One feature in the history of the Scottish conscience profoundly affected American life in its colonial and formative stages--the emphasis laid in the Kirk of Scotland on the National Covenants. They were politico-religious agreements for the maintenance and defence of certain principles and privileges. The idea was copied from Jewish precedent. They originated in that critical period when the sacred rights and convictions of the people were in imminent danger and when the religious and national sentiments were inseparably blended. They were meant to defend the doctrine and polity of the Reformed Kirk against all hostile attempts from within and from without, and the sentiment of those who made them was to die rather than to surrender. One can trace in these historical movements of the Church three periods: (1) against the Papacy (1560–1590); (2) against English prelacy (1590–1690); and (3) against patronage, until 1875. This custom of “covenanting” had a great influence upon those people in Britain who so largely helped to make American freedom, the English Puritans and the New Englanders. To-day the outstanding feature of the independent congregations of several of the largest and most influential bodies of Christians in America is the covenant, which is taken on uniting with the church. The covenant, as the expression of the individual to his Creator and Redeemer, takes the place of the confirmation vows which are customary in the Lutheran and Anglican churches. The “covenant” was the core of the Mayflower Compact and of the Pilgrim Republic. Dr. Schaff thus draws the religious map of Scotland: “The Puritans overthrew both monarchy and prelacy, but only to be overthrown in turn by the nemesis of history.... Romanism in the Highlands is only an unsubdued remnant of the Middle Ages, largely reinforced by Irish emigrants to the large cities. Episcopacy is an English exotic, for Scotsmen educated in England and associated with the English aristocracy. The body of the people are Presbyterians to the backbone.” The weak point in the establishment, by Parliament in 1690, of Presbyterianism in Scotland, was the degree of dependence upon the State, which kept up a constant irritation, and which, from time to time, led to the new secessions from the Established Kirk, down to the great exodus of the Free Church in 1843. But these were not new departures, but rather, like the sects in Russia, were simply returns to the old landmarks. We are often amused, when in Scotland, at the large number, some twenty or so, of ways of being a Presbyterian. Yet, looking into these variations of belief, we find that, whereas in other countries these would simply be different schools or parties in the same denomination, they gave rise in Scotland to separate ecclesiastical organizations. Nearly all these differences turn on minor matters, such as psalmody, patronage, and relations to civil government.