RELIGION. 523 



pitiful to find the Reformed Church of Scotland acquiesc- 

 ing, apparently, in the proposed scheme of extermination, 

 instead of hastening to repair its neglect of a community, 

 whose spiritual needs it had for nearly forty years prac- 

 tically ignored. The Adventurers brought to Lewis their 

 own clergyman, Robert Durie, minister of Anstruther, but 

 there was no intention of giving him missionary work to 

 perform : his services were to be confined to the elect from 

 Fife and the Lothians. He escaped from Lewis after the 

 first abortive attempt of the colonists, and was, in 1601, 

 again appointed to plant " ane kirk " in the island. 



The neglect of the Outer Hebrides by the Reformed 

 Church is proved by the fact, that when, in 1610, Lord 

 Kintail brought to Lewis, Mr. Farquhar Macrae, Vicar of 

 Gairloch, then a young man of thirty, to minister to the 

 religious wants of the people, that clergyman found it 

 necessary to baptise all under forty years of age, and to 

 re-introduce, practically, the institution of marriage. His 

 ministrations were gladly received, and his presence was 

 an influential factor in inducing the people except the 

 irreconcilables to submit to Kintail. Farquhar Macrae's 

 stay in Lewis was short, but the impression he created was 

 probably durable. 



After its struggle with the Crown, Presbyterianism was, 

 in 1592, fully established in Scotland. But in 1606, bishops 

 were restored to their temporal estate, and in 1610, Epis- 

 copacy triumphed by the abolition of the rival organisation. 

 By the Acts of Assembly in 1638, and of the Scottish 

 Parliament in 1640, Presbyterianism was re-introduced, only 

 to be again replaced by Episcopacy at the Restoration. In 

 1 690, Episcopacy was finally abolished, and Presbyterianism 

 permanently adopted, being subsequently confirmed in 

 1707, by the Articles of Union, as the form of church 

 government in Scotland. These changes had little or no 

 practical effect upon the Western Highlands and Isles. In 

 the Western Highlands, the clergy and the people remained 

 faithful to Episcopacy ; and it was not until the eighteenth 

 century, that Presbyterianism was unwillingly accepted. 



