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IS 
 
 AN I > 
 
 EARNEST APPEAL 
 
 TO THE 
 
 FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 O^ THE SUBJECTS OF ITS 
 
 ECONOMICS. 
 
 REt. THOMAS^CHALMERS, D. D. 
 
 Piincipal and Professor of Divinity in the New College, Edinburgh, and Corresponding 
 Member of ihe Rojal Institute of France. 
 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 BV THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 
 
 FIRST AMERICAN FROM THE SECOND EDINBURGH EDITION. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION. 
 
 1847. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Introduction to the American Edition, 5 
 
 Preface, 15 
 
 Original Preface, 17 
 
 Economics of the Free Church of Scotland. 
 
 Section I. On the Contributions for the Support of the Free Church,. • • 19 
 
 II. On the Financial Committee, 27 
 
 III. IV. On the Distribution of the Sustentation Fund 31 
 
 V. On Church Extension, 41 
 
 VI. General View of the Schemes and Objects of the Church, 44 
 
 VII. General Considerations, 47 
 
 Affendix. 
 
 No. I. On the Importance op the Free Church Ministers giving their 
 Testimony and their Countenance in behalf of the Associa- 
 tion. See. I. § 2 49 
 
 II. On the Possibility of supporting a Church, even of National 
 Magnitude and Extent, by the Contributions of the Middle 
 and Lower Classes, Stc. I. § 5, ^ 50 
 
 III. On the Offerings of the Common People, Sec. I. § 6 52 
 
 IV. The Stability of our Means lies more in the Smaller Contri- 
 
 butions OF the many, than in the Larger Contributions of 
 
 the few. Sec. I. § 8, 53 
 
 V. On certain requisite Modifications by which our present Sys- 
 tem OF AN equal Dividend might be improved. Sec. III. and 
 
 IV., §2 54 
 
 VI. On the Character and Prospects of a Church indifferent to 
 the Moral and Religious State of the Outfield Popula- 
 tion. Sec. III. and IV., § 7, 56 
 
 VII. On Scales of Distribution. Sec. III. and IV., § 15, 56 
 
 VIII. Fear lest the Work of Church Extension should be misman 
 
 aged or neglected, 
 
 IX, On the Prospects of Voluntaryis.m Sec VII. § 2 ... • • 61 
 
 X. Conclusion — The Author's View of what should be the State 
 of the Church's outward Business for the following 
 
 59 
 
 twelvemonth, 
 
 62 
 
ADYEETISEMENT. 
 
 The Board of Publication believe that tliey are performing 
 an important service for tlie Pre'sbyterian Clmrcli in re-pub 
 lisliing this pamphlet. The topics Dr. Chalmers here dis- 
 cusses with his characteristic ability and energy, are, mutatis 
 mutandis^ of no less moment to our Church than they are to 
 the Free Church of Scotland. This will be sufficiently evi- 
 dent to every candid reader of the able and interesting Intro- 
 duction prefixed to the present edition. 
 
 A copy of the pamphlet will be sent, through the liberality 
 of a friend, to each of the ministers in our connexion. The 
 Board are unwilling to believe that such seed is to be scat- 
 tered through the Church in vain. They are convinced that 
 ♦the subjects here presented, demand the most serious atten- 
 tion of our ministers and people, and that they should be dis- 
 cussed until some measures shall be devised and adopted at 
 once to augment the liberality, zeal, and efficiency of our 
 Church, and to promote the comfort and usefulness of her 
 ministers. 
 
 The manaofement of the Economics of the Church is 
 vested in its Judicatories. With their functions this Board 
 has no wish to interfere. It is not its province even to sug- 
 gest specific modifications of existing plans. Its office sim- 
 ply is to diffuse light, leaving it to the Church herself, under 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 the guidance of God's Providence and Spirit, to use the 
 light thus disseminated as she may see fit. 
 
 It is taken for granted that many of those into whose 
 hands this Appeal may fall, will be disposed to examine 
 its facts and reasonings in their application to our own 
 affairs, and to lay their views before the churches. If in 
 any instances individuals should choose to send their com- 
 munications to this Board, the Board will with pleasure 
 receive them, and dispose of them in such a manner as may 
 in their judgment be best adapted to promote the ends con- 
 templated in the circulation of this pamphlet. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 TO THE 
 
 AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 The disruption of the Ciiurcli of Scotland, the simultaneous secession 
 of four hundred and seventy of her ministers, and of a still larger pro- 
 portion of her members; the sacrifice by the clergy of an abundant 
 and secure income; the cheerful assumption by the people of the bur- 
 den of sustaining their own Church, and of creating all the necessary 
 appliances for that purpose, presented an example of fidelity, of 
 self-denial, and of energy, which has few parallels in history. This 
 spectacle has fixed the attention of the Protestant world, and is 
 exerting an influence, the results of which it is difficult to foresee or 
 estimate. 
 
 When the Free Church withdrew from the Establishment, it had. 
 every thing to do, and to do at once. 1. Churches were to be erected 
 in every parish. 2. Provision was to be made for the support of the 
 ministry. 3. All the missionary and other benevolent operations of 
 the Church were to be taken up and carried on, 4. Parochial 
 schools were to be established. 5. Manses were to be provided for 
 the pastors. 6. A college was to be organized and sustained. 
 
 Some of these objects demanded a strenuous effort once for all, 
 and they were taken up and disposed of in order. First, collections 
 were made for the building of churches. This work was prosecuted 
 with so much vigour that within three years and a half after the dis- 
 ruption not less than £400,000 sterling, or ^1,800,000 have been 
 expended in erecting from five to seven hundred churches. Then 
 ^250,000 were raised for parochial schools. Then, in the space of 
 eight months, ^500,000 were collected for building manses. Then, 
 or even before, ^100,000 were obtained for a college, designed prin- 
 cipally as a theological seminary. 
 2 
 
6 INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 Important as were these several objects, they were still secondary 
 to those which made a permanent demand on the Cinirch. Of these 
 tlie most pressing was the support of the ministry. The principle 
 adopted was, that every minister who left the Establishment, should 
 receive an equal sum from a common fund, which sum the congre- 
 gation to which he ministered might increase by voluntary contribu- 
 tions, at discretion. In some places the amount received from the 
 common fund would be adequate to the support of the pastor; in 
 other places it would be entirely insufficient. Every congregation, 
 therefore, after contributing to the general fund, was left at liberty to 
 do what they saw fit for the support of their own minister. To carry 
 out this plan, associations were organized in every parish. The 
 business of these associations is to make collections for the sustenta- 
 lion fund. This is done by districting the parish, and appointing a 
 collector in each district, whose duty it is to apply to every member 
 within his bounds for his weekly or monthly contribution. The pro- 
 ceeds of these collections are remitted to Edinburgh, and twice a 
 year a dividend is declared. To supplement these salaries, collec- 
 tions are made every Sabbath at the door of the churches, the pro- 
 ceeds of which are given to the pastor. The result has been that 
 every pastor has received from the general fund a salary varying 
 from £100, to £140. 
 
 It will be seen from the following pamphlet, that Dr. Chalmers is 
 alarmed at the operation of this plan of equal distribution, which he 
 says fosters the spirit of giving as little, and getting as much as pos- 
 sible. He insists strenuously that the rule should be adopted of the 
 congregations •' getting as they give." One proposition is, that 
 every pastor shall receive from the sustentation fund, one and a half 
 limes as much as his congregational association contributes to that 
 fund. If the association contributes £50, the pastor receives £75; 
 if it contributes £60, he receives £90; and so on until the stipend 
 amounts to £150, beyond which nothing is to be given from the 
 general fund. The reasons for this modification will be found in the 
 pamphlet. 
 
 After providing for the support of her own ministers, the next 
 most pressing duty of the Free Church, was the prosecution of her 
 benevolent operations. As all the missionaries connected with the 
 Established Church, took part with the seceding portion, on that por- 
 tion was devolved at once the burden of sustaining all the enterprises 
 in which the v/hole Church had been engaged. These benevolent 
 operations are divided into several departments, called schemes, each 
 having its own committee of superintendence and management. 
 These are, Educatiou, Foreign Missions, Domestic Missions, Conver- 
 sion of the Jews, Colonial Churches. The general plan of raising 
 funds for these several schemes, is to assign a particular day lor each, 
 on which the collection is to be made simultaneously throughout the 
 whole Cliurch. The plan or mode of making this collection seems 
 to be left to the discretion of each congregation. There is a schedule 
 in use in some congregations, which seems so simple and so well 
 adapted to the purpose, that it may without impropriety be transfer- 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 7- 
 
 red from Appendix No II. to this place, to render it more prominent 
 as a model. 
 
 Rates of Contribntiou to the 
 
 Fund. 
 
 SCALE. 
 
 PER WEEK. 
 
 PER 
 
 MONTH. 
 
 PER QUARTER. 
 
 
 6. 
 
 d. 
 
 £ 
 
 S. 
 
 d. 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 Rale, No. 1 
 
 » 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 2 . . . 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 3 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 G 
 
 Rate, No. 4 ... 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 5 . . . . 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 6 ... 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 7.... 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 8.... 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 10.... 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 11.... 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 12.... 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 On considering the above rates, I agree to give to the the sum specified in 
 
 Rate No. — , for the year commencing at Martinmas, 1844, and request the Deacon or 
 Collector to call for it each (Signature) 
 
 * Rate No. 1 is left blank, to suit parties who may find that even the Rate, No. 2 is 
 above their ability; and Rate No. 12 is also left blank, to suit parties whose circum- 
 stances may enable them to give a higher Rate than any put down in the scale. Some 
 members of the Free Church also give .£1 a week, some £2, some £4, and a few even 
 more, to the fund. 
 
 In proof of the efficiency of these plans and of the energy with 
 which they are prosecuted, it is enough to say that the Free Church 
 has raised in three years a million sterling, by annual contributions 
 of upward of ^6300,000. It assumed at birth all the functions and 
 responsibilities of a mature establishment. Six and thirty months 
 have sufficed to form a society with all the appliances of self-support, 
 instruction, and extension. A body whose existence dates no further 
 back than 1S43, pays ^672,000 to its appointed ministers, provides 
 for its widows and orphans, expends £9000 a year on its home mis- 
 sions, and twice as much in building churches. It has a college with 
 scholarships for poor students, with professors and tutors receiving 
 salaries amounting to £4000 a year. It has its normal and general 
 schools, probationers, catechists and travellers. It has six missions 
 in India, six stations in Eastern Europe and Asia Minor for the con- 
 version of the Jews. It has made grants amounting to near £2000 
 to the Evangelical Societies of Switzerland and Belgium, and the 
 Bible Society of Toulouse and the Gustavus Adolphus Society of 
 Germany. It provides for the temporary support of Hebrew con- 
 verts in Hungary, and for Hindoo converts in Calcutta; supports 
 missionaries with insured lives in South Africa, and has despatched 
 a philosophical apparatus to the Great Fish River.* 
 
 It is obvious that other churches must have much to learn from 
 such a body. Our own church from its various points of contact 
 and affinity with the Free Church of Scotland, may especially be 
 
 * Condensed from no very friendly article in the London Times, September, 1846. 
 
g INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 expected to take an interest in her operations, and to be disposed to 
 profit by her example. We have the same standards of doctrine and 
 order. Our people have been trained under the same system of 
 truth. We too are a self-sustaining and self-extending church. We 
 have the same kind of work to perform both at home and abroad. 
 What, therefore, a man so eminent and so long experienced in prac- 
 tical matters, as Dr. Chalmers, has to say in his parting counsels to 
 the Free Church, may well be expected to find attentive readers in 
 this country. The republication of this pamphlet is to be referred 
 to the conviction, that the principles here advocated are the very prin- 
 ciples upon which we must act, if we would in any measure fulfil 
 our destiny, or emulate the usefulness of a body much smaller in 
 numbers, and much more limited in its resources than our own. 
 There is indeed much in this pamphlet which has reference to the 
 peculiar circumstances of the Free Church, but there is also much 
 which as intimately concerns us as it does them. 
 
 I. There are certain general principles which pervade all the prac- 
 tical counsels of Dr. Chalmers, as they do the whole Bible. One is 
 the universal brotherhood of believers; another is, the obligation 
 which lies on every individual and every community to meet as far 
 as possible, its own necessities. From the one principle flows the 
 duty of bearing one another's burdens, of making the abundance of 
 one a supply for the deficiency of others. 2 Cor. viii. 13, 14. From 
 the other, flows the duty of self-support as far as it may be practica- 
 ble. It is on the due adjustment of these two principles, the proper 
 relative discharge of these two duties, that the well being of every 
 community depends. If, on the one hand, the rich keep their abun- 
 dance to themselves, multitudes of their brethren must perish. If, 
 on the other, the poor rely upon the rich, without adequate exertion 
 on their own part, the rich will soon weary of a liberality which 
 they see to be productive of evil, or resources which ought to flow 
 out to those who really need them, will be absorbed by those who 
 would be better without such assistance. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers makes a twofold application of these principles. 
 First, he shows the impropriety of the poorer members of the Church 
 devolving the duty of giving on their richer brethren. This is un- 
 reasonable, because it is as much the duty of the poor to give accord- 
 ing to their ability, as it is that of the rich to give accordmg to theirs. 
 It is unwise, because the numerous small contributions of the poor, 
 in all societies, amount to more than the large contributions of the 
 rich. It is injurious, because it is doing the poor a great good, it is 
 cultivating self-respect, self-denial, gratitude to God, and love to men, 
 to call upon them to take their part in the great work of Christian 
 benevolence. In the second place, he applies these principles to con- 
 gregations. There always will be aid-giving and aid-receiving 
 churches. There is a tendency in the one class to be backward or 
 parsimonious in giving; and a tendency in the other, to rely upon 
 aid from abroad, without making due exertion at iiome. lioth these 
 evils are to be counteracted; the one by impressing on the stronger 
 churches the duty of aiding their brethren; and the other, by urging 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 9 
 
 on weak churches the duty of doing all they can for themselves. 
 Hence the earnestness with which our author argues that all the 
 benevolent operations of the Church should be conducted with the 
 aim of increasing the number of the aid-giving, and of decreasing 
 that of the aid-receiving congregations; making it the interest of the 
 latter to assist themselves, by proportioning the amount received 
 from abroad, to the sum raised at home. 
 
 There is another general principle on which Dr, Chalmers very 
 properly insists, and that is, the perfect consistency of real unity in 
 the Church, both as to feeling and operation, without uniformity. 
 All may be united, though all are not alike. There may be a gene- 
 ral building fund, though all the churches are not of the same pat- 
 tern. There may be a general fund for sustaining the ministry, 
 though all salaries are not equal. It seems in Scotland many sup- 
 pose that unity implies uniformity, and parity equality, not only in 
 constitutional rights, but in external circumstances. Hence the at- 
 tempt was made to prohibit the richer congregations building churches 
 more expensive than a prescribed model; and to do away with the 
 right of a congregation adding any thing to the salary its pastor 
 received from the common fund. This our author argues betrays 
 great ignorance of human nature. The money spent in ornament- 
 ing a church, is not money taken from the building fund, but money 
 which would never have found its way into the treasury of the 
 Church. Money given to supplement the salary of a pastor, is not 
 so much subtracted from the sustentation fund, but so much added to 
 the comfort of the pastor, which would not otherwise have been 
 given. In some congregations it was the custom to charge pew- 
 rents. These in some cases were abolished, under the impression 
 that the amount paid as rent, would be added in the form of increased 
 contributions to the sustentation fund. The result was, the rents 
 were lost, but the sustentation fund was not increased. The reason 
 is plain. The rents were paid from one motive, and contributions 
 were made to the sustentation fund from another motive. Taking 
 off the pew rent had no more tendency to increase the contributions 
 of the congregation, than a fall in the rent of houses. There is 
 surely wisdom in all this, and it shows that the attempt to reduce 
 every thing to a dead level in the Church or out of it, is just as im- 
 practicable as to reduce all men to the same age, or to one uniform 
 stature. There must be free scope left to the people to indulge all 
 right feelings, while they are made to bear in mind that the Church 
 is one, so that if one member sutler, all the members should suffer 
 with it. 
 
 II. The principles inculcated in this pamphlet bearing on the best 
 method of raising funds, will be found as applicable to us, as to the 
 Church in Scotland. The most obvious and important of these prin- 
 ciples are the following: 
 
 1. The necessity of thorough organization. Every portion of the 
 territory of the Free Church is brought within the limits of some 
 association. These associations, organized by church officers, divide 
 every parish into geographical districts, in each of which a collector 
 
*10_ INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 is appointed, whose duty it is to go over the ground at stated periods. 
 This is so essential a part of the whole system, that Dr. Chalmers 
 asks, Where should we have been, but for our associations? 
 
 2. The necessity of personal application to every member of the 
 Church. Reliance is not placed on general collections in the Church. 
 The name of every member in each district is obtained ; and the 
 question is deliberately laid before his heart and conscience, What 
 can you give to promote the cause of Christ? 
 
 3. The necessity of ministerial supervision and agency. Dr. Chal- 
 mers records it as the result of his experience, that wherever the pas- 
 tor takes an interest in these associations, and exerts himself to 
 secure their efficiency, there the work is done; and he avows it as 
 his conviction that wherever the plan has failed or languished, there 
 the fault lies with the minister, and not with the people. 
 
 4. The necessity of a central committee to give uniformity and 
 efficiency to the financial operations of the Church. This com- 
 mittee should consist mainly of men of business, that is, of men 
 familiar with accounts, rather than of professional men. With this 
 must be connected a system of paid agencies. " There is," says Dr. 
 Chalmers, " a prejudice, I had almost said a low-minded suspicion, 
 on this subject, most grievously adverse to the enlargement of the 
 church's resources and means. The sum of £2000 or £3000 a year, 
 and perhaps more, rightly expended on the right men, would be re- 
 munerated more than fifty fold by the impulse thus given to the 
 mechanism of our associations." If this is the testimony of expe- 
 rience in such a country as Scotland, any part of which can be 
 reached in two days from the centre of operations, how much more 
 necessary must be an efficient agency in our country, where every 
 thing is so dispersed, that it is impossible thus easily to transmit an 
 impulse or to secure co-operation. 
 
 III. The support of the clergy. This is one of the most difficult and 
 complicated practical questions which can engage the attention of the 
 church. In this country we seem to think we have solved the prob- 
 lem, by making every pastor dependent on his own immediate 
 flock. This however is a very questionable matter. Our system, 
 though it has its advantages, has its serious disadvantages. A system 
 which secures the exclusive devotion of every minister to his official 
 duties, is surely better than one which forces a large portion of the 
 ministry to resort to some secular employment as a means of support. 
 A system which secures to every man devoted to his work, an 
 income adequate to his necessities, is certainly better than one which 
 provides with lavish abundance for a few, and loaves the many to 
 struggle with penury. The plan adopted in the Free Church has 
 these advantages; ours labours obviously and to a lamentable extent 
 under these disadvantages. This pamphlet brings up this subject. 
 It will lead the reader to ask, whether nothing can be done to correct 
 the evils under which our system labours. This is not the place to 
 discuss this question, nor to follow out into its details any plan for 
 meeting these difficulties. Ikit as the subject will suggest itself to 
 every reader, it may not be improper to say what follows. 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 11 
 
 If the church is one, it is just as much the duty of our wealthy 
 congregations, to see that men preaching the gospel in Wisconsin or 
 Iowa are supported, as that their own pastors are duly sustained. 
 And if the Lord has ordained that they who preach the gospel should 
 live by the gospel, — if the principle that the labourer is worthy of his 
 hire, be of general and not of very restricted application, then does 
 justice demand that every minister devoted to his work should be 
 adequately supported. 
 
 These are the two principles, viz. the unity of the church, and the 
 "divine right" (i. e. a right founded on a divine ordinance) of every 
 minister to a support, on which this whole subject rests, and according 
 to which it ought to be adjusted. 
 
 Nothing so chimerical as an equalization of salaries is of course 
 intended. This would be both unjust and impracticable. Unjust, 
 because an equal sum from a common fund would be a most unequal 
 compensation, owing to the great diflerence of the expense of living 
 in different places, and to the demands to which different ministers 
 are subject. It would be impracticable, because if all ministers 
 received the same salary from a common source, the people would 
 still possess and exercise the right of adding to it what they pleased. 
 All that is here asserted is, first, that every minister devoted to his 
 work has a right to an adequate support; and second, that the obliga- 
 tion to provide that support rests on the whole church, and not 
 exclusively upon that portion of the church to whom the preacher 
 ministers. 
 
 If it be asked how these principles are to be carried out so as to 
 accomplish the end in view, it may be answered that a great good 
 will be obtained if the principles themselves be recognized as just, 
 and the obligation to act in obedience to them be acknowledged. 
 The best method of giving them effect may well call for the delibe- 
 rate consideration of the wisest men of the church. 
 
 The following suggestions are made in hopes of calling attention 
 to the subject, and of ultimately leading to the adoption of some plan 
 which may meet with general approbation. 
 
 1. Let the principle be adopted, that every man who devotes him- 
 self to the work of the ministry, shall receive an adequate support. 
 We act on this principle with regard to our foreign missionaries, why 
 should we not do it with regard to those who preach the gospel at 
 home? 
 
 2. Let the church appoint a " Sustentation Committee," to be 
 composed principally of men of business, whose duty it shall be to 
 raise funds for the support of the ministry, and to distribute them 
 according to rules to be prescribed by the General Assembly. This 
 committee ought perhaps to be estabhshed in New York, as the 
 business centre of the country. 
 
 3. Let a maximum be fixed, beyond which no contribution shall 
 be received from the Sustentation Fund. In the Free Church that 
 maximum is £150. If ^500 be assumed as the limit here, then it 
 may be determined that no pastor who receives ^500 or more from 
 his congregation, shall receive anything from the Sustentation Fund. 
 
li INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 He and his people would then belong to the aid-giving and not to 
 the aid-receiving class of churches. 
 
 4. All money raised within the churches, connected with the fund 
 for the support of the ministry, should be remitted to the Sustenta- 
 iion Committee or carried to its credit. If this plan were adopted 
 the pastors could more freely urge their people to give, than when 
 pleading for themselves. 
 
 5. Let a minimum be fixed to entitle any congregation to be taken 
 into connexion with the fund. The salary then paid to the pastor 
 may be determined, according to some regular scale, in proportion to 
 the amount received from his congregation. For example, if a con- 
 gregation contribute SlOO, the pastor's .salary may be fixed at {5400; 
 if the congregation contribute ^200, the pastor may receive $500. 
 Or it may be found best to adopt the plan of fixing the pastor's salary 
 at one and a half the sum, or at double the sum, received from his 
 congregation. 
 
 6. Those places whence nothing is received for the general fund, 
 or an amount less than the sum determined as the minimum, must be 
 considered as missionary stations to be supplied by young unmarried 
 men, until they are able to contribute the amount necessary to enti- 
 tle them to be received on the Sustentation Fund. 
 
 Instead of appointing a " Sustentation Committee," it may be 
 deemed expedient to commit this whole subject to the Board of Mis- 
 sions, and to modify the plan of that Board in such a manner as to 
 accomplish the end contemplated. 
 
 It may be said that any such scheme as that above referred to, 
 would be liable to great abuse. Men might be received on the fund, 
 who were still engaged in secular pursuits, or were indolent, or inef- 
 ficient, or unacceptable. This is undoubtedly true. But it is true 
 of any conceivable plan of doing good, that it is liable to be abused. 
 In carrying out such a plan, our reliance, under God, must be on the 
 piety of the men introduced into the ministry, the supervision of 
 the Presbyteries, and on the regular reports of the incumbents on the 
 fund, as to the amount and results of their labours. 
 
 If it be asked, where the money is to come from to carry out such 
 a plan, it may be asked in reply, Where does it come from in 
 Scotland? The Free Church raises annually about S350,000 for its 
 sustentation fund. We are far more numerous, and have far more 
 wealth than they. Our people are as liberal, piety is the same thing 
 here, that it is there, we have as great a work to do, and as strong 
 motives for doing it well. The great difterence lies in the difference 
 of our plans, and consequently in the objects which we present to 
 the people. If you propose to any congregation the support of their 
 own pastor, or to send a number of missionaries to the west, with a 
 hundred dollars each, they will give accordingly. But if you pro- 
 pose to them the larger object of providing for the adequate support 
 of every faithful minister in our Church, they will awake to new 
 views, and to larger conceptions of their duty and privileges. 
 
 It is not expected that these suggestions will meet with general or 
 immediate acceptance. They are to be regarded as mere hints, to 
 
INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 18 
 
 be modified indefinitelv, as the wisdom or experience of the Church 
 may determine. 
 
 The following remarks, however, seem to deserve consideration, 
 in favour of some such plan. 
 
 1. It will be a compliance, on the part of our Church, with the 
 law of Christ, tliat they who preach the gospel, shall live by the 
 gospel. 
 
 2. It will enable our pastors to devote themselves to their minis- 
 terial work, instead of giving, as in a multitude of cases is now una- 
 voidable, a large portion of their time to some secular employment, 
 for the support of their families. 
 
 3. It will in a measure do away with the undue and unjust dispa- 
 rity in the salaries of our ministers. It has ever been justly considered 
 a great reproach on the Church of England, that while one portion of 
 her clergy have the income of princes, so large a part of her labori- 
 ous ministers have from £30 to £50 a year. 
 
 4. As such a plan presupposes the unity of the Church, and can 
 be successfully prosecuted only under the influence of a recognition 
 of that unity, its adoption and successful prosecution must promote 
 brotherly love. And if it have that effect, the blessing of God \vi\[ 
 descend upon us as the dew on Hermon. 
 
 5. The plan is essentially, (to borrow the language of Dr. Chal- 
 mers,) aggressive. It presses the Church continually forward, sus- 
 taining the gospel in places, where from the fewness, the indifference, 
 or poverty of the people it could not otherwise be supported. 
 
 6. It leaves untouched the intimate relation between the pastor 
 and the people, and the reciprocation of benefits between them, 
 while the minister is not made entirely dependent on his own imme- 
 diate congregation for his support. A large portion of his salary 
 however must ever come from them, and on their confidence and. 
 kindness he must ever be dependent for many of his comforts. 
 
 There are many other lessons besides those above indicated to be 
 derived from this pamphlet. But enough has probably been said to 
 explain the reason of its republication in this country. It cannot be 
 denied that we fall short of the example set us by the Free Church 
 of Scotland. The principles on which they act are those on which 
 we must act if we would be equally useful as a church. We must 
 feel that we are one body; that the weakest and the strongest are 
 equally bound to do what they can for the common cause. We 
 must become more systematic in our operations, and devise some 
 plan by which personal application shall be made to all our members 
 for their contributions. Ministers must feel that the chief responsi- 
 bility in every good work devolves on them. They are the leaders 
 of the flock; if they go forward the people will follow. 
 
 While we thus strive to awaken a livelier sense of brotherhood in 
 the Church, and to bring about a more equal distribution of its re- 
 sources, we must allow the several parts to act freely in their respec- 
 tive spheres. The foot must not say, because I am not the hand, I 
 am not of the body; neither must the eye say to the hand, I have no 
 need of you. There is no schism in the natural body ; neither is there 
 
14 INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 
 
 any alienation of feeling in the Church, so far as the Holy Ghost 
 dwells in it. Indiiference, therefore, on the part of the strong, or 
 envy on the part of the weak, is an evidence of the absence of the 
 Spirit, and cause for alarm and humiliation to all conscious of such 
 infirmities. We need, therefore, above all things, the indwelling of 
 the Holy Spirit, to give us wisdom to know how to act, and to dis- 
 pose and enable us to act right. 
 
PEEEACE. 
 
 The body of this little work was printed, but can scarcely be said to 
 have been published, last year. As it contains the most matured 
 views of its author, the fruit of much thought and of some expe- 
 rience, he is unwilling that it should be altogether lost. He there- 
 fore presents it anew to the Church, in a form which leaves the main 
 pamphlet untouched, but with this peculiarity in its structure, that 
 each topic which required any further enlargement, or to be repre- 
 sented over again with still greater earnestness and urgency than 
 before, has a distinct place assigned for it in a little section with its 
 own distinct title, which sections are made to compose an Appendix 
 to the work. It is to this Appendix that I would invite the special 
 attention of the reader, as containing a series of final deliverances 
 on the matters which are there successively taken up. I have, at the 
 same time, to apologize for the somewhat absolute and aphoristical 
 style in which they are given forth, as being more like the sentences 
 of a judge who has already got a verdict to found upon, than the 
 pleadings of an advocate who has yet a verdict to obtain. The only 
 explanation which I can give of this peculiarity is, that I have already 
 pleaded long enough, which the reader will find to his cost, were 
 he to reperuse the various reports and other documents which from 
 time to time 1 have been called upon to prepare on the financial 
 affairs of the Free Church. 
 
 This is the last representation which I mean to offer upon the sub- 
 ject; and, such being the case, it is most natural that I should feel 
 the importance, nay, the paramount duty, of stating not only the 
 truth, but the whole truth, however unpalatable, if but salutary, or 
 needful and desirable to be made known. There is a sensitive dread 
 among several of our friends of any thing like the appearance of 
 dissatisfaction or differences amongst ourselves, which really it is 
 high time that we should now get the better of. The Free Church 
 of Scotland is far too strong, too deeply rooted in the affections and 
 confidence of the people, to be easily shaken, at least in any of her 
 essential supports, by those misunderstandings and altercations of 
 sentiment which are unavoidable in so large a body. She is now 
 strong enough to stand the blasts of controversy, and can afford to 
 be told, even publicly and by proclamation from the house-tops, of 
 her faults and her errors. There ought to be no hushing up. The 
 Free Church public of Scotland is far too large to have the benefits 
 and the wholesome influences of frank and open and fearless dis- 
 cussion withheld from it, lest another Scottish public, exterior to ours 
 and apart from ours, should lift up their shout of exultation and 
 
16 PREFACE. 
 
 augur our speedy downfall, when they observe that questions are 
 getting up amongst us, or think we are far from being perfectly at 
 one. It will turn out, I trust, that the fears of our friends, and the 
 triumph or liopeful anticipations of our enemies, are alike groundless. 
 It is an old phenomenon, and one which the observation of forty 
 years has now made perfectly familiar to us, that the country breth- 
 ren should look with a vigilance bordering somewhat upon jealousy 
 to our more conspicuous ecclesiastics in the larger towns; and, in so 
 far as they are actuated by feelings of dislike for aught like the regi- 
 men of a metropolitan cliqueship,do we most thoroughly sympathize 
 with them.* But, on the other hand, they too should bear to be told 
 of their short-comings, else I can look for little toleration or compla- 
 cency at their hands — purposing as I do, in the following pages, to 
 tell with all sincerity, though at the same time with the utmost affec- 
 tion and good-will, wherein it is that I think many of them are defi- 
 cient, and some of them, I fear, most grievously in the wrong. I 
 hope to be forgiven for the plain speaking which occurs in some of 
 the following passages, as, next to my regard for the moral and 
 Christian good of the people of Scotland, is the personal liking I 
 have for their ministers. But open rebuke is better than secret or 
 silent love. 
 
 * A thing-, however, may be very hateful, while it remains a question in how far the 
 thing is realized. The jealousy here spoken of may often be as groundless as it is some- 
 times low-minded. The talent for public business, and more esjwcially for the guidance 
 of so large a corporation as a parliament or an ecclesiastical assembly — itself an eccle- 
 siastical parliament — this talent, we say, may in itself constitute an obligatory call on 
 those who are possessed of it, so as to make it their justifiable, nay, their incumbent 
 vocation, to take the influential and ostensible part which they do in the management 
 of our affairs. If the Church but knew the fatigue and the sacrifices of ease and domes- 
 tic enjoyment which are endured by those men, and the weight of care which lies upon 
 their spirits, it would view them as the proper objects of gratitude, nay, even of pity, 
 at the very time, perhaps, when they are assailed by clamours, and loaded till they are 
 like to break down with unreasonable, and, it may be, with envious complaints. 
 
OEIGINAL PEEFACE. 
 
 In* announcing my determination now to retire from the public busi- 
 ness of the Free Church, I feel confident that it will not be ascribed 
 to any decay of affection for its cause. It is not a matter of choice, 
 but of physical necessity. I have neither the vigour nor alertness of 
 former days; and the strength no longer remains with me, either for 
 the debates of the Assembly, or for the details of committees and their 
 correspondence. 
 
 At the last Assembly but one, during the first days of which I en- 
 joyed a health I never expect to regain, I did a very rash thing. I 
 moved the appointment of an extension committee, and accepted of 
 its convenership. I fondly imagined the possibility of weathering 
 one twelvemonth more of such active service as had long been 
 familiar to me; and deemed the object I had in view of such special 
 importance, as to justify the attempt. A few weeks convinced me 
 of my error; and, since the month of August in 1844, my connection 
 with our financial affairs has been little better than nominal. I can 
 still describe, however, what I cannot execute; and the process which 
 I hoped to set agoing will be laid before the reader in the following 
 pages. Its accomplishment by me is now wholly out of the ques- 
 tion; and, if judged worthy by the Church of being carried into 
 effect, should be devolved on younger and abler men. 
 
 I shall be at all times ready to offer my opinion, and to state the 
 results of my former experience, whenever it shall be required of me. 
 
 Egotism is painful, and more especially when it relates to one's 
 constitutional peculiarities. Yet we are not sure if it can be deemed 
 a peculiarity, that one should feel it greatly more fatiguing execu- 
 tively to carry his object over the adverse views and conceptions of 
 other men, than arguraentatively, and by following out his own unin- 
 terrupted processes of thought, to set it forth in a way that might 
 best recommend it to those of kindred understanding with himself. 
 It surely requires a far more strenuous effort to succeed in the estab- 
 lishment of a measure, than merely to advocate an opinion, even 
 though so advocated as to succeed in the establishment of a principle. 
 The one achievement is a triumph often effected by a leader in the 
 hall of deliberation or debate; — the other is an achievement that 
 might often be effected by a professor in his class-room. My prefer- 
 ence all along has been for the latter over the former employment — 
 to operate on the ductile minds of the young, rather than engage in 
 arduous conflict with my fellows on questions of ecclesiastical right 
 or polity. Circumstances have engaged me in the more uncongenial 
 work; and for twelve years the duties of the chair have been sadly 
 encroached upon, throughout no less than three successive warfares — 
 those of Church Establishments, and Church Extension, and, lastly. 
 
18 ORIGINAL PREFACE. 
 
 Church Independence. I do hope that it will neither surprise nor 
 offend my brethren of the Free Church, that I now resign a general 
 care of the churches, for a more special and intense care of those stu- 
 dents who are to be the Church's future guides and guardians. The 
 matters which I am henceforth to give up have now proceeded so far, 
 that, without derangement or inconvenience, they may be left to pass 
 from one hand and one management to another. And, in these circum- 
 stances, for me to persevere any longer in the work of a committee, 
 at the expense and to the injury of the far higher work of a class, 
 were something like the monstrous inversion of starving the heart in 
 order to feed the extremities. 
 
 Yet I should have been unwilling to relinquish the "outward 
 business of the house of God," without the closing effort which I 
 now make for the exposition and enforcement of my views ; both on 
 those matters which I deem to be of most urgent importance, and on 
 those, let me be permitted to say, in which I fear that the Church is 
 most likely to go astray. It is very possible that some of my views will 
 not be found to quadrate with those of men possessing great weight 
 and consideration in our Church. This will not prevent me from 
 stating them, though I am no longer able to contend for them. I 
 have not forgotten the all but universal incredulity wherewith the 
 proposal for Associations was received; and can now ask, in what 
 state of external support would our Church have at this moment been, 
 but for these Associations? The experiment has now ripened into 
 experience; and, with God's blessing, I have the utmost confidence 
 that, on the strength of a few plain and obvious principles, not only 
 might the support of the Free Church be secured, but its extension 
 be indefinitely carried forward. There is enough of evidence, how- 
 ever, even in the brief history of our Free Church, to justify the 
 apprehension that these principles may be forgotten and disregarded. 
 There is a leaven of selfishness, which, if not purged out, might 
 leaven the whole lump; and, should it come to this, we can look 
 neither for stability nor enlargement — when all men mind their own 
 things, and not the things of the Lord Jesus. 
 
M 
 
 ECONOMICS 
 
 FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 Our observations on the Financial System of the Free Church had 
 better be arranged into different sections, with titles expressive each 
 of a separate yet integral department of the whole subject. In our 
 first section we shall treat of the Contributions made or making in 
 all parts of the country for the support of the Free Church. In the 
 second, of the business devolved upon the Board of Correspondence 
 and Management in Edinburgh, or, in other words, on the Financial 
 Committee. In the third, on the principles by which the distribu- 
 tion of the Central Fund, formed chiefly by remittances from the 
 Associations of the Free Church, ought to be regulated. In the 
 fourth, on the distinction, if any, which should be made between 
 those ministers of the Free Church who left the Establishment at 
 the Disruption, and those who have become ministers in it since. 
 In the fifth, we propose to treat of Church Extension. In the sixth, 
 to present a general view of the Schemes and Objects of the Church, 
 so as that its members and friends might be made distinctly aware 
 what the regular calls are upon their liberality, and what the peri- 
 odical collections which they might lay their account with, and which 
 ought not to be multiplied interminably or at random. We shall 
 then, in a seventh section, conclude with the application of our prin- 
 <fiples to questions of general interest, and which affect other churches 
 equally with our own. We confess the extent of this plan to be 
 somewhat appalling. We shall, therefore, attempt no more than a 
 mere syllabus, the right execution of which will require throughout 
 a most strenuous effort of condensation. 
 
 SECT. I. ON THE CONTRIBUTIONS FOR THE SUPPORT OF THE FREE 
 
 CHURCH. 
 
 1. The direct individual subscriptions, as was to be expected from 
 the first, are now falling away, though not to such an extent as might 
 be conceived, on comparison of the present with the original list — 
 the greater part of these having merged into the Associations, and 
 being still transmitted to us through that medium.* It is on the 
 regular working and perennial yield, as from an unintermittent 
 spring, of the Associations, that our financial system mainly de- 
 pends. This lays an onerous responsibility upon the Collectors. 
 
 * From the accounts relative to tliis matter as last made up (May 15th, 1845 ) it 
 appears that the produce of these direct contributions had fallen from iJl7,353 Os. 8id. 
 to £1{)55 10s. 3id.; while the produce of the Associations liad risen from iJ50,934 lOa. 
 to £70,575 is. Bid. We cannot yet present the accounts for the present year. 
 
J80 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 We do not say onerous in the sense that theirs is a burdensome 
 performance. Generally speaking, a very brief interval of time 
 would suffice for their periodical rounds of visitation. All which is 
 required is, that the duty, a very light one, shall never be omitted — 
 shall be gone through punctually. But just in proportion to the 
 lightness of the duty will be the heaviness of the imputation, if it be 
 found that the Free Church cannot be upheld, because, after all their 
 parade and professionsof attachment, not one can be found for every 
 hundred among her friends who will give up half au hour in the 
 week, or two hours a month, in her service. 
 
 2. But it is not enough that this duty should be punctually, it 
 should he fully gone through. On comparing the list of contributors 
 witli that of sitters or communicants, it is often found that not one 
 half of these have yet given in their names as members of the Con- 
 gregational Association. All should be offered the opportunity, and 
 be invited to take a share in the support of gospel ordinances. For 
 this purpose it were well, if, either on beginning anew, or in order 
 to repair the slackness and incompleteness of the operation hitherto, 
 each Deacon, accompanied by the Elder of his district, should call 
 on every Free Church family within its limits,* that each may be 
 made to understand the object and the vast religious importance of 
 these Associations. The reason why we would have the Elder to 
 go round with the Deacon, at least in the first instance, and to set 
 the process fully agoing, is, that though the latter has chiefly to do 
 with the secularities of the Church, it is the part of the former to 
 deal freely and faithfully with the people of his charge on every ques- 
 tion in which conscience and a Christian obligation are concerned. 
 Now, the support of an evangelical ministry in Scotland, the great 
 design of these Associations, is pre-eminently such a question. There 
 is in it all the apostolic sacredness of a missionary cause. And what 
 is true of the part which the Elder should take in this matter, liolds. 
 also true of the Clergyman. No consideration should restrain him^ 
 in right measure and on all fitting occasions, from giving his testi- 
 mony and his countenance on the side of a plain duty.t Otherwise, 
 he fails in declaring the whole counsel of God; and because of a 
 false delicacy on his part, the people whom he should labour to make 
 perfect and complete in the divine life, are suffered to remain beneath 
 the level of their most righteous and incumbent obligations. 
 
 3. All the names which have been taken up in this initial survey, 
 by the Elder and Deacon of any given district, should be made over 
 to the Collector or Collectors attached to it. After which, it were 
 well if the Deacon (who might or might not be a Collector himself) 
 were, at least once a quarter, to accompany each of the Collectors, 
 who operate within his sphere, throughout all the families; and by 
 means of conversation, as well as the distribution of tracts and peri- 
 odicals, to sustain their interest in the cause. 
 
 4. In a subscription of this sort, carried over a whole district, and 
 
 * In this introductory round I can imagine no better devised schedule tlian that of 
 Mr. Thomson of Ycstcr, now of I'aislcy, for taking down tiie names and subscriptions 
 of all the contributors in the district. 
 
 t See Appendix, No. 1. 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 21 
 
 inclusive of all classes, there will, of course, be a great variety of 
 ofierings, from the penny or twopence a week, to the larger contribu- 
 tions of those who are both wiHiiig and wealthy. There cannot be 
 a falser principle, than that the poorer offerings should be declined 
 or dispensed with. Under the guise of sentiment, there is in it all 
 the grossness of materialism. To neglect or underrate the miles of 
 our artizans and labourers, because of their insignificance, is to rate 
 the moral value of a sacrifice at nothing, and to make the moneyed 
 value of it all in all. It is a complete inversion of the estiuiate 
 passed by our Saviour on the humble gift which the poor widow 
 cast into the treasury. Such a calculator as this would gladly forego 
 all the moral grandeur which sits on the face of a plebeian congre- 
 gation, each doing his little all — if he could but replace their liberal- 
 ities by the munificence of a single grandee, whose one princely 
 contribution slackened, or superseded the call for a united ofl'ering 
 from the people at large. We are not for bearing hard upon the 
 humbler classes: but we deem it no kindness to spare them the ex- 
 pense of what they might, and what they ought, to contribute for the 
 precious blessing of a gospel ministration to their families — and this 
 at the far more grievous expense of inflicting a mutilation upon their 
 Christianity. We are for upholding the integrity oi their virtue too 
 in all its parts, and in all its proportions; nor can we imagine a more 
 mischievous error in the management of human nature, than to pro- 
 ceed on the idea, that throughout the great bulk and body of the 
 common people, all the graces and high characteristics of the perfect 
 man in Christ Jesus might not be fully realized. 
 
 5. But though it be the moral value of these plebeian contribu- 
 tions which claims our highest reckoning and regard, their moneyed 
 value is far from insignificant. The smallness of the individual of- 
 ferings is made up by the number of them. In a congregation of 
 even only two hundred members, did they average among them 2d. 
 a week — this of itself would there uphold, in being at least, a gos- 
 pel ministration. The average of 3d. a week would raise the rn«nis- 
 ter above a state of absolute penury, and of 6d. a week would sus- 
 tain him in decency and comfort.* Let it not be wondered at, then, 
 that we should prize so highly every accession to the number of our 
 contributors, however small our off'erings might be. Like every 
 other wholesome habit, we should like if it pervaded the entire 
 mass of our Free Church community. Nor do we hesitate to con- 
 fess, that every instance of an upshooting liberality above the level 
 of their penny a week, on the part of artizans, or domestics, or la- 
 bourers, never fails to call forth both a peculiar complacency in the 
 good that is done; and, for the principle in the poor man's bosom 
 from which it flows, the profoundest sense of respectful estimation. 
 
 6. We are not unaware of the invectives to which such a senti- 
 ment exposes us — often uttered with the semblance, and perhaps, 
 too, with the reality of a generous, although, as we think, mistaken 
 indignation — as if we proposed to grind the faces of the poor, and, 
 for the support of our ecclesiastical system, ravenously to seize on a 
 
 * Appendix, No. 2. 
 
22 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 portion of their hard-won earnings. These reasoners would be puz- 
 zled to understand how it is that the Methodists of England, many 
 of them in humble life, give their shilling a month, even their six- 
 pence a week, for the maintenance of the gospel — why, after all, 
 they form the best conditioned and most prosperous community in 
 our empire. The truth is, that instead of what they give being ex- 
 tracted from the earnings of their hard and honest industry, it were 
 far more correct to say, in reference to the great majority of their 
 converts, that what they give is the spontaneous tribute of but a 
 fraction from the squanderings of their former extravagance. The 
 habit of economizing, should it begin with an offering to the cause, 
 w^hether of benevolence or religion, will not end there, but be fol- 
 lowed up by the other achievements of a reformed and regulated ex- 
 penditure — when the cost of vain and vicious indulgences will be 
 transferred to higher objects, to the education of children, and such 
 improvements in dress, and diet, and furniture, as betoken a greater 
 fulness and sufficiency than before. There is the operation of natu- 
 ral influences, as well as the guaranty of Scripture promises, to ac- 
 count for the blessing which rests on a habit of plebeian liberality, 
 or self-denial. Were a Savings' Bank to be set up any where in 
 Scotland, it would be no surprise to us if it were found that, for 
 every penny given by the common people to the cause of their Chris- 
 tian education, there were as many shillings or sixpences which found 
 their way to these most useful institutions. We should expect, in 
 fact, our Free Church population to be the largest depositors; and, so 
 far from grudging what they thus retained for themselves, should re- 
 joice in the fulfilment of this expectation. The whole tendency of a 
 popular Association for the promotion of what is good, is to elevate 
 the platform of humble life; and the effect of its payments, so far 
 from being to impoverish or depress, is, through the medium of cha- 
 racter and principle, or by the elastic operation of moral causes, to 
 raise and uphold our people in a far higher economic stains, than 
 even the highest wages, left all to their own disposal, and without 
 one farthing given for religious objects, will ever secure for our 
 careless and dissipated families.* 
 
 7. But there is another consideration which enhances still further 
 the mighty importance of the subscription to its congregational Asso- 
 ciation being made quite general among the members of each of our 
 churches. Once that the people of any particular church get into 
 the unhealthy state of leaning on the munificence of a few of the 
 richest among them, and feeling themselves exonerated, in conse- 
 quence, as a body, from all care and all obligation, this condition of 
 disease is the sure forerunner to a speedy and final dissolution. The 
 two or three generous supporters of the Association die, and may 
 never be replaced by men in their own likeness. But a popular 
 habit, once it is settled, has in it a principle of endurance, by which 
 it is perpetuated from generation to generation. It descends in fami- 
 lies from father to son; and, instead of being only kept afloat for a 
 few years by the rare and romantic liberality of perhaps a single in- 
 
 * Appendix, No. 3. 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 23 
 
 dividual, instead of an ephemeral duration on some precarious and 
 short-lived tenure of this sort, the institute has become a fixture in 
 the neighbourhood, because it has struck its roots in every house- 
 hold of worshippers, solidly based, and tenaciously held together, on 
 the extended platform of the middle and lower classes of society. 
 
 8, But while we deprecate the general selfishness that would lead 
 a congregation to do nothing for the cause, because a few of their 
 number have a largeness both of wealth and of good will, which, in 
 as far as money is concerned, goes far to cover their deficiencies — 
 we have no inclination whatever to spare the wealthy, or to relax in 
 their favour the Bible principle, that every man should give as God 
 hath prospered him. The pounds of the rich should not supersede 
 the pennies of the poor; but, on the other hand, the pennies of the 
 poor form what ought to be a telling argument for pounds from the 
 rich. Tiie surrender of 2d. or 3d. a-week from a labourer may imply 
 as great a moral sacrifice, as the weekly gift of £2 or £.0 from a man 
 of affluence; and we have illustrious examples of such generosity 
 among the friends of the Free Church, of individual subscribers 
 who give their £100, or i2200, or £300 in the year, and of one who 
 gives his annual £500, besides some instances of donations to the 
 extent of a thousand pounds, for the sustentation of the ministry. 
 There is room, there is ample room for many, for very many more, 
 of such liberalities; and though they were multiplied tenfold, a most 
 beneficial expenditure could be found for every farthing of it. Let 
 the wealthier friends of the Free Church only bethink themselves of 
 the increased number of its ministers, from 470 to about 650 — of the 
 extreme lowness of their dividend raised, with great difficulty and 
 effort, by a small fraction of excess above £100 a-year, — of the yet 
 many unprovided Free Church congregations, in readiness for ecclesi- 
 astical labourers, so soon as we can finish their theological education, 
 — above all, of the vast extent of land which remains to be possessed, 
 and from every part of which we receive the most unbounded assur- 
 ances of welcome; so that with but an adequate enlargement of 
 means, there lies before us the magnificent enterprise of covering the 
 whole of yet unreclaimed Scotland with our churches and our schools; 
 and thus to fill up every deficiency, whether in the amount of Chris- 
 tian or of common education for all the families.* 
 
 9. But we suffer from this evil, and far more generally, in another 
 form. Not only does one part of the same congregation often fail in 
 their duty, leaving the whole weight and burden of that obligation, 
 which they ought to take a share in, to the other part of it — but there 
 are many congregations in certain parts of the Church, who, trusting 
 to the more generous or wealthy congregations in other parts of it, 
 fall miserably short in their contributions to the Central Fund. This 
 is far the sorest and heaviest impediment in our way, which, if not 
 effectually made head against, will infallibly run us aground; and 
 put an end to all the fondest anticipations of Christian benevolence on 
 the subject of a universal Sabbath, and universal week-day, education 
 for the people of our land, a consummation quite within our reach, 
 
 • Appendix, No. 4. 
 
24 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 would the friends of the Free Church but fulfil their plain and prac- 
 ticable, and, let me add, not only their sacred, but to leave them 
 wholly without excuse, their truly light and easy obligations. We 
 do hope that hitherto there has been a great want of understanding 
 in this matter; and that the hardship of which we complain is not 
 altogether due to selfishness. It were a great relief to know of the 
 aid-receiving congregations, that, instead of being chargeable with 
 misbehaviour in the wretchedly small remittances which a great 
 many of them have made, the reason why they have done so little is 
 mainly founded upon miscalculation. We are aware of a delusion 
 too prevalent over the country, that when the hundreds and thousands 
 of pounds raised in the large towns are reported in their hearing, 
 they feel that with all safety they might lie upon their oars, and that 
 any insignificant contribution which they could make to the fund is 
 of small consequence. There cannot be a more grievous perversity, 
 nor one more sure in the end to shipwreck the dearest objects of 
 Christian patriotism. It is no doubt desirable that we should increase 
 both the number and liberality of the aid-giving congregations; but 
 it is of far more vital importance to our cause, that we should lessen 
 the number, and diminish the enormous absorptions, of the aid-receiv- 
 ing congregations. They form a wall of interception in the way of 
 extending the Church to places and people more destitute than them- 
 selves ; or perhaps they were better compared to an annular belt of 
 sand, which drinks in all the waters that issue from the central reser- 
 voir, making it impossible to reach or fertihze the regions beyond 
 it. We should infinitely less value all the additional hundreds and 
 thousands that might be raised from the wealthier congregations, 
 than we should an average elevation of £50 in the contributions that 
 come to us from the lower half of the scale. This were like tlie 
 opening of a gate that would set us at liberty: and make us free to 
 expatiate, so as that we might find our way both to the most wretched 
 population in towns, and to the poorest and remotest extremities of 
 Scotland. 
 
 10. But are the ministers not here in fault? Why do they not lift 
 their free and fearless testimony on this matter, telling the people 
 their duty with all faithfulness; and making it clear both to their un- 
 derstanding and their conscience, that on the extent of tiieir liberali- 
 ties hinges the extent to which the ministrations of the gospel can be 
 carried in the Free Church of Scotland? What is it that restrains 
 them from makitig this statement ? Is it the paltry consideration tliat 
 their own maintenance, and that of their famihes, are bound up with 
 tlie great Central Fund which is formed out of the ojierings of all the 
 churches? One might have expected that the men who, for the sake 
 of principle, had reluiquished all their emoluments, would have felt 
 nobly superior to the low-minded imputation of selfishness, when 
 pleading now for the sacred cause of an evangelical ministry, which 
 had been cast by the hand of power an unprotected orphan upon the 
 world. For the uiainienance of their families! This truly forms but 
 the veriest bagatelle, a mere speck in an argument, whose high bear- 
 ing is on the best and highest interests of the fanulies of Scotland. 
 And besides, if theirs be an aid-receiving congregation, or one taking 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. itS 
 
 more out of the common fund than they are giving into it, what 
 should restrain them from telling their people that they should be as 
 little burdensome to others as possible? And, on the other hand, 
 should theirs be an aid-giving congregation, or one sending more into 
 the Central Treasury than is returned to them, what should restrain 
 them from telling their people that it is the duty of the strong to sup- 
 port the weak; and from cheering them onward to larger and higher 
 Hberalities, till the whole of our beloved country shall be replenished 
 with churches of a pure faith, and schools of a sound and scriptural 
 education? On the strength of such frank and full explanations, 
 there would be no difficulty in enlisting the people on the side of so 
 noble an achievement. Once that their understandings were en- 
 lightened, their conscience and their wills, we verily believe, would 
 be carried, and that well nigh universally. But we have heard an- 
 other, and, we must say, a more discreditable reason for this 7'elice7ice 
 on the part of ministers — even a fear lest the expenses of their self- 
 sustained church shou'd deter the people from adhering to it. This 
 is very like the invention of enemies; and, at all events, the appre- 
 hension which they would fain ascribe to our respected friends and 
 fellow-labourers is one which we do not share in — nay, even though 
 we did, we should utterly refuse it as an element of slightest influence 
 upon the question. We have no wish that our Church should be 
 otherwise expanded, than by the accession to it of pure and well 
 principled members. We have no ambition for mere numbers; and 
 should regard it as a disgusting spectacle to see thousands and tens of 
 thousands congregated at sacraments, who were persisting in the 
 neglect of a plain duty, and not only inflicting a disability on the 
 general cause of our great Home Mission by taking as much to them- 
 selves and giving as little to others as possible, but even doing nothing 
 to alleviate the penury and privation of their own immediate minis- 
 ters. To talk of a people's thirst for ordinances in conjunction with 
 such an apathy or sordidness as this, is to palm on the face of the 
 world a most hideous and revolting combination. But we again 
 repeat our conviction that the people are not in fault; and if hitherto 
 any of them have been living in the neglect of a plain duty, it is be- 
 cause they have not been plainly told of it. Were their eyes once 
 opened to the state of the case, they would no longer remain an in- 
 cubus or dead weight upon a cause in which their affections are so 
 thoroughly engaged. 
 
 11. It has been well said, that neither the duties nor the oppor- 
 tunities of beneficence are confined to the rich. Even the poor man 
 who can bestow nothing upon charity, may yet evince the whole 
 principle and soul of charity, by struggling against the necessity of 
 receiving, or, at least, so that he might be as little burdensome as he 
 can. And he might earn by these noble exertions all the credit of a 
 positive benefactor — for what he refrains from absorbing upon his 
 own wants, is free to be discharged on the wants of others more help- 
 less than himself. In like manner, an aid-receiving Association may 
 never attain to the condition of a self-supporting one; and yet by 
 every pound of upward approximation to this higher level, or for 
 every pound whereby it lessens the excess of its receipts over its 
 
26 ECONOMICS OP THE 
 
 remittances, it leaves a pound free for the supply of localities more 
 destitute than its own. Were tliis noble principle once to pervade 
 our Church, and be generally acted on, we see no limit to the opera- 
 tion of a Christian philanthropy, that would first people our own 
 country to the full with all the desirable institntes, both of religions 
 and literary education, and then flow over in the might of its exube- 
 rance upon other lands. 
 
 12. But with all our anxiety to work up the average offerings of 
 the aid-receiving congregations, and all our sense of the vast impor- 
 tance that they should do their uttermost to spare us, let me repeat 
 that we have no desire to exonerate from their present rate of con- 
 tribution, or to lessen the number of our aid-giving congregations. 
 On the contrary, one main reason of our urgency with the Associa- 
 tions on the lower part of the scale, is to encourage and keep in 
 good heart and exertion the Associations on the higher part of it. 
 There is a pleasure in giving all needful help to parties, who at the 
 same time are doing all they can to help themselves; just as in the 
 work of private benevolence, there is a supreme luxury and enjoy- 
 ment in bestowing the requisite aid on a struggling and meritorious 
 family. But, on the other hand, as nothing is more fitted to chill and 
 to dispirit our charity to a poor neighbour, than to find that every 
 new benefaction has the effect of making him more reckless and 
 ravenous than before; so, infallibly, will our wealthier congregations 
 become weary of their present well-doing, if they find that it tends 
 but to nourish the apathy and indolence of poorer congregations, 
 leaving their whole weight upon others, and quite satisfied to get as 
 much and to give as littlQ as they can. Let this be the prevalent 
 habit, and the Free Church will to a certainty break up; at least as 
 a national, though it may still keep its ground as a limited and sec- 
 tarian institute. It will be unable to enlarge the ground which it 
 now occupies, and so cease to be an extending Church. Nay, it will 
 be compelled to surrender most of its present territory; for, in less 
 than half an age, there are hundreds of our congregations which 
 must wither into extinction, if, in the first instance, they will do little 
 or nothing for themselves; and, in the second instance, the more 
 affluent of our churches, revolted by the heartless spectacle of such 
 misconduct, will cease from their liberalities, and do as little for 
 them. Let us hope better things; and that, by a harmonious work- 
 ing between these two classes of Associations, the odds which we 
 now complain of will soon be made even. The only way of getting 
 the two ends to meet is, that the richer congregations shall give as 
 much as they might, and the poorer seek as little as they might. Or, 
 in other words, that the contributions of the former shall rise as high 
 above their dividends, and the contributions of the latter shall come 
 as nearly up to their dividends, as possible. And, beside the moneyed 
 result, there would accrue an incalculably higher benefit in the 
 moral result of such a glorious emulation, reminding us of those 
 bright and sunny periods in the history of Jndca, when not only its 
 good kings, but the princes and all the people poured in their offer- 
 ings for the service of the temple, and rejoiced because God had 
 given them a heart to offer willingly; and the benedictions of the 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 27 
 
 monarch upon his throne were responded to in gladness and with 
 enthusiasm by the thousands of Israel. 
 
 SECTION II. ON THE FINANCIAL COMMITTEE. 
 
 ■ 1. I do not undertake a complete description of this body, nor of 
 the various cares and duties which should be assigned to them. 
 There is much of what is obvious to, and well known by all, which 
 requires no demonstration, and the statement of which would but 
 swell unnecessarily the bulk of this pamphlet. I therefore confine 
 myself to a very few of those desiderata which have been suggested 
 to me by my own observation, as being of the most urgent import- 
 ance. 
 
 2, There should be a great predominance of laymen in the Com- 
 mittee, which, at the same time, ought not to be over numerous. 
 There might be two or three clergymen for the sake of certain ques- 
 tions which require a sound ecclesiastical judgment to be rightly 
 decided on, whose opinion on these would, of course, be much 
 deferred to by the rest of their colleagues. And it greatly concerns, 
 the good of the Church, that of laymen there should be a most care- 
 ful and judicious and well-weighed selection. It is not to be told 
 what mischief might be incurred by the rash and random appoint- 
 ments of committee-men. Men of greatest eminence as debaters 
 and orators in a popular assembly are not always, I should even say 
 are not generally, the best qualified to be counsellors in committees. 
 They may be profoundly legal, and irrefragably logical, and bril- 
 liantly eloquent, yet be very deficient in transacting with men, or 
 on matters of business. It puts to most serious hazard the interest 
 of the Church's business, when such appointments are made com- 
 pUmentarily; and so are laid upon men, who, whatever their excel- 
 lence in other and perhaps very high departments of usefulness, 
 might utterly fail in that certain tact, or ready and practical discern- 
 ment of men and things, which accomplishes one for what the 
 French, if I mistake not, call "le savoir des affaires." Or, to illus- 
 trate my meaning the more, they may have, in a most pre-eminent 
 degree, the "savoir," in some very noble departments too, of scholar- 
 ship and science, and professional learning; yet may entirely lack 
 the "savoir-faire" in the department of committeeship. They have 
 plenty of the "savoir," in things of argument; but as to the "faire," 
 in things practical, they have either none of it, or have it in a way- 
 ward and wrong direction. I most assuredly would not express my- 
 self so strongly, but for my serious apprehension lest these outward 
 matters of our Church should fall into unfortunate hands. Were I 
 to speak the recollections of my own experience, I should say that 
 merchants and solicitors, or writers to the signet, are far the most 
 desirable coadjutors in the work of directing the correspondence, and 
 conducting the various managements which are confided to commit- 
 tees. Or, without specifying the professions so minutely, let me state, 
 in general, the value I feel for the sagacity and good sense of all such 
 as have been schooled aright either in counting-houses or chambers 
 of agency. The education and professional habits, neither of advo- 
 
28 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 cafes nor ministers, are at all favourable to those business qualifica- 
 tions which I most desiderate for our working committees, 
 
 3. The Church cannot adequately feel her obligations to those lay 
 supporters and friends, who so generously lend their time and their 
 gratuitous labours to her service. But it is monstrous impolicy to 
 confide altogether, or' in very great proportion, so large an interest as 
 that of her Sustentation Fund, to the discretionary and unremu- 
 iierated attendance even of her most zealous and best qualified adher- 
 ents. There ought to be a greatly fuller paid agency, and with all 
 the guaranties for a vigorous and punctual discharge of our busi- 
 ness, which obtain in any of the public and national offices, or in any 
 of the great trading establishments of the country. And first, in 
 addition to a treasurer with the proper complement of clerks, there 
 should be a Lay Superintendent, whose business it is, whether by 
 personal visits, or by the emanations of a central correspondence, to 
 keep the whole machinery of our Associations constantly and vigor- 
 ously agoing — under whom no omission should be left unnoticed, 
 and no letter of inquiry should be left unanswered. I cannot enter 
 at length on the multifarious details of such an otfice, any more than 
 I am qualified to describe all that passes and repasses between a 
 head bank and its branches, or between a great commercial house in 
 the metropolis, and its dependents or customers all over the country. 
 But sure I am that there is room and application for a business-talent 
 of the highest order in the work of completing and giving full etfi- 
 ciency to the whole system of our operations. It is, therefore, of the 
 utmost importance to our financial prosperity, that we should have 
 a Superintendent of thorough business ability and habits, under the 
 control, at the same "time, and surveillance of a Committee, mainly 
 composed of business men. 
 
 4, But this is not the whole of that central and directing, and pre- 
 siding influence which I would bring to bear upon the provinces. 
 The apparatus in Edinburgh, to the extent that has been yet descri- 
 bed, were far from being complete, at least far short of the point to 
 which we would carry it. Beside the Lay Superintendent, whose 
 converse, whether by letter or by personal visitation, should, in the 
 main, be with Secretaries and Collectors, and the various lay office 
 bearers of our diflerent Associations, we greatly desiderate a Cleri- 
 cal Correspondent, who, beside seeing to the preparation and issue 
 of tracts and circulars, charged with the high matters of principle 
 and religious duty, should hold converse chiefly, if not exclusively, 
 with the ministers of the Free Church. Without an oflice of this 
 sort, both well filled and well executed, our present financial returns 
 will not be increased, will not even be upholden. If left exclusively 
 in the hands of secular men,* the whole of our financial system will 
 be secularized, after which it will infallibly go to pieces. Ours is 
 essentially a religious operation for a religious object; and if sepa- 
 rated from the religious principle by which alone it is kept in health- 
 ful and living play, then, as if bereft of its needful and sustaining 
 aliment, it will wither into extinction in a few years. We do not 
 
 * Meaning by this to designate not the character, but the profession. 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Z9 
 
 see how this essential vitality can be kept up and circulated, but by 
 an influential ecclesiastic in Edinburgh holding busy and perpetual 
 converse with his ecclesiastical brethren all over the land. Our cler- 
 gymen, many of wliom, I must be frank enough to say, have still 
 much to learn, will not take their lesson from the Lay Superinten- 
 dent, or submit to any urgencies and remonstrances from him, yet 
 will bear (they at least ought) to be calmly, and christianly, and 
 affectionately reasoned with, when requested, on the high apostolic 
 ground of ours being a great Home Mission, to the fulfilment of 
 which all should lend a hand, when requested, we say, to give his 
 testimony and countenance in favour of the cause; and so as that 
 the agency of his Association might be kept in good heart and 
 good will for the regular discharge of the parts which, whether as 
 Collectors or Contributors, respectively belong to them. This Cleri- 
 cal Correspondent should have free access to all the returns which 
 come from the country, that upon them he, when necessary, may 
 found his communications. And not only so, but it were fiu'ther 
 well if [le singled out those clergymen for his occasional letters, who 
 might prove his most useful auxiliaries, in their respective neigh- 
 bourhoods, in this great and good work. Such is our sense of the 
 immense practical importance of some such arrangement, that we 
 confess our alarm, when finding, in any instance, that our views of 
 it are not sympathized with. What greatly enhances our conviction 
 of the incalculable good which would ensue from it, is the uniform 
 experience that wherever the matter is undertaken zealously and 
 intelligently by the minister, there we are sure to have a prosperous 
 Association.* 
 
 5. But we are yet far short of our beait ideal in respect of this 
 central machinery, far short of the optimism after which we aspire. 
 Over and above all that we have yet specified, we would have a 
 number of travelling agents, who might go to work in a far more 
 piece-meal and particular way among the Associations than we have 
 yet been able for. The Superintendent can, in his own person, only 
 deal with aggregates, with the representatives met together of all 
 the Associations in a given district. With the duties of his inner 
 department at Edinburgh, he cannot possibly combine a thoroughly 
 pervading operation over the outer department of the country at 
 large. His wholesale surveys can accomplish no more than what 
 our trigonometrical surveyors would call the triangulation of the 
 territory. For filling up of the intermediate spaces, there must be 
 additional hands. They might not go so often to the Associations 
 that are doing well, excepting at times, to learn particularly of their 
 methods, and this with the view of holding them forth as an excite- 
 ment and an example to other Associations, But they would be of 
 incalculable use by putting into action and good order all our defi- 
 cient Associations, and in setting up new ones. The Returns of 
 every month would make mainfest what the Associations were, 
 
 * On penning this sentence, there instantly occurred to me the names of Mr. Alex- 
 ander of Kirkaldy, Mr. Craig of Rothesay, Mr. Bain of Coupar-Angus. I do hope that 
 they will forgive tliis public notice of them. There are many others who would soon 
 cast up to recollection, were I to dwell longer on this part of the subject. 
 
30 ECONOMICS OP THE 
 
 which would require either the direction or the stimuhis of a per- 
 sonal visit from one of oiir travellers. It were worth his while, even 
 for the sake of a single Association, to undertake a journey of many 
 miles; and especially as along the tract on both sides of it, he could 
 offer his passing respects, and bestow the refreshing influence of his 
 presence on various Associations. He should often spend days in a 
 neighbourhood, even though it were for nothing more than to put 
 one remote and isolated Association into a state" of right equipment 
 and activity. He should hold much intercourse with the influcntials 
 of the district; be most minutely and kindly exi)licit in his conver- 
 sation with the Collectors; and, above all, should, by his piety and 
 intelligence together, find his way to the Scottish heart of our homely 
 and well-principled countrymen, which he will be sure to do when 
 he tells them of the vast religious importance of the errand upon 
 which he has come; and in the success of which there, and in other 
 places, there hangs the mighty interest of churches for all and schools 
 for all. This is the true way of making the life-blood of our cause 
 circulate from the heart to the extremities of Scotland. Hitherto 
 we have greatly too much confined ourselves to the flying missiles 
 of letters, and circulars, and written queries, and such other winged 
 messengers as these, between the metropolis and the provinces. 
 Such a system as I have now pointed out of kindly, domestic, 
 personal visitations, on the part of Christian, and withal companion- 
 able men, would be a thousand times more effective. It is the very 
 instrumentality by which to keep every old Association from sinking, 
 and by which to foster into being and activity many new ones. Our 
 little knots of adherents, even in the most sequestered places, could 
 thus be cherished into congregations; and not a spark or embryo of 
 an attachment to the cause of a free gospel needs be suffered any 
 where to expire. 
 
 6. We do hope that these mighty advantages will reconcile the 
 Church to the expenses of a larger paid agency. There is a preju- 
 dice, I had almost said a low-minded suspicion, on this subject, most 
 grievously adverse to the enlargement of the Church's resources and 
 her means. The sum of £2000 or even £3000 a-year, and perhaps 
 more, rightly expended on right men, would be remunerated more 
 than fifty-fold by the impulse thus given to the mechanism of our 
 Associations. The country would feel an ample recompense in the 
 charm of a ready and punctual service, which as yet they have little 
 experienced; and in being saved from the provocation of those end- 
 less delays, which, from the sheer want of men to do the required 
 work, have been really unavoidable. Of course the expense of all 
 that is done for the Financial Committee ought to be laid on the funds 
 of that Committee; and glad shall we be, iT protected from the ex- 
 pense incurred by other committees, over which we had no control, 
 the maxim should ever be held inviolable, that the expenses of every 
 committee should be defrayed from moneys of its own raising — a 
 maxim, the violation of which is just that sort of monstrous paralo- 
 gism in business, which we trust will never be repeated. Yet 
 what has been done once maybe done over again; and iience the 
 necessity of a vigilant guardianship and control on the part of men 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 31 
 
 who have a real knowledge of business, that a popular assembly, 
 ever liable to the impulse of hasty and partial views, may not, by 
 oversetting the clearest principles of right management, bring every 
 thing into confusion. 
 
 SECTIONS III. AND IV. ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE SUSTENTATION 
 
 FUND.* 
 
 1. There is nothing to be more strongly deprecated, while yet in 
 the infancy of our Free Church, than frequent and capricious changes, 
 and more especially in a matter on which earthly passions and inter- 
 ests come so readily into play, as the parting of money. It is all the 
 more dangerous, that the right principles on which the distribution 
 should take place, can only be gathered from the comprehensive sur- 
 vey of a subject large in itself and variously complicated; as, besides 
 the maintenance of the Church's functionaries, involving in it the far 
 weightier and more precious element of what is best for the Christian 
 good of the country's population. The system to provide for these 
 two objects, and embrace them both, is not to be got at in some spare 
 moment of rapid thought, by one who can wield the pen of a ready 
 writer, and throw off hi.s goodly and well-looking scheme in the heat 
 of a single down-sitting. Neither when once such a system is set up, 
 whether as finally established or as yet upon its trial, should it be 
 overset on some hasty observation by one who but looks at the thing 
 in parts or snatches, without the patient and full study of it in all its 
 consequences and all its bearings. 
 
 2. But while thus fearful of unnecessary changes — as giving to the 
 friends of the Free Church a certain painful sense of frailty and pre- 
 cariousness; and fitted therefore to shake their confidence in the 
 stability of our great and growing institution, let it not be thought 
 that the proposal of two years back, so far as adopted, was one of 
 these changes. It was not a change, but a mere expedient to meet 
 a new case or to provide for a new object — the maintenance, not of 
 the ministers who came out at the time of the Disruption, but of such 
 as were superadded to the original 470, whether as successors in the 
 old or as ordained ministers for new charges. Our first care was the 
 support of the Free Church as it stood at the moment of its forma- 
 tion; and we set out on the method of an equal dividend for all the 
 outgone ministers. Our second care was the extension of the Church, 
 which extension will infallibly be crippled, nay, brought to a dead 
 stand, if the method of an equal dividend is to be persevered in. It 
 is obvious that if we are to give the same yearly allowance to every 
 new minister, however little we shall receive from his congregational 
 Association, we cannot hold out long upon such a system, unless by 
 such successive reductions of the dividend as must sooner or later 
 involve the whole Church in one conmion overthrow. This is an 
 argument, and a strong one; but we confess that it is not ours. Our 
 argument against the continuance of an equal dividend is, that it 
 
 • We have blended the two topics of these sections into one, from their standing so 
 nearly related to each other, while we at the same timeiieep up the distinction between 
 them in the primary announcement of our plan. 
 
32 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 would put an end to Church Extension. On the principle that the 
 minister's work is of far higher consideration than the minister's 
 stipend, we have ever regarded an addition to the number of our 
 zealous and hard-working ministers as of paramountly higher value 
 than an addition to their livelihood. Yet we do not object to the 
 more secular of these arguments, which is both a very natural and a 
 very sound one. We are glad to hare two arguments instead of one; 
 and shall rejoice if, on the strength of both together, we can succeed 
 in breaking down the figment of Presbyterian parity as brought to 
 bear upon this question; for in truth it becomes the veriest of all fig- 
 ments, when extended, as some would do, to the equality of ministe- ■ 
 rial income as well as the equality of mitiisterial jurisdiction. Let it 
 not be imagined that we say aught to the disparagement of Presby- 
 terianism; for it is they, and not we, who would vilify and vulgarize 
 all that is noble in its principle of equality, by making it hinge at 
 all upon money, and not altogether upon the higher standing of 
 constitutional right. For ourselves, we have never felt so profound 
 a veneration for Presbytery, as when witnessing the sublime specta- 
 cle of that ascendency which is often wielded in her councils by the 
 poorest of our country ministers, and that on the sheer force of his 
 character and talents; and more especially when some concerted plan 
 or policy of the metropolitan rulers has been overset, as we have 
 sometimes seen in the Old Assembly, by a noble burst of independence 
 from the provinces. But to keep by the matter in hand: whatever 
 reason miight be alleged for an equal dividend among the first minis- 
 ters of the Disruption, its continuance with all the succeeding ministers 
 would be absolutely ruinous. There is no church in Christendom, 
 whether Catholic or Episcopalian, or Reformed, that has ever con- 
 ducted her Home Missions on a principle so destructive of their 
 progress and prosperity, as this would inevitably be. It would lay 
 such an incubus on Church Extension, as to make it altogether 
 hopeless. We could reclaim this one and that other portion of the 
 territory, with a smaller remuneration at the first to the ecclesiastical 
 labourer; but not if we are to be saddled from the outset with the 
 condition of a remuneration so large as that which issues from the 
 Central Fiuid on one and all of its ministers. We could even give 
 an ordained minister to a newly brought in locality, and set up a 
 complete parochial economy in the midst of it, on some safe and 
 regulated proportion, between its givings to the Central Fund and 
 the allowances to be received from it. On such a system we could 
 pioneer our way even to the poorest localities both in town and 
 country, but from which the system of an equal dividend would in- 
 fallibly shut us out. And when we take a survey of the vast extent 
 that remains to be possessed, to the appalling city wastes, as well as 
 to the many outfields of heathenism over the whole of Scotland, we 
 confess our alarm lest an absurd and factitious principle shall, under 
 the venerable guise of a Presbyterian rule or category, put to jeopardy 
 the dearest of Christian interests — and this by oversetting all the con- 
 siderations of Christian wisdom and soundest Christian expediency.* 
 
 * See Appendix, No. 5. 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 33 
 
 3. And not only would the system of an equal dividend lessen the 
 amount of Church Extension, we also fear that it would greatly vitiate 
 its quality. The prospect of a sure hundred a year might bring an 
 earthly element into play, and call forth the sordid appetencies of the 
 ecclesiastical aspirant. We should vastly prefer, when unbroken 
 ground is to be entered on for the first time, that we saw something 
 like the workings of that self-denying spirit, under the influence of 
 which an affection for human souls bears onward an enterprise of 
 Christian charity, even amid the hazards and uncertainties of aught 
 like an adequate remuneration. That surely is not the most unlikely 
 process for the christianization of an outfield territory, which affords 
 scope for the devotedness and disinterestedness of apostolic times; 
 nor, on the other hand, should we expect that much new land will 
 ever to good purpose be reclaimed under an economy, by which the 
 risk and the privations incident to the vocation, whether of a home or 
 foreign missionary, were all to be forestalled. 
 
 4. I have felt the greatest difficulty in penning the above sentences. 
 I am not for underpaid labour, whether it be missionary or ministerial, 
 or professional labour of any sort. Yet we have the strongest per- 
 suasion that to set missionary work prosperously agoing, the way is 
 not to lure adventurers into the service by the bribery of its secular 
 advantages. We fear that whenever the mercenary inducement is at 
 all the predominant one, it will act as a damaging flaw on the whole 
 enterprise. The missionary must from the very first be subsisted; 
 but, rather than that at the outset there should be held out the full 
 comforts of a regular settlement, we should deem it infinitely better 
 that he won his way to this by his success, in gathering in the house- 
 holders of his outfield territory, and forming them into a new congrega- 
 tion. We greatly mistake, we greatly underrate both the capabilities 
 and dispositions of even the poorest congregations thus formed, if we 
 mistrust either their will or their power for such offerings, as would 
 constitute a most important element in the maintenance of their 
 future minister.* There is a mine of productiveness here for the 
 support and extension of the gospel, which has not yet been explored, 
 which has scarcely been entered on. We are quite sure that an 
 a priori equal dividend, should it not have the eff'ect of leaving alto- 
 gether shut, would at least deaden every internal fountain of supply 
 which might otherwise be opened and kept in vigorous play within 
 the bosom of every additional congregation, thus limiting both the 
 revenue of the Church, and proportionally thereto, her power of 
 expansion. We are quite aware of the uncertainties, and perhaps 
 the hardships which, on the system as we would have it, must be 
 encountered at the commencement of every new enterprise. But 
 along with this we have the sanguine anticipation of a prosperous 
 result, prosperous in every sense of the term, with every such under- 
 taking when entered on in the spirit of devotedness and faith. Let 
 the primary and prompting impulse be but an aftection for souls, and 
 we have no fear of the consummation. The enlargement of the 
 temporal means will be sure to follow in the train of the spiritual 
 
 • For the further details of this process see our Section on Church Extension. 
 
34 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 achievements. The commencement and progress of missionary work 
 are Hke the commencement and progress of the Christian Vyfe. There 
 may be sacrifices and sutferings, and self-denial at the first; bnt we 
 know that there are earthly as well as heavenly promises attendant 
 ou these exercises of faith and patience. The life that now is, is not 
 forgotten amid the richer and brighter promises of the life that is to 
 come. Whether it be a private Christian who seeks first for himself, 
 or a missionary who seeks first and foremost for the people among 
 whom he labours, the kingdom of God and His righteousness — the 
 assurance will not fail with either, that all other things shall be added 
 unto them. 
 
 5, We trust that we have now said enough to demonstrate the 
 ruinous elfect of an equal dividend, or the absolute necessity of a 
 proportional dividend, so that the gettings out from the Central Fund 
 and the givings in may bear some relation the one to the other. 
 The ministers who came out at the Disruption have obtained an ex- 
 emption from this rule; but it is a rule which ought to expire with 
 their incumbencies, else our Church can never expect to be an inde- 
 finitely progressive one. What the proportion ought to be between 
 the yearly remittances of an Association, and the yearly return which 
 should be sent to it back again, is a question that might be decided 
 variously. According to the present method, the more recent min- 
 isters receive a half more than is remitted by their Associations, on 
 to the dividend of £150, after which there is no augmentation. At 
 this rate no Association can cost more than £50 a year to the Gene- 
 ral Fund, a most important limitation, but a limitation which could 
 be secured in twenty other ways, giving rise to as many schemes or 
 scales of distribution, the adoption of any one of which would in- 
 volve no change of principle, and might lead to no other inconve- 
 nience than one that has been already adverted to, and might be as 
 well avoided, a certain painful sense of instability in our system, 
 when thus made to undergo a number of wanton and unnecessary 
 alterations. 
 
 6. The great and essential reform needed upon our financial sys- 
 tem is some provision, call it either a stimulus or a check, by the ope- 
 ration of which our aid-receiving Associations shall be either made 
 to contribute more, or receive less, from that great Central Fund, 
 which, if but relieved from the present inordinate pressure, could be 
 made so greatly more available for our Church's prosperity and en- 
 largement. We are all the less scrupulous in urging this, because 
 we know that, but for their own intolerably sluggishness and apathy, 
 these Associations could be easily made to contribute more; and iso, 
 though thereby less burdensome at head-quarters than they now are, 
 the provision of the minister might be fully kept up, and with this 
 greatest of all satisfaction to every right-minded people, that it would 
 be more honourably come by. Were the .'318 Associations, who now 
 give less than £50 a year, lirought up by our provision acting in the 
 form of a stimulus, though only to this humble rate of contribu- 
 tion; or, by means of the same provision, acting in the form of a 
 check, were matters so ordered that they should never cost us more 
 than ^650 a year each, I tliink we might answer for our aid-giving 
 
FREE CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 35 
 
 Associations helping up this extent of deficiency. But we cannot 
 answer for their holding out against a larger demand or deficiency 
 than this, and that is ever growing larger with every exertion made 
 to overtake it. They will infallibly lose heart and let down their 
 present liberalities, if they find that, do their uttermost, they, in vir- 
 tue of a dead weight at the other end of our apparatus, can neither 
 make good a rising dividend for the present necessities of our cler- 
 gymen, nor an extending Church for the far more serious, because 
 spiritual and moral, necessities of a destitute population. for a 
 voice of sufficient emphasis and power, to send abroad this lesson 
 with a telling efficacy upon all our congregations! 
 
 7. Tiie mere proposal to fix a ratio between the contributions and 
 the return has, we understand, been strangely felt by certain of the 
 aid-receiving congregations, with something like the sense of an in- 
 jury done to them. Should they give £60, they will get back £90; 
 this is the rate at which we should like to deal with these congrega- 
 tions, up to £100 given us on their part, and £150 sent back to them 
 upon ours. So that, in reference to them, it is altogether a system 
 of dispensation. Nor is there a country in Christendom where we 
 should expect it to be regarded or spoken of as if, instead of this, it 
 were a system of extortion. The aid-giving congregations, by 
 whose generosity it is that we are enabled to do so much, might 
 be the instruments of a great and glorious expansion of our Church 
 over all Scotland, were there but enough of effort, and enough of co- 
 operation, throughout all its provinces. But this career, so full of pro- 
 mise, and of richest blessings to our country, will soon be terminated, 
 if, instead of such co-operation, it become the prevalent habit of our 
 poorer Associations to give as little to the Central Fund, and take or 
 expect as much from it as possible.* 
 
 8. Other proportions might be fixed on than one and a half; or 
 other rates of distribution might be constructed, yet, so as to secure 
 the operation of a stimulus or a check, on the aid-receiving con- 
 gregations. There would in this case, be no change of principle, 
 but still such a change, or such a semblance of change, as might 
 unsettle the confidence of men's minds in the stability or soundness 
 of the system altogether. This were a serious evil, but the evil 
 were greatly enhanced, did the change amount to one of principle, 
 and be wrong after all. Now, such a change has been proposed, 
 and to our apprehension, it is more than questionable, we think mis- 
 chievous. By our present system, as is known to all, there is an 
 allowance given to every minister out of the common fund, after 
 which each congregation is left to supplement this allowance at their 
 own pleasure. Now, the proposal is, to abolish these supplements, 
 to lay a legislative prohibition of the Church upon them, and to make 
 it imperative that all which is given for the support of our ministers 
 shall pass through the Central Fund in Edinburgh, and be distributed 
 thence in the proportions of a certain regulated scale. We very 
 much fear the consequences of such an innovation, and for the fol- 
 lowing reasons. 
 
 * See Appendix, No. 6. 
 
3« ECONOMICS OP THE 
 
 9. First, It is presntned that what is now given to the Sabbath 
 collection for a supplement to the minister, would then be withheld 
 and given to the Association; but this is a great mistake. Tliat it 
 would be withheld from one quarter, there is every reason to appre- 
 hend; but that it would, therefore, be transferred to the other quarter, 
 there is little or no reason to hope. The habits of the people are not 
 so easily moulded, nor can they be so safely tampered with as some 
 would imagine. There might be arithmetic in the argument of 
 those who contend on this ground for the abolition of the supple- 
 ment; but most assuredly there is not in it a sound or experimental 
 judgment of human nature. We think that those who contend 
 for the abolition of our supplements might be instructed by the re- 
 sults of a former abolition, even that of the seat-rents. The calcu- 
 lation was, that all which might be remitted to the people on the 
 article of seat-rents would be returned by them at the church-door, 
 so as to swell the collections. Has it turned out so? or rather, has 
 there not bi'cn a dead loss to the extent of many thousand pounds 
 a-year in consequence? We do not know liow many annual thou- 
 sands would, in like manner, be thrown away by the abolition of 
 these supplements. In keeping wuh this, there was a proposal 
 .sometime ago to abolish class-fees. It would just, as in the other 
 cases, have proved the cause of an additional impoverishment. Iti 
 short, if we give in to all the proposals of all the abolitionists, the 
 Free Church is on a fair way to become the poorest Church in Chris- 
 tendom. 
 
 10. But it may be said that there is no proper analogy between 
 the seat-rents and the supplements. The money yielded by the 
 former is the produce of a compulsory tax; and it does not follow 
 that, because it is remitted, it will therefore be returned in the new 
 shape of a voluntary contribution. But what is given at the church- 
 door for a supplement is a free-will offering, the produce of the 
 hearer's aflcction for his minister, or of a desire of adding to his 
 comfort, by making over to him a certain amount of carnal things 
 in reiurn for his spiritual things.* Now, it may be contended that 
 we do not extinguish this affection, we do not even weaken the im- 
 pulse which prompts to any offering at all, by merely shutting up the 
 channel through which it flows at present, and opening for it another 
 channel by which it comes back in equal amount, nay, it may be, in 
 greater amount of good to the minister. It makes no diti'erence, it 
 may be argued, whether it comes to him immediately through the 
 Sabbath collection of his own church, or immediately through the 
 organism of an Association, first up to the Central Fund in Edin- 
 burgh, and then back again, in an augmented dividend, at the term of 
 general distribution. We should have given way to this considera- 
 tion, had it not been for our frequent experience of tlie danger which 
 there is in substituting the circuitous for the direct, when we want 
 to enlist the popular concurrence in any object of Christian useful- 
 ness. It is inconceivable how powerful the effect of it is in placing 
 the object more out of sight, and so more out of influence. You will 
 
 • 1 Cor. ix. 11. 
 
FREE CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 3f 
 
 get a people to join you for the doing of many things, if to be done 
 at once, which you will not get them to do if to be done by a pro- 
 cess. Even ihe interposal of but one step in the way of a desired 
 accomplishment, will suffice to defer, or to defeat altogether, the 
 impression which a good cause might otherwise have made, so as to 
 open both the hearts and the hands of a parochial community in its 
 favour. The money given at their own church door, with a design 
 and destination to the support of their own minister, will tell far 
 more powerfully on the liberal dispositions of the people, than if the 
 same money should be made to pass out of sight to a great central 
 reservoir many miles off, even though it should all reissue thence 
 with the same or greater amount of home-benefit at the last. To 
 make this home-benefit a sure and a lasting one, it should be preserved, 
 out and out, in the character of a home-operation. We have quite 
 the feeling that many will look on the influence we now speak of as 
 too fine or shadowy for being at all practical. So it might appear, 
 and so it will be spoke of at committees, whether among men of 
 words or men of penmanship. But there is many a shrewd peasant, 
 whose discernment has been exercised among the roughnesses and the 
 realities of life, who will appreliend,and that most readily, the substan- 
 tial truth of what we now insist upon. And, therefore, we should ex- 
 ceedingly regret if the present arrangement — first, of our Associations 
 for the Central Fund, and then, distinct from these, of our Collec- 
 tions for a Supplement, were at all to be disturbed or broken up. 
 "VVe greatly fear that it would just turn out another example of a 
 suffering and a loss because of our hazardous innovations. 
 
 11. But more than this. We have two distinct and separate 
 duties laid before us in two distinct and separate places of the Bible; 
 and surely for the performance of them, there might be found sepa- 
 rate places in a man's life, separate doings in the course of a man's 
 varied and successive history. Let us address ourselves to what the 
 Bible makes two separate duties of, by means of two separate ope- 
 rations. We are told in one verse of the Bible, that each should 
 mind not his own things only, but the things of others also; and 
 through the medium of our Associations, and of the Central Fund, 
 instituted for the Christian good of the Church at large, we have a 
 method provided for carrying this duty into effect. We are told in 
 another verse of the Bible, that they who are taught should commu- 
 nicate to him who teacheth in all good things; and for the fulfilment 
 of this more special duty, we have a method provided through the 
 Sabbath collections at the churcli-door. Leave each of these verses 
 to tell with their own distinct authority on the consciences of men. 
 We shall not mend the matter, by blending or implicating the two 
 into one. We have no right, by some ingenious processof ours, to con- 
 vert one of these verses into a sort of artificial strainer, through which, 
 and through which alone, forbidding and closing up all other chan- 
 nels, to get at tlie accomplishment of the duty given forth in the 
 other verse. Both are injunctions of Holy Scripture: and, with but 
 a sufficient strength of religious principle, we shall make good the 
 observance of both. To affirm the incompatibility of two distinct 
 methods — the one for upholding a general ministry in Scotland, the 
 4 
 
3» ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 Other for upholding the ministry of our own particular congregation, 
 is to affirm the incompatibility of two duties, which are equally and 
 expressly inculcated upon our observance in the word of God. 
 
 12. This proposal to do away supplements by legislation, reminds 
 me forcibly of the disposition that there was two years back to do 
 away, and by force of legislation, too, all ornaments from our churches. 
 The imagination then was, that the money thus rescued from the 
 ornaments, would all take its spontaneous way to the General Build- 
 ing Fluid; and the imagination now is, that the money to be rescued 
 from those supplements on which it is at present expended, will be 
 sure to find its way into the Sustentation Fund. Both imaginations 
 betray a like want of that discernment into the real workings and 
 tendencies of human nature, on which all wise legislation is fomided. 
 And there is one difterence between a law against ornaments and a 
 law against supplements, which makes all the more heavily to the 
 disadvantage of the latter. The one law comes into conflict only with 
 a taste, the other law comes into conflict with a principle. I felt quite 
 secure that the Building Fund would not sulfer, though we should 
 leave the friends of the Free Church to indulge their liking for orna- 
 ments; and I feel still more secure that the Sustentation Fund will 
 not sufler by the friends of the Church being left to indulge their lik- 
 ings, each for his own minister. This may sound paradoxical; but 
 "we are persuaded that, on a very little consideration, there will be no 
 ditiiculty in admitting the truth and soberness of what we now say. 
 The man who gives a large subscription to beautify and adorn his 
 own church, or who gives a large subscription to help out a liberal 
 provision for his own minister, may do both from an impulse that is 
 altogether natural — in the one case from the impulse of a natural 
 taste, in the other from the impulse of a natural affection. Or beside 
 the natural, nay, without the natural influence altogether, he may do 
 l)oth these things, in part or in whole, under a religious impulse — in 
 the first case, under a sense of what was due to the decency, or the 
 dignity of a sacred edifice; in the second, under the still more direct 
 sense of a palpable and proclaimed duty — seeing that the Bible tells 
 us to give of our carnal things to the man who teaches us Christianity, 
 in return for his spiritual things. In as far as the natural element is 
 concerned, we may by a legislation put a check on the expense that 
 v/as to be lavished, whether on ornaments or on supplements ; but if 
 there be no religion on the part of the giver who is thus thwarted, 
 "we shall look in vain for the money tliat has been thus thrown back 
 upon him, finding its way into our Central Treasury. Or, on the 
 other hand, so far as there was religion in the munificence for local 
 objects, this is the best guaranty for a like munificence in behalf of 
 our general object. At all events, to stifle and repress one religious 
 exercise, is not the way to further, but rather to cripple and itifringe 
 on another religious exercise. I should not look on the man wlio 
 liad previously been thwarted and disappointed in some object that 
 his heart was set upon, as at all a hopeful subject for an application 
 in behalf of the object that 7??^^ licart is set nj)on. "We have been 
 made to understand that there is a congregation in our Free Church, 
 ■whose supplement to their minister has been fifteen times greater than 
 
PREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 39 
 
 their contribution to our General Fund. Our inference is, that the 
 natural must greatly jKedoniinate in that congregation; but not that 
 if tliis natural, and we will also add, this good natural tendency, were 
 forcibly overborne, there would accrue therefrom any of its now actual 
 produce to our treasury. The right way of proceeding is not to lay 
 an interdict on the natural, but to fan and foment to the uttermost 
 whatever small spark there might be of the religious, both in this 
 and other congregations. We have distinct scriptural duties for both 
 the local and The general; and distinct methods should be provided 
 and kept up for the respective fulfilments of them. They will no 
 more conflict or interfere with each other than do the six Schemes of 
 the Church interfere with each other. Let us but invigorate the reli- 
 gious spirit of our people, and all will be made to flourish. Monstrous 
 exceptions will no doubt occur among our six hundred churches. 
 But they will not long stand their ground against the publicity of 
 their annual exposure; and still more will they be sure to give way 
 before the growth of a right understanding, and of sound and good 
 principle in the midst of us. 
 
 13. We can perceive what that is, which sways with the abolition- 
 ists. They calculate that the less the money which is given for one 
 object, the more will remain to be given for another object. Their 
 computation turns upon the means, ours again turns upon the motives. 
 It is true that there is a limit to the means; and, on the strength of 
 this consideration, we hope that the schemes and objects of our 
 Church will not be capriciously or indefinitely multiplied. But we 
 are not yet within sight of this limit, nay, so far are we from having 
 come into contact with it, that all which is given — we do not say by 
 individuals, many of whom have really made sacrifices for the cause 
 — that all which is given, we mean collectively, and in the aggregate, 
 is but a merest bagatelle, when compared with all which might and 
 ought to be given. Speaking generally, the boasted liberalities of the 
 
 .Free Church have not told with the least sensible encroachment on 
 the style and expenditure of families. We are yet miserably short of 
 the example of Ilim, who, though rich, yet for our sakes became 
 poor. We therefore, on the moral estimate, would continue to urge 
 forward, because most assuredly there is nothing yet in the arithmeti- 
 cal estimate that should discourage or keep us back. We are yet a very 
 great way ofl" from the necessity of laying a prohibition, or a retrench- 
 ment, on one good thing, for the sake of another good thing. Both 
 might, and both should, be fully provided for. Each minister should 
 amply experience the kindness of his own congregation; and each 
 congregation should, at the same time, cast a wide and watchful eye 
 over the spiritual necessities of Scotland. 
 
 14. But, still more grievous than that, in so many instances, the 
 supplements should exceed the contributions to the Central Fund, is 
 it that in so many parts of the country there should be few or no sup- 
 plements at all. But even for this I would not abandon them. The 
 grand panacea for this and all other deficiencies is the increase of reli- 
 gion. And, besides, at the time of the Disruption our people had all 
 to learn; and yet, in a very great number, perhaps the majority of in- 
 stances, the habit has still to be formed. There are some who ascribe 
 
TO ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 the general remissness in this particular to the pressure of other, but 
 these initial expenses — as the debt, for example, upon our new-built 
 churches, which will soon be liquidated. I do not ascribe much to 
 this, or at least so much as to look for the spontaneous rise of supple- 
 ments, by a movement from the people themselves, after that these 
 expenses have been done away. They need to be plainly and 
 minutely lessoned in what is good: and that they should become fit 
 subjects for such lessons, I look mainly, with the blessing of God, to 
 the efforts of our spiritual men. And, though not on the subject of 
 the Associations, yet on that of the supplements, there are strong and 
 natural delicacies among the clergy which I fully sympathize with. 
 This of all others is an occasion on which the enlightened lay friends 
 of the Church might render an opportune and most important service. 
 There might be agencies of such formed in every Presbytery, who 
 might perform their annual visits to every parish, and take special cog- 
 nizance, as well as give special instruction, in a matter so indispensa- 
 ble to the requisite comfort of ministers, but from the care of which 
 they ought to be relieved. 
 
 15. Lastly, to legislate against these supplements, is to venture on 
 a legislation which we cannot compel, and which certainly would, I 
 had almost said which ought, to be evaded. To enact where we can- 
 not enforce is a most impolitic waste of authority, and must serve to 
 "weaken every government, whether civil or ecclesiastical, which at- 
 tempts it. We should rather follow, in so far, the example of the 
 Building Committee. There was a strong disposition among them 
 to legislate against ornaments; but the method in fact which they 
 wisely adopted, was to institute the check of granting no aid, save 
 in those cases where the church was built so economically as to cost 
 no more than at the rate of 15s. per sitting. They legislated in that 
 where they liad the power, and abstained from legislating in that 
 where they had not the power. It were well if the Sustentation 
 Committee had authority for doing the same; to proclaim such a rule* 
 of distribution, as that if Associations will give little — whether be- 
 cause they give much for supplements, or from any other cause — they 
 will receive proportionably little. The enactment of one and a half 
 answers this purpose, though there might be other and perhaps bet- 
 ter ways of it. It were the removal for instance of a mighty incu- 
 bus upon our operations, if it could be made law, that in no instance 
 we should give more than iS'SO to any minister, over and above what 
 we received from his Association; to which, might it be added, that 
 the coimexion of an Association with the Sustentation Committee 
 should only commence, when its own coniribution came to £50 
 a-year. Without some check of this sort, 1 predict with all confi- 
 dence, but in great heaviness of heart, that sooner or later we must 
 lay our account with a most fearful overthrow; or at least that a sore 
 paralysis will be inflicted on the support and enlargement of the 
 Church, which might otherwise, in respect of both these interests, be 
 made to advance most prosperously.* 
 
 • See Appendix, No. 7. 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 41 
 
 SECTION V. — ON CHURCH EXTENSION. 
 
 1. Instead of Extension, the Free Church may be said, in one 
 sense, to have nndergone the reverse process. As a proof of this, at 
 the time of the Disruption, it had upwards of 800 Associations. 
 They now stand, at least the paying ones, at 775. The reason of 
 this is, that we were not able to supply all the places where such 
 a palpable manifestation was given of an interest in the Free Church, 
 as the formation of an Association in its favour; we could not supply 
 them all at once with ecclesiastical labourers. We have certainly not 
 been wanting in our endeavours to remedy this defect; and, as a 
 proof of it, the number of our ordained ministers has been increased 
 from 470 to about 650. There still remain to us upwards of a hun- 
 dred places where Associations exist, but which can only as yet have 
 a partial service rendered to them by means of Catechists or Proba- 
 tioners; and we have some few noble instances where congregations 
 have kept, and are still keeping themselves afloat by the gratuitous 
 labours of the pious and the good among their own members, who 
 assemble our adherents throughout the neighbourhood on the Sab- 
 bath, and conduct public worship in the midst of them. Still, how- 
 ever, and it is not to be wondered at, upwards of thirty of our origi- 
 nal Associations have gone into extinction; and with them the germs 
 of as many future congregations. So, though in one sense the Free 
 Church has been extended within these two years — that is, in hav- 
 ing added about ISO to the number of her ordained ministers; in 
 another sense she has retrograded, by having lost no small part of the 
 ground she occupied at the first, through the dissolution of so many 
 of her primitive Associations. Our explanation of the manner in 
 which we think that these might have been preserved, and each 
 made the nucleus of, and at length ripened into a future church, will 
 at the same time show by what steps I conceive that we might still 
 preserve and forward our Non-ministerial Associations, of which we 
 have yet upwards of a hundred; nay, may not only recover all that 
 we have lost, but make indefinite additions to our territory. 
 
 2. We, in the first instance, would have the Non-ministerial As- 
 sociations made the objects of a distinct management. Of course, 
 so soon as a congregation connected with any one of these was fur- 
 nished with a regularly ordained minister, it would merge into the 
 general system; and its Association would take a place among those 
 which stood related to the Sustentation Committee, when it would be 
 subject to all such provisions and regulations as might be adopted for 
 the support of the Free Church. In other words, so long as it was 
 in the transition state it would remain under a sort of outstanding 
 management by itself; and thence pass into the hands of the Susten- 
 tation Conmiittee, so soon as its locality had been constituted into a 
 complete and regular charge. 
 
 3. There is an important difference that vi^e would earnestly recom- 
 mend between the disposition of the fund raised by the Ministerial 
 Associations and under the charge of the Sustentation Committee, 
 and of the fund raised by these Non-ministerial Associations. The 
 
4« 
 
 ECONOMICS OP THE 
 
 former fund has been treated as one large aggregate, to be dealt with 
 and distributed according to certain general and prescribed niethods. 
 But in the management of the latter fund, we would have separate 
 accounts with each of the Associations; and, instead of merging the 
 contributions of any into a general fund which should be rnade ap- 
 plicable to the benefit of all the otfiers, we would so proceed as that 
 each contribution should be most distinctly available for the sole and 
 distinct benefit of the locality from which it came. By thus individ- 
 ualizing each, we should put into operation the sense and stimulus of 
 an individual interest, so as not only to keep up their present rate of 
 exertion, but so as to keep it constantly on the tendency towards an 
 increase. And here let me insist on the capital importance of the 
 communications from head quarters to other associations being, to a 
 certain extent, personal. And for this purpose, the agents we have 
 already recommended for the Sustentation Committee should be 
 available for this service; men of intelligence and piety, who might 
 be deputed on every fit occasion to repair to the spot, and, if neces- 
 sary, to spend days of converse and explanation and encouragement 
 with the friends of the Free Church, who might any where be taking 
 measures for having a regularly served congregation in the midst of 
 them, and who are cherishing the prospect of its soon being realized. 
 Let me unfold my own view of the distinct steps by which this truly 
 interesting process might be carried forward, from these its first bud- 
 dings, in any given locality, to a final accomplishment. 
 
 4. The very first intimation of such a movement in any quarter 
 might form a sufficient call for a journey by one of our travelling 
 agents. If an association have not yet been formed in the place, he 
 could commence and originate one. He can set them on the right 
 way of proceeding, and make the whole progress and ultimate fulfil- 
 ment of it intelligible to our friends. He can let them understand the 
 difficulties of the Church, as proceeding from the want of ecclesiastical 
 labourers, which meanwhile we are doing our uttermost to supply. 
 He can ascertain if there be any among them willing and qualified 
 for a Sabbath-service, and who might give his gratuitous labours to 
 the cause. If not, he can state for how much a year they might have 
 the services of a Catechist among them; or for how much more, 
 if they wish to have a higher service, they might have the labours of 
 a Probationer. Or, at this initial stage of the operations, the agent 
 might assist them in laying down a scheme by which to partition the 
 services, whether of a catechist or a probationer, between the locality 
 now visited, and other localities in the neighbourliood wliere there 
 are Associations already established, or on (he point of being so. We 
 are quite sure that there is scarcely any district in the land, where 
 Associations might not be so stimulated by a fostering operation of 
 this sort, as to yield enough for their initial expenses; or, in so far as 
 they chose to be satisfied with gratuitous services, where a prosper- 
 ous beginning might not be made of a fund for the erection of tlieir 
 intended church. Such an object in the distance would have a mighty 
 effect in calling forth the liberalities of the people; and thus it is that 
 a rate and habit of giving might be commenced, which need never be 
 let down; and so prove the guaranty of almost, if not altogether, a 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 43 
 
 sufficiency within themselves, for both an educational and an eccle- 
 siastical provision adequate to the moral and spiritual wants of their 
 families. These ulterior objects furnish a mighty inducement both to 
 gather the requisite means and to economize them. Beside the pros- 
 pect of having their church, there should be set before them the 
 advantages of their future connexion with the Sustentation Fund, so 
 that, should they work up the annual produce of their Association to 
 any sum short of £100, they would get, in addition, one-half of what 
 they had received from the Central Treasury; and thus upon reaching 
 the £100, they will secure £150 for their future minister. We are 
 quite sure that by such a particular and piece-meal dealing with each 
 Association, severally and on its own account, we should work up an 
 immensely speedier and immensely greater result than ever will be 
 obtained under a system of mere circulars and written communica- 
 tions; and when, from the very outset, every motive to exertion is 
 superseded by the hope of getting all from Edinburgh, however little 
 they might do for themselves. We cannot imagine a worse education 
 to begin with, or one more fitted to raise an insuperable barrier in the 
 way of aught like a speedy or large church extension. And yet it 
 has been greatly too much the habit hitherto, and from which, if we 
 indeed aspire to the glorious achievements of a great and prosperous 
 Home Mission, we cannot too soon recover ourselves. We are quite 
 sure that if rightly gone about, such a method would obtain the ready 
 coalescence of every little knot of adherents in all parts of the land. 
 They would, if but thus personally dealt with from the first by one 
 of our own visitants, and they had the whole bearings and necessities 
 of the case christianly and reasonably set before them, they would 
 easily be led to inake such eftorts and sacrifices, as yet we have no 
 imagination, or at least have had no experience of. We could easily, 
 at this rate, have preserved all our Associations, and may still do 
 much in the way of restoring them ; besides, that by thus seizing on 
 every intimation of a desire for our countenance and aid from the 
 friends of the Free Church, in whatever quarter of Scotland it might 
 come from, we should, with little or no burden on any of our Central 
 Funds, multiply our additional or new stations all over the land. 
 
 5. Such is our confidence of success in this mode of proceeding, 
 and withal so exceedingly genial and pleasurable is the work of car- 
 rying it forward, that I fondly conceived the purpose of at least de- 
 voting one summer, partly to correspondence, and partly to personal 
 visitation and actual converse with the Scottish worthies in various 
 places of our Non-ministerial Associations; whether already formed, 
 or only yet in embryo — but composing altogether the nursery of our 
 Free Church's future enlargements. To have luxuriated for days m 
 so many little neighbourhoods of homebred and honest piety, would 
 have been a perfect feast of the aff'ections; and to have worked up 
 so many specimens of what can be achieved in the way of liberality 
 and support for the Church which they love even among the rudest 
 and remotest hamlets of the country, would have set the seal of an 
 experimental demonstration on a lesson which we fear has yet to be 
 learned. To my own infinite regret, I broke down in the course of 
 a few weeks after I had begun this charge; which I all the more 
 
4»4 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 lament, as being convinced that to begin aright in the rndimental 
 stages of this process, is the only way by which, in the state of 
 vohintaryisni on which we are now cast, to spread and to consohdate 
 a comnjensnrate system of Christian instruction, that might fill up all 
 vacancies, and leave no place even among the poorest of our people 
 unprovided for. But what I could not do even on the small scale in 
 my own person, might still be done on the great scale by our well- 
 selected agents, whose delightful office it should be to fan the embers 
 of phiIanthroj)y and piety in every place to which they are called, 
 till matured into the blessed fruits of well-taught schools and well- 
 served churches, throughout the whole length and breadth of our 
 Scottish territory. 
 
 6. We have no doubt of the result, should the system we have 
 now sketched so imperfectly, be but fairly and vigorously set agoing. 
 But we have great fears that it will not be set agoing. Our dread is 
 lest the rulers of our Church should be greatly too much occupied 
 with the affairs of the inner department to looic abroad on the out- 
 fields of Scotland. We have never been able to command an ade- 
 quate sympathy on the subject of Church Extension; each congre- 
 gation being engrossed with the care of its own prosperity, and the 
 Church at large finding ample scope for its attention and energy in 
 the matters of their existing congregations. But what we are most 
 afraid of is the adoption of some such financial measure, as would 
 lay a sure arrest on aught like an indefinite enlargement that might 
 keep pace with the moral and spiritual wants of the community. 
 And should it so turn out, the Free Church must be satisfied with 
 the same limited and sectarian position which is occupied by any 
 other of our religious denominations. Meanwhile, the advancing 
 tide of profligacy and infidelity, both in town and country, will make 
 head against the puny efibrts of all the Churches put together; and 
 the horrors of a desolating anarchy will expiate at length the crim- 
 inal neglect both of past and present generations.* 
 
 SECTION VI. GENERAL VIEW OF THE SCHEMES AND OBJECTS OF THE 
 
 CHURCH. 
 
 1. Let these be fully provided for, but do not let there be an in- 
 definite multiplication of them. It were well if the friends of the 
 Free Church were set at ease upon this matter. They should not be 
 exposed to demands in such rapid and endless succession, as might 
 well awaken the apprehension or the feeling that (hey are quite 
 interminable. Some of these, even though not of the ordinary and 
 recognized class, have undoubtedly been well selected, and carried 
 at once the assent and willing liberality of the public along with them. 
 The School-Subscription, under the able conduct of JNlr. McDonald, 
 forms an apposite example of this. We think a subscription for 
 Manses would form another; and would Mr, Guthrie undertake an 
 object which goes so near to the Scottish heart, we feel that, with his 
 
 • See Appendix, No. 8. 
 
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 45 
 
 powers of command over tliose national sympathies in which his 
 own heart shares so largely, his appeals, carried IVom neighbourhood 
 to neighbourhood, would be quite irresistible.* There can be no 
 quarrel, but the contrary with either of these objects, which, so soon 
 as proposed, carry an instant and popular acquiesence along with 
 them; and wiiich may be overtaken by one great effort, or at most 
 by such an effort repeated after intervals of many years or of whole 
 generations. On the other hand, there are few things which have 
 gratified us more than that the fabric of our College should have been 
 provided for, and without any appeal to the public at large, by the 
 munificence of twenty individuals ;t and by a like munificence, on 
 the part say of fifty or a hundred individuals, we do hope that the 
 present effort which is now making for the endowent of bursaries 
 will be crowned with success. 
 
 2. But there are things of perennial necessity which can only be 
 met and provided for by a liberality alike perennial. The rare and 
 occasional objects, or such as can be overtaken by one great effort, 
 and once for all, these might be settled and set by at a single start, 
 and under the power of an impulse. But for the constant atid ever 
 recurring necessities of the Church, the thing required is not the ex- 
 citement of an impulse, but the establishment of a habit; as the 
 Sustentation Fund, which can surely and rightly be upheld in no 
 other way than by a habit of punctuality among the collectors. But 
 there are other, though all of them minor objects to this main and 
 central one, which would require in like manner to be worked into 
 the system of the Church's operations, a thing not to be done by 
 evanescent impulses, but only by enduring habits. And therefore 
 we hold it very fortunate, that, by a mere change in the direction of 
 a habit at least two hundred years old, there seems a patent way for 
 the accomplishment of all which a Christian Church should be most 
 desirous to realize. We mean the good, old, and universal habit of 
 a Sabbath-collection at our church-doors. 
 
 3. We would not venture to prescribe, but with all deference 
 would we submit the following suggestion for the consideration of 
 tiie Church: Might not the first Sunday of every month be singled 
 out for a collection in favour of some specific and understood object, 
 leaving the forty remaining Sabbath-collections throughout the year 
 to take their present course towards the local fund for supplementing 
 the minister's dividend? Out of the twelve monthly and extraordi- 
 nary collections, six, or one-half their number, might be assigned to 
 the Schemes of the Assembly, leaving the other halt', or six more, 
 of these extraordinary collections to the determination of the Dea- 
 cons' Courts, or to be expended on any such objects as might seem 
 good to that body. In this way there would, from these extraordi- 
 
 * Mr. Guthrie has, since this was written (a year ago) undertaken and prosecuted this 
 great work, and nobly has he fulfilled it, having obtained, within the brief space of eight 
 months, the magnificent subscrij)lion of more than one hundred thousand pounds. 
 
 t Through a process of quiet and influcntiul correspondence on the part of Dr. Welsh. 
 But it is now right to add, that, in virtue of tlie great rise in the price of labour and ma- 
 terials, this sum turns out to be deficient by several thousand pouiids. 
 
46 ECONOMICS OF THE 
 
 nary collections, be six general objects provided for as laid down by 
 the Assembly, and six such local objects as the local anthorities of 
 each congregation might choose to fix npon. Let ns here specify 
 the six Assembly ohjecfs in what I conceive to be the order of then- 
 importance, or rather in the order and according to the magni- 
 tude of their necessities; First, the Home Mission Scheme; second, 
 the Scheme for School Education; third, for Foreign Missions; fourth, 
 for Colonial Churches; fifth, for the Conversion of the Jews; and 
 sixth, for the Annual Expenses of the College, which, though the 
 last and least in regard to the amount of collections required, is cer- 
 tainly not the least in the order of importance, the object being to 
 uphold the academic education of the Free Church, or the education 
 of students for the ministry. 
 
 4. Tlie produce of the other six extraordinary collections should 
 be placed entirely at the disposal and under the direction of the 
 Deacons' Courts. They need be at no loss for objects; and the right 
 determination of these were a fit exercise for their Christian wisdom 
 and charity. Of course, there are the usual congregational expenses, 
 ■which would require to be thus defrayed; and, when they judged it 
 expedient, there would be occasional collections for the poor of the 
 congregation. It is thus, too, that all the constituents of a right 
 ecclesiastical economy, as school-rents and salaries and repairs, parish 
 libraries, even school-houses and manses, might be helped out, and 
 at length wholly provided for. The spirit and good will of the peo- 
 ple would speedily be enlisted on the side of what themselves saw to 
 be right, and would soon experience to be practicable. It were sure 
 to keep up iheir habit of liberality, nay, to encourage and extend it, 
 did they see that every year their own apparatus of Christian useful- 
 ness was rising before their eyes into greater completeness and re- 
 spectability. There should be nothing in the multitude of the col- 
 lections to disquiet, for in proportion as these are multiplied, they 
 can subdivide; and no one who understands either the policy or the 
 principle of true religious benevolence, would ever wish them to 
 give more than, under the dictatesof conscience and Christian feel- 
 ing, they are prepared to give cheerfully. But 1 would not have 
 these objects multiplied at random, so as to be constantly shooting 
 aliead of what the people are laying their account with. In a few 
 years, it would settle down into a regular and unvarying method, 
 the use and wont of twelve special, and forty ordinary Sabbath col- 
 lections in the twelvemonth ; and we feel persuaded, that in the vast 
 majority of instances, these last would grow in amount, when their 
 destination came to be understood, and nothitig was made to inter- 
 vene between the comfort of the minister and the kindness of the 
 hearers among whom ho laboured. This needs not supersede, if 
 found necessary, a distinct and supplemental eilbrl,on the part of the 
 officials or leading men in the congregation, doing what in many in- 
 stances I understand ihcy arc now doing; taking measures that the 
 income of their clergyman shall at least not fall short of what they 
 judge to be a decent sutficieucy, while, at the same time, they would 
 rejoice, if, as the fruit of a spontaneous affection on the part of the 
 
FREE CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 47 
 
 congregation, the amount of the collective offerings should supersede 
 the necessity of any further care or exertion on their part.* 
 
 SECTION VII. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 
 
 1. On the strength of the above explanations, we would earnestly 
 wish the concurrence, the practical concurrence, of all other evan- 
 gelical communions in this great work. Why should they not adopt, 
 too, the device of a General Fund, so that, instead of confining their 
 efforts in a great degree to the support of their existing congregations, 
 they might have the same principle of expansion which we are 
 labouring to keep in operation among ourselves? We are all the 
 more desirous of this, when we think on the mighty, nay, the yearly 
 increasing spaces of wild and outlandish territory which are still un- 
 occupied. Are there not myriads of immortal, yet perishing because 
 neglected spirits in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and other large towns 
 of Scotland, as well as in hundreds of outfields throughout the coun- 
 try at large, which would require the united efforts of all the wise and 
 good in our land for many years to come? Why put oflf for another 
 hour, we do not say the fulfilment, but at all events the commence- 
 ment of this glorious enterprise; for in truth this, though forming the 
 greatest moral problem of our day, has scarcely been entered on. In 
 our city wastes, in our manufacturing villages, in many, very many 
 of our remote and rural hamlets; in all these put together, are there 
 thousands of families who live in guilt and die in darkness, and have 
 never up to this moment been the objects of aught like an adequate 
 effort for their Christian education. Should not all who love the 
 Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity, form themselves into agencies, and 
 select their respective fields of operation ? And though each of these 
 bodies will labour far more effectively when labouring apart from 
 each other, or when not overlaid by the weight of that very usual, 
 but at the same time very useless apparatus — we mean the incubus 
 of a complex and cumbrous committeeship — yet this need not hinder 
 a busy converse and comparison of their several methods on the part 
 of these distinct bands of philanthropists, the individual members of 
 which might often meet together in social party, and there provoke 
 each other to love, and more especially to this great and good work. 
 And another mighty benefit might be expected from such a co-opera- 
 tion as this. A common object of Christian charity, zealously prose- 
 cuted by all, will lead to a more general community of thought and 
 feeling betwixt them. It would speed the cause of Christian union at 
 an infinitely more rapid pace than ever will be effected by Synods and 
 Assemblies, labouring in conjunct deliberation to new-model their 
 formularies, and settle their articles of agreement. Let us be one 
 
 * In some places where seat-rents have been abolished, the voluntary expedient of 
 seat-offerings has been substituted ; and out of these not only are the precentor and 
 beadle paid, but church repairs arc provided for, and any remainder of debt upon the 
 fabric is gradually liquidated. The result of the abolition of seat-rents illustrates very 
 clearly the distinction between an impulse and a habit. Where they had been long- 
 established, they would never have been grudged; but now tliat they are done away, 
 they are not compensated, as it was fancied they would have been, by an increase in the 
 collections. The habit of larger collections has not yet been formed. 
 
48 ECONOMICS OF THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 • 
 
 in well-doing; and this, wherever there is real sincerity and right 
 good earnest, will prove the high-road to being one in sentiment. A 
 oneness in conduct will often lead to an essential oneness of creed — 
 for the reflex influence of the latter upon the former is far greater 
 than perhaps logicians and controversialisis in theology are willing 
 to allow. And so may we speed onward the accomplishment of our 
 blessed Saviour's prayer, even that palpable unity among Christians, 
 which He has announced as an indispensable stepping-stone to the 
 world's regeneration.* 
 
 2. We find that in this section, which we had devoted to general 
 considerations, we must fall greatly short of what our conception or 
 our aim was at the first, and of what our desire is still. These con- 
 siderations so crowd upon us, that aught like an adequate enforce- 
 ment of them would require a great deal more of time and strength 
 than we can afford to bestow. Perhaps some of them will be 
 touched upon in our purposed Appendix, the various articles of 
 which we earnestly recommend to the attention of our readers, and 
 especially such of them as are to be members of the next General 
 Assembly.! 
 
 * John xvii. 21. * See Appendix, No. 9. 
 
49 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 No. I. 
 
 On the importance of the Free Church Ministers giving their Testimony 
 
 and their Countenance in behalf of the Association. Sec. I. § 2. 
 
 It were well if some other name could be devised for our Fund than the Sustenta- 
 tion Fund, and some other name for our Committee than the Sustentalion Com- 
 roiitee. What we want is ihe adoption of some such name as will express, not the 
 sustentation of ministers, but Ihe support and witiial the extension of a Gospel 
 ministry in Scotland; a name, in short, that will stand related to the work of the 
 rainisiry raliier than to its wages; a name that would light up m people's minds 
 the idea of that public, patriotu;, and truly Christian object for which our Associa- 
 tions Jiave been instituted, rather than it should awaken on the instant, as it does 
 now, a personal, and as many feel it, a degrading association with an income to 
 our ecclesiastical labourers for the subsistence of themselves and their families. It 
 is thought that some such change would relieve our clergymen from that embarrass- 
 ing delicacy by which a number of them feel as if spell-bound, and tied up from any 
 attempt at the furtherance of a most righteous and religious cause. 
 
 I am too well aware of the virtue which lies in a name — the power of imposition 
 that may reside in a single word — not to feel the importance of this suggestion. 
 Yet it is extremely difficult to act upon ; or to select a title for our Fund and our 
 committee sufficiently brief, and at the same time sufficiently expressive for the 
 purpose of a designation. Our original appellation was, "The Financial Com- 
 mittee ;" but this suggested the notion of" a fund for all the expenses of the Church 
 — another instance, by the way, of the misleading power of a name. Certain it is 
 that we were exposed for a whole year to draughts and demands from committees 
 over whose expenditure we had no manner ot control; and to make our escape 
 from these, we had to find out some more special and discriminative epithet which 
 might announce more precisely the real object of our Associations, as well as pro- 
 tect from all encroachment boih the functions and the means of their presiding 
 Committee. 
 
 There is an analogy for such a change of name in the Church Extension Com- 
 mittee of the Old Assembly. It was originally the Church Accommodation Com- 
 mittee; and hence (a third example of ihe mighty influence that lies in mere 
 nomenclature) the inveterate notion that all we meant by that movement was a 
 mere multiplication of fabrics; or, in the derisive language of our enemies, that 
 ours was but a stone and lime reformation. I wished to find a title which might 
 be expressive of an addition to the living agency as well as to the architecture or 
 our Church. I could think of nothing better than Church Extension; and though 
 1 was not satisfied with the term as being altogether adequate, yet it has been 
 generally given in to, and the cause is now recognized by no other title either in 
 •Scotland or England. 
 
 Some may think the topic too insignificant to have been so much expatiated on. 
 We sh'iuld have thought so too, were it not tor our extreme desire to enlist so 
 influential a body as the clergy of our Free Church in the vigorous, unembarrassed, 
 unblusliing advocacy of the Associations; the prosperity of which is bound up 
 with the furtherance of a cause, as pure and noble as the loftiest and most disinter- 
 ested philanthropy ever was engaged with. 
 
 It will, indeed, be quite grievous, if they are restrained by any con>ideration 
 whatever fioui doing their uttermost for the proraotioa of a cause so obviously 
 
50 APPENDIX. 
 
 patriotic and Christian. We do not ask them to solicit contributions in their own 
 person ; but we ask them to put Ibrth their legitimate influence on the deacons and 
 collectors. It were surely no great sacrifice to hold a monthly meeting with these, 
 to be present at their reports ol' progress, to urge upon them tiie mighty importance 
 of llieir office, to suggest such directions and details as might aid them in the dis- 
 charge of its duties, to spirit them on by the example of ot.ier places, to state the 
 positive religious obligation which lies upon them of being as little burdensome 
 as possible, to represent the' superior blessedness of being givers rather than 
 receivers; and, if plain language be necessary, to tell how odious, how disgustingly 
 odious, for tliem to be an incubus on the Church, at the expense of other congre- 
 gations more generous than they, and so as to lay an arrest upon its extension, 
 and keep out the light of the gospel from localities far more destitute than their 
 own. On tills subject see a very admirable address to the Presbytery of Linlithgow 
 by James M. Hog, Esq. of Newliston. If such remonstrances as his do not tell in 
 arousing our Free Church ministers to a sense of their responsibilities and duties, 
 I give up in despair what, would they but co-operate as they ought, might be a 
 most easy and practicable attainment, such an augmentation of our means as would 
 enable us to meet both the ecclesiastical and educational wants of all our people. 
 Whenever the minister is in good earnest, and gives himself zealously and heartily 
 to the object, there never fails to be a prosperous association. In other words, 
 should the Free Church fall short of this lofty aim, the failure will lie at the door 
 of her own clergymen. 
 
 No. II. 
 
 On the Possibility of Supporting a Chvrch, even of National Magniiude 
 and Extent^ by the Contributions of the Middle and Lower Classes. 
 Sec. I. § 5. 
 
 To demonstrate this possibility, or rather to turn this possible into actual, it is 
 not necessary that each locality should do all for itself; but we utterly despair of 
 a universal result, if each locality, even the poorest, is not made to do something; 
 after which a something more might be done for it, proportional to what it has 
 done for itself. We need never calculate on the endurance of a congregation that 
 looks for all its supplies from without; and unless there be a fountain of more or 
 less yield from within, it will either be stifled in embryo, or infallibly go down in 
 a single generation. It is a sustained eflbrt by the people themselves, first to set 
 up an Association, and then to keep it going, which forms our best guaranty for 
 what may well be called fixity of tenure, whether to the mission or the ministry 
 that has been planted in the midst of them. And here I cannot but record the 
 unmixed complacency and satisfaction I have felt in all my correspondence with 
 the good people of Ellsrighill — an upland, yet pleasing and picturesque hamlet in 
 the neighbourhood of Biggar— where there is a devoted body of adherents, with 
 at most'two or three husbandmen, but made up chiefly of labourers and the ser- 
 vants of husbandmen. Their usual Sabbath attendance is ItiO; and the number 
 of their home communicants at a late sacrament, exclusive of those from a dis- 
 tance, was 85. Their annual contribution to our Central Fund is ^^41; and by 
 which, in a humble way, they managed to support the catechisl who laboured 
 amongst them. On being apprized by us that if, by a slight effort, they could raise 
 about £20 more, by the operation of our rule, they would secure £11)0 a-year for 
 their future minister— the last and truly most gratifying communication which I 
 received from them was an expression of their entire satisfaction with this arrange- 
 ment. O, for but two or three pious and intelligent travellers in our employ, under 
 whose influence and care not one of our infant assemblages need be suflered to go 
 down; who, instead of this, could foster hundreds more of them into being and 
 stability, and so multiply these beauteous spectacles of piety and Christian worth 
 all over the land ! 
 
 Never was a church in a better or likelier position for filling up all the waste 
 and vacant places in our land, than is at this moment the Free Church of Scotland. 
 In the first place, it could make sure of a little nucleus of adherents every where. 
 In the second place, it might form them into an embryo congregnlion; which, could 
 it only manage to keep up through the succebsive stages of Us advancement, might 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 51 
 
 in so many months, or say in two or three years, be in a fit state for the services 
 of a full and regular ministry. In the originating:, as well as ihe conducting of 
 i-uch a process, the utmost encouragement should be given to the efforts of lay 
 piety. Without a co-operation Imm this quarter, we cannot possibly, in the pre- 
 sent defect of our ecclesiastical labourers, meet the demands for help which come 
 in upon us from all parts of the country. Anterior, therefore, to the services of a 
 probationer, or even of a paid catechist, the Sabbath exercises might, in many in- 
 stances, require to be shared as in our ordinary fellowship meetings, by the pious 
 and the good among themselves. Who knows but that in the course of these 
 earlier operations, an able and approved catpchist may at length spring up among 
 them, and so raise them to a higher platform in the rank of their now progressive 
 congregations'! We know of one such, now large and flourishing, with its hand- 
 some church, and highly acceptable minister, which began not three years ago 
 with but four or six individuals. 
 
 But we have to speak not only of the demands from the country for help in men, 
 but of their demands for help in money. It cannot be too earnestly insisted on, 
 that nothing eff-'Ctual and permanent should be looked for in this way, if they will 
 do little or nothing to help themselves. And, therefore, one of the earliest steps 
 in devising for the continuance and growth of a new congregation, still in the 
 smallness and feebleness of its infancy, is to form an Association out of its mem- 
 bers, and give them well to understand, that, instead of counting on peculiar sup- 
 plies from abroad, they should feel their main dependence to be on their own efforts 
 and their own sacrifices. How these should be stimulated and carried onward, 
 till, chiefly by dint of their own liberalities and exertions, their ecclesiastical 
 economy was completed, will be detailed in a subsequent Note. See No. 8. 
 
 The truth is, that analogous specimens to that of Ellsrighill might be reared 
 every where. And this perhaps is the place for inserting Mr. Thompson's schedule, 
 as a most effective instrument, either for raising new Associations, or for resusci- 
 tating such as are extinct, or finally, for reinvigorating old ones. 
 
 RATES OF CONTRIECTIONS TO THE SUSTENTATION FUND. 
 
 SCALE. 
 
 PER WEEK. 
 
 PER 
 
 MONTH. 
 
 PER QUARTER. 
 
 
 S. 
 
 d. 
 
 £ 
 
 s. 
 
 d. 
 
 £ 
 
 s. d. 
 
 Rate, No. 1 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 2 . . . 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 Rate, No. 3 
 
 
 
 n 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 1 6 
 
 Rate, No. 4 ... 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 Rate, No. 5 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 Rate, No. 6 . . . . 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 6 
 
 Rate, No. 7 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 4 
 
 
 
 
 
 12 
 
 Rate, No. 8 
 
 2 
 
 
 
 
 
 8 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 4 
 
 Rate, No. 9 
 
 2 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 10 
 
 Rate, No. 10.... 
 
 3 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 14 
 
 
 
 2 
 
 2 
 
 Rate, No. 11 
 
 5 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 
 
 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 Rate, No. 12 
 
 * 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 On considering the above rates, I agree to give to the General Sustentation Fund the 
 sum specified in Rate No. — , for the year commencing at Martinmas, 1844, and request 
 
 the Deacon or Collector to call for it each 
 
 (Signature) 
 
 * Rate No. 1 is left blank, to suit parties who may find tliat even the Rate, in No. 2 is 
 beyond their ability; and Rate No. 12 is also left blank, to suit parties whose circum- 
 stances may enable them to give a higher Rate than any put down in the scale. Some 
 members of the Free Church give ±'1 a week, some X2, some £i a-week, and a few 
 even more, to tlie Sustentation Fund. 
 
 On the other hand, how grievous, how discouraging, to be told, that a process 
 so hopeful, and which might be carried into effect any where, is utterly impracti- 
 cable in this one, and that other, part of the country, from the extreme and uni- 
 versal poverty which abounds in it. The thing is experimentally untrue. And 
 BO contident am I of this, that 1 will not let go my expectation of a tenfold greater 
 
52 APPENDIX. 
 
 produce from the Highlands of Scotland, than we have ever yet received from 
 them, a confidence fully warranted by the following- encouraging examples of what 
 has been done, and is doing, in various localities ot that region: 
 
 Abie of Amount of Contributions to the Sustentation Fund from the following Highland 
 Furishes,from ist April 18'15, to 26lh March 1846, (nearly a year.) 
 
 Kingussie, Presbytery of Abernethy, X9 1 1 
 
 Glenurquliart. „ Abertarff, 110 9 3 
 
 Knockbain, „ Chanonry, 102 3 7 
 
 Kedcaslle, „ „ 84 9 3 
 
 Kiiniorack, „ Dingwall, £116 5 9 
 
 Fcrinlosh, „ „ 107 6 
 
 Urray „ „ 102 3 6 
 
 Callander, „ Dunblane 127 
 
 Loeligilphead, „ Dunoon and Inverary, ... . 116161 
 
 Kirkhill, „ Inverness, 152 19 
 
 Kiltarlity, , 96 12 
 
 Snizort, „ Skye, 75 16 3 
 
 Rosskeen, „ Tain, 95 8 1 
 
 Loclibroom, „ Lochcarron, 90 
 
 I doubt not that others, if I knew their neighbourhoods as well, would call forth 
 the same expressions of my admiration and gratitude. I feel confident thai if Mr. 
 Macrae of Knockbain, would go forth on a mission through the Associ'itions of 
 the north, he would awaken a noble spirit of Christian emulation and liberality 
 over the Highlands of Scotland. " Let us provoke each other to love and to good 
 works." 
 
 Truly the Free Church has had sore difficulties to contend against, both right 
 and left. On the one hand, it is cut altogether off from the liberalities of the 
 great bulk and body of the upper classes; and, on the other hand, as if to com- 
 plete our hciplessne??, and make sure our speedy and entire overthrow, are there 
 many injudicious sentimentalists among our friends, who would lay their interdict 
 on every attempt to obtain a revenue from the offerings of the great bulk and body 
 of the common people. And yet they will look for dividends all the while. Verily 
 to be placed under such taskmasters is worse than an Egyptian bondage. To 
 make dividends without contributions, I should hold to be a work of greater diffi- 
 culty than to make bricks without straw. 
 
 On the subject of a perpetuity for our system, I have omitted what I hold to be 
 a useful hint tor making sure of it. There is a labourer in my own Association who 
 gives 3d. a-week; but, with great judgment and good feeling, he gives it in three 
 names, his own, and those of two of his children. By thus dividing the family 
 contribution, even thouirh to include all the children, you behoved to associate 
 with each of^ their names a half-penny a week, or say a penny, nay, even a half- 
 penny a month, the good habit, along with its wholesome principle, might be 
 made to descend from generation to generation. 
 
 No. III. 
 On the Offerings of the Common People. Sec. I. § 6. 
 
 For my views upon this subject I would refer to a tract published by me more 
 than thirty years ago, in order to repel the objection, thai by taking contributions 
 for a religious object from people in humblf lite, we hastened their de.scent to a 
 etaie of pauperism. The tollowing extract forms one part of my reply to the 
 adversaries of all such institutions: 
 
 "The single circumstance of its being a voluntary act, forms the defence and 
 the answer lo all the clamours of an atlected sympathy. You tiike from the poor! 
 No! thev give. You lui<e beyond their ability ! Ot this they are the best jiidg(!S. 
 You abridge their comforts ! No! there is a comfort in the exercise of cliarity : 
 there is a comlbrt in the act of lending a hand to a noble enterprise; tlnre is a 
 comfort in the conlemplution of its progress; there is a comfort in rendering a 
 service to a friend, and when tl.at friend is the Saviour, and that service the cir- 
 culation of ihe message He left behind Him, it is a comlorl which many of the 
 
 J 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 53 
 
 poor are ambitious to share in. Leave them to judge of their comfort ; and if, in 
 point of fact, they do give their penny a-week to a Parochial Society, it just 
 speaks them to have more comfort in this way of spending it, than in any other 
 which occurs to them. 
 
 " Perhaps it does not occur to those friends of the poor, while they are sitting 
 in judgment on their circumstances and feelings, how unjustly and how unworthily 
 they think of them. They do not conceive how truth and benevolence can be at 
 all objects to them ; and suppose, that after they have got the meat to feed, the 
 Jiouse to shelter, the raiment to cover them, there is nothing else that they will bestow 
 a penny upon. They may not be able to express their feelings on a suspicion so 
 ungenerous, but I shall do it for them: 'We have souls as well as you, and pre- 
 cious to our hearts is the Saviour who died for them. It is true, we have our dis- 
 tresses; but these have bound us more firmly to our Bibles, and it is the desire of 
 our hearts, that a gift so precious should be sent to the poor of other countries. 
 The word of God is our hope and our rejoicing; we desire that it may be theirs 
 also — that the wandering savage may know it and be glad, and the poor negro, 
 under the lash of his master, may be told of a Master in heaven, who is full of 
 pity and full of kindness. Do you think that sympathy for such as these is your 
 peculiar attribute! Know that our hearts are made of the same materials wiih 
 your own; that we can feel as well as you; and out of the earnings of a hard and 
 honest industry, we shall give an offering to the cause; nor shall we cease our ex- 
 ertions till the message of salvation be carried round the globe, and made known 
 to the countless millions who live in guilt, and who die in darkness.' " — Chalmers' 
 Works, Vol. xii., pp. 143-145. 
 
 No. IV. 
 
 The Stability uf our Means lies more in the Smaller Contributions of the 
 many.) than in the Larger Contributions of the few. Sect. I. § 8. 
 
 When I was called, in the spring of last year, to address the friends of our Free 
 Church in Glasgow on the subject of their Associations, I believe some were dis- 
 appointed because I did nut address myself so much to the richer as to the general 
 classes of society. 1 spoke under a deep conviction both of the moral and pecu- 
 niary importance of plebeian contributions; and with an anxious desire that this 
 should be felt and acted on throughout the country at large. Perhaps the follow- 
 ing official statemenc will convince the reader of what mighty consequence it were 
 that an elevating force were brought to bear on the greatly too numerous class of 
 unproductive Associations. 
 
 Abstract, showing the Rate of Contrihittions, according to the Actual Remiltavces to the 
 Treasurer in Edinburgh, from all (he Associations of the. Free Church of Scotland, for 
 the six months immediatelij following the General Assembly of 1844: 
 
 Rates. 
 
 No. ofj Average Sum Amount Irom ail 
 Associ- from each the Association 
 ations.i per Annum. | per Annum. 
 
 1. At or above £500 per annum .... 
 
 2. From £300 to £500 
 
 3. " £200 to £300 
 
 4. " £100 to £200 
 
 5. " £75 to £100 
 
 6. » £50 to £75 
 
 7. " £20 to £.'J0 
 
 8. Under £20 
 
 9. Associations which madeno remit- 
 
 tances during the six months, but 
 have since remitted sums which 
 may fairly be taken as their half- 
 yearly sum, 
 
 10. Associations entirely blank, 
 
 1 ] . Stations returning very small sUms, 
 
 17 
 
 13 
 
 30 
 
 114 
 
 95 
 
 145 
 
 240 
 
 37 
 
 13 
 
 4 
 48 
 
 Total number of Associations,. . 756 
 
 £980 13 fi 
 
 354 15 
 
 238 16 4 
 
 131 10 
 
 86 8 4 
 
 62 5 4 
 
 34 1 4 
 
 14 2 10 
 
 £16,671 9 6 
 
 4,611 15 
 
 7,164 11 9 
 
 14,991 
 
 8,209 18 8 
 
 9,029 2 3 
 
 8,176 
 
 523 4 10 
 
 645 7 4 
 
 
 
 198 8 9 
 
 l£70,220 18 1 
 
£4 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Abstract, showinor the Rate of Contributions, according to the Actual Remitiancrs to the 
 Treasurer in Edinburgh, from all the Associations of the Free Church of Scotland, 
 from 15th May to I5th November, 1845: 
 
 Rates. 
 
 No. 
 
 Average 
 per Annum. 
 
 Amount 
 per Annum. 
 
 1. Above i?500 per annum, 
 
 2. From i;200 to i:500 
 
 3. " XlOOtojESGO 
 
 4. " £50 toXlOO 
 
 15 
 
 52 
 
 146 
 
 275 
 
 287 
 
 775 
 31 
 
 £910 14 6 
 
 288 7 7^ 
 
 129 16 10 
 
 73 2 4 
 
 28 9 2 
 
 jC14,695 18 1 
 
 14,9!l5 16 6 
 
 18,957 4 
 
 20,107 7 3 
 
 8,169 3 2 
 
 6. Remitted nothing during the above 
 
 .£76,925 9 
 
 
 The comparison of this abstract with a similar one for last year, enables us to 
 state the following differences betwi.xt them : 
 
 1. There are two fewer Associations this year than last, which yielded more 
 than £.500 a-year each, and the whole sum contributed by these is £i975, lis. 5d. 
 less. This process of diminution will infallibly go on, if the aid-receiving Asso- 
 ciations do not bestir themselves. 
 
 2. There are nine more which yield from £200 to £.500 more than last year; 
 and their united contributions exceed those of last year by £3,219 19s. 9d. This 
 forms a very wholesome class of Associations; and to tlie multiplication of these 
 do we look for the extension of our Church. 
 
 3. Of those which yield from £100 to £200, there are so many which rise above 
 the self-supporting point, and so many which fall beneath it. We would earnest- 
 ly urge upon them an aspiring effort toward the 2d class. They give £3,966, 43. 
 more than last year. 
 
 4. There are thirty-five Associations more than last year of those which give 
 from £50 to £100; and united they give £2,868, Gs. 4d. more than last year. But 
 Ihev are all beneatii the sell-supporting level; and we do, for the sake of the 
 Chiistianiiy of our land, implore tliem to rise above the condition of receivers. 
 
 5. Of those who give under £50 there are twenty-four less than last year: but 
 they give us amongst them much less in proportion — tliat is, £1,373, 5s. 7d. less 
 than last year. These form the heaviest part of our concern, and they will at last 
 sink the ship if not put under proper reuulation. It is for preventing the multi- 
 plication of these that our nursery operations are so indispensable. The otfice- 
 bearers connected witii such Associations, and who mak eno effort to amend tiiem — 
 these are they to whom 1 referred in the Preface as being most grievously in the 
 wrong. 
 
 Let me not be understood, however, as if I regarded with indifference the 
 larcrer contributions of the wealthy. All is wanted; and let me hope tiiat not only 
 will individuals of signal munificence arise in greater numbers to befriend us, but 
 that the aid giving Associations will increase and multiply more and mure. 
 
 No. V. 
 
 On certain requisite Modiji cat ions by vrJiich our present Sr/ste7n of an 
 Equal Dividend mis^ht be Improved. Sect. III. and IV., ^ 2. 
 The only semblance of an argument for an equal dividend is, that it carries an 
 aspect of justice («^'7»i^«s) to the ministers wlio came out at the Disruption. 
 There is but the aspect in it, however, and not the reality of justice. Had the 
 plan been adopted of each Association gftiing back one half more than it gave, up 
 to £150, it would have insured this dividend to at least the great majority of the 
 out^rone ministers, whereas, wiih no less tlian 318 Associations giving us less than 
 £00, and some of them less than £20 a-ycar, the result is unavoidable of a much 
 lower dividend throughout the whole Cliurch; so that all, iii fact, are weighed 
 down to a lower level, tor the sake of a few who, at the same time, would, if Ibund 
 in tlieir ascertained circumstances not to have been glaringly deficient, would, 
 
APPENDIX. 55 
 
 through the medium of the Home Mission Committee, or otherwise, have been 
 raised to £100; an allowance which, on the system of an equal dividend, all must 
 make up iheir minds to, thougii no practical good, but, on tlie other hand, a great 
 and depressing influence is brought to bear by it on the revenues of the Church. 
 
 But if the evil cannot at once "be done away, we should at least attempt to miti- 
 gate and to make it temporary. Some are proposing that the ministers admitted 
 from the Assembly 1843 to 1844 should come under the new regulation. But the 
 regulation of 1844 was adopted prospectively ; and I for one have no wish that 
 aught which can be complained of as having in it the injustice of a retrospective 
 operation, should be proposed in the Assemblies of our Free Church. 
 
 But there is a very obvious contravention of sound principle which ought to be 
 instantly provided against. The equal dividend should be continued only with the 
 ministers who came out, and not be perpetuated in the charges which are letl 
 vacant, whether by their death or by their removal. There have been several such 
 vacancies; and we have committed tlie flagrant error of keeping up the equal di- 
 vidend to the newly appointed ministers who have succeeded in their places. At 
 this rate, the anomaly of 470 congregations on a different footing from all the rest 
 would be perpetuated to the latest ages. Whereas the anomaly should be suffered 
 to die away with the disappearance of the original ministers, and at length all 
 would be placed under the common rule of getting as they give — a rule that should 
 stimulate to its uttermost every Association in the Church; and, under the opera- 
 tion of which we could accomplish two objects, otherwise hopeless ; first, the raising 
 generally of the allowance from the Central Fund to £1-50, and we think at length 
 to i2200; and, secondly, the indefinite expansion of the Church, so as to meet all 
 the necessities of all our population. 
 
 There is another modification which, we think, might be adopted with a most 
 beneficial influence. Let those ministers of the Disruption who choose to be 
 placed on the footing of one and a half more till they receive £150, signify this 
 wish ; and let it forthwith take effect. Many, we are sure, who are now kept down 
 to the present low dividend would rise, per saltum, to £150. We are confident of 
 many Associations which now give much less than £100, and even less than £.50 
 annually, that they would instantly put forth new vigour ; and rising each to £100, 
 and some of them I hope generously beyond it, would ensure £150 from the Central 
 Fund for their minister. The regulation of one and a half more would act as if 
 by barometrical pressure in raising the contributions; whereas, from the want of 
 this elevating power, the Church loses every year many thousand pounds which it 
 might otherwise realize. 
 
 I had a visit some time ago from a zealous friend of the Free Church, which I 
 confess greatly discomposed me. The object of it was to point out and complain 
 of an anomaly in which the system of getting as they give was likely to land us. 
 Some of the new ministers, under the new regulation, will, in virtue of the hand- 
 some contribution from their people, be entitled to £150, and so shoot a-head of all 
 who are limited to the dividend. Would that this anomaly were realized by all of 
 these ministers, or at least by as many as would demonstrate the stimulating and 
 elevating power of the rule under which they are placed. But the mortifying cir- 
 cumstance is, that what formed the most impressive argument for our adoption of 
 this system should thus have been turned into an argument against it. I perfectly 
 despair of a right and comprehensive policy being adopted, if in our popular Assem- 
 bly, where not twelve perhaps have listened to the subject in all its bearings, and 
 made a thorough study of it, the most laboriously devised scheme, however sound 
 and however much it may commend itself to the judgment of practical men, shall 
 be in dangerof being overset on the rash and hasty suggestion, whether of one who 
 can sport what may seem a plausibility, but only to those who take in but a part or 
 fragment of the whole ; or of one who carries weight because of his real excellence 
 in some departments of the Church's business, and who therefore is held worthy to 
 be a universalist in the direction of all her affairs. If it seem hard that they who, 
 by giving us £100, have earned their right to £50 more, should receive so much 
 from us, is it not infinitely harder that those who make no exertion, and give us 
 less than £50 each, should obtain more than £.50 additional, even upon the low 
 dividend of £100; and should put in even for more than £100 additional should the 
 dividend ever rise to J21.50; a point, however, that it will never reach under the 
 system of an equal dividend ; or if it does, it will be because of the cruel arrest 
 
H 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 which it has laid on church extension. It were a mighty relief could we obtain 
 the estaliiishment of a system under which the maximum of what we had to <,'-ive 
 over and above the remittances of any church, was not more than £50 to any of 
 our aid-receiving Associations. 
 
 No. VI. 
 
 On the Character and Prospects of a Chvrch indifferent to the Moral 
 and Religious State of the Outfield Population. Sect. III. & IV., § 7. 
 One can imagine, no doubt, a selfish church, headed by aspiring rulers; the 
 former caring more for the comfort of its existing ministers than for the Christian 
 good of the surrounding population ; and the latter satisfied with the command of 
 a body, that held withm its limits the political influence of five or six iiundred 
 congregations, although limited to this number, it should never be extended fur- 
 ther. One can imagine a collusion between these parties, and a measure carried, 
 Buch as a universal and prospective equal dividend, which promised, however falla- 
 ciously, to secure a higher provision for the ministers at large, while at the same 
 time it paralyzed all our home missionary efforts, and laid a sure arrest on the 
 extension of the Church. But <6uch a system never could enjoy the continued 
 support of an intelligent Christian public; and so aught like a general fund would 
 speedily wane to its extinction, leaving nothing to divide, and so landing us in no 
 dividend. 
 
 One of the most frequent marks of the indifference to be charged upon too many 
 of the churches in our land, is the union of two weak congregations, for the pur- 
 pose of forming a strong one. Surely if there be enough of population to make up 
 both, it were greatly better that each should retain its own distinct agency, and by 
 means of laborious and devoted missionary work, that they should recruit their res- 
 pective churches from the outfield families around them. There is a congrega- 
 tional interest that comes into direct conflict with the Christian good of the 
 community at large. 
 
 No. VII. 
 On Scales of Distribution. Sect. Ilf. & IV., § 15. 
 These can be variously constructed. The rate of one and a half more would 
 give rise to a scale, No. i. of the three here subjoined. The other two have been 
 actually proposed. 
 
 (1.) (2.) (3.) 
 
 Conlribution. 
 
 Stipend. 
 
 Contribution. 
 
 Stipend. 
 
 Contribution. 
 
 Stipend. 
 
 £50 
 
 £15 
 
 JE60 
 
 £\20 
 
 .£50 
 
 JC120 
 
 GO 
 
 90 
 
 70 
 
 1.30 
 
 60 
 
 120 
 
 70 
 
 105 
 
 80 
 
 140 
 
 70 
 
 136 
 
 80 
 
 120 
 
 90 
 
 150 
 
 80 
 
 144 
 
 90 
 
 13.5 
 
 110 
 
 165 
 
 90 
 
 152 
 
 100 
 
 150 
 
 130 
 
 180 
 
 100 
 
 158 
 
 
 155 
 
 190 
 
 110 
 
 164 
 
 The- increase of the 2d 
 column stops here. Tfie 
 (iri-t rises upwards through 
 
 180 
 200 
 220 
 
 200 
 205 
 210 
 
 120 
 130 
 
 140 
 
 170 
 176 
 180 
 
 the aid-receiving to the 
 contributions of the aid- 
 giving congregations. 
 
 Both colum 
 to inc 
 
 ns continue 
 rease. 
 
 150 
 IGO 
 
 180 
 200 
 220 
 Botii colum 
 
 184 
 168 
 193 
 198 
 208 
 ns increase. 
 
 U will be observed that by the 2d and 3d scales, no congregation becomes an 
 aid-giver till its conlribution has risen above £'2U0. All at or below £200 are 
 aid-receivers. Let it be observed that at present we have only 07 congregations 
 who give up to or above X'20(); and that if there be no increase in the number 
 of them, over and above providing the stipends of their own ministers, they would 
 have to make up the deficiency of towards six hundred aid-receiving congregations. 
 
APPENDIX. 57 
 
 We hold that the main purpose of scales would be served by the simple regula- 
 tion, ihat no congregation should be connected with the General Fund till it 
 remitted £50 a-year — after which let us imagine a scale terminating where No. 1 
 does; but that, instead of its rate of one and a half, each should receive ^50 more 
 than its contribution till the stipend came to J£150, and there should be no further 
 increase upon it. This VA'ould give rise to the following scale : — For £iii) gel back 
 i^lUO; for X'60, £110; for £70, £120; for £80, ^6130; for £90, £145; tor £100, 
 £150. After the selfish principle had carried up so many congregations to the 
 contribution of iJlOO, it is to he hoped that so many more would not stop there; 
 but that the generous principle would liien begin to operate, and we should have 
 contributions of £110, £120, and £150 — lessening their burden upon us from £50 
 to £40, £30, &,c., till they became self-supporting at £150. Then, and at thia 
 point would there commence our aid-giving congregations; and it will give some 
 idea of tiie capabilities of our Church, if to avoid complexity we shall keep out of 
 view the intermediate congregations; and, suppose that all the aid-receiving con- 
 gregations cost £50 each to the General Fund. Let us then conceive our Church 
 to consist of 750 congregations, and that one-third of them only, or 2-50, are aid- 
 giving, while two-thirds, or 500,are aid-receiving. This would imply a deficiency on 
 the part of the latter to the extent of £25,000 to be made up by the former, whose 
 contributions would therefore require to average £250 each — that is, £150 reserved 
 each for its own minister, and £100 over and above for the deficient congregations. 
 The sum total from the 250 aid-giving congregations, on the supposition that they 
 averaged £100 each, would be £50,000. Or, in other words, from a net revenue 
 of £112,500, we could afford to give £150 a year to each of 750 ministers. This 
 might be realized next year, could we only get rid of the enormous deficiencies of 
 those wlio now give us less than £.50 a-year. Why, to get up these alone to this 
 £150, we should require to expend more than the whole £25,000 of surplus put 
 into our hands by the aid-giving congregations — whereas, with this surplus, and on 
 the simple adoption of the regulation that none should be admitted into connexion 
 with us till they give £50 — we could, with the same £25,000 of surplus, insure 
 a dividend of £150 a-year throughout nearly all, or with a very few straggling 
 exceptions, a whole Church of 750 ministers. 
 
 And let it not be said that by ridding ourselves of this incubus, we doom to ex- 
 tinction so many of our poorer congregations. The truth is, that almost, if not 
 altogether, they, every one of them, under the stimulus of getting as they gave, 
 would remit the £50. Or if some few did not, there is not one of them, if found 
 by the Home Mission Committee to be meritorious cases, which would not receive 
 what would make up £100 from their funds, a sum as great as they ever can 
 receive under the system of an equal dividend, a system, therefore, which, though 
 continued for their sakes, would yield no practical good to them, and at the heavy 
 expense of keeping down the general dividend to its present level ; or, if the ex- 
 tension of our Church is to be prosecuted, of sinking it still lower. 
 
 When I think of the perfect ease wherewith both dividends might be increased, 
 and the Church rapidly extended, I am all the more conscious that these various 
 schemes of distribution should be discussed with the most perfect temper and 
 forbearance; and, also, that enough of time should be taken for the maturing of 
 them. It were grievous, indeed, if, when within demonstrable reach of so blessed 
 a consummation, we should fall short of it by falling out among ourselves. Let 
 us not give our enemies this triumph. 
 
 There is nothing v^hich has more shaken our confidence in the disposition of 
 the Free Church to become an extending Church, or at least in its perception of 
 the right measures for carrying this into eflect, than a late resolution on the part 
 of a numerous meeting of its ministers and elders, that the equal dividend should 
 be kept up in those charues v/hose ministers came out at the Disruption, even 
 after the outgone minister had been removed by death or by translation, and been 
 succeeded by one who liad made no sacrifice. If there be any soundness in the 
 principle that congregations should be encouraged to make an efix)rt for them- 
 selves by getting in proportion as they give, then there is so little sense or rea- 
 son in exempting from the operation of this rule, and that for ever, all those geo- 
 graphical portions of the Free Church territory, whose ministers happened to come 
 out at the Disruption, that the resolution they should be so exempted looks very 
 like a blow ai the rule or principle itself. And then, should the blow take eflect, 
 
SB APPENDIX. 
 
 it will involve llie restoration of a universal equal dividend, both present and pro- 
 Bpeclive. Our reason for deprecating such a measure as ruinous is not that it will 
 hang with depressing effect in all time coming upon the dividend, though this 
 must be one of its sure results, but tliat it will prove a death-blow to our Churcli's 
 extension, and thus incapacitate her for taking a share in the honourable work of 
 making aught like a large or successful inroad on that outfield population, who 
 occupy the wide and fearfully increasing domain of the country's practical hea- 
 thenism. It will land us in a most anomalous syste(n, at variance with all the 
 attempts which have been made of late years for adding to the number of minis- 
 ters, or churches, or schools in the land. The regium donum proceeds on the 
 rule of getting as they give, the sum awarded to the minister from the Treasury 
 bearing a proportion to the sum raised for him by the congregation. The present 
 allowance from the State for the erection of schools is regula'ted by the amount of 
 private subscriptions for the same object. The Church Extension of the old Gen- 
 eral Assembly, under which 200 churches sprung into being in four or five years, 
 advanced with such rapid strides, not by granting to all equally from the Central 
 Fund, at which rate we should not have had a tenth part of these additional churches, 
 but by a certain regulated centage, which left the remainder, or rather main bulk 
 ot the expense, to be provided for by local efforts. Let not oui Church be aban- 
 doned to the recklessness of men, who, under the power of one engrossing idea, 
 or misled by some specious plausibility that carries in it the semblance, and but a 
 eemblance, of the reasonable and the right, would shut out the light of all these 
 experiences, and rush headlong into a policy that would soon bring us to a dead 
 stand. The equal dividend, carried out and persisted in, will not only operate, 
 which it has already done, to a fearful extent, as a sedative on the efforts of the 
 aid-receiving, but as a sedative too, and that right soon, on the liberalities of the 
 aid-giving congregations. The spectacle of nearly one-half our Churches receiv- 
 ing each £120 from the Central Treasury, and contributing less than £50, and 
 this palpably due, not to the necessities of the case, but to the downright apathy 
 or indolence of Deacons and Collectors, such a spectacle cannot long be perpetu- 
 ated, but will soon fall to pieces under the weight and the exhaustion of its own 
 natural decay. 
 
 We have heard it objected to the method of getting as they give, that instances 
 may occur of the remittance from the association being made, not of a sum raised, 
 but ot a sum borrowed, and this to cause the larger proportional return from the 
 Central Fund in Edinburgh. And it is argued, from the possible or even the actual 
 occurrence of such a flagrant iniquity, in one or two instances, that the system 
 though otherwise and in general of most wholesome operation, should be there- 
 fore done away. It were well if these reasoners would only bethink themselves 
 ot wherein it is that the necessity or the wisdom of legislation lies, not most cer- 
 tainly in the sacrifice of a universal good, and this for the prevention of such a 
 rare and disgraceful enormity, that the very exposure of it would prove its own 
 severest punishment, and therefore its own most effectual check and corrective; 
 but for the prevention of a sore and universal evil, and this through the operation 
 ol a natural lethargy, which stirs up no vivid indignation whatever, because there 
 are so many who share in it, and keep it in countenance. When a congregation, 
 who might easily do three times more, gives less than £50 to the General Fund, 
 and yet without remorse would take out £120 for the maintenance of their minis- 
 ter, there is readiness enough, we admit, to call out shameful ; but the shame of 
 it 18 not really felt, or at least not so felt as to be of practical operation, as the 
 very existence of 318 such congregations in the Free Church most abundantly 
 tes>tilies. The law of getting as they give supplies the very stimulus that is 
 oLviously awanling; and which, if not supplied, will perpetuate such a drag upon 
 the Church as shall both restrain, or rather wholly arrest its progress, and keep 
 down the general circumstances of the whole body. 
 
 We would not have dwelt so long on the subject of this note, hut for our appre- 
 hension of its being the very subject on which the Free Church is likeliest to go 
 wrong. And should the apprehension be verified, then must we abandon our 
 loudly cherished hope of its ever attaining to the magnitude of a national insti- 
 tute, or of its ever reaching farther than by a very little way among our yet unpro- 
 vided families. The loss of importance to it is comparatively a bagatelle; but it is 
 
APPENDIX. 59 
 
 no basratelle that we should adopt a system which limits and disables us as a Home 
 Mission, and so confines that gospel within a narrower territory, the blessed calls 
 and overtures of which might, under another economy, be brought to every poor 
 man's hovel, to every cottage door. 
 
 No. VIIL 
 
 Fear lest the work of Church Extension should he mismanaged or 
 
 neglected. 
 
 We confess that our fears lest any suggestions which might be offered shaU 
 not be attended to, but be overlooked in the headlong and hurried style of Assem- 
 bly business, by which matters are huddled through, of whatever importance ; and 
 however essential, that they should have been well weighed and undergone a 
 thorough elaboration in the silent chambers of thought, or amid the leisurely 
 deliberations of a small and select committee, the members of which were not 
 overborne by the multitude of their tasks, we confess that our fears lest such mat- 
 ters should proceed in their wonted hap-hazard way, have been greatly confirmed 
 and aggravated by a very glaring inslnnce of it that occurred since tlie first im- 
 pression of this pamphlet was thrown off", and copies of it put into the hands of 
 the most prominent and public men in Edinburgh, and who have to do in the man- 
 agement of the affairs of the Free Church. The very essence of our proposed 
 training method for the non-ministerial Associations, lies in the separate corres- 
 pondence that we hold, and the separate accounts that we keep with each of these. 
 But so little was this adverted to, even after the method had been proceeded in for 
 nearly a whole twelvemonth, that two or more Committees which stood related to 
 these Associations were on the eve of a joint resolution that all their contributions 
 should be merged is^to one, and disposed of for the general behoof. This measure 
 was fortunately averted by the production of the original circulars which had been 
 sent forth at the outset of this peculiar arrangement, when it was discovered that 
 the produce of such Associations could not be alienated from the special to the gen- 
 eral application, without the violation of a distinct understanding with each and 
 with all of them. Jt was well that a very grievous blunder was thus prevented ; 
 but, on the other hand very mortifying to find that the charm and efficacy of thia 
 separate mode of treatment were still so little acknowledged and so little under- 
 stood. 
 
 It is, however, all the more gratifying now, that there is a likelihood of these 
 nursery operations being better attended to. My able and intelligent friend Mr. 
 Handyside, is all alive to the importance of them. The beauty and the efficacy of 
 such a process as that exemplified at Eljsrighill could not fail indeed to arrest and 
 convince all who have had the opportunity of closely observing them. And it is 
 a very great satisfaction that the correspondence with these nursling or embryo 
 congregations should have fallen into the hands and been placed under the direc- 
 tion of Mr. Tweedie. I do hope tiiat he will be left to prosecute this very high 
 and most prolific walk of usefulness without disturbance or embarrassment of any 
 sort. And here, let me be sufl>^red to make frank and honest utterance of the 
 mischief and mismanagement which I conceive to be attendant on the interference 
 of Committees with each other. Each should have its own well defined task and 
 territory, and each should be left to the separate and uncontrolled manag(^ent 
 of its own affairs — subject of course, and responsible at all times to the Assembly, 
 to whom it briniTs the annual report of its proceedings; but free from all jurisdic- 
 tion on the part of other Comrnitlees — between which there should be the utmost 
 readiness to confer, for the sake of mutual information and advice, but with no 
 power either to overrule one another's decisions or to intromit with one another's 
 fut;d!5. Nothing could exceed the regularity and right working of this mechanism 
 in the old Assembly; whereas the system of dovetailing and complicating the 
 committees with each other, has not only the immediate effect of confusing; every 
 thing; hut in its tendencies and final outgoings would place the whole business 
 of the Church in the hands of a small ecclesiastical oligarchy. J exceedmgly 
 grieve to find that many are yet so insensible to practical evils which even in 
 our brief course have been so often experienced from this cause, and ought to be 
 vigorously and instantly redressed. 
 
 Before quilting the subject of this article, let me state as minutely as I can the 
 
W» APPENDIX. 
 
 respective influences for good, and for evil; first, of the system under whifli each 
 locality receives as it gives; and secondly, of the system under which there is 
 placed full before the view of each locality from the outset, the share that will 
 fail to it, when once admitted among the ordained charges, of a prospective uni- 
 versal equal dividend. 
 
 1. Let the locality in question be some plebeian district of a lar^e town, or some 
 recent manufacturing village, chiefly made up of utter aliens from the gospel ; 
 there, with the exception of school fees, little or nothing can be expected, at the 
 outset, from the co-operation of their own payments. The necessary advances 
 will have to be made in the first instance by a voluntaryism ab extra, though it 
 need not to be long ere that the voluntaryism ah intra is brought into action. This, 
 indeed may begin so soon as a Sabbath service is instituted, with the customary 
 oflTerings at the door; but the great and decisive epoch of its operations is when, 
 after a sufficient nucleus has been obtained for the future regular congregation, a 
 District Association is set up for weekly contributions, and these placed in the 
 custody and for the purposes specified in the body of our pamphlet. The Associa- 
 tion has only to be well worked, and it will do wonders. The wholesome habit of 
 lending a helping hand themselves to the good work will take root amone the 
 families. Themselves will be astonished to find how much they can do for the 
 payment first, it may be, of their own catechist, then of their own probationer, nay, 
 towards the erection of their own church; last of all, for the support of their own 
 minister; and they ought to be provided with one so soon as they can raise two- 
 thirds of i^lOO a-year. But they need not stop there. So great is our faith in the 
 capabilities and willingness of our people under such a process as we are now 
 describing, that it were no marvel to us though they should raise the whole jCIOO 
 themselves, so as to obtain for their minister, at our present rate of one and a-half 
 more, £1.50 a-year, and yield him a good supplement to the btrgain. With what 
 delight would our aid-giving Associations push forward their liberalities, if sure 
 that for every £.50 additional to their present annual contribution, they gained a 
 distinct parochial economy amon? our former out-field population. Church exten- 
 sion would proceed, with rapid strides, from one territory to another, under such 
 a procedure as this, till all the spiritual destitution of our land were at length over- 
 taken. 
 
 2. But try the other way of it, and as yet we have been doing little better with 
 our out-field operations. Let the people among whom we work be confirmed in 
 their sordidness and lethargy by the imagination that all is to be done for them, 
 and that little or nothing is expected from themselves. Let the rudimental 
 education, under which they are made to pass, be one of selfishness, instead 
 of considerate regard fijr the necessities of a Church that has to provide for other 
 places and other people beside their own. Above all, let the prospect of an equal 
 dividend he held out to vitiate both the parties concerned; lulling the people into 
 apathy, and, perhaps, tainting, by a most unworthy motive, the he'art of him whose 
 predotuinant impulse to his work, as an ecclesiastical labourer, should be an affec- 
 tion for human souls. Last of all, let it be found, when the measure of its full ad- 
 mission as a regular charge comes to be agitated, that it cannot be done but at the 
 expense of nearly its wliole up-keeping to the General Fund of the Church ; 
 and then we may well imaginp, with the indisposition of aid-givers to do all if aid- 
 receivers are to do nothing, with what slowness Church-extension will proceed, or 
 rather, with what certainty it will soon be brought to a dead stand. A process so 
 impure in its earlier stage, and landing in such a burdensome result, neither will 
 nor should go prosperously forward. And yet, such is the mistiness and confusion 
 of ideas upon this subject, that people will ask. How can extension go on without 
 the encouragement of an equal dividend? With the encouragement of the one and 
 a-half more we can make way; but with the equal dividend we shall never make 
 way, at least throughout the dense and, as yet, unexplored masses of our increas- 
 ing towns and newly-sprung-up villages. A wedge is employed for penetration; 
 but it makes all the difference in the world, thoiisjli not greater than the difl'er- 
 ence between the two methods which we are now comparing, whether we shall 
 present the fi'ne or the blunt edge of it. 
 
APPENDIX. Bt 
 
 No. IX. 
 
 On the Prospects of Voluntaryism. Sec. VII. § 2. 
 
 I thoucrht it possible ihat among the other slight articles which compose this 
 Appendix, and which I am forced to write calamo currente, I might have had some 
 space for a few thoughts on the subject of the present one. I can afford to say no 
 more than that my hopes of an extended Christianity from the efforts of Volun- 
 taryism alone have not been brightened by my experience since the Disruption. 
 This is no reason why we should seek an alliance with the State by a compromise 
 of the Church's spiritual independence; and still less with a government, which 
 on the question of endowments, disclaims all cognizance of the merits of that 
 religion on which it confers support, and makes no distinction between the true 
 and the false, between the scriptural and the unscriptural. Still, it may be a heavy 
 misfortune, it may prove a great moral calamity, when a Government does lall 
 into what, speaking in the terms of my own opinion, I hold to be the dereliction 
 of a great and incumbent duty. And ere I am satisfied that Voluntaryism will 
 repair the mischief, I must first see the evidences of its success in making head 
 against the fearfully increased heathenism, and increasing still, that accumulates 
 at so fast a rate throughout the great bulk and body of the common people. We 
 had better not say too much on the pretensions or the powers of Voluntaryism, 
 till we have made some progress in reclaiming the wastes of ignorance and irre- 
 ligion and profligacy which so overspread our land ; or till we see whether the 
 congregational selfishness which so predominates every where, can be prevailed 
 on to make larger sacrifices for the Christian good of our general population. 
 Should their degeneracy increase to the demolition, at length, of the present 
 frame- work of society, and this in spite of all that the most zealous Voluntaryism 
 can do to withstand it, it will form a most striking experimental demonstration of 
 the vast importance of Christian Governments for the Christian good of the world. 
 The lights of experience and prophecy will be found to harmonize, when, after 
 what may be called the horrors of the middle passage, the desolating flood of 
 anarchy and misrule that is coming upon the earth, the Millennium will at length 
 emerge from it; but that, in conjunction therewith, the kingdoms of the world 
 shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; or, in other 
 words, the Governments of the world shall all be Christianized. 
 
 It seems very clear that internal Voluntaryism will not, of itself, do all, and, 
 with all the vaunted prosperity of the Free Church, we do not find that external 
 Voluntaryism will either make up the deficiencies of the former, or, still less, of 
 itself, do all either. If the two can be made so to act and react as to stimulate, 
 rather than check and discourage each other, a better result might be obtained 
 than we yet have arrived at; and, for this purpose, it calls for the highest wis- 
 dom of the Church to relate these two elements or agents aright to each other. 
 It, I trust, is pretty obvious now that, under the system of an equal dividend, it is 
 tiie imagined sufficiency of the external which keeps our internal Voluntaryism so 
 miserably low in more than half our congregations; and, on the other hand, the 
 provoking exhibition of so much apathy and selfishness must inevitably, sooner or 
 later, cool and alienate our aid-giving congregations, till an arrest be laid on the 
 further increase of external Voluntaryism. Under the system of getting as they 
 give, the very reverse of this takes place. The internal puts forth its most strenu- 
 ous efforts that it might share as largely as possible of the external; and, on the 
 other hand, the external rejoices in fostering and calling out the internal to do its 
 uttermost. 
 
 Should both together, however, fall short, and there is too much reason to ap- 
 prehend this, both from the selfishness and the short-sightedness which prevail 
 amongst us, then must we lay our account with an untouched mass of heathenism, 
 both in large towns and in many other places of the land. And so the argument 
 for State endowments, if only given on a right principle, will stand thus: Are the 
 thousands and the tens of thousands whom Voluntaryism, with all its efforts, and, 
 we may well add, with all Us high-sounding pretensions, have failed to overtake, 
 are they to be sacrificed to an impotent and most inoperative theory — a theory tried 
 in all its forms, and most palpably found wanting'? 
 6 
 
•9 APPENDIX. 
 
 We rejoice, therefore, in the testimony of the Free Churcli fur the principle of a 
 JValional Esiablishinenl, and most sincerely do we hope that she will never fall 
 away from it. Little do those of her enemies, who, at the same time, are the 
 friends of loyalty and order — (for, besides these, we can rank many of tiie turbu- 
 lent and disaffected in society as among the deadliest of her enemies) — little do 
 they know, that the Free Church is, at this moment, lifting a far more influential 
 testimony on the side of ecclesiastical endowments, than can possibly be given in 
 any other quarter of society. Hers is a wholly disinterested testimony in their 
 tavuur, for she reaps no advantage from them; but, sorely aggrieved thi ugh she 
 has been by our rulers, she will neither underrate the importance of their friend- 
 ship, nor yet the solemn obligation whicii lies upon them to care for the religion 
 of the people, and to provide within their sphere for this best and highest interest 
 of the commonwealth. 
 
 There is a saying of the King of Prussia quoted by my friend Dr. D'Aubigne, 
 and strangely rejoiced in by our Continental Voluntaries in support of their sys- 
 tem. The King puts the question. What were my duty to my mother if she were 
 a slave? and his reply is — Emancipate her. Were it not his farther duty to sup- 
 port her? or does he acquit himself of all he owes to her by simply giving her 
 liberty, and then leaving her to starve"? Were it not wrong to withliold from her 
 the requisite maintenance] Just as wrong as to give her the maintenance, and, 
 as the price of it, take away from her the liberty. This last is the wrong that hag 
 been done by the British Government to the Church of Scotland, to escape from 
 which 470 of her ministers came out at the Disruption, though in so doing, they 
 had to encounter and submit to another wrong, even the spoliation of what waa 
 most rightfully and constitutionally theirs. 
 
 No. X. 
 
 Conclusion — The Avthor^s view of what should he the state of the Chtirch''s 
 outward Business for the following twelvemonth. 
 
 We have no wish for the instant adoption of any material change, saving for a 
 more efficient agency, and more especially for paid visitors who might transact 
 personally between the Edinburgh Committees, and all the places in Scotland 
 where their services might be available for the good of the Free Church; which is 
 no other than the best and highest good of all our families. VVilh this exception, 
 we should be happy if things were allowed to remain as they are till the Assembly 
 ot'1847; provided that the following suggestion wereacted on, a suggestion whicli 
 I owe to a closely related friend of my own; and to whom I also stand indebted 
 tor the first suggestion which led to the memorable Convocation of November, 
 1842. an event which both in itself and in its consequences is one of the greatest 
 that ever took place in the ecclesiastical annals of Scotland. 
 
 The suggestion is simply this: That the Assembly of 1S46 should appoint a 
 committee, made up of real business men, with a very small proportion of eccle- 
 siastics; and who, after a lengthened, and deliberate, and comprehensive survey 
 of the whole matter, might rpport to us next year their well-inatured opinion, both 
 as to the best way of raising the Church's funds, and as to the best and fittest 
 method for the distribution of them. So large a pecuniary concern, approaching 
 to nearly a hundred thousand pounds in the year, and implicated with an object so 
 mighty as the moral and religious well-being of Scotland — we say, that an interest 
 of such extent and magnitude as this, should not be left at the mercy of every 
 random conception which might occur on a single and superficial glance to any 
 hasty observer; but should be committed to the judgment and experience of men 
 who are conversant in the affairs of life, and can look with a practised eye both to 
 the connections and the consequences of any arrangeinent that might be proposed. 
 Let us wait patiently for the well-weighed deliverance of such men as these; and, 
 meanwhile, let all our Associations, placed under their surveillance, and vigilantly 
 looked to in all their workings by able inspectors so well qualified to appreciate 
 and distinguish between the com'mendably cfticient and the culpably remiss— let 
 these Associations feel and act as il' put on their good behaviour; and then, with 
 the blessing of God, wc predict, with all confidence, that by May, 1647, they will 
 
APPENDIX. 83 
 
 have made full proof of their sufficiency for suptainir.g and perpetuating- a machinery 
 adequate to all the religious and all the ecclesiastical necessities of our people. 
 
 I'he above paraoraphs were written last year, the change being only made now 
 from the years 1845 and 1846 to 1646 and 1847. But the suggestion has been mis- 
 understood, and so the matter was devolved on the J?ustentation Committee, where, I 
 am told, it was agitated at a large general meeting, tiie worst kind of body, we do 
 not say for finally deciding, but certainly for preparing a complex arithmetical 
 scheme, made up of many details, and involving many and various considerations. It 
 is only a small and very select committee which can rightly make their way to such 
 a scheme. It should be then long and in many ways before the Free Church pub- 
 lic, and subject to the amendments and modifications that might be proposed from 
 all quarters, ere it shall be definitely adopted by the General Assembly. We can- 
 not imagine a more admirable mechanism for a process like this, than that which 
 is supplied by the Church courts of our Presbyterian constitution, when any meas- 
 ure for permanent regulation is committed to the ordeal of the Barrier Act. We have 
 no fear that once the manifold lights of free and full discussion have shone upon 
 the question in all parts of the Church, the returns from Presbyteries will evince a 
 very general and harmonious understanding of what is best. 
 
 Though this proposed Committee should have its sittings in the Metropolis, It 
 ought to have one or two members from other places, and more Especially from 
 Glasgow, It is by no moans indispensable that they should be selected from the 
 members of Assembly ; for did we confine ourselves to these, we should be cut off 
 from the services of some of the wisest business heads and best business habits in 
 all Scotland. My reason for suggesting even so much as one ecclesiastic is, that 
 they may assign certain good general objects which might not so readily occur to 
 men of another profession, though these be the fittest for devising the pecuniary 
 means by which they might be provided for. Certain it is that none who stand 
 publicly committed to any particular view should be allowed to have a share in 
 them — however desirable it be that both they and all others should be encouraged 
 to give their respective proposals or schemes for the consideration of such a Com- 
 mittee as we have ventured to recommend. 
 
 We cannot figure a more egregious absurdity than to speak of the Church being 
 committed to any particular scheme, or to any part of one, as, for example, an equal 
 dividend. She is not more pledged to give out an equal dividend to all ministers, 
 than she is to take in no more than a penny a week from all contributors. When 
 the system of our present Associations was first expounded, the demonstration of 
 their power was grounded on the hypothesis of a penny a week, from each mem- 
 ber, on which, as the base line of our calculation, we stated how much could thus 
 be allowed to each minister. We can imagine nothing more ruinous than to 
 ground upon this, not only a present but a prospective claim to an equal dividend 
 in all time coming. And yet we hear as if an equal dividend were the radical 
 principle of the scheme. The radical principle of our scheme is the power of 
 littles; and it is to the practical disregard or reversal of this that all our difficul- 
 ties are owing. It is because of the confidence which our aid-receiving Associa- 
 tions have in great sums, and not in small sums; in the hundreds raised in Edin- 
 burgh and Glasgow, instead of the pennies which ought to be raised not from 
 wretched minorities, but from the great bulk and body of their own congregations, 
 it is because of this that the Free Church moves at so slow a pace among the out- 
 fields of our land. Would they but generalize their contributions till it became a 
 universal habit that each should give something, it might enable us to progress at 
 a greatly faster rate than we are doing. 
 
 It is my confidence in the power of these Associations when well worked, which 
 leads me to befriend the idea of admitting our Free Church teachers to a share in 
 the Sustentation Fund, This is quite a topic for the deliberation of our proposed 
 Committee, But, meanwhile, had our coming Assembly but the faith and cour- 
 age to venture on an experimental year, it would mightily enlighten the question, 
 and I fondly hope would supply a powerful impulse for the enlargement of our 
 cause. For the idea of some such process as the following, I am indebted to a 
 very able and energetic friend. Let the Sustentation Fund be kept entire for the 
 ministers till their dividend reached £100 a-year, Aiterwards, let the increase 
 upon this be alloted to the schoolmasters to the extent of £25 a year. Then what- 
 ever ulterior increase might accrue, let it be shared in the proportion of four to 
 
64 APPENDIX. 
 
 one between the two parties. It were no surprise to me, however Utopian it 
 might appear to others, ihat under the new influence which such a system would 
 create and keep in action, there would speedily result a dividend of £200 for eacli 
 minister, and j£50 for each schoolmaster throughout the vast majority of our church, 
 while the inferior provisions made for those who are under the rule of getting as 
 they give, would rapidly tend upwards to this maximum. We have no sympathy 
 with those who think that we are aspiring at a maximum which is too large, feeling 
 as we do that all public functionaries, and more especially the functionaries, of edu- 
 cation, are greatly underpaid. Little are our aid-receiving Associations aware 
 how much they stand in the way of high interests. O, that they had more of the 
 spirit of the Apostle, who told the elders of Ephesus, that his own hands minis- 
 tered to his own necessities; and adduced the precious saying of our Saviour, tha«t 
 it was more blessed to give than to receive ! 
 
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