Scottish Presbyterian Worship

Proposals for organic change 1843 to the present day

Bryan D. Spinks

• Publisher: Saint Andrew Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781800830004
• eBook ISBN: 9781800830028
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Rituals & Practice

This seminal work by one of the world's most distinguished liturgical scholars fills an important gap in the history of the Church of Scotland and of Scottish worship. It offers an in-depth narrative of a neglected liturgical legacy and a perceptive analysis of the Church's evolving patterns of worship from the middle of the 19th century to the present day.

1. Inherited Patterns of Public Prayer and the ‘Specimens of the Various Services of Presbyterian Worship’

In 1864, both the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland General Assemblies received reports on ‘Innovations in Worship’. Both Churches grounded Scottish Presbyterian worship in the Westminster Directory of 1644, noting the General Assembly Act of 1705 recommending that all ministers observe the Directory, and in 1707 an Act was passed against innovations in worship.1 The Church of Scotland report also noted that with the Directory, free prayer, which had formerly been permitted and encouraged, was made imperative, though the contents and scope were set forth in the Directory.2 In addition, the Church of Scotland report gave a summary of what, in the light of questions to the presbyteries, was described as the ‘uniformity in the mode of administering public worship’.3 It noted that in many instances ministers exercised the discretion the Directory permitted on the precise sequence of the elements of worship. It reported:

Slight changes in the order observed are to be found even in the same neighbourhood, and occasionally the service is shortened by the omission of one or more parts. But in general, almost universally, the order is as follows: Praise, Prayer, Reading of Scripture; Praise, Prayer, Lecture or Sermon; Prayer, Praise, Benediction.

There is the same general uniformity in the order of service when the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper is dispensed. After the action sermon, and prayer and praise, the Scriptural authority for administering the ordinance is exhibited, the tables are fenced, prayer is offered up before distributing the elements, and the communicants are successively addressed. At the close praise is offered up, the presiding minister gives a concluding exhortation, and that is followed by prayer and praise, and the benediction.4

This reported variation within a uniformity may be illustrated from a number of nineteenth-century contemporary accounts of worship.

Contemporary accounts of traditional worship patterns

The immediate result of the Disruption of 1843 was that the ministers who had left the established Church had to leave their manse and church building, and make alternative arrangements for worship for their congregations. Some had to worship in the open air. The Revd R. Craig of Rothesay was able to take services in the Gaelic church and for 4 June 1843 The Annals of the Disruption record the following:

A dense multitude crowds around the door of the Gaelic Church, vainly expecting admittance to what was already a packed house. The lobbies, the passages, the pulpit stairs, all are filled. Every inch of standing room is occupied. His former beadle, John Macdonald, is waiting to attend him as usual. The greater number of his attached elders surround him as usual. His congregation, too, is there much as usual. With great difficulty, from the density of the crowd, the pulpit is reached. After praise, prayer, and the reading of the Word, in all which exercises his own spirit was deeply moved, he discoursed with remarkable unction and power to the joy and edification of his people, from Psalm cxxvi.3: ‘The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.’ This was a day never to be forgotten.5

The Disruption was not over forms of worship. Worship was as usual.

In the Life and Letters of John Cairns, Alexander Macewen described a similar Sabbath Morning service of the Church of Scotland at Berwick c.1850:

As the town clock struck eleven, the beadle bustled up the steep pulpit stair with Bible and Psalm Book tucked under his arm, adjusted these with care on velvet cushions and then stood waiting at the foot of the stair. There was a hush – as seemly preparation for worship as any voluntary – amidst which the creaking of the minister’s boots was heard, and all eyes were fixed on his solemn and stately approach, as he slowly mounted the stair and at once hid his face in his black-gloved hand. When he arose to give out the opening psalm, he showed a majestic presence … The psalm ended, there came the ‘long prayer’, so called to distinguish it from the ‘short prayer’ which followed the sermon … it contained no argument, moving steadily and quietly along familiar lines of adoration, thanksgiving, confession, humiliation and supplication. Scriptural it was, not through quotation but by embodiment of Scripture truth; … Then came the reading of Scripture and another psalm as prelude to the sermon, which would last perhaps fifty minutes.6

Macewen omits to mention that a psalm followed the short prayer as a conclusion to the service with a Benediction. Similar patterns to this order of worship, which in the nineteenth century was regarded as traditional in Presbyterian Scotland, are attested to and supplemented by other contemporary or near-contemporary nineteenth-century writers. Elizabeth Grant described the same pattern of the worship service in the Highlands in 1809.7 Anne Mary MacLeod attests the same in Memories of the Manse:

The perfect hush that pervades a Scottish congregation before service begins – the grave, expectant expression on every face – the reverend voice of the minister as he says, ‘Let us begin the public worship of God by singing his praise,’ – have been often remarked by strangers. … [Mr. Douglas] would have liked, years before, to do away with the habit of lining the psalms, … But the old people … never dreamed of finding the psalms for themselves, but depended solely on Alan MacDonald reading each line before he sang it … Lining was to them a regular part of the service, and singing without that preliminary was to be classed with reading sermons, kneeling at prayer, and other abominations of their arch enemies – popery and prelacy … At prayer, standing was, of course, the custom; … The prayers of Mr. Douglas were full of rugged eloquence and abounded in apt and forcible figures. The greatness and holiness of God, the insignificance and sinfulness of man, were set forth in strong contrast … As far as attention was concerned, Mr. Douglas’s congregation was entirely satisfactory. When the minister announced the text, every one found it and followed the reading. Throughout the sermon a passage was never quoted or referred to without book, chapter and verse being named by the minister and instantly found by the people.8

It was the sermon text and content that seem to have been the main interest of laymen William Lamb and John Sturrock.9 Robert Louis Stevenson remarked of a service in 1883, that there was ‘fifty minutes of solid sermon’.10

Communion was celebrated in most places only twice a year.11 The Record of the Free Church of Scotland provides an interesting account of an annual Highlands Communion at Snizort, Skye in 1863, which again was regarded as preserving the older traditional Scottish communion service:

Thursday, the 16th July, was the day specially set apart for prayer and humiliation before God. Four ministers had arrived at the manse to discharge the duties of the day; … Long before the usual hour of worship the people had assembled to ask a blessing on the word and ordinances. The public services of this day were held in the church, and were conducted in Gaelic and English. The Rev. Roderick M’Leod, who spoke in Gaelic, commenced in the usual way, by giving out the first seven ve...

Table of contents

• Copyright information
• Dedication
• Opponent and overseers of change
• Contents
• Preface
• Biographical Note
• List of Photographs
• Introduction
• 1. Inherited Patterns of Public Prayer and the ‘Specimens of the Various Services of Presbyterian Worship’
• 2. Liturgical Disruption: Dr Robert Lee of Greyfriars Edinburgh
• 3. The Church Service Society and the Euchologion
• 4. Nineteenth-Century Public Worship Provisions in the United Presbyterian Church, the Free Church of Scotland and a Communion Service of the Free Presbyterian Church
• 5. Worship’s Companions: The Playing of the Merry Organ, Hymns, and Sweet Singing in the Choir
• 6. Worship and the High Church Party: The So-called Scoto-Catholics and the Scottish Church Society
• 7. Integrating Some of the Pieces: Culture, Ecclesiology, Architecture and Case Studies
• 8. Forms of Worship Between Two Unions and Two World Wars, 1900–40
• 9. The Ecumenical and Liturgical Movements and the ‘Last Years of Modernity’: 1940–79
• 10. Into Postmodernity
• 11. Some Final Thoughts and Reflections
• Appendix: The Chapel Royal in Scotland
• Bibliography