For This Reason An Age Of Ignorance Is
An Age Of Ceremony.
Pageants, and processions, and commemorations,
gradually shrink away, as better methods come into use of recording
events, and preserving rights.
It is not only in Raasay that the chapel is unroofed and useless;
through the few islands which we visited, we neither saw nor heard
of any house of prayer, except in Sky, that was not in ruins. The
malignant influence of Calvinism has blasted ceremony and decency
together; and if the remembrance of papal superstition is
obliterated, the monuments of papal piety are likewise effaced.
It has been, for many years, popular to talk of the lazy devotion
of the Romish clergy; over the sleepy laziness of men that erected
churches, we may indulge our superiority with a new triumph, by
comparing it with the fervid activity of those who suffer them to
fall.
Of the destruction of churches, the decay of religion must in time
be the consequence; for while the publick acts of the ministry are
now performed in houses, a very small number can be present; and as
the greater part of the Islanders make no use of books, all must
necessarily live in total ignorance who want the opportunity of
vocal instruction.
From these remains of ancient sanctity, which are every where to be
found, it has been conjectured, that, for the last two centuries,
the inhabitants of the Islands have decreased in number. This
argument, which supposes that the churches have been suffered to
fall, only because they were no longer necessary, would have some
force, if the houses of worship still remaining were sufficient for
the people.
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