SESSION RECORDS. 377 



no common outpouring of the Spirit which is to sweep 

 away in that people the prejudices which, for a period of 

 nearly twenty centuries, have shut them up to an 

 obstinate rejection of the Messiah ; and when under the 

 influence of that outpouring they shall set themselves to 

 the study of the whole Scriptures, to fix their belief as 

 a Christian Church regarding those minor points on 

 which Christians at present disagree, there is little 

 probability of their being led into error, or that their 

 decision shall not influence the Churches of the Gentiles. 

 ' I have been so fortunate of late as to procure the 

 perusal of a highly interesting piece of antiquity : the 

 Session Records of Cromarty during the Establishment 

 of Episcopacy. They commence in the year 1674, and 

 terminate in 1688, the year of the Revolution. They 

 are written in an extremely old hand (which, however, 

 I am antiquary enough to decipher), and from this cir- 

 cumstance have lain in the archives of the Session for 

 at least the last three generations unopened and unread. 

 They furnish me with a great mass of local history 

 curiously stamped with the peculiar manners of the age; 

 with narratives of the little, foolish bickerings and dis- 

 putes of men whose sagacity we look up to as very 

 superior to our own ; and stories long since forgotten 

 that at one period employed all the tongues and all the 

 ears of the place, for no better reason, 1 am afraid, than 

 that they exposed the weakness or wickedness of an 

 acquaintance or neighbour. Our great-great-grandfathers, 

 I suspect, were not a whit wiser, or better, or happier 

 than ourselves ; and our great-great-grandmothers, poor 

 ladies, seem to have had quite the same passions as their 

 descendants, with as little ability to control them. I see 

 there are vices which, like passions, have their rise and 

 decline ; and that we often deem an age more virtuous 



