Penelope's Experiences in Scotland: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope HamiltonWiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
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Penelope's Experiences in Scotland: Being Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton
Wiggin, Kate Douglas Smith
Scotland -- Fiction
“Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community,” I continued to
Salemina, “is to learn how there can be three distinct kinds of proper
Presbyterianism. Perhaps it would be a graceful act on our part if we
should each espouse a different kind; then there would be no feeling
among our Edinburgh friends. And again what is this 'union' of which we
hear murmurs? Is it religious or political? Is it an echo of the
1707 Union you explained to us last week, or is it a new one? What is
Disestablishment? What is Disruption? Are they the same thing? What is
the Sustentation Fund? What was the Non-Intrusion party? What was the
Dundas Despotism? What is the argument at present going on about taking
the Shorter Catechism out of the schools? What is the Shorter Catechism,
any way,--or at least what have they left out of the Longer Catechism to
make it shorter,--and is the length of the Catechism one of the points
of difference? then when we have looked up Chalmers and Candlish, we
can ask the ex-Moderator and the Professor of Biblical Criticism to tea;
separately, of course, lest there should be ecclesiastical quarrels.”
Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established church, I lean
instinctively toward the Free; but that does not mean that we have
any knowledge of the differences that separate them. Salemina is a
conservative in all things; she loves law, order, historic associations,
old customs; and so when there is a regularly established national
church,--or, for that matter, a regularly established anything,
she gravitates to it by the law of her being. Francesca's religious
convictions, when she is away from her own minister and native land, are
inclined to be flexible. The church that enters Edinburgh with a marquis
and a marchioness representing the Crown, the church that opens its
Assembly with splendid processions and dignified pageants, the church
that dispenses generous hospitality from Holyrood Palace,--above all,
the church that escorts its Lord High Commissioner from place to place
with bands and pipers,--that is the church to which she pledges her
constant presence and enthusiastic support.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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