fail to give any satisfaction concerning the entrance of the Gospel into
that lovely land. The ruins of numerous altars of stone bear grim
testimony to the idolatrous worship practiced by the early inhabitants.
These are known in history as the Druids. They held their religious
meetings in groves, and evidently offered human sacrifices to their
gods. The oak was accounted by them a sacred tree, and the mistletoe,
when growing upon it, was worshiped. Thus the land of our forefathers,
in the far off ages, was without a ray of Gospel light. The people sat
in darkness, in the region and shadow of death.

In the first three centuries of the Christian era, the successive
persecutions at Rome drove many Christians out from that Gospel center,
to wander in all directions over the world. They suffered banishment for
Christ's sake. In their wanderings they became great missionaries. They
loved Jesus more than their lives, and their religion more than their
homes. By them the Gospel was carried to the ends of the earth. It
seems that some of them drifted into Scotland and brought to that land
the bright morning of a day that carried storms in its bosom, and after
the storms, peace, quietness, prosperity, Christian civilization--an
inheritance of light and liberty unparalleled in history.

As these witnesses of Jesus told the story of God's love and of Christ's
death, the Holy Spirit came down with power and wrought wondrously upon
the people. They readily believed the faithful saying, "Christ Jesus
came into the world to save sinners."

In the later centuries the Gospelized communities developed into an
organized Church, with doctrine, worship, and government based upon
God's Word. These primitive Christians were careful to preserve the
apostolic simplicity, purity, manner, and substance, of Divine service.