A visit to St. Andrews, the home of golf and of ancient and modern Scottish culture, compels thought. I have met Scotsmen who thought and devoutly believed that there was nothing among all the lands of earth equal to Scotland, and in Scotland nothing greater than the Kirk. Yet this stout insistence has come not alone from believers in “the old gospel,” so called, but with equal vehemence and cool conviction from men saturated with the philosophy of common sense, even from those fearing not to be called “freethinkers.” The real Scotland, like the true United States described in Whittier’s verse, seems to fear neither “the puny sceptic’s hands” nor “the bigot’s blinded rule.” At least, her history teaches this.

The first heralds of the new dawn, whose advent awakened Scotland from her mediæval slumber of intellect, were the Lollards of Kyle, who were among our own spiritual ancestors. They made a great excitement in western Scotland in the early part of the fifteenth century. Their coming was as refreshing as when a window is opened in a stuffy room, letting in God’s fresh air. The articles of which the Lollards were accused, as Knox found them stated in the Register of Glasgow, make us love these people, for their faith and belief were very much like what is held by the mass of the people who live and think in northern Europe and in the United States of America to-day. Some things to which they held are still retained by Christians who are as wide apart as are Quakers and Catholics.

Those who cut down the forest are often surprised at the new and different timber which springs up from the soil. After John Knox, David Hume! But if the Puritans and reformers had not been intolerant, they would not have been men of their own age. It is to the glory of these narrow-minded but high-souled men that they believed in education. They could not well conceive that any other belief was as good as their own. Yet theirs was not the spirit of Mahomet, who gave choice of acceptance of sword or creed; for these men, who had a conviction themselves of the truth, demanded from others the same knowledge, by experience and enlightenment, of these doctrines which they believed. Hence they were earnest for both elementary training and the higher erudition.

If living to-day, the spiritual pioneers and reformers would no doubt be surprised at the visible harvest. Yet it was their opening of dark places to the light, through the cultivation of the mental soil, that made the intellectual landscape which we see to-day. The Indians call the plantain the “white man’s footstep,” because they note that the cutting-down of the dark forests and opening the soil to the sunlight have given the weeds also their opportunity; so that, far more numerously than in the twilight of the woods, or even in the little clearings for the corn and pumpkins, the highways and fields are to-day populous with what we call “weeds.” Yet how vastly greater is the crop of what makes food for man! This is the story, also, of intellectual culture in every age and land. Perhaps it always will be thus. The best of all practical philosophy on this subject is that taught by the greatest of teachers—“let both grow together.” Persecutors, bigots, and tyrants have acted in a different spirit, with appalling results.

The Reformation was more of a success in Scotland than in England, even as men are of more value than edifices of brick and stone, and the people of more value than courts. It culminated, in the lower part of the island, in the divine right of kings and the celestial origin of the Established Church, for Elizabeth was advised by Spain and was strong enough to prevent any open change. But north of the Tweed the people were more generally educated and elevated to a higher place. Hence, in Scotland there was no such tempest raised as there was in the next century, in England, when one king was decapitated and another sent out of the kingdom. Scotland saved herself from stupid kings and a multitude of horrors by previously giving her people the rudiments of knowledge. We in America have never had, from English writers, either fair play or full truth about the Scots, nor is the Scotsman’s part in the making of the United States generally appreciated. The Scotch Puritans not only exercised a marked and lasting influence upon their brethren in England, but upon those beyond sea. Next to the Hollanders, who taught us Americans pretty much all we know of Federal Government, was the influence of Scotsmen in the development of the American nation.

The Normans gave to England her universities, her cathedrals, and her legal system, but Scotland never shared in the benefits of the Norman invasion as did England. One may almost say that in place of the nobler and creative side of the Norman genius was Presbyterianism; that is, representative and responsible government in the Church, the actual rule being by lay elders chosen by the congregation. Much of this republicanism in things religious was the work of one man, the greatest in a country prolific of great men as Scotland has been. John Knox’s power was resistless, because he trusted in God and in the common man.

It is astonishing how much alike William the Silent, John Knox, and Abraham Lincoln were in putting confidence in the plain people. William of Orange, the great moderate man of the sixteenth century, found that kings and princes were as reeds to lean upon, nobles were selfish and factious, but that the common people, when you put confidence in them, could be trusted. John Knox walked in the footsteps of William of Orange. Lincoln followed Knox.

Yet Knox was not the founder of the Scottish Reformation, which had begun before he had left the old Church; he was its nurse, not its parent. At first the Reformation in Scotland, as in some parts of Europe, was a political, not a religious movement. In the beginning the Scotch nobles hoped to be enriched from the Church lands, as their peers in England had been; but among the Scottish people there were gradually formed circles in which education of mind and heart went on. Apart from the court and nobles, the people wanted a change for the better. This general intelligence among “the commonalty” had already so undermined the structure of the old political Church in Scotland that when Knox blew his bugle blast, this semi-political edifice came tumbling down.

In two hundred years Scotland made more progress than any other country in the world. Her people, in proportion to their numbers, have probably done more for the general advancement of the race than those of any other modern nation. Yet the foundation of Scotland’s prosperity was laid by John Knox and his successors. Hamerton, who wrote that charming book, “A Painter’s Camp in the Highlands,” said in one of his works that, in proportion to their small numbers, the Scots are the most distinguished little people since the days of the ancient Athenians, and the most educated of the modern races. “All the industrial arts are at home in Glasgow, all the fine arts in Edinburgh, and as for literature it is everywhere.”

Twice the Scots signally nullified the ambition of kings. Edward I, whom the English count one of their greatest kings, conquered Wales and made it a permanent part of the British Empire. He thought he had done the same thing with Scotland, but there he met a different foe, and twenty years later, Scottish valor at Bannockburn gave Scotland her independence forever. How strange that this same reign saw the death of Roger Bacon, the culmination of Christian architecture, and the expulsion of Jews from England!

When King James came to London, in 1604, he found himself in such a totally different atmosphere that he tried to use the power of England behind him to force the rule of the bishops, in place of elders, upon his Scottish subjects. In England the Church lords told King James, when discussing religious matters, that he was inspired of God. Those who have read the disgustingly fulsome praise of King James, made in their preface by the translators of the English Bible in 1611, can see that they believed in the divine right of kings. On the contrary, in 1596, Andrew Melville, the preacher, in a public audience, called James VI “God’s silly vassal.” Said he to him, “I tell you, sir, there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the Kirk, whose subject James VI is, and of whose kingdom, not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. And they whom Christ hath called to watch over his Kirk and govern his spiritual kingdom have sufficient power and authority to do so both together and severally.”

The Scottish commons, as Froude says, are the sons of their religion, and they are so because that religion taught the equality of man.

The literature of the subject of the relation of the king to the people, which now holds its place triumphantly in England, shows that this theory, regnant in the twentieth century, originated and was elaborated in Scotland. The idea that the royal government arises from popular electoral choice, and that for a king to break his part of the contract makes him forfeit his right and justifies war against him,—which has always been the American idea,—was first wrought out in Scotland. The true theory of the relations between a king and his subjects first appeared in a book published in Edinburgh, in 1580. It was written by George Buchanan, and was the same that was burned by Englishmen at Oxford in 1683.

It was not until 1594 that Hooker, in his “Ecclesiastical Polity,” developed the idea of a social compact, which later was expanded by John Locke, who was so much read by our fathers. Yet even before Buchanan, French writers had discussed the rights and duties of kings on the same democratic lines, and William of Orange, in his “Apology” of 1570, had lengthily exploited the idea and demonstrated in his life the right to take up arms against princes who abused their trust. The “Apology” was but the preface to the Dutch Declaration of Independence in July, 1581—the political ancestor of ours of 1776.

One who would find out and appraise with exactness the influence of Scotland upon English thought, previous to the eighteenth century,—that is, during the period of the colonization of New England, before the Commonwealth, and later, when American institutions were taking definite form,—will not find much to the point in English books or documents. That Scottish writers and preachers were most influential with English Puritans—the same who settled America—cannot be gainsaid.

Neither can it be denied that Puritanism took on some dark and unlovely forms. Yet we must remember that the work of Claverhouse and the massacres of Scottish Christians by Englishmen were taking place within a few score miles of these very people who first left England, to find a permanent home beyond the Atlantic. These English Puritans got their idea of the equality of man and that sense of human dignity, which lies at the foundation of civil liberty, in large measure from the Scots, who had already shown their hatred of oppression and their contempt for differences of rank founded only on the accident of birth.

From such a soil of history and feeling sprang Burns’s inimitable poem, “A man’s a man for a’ that,”—the consummate white flower of the poetry of humanity. It is barely possible that such a poem might have been written in England in the eighteenth century, but, as a matter of fact, it rose out of the heart of a Scotsman. In England the lesson of the equality of man has not, even yet, been fully learned. In America, it is the very foundation on which our Government rests. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Speech is the answering and antiphonic call to the song of Burns. In fact, we cannot understand how any true history of the United States can be written which neglects the study of Scotland’s history.

The Scottish people called those prelates appointed by the London Government, who collected the revenues of their sees and turned them over to their patrons, “tulchan” bishops. These prelates got their nickname in Scotland from calfskins, stuffed with straw to make them look like cow’s babies, with which the dairymen deceived refractory cattle,—mothers that refused to give down their milk. In 1578, the General Assembly resolved that bishops should be called by their own names and not by their titles or sees, and that no vacant see should be filled until the next December. In 1580, the whole system was abolished when the General Assembly, meeting at Dundee, resolved that the office of bishop was a mere human invention unwarranted by the Word of God.

The custom of British peers signing only their surnames, or by peerage designations, though no older than the times of the Stuart kings, has been imitated by the prelates even on hotel registers. This fashion of using geographical affiliations with their surnames only had an amusing illustration while we were in Scotland. A certain American bishop from our neighborhood, travelling through Europe, subscribed himself, let us say, as “Theophilus of Peoria.” By accident, this worthy man of God was followed around by a clergyman of Scottish descent, who was not loath, for the sake of a good joke, to imitate the example of so noble a son of the Church. He made his sign manual, let us say, as “Bartholomew of Pony Hollow.”

Happily in these our days the Scots and English, though so different in old and fundamental ideas, have come to work hand in hand together in civil government. Even within the fold of salvation, they dwell in Christian charity, ever agreeing to differ—the Episcopalian in Scotland being a “Dissenter” and the Scotch Presbyterian in England the same, each being in his own country a “Churchman,” while the average American is amused at the whole proceeding. With what a hearty roar of merriment a party of us Bostonians, when we saw it, bought, for the fun of the thing, a photograph, of cabinet size, found in the London shop windows, of our neighbor, friend, and fellow Christian, the “Lord” Bishop Phillips Brooks, of Yankee land and Hub fame and beloved by all men. Think of an American shepherd of God’s heritage “lording” it over the flock! Yet we forgave the English printer, who probably never noticed his own joke, or knew how funny he had made himself to Yankees.

A survey of Scottish religious history, such as Melrose, Iona, and St. Andrews suggest, shows that in the first working-out of the human spirit, as it reacted upon form and symbol and developed in submission to discipline and the law of unity, the Scottish churches, of necessity, followed the rule of Rome. The flowering of the human spirit, in the hewn stone of church and abbey, took on forms of beauty akin to those in the south, yet with Gothic luxuriance. The marble blossomed in air as from the native rock, and the artist’s chisel made gardens of beauty. Wonderful and alluring was the reality of the mediæval landscape, gemmed with richest architecture and wealthy in sacred edifices made beautiful with color, carving, gems, and the gifts of the devout, the travelled, and the wealthy. The graceful edifices, the abbeys and monasteries, the parish churches, the tithe-barns, the castles and bishops’ seats, made even this far northland a region of charm and romance. Within these sacred walls, what impressive chants and processions, incense and lights, and all that resplendent paraphernalia of robed and costumed ministers of religion, which, whether in pagan or Christian lands, do so appeal to the senses in spectacular worship!

All this mediæval, dramatic variety, so strongly set in contrast to the simplicity of worship to-day, did, in a certain sense, correspond to the contemporaneous glory of civil and military splendor of feudal days. Then the pageant of the titled knight, in shining steel upon his proud steed, leading his clansmen in their brilliant tartans, with claymore and target,—with a rich background of the visible splendor of castles, lords and ladies, in that feudal life which Scott has idealized, glorified, yes, even transfigured in his poetry and romances,—was matched by outward ecclesiastical magnificence; both systems making irresistible appeal to the senses and both being equally far removed from the primitive simplicity of the Master and his disciples.

In a word, Christianity in Scotland wore the garments of the civilization of the age during which it took on its material forms, changing its outward habiliments as its growing spirit entered more deeply into the old, unchangeable truth. In the case of certain young nations, having characteristics that respond to what is first offered them, and in which native traits can make subtle harmony with the imported religion, history marks out but one course—the standards of religion and civilization usually run in parallel lines.