationary act at their bar; viz. an examination of his theological
sufficiency. But in this it could not be expected that he should fail,
because he must previously have satisfied the requisitions of the
church in his original examination for a license to preach. Once
dismissed with credit from this bar, he was now beyond all further
probation whatsoever; in technical phrase, he was entitled to
'admission.' Such were the steps, according to their orderly succession,
by which a man consummated the pastoral tie with any particular parish.
And all of these steps, subsequent to the '_reception_' and inaugural
preaching, were now summarily characterized by the revolutionists as
'spiritual;' for the sake of sequestering them into their own hands.
As to the initiatory act of presentation, _that_ might be secular, and
to be dealt with by a secular law. But the rest were acts which belonged
not to a kingdom of this world. 'These,' with a newborn scrupulosity
never heard of until the revolution of 1834, clamored for new
casuistries; 'these,' said the agitators, 'we cannot consent any longer
to leave in their state of collapse as mere inert or ceremonial forms.
They must be revivified. By all means, let the patron present as
heretofore. But the acts of "examination" and "admission," _together
with the power of altogether refusing to enter upon either,_ under a
protest against the candidate from a clear majority of the
parishioners--these are acts falling within the spiritual jurisdiction
of the church. And these powers we must, for the future, see exercised
according to spiritual views.'

Here, then, suddenly emerged a perfect ratification for their own
previous revolutionary doctrine upon the creation of parish clergymen.
This new scruple was, in relation to former scruples, a perfect
linch-pin for locking their machinery into cohesion. For vainly would
they have sought to defeat the patron's right of presenting, unless
through this sudden pause and interdict imposed upon the _latter_ acts
in the process of induction, under the pretext that these were acts
competent only to a spiritual jurisdiction. This plea, by its tendency,
rounded and secured all that they had yet advanced in the way of claim.
But, at the same time, though indispensable negatively, positively it
stretched so much further than any necessity or interest inherent in
their present innovations, that not improbably they faltered and shrank
back at first from the immeasurable field of consequences upon which
it opened. They would willingly have accepted less. But, unfortunately,
it sometimes happens, that, to gain as much as is needful in one
direction, you must take a great deal more than you wish for in another.
Any principle, which _could_ carry them over the immediate difficulty,
would, by a mere necessity, carry them incalculably beyond it. For if
every act bearing in any one direction a spiritual aspect, showing at
any angle a relation to spiritual things, is therefore to be held
spiritual in a sense excluding the interference of the civil power,
there falls to the ground at once the whole fabric of civil authority
in any independent form. Accordingly, we are satisfied that the claim
to a spiritual jurisdiction, in collision with the claims of the state,
would not probably have offered itself to the ambition of the agitators,
otherwise than as a measure ancillary to their earlier pretension of
appointing virtually all parish clergymen. The one claim was found to
be the integration or _sine qua non_ complement of the other. In order
to sustain the power of appointment in their own courts, it was
necessary that they should defeat the patron's power; and, in order
to defeat the patron's power, ranging itself (as sooner or later it
would) under the law of the land, it was necessary that they should
decline that struggle, by attempting to take the question out of all
secular jurisdictions whatever.

In this way grew up that twofold revolution which has been convulsing
the Scottish church since 1834; first, the audacious attempt to disturb
the settled mode of appointing the parish clergy, through a silent
robbery perpetrated on the crown and great landed aristocracy; secondly,
and in prosecution of that primary purpose, the far more frantic attempt
to renew in a practical shape the old disputes so often agitating the
forum of Christendom, as to the bounds of civil and spiritual power.

In our rehearsal of the stages through which the process of induction
ordinarily travels, we have purposely omitted one possible interlude
or parenthesis in the series; not as wishing to conceal it, but for
the very opposite reason. It is right to withdraw from a
_representative_ account of any transaction such varieties of the
routine as occur but seldom: in this way they are more pointedly
exposed. Now, having made that explanation, we go on to inform the
Southern reader--that an old traditionary usage has prevailed in
Scotland, but not systematically or uniformly, of sending to the
presentee, through the presbytery, what is designated a '_call_,'
subscribed by members of the parish congregation. This call is simply
an invitation to the office of their pastor. It arose in the disorders
of the seventeenth century; but in practice it is generally admitted
to have sunk into a mere formality throughout the eighteenth century;
and the very position which it holds in the succession of steps, not
usually coming forward until _after_ the presentation has been notified
(supposing that it comes forward at all), compels us to regard it in
that light. Apparently it bears the same relation to the patron's act
as the Address of the two Houses to the Speech from the Throne: it is
rather a courteous echo to the personal compliment involved in the
presentation, than capable of being regarded as any _original_ act of
invitation. And yet, in defiance of that notorious fact, some people
go so far as to assert, that a call is not good unless where it is
subscribed by a clear majority of the congregation. This is amusing.
We have already explained that, except as a liberal courtesy, the very
idea of a call destined to be inoperative, is and must be moonshine.
Yet between two moonshines, some people, it seems, can tell which is
the denser. We have all heard of Barmecide banquets, where, out of
tureens filled to the brim with--nothings the fortunate guest was
helped to vast messes of--air. For a hungry guest to take this
tantalization in good part, was the sure way to win the esteem of the
noble Barmecide. But the Barmecide himself would hardly approve of a
duel turning upon a comparison between two of his tureens, question
being--which had been the fuller, or of two nihilities which had been
seasoned the more judiciously. Yet this in effect is the reasoning of
those who say that a call, signed by fifty-one persons out of a hundred,
is more valid than another signed only by twenty-six, or by nobody;
it being in the mean time fully understood that neither is valid in
the least possible degree. But if the '_call_,' was a Barmecide call,
there was another act open to the congregation which was not so.

For the English reader must now understand, that over and above the
passive and less invidious mode of discountenancing or forbearing to
countenance a presentee, by withdrawing from the direct 'call' upon
him, usage has sanctioned another and stronger sort of protest; one
which takes the shape of distinct and clamorous _objections_. We are
speaking of the routine in this place, according to the course which
it _did_ travel or _could_ travel under that law and that practice
which furnished the pleas for complaint. Now, it was upon these
'objections,' as may well be supposed, that the main battle arose.
Simply to want the 'call,' being a mere _zero_, could not much lay
hold upon public feeling. It was a case not fitted for effect. You
cannot bring a blank privation strongly before the public eye. 'The
"call" did not take place last week;' well, perhaps it will take place
next week. Or again, if it should never take place, perhaps it may be
religious carelessness on the part of the parish. Many parishes
notoriously feel no interest in their pastor, except as a quiet member
of their community. Consequently, in two of three cases that might
occur, there was nothing to excite the public; the parish had either
agreed with the patron, or had not noticeably dissented. But in the
third case of positive 'objections,' which (in order to justify
themselves as not frivolous and vexatious) were urged with peculiar
emphasis, the attention of all men was arrested. Newspapers reverberated
the fact: sympathetic groans arose: the patron was an oppressor: the
parish was under persecution: and the poor clergyman, whose case was
the most to be pitied, as being in a measure _endowed_ with a lasting
fund of dislike, had the mortification to find, over and above this
resistance from within, that he bore the name of 'intruder' from
without. He was supposed by the fiction of the case to be in league
with his patron for the persecution of a godly parish; whilst in reality
the godly parish was persecuting _him_, and hallooing the world _ab
extra_ to join in the hunt.

In such cases of pretended objections to men who have not been tried,
we need scarcely tell the reader, that usually they are mere cabals
and worldly intrigues. It is next to impossible that any parish or
congregation should sincerely agree in their opinion of a clergyman.
What one man likes in such cases, another man detests. Mr. A., with
an ardent nature, and something of a histrionic turn, doats upon a
fine rhetorical display. Mr. B., with more simplicity of taste,
pronounces this little better than theatrical ostenostentation. Mr.
C. requires a good deal of critical scholarship, Mr. D quarrels with
this as unsuitable to a rustic congregation. Mrs. X., who is 'under
concern' for sin, demands a searching and (as she expresses it) a
'faithful' style of dealing with consciences. Mrs. Y., an aristocratic
lady, who cannot bear to be mixed up in any common charge together
with low people, abominates such words as 'sin,' and wills that the
parson should confine his 'observations' to the 'shocking demoralization
of the lower orders.'

Now, having stated the practice of Scottish induction as it was formerly
sustained in its first stage by law, in its second stage by usage, let
us finish that part of the subject by reporting the _existing_ practice
as regulated in all its stages by law. What law? The law as laid down
in Lord Aberdeen's late Act of Parliament. This statement should,
historically speaking, have found itself under our _third_ head, as
being one amongst the consequences immediately following the final
rupture. But it is better placed at this point; because it closes the
whole review of that topic; and because it reflects light upon the
former practice--the practice which led to the whole mutinous tumult:
every alteration forcing more keenly upon the reader's attention what
had been the previous custom, and in what respect it was held by any
man to be a grievance.

This act, then, of Lord Aberdeen's removes all _legal_ effect from the
'_call_.' Common sense required _that_. For what was to be done with
patronage? Was it to be sustained, or was it not? If not, then why
quarrel with the Non-intrusionists? Why suffer a schism to take place
in the church? Give legal effect to the 'call,' and the original cause
of quarrel is gone. For, with respect to the opponents of the
Non-intrusionists, _they_ would bow to the law. On the other hand, if
patronage _is_ to be sustained, then why allow of any lingering or
doubtful force to what must often operate as a conflicting claim? 'A
call,' which carries with it any legal force, annihilates patronage.
Patronage would thus be exercised only on sufferance. Do we mean then,
that a 'call' should sink into a pure fiction of ceremony, like the
English _conge-d'elire_ addressed to a dean and chapter, calling on
them to elect a bishop, when all the world knows that already the see
has been filled by a nomination from the crown? Not at all; a _moral_
weight will still attach to the 'call,' though no legal coercion: and
what is chiefly important, all those _doubts_ will be removed by express
legislation, which could not but arise between a practice pointing
sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, between legal
decisions again upholding one view, whilst something very like legal
prescription was occasionally pleaded for the other. Behold the evil
of written laws not rigorously in harmony with that sort of customary
law founded upon vague tradition or irregular practice. And here, by
the way, arises the place for explaining to the reader that
irreconcilable dispute amongst Parliamentary lawyers as to the question
whether Lord Aberdeen's bill were _enactory_, that is, created a new
law, or _declaratory_, that is, simply expounded an old one. If
enactory, then why did the House of Lords give judgment against those
who allowed weight to the 'call?' That might need altering; _that_
might be highly inexpedient; but if it required a new law to make it
illegal, how could those, parties be held in the wrong previously to
the new act of legislation? On the other hand, if declaratory, then
show us any old law which made the 'call' illegal. The fact is, that
no man can decide whether the act established a new law, or merely
expounded an old one. And the reason why he cannot, is this: the
practice, the usage, which often is the law, had grown up variously
during the troubles of the seventeenth century. In many places political
reasons had dictated that the elders should nominate the incumbent.
But the ancient practice had authorized patronage: by the act of Queen
Anne (10th chap.) it was even formally restored; and yet the patron
in known instances was said to have waived his right in deference to
the 'call.' But why? Did he do so in courteous compliance with the
parish, as a party whose _reasonable_ wishes ought, for the sake of
all parties, to meet with attention? Or did he do so, in humble
submission to the parish, as having by their majorities a legal right
to the presentation? There lay the question. The presumptions from
antiquity were all against the call. The more modern practice had
occasionally been _for_ it. Now, we all know how many colorable claims
of right are created by prescription. What was the exact force of the
'call,' no man could say. In like manner, the exact character and limit
of allowable objections had been ill-defined in practice, and rested
more on a vague tradition than on any settled rule. This also made it
hard to say whether Lord Aberdeen's Act were enactory or declaratory,
a predicament, however, which equally affects all statutes _for removing
doubts_.

The 'call,' then, we consider as no longer recognised by law. But did
Lord Aberdeen by that change establish the right of the patron as an
unconditional right? By no means. He made it strictly a conditional
right. The presentee is _now_ a candidate, and no more. He has the
most important vote in his favor, it is true; but that vote may still
be set aside, though still only with the effect of compelling the
patron to a new choice. '_Calls_' are no longer doubtful in their
meaning, but '_objections_' have a fair field laid open to them. All
reasonable objections are to be weighed. But who is to judge whether
they _are_ reasonable? The presbytery of the district. And now pursue
the action of the law, and see how little ground it leaves upon which
to hang a complaint. Everybody's rights are secured. Whatever be the
event, first of all the presentee cannot complain, if he is rejected
only for proved insufficiency. He is put on his trial as to these
points only: 1. Is he orthodox? 2. Is he of good moral reputation? 3.
Is he sufficiently learned? And note this (which in fact Sir James
Graham remarked in his official letter to the Assembly), strictly
speaking, he ought not to be under challenge as respects the third
point, for it is your own fault, the fault of your own licensing courts
(the presbyteries), if he is not qualified so far. You should not have
created him a licentiate, should not have given him a license to preach,
as must have been done in an earlier stage of his progress, if he were
not learned enough. Once learned, a man is learned for life. As to the
other points, he may change, and _therefore_ it is that an examination
is requisite. But how can _he_ complain if he is found by an impartial
court of venerable men objectionable on any score? If it were possible,
however, that he should be wronged, he has his appeal. Secondly, how
can the patron complain? _His_ case is the same as his presentee's
case; his injuries the same; his relief the same. Besides, if _his_
man is rejected, it is not the parish man that takes his place. No;
but a second man of his own choice: and, if again he chooses amiss,
who is to blame for _that_? Thirdly, can the congregation complain?
They have a _general_ interest in their spiritual guide. But as to the
preference for oratory--for loud or musical voice--for peculiar views
in religion--these things are special: they interest but an exceedingly
small minority in any parish; and, what is worse, that which pleases
one is often offensive to another. There are cases in which a parish
would reject a man for being a married man: some of the parish have
unmarried daughters. But this case clearly belongs to the small
minority; and we have little doubt that, where the objections lay 'for
cause not shown,' it was often for _this_ cause. Fourthly, can the
church complain? Her interest is represented, 1, not by the presentee;
2, not by the patron; 3, not by the congregation; but 4, by the
presbytery. And, whatever the presbytery say, _that_ is supported.
Speaking either for the patron, for the presentee, for the congregation,
or for themselves as conservators of the church, that court is heard;
what more would they have? And thus in turn every interest is protected.
Now the point to be remarked is-that each party in turn has a separate
influence. But on any other plan, giving to one party out of the four
an absolute or unconditional power, no matter which of the four it
be--all the rest have none at all. Lord Aberdeen has reconciled the
rights of patrons for the first time with those of all other parties
interested. Nobody has more than a conditional power. Everybody has
_that_. And the patron, as necessity requires, if property is to be
protected, has, in all circumstances, the revisionary power.

II. _Secondly_, How _were these things don?_? By what means were the
hands of any party strengthened, so as to find this revolution possible?

We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces.
And it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of
religion, which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose
in this island through the last two hundred years.

It is well known that the two great revolutions of the seventeenth
century--that in 1649, accomplished by the Parliament armies (including
its reaction in 1660), and secondly, that in 1688-9--did much to
unsettle the religious tone of public morals. Historians and satirists
ascribe a large effect in this change to the personal influence of
Charles II., and the foreign character of his court. We do not share
in their views; and one eminent proof that they are wrong, lies in the
following fact--viz., that the sublimest act of self-sacrifice which
the world has ever seen, arose precisely in the most triumphant season
of Charles's career, a time when the reaction of hatred had not yet
neutralized the sunny joyousness of his Restoration. Surely the reader
cannot be at a loss to know what we mean--the renunciation in one hour,
on St. Bartholomew's Day in 1662, of two thousand benefices by the
nonconforming clergymen of England. In the same year, occurred a similar
renunciation of three hundred and sixty benefices in Scotland. These
great sacrifices, whether called for or not, argue a great strength
in the religious principle at that era. Yet the decay of external
religion towards the close of that century is proved incontestably.
We ourselves are inclined to charge this upon two causes; first, that
the times were controversial; and usually it happens--that, where too
much energy is carried into the controversies or intellectual part of
religion, a very diminished fervor attends the culture of its moral
and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the dispute with
the Papal church, partly, perhaps, with a secret reference to the
rumored apostasy of the royal family, was pursued more eagerly in the
latter half of the seventeenth than even in any section of the sixteenth
century. But, doubtless, the main reason was the revolutionary character
of the times. Morality is at all periods fearfully shaken by intestine
wars, and by instability in a government. The actual duration of war
in England was not indeed longer than three and a half years, viz.,
from Edgehill Fight in the autumn of 1642, to the defeat of the king's
last force under Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-in-the-walds in the spring
of 1846. Any other fighting in that century belonged to mere insulated
and discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every government between
1638 and 1702, kept the popular mind in a state of fermentation.
Accordingly, Queen Anne's reign might be said to open upon an
irreligious people. The condition of things was further strengthened
by the unavoidable interweaving at that time of politics with religion.
They could not be kept separate; and the favor shown even by religious
people to such partisan zealots as Dr. Sacheverell, evidenced, and at
the same time promoted, the public irreligion. This was the period in
which the clergy thought too little of their duties, but too much of
their professional rights; and if we may credit the indirect report
of the contemporary literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for
the extension of religion, was in those days a thing unknown. It may
seem unaccountable to many, that the same state of things should have
spread in those days to Scotland; but this is no more than the analogies
of all experience entitled us to expect. Thus we know that the instincts
of religious reformation ripened everywhere at the same period of the
sixteenth century from one end of Europe to the other; although between
most of the European kingdoms there was nothing like so much intercourse
as between England and Scotland in the eighteenth century. In both
countries, a cold and lifeless state of public religion prevailed up
to the American and French Revolutions. These great events gave a shock
everywhere to the meditative, and, consequently to the religious
impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel had been
already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism. A
century has now passed since Wesley and Whitefield organized a more
spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England,
for the benefit of the poor and laboring classes. These Methodist
institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor
and the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep
slumbers of the Established Church. And another ground of prosperity
soon arose out of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast
multitudes of men grew up under that system--humble enough by the
quality of their education to accept with thankfulness the ministrations
of Methodism, and rich enough to react, upon that beneficent
institution, by continued endowments in money. Gradually, even the
church herself, that mighty establishment, under the cold shade of
which Methodism had grown up as a neglected weed, began to acknowledge
the power of an extending Methodistic influence, which originally she
had haughtily despised. First, she murmured; then she grew anxious or
fearful; and finally, she began to find herself invaded or modified
from within, by influences springing up from Methodism. This last
effect became more conspicuously evident after the French Revolution.
The church of Scotland, which, as a whole, had exhibited, with much
unobtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the church of England
during the eighteenth century, betrayed a corresponding resuscitation
about the same time. At the opening of this present century, both of
these national churches began to show a marked rekindling of religious
fervor. In what extent this change in the Scottish church had been
due, mediately or immediately, to Methodism, we do not pretend to
calculate; that is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But
_mediately_ the Scottish church must have been affected, because she
was greatly affected by her intercourse with the English church (as,
_e.g._, in Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.); and the English
church had been previously affected by Methodism. _Immediately_ she
must also have been affected by Methodism, because Whitefield had been
invited to preach in Scotland, and _did_ preach in Scotland. But,
whatever may have been the cause of this awakening from slumber in the
two established churches of this island, the fact is so little to be
denied, that, in both its aspects, it is acknowledged by those most
interested in denying it. The two churches slept the sleep of torpor
through the eighteenth century; so much of the fact is acknowledged
by their own members. The two churches awoke, as from a trance, in or
just before the dawning of the nineteenth century; this second half
of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The Wesleyan Methodists,
that formidable power in England and Wales, who once reviled the
Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for many years
hailed a very large section in that establishment--viz., the section
technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy--as brothers
after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest model
of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section,
in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct
interest in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal
interest in all that could affect religion, beyond what could be
expected from the Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable
action and reaction between the two classical churches of the British
soil. Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the
Scottish and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century
beyond that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent
agitation, and of sacrifices for conscience, which involved every fifth
or sixth beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the
carelessness which belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for
both has arisen a half century of new light--new zeal--and, spiritually
speaking, of new prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring
down, in order to explain the new power which arose to the Scottish
church, during the last generation of suppose thirty years.

When two powerful establishments, each separately fitted to the genius
and needs of its several people, are pulling together powerfully towards
one great spiritual object, vast must be the results. Our ancestors
would have stood aghast as at some fabulous legend or some mighty
miracle, could they have heard of the scale on which our modern
contributions proceed for the purposes of missions to barbarous nations,
of circulating the Scriptures, (whether through the Bible Society,
that is the National Society, or Provincial Societies,) of translating
the Scriptures into languages scarcely known by name to scholars, of
converting Jews, of organizing and propagating education. Towards these
great objects the Scottish clergy had worked with energy and with
little disturbance to their unanimity. Confidence was universally felt
in their piety and in their discretion. This confidence even reached
the supreme rulers of the state. Very much through ecclesiastical
influence, new plans for extending the religious power of the Scottish
church, and indirectly of extending their secular power, were
countenanced by the Government. Jealousy had been disarmed by the
upright conduct of the Scottish clergy, and their remarkable freedom
hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that the
temper of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to all intriguing
or modes of temporal ascendency in ecclesiastical bodies. The nation,
therefore, was in some degree held as a guarantee for the discretion
of their clergy. And hence it arose, that much less caution was applied
to the first encroachment of the non-intrusionists, than would have
been applied under circumstances of more apparent doubt. Hence, it
arose, that a confidence from the Scottish nation was extended to this
clergy, which too certainly has been abused.

In the years 1824-5, Parliament had passed acts 'for building additional
places of worship in the highlands and islands of Scotland.' These
acts may be looked upon as one section in that general extension of
religious machinery which the British people, by their government and
their legislature, have for many years been promoting. Not, as is
ordinarily said, that the weight of this duty had grown upon them
simply through their own treacherous neglect of it during the latter
half of the eighteenth century; but that no reasonable attention to
that duty _could_ have kept pace with the scale upon which the claims
of a new manufacturing population had increased. In mere equity we
must admit--not that the British nation had fallen behind its duties,
(though naturally it might have done so under the religious torpor
prevalent at the original era of manufacturing extension,) but that
the duties had outstripped all human power of overtaking them. The
efforts, however, have been prodigious in this direction for many
years. Amongst those applied to Scotland, it had been settled by
Parliament that forty-two new churches should be raised in the
highlands, with an endowment from the government of [pound symbol]120
annually for each incumbent. There were besides more than two hundred
chapels of ease to be founded; and towards this scheme the Scottish
public subscribed largely. The money was intrusted to the clergy.
_That_ was right, but mark what followed. It had been expressly provided
by Parliament--that any district or circumjacent territory, allotted
to such parliamentary churches as the range within which the incumbent
was to exercise his spiritual ministration, should _not_ be separate
parishes for any civil or legal effects. Here surely the intentions
and directions of the legislature were plain enough, and decisive
enough.

How did the Scottish clergy obey them? They erected all these
jurisdictions into _bona fide_ 'parishes,' enjoying the plenary rights
(as to church government) of the other parishes, and distinguished
from them in a merely nominal way as parishes _quoad sacra_. There
were added at once to the presbyteries, which are the organs of the
church power, two hundred and three clerical persons for the chapels
of ease, and forty-two for the highland churches--making a total of
two hundred and forty-five new members. By the constitution of the
Scottish church, an equal number of lay elders (called ruling elders)
accompany the clerical elders. Consequently four hundred and ninety
new members were introduced at once into that particular class of
courts (presbyteries) which form the electoral bodies in relation to
the highest court of General Assembly. The effect of this change, made
in the very teeth of the law, was twofold. First, it threw into many
separate presbyteries a considerable accession of voters--_all owing
their appointments to the General Assembly_. This would at once give
a large bias favorable to their party views in every election for
members to serve in the Assembly. Even upon an Assembly numerically
limited, this innovation would have told most abusively. But the
Assembly was _not_ limited; and therefore the whole effect was, at the
same moment, greatly to extend the electors and the elected.

Here, then, was the machinery by which the faction worked. They drew
that power from Scotland rekindled into a temper of religious anxiety,
which they never could have drawn from Scotland lying torpid, as she
had lain through the eighteenth century. The new machinery (created
by Parliament in order to meet the wishes of the Scottish nation), the
money of that nation, the awakened zeal of that nation; all these were
employed, honorably in one sense, that is, not turned aside into private
channels for purposes of individuals, but factiously in the result,
as being for the benefit of a faction; honorably as regarded the open
mode of applying such influence--a mode which did not shrink from
exposure; but most dishonorably, in so far as privileges, which had
been conceded altogether for a spiritual object, were abusively
transferred to the furtherance of a temporal intrigue. Such were the
methods by which the new-born ambition of the clergy moved; and that
ambition had become active, simply because it had suddenly seemed to
become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the effectual electoral
bodies, are really the main springs of the ecclesiastical
administration. To govern _them_, was in effect to govern the church.
A new scheme for extending religion, had opened a new avenue to this
control over the presbyteries. That opening was notoriously unlawful.
But not the less the church faction precipitated themselves ardently
upon it; and but for the faithfulness of the civil courts, they would
never have been dislodged from what they had so suddenly acquired.
Such was the extraordinary leap taken by the Scottish clergy, into a
power, of which, hitherto, they had never enjoyed a fraction. It was
a movement _per saltum_, beyond all that history has recorded. At
cock-crow they had no power at all; when the sun went down, they had
gained (if they could have held) a papal supremacy. And a thing not
less memorably strange is, that even yet the ambitious leaders were
not disturbed; what they had gained was viewed by the public as a
collateral gain, indirectly adhering to a higher object, but forming
no part at all of what the clergy had sought. It required the scrutiny
of law courts to unmask and decompose their true object The obstinacy
of the defence betrayed the real _animus_ of the attempt. It was an
attempt which, in connection with the _Veto_ Act (supposing that to
have prospered), would have laid the whole power of the church at their
feet. What the law had distributed amongst three powers, patron, parish,
and presbyter, would have been concentrated in themselves. The _quoad
sacra_ parishes would have riveted their majorities in the presbyteries;
and the presbyteries, under the real action of the _Veto_, would have
appointed nearly every incumbent in Scotland. And this is the answer
to the question, when treated merely in outline--_How were these things
done_? The religion of the times had created new machineries for
propagating a new religious influence. These fell into the hands of
the clergy; and the temptation to abuse these advantages led them into
revolution.

III. Having now stated WHAT was done, as well as HOW it was done, let
us estimate the CONSEQUENCES of these acts; under this present, or
_third_ section, reviewing the immediate consequences which have taken
effect already, and under the next section anticipating the more remote
consequences yet to be expected.

In the spring of 1834, as we have sufficiently explained, the General
Assembly ventured on the fatal attempt to revolutionize the church,
and (as a preliminary towards _that_) on the attempt to revolutionize
the property of patronage. There lay the extravagance of the attempt;
its short-sightedness, if they did not see its civil tendencies; its
audacity, if they _did_. It was one revolution marching to its object
through another; it was a vote, which, if at all sustained, must entail
a long inheritance of contests with the whole civil polity of Scotland.

  'Heu quantum, fati parva tabella vehit!'

It might seem to strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court,
like the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by
one routine rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that
the power of appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous
dilemma--either that it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical
order, and thus, that a lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created,
disposing of incomes which, in the aggregate, approach to half a million
annually; or, on the other hand, that this dangerous power, if defeated
as a clerical power, should settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic?
Was _that_ trivial? Doubtless, the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues
are not equal, nor nearly equal, to the English; still, it is true,
that Scotland, supposing all her benefices equalized, gives a larger
_average_ to each incumbent than England, of the year 1830. England,
in that year, gave an average of [pound symbol]299 to each beneficiary;
Scotland gave an average of [pound symbol]303. That body, therefore,
which wields patronage in Scotland, wields a greater relative power
than the corresponding body in England. Now this body, in Scotland,
must finally have been the _clerus_; but supposing the patronage to
have settled nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would
have settled into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr. Forsyth has
justly remarked, that in such a case the hired ploughmen of a parish,
mercenary hands that quit their engagements at Martinmas, and _can_
have no filial interest in the parish, would generally succeed in
electing the clergyman. That man would be elected generally, who had
canvassed the parish with the arts and means of an electioneering
candidate; or else, the struggle would lie between the property and
the Jacobinism of the district.

In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is much altered
from what it was; pauperism and great towns have worked 'strange
defeatures' in Scottish society. A vast capital has arisen in the west,
on a level with the first-rate capitalists of the Continent--with
Vienna or with Naples; far superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to
Berlin; more than equal to Rome and Milan; or again to Munich and
Dresden, taken by couples: and, in this point, beyond comparison with
any one of these capitals, that whilst _they_ are connected by slight
ties with the circumjacent country, Glasgow keeps open a communication
with the whole land. Vast laboratories of encouragement to manual
skill, too often dissociated from consideration of character; armies
of mechanics, gloomy and restless, having no interfusion amongst their
endless files of any gradations corresponding to a system of controlling
officers; these spectacles, which are permanently offered by the _castra
stativa_ of combined mechanics in Glasgow and its dependencies (Paisley,
Greenock, &c.), supported by similar districts, and by turbulent
collieries in other parts of that kingdom, make Scotland, when now
developing her strength, no longer the safe and docile arena for popular
movements which once she was, with a people that were scattered and
habits that were pastoral. And at this moment, so fearfully increased
is the overbearance of democratic impulses in Scotland, that perhaps
in no European nation--hardly excepting France--has it become more
important to hang weights and retarding forces upon popular movements
amongst the laboring classes.

This being so, we have never been able to understand the apparent
apathy with which the landed body met the first promulgation of the
_Veto_ Act in May, 1834. Of this apathy, two insufficient explanations
suggest themselves:--1st, It seemed a matter of delicacy to confront
the General Assembly, upon a field which they had clamorously challenged
for their own. The question at issue was tempestuously published to
Scotland as a question exclusively spiritual. And by whom was it thus
published? The Southern reader must here not be careless of dates. _At
present_, viz. in 1844, those who fulminate such views of spiritual
jurisdiction, are simply dissenters; and those who vehemently withstand
them are the church, armed with the powers of the church. Such are the
relations between the parties in 1844. But in 1834, the revolutionary
party were not only _in_ the church, but (being the majority) they
came forward _as_ the church. The new doctrines presented themselves
at first, not as those of a faction, but of the Scottish kirk assembled
in her highest court. The _prestige_ of that advantage has vanished
since then; for this faction, after first of all falling into a
minority, afterwards ceased to be any part or section of the church;
but in that year 1834, such a _prestige_ did really operate; and this
must be received as one of the reasons which partially explain the
torpor of the landed body. No one liked to move _first_, even amongst
those who meant to move. But another reason we find in the conscientious
scruples of many landholders, who hesitated to move at all upon a
question then insufficiently discussed, and in which their own interest
was by so many degrees the largest.

These reasons, however, though sufficient for suspense, seem hardly
sufficient for not having solemnly protested against the _Veto_ Act
immediately upon its passing the Assembly. Whatever doubts a few persons
might harbor upon the expediency of such an act, evidently it was
contrary to the law of the land. The General Assembly could have no
power to abrogate a law passed by the three estates of the realm. But
probably it was the deep sense of that truth which reined up the
national resistance. Sure of a speedy collision between some patron
and the infringers of his right, other parties stood back for the
present, to watch the form which such a collision might assume.

In that same year of 1834, not many months after the passing of the
Assembly's Act, came on the first case of collision; and some time
subsequently a second. These two cases, Auchterarder and Marnoch,
commenced in the very same steps, but immediately afterwards diverged
as widely as was possible. In both cases, the rights of the patron and
of the presentee were challenged peremptorily; that is to say, in both
cases, parishioners objected to the presentee without reason shown.
The conduct of the people was the same in one case as in the other;
that of the two presbyteries travelled upon lines diametrically
opposite. The first case was that of _Auchterarder_. The parish and
the presbytery concerned, both belonged to Auchterarder; and there the
presbytery obeyed the new law of the Assembly; they rejected the
presentee, refusing to take him on trial of his qualifications: And
why? we cannot too often repeat--simply because a majority of a rustic
congregation had rejected him, without attempting to show reason for
his rejection. The Auchterarder presbytery, for _their_ part in this
affair, were prosecuted in the Court of Session by the injured
parties--Lord Kinnoul, the patron, and Mr. Young, the presentee. Twice,
upon a different form of action, the Court of Session gave judgment
against the presbytery; twice the case went up by appeal to the Lords;
twice the Lords affirmed the judgment of the court below. In the other
case of _Marnoch_, the presbytery of Strathbogie took precisely the
opposite course. So far from abetting the unjust congregation of
rustics, they rebelled against the new law of the Assembly, and
declared, by seven of their number against three, that they were ready
to proceed with the trial of the presentee, and to induct him (if found
qualified) into the benefice. Upon this, the General Assembly suspended
the seven members of presbytery. By that mode of proceeding, the
Assembly fancied that they should be able to elude the intentions of
the presbytery; it being supposed that, whilst suspended, the presbytery
had no power to ordain; and that, without ordination, there was no
possibility of giving induction. But here the Assembly had
miscalculated. Suspension would indeed have had the effects ascribed
to it; but in the mean time, the suspension, as being originally
illegal, was found to be void; and the presentee, on that ground,
obtained a decree from the Court of Session, ordaining the presbytery
of Strathbogie to proceed with the settlement. Three of the ten members
composing this presbytery, resisted; and they were found liable in
expenses. The other seven completed the settlement in the usual form.
Here was plain rebellion; and rebellion triumphant. If this were
allowed, all was gone. What should the Assembly do for the vindication
of their authority? Upon deliberation, they deposed the contumacious
presbytery from their functions as clergymen, and declared their
churches vacant. But this sentence was found to be a _brutum fulmen_;
the crime was no crime, the punishment turned out no punishment: and
a minority, even in this very Assembly, declared publicly that they
would not consent to regard this sentence as any sentence at all, but
would act in all respects as if no such sentence had been carried by
vote. _Within_ their own high Court of Assembly, it is, however,
difficult to see how this refusal to recognise a sentence voted by a
majority could be valid. Outside, the civil courts came into play; but
within the Assembly, surely its own laws and votes prevailed. However,
this distinction could bring little comfort to the Assembly at present;
for the illegality of the deposal was now past all dispute; and the
attempt to punish, or even ruin a number of professional brethren for
not enforcing a by-law, when the by-law itself had been found
irreconcilable to the law of the land, greatly displeased the public,
as vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the purposes of the Assembly.

Nothing was gained, except the putting on record an implacability that
was _confessedly_ impotent. This was the very lunacy of malice.
Mortifying it might certainly seem for the members of a supreme court,
like the General Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate
court: but still, since each party must be regarded as representing
far larger interests than any personal to themselves, trying on either
side, not the energies of their separate wits, but the available
resources of law in one of its obscurer chapters, there really seemed
no more room for humiliation to the one party, or for triumph to the
other, than there is amongst reasonable men in the result from a game,
where the game is one exclusively of chance.

From this period it is probable that the faction of Non-intrusionists
resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left
for sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast
in public estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a
convocation in Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was
generally understood that at this time they concerted a plan for going
out from the church, in the event of their failing to alarm the
Government by the notification of this design. We do not pretend to
any knowledge of secrets. What is known to everybody is--that, on the
annual meeting of the General Assembly, in May, 1843, the great body
of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession. The sort of
theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a few hurried
days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made wise men
both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from that
state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by the
vague anticipation of a 'scene,' possibly of a quarrel, together with
the natural interest in _seeing_ men whose names had been long before
the public in books and periodical journals.

The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a
pseudo-General Assembly. When there are two suns visible, or two moons,
the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_,
and the mock moon a _paraselene_. On that principle, we must call this
mock Assembly a _para-synodos_. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the
Seceders in the fabrication of names. They distinguish as _quoad sacra_
parishes those which were peculiarly _quoad politica_ parishes; for
in that view only they had been interesting to the Non-intrusionists.
Again, they style themselves _The Free Church_, by way of taunting the
other side with being a servile church. But how are they any church
at all? By the courtesies of Europe, and according to usage, a church
means a religious incorporation, protected and privileged by the State.
Those who are not so privileged are usually content with the title of
Separatists, Dissenters, or Nonconformists. No wise man will see either
good sense or dignity in assuming titles not appropriate. The very
position and aspect towards the church (legally so called) which has
been assumed by the Non-intrusionists--viz., the position of protesters
against that body, not merely as bearing, amongst other features, a
certain relation to the State, but specifically _because_ they bear
that relation, makes it incongruous, and even absurd, for these
Dissenters to denominate themselves a 'church.' But there is another
objection to this denomination--the 'Free Church' have no peculiar and
separate Confession of Faith. Nobody knows what are their
_credenda_--what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership, either
as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they reply--'Oh!
as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever we _did_ profess when
members of the Scottish kirk'--then in effect they are hardly so much
as a dissenting body, except in some elliptic sense. There is a grievous
_hiatus_ in their own titledeeds and archives; they supply it by
referring people to the muniment chest of the kirk. Would it not be
a scandal to a Protestant church if she should say to communicants
--We have no sacramental vessels, or even ritual; but you may borrow
both from Papal Rome.' Not only, however, is the kirk to _lend_ her
Confession, &c.; but even then a plain rustic will not be able to guess
how many parts in his Confession are or may be affected by the
'reformation' of the Non-intrusionists. Surely, he will think, if this
reformation were so vast that it drove them out of the national church,
absolutely exploded them, then it follows that it must have intervened
and _indirectly_ modified innumerable questions: a difference that was
punctually limited to this one or these two clauses, could not be such
a difference as justified a rupture. Besides, if they have altered
this one or these two clauses, or have altered their interpretation,
how is any man to know (except from a distinct Confession of Faith)
that they have not even _directly_ altered much more? Notoriety through
newspapers is surely no ground to stand upon in religion. And now it
appears that the unlettered rustic needs two guides--one to show him
exactly how much they have altered, whether two points or two hundred,
as well as _which_ two or two hundred; another to teach him how far
these original changes may have carried with them secondary changes
as consequences into other parts of the Christian system. One of the
known changes, viz., the doctrine of popular election as the proper
qualification for parish clergymen, possibly is not fitted to expand
itself or ramify, except by analogy. But the other change, the infinity
which has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the
rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the doctrine
and application of _spirituality_, seems fitted for derivative effects
that are innumerable. Consequently, we say of the Non-itrusionists--not
only that they are no church; but that they are not even any separate
body of Dissenters, until they have published a 'Confession' or a
_revised_ edition of the Scottish Confession.

IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the _ultimate_ consequences
of these things. Let us pursue them to the end of the vista.--First
in order stands the dreadful shock to the National Church Establishment;
and that is twofold: it is a shock from without, acting through opinion,
and a shock from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each
case is separately perfect. Through the opinion of men standing
_outside_ of the church, the church herself suffers wrong in her
authority. Through the contagion of sympathy stealing over men _inside_
of the church, peril arises of other shocks in a second series, which
would so exhaust the church by reiterated convulsions, as to leave her
virtually dismembered and shattered for all her great national
functions.

As to that evil which acts through opinion, it acts by a machinery,
viz. the press and social centralization in great cities, which in
these days is perfect. Right or wrong, justified _or not_ justified
by the acts of the majority, it is certain that every public body--how
much more, then, a body charged with the responsibility of upholding
the truth in its standard!--suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion
by any feud, schism, or shadow of change among its members. This is
what the New Testament, a code of philosophy fertile in new ideas,
first introduced under the name of _scandal_; that is, any occasion
of serious offence ministered to the weak or to the sceptical by
differences irreconcilable in the acts or the opinions of those whom
they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities. Now here, in
Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no longer
theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation; here is
a change of doctrine, _on one side or the other_, which throws a sad
umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the
church to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always
be henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such
incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish
church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more
deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so
irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or
speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet
no breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and
irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit
the beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the
first light augury of mischief skirted the horizon--a cloud no bigger
than a man's hand. In 1843, the evil had 'travelled on from birth to
birth.' Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy;
already it had entered upon a second, viz., to rear up an _Anti-Kirk_,
or spurious establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like
folds about the legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman _vinea_
surmounted the fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under
whatsoever practical issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook,
molest, and insult the true church for ever. Even this brief period
of development would have been briefer, had not the law courts
interposed many delays. Demurs of law process imposed checks upon the
uncharitable haste of the _odium theologicum_. And though in a question
of schism it would be a _petitio principii_ for a neutral censor to
assume that either party had been originally in error, yet it is within
our competence to say, that the Seceders it was whose bigotry carried
the dispute to that sad issue of a final separation. The establishment
would have been well content to stop short of that consummation: and
temperaments might have been found, compromises both safe and honorable,
had the minority built less of their reversionary hopes upon the policy
of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they insisted upon becoming: and that
they _might_ be martyrs, it was necessary for them to secede. That
Europe thinks at present with less reverence of Protestant institutions
than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these institutions in
particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to the minority
in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration, all
brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in
the other. Consequently upon _their_ consciences lies the responsibility
of having weakened the pillars of the reformed churches throughout
Christendom.

Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were
it possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside
for generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers
of reproach before 1834? How came it that no aurora of early light,
no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run
before this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have
been huge error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been
traitorously below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.

Such conclusions are irresistible and upon any path, seceding or not
seceding, they menace the worldly credit of ecclesiastical bodies.
That evil is now past remedy. As for the other evil, that which acts
upon church establishments, not through simple failure in the guarantees
of public opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition;
here undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish church from the
very gates to the centre. And unhappily the same chasm, which marks
a division of the church internally, is a link connecting it externally
with the Seceders. For how stands the case? Did the Scottish kirk, at
the late crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections?
Was there one of these bisections which said _Yes_, whilst the other
responded _No_? Was the affirmative and negative shared between them
as between the black chessmen and the white? Not so; and unhappily not
so. The two extremes there were, but these shaded off into each other.
Many were the _nuances_; multiplied the combinations. Here stood a
section that had voted for all the changes, with two or three
exceptions; there stood another that went the _whole_ length as to
this change, but no part of the way as to that; between these sections
arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or _eclectically_, that is,
by no law generally recognised. And behind this eclectic school were
grouped others who had voted for all novelties up to a certain day,
but after _that_ had refused to go further with a movement party whose
tendencies they had begun to distrust. In this last case, therefore,
the divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the accident of
having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of conscientious
alarm. The principles upon which men had divided were various, and
these various principles were variously combined. But on the other
hand, those who have gone out were the men who approved totally, not
partially--unconditionally, not within limits--up to the end, and not
to a given day. Consequently those who stayed in comprehended all the
shades and degrees which the men of violence excluded. The Seceders
were unanimous to a man, and of necessity; for he who approves the
last act, the extreme act, which is naturally the most violent act,
_a fortiori_ approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity
of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the
modifications, all who had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so
great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious; whose
casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who had preferred an
interest of conscience to a triumph of partisanship. We honor them for
that policy; but we cannot hide from ourselves, that the very principle
which makes such a policy honorable at the moment, makes it dangerous
in reversion. For he who avows that, upon public motives, he once
resisted a temptation to schism, makes known by that avowal that he
still harbors in his mind the germ of such a temptation: and to that
scruple, which once he resisted, hereafter he may see reason for
yielding. The principles of schism, which for the moment were
suppressed, are still latent in the church. It is urged that, in quest
of unity, many of these men _succeeded_ in resisting the instincts of
dissension at the moment of crisis. True: But this might be because
they presumed on winning from their own party equal concessions by
means less violent than schism; or because they attached less weight
to the principle concerned, than they may see cause for attaching upon
future considerations; or because they would not allow themselves to
sanction the cause of the late Secession, by going out in company with
men whose principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of
supporting those principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident,
that little stress is to be laid on a negative act; simply to have
declined going out with the Seceders proves nothing, for it is
equivocal. It is an act which may cover indifferently a marked hostility
to the Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness
not quite equal to so extreme a test. And, again, this negative act
may be equivocal in a different way; the friendliness may not only
have existed, but may have existed in sufficient strength for any test
whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but their Jacobinical
mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve of the repulsion
to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to collect from
these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone past. The
earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general tendency
in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--

  'The earthquake is not satisfied at once.'

All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they
intermit, only as the revolving lamps of a light-house are periodically
eclipsed. The General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon
the Seceders, shut _in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at the
time she succeeded in shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the
world outside, it seemed advisable to shut out the least number
possible; for in proportion to the number of the Seceders, was the
danger that they should carry with them an authentic impression in
their favor. On the other hand, as respected a greater danger, (the
danger from internal contagion), it seemed advisable that the church
should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who, for the
present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more
absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety
there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety
in this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by
looking over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to
separate the _wheat from the chaff_. By the 'wheat,' in the view of
this writer, is meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their
recusant policy up to the practical result of secession. All who stopped
short of that consummation (on whatever plea), are the 'chaff.' The
writer is something of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but
he is consistent with regard to his own principles, and so elaborately
careful in his details as to extort admiration of his energy and of
his patience in research.

But the reason for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to
the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind
in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question
of that nature, _can_ be so showy and _ostensive_ to a stranger as
that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past
vote recording a scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing,
though for the moment suppressed. Since the secession, nearly four
hundred and fifty new men may have entered the church. This
supplementary body has probably diluted the strength of the
revolutionary principles. But they also may, perhaps, have partaken
to some extent in the contagion of these principles. True, there is
this guarantee for caution, on the part of these new men, that as yet
they are pledged to nothing; and that, seeing experimentally how
fearfully many of their older brethren are now likely to be fettered
by the past, they have every possible motive for reserve, in committing
themselves, either by their votes or by their pens. In _their_
situation, there is a special inducement to prudence, because there
is a prospect, that for _them_ prudence is in time to be effectual.
But for many of the older men, prudence comes too late. They are already
fettered. And what we are now pointing out to the attention of our
readers, is, that by the past, by the absolute votes of the past, too
sorrowfully it is made evident, that the Scottish church is deeply
tainted with the principles of the Secession. These germs of evil and
of revolution, speaking of them in a _personal_ sense, cannot be purged
off entirely until one generation shall have passed away. But, speaking
of them as _principles_ capable of vegetation, these germs may or may
not expand into whole forests of evil, according to the accidents of
coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize our billowy aspects of
society; or, on the other hand, largely to fertilize the many occasions
of agitation, which political fermentations are too sure to throw off.
Let this chance turn out as it may, we repeat for the information of
Southerns--that the church, by shutting off the persons of particular
agitators, has not shut off the principles of agitation; and that the
_cordon sanataire_, supposing the spontaneous exile of the
Non-intrusionists to be regarded in that light, was not drawn about
the church until the disease had spread widely _within_ the lines.

Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future course of action;
warned in time, such a man may stand neutral in practice; but thus far
they poison the fountains of wholesome unanimity--that, if a man can
evade the necessity of squaring particular _actions_ to his past
opinions, at least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions
themselves, or his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too
notoriously have placed on record by his votes.

But, if such are the continual dangers from reactions in the
establishment, so long as men survive in that establishment who feel
upbraided by past votes, and so long as enemies survive who will not
suffer these upbraidings to slumber--dangers which much mutual
forbearance and charity can alone disarm; on the other hand, how much
profounder is the inconsistency to which the Free Church is
doomed!--They have rent the unity of that church, to which they had
pledged their faith--but on what plea? On the plea that in cases purely
spiritual, they could not in conscience submit to the award of the
secular magistrate. Yet how merely impracticable is this principle,
as an abiding principle of action! Churches, that is, the charge of
particular congregations, will be with _them_ (as with other religious
communities) the means of livelihood. Grounds innumerable will arise
for excluding or attempting to exclude, each other from these official
stations. No possible form regulating the business of ordination, or
of induction, can anticipate the infinite objections which may arise.
But no man interested in such a case, will submit to a judge appointed
by insufficient authority. Daily bread for his family is what few men
will resign without a struggle. And that struggle will of necessity
come for final adjudication to the law courts of the land, whose
interference in any question affecting a spiritual interest, the Free
Church has for ever pledged herself to refuse. But in the case supposed,
she will not have the power to refuse it. She will be cited before the
tribunals, and can elude that citation in no way but by surrendering
the point in litigation; and if she should adopt the notion, that it
is better for her to do _that_, than to acknowledge a sufficient
authority in the court by pleading at its bar, upon this principle
once made public, she will soon be stripped of everything, and will
cease to be a church at all. She cannot continue to be a depository
of any faith, or a champion of any doctrines, if she lose the means
of defending her own incorporations. But how can she maintain the
defenders of her rights, or the dispensers of her truths, if she
refuses, upon immutable principle, to call in the aid of the magistrate
on behalf of rights, which, under any aspect, regard spiritual
relations? Attempting to maintain these rights by private arbitration
within a forum of her own, she will soon find such arbitration not
binding at all upon the party who conceives himself aggrieved. The
issue will be as in Mr. O'Connell's courts, where the parties played
at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play, and no
longer 'made believe' to be disputing, the award of the judge became
as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry of such a transaction.

This should be the natural catastrophe of the case; and the probable
evasion of that destructive consummation, to which she is carried by
her principles, will be--that as soon as her feelings of rancor shall
have cooled down, these principles will silently drop out of use; and
the very reason will be suffered to perish for which she ever became
a dissenting body. With this, however, we, that stand outside, are
noways concerned. But an evil, in which we _are_ concerned, is the
headlong tendency of the Free Church, and of all churches adulterating
with her principle, to an issue not merely dangerous in a political
sense, but ruinous in an anti-social sense. The artifice of the Free
Church lies in pleading a spiritual relation of any case whatever,
whether of doing or suffering, whether positive or negative, as a
reason for taking it out of all civil control. Now we may illustrate
the peril of this artifice, by a reality at this time impending over
society in Ireland. Dr. Higgins, titular bishop of Ardagh, has
undertaken upon this very plea of a spiritual power not amenable to
civil control, a sort of warfare with Government, upon the question
of their power to suspend or defeat the O'Connell agitation. For, says
he, if Government should succeed in thus intercepting the direct power
of haranguing mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them, and
cause them to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the same topics,
from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate extension of this principle
would be--that every disaffected clergyman in the three kingdoms, would
lecture his congregation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he
would denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad government
would become, in his language, the most sacred of duties. In any
argument with such a man, he would be found immediately falling back
upon the principle of the Free Church; he would insist upon it as a
spiritual right, as a ease entirely between his conscience and God,
whether he should press to an extremity any and every doctrine, though
tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against
war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most
colorable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would
soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the
improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the _Levellers_
in Cromwell's time, of the _Anabaptists_ in Luther's time, would exalt
themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments were weak enough
to recognise these spiritual claims in the feeblest of their initial
advances. If it were possible to suppose such chimeras prevailing, the
natural redress would soon be seen to lie through secret tribunals,
like those of the dreadful _Fehmgericht_ in the middle ages. It would
be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social chimeras
through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush so
monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such
insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction
upon which the Free Church has laid the foundations of its own
establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to
an officer of a church which is not spiritual by one of its two Janus
faces. And every examination of the case convinces us more and more
that the Seceders took up the old papal distinction, as to acts
spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion less or more, but
under a simple necessity of finding some evasion or other which should
meet and embody the whole rancor of the moment.

But beyond any other evil consequence prepared by the Free Church, is
the appalling spirit of Jacobinism which accompanies their whole
conduct, and which latterly has avowed itself in their words. The case
began Jacobinically, for it began in attacks upon the rights of
property. But since the defeat of this faction by the law courts,
language seems to fail them, for the expression of their hatred and
affected scorn towards the leading nobility of Scotland. Yet why? The
case lies in the narrowest compass. The Duke of Sutherland, and other
great landholders, had refused sites for their new churches. Upon this
occurred a strong fact, and strong in both directions; first, for the
Seceders; secondly, upon better information _against_ them. The _Record_
newspaper, a religious journal, ably and conscientiously conducted,
took part with the Secession, and very energetically; for they denounced
the noble duke's refusal of land as an act of 'persecution;' and upon
this principle--that, in a county where his grace was pretty nearly
the sole landed proprietor, to refuse land (assuming that a fair price
had been tendered for it) was in effect to show such intolerance as
might easily tend to the suppression of truth. Intolerance, however,
is not persecution; and, if it were, the casuistry of the question is
open still to much discussion. But this is not necessary; for the
ground is altogether shifted when the duke's reason for refusing the
land comes to be stated; he had refused it, not unconditionally, not
in the spirit of non-intrusion courts, '_without reason shown,_' but
on this unanswerable argument--that the whole efforts of the new church
were pointed (and professedly pointed) to the one object of destroying
the establishment, and 'sweeping it from the land.' Could any guardian
of public interests, under so wicked a threat, hesitate as to the line
of his duty? By granting the land to parties uttering such menaces,
the Duke of Sutherland would have made himself an accomplice in the
unchristian conspiracy. Meantime, next after this fact, it is the
strongest defence which we can offer for the duke--that in a day or
two after this charge of 'persecution,' the _Record_ was forced to
attack the Seceders in terms which indirectly defended the duke. And
this, not in any spirit of levity, but under mere conscientious
constraint. For no journal has entered so powerfully or so eloquently
into the defence of the general principle involved in the Secession
(although questioning its expediency), as this particular _Record_.
Consequently, any word of condemnation from so earnest a friend, comes
against the Seceders with triple emphasis. And this is shown in the
tone of the expostulations addressed to the _Record_ by some of the
Secession leaders. It spares us, indeed, all necessity of quoting the
vile language uttered by members of the Free Church Assembly, if we
say, that the _neutral_ witnesses of such unchristian outrages have
murmured, remonstrated, protested in every direction; and that Dr,
Macfarlane, who has since corresponded with the Duke of Sutherland
upon the whole case--viz. upon the petition for land, as affected by
the shocking menaces of the Seceders--has, in no other way, been able
to evade the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the
indefensible, and at the same time of losing the land irretrievably,
than by affecting an unconsciousness of language used by his party
little suited to his own sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities
of Christianity. Certainly it is unhappy for the Seceders, that the
only disavowal of the most fiendish sentiments heard in our days, has
come from an individual not authorized or at all commissioned by his
party--from an individual not showing any readiness to face the whole
charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst of them, and finally
offering his very feeble disclaimer, which equivocates between a denial
and a palliation--not until _after_ he found himself in the position
of a petitioner for favors.

Specifically the great evil of our days, is the abiding temptation,
in every direction, to popular discontent, to agitation, and to
systematic sedition. Now, we say it with sorrow, that from no other
incendiaries have we heard sentiments so wild, fierce, or maliciously
democratic, as from the leaders of the Secession. It was the Reform
Bill of 1832, and the accompanying agitation, which first suggested
the veto agitation of 1834, and prescribed its tone. From all classes
of our population, in turn, there have come forward individuals to
disgrace themselves by volunteering their aid to the chief conspirators
of the age. We have earls, we have marquesses, coming forward as
Corn-League agents; we have magistrates by scores angling for popularity
as Repealers. But these have been private parties, insulated,
disconnected, disowned. When we hear of Christianity prostituted to
the service of Jacobinism--of divinity becoming the handmaid to
insurrection--and of clergymen in masses offering themselves as
promoters of anarchy, we go back in thought to that ominous organization
of irreligion, which gave its most fearful aspects to the French
Revolution.

Other evils are in the rear as likely to arise out of the _funds_
provided for the new Seceders, were the distribution of those funds
confessedly unobjectionable, but more immediately under the present
murmurs against that distribution. There are two funds: one subscribed
expressly for the building of churches, the other limited to the
'sustentation' of incumbents. And the complaint is--that this latter
fund has been invaded for purposes connected with the first. The reader
can easily see the motive to this injustice: it is a motive of ambition.
Far more display of power is made by the annunciation to the world of
six hundred churches built, than of any difference this way or that
in the comfort and decorous condition of the clergy. This last is a
domestic feature of the case, not fitted for public effect. But the
number of the churches will resound through Europe. Meantime, _at
present_, the allowance to the great body of Seceding clergy averages
but [pound symbol]80 a-year; and the allegation is--that, but for the
improper interference with the fund on the motive stated, it _would_
have averaged [pound symbol]150 a-year. If anywhere a town parish has
raised a much larger provision for its pastor, even _that_ has now
become a part of the general grievance. For it is said that all such
special contributions ought to have been thrown into one general
fund--liable to one general principle of distribution. Yet again, will
even this fund, partially as it seems to have been divided, continue
to be available? Much of it lies in annual subscriptions: now, in the
next generation of subscribers, a son will possibly not adopt the views
of his father; but assuredly he will not adopt his father's zeal. Here,
however (though this is not probable), there may arise some compensatory
cases of subscribers altogether new. But another question is pressing
for decision, which menaces a frightful shock to the schismatical
church: female agency has been hitherto all potent in promoting the
subscriptions; and a demand has been made in consequence--that women
shall be allowed to vote in the church courts. Grant this demand--for
it cannot be evaded--and what becomes of the model for church government
as handed down from John Knox and Calvin? Refuse it, and what becomes
of the future subscriptions?

But these are evils, it may be said, only for the Seceders. Not so:
we are all interested in the respectability of the national teachers,
whatever be their denomination: we are all interested in the maintenance
of a high standard for theological education. These objects are likely
to suffer at any rate. But it is even a worse result which we may count
on from the changes, that a practical approximation is thus already
made to what is technically known as Voluntaryism.

The '_United Secession_,' that is the old collective body of Scottish
Dissenters, who, having no regular provision, are carried into this
voluntary system, already exult that this consummation of the case
cannot be far off. Indeed, so far as the Seceders are dependent upon
_annual_ subscriptions, and coupling that relation to the public with
the great doctrine of these Seceders, that congregations are universally
to appoint their own pastors, we do not see how such an issue is open
to evasion. The leaders of the new Secession all protest against
Voluntaryism: but to that complexion of things they travel rapidly by
the mere mechanic action of their dependent (or semi-dependent)
situation, combined with one of their two characteristic principles.

The same United Secession journal openly anticipates another and more
diffusive result from this great movement; viz. the general disruption
of church establishments. We trust that this anticipation will be
signally defeated. And yet there is one view of the case which saddens
us when we turn our eyes in that direction. Among the reasonings and
expostulations of the Schismatic church, one that struck us as the
most eminently hypocritical, and ludicrously so, was this: 'You ought,'
said they, when addressing the Government, and exposing the error of
the law proceedings, 'to have stripped us of the temporalities arising
from the church, stipend, glebe, parsonage, but not of the spiritual
functions. We had no right to the emoluments of our stations, when the
law courts had decided against us, but we _had_ a right to the laborious
duties of the stations.' No gravity could refuse to smile at this
complaint--verbally so much in the spirit of primitive Christianity,
yet in its tendency so insidious. For could it be possible that a
competitor introduced by the law, and leaving the duties of the pastoral
office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary, should not be
hooted on the public roads by many who might otherwise have taken no
part in the feud? This specious claim was a sure and brief way to
secure the hatefulness of their successors. Now, we cannot conceal
from ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things
might be realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that
a second schism in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also
but too possible that Puseyism may yet rend the English establishment
by a similar convulsion. But in such contingencies, we should see a
very large proportion of the spiritual teachers in both nations actually
parading to the public eye, and rehearsing something very like the
treacherous proposal of the late Seceders, viz., the spectacle of one
party performing much of the difficult duties, and another party
enjoying the main emoluments. This would be a most unfair mode of
recommending Voluntaryism. Falling in with the infirmities of many in
these days, such a spectacle would give probably a fatal bias to that
system in our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This would move the
sorrow of the Seceders themselves: for they have protested against the
theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence which that party even
complain of as excessive. Their leaders have many times avowed, that
any system which should leave to men in general the estimate of their
own religious wants as a pecuniary interest, would be fatal to the
Christian tone of our national morals. Checked and overawed by the
example of an establishment, the Voluntaries themselves are far more
fervent in their Christian exertions than they could be when liberated
from that contrast. The religious spirit of both England and Scotland
under such a change would droop for generations. And in that one evil,
let us hope, the remotest and least probable of the many evils
threatened by the late schism, these nations would have reason by
comparison almost to forget the rest.




TOILETTE OF THE HEBREW LADY.

EXHIBITED IN SIX SCENES.

[1828.]



[TO THE EDITOR OF BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE.]

Sir,--Some years ago you published a translation of Bottiger's 'Sabina,'
a learned account of the Roman toilette. I here send you a companion
to that work--not a direct translation, but a very minute abstract
from a similar dissertation by Hartmann, (weeded of the wordiness which
has made the original unreadable, and in consequence unread,) on the
toilette and the wardrobe of the ladies of ancient Palestine. Hartmann
was a respectable Oriental scholar, and he published his researches,
which occupy three thick octavos, making in all one thousand four
hundred and eighty-eight pages, under the title of _Die Hebraerin am
Putztische und als Braut_, _Amsterdam_, 1809. (_The Hebrew Woman at
her Toilette, and in her Bridal character_.) I understand that the
poor man is now gone to Hades, where let us hope that it is considered
no crime in a learned man to be exceedingly tedious, and to repeat the
same thing ten times over, or even, upon occasion, fifteen times,
provided that his own upright heart should incline him to think that
course the most advisable. Certainly Mr. Hartmann has the most excellent
gifts at verbal expansion, and at tautology, that ever came within my
knowledge; and I found no particular difficulty in compressing every
tittle of what relates to his subject, into a compass which, I imagine,
will fill about twelve of your pages, or fifty, at the utmost, of the
original work.

It was not to be expected, with the scanty materials before him, that
an illustrator of the Hebrew costume should be as full and explicit
as Bottiger, with the advantage of writing upon a theme more familiar
to us Europeans of this day, than any parallel theme even in our own
national archaeologies of two centuries back. United, however, with
his great reading, this barrenness of the subject is so far an advantage
for Hartmann, as it yields a strong presumption that he has exhausted
it. The male costume of ancient Palestine is yet to be illustrated;
but, for the female, it is probable that little could be added to what
Hartmann has collected; [Footnote 1] and that any clever dress-maker
would, with the indications here given, (especially if you could
persuade Mr. Blackwood to adopt one or two of Mr. Hartmann's seven
outlines,) enable any lady at the next great masquerade in London, to
support the part of one of the ancient daughters of Palestine, and to
call back, after eighteen centuries of sleep, the buried pomps of
Jerusalem. As to the _talking_, there would be no difficulty at all
in that point; bishops, and other 'sacred' people, if they ever go
a-masquing, for their own sakes will not be likely to betray themselves
by putting impertinent questions in Hebrew; and for 'profane' people,
who might like the impertinence, they would very much dislike the
Hebrew; indeed, of uncircumcised Hebrews, barring always the clergy,
it is not thought that any are extant. In other respects, and as a
_spectacle_, the Hebrew masque would infallibly eclipse every other
in the room. The upper and under chemise, if managed properly, (and
either you or I, Mr. North, would be most proud to communicate our
private advice on that subject,) would transcend, in gorgeous display,
the coronation robes of queens; nose-pendants would cause the masque
to be immediately and unerringly recognised; or if those were not
thought advisable, the silver ankle-bells, with their melodious
chimes--the sandals, with their jewelled net-work--and the golden
diadem, binding the forehead, and dropping from each extremity of the
polished temples a rouleau of pearls, which, after traversing the
cheeks, unite below the chin--are all so unique and exclusively
Hebraic--that each and all would have the same advantageous effect,
proclaiming and notifying the character, without putting the fair
supporter to any disagreeable expense of Hebrew or Chaldee. The silver
bells alone would 'bear the bell' from every competitor in the room;
and she might besides carry a cymbal--a dulcimer--or a timbrel in her
hands.

In conclusion, my dear North, let me congratulate you that Mr. Hartmann
is now in Hades (as I said before) rather than in Edinburgh; for, had
he been in this latter place, he would have been the ruin of you. It
was his intention, as I am well assured, just about the time that he
took his flight for Hades, to have commenced regular contributor to
your journal; so great was his admiration of you, and also of the terms
which you offer to the literary world. As a learned Orientalist, you
could not decorously have rejected him; and yet, once admitted, he
would have beggared you before any means could have been discovered
by the learned for putting a stop to him. [Greek Text: Aperantologia]
was his forte; upon this he piqued himself, and most justly, since for
covering the ground rapidly, and yet not advancing an inch, those, who
knew and valued him as he deserved, would have backed him against the
whole field of the _gens de plume_ now in Europe. Had he lived, and
fortunately for himself communicated his _Hebrew Toilette_ to the world
through you, instead of foundering (as he did) at Amsterdam, he would
have flourished upon your exchequer; and you would not have heard the
last of him or his Toilette, for the next twenty years. He dates, you
see, from Amsterdam; and, had you been weak enough to take him on
board, he would have proved that 'Flying Dutchman' that would infallibly
have sunk your vessel.

The more is your obligation to me, I think, for sweating him down to
such slender dimensions. And, speaking seriously, both of us perhaps
will rejoice that even with _his_ talents for telling everything, he
was obliged on this subject to leave many things untold. For, though
it might be gratifying to a mere interest of curiosity, yet I believe
that we should both be grieved if anything were to unsettle in our
feelings the mysterious sanctities of Jerusalem, or to disturb that
awful twilight which will for ever brood over Judea--by letting in
upon it the 'common light of day;' and this effect would infallibly
take place, if any one department of daily life, as it existed in
Judea, were brought with all the degrading minutiae of its details
within the petty finishing of a domestic portrait.

Farewell, my dear North, and believe me to be always your old friend
and admirer,

[Greek Text: Cap Omega, Cap Phi]

SCENE THE FIRST.

I. That simple body-cloth framed of leaves, skins, flax, wool, &c.
which modesty had first introduced, for many centuries perhaps sufficed
as the common attire of both sexes amongst the Hebrew Bedouins. It
extended downwards to the knees, and upwards to the hips, about which
it was fastened. Such a dress is seen upon many of the figures in the
sculptures of Persepolis; even in modern times, Niebuhr found it the
ordinary costume of the lower Arabians in Hedsjas; and Shaw assures
us, that from its commodious shape, it is still a favorite dishabille
of the Arabian women when they are behind the curtains of the tent.

From this early rudiment was derived, by gradual elongation, that
well-known under habiliment, which in Hebrew is called _Ch'tonet_, and
in Greek and Latin by words of similar sound. [Footnote 2] In this
stage of its progress, when extended to the neck and the shoulders,
it represents pretty accurately the modern shirt, or _chemise_--except
that the sleeves are wanting; and during the first period of Jewish
history, it was probably worn as the sole under-garment by women of
all ranks, both amongst the Bedouin Hebrews and those who lived in
cities. A very little further extension to the elbows and the calves
of the legs, and it takes a shape which survives even to this day in
Asia. Now, as then, the female habiliment was distinguished from the
corresponding male one by its greater length; and through all antiquity
we find long clothes a subject of reproach to men, as an argument of
effeminacy.

According to the rank or vanity of the wearer, this tunic was made of
more or less costly materials; for wool and flax was often substituted
the finest byssus, or other silky substance; and perhaps, in the latter
periods, amongst families of distinction in Jerusalem, even silk itself.
Splendor of coloring was not neglected; and the opening at the throat
was eagerly turned to account as an occasion for displaying fringe or
rich embroidery.

Bottiger remarks, that, even in the age of Augustus, the morning dress
of Roman ladies when at home was nothing more than this very tunic;
which, if it sate close, did not even require a girdle. The same remark
applies to the Hebrew women, who, during the nomadic period of their
history, had been accustomed to wear no night-chemises at all, but
slept quite naked, or, at the utmost, with a cestus or zone: by way
of bed-clothes, however, it must be observed, that they swathed their
person in the folds of a robe or shawl. Up to the time of Solomon,
this practice obtained through all ranks; and so long the universal
household dress of a Hebrew lady in her harem, was the tunic as here
described; and in this she dressed herself the very moment that she
rose from bed. Indeed, so long as the Hebrew women were content with
a single tunic, it flowed loose in liberal folds about the body; and
was fastened by a belt or a clasp, just as we find it at this day
amongst all Asiatic nations. But, when a second under-garment was
introduced, the inner one fitted close to the shape, whilst the outer
one remained full and free as before.

II. No fashion of the female toilette is of higher antiquity than that
of dyeing the margin of the eyelids and the eyebrows with a black
pigment. It is mentioned or alluded to, 2 Kings, ix. 30, Jerem. iv.
30, Ezek. xxiii. 40; to which may be added, Isaiah, iii. 16. The
practice had its origin in a discovery made accidentally in Egypt. For
it happens, that the substance used for this purpose in ancient times,
is a powerful remedy in cases of ophthalmia and inflammation of the
eyes;--complaints to which Egypt is, from local causes, peculiarly
exposed. This endemic infirmity, in connection with the medical science
for which Egypt was so distinguished, easily account for their
discovering the uses of antimony, which is the principal ingredient
in the pigments of this class. Egypt was famous for the fashion of
painting the face from an early period: and in some remarkable
curiosities illustrating the Egyptian toilette, which were discovered
in the catacombs of Sahara in Middle Egypt, there was a single joint
of a common reed containing an ounce or more of the coloring powder,
and one of the needles for applying it. The entire process was as
follows:--The mineral powder, finely prepared, was mixed up with a
preparation of vinegar and gall-apples--sometimes with oil of almonds,
or other oils--sometimes, by very luxurious women, with costly gums
and balsams. [Footnote 3] And perhaps, as Sonnini describes the practice
among the Mussulman women at present, the whole mass thus compounded
was dried and again reduced to an impalpable powder, and consistency
then given to it by the vapors of some odorous and unctuous substance.
Thus prepared, the pigment was applied to the tip or pointed ferule
of a little metallic pencil, called, in Hebrew, _Makachol_, and made
of silver, gold, or ivory; the eyelids were then closed, and the little
pencil, or probe, held horizontally, was inserted between them:--a
process which is briefly and picturesquely described in the Bible. The
effect of the black rim, which the pigment traced about the eyelid,
was to throw a dark and majestic shadow over the eye; to give it a
languishing and yet a lustrous expression; to increase its apparent
size, and to apply the force of contrast to the white of the eye.
Together with the eyelids, the Hebrew women colored the eyebrows, the
point aimed at being twofold--to curve them into a beautiful arch of
brilliant ebony--and, at the same time, to make the inner ends meet
or flow into each other.

III. Ear-rings of gold, silver, inferior metals, or even horn, were
worn by the Hebrew women in all ages; and in the flourishing period
of the Jewish kingdom, probably by men: and so essential an ornament
were they deemed, that in the idolatrous times, even the images of
their false gods were not considered becomingly attired without them.
Their ear-rings were larger, according to the Asiatic taste; but whether
quite large enough to admit the hand, is doubtful. In a later age, as
we collect from the Thalmud, Part VI. 43, the Jewish ladies wore gold
or silver pendants, of which the upper part was shaped like a lentil,
and the lower hollowed like a little cup or pipkin. It is probable
also, that, even in the oldest ages, it was a practice amongst them
to suspend gold and silver rings, not merely from the lower, but also
from the upper end of the ear, which was perforated like a sieve. The
tinkling sound, with which, upon the slightest motion, two or three
tiers of rings would be set a-dancing about the cheeks, was very
agreeable to the baby taste of the Asiatics.

From a very early age, the ears of Hebrew women were prepared for this
load of trinketry; for, according to the Thalmud, II. 23, they kept
open the little holes, after they were pierced, by threads or slips
of wood: a fact which may show the importance they attached to this
ornament.

IV. Nose-rings, at an early period, became a universal ornament in
Palestine. We learn, from Biblical and from Arabic authority, that it
was a practice of Patriarchal descent amongst both the African and
Asiatic Bedouins, to suspend rings of iron, wood, or braided hair,
from the nostrils of camels, oxen, &c.--the rope by which the animal
was guided being attached to these rings. It is probable, therefore,
that the early Hebrews who dwelt in tents, and who, in the barrenness
of desert scenery, drew most of their hints for improving their personal
embellishment from the objects immediately about them, were indebted
for their nose-rings to this precedent of their camels. Sometimes a
ring depended from both nostrils; and the size of it was equal to that
of the ear-ring; so that, at times, its compass included both upper
and under lip, as in the frame of a picture; and, in the age succeeding
to Solomon's reign, we hear of rings which were not less than three
inches in diameter. Hebrew ladies of distinction had sometimes a cluster
of nose-rings, as well for the tinkling sound which they were contrived
to emit, as for the shining light which they threw off upon the face.

That the nose-ring possessed no unimportant place in the Jewish
toilette, is evident, from its being ranked, during the nomadic state
of the Israelites, as one of the most valuable presents that a young
Hebrew woman could receive from her lover. Amongst the Midianites, who
were enriched by the caravan commerce, even men adopted this ornament:
and this appears to have been the case in the family to which Job
belonged, [chap. xli. 2.] Under these circumstances, we should naturally
presume that the Jewish courtezans, in the cities of Palestine, would
not omit so conspicuous a trinket, with its glancing lights, and its
tinkling sound: this we might presume, even without the authority of
the Bible: but, in fact, both Isaiah and Ezekiel expressly mention it
amongst their artifices of attraction.

Judith, when she appeared before the tent of Holofernes in the whole
pomp of her charms, and appareled with the most elaborate attention
to splendor of effect, for the purpose of captivating the hostile
general, did not omit this ornament. Even the Jewish Proverbs show how
highly it was valued; and that it continued to be valued in later
times, appears from the ordinances of the Thalmud, II. 21, in respect
to the parts of the female wardrobe which were allowed to be worn on
the Sabbath.

V. The Hebrew women of high rank, in the flourishing period of their
state, wore NECKLACES composed of multiple rows of pearls. The thread
on which the pearls were strung, was of flax or woollen,--and sometimes
colored, as we learn from the Thalmud, VI. 43; and the different rows
were not exactly concentric; but whilst some invested the throat,
others descended to the bosom; and in many cases, even to the zone.
On this part of the dress was lavished the greatest expense; and the
Roman reproach was sometimes true of a Hebrew family, that its whole
estate was locked up in a necklace. Tertullian complains heavily of
a particular pearl necklace, which had cost about ten thousand pounds
of English money--as of an enormity of extravagance. But, after making
every allowance for greater proximity to the pearl fisheries, and for
other advantages enjoyed by the people of Palestine, there is reason
to believe that some Hebrew ladies possessed single pearls which had
cost at least five times that sum. [Footnote 4] So much may be affirmed,
without meaning to compare the most lavish of the ladies of Jerusalem
with those of Rome, where it is recorded of some _elegantes_, that
they actually slept with little bags of pearls suspended from their
necks, that even when sleeping, they might have mementos of their pomp.

But the Hebrew necklaces were not always composed of pearls, or of
pearls only--sometimes it was the custom to interchange the pearls
with little golden bulbs or berries: sometimes they were blended with
the precious stones; and at other times, the pearls were strung two
and two, and their beautiful whiteness relieved by the interposition
of red coral.

VI. Next came the BRACELETS of gold or ivory, and fitted up at the
open side with a buckle or enamelled clasp of elaborate workmanship.
These bracelets were also occasionally composed of gold or silver
thread; and it was not unusual for a series of them to ascend from the
wrist to the elbow. From the clasp, or other fastening of the bracelet,
depended a delicate chain-work or netting of gold; and in some
instances, miniature festoons of pearls. Sometimes the gold chain-work
was exchanged for little silver bells, which could be used, upon
occasion, as signals of warning or invitation to a lover.

VII. This _bijouterie_ for the arms, naturally reminded the Hebrew
lady of the ANKLE-BELLS, and other similar ornaments for the feet and
legs. These ornaments consisted partly in golden belts, or rings,
which, descending from above the ankle, compressed the foot in various
parts, and partly in shells and little jingling chains, which depended
so as to strike against clappers fixed into the metallic belts. The
pleasant tinkle of the golden belts in collision, the chains rattling,
and the melodious chime of little silver ankle-bells, keeping time
with the motions of the foot, made an accompaniment so agreeable to
female vanity, that the stately daughters of Jerusalem, with their
sweeping trains flowing after them, appear to have adopted a sort of
measured tread, by way of impressing a regular cadence upon the music
of their feet. The chains of gold were exchanged, as luxury advanced,
for strings of pearls and jewels, which swept in snaky folds about the
feet and ankles.

This, like many other peculiarities in the Hebrew dress, had its origin
in a circumstance of their early nomadic life. It is usual with the
Bedouins to lead the camel, when disposed to be restive, by a rope or
a belt fastened to one of the fore feet, sometimes to both; and it is
also a familiar practice to soothe and to cheer the long-suffering
animal with the sound of little bells, attached either to the neck or
to one of the fore legs. Girls are commonly employed to lead the camels
to water; and it naturally happened, that, with their lively fancies,
some Hebrew or Arabian girl should be prompted to repeat, on her own
person, what had so often been connected with an agreeable impression
in her mule companions to the well.

It is probable, however, that afterwards, having once been introduced,
this fashion was supported and extended by Oriental jealousy. For it
rendered all clandestine movements very difficult in women; and by
giving notice of their approach, it had the effect of preparing men
for their presence, and keeping the road free from all spectacles that
could be offensive to female delicacy.

From the Hebrew Bedouins, this custom passed to all the nations of
Asia; Medes, Persians, Lydians, Arabs, &c., and is dwelt on with
peculiar delight by the elder Arabic poets. That it had spread to the
westernmost parts of Africa, early in the Christian times, we learn
from Tertullian, who cannot suppress his astonishment, that the foolish
women of his time should bear to inflict such compression upon their
tender feet. Even as early as the times of Herodotus, we find, from
his account of a Lybian nation, that the women and girls universally
wore copper rings about their ankles. And at an after period, these
ornaments were so much cherished by the Egyptian ladies, that, sooner
than, appear in public without their tinkling ankle-chimes, they
preferred to bury themselves in the loneliest apartments of the harem.

Finally, the fashion spread partially into Europe; to Greece even, and
to polished Rome, in so far as regarded the ankle-belts, and the other
ornamental appendages, with the single exception of the silver bells;
these were too entirely in the barbaresque taste, to support themselves
under the frown of European culture.

VIII. The first rude sketch of the Hebrew SANDAL may be traced in that
little tablet of undrest hide which the Arabs are in the habit of tying
beneath the feet of their camels. This primitive form, after all the
modifications and improvements it has received, still betrays itself
to an attentive observer, in the very-latest fashions of the sandal
which Palestine has adopted.

To raw hides succeeded tanned leather, made of goat-skin, deer-skin,
&c.; this, after being accurately cut out to the shape of the sole,
was fastened on the bare upper surface of the foot by two thongs, of
which one was usually carried within the great toe, and the other in
many circumvolutions round about the ankles, so that both finally met
and tied just above the instep.

The laced sole, or sandal, of this form, continued in Palestine to be
the universal out-of-doors protection for the feet, up to the
Christian-era; and it served for both sexes alike. It was not, however,
worn within doors. At the threshold of the inner apartments the sandals
were laid aside; and visitors from a distance were presented with a
vessel of water to cleanse the feet from the soiling of dust and
perspiration. [Footnote 5]

With this extreme simplicity in the form of the foot apparel, there
was no great field for improvement. The article contained two parts--the
sole and the fastening. The first, as a subject for decoration, was
absolutely desperate; coarse leather being exchanged for fine, all was
done that could be done; and the wit of man was able to devise no
further improvement. Hence it happened, that the whole power of the
inventive faculty was accumulated upon the fastenings, as the only
subject that remained. These were infinitely varied. Belts of bright
yellow, of purple, and of crimson, were adopted by ladies of
distinction--especially those of Palestine, and it was a trial of art
to throw these into the greatest possible varieties of convolution,
and to carry them on to a nexus of the happiest form, by which means
a reticulation, or trellis-work, was accomplished, of the most brilliant
coloring, which brought into powerful relief the dazzling color of the
skin.

It is possible that, in the general rage for ornaments of gold which
possessed the people of Palestine, during the ages of excessive luxury,
the beauties of Jerusalem may have adopted gilt sandals with gilt
fastenings, as the ladies of Egypt did. It is possible, also, that the
Hebrew ladies adopted at one time, in exchange for the sandal, slippers
that covered the entire foot, such as were once worn at Babylon, and
are still to be seen on many of the principal figures on the monuments
of Persepolis; and, if this were really so, ample scope would, in that
case, have been obtained for inventive art: variations without end
might then have been devised on the fashion or the materials of the
subject; and by means of color, embroidery, and infinite combinations
of jewellery and pearls, an unceasing stimulation of novelty applied
to the taste of the gorgeous Asiatic.

IX. The VEIL, of various texture--coarse or fine--according to
circumstances, was thrown over the head by the Hebrew lady, when she
was unexpectedly surprised, or when a sudden noise gave reason to
expect the approach of a stranger. This beautiful piece of drapery,
which flowed back in massy folds over the shoulders, is particularly
noticed by Isaiah, as holding an indispensable place in the wardrobe
of his haughty country-women; and in this it was that the enamored
Hebrew woman sought the beloved of her heart.

ADDENDA TO SCENE THE FIRST.

I. Of the Hebrew ornaments for the throat, some were true necklaces,
in the modern sense, of several rows, the outermost of which descended
to the breast, and had little pendulous cylinders of gold, (in the
poorer classes, of copper,) so contrived as to make a jingling sound
on the least motion of the person; others were more properly golden
stocks, or throat-bands, fitted so close as to produce in the spectator
an unpleasant imagination (and in the wearer, as we learn from the
Thalmud, VI. 43, until reconciled by use, an actual feeling) of
constriction approaching to suffocation. Necklaces were, from the
earliest times, a favorite ornament of the male sex in the East; and
expressed the dignity of the wearer, as we see in the instances of
Joseph, of Daniel, &c.; indeed the gold chain of office, still the
badge of civic (and until lately, of military) dignities, is no more
than the outermost row of the Oriental necklace. Philo of Alexandria,
and the other Arabian poets, give us some idea of the importance
attached by the women of Asia to this beautiful ornament, and of the
extraordinary money value which it sometimes bore: and from the case
of the necklace of gold and amber, in the 15th Odyssey, (v. 458,)
combined with many other instances of the same kind, there can be no
doubt that it was the neighboring land of Phoenicia from which the
Hebrew women obtained their necklaces, and the practice of wearing
them.

II. The fashion, however, of adorning the necklace with golden _Suns_
and _Moons_, so agreeable to the Hebrew ladies of Isaiah's time, (chap.
iii. 18,) was not derived from Phoenicia, but from Arabia. At an earlier
period, (Judges, viii. 21,) the camels of the Midianites were adorned
with golden moons, which also decorated the necks of the emirs of that
nomadic tribe. These appendages were not used merely by way of ornament,
but originally as talismans, or amulets, against sickness, danger, and
every species of calamity to which the desert was liable. The particular
form of the amulet is to be explained out of the primitive religion,
which prevailed in Arabia up to the rise of Mahometanism, in the seventh
century of Christianity, viz. the _Sabean_ religion, or worship of the
heavenly host--sun, moon, and stars, the most natural of all modes of
idolatry, and especially to a nomadic people in flat and pathless
deserts, without a single way-mark or guidance for their wanderings,
except what they drew from the silent heavens above them. It is certain,
therefore, that, long before their emigration into Palestine, the
Israelites had received the practice of wearing suns and moons from
the Midianites; even after their settlement in Palestine, it is certain
that the worship of the starry host struck root pretty deeply at
different periods; and that, to the sun and moon, in particular, were
offered incense and libations.

From Arabia, this fashion diffused itself over many countries; [Footnote
6] and it was not without great displeasure that, in a remote age,
Jerome and Tertullian discovered this idolatrous ornament upon the
bosoms of their countrywomen.

The crescents, or _half_-moons of silver, in connection with the golden
suns, [Footnote 6] were sometimes set in a brilliant frame that
represented a halo, and still keep their ground on the Persian and
Turkish toilette, as a favorite ornament.

III. The GOLDEN SNAKES, worn as one of the Hebrew appendages to the
necklace, had the same idolatrous derivation, and originally were
applied to the same superstitious use--as an amulet, or prophylactic
ornament. To minds predisposed to this sort of superstition, the serpent
came specially recommended under the circumstances of the Hebrews,
from the conspicuous part which this reptile sustains in the mythologies
of the East. From the earliest periods to which tradition ascends,
serpents of various species were consecrated to the religious feelings
of Egypt, by temples, sacrifices, and formal rites of worship. This
mode of idolatry had at various periods infected Palestine. According
to 2 Kings, xviii. 4, at the accession of King Hezekiah, the Israelites
had raised peculiar altars to a great brazen serpent, and burned incense
upon them. Even at this day the Abyssinians have an unlimited reverence
for serpents; and the blacks in general regard them as fit subjects
for divine honors. Sonnini (II. 388) tells us, that a serpent's skin
is still looked upon in Egypt as a prophylactic against complaints of
the head, and also as a certain cure for them. And of the same origin,
no doubt, was the general belief of antiquity, (according to Pliny,
30, 12,) that the serpent's skin was a remedy for spasms. That the
golden serpent kept its place as an ornament of the throat and bosom
after the Christian era, we learn from Clement of Alexandria. That
zealous father, so intolerant of superstitious mummery under every
shape, directs his efforts against this fashion as against a--device
of the devil.

IV. To the lowest of the several concentric circles which composed the
necklace, was attached a little box, exquisitely wrought in silver or
gold, sometimes an onyx phial of dazzling whiteness, depending to the
bosom or even to the cincture, and filled with the rarest aromas and
odorous spices of the East. What were the favorite essences preserved
in this beautiful appendage to the female costume of Palestine, it is
not possible at this distance of time to determine with
certainty--Isaiah having altogether neglected the case, and Hosea (who
appears to allude to it, ii. 14) having only once distinctly mentioned
it, (ii. 20.) However, the Thalmud particularizes musk, and the
delightful oil distilled from the leaf of the aromatic _malabathrum_
of Hindostan. To these we may venture to add, oil of spikenard, myrrh,
balsams, attar of roses, and rose-water, as the perfumes usually
contained in the Hebrew scent-pendants. Rose-water, which I am the
first to mention as a Hebrew perfume, had, as I presume, a foremost
place on the toilette of a Hebrew _belle_. Express scriptural authority
for it undoubtedly there is none; but it is notorious that Palestine
availed itself of _all_ the advantages of Egypt, amongst which the
rose in every variety was one. _Fium_, a province of central Egypt,
which the ancients called the Garden of Egypt, was distinguished for
innumerable species of the rose, and especially for those of the most
balsamic order, and for the most costly preparations from it. The
Thalmud not only speaks generally of the mixtures made by tempering
it with oil, (i. 135,) but expressly cites (ii. 41) a peculiar
rose-water as so costly an essence, that from its high price alone it
became impossible to introduce the use of it into the ordinary medical
practice. Indeed this last consideration, and the fact that the
highly-prized _quintessence_ cannot be obtained except from an
extraordinary multitude of the rarest roses, forbid us to suppose that
women of the first rank in Jerusalem could have made a very liberal
use of rose-water. In our times, Savary found a single phial of it in
the place of its manufacture, valued at four francs. As to the _oil
of roses_, properly so called, which floats in a very inconsiderable
quantity upon the surface of distilled rose-water, it is certain that
the Hebrew ladies were _not_ acquainted with it. This p