It is freely acknowledged that the ancient Free Church of the Scots, even in its golden age, held and practised peculiar tenets which in course of time developed undesirable and even unscriptural fruit. On the other hand, it must be allowed that it adhered for a long period to the main doctrines of evangelical Christianity. From the hymns which we have been considering, and from Patrick’s “Epistle of Coroticus,” and his “Confession,” in which we have something of the nature of a creed or a confession of faith, as well as from other sources, we gather a fair representation of the chief dogmas of its faith. It held and taught the chief doctrines of the Trinity, of the incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, and of His coming again at the last day to judge all men; and likewise of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to make us sons of God, and heirs of immortality. It held, moreover, the Holy Scriptures to be the Word of God, and used them freely and exclusively as the authority by which all statements of doctrine are to be proved and confirmed. At the same time the doctrine of human merit, purgatory, saint-worship, transubstantiation, papal infallibility, and other distinctive tenets of modern Romanism, find no recognition. While, as we are told by St. Bernard, its followers “rejected auricular confession as well as authoritative absolution, and confessed to God alone, believing God alone could forgive sins,” they would neither give to the Church of Rome the tenths, nor the first-fruits, which of course rendered them “schismatics and heretics” at Rome. Marriage was regarded as a civil rite, and was performed by the magistracy. The purity of doctrine and generally healthy influence cultivated and exercised by the ancient Celtic Church, are shown in a remarkable manner in the products of Celtic art, which attained to its highest development in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries. The remains of this school of ancient sculpture, if collected into one national museum, would form an exhibition of native art such as, according to Mr Joseph Anderson, the Rhind lecturer, no northern nation can boast of. Respecting these sculptured stones, memorials that are not unworthy of our valiant Christian ancestors, Burton, in an interesting chapter, remarks: “It deserves to be commemorated that in the hundreds of specimens of native sculpture of this class recently brought to light there is no single instance of indecency, while in the scanty remains of Roman art within the same area it would be easy to point out several.”