The above enactment leaves no room for doubt as to the opinion prevailing in the Church of Scotland at the beginning of the eighteenth century respecting ritual in the public worship of God. At the same time it is very evident that a desire prevailed in the Church for a seemly and uniform order of service in public worship and an Act of the Assembly of 1705 "Seriously recommends to all ministers and others within this national Church the due observance of the Directory for public worship of God approven by the General Assembly held in the year 1645." This deliverance may be taken as representing the spirit of all legislation of the Church respecting worship up to the middle of the present century. Whenever, in response to overtures from subordinate courts, or inspired by special requirements of the times, deliverances concerning any part of worship were prepared by the Assembly, they uniformly directed the Church to the observance of the regulation of this department of Divine service as provided for in the Westminster Directory. It cannot be claimed, however, that due regard was accorded the Directory throughout the whole Church. The last half of the eighteenth century was a time of spiritual coldness in Scotland; not only did evangelical piety languish but there existed at the same time a corresponding want of interest in the worship of the Church. Praise was neglected, and little effort was made to secure suitable singing of the Psalms; at times the reading of Scripture was entirely omitted, prayers were brief and meagre, the sermon was regarded as in itself sufficient for the whole service, and all other parts of public worship were looked upon either as preliminaries or subordinate exercises, not calling for any particular preparation or attention. It was a time when spiritual life was low, and the outward expression of that life exhibited a corresponding want of vigor. The evil, therefore, from which the Church suffered at this period was not an excess of attention to worship, but a neglect of it; not a too great elaboration of forms, but an almost total disregard of them, even of such as are helpful to the development of the spiritual life of the worshipper. And thus it came to pass that the struggle of more than a century against the use of prescribed forms of worship resulted in a condition more extreme than had been either anticipated or desired, for not only were such forms abandoned, but worship itself was neglected and disregarded. In reviewing the period subsequent to the rejection of Laud's Liturgy and up to the time of the First Secession within the Church of Scotland, some features that mark the general trend of the spirit of Presbyterianism with regard to worship are clearly manifest.