“Weel, I canna juist speak as decidedly and dogmatically as Mr. Angus does; but I am sure o’ one thing--Columba and his Culdees used the same kind o’ prayer book that was used at that time all over Europe, and ony reader of church history kens that it spak’ o’ a three-fold ministry of bishops, priests and deacons; and they used the same kind of forms for baptisms, marriages, burials, and for the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper; and a’ the records that hae come down frae these Culdees show that they kept Christmas, and Easter, and a’ the rest of the great festivals, just as the Episcopalians do. So you see, the original form of Christianity in this country was the same as in England.” “Weel, but why do they ca’ the Presbyterian the ‘Auld Kirk’? Surely the kirk which had bishops was the auldest kirk!” “Aye, noo ye’ve hit the mark--that’s just what it is. For a lang time the Christianity planted by St. Columba and his followers was simple and primitive and pure, but sometime before what we call the ‘Middle Ages’ the church began to get a great deal of power, even in civil matters; abuses crept in. The Bishop of Rome was allowed to usurp authority in this land, which never belonged to him. In the sixteenth century the papal power ruled everywhere--and in Scotland the corruptions in discipline which it brought about were worse than in any other part of the west. The bishops and clergy came actually to be held in contempt among the people, who really tried to be religious. Then came what we call the Protestant ‘Reformation.’ Things were so bad in Scotland that it seemed to the reformers of no use to try and purify the old system; they resolved to bring in a new order of things altogether; and so by an act of parliament passed in Edinburgh in 1560 they destroyed the old church and in its place put an entirely new church, invented by themselves, and established by themselves. The bishops who were put down must have been poor successors of the Apostles, for they submitted with a feeble show of protest. For more than a hundred years those who still clung to the old ways had to do without bishops, and it is to the credit of many that they kept their allegiance to the ways of the Primitive Church, as individuals and small communities, when there was so much to tempt them to go with the crowd.” III. The Old Aumrie