This book has been written with a view of helping to perpetuate the memory of those zealous and courageous sons of Scotland who in the seventeenth century, through the long period of fifty years, struggled for their inalienable rights and privileges—their civil and religious liberty. Although every reader of history is more or less familiar with the events which transpired during this struggle, it may be well, for the sake of our younger readers, to give something of an outline of their course, as well as of the causes which led to them.

The persecuted people of Scotland were Presbyterians, having embraced the doctrines of the great reformer John Knox. But they are widely known by the name of Covenanters, because on several distinct occasions they signed a solemn agreement, or covenant, to adhere to their religious principles and to defend them against all opposition. Successive kings endeavored to force them to admit the royal claim to supreme authority in matters of religion and to adopt the Episcopal form of church government and worship; but the Scotch were faithful to their conscience and their Covenant, and the attempted interference with their religion engendered bitter animosity which ripened into open hostility.

The kings under whose reigns the Covenanters suffered were Charles I., Charles II., and James II.; but as early as the reign of James I. the royal power was unfriendly to Presbyterianism as offering too formidable a check to kingly despotism.

The history of this time, as regards the treatment of the dissenting Scots, is the history of a succession of tyrannies and cruelties that culminated in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. Edicts having failed to accomplish the wish of the king and his advisers, armed men were sent into Scotland to enforce conformity with the sword. Some battles were fought, in which the persecutors were generally victorious.

The dissenting pastors were driven from the parish churches, and Episcopalian ministers, or curates, many of whom were ignorant and vicious, were placed in their pulpits. But the Scots had no mind to hear them, and rather than adopt doctrines and modes of worship which in any degree savored of popery, they followed their spiritual guides into the fields, and there heard the Word of God expounded as they had been wont. These field-meetings, called "conventicles," were contrary to the wishes of the king, and ministration or attendance at them was prohibited by law, and declared punishable by fine, imprisonment, or exile, and even in some cases death. But the liberty-loving, conscience-obeying Covenanters continued to hold them whenever opportunity offered, sometimes in remote districts, sometimes in almost inaccessible places.

The Covenanters suffered great loss of property through fines and taxations. Robberies and barbarities almost unparalleled were perpetrated by the Highland hordes that were quartered on the southwestern part of Scotland for three months in the beginning of 1678. Still, however, the brave hearts of the heaven-trusting Covenanters were unbroken and their spirit unsubdued. They were hunted like criminals; but they either evaded their pursuers or met death with composure and willingness, esteeming it preferable to apostasy. They have left us many striking proofs of God's sustaining grace.

Living in dens and caves of the earth, suffering from cold and hunger, cut off from intercourse with their families, and even with their fellow-beings, many of them became zealots, and advocated measures which the more prudent could not approve; and thus dissensions arose in their midst and increased the difficulties of their situation. We can scarcely be surprised at this state of things when we remember their privations, their solitude, and their sufferings; their ideas took color and shape from their surroundings. No wonder that some of them were extremists. The husband and father was no longer soothed by the music of the wife's soft lullaby to the infant resting on her knee, and the constant youth heard only in imagination the sweet sound of the voice he most loved. But their ears were assailed by the ungentle sound of the wintry wind as it roared in the tossing tree-tops or moaned over the dreary moors. With sad hearts they pictured their firesides as they had been in other days, and wondered if they should outlive the storm and again find rest in the peace of home.

We cannot read of these worthy people, who suffered so much for conscience' sake, without feeling thankful for the religious liberty which their struggles helped to secure for us, and rejoicing that the day of religious persecution is past. And when we consider the vast number that perished rather than barter the favor of God for that of an earthly sovereign, we are filled with admiration as well as sympathy.

EFFIE PATTERSON'S STORY.