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PR 
 
 SYl 
 

 PROTEST 
 
 AGAINST THE DECISION 
 
 OF THE 
 
 Presbytery of Montreal, 
 
 AND APPEAL 
 
 fi 
 
 TO THE 
 
 SYNOD OF MONTREAL AND OTTAWA. 
 
 r-<« 
 
 1894. 
 
tH! 
 
 Oct. i2i^ l3£'4. 
 
 /^ 
 
wmtmi 
 
 PROTEST AGAINST THE DECISION OF 
 THE PRESBYTERY OF MONTREAL, 
 AND APPEAL TO THE SYNOD OF 
 MONTREAL AND OTTAWA. 
 
 Fathers and Brethren : 
 
 The Presbytery of Montreal has formulated a charge 
 of heresy against me on the ground of a lecture delivered 
 in the Convocation Hall of Queen's University, Kingston, 
 in the month of February, 1893. The two counts in the 
 indictment are, (i) "A view of the inspiration of the Holy 
 Scriptures which impugns and discredits them as the 
 supreme and infallible source of religious truth. (2) A view 
 of God which sets Him forth as one who does not smite 
 either in the way of punishment or discipline, and who has 
 notl "ng to do with the judging or punishing of the wicked." 
 
 By varying majorities the Court found these two 
 charges relevant, and, without proceeding to judgment, 
 precluded me during the whole of the past session from dis- 
 charging the duties of my chair in the Presbyterian College, 
 Montreal. 
 
 The position taken by me in the lecture, on the state- 
 ments of which the libel is based, was not a philosophical 
 one, dealing with the rationalistic, either in metaphysics or 
 in morals ; neither was it literary and historical, as pertain- 
 ing in any sense to what is called the Higher Criticism ; 
 but it was strictly hermeneutical, being based upon an 
 examination and comparison of exceedingly important 
 passages in the Holy Scriptures themselves. The presen . 
 tation of these passages of Scripture the prosecution did 
 
not meet, save in the most perfunctory manner, it being 
 abundantly evident to my mind and to that of any candid 
 observer that their object was not to adjudicate fairly in 
 the premises, but to secure at any cost a conviction that 
 should send the case for trial up to a higher court. Hence 
 the form of my protest, *' that the Presbytery, in the con- 
 sideration of the arguments on which the decision was 
 based, failed to weigh those Scriptural ones presented for 
 the defence, which the appellant regards as sufficient to 
 exonerate him from the charges contained in the libel." 
 To this appeal a committee, in which I am ashamed to say 
 the names of two of my colleagues appear, answered most 
 disingenuously, that the Presbytery had before it all the 
 arguments and Scriptural references written and oral used 
 by me. If the Presbytery really had the Scriptural proofs 
 before it, it acted as the priest and the Levite did in the 
 parable of the good Samaritan ; when they saw him they 
 passed by on the other side The prosecuting committee 
 and its abettors in the house, while showering Old Testa- 
 ment texts as irrelevantly as abundantly, did not meet a 
 single proof text from the words of Jesus Christ and His 
 disciples. Never in all the history of Protestantism has 
 there been a more conspicuous and wilful failure to ascer- 
 tain the position of a theologian, nor a more glaring 
 example of ecclesiastical injustice. Therefore, in spite of 
 the Committee's reply, I bring entirely unaltered my protest 
 and appeal to a larger,. and more impartial, and, as 1 trust, 
 more courageous tribunal. 
 
 I. The Presbytery's first count is that my Kingston 
 lecture impugns and discredits the Holy Scriptures as the 
 supreme and infallible source of religious truth. This I 
 have already more than once by written and spoken word 
 denied, but, like many another lie, it seems hard to kill. 
 The lecture in question is full of reverence for the Scrip- 
 tures, as considering its authorship, it could not fail to be. 
 
:r, it being 
 niy candid 
 te fairly in 
 iction that 
 t. Plence 
 the con- 
 nsion was 
 ;sented for 
 ifficient to 
 he hbel." 
 ned to say 
 ered most 
 it all the 
 oral used 
 iral proofs 
 did in the 
 him they 
 committee 
 )ld Testa- 
 3t meet a 
 5t and His 
 Uism has 
 to ascer- 
 e glaring 
 n spite of 
 ;iy protest 
 IS 1 trust, 
 
 Kingston 
 res as the 
 . This I 
 ken word 
 d to kill, 
 he Scrip- 
 faiJ to be. 
 
 So far from calling in question the supreme authority of 
 the Scriptures, the lecture does not even suggest a subor- 
 dinate or complementary source of truth, either in nature 
 or in the reason of man. Honest men should withdraw 
 thischarge as baseless as it is calumnious. Next it appears 
 that I impugn and discredit the Holy Scriptures as the 
 infallible source of religious truth, and one speaker went so 
 far as to say that I rendered unreliable whole chapters' 
 books and epistles. He called upon his imagination for 
 his facts, and must have been exceedingly eager for a con- 
 viction when he allowed himself to state what he must have 
 known in his own mind to be false or at best grossly exag- 
 gerated. Receiving the complete canon of the Holy Scrip- 
 tures as the inspired word of God, I also find in them, and 
 in them only, the infallible source of religious truth, and 
 this the adverse majority of the Presbytery of Montreal 
 perfectly knows. 
 
 If I am not guilty of placing the Holy Scriptures on a 
 level with nature, reason, and other writings as coordinate 
 sources of religious truth, nor of denying that they are, as 
 such a source, infallible, it follows that, in spite of the vote 
 of a majority of one-third of the Montreal Presbytery, I am 
 both technically and really guiltless of the charge laid 
 against me ; but, while prepared to contend against false- 
 hood and misrepresentation, I am unwilling to seek shelter 
 under technicalities. What I have asserted in the lecture, 
 on the statements of wdiich the chai;ge is based, is progress 
 in revelation, the gradual development of doctrine — a pro- 
 gress and a development arising out of the varying limita- 
 tions, not of the divine revealer but of the holy men of old 
 to whom He revealed this truth. Of scientific, of historical, 
 of literary errors I have said nothing, and when I have 
 briefly indicated the ethical imperfections of a few parts of 
 the Old Testament, not chapters, hooks and epistles, but rare 
 verses or paragraphs, I have done so on the authority , 
 
not of subjective conscience or any moral system, but of 
 the Lord Jesus Clirist and His apostles. While lamenting,' 
 that a Church Court should have placed it on recor:l, I 
 glory in a condemnation that marks me as the justifier of 
 the works and deeds of the Son of God. Hence, while I 
 might quote hundreds of authorities for my course from 
 among the fathers, the schoolmen, the reformers, and in our 
 own day from such writers as Alford and Delitsch, McCosh, 
 Candlish, Crawford, Schaff, Fairbairn, Newman Smytli, 
 Fisher, DeWitt, Sanday, Dykes and Gibson, I prefer to set 
 forth once again the simple scriptural arguments manifest 
 to all 
 
 I will make one, and only one, exception to this rule, 
 inasmuch as the prime instigator of charges against me is 
 an ardent disciple of Hodge. In the introduction to his 
 S\'stematic Theology, ch. vi., paragraph 2e, the divine of 
 Princeton says: " No Christian puts the inspiration of the 
 Old Testament above that of the New. The tendenc)-, 
 and we may even say the evidence, is directly the other 
 wa}'. If the Scriptures of the Old economy were given by 
 inspiration of God, much more were those writings which 
 were penned under the dispensation of the Spirit." Just as 
 there are geological uniformitarians, so are there among 
 theologians, but Hodge is not of them, neither is any 
 intelligent student of the word of God. God Himself, 
 said (Ezekiel xx. 25) : " I gave them also statutes that 
 were not good, and jfidgments whereby they should not 
 live." Contrasting the old commandment with the new, 
 John says (I.John ii. 8) : "The darkness is past and the 
 true light now shineth." The apostle Paul (II. Cor. iii. 7-13) 
 contrasts the veiled revelation and transient glory of Moses 
 with the open and abiding revelation of the Spirit. The 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews says (vii. 19), " the 
 law made nothing perfect;" (viii. 7), "If that first cove- 
 nant had been faultless, then there should no place have 
 
tcm, but of 
 i lamenting 
 n recor;l, I 
 ustifier of 
 ce, while I 
 urse from 
 and in our 
 , McCosh, 
 an Smyth, 
 )refer to set 
 s manliest 
 
 o this rule, 
 ainst me is 
 tion to ])is 
 e divine of 
 ation oftlie 
 e tendenc)', 
 r the other 
 re given by 
 ings which 
 ■ " Just as 
 ere among 
 ler is any 
 i Himself, 
 tutes that 
 should not 
 h the new, 
 St and the 
 r.iii. 7-13) 
 ^ of Moses 
 irit. The 
 19), "the 
 first cove- 
 lace have 
 
 been sought for the second ; and (x. i) " the law having a 
 shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of 
 the things, can never with those sacrifices which they 
 offered year by year continually make the comers there- 
 unto perfect." Jesus Himself said (Luke xvi. 16) : "The 
 law and the prophets were until John ; since that time the 
 kingdom of God is preached, and every man presseth into 
 it." In John i. 18, we read, " The law was given by 
 Aloses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." In 
 Galatians iv. 9, Paul calls the ceremonial precepts of the 
 law "weak and beggarly elements." The same apostle 
 gives special prominence to the revelation of Christ when 
 he says (Eph. ii. 20), " And are built upon the foundation 
 of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being 
 the chief corner stone." Everywhere revelation is made 
 to culminate in Christ, so that Peter calls His manifesta- 
 tion " a more sure word of prophecy" (II. Peter i. 19). 
 
 Jesus was the prophet whom Israel looked for above 
 all other prophets, concerning whom Moses said (Deut. 
 xviii 15), " unto Him ye shall hearken." Matthew (xvii. 5) 
 cites in regard to His message the miraculous words of the 
 Father, " hear ye Him." That same Matthew (xi. 27) 
 quotes Jesus as saying, " neither knoweth any man the 
 Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will 
 reveal Him." Similar is John's language, " No man hath 
 seen God at any time ; the only begotton Son which is in 
 the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him " (John i. 
 18). Again he says (John vi. 46), " Not that any man hath 
 seen the Father, save He which is of God, He hath seen the 
 Father." And finally (John iii. 34), " He whom God hath 
 sent speaketh the words of God : for God giveth not the 
 the Spirit by measure unto Him." Here plainly there is a 
 line and a broad line drawn between Christ and other 
 revealers, as compared with whom He stands' pre-eminent. 
 His word is not amenable to their standards, while their 
 
6 
 
 utterances must be brouj^ht to the bar of His infalliblo 
 truth and unveiled contemplation of divinity. As Paul 
 says (II. Cor. iv. 7), tlie apostles had the treasure in 
 earthen vessels, grace according to the measure of the 
 gift. They and the prophets before them revealed God 
 and His will according to their capacity, and alone, of all 
 men since the world began, was it said of Christ, " God 
 giveth not the Spirit by measure unto Him.' If to assert 
 the existence in the Scriptures of differcut degrees of inspi- 
 ration be to impugn and discredit them, Jolin the Baptist 
 is worthy of libel, and even Hodge must find a place among 
 the many thousands who believe the Baptist right. In so 
 far as the inspiration of a prophet differed in value from 
 that of Christ was it the means of a partial and imperfect 
 revelation. 
 
 I know of no statement in the Scriptures which gives 
 to understand that the revelation culminating in Jesus 
 Christ is in every part infallible. Our Lord homologated 
 them sometimes in their actual words, at others in their 
 general statements, and probably His strongest language in 
 regard to them was, " Search the Scriptures ; for in them ye 
 think ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of 
 me " (John v. 39). It does not follow that everything 
 uttered or recorded by an inspired man is worthy to be 
 received as infallible ; for if this were the case Paul would 
 not have said regarding prophesy ings (I. Thes. v. 21), 
 " Prove all things ; hold fast that which is good," nor of 
 the prophets (I. Cor. xiv. 29), " Let the prophets speak 
 two or three, and let the other judge." The following 
 verse shows the subject of their prophecy to be a revela- 
 tion, and then (verse 32) we find the remarkable words 
 *' The spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." 
 In I. Cor. ii. 13, the apostle of the Gentiles claims the 
 right of comparing spiritual things with spiritual, and the 
 author of the epistle to the Hebrews gives honour to those 
 
fifallible 
 |\s Paul 
 [sure in 
 of the 
 led God 
 \q, of all 
 'God 
 to assert 
 )f inspi- 
 
 Baptist 
 e amoii'^ 
 :. In so 
 lue from 
 iiiperfect 
 
 ch gives 
 in Jesus 
 lologated 
 > in their 
 iguage in 
 1 them ye 
 testify of 
 ^erything 
 thy to be 
 Lul would 
 
 3. V. 21), 
 
 ' nor of 
 ;ts speak 
 following 
 a revela- 
 i words 
 •ophets." 
 lims the 
 and the 
 to those 
 
 who have their senses exercised to discern both good and 
 evil (Heb. v. 14). An example of a revelation true in its 
 main scope but defective in its particulars is that of 
 Agabus (Acts xxi. 11) concerning Paul, whom the Jews 
 did not bind and deliver into the hands of the Gentiles. 
 To say that a professed revelation of divine truth, coming 
 through the necessary medium of our fallible humanity, is 
 no revelation because it contains an element of error, is to 
 ignore utterly the relation of God to human freedom and to 
 play into the hands of scepticism. 
 
 The text of the lecture on which the Presbytery's in- 
 dictment is based is, " Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
 Father which is in heaven is perfect." These are the 
 words of Jesus Christ, and they follow a definite statement 
 of His own fulfilment of certain precepts of the law as 
 opposed to the partial and imperfect legislation of Moses. 
 Our Lord's law regarding divorce (Matt v. 32) is diametri- 
 cally opposed to that of the Hebrew lawgiver in Deut. 
 xxiv. I. His law concerning oaths (Matt. v. 34) abrogates 
 that of Moses in Numbers xxx. The lex taiionis (Matt. 
 V. 38) which Christ condemns appears in all its integrity 
 in Exod. xxi. 24, Levit. xxiv. 20, Deut. xix. 21. Hatred, 
 which our Saviour condemns (Matt. v. 44) is virtually in- 
 culcated in Deut. xxiii. 6, in so far as the Moabites and 
 Ammonites were concerned, and the i3gth Psalm contains 
 a fierce exhibition of it. Christ owns Moses as a prophet 
 and homologates the Psalms as divine revelations, but in the 
 Sermon on the Mount He gives it distinctly to be under- 
 stood that their revelations were partial and incomplete : 
 " It hath been said by them of old time — but I say unto 
 you." A further renunciation of the old law of divorce is 
 contained in Matt. xix. and in verse 8, the reason for tha 
 imperfect law of Moses is made the hardness of the hearts 
 of Israel. The law was imperfect not throilgh any change- 
 ableness in God, but through the lack of moral culture in 
 
8 
 
 the human recipient. Here then is a distinct recognition 
 by Christ of a human element in the Scriptures hmiting 
 and interfering with the perfection of the divine revelation. 
 Our Lord's doctrine is contained in His deeds as well as in 
 His words. The 69th Psalm is Messianic and curses 
 most bitterly the enemies of the Messiah, but when that 
 Christ was in the lowest depth of His soul agony He 
 pra3'ed, " Father forgive them ; for they know not what 
 they do." The psalm and the prayer as divine utterances 
 are irreconcilable, but admit the subjective imperfection 
 of the inspired psalmist as a factor in composition and tiie 
 difficulty vanishes. In H. Kings i. 9, seq., we read that 
 Elijah called fire from heaven to devour two captains and 
 one hundred soldiers of Ahaziah, and in Luke ix. 54 we 
 learn that the sons of Zebedee, inspired by this Old Testa- 
 ment example, wished similarly to consume an inhospitable 
 Samaritan village. Did Christ homologate the action of 
 the prophet, who alone with Moses was yet to be honoured 
 with a place in His transfiguration ? On the contrary, He 
 turned and rebuked them, and said, "Ye know not what 
 manner of spirit ye are of." The story of the woman 
 taken in adultery is looked upon as an interpolation in 
 John viii., yet few call it in question as the record of an 
 actual event in Christ's life, It contravenes the law of 
 Moses in Levit. xx. 10, Deut. xxii. 22. So Christ's con- 
 ception of the Sabbath in Matt. xii. 8 brought Him into 
 endless conflicts with the Pharisees who held fast by the 
 Mosaic commandments. 
 
 The old laws and permissive enactments regarding 
 slavery, polygamy, concubinage, the wholesale destruction 
 of wives and children, slaves and property, for the sin of 
 one man like Achan (Joshua vii. 24), and the military order 
 (Deut. XX. 16), " Thou shalt save alive nothing that 
 breatheth," are utterly irreconcilable with the revelation 
 of God in Christ, and I cannot see what possible gain 
 
9 
 
 there is to Christianity in maintaininj? a theory of plenary 
 inspiration which sets God in conflict with His hoHest 
 attributes. The cold-blooded slau<:(hter of a hundred 
 thousand Midianite women and male children by Israel at 
 Moses' command (Numbers xxxi. 14, seq.), were we to read 
 the account of it in any other history, would fill our souls 
 with the liveliest indignation ; and no words would be too 
 strong to condemn the base treachery of Jael, the wife of 
 Heber the Kenite, whom the inspired Deborah called 
 " blessed above women " (Judges v. 24). In Ezekiel xiv. 9 
 we read, " If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken 
 a tiling, I the Lord have deceived that prophet and I will 
 stretch out my hand upon him and will destroy him from 
 the midst of my people Israel." This is very strangejustice, 
 yet similar is the language of II. Thess. ii. 11. " For this 
 cause God shall send them strong delusion that they shall be- 
 lieve a lie." In I. Kings xxii. 23 it is written, " Behold the 
 Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy 
 prophets." When we read the word of James 1. 13, " Let no 
 man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God ; for God 
 cannot be tempted with evil, neither temptetli He any 
 man," and those of Paul, " Know ye not, that to whom ye 
 yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to 
 whom ye obey," we understand the mystery, namely : that 
 when men choose the paths of falsehood and error, God 
 permits them to fall under the sway of the father of lies. 
 Did Ezekiel and the author of the Book of Kings know 
 this ? We cannot tell, but their language plainly imputes to 
 God directly such deception as cannot possibly pertain to 
 the character of Him who is the Truth. 
 
 I may sum up these objections in the words of the 
 Rev. W. Hetherington in the CJiristian World Pulpit of 
 Nov. 22, 1893. He says, after citing cases similar to those 
 I have adduced, " With respect to these statements let me 
 ask : Can God deceive ? Can the Holy One express His 
 
10 
 
 approbation of tempting Ahab through the medium of a 
 He ? Is God responsible for the concubinage of David ? 
 Can He directly in His own person dictate statutes which 
 are not good, and judgments whereby men cannot live ? 
 Can He punish a prophet for being deceived if He Him- 
 self is the cause of the deception ? The New Testament 
 disposes of these utterances once and forever : * God can- 
 not be tempted of evil, and He Himself tempteth no man. 
 God cannot lie. Man shall not live by bread alone, but by 
 every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God,' I 
 might refer to other examples, such as the spirit of the 
 Lord coming upon Samson, and enabling him to kill thirty 
 men of Askalon, who, as far as the narrative is concerned, 
 had given him no offence. But the wholesale murder is 
 committed that he may give thirty changes of raiment to 
 his thirty companions who had seduced his wife into be- 
 traying his secret. Rather a strange proof of inspiration 
 that ! Or the often-quoted case of David's numbering 
 Israel, regarded by the author of Samuel as a great sin and 
 directly attributed to the Lord, and by the author of the later 
 book of Chronicles attributed to Satan. What then is the 
 meaning of these expressions ? Is it not that in the Old 
 Testament no sharp line of distinction is drawn between 
 what God does by His own immediate agency and what 
 he permits to be done by secondary agents, whether they 
 be evil spirits, men, or the forces of nature ? These state- 
 ments show us that we must read what follows, a ' Thus 
 saiththe Lord,' even with discrimination." 
 
 The lecture on the statements of which this libel is 
 based dealt simply with the moral character of God the 
 Father as the Clirist-given standard of Christian perfection. 
 Tested by the Old Testament standard of the Moral Law, 
 viewed as a rescript of the divine nature, several acts 
 and utterances attributed to God in the Law, the Psalms 
 and the Prophets fall far short of its requirements. Much 
 more is this the case when in place of the Moral Law we 
 
 k 
 
set up msoer standard the divine man who came to fiuIM 
 lit. He who* said, " I and my Father are one " (John x. 30I, 
 " He thM s€eth me seeth Him that sent me " (John xiL 45), 
 " He tlbair hath seen me hath seen the Father '" (John 
 Ixiv. g|, presents Himself in word, life and deed as the 
 brightiness of the Father's glory and the express ima;L;t of 
 I His peisom. In Him revelation, coming gradually throw^h 
 [the ages, pairtial and imperfect because of the straittn:!nig 
 i influemoes of a hard-hearted humanity, defective education, 
 land wliatever else pertains to the earthen vessel, reached 
 its culmimacion and fulfilment. To be content, for ihe 
 sake of a mere theory of infallibility, with any lower coo- 
 ceptiom of the divine character than that which Christ 
 presemls is to live back into the times of darkness, is to 
 Judaizt. aed virtually to allow that Christ has come in 
 vaia. I ask you, who is it thae impugns and discredits 
 the Holy Scriptures as the supreme and infallible source 
 of reli^ooES truth, the man who makes Jesus Christ the 
 infallible standard and touchstone of orthodoxy regarding 
 the Fattheu, or he who, in spite of Scripture itself, of the 
 theological learning of the ages, of the dictates of common 
 sense, womld degrade the record of Him to whom aJooe the 
 Holy Spii^t was given without measure, down to the level 
 of hunniani seers, whose genuine heavenly treasure dwelt in 
 a vessel of the earth earthy, rescued by grace from the 
 blackened pots of ancient ignorance and prejudice? In 
 condemning me on the first count I maintain, that 
 the majority of the Presbytery of Montreal in session was 
 not simply guilty of injustice and a grievous wrong to my- 
 self, butt of something infinitely worse, namely : dishonour 
 to the one only perfect revealer of the Father, concerning 
 wliom even his enemies were compelled to say, " Xe\'er 
 man spake like this man." I protest against such a de- 
 cision and appeal against it to the more enlightened 
 Christian judgment of the Synod. 
 
 II. The second ^ount on which the majority of Pres- 
 
12 
 
 bytery present found me guilty, is that of holding " a view 
 of God which sets Him forth as one who does not smite 
 either in the way of punishment or discipline, and who has 
 nothing to do with the judging or punishing of the wicked.'' 
 At two stages in the brief trial I protested against the 
 charge as untruthful. It is not fairly deducible from even 
 the rhetorical forms of the lecture in question, and the 
 Presbytery knew very well that I do not hold such a view. 
 In the first place I allowed the sovereignty of God to the 
 extent that not a sparrow falls to the ground without our 
 Father, and recognizing God as the author of these laws of 
 nature, providence and grace, which carry their own 
 enforcement, I asked that the word "directly" might be 
 added to the verb " smite." This simple act of justice the 
 prosecution refused to grant. Another blemish in the 
 indictment is, that the word God is made use of instead of 
 the Father. It is true that in the lecture, in order to 
 avoid repetition, God and the Father are used interchange- 
 ably, but one has simply to look at the lecture's title and 
 text m order to sc^; that it is throughout a vindication of 
 the first person of Uie Trinit}'. The aim of the lecture was 
 not to intrude upon the mysteries of a future state of 
 rewards and punishments, in which it expresses full belief, 
 as well as in the divine attribute of justice. Its aim was 
 to show from Scripture that in this life upon our earthly 
 sphere all evil, physical as well as spiritual, is one, and 
 that while under God's control it is not of God. It is 
 true that, in order still further to correct a mistaken notion 
 of the attitude of the Father to our race, 1 adduced a 
 number of passages which declare that the function of 
 judgment is exercised not by the Father but by the Son. 
 If it be true, as Paul says, that the Saints also shall judge 
 the world, I sincerely hope that they may prove themselves 
 better qualified for the task than those of the Montreal 
 Presbytery, who have knocked down a scarecrow of their 
 
13 
 
 own stuffing which they presumed to call by my name. 
 I am not guilty of the ridiculous charge brought against 
 me as a second count, as many who condemned me know. 
 One plea of the lecture, in vindication of the character 
 of God the Father, was that many acts of which subordi- 
 nate agents were the immediate cause are in the Old Tes- 
 ament attributed to God who permitted them. It was 
 attempted by one ver}-^ fervid member of Presbytery to 
 prove that God is responsible for all such actions on the 
 principle qui facit per aliuni Jacit per se. That does not 
 follow by any means, since God permits a thousand things 
 which he does not approve. The whole realm of sin, its 
 spheres of war, murder, persecution, are in God and per- 
 mitted by Him, but are utterly antagonistic to His holy 
 nature. God is only responsible for them to this extent 
 that He bestowed on their perpetrators the freedom which 
 they have so foully abused. The visible agents who con- 
 travene the laws of God are men, and the invisible ones 
 who owe their continued existence and activity to man's 
 choice are the devil and his angels. One who theoretically 
 believes as strongly as I do in the existence and agency of 
 evil spirits, remarked in Presbytery that it was refreshmg 
 to find a theologian in the nineteenth century who believed 
 there was a devil. I do believe there is such a being, and, 
 if I had any doubt about it, this prosecution would be 
 enough to settle it. My crime, therefore, is not that I 
 deny divine justice, judgment and punishment for sin, 
 present and eternal, for I admit all of these ; but it is that 
 I emphasize the existence of the devil and his angels an^ 
 their power in the natural as in the spiritual world, and 
 that I characterize as little short of blaspliemy the con- 
 founding of the actions of the ever-blessed God with those 
 of the fiend who is His enemy, albeit His subject, as he is 
 mankind's greatest foe. Here, again, I might quote King, 
 Whately, Delitsch, Muller, Maurice, Edward White, 
 
M 
 
 U 
 
 Matson, and man}'' other writers old and new, but I prefer 
 to keep to the language of Scripture itself in proof of my 
 position. 
 
 I believe in the existence of a personal devil, who, 
 while God's creature, is the chief enemy of God and of 
 God's children. Paul says (Eph. vi. 12): "We wrestle 
 not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, 
 against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this 
 world, against spirits of wickedness in high places." Peter 
 says : " Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walk- 
 eth about seeking whom he may devour." He was with 
 our Lord at the beginning of his ministry, and one of 
 Christ's last words to His disciples was : " The prince of 
 this world cometh and hath nothing in me." That devil 
 tempted Jesus through Peter and betrayed Him by Judas 
 Iscariot. When we assert divine sovereignt}' on earth we 
 forget two petitions of the Lord's Prayer, namely : Thy 
 kingdom come, and Sufifer us not to be led into temptation, 
 but deliver us from the evil one. God's kingdom has not 
 come. This world is the strong man's house waiting for a 
 greater to come who will bind the strong man and spoil 
 his house (Matt. xii. 29). In John xii. 31, the strong man 
 is called the prince of this world, as in xiv. 30, and xvi. 11. 
 In Ephesians ii. 2, he is the prince of the power of the air, 
 the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience. 
 In Hebrews ii. 14, he is said to have the power of death 
 and to be the devil, But why should I tire the Synod 
 with proofs of the existence and activity of Satan as well 
 known to you as to me ? 
 
 It has appeared that the Old Testament writers, 
 whether anxious to escape the charge of Persian dualism, 
 or from some other reason, frequently confounded the 
 direct actions of God with permissive acts performed by 
 His creatures, which were not necessarily done with His 
 approval. Thus it happens that while the activity of the 
 
15 
 
 [evil and his angels must have been immeasurably more 
 [•equent during the four thousand years of Old Testament 
 iistory than during the sixty of the New Testament 
 icord, the references to this activity in the Law, the his- 
 )rical book, and the prophets are exceedingly fev/. As 
 he serpent, Satan appears and disappears in Genesis ; he 
 las great prominence in the book of Job ; he is mentioned 
 In Psalm cix. 6 ; in I. Chron. xxi. i ; he takes the place of 
 led in II. Sam. xxiv. i ; and in Zech. iii. 1,2, he appears 
 IS the opponent of Joshua the high priest. On the other 
 land, the New Testament is full of the doings of this great 
 idversary of our humanity. It does not appear to me that 
 the indication of this discrepancy, or the assigning a cause 
 for il, is a sufficient foundation for a heresy libel, unless of 
 (course Satan himself were the prosecutor. 
 
 One of the most horrible sins of thought is that of con- 
 Ifounding the works of God with the works of the devil, and 
 he who does so thereby becomes the devil's advocate. He 
 has had many such, but in the Old Testament the book of 
 Job distinguishes clearly between the divine permitter and 
 the diabolical inflictor of physical evil. The raids of the 
 Sabeans and Chaldeans, the fire from heaven, the dis- 
 astrous tempest, the patriarch's disease were permitted by 
 God, but were physical acts of Satan ; yet confusion of 
 thought reigns even in the book that lifts this veil, for Job 
 said, " the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away ; 
 blessed be the name of the Lord," and at the end of his 
 story it is said that his friends " comforted him over all 
 the evil that the Lord had brought upon him." So in 
 Samuel, God tempts David, and in Chronicles it is Satan. 
 In the 78th Psalm at the 49th verse, referring to the 
 plagues of Egypt it is said, God cast upon them the fierce- 
 ness of his anger, wrath, and indignation and trouble, by 
 sending evil angels among them. In Judges ix. 23, God 
 sent an evil spirit between Abimelech and the men of 
 
u 
 
 
 Shechem ; and in I. Sam. xvi. 14 and onwards, an evil 
 spirit from the Lord is said to have troubled Saul, 
 Nevertheless God's spirit is called good (Psalm cxliii. 10) : 
 He himself is a physician and restorer, declaring at Marah 
 (Exod. XV. 26), I am the Lord that leadeth thee : and in the 
 103rd Psalm, the Lord who forgiveth all iniquities, alsol 
 healeth all diseases. There is a strange anomaly, a con- 
 tradiction, a house divided against itself, in a God who 
 heals the wounds of his own inflicting. 
 
 When I said that the Father does not in this life smite 
 immediately, I applied to this strange and perplexing 
 problem the teachings of Jesus Christ and His apostles, 
 which, in any other Church court than the Presbytery of 
 Montreal, would be regarded as sufficient testimony. That 
 court paid no attention m spoken word or in writing, what- 
 ever it may have done in silent thought, to that all-impor- 
 tant witness. It has already appeared that our Saviour 
 recognized diabolic agency in the world, as he could hardly 
 fail to do, seeing that He suffered from it all through His 
 career, and that He designated Satan as the prince of this 
 world. When accused of casting out devils by the agency 
 of Beelzebub the prince of the devils, he exposed the folly 
 of supposing such a house divided against itself, a folly 
 that holds equally good if He, the Son of God, be repre- 
 sented as divided against the Father. In I. John iii. 8, it 
 is expressly said, " For thfs purpose the Son of God was 
 manifested that He might destroy the works of the devil." 
 When Jesus cast out devils, those possessed were at the 
 same time healed of their physical diseases, so that in 
 Matt. ix. 33, " when the devil was cast out the dumb 
 spake," and in a similar connection (Mark vii. 37), men 
 said, " He maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to 
 speak." Peter, in Acts x. 38, plainly recognizes physical 
 suff"ering as of diabolical agency, for he declares that 
 Jesus " went about doing good, and healing all that were 
 
i; 
 
 oppressed of the devil." But, more than all, there is the 
 testimony of Christ himself, who said concerning the 
 woman that had a spirit of infirmity, *' ought not this 
 woman being a daughter of Abraham, 7v}iom Satan hath 
 hound, lo these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on 
 the Sabbath day ? " (Luke xiii. i6). In John viii. 44, 
 Jesus calls the devil a murderer as well as a liar ; and in 
 John X. 10, contrasts himself as the giver of life with the 
 thief who comes to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. In 
 the ninth chapter of Revelation and elsewhere, under the 
 names of Abaddon and Apollyon, the evil one is repre- 
 sented as the king of the tormentors of the bodies of men ; 
 and in Hebrews ii. 14, we read of " him that had the power 
 of death, that is the devil." I do not think I need apolo- 
 gise to this or to any Church court for quoting such words 
 as these, and quoting them with joyous approbation. 
 
 Judgments in this life are hard to determine and 
 Christ warns us to judge not that we be not • judged. 
 Those on whom the tower of Siloam fell, the Galileans 
 whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices, the blind 
 man and his parents, did not suffer death or affliction 
 because they had been notorious sinners. The cases of 
 Ananias and Sapphira, and of Elymas the sorcerer, bear 
 the character of judgments, but we cannot decide that no 
 mediate agency brought about their fate. There are three 
 clear cases of the agency of Satan in matters of divine or 
 ecclesiastical discipline. The divine discipline is Paul's 
 thorn in the flesh, which he, in II. Cor. xii. 7, calls " the 
 messenger of Satan." The ecclesiastical cases are the 
 incestuous man of Corinth (I. Cor. v. 5) who was deliv- 
 ered unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh ; and 
 Hymenaeus and Alexander (I. Tim. i. 20) whom Paul 
 delivered unto Satan that they might learn not to blas- 
 pheme. These three cases are certainly calculated to 
 arrest the attention and prompt the question, If God 
 
18 
 
 \'i 
 
 himself smites immediately, why were the beloved apostle 
 of the Gentiles and the Corinthian and Ephesian heretics 
 handed over to the power of the evil one ? What has the 
 Church to gain by contravening or ignoring these express 
 declarations of the New Testament, which nothing in the 
 Old but the preface of the book of Job will explain, and 
 which are sufficient to explain all Old Testament accounts 
 of divine smiting? I question if ever before in the history 
 of the world a man was adjudged guilty of heresy for desig- 
 nating Satan as the fruitful source of the world's physical 
 and spiritual ill-being. " Woe to the inhabitants of the 
 earth and of the sea ! for the devil is come down unto you 
 having great wrath " (Rev. xii. 12). That God should 
 give men over into the power of any evil is no evidence 
 that He approves or that He created the evil. In Psalm 
 Ixxxi. 12, He is said to have given Israel up to their own 
 hearts' lust, Stephen, in Acts vii. 42, says that God gave 
 the Israelites up to worship the host of heaven. Paul at 
 Lystra (Acts xiv. 16) declared that God in times past 
 suffered all nations to walk in their own ways ; and in 
 Romans i. 24-26, a passage most ludicrously quoted 
 against me, He is represented as giving the Gentiles up to 
 uncleanness and vile affertions. It seems to me that these 
 are illustrations of the our Lord's word, "Whosoever 
 committeth sin is the servant of sin," and of Paul's warn. 
 ing, *' To whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his 
 servants ye are to whom ye obey." The wages of sin is 
 death. 
 
 My original, cowardly, anonymous slanderer, who 
 posed as a writer of editorials in the Presbyterian 
 RevUii', charged me with holding the views of 
 Irenaeus and other fathers in regard to the atonement, which 
 in vulgar language represents the sacrifice of Christ as a 
 sop to Cerberus. Such a thought is not even obscurely 
 hinted at in the lecture under discussion, and malice must 
 
n 
 
 ed apostle 
 in heretics 
 at has the 
 :se express 
 ling in tiie 
 plain, and 
 t accounts 
 he history 
 ' for desig. 
 's physical 
 ints of the 
 unto you 
 od should 
 3 evidence 
 In Psalm 
 their own 
 God gave 
 . Paul at 
 imes past 
 s ; and in 
 y quoted 
 tiles up to 
 that these 
 Whosoever 
 Ill's warn, 
 obey, his 
 of sin is 
 
 irer, who 
 'esbyterian 
 iews of 
 jnt, which 
 irist as a 
 obscurely 
 ilice must 
 
 have gone far before it raised such an utterly ungrounded 
 charge. That Jesus Christ came under the tempting power 
 of Satan is undoubted ; that He passed under the sway of 
 him who has the power of death cannot be denied. Paul 
 (Kom. iv. 25) says that He was delivered for our offences, 
 and (Rom. viii. 32) that He was deHvered up for us all ; but 
 His sacrifice was to the Father's love, and His death, 
 so far from being a sop to Satan, is characterized as a 
 spoiling of principalities and powers, of which He made a 
 show openly, triumphing over them in it (Col. ii. 15). I 
 reject with indignation each and every inference drawn 
 from my words by shallow-minded theologians, who, under 
 a great parade of contempt for the evil one, have declared 
 themselves to be the devil's advocates. If it is not meet in 
 ecclesiastical circles that every nice offence should bear 
 its comment, much less should Church courts give heed to 
 slanderous insinuations and wire-drawn inferences, until 
 they have considered the unworthy motives of those who 
 are responsible for them. My colleagues, even those who 
 are officially opposed to me, know very well whence these 
 emanated and who is the cause of the unworthy clamour to 
 which mistakenly, and I would hope unwittingly, they have 
 submitted their judgment. I content myself with say- 
 ing that such insinuations and inferences are as false as 
 they are malicious and should have no place in any charge 
 formulated against my utterances. 
 
 In regard to the matter of judgment, I have not said 
 that God does not judge, but that judgment, even though it 
 may be the prerogative of the Father, is not, and will not 
 be, exercised by Him. In Matt. xxv. 31 and parallel 
 passages, depicting the last judgment, the Son of Man is set 
 forth as the judge. In John v. 22 these words occur : 
 " The Father judgeth no man, but hath comiyiitted all 
 judgment unto the Son "; and in the 27th verse we read : 
 *' And hath given Him authority to execute judgment also. 
 
m 
 
 II' 
 
 #' 
 
 because He is the Son of Man." Peter (Acts x. 42) em- 
 pliasizes the same truth, " He commanded us to preach 
 unto the people and testify that it is He wliich was ordained 
 of God to be the jud^^e of quick and dead." Paul (Acts 
 xvii. 31) states that God has " appointed a day in the whicii 
 He will judf^e the world in righteousness by that man 
 whom he hath ordained." In Romans ii. iG he speaks of 
 " the day when God shall jud},^e the secrets of men by Jesus 
 Christ," and in xiv. 10 says, "We shall all stand before 
 the judgment seat of Christ." Inasmuch as Christ is judge 
 by virtue of His humanity, it follows that the saints are 
 assessors with Him In Luke xxii. 30 He speaks of the 
 apostles sitting on thrones and judging the twelve tribes of 
 Israel; and in I. Cor. vi. 2, 3, Paul makes the noteworthy 
 interrogations : " Do ye not know that tlie saints shall judge 
 the world ? " and " Know ye not that we shall judge 
 angels ?" It must be evident from these passages that the 
 Father, with whose being and functions the lecture under 
 consideration is concerned, does not judge, but remits the 
 office of judgment to sanctified humanity under the presi- 
 dency of the Son as the Son of Man. 
 
 The plea of the lecture is a plea for the Son as the 
 fullest and only perfect revelation of the Father. Thus it 
 emphasizes (John v. 19) the truth that "the Son can do 
 nothing of Himself, but what He seeth the Father do ; for 
 what thir«gs soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son 
 likewise." Again Christ says (verse 30), " I can of mine 
 own self do nothing: as I hear I judge, and my judgment 
 is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of 
 the Father which hath sent me." Once more (John viii. 
 26) Jesus speaks : " He that sent me is true ; and I speak 
 to the world those things which I have heard of Him " ; 
 and in verse 28 He adds : " As my Father hath taught me 
 I speak these things." Then in John ix. 4 He declares, 
 " I must work the works of Him that sent me "; and these 
 
 ll 
 
42) eni- 
 3 preacJi 
 )rdaine(l 
 111 (Acts 
 which 
 at man 
 H,aks of 
 '3' Jesus 
 1 before 
 is judge 
 nts are 
 5 of the 
 tribes of 
 e worthy 
 all judge 
 II judge 
 that the 
 re under 
 mits the 
 he presi- 
 
 as the 
 
 Thus it 
 
 can do 
 
 do ; for 
 
 the Son 
 
 of mine 
 
 idgment 
 
 will of 
 
 ihn viii. 
 
 I speak 
 
 Him"; 
 
 ught me 
 
 leclares, 
 
 id these 
 
 21 
 
 works were works not of smiting but of healing. His very 
 words were given Him, as He says (John xii. 49), *' I have 
 not spoken of myself, but the Father which sent rie, He 
 gave me a commandment what I should say and what I 
 should speak." Finally, in John xiv. 9. 1 1, we read the mar- 
 velous words, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father," 
 and " Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in 
 me.'' No other rcvealer of the will of God ever spoke like 
 that. In view of such manifest superiority over all other 
 witnesses for the Father, it is criminal to neglect Him who 
 now ''peaks from heaven, or to give equal credence to minor 
 testimony that conflicts with His record or in any respect 
 falls short of it. 
 
 I make this appeal because the Presbytery of Mont- 
 real virtually said, we decline to consider your Scripture 
 proofs. No real attempt was made by that court to clear 
 up misconceptions. Its procedure was an injudicial rush 
 to formulate a foregone conclusion, in obedience to the 
 clamour of an excited mob, stirred up by cowardly anony- 
 mous misrepresentation on the part of a now defunct 
 newspaper, calling itself religious and Presbyterian. The 
 comments of British journals indicate that such a trial as 
 I have been subjected to would be an impossibility in the 
 home Churches, which are certainly as devout, and as 
 certainly much more scholarly than our own. Ignorance 
 has marked the attitude of those opposed to me from the 
 beginning. I have been called a Canadian Briggs, and 
 have been charged with the whole ofthe Higher Criticism. 
 I challenge my accusers to find in the lecture in question 
 or in any other of my writings the remotest advocacy of 
 the Higher Criticism. I do not say that I am not prepared 
 to welcome the fruits of honest literary toil in any di- 
 rection ; but, with my present light, I should 4iesitate be- 
 fore placing with approval in the hands of my students 
 Dr. Bruce's Apologetic, which homologates the entire 
 
22 
 
 scheme of the Higher Criticism, as my ultra-orthodox col. 
 leagues of the Presbyterian College have clone in that nh- 
 sence of mine for which they are chiefly responsible. A 
 more disengenuous action than the supersedence of my 
 orthodox lectures by Dr. Bruce's Apologetic it would he 
 hard to imagine. If consistency be a jewel, this is mud. 
 
 I have called in question the inspiration of no portion 
 of Scripture, great or small. The doctrine of the atone- 
 ment has not been impugned by me. Neither have I in 
 any way discredited the divine justice or future retribu- 
 tions. I have been charged with making a subjective in- 
 terpretation of Scripture. This is utterly false, as the 
 accuser knew when he made the unworthy charge. I in- 
 terpret Scripture by Scripture and bring all to the bar of 
 Christ in the gospels. Yet if I had made the test sub- 
 jective, I would still have been within the limits of the 
 Confession of Faith, which plainly says (Ch. i. 5), " Our 
 full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and 
 divine authority thereof is from the inward work of the 
 Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the Word in oui" 
 hearts." One critic maintained that in Matt. v. Christ 
 objected not to the words of Moses but to Jewish glosses, a 
 view contradicted by our Lord's language, and held by no 
 commentator of any reputation for scholarship and sin- 
 cerity. Others in the vain effort to bolster up the theory 
 of verbal or plenary inspiration, adduced texts which prove 
 nothing of the kind, laying great stress upon H. Tim. iii. 16, 
 " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," the doubt- 
 ful character of which is admitted by every exegete. In 
 answer to the unworthy accusation of another that I de- 
 fended my position by exceptional and isolated texts 
 wrested from their connection, I have simply to refer to the 
 cloud of Bible witnesses cited in all documents contributed 
 by me to the trial. The weakness of opposing testimony 
 could not be made more conspicuous than it has been 
 
n 
 
 made by such a school-boy contention. A worthy mem- 
 ber of Presbytery claimed that the scourge of small cords 
 with which our Saviour drove the traders out of the temple 
 constituted a case of divine smiting, forgetting that the so- 
 called cords were soft bruised rushes used for litter, . and 
 that they were gentle persuaders to animals, not to men. 
 Finally, the last speech, to which I was precluded from 
 replying, consisted of a string of texts largely from the Old 
 Testament, which, while setting forth God as a smiter, did 
 not in the least invalidate the argument of Job and my 
 New Testament quotations. That our God is a consuming 
 fire 1 never called in question, and many other texts quoted 
 simply confirmed my contentions instead of disproving 
 them. It is not my business to indicate the unnamed 
 agency by which judgments in old time were wrought, so 
 long as I have proof positive in Scripture that physical 
 calamity in this life pertains to the world of evil. 
 
 It is contended that the language of the Kingston lec- 
 ture is in part very strong and to certain minds offensive. 
 The term offensive is a verv relative one, as we know that 
 one man's meat is another's poison. Doubtless many have 
 heard far more offensive language from the ordinary pulpit, 
 from which they could not escape, while to be offended 
 with the lecture's style involved the voluntary purchase 
 and reading of it. If the offensiveness of the Kingston 
 lecture be one tithe as bad as that of the unjust, slanderous, 
 abusive and cruel things spoken and written about its 
 author, I should be exceedingly sorry. But it is not. 
 When a great truth has been suffered to fall into abeyance 
 it needs a trumpet tone to rouse the world to consider it. 
 Such a great truth is this, that Jesus Christ is the revela- 
 tion of the Father. I honour my Father, said Christ, and 
 ye do dishonour me. My work has been Chriet's work, 
 the vindication of the Father's character, an attempt to 
 put into practice the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, 
 
w 
 
 24 
 
 hallowed be Thy name. To compare small things with 
 great, I do not find that truth-lovers found fault with 
 Luther and Knox for using strong language, or that they 
 sat in judgment on Paul for calling Moses' ceremonial 
 enactments " weak and beggarly elements." Suppose that 
 certain sentences in the lecture convey an exaggeration, is 
 this wrong ? Has not every fervent speaker and writer the 
 right to employ the rhetorical idiom of exaggerated contrast? 
 In the lecture it was done in order to call attention to an 
 obscured truth, since then happily coming to the front on 
 all sides. This idiom was used by the prophets and 
 apostles, and the Psalms are full of it. Every preacher 
 and public speaker is allowed this liberty, save when some 
 small verbal peg is wanted on which to hang a large charge 
 of heresy. Moses (Exod. xxxii. 32) prayed God to blot him 
 out of His book ; Paul (Roin. ix. 3) wished himself accursed 
 from Christ ; Jesus (John ix. 3) said concerning the man 
 born blind, *' Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents." 
 When that same Saviour told men to offer theirleft checks 
 to the smiter, to give the coat-thief their cloak, to go two 
 miles for the offender that took them one out of their way, 
 He used the idiom of exaggerated contrast, as He did 
 when He said, " If any man hate not his father and mother, 
 and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yea and 
 his own life also, he cannot be my disciple." There is a 
 very pertinent Scripture which says (Isaiah xxix. 20), "For 
 the terrible one is brought to naught, and the scorner is 
 consumed, and all that watch for iniquity are cut off: that 
 make a man an offender fur a word, and lay a snare for 
 him that reproveth in the gate, and turn aside the just lor 
 a thing of naught." To any candid examiner my mean- 
 ing is plain and the exaggerated idiom is in no danger of 
 leading such astray. 
 
 The subordinate standard of our Church is the West- 
 minster Confession of Faith. The Church does not accept 
 
25 
 
 it alL Its doctrine regarding the civil magistrate and the 
 deceased wife's sister it rejects, and it virtually declines to 
 believe m predestination to sin and wrath. But wherein 
 have I offended the Confession ? Has it any theory of 
 inspiration? Did its framers formalate any articles on 
 diabolical aijency ? Does it not assert that in God's 
 providence -things fall out according to the nature cf 
 second causes ?'' The Presbytery of Montreal was blind to 
 the very traditions of the Church when it wrongfully con- 
 demned me. To condemn an honest enquirer because his 
 views are not those of the dying school of verbal inspi- 
 rationists and anti diabolists, evolutionary or otherwise, 
 imputing to him inferences which he has not stated and for 
 which he refuses to be responsible is conduct directly 
 opposed to all law and justice. Are we ministers and 
 elders tied by the ipsissinia verba of the Confession, or are 
 we free to search the Scriptures ? For my part, I do rjot 
 wish to remain a single moment longer in any church that 
 is narrower than the Word of God. What have I pre- 
 sented to this court ? The Word and nothing but the 
 Word. I have said let God be true and every man a liar. 
 Christ is God and all that is in accordance with Christ is 
 of God. What I contend for is purity of doctrine, per- 
 fection of character, the living face of God. It is far from 
 a pleasant experience for a man of my habits to be dragged 
 into publicity, tossed about and baited in church courts, 
 after five and twenty years defence of the Gospel, and that 
 by men who, knowing me as they do, are well aware that 
 1 can do nothing against the truth but for the truth Yet 
 unpleasant as it may be in many ways, I stand here with 
 the answer of a good conscience in the sight of God 
 and meiT to protest against the adverse ruling of the 
 Presb}-tery of Montreal and to appeal to a wider con- 
 stituenc}' and higher court of the Church from its hasty and 
 
 ilhjudged decision. 
 
 JOHN CAMPBELL.