The Streets Were Full Of Well-Dressed
Persons Going To Church, The Women For The Most Part, I Must Say, Far From
Beautiful.
I turned with the throng and followed it as far as St. Enoch's
church, in Buchanan-street, where I heard a long discourse from a
sensible preacher, Dr. Barr, a minister of the established Kirk of
Scotland.
In the afternoon I climbed one of the steep streets to the north of my
hotel, and found three places of worship, built with considerable
attention to architectural effect, and fresh, as it seemed, from the hands
of the mason. They all, as I was told, belonged to the Free Kirk, which
has lately been rent from the establishment, and threatens to leave it a
mere shadow of a church, like the Episcopal church in Ireland. "Nothing,"
said an intelligent Glasgow friend of mine, "can exceed the zeal of the
friends of the Free Church. One of our Glasgow merchants has just given
fifteen hundred pounds towards the fund for providing _manses_, or
parsonages, for the ministers of that Church, and I know of several who
have subscribed a thousand. In all the colleges of Scotland, the
professors are obliged, by way of test, to declare their attachment to the
Presbyterian Church as by law established. Parliament has just refused to
repeal this test, and the friends of the Free Church are determined to
found a college of their own. Twenty thousand pounds had already been
subscribed before the government refused to dispense with this test, and
the project will now be supported with more zeal than ever."
I went into one of these Free churches, and listened to a sermon from Dr.
Lindsay, a comfortable-looking professor in some new theological school.
It was quite common-place, though not so long as the Scotch ministers are
in the habit of giving; for excessive brevity is by no means their
besetting infirmity.
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