In regard to the sacraments the "Book of Discipline" lays down that the Lord's Supper should be observed after the manner already described by us when we were treating of Knox's ministry in Berwick. In great towns it was recommended that it should be observed four times in the year, and in order to keep off Easter, the first Sundays in March, June, September, and December are suggested, because "we study to suppress superstition." It was also specified that in large towns there should be daily sermon, or else common prayer, with some exercise of reading the Scriptures; and in smaller places there should be at least one day besides the {146} Sunday appointed for sermon and prayer. Baptism might be administered wherever the word was preached, but it is alleged to be more expedient that it be on the Sunday, and never in private unless accompanied by the preaching of the word; for as the Book of Common Order says, "The sacraments are not ordained of God to be used in private corners as charms or sorceries, but left to the congregation and necessarily annexed to God's word as seals of the same." We admit the clause about "charms," but with the household baptisms of the Scriptures before us, and the other baptisms, which were administered--as it were "extempore"--by the apostles in the house of the jailer and the house of Cornelius, we are not quite so sure about the rest of "the rubric." Marriages were not to be entered into secretly, but in open face and audience of the church; the place for their celebration, therefore, was the church, and the time recommended was Sunday before sermon. It was suggested that there should be no service of any sort at funerals; but it is added, "Yet we are not so precise but that we are content that particular kirks use services in that behalf, with the consent of the ministry of the same, as they shall answer to God, and to the assembly of the Church gathered within the realm." But the most interesting portion of the Book of Discipline, perhaps, to us in these days, is that which refers to education, contemplating as it did the erection of a school in every parish for the instruction of the {147} young in the grammar of their own language, in the Latin tongue, and in the principles of religion; the setting up in every notable town of a "college" for the teaching of "the arts, at least, logic and rhetoric, and the tongues;" and finally the establishment in the "towns accustomed,"--that is Aberdeen, St. Andrews, and Glasgow,--of Universities with full appointments which are minutely described. These were to be supported, stipends were to be furnished for the superintendents, ministers, and readers, and suitable provision made for ministers' widows, and orphan children, out of the confiscated revenues of the Church, the bishops, and the cathedral establishments, together with the rents arising from the endowments of monasteries and other religious foundations.