a 
By the Rev. John Wilkinson. 65 
Now, shall it be thought that the Clergy of the Church of England 
cannot do for one county, what the ministers of the Kirk of Scotland 
have done for a whole kingdom? Dr. Johnson is reported to have 
said, “Shall the Kirk of Scotland have its General Assembly and 
shall the Church of England be denied its convocation? I will stand 
before a battery of cannon to restore convocation.” Without 
entering into the question of the revival of convocation, and without 
_ professing the fire-eating zeal of the High Church Lexicographer, 
we may stir up our own church to a reasonable jealousy, and ask, 
Shall the Kirk of Scotland have the completest parochial history 
existing, and shall we of the Church of England have none? 
Why? Are we less naturally intellectual, less highly educated, less 
zealous and inquiring, less fond of research, less literary in our 
tastes, less interested in our several spheres of duty? I reject the 
notion of our inferiority in any of the qualifications for the task: 
that we have not yet undertaken it with a simultaneous effort is 
an accident which may be repaired. Indeed in one very essential 
requisite—knowledge of church history, of christian and ecclesias- 
tical antiquity, we may, without much vainglorying, suppose 
ourselves better informed than they are in the north. We should 
not probably, it is hoped, fall into such mistakes as some which I 
am going to mention in the great Scotch work. Many churches 
in Scotland, as well as elsewhere, are dedicated to Michael the 
Archangel. The ministers of one of these (Kirk Michael) says, in 
“The New Statistical,” that “the name of this parish, which is 
common to no fewer than five others in Scotland, is obviously 
derived from St. Michael, a saint of great note in the Roman 
breviary, who flourished in the 10th century.” The minister of 
Cross Michael also tells us that “St. Michael seems to have been 
regarded as an individual of more than ordinary sanctity :” quite 
unconscious that he is speaking of him who in heaven made war 
on the great Dragon. Again, the Church of Kilmorack—a Gaelic 
word meaning literally “the Church of Mary’’—was dedicated, of 
course, to the Blessed Virgin. The minister was at a loss who this 
Mary might be, and adds, “from what family this lady sprang 
cannot with certainty be ascertained, though it seems most likely 
K 
