country congregations are abounding and excelling in this grace. Probably there is no office-bearer, nor even any member, of any of our churches, exactly resembling an elder in the south country in the early part of this century, who, when he died, left some thousands to be squandered by his relatives. This man, have been told, when there was a special collection, was wont to double his gift; but his extraordinary liberality, on such an occasion, did not exhibit an instance of substitution of gold, or even silver, for brass, for his usual contribution was no more than twice as much as the poor widow cast into the treasury.

CHAPTER XII.

DISCIPLINE.

DISCIPLINE, in the wide sense of the term, com

prehends all the actual exercise of Church-government by the appointed office-bearers; and the term is frequently used in this sense. What are called the First

and Second Books of Discipline, connected with the Reformation in our own country, were a somewhat rude but highly laudable attempt at a digest of forms of procedure in all cases of ecclesiastical order. In its more usual and restricted sense, the term denotes the means of securing the purity of the Church in doctrine and worship, in profession and practice, and, particularly, the mode of dealing with offenders. It implies a power of censure, and is often used to denote the infliction of it.

The censures are admonition, rebuke, suspension, and excommunication. These are purely spiritual or ecclesiastical acts; but in some periods of the Church, censures were accompanied or followed by temporal or civil penalties-by persecution on the part of Christians, as when many in the early ages were denied all social

intercourse, and were obliged to banish themselves to heathen lands, or perish for want, or as when, in subsequent times, offenders, on being cast out of the Church, were regarded as delivered up to the secular power for such punishment as it is wont to inflict,—imprisonment, confiscation of goods, or death. In the Romish Church, penitential discipline consists in punishment of different kinds, such as alms, fasting, self-flagellation, wearing of hair-shirts, repetition of a certain number of prayers, enjoined or authoritatively imposed, for the faults which a person has committed. But even in the Protestant Churches a rigorous penance was prescribed at the period of the Reformation, and long maintained its ground. Shame, which was originally connected with censure only as a proof of humiliation before God, and a powerful motive to deter both the offender in future, and others, from courses or deeds to which it must necessarily attach, was afterwards considered as a penalty, the infliction of which formed part of the sentence pronounced on the offender, to be effected by repeated or long-continued exposure, in ignominious circumstances, either at the door of the church, or in a conspicuous place in the interior allotted for the purpose. In the records of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 1576, we find this enactment-The Kirk ordains that offenders who have been excommunicated "shall make public repentance, at their own kirks, bareheaded and barefooted, three," or in some cases six, "several days of preaching, standing at the kirk door betwixt the assemblies, secluded from

prayers before sermon, and then entering, and sitting in the public place, all the time of the sermon, and departing before the latter prayer;" and that other offenders not excommunicated "shall be placed in the public place, where they shall be known from the rest of the people," etc. In Scottish churches, two hundred years ago, there was a prominent seat, called “the cutty stool,” on which offenders of a particular class sat during service, to be afterwards called up and formally rebuked; and there was also a collar of iron, called "the jougs" or "juggs" (probably from the Latin word jugum, a yoke), which, being attached by a chain to a post at the porch or door of the church, was clapsed round the necks of certain transgressors, who were obliged to stand in this ecclesiastical pillory, exposed to public gaze.1 Mulcts or fines, too, were connected with censure, the payment of which ensured absolution, and was sometimes accepted instead of submission to the censure. So recently as in the early part of the present century, the General Associate Synod, in a public document, "testified against the practice which very generally prevailed in the National Church, of accepting money as a penalty for offences, instead of inflicting the censures instituted by Christ," condemning this as "a remnant of Popery, and nearly allied to that antichristian system of penance, according to which almost every transgression of the moral law has its price."

The offences which subject to discipline may all be ranked under the conduct of individuals who propagate 1 Eadie's "Eccl. Cycl."

opinions, prosecute courses, or commit deeds at variance with the known principles of the society with which they have connected themselves, or with the fundamental doctrines and explicit laws of Christianity. The alleged total want or grievous relaxation of discipline in the Established Church was one of the original grounds of the Secession; and the founders of this denomination regarded it as an object of primary importance to introduce a more spiritual and efficient system. But in the early period of its history, there was frequently displayed a tendency to excessive strictness in the administration. of discipline. In zeal for the interests of truth and holiness, too little regard was manifested to the dictates of brotherly kindness and charity. Actions that were indifferent in themselves, or, if reprehensible, were so in but a slight degree, were regarded as very serious offences, and those chargeable with them were subjected to cen

sure.

Among these offences, occasional hearing, or joining in the acts of worship with other churches, was one that proved a fruitful source of business to Sessions. In a sketch of the history of one of the oldest Secession congregations in Glasgow, which appeared in the United Presbyterian Magazine of 1849, the following statements are made: "Again and again persons were summoned before the Session, and rebuked for hearing ministers of the Establishment, Mr M'Millan (Cameronian), and especially Mr Fisher (Burgher). But the most remarkable case is recorded in a minute of November 1755. A man and his wife, having been at a marriage where Mr