There can be no doubt that the older school of national clergy supply
many of our most amusing anecdotes; and our pages would suffer
deplorably were all the anecdotes taken away which turn upon their
peculiarities of dialect and demeanour. I think it will be found,
however, that upon no class of society has there been a greater change
during the last hundred years than on the Scottish clergy as a body.
This, indeed, might, from many circumstances, have been expected. The
improved facilities for locomotion have had effect upon the retirement
and isolation of distant country parishes, the more liberal and extended
course of study at Scottish colleges, the cheaper and wider diffusion
of books on general literature, of magazines, newspapers, and reviews.
Perhaps, too, we may add that candidates for the ministry now more
generally originate from the higher educated classes of society. But
honour to the memory of Scottish ministers of the days that are gone!
The Scottish clergy, from having mixed so little with life, were often,
no doubt, men of simple habits and of very childlike notions. The
opinions and feelings which they expressed were often of a cast, which,
amongst persons of more experience, would appear to be not always quite
consistent with the clerical character. In them it arose from their
having nothing _conventional_ about them. Thus I have heard of an old
bachelor clergyman whose landlady declared he used to express an opinion
of his dinner by the grace which he made to follow. When he had had a
good dinner which pleased him, and a good glass of beer with it, he
poured forth the grace, "For the riches of thy bounty and its blessings
we offer our thanks." When he had had poor fare and poor beer, his grace
was, "The least of these thy mercies."
Many examples of the dry, quaint humour of the class occur in these
pages, but there could not be a finer specimen than the instance
recorded in the "Annals of the Parish" of the account given by the
minister of his own ordination. The ministers were all assembled for the
occasion; prayers had been offered, discourses delivered, and the time
for the actual ordination had come. The form is for the candidate to
kneel down and receive his sacred office by the imposition of hands,
_i.e._ the laying on of hands by the whole Presbytery. As the attendance
of ministers was large, a number of hands were stretched forth, more
than could quite conveniently come up to the candid
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