THE report of this Commission laments very keenly the diffidence shown among the Highland people in becoming members in full communion. The following paragraph occurs:—”The feeling of the great mass of the people in reference to the communion is extremely painful. In some parishes very few, and these chiefly old people, partake of the Lord’s Supper, ‘giving as their reason that they are afraid to eat and drink damnation to themselves.’ This sad state of mind, it is said, is not diminishing, though the ministers seem earnest in explaining the true nature of the ordinance.” The italics are ours. We can hardly describe the feelings with which we read this paragraph. The Commission depicts the state of mind in the Highlands on the subject of communion as “this sad state.”
It appears to us that it laments as sad what was the healthiest mark in the religious life of the Established Church in those parts. The people have a certain due reverence for the Lord’s Table, and are conscious of their own spiritual unfitness for it. They are afraid of “eating and drinking damnation.” Now we know this last word does not necessarily mean final condemnation, for the Lord does pardon unworthy communicating. But we also know that every sin deserves God’s wrath and curse for ever, and therefore unworthy communicating deserves everlasting damnation. It is highly becoming to cherish the fear of this awful punishment, and certain we are that unworthy communicating will seal the final destruction of multitudes of sham professors of religion in this country. We think, therefore, that there is no more pitiable sight under the heavens than to see a Commission composed of men who ought to be the religious guides of the people deploring as sad a thoroughly healthy and Scriptural state of mind, perhaps the only spark in many of a reverence for the things of religion. This Commission is, we understand, chiefly composed of ministers, and thus it may be clearly seen that there is nothing which so much destroys any real sense of the solemnity of spiritual things as unhallowed familiarity with them. Unregenerate ministers are a hundred times harder in heart, more irreverent, and more insensible to eternal realities than unregenerate hearers. May the Highlands long cherish that reverence of the ordinances of religion, which has been one of its most honourable characteristics in the past! The Southerns, who also have had a noble ancestry, are now for the most part casting that which is holy unto dogs, and opening the doors of sacred communion to the unclean and profane rabble.