With Dr. Morgan's permission I write a brief Introduction to that part of his work which deals with the Reformation and its results in my own country, Scotland. Dr. Morgan is a Welsh divine of Wales, and after being myself honoured with the degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology by the University of Breslau, I feel free from the reproach of a friend who dubbed me ‘an amateur divine.’ Both Dr. Morgan and I speak not only as D.D.'s, but as members of ‘small nationalities,’ each of them fertile since the Reformation in the production of schism and sects such as MacMillanites, Irvingites, ‘glancing Glassites,’ Auld Lichts, New Lichts, and Sandemanians.

Both of us are well aware that, in Dr. Morgan's words, ‘there has grown up around the Reformation … a mass of legend from which it is difficult to disentangle the truth.’ But I was hitherto unaware that among the legends ‘is that the high-water mark in architecture was the direct result of the Reformation’ (p. 56). Here, indeed, is a large sample of the mass of legend that hangs about the Reformation. The Reformers, in Scotland, ‘hated boetry and bainting,’ like George II. In my own beloved country, the complete pulverisation of mediaeval architecture, save in a few examples, was the direct result of the Reformation. Mediaeval works of art were destroyed as ‘monuments of idolatry,’ while everywhere the development of art, whether for good or evil, was no more the result of the Reformation than of the Council of Nicea.

In literature, on the other hand (at least in England), the amazing splendour of the Elizabethan literature was concomitant with, if not caused by, the Reformation; while in Scotland presbyterial government refused the drama leave to exist, and the contemporary Scottish literature, in belles lettres, was, and long remained, insignificant.

Only persons under a strong delusion will differ from Dr. Morgan when he avers that ‘letters, art, architecture, painting, and music were not the distinct products of the Protestant Reformation.’ As to music, the church organs were made into firewood, or, like a wicked French clock which fell into the hands of a Presbyterian forbear of my own, the works were scooped out, because, as in the case of Prince Charlie's clock, ‘the heathenish timepiece played tunes on the Sabbath.’