The minister peremptorily refused to make her an exception to his ordinary practice.

His child stood up in the congregation, and received, from her agonised father, a rebuke similar to that administered to other members of his congregation for a like offence.

The spirit of the age became unfavourable to the practice.

The rebuke on the cutty stool, like the penance in a white sheet in England, went out of use, and the circumstance is now a matter of "reminiscence." I have received some communications on the subject, which bear upon this point; and I subjoin the following remarks from a kind correspondent, a clergyman, to whom I am largely indebted, as indicating the great change which has taken place in this matter.
"Church discipline," he writes, "was much more vigorously enforced in olden time than it is now.

A certain couple having been guilty of illicit intercourse, and also within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity, appeared before the Presbytery of Lanark, and made confession in sackcloth.