This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 Excerpt: ...class of prohationers had heen trained. CONDITION OP THE HIGHLANDS. In regard to the permanent settlement of ministers two things had to he kept specially in view--the Highlands had to he evangelised as well as purged of Epiicopacy. It has heen the cu tom of some writers to speak of the Highlands as having heen almost completely neglected hy the Church of the Reformation. Instead of that heing so the wonder is that so much was done in so short a time for organising an ecclesiastical machinery in the Highlands. At the same eime the progress of Protestantism was slow, and even at the time of the Revolution there were districts to which it had never penetrated. Like the snow that lingers in the crevicea of the Bens long after the summer sun has me ted it on the parts exposed to its heams. Popery lingered in many of the glens, and in severe! parts, as wall as in the Isles, even Pagan tites were practised. Indeed, it is quesii inahle whether the old faith was seriously shaken until many years after the recognition of the Reformation. There were several caus--s for this, hut the chief wera the condition of comparative chaos in which the ecclcsiast cal arrangements remained from the Reformation till the Revolution; the paucity of mmiitera. comhined with the totally inadequate iirovion made for their sustenance and the necessity the Ref rme s were under of utilising such machinery as was at their dispo'al: and the d faculties of the w rk in itself, com) ine), with the comparatively lawless character of the people. Although an interval of one hundred and thirty years intervened hetween the recognition of the Reformation and the final estahlishment of Preshyterisnhm, there vai scarcely ever a period of tranquillity long enough to enahle the form of ecclesiasticism fo...