6th NOVEMBER, 1889.

This meeting, being the first of Session 1889-90, was largely attended. The Rev. Donald Masson, M.A., M.D., Edinburgh, read a paper, entitled, "The Church and Education in the Highlands." The following is Dr Masson's paper:

THE CHURCH AND EDUCATION IN THE HIGHLANDS.

In dealing with this subject, it would be unfair to dwell exclusively on the splendid educational work of the Protestant Presbyterian Church-that work, so wisely begun by John Knox, which, for good or evil, was finally closed by the Education Act of 1872. We must remember that from very early times, long before the Reformation, there were favoured spots of our native land where the lamp of knowledge was trimmed and tended with pious care by learned and faithful men, whose teaching and great personal influence shed abroad into the darkness some rays of culture and the light of softened manners. We ought also to remember that education is not always and necessarily a matter of letters, and writings, and books. Already in our own day, when books and book-learning count for so much, we have come to speak not a little of technical education, the education of quickened senses, manual dexterity, and special craft-culture. As an educated nation, we boast of our ocean greyhounds, which are rapidly turning the wide Atlantic into a convenient ferry, to be crossed and recrossed without fear or concern at the frequent call of business or pleasure. But what of the long and perilous voyages of those hardy Norsemen who, ages ago, daring the tempests of the German Ocean in their slim canoes, swept down upon our shores to give us, if through the channel of temporary conquest, that precious tertium quid in our blood, the iron and stiffening of our national character? They were pagans, and practised human sacrifice. But who shall say that they were uneducated? In the whole technique of a sailor's life and work they were already graduates in honours. Among them were splendid workers in gold, silver, and iron. Their precious ornaments of gold and silver, their swords of finest temper, beautifully damascened, take high rank as works of art, and form the choicest treasures of 'ground-find," enriching the museums of the world. They were merchantmen as well as sea kings. The golden coins of Rome and

Carthage were buried with them in the funeral mound, side by side with the shirt of mail, the war-steed, or the ship which was their home. Such men were surely educated, and must have been educators as well. And what of the men of an unknown but evidently a still earlier age, who carved the rude contents of those handsome funeral urns, daily turned out in our day by a horde of promiscuous excavators, irreverent as too often they are wholly incompetent, pottering among the hoary burying grounds of a forgotten race? Ignorant of our three R's, these primitive men, of unknown age and race, very obviously were; but wholly uneducated we dare not call them. And the carvers of that wonderful series of beautifully sculptured memorial stones, long ago set up along the north east shores of Scotland, what shall we say of them? Were they missionaries of the Asian Mystery? pilgrims from the sacred banks of the Five Rivers, who voyaged all the way to Thule to propagate the mild religion of Buddha? A learned Aberdonian, long resident in India, and a competent student of Comparative Archaeology, has fully convinced himself that they were; and he has written a large and learned book to make good this faith that is in him. Whether, indeed, it be really so; or whether, as is most likely, these sculptured stones are the work of the earlier Norsemen, their beautiful workmanship bespeak no mean attainment in decorative art; for they are the admiration of the artists, not less than the antiquaries of our day. These men had not our education. But who shall say that they had not an education of their own which, in us, it were at once unfair and unwise to ignore or despise?

So much I frankly grant. In Scotland, as elsewhere, there was some sort of education, lopsided, indeed, and at its best confined mostly to the few, which not only preceded Christianity but was also, to some extent at least, independent of the great Roman Empire.

Still there can be no doubt that, in the wider and modern sense of the word, the real education of Britain came to us through the Christian Church. When, for example, about A.D. 560 Columba visited the pagan court of Brude Mac Maelchon, on the shores of the Ness, he must necessarily have left his converts something. more than the abstract truths of our most holy religion. Columba, though brave and strong as the bravest hero of his warlike days, was above all a missionary of the Gospel of Peace. He was deeply versed, moreover, in all the book-learning of his day. His sword was the transcriber's pen, and his only buckler that leabhran beg bàn he loved so well. If he found not at the Pictish Court

the arts of reading and writing, he must have left them there; for the service of the Church could not be carried on without them. In like manner every little centre of Christian activity, in those rude times, became necessarily a Christian school. The Scriptures had to be copied, or at least such portions of the sacred writings as were used in the service of the Church. The Gospels especially were largely transcribed. So were the Acts of the Apostles, the Psalms, the Song of Solomon, and an abstract or condensed commentary of Genesis. Nor did the transcriber confine himself to the contents of the sacred volume. The works of Origen, the "Sentences" of St Bernard, and other devotional writings were much sought after, and copied with pious care.

Thus beginning at Iona, the blessed work of education and enlightenment spread to other centres of light and leading throughout the land-to Abernethy, St Andrews, and Loch Leven; to Stirling, Perth, Dunkeld, and Aberdeen; and, in due time, to Beauly, Fortrose, and Baile Dhuthaich. Under the shadow of the Church, and springing out of the exigencies of the Christian worship, the School sprang up, a weak and humble sapling at first, ill-fitted in itself to battle with the rude blast of rough and stormy times; but sheltered by the walls of the monastery, and nurtured by the piety of the monks, it grew in strength and stature, spreading out its branches on every side, and lifting them high towards heaven, till at last it overshadowed and helped to crush the mother that gave it birth and sheltered its tender youth.

But I must not anticipate; nor here dare I enter upon debatable ground. Suffice it to say that the seat of every great church or monastery thus naturally became also the seat of a growing school, each with due array of "scoloc," "master," and "ferleyn." The scoloc was not yet a mere "scholar" in the modern school sense. At a date as late as 1265 there is proof that, if still in training for higher service, he was already in some real sense an ecclesiastic, or "clerk." The late Dr Joseph Robertson traces the "scolocs" back to the previous century, when he finds the Latin "clerici" described in the book of the Miracles of St Cuthbert, as "scolofthes in the Pictish language," clerici illi, qui in ecclesia illa commorantur, qui Pictorum Lingua Scolofthes cognominantur. The master, or rector, was an ecclesiastic of high dignity, as may be gathered from the fact that in one of our oldest charters his name stands side by side with the names of Malcolm Canmore's three sons. It may be added that in 1212 Pope Innocent III. addressed a bull to the archdeacons of Dunkeld and Dunblane, and "magistro scholarum de Pert"-to the master of the schools at Perth

appointing them to act as arbiters in a dispute between the clerk of Sanquhar and the monks of Paisley, concerning the ownership of the Church of Prestwick. Dr Joseph Robertson thinks that in the Irish aud Scoto-Irish Churches the Ferleyn was the same as the Chancellor in the English and Scoto-English Churches; and he points to the fact that, as late as 1549, in St Andrews, where there was no Chancellor, the archdeacon, "in right of his office of Ferleyn," enjoyed certain rights, and was still under certain responsibilities, in regard to the grammar school of that city.

Who was this Ferleyn, and what his position, duties, and the origin of his name? The name is obviously Gaelic, and in Scotland it is found only in the churches which derive from Iona. A learned but somewhat eccentric friend of mine will have it that the Ferleyn is simply "the shirted-man ;" and on this simple basis of very simple philology he founds a learned argument for the place in the Celtic Church of "the simple white surplice!" You will, however, agree with me that in all probability the Ferleyn was the "reader" in the simple service of our primitive Celtic worship. That he may also, later on, have had his place and work in the scriptorium, or transcribing room, of the early Christian brotherhoods, I will not deny; but whatever in the way of parallel there may be traced between the scriptorium of the monks and the sanctum of the modern sub-editor, it cannot be conceded that the "reader" of the old Church establishment and the modern press can claim any kinship, whether of origin or vocation.

For many long years there must, however, have lingered on one slender bond of brotherhood between the schools and schoolmen of the ancient Celtic Church on the one hand, and the potential idea of that newspaper on the other, which in our day aspires to show men a better and higher way than the old pagan pathway of vulgar English, and the humdrum commonsense of the common people. The Saturday Review aspires to be "written by gentlemen for gentlemen." Even so is it with the old schools of which we have been speaking; they were at first taught by ecclesiastics only for ecclesiastics. For the gross ignorance of the common hordes of men around them they do not seem to have taken much concern, and on the thick darkness of that gross ignorance of the common people they certainly made little perceptible impression. It is not till near the close of the thirteenth century that we find much evidence of any serious attempts to educate laymen

"Thanks to St Bothan, son of mine,

Save Gawain, ne'er could pen a line."

So sings the Douglas bold, and if he did not exactly speak the sentiments of his order and his day, he certainly did not belie to any great extent the prevailing practice, and the prevailing opinion of times but a little earlier. The earliest direct evidence of any provision for the education of a layman in Scotland is found in the chartulary of Kelso, under date of 1260. In that year a certain devout widow, named Matildis of Molle, made over to the abbot and convent of Kelso certain life-rent interests of hers, on condition that they should "provide victuals" and training for her son William-ut exhibuerint in victualibus. In 1383-4 there is found similar evidence of certain payments to the bishop of St Andrews, on account of James Stewart, son of Robert II., then under his Grace's charge. By the end of the century the education of laymen was more common, and a stray layman now begins to show himself also among the schoolmasters. At this time too there is evidence that laymen as well as churchmen resorted to the great schools of the Continent for that higher education which was not available at home. In 1411 was founded at St Andrews the first of our Scottish Universities. The sister University of Glasgow followed in 1450, and Aberdeen in 1494. They were all the creations, and the gifts to Scotland, of the Church; being founded by Papal Bull, and their professed object, in the words of the Bull, "the extension of the Catholic faith, the promotion of virtues, and the cultivation of the understanding by the study of theology, canon and civil law, the liberal arts, and every other lawful faculty." It were too long to tell, even were this the place, how this feather from the Roman Eagle's wing was used to speed the arrow which, not long after, pierced the breast of Mother Church in Scotland.

I must, however, crave your indulgence if for a moment I advert to one special reason assigned by the Pope for erecting the University of Aberdeen. It was because it had been represented to his holiness by "our dearest son in Christ, James, the illustrious King of Scots," that in the northern or north-eastern part of his kingdom there are certain parts separated from the rest of the kingdom by arms of the sea and very high mountains, in which dwell men rude and ignorant of letters, and almost barbarous— homines rudes et literarum ignari et fere indomiti-nay, are so ignorant of letters that, not only for the preaching of the Word of God to the people, but also for administering the Sacraments, proper men cannot be found." On this complaint, by no means a flattering one to the memory and character of our ancestors in these northern parts, the King of scots appealed to the Pope to erect a