THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 FREDERIC THOMAS BLANCHARD 
 
 I=irXTlnf=I=rrf 
 
 V a friend, 
 [lie be, 
 to lend. 
 
 ledge doth 
 ^ore, 
 ten lent, 
 
 ;ently, 
 etnrn 
 
 ?s not turned 
 
 i 
 
 Iv, think {11 
 rn duly, | 
 
 n y 
 
 life, 
 
 [fact in mind 
 id this hook 
 
 se you strife, 
 jiiL'&b mi unce in your 
 
 Return this hook to me quite clean. 
 And receive the thanks of 
 
 A. D. KEAN. 
 
 N. B.— Commence with the title 
 page, and read every word to the end 
 of the book that you may do the 
 author justice. 
 
 mi o^i^^®? h^^^ .^ Cover on this ^ 
 \m Book while usin g it. A. D. K. \\ 
 
 Price $ 
 
 Bought
 
 THE WITNESS PAPERS. 
 
 THE 
 
 HEADSHIP OF CHRIST 
 
 AND THE 
 
 RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE, 
 
 A COLLECTION OF ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND 
 
 DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES, AND 
 
 PERSONAL PORTRAITURES, 
 
 BY 
 
 HUGH MILLER, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " FOOTPRINTS OF THB CREATOR," " TESTIMONY OF THB ROCKS," 
 " OLD RED SANDSTONE," " POPULAR GEOLOGY," ETC 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 ROBERT CARTER AND BROTHERS, 
 
 530 Broadway. 
 1882.
 
 ADVEHTISEMENT 
 
 TO THE AMERICAN EDITION; 
 
 This volume, like the previous works of Hugh Miller, is issued 
 by special arrangement with the author's family ; while Mr. Bayne, 
 the editor, in a note to his Preface to the English edition, presents 
 in brief the historic facts that caused the division of the Scottish 
 Church, and has thus rendered the entire discussion more intel- 
 ligible to American readers, and at the same time developed the 
 great importance of the principles involved. 
 
 Hitherto the author has been chiefly known for his writings on 
 Geology, and in some other departments of secular literature, 
 where he has won a distinguished name and achieved a prominent 
 place among the lights of his age ; in this work he is presented 
 in a new character, as the champion of the Church in the exciting 
 period of her history to which these articles refer. In this field of 
 effort, no less than in those more quiet walks in which he delighted 
 to range, he exhibits a fresh, vivid, and natural style, and that won- 
 derful skill in description which Dr. Buckland said he would give 
 his left hand to possess. 
 
 The celebrated letter to Lord Brougham, which first directed 
 public attention to Mr. Miller as a powerful writer, and as the man 
 
 Hii^n-i '"^^Q
 
 IV ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 best fitted to espouse and maintain the cause of the Church, will 
 be found at the opening of the volume ; and the papers, generally, 
 prepared by Mr. Miller in this cause, which enlisted his warmest in- 
 terest and engaged his best powers, are characterized by Mr. Bayne, 
 in his Preface, as " noble in eloquence, keen in satire, powerful in 
 invective, and masterly in argument." 
 
 Though written with primary reference to the Church of Scot- 
 land and the spiritual welfare of the Scottish people, the great 
 principles advocated in the work lie at the foundation of all reli- 
 gious prosperity, while those against which it contends are insepara- 
 bly associated with spiritual torpor and death ; and the discussion is 
 thus appropriate to all times and places. 
 
 The English edition of this work contains an Appendix on " the 
 Cardross Case," embracing the address of Dr. Candlish before the 
 Commission of the General Assembly in relation thereto. As the ad- 
 dress is of considerable length, and its details of no special interest 
 to American readers, instead of this Appendix will be found a brief 
 outline of the more recent history of the controversy, including a 
 statement of the Cardross case, and of the present aspect of the 
 whole question. 
 
 The work will secure many readers on this side of the Atlantic, 
 and add to the author's great popularity. 
 
 American Publishebs. 
 
 Boston, Ootobbb 1, 1863.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 To enter into the spirit of this book we must distinctly 
 apprehend the conception formed by its author of the Pres- 
 byterian Church of Scotland. 
 
 Throughout her entire history the Scottish Church has 
 been distinguished by two leading characteristics, seldom found 
 in combination. 
 
 First : She has assumed a high and commanding ecclesias- 
 tical position, claiming a jurisdiction in spiritual concerns inde- 
 pendent of and coordinate with the jurisdiction of the civil 
 magistrate. She has declared Christ the Head of the Church, 
 not in any abstract and inconsequential sense, but to tlie 
 clear practical effect of having given his Church upon earth 
 a code of law, — the Scriptui'es of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment, — and of empowering and requiring her to regulate her 
 affairs by that code alone. 
 
 Secondly : She has been eminently a Church of the people. 
 
 What she claimed, she claimed not as a hierarchy, not as a 
 
 clerical corporation, but as a congregation of Christians. The 
 
 minister had his phue ; the member had his place. Tlie 
 
 1*
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 powers and rights of each were held equally {'rem Christ the 
 King. 
 
 By both these characteristics the Church of Scotland has 
 been distinguished from the Church of Engh\nd. 
 
 The southern Establishment was the work of kings and 
 statesmen. The constitution of the Church grew gradually 
 into shape and form as part of the civil constitution of the 
 realm. Slight share in its construction was taken by 
 divines ; — no share at all by the peojjle. It was Henry, it 
 was Burleigh, it was Elizabeth, who were the nursing fathers 
 and nursing mothers of the Church of England. Ecclesias- 
 tical personages aspired to nothing higher than being their 
 recognized and rewarded functionaries. From their position 
 as divines they derived no commanding or regulating author- 
 ity. The mechanism of the Church of Rome occupied the 
 land, and they complacently lent their aid while it was 
 adapted to the circumstances of a civil popedom. The ques- 
 tion of the original constitution of the Christian Church was 
 not forced upon them by circumstances, and they were well 
 content to evade it. The result was, that independent spir- 
 itual jurisdiction was conclusively withheld from the Church 
 of England. The Act of Supremacy bound her to the state. 
 
 The part played by the people in the construction of the 
 Church of England was still more insignificant than that 
 j)lay('d by divines. The Tudor sovereigns — able, energetic, 
 imperious, proud by nature, proud in virtue of their prerog- 
 ative — thought little of the feelings of the commonalty in 
 promulgating their haughty decrees. The Englisli — the most
 
 PREFACE. VIl 
 
 peaceable, loiig-sufFering, and loyal of European nations — had 
 not yet dreamed of asserting their dignity and rights against 
 the majesty of monarchs. They did, indeed, at last awaken. 
 AVhen the sceptre was held by a race intellectually and 
 morally inferior to the Tudors; when loyalty and reverence 
 had been sapped by contempt ; when nearly half a century 
 of treacherous oppression had roused to irresistible fury the 
 tremendous instincts of religion and natural justice, — the 
 people of England showed themselves. The Puritans en- 
 gaged in a struggle for two objects : civil liberty, and the 
 reformation of religion. The civil constitution of England 
 they vindicated in its ancient principles, and placed imjireg- 
 nably on its modern basis. But when the long and eventful 
 conflict was at an end, the constitution of the Church of Eng- 
 land remained essentially unchanged, and the Christian people 
 Avere not recognized as one of its integral parts. 
 
 The history of Scotland presents an entirely different 
 ecclesiastical prospect. The vehement and impetuous nation 
 north of the Tweed embraced the Reformation witli a decis- 
 ion and enthusiasm which brooked no half-measures. The 
 Church of Rome was first of all overthrown from base to 
 turret, and a platform found for a new construction. In 
 rearing the new edifice, divines bore a chief, and statesmen a 
 subordinate part. And these were divines who magnified their 
 office ! They had learned in the school of Calvin to see the 
 glitter of earthly crowns pale in the light of the sanctuary, 
 to exalt the Church as the city of God upon earth, to set 
 small store by human authority against the voice whicli they
 
 VIII PREFACE. 
 
 believed they heard speaking direct from heaven. They 
 invoked their Divine King to lay the foundation of His 
 House. Ten centuries of prescription were less to tliem than 
 one promise of Christ. They have been accused of narrow- 
 ness, of fjinaticism, of violence ; but all the world has recog- 
 nized them as men of intrepid courage, of iron will, of high 
 devotion, who quailed not in the presence of kings. Knox, 
 Melville, Henderson, were very different personages from 
 those politic and temporizing prelates who showed a courtier- 
 like subservience to Henry, or trembled lest Elizabeth should 
 unfrock them. As churchmen, they would have no king but 
 Christ. They practically vindicated the doctrine of Christ's 
 Headship, by securing that no Act of Supremacy was inscribed 
 in the statute-book of Scotland. And they had a nation at 
 their back, — an earnestly, ardently believing nation, — "a 
 nation," says Carlyle, " of heroes." The circumstances of 
 their position were such that they could not, and their char- 
 acter and the doctrines of their Church were such that, under 
 any circumstances, they assuredly would not have overlooked 
 the people. The consent of the congregation — laid down by 
 Calvin in the Institutes as an essential element in the appoint- 
 ment of ministers — was given effect to in the ecclesiastical 
 constitution by means of the Call. And thus the Cluircli of 
 Scotland became known to liistory and to fame as liaving rec- 
 onciled the seeming contradictions of an intensely ecclesiastical 
 and a broadly popular character. 
 
 Under these auspices the General Assembly of the Kirk 
 came into existence. Implicitly confided in by tlie jK-ople,
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 and representing even the laity to a far larger extent than 
 the Scottish Parliament, it exercised throughout the seven- 
 teenth century a commanding influence in all the affairs of 
 the kingdom. Tiie objects for which it contended were the 
 same as those of the early English Puritans ; but its victory 
 was more complete than theirs. At the Revolution settlement, 
 it appeared that both the civil and religious liberties of Scot- 
 land were vindicated. In the Treaty of Union, which speedily 
 followed, the constitution of the Church of Scotland was care- 
 fully guarded. The Act of Supremacy was confined to the 
 southern part of the island, and no provision was made for the 
 introduction of patronage into Scotland. In possession of a 
 spiritual independence never claimed by the sister Establish- 
 ment, and with the rights of the Christian people intact, the 
 Kirk of Knox and Melville, the Kirk of the "Westminster 
 Confession and the Solemn League and Covenant, — the old, 
 indomitable Kirk of Scotland, — rested from her labors. 
 
 All this was to Hugh Miller a faith deliberately ratified 
 by his intellect, and enshrined with dearest and most exalt- 
 ing associations in his heart of hearts. Patriotism and 
 affectionate reverence — the feeling with which an English- 
 man regards the Long Parliament, and the feeling with which 
 a Jew of old regarded the Temple on Mount Moriah — were 
 combined in the emotions with which he contemplated his 
 Church. To stand in spirit by the side of her great men ; 
 to follow her with compassionate or exulting sympathy from 
 reverse to reverse, from triumph to triumph ; to draw his 
 breath deep in unutterable execi'ation at thought of the a[)os-
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 tate Lauderdale or the bloodhound Claverhouse ; to know 
 her for his countiy's Church, when her canopy was the mist of 
 the hill, and the trampling of the troopers broke in upon the 
 lifted psalm, as well and as proudly as when she bearded nion- 
 archs, and set her foot on the necks of her enemies, — this 
 seemed involved in the fact of his being a Scotchman. That a 
 fundamental principle of her constitution, such as the right of 
 the Christian people to have no minister intruded upon them, 
 after being preserved through the storms and treacheries of a 
 century, should be set aside by a Patronage Act smuggled by 
 Tories through the British Parliament in contravention of the 
 Treaty of Union, was to him an absurd idea. He looked 
 upon the Patronage Act as a galling fetter, which her creed 
 and her history pledged the Church to cast off. He sympa- 
 thized with the Seceders of the lust century in their refusal to 
 wear it. He assented to the petition against it sent up year by 
 year to Parliament from the General Assembly, until Moderate 
 ascendency culminated under Robertson, and the Church, for 
 the first time in her history, winked at her own humiliation. 
 In the evangelical minority of the eighteenth century, headed 
 by Erskine, he recognized his beloved Church as cordially and 
 as confidently as in the homeless hill-men who clung to Peden 
 and to Cameron in the seventeenth. When that minority 
 swelled into a majority, — when the ancestral principles of the 
 Chui'ch of Scotland shone out once more broad and clear, — 
 there was no man better fitted to understand the position of 
 the Establishment — no man more ready to support and defend 
 her — than Hugh Miller.
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 The struggle between the Church of Scotland and the civi] 
 authority, which ended in the Disruption, was inaugurated by 
 the passing of the Veto Act by the Church. The conflict took, 
 shape and character throughout from that celebrated enact- 
 ment. In daring to put into the hands of the people a veto on 
 any minister presented to a charge, but not accepted by the 
 congregation, the Church vindicated both her ancient and dis- 
 tinctive principles. She proclaimed that the rights of the 
 Christian people were inidienably secured to them ; and she 
 asserted her power, in face of an existent act of Parliament, 
 to give those rights effect. Non-intrusion and spiritual inde- 
 pendence were thus linked together throughout the Ten Years' 
 Conflict. 
 
 That Hugh Miller viewed the contest in this manner, we 
 know from his own words. "The contendings of the Seces- 
 sion in the last century," he wrote, shortly before the Dis- 
 ruption, " involved mainly the Non-intrusion principle. The 
 contendings of our Presbyterian fathers in the century previous 
 involved mainly the great doctrine that Christ is the only 
 Head of the Church, and that, in the things which pertain to 
 his kingdom, she owns no other Lord but Him. And in our 
 pi-esent struggle, both these twin principles of strength are 
 united" 
 
 The present volume consists of two celebrated pamphlets 
 written by Hugh Miller in defence of the contending Church, 
 and of a gleaning — a scanty and desultory gleaning — from 
 J)is articles in the Witness newspaper on the Church question. 
 These will assuredly convey no adequate idea of his part in
 
 XII PREFACE, 
 
 the Disruption controversy. It was only here and there that 
 an article could be selected. To have taken all that displayed 
 high excellence, — all that were noble in eloquence, keen and 
 brilliant in satire, powerful in invective, or masterly in argu- 
 ment, — would have been to fill many volumes. It is likely 
 that articles which created a particularly wide and deep sensa- 
 tion at the time, and are still vividly remembered, will be 
 missed. To revive the interest which made them effective, — to 
 call from oblivion some speech, pamphlet, or party manoeuvre, 
 agitating all minds at the time, and now everlastingly forgotten, 
 — was impossible. It has been carefully endeavored, also, to 
 avoid inflicting pain upon any still aUve who were engaged in 
 the conflict, or upon the surviving relatives of those who have 
 died. Controversy is controversy ; and Hugh Miller fought 
 for his Church with the earnestness and vehemence of his cov- 
 enanting fathers at Marston Moor or Drumclog. But when 
 the dust of the fight is laid, and its din is over, — when the 
 grave has closed over so many of the combatants, — it would be 
 useless, and it would be ungracious, to reawaken its animosities. 
 Of the influence exerted upon the public mind of Scotland 
 by Hugh Miller's articles in the Witness on the Church ques- 
 tion, there are thousands still living who can speak. A year 
 or two before the Disruption, I passed a winter in a Highland 
 manse. I was too young to form a distinct idea of the merits 
 of the dispute. But there was a sound then in the air wiiich 
 I could not help hearing. It seems as if it were in my ears 
 still. Never have I witnessed so steady, intense, enthralling 
 an excitement. And I have no difficulty, even at this distance,
 
 PREFACE. XIII 
 
 ill discriminating the name which rung loudest through the agi- 
 tated land. It was that of Hugh Miller, — the people's friend, 
 champion, hero. There are men, there are family circles, to 
 whom certain of these articles will suggest pathetic recollec- 
 tions. A sentence, a word, will recall the olden time, with its 
 hallowed, its tender, its stirring associations : the fireside of 
 the manse, round which member after member of the family 
 grew up ; the garden, with its old fruit-trees and familiar walks ; 
 the broad, bright, j^lacid landscape, stretching from the manse- 
 door ; the unadorned church close at hand, with the household 
 graves around it ; — and then the eye will see to read no more. 
 With all its defects, this volume will illustrate with some 
 comprehensiveness the manner in which Hugh Miller took 
 part in the Disruption Controversy. It will show to what a 
 marvellous point of perfection he was equipped for the work 
 he had to do : how familiar to him was the whole range of 
 Scottish history, ecclesiastical and literary ; how accurately he 
 had appreciated Presbyterianism as an influence in all prov- 
 inces of Scottish life ; how perfectly he understood the rela- 
 tions of parties in the Church and kingdom of Scotland, at 
 every stage of the national history. He is seen assailing 
 patronage from every point, — exposing its unconstitutional 
 introduction, its disgraceful history, its pernicious practical 
 effects. The volume contains also his deliberate and emphatic 
 testimony to the doctrine of the Headship of Christ. Though 
 dead, he may still be heard speaking to the people of Scotland 
 on that sacred and momentous theme. The following sentences, 
 in which he described the impression made upon certain per-
 
 XIV P K E F A C E . 
 
 sons by attempts practically to insist upon the doctrine in ques- 
 tion, read in the light of present occurrences and prevailing 
 frames of mind, may seem almost prophetic: — "As a practical 
 rule of conduct, that sets itself in opposition to secular interests, 
 judicial interdicts, and the decisions of magistrates, they can- 
 not and will not tolerate it. Their merely nominal belief in 
 Christianity — held as so respectable and so praiseworthy at 
 other times — always puts on, in such circumstances, its true 
 character as simply no belief at all. Christ becomes to them 
 a mere phantom King, unreal and invisible ; and his kingly 
 authority appears but as a mischievous and repulsive fiction, 
 subversive of the principles of good government." 
 
 And are these questions of spiritual independence and of 
 non-intrusion, after all, but lingering phantoms, paling grad- 
 ually, and sure to pass away in the light of progress ? Many 
 think so, — many able, and not a few devout men. I think 
 they err. That, in face of all the coercion which can possibly 
 be brought to bear upon the subject, the genuine Presbyterians 
 of Scotland will maintain both, need not be doubted. But may 
 not England awake to a new interest in the rights of the Chris- 
 tian people, and in the independence of the Church? May 
 not the liberal and thinking part of the community, scandalized 
 and distressed by such scenes as have recently occurred in a 
 London church, ask whether the just and rational remctly for 
 such a state of things is not to give congregations a voice in 
 choosing their own ministers ? And may not those in the 
 Church of England who hold most closely by the princijjles of 
 the Puritans bethink themselves whether they have not un-
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 wisely lost sight of one doctrine professed by Cartwright in 
 England, and by all the reformers in the northern part of the 
 island, — the doctrine that Christ is King and Head of his 
 Church, and that it is in the prince's province " to exercise no 
 spiritual jurisdiction " ? 
 
 It is hardly necessary to add a single word to the preced- 
 ing, in order to render this volume intelligible to American 
 readers. Stated in the simplest form, and apart from technical 
 phraseology, the principles for which the Church of Scotland 
 contended in the years preceding the Disruption of 1843 were 
 these : — the right of congregations to choose their pastors, 
 and the competence of a Church of Christ to manage her spir- 
 itual and distinctive concerns in her own courts. In 1834 the 
 Church of Scotland decreed that the will of congregations 
 should form an essential element in the settlement of pastors. 
 In the same year Lord Kinnoul, patron of the parish of Auch- 
 terarder, in Perthshire, presented that living to Mr. Robert 
 Young, preacher of the Gospel. The Call, or document signi- 
 fying the assent of the congregation to the appointment of Mr. 
 Young, was signed by three persons, only two of whom 
 belonged to the parish. Dissatisfaction with the appointment 
 was expressed by two hundred and eighty-seven out of three 
 hundred and thirty, who, as being in full communion witli tlie 
 Church, were entitled to exercise the pi-ivilege. To inj^tall
 
 XVI PREFACE. 
 
 Mr. Young, therefore, as minister of Auchterarder, would 
 have been a clear case of intrusion, — exactly such a case as 
 the Church had guarded against by her act of 1834. The 
 Presbytery, in obedience to the law of the Church, refused to 
 ordain him. Lord Kinnoul and Mr. Young had recourse to 
 the Court of Session, to compel the Presbytery to proceed with 
 the ordination. The court granted their request by a decision 
 pronounced in 1838. The House of Lords confirmed this 
 judgment in the following year. Between the decision of 
 their Lordships and the occurrence of the Disruption no new 
 principle emerged. A civil court had undertaken to force the 
 jOhurch of Scotland to ordain a minister, and to ordain him 
 against the will of the people. Rather than submit, the Church 
 cut her state moorings, and became free. To recount the inci- 
 dents of the conflict would be neither interesting nor useful. 
 For several years State and Church in Scotland were continu- 
 ally in collision. Many attempts at reconciliation were made. 
 But to understand the position taken up by each we need only 
 to understand the Auchterarder case. 
 
 PETER BAYNE. 
 London, October 2, 1863.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE HEADSHIP OF CHRIST. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Letter to Lord Brougham (June, 1839) . . .... 19 
 
 The Whiggism of the Old School (August, 1839) ... 40 
 
 The Literary Character of Knox (Mar. 4, 1840) ... 81 
 
 Dr. Thomas M'Crie (June, 1840) 93 
 
 The Debate on Missions (October, 1841) 144 
 
 THE RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE. 
 
 The Two Parties in the Church of Scotland (Jan. 1.5, 1840) . 200 
 
 The Twin Presbyteries of Strathbogie (Feb. 5, 1S40) . . 204 
 
 The Two Students (Feb. 8, 1840) 209 
 
 The Presentation to Daviot (Feb. 12, 1840) 215 
 
 The Communicants of the North Country (Feb. 22, 1810) . 220 
 Spiritual Independence the Distinctive Privilege of the 
 
 Church of Scotland (March 7, 1840) 228 
 
 The "Grasping Ambition" of the Non-Intrusionists (Mar. 25, 
 
 1840) 230 
 
 Popular Estimate of the Two Parties (April 2.5, 1840) . . 235 
 
 The Earl of Aberdeen's Bill (May 9, 1840) 241 
 
 The Scotch People and the Presbyterian Church (May 20, 
 
 1840) 248
 
 XVIII 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MODERATISM POPULAE, "WhERE AND WhT (JUTie 0, 1840) . . 251 
 
 The Earl of Aberdeen v. the People of Scotland (June 17, 
 
 1840) 256 
 
 Debate in the Edinburgh Presbytery on Lord Aberdeen's 
 
 Bill (July 4, 1840) 263 
 
 Revival in Alness (Sept, 2, 1840) 270 
 
 Conservatism on Rkivivals (Oct. 14, 1840) 279 
 
 The Outrage AT Marnoch (Jan. 27, 1841) 285 
 
 Supplementary Notes of the Settlement at Marnoch (Feb. 3, 
 
 1841) 292 
 
 Sketches of the General Assembly of 1841 (May 21, 1841) . 2[»8 
 
 Scottish Lawyers: their Two Classes (June 5, 1841) . . 335 
 
 The New Policy: Evangelical Moderates (Sept. 14, 1841) . 339 
 
 Modeeatism: SOME OF THE Better Classes (Sept. 22, 1841) . 347 
 
 Prayer: the True and the Counterfeit (Dec. 29, 1841) . . 352 
 Mr. Isaac Taylor on the Independence of the Church (Jan. 1, 
 
 1842) 356 
 
 Defence Associations (Jan. 8, 1842) 359 
 
 Foreshadowings (February 2, 1842) 364 
 
 Translations into Fact (February, 1842) 368 
 
 The Two Conflicts (May 25, 1842) '. 391 
 
 Tendencies (December, 1842, to May, 1&43) . » . . .402 
 
 Mr. Forsyth's " Remarks " (Jan. 14, 1843) 455 
 
 State-Carpentry (May 17, 1843) 46.5 
 
 The Disruption (May 20, 1843) 475 
 
 The Close (June 1, 1843) 482 
 
 Union and its Principles (June 10, 1&13) . , , . 488 
 
 Appendix — An outline of the more recent history of the controversy, 
 with a statement of the " Cardross Case."
 
 THE 
 
 HEADSHIP OF CHRIST. 
 
 LETTER TO LORP BROUGHAM. 
 
 A VOLUME consisting of the principal contributions made by 
 Hugh Miller to the literature of the Ten Yeai-s' Conflict cannot be 
 more appropriately introduced than with the celebrated pamphlet in 
 "which he first stepped forward to take that lead in the lay and 
 popular championship of the Church which he thenceforth continued 
 to hold. liaving, as he informs us in the " Schools and School- 
 masters," been deeply moved by the decision, adverse to the claims 
 of the evangelical majority, delivered by the Court of Session in 
 March, 1838, and by that of the House of Lords in 1839, he experi- 
 enced an ardent aspiration to offer some aid to his Church in het 
 hour of peril. The speech of Lord Brougham in the Upper House 
 furnished the occasion required. " I tossed wakefully," says Mr, 
 Miller, " throughout a long night, in which I formed my plan of taking 
 up the purely popular side of the question ; and in the morning I 
 sat down to state my views to the people, in the form of a letter 
 addressed to Lord Brougham." He was at the time occupied with 
 the duties of a bank oflice, but in the fulness of his heart the words 
 flowed apace : in about a week the composition was finished. Being 
 transmitted to Edinburgh, and brought by Mr. Robert Paul under 
 the notice of Dr. Candlish and other evangelical leaders, its imme-
 
 20 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 dlate result was the appointment of Mr. Miller to tlie editorship 
 of the then contemplated " Witness" newspaper. On being pub- 
 lished, it ran rapidly through four editions, and was rei'erred to in 
 terms of high encomium by Mr. O'Connell on the one hand, and by 
 Mr. Gladstone on the other. It is beyond doubt one of the most 
 masterly performances of its illustrious author. The eloquence, at 
 once impassioned in its earnestness and majestic in its calmness, and 
 the comprehensiveness and clear depth, worthy of the statesman or 
 the philosophic historian, by which it is characterized, impart to it 
 an interest superior to all local or temporary circumstances. It is 
 an essay, and one of high and permanent value, upon a question 
 inextricably associated with what is noblest and most instructive in 
 the history of Scotland. — Ed. 
 
 My Lord : — 
 
 I am a plain working man, in rather humble circum- 
 stances, a native of the north of Scotland, and a member 
 of the Established Church. I am acquainted with no 
 other language than the one in which I address your lord- 
 ship ; and the very limited knowledge which I possess 
 has been won slowly and j^ainfully from observation and 
 reflection, with now and then the assistance of a stray 
 volume, in the intervals of a laborious life. I am not too 
 uninformed, however, to appreciate your lordship's extraor- 
 dinary powers and acquirements; and as the cause of free- 
 dom is peculiarly the cause of the class to which I belong, 
 and as my acquaintance with the evils of ignorance has 
 been by much too close and too tangible to leave me indif- 
 ferent to the blessings of education, I have been no careless 
 or uninterested spectator of your lordship's public career. 
 No, my lord, I liave felt my heart swell as I pronounced 
 the name of Henry Brougham. 
 
 "With many thousands of my countrymen, I have waited 
 in deep anxiety for your lordship's opinion on the Auch- 
 terarder case. Aware that what may seem clear as a
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 21 
 
 matter of right may be yet exceedingly doubtful as a ques- 
 tion of law, — aware, too, that your lordship had to decide 
 in this matter, not as a legislator, but as a judge, — I was 
 afraid that, though you yourself might be our friend, you 
 might yet have to pronounce the law our enemy. And 
 yet, the bare majority by which the case had been carried 
 against us in the Court of Session, — the consideration, 
 too, that the judges who had declared in our flivor rank 
 among the ablest lawyers and most accomplished men that 
 our country has ever produced, — had inclined me to hope 
 that the statute-book, as interpreted by your lordship, 
 might not be found very decidedly against us. But of you 
 yourself, my lord, I could entertain no doubt. You had 
 exerted all your energies in sweeping away the Old Sarums 
 and East Retfords of the constitution. Could I once 
 harbor the suspicion that you had become tolerant of the 
 Old Sarums and East Retfords of the Church? You had 
 declared, whether wisely or otherwise, that men possessed 
 of no property qualification, and as humble and as little 
 taught as the individual who now addresses you, should be 
 admitted, on the strength of their moral and intellectual 
 qualities alone, to exercise a voice in the legislature of the 
 country. Could I suppose for a moment that yon deemed 
 that portion of these very men which falls to the share of 
 Scotland unfitted to exercise a voice in the election of a 
 parish minister? or, rather, — fori understate the case, — 
 that you held them unworthy of being emancipated from 
 the thraldom of a degrading law, the remnant of a bar- 
 barous code, which conveys them over by thousands and 
 miles square to the charge of patronage-courting clergy- 
 men, practically unacquainted with the religion they pro- 
 fess to teach? Surely the people of Scotland are not so 
 changed but that they know at least as much of the doc- 
 trines of the New Testament as of the principles of civil 
 government, and of the requisites of a gospel minister as 
 of the qualifications of a member of Parliament! 
 
 You have decided against us, my lord. You have even
 
 22 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 said that we had better rest contented with the existing 
 statutes, as interpreted by your lordship, than involve 
 ourselves in the dangers and difficulties of a new enact- 
 ment. Nay, more wonderful still, all your sympathies 
 on the occasion seem to have been reser\ed for the times 
 and the memory of men who first imparted its practical 
 efficiency to a law under which we and our fathers have 
 groaned, and which we have ever regarded as not only 
 subversive of our natural rights as men, but of our well- 
 being as Christians. Highly as your lordship estimates 
 our political wisdom, you have no opinion whatever of our 
 religious taste and knowledge. Is it at all possible that 
 you, my lord, a native of Scotland, and possessed of more 
 general information than perhaps any other man living, 
 can have yet to learn that we have thought long and 
 deeply of our religion, whereas our political speculations 
 began but yesterday ; that our popular struggles have 
 been struggles for the right of worshipping God according 
 to the dictates of our conscience, and under the guidance 
 of ministers of our own choice ; and that, when anxiously 
 employed in finding arguments by which rights so dear to 
 us might be rationally defended, our discovery of the prin- 
 ciples of civil liberty was merely a sort of chance-conse- 
 quence of the search? Examine yourself, my lord. Is 
 your mind free from all bias in this matter? Are you 
 quite assured that your admiration of an illustrious rela- 
 tive, at a period when your judgment M'^as comparatively 
 uninformed, has not had the effiact of rendering his opinions 
 your prejudices? Principal Robertson was unquestionably 
 a great man ; but consider in what way : great as a leader, 
 — not as a "father in the Church," — it is not to ministers 
 such as the Principal that the excellent among my coun- 
 trymen look up for spiritual guidance amid the temptations 
 and difficulties of life, or for comfort at its close ; great in 
 literature, — not, like Timothy of old, great in his knowl- 
 edge of the Scriptures, — aged men who sat under his 
 ministry have assured me that, in hurrying over the New
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. Z6 
 
 Testament, he had missed the doctrine of the atonement ; 
 great as an author and a man of genius, — great in his 
 enduring labors as a historian, — great in the sense in 
 which Hume, and Gibbon, and Voltaire were great.^ But 
 who can regard the greatness of such men as a sufficient 
 guarantee for the soundness of the opinions which they 
 have held, or the justice or wisdom of the measures which 
 they have recommended? The law of patronage is in no 
 degree the less cruel or absurd from its having owed its 
 reenactment to so great a statesman and so ingenious a 
 writer as Bolingbroke ; nor jet from its having received 
 its full and practical efficiency from so masterly a historian 
 and so thorough a judge of human affiiirs as Robertson; 
 nor yet, my lord, from the new vigor which it has received 
 from the decision of so profound a philosopher and so 
 accomplished an orator as Brougham. 
 
 I am a plain, untaught man ; but the opinions which I 
 hold regarding the law of patronage are those entertained 
 by the great bulk of my countrymen, and entitled on that 
 account to some little respect. I shall state them as clearly 
 and as simply as I can. You are doubtless acquainted with 
 
 1 Is the writer's estimate of Dr. Robertson's religious character too low? 
 Take, then, the estimate of William Wilberforce — a name to which even the 
 high eulogiums of Lord Brougham can add nothing. In the " Practical View," 
 chapter vi., there occurs the following passage: 
 
 " It has also been a melancholy prognostic of the state to which we are pro- 
 gressive, that many of the most eminent literati of modern times have been 
 professed unbelievers; and that others of them have discovered such lukewarm- 
 ness in the cause of Christ as to treat with especial good-will, and attention, and 
 respect, those men who, by their avowed publications, were openly assailing, or 
 insidiously undermining, the very foundations of the Christian hope — consid- 
 ering themselves as more closely united to them by literature than severed from 
 them by the widest religious differences. It is with pain that the author finds 
 himself compelled to place so great a writer as Dr. Robertson in this class. But, 
 to say nothing of his phlegmatic account of the Reformation (a subject which 
 we should have thought likely to excite in any one who united the character of 
 a Christian divine with that of a historian, some warmth of pious gratitude for 
 the good providence of God), —to pass over, also, the ambiguity in which he 
 leaves his readers as to his opinion of the authenticity of the Mosaic chronology, 
 in his Disquisitions on the Trade of India,— his letters to Mr. Gibbon, lately 
 published, cannot but excite emotions of regret and shame iu every sincere 
 Christiap." — Rage 304, fifth edition.
 
 24 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 that beautiful little piece of antique simplicity, drawn up 
 by Knox, on the election of ciders and deacons. It forms 
 an interesting record, by an eye-witness, of the earliest 
 beginnings of reformation in Scotland. At first, pious 
 individuals, "brought, through the wonderful grace of God, 
 to a knowledge of the truth, began to exercise themselves 
 by i*eading of the Scriptures secretly," and to call the 
 members of their own households around them to join 
 with them in prayer. In the next stage a few neighboring 
 families of this character learned to assemble themselves 
 together to pray and to exliort, sometimes under the cloud 
 of night in houses, sometimes in lone and sequestered hol- 
 lows in the fields. Their numbers gradually increased, and 
 that diversity of talent so characteristic of the human 
 family, and so nicely adapted to man's social nature, began 
 to manifest itself in this first germ of the Reformed Church 
 in Scotland. To assign to individuals among them by the 
 general voice that place for which nature and the Holy 
 Spirit had peculiarly fitted them, was but a giving of effect, 
 through the agency of man, to the will of God, and essen- 
 tially necessary for the maintenance of decency and good 
 order. "And so began that small flock," says the reformer, 
 "to put themselves in such order as if Christ Jesus had 
 plainly triumphed in the midst of them by the power of 
 the Evangel ; and they did elect some to occupy the supreme 
 place of exhortation and reading, and some to be elders 
 and helpers to these for the oversight of the flock, and 
 some to be deacons for the collection of alms to be dis- 
 tributed to the poor of their own body. And of this small 
 beginning is that order that now God, of his mercy, hath 
 given unto us publicly within this realm." 
 
 One stage more, and the history is complete. The 
 devotions of the closet had passed into the family ; the 
 members of Christianized fiuuilies had formed themselves 
 into a church. But this process of germination and growth 
 had not been confined to a single locality. The long win- 
 ter was over; the vital principle was heaving undfr the
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 25 
 
 clods of separate fields and widely distant valleys ; the deep 
 sleep of ages had been broken ; the day-star had arisen ; 
 the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters ; 
 many families had been enlightened — many churches had 
 been formed. How was " the bond of unity " to be best 
 preserved, and wise and equal laws established for the 
 good of the whole ? " Wisdom," saith the Saviour, " is jus- 
 tified of her children." The churches instructed their best 
 and wisest to deliberate in council, — their learned and 
 strong-minded, their tried and venerable men, whom they 
 had chosen to be their guides and leaders, because God had 
 chosen them first; and these met in assembly, each recog- 
 nizing in each an equal and a brother, and in Christ the 
 Head and Governor of the whole. The Scriptures were 
 opened, that the " mind of God " might be known. They 
 sought advice of the Reformed Churches abroad ; con- 
 ferred with princes and magistrates at home ; enacted wise 
 laws ; drew up books of order and of discipline ; framed 
 Catechisms and Confessions of Faith. The God in whom 
 they trusted breathed a spirit of wisdom into their coun- 
 sels ; and the inestimable blessings of a pure and scriptural 
 religion were thus secured to our land. Is the picture 
 faithfully drawn ? Look at it, my lord. The Presbyterians 
 of Scotland deem it a picture of their Church in her best 
 estate ; and believe that the one great object of her saints 
 and martyrs in all their struggles with kings and patrons, 
 priests and curates, leaders in the General Assembly and 
 dragoons on the hill-side, has been to restore what of the 
 original likeness had been lost, or to preserve what had 
 been retained. 
 
 Now, with many thousands of my countrymen, I have 
 been accustomed to ask. Where is the place which patron- 
 age occupies in this Church of the people and of Christ? 
 I read in the First Book of Discipline (as drawn up by 
 Knox and his brethren) that "no man should enter the 
 ministry without a lawful vocation ; and that a lawful 
 vocation standeth in the election of the 2)<iople, examination 
 
 3
 
 26 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 of the ministry, and admission by them both." I find in 
 the Second Book, as sanctioned by our earlier Assemblies, 
 and sworn to in our National Covenant, that as this liberty 
 of election was observed and respected so long as the 
 primitive Church maintained its purity, it should be also 
 observed and respected by the Reformed Church of Scot- 
 land ; and that neither by the king himself, nor by any 
 inferior person, should ministers be intruded on congrega- 
 tions contrary to the will of the people. I find patronage 
 mentioned in this Second Book for the first time, and men- 
 tioned only to be denounced as "an abuse flowing from the 
 Pope and the corruption of the canon law," and as contrary 
 to the liberty of election, the light of reformation, the word 
 of God. Where is the flaw in our logic when we infer 
 that the members of our Church constitute our Church, 
 and that it is the part and right of these members in their 
 collective capacity to elect their ministers? I, my lord, 
 am an integral part of the Church of Scotland, and of 
 such integral parts, and of nothing else, is the body of this 
 Church composed ; nor do we look to the high places of 
 the earth when we address ourselves to its adorable Head. 
 The Earl of Kinnoull is not the Church, nor any of the 
 other patrons of Scotland. Why, then, are these men 
 suiFered to exercise, and that so exclusively, one of the 
 Church's most sacred privileges? You tell us of "existing 
 institutions, vested rights, positive interests." Do we not 
 know that the slaveholders, who have so long and so stub- 
 bornly withstood your lordship's ti'uly noble appeals in 
 behalf of the African bondsmen, have been employing an 
 exactly similar language for the last fifty years; and that 
 the onward progress of man to the high place which God 
 has willed him to occupy has been impeded at every step 
 by "existing institutions, vested rights, positive interests"? 
 My grandfather was a grown man at a period when the 
 neighboring proprietor could have di-nggod him from his 
 cottage, and hung hiin upon the gallows-hill of the barony. 
 !♦■ is not yet a century since the colliers of our southern
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 2T 
 
 districts were serfs bound to the soil. The mischievous 
 and intolerant law of patronage still i-)resses its dead weight 
 on our consciences. But what of all that, my lord ? Is it 
 not in accordance with the high destiny of the species that 
 the fit and the right should triumph over the established? 
 
 It is impossible your lordship can hold, with men of a 
 lower order, that there is any necessary connection between 
 the law of patronage and our existence as an Establishment. 
 The public money can only be legitimately employed in 
 furthering the public good ; and we recognize the improve- 
 ment and conservation of the morals of the people as the 
 sole condition on which our ministers receive the support 
 of the state. Where is the inevitable connection between 
 rights of patronage (which, as the law now exists, may be 
 exercised by fools, debauchees, infidels) and principles such 
 as these? Nay, what is there subversive of such principles 
 in a Christian liberty of election as complete as that en- 
 joyed of old by the first fathers of the Reformation, or 
 exercised in the present day by our Protestant Dissenters ? 
 I may surely add, that what is good for the Dissenters in 
 this matter cannot be very bad for us; that lean find none 
 of the much-dreaded evils of popular election — the divi- 
 sions, the heart-burnings, the endless lawsuits, the domi- 
 nancy of the fanatical spirit — exemplified in them; and 
 that there can surely be little to censure in a principle 
 Avhich could have secured to them the labors of such min- 
 isters as Baxter and Bunyan, Watts and Doddridge, Robert 
 Hall, and Thomas M'Crie. Even you yourself, my lord, 
 will hardly venture to assert that our Scottish patrons 
 could have jirovided them with better or more useful cler- 
 gymen than they have been enabled to choose for them- 
 selves. 
 
 But on these points we are not at issue with your lord- 
 ship. You tell us, however, that we are protected against 
 the abuses of patronage by the provision that patrons can 
 present only qualified persons, — clergymen whose litera- 
 ture the Church has pronounced sufficient, and their morals
 
 28 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM- 
 
 not bad. And wlien, under the suspension of our higher 
 privileges, we challenge for ourselves the right of rejecting 
 ministers thus selected without assigning our reasons, you 
 ungenerously insinuate that we are perhaps anxious to 
 employ this liberty in the rejection of good men, too strict 
 in morals, and too diligent in duty to please our vitiated 
 tastes. " Have a care, my lord." You are a philosopher 
 of the inductive school. Look well to your facts. Put 
 our lives to the question. Ascertain whether we are im- 
 moral in the proportion in which we are zealous for this 
 privilege ; determine whether our clergymen are lax and 
 time-serving in the degree in which they are popular ; and 
 see, I beseech your lordship, that the scrutiny be strict. 
 We challenge, as our right, liberty of rejection loithoxd 
 statement of reasons. What is there so absurd in this as to 
 provoke ridicule ? or what so unfair as to justify the impu- 
 tation of sinister design ? It is positive, not negative, char- 
 acter we expect in a clergyman. We are suspicious of the 
 '■'■ not proven ; '''' we are dissatisfied with even the " ;zoi 
 guilty :'''' we look in him for qualities which we can love, 
 powers which we can respect, graces which we can revere. 
 It matters not that we should have no grounds on which 
 to condemn: we are justified in our rejection if we can- 
 not approve. 
 
 But we are aware, my lord, that there is a noiseless 
 though powerful under-current of objection, which bears 
 more heavily against us in this matter than all the thousand 
 lesser tides that froth and bubble on the surface. We are 
 opposed by the prejudices of a powerful party, who see an 
 inevitable connection between the exercise of the popular 
 voice and what I shall venture to define for them as a fu 
 naticixm according to the standards of our Church. We 
 have but one Bible and one Confession of Faith in our 
 Scottish Establishment; but we have two religions in it; 
 and these, though they bear exactly the same name, and 
 speak nearly the same language, are yet fundamentally and 
 vitally different. They belong, in fact, to the two very
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 29 
 
 opposite classes into which all religions naturally divide. 
 The one is popular, and has ever contended for the infu- 
 sion of the popular principle into the Church as a necessary 
 element; the other is exclusive, and has as determinedly 
 struggled against it. The Logans, Homes, Blairs, Robert- 
 sons, of the last age, may be regarded as constituting the 
 fit representatives of the latter class. The other recog- 
 nizes its master spirits — its beloved and much honored 
 leaders — in our Thomsons and Chalmerses, our Knoxes 
 and Melvilles, the fithers of the Secession, and the cham- 
 pions of the Covenant. The infusion of the popular prin- 
 ciple, while it would mightily strengthen the one class, 
 would assuredly diminish, if not altogether annihilate, the 
 other; and while the thousands which form the one reckon 
 on it as their friend, the hundreds which compose the other 
 hate and oppose it as their enemy. 
 
 Now, there are important, though perhaps somewhat 
 occult, principles couched in this circumstance, regarding 
 which your lordship's opinion, as a philosopher, would be 
 of great value, had you not already foreclosed the question 
 in a very different character indeed. It will be found that 
 all the false religions of past or of present times, which 
 have abused the credulity or flattered the judgments of 
 men, may be divided into two grand classes, — the natural 
 and the artificial. The natural religions are wild and 
 extravagant; and the enlightened reason, when unbiassed 
 by the influence of early prejudice, rejects them as mon- 
 strous and profane. But they have unquestionably a strong 
 hold on human nature, and exert a powerful control over 
 its hopes and its fears. They are, like the oak or the chest- 
 nut, the slow gi'ovrth of centuries ; their first beginnings 
 are lost in the uncertainty of the fabulous ages, and every 
 addition they receive is fitted to the credulity of the pop- 
 ular mind ere it can assimilate itself to the mass. The 
 grand cause of their popularity, however, seems to consist 
 xa the human character of their gods ; for is it not accord- 
 
 3*
 
 30 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 ing to the nature of man as a religious creature that he 
 meet with an answering nature in Deity? 
 
 The artificial religions, on the other hand, are exclusively 
 the work of the human reason, and the God with which 
 they profess to acquaint us is a mere abstract idea, — an 
 incomprehensible essence of goodness, power, and wisdom. 
 The understanding cannot conceive of him except as a 
 first great cause — as the mysterious source and originator 
 of all things; and it is surely according to reason that he 
 should be thus removed from that lower sphere of con- 
 ception which even finite intelligences can occupy to the 
 full. But in thus rendering him intangible to the under- 
 standing, he is rendered intangible to the aflfections also. 
 Who ever loved an abstract idea, or what sympathy can 
 exist between human minds and an intelligent essence 
 infinitely diflfused ? And hence the cold and barren inef- 
 ficiency of artificial religions. They want the vitality of 
 life. They want the grand principle of motive; for they 
 can lay no hold on those aflfections to which this prime 
 mover in all human aflfairs can alone address itself They 
 may look well in a discourse or an essay ; for, like all 
 human inventions, they may be easily understood and 
 plausibly defended ; but they are totally unsuited to the 
 nature and the wants of man. 
 
 Now, is it not according to reason and analogy that the 
 true religion should be formed, if I may so express myself, 
 on a popular principle ? Is it not indispensable that the 
 religion which God reveals should be suited to the human 
 nature which God has made ? Artificial religions, with all 
 their minute rationalities, are not suited to it at all, and there- 
 fore take no hold on the jwpular mind ; natural religions, 
 with all their immense popularity, are not suited to imj)rove 
 it. It is Christianity alone whicli unites the popularity of 
 the one class with the rationality and more than the ])urity 
 of the other — that gives to Deity, as the man Cln-ist Jesus, 
 his strong hold on the human a'f'^ytions, and restores to
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 31 
 
 him, in his abstract character as Father of all, the homage 
 of the unilerstunding. 
 
 Question the principle as you please, but look, I beseech 
 you, to the fact. Who was that most popular of all 
 preachers, whom the immense multitudes of Judea fol- 
 lowed into waste and solitary places, and of whom it is 
 BO expressly told that the " common people heard him 
 gladly"? And what the religion taught by the twelve 
 unlettered men, whose labors revolutionized the morals 
 of the world '? Christianity, in its primitive integrity, is 
 essentially a popular religion ; and what we comi)lain of 
 in the Churchmen opposed to the popular voice is, that 
 they have divested it of this vital principle. What God 
 has done in the framing of it they undo in the preaching 
 of it; they impart to it all the cold inefficacy of an arti- 
 ficial religion ; they tell us well-nigh as much of the beauty 
 of virtue as Plato could have done ; of the incarnation or 
 the atonement they tell us well-nigh as little, or tell as 
 if they told it not; and what wonder if they should be 
 left to exhibit their minute and feeble rationalities to bare 
 walls and empty benches, and to dread in the popular 
 principle the enemy which is eventually to cast them out 
 of the Church ? We are acquainted with our New Testa- 
 ments, and demand that our ministers give that prominence 
 and space to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity which 
 we find assigned to them in the epistles of Paul and of 
 Peter, of James and of John. 
 
 I have striven, my lord, to acquaint myself Avith the 
 history of my Church. I have met with a few old books, 
 and have found time to read them ; and, as the histories 
 of Knox, Calderwood, and Wodrow have been among the 
 number, I do not find myself much at the mercy of any 
 man on questions connected with our ecclesiastical institu- 
 tions, or the spirit which animated them. Some of the 
 institutions themselves are marked by the character of the 
 age in which they were produced ; for we must not forget 
 that the principles of toleration are as much the discovery
 
 32 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 of a later time as those principles on which we construct 
 our steam-engines. But the spirit whicli lived and breathed 
 in them was essentially that "spirit with which Christ 
 maketh his people free." Nay, the very intolerance of our 
 Church was of a kind which delighted to arm its vassals 
 with a power before which all tyranny, civil or ecclesias- 
 tical, must eventually be overthrown. It compelled them 
 to quit the lower levels of our nature for the higher. It 
 demanded of them that they should be no longer immoral 
 or illiterate. It was the Reformed Church of Scotland 
 that gave the first example of providing that the children 
 of the jt^oor should be educated at the expense of the state. 
 Not Henry Brougham himself could have been more zeal- 
 ous in sending the schoolmaster abroad. But ignorance, 
 superstition, immorality, above all, an intolerance of an 
 entirely opposite character, jealous of the knowledge and 
 indifferent to the good of its vassals, were by much too 
 strong for it ; and there were times when the Church could 
 do little more than testify against the grinding tyranny 
 which oppressed her, and to the truth and justice of her 
 own principles; and not even tliis with impunity. I have 
 perused, by the light of the evening fire, whole volumes 
 filled with the death-testimonies of her martyrs. Point 
 rae out any one abuse, my lord, against which she has 
 testified oftener or more strongly than that of patronage, 
 or any one privilege for which she has contended with a 
 more enduring zeal than that for which our General As- 
 sembly is contending at this day. Moulding her claims 
 according to the form and pressure of the opposition from 
 without, — casting them at one time into a positive, at 
 another into a negative form, — asserting at one time a 
 free election^ at another a lyon-intrusion principle^ — we 
 find her, on this great question, perseveringly firm and 
 invariably consistent; and we regard the abolition of pat- 
 ronage, and the recognition of the 2:)opular right, as entirely 
 a consequence of that dominancy of just and generous 
 principle which was in part a cause and in part an effect
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 33 
 
 of the Revolution, as we do any of the other great liberties 
 which the Revolution has secured to us ; nor does the very- 
 opposite opinion expressed by your lordship weigh more 
 with us in this matter than if it had proceeded from the 
 puniest sopliist that ever opposed himself to the spread of 
 education or the emancipation of the slave. 
 
 Twenty-one years passed, during which the Church, in 
 the undisputed possession of her hard-earned privileges, 
 was slowly recovering from the state of weakness and 
 exhaustion induced by her sufferings in the previous 
 period. And well and wisely were these privileges era- 
 ployed. Differences inevitably occur wherever man enjoys 
 the blessings of liberty, civil or ecclesiastical ; but during 
 these twenty-one years there were few heats or divisions, 
 and no schisms, in the Scottish Church. Such, at least, is 
 the view of the matter given us in that life of Wodrow 
 affixed to the late edition of his history; and sure I am 
 that it tenders its information in a better spirit than that 
 of any of the acts of Parliament which disgraced the latter 
 years of Queen Anne. But a time had arrived in which no 
 privilege was to be respected for its justice, or spared for 
 its popularity, and in which our governors were to pursue 
 other and far different objects than the good of the peojjle 
 or the peace of the Church. The Union had sunk the 
 Presbyterian representation of Scotland into a feeble and 
 singularly inefficient minority. Toryism, in its worst form, 
 acquired an overpowering ascendency in the councils of 
 the nation ; Bolingbroke engaged in his deep-laid con- 
 spiracy against the Protestant succession and our popular 
 liberties ; and the law of patronage was again established. 
 But why established ? On this important point your lord- 
 ship's great historical knowledge seems to have deserted 
 you at once ; there was a total lapse of memory, and all 
 that remained for your lordship, in the peculiar circum- 
 stances of the case, was just to take the law's own word 
 for the goodness of the law's own character. Was it not 
 sufficiently fortunate in its historians? Smollett, ere he
 
 34 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 composed liis English History, had abandoned his whig 
 principles; Burnet was an Episcopalian and a bishop ; Sir 
 Walter Scott a staunch tory, and full of the predilections 
 and antipathies of his party. But all the three, my lord, 
 were honest and honorable men. Smollett would have 
 told your lordship of the peculiarly sinister spirit which 
 animated the last Parliament of Anne ; of feelings adverse 
 to the cause of freedom which prevailed among the peo- 
 ple when it was chosen ; and that the act which reestab- 
 lished patronage was but one of a series, all bearing on an 
 object which the honest Scotch member, who signified his 
 willingness to acquiesce in one of these on condition that 
 it should be designated by its right name, — yin Act for 
 the JEncouragement of Immorality and Jacobitism in 
 Scotland, — seems to have discovered. The worthy Bishop 
 is still more decided. Instead of triumphing on the occa- 
 sion, he solemnly assures us that the thing was done 
 merely " to spite the Presbyterians, who from the beginning 
 had set it up as a principle that parishes had, from war- 
 rants in Scripture, a right to choose their ministers," and 
 "who saw, with great alarm, the success of a motion made 
 on desif/n to weaken and undermine their Establishment;" 
 and the good Sir Walter, notwithstanding all his tory 
 prejudices, is quite as candid. He tells us that Jacobitism 
 prevailed in Scotland more among the upper than the 
 lower classes; and that "the act which restored to patrons 
 the right of presenting clergymen to vacant churches was 
 designed to render the Churchmen more dependent on the 
 aristocracy, and to separate them in some degree from 
 their congregations, who could not be supposed to be 
 equally attached to or influenced by a minister who held 
 his living by the gift of a great man, as by one who was 
 chosen by their own free voice." You see your lordship 
 might have learned a little, even from writers such as 
 these. Historical evidence is often of a vague and inde- 
 terminate character; there are disputed questions of fact 
 whicii divide the probabilities in directions diametrically
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 35 
 
 opposite ,• but on the question before us it is comparatively 
 easy to decide. The law which reestablished patronage in 
 Scotland, which has rendered Christianity inefficient in 
 well-nigh half her parishes, which has separated some 
 of her better clergymen from her Church, and many of her 
 better people from her clergymen — the law through which 
 Robertson ruled in the General Assembly, and which 
 Brougham has eulogized in the House of Lords, — that 
 identical law formed, in its first enactment, no unessential 
 portion of a deep and dangerous conspiracy against the 
 liberties of our country. 
 
 There is, my lord, a statesman of the present day, quite 
 as eminent as Bolingbroke, who is acting, it is said, a 
 somewhat similar part. It is whispered that not only can 
 he decide according to an unpopular and unjust law, which 
 he secretly condemns, but that he can also praise it as 
 good and wise, and stir up its friends (men of a much 
 narrower range of vision than himself) to give it full force 
 and efficacy; and all this with the direct view of destroy- 
 ing a venerable institution on which this law acts. Now, 
 I cannot credit the insinuation, for I believe that the very 
 able statesman alluded to is an honest man ; but I think 
 I can see how he might act such a part, and act it with 
 very great effect. At no previous period were the popular 
 energies so powerfully developed as in the present ; at no 
 former time was it so essentially necessary that institutions 
 which desire to live should open themselves to the infusion 
 of the popular principle. Shut them up in their old chrys- 
 alis state from this new atmosphere of life, and they 
 inevitably perish. And these, ray lord, are truths which I 
 can more than see — I can also feel thera. I am one of 
 the people, full of the popular sympathies — it may be, 
 of the popular preju<lices. To no man do I yield in the 
 love and respect which I bear to the Church of Scotland. 
 I never signed the Confession of her Faith, but I do more 
 — I believe it; and I deem her scheme of government at 
 once the simplest and most practically beneficial that has
 
 36 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 been estab^iishecl since the time of the apostles. But it is 
 the vital spirit, not the dead body, to which I am attached; 
 it is to tlie free popular Church, established by our re- 
 formers, not to an unsubstantial form or an empty name, 
 a mere creature of expediency and the state ; and had 
 she so far fallen below my estimate of her dignity and 
 excellence as to have acquiesced in your lordship's de- 
 cision, the leaf holds not more loosely by the tree when 
 the October wind blows highest, than I would have held 
 by a church so sunk and degraded. And these, my lord, 
 are the feelings, not merely of a single individual, but of a 
 class, which, though less learned, and, may be, less wise, 
 than the classes above them, are beyond comparison more 
 numerous, and promise, now that they are learning to 
 think, to become immensely more powerful. Drive our 
 better clergymen to extremities on this question, — let but 
 three hundred of them throw up their livings, as the 
 Puritans" of England and the Presbyterians of our own 
 country did in the times of Charles II., — and the Scottish 
 Establishment inevitably falls. Your lordship is a saga- 
 cious and far-seeing man. Plow long, think you, would 
 the English Establishment survive her humbler sister? 
 and how long would the monarchy exist after the extinc- 
 tion of both ? 
 
 You have entertained a too favorable opinion of the 
 Scottish Church, and she has disappointed your expecta- 
 tions. Scotland is up in rebellion ! The General Assem- 
 bly refuse to settle Mr. Young. Take your seat, my lord, 
 and try the members of this refractory court for their new 
 and unheard-of offence. They believe " that the principle 
 of non-intrusion is coeval with the existence of the Church, 
 and forms an integral part of its constitution." Their con- 
 sciences, too, are awakened on the subject; they see that 
 forced settlements have done very little good, and a great 
 deal of harm ; and that intruded ministers have been the 
 means of converting few souls to Christ, and have, it is 
 feared, in a great many instances, been unconverted them-
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 3< 
 
 selves. They have, besides, come to believe, with their 
 fathers of old, that God himself is not indifferent in the 
 matter, and are fearful lest "haply they should be found 
 fighting against him." And in this assembly, my lord, there 
 are wise and large-minded men — men admired for their 
 genius, and revered for tlieir piety, wherever the light 
 of learning or religion has yet found its way. Now, a 
 certain law of the country, which was passed rather more 
 than a hundred and twenty years ago, through the influ- 
 ence of very bad men, and for a very bad purpose, has 
 demanded that this assembly proceed forthwith to impose 
 on a resisting people a singularly unpopular clergyman. 
 And the assembly have refused ; courteously and hum- 
 bly, 'tis true, but still most firmly. Give to this unpopular 
 clergyman, they say, all the emoluments of the office. We 
 lay no claim to these ; we have no right to them what- 
 ever; nay, we hold even our own livings by sufferance, 
 and you have the power to take them from us whenever 
 you please. But we must not force this unpopular clergy- 
 man on the people : our consciences will not suffer us to 
 do it ; and as the laws which control our consciences 
 cannot be altered, whereas those which govern the country 
 are in a state of continual change, suffer us, we beseech 
 you, to confer with the makers of those changing laws, that 
 this bad law may be made so much better as to agree with 
 the fixed law of our consciences. Now, such, my lord, is 
 the heinous offence committed by these men. You could 
 not believe they were so wicked ; you could imagine the 
 crime itself, but not in connection with them ; you said it 
 was indecorous, preposterous, monstrous, to believe that 
 they could be so wicked. But you did ill to speak of 
 Christ on the occasion. It is against Bolingbroke's law, 
 not the law of Christ, that these men have offended. 
 
 Nay, my lord, you should have known the Church of 
 Scotland better. Consult her history, and see whether 
 she has not as determinedly opposed herself to wicked 
 laws as to wicked men. The very act which first indicated 
 
 4
 
 88 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 
 
 her existence as a Church was her opposition to the law. 
 And fearfully did she suifer for it. The law persecuted 
 her children to death, — lier Patrick Hamiltons, her George 
 Wisharts, her Walter Mills, — and scattered their ashes to 
 the winds. But there was a law to which she was not 
 opposed — a fixed and immutable law; and God fought 
 for her, and she waxed mighty in the midst of her great 
 suffering ; and at length, when her fierce and cruel perse- 
 cutors had gone to their place, the unjust and intolerant 
 law against which she had so long struggled in sorrow and 
 great weakness was expunged from the statute-book. His- 
 tory tells me that, in all her after conflicts, it was not the 
 Church that yielded to the law, but the law that yielded 
 to the Church. Need I remind your lordship of her strug- 
 gles in the days of Mary, of James, of Charles ? Need I 
 say that, subsequent to the Restoration, she opposed her- 
 self to the law for twenty-eight years together ; and that 
 the graves which lie solitary among our hills, and the 
 tombs which occupy the malefiictors' corner in our public 
 burying-grounds, remain to testify of the heavy penalty 
 which she paid? But the curse denounced against Cain 
 of old fell on the unrighteous shedders of innocent blood : 
 the descendants of our ancient monarchs became fugitive 
 and vagabond on the face of the earth. The law to which 
 our Church would not yield, yielded to her ; and that 
 better law which your lordship so pointedly condemns as 
 unworthy of the Revolution, but which thousands among 
 the wise and good of my countrymen, and many, many 
 thousands of humble individuals like myself, have been 
 accustomed to regard as so entirely in its purest spirit, 
 was made to occupy their place. We do not think the 
 worse of our Church, my lord, for lier many contests with 
 the law ; not a whit the better of her opposers for their 
 having had the law on their side. The public prosecutor 
 in the time of Charles II. was perhaps as able a lawyer as 
 even your lordship, but we have been accustomed to 
 execrate his memory as "the bloody Mackenzie."
 
 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. LJ 
 
 The Church has offended many of her noblest find wealth- 
 iest, it is said, and they are flying from her in crowds. 
 Well, what matters it? — let the chaff" fly! We care not 
 though she sliake off", in her wholesome exercise, some of 
 the indolent humors which have hung about her so long. 
 The vital principle will act with all the more vigor when 
 they are gone. She may yet have to pour forth her life's 
 blood through some incurable and deadly wound ; for do 
 w'e not know that though the Church be eternal, churches 
 are born and die? But the blow will be dealt in a differ- 
 ent quarrel, and on other and lower ground, — not when 
 her ministers, for the sake of the spiritual, lessen their hold 
 of the secular; not when, convinced of the justice of the 
 old quarrel, they take ujj their position on the well-trodden 
 battle-field of her saints and her martyrs ; not when'they 
 stand side by side with her people, to contend for their 
 common rights, in accordance with the dictates of their 
 consciences, and agreeably to the law of their God. The 
 reforming spirit is vigorous within her, and her hour is not 
 yet come. 
 
 I am, my lord, with profound respect. 
 Your lordship's most humble, 
 
 Most obedient servant, 
 
 HUGH MILLER. 
 Cromarty, June, 1839.
 
 WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL, Etc. 
 
 " So filled was my mind with our ecclesiastical controversy, that, 
 while 3'et unacquainted with the fate of my first brochure, I was 
 busily- engaged with a second." In these words Mr. Miller has suf- 
 ficiently indicated the relation of the following Essay to that which 
 precedes it. It is essentially a continuation of the same discussion ; 
 the question of patronage, in its historical, philosophical, and re- 
 ligious aspect, being probed in a manner equally searching, and 
 perhaps more deliberate and comprehensive. The absence of a 
 personal opponent may detract somewhat from the vivacity of the 
 composition ; but the place occupied by Lord Brougham on the pre- 
 vious occasion is here partially held by the President of the Court 
 of Session. The opinion pronounced by his lordship against the 
 claims of the Church in the Lethendy case had exposed him to the 
 particular animadversion of Mr. Miller. — Ed. 
 
 One of the most important views of the Christian 
 religion, in its political effects, which I have anywhere met 
 with, is to be found in Voltaire. It occurs in his "Age of 
 Louis XIV.," in the chapter devoted to Calvinism, and 
 serves admirably to siiow, that though infidelity owes much 
 to a false philosophy, it has nothing to hope from the true. 
 The historinn tells us, after descanting, in his usual style, 
 on " the furious zeal, unknown to paganism," which first
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD .SCHOOL. 41 
 
 gave rise to religious wars, that he had ofte;i endeavored 
 to find out why the dogmatical spirit, so harmless in the 
 schools of antiquity, should be productive of so many dis- 
 orders among us. Fanaticism could not be the cause; 
 men quite as fanatical as Christians did harm to none but 
 themselves. The origin of this " new pest," he says, is 
 rather to be found " in the republican spirit which animated 
 the first churches. Those secret assemblies which, from 
 their caves and recesses, braved the authority of the Ro- 
 man emperors, formed by degrees a state within a state — 
 a concealed republic within the empire." But after Con- 
 stantine had drawn this stubborn religion from its retreat 
 under ground, to place it on a level with the throne, there 
 was a gradual softening of its character. Prosperity im- 
 parted a new nature to it. " The authority attached to 
 the great sees ran counter to the popular spirit;" and in 
 the end, so unlike itself did it become, that the powers 
 which it had at first so determinedly opposed found in it 
 eventually one of their surest and most eflicient supports. 
 But, in laying down its primitive character, it had also 
 relinquished its original opinions; and no sooner, says the 
 historian, were these revived by Luther, Zuinglius, and Cal- 
 vin, than the ancient spirit also awoke. The identical 
 principle which had opposed itself so determinedly to the 
 tyranny of ancient Rome arose, from under the enormous 
 mass which the guilt and superstition of ages had accumu- 
 lated over it, to do battle with the despotisms of modern 
 Europe. It opposed itself, though miserably oppressed and 
 overborne, to the iron sway of Mary of England ; took 
 up arms in our own country against Mary of Guise ; con- 
 tended in France with the ghostly authority of kings and 
 cardinals ; and set limits in Germany to the encroach- 
 ments of the emperors. 
 
 It may be remarked in the passing, however, that what 
 Voltaire has termed the rejnMican spirit of Christianity 
 is by no means exclusively republican ; for, though it has 
 an inevitable tendency to limit the power of kings, it has 
 
 4*
 
 42 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 none whatever to abrogate their office. On the contrary, 
 the just restrictions wliicli it imposes on their autliority do 
 not serve more as barriers to confine than as ramparts to 
 protect them. And nothing, surely, can be more simple 
 than the mode in which it acts, or more in accordance with 
 the moral and intellectual dignity of man. Homer tells- 
 as that the day which makes man a slave robs him of half 
 his worth : Christianity more than doubles it. He who 
 becomes a Christian, becomes, of necessity, subject to an 
 immutable and paramount code, to which every other code 
 must be subordinate ; his obedience to kings and magis- 
 trates becomes, in consequence, a conditional obedience — 
 his prince a limited prince ; he finds his subjection to every 
 merely human law restricted by the simple but unanswer- 
 able argument of Peter and John ; nor must his oath of 
 allegiance interfere with the more sacred oath which, ac- 
 cording to Pliny, binds him that he commit no evil. What 
 are the persecutions, whether those of our own or of other 
 countries, but just so many illustrations of this principle in 
 its necessary attitude, — opposed alike to domination in the 
 priest and to despotism in the ruler, — and of that deadly 
 and exterminating hatred with which the antagonist prin- 
 ciples, tyranny, bigotry, and the secular spirit, have ever 
 regarded it ? The entire history of the Church is corrobo- 
 rative of the view so unwittingly given us by Voltaire ; 
 and in none of its various sections is the evidence more 
 complete than in the history of our own. There is a little 
 tract by John Knox — his "Admonition to his Dearly Be- 
 loved Brethren, the Commonality of Scotland " — which 
 is of itself sufficient to establish the point. It was first 
 published in the year 1558 (only two months after Walter 
 Miln had been cruelly put to death by the Archbishop of 
 St. Andrews), and exhibits in a truly admirable light the 
 large heart and masculine understanding of its extraordi- 
 nary author. The truths which it embodies have since 
 become common ; not so, however, the power with which 
 these are enforced ; and with how deep and startling an
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL, 43 
 
 effect must they have fallen for the first time on the ears 
 of the serf and the vassal, sunk almost below the level of 
 our nature by a hereditary course of servitude, that wears 
 out the very mind, and with well-nigh all their natural 
 rights as men absorbed in the exclusive and long-estab- 
 lished privileges of their masters.^ 
 
 1 "Neither would I," says the reformer, in his address to the common people, 
 "that ye should esteem the Reformation and care of religion less to appertain to 
 you than to the rulers and judges set over you iu authority. Beloved brethren, 
 ye are God's creatures, created and formed to his own image and similitude, 
 for whose redemption was shed the most precious blood of the only beloved Sod 
 of God, to whom he iiatli commended his gospel and glad tidings to be 
 preached, and for whom he hath prepared the heavenly inheritance, if so that 
 you do not obstinately refuse and disdainfully contemn the means which he 
 hath appointed to obtain the same, namely, his blessed gospel, which he now 
 otfereth unto you, to the end that ye may be saved. For the gospel and glad 
 tidings of the kingdom, truly preached, is the power of God to the salvation of 
 every true believer. Which to credit and recieve, you, the commonality, are no 
 less addebted than are your rulers and princes; for, albeit God hath ordained 
 distinction and difference in the administration of civil policies betwixt kings 
 and subjects, rulers and common people, yet in the hope of the life to come he 
 hath made all equal. For as iu Christ Jesus the Jew hath no greater prerogative 
 than hath the Gentile, the man than hath the woman, the learned than the un- 
 learned, the lord than the servant, but all are one in him, so is there but one 
 way and means to attain to the participation of his benefits and spiritual grace, 
 
 which is a lively faith working by charity Surely, then, it behooveth you 
 
 to be careful and diligent in this so weighty a matter, lest that ye, contemning 
 the occasion which God now offereth, dud not the like again, iven although that 
 ye seek after it with sighings and tears. And that ye be not ignorant of what 
 occasion I mean, in few words I shall express it. 
 
 '•Not only I, but with me also divers godly and learned men, offer unto you 
 our labor, faithfully to instruct you in the ways of the Eternal, our God, and in 
 the sincei'ity of Christ's gospel, which this day, by the pestilent generation of 
 Antichrist, are almost hid from the eyes of men. We offer to jeopard our lives 
 for the salvation of your souls, and by manliest Scriptures to prove that religion 
 that amongst you is maintained by tire and swoid, to be false, vain, and diabol- 
 ical. We require nothing of you but thut patiently ye will hear our doctrine, 
 which is not ours, but the doctrine of salvation revealed to the world by the only 
 Son of God, and that ye will examine our reasons by which we offer to prove 
 the Papistical religion to be abominable before God; and, lastly, we require that 
 by'yourpoiver the tyrimny of these cruel priests and friars may be bridled, till 
 we have uttered our minds in all matters this day debatable in religion. If these 
 things, in the fear of God, ye grant unto us, I am assured that of God ye shall 
 be blessed, whatsoever Satan shall devise against you. But if ye contemn or 
 refuse God, who thus lovingly offereth unto you salvation and life, ye shall 
 neither escape plagues temporal, which shortly shall apprehend you, neither yet 
 the torment prepared for the devil and his angels." 
 
 The quotation is not too long. To use the scarcely more powerful language of 
 Milton: ''It was Knox himself, the reformer of a kingdom, that spake it; and
 
 44 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 There is nnotlier important principle involved in wlmt 
 has been termed tlie republican spirit of the first churches. 
 The spread of political power as necessarily accompanies 
 the spread of intelligence as the heat of the sun accompa- 
 nies its light; and it is quite as idle to affirm that the case 
 should be otherwise as to challenge the law of gravitation, 
 or any of the other great laws which regulate the govern- 
 ment of the universe. If the progress of mind cannot be 
 arrested, it is quite as impossible to arrest the growth of 
 the power which necessarily accompanies it. Now, Chris- 
 tianity is essentially an intellectual religion, which, by 
 increasing the popular intelligence, adds necessarily to the 
 popular power. It is a system not of rites and ceremonies, 
 but of morals and doctrines, — of morals that exercise 
 those useful faculties which find fit employment in regu- 
 
 thougli his senteuce secmeth of a venturous edge, uttered in the height of zeal, 
 and perchance not suited to every low decrepit humor of the time, yet who 
 knoweth whether it might not have proceeded from the dictat of a Divine 
 Spirit? " The whole passage is pregnant with wliat may be termed the political 
 influences of Christianity, as recognized by our Saviour himself, when he de- 
 clared that he had come not to send peace on tlie earth, but a sword. 
 
 The concluding portion of this interesting little tract is conceived in the very 
 vein in which Paul addressed himself to Felix, and rouses like the blast of a 
 trumpet. The reformer speaks of perilous times — of blood spilt for the testi- 
 mony of Christ by unjust princes and rulers who liad set tlieir faces against the 
 truth — of proud and cruel Churchmen, embruted in their lusts. "Their lives," 
 he says, " infect the air. Tlie idolatry which openly they commit defileth the 
 whole land. The innocent blood which they shed crieth for vengeance in the 
 ears of our God; and none among you do unfeignedly seek after any redress for 
 such foul enormities. Will God in this behalf hold you as innocent? Be not 
 deceived, dear brethren. God hath punished not only proud tyrants and cruel 
 murderers, but also such as with them did draw the yoke of iniquity, whether 
 by flattering their offi/nces, obeying their vnjiist commandments, or winking at 
 their manifold and most grievous oppressions; — all such, I say, God once pun- 
 ished with the chiet otl'enders. Be assured, brethren, tliat as he is immutable of 
 nature, so will he not pardon you in that which he hath punished in others; and 
 now the less because he hath plainly admonished you of the danger to come, and 
 offered you his mercy before that he pour forth his wrath and displeasure on the 
 gainsayer and the disobedient." Tlie writer concludes with an emphatic prayer 
 that his "dearly beloved countrymen" might "be partakers of the glorious 
 inheritance prepared for such as refuse themselves, and fight under the banner 
 of Christ Jesus in the rlny of this his hot battle ; and that, in deep consideration 
 of the same, they might learn to prefer the invisible and eternal joys to the vain 
 pleasures that are present." For these nuotations see Oliver & IJoyd's edition 
 of Knox, 1816, vol. ii. pp. 259, 275, and 278.
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 45 
 
 lating the human conduct, anrl of doctrines tliat, in their 
 unexaggerated magnitude, fill, and more than fill, the 
 widest grasp of the human understanding. There is scarce 
 a question in the philosophy of mind of which at least the 
 germ is not to be found in the Bible ; and instead of leav- 
 ing these to be discussed at pleasure by a few intellectual 
 natures, it renders the study of them in some degree 
 imperative on all. The same revealed truths which, as 
 rudiments of thought, serve to awaken the faculties, 
 constitute that identical " mind of God," Avhich it is the 
 essential duty of all men to know. And hence it is that 
 conversion, in so many instances, is scarcely less marked 
 in its intellectual than in its moral effects, and that wher- 
 ever the Christian religion is established in the integrity 
 of its first promulgation, men in even the humblest condi- 
 tion learn to reason and to observe. We find it stated by 
 Locke, that aniong the Huguenots of France the common 
 people were better instructed in their religion than even 
 the higher classes in most of the other countries in Europe. 
 We are told by Sir James Mackintosh, that " the uniform 
 efiect of Calvinism, in disposing its adherents to meta- 
 physical speculation (which survives at times even the 
 beliefs in which it originates), cannot be doubted to have 
 influenced the mind of Butler." Christianity formed the 
 sole learning of Bunyan. It constituted, in its reflex 
 influences, the sole education of Burns. But by no class 
 of writers, or no series of facts, is this sound principle bet- 
 ter illustrated than by the history of the Reformed Church 
 in Scotland. 
 
 The Reformation found the great bulk of our people 
 parcelled out, through the influence of the feudal system, 
 into detached masses, — ])OSsessed, like so many machines, 
 of a merely physical power, and ready to be employed, 
 whether for good or evil, as the caprice of a few ill-regu- 
 lated minds chanced to direct. Pageants and ceremonies, 
 with a multitude of vague, ill-defined beliefs, to which 
 there attached no discii)line of purity, and the tendency of
 
 46 THE WIIIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 ■which was to doaden, not to stimulate the intellect, consti- 
 tnted the entire religion of the country. But the "revival 
 of the ancient opinions" led to a very different state of 
 things; partly, doubtless, through the more covert work- 
 ings of the principle described, and partly through the 
 educational institutions established for the direct purpose. 
 The religion of the reformers was a religion which sought 
 tlie light, and which, in calling upon the masses to reason 
 and to judge, laid it down as a first principle, that "for 
 the soul to be without knowledge is not good." The 
 scheme of education drawn up by Knox and his brethren 
 was at once the most liberal and comprehensive which the 
 world had yet seen, and bears reference in all its pro- 
 visions to that spiritual nature, the common inheritance 
 of the species, on whose high level all men meet and are 
 equal. It provided that even the humblest of our crafts- 
 men and peasants should be furnished with the data neces- 
 sary to just thinking, and brought acquainted with the 
 rules which regulate the reasoning faculties. Almost all 
 the knowledge which books could supjjly was locked up in 
 the learned languages. It was appointed, therefore, " that 
 young men who purposed to travel in some handicrait, or 
 other pi'ofitable exercise, for the good of the common- 
 wealth, should (after devoting a certain time to reading and 
 the catechism) devote a certain time to grammar and the 
 Latin tongue ; and then a certain time furtlier to the study 
 of the other tongues, and to the arts of philosophy."^ It 
 must have been surely a strange fanaticism that could have 
 formed a system such as this. Despite the utmost efforts 
 of the reformers, however, the system was only partially 
 established, for its enemies were numerous and powerful. 
 But the pure and intellectual religion in which it origi- 
 nated had freer course ; and such were the effects of the 
 latter, that in little more than half a century it had filled 
 even the humblest cottages of our country with thinking 
 men, who had learned to read and to pray over their 
 
 1 " First Book of Discipline," chap. vii. part i. clause 5.
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 47 
 
 Bibles. The fact is happily illustrated by the two great 
 persecutions to which our Church has been subjected, — 
 that which preceded the first establish tnent of the re- 
 formed religion, and that of the reign of Charles 11. The 
 martyrs of the one were mostly men of rank and learning. 
 Hamilton was the scion of a noble family, Wishart a gen- 
 tleman and deeply learned, Miln a priest, Straiton well 
 born and a person of erudition. The victims of the other, 
 on the contrary, were taken, in most instances, from among 
 our common people — our farmers, mechanics, and shop- 
 keepers. The testimony of Bishop Burnet to the intelli- 
 gence of this class, as adduced by the Rev. Andrew Gray, 
 in his masterly pamphlet, is very conclusive. Burnet was 
 one of six Episcopal divines employed by Leighton in the 
 year 1670 to go among the people and combat their Pres- 
 byterian prejudices ; but the mission proved, it would 
 seem, of little effect. " We were indeed amazed," he 
 states, "to see a poor community so capable of arguing on 
 points of government, and on the bounds to be set to the 
 power of princes in matters of religion. Ui)on all these 
 topics they had texts of Scripture at hand, and were ready 
 with their answers to anything which was said to tl:em. 
 And this measure of knowledge was spread among the 
 very meanest of them, even their cottagers and their 
 servants." We find evidence equally direct, though of a 
 somewhat different character, in the "death testimonies" 
 preserved in such works as"Naphtali" and the "Cloud 
 of Witnesses." Many of these were written by j^eomen 
 and mechanics, — by Glasgow shopkeepers, shoemakers 
 from Edinburgh, and weavers from the Stewartry of Kirk- 
 cudbright; and yet, though sufficiently humble regarded 
 merely as compositions, there are none of them so imper- 
 fect as not to embody the thoughts and give expression to 
 the feelings of their i-cspective authors. Be it remem- 
 bered, too, that they are tlie productions of a period when 
 it was no uncommon matter, in at least the northern parts 
 of the kingdom, to find persons in the grade of gentlemen 
 unable to sijjjn their names.
 
 48 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 The defects and errors of the Scottish Church in tlie 
 earlier and better part of her history it is no difficult task 
 to point out. We do not live among greater or better 
 men than the Knoxes and Melvilles of the sixteenth cen- 
 tury, or the Hendersons and Rutherfords of the seven- 
 teenth ; but we live in an age considerably in advance of 
 theirs. Let us remember, however, that the knowledge of 
 truths which perchance we could never have discovered 
 for ourselves does not entitle us to look down with any 
 very marked contempt on the vigorous-minded worthies 
 who flourished before their promulgation ; and that we 
 would do well to enjoy with moderation the chance emi- 
 nence which raises our dapper little persons over the giants 
 who stand on a lower level. The age of Knox and of 
 Craig was essentially a despotic age. The Church in which 
 they had spent that eai'lier portion of their lives in which 
 habits of thought and feeling are most readily formed, was 
 inevitably and constitutionally a despotic Church. The 
 principles of toleration were altogether the discovery of a 
 later time. It is undeniable, too, that some of the better 
 members of the Church, in her seasons of suffering, were 
 goaded into blamable excesses by that exasperating spirit 
 of jiersecution which, according to Solomon, maketh even 
 wise men mad. It is equally undeniable that she must 
 have included within her pale, in her times of triumph, a 
 considerable amount of the volatile rascality which ever 
 delights to attach itself to a dominant partv. Do we not 
 know that the blood-thirsty Lauderdale and the crafty and 
 cruel Sharpe were at one period of their lives i:ealous and 
 influential Covenanters? Let us not confound, however, 
 the excesses of either her true or her renegade members 
 with her own proper acts, or the grosser spirit which some- 
 times influenced her from without with the infinitely purer 
 principle wliich dwelt within. Nor yet let us forget that 
 the great bulk of our countrymen in the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries had not attained to that full moral 
 and iutelleclaul ^^luture which is in('()iHpatible with a state
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 49 
 
 of tutelage and subserviency. We treat children after one 
 fashion, and men after another, in even the freest states, 
 and under the most equal laws. And in deciding regarding 
 the spirit of the Scottish Church, there can be nothing 
 more illiberal than to mix up into one heterogeneous idea 
 two such opposite principles as the absolute rule of a 
 schoolmaster, whose very vocation it is to forward the 
 progress of the human mind, and the iron despotism of a 
 tyrant, who, to accomplish his own base purposes, would 
 plunge the millions into barbarism. Let our Church be 
 tried, as we try the characters of our fellow-men, by the 
 main scope of her conduct, and the intrinsic value and as- 
 certained effects of her grand principles. Let us try her 
 enemies and antagonists by the same rule, separating their 
 general conduct from all such accidental circumstances as 
 the beauty and fascinating elegance of Mary, the dignity 
 under suffering of Charles L, or the military genius of 
 Montrose and Dundee. It will be found that the Church 
 has much to hope and nothing to dread from such a trial, 
 — that ignorance, tyranny, cruelty, superstition, the ignoble 
 selfishness that would sacrifice the welfare of the many to 
 the little interests of the few, and criminally repress the 
 moral and intellectual growth of the species, have ever 
 formed the chief characteristics of her opponents, — that 
 a regard for the souls of men, a zeal for the spread of 
 knowledge, a love of liberty and of morals, an all-pervad- 
 ing reverence for the law of God — in short, the "antient 
 opinions," joined to the original spirit of Christianity, have 
 ever constituted her own. 
 
 The gist of the argument lies in least compass when we 
 regard it simply as a question of history. The inevitable 
 hostility of Christianity, in its purer forms, to irresponsible 
 authority, however strengthened by ancient prejudice or 
 unjust laws, arises, as has been shown, from two grand 
 principles, — the recognition of a paramount code, to 
 which every other code must yield, and an intellectual 
 discipline, through which m-^n are raised to a freedom and 
 
 5
 
 .00 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 dignity of thought incompatible with a state of political 
 servitude. And what wonder that principles so formida- 
 ble should have found bitter enemies in absolute kings 
 and tyrannical nobles, men whose widely extended privi- 
 leges were encroachments on the unalienable rights of the 
 species ? Prerogative urged its claims on the one side, 
 men asserted their rights on the other. But though such 
 formed the actual merits of the controversy, they were 
 otherwise stated and understood. The reformers contended 
 that to Caesar should be rendered the things which were 
 Ca3sar's, and nothing more ; and that they should be per- 
 mitted to render directly unto God himself the things 
 which pertained to God. Csesar contended, on the other 
 hand, that he should be jnit in possession of the whole, — 
 one part, of course, in his own proper right, the other in 
 an assumed capacity of steward or middleman. The 
 reformers maintained that their religion was a pure and 
 scri])tural religion, and that they could not in conscience 
 receive any other. Cajsar insisted on taking this scrip- 
 tural religion from them, and setting what he deemed a 
 better in its place — a religion whose laws he had made to 
 agree with his own. In all history there are not three 
 characters better or more generally understood than those 
 of James and the two Charleses. We are as intimately 
 acquainted with not only the general scope of their con- 
 duct, but even their little individual peculiarities, as if our 
 knowledge of them had been the result of personal obser- 
 vation. Who will venture to affirm that any one of the 
 three, even the alleged author of the Icon Basilike him- 
 self, was actuated for a single day by that pure missionary 
 sj)irit which can unhesitatingly sacrifice the lower regards 
 of self to the glory of God or the general good of men ; 
 or that they preferred the Episcopacy they were so zeal- 
 ous to establish, to the Presbyterianism they would so fain 
 have anuihilatcMl, meix'ly because they deemed it more 
 purely scriptural, or better suited to advance the true 
 interests of their subjects? J:;mes, whose very considera-
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 51 
 
 ble shrewdness was balanced by a singularly great amount 
 of folly and weakness, and who was by much too vain to 
 enjoy his wisdom in secret, divulged the principle on 
 which both himself and his successors acted, in one of 
 those "short speeches" which, according to Bacon, have 
 the double quality of indicating men's real designs and 
 of flying about like arrows. "ISTo bishop, no king." 
 The Episcopacy which these princes labored to introduce 
 was virtually a modified Christianity, which, to use the 
 language of Voltaire, " ran counter to the popular spirit," 
 necessarily associated with the "antient opinions," now 
 happily " revived." The institution of bishops was a 
 piece of mere political machinery on which to rest the 
 ghostly authority of the king. And the character of the 
 men best suited for the office throws light, like that of the 
 princes by whose authority they were appointed to it, on 
 the secular nature of the purposes which they were in- 
 tended to serve. We have been lately instructed by an 
 eminent judge, on the strength of a Greek etymology, that 
 this order of Churchmen and the Presbyterian superin- 
 tendents of our "First Book of Discipline" were in reality 
 identical. Perhaps, however, a slight acquaintance with 
 history might have stood his lordship in better stead on 
 the occasion than even the nicest knowledge of Greek. 
 The Scotchman knows very little of his Church who does 
 not know that the more fitted a minister was to be a 
 superintendent, the less fitted was he to be a bishop. The 
 superintendent was a faithful and able clergyman, " a man 
 endowed with singular graces," chosen by the people and 
 his brethren to be, like the apostle of the Gentiles, " more 
 abundant in labors" than men of ordinary gifts; to be a 
 journeyer froni place to place, in districts where ministers 
 were^ few ; to " preach at least thrice every week ;" to take 
 note of crimes and defections; to "admonish where admo- 
 nition was needed ; " to give good counsel where it was 
 required ; to consider how the " poor were to be provided 
 for," the " youth instructed ; " to watch over the " manners
 
 52 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 of the people," the lives of ministers, the order of churches.' 
 The men best fitted to be bishops, on the contrary, were 
 the Montgoraeries, Adamsons, Sharpes — Judas Iscariots 
 of the Church. It was essential that the Scotch superin- 
 tendent should have much religion ; it was necessary that 
 tlie Scotch bishop should have none. Leighton was a 
 truly good man ; and, after giving the office a fair trial, he 
 found himself entirely unfitted for it. 
 
 It may be remarked, however, that though the Reformed 
 Church of Scotland has always been opposed to bishops in 
 the king's sense of the term, she has ever loved and cher- 
 ished them in the true apostolical sense; and that the 
 republican level on which she has placed her ministers has 
 proved the most direct means of securing to her the ser- 
 vices of real bishops, and of guarding her against the 
 intrusion of counterfeits. It has secured to her that the 
 John Newtons, Thomas Scotts, and Richard Cecils of the 
 corporation should not remain in inferior, uninfluential 
 offices, when right reverend infidels, high in spiritual 
 authority, should be lending the full weight of their influ' 
 eiice to degrade to the merely human level the adorable 
 and sole Redeemer. -The bishops of our Presbyterian 
 Church have been men of larger minds and greater moral 
 force than their brethren, and their widely-extended 
 dioceses have been the hearts and understandings of the 
 people of Scotland. Knox, Craig, Melville, Bruce, Ruther- 
 ford, Henderson, Witherspoon, Erskine, Moncreiff, Thom- 
 son, — all these, and many others, were eminent PresWy^- 
 terian bishops of the first rank; and, though their claims 
 may seem more than a little doubtful when tried by the 
 I*useyite argument, we have no unwillingness whatever to 
 subject them to the test of reason and of Scripture. 
 
 Such is the true and rational Episcopacy of the Church 
 of Scotland — an Episcopacy founded on principles which 
 secure, agreeably to the spirit of the a|)Ostolical church, 
 that the best and wisest men shall exercise the greatest 
 
 1 First Book of Discipline, chap. vi. part ii.
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 53 
 
 authority, and which the counterfeit Episcopacy of James 
 and tlie Charleses hxbored so zealously to subvert. But 
 there is a principle whose hostility to the Church's true 
 interest is even less defensible, because more unequivocally 
 secular, than that of the nominal religion by which the 
 Church, in the earlier portion of her history, was so long 
 and so grievously oppressed. It is not difficult to conceive 
 how, through a little perverted ingenuity, the identical 
 arguments which support the better Episcopacy may be 
 converted into sophisms to defend the worse. Nothing 
 easier than to prove the immense value of such master- 
 spirits as our Knoxes and Hendersons ; and it is only 
 necessary to confound the distinctions conferred on Church- 
 men by kings and laws, with the distinctions created among 
 them by grace and nature, in order to arrogate an equal 
 importance to the hierarchy appointed by men as to the 
 hierarchy instituted by God. Or the argument may be 
 differently grounded. It may be asserted that a notninal 
 Episcopacy in the Church is a mere recognition of its real 
 Episcopacy — a mere system of sanctions extended by hu- 
 man law to the natural and divinely-instituted authority 
 of great and good men. And to give the assertion weight 
 and plausibility in its bearing on the Scottish Church, we 
 have merely to set aside our histories, and to forget that it 
 was the Montgomeries, Adamsons, and Sharpes, to whose 
 authority the law extended its sanction, while our untitled, 
 though surely most venerable and divinely-instituted bish- 
 ops were compelled to flee for their lives to the hill-side. 
 But the other great expedient for secularizing the Church, — 
 the 2)C(tro)iage jii'inciple, — even sophistry itself has scarcely 
 ingenuity enough to defend. It is one of those legalized 
 enormities which disdain to assume even the color of good, 
 and which base their claims to the respect and obedience 
 of the masses whom they oppress, not on their being just 
 and rational, but on their being law. Episcopacy, not- 
 withstanding its grovelling and earthly spirit, was osten- 
 sibly a form of religion as truly as Presbyterianism itself; 
 
 5*
 
 64 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 and the controversy assumed, in consequence, a theological 
 aspect. The patronage princij)lc, on the contrary, is avow- 
 edly secular. It interferes witli spiritual concerns, with no 
 spiritual character to assert, and intermeddles with matters 
 of conscience, with no conscientious motives to urge. 
 
 True it is, however, that the difference is rather appar- 
 ent than real. It will be found that it is virtually the 
 same modifying power in its attempts to render the Church 
 a merely secular institution, subservient to merely secular 
 purposes, which assumed an Episcopal form in the earlier 
 portion of her history, and embodied itself into a patron- 
 age principle in the latter. It will be found, too, that iden- 
 tically the same class of men who were so ready to lay 
 down their lives in resisting the encroachments of the one, 
 have been ever the staunchest and most uncompromising 
 opponents of the other ; that though the assaulting prin- 
 ciple from without has altered its form and mode of attack, 
 it has not altered its nature ; and that the resisting prin- 
 ciple within, still more thoroughly consistent, has retained 
 both its form and its nature too. The two conflicts, at 
 once dissimilar and alike, liave agitated the Church during 
 two nearly equal periods of lier history, — the one from 
 early in the reign of James VI. until the Revolution, the 
 other from the latter years of Anne until the present 
 day. Patronage existed during the earlier period; and 
 broadly was it denounced, and the " free election " princi- 
 ple asserted, by even the first fiithers of the Reformation ; 
 but the field was occupied by questions embodying the 
 same antagonist principles in a different form, and the 
 abuse on the one hand, and the popular right on the other, 
 were assigned subordinate places in the controversy. It is 
 perhaps not unworthy of remark, that the truly liberal 
 educational scheme of the reformers shared (also in a sub- 
 ordinate form) in exactly the same prosperity and the same 
 reverses with the non-intrusion principle ; that the cause 
 of ignorance and of patronage on the part of the court, 
 of the popular right and of popular instruction on the
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 55 
 
 part of the Church, triumplied and suffered together. 
 During the earlier part of the seventeenth century, tlie 
 educational scheme, with only its true excellence to recom- 
 mend it, retained its first unauthorized and unsanctioned 
 character. No sooner, however, did the Church become 
 dominant, at the close of the reign of Charles I., than it 
 passed into a law, — " a law," says Currie, the elegant biog- 
 rapher of Burns, " which may challenge comparison with 
 any act of legislation to be found in the records of historj^, 
 whether we consider the wisdom of the ends in view, the 
 simplicity of the means employed, or the provisions made 
 to render these means effectual to their purpose."^ The 
 Church sank on the Restoration, and the educational law 
 sank with it, together Avith all the other laws unsanctioned 
 by the royal assent. It slept during the reigns of Charles 
 and James; but on the Revolution the Church again be- 
 came dominant, and this wise and good law was again 
 enacted in identically the original terms. I need hardly 
 remind the reader that it had for its meet companion an 
 *mti-patronage law, which was established, abolished, and 
 reiinacted at precisely the same j^eriods, and through ex- 
 actly the same influences. 
 
 The origin of the singularly metaphysical right of pat- 
 ronage has been variously accounted for. It has been 
 asserted that it may be traced simply to the circumstance 
 that, in the earlier periods of our ecclesiastical history, 
 churches, were sometimes built and endowed by private 
 individuals, who retained to themselves and their succes- 
 sors the right of nominating the ecclesiastics by whom the 
 duties attached to these erections were to be performed, 
 and the revenues enjoyed ; and that this merely civil right 
 escaped the general confiscation of church property which 
 took place at the Reformation, and has come down, with a 
 few interruptions, to our own times. It will be found, how- 
 ever, that this, though a sufficiently clear, is but a partial 
 statement of the case. In whom, I ask, were the rights of 
 
 1 Dr. Currie's Trefatory Remarks, Life of Burns.
 
 66 THE WniGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 patronage vested in 1560, on tlie first documentary recog- 
 nition of Protestantism by the Lords of the Congregation? 
 
 — Not, certainly, in the Argyles, Glencairns, Lindsays, 
 Boyds, Hays, Lochinvars, Marshals, Drumlanrigs, of Scot- 
 tish story. I find the names of these noblemen, with those 
 of many others, attached to the First Book of Discipline, 
 in which the free election principle is so broadly and un- 
 compromisingly laid down. I find, too, that in pledging 
 themselves to su|)port the various important principles 
 which the book embodies, as altogether " good and con- 
 form to God's woi'd," they could stipulate as a condition 
 that the Churchmen of the exploded fiith should be per- 
 mitted to enjoy their benefices during the course of their 
 lives. But there is no stipulation regarding the " free elec- 
 tion " principle; no mention made of a right vested in 
 either themselves or others, which it threatened to subvert ; 
 in short, nothing whatever to show that they deemed the 
 claims of patronage more Protestant in principle, or less 
 entirely abrogated by the triumj)h of the "antient opin- 
 ions," than even the worship of saints and images, or the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation itself. The Reformation 
 interposed at this period a wide gulf between the abuses 
 of the old system and the visages of the new, and not a 
 single right of patronage had as yet strided across the 
 chasm. 
 
 The revival of these rights was evidently an after- 
 thought, — one of the many expedients of the time for 
 secularizing the Church, We read its true character in 
 that of the party in whom it originated, — in the appoint- 
 ment of the tulchan bishops, in the violence of Morton 
 and his associates in 1571, in the Black Acts of 1584, 
 
 — in short, in the entire history of James, and in that of 
 his son. Nor can we well conceive a greater contrast than 
 that which existed between the spirit in which these rights 
 of pati-onage were asserted by the court party on the one 
 side, and the niodilied and well-restricted sense in which 
 they were recognized by the Church on the other. The
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL, 0< 
 
 highest civil authority was of course that of the king; nor 
 was his power j^et compressed within its true limits by the 
 just rights of the people; for, thougli a few enlighten cfl 
 minds of the Knox and Buchanan calibi-e could mark out the 
 separating boundary with a skill and precision not surpassed 
 in any after period, there existed no tidal influences of opin- 
 ion powerful enough to raise and propel the masses to the 
 proper line. Liberty had almost all its battles yet to fight, 
 and prerogative almost all its defeats yet to sustain. The 
 king was tlie first magistrate of the country ; but he was 
 also a great deal more ; and the national property held by 
 him for the public good was too often confounded with a 
 thing so entirely different as the personal property held by 
 him for his own benefit. But though the Church shared, in 
 some degree, in this confusion of ideas, her high princijjles 
 assisted materially in clearing her views ; and she could 
 assert in her Book of Discipline that not even by the king 
 himself should ministers be obtruded on congregations 
 contrary to the will of the people. In his connection \\ith 
 her patrimony, however, — a connection which, now that 
 such matters are better understood, resolves itself into 
 merely the care of the magistracy extended to public prop- 
 erty employed for the public advantage, — she recognized 
 his rights of patronage. Nor is it at all difficult to conceive 
 how, in her view of the matter, these rights, and even a 
 free-election principle, should be perfectly compatible with 
 each 'Other. She had but one code of laws and one rule 
 of duty for all men, with no peculiar license for kings; and, 
 deeming the monarch as certainly an accountable creature 
 as any of his subjects, and recognizing but one way in 
 which his privileges could be employed, she held that his 
 right of patronage was a sacred trust, which he could only 
 properly exercise by extending to the people, as the occa- 
 sion offered, a liberty of choice; and that the intrusion 
 upon them of an unpopular minister was a gross and crim- 
 inal abuse of power, which, as being contrary to justice, 
 no law could sanction. There are, fortunately, Scottish
 
 58 THE WIIIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 patrons of the present clay who view the privilege as vested 
 in themselves in a light exactly similar to that in which 
 the Church regarded it in its connection witli the king, and 
 who find no disagreement between its wise and conscien- 
 tious exercise and a scrupulous regard to the vvelfiire and 
 wishes of the people; nor is the right a merely nominal 
 one, when thus exercised by these men, if the gratitude 
 and good-will of thousands, and the approval of their own 
 conscience, be matters of any value. Even we of the 
 present time have no other objection to patronage in such 
 hands than the one which a Roman of the empire might 
 have urged against the despotism of an Antonine or an 
 Aurelian ; — it is merely the irresponsible power, and the 
 Neros and Domitians, that we dread. 
 
 But James VI., the true son of Mary and of Darnley, 
 and, if we except his ancestor, James III., the most con- 
 temptible of all our Scottish kings, was a patron of a very 
 different stamp from either Sir George Sinclair or the 
 Marquis of Bute. At once timid and unscrupulous, grasp- 
 ing and profuse, facile and ungenerous, childishly attached 
 to a few, though indifferent to the good of the niany, ever 
 eager to extend his power beyond tlie just limits, and yet 
 ever subject to some petty tyranny of his own creating, 
 with almost vanity and folly enough to neutralize his cun- 
 ning, and nearly weakness enough to balance his wicked- 
 ness, — there was scarce an opportunity of good or of 
 advantage which he did not misimprove, scarce a privilege 
 which he did not abuse, scarce a duty in which he did not 
 fail. Nay, such was the nature of the man, that he was 
 hardly more faithful to his own selfish aims tlian to the 
 just rights of his subjects. Robertson shows us with how 
 careless a hand he portioned out, among his flatterers and 
 favorites, the church lands annexed by Parliament to the 
 Crown, and which, if retained, would have so mightily 
 strengthened the power he was so anxious to establish. 
 And Calderwood relates that he dealt after exactly the 
 same manner with the rights of patronage, which he had
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 59 
 
 for the purpose created, contrary to law, when they had 
 ceased to exist — scattering them as tlionghtlessly and pro- 
 fusely among his courtiers and minions as he could have 
 done the counters which he used in play, when the game 
 Avas over.^ The Church seriously remonstrated against an 
 abuse of the kingly power so weak in itself, and so preg- 
 nant with evil, and urged, somewhat in the spirit of the 
 last General Assembly, that gifts of such ill omen should 
 be instantly recalled, and that commissioners and presby- 
 teries should not be "processed and horned" for not giv- 
 ing admission to "persons presented by the new patrons." 
 But supplications and remonstrances with only justice and 
 reason to recommend them proved of little avail ; and the 
 king's gifts, in all their portentous absurdity, were con- 
 firmed, not recalled. Certainly the origin of patronage in 
 the Reformed Church of Scotland had not been such as to 
 entitle it to much reverence. It has been truly remarked, 
 that the cause of justice and of truth stands in need of no 
 pedigree to ennoble it; but the reverse is not equally true; 
 and it is well to know of an antagonist cause, that the 
 meanness of its descent corresponds with the flagitiousness 
 of its principles. It does not in any degree tend to increase 
 our respect for the rights of patronage — rights so con- 
 tinually associated with wrong — to find that they should 
 have originated in the grasping rapacity of a selfish aris- 
 tocracy, who, to accomplish their sordid purposes of per- 
 sonal or fomily aggrandizement, could have sacrificed the 
 spiritual welfare of a whole country, in the mistaken no- 
 tions of a comparatively uninformed age, only partially 
 won from slavery and barbarism, and in the criminal 
 usurpation and weak profusion of a silly and unprincipled 
 king. 
 
 To the reenactment of patronage by the last Parliament 
 of Anne it is unnecessary to allude. All the more honor- 
 
 1 Calderwood, p. 227. (Sir (5eorf;e M"Kenzio, Obserr. Act 1692, c. 121, observes: 
 "There can be iiotliing so unjust and illegal as these patronages were.")
 
 60 THE \VHIGGISM OF THE OLD t^CHOOL. 
 
 able friends of the principle which the law embodies freely 
 admit tliat the measure, whatever it was in itself, was dis- 
 gracefully carried, and that the accomplishment of its main 
 object would liave proved the ruin of the country. There 
 is no one reckless or unprincipled enougli to justify it in 
 its first cliaracter as a conspiracy. Brougham himself does 
 no more than shut liis eyes on tlie history of the time, and 
 observe a jirofound silence regarding the facts. The apolo- 
 gists of tlie law ground their defence on an entirely differ- 
 ent basis. They remark, with Paley, that there are meas- 
 ures which have presented, on their fii'st establisment, an 
 apparently doubtful or indifferent character, which are 
 found eventually to involve principles little dreamed of by 
 either their friends or their enemies, and to serve other 
 and more important purposes than those for which they 
 were originally designed, and that the law of patronage is 
 one of these. They are ingenuous enough, in most in- 
 stances, to confess, with the honorable Sir Walter, that the 
 law was badly conceived and ill-intended; they only assert 
 that it has wrought well. Now, most broadly and point- 
 edly do we deny the fict. It has not wrought well. It 
 has wrought ill — decidedly, unequivocally, emphatically 
 ill. It has ever breathed in its influences the spirit of its 
 first enactment; its character has ever corresponded with 
 tlie baseness of its origin ; it has done more to unchristian- 
 ize the peo])le of Scotland tlian all the learned and in- 
 genious infidelity of the eighteenth century; it has inflicted 
 a severer injury on the Church than all the long-protracted, 
 and bloody persecutions of the seventeenth. 
 
 The subject is one of great multiplicity; but nothing 
 can well be sim):>ler or more obvious than the principles 
 which it involves ; and the light of reason and of histoiy 
 exhibit it in exactly the same point of view. No one 
 can assert, without either a strange abuse of words or a 
 scarcely conceivable confusion of ideas, that a law works 
 for the benefit of any institution, if it be the direct and 
 palpable tendency of that law to overturn and destroy it.
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 61 
 
 And it is not less obvious, that if the institution be good, 
 and positively useful, the law which tends to its overthio^ 
 must be bad, and positively mischievous. It is a poison 
 introduced into the system, a "law which kills." Kow, 
 it is an undisputed fact, that little more than a century 
 has passed since a Commission of the General Assembly 
 "loosened the pastoral relation" of four of our worthiest 
 clergymen "to their respective charges," and declared 
 them to be "no longer ministers of the Church ;" and tiii:. 
 for no other crime than that of during openly to avow the 
 same detestation of the intrusive principle which, during 
 the two preceding centuries, all the better Presbyterians 
 of the country had been openly avowing before them. It 
 is not less a foct, that in the Edinburgh Almanac for the 
 present year there are no fewer than twelve closely-printed 
 pages of names of Scottish clergymen located within the 
 country, each of these holding by the same catechism and 
 confession of faith with the Church itself; each and al! of 
 them deriving their distinctive designation from the i'our 
 ejected ministers, and their separate existence, either di- 
 rectly or indirectly, from the abuse of patronage ; each 
 furnished with an attached congregation, who, but for the 
 tyranny of the deprecated law, would have been at this 
 moment within the pale of the Establishment, constituting 
 its strength ; and that, in the proportion of about seven- 
 eighths to the entire amount, this numerous and influential 
 body, both ministers and people, are zealously laboring to 
 overturn this very Establishment, and want only a little 
 more of that power which has been accumulating among 
 them in so formidable a ratio during the last fifty years, fully 
 to accomplish their purpose. Nay, that they do not already 
 possess this power, and that the Church is not already 
 overthrown, is owing solely to the fact that the patrons of 
 Scotland have been, in many instances, a gi'cat deal less 
 wicked than the law of patronage, and have waived the 
 exclusive rights which it conferred upon them in favor of 
 the people. 
 
 6
 
 G2 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 And not only can it be shown thnt the law of patronage 
 has a direct tendency to destroy the Church, but tliat it 
 Jias also a tendency equally direct to render it worthy of 
 being destroyed. The entire people of Scotland are judges 
 in this matter; there is no need of framing arguments 
 to convince them ; it is only necessary to refer to well- 
 known facts. When, and through what influence, I ask, 
 was it that the Church of Scotland, long the most popular 
 and influential of all establishments, ceased to so great an 
 extent to impress its own character on that of the country, 
 and, from being a guide and leader of the people, sunk in 
 so marked a degree into a follower and dependent on the 
 government and the aristocracy? When and through 
 what influence was it that the children learned to look 
 with coldness and suspicion on an order of men to whom 
 their fithers had turned in every time of trouble for as- 
 sistance and counsel, — whose sayings they delighted to 
 treasure up, — the stories of whose lives and sufferings 
 constituted their choicest literature, — whose very names 
 they employed as watchwords whenever there was a right 
 to be asserted or a wrong to be redressed, — whom they 
 unhesitatingly followed to the hillside and the battle-field, 
 into exile and captivity, to tortures and to death ? When 
 and through what influence was it that the old evangelical 
 party sunk into a feeble and persecuted minority, — that 
 party who subscribed the confession of our faith, believ- 
 ing it in their hearts, — who, fearing the curse denounced 
 by John, delivered the whole truth of God, taking nothing 
 therefrom, and adding nothing thereto, — who first asserted 
 for themselves and their countrymen the higl> rights of the 
 species, and dared to think and to act with the freedom of 
 men ennobled by "the liberty with which Christ maketh 
 his people free," — who so zealously strove, amid the dark- 
 ness of ignorance and superstition, to extend to even the 
 meanest vassal the blessings of religion and the light of 
 learning, and wlio were ever so ready in the good cause 
 to give their temporalities to the winds, and to hold their
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 63 
 
 lives as nothing? "When nnd through wliat influence ■v\tis 
 it tliat more than one-half the clergy of our Church, pow- 
 erless for every good purpose, ^vere made to stand on 
 exactly the same ground which had been occupied by the 
 curates and bishops of half a century before, and through 
 which the ]nke and the musket came to be employed, as 
 in the Avorst days of Charles II., to secure the settlement 
 of ministers misnamed Presbyterian? Through what in- 
 fluence was it that, the more secular-minded the clergy- 
 man, the more certain was he of retaining his office in the 
 Church, and through which men such as Fisher and the 
 Erskines came to be regarded as the very pests and trai- 
 tors of the institution, and the godly and inoffensive Gilles- 
 pie — whose sole crime it was that he would neither offend 
 against his own sense of duty nor yet outrage the con- 
 science of others — came to be contemptuously thrust 
 out? Through what influence was it that the clerical 
 farmers and corn-fiictors of forty years ago were brought 
 into the Church, — the men who were so ready, in what 
 has been termed the natural course of society, to quit the 
 pastoral for the agricultural life, and Avho, in years of 
 scarcity, when the jirice of grain rose beyond all precedent, 
 were either thriving on the miseries of the ])eople, and 
 accumulating to themselves, in the least popular of all 
 characters, the bitter contempt and un mingled detestation 
 of a whole country,^ or, as the unhonored martyrs of un- 
 lucky speculation, were studying in jails, or under hiding, 
 the restrictions and technicalities of the bankruj)t statutes? 
 Who of all the men of our country has not marked the dif- 
 ference wliich obtains between the faithful minister of Jesus 
 Christ, alike equal in rank to the highest and to the lowest 
 who have souls to be lost or saved, — between the zealous 
 I^reacher of the truth, appointed by God himself to wres- 
 tle with men for their souls, and the mere clerical, half- 
 
 1 It is a fact wliich stands in need of no comment, that the person in the north 
 of Scotland who first raised the price of oatmeal to three pounds per boll was a 
 minister of the Established Church.
 
 64 THE AVHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 fashionable gentleman of " limited means," so little re- 
 spected by the people, and so coldly regarded by the 
 aristocracy, — the mere reader of sermons for a piece of 
 bread, whose sole "vocation" consists in the perhaps pur- 
 chased favor of some unprincipled courtier or ungodly 
 patron ? Truly the people of Scotland must forget a 
 great deal before they can learn to love patronage even a 
 very little; and the man must be wofully ignorant of both 
 the facts of the question and the national character, or 
 strangely confident in his own powers of persuasion, who 
 hopes to convince us, in the face of ten thousand hostile 
 recollections, that the secularizing, soul-destroying law of 
 the infidel Bolingbroke has wrought well. 
 
 I heard sermon only a few weeks ago in the church of a 
 country parish in the north of Scotland, where almost the 
 entire people are separated from the clergyman. I had 
 previously seen much of the evils of patronage. In the 
 prosecution of a humble but honest calling, of which I am 
 not mean enough to be ashamed, I had travelled over a 
 considerable part of Scotland. I had been located for 
 months together, at one period of my life, among the par- 
 ishes of its southern districts, at another in those of the 
 north ; I had seen both the Highlands and the Low 
 country; and if the powers of observation were not want- 
 ing, the opportunities were certainly very great. But the 
 almost entire desertion of a pastor by his people was a 
 thing I had not yet witnessed, and I was desirous to see 
 and judge for myself There are associations of a high 
 and peculiar character connected with this northern parish. 
 For more than a thousand years it has formed part of the 
 patrimony of a truly noble family, celebrated by Philip 
 Doddridge for its great moral worth, and by Sir Walter 
 Scott for its high military genius, and through whose in- 
 fluence the light of the Reformation had been introduced 
 into tliis remote coi'uer, at a period when all the neighbor- 
 ing districts were enveloped in the original darkness. In 
 a later age it had been honored by the fines and proscrip-
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 65 
 
 tions of Charles II. ; and its minister — one of those men 
 of God whose names still live in the memory of the coun- 
 try, and whose biography occupies no small s])ace in the 
 recorded history of her " w^orthies" — had rendered him- 
 self so obnoxious to the tyranny and irreligion of the 
 time, that he was ejected from his charge more than a 
 year before any of the other non-conforming clergymen 
 of the Church. I approached the parish from the east. 
 The day was warm and pleasant; the scenery through 
 which I passed, some of the finest in Scotland. The 
 mountains rose on the right in huge Titanic masses, that 
 seemed to soften their purple and blue in the clear sun- 
 shine to the delicate tone of the deep sky beyond, and I 
 could see the yet unwasted snows of summer glittering in 
 little detached masses along their summits ; the hills of 
 the middle region were feathered with wood ; a forest of 
 mingled oaks and larches, wdiich still blended the tender 
 softness of spring wnth the full foliage of summer, swept 
 down to the path ; the wide undulating plain below was 
 laid out into fields, mottled with cottages, and waving with 
 the yet unshot corn ; and a noble arm of the sea winded 
 along the lower edge for nearly twenty miles, losing itself 
 to the west among blue hills and jutting headlands, and 
 opening in the east to the main ocean through a magnifi- 
 cent gateway of rock. But the little groups which I en- 
 countered at every turning of the path, as they journeyed, 
 with all the sober, well-marked decency of a Scottish Sab- 
 bath morning, towards the church of a neighboring j^arish, 
 interested me more than even the scenery. The clan 
 which inhabited this part of the country had borne a 
 well-marked character in Scottish stor3^ Buchanan has 
 described it as one of the most fearless and warlike in the 
 north. It served under the Bruce at Bannockburn ; it was 
 the first to rise in arms to protect Queen Mary, on her visit 
 to Inverness, from the intended violence of Huntiy ; it 
 fought the battles of Protestantism in Germany under 
 
 G*
 
 66 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 Gustavns Adolphiis ;^ it covered the retreat of the Enghsh 
 at Fontenoy, and presented an unbroken front to the 
 enemy after all the other allied troops had quitted the 
 field. And it was the descendants of these very men who 
 were now passing me on the road. The rugged, robust 
 form, half bone, half muscle ; the springy firmness of the 
 tread; the grave, manly countenance, — all gave indica- 
 tion that the original characteristics survived in their fidl 
 strength ; and it was a strength that inspired confidence, 
 not fear. There were gray-haired, patriarchal-looking inen 
 among the groups, whose very air seemed impressed by a 
 sense of the duties of the day ; nor was there aught that 
 did not agree Avith the object of the journey in the a})pear- 
 ance of even the youngest and least thoughtful. 
 
 As I proceeded, I came up with a few people who were 
 travelling in a contrary direction. A Secession meeting- 
 house lias lately sprung up in the parish, and these formed 
 part of the congi'egation. A path nearly obscured by grass 
 and weeds leads from the main road to the parish church. 
 It was with difficulty I could trace it, and there were none, 
 to direct me, for I was now walking alone. The parish 
 burying-ground, thickly sprinkled with graves and tomb- 
 stones, surrounds the church. It is a quiet, solitary spot of 
 great beauty, lying beside the sea-shore ; and as service 
 had not yet commenced, I whiled ;iway half an hour iu 
 sauntering among the stones, and deciphering the inscrip- 
 tions. I could ti"ace in the rude monuments of this retired 
 little spot a brief but impressive history of the district. 
 The older tablets, gray and shaggy with the mosses and 
 lichens of three centuries, bear, in their uncouth semblan- 
 ces of the unwieldy battle-axe and double-handed sword 
 of ancient warfare, the meet and appropriate symbols of 
 the earlier time. But the more modern testify to the 
 
 1 It is an interesting fact, and illustrates happily tlie high respect with which 
 the clansmen must have regarded their general, that, even in the present day, 
 the name Giistavus is scarcely more common in Sweden itself than in this part 
 of the country.
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 67 
 
 introduction of a humanizing influence. They speak of a 
 life after death in the "holy texts" described by tlie poet, 
 or certify, in a quiet humility of style which almost vouches 
 for their truth, that the sleepers below were "honest men, 
 of blameless character, and who feai'cd God." There is 
 one tombstone, however, more remarkable than all the 
 others. It lies beside the church door, and testifies, in 
 an antique inscription, that it covers the remains of 
 
 the " GREAT.MAX.OF.GOD.AND.FAITHFYL.MIXISTER.OF.IESVS 
 
 CHRIST," who had endured persecution for the truth in the 
 dark days of Charles and his brother. He had outlived 
 the tyranny of the Stuarts, and, though worn by years and 
 sufferings, had returned to his parish on the Revolution, to 
 end his course as it had begun. He saw, ere his death, the 
 law of patronage abolished, and the popular right virtually 
 secured ; and fearing lest his people might be led to abuse 
 the important privilege conferred on them, and calculating 
 aright on the abiding influence of his own character among 
 them, he gave charge on his death-bed to dig his grave in 
 the threshold of the church, that they might regard him as 
 a sentinel placed at the door, and that his tombstone might 
 speak to them as they passed out and in. The inscription, 
 which, after the lapse of nearly a century and a half, is 
 still perfectly legible, concludes with the following remark- 
 able works : — " This. stone. shall. bear. witness. agaixst. 
 
 THE.PARISHIONERS.OF IF.THEY.BRING.ANE. UNGODLY. 
 
 MiNiSTER.iN.HERE." Could the imagination of a poet have 
 originated a more striking conception in connection with 
 a church deserted by all its better people, and whose min- 
 ister fattens on his hire, useless and contented? 
 
 I entered the church, for the clergyman had just gone in. 
 There were from eiglit to ten persons scattered over the 
 pews below", and seven in the galleries above; and these, 
 as there were no more " John Clerks " and '■'•Michael Tods "^ 
 
 1 u Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the only individuals who, in a popula- 
 tion of three tliousand souls, attached their si,!;natures to the call of tlie obnox- 
 ious presentee, Mr. Young, in the famous Auchterarder case.'* — JV'ofe appended 
 to " My Schools and Schoolmasters.'"
 
 68 THE "WIIIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 in the pnvisli, composed the entire congregation. I wrap- 
 ped myself up in my plaid and sat down, and the service 
 went on in the usual course; but it sounded in my ears 
 like a miserable mockery. The precentor sung almost 
 alone ; and, ere the clergyman had i-eached the middle of 
 his discourse, which he read in an unimpassioned, monoto- 
 nous tone, nearly one halt" his skeleton congregation had 
 fallen asleej); and the drowsy, listless expression of the 
 othei's showed that, for every good purpose, they might 
 have been asleep too. And Sabbath after Sabbath has 
 this unfortunate man gone the same tiresome round, and 
 with exactly the same effects, for the last twenty-three 
 years, at no time regarded by the better clergymen of the 
 district as really their brother, on no occasion recognized 
 by the parish as virtually its minister, with a dreary vacancy 
 and a few indifferent hearts inside his church, and the stone 
 of the Covenanter at the door! Against wdiom does the 
 inscription testify? — for the people have escaped. Against 
 the patron, the intruder, and the law of Bolingbroke, — 
 the Dr. Robertsons of the last age, and the Dr. Cooks of 
 the present. It is well to learn from this hapless parish 
 the exact sense in which, in a different state of matters, the 
 Rev. Mr. Young would have been constituted minister of 
 Auchterarder. It is well, too, to learn, that there may be 
 vacancies in the Church where no blank appears in the 
 Almanac. 
 
 It is scarce necessary to remark, that the present position 
 of the Church is a position which she has often occupied, 
 or that the agitated question is one which she has agitated 
 a thousand times before. There is comfort in the fact that 
 we need only refer to her history, to show that all lier bet- 
 ter names have been invariably on the one side; and that 
 the highest praise to which her opponents can pretend is 
 that some of them have been fortunate enough to have 
 attained to a negative character, and that some of them 
 liave had the merit of being equivocal. There is comfort, 
 too, in the reflection that what is morally wrong cannot be
 
 THE AVIIIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 69 
 
 logically right ; and that not only the worthier men, but 
 also the sounder arguments, are to be found on the better 
 side. It is indeed no easy matter to prove that our clergy- 
 men should not receive the people's money for the people's 
 good, unless they first recognize an tincontroUahle right 
 of misapplication in the ])atron ; that Bolingbroke's Act 
 and the Reform Bill should alike remain the law of the 
 land, to blend more than the civil liberty of the freest 
 states of antiquity with well-nigh the giiostly despotism 
 of Turkey or of Rome ; or that men, through a sense of 
 the high duty wliicli they owe to God, should obey, an 
 nnjust law, through which God's own laws are to be nulli- 
 fied, his gospel repressed, and the consciences of his people 
 wronged and offended. And yet such ai'e the difficulties 
 of at least our more extreme opposers. The Lord Pi'esi- 
 dent of the Court of Session is unquestionably an al)le and 
 respectable lawyer; but it is an over-task for even the 
 Lord President himself to be correct and rational when in 
 the wrong; and his address in the Lethendy case is i)er- 
 haps not less valuable as an illustration of the kind of ficts 
 and arguments of which our opponents can alone avail 
 themselves, than even his lordship's ablest and most 
 impressive addresses in their direct and proper character. 
 
 We are shown by Locke, in his wonderful Essay, that 
 "confusions making it a difficulty to separate two things 
 that should be separated, concern always two ideas, and 
 those most which niost approach one another." His lord- 
 ship, however, confounds ideas the most distinct' — things 
 which do not belong to even the same category. He mis- 
 takes a duty enjoined for a power conferred; and finds a 
 mystery, which he confesses himself unable to comprehend, 
 in the absurdity into which the mistake necessai'ily leads. 
 The article in our Confession quoted by his lordship in- 
 structs the civil magistrate "to take order that unity and 
 peace be preserved in the Church ; that the truth of God 
 be kept pure and entire ; that blasphemies and heresies be 
 suppressed ; corruptions and abuses in worship and disci-
 
 70 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 pline prevented or reformed ; " nnd it empowers him, tlie 
 better to fulfil the enjoined duty, to call synods, regarding 
 which he is instructed "to provide that whatever is trans- 
 acted in them he according to the mind of GodP Now, 
 Avhat, I ask, can well be simpler than this, especially the 
 concluding portion of the passage, Avhich seems intended 
 to guard against the very possibility of misconception, and 
 throws so clear a light on what goes before ? Tlie mind 
 of God is the pure and perfect code embodied in God's 
 word, — the snblime doctrines which God reveals, the 
 high duties which he enjoins, the pure morality which 
 he inculcates ; and the magistrate, as the responsible sub- 
 ject of this absolute and immutable code, is commanded to 
 take order that he not only conform to it liimself, but that 
 the Church conform to it too. Strange, however, as it may 
 seem, this explanatory and restricting clause — this clause 
 which lowers the delegated trust into a strictly defined 
 duty — his lordship confesses liimself totally unable to 
 understand.^ He had explored the passage with so engross- 
 ing and definite a conception of tlie meaning he had ex- 
 pected to find in it, as to have no eyes for the meaning 
 which it actually conveys. The determining and defining 
 clause, Avhich asserts the supremacy of the Divine law, 
 appeared to him somehow as merely a splendid obscurity, 
 which sanctioned the exercise of a great, though mysterious 
 and undefinable, power. I doubt not that the ministers at 
 the bar understood the passage a little better, and accepted 
 
 1 " Wliat is the precise meaning of that passage I am sure I don't know, or 
 ■what is the juiisdictiun it gives to the civil manistiate: but it must allude to 
 something which is not temporal. The mind of God is a spiritual concern, and 
 they [magistrates] are to take care that the things transacted in synods be ac- 
 cording to the mind of God. Surely this does not exclude tlie civil magistrate 
 from interfering in ecclesiastical concerns. If words be callable of conveying a 
 meaning, it certainly gives to the civil authority more power than they liave ever 
 exercised, or tlian, I believe, it was ever meant they sliould e.vercise; but it 
 must allude to more tlian mere temporal concerns. In short, I liope that, on 
 sober reflection, the Church will see that they cannot remain in the position of 
 an Established Church, and yet resist the law which has made them an Estab- 
 lished Cliurch." — Lord President's Address, lieport, Scot. Guard., ISth Jun», 
 1839.
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. I 1 
 
 it as a sign tliat they were not standing on unsafe or dis- 
 honorable ground. It proved perfectly impracticable ou 
 this occasion for every purpose of the court. It passed no 
 censure on the minister of Lethendy ; denounced no threat, 
 against the Presbytery of Dunkeld; and if it empowers 
 Lords of Session and their presidents to enter our church 
 courts, it gives them at least no encouragement to vote on 
 the secular side. The jjassage was introduced into our 
 Confession, in its present form, rather more than a hun- 
 dred and ninety years ago ; and there has it remained ever 
 since, as unchanged to suit the profligacy of Charles II., or 
 the prostitution and subserviency of his courts of law, as 
 Avhen the good President Forbes employed his whole Sab- 
 baths in studying the " mind of God," and the rest of the 
 week in advancing the weal of his country, and in the con- 
 scientious discharge of the high duties of his ofiice. It 
 extended to the magistracy exactly the same power which 
 it does now, and breathed exactly the same s[»irit, when 
 Middleton introduced the unhappy act which overturned 
 Presbyterianism in Scotland, — when the apostate Lauder- 
 dale renounced the Covenant, to beconie the remorseless 
 persecutor of his brethren, — when the criminals of our 
 courts were the martyrs of our Church, — when the heroic 
 Mackail stood before the Lords of Council with his leg 
 fixed in the boot, and the executioner struck the wedge 
 till the bone was splintered, and the blood and marrow 
 spurted in their faces. 
 
 Some of his lordship's other mistakes and misconceptions 
 are scarcely less striking than the one just exposed. Error 
 and misstatement creep into his very facts, — error, too, of 
 so important a nature as entirely to alter their illustrative 
 scope and character. It is unnecessary to allude a second 
 time to his lordship's Episcopal argument, so well backed 
 by Greek, and so ill supported by history. In his allusion 
 to the eminent Father of the Secession, he is still more 
 palpably unfortunate. lie tells our better clergymen that 
 they have but one alternative in the matter; that an
 
 72 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 implicit submission to the law of patronage is one of the 
 express conditions on wliich they receive the support of 
 the state ; and that they must either unresistingly subject 
 themselves to this conditional law, or, like the good Eben- 
 ezer Erskine, throw up their livings, and quit the Establish- 
 ment : for this excellent and eminent man, finding, as his 
 lordship states the case, that he* could neither remain in 
 the Establishment without submitting to the law, nor yet 
 submit to the law without oflending against his conscience, 
 judiciously and honestly settled the point by withdrawing 
 from the Church and founding the Secession. What ob- 
 scure and nameless historian could have so entirely misled 
 his lordship ? The statement is totally untrue. Erskine 
 did not withdraw from the Establishment : he was thrust 
 out, and thrust out for this, — that he broadly and point- 
 edly condemned the Church for doing what the court now 
 requires of it to do, and for not doing what, in direct op- 
 position to the court, it has now done. He took his stand, 
 with his three brethren, on the broad constitutional ground 
 which had been occupied by all the better men of the 
 Church from the Reformation downwards ; and, outnum- 
 bered and overborne in an inferior ecclesiastical court, he 
 appealed to the highest. And there, too, he was outnum- 
 bered and overborne ; but, strong in the goodness of his 
 caiise and the approval of his conscience, he would neither 
 recognize its censures as just, nor succumb to its authority. 
 And the court, by a commission of its members, proceeded 
 to cast him out as a disturber of its peace. It "loosened 
 his pastoral relation to his charge," declared his "parish 
 vacant," pronounced him " no longer a minister of the 
 Church of Scotland," and prohibited all the acknowledged 
 ministers of the Church from "employing him in any min- 
 isterial function." Against this unjust sentence Erskine 
 protested and appealed ; and the document is recorded, 
 not in the journals of the assembly, but in the heart and 
 mind of the country. He " protested that his pastoral 
 relation to his people should still be held firm and valid;"
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 73 
 
 that he should "still hold communion with all and every 
 one who adhered to the principles of the true Presbyterian 
 Church of Scotland;" that it should "still be held lawful 
 for him to exercise the keys of doctrine, discipline, and 
 government, according to the Avord of God, the Confes- 
 sion of Faith, and the constitution" of this, the "Cove- 
 nanted Church," by which he so tenaciously held ; and 
 finally, in the hope of a better spirit in the future, he 
 '''• appealed to the first free, faithful, and reforming General 
 Assembly of the Church of Scotland f^ nor are there 
 many of our Avorthier ministers who do not recognize the 
 full justice of the appeal. Such are the facts of the case, 
 as sanctioned by authentic history, in opposition to those 
 adduced by his lordship. But in passing from the illustra- 
 tion to the principle illustrated, it cannot be improper to 
 ask, what sort of estimate has this shrewd and able magis- 
 trate formed of the strength and importance of the party 
 which he so coolly recommends either to submit to the 
 law of patronage, or to retire from the Church? Has he 
 not mistaken the staff, on this occasion, for the main army, 
 — the representatives of the million for the million itself? 
 Or is it really the tens and hundreds of thousands — the 
 preponderating majority and strength of the country, with 
 all their hereditary hatred and acquired dislike of the 
 iniquitous and deprecated law — to whom he submits the 
 alternative ? Retii'e from the Church ! The Church can- 
 not exist without us. We are the thews and sinews, the 
 blood and nerves, of the Church. Our support is essen- 
 tially necessary to secure their temporalities to even the 
 clergymen who value us least ; and the secession of our 
 party would be the inevitable ruin of our opponents. 
 
 The misfortune of the Lord President's address consisted 
 simply in this, — it was a great deal too clear. His lord- 
 ship had to defend what was in itself radically wrong ; 
 
 1 For an impartial and well-written account of the origin of the Secession, see 
 " Chambers's Lives of Eminent Scotsmen," " Life of Erskine," vol. ii. p. 230, etc.
 
 74 THE WHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 and, instead of entrenching himself behind acts of Par- 
 liament happy in their ambiguities, and precedents of 
 the Court which may in some instances be but recorded 
 mistakes, he came imprudently out into the open field of 
 reason and of Scripture. Arguments drawn from the mere 
 law of the case could have been combated by' few ; but in 
 drawing them from the Bible — a book at once the most 
 decided on questions of morals, and the most extensively 
 known — and from reason, the common gift and distinguish- 
 ing characteristic of the species, he addressed himself to 
 the understandings of the entire community. And hence, 
 obviously enough, the people have been enabled to change 
 places with his lordship. It is alike contrary to the whole 
 scope of reason and of Scripture that obedience be ren- 
 dered to an unjust law; nor can there be anything more 
 exquisitely absurd than to confound such an obedience with 
 the mere recognition of the power and authority of the 
 magistrate. "Our Saviour," says his lordship, "pleaded 
 no exemption from the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim." 
 True ; but our Saviour never obeyed an unjust law. " Paul 
 pleaded before Felix," Festus, " and Agrippa, and," as the 
 edicts against the Christians were not yet framed, "he 
 appealed to Cffisar." Undisputably ; but Paul did not obey 
 an unjust law. Nor are we left to mere inference in the 
 matter. Peter and John, when brought before a council of 
 rulers and Sadducee elders, assigned good and sufficient 
 reasons why they should not submit themselves to the will 
 or authority of men, if opposed to that of God ; and the 
 argument still survives to urge on our consciences, that 
 we yield not obedience to an unjust law. Nay, it is only 
 necessary, in deciding the question, to inquire why the 
 churches have been persecuted and the martyrs slain. His 
 lordship's law does not lie so much within reach as his lord- 
 ships facts and arguments. It is exceedingly natural, how- 
 ever, to judge of it from the company which it keeps, and 
 to bear in mind that very eminent lawyers have arrived at 
 very opposite conclusions on the point, and entertain very
 
 THE WHIGGISxM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 75 
 
 different opinions. The independence of tlie Church seems 
 as decidedly recognized by statute as the rights of the pa- 
 tron ; and, besides, are we not assured '•Hhat the laio and 
 the opinion of the Judge are not always convertible terms, 
 or one and the same thing, since it sometimes may happen 
 that the judge may mistake the law'''' f Now, this must 
 surely be good sense, for it is according to reason and 
 experience; and it must necessarily be good law, for it 
 occurs in Blackstone. 
 
 It is fully admitted, however, that the decision of our 
 courts has practically determined the law, and that the 
 Church is at this moment as entirely at the mercy of the 
 patron as if her liberties had never been asserted nor her 
 independence recognized. The Court of Session has means 
 at command, far more convincing than argument, to com- 
 pel the admission ; and the readiness to employ these is 
 fully equal to the ability. We have already seen one of 
 the Presbyteries of our Church honored by a public rebuke, 
 and fines and im])risonment hang over another. But the 
 duty o,f our ministers is not the less clear. They owe it 
 to themselves and to their people, to their country and to 
 their God, that they neither obey this iniquitous law, nor 
 yet quit the Establishment. Either alternative involves 
 the ruin of the Church of Scotland ; and who is there that 
 has studied our country's history in the true spirit, or has 
 acquainted himself with the temper of the present time, 
 and the depth and force of the national character, who can 
 believe that the Church of Scotland is destined to fall 
 alone ? There is more at stake in the agitated question 
 than either rights of patronage or the temporalities of the 
 Church ; and our Earls of Kinnoull, who have wealth, and 
 lands, and titles, as well as patronages, to lose, and our 
 Lord Chancellors and Lord Presidents, who, like our clergy, 
 derive their support from an establishment, would do well 
 to beware that in this season of tempests and tornadoes 
 they unsettle not the ballast of the state. There are ele- 
 ments of tremendous power slumbering, and but partially
 
 76 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 slumbering, among the masses; and woe to the people — - 
 a double woe to the aristocracy of the land — if these 
 once awaken in the fierce and untamable fury of their 
 nature, to bid defiance to every law, and to trample on 
 eveiy privilege. God, to avert the calamity, and in his 
 great and wonted care for our country, is awakening the 
 old spirit of the Church, — that free and noble spirit which, 
 alike opposed to despotism in the ruler and to license in 
 the people, can brook neither the grinding tyranny of the 
 few, nor yet the fiercer and more savage intolerance of the 
 many ; and if his design of mercy be thwarted through a 
 selfish and short-sighted policy, the judgment shall assur- 
 edly fall heaviest on the classes which offend most. In 
 the event of a popular convulsion, all must necessarily 
 suffer, and suffer to no good end. It is an immutable law 
 of Deity that the blessings of freedom can be enjoyed by 
 only wise and virtuous men, and that the uncultured and 
 the vicious, in their vain attempts to secure to themselves 
 an ideal liberty, for which they are unfitted, shall struggle 
 fruitlessly in a miserable and delusive cycle of crime and 
 sorrow, that ever returns into itself. All would necessa- 
 rily suffer. But it could not be by the common people that 
 the infliction would be felt most severely; nor, were the 
 hour already come, would the writer of these pages ex- 
 change his humble lot, with its various adjuncts, necessary 
 or peculiar, for perhaps even the highest. lie has but lit- 
 tle to lose or to jirovoke envy ; he has been accustomed to 
 hardship and fatigue; he is in the full vigor of manhood; 
 he could fight as a common soldier in the ranks ; and, if 
 he survived the struggle, he might find himself occupying 
 a not lower level at its close than at its commencement. 
 But the aged judges, the wealthy patrons, the delicately- 
 nurtured aristocracy of Scotland, the men who have so 
 much to lose, which in a popular convulsion could not fail 
 to be lost, nay, even the more eloquent orators and more 
 vigorous thinkers of the age, who have yet to give their 
 first proof of military talent, — what fiite do they augur
 
 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 77 
 
 to themselves? Have they secured the position which 
 they are to occupy in the struggle, or ascertained the exact 
 rank which they are to bear among the new aristocracy, or 
 under the second Cromwell ? They think miserably amiss 
 if they think the people could not find leaders without 
 employing them; nor do they well if, instead of calculat- 
 ing upon the formidable depth and momentum of the yet 
 unbroken waters, they merely look (with, I grant, the nat- 
 ural and proper contempt) on the froth and spume which 
 idly bubbles on the surfoce, — on the shallow and futile 
 talent of demagogues and declaimers, so noisy and obtru- 
 sive now, but which, with the first breach in the barrier, 
 would be forever engulfed in the torrent. 
 
 It is an unchallenged truth, that it is not from reason we 
 derive our highest degree of knowledge, and that we lower 
 the certainty of the intuitive if we but equal it with the 
 merely inferable. It is according to the nature of the 
 human mind that an ascertained fact should weigh more 
 than even the most ingenious argument ; and it is on this 
 pi-inciple that the experience of fourteen years, spent in 
 the workshed and the barrack, in almost every district of 
 the country, and among almost every class of the common 
 people, has had infinitely more to do in influencing my 
 opinion regarding the high importance of the present 
 struggle, and the imnainent danger of the community, 
 than all that even the more rational waiters for a merely 
 intellectual millennium have urged on the one hand, or all 
 that ever the abler and better Voluntaries have argued on 
 the other. I have not yet discovered the elements of the 
 coming happiness among the immense masses broken loose 
 from religion. And though I can believe, with even Vol- 
 taire, that great prosperity has proved prejudicial to the 
 Church, I cannot see that it is from prosperity the Church 
 of Scotland has most to dread at present ; nor have I 
 found much satisfaction in balancing matters between the 
 ascetics of Upper Egypt, or the more than half-infidel 
 
 7*
 
 78 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOI/. 
 
 gnostics of the East, and the corrupt and tyrannical 
 churchmen establislicd by Constantine. Arguments drawn 
 from so remote and misty a period have but the effect of 
 rendering the discussion long and the inference uncertain, 
 I have been enabled to arrive at conclusions much more 
 satisfactory, to at least my own judgment, than what I 
 have found among the Voluntaries themselves. I am not 
 ignorant that the party has its truly excellent lay adher- 
 ents — its good and faithful ministers. I have associated 
 for months together with pious Voluntaries from whom I 
 differed wonderfully little ; and Sabbath after Sabbath 
 have I accompanied them to the meeting-house, to listen 
 with, I trust, more than pleasure to some of their better 
 divines ; and this in districts — and there are still too 
 many such — where the gospel is not preached in the 
 Establishment. It has not escaped me, however, that the 
 religious men of the party are comparatively few ; that, 
 save for purely political purposes, they act but feebly on 
 the mass to which they are attached, and not at all for 
 good on the formidable masses beyond; that, in short, 
 they form merely the " silver lining of the cloud," and that 
 there is enough of the smoke and stench of infidelity in its 
 obscurer recesses to render a Voluntary triumph the bane 
 of the country. The conscientious motives of Dr. Wardlaw 
 and his better friends operate but feebly and inefficiently 
 on the thousands who, holding ostensibly by the same 
 opinions, make common cause with these good but mis- 
 taken men, for accomplishing the same object. I have 
 met with other than pious Voluntaries — and this, too, 
 in immensely greater numbers — with unsatisfied and 
 restless spirits, who, had not the controversy been agitated 
 in its jjresent forjn, would have opposed themselves, not 
 to the Establishment, but to Christianity itself; and, with 
 no secular interest involved in the quarrel, save in its 
 remoter consequences, I have deliberately taken my stand 
 on the side of the Church of Scotland, not more influenced
 
 THE AVHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. 79 
 
 by a cherished recollection of her past services in the 
 cause of God and humanity, or by a well-grounded confi- 
 dence in those pregnant elements of good which she still 
 so largely retains in her constitution, than from an assured 
 conviction that the animating spirit of her opponents is 
 less an inspiration than a possession. It is not this spirit 
 of modern Voluntaryism, so unlike that of the missionary, 
 which is to reestablish the old character of our country, — 
 to substitute a pure Christianity for the serai-barbarous 
 and unreasoning infidelity of our larger towns, — to fill 
 our hamlets with such men as the cotter described by the 
 poet, — to sanction the testimony of some second Kirkton, 
 or to justify the eulogium of some future Whitefield. It 
 is easy to distinguish between a disorganizing influence 
 and a reforming principle, — between the " revived opin- 
 ions" of the sixteenth century and the new opinions of the 
 nineteenth, — between a Scotch Parliament suppressing 
 a corrupt Establishment because it was Popish, and a 
 French convention annihilating a similar institution be- 
 cause it was Christian. It is reformation, not change, — 
 Christianity, not Voluntaryism, — that can alone save our 
 country. 
 
 There is a palpable confusion of idea in the main argu- 
 ment of the party. It confounds things essentially difler- 
 ent — the provided temporalities with the secular spirit. 
 It regards a mere accidental connection as a necessary 
 and inevitable consequence; and could the absurdity occur 
 in any other than a semi-theological controversy, we might 
 hear the incompetency of Cope or Burgoyne attributed to 
 the parliamentary grant for the pay of the army, and the 
 brutality and gross injustice of Jeffries to the establishment 
 of the court over which he presided. We are content to 
 trace the well-marked distinction in both the past history 
 and present position of the Church of Scotland ; and are 
 in no danger whatever of confounding the vantage-ground 
 which her better ministers have occupied to such good
 
 80 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 
 
 purpose, from the days of Knox until now, with that 
 secular spirit which has oppressed and persecuted her in 
 boili the earlier and later periods of her existence, — in the 
 one as an Episcopal form, in the other as a Patronage 
 principle.
 
 LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 
 
 It is one of the main distinctions of works produced by 
 the master minds, whether in literature or the fine arts, 
 that they contain a large amount of thought. There are 
 books of no great bulk which it seems scarce possible to 
 exhaust, and pictures which, after one had looked at them 
 for hours together, apj^ear just as fresh and new as at first 
 when one comes to look at them again. The works of 
 Hogarth are scarcely less remarkable for vigor and cf)n- 
 densation of thought than the works of Shakspeare ; nor 
 is Sir David Wilkie a less fascinating author than Sir 
 Walter Scott, or a less masterly delineator of character. 
 Both these great artists — the living and the dead one, Ho- 
 garth and Sir David — have shown how possible it is for 
 men of genius to think vigorously upon canvas; and that 
 a clear, readable, condensed style may be attained in paint- 
 ing as certainly as in writing. One never tires of their 
 productions. They tell admirable stories in so admirable 
 a manner, that the oftener we |)eruse them the better are 
 we pleased ; and almost every story has its moral. There 
 is, however, one of the most readable of Sir David's ])ic- 
 tures which contains what we have been inclined to think 
 a gross historical error, and belies the chai-acter of a very 
 great man. His "Knox preaching before the Lords of the 
 Congregation" is unquestionably a splendid composition, 
 full of thought and sentiment ; but the main figure is 
 defective. It represents not the powerful and persuasive
 
 82 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 
 
 orator, whose unmatched eloquence led captive the great 
 minds of the country, but the mere fanatical leader of an 
 unthinking rabble. It reminds us of the narrow-minded 
 heresiarch described by Hume and Gilbert Stuart, not 
 of the vigorous-thoughted worthy apostrophized by the 
 noble Milton as " Knox, the reformer of a kingdom," — "a 
 great man, animated by the Spirit of God."^ 
 
 The labors of the late Dr. M'Crie have done much to 
 disabuse the public mind regarding the true character of 
 Knox, moral and intellectual. Never before did an honest 
 and able man turn the stream of truth throusjh such an 
 
 1 Mr. Carlyle, in his letter to David Laing, Esq., of tlie Signet Library, Edin- 
 burjrli, on the project of a National Exhibition of Scottish Portraits, refers to 
 this work of VVilkie's iu the Ibllowiug terms: " No picture tliat I ever saw by a 
 man of genius can well be, in regard to all earnest purposes, a more perfect fail- 
 ure. Can anything, in fact, be more entirely nse/ess for earnest purposes, more 
 «?ilike what ever could have been the reality, than that gross Energumen, more 
 like a boxing-butcher, whom he has set into a pulpit surrounded with draperies, 
 with fat-shouldered women and play-actor men iu mail, and labelled Knox?" 
 With all deference to authority so high and emphasis so great, it may be per- 
 mitted us to doubt wliether Mr. Miller and Mr. Curlyle have done full justice to 
 Wilkie's picture. It was legitimate for the artist to paint Knox as a preacher, 
 and in this character his representation is certainly not unlike what the reality 
 would have been. Knox in the pulpit was one of the fieriest incarnations of the 
 perfcri'iclum ingenium of his countrymen — more tiery even, were that possible, 
 than Chalmers. James Melville heard him preach in 1571, the year before his 
 deatli. Sucli was his weakness, that he went leaning on a staff, his neck wrapped 
 in furs, and supported by Richard Ballenden. It was necessary to lift him to 
 the pulpit, and on first entering it he had to lean for a time to draw breath; 
 "bot," says James, iu his old dialect, " er he haid done with his scimone, he 
 was sa active and vigorous, that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in blads, and tlie 
 out of it." Wilkie had probably this passage in view when he designed liis pic- 
 ture, and the gestures of his Knox correspond as closely as possible to Blelville's 
 last words. The question whether Wilkie's choice of a moment for representing 
 Knox was just and felicitous — whether it is thus we ought to realize to our- 
 selves the Reformer of Scotland — resolves itself into this other, how far the 
 character and work of Kno.x were revealed or typified in his pulpit appearances. 
 Itestrained by the conditions of his art. Wilkie was forced to choose between tlie 
 Knox of the council chamber, or of the General Assembly, or of the study, and 
 the Knox of the pulpit. I'erhaps he ought to have painted him in some one of 
 the former characters rather than in the latter. But the Reformation w.is much 
 the work of preaching, and tlic painter's eye of Wilkie was correct in discerning 
 liow Knox preaclied. It may be suggested that before the Lords of tlie Congre- 
 gation he would have subdued his fire. It is not likely. In the pulpit Ica.st of 
 all would he fear or respect the face of man. The " fat-shoiildcred women, and 
 play-actor men iu mail," are of course conventional and abs»j-d.— Ed.
 
 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 83 
 
 Augean stable of calumny and fiilsehood as this admirable 
 writer in elucidating the history of the Reformation. He 
 accomplished such a revolution in public opinion regarding 
 the characters and events of the period, as the well-chosen 
 hero of his first biography accomplished in its religion. 
 
 The reign of the dissolute and totally unprincipled 
 Charles II. aflected more than the mode and framework 
 of English literature ; it affected its spirit also. It sub- 
 stituted for that indigenous school to which Shakspeare 
 and Milton belong, and which, in a later time, has been 
 restored by Cowper and Wordsworth, the feeble elegan- 
 ces of French literature in the reign of Louis XIV. It 
 substituted also for the native spirit of liberty and the zeal 
 of truth, the servilities of French flattery and French false- 
 hood. It was in this reign of degradation — the reign in 
 which the glorious "Paradise Lost" was described by a ser- 
 vile versifier as a " poem remarkable for only its length" — 
 that Knox came to be represented, like the blind poet who 
 so honored and cherished his memory, as a rude and 
 unmannerly fanatic. lie had taught kings that the divine 
 right is not on the side of irresponsible power, but on the 
 side of a well-regnlated popular liberty. He had shown, 
 with irresistible effect, that whatever God has commanded, 
 men have a "divine right" to obey; and that in such mat- 
 ters kings and law-makers have no right whatever to inter- 
 fere. And the hereditary despots could neither overturn 
 his logic nor forgive him the lesson. But they could revile 
 and calumniate ; and the creatures whom they half fed, 
 half starved, fixed the calumny in the literature of the 
 time. There was a decided improvement in the following 
 age ; but the tone of its theology, in at least the sister 
 kingdom, was unfavorable to the character of Knox. It 
 was a time of spiritual death in the English Church ; and 
 the cry of fanaticism raised against the reformer, chiefly 
 on a civil plea, in the reign of Charles II., was prolonged, 
 in the reign of Anne and the earlier Georges, on a purely 
 religious one. Naturally enough, his beliefs were deemed
 
 84 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 
 
 absurd and irrational by the defamers and depreciators of 
 Whitefield ; and there was no M'Crie to tell the Rundles 
 and Atterburys of the time that the zealot Avhom they 
 contemned and undervalued had been a fellow-laborer in 
 the English Church with its Latimers and Cranniers, and 
 had lent his assistance in framing the code of belief which 
 they themselves had professed to receive, but for which in 
 reality they cared so little. 
 
 The tone of our Scottish literature in the last century 
 was borrowed in part from our English neighbors, and in 
 part from the French. Hume, with less liveliness but 
 greater original powers than Voltaire, condescended, in a 
 considerable degree, to imitate the historical style of that 
 volatile and accomplished writer, and evinced a hostility 
 equally bitter to whatever had the sacredness of religion 
 to recommend it. Robertson, Smollett, Kaimes, Adam 
 Smith, Gilbert Stuart, Tytler, and Moore, had all caught 
 the English mode and the English spirit, and Avere, in at 
 least as marked a degree as any of their English contcm- 
 jioraries, tinctured with infidelity. Hence, in part, the 
 disrespect shown by almost all these writers to the mem- 
 ory of Knox. Many of them, too, had imagination cnc ugh 
 to evince a sympathy for the misfortunes of Mary, which 
 a sense of her crimes and infamies seems to have checked 
 in the friends and followers who would not light for her at 
 Carberry Hill, and who struck only a half-blow in her 
 quarrel at Langside ; and the man who could attach more 
 importance to the religion of a country than to the smiles 
 of so fine a woman, was characterized as rude and brutal. 
 Robertson's hostility to Knox is well known. Even Ilume 
 — who was by much too cool and too sagacious a man to 
 share in the general admiration of Mary — could urge with 
 him, as an argument of weight, that, if he only gave him 
 up the i)rincess, " he would have the compensatory satis- 
 faction of seeing the reformer made sufficiently ridicu- 
 lous." We are -in possession of a volume of the " Edin- 
 burgh Magazine," of the time when that periodical was
 
 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 85 
 
 edited by Gilbert Stuart, and when the Moderate clergy 
 of the south of Scotland were the chief contributors. Tiie 
 articles are temjjerate throughout, except on two subjei^ts, 
 — the Secession and John Knox ; but when these are in- 
 troduced, we find that the writers seem to have lost all 
 command of temper, or to have regarded as legitimate the 
 foulest epithets of opprobrium and reproach. There is, in 
 particular, one article on Knox, written apparently by the 
 editor, in which our venerable reformer is described as 
 mean, illiterate, narrow-minded, cruel, and libidinous; and 
 so completely does the engraver for the Work appear to 
 have entered into the writer's spirit, that the figure in an 
 accompanying print wants only horns and a tail to render 
 it complete. 
 
 But whatever Gilbert Stuart might have thought of the 
 literature of John Knox, it is certain the contemporaries 
 of the reformer, both friends and enemies, estimate<l it 
 very high. Nor in the present time are we without data 
 on which to decide. The art of writing history in the 
 vernacular tongue was not an art of the age. Even the 
 great Bacon failed utterly in this department, nearly an 
 age after, and produced, in his History of Henry VII., a 
 work which has been quoted liberally by both Lord Kainies 
 and Sir Richard Steele, to show how very badly history 
 may be written. Knox's " History of the Reformation" is 
 immensely superior to the history of Bacon. It displays 
 more freedom and more power. There is a dramatic efTiect 
 in some of the dialogues altogether fascinating, and there 
 are touches of such simple pathos in the narrative that 
 they affect even to tears. We would instance the closing- 
 scene in the life of the martyr Wishart, as described in 
 the first volume. No one can glance over the passage 
 without being convinced that the heart of the writer was 
 a heart tender and compassionate in the first degree. We 
 doubt not that it was written with wet eyes and a swelling- 
 heart. He relates, with almost New Testament simplicity, 
 how the "said Mr. George Wishart, departing from the
 
 86 THE LITERACY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 
 
 town of Haddington" under a, presentiment of death, 
 " took good night forever of all his acquaintances," and 
 "how John Knox pressing hard to go with him," the de- 
 voted man said, "Nay, return to your cliildren, God's peo- 
 ple, and God bless you; one is sufficient for a sacrifice:" 
 and how "the said Jolm Knox unwillingly obeyed." Pie 
 relates, further, after narrating the apprehension and trial 
 of the martyr, "that the fire was made ready, and the 
 stake, rt the west port of the Castle of St. Andrews, near 
 to the Priory; and that, directly over against the place, 
 the castle windows were hung Avith rich liangings, and 
 velvet cushions laid for the cardinal and the prelates, who 
 came to feast their eyes with the torments of this innocent 
 man ; " how that, " dreading lest he should be rescued by 
 his friends, the cardinal had commanded that all the ord- 
 nance of the castle should be bent right against the place 
 of execution, and had ordered the gunners to be ready 
 standing by their guns, until such time as his victim was 
 burnt to ashes;" how, "all this being done, they bound 
 Mr. George's hands behind his back, and with sound of 
 trumpet led him forth with the soldiers from the castle to 
 the place of their cruel and wicked execution ;" how, "as 
 he came forth of the castle gate, there met him certain beg- 
 gars, asking of him alms, for Goers sake, to whom he 
 answered, '■I loant my Jiands wliereicith I toas wont to give 
 you alms ; hut the merciful Lord, of his benignity and 
 abundant grace, that feedeth all m.en, vouchsafe to give you 
 necessaries, both unto your body and souls ; ' " how, " after 
 this, he was led to the fire with a rope about his neck and 
 a chain of iron about his middle ; and how, kneeling down 
 beside the faggots, he rose again, and thrice said these 
 words, 'O thou Sovereign of the world, have mercy upon 
 me; Father of Heaven, I commend my s])irit into thy holy 
 hands;'" how, "when he had made this jirayer, he turned 
 inito the people and said, 'I beseech you, Christian breth- 
 ren and sisters, that ye be not offended at the Word of God, 
 for the aflliction and torment which ye see ready pi-epared
 
 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. bl 
 
 for me; but I exhort you that you love the Word of God, 
 and suffer patiently, and with a comfortable heart, for the 
 Word's sake, which is your undoubted salvation and ever- 
 lasting comfort;'" how that "many more foithful words he 
 spake unto them, taking no heed or care of the cruel tor- 
 tures pi'epared for him;" and how, "by and by, the trum- 
 pet sounding, he was tied to the stake, and the fire kin- 
 dled ;" how "■ the captain of the castle, for the love he bore 
 to Mr. Wishart, dreio so near to the fire that the flame 
 thereof did hhn harm, and urged him to be of good cour- 
 age, and to beg from God the forgiveness of his sins;" 
 and how the martyr answered hiui thus from the flames, 
 "'The fire torments ray body, but no ways abates my 
 spirit;'" how "then Mr. Wishart, looking steadfistly 
 towards the cardinal, said, 'He who in such state from 
 that high place feedeth his eyes with my torments, within 
 few d(jys shall be lianged out at the same window, to be 
 seen with as much ignominy as he now leaneth there in 
 pride;'" how, finally, "in short space thereafter, the fire 
 being very great, he Avas consumed to powder." We can 
 believe that the man who wrote this aflecting narrative — 
 the "ruffian Knox," the " barbarian who made Mary weep" 
 — told his queen the very truth when he assured her that 
 "he delighted not in the weeping of any of God's crea- 
 tures; yea, that he could scarce abide the tears of his 
 own boys when his own hands corrected them." Love and 
 pity were assuredly no unwonted emotions in tlie large 
 heart of him who "never feared the face of man." 
 
 It is not as a historian, however, that the literary char- 
 acter of Knox can be rated highest. His history, unlike 
 Bacon's, which is rather overlabored than the reverse, 
 seems, so far as regards composition, to have been carelessly 
 written, — in the midst, doubtless, of the ceaseless round 
 of harassing emidoyments in which the latter portion of 
 his life was spent. It is in his shorter compositions that 
 his great ability as a writer is best shown ; and, with some 
 of these before us, we speak advisedly when we assert that
 
 88 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 
 
 he was decidedly the first man of cither kingdom who 
 wrote what wonhl be deemed a good P^nglish style, tested 
 by the present standard. There is a mellifiuous flow and 
 thorough ease in his sentences altogether astonishing, when 
 we take into account the stiff inflexibility of the English 
 language at that period, as shown in the prose writings of 
 even his abler contemporaries. Whole colonies of half- 
 naturalized Greek and Latin words had been just brought 
 into the language ; and, as if unsuited to its genius, they 
 performed their work clumsily and heavily in even the 
 hands of superior men. We instance the earlier homilies 
 of the English Church. Almost every member of every 
 sentence in these compositions is broken into two parts, the 
 last of which generally repeats in Saxon English the idea 
 which in the first is expressed in Latinized English. And 
 hence their stiff" and peculiar verbosity of style. In the 
 more carefully written compositions of Knox there is none 
 of this. Johnson has remarked of Milton, that the " heat 
 of his genius sublimed his learning," and threw off" merely 
 the finer and more subtle parts into his poetry. In the 
 same way, the genius of the great reformer seems to have 
 fused into one pliant and homogeneous mass the language 
 which, when employed by men of a lower order, was so 
 heterogeneous and untractable. He seemed as if born to 
 anticipate the improvements and refinements of an age yet 
 distant, and this not merely in his knowledge of things, 
 but in his command of words. Sir Walter Raleigh has 
 been described by some of our higher critics as tlie first 
 good prose writer of England; we beg to submit^to the 
 reader the following prayer, written by Knox during the 
 reign of Mary of Guise, nearly an age, be it remarked, 
 before Sir Walter produced the great work on which his 
 fame as a writer chiefly rests. We know not in the com- 
 pass of our literature a more interesting composition. It 
 was written at a time when the ashes of Walter Mill still 
 blackened the public square of St. Andrews, and gives us 
 no inadequate idea of the power of that eloquence chosen
 
 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 89 
 
 by Deity as his honored instrument for the reformation of 
 a kingdom. We ndopt the punctuation and spelling of the 
 oldest edition we have yet seen, — that of the year 1600. 
 
 A Complaint of the Tyrannie used against the Saincts of God, con- 
 taining a Confession of our Sinnes, and a Prayer for the Deliver- 
 ance and Preservation of the Church, and Confusion of the 
 Enemies. 
 
 Eternal! and everlasting God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 •who hast commanded us to pray, and promised to hear us, even 
 when we doe call from the pit of desperation, the miseries of these 
 our most wicked dayes compel us to poure forth before thee the 
 complaintes of our wretched hearts, oppressed with sorrow. Our 
 eyes doe behold, and our eares doe hcare, the calamities and oppres- 
 sion which no tongue can expresse, neither yet, alas, doe our dull 
 hearts rightlie consider the same ; for the heathen are entred into 
 thine inheritance, they have polluted thy sanctuarie, prophaned and 
 abolished thy blessed institutions, moste cruellie murthered, and 
 daylie doe murther thy deare children ; thou hast exalted the arm 
 and force of our enemies, thou hast exposed us a prey to ignominie 
 and shame, before such as persecute thy trueth ; their wayes doe 
 prosper, they glorie in mischiefe, and speake proudlie against the 
 honour of thy name ; thou goest not forth as captaine before our 
 hostes ; the edge of our sworde, which sometimes was most sharpe, 
 is now blunte, and doeth returne without victorie in battell. 
 
 It appeareth to our enemies, O Lord, that thou hast broken that 
 league which of thy mercie and goodnesse thou hast made with thy 
 Church : For the libertie which they have to kill thy children like 
 sheep, and to shed their blood, no man i-esisting, doeth so blind and 
 puife them up with pride, that they ashame not to affirme, that thou 
 regardest not our intreating. Thy long suffering and patience 
 maketh them bold from crueltie to proceed to the blasphomie of thy 
 name. And in the mean season, alas, we do not consider the 
 heavenesse of our sinnes, which long have deserved at thy hands 
 not onlie these temporal! plagues, but also the torments prepared for 
 the inobedient; for we knowing thy blessed will, have not applyed 
 our diligence to obey the same, but have followed, for the most part, 
 the vaiiie conversation of the blinde world : and therefore in verie 
 justice hast thou visited our untiiankfulnesse. But, O Lord, if thou 
 shalt observe and keep in mind for ever the iniquities of thy
 
 90 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 
 
 children, then shall no flesh abide nor be saved in thy presence. And 
 therefore we, convicted in our own conscience, that most justlie we 
 suffer, as punished by thy hand, doe nevertheless call for menrie, 
 accordinj:; to promise: And first we desire to be corrected with the 
 rodde of thy children, by the which we may be brouglit to a perfect 
 hatred of sinne, and of ourselves; and therefore, that it would please 
 thee, lor Christ Jesus thy Sonne's sake, to shew us, and to thy Avhole 
 Church universally persecuted, the same favour and grace that some- 
 times thou diddest, when the chief members of the same for anguish 
 and fear were compelled to crie, Why have the nations raged ? 
 Why have the people made uproares ? And why have princes and 
 kings conjured against thine anointed Christ Jesus ? Then diddest 
 thou wonderfuUie assist and preserve thy small and dispersed flock; 
 then diddest thou burst the barres and gates of yron ; then diddest 
 thou shake the foundations of strong prisons ; then diddest thou 
 plague the cruell persecutors; and then gavcst thou tranquilitie and 
 rest, after those raging stormes and cruell afllictions. 
 
 O Lord, thou remainest one for ever; we have offended, and are 
 unworihie of anie deliverance ; but worthie art thou to be a true 
 and constant God, and worthie is thy deare Sonne, Christ Jesus, 
 that thou shouldest glorifie his name, and revenge the blaspemie 
 spoken against the trueth of his gospel, which is by our adversaries 
 damned as a doctrine deceaveablc and false. Yea, the blood of thy 
 Sonne is trodden under feet, in that the blood of his members is shed 
 for witnessing of thy trueth; and therefore, O Lord, behold not the 
 unworthincsse of us that call for the redresse of these enormities, 
 neither let our imperfections stop thy mercies from us ; but behold 
 the face of thine anointed Christ Jesus, and let the equitie of our 
 cause prevaile in thy presence ; let the blood of thy saincts which is 
 shed be opcnlie revenged in the eyes of thy Church, that mortall 
 men may know the vanitie of their coun sells, and that thy children 
 may have a taste of thine eternal goodness. And seeing that from 
 that man of sinne, that Romnne Antichrist, the chiefe adversarie to 
 thy deare Sonne, doth all iniquitie spring, and mischiefe proceede, 
 let it please thy Fatherlie mercie, more and more to reveale his 
 deceit and tyrannic to the world : open the eyes of princes and 
 magistrates, that clearly they may see how shamefullie they have 
 bene abused by his deceaveablc wayes ; how by him they are com- 
 pelled most crucllio to shed the blood of thy saincts, and by violence 
 refuse thy n(!W and ctcrnall Testament; that tlu^y in deep consider- 
 ation of these grivous offences, may unfainedlie lament their hor-
 
 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 91 
 
 rible defection from Christ Jesus thy Sonne ; from henceforth study- 
 in" to promote his glorie in the dominions committed to their charges, 
 that so yet once again the glorie of thy gospell may appeare to the 
 world. And seeing also that the chief strength of that odious beast 
 consisteth in the dissension of princes, let it please thee, O Father, 
 which hast claimed to thyself to be called the God of Peace, to unite 
 and knitte in perfect love the hearts of all those that look for the 
 life everlasting. Let no craft of Sathan move them to warre one 
 against another, neither yet to maintaine by their force and strength 
 that kingdome of darknesse ; but rather that godlie they may con- 
 spire (illuminated by thy Word), to root out from among them all 
 superstition with the maintainers of the same. 
 
 These, thy graces, O Lord, we unfainedlie desire to be poured 
 forth upon all realms and nations ; but principallie, according to that 
 duetie which thou requirest of us, we most earnestlie desire that the 
 heartes of the inhabitants of England and Scotland, whom the 
 malice and craft of Sathan, and of his supportes, of manie yeers 
 have dissevered, may continue in that godlie unitie which now, of 
 late, it hath pleased thee to give them, being knitted together in the 
 unitie of thy Word : Open their eyes that clearlie they may behold 
 the bondage and miserie which is purposed against them both ; and 
 give unto them wisdome to avoide the same, in such sort that, in 
 their godlie concorde, thy name may be glorified, and thy dispersed 
 flock comforted and relieved. 
 
 The commonwealthes, O Lord, where thy gospell is trulie preached, 
 and harbour granted to the afflicted members of Christ's bodie, we 
 commend to thy protection and mercie ; be thou unto them a defence 
 and buckler. Be thou a watchman to their walles, and a perpetuall 
 safeguard to their cities, that the crafty assaults of their enemies, 
 repulsed by thy power, thy gospell may have free passage from one 
 nation to another ; and let all preachers and ministers of the same 
 have the gifts of thy Holie Spirit in such aboundance as thy godlie 
 wisdome shall know to be expedient for the perfect instruction of 
 that flock which thou hast redeemed with the precious blood of thine 
 onlie and well-beloved Sonne Jesus Christ. Purge their hearts from 
 all kind of sujierstition, from ambition, and vaine glorie, by which 
 Sathan continuallie labouretli to stirre up ungodlie contention, and 
 let them so ron.^ent in the unitie of tliy truelh, that neither the 
 estimation which they have of men, neither the vaine opinions whiili 
 they have conceived by their writinges, prevaile in them against the 
 cleare understanding of thy blessed Word.
 
 92 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 
 
 And now, last, O Lord, we moste huniblie beseech thee, according 
 to that prayer ot thy dear Sonne our Lord Jesus, so to sanctifie and 
 confirme us in thine eternal veritie, that neither the love of life 
 temporal, nor yet the feare of torments and corporall death, cause 
 us to denie the same when the confession of our faith shall be 
 required of us ; but so assist us, with the power of thy Spirit, that 
 not onlie boldlie we may confess thee, O Father of mercies, to be 
 the true God alone, and whom thou hast sent, our Lord Jesus, to be 
 the only Saviour of the world, but also, that constantlie we may 
 withstand all doctrine repugning to thy eternall trueth, revealed to 
 us in thy most blessed Word. Remove from our hearts the blind 
 love of ourselves ; and so rule thou all the actions of our life, that 
 in us thy godlle name may be glorified, thy Church edified, and 
 Sathan finally confounded by the power and means of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be all praise 
 and glory, before thy congregation now and ever. 
 
 Arise, O Lord, and let thine enemies be ashamed, let them flee 
 from thy presence that hate thy godly name ; let the grones of thy 
 prisoners enter in before thee, and preserve by thy power such as 
 be appointed to death ; let not thine enemies thus triumph to the 
 end, but let them understand, that against thee they fight: preserve 
 and defend the vine which thy right hand hath planted, and let all 
 nations see the glory of thine Anointed. 
 
 Hasten, Lord, and tarrie not.
 
 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 These articles upon Dr. Thomas IM'Crie have no direct bearing 
 upon the Disruption controversy. They illustrate, however, in a 
 •way eminently clear and pertinent, the precise manner in which the 
 principles then at stake were apprehended by Mr. Miller, and con- 
 stitute a masterly sketch of the beginnings of the contest in connec- 
 tion with the ecclesiastical history of Scotland in the present cen- 
 tury. For these reasons, and on account of their intrinsic value as 
 embracing a powerful and vivid delineation of one of the greatest 
 Presbyterian divines, it has been deemed proper to give them a place 
 in the volume. — Ed. 
 
 ARTICLE FIRST. 
 
 It is now sixteen years since we first saw the late Dr. 
 M'Crie. We had learned to love and respect him at even 
 an earlier period, not merely as an honest and truly able 
 man, hut also as a genuine type and representative of the 
 Christian patriots of Scotland, — those worthies of other 
 days, whose names we had been taught to pronounce in 
 our childhood as at once the wisest and warmest friends of 
 the people. All our sympathies, national, Presbyterian, and 
 literary, had taken part together in our admiration of the 
 historian of Knox. There was an air of positive romance 
 about his history as a man of letters, which, by exciting
 
 94 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 our imagination, endeared him to x;s the more. "Waller 
 has remarked of the poet Dcnliam, " tliat he broke out 
 like the Irisli rebellion, tlireescore thousand strong-, when 
 nobody was aware or in the least suspected it." But with 
 how much more force does the remark apply to Dr. M'Crie ? 
 Half the literary power of the country had been employed 
 for more than a hundred years in blackening the memory 
 of our noble-hearted reformers. ITume, at once the shrewd- 
 est infidel that ever opposed the truth and the ablest his- 
 torian that ever perverted it, had done his worst. Gilbert 
 Stuart, no mean writer, had done his Avorst too, and in 
 even a bitterer spirit. Tytler, Whitaker, and a whole liost 
 of others, including some of our most popular poets, had 
 followed in their track; and the j^ictures of the more wary 
 but not less insidious Robertson — pictures illustrative of 
 the remark of Pope, that what men are taught to pity they 
 soon learn to love — had prejudiced the public mind even 
 more powerfully against the opponents of Mary than the 
 attacks of more open assailants. The memory of Knox 
 and his coadjutors was pilloried in the literature of tlie 
 country; every witling, as he passed by, flung his handful 
 of filth ; and that portion of our Presbyterian people who, 
 looking into the past through the religious medium, and 
 believing that our reformers, as men awakened to a sense 
 of the truth, were far different from what our literati repre- 
 sented them, could only retain for themselves the justcr 
 estimate of their fathers regai'ding them, without influenc- 
 ing in the least the opinions of their contemporaries. Such 
 was the state of things when a nameless champion entered 
 the lists, and threw down his gauntlet in the cause of 
 Knox and the rcformoi-s. Who or what was he? A per- 
 son who had been engaged a few years before in some 
 obscure squabble, which he had seemed to tlunk of vast 
 importance, forsooth, but which had interested no one but 
 himself and the opponents, who, with the aid of the Court 
 of Session, hud ^yut him down, and which i-eally no one had 
 thought worth while trying to understand. Well, but what
 
 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 95 
 
 was the result on this occasion? The literature of a whole 
 century went down before him, — Hume, Stuart, Tytler, 
 Whitaker, Robertson, and the poets, — all the great names 
 among the dead ; and the living — men of a lower stature 
 — he foiled with scarce half an effort. All went down who 
 opposed him, and the rest stood waril}' aloof The far 
 known "Chaldee Manuscript," so much more witty than 
 reverent, is happy in its description of tliis redoubtable 
 champion ; for, with all its mixture of the grotesque, it has 
 at once the merit of being poetical and true. "And the 
 Griffin," says the Manuscript, "came with a roll of the 
 names of those whose blood had been shed, between his 
 teeth ; and I saw him standing over the body of one that 
 had been buried long in the grave, defending it from all 
 men ; and, behold, there were none which durst come near 
 him." 
 
 We, had just passed our first week in this part of the 
 country, a little out of town, early in 1824, and had walked 
 into Edinburgh on the Sabbath morning to see the Doctor 
 and hear him preach. Only two evenings before, we had 
 been sauntering, after the labors of the day, along one of 
 the green lanes of Liberton, and had met with a gentle- 
 man whose appearance had struck us as being as much the 
 reverse of commonplace as any we had ever seen. He was 
 an erect, spare, tall man — rather above, we should have 
 supposed, than under six feet, though perhaps his carriage, 
 which had much quiet dignity in it, and a good deal of the 
 military air, might have led to an over-estimate. The 
 countenance was pale, we would have said almost sallow, 
 and the cast of expression somewhat melancholy ; but 
 there was a wakeful penetration in the dark eyes, and an 
 air of sedate power and reflection so legibly stamped on 
 every feature, that we were irresistibly impressed with the 
 idea he could be no ordinary man. We stood looking 
 after him. He wore a brown great-coat over a suit of 
 black, the neck a good deal whitened by powder; and the 
 rim of the hat behind, which was slightly turned up, bore
 
 96 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 a similar stain. Who can that possibly be? we thought. 
 Shall we impart to the reader the recollection which flashed 
 into our mind, — from an association awakened, doubtless, 
 by what we deemed the half-military, half-clerical air of 
 the stranger ? — it was that of Sir Richard Steele's story of 
 the devout old military chaplain, who, on being insulted 
 by a foul-mouthed, blasphemous young officer, challenged 
 him, fought and disarmed him, and then, ere he took him 
 to mercy, made him kneel down and ask pardon, not of 
 him, but of the Being whom he had blasphemed. On the 
 Sunday morning we contrived to find our way to the 
 Doctor's chapel about half an hour ere divine service 
 began, and planted ourselves in one of the empty pews 
 (for the congregation had not yet assembled) in front of 
 the pulpit. The people began to gather ; — we thought, 
 but it might not be so, that more than the usual propor- 
 tion were elderly ; a respectable looking, well-dressed man, 
 accompanied by his wife and family, entered the pew 
 which we had so unceremoniously appropriated, and we 
 rose to leave it for the passage, a good deal abashed at 
 feeling, for the first time, that we were an intruder, for we 
 had thought previously of only the Doctor. The man, 
 however, politely insisted that we should keep our seat. On 
 sitting down again, we found that the Doctor had mean- 
 while entered the pulpit, and we at once recognized in the 
 historian of Knox and Melville the military chaplain whom 
 we had met in the green lane. 
 
 We were first struck by the great simplicity of his man- 
 ner. It reminded us of a remark of Robertson's, on his 
 return from his visit to London, immediately after the 
 publication of his History of Scotland. The extraordinary 
 merit of the work had introduced him to all the more 
 eminent literati of the time ; and he was asked, on coming 
 back, by a friend in Edinburgh, whether he thought the 
 celebrated men, his new acquaintances, varied as they were 
 in genius and acquirement, had any one trait in common. 
 "Yes," replied the historian, " one trait at least, and a very
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 97 
 
 striking one ; all the truly great among them are marked 
 by a child-like simplicity of manner." The service went 
 on. There was a solemn impressiveness about the Doc- 
 tor's prayers, which were, in the best sense of the term 
 extempore, that was well suited to lead our thoughts from 
 himself to the Being whom he addressed. There was little 
 exertion of voice, and no striking combinations of set 
 phrases, fine, doubtless, when they are new, but on which 
 it is possible to ring the changes until they become com- 
 monplace and lose their meaning ; but there was what was 
 much better, — a continuous stream of thought, sobered by 
 a feeling of devout reverence, which found ready entrance 
 into the mind, and subdued it into seriousness. He en- 
 tered upon his discourse. We were again struck by the 
 great simj^licity of his manner and style, and listened, 
 rather soothed and pleased by his lucid statements of 
 important truths, grounded, if we may so express onv- 
 selves, on a deep substratum of serious feeling, than sur- 
 prised by any marked originality of view. By and by, 
 however, when the first obvious principles were laid 
 down, the Doctor began to draw inferences. Ah ! thought 
 we, as we sat up erect in the pew, there now is something 
 we never heard before. The discourse, simple and quiet 
 at its commencement, had assumed a new character. The 
 unquestioned but common truths were but the foundations 
 of the edifice; the edifice itself Avas such a one as the 
 historian of Knox and Melville could alone have erected. 
 There were remarks on human nature, that, from their 
 graphic shrewdness, reminded us of Crabbe, and yet the 
 mode was entirely diiferent ; there were gleams of fancy, 
 that, falling for a moment on some of the remoter recesses 
 of the subject, lighted them up into sudden brightness, 
 and, when fully shown, the gleam disappeared ; there were 
 strokes of eloquence, condensed at times into a single 
 sentence, that found their way direct to the heart; and 
 far conclusions attained by a few steps through vistas of 
 thouglit unopened before. We would perhaps not have 
 
 9
 
 98 DR. THOMAS M'cRIE. 
 
 termed the discourse a philosophic one at the time we 
 were Hstening to it : men are misled by the mere conven- 
 tionalities of thought — the set terms and phrases in 
 which thought is usually embodied ; and according to the 
 pattern of these are they apt to judge and classify the 
 thoughts themselves. But the reverse process is surely 
 the true one : it is the man, not the dress, to which we are 
 to look, — the soul, not the body; and, tried by this pro- 
 cess, the Doctor's discourse was philosophic in the best 
 and highest sense of the term ; for what is j)hilosophy but 
 good sense, on an extended scale, employed in discovering 
 the remote causes of things, or in anticipating their distant 
 effects? His plain, simple style reminded us of Swift's 
 definition — "Proper words in their proper places." There 
 was nothing very striking in the general groundwork, only 
 it would be found no easy matter to alter any one of his 
 words for a better. Even his occasional Scotticisms had 
 invariably more point and a larger meaning than the nearly 
 synonymous English ])hrases which a fastidious critic might 
 have substituted for them. But style, and even thought, 
 were but subordinate matters in the pulpit ministrations 
 of Dr. M'Crie. Never have we listened to a preacher — 
 and from that day until we quitted the district he was 
 almost our only minister — on whose judgment and integ- 
 rity we could more thoroughly depend. Scotchmen, espe- 
 cially the Presbyterian Scotch, are naturally sticklers for 
 the right of private judgment, and less disposed than 
 almost any other people to yield themselves up implicitly 
 to their i-eligious teachers ; and hence it is that, though 
 Moderatism has been encamped in the Church for more 
 than a century, it has acquired no popular basis. To the 
 Doctor, however, we soon learned to give ourselves up 
 entirely. Not that he saved us the trouble of thought; — 
 his discourses were by much too intellectual for that, and 
 his remarks had a germinative quality, suited to fill the 
 mind which received them in their unbroken vitality : but 
 if he did not save us the trouble of thought, he at least
 
 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 99 
 
 saved us the trouble of suspicion. We could lean our- 
 selves unsuspectingly on his judgment;- nature had formed 
 him for a leader; and his capacious understanding and 
 almost instinctive sagacity were heightened and strength- 
 ened by other and even more valuable qualities — the depth 
 of his devotional feelings, and the high-toned rectitude of 
 the moral sense. 
 
 The Sunday on which we first heard Dr. M'Crie was, as 
 we have said, early in the season. There had been a sud- 
 den change of weather a few days before, and there was a 
 great deal of coughing in the chapel. We were annoyed 
 by finding some of the pithiest remarks in the discourse 
 broken in upon by some remorseless cougher, and mu- 
 tilated, so far at least as the listeners were concerned ; and 
 the Doctor seemed somewhat annoyed too. He knew 
 better, however, than we did, in what degree even cough- 
 ing lies, under the restraint of the will; he knew, too, 
 what we did not, that when people are very much sur- 
 prised they cease to cough. Suddenly the Doctor stopped 
 short in the middle of his argument ; every face in the 
 chapel was turned to the pulpit, and for a full minute so 
 dead was the stillness that a pin might be heard to drop. 
 "I see, my friends," he said, with a suppressed smile, "you 
 can all be quiet enough when I am quiet." It would be 
 difiicult to imagine a better humored rebuke, but certainly 
 never was there a more effectual one. A suppressed cough 
 might occasionally be heard during the rest of the service, 
 but not even the tithe of what had disturbed it before. 
 Simple as the incident may seem, we remember being 
 much struck by it, as illustrative of the peculiar shrewd- 
 ness of the character. 
 
 We have but just risen from the perusal of the Life of 
 Dr. M'Crie by his son, the bulkiest volume we ever ran over 
 at a sitting, and certainly one of the most interesting we 
 have ever read. We had thought that the subject of the 
 memoir could not have risen in our esteem, and, now that 
 we have communicated our sentiments and recollections
 
 100 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 of him to the reader, others might perhaps have thought 
 80 too ; but we have been mistaken ; our respect for liis 
 memory is higher now than it ever was before. Tlie Avhole 
 character lies open before us, — magnanimous, wise, sin- 
 cere, humble, affectionate, invincibly honest, consistently 
 devout ; and the more thoroughly we study it, the more 
 do we find to love and admire. It forms a mirror by which 
 to dress the heart ; it furnishes a rule by which to regulate 
 the understanding. We contemplate Avith a feeling of 
 awe the far-sighted character of his intellect, — to use the 
 language of Cowper, " the terrible sagacity that informed 
 his heart," in anticipating coming events. We have al- 
 luded to his first controversy. It commenced just thirty- 
 seven years ago, and involved him in great difficulty and 
 distress ; many of his friends and his people forsook him ; 
 he was dispossessed of his chapel by the strong arm of the 
 law; he was deposed and excommunicated hy his brethren. 
 Yes, the greatest and ablest, and certainly one of the best 
 and most devout Dissenters Scotland ever produced, was 
 deposed and excommunicated: for what? — simply for 
 contumacy and disobedience to the synod of which he was 
 a member. But disobedience in what ? That could not be 
 understood : it involved some metaphysical point about the 
 civil magistrate, and the duty of nations as such in their 
 religious character. Lawyers and judges could see noth- 
 ing in it ; and they decided the case merely as one of con- 
 tumacy. The press and the pulpit Avere alike silent. The 
 matter was one of no interest or importance whatever, 
 except to the sufferer for conscience' sake ; and he jiub- 
 lished a "Statement" on the subject, which no one read, 
 and asserted that the principles which he opposed were 
 soon to shake the whole country, and subvert all its reli- 
 gious institutions. " But we will not live to see that day," 
 said one of his humbler friends. " I don't know that," 
 was the reply ; " I feel persuaded you will see the fruits of 
 these principles in a quarter of a century^ Men know 
 somethinq; better about them now. It was the great Yol-
 
 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 101 
 
 iintary contest which this remarkable man saw so clearly 
 at this .early period; and his "Statement" has since been 
 eagerly sought after and reprinted, as the ablest defence 
 of religious establishments which has yet appeared. To 
 employ his own striking figure, he had seen "in the cloud 
 like the man's hand, the tempest which was soon to darken 
 the heavens, the earth, and the sea." Contrast with this 
 wonderful power the benevolence and humility of the 
 cliaracter. " People of less reach of mind," says one of his 
 friends, "never can appreciate aright the disinterested 
 patience with which he would hear out a long story from 
 some prosy person, or walk far to see some poor body, or 
 even, as I have known him do, go six miles out of town, 
 that he might communicate by word of mouth, and with 
 the greatest delicacy, some painful news to a servant 
 maid." 
 
 ARTICLE SECOND. 
 
 Thomas M'Crie was born in the year 1772, at Dunse, in 
 Berwickshire, a town which has been the birthplace of 
 at least two other distinguished men, — Duns Scotus, the 
 famous scholastic doctor of the fourteenth century, and 
 Thomas Boston, the well-known author of the " Fourfold 
 State." His parents, persons of great worth, belonged to 
 that middle class among the people which may be regarded 
 as forming the staple of our population, and on whose 
 general character that of the country always depends. His 
 father, whose name was also Thomas, a strictly religious 
 man, of strong good sense and much general intelligence, 
 was a manufacturer and merchant. His mother, Mary 
 Hood, a tender-hearted and affectionate woman, of singu- 
 lar piety and devotedness, was the daughter of a re- 
 spectable farmer. Thomas, their first-born, seemed to 
 share in the character of both. He was a manly little 
 fellow, rational beyond his years, fond of robust exercises, 
 skilled in athletic games, and a fearless rider ; but there 
 
 9*
 
 102 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 
 
 were other and gentler elements in his nature, — a tender' 
 ness and sensibility of heart almost feminine, and a warmth 
 and strength of affection not often equalled. Never, in 
 any instance, were mother and son more thoroughly at- 
 tached. She was long in delicate health ; and the hours 
 wasted by his companions in play were spent by Thomas 
 in watching beside his mother's sick-bed, and in perform- 
 ing for her all the little acts of kindness which her situa- 
 tion required. And well was his tenderness repaid ; in 
 after-life he has frequently been heard to trace to her 
 example, her instructions, and her prayei's, his first serious 
 impressions of religion. 
 
 "Common birds fly in crowds," says the romantic Sir 
 Philip Sydney, "but the eagle goes forth alone." It was 
 soon found that the little boy, the manufacturer's son, dif- 
 fered from all his fellows. He had an insatiable appetite 
 for knowledge, that, the more it was fed, strengthened the 
 more. He was sedate, too, and studious; and often, when 
 he wandered out alone into the fields to pore over his books, 
 food and play and his companions were all alike forgotten, 
 and the live-long day passed happily in the solitude. His 
 father rather discouraged the prosecution of his studies ; 
 "he would not," he said, "make one of his sons a gentle- 
 man at the expense of the rest;" but the hopes of the 
 affectionate mother had been awakened in the behalf of 
 her favorite son ; and, through the kind intei'ference of the 
 boy's maternal grandfather, he was permitted to pursue 
 what he so ardently inclined. Had the decision been 
 otherwise, the w^orld would probably have heard of him, 
 not as the deeply-learned historian of Knox and Melville, 
 but as a self-taught writer of ])Owerfal genius; for unques- 
 tionably the development of the lai-ger minds is but little 
 dependent on circumstances, and the mind of M'Crie 
 behmged to the larger order. And yet we have little 
 doubt, when we consider how much the world has owed 
 to his unequalled powers of research, that his usefulness, 
 if not his celebrity, depended materially on the decision.
 
 DR. THOMAS m'crIE. 103 
 
 In his sixteenth year he set out for the first time to attend 
 the classes at the University of Edinburgh, and his i)ious 
 and attached mother, whom he lost in about a twelve- 
 month after, but whom he never forgot, accompanied him 
 part of the way, and parted from him on Coldingham 
 Moor. Before bidding him farewell, she led him behind a 
 rock, a little way off the road, and there, kneeling down 
 with him, she affectionately and solemnly devoted him to 
 the service of God, and earnestly commended him to his 
 fotherly care. The grave closed over her; nearly half a 
 century passed by; the time had well-nigh arrived when 
 the. son whom she had blessed, and for whom she had 
 prayed, was to rest from his labors; and then she appeared 
 to him in a dream, as he had seen her behind the rock 
 upon the moor, and beckoned upon him to follow her, 
 which he promised to do. Dr. M'Crie was no weak or 
 Buperstitious man, but he did not on this occasion slight 
 the solemn warning, and the result showed that he only 
 regarded it in the proper light. 
 
 He passed through college with little show, but with 
 great profit: knowledge was his daily food, and he could 
 not exist without it. The languages, moral and political 
 science, history, philology, eloquence, and in some degree 
 poetry, were his favorite studies. His every-day compan- 
 ions among the classics were Tacitus, Livy, and Cicero; 
 and he sedulously kept up his Latin reading to the close of 
 his life. He excelled, too, in his knowledge of Greek. The 
 English authors he most valued were the masculine think- 
 ers of our literature ; the Lockes, Smiths, Butlers, Reids, 
 and Humes. He was a thorough admirer of the character 
 and the writings of one who, at an after period, expressed 
 an equally high admiration of him and of his productions, 
 — his professor, Dugald Stewart. We need hardly add, 
 that he was not content with being merely a reader of 
 books; he cultivated a close acquaintance with his humbler 
 countrymen ; and the future historian miglit often be found 
 in some back shop, ensconced among the members of a
 
 104 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 reading club, listening to the news of the day, and the 
 accompanying roniaiks. lie had thrown himself at an 
 early period on his own resources: he had taught succes- 
 sively two country seliools in the neighborliood of Dunse 
 before completing his fifteenth year, and liad contrived — 
 a task of some difiiculty, one sliould think — both to con- 
 trol his pupils when under his cliarge in school, and to play 
 with them when they got out. In his eighteenth year he 
 removed to Brechin, where he continued to teach a school 
 for three years longer, and of which he may be regarded 
 as the founder; for he began with only three jDupils, and 
 ere he quitted it he had well-nigh filled the house. It jstill 
 continues to exist. His character at this early period of 
 his life, including the space between his eighteenth and 
 his twenty-first year, is well described by one of his old 
 pupils, the Rev.. Mr. Gray of Brechin, as a happy mixture 
 of playfulness and sobriety. Exemplary in conduct, a fre- 
 quenter of fellowship meetings, attached to the company 
 and converse of unlettered Christians, strict in his observ- 
 ance of the Sabbath, and much in religious duty, a great 
 consumer, Avithal, of the midnight oil, — he was yet one 
 of the most playful, ready-Avitted, buoyant-spirited, happy 
 young men in the country side. No one could be readier 
 for an adventure, or fonder of innocent amusement; and 
 in exercises of skill or peril he distanced competition. 
 It could not be anticipated at this stage of his life that he 
 was to write the Lives of Knox and Melville; "but those 
 who best knew him," says Mr. Gray, "had already set him 
 down as a very likely person, did the occasion offer, for 
 accomi)lishing some of their boldest deeds." We Avcre 
 not mistaken, it seems, in our first impression of the Doc- 
 tor, or in recognizing in his quiet and yet dignified air a 
 mixture of the clerical and the military. He was as fitted 
 by nature to lead a battalion to the charge, as qualified by 
 grace to direct the devotions of a congregation. 
 
 The native weight of his character began to be felt. He 
 was licensed to be a preacher of the gospel by the Asso-
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 105 
 
 ciate Syood of Kelso, in 1795, and received, only a month 
 after, a 'j*?,r>nimous call to become minister of an Associate 
 congregation in Edinburgh, which anticipated and frus- 
 trated the call of another respectable congregation of the 
 same body who were likewise solicitous to secure him as 
 their pastor. The people do sometimes discern meiit, and 
 make amends for their rejection of Youngs and Edwardses^ 
 by their anxiety to secure the services of M'Cries. It is 
 an interesting fact, that he had a strong presentiment, long 
 ere his appointment, of being settled as a minister in Ed- 
 inburgh, — the only field, be it remembered, in which his 
 truly important historical labors could be profitably pur- 
 sued. Shortly after his settlement he was united in mai*- 
 riage to a_ lady to whom he had been long and ardently 
 attached — a person of great sweetness of disposition, ex- 
 emplary prudence and affection, and with whom he enjoyed 
 much happiness. He was assiduous in his ministerial labors; 
 our readers already know the character of his pulpit min- 
 istrations. His week-day services were not less valuable; 
 and there was a frankness and kindness of disposition 
 about him that recommended him powei-fully to the affec- 
 tions of his people. The Doctor was one of those rare 
 individuals who always think of the interests of others in 
 the first place, and of their own last. His congregation 
 rapidly increased ; but it was composed mostly of the 
 humbler classes of society; and his income, which had not 
 been gi'owing in proportion, was inadequate to support his 
 station in a large city, and provide for the wants of an 
 increasing family. Years of scarcity, and the revolution- 
 ary war, bore heavily upon all classes; and the price of 
 provisions about the year 1799 rose to a height unequalled 
 at any previous period. His people felt that duty de- 
 manded an effort, and they met among themselves to pro- 
 pose an addition to his stipend. No sooner, however, had 
 
 1 Mr. Youii{^ and Mr. Edwards were the rejected presentees to Auchterarder 
 and Strathbogie.
 
 106 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 the intention reached their minister's ears than he clapped 
 liis veto npon it at once. The times, to be sure, might 
 bear somewhat hardly upon liim, but then tliey could not 
 bear less hardly upon his people. The expense of living, 
 he remarked, in a letter which he addressed to them on the 
 subject, and which they gratefully inscribed among the 
 congregational minutes, had, indeed, been increasing for 
 some time past, but the income of tradespeople had not 
 increased in proportion ; and as the greater part of the 
 body were of that description, he could not permit the 
 sacrifice which their feelings had so kindly suggested. 
 Worse times soon followed ; and in the long-remembered 
 year 1800, when our fields, according to Wordsworth, 
 " were left with half a harvest," and a general scarcity of 
 employment immensely heightened the evil, he came un- 
 hesitatingly forward, and proposed in form to give up a 
 jiortion of his already too scanty income. His people, 
 however, were not to be thus overcome by their disinter- 
 ested and generous pastor, and the- proposal, therefore, was 
 gratefully but firmly declined. It would be no difficult 
 matter to find striking foils to these instances of high- 
 toned and unselfish feeling among some of the most noisy 
 advocates of Voluntaryism. 
 
 He was now on the eve of entering his first great con- 
 troversy. At the period of his license the synod Avere 
 contemplating certain changes in the profession of their 
 body, aifecting, among other things, the old received opin- 
 ion regarding the power of the civil magistrate in reli- 
 gious matters. Young, fearless, and ardent, the frank and 
 open-hearted probationer had adopted all tlie more liberal 
 opinions of tlie age. lie had been smit with the opening 
 gloiies of the French Revohition, so soon to be quenched 
 in blood ; his views of ecclesiastical ju^lity had been 
 taken through a somewhat similar medium, and the ccvn- 
 tcmplated changes accorded well with his hastily-formed 
 conclusions. He objected, thei-efore, against taking the 
 formula as it then stood, without some qualification cor-
 
 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 107 
 
 responding with the anticipated change ; and the objection 
 was more tlian sustained — it was highly approvetl of, and 
 made the groundwork of a general declaration. Bitterly 
 did he afterwards regret this rash step, and the result to 
 Avhich it had led. His mind was not one of the super- 
 ficial and ordinary class, that are content to flutter over 
 the surfaces of things. He deeply revolved the subject; 
 applied the principle which it embodied to the events of 
 the past ; followed it, with that far-seeing sagacity in 
 which he excelled all his contemporaries, into its remote 
 consequences; and, convinced that he had erred egre- 
 giously, he joined with five of his brethren, all men of the 
 highest character, in remonstrating with the synod against 
 the proposed change of the formula. He felt the mortify- 
 ing awkwardness of his position ; but principle demanded, 
 not that he should appear consistent, but that he should 
 do what he had ascertained to be right ; and feeling, there- 
 fore, was sacrificed to duty. The great bulk of his brethren 
 deemed the matter one of little consequence. He had 
 come to know better: that principle could not be one of 
 slight importance which, if it had been generally operative 
 in the past, would have effectually prevented the Protes- 
 tant Reformation, and which, if carried out to its legitimate 
 effects, would shake the whole country, and overturn all 
 its religious institutions. And such was the gloomy result 
 which he at this period ominously anticipated. He peti- 
 tioned the synod, and, referring to his former ill-weighed 
 scruj)les, expressed his deep regret for the rash step to 
 which they had led, and the great distress in which he had 
 been plunged by the reflection that he might have been 
 thus instrumental in unhinging the principles of others. 
 There is no portion of his biography in which we find the 
 moral sense more nobly predominant than during this 
 period of distress. The intensity of his feelings visibly 
 affected his health. "What would I give," he says, in a 
 letter to one of his friends at this period, "to have some 
 of my years blotted out! I think my situation worse than
 
 108 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 that of the other brethren, and need to be taught the 
 lesson of tlie apostle, 'There hath no temptation taken 
 you but such as is common to men.' " His history at this 
 period, with that of the few friends who made common 
 cause with him, closely resembles the history of the first 
 founders of the Secession. They alike stood upon the old 
 ground, a small and despised minority, accused of sectarian 
 narrowness and a want of charity, protesting and remon- 
 strating against what they deemed dangerous and uncon- 
 stitutional innovations, but protesting and remonstrating 
 in vain. Matters soon reached their crisis. The synod 
 enacted their new Narrative and Testimony into a term 
 of communion. The protesters stood firm ; and though 
 the innovators were liberal enough to propose receiving 
 them into their body, it was only on condition that, what- 
 ever they might think of the new principles themselves, 
 they should neither impugn nor oppose them from the 
 pulpit or the press. Moderatism would have received 
 Fisher and the Erskines on exactly the same terms ; and 
 neither the Doctor nor his coadjutors were unworthy of 
 the first fiithers of the Secession, nor disposed to act a part 
 which involved a dereliction of principle so gross. The 
 protesters, therefore, as they were termed, now reduced to 
 four, — for death had recently been thinning their num- 
 bers, — formed themselves into a Pi-esbytery, and drew np 
 a deed of constitution, in which they declared that, finding 
 themselves virtually secluded from ministerial and Chiis- 
 tian communion, and unable, with a good conscience, and 
 consistently with their vows, to comply with the new 
 terms, they were reluctantly driven in this state of seclu- 
 sion to constitute themselves an independent body, adher- 
 ing to the true constitution of the Reformed Churcli of 
 Scotland and the original Testimony. The synod, mean- 
 while, unconscious of what was passing, was employed in 
 deposing one of the refractory four, — a person who had 
 rendered himself particularly obnoxious to some of the 
 leading members, as "disorderly and a schismatic;" they
 
 DR. THOMAS M'cRIE. 109 
 
 •were still sitting when the intelligence reached them of 
 the act of independence ; and, with a haste wliich was at 
 least indecent, they proceeded, without the formalities of a 
 legal process, to pass sentence of deposition and excommu- 
 nication on a still more obnoxious and formidable member 
 of the body — Thomas M'Crie. He was deposed and 
 excommunicated, therefore, — thrust out of the synagogue 
 for conscience' sake, — on the 2d September, 180G. 
 
 A time of great suffering ensued. Very brave men may 
 bear very tender hearts, and the subject of our brief me- 
 moir, though there never lived a more detei'mined asserter 
 of a good cause, was no hard, unfeeling stoic. The sentence 
 of his deposition was intimated by one of the estranged 
 brethren of the majority, from his own pulpit ; many of 
 his old friends forsook him, and more than half his peo- 
 ple. There was an action raised against him in the Court 
 of Session, which terminated in wresting from him his 
 chapel. He saw his brethren involved in the same general 
 calamity ; interdicts, sheriff officers, legal prosecutions, 
 and even military force, called into action against tliem, 
 and employed, strange to say, in carrying into effect sen- 
 tences grounded expressly on ecclesiastical censures, and 
 at the instance of enemies to all magisterial interference in 
 things sacred. But error is ever inconsistent. Nor is the 
 sum of his sufferings on this occasion yet complete. He 
 heard the gibes of his brethren in the Church reechoed by 
 the wits of the bar and the judges on the bench ; he found 
 himself isolated in the midst of society, — shunned even 
 by all the evangelical ministers of Edinburgh as a narrow- 
 minded and obstinate bigot, — a man who could bring his 
 wife and family to poverty and contempt rather than abate 
 one jot of his antiquated and metaphysical scruples. What 
 supported him meanwhile? A firm reliance on Divine 
 guidance and sup{>ort, and a thorough conviction of the 
 goodness of his cause. " What am I," lie has exclaimed, 
 "that I should be counted worthy to suffer shame for his 
 name ? " He knew well upon what ground he had planted 
 
 10
 
 110 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 his foot. If he was in the wrong, then were our ancestors 
 in the wrong in legalizing the profession of the true reli- 
 gion ; they were in the wrong in passing laws in its favor; 
 they were in the wrong in protecting the Sabbath ; they 
 were in the wrong in repressing gross violations of the 
 first table of the law ; they were in the wrong in all their 
 solemn contracts, — in the covenants by which the Refor- 
 mation, at both its periods, was confirmed ; they were in 
 the wrong in recognizing religion in the education of 
 youth, in the administration of oaths, and in the admission 
 to all places of power and trust. A question involving 
 iwints of such mighty importance might seem merely 
 metaphysical to others, but not so to him. He contended 
 for what he deemed a great practical principle, which was 
 in all time to affect the destinies of the British empire. 
 He held, too, that the principle to which it was opposed — 
 that of the Voluntary — Avas incapable of defence, except 
 on grounds inconsistent with a belief in divine revelation; 
 that indirectly but infallibly it led to infidelity ; and, look- 
 ing far into the future, he could discern through the 
 gloom, impenetrable to otlier eyes, the field of the coming 
 warfixre thronged with dim shapes of terror — with the 
 threatening faces and fiery arms of the yet unawakened, 
 perhaps unborn, combatants. Nor were tiiere more mel- 
 ancholy moments wanting, when he saw amid the darkness 
 the fall of age-hallowed institutions, and the short-lived, 
 but for the time complete, eclipse of religion itself In 
 referring in after years to this period of suffering and trial, 
 he ever spoke of his opponents in a subdued and placid 
 spirit. "Well," said he one morning to a friend, "tliere's 
 a man dead who took the trouble of coming eighty miles 
 to depose me fi-om the ministry. I am sure I have had 
 no resentment toward him. No doubt he did what he 
 considered it his duty to do. Yet it was hard, with a wife 
 and family, to be thrown upon the world."
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. Ill 
 
 ARTICLE THIRD. 
 
 The Court of Session clecicled that Thomns M'Cric, and 
 the portion of liis congregation which continued to hold 
 by him, had forfeited all riglit to their chapel. There 
 could not be a, clearer case. They were found guilty of 
 adherence to the old standards; tliey had obstinately 
 refused to alter the Confession of Faith ; they had con- 
 tinued to cling to the original Testimony; they had even 
 gone so far as to assert that magistrates, as such, have 
 religious duties to perform; and it was but strict justice, 
 therefore, that they should lose their chapel. The case 
 was decided against them in March, 1809, and the decision 
 has no doubt been carefully registered among the archives 
 of the court as a valuable jDrecedent. The poor people 
 who suffered by it were not numerous, and we use the 
 right phrase when we say that they were poor ; and so, 
 in providing their deposed and excommunicated minister 
 with another chapel, they had just to content themselves 
 with an obscure building, that lay hid among old and black- 
 ened tenements at the foot of Carrubber's Close. Rarely 
 has there been a preacher or congregation less generally 
 known. "There now," said the late Dr. Andrew Thomson 
 to a friend, after listening, at a subsequent period, to one 
 of Dr. M'Crie's discourses, — " There now is something far 
 beyond the compass of any minister in our Establishment." 
 What would have been thought of the man who would 
 have said as much in the year 1810 of the deposed minister 
 who preached in Carrubber's Close ? 
 
 During this period of obscurity he was silently employed 
 on his first great work — the "Life of Knox." He had 
 been engaged in storing up materials of thought from even 
 his earliest boyhood ; and for at least the last seven years 
 he liad been contributing largely to the "Christian Maga- 
 zine," a religious periodical edited by one of his friends. 
 But "can any good come out of Galilee?" No one 
 looked for powerful writing and profound research in the
 
 112 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 
 
 humble pages of a Secession Magazine ; nor was it discov- 
 ered by more than a few friends, as obscure as liimself, that 
 his " Sketclies of the Reformation in Spain," or his biogra- 
 phies of French and Scotch ministers of the sixteenth and 
 seventeenth centuries, were frauglit with interesting infor- 
 mation, pleasingly conveyed, and which no other writer 
 of the age could communicate. " It is pleasing," says 
 Johnson, "to see great works in their seminal state, preg- 
 nant with latent possibilities of excellence." In some of 
 these earlier pieces may be found the unexpanded germ of 
 the "Life of Knox;" and as early as the year 1803 he had 
 struck out his plan — never, alas! fully completed — of 
 writing the history of the Church of Scotland in a series 
 of biographies. But the more immediate cause of his 
 undertaking was unquestionably his recent controversy. 
 The pillar of history is sagaciously placed by Bunyan in 
 the immediate neighborhood of the den of Giant Pope ; 
 and fain, he tells us, would the giant deface its inscrip- 
 tions, were it not carefully guarded. The historian felt 
 how necessary it was to erect a similar pillar among the 
 people of Scotland — a pillar which none of the enemies 
 of the Church, whether they sheltered under a jDretended 
 liberalism, like the men who had cast him out of their 
 communion, or accomplished similar ends by opposite 
 means, and under a different profession, would be able to 
 obliterate or pull down. He had thoroughly satisfied 
 himself that the system of doctrine and discipline intro- 
 duced by our first " Reformers and Confessors" Avas not 
 more consonant to the oracles of truth than conducive to 
 the best interests, temporal and spiritual, of the nation. 
 He liad set himself, therefore, minutely to study their 
 history; — to use his own striking language, "then the fire 
 began to burn :" nor could he forbear imparting to others 
 wliat he himself had felt so stroncflv. But his feel in sj of 
 admiration was not for the men, — they were all deceased, 
 and had rendered in their accounts, — but for the grace 
 and gifts with which God had endowed them, and for the
 
 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 113 
 
 fabric wliich they had been honored to rear. Late in 
 the year 1811 his "Life of Knox" was submitted to the 
 public. 
 
 There is much interest in marking the first reception of 
 works of great genius, destined powerfully to influence 
 public opinion, and to become the heir-looms of civilized 
 man in all after ages ; — to see them at times painfully 
 struggling with neglect, at times well-nigh borne down 
 by the malignancy of envious opposition, — now contend- 
 ing with some blind prejudice, now with some selfish 
 interest, — awhile repressed by the severity of vulgar and 
 undiscerning criticism, awhile by the conventionalities of 
 some artificial, but, for the time, established mode ; and 
 then to mark them rising variously, but invariably, to their 
 proper place, — in some instances by a slow and gradual 
 pi'ocess, in others suddenly and at once, through the 
 influence of happy accidents. Cowper was told by one of 
 his first reviewers that he might be a very honest man, 
 but most assuredly he was no poet ; and poor Kirke White 
 was represented as a beggar, who had made a worthless 
 book a pretence for gathering money. The "Life of 
 Knox" was destined to no long probation, for it soon fell 
 under tlie notice of very superior men. Shortly after its 
 publication, the author's old favorite professor, Dugald 
 Stewart, — certainly the most eloquent, if not the most 
 profound, of all our Scottish metaphysicians, — was con- 
 fined one Sunday to the house by a slight indisposition. 
 All the family were at church except his man-servant, an 
 old and fiithfid attendant; and the Professor, on some 
 occasion which required his services, summoned him by 
 the bell. To his surprise, however, the careful domestic 
 did not appear, and the bell was rung again and again, but 
 with no better effect. The Professor then stepped down 
 stairs to see Mdiat could have possibly befollen John, and 
 threw open the door of the old man's apartment. And 
 there, sure enough, was John, leaning over a little table, 
 and engrossed heart and soul in the perusal of a book, as 
 
 10*
 
 114 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 unconscious of the presence of his master as he had been 
 an instant before of the ringhig of the belL The Profes- 
 sor's curiosity was aroused ; — literature was rather a new 
 pursuit to John ; — and, shaking him by the shoulder, ho 
 inquired Aviiat book it was that had so wonderfully capti- 
 vated his fancy. "Why, sir," said John, "it's a book that 
 riiy minister has written, and really it's a grand ane." 
 The Professor brought it with him to his room, to try 
 what he could make of John's minister's book; and, M'hen 
 once fairly engaged, found it as impossible to withdraw 
 himself from it as John himself had. He finished it at 
 a sitting, and waited next day on the author to express 
 the admiration he entertained for his performance. The 
 Doctor bowed to the praises of Jiis old Professor with the 
 modesty of real genius, and replied in one of those happy 
 compliments which show the elegant and delicate mind, 
 " Pidchrwn est laudari a laudato" — " It is delightful to 
 be praised by one who lias himself gained the applauses of 
 mankind." 
 
 The " Edinburgh Review" — at this period beyond 
 comparison the most j^owerful periodical in Europe — 
 took up the biography of Knox in the same spirit with 
 Dugald Stewart. An air of surprise and admiration so 
 thorouglily pervades the abj'e article in which the work is 
 reviewed, that it seems to constitute a part of its very 
 style, and certainly a very refreshing part of it. M'Kenzie 
 has been praised for the shrewdness he evinced in at once 
 jjlacing Burns among the great masters of undying song, 
 at a period when at least nine-tenths of his contemporaries 
 thought of him as merely a clever ploughman, who made 
 very passable vev'ses, considering that he was but an un- 
 taught man. Lord Jeffrey was equally happy in marking 
 out the proper place of M'Crie. He at once characterized 
 his work as one which united opposite (jualities of excel- 
 lence, and as by fir the best piece of history wliich had 
 ajjpeared sir;ce the commencement of the reviewer''s criti- 
 cal career, — as accurate, learned, and concise, and yet not
 
 DR. THOMAS M'cRIE. 115 
 
 the less full of spirit and animation ; as a rare union of 
 patient research and sober judgment, with boldness of 
 thinkino- and force of imagination. Nothing had he ever 
 read on the subject, he said, which had afforded him so 
 much amusement and so much instruction ; and yet this 
 noble production was the work of an author of whose very 
 existence, though residing in the same city with himself, 
 he had never heard before. The Quarterly Reviewers, in 
 spite of their Episcopacy, said well-nigh as much. With 
 them, as with their contemporary, " Dr. M'Crie was really 
 a great biographer." Compact, precise, discriminating, 
 simple, vigorous, profound in his researches, and candid in 
 his statements, he told the story of a hero as a liero would 
 wish to have it told. Neither Luther nor Calvin, they 
 said, had found a biographer like the present : and yet, 
 true it was that his principles were bad. He held by the 
 reformers in all their extremes ; and had he been born in 
 the sixteenth century, "less," they were persuaded, "would 
 have been heard of Rowe or Willox as auxiliaries of Knox 
 than of M'Crie." We believe they were perfectly in the 
 right, and yet think none the worse of the Doctor. 
 
 He rose at once into eminence. The University of 
 Edinburgh honored itself by conferring upon him his 
 degree, the first ever extended in Scotland to a dissenting 
 clergyman. His work was translated into the French, 
 Dutch, and German languages, and spread extensively over 
 the continent. History assumed a new tone when it spoke 
 of the deeds and the character of Knox ; monuments were 
 erected and clubs instituted to his memory; candid and 
 honorable men, of all persuasions, filled the periodicals of 
 the time with their recantations of the error into which 
 they had fiillen Regarding his character; and the powerful 
 and manly reasonings and well-attested facts of liis biog- 
 ra})her were only met by the contemptible puerilities and 
 garbled misstatements of a few embryo Puseyites, and at 
 an after period by the denunciations of the Court of Koine. 
 In the list of those peculiarly dangerous writings, among
 
 116 DR. THOMAS m'CRTE. 
 
 which the Bi'ole stands preeminent, the infallible church 
 has placed at least one of the productions of Dr. M'Crie, 
 
 — by tar the highest compliment which he has yet received. 
 But the effect of a personal nature resulting from his sud- 
 den celebrity, which the Doctor himself probably valued 
 most, was the degree of friendship and esteem which it 
 secured to him from kindred spirits. Dr. Andrew Thom- 
 son — wiiose star, of, alas! brief but matchless brilliancy, 
 had at that time just risen above the horizon — found him 
 out; and a friendship, based on mutual admiration and 
 respect, was formed between these two great and good 
 men, whose duration, it is probable, is not to be measured 
 by periods of time. Except on one unhappy occasion, 
 they stood side by side in all their after controversies, 
 employing somewhat dissimilar weapons, but fighting 
 under the same shield. Was the historian assailed by the 
 Episcopalian critics of our own country or of the south? 
 
 — a discharge of merciless ridicule and resistless argument 
 from his friend the Churchman prostrated the assailants. 
 Did his friend the Cliurchnian refuse opening St. George's 
 at the bidding of the state, just because he held that 
 the Chiu'ch of Scotland was not an Erastian church ? 
 • — out stepped the historian in his defence, and opposition 
 sunk overawed. They were often together, and the happy 
 temper of both, added to the rich humor of Dr. Thomson, 
 threw an air of peculiar cheerfulness over their intercourse. 
 There is a sunshiny freshness in the few notes which have 
 been preserved of the many that passed between them ; 
 and when at any time the frequent and hearty laugh was 
 heard proceeding from the historian's study, all the house- 
 hold at once concluded that Dr. Andrew Thomson Avas 
 there. The Doctor was more than hall" a phrenologist, 
 and nsed at times to try whether he could not accommo- 
 date the cranial development of his friend the historian to 
 the well-known powers of his mind. In some respects he 
 was singularly unlucky, and his blunders seem to have 
 furnished larsxe occasion of mirth. The Doctor flattered
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 117 
 
 himself on one occasion that he had discovered a large 
 development of the organ of music on the corners of his 
 friend's forehead, and when he had fully assured himself of 
 the fact, liis friend quietly informed him that the acconi- 
 jianying musical ear was, notwithstanding, particularly dull, 
 and that one of the most arduous tasks which he had ever 
 seen accomplished was the task undertaken by one of his 
 acquaintances, an old weaver, Avho had set himself to beat 
 into his head the familiar tune of /St. jPaid's. We find 
 humorous allusions' to the new science in some of Dr. 
 M'Crie's notes referring to contributions for the " Christian 
 Instructor." "You are prodigiously moderate," he says, 
 "in your expectations, when you look for two reviews from 
 me in one month. You imagine, I suppose, that my brain 
 is as large and as fertile as your own, — a mistake which 
 you might have avoided without the assistance of Dr. 
 Spurzheim." The two champions stood, as we have said, 
 side by side, the unliinching opponents of slavery in the 
 colonies and of patronage in the Church, — of the super- 
 stition that would debase religion, and of the infidelity 
 that would overturn it, — of the hirelings of Moderatism, 
 the wild visionaries of Roweism, and the incendiaries of 
 Voluntaryism, — till the younger champion dropped, and 
 died, we may well say, in his harness, cut down in his mid 
 career of usefulness, "when best employed and wanted 
 most." Deeply was the survivor affected ; and many of 
 those who on the succeeding Sabbath heard him give vent 
 to his feelings in a sudden and impassioned burst, have not 
 yet forgotten what the passage conveyed, and never will. 
 "Brethren, ]»ray for us, and let your first and last petition 
 be hianilitij. Once, yea twice, has a voice cried to the 
 ministers of this city, and again, since we last met, it hath 
 cried with the sound of a trumpet, 'All flesh is grass, and 
 all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field!' 
 The time has not come at which ceremony permits the 
 dead to be spoken of in public. But I hasten to say the 
 little which I have to say, especially as it is not in the way
 
 118 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 of eulogy. Others will praise him : as for mo, I can only 
 deplore him. And my deploration shall not turn on the 
 si)lendid talents with which his Master adorned him, — 
 the vigor of liis understanding, the grasp of his intellect, or 
 the unrivalled force of his masculine eloquence; but on his 
 honest, firm, unflinching, fearless independence of mind, — a 
 quality eminently required in the present time, — in which, 
 I may say, he was single among his fellows, and which 
 claimed for him respect as well as forbearance, even when 
 it betrayed its possessor into excess." We are reminded 
 strongly by this truly eloquent passage of a passage which 
 has been long regarded as one of the most powerful in 
 English literature, — the concluding part of the last chap- 
 ter of Sir Walter Ralcigh-s "History of the World:" 
 " O earth, earth, earth ! thou art the true proprietor and 
 lord paramount of all that is here below. Thou givest 
 forth nothing but what thou reccivcst again, and thou 
 receivest thine own with usury. Grass, hei'bs, trees, plants, 
 houses, metals base and precious, and man himself, who 
 hath rifled thee of all these, and who tears thy bosom and 
 digs into thy bowels, and, measuring thy length and thy 
 breadth, pi'oudly walks over thee as if he were more than 
 dust, — all shall return to thee, and find a grave in the 
 womb from which they sprang." 
 
 ARTICLE FOURTH. 
 
 Dr. Johnson has occupied a whole paper of the " Idler" 
 in showing that the biographies of authors may be as rich 
 in interest as the biographies of any class of persons what- 
 ever. No lives, he remaiks, more abound in sudden vicis- 
 situdes of fortune, and over no class of men do hope and 
 fear, expectation and disappointment, grief and joy, exer- 
 cise a larger influence. Goldsmith, in his Life of Parneli, 
 has recorded an opposite opinion ; but Goldsmith did not 
 sufficiently attend to his own history — a liistory quite aa
 
 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 119 
 
 striking in its details ns any piece of fiction, not excepting 
 even his own exquisite " Vicar of Wakefield." The obscure 
 surgeon-assistant, whom the faculty were afraid to employ 
 because his brogue was so strong and his appearance so 
 uncouth ; the imprudent and ruined surety, who, forsak- 
 ing his obscure little shop in a provincial town, fled fron 
 his creditors to avoid a jail ; the poor scholar and itinei 
 ant musician, who wandered on foot over France, Belgium 
 and Italy, purchasing' a supper and a bed with his tunes 
 from the peasantry, and disputing on some philosophical 
 question for the same meed and a piece of money addi- 
 tional with the learned of Ferrara and Padua, — was the 
 elegant and accomplished author whose poetry, a few years 
 after, was to be rated higher than that of Pope, and liis prose 
 superior to that of Addison. Dr. Johnson Avas so much in 
 the right, that, to establish the point, one has but to appeal 
 from the opinion of his opponent to his opponent's biogra- 
 phy. We have already passed, in our rapid sketch, over 
 that part of the life of Dr. M'Crie most marked by vicis- 
 situde. The novelist or the poet takes but a portion of 
 individual or national history for his subject; — the curtain 
 falls, or the tale closes, when the hero of the piece has 
 passed from one extreme of fortune to another ; even the 
 boy hears no more of Whittington after he has become 
 Lord Mayor of London, or of Pepin after he has become 
 King of France. On the same principle, what may be 
 termed the romance of the Doctor's life closes when the 
 obscure and persecuted preacher of Carrubber's Close, 
 known only, beyond the narrow circle of his friends, when 
 known at all, as a narrow-minded and illiberfil sectarian, 
 takes his undisputed place among the literati of his coun- 
 try as beyond comparison the first historian of his age, — 
 as a ^reat master of public opinion, — as successful above 
 all his contemporaries in removing long-cherished prejudice 
 and misconception, and as singularly sagacious in seizing 
 the events of the remote future in the imperfect and 
 embryo rudiments of present occurrences, or in partially
 
 120 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 developed modes of feeling and thought. But in the por-> 
 tion of his history which remains, though little checkered 
 by incident, there is interest of .1 different kind. It is 
 something to know the part taken by such a man in the 
 controversies of the time — controversies many of which 
 still survive; for there were few judgments less liable to 
 mistake, and no honest man ever questioned his integrity. 
 Dr. M'Crie was very much of the opinion of Cowley. 
 Good men, says the prince of metaphysical poets, should 
 pray not less frequently for the conversion of literature 
 than for the Jews. No one better knew the importance 
 of literature, or was more earnestly solicitous for its con- 
 version, than the Doctor. He saw every species of power 
 among men, whether for good or evil, founded in opinion ; 
 and recognized in the press an all-potent lever, through 
 which the public mind may be either heightened or de- 
 pressed. He was aware, too, that it is not always the grave 
 or more elaborate works wliich produce the deepest impres- 
 sions. Songs have hastened national revolutions, and a 
 single romance has powerfully affected the character of a 
 country ; and in the first series of the "Tales of my Land- 
 lord," with its marvellously unfiiir representation of the 
 Covenanters, he recognized a work of the most influential 
 character, and influential chiefly for evil. Karely, says the 
 poet, has Spain had heroes since Cervantes laughed away 
 the chivalry of his country ; and it was a class beyond 
 comparison nobler and better than the chivalry of Spain 
 that the novelist had set himself to laugh down. Dr. 
 M'Crie's review of the "Tales" appeared in the "Christian 
 Instructor "-for 1817, and produced a powerful imjiression. 
 Sir Walter, secure in his strength, had felt for years before 
 that he could well afford being indifferent to criticism. He 
 had a firmer hold of the jMiblic mind than any of his review- 
 ers ; the occasional critique either reechoed his praises in, 
 tones caught from the general voice, ji.nd then sank uidieeded, 
 or dared to dispute the justice of the almost universal deci- 
 sion in his favor and sank all the sooner in consequence. So
 
 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 121 
 
 far was he from deeming the strictures of a hostile reviewer 
 worthy of reply, that he had ceased to deem them worthy 
 of perusal. On this occasion, however, he found he had 
 to deal with no ordinary critic ; the stream of public opin- 
 ion had been turned fairly against him ; and, after record- 
 ing his determination not even to read the Doctor's article, 
 he eventually found it necessary not only to read, but also 
 to attempt answering, it, which he did in the "Quarterly," 
 in the form of a critique on his own work. Hogg has 
 informed us how invariably favorable Sir Walter as a critic 
 was to Sir Walter as an author. He, of course, decided 
 that his " Tales" were very excellent tales, and that the 
 Covenanters were in no degree better than he had described 
 them ; referring for proof to a few insulated facts as valu- 
 able in proving general propositions, as if it were to be 
 inferred from the history of the Rev. Titus Oates that all 
 the clergy of England were perjured miscreants, or from 
 that of the Rev. Dr. Dodd that they were all malefactors, 
 and deserved to be hung. Plis article had its weight with 
 a few High Churchmen, zealously prejiared to believe on 
 the side of Claverhouse without the trouble of thought or 
 scrutiny; but in the estimate of the less prejudiced classes, 
 both in England and our own country, victoiy remained 
 as unequivocally on the side of Dr. M'Crie and the Cov- 
 enanters as if the reply had never been written. 
 
 The "Life of Andrew Melville" appeared about two 
 years after, in 1819. It maybe regarded as a continuation 
 of the history of the Scottish Church, so auspiciously begun 
 in the " Life of Knox," and displays the same power and 
 discrimination exhibited in that work, with even more than 
 the same amazing profundity of research. It was remarked, 
 it is said, by the present Lord Jeffi'ey, that one would re- 
 quire several years' additional reading to qualify one's self 
 f<jr the task of reviewing it. The Doctor had got into a 
 walk of information, the intricacies of which were known to 
 only himself; and critics of the highest class were content 
 to set their ci*aft aside, and, taking the place of ordinary 
 
 11
 
 122 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 readers under liim, were fain, inste.id of leading others 
 to be followers themselves. Regarded simply as a piece 
 of narrative, it has been found to possess less interest than 
 the "Life of Knox." The writer has not performed his 
 part less ably ; but the subject of his memoir, if not less a 
 hero than his great predecessor, the reformer, had lived a 
 life of less stormy interest, and had found feebler, if not 
 less insidious spirits, with which to contend. But the his- 
 tory of Melville will ever continue, notwithstanding, to be 
 regarded as emphatically the history of the Scottish Church 
 for the stirring and eventful period which it embraces. 
 Tlie High Churchmen of the "British Critic" were less 
 candid and less knowing than the editor of the "Edin- 
 burgh Review ; " and, making their own ignorance the 
 measure of their censure, they were of course very severe. 
 Authorities of which they knew nothing might be garbled 
 and misquoted, they said, without their being aware of the 
 fact; and it could not be held, therefore, that the "bold, 
 rebellious fanatics who figured prominently in the early 
 days of the Scottish Reformation" could be in reality the 
 good, honest men which the Presbyterian historian had 
 proved them to be. The argument seems unanswerable ; 
 and as ignorance in one set of men is quite as good as 
 ignorance in any other set, there can be no faith in history 
 so long as the Churchmen of the "British Critic," or any 
 other sort of jieople, remain unacquainted with the data on 
 which the historians have founded. 
 
 The Doctor rarely took any part in public meetings. 
 Though an eloquent and impressive speaker, and at once 
 qualified to delight by the manner and instruct by the 
 matter of his addresses, his native modesty led him to rate 
 his capabilities for the platform lower than every one else 
 rated them. He felt, too, that he was not neglecting his 
 duty so long as he was engaged in his own peculiar walk, 
 — the walk in which he excelled all his contemporaries, — 
 and so long as he saw every public measure in which he 
 felt an interest furnished with its zealous and appropriate
 
 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 123 
 
 champions. His friend Andrew Thomson was the power- 
 ful assailant of the Apocrypha and the slave-trade ; and 
 the cause of the Scottish poor might well be entrusted to 
 Dr. Chalmers. There were questions and causes, however, 
 for which he could deem it a duty to mount the platform. 
 Many of our readers will remember the apathy with which 
 a large proportion of the British public regarded the long, 
 protracted, and bloody struggle of the Greeks with their 
 cruel and tyrannical taskmasters. The country had grown 
 too mercantile to be generous ; the interests of some of our 
 trading bodies Avere compromised ; it had become impru- 
 dent to be sympathetic. The Greeks had grown too base 
 and degraded, it was affirmed, to be either deserving of 
 freedom or capable of enjoying it; and so they were left 
 to fight more than half the battle of liberty, not only with- 
 out assistance, but Avithout sympathy. But the Doctor 
 indulged in other feelings, and reasoned on other princi- 
 ples. He could sympathize with the oppressed Greeks, not 
 only as a scholar, richly imbued Avith the spirit of the 
 ancient literature of their country, but also as a Christian, 
 deeply interested in their welfore as men; nor had he 
 learned, in the prosecution of his studies, to deem the strug- 
 gles of even a semi-barbarous people as of little impor- 
 tance. The accident Avhich befalls an individual in his 
 immature childhood frequently influences his destiny for 
 life ; and it is so also Avith countries. The Irish were not 
 a civilized people Avhen conquered by the English under 
 StrongboAv^, nor yet the Scotch when they baffled and 
 defeated the same enemy under Cressingham and Edward 
 II. ; but who can doubt that the present state of Scotland 
 and Ireland depends materially upon the very opposite 
 results of their respective struggles? At the first meeting 
 held in behalf of the Greeks in Scotland, — we believe 
 in Britain, — Dr. M'Crie took the lead, and delivered an 
 address of great eloquence and poAver, which had much 
 the effect of exciting the public interest, and which united 
 what is not often conjoined — a manner singularly popular
 
 l24 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 and pleasing, with much profundity of thought, and infor- 
 mation drawn from the less accessible sources. At an 
 after period, when the struggle had terminated in the free- 
 dom of Greece, the ladies of Edinburgh exerted themselves 
 m raising funds, through which it was proposed to extend 
 tlie advantages of education to the long-neglected females 
 of that country. The Doctor gave the scheme his warmest 
 support ; he preached in its behalf the sermon so highly 
 eulogized by Andrew Thomson as something beyond tlie 
 reach of his contemporary ministers of the Establishment, 
 conducted tlie correspondence of the Association origi- 
 nated to carry it on, and at a public meeting appealed 
 to the country in its favor. Some of the ladies, his coad- 
 jutors in the scheme, had conceived of the Doctor merely 
 as a person of one talent — one of the most common con- 
 ceptions imaginable ; they had no idea that the man who 
 excelled all his contemporaries in research could excel 
 most of them in eloquence also. They knew that no one 
 could surpass him in argument or narrative, and therefore 
 for argument and narrative they looked to him ; but to 
 delight the meeting with the poetry of the subject, to 
 recall the old classic associations, to appeal powerfully to 
 the feelings, ■ — to do all they supposed the Doctor was not 
 capable of doing, — they secured the services of the late 
 Sir James Mackintosh. One of them even went so far as 
 to tell the Doctor of their arrangement, in which he readily 
 acquiesced. When the meeting came, however, they were 
 all convincingly shown that he could do more than argue 
 and narrate. " His address," says a writer in an English 
 periodical, "distinguished throughout by the most thorough 
 acquaintance with the jiolitics, philosophy, mythology, and 
 poetry of ancient Greece, commingled with the happiest 
 allusions to these so fervid a contrast of her ancient glory 
 with her modern degradation, that, new and foreign as 
 such topics were thought to be to the habits of the good 
 Doctor, his speech reminded many of his hearers of the 
 finest speeches of Burke."
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 125 
 
 The vear 1827 was what Ave wouM have termed a year 
 of triumph to Dr. M'Crie, had the conscientious stand for 
 what he deemed a great principle, which liad subjected 
 him to so much persecution rather more than twenty years 
 before, borne any reference to the opinion or the approval 
 of men. He had stood with his few brethren on tlie ground 
 occupied by the fathers of the Secession and tlie first 
 reformers of the Church, and liad seen well-nigh the entire 
 body to whom he had been united, but who had cast him 
 off, carried away on a new and untried course of peril and 
 defection, which w^ould terminate, he augured, in the 
 wreck of all those principles for which their fathers had so 
 zealously contended. The body, however, had contained 
 many excellent men, who, less sagacious than the Doctor, 
 were yet not less attached to the original principles of the 
 Secession, and who had been led from off the ground occu- 
 pied by the first reformers, merely in the hope of reforming 
 a little further. But the experience of twenty years had 
 sufficed to teach them that their liberalism had led them 
 astray. About seven years before, on the union of the 
 Burgher and Antiburgher synods, a considerable body 
 of this class, thoroughly convinced that the Secession was 
 drifting from its original moorings, had formed themselves 
 into a separate synod ; and now in this year, finding that 
 they were contending for the same grand truths with the 
 Doctor and his brethren, they again entered, through 
 mutual agreement, into communion with them, and were 
 reunited, as of old, into one body. They virtually con- 
 fessed that the excommunicated and deposed minority had 
 occupied all along the true position — a position to which 
 they themselves now deemed it necessary to return. Such 
 are some of the honors reserved for the men who, through 
 good and evil report, steadily adhere to the truth. With 
 a magnanimity, however, natural to his character, Dr. 
 M'Crie "steadily refused," says his biographer, '• either to 
 exact or receive from his former associates any acknowl- 
 edgment of the illegality or severity of the senteaces passed 
 
 11*
 
 126 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 
 
 by the General Synod against himself or his brethren. The 
 honor of the truth was all that he cared to vindicate ; his 
 own he left in the hands of his Divine Master." 
 
 ARTICLE FIFTH. 
 
 Two of the later literary works of Dr. M'Crie bear in 
 history such a relation to his two earlier productions, the 
 Lives of Melville and Knox, as, in the drama, tragedy bears 
 to comedy. A cloud of disaster darkened the closing scene 
 of the life of Melville, but the existence of the Scottish 
 Church in the present day shows that he did not dare and 
 suffer in vain. The cloud was a temporary one. The seed 
 which he had sown lay dormant for a while, but it ultimately 
 sprang up and bore fruit abundantly. The biograjihies of 
 Melville and Knox constitute, therefore, the history of a 
 successful reformation ; his later works — the Sketches 
 of the Reformation in Spain and Italy — form the his- 
 tories of unsuccessful ones. The beacon-light was kindled 
 but to be extinguished ; the seed was sown but to die. 
 Both works read an important lesson, and both are probably 
 destined to produce important effects, in the future, in the 
 countries to which they relate. The " History of the Ref- 
 ormation in Italy " has been translated into the Dutch, 
 French, and German languages; and in the fear, doubtless, 
 of its being translated into the Italian also, the Court of 
 Rome has done it the honor of inserting it in the "Index 
 Expurgatorius," as a work peculiarly obnoxious. The 
 "History of the Reformation in Spain" has lately been 
 translated into German. Both works are acquiring a con- 
 tinental celebrity; and when the time shall come — and it 
 may not now be very distant — when, according to Mil- 
 ton, the "blood and ashes" sown over the fields "where 
 still doth sway the triple tyrant," shall begin to bear fruit, 
 the faithful record of the fierce and relentless hatred of 
 the persecutor, and ojf the sufferings unflinchingly endured
 
 DR. THOMAS MCRIE. 
 
 127 
 
 and the deaths joyfully welcomed for the truth's sake by 
 his oppressed victims, may exert no little influence in 
 hastening the fall of the one and leading to an imitation 
 of the other. 
 
 The Doctor was employed in pursuing his researches, 
 adding instance to instance of the cruelty and perfidy of 
 Popery, and accumulating proof upon proof that its atroci- 
 ties have not been restricted to one country or confined^ 
 to one age, when the bill for admitting Roman Catholics 
 into places of power and trust Avas introduced by the gov- 
 ernment. In the preceding year he had taken an active 
 interest in petitioning for the abolition of the Test and 
 Corporation acts. He was too shrewd not to recognize 
 the measure as merely a jtreparatory one, and which could 
 not fail to terminate in Catholic emaiicipation. But he 
 was not one of the class who can withhold from doing 
 what is right in itself because something not so right may 
 follow. He believed, with Cowper, that these acts involved 
 a gross profanation of things sacred ; that they converted 
 the symbols of "redeeming grace" into mere "picklocks," 
 through which the unscrupulous entered into office, but 
 by which the conscientious were excluded ; and hence the 
 zeal with which he urged their abolition. He now took as 
 active a part, and on quite the same principle, in op])osing 
 the emancipation of the Catliolics. He advocated the pre- 
 liminary measure because he deemed it essentially right, 
 and denounced and opposed the measure to which it had 
 led as radically Avrong, — as a measure, too, to be dreaded 
 and deprecated in its effects as one of the most ruinous of 
 modern legislation. He was convinced, he said, tliat the 
 ministry of the day would succeed in carrying their object; 
 such seemed to be the intention of Providence in peiinit- 
 ting the union of parties hitherto opposed, and in suftering 
 even "our prophets" to be carried away by a spirit of 
 delusion ; but he felt it necessary to do all he could in the 
 matter, by way of personal exoneration ; he felt opposi- 
 tion, however fruitless, to be his duty. " We have been
 
 128 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 told," he said, "from a high quartei', to avoid such subjects, 
 unless we wish to rekindle the flames of Smitlifield, now 
 long forgotten. Long forgotten ! where forgotten ? In 
 heaven ? No. In Britain ? God forbid. They may be for- 
 gotten at St. Stephen's or Westminster Abbey, but they 
 are not forgotten in Britain. And if ever such a day 
 arrives, the hours of Britain's ]»rosperity have been num- 
 ^bered." A petition to the Legislature against the Catholic 
 claims, which, whatever might be thought of its object, 
 could not be regarded as other than a document of extra- 
 ordinary ability, was drawn up by Dr. M'Crie, and received 
 the signatures of rather more than thirteen thousand per- 
 sons. We are ill qualified to decide on the part taken 
 on this occasion by the Doctor. There were very excel- 
 lent and very sagacious men — men little moved by the 
 arguments of mere expediency — who exerted tliemselves 
 on the opposite side ; nor was it easy to see what other 
 course remained for our legislators, in the peculiar circum- 
 stances of the country, than the course which they adopted. 
 The Catliolics seemed prepared for a civil war, and at least 
 nine-tenths of our Protestants were determined not to 
 fight in such a quarrel. We would not have signed Dr 
 M'Crie's petition at the time ; had an opj)ortunity occurred, 
 we would liave readily appended our signature to the list 
 which contained the uames of Thomson and of Chalmers. 
 Eleven years, however, have since passed : the government 
 of Ireland is well-nigh as great a problem now as it was 
 then ; the struggle between Protestantism and Popery still 
 continues, with this difixjrence, that the advantage is now 
 more on the side of the enemy, without his being in any 
 degree less bitter in his enmity; the power of the priest 
 is nothing lessened; the success of the missionary or the 
 triumph of the Bible is nothing increased. We are afraid, 
 in short, that the part taken by the Doctor did not run so 
 counter to his pi-ofound sagacity in such matters as at one 
 time we might possibly have thought; nay, more, we are 
 somewhat afraid that events are in the coui'se of showinsr
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 129 
 
 it did not mn counter to it at all. As little, however, can 
 we avoid feeling that, should the worst come to the worst, 
 Protestantism on its present ground would have at least a 
 clearer, if not a better quarrel than on its former post of 
 advantage ; and that if Popery, unlike an aiicient wrestler, 
 could not have contended with most success Avhen beneath 
 its opponent, it would at least have to contend with an 
 opposition less hearty, and encouraged by a sympathy 
 deeper and more general. 
 
 Three years aftei". Dr. M'Crie again deemed it his duty 
 to come publicly forward and record his conscientious dis- 
 approval of another political measure, — the Irish Educa- 
 tional scheme, with its carefully culled scriptural lesson- 
 book. His estimate of the statesmanship of the present 
 day was far from high ; but it was not an estimate that any 
 one party would choose to quote with the view of better- 
 ing their own character at the expense of that of the party 
 opposed to them. Nor was it much more favorable to the 
 people than to the people's rulers ; for, though the Doctor 
 loved, he could not flatter them. "It has been my opinion 
 fixedly for some time," he remarks, in a letter to a friend, 
 " that any administration to be formed at present, whig 
 or tory, would sacrifice religion on the shrine of political 
 expediency; and 'my j)eople,' provided their temporary 
 and worldly views were gratified, would ' love to have it 
 so.' This is my political creed." He held that the scheme 
 which he opposed involved a principle on which the very 
 foundations of Protestantism rested ; and that it was 
 taking a view of the subject radically false to regard the 
 book of selected extracts in the same light with collections 
 of passages drawn up for purposes of mere economy; seeing 
 that these extracts were confessedly made to conciliate the 
 prejudices of a class who deny the right of the laity to the 
 use of the whole Bible. We are not unacquainted with 
 the arguments which have been urged on the opposite side, 
 and they are at least plausible. We have little doubt, 
 however, that ultimately it will be found that the Doctor
 
 130 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 was in the riglit ; and we are inclined to think that by 
 phicing the question, through a slight alteration of the 
 terms, more in a secular light, the soundness of his views 
 would be more generally recognized. Suppose the entire 
 Scriptures consisted of the decalogue alone; that a sound 
 criticism had proved, as it has proved, the integrity of 
 every one of the ten commandments which compose it, 
 and that all Protestants were thoroughly convinced of 
 their Divine origin ; suppose that Popery treated four of 
 the ten in exactly the way in which it sometimes treats 
 one of the ten, — that it had not only struck out the Divine 
 prohibition of idolatry, but the prohibition also against 
 theft, murder, and adultery, — would any government, five- 
 sixths of which were Protestants, so much as dream of 
 forming an educational scheme for both Protestants and 
 Papists, through which, out of respect to the prejudices 
 of the latter, only six of the commandments — the per- 
 mitted six — would be taught? And yet, either the Bible, 
 as a whole, is no revelation, addressed as it is to the peo- 
 ple as a body, not to any particular class of functionaries, 
 or the same rule must apply to it too. Or, again, suppose 
 that Popery, instead of forbidding the )>erusal of the whole 
 Scriptures, forbade the acquirement of the art of reading 
 altogether, leaving the other branches of education open, 
 such as arithmetic, drawing, and the mathematics, — would 
 a liberal government once think of closing with it on such 
 terms, or exclude reading from its schools, in deference to 
 a ftrejudice so illiberal? And if a prejudice against secu- 
 lar knowledge is to be ovei'borne and denounced, why 
 respect a prejudice against religious knowledge ? But our 
 limits, and the character of our sketch, forbid an examina- 
 tion of the question ; and we refer the reader to the pow- 
 erful and eloquent speech of the Doctor on the subject, 
 appended to his biography. He was no way aj)palled at 
 finding himself standing in a slender minority; he had 
 been in the minority, he said, all his life long; and the 
 truth has often shared the same fate with Dr. M'Crie. On
 
 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 131 
 
 an attemi^t being made to disturb the meeting, of that low 
 and disreputable character so often resorted to on similar 
 occasions, and in which brute noise is brought to bear 
 against argument, — the mere animal against the moral 
 and rational agent, — the Doctor stepj^ed forward, and told 
 the disturbers, with much emphasis, to " recollect that they 
 liad to do with men, and with men who were not accus- 
 tomed to be browbeat." His spirit rose with opposition, 
 and kindled at every show of oppression and injustice; 
 and though the shouts and bellowings of a score or two 
 of Liberals^ determined to tolerate only the principles of 
 their own party, might drown his voice, just as the kettle- 
 drums of Dalyell and Claverhouse drowned the voices of 
 the Covenanters in their scaffold addresses, no one could 
 better exert the influence of that moral force before which 
 all such brute violence must ultimately quail. 
 
 The Voluntary controversy, in which he had entered so 
 early, had become what he had predicted — an all-impor- 
 tant conflict, recognized by every one as of the first im- 
 portance. Men of some religion and men of none had 
 made common cause, though with a different object, — the 
 one against church establishments, the other against Chris- 
 tianity itself; and the Doctor could now look forward to a 
 time when the better materials of the combination would 
 be reduced to well-nigh the level of the worst, and the 
 religious degradation of the men from whom he had parted 
 company more than twenty years before would be rendered 
 apparent to all. It was one of his first principles, " that 
 society is a corporate body, and has rights and duties of 
 the same kind as those of the individual;" nor could he 
 believe, therefore, in his thorough conviction of the im- 
 portance of religion, that religion would hold other than 
 the first place among national concerns. Still, his antici- 
 pations were gloomy when he thought of the Establish- 
 ment. Though persuaded, as we have already said, that 
 "the Voluntary principle was not only untenable, but 
 incapable of defence, except on grounds inconsistent with a
 
 132 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 belief in Divine revelation, and directly but infallibly lead- 
 ing to infidelity," no man could see better how much of 
 abuse and corruption had crept into our national Church, 
 and how strenuously every measure of reform would be 
 resisted through the blind and suicidal selfishness of her 
 professed but hollow friends, and the hostility of her clearer- 
 sighted enemies. He often anticipated, therefore, a dis- 
 astrous result of the controversy, and a season of general 
 suffering and perturbation, in which all classes would be 
 fearfully taught the value of religion through the want of 
 it. At times, however, his views would brighten ; and we 
 find him, in one of his happier moods, thus addressing a 
 correspondent : "Is it yet time for me to commence a can- 
 vass for John Knox's Church? I have heard that Adam 
 Gib, to a considerably late period in his life, expressed the 
 hope that he would preach in St. Giles's. You know the 
 practical inference. Yet we do injury to more than our 
 own happiness by dealing harshly with kind hope, repress- 
 ing her ardor, and chiding her for those lamb-like friskings 
 in which she indulges to please us." 
 
 And he did hestiv himself in the behalf " of John Knox's 
 church ;" but it was not by striking at her enemies, but by 
 striking at one of the main abuses which had entered into 
 her system — the abuse of patronage. And the blow was 
 dealt by no feeble or unpractised hand. The cause was 
 of importance enough to bring liim to the platform. He 
 attended, in the beginning of 1833, a meeting of the Anti- 
 Patronage Society, and delivered a powerful and im])res- 
 sive s])eech, in which he advocated the total abolition of 
 patronage, as the sole means of saving the Establishment. 
 And perhaps on no occasion was the magnanimity of the 
 man more strikingly shown than in the concluding portion 
 of this address, or brought out in broader contrast with 
 the no doubt M'idely opposite but equally selfish feelings 
 of the class who, rather than relinquish their miserable 
 powers of patronage, would stand and see the Churcli 
 overwhelmed amid the surges of po])ular anarchy, or the
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 138 
 
 class — anxious to fill their meeting-houses — who, like the 
 wreckers of Cornwall, exert themselves with a view to her 
 destruction, in the hope of profiting by the wreck. '' If 
 you succeed in your object," said the Doctor, "you will do 
 much harm, — you will thin, much thin, my congregation. 
 For I must say that, though patronage were abolished to- 
 morrow, I could not fortlnvith enter into the Establishment. 
 But I am not so blind or so ignorant of the dispositions of 
 the people as to suppose they Avould act in that manner. 
 Your cause will soon come into honor ; the restoration of 
 long-lost rights will convert popular apathy into popular 
 favor, and in their enthusiasm the people will forget that 
 there are such things as erroneous teachers and neglect of 
 discipline. Do I therefore dread your success, or stand 
 aloof from you, on the ground mentioned ? Assuredly not. 
 The truth is, that I think I may be of more service to you 
 by declining to be in your council. I have only to say, 
 therefore. Go on and prosper ; though your beginnings have 
 been but small, may your latter end greatly increase. You 
 have my best wishes and prayers." These surely are the 
 sentiments of a man who, to employ the striking figure of 
 Burns, held a patent of nobility direct from Deity himself, 
 and who had trained and cultivated his heart as sedulously 
 and successfully as his head. 
 
 He published, in the May of the same year, his now 
 well-known but at the time neglected pamjjhlet, " What 
 ought the General Assembly to do at the present Crisis?" 
 It had one great defect — it wanted the author's name; 
 and told, in consequence, with less power on the body 
 for whose benefit it was chiefly intended. But in none 
 of all the Doctor's writings is his wonderful sagacity 
 more clearly and unequivocally shown, and there are 
 none of them on which subsequent events have read a 
 more striking comment. His advice to the Assembly 
 forms an emphatic reply to the query in the title : " With- 
 out DELAY PETITIOX THE LEGISLATURE FOU THE ABOLI- 
 
 riox OF patko:nage." But he neither did anticipate, nor 
 
 12
 
 1S4 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 
 
 could have anticipated, the present position of the Church; 
 for to have done so would have required not simply human 
 sagacity, but a superhuman prescience. "No meaning," 
 says Pope, " puzzles more than wit." " It is almost impos- 
 sible," says Robertson, "to form any satisfactory conjecture 
 concerning the motives which influence capricious and 
 irregular minds." No one could have presaged more 
 justly than Dr. M'Crie the manner in which the Court of 
 Session would have decided any ecclesiastical case accord- 
 ing to law ; but it was not in the nature of things that he 
 could have presaged the manner in which tlie court was to 
 decide ecclesiastical cases contrary to law. There was no 
 clew to surmise, no guide to conjecture. One of the first 
 princijdes laid down in his profound and masterly pam- 
 phlet — a principle from whicjj he deduces the necessity of 
 a popular check in the appointment of ministers — must 
 have as effectually prevented him from premising the 
 possibility of such interdicts as have been granted to the 
 suspended functionaries of Strathbogie or the rejected 
 licentiate of Lethendy, as it ought to have stood in the 
 way of the court itself in rendering theni possible. "Ac- 
 cording to law," says the Doctor, " tliere lies no appeal 
 from the decisions of a church court to any civil tribunal, 
 not to the Parliament itself, in any case properly ecclesias- 
 tical. Everything of this kind is finally settled by the 
 decision of the General Assembly, which, in addition to its 
 judicial and executive power, claims a legislative authority, 
 or at least a power of making authoritative acts, and, M'ith 
 the concurrence of a majority of Presbyteries, of enacting 
 standing laws which are binding on all the members of 
 the Church, laity as well as clergy." The decision of the 
 historian of Knox and Melville in a question of this kind 
 bears a very different sort of value from that cf the Dean 
 of Faculty or the Earl of Aberdeen. JNIark, too, the 
 shrewdness of his conclusion regarding the more tliorough- 
 going Voluntaries: "You will not find one of them 
 taking part in a society for promoting church reform;
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 135 
 
 you will not see one of their names at a petition for 
 abolishing patronage. They affect to laugh at such 
 attempts to reform minor abuses, although, in fact, they 
 dread them more than the most able and elaborate vindi- 
 cation of ecclesiastical establishments." 
 
 CONCLUDING AKTICLE. 
 
 "We passed a Sabbath in Edinburgh early in 1835, — the 
 first after a lapse of nearly ten years, — and sought out the 
 well-known chapel of our favorite preacher. There was no 
 change there ; the same people seemed to occupy the 
 same pews ; but so marked was the change in the appear- 
 ance of the Doctor, that at first we scarce recognized hiui. 
 "Can it be thought," says a living writer, "that the human 
 soul, so nobly impressed by the hand of Deity, is but the 
 creature of a passing day, when a brick of Thebes or of 
 Luxor retains, undefaced, its original stamp for thousands 
 and thousands of years?" The intervening decade had 
 borne heavily on the Doctor. He had lost his elasticity 
 of tread, and his erect and semi-military bearing; and the 
 complexion, darker and less pale than formerly, bore, after 
 slight exertion, an apoplectic flush, that indicated some 
 perilous derangement in the springs of life. But the too 
 apparent decay affected only the earthy and mateiial 
 frame : the mind retained all its original vigor. We have 
 never listened to the Doctor with deeper interest, or a 
 more thorough admiration of his sound and powerful judg- 
 fiient, than on that Sabbath ; and we fancied, but it might 
 not 6e so, that his manner was more impressively earnest, 
 even, than usual, — impressive and earnest as it always 
 was, — and that he was "laboring with all his might," in 
 the belief that the long night was fast closing over him, in 
 which "he could no longer work." We stood beside the 
 chapel-door as the congregation slowly dismissed, and 
 took our last look of the Doctor, believing it to be such.
 
 136 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 
 
 as he entered a hackney coach, assisted by a friend. The 
 assistance did not seeux necessary, but it was sedulously 
 rendered. 
 
 His death took place in the following autumn. Melanc- 
 thon, in his latter days, evinced a weariness of the world. 
 The folly and villairy of mankind, the littleness of their 
 aims, and the base and ungenerous spirit in which they 
 so often pursued them, sickened and disgusted him, and he 
 longed earnestly to be " away from them, and at rest." 
 Cowper's wish was of a similar character. The ever-swell- 
 ing rumor of outrage and wrong, of oppression, cruelty, 
 and deceit, disturbed and pained his gentle spirit, and he 
 longed for a " lodge in some vast wilderness," where he 
 might never hear it more. There were seasons, towards 
 the close of his life, in which Dr. M'Crie experienced a 
 weariness such as that of Melancthon, a feeling such as 
 that of Cowper. " His heart," says his biographer, " was 
 greatly alienated from the world, and tired of the troubled 
 scenes of its politics, civil and ecclesiastical." There was 
 an im^^ression, too, borne in upon his mind that he was 
 soon to be called away, and that his death, like that of his 
 friend Andrew Thomson, was to be sudden. He felt his 
 little remaining strength fast sinking, and the remarkable 
 dream to which we adverted in an early article mingled 
 its warning with his waking presentiments, like the morn- 
 ing dreams described by Michael Bruce in his Elegy. Pie 
 had seen the hand beckoning him away, which, nearly 
 half a century before, had so solemnly devoted him to the 
 service of God. Not the less, however, did he continue 
 to urge his labors, to walk his round of professional duty, 
 to ply his literary occupations, — for he had now engaged 
 in a life of Calvin, — and to meet the unceasing demands 
 made uj»on him for counsel and assistance. He was 
 too little sedulous, perhaps, to "keep life's flame from 
 wasting by repose ; " an accumulation of toil was suf- 
 fered to press on his health and spirits; but in the 
 benignity of his disposition he could not find heart
 
 DR. THOMAS M CRIE. 
 
 137 
 
 to refuse an application, and so he toiled on. " Some 
 people," he said, with reference to a task to which he had 
 just submitted, and which was to engage him for a whole 
 Aveek, — "some people seem born to be beasts of burden." 
 Nor did the presentiment of his approaching dissolution 
 lessen his interest in the fortunes of the Church of Scot- 
 land. Nothing so delighted him as any indication among 
 her ministers of a "disposition to return to the good old 
 way of their fathers." The Assembly of May, 1835, ap- 
 pointed a day of general fasting — " an assertion," says 
 the Doctor's biographer, " of the intrinsic power of the 
 Church which he did not anticipate, and which, remind- 
 ing him of her better days, appeared a token for good." 
 " Will they venture," he said, unacquainted with what the 
 Assembly had intended, "to appoint a fast on their own 
 authority?" and he received the intelligence with hardly 
 less surprise than pleasure, that what he had been scarce 
 sanguine enough to anticipate from them they had actually 
 done. The Doctor had never held public worsliip on a 
 king's fast, but readily and willingly on this occasion did 
 he join with the Church. His resentments, however, were 
 all over; and he anticipated, more in sorrow than in anger, 
 and anticipated justly, that the Dissenters, as a body, 
 "would keep their shops open and their churches shut." 
 "They did not use to do that," he said, " on days of royal 
 appointment." 
 
 But if no man could evince a deeper interest in the wel- 
 fare of the Church of Scotland, there was no man, on th« 
 other hand, who could feel more painfully for what he 
 deemed the imprudence of h^* ministers, or for any general 
 act on the part of her friends, which compromised, as he 
 believed, either her safety or her usefulness. The follow- 
 ing remark in a letter to a friend — a remark full of shrewd 
 meaning, and on which recent events have been reading a 
 comment of tremendous emphasis — belongs to the closing 
 year of his life, and craves careful study : " What fools our 
 church folks are, to identify their cause with Toryism at
 
 1C8 DR. THOMAS M'CRIE. 
 
 the present day, — to alienate the whigs, and oblige them 
 to league with radicals, — to give them an excuse for 
 deserting the defence of the Church whenever they shall 
 find it safe or politically wise to do so ! Don't you think 
 that our times bear a great resemblance to those of 1640 
 in England, with the difference (great indeed), that there 
 is not the same religious spirit in Parliament and in the 
 public which existed at that period ? How a collision 
 between the aristocracy and the commons (not to speak 
 of the monarchy) is to be avoided, I do not see. The 
 public mind is much more extensively enlightened as to 
 politics than it was in 1793; and it has got a power — a 
 lever — which it did not then possess. I have no doubt I 
 have got a great portion of the incredulity of my name- 
 sake, and would Avish to say with respect to public pros- 
 l^ects, 'Lord, I believe; help thou my unbelief" 
 
 lie had held, as we have said, the Assembly's fast ; and 
 never, it was remarked, had he addressed his people with 
 more solemn effect than on that occasion. On the Sabbath 
 after, he preached twice from the striking text in Matthew, 
 " Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge 
 his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner ; but he 
 will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." At the 
 close of the service he seated himself at the door of the 
 vestry, contrary to his usual practice, "and watched the 
 people while they were retiring, until they had all gone 
 out." On the afternoon of the Tuesday following, after 
 spending the early part of the day in visiting some of his 
 congregation, he was seized, immediately on his return 
 home, with a severe pain in the bowels ; and, after experi- 
 encing an interval of partial relief, fell into a slumber, out 
 of wliicli he never awoke. lie continued to breathe until 
 the middle of the next day ; and then, surrounded by his 
 friends, and by many of his beloved flock, who had col- 
 lected to witness his last moments, he passed to his reward, 
 without a groan or a struggle. He had entered the sixty- 
 third year of his age, and the fortieth of his n\inistry.
 
 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 139 
 
 His funeral wns nttencled by nearly fifteen hundred per- 
 sons, including the magistracy of Edinburgh, its ministers 
 of all persuasions, the preachers and students attending the 
 halls of the Establisliment and the United Secession, and 
 by a deputation from the Assembly's Commission, headed 
 by the clerk and the moderator. Nor cpuld his remains 
 have found a more appropriate resting-place than the 
 ancient cemetery to which they were conveyed, — the burial 
 ground of the Greyfriars. It contains the dust of Alex- 
 ander Henderson, the great leader of the Cliurch during 
 the troubles of the first Charles ; it contains also, in its 
 malefactor's corner, the remains and the monument of the 
 martyrs who, in the cause of Christ and of Presbytery, 
 laid down their Ua'Cs in Edinburgh during the dissolute 
 and bloody reign of Charles the Second ; and for an entire 
 twelvemonth its open area was the prison in which the 
 captive Covenanters of Bothwell Bridge were exposed to 
 every inclemency of the seasons, and to the mockeries and 
 revilings of their fierce and cruel jailers. Nor is there 
 any lack of the kindred dust once animated by genius. 
 There occur on the surrounding tombs the names of Colin 
 M'Laren, of Allan Ramsay, of Hugh Blair, and of William 
 Robertson. But the talents which the Task-Master en- 
 trusts to his servants, whether the sum total consists of 
 one or of ten, are of but little value, compared with the 
 use to which they have been devoted, and the effects which 
 the possessors have accomplished through their means. 
 We have stood beside the Doctor's grave, and felt, amid 
 the deep silence of the place Avhere knowledge and device 
 faileth, and where there is no work and no wisdom, how 
 well and honestly he had "occupied" his. His important 
 labors are over ; the work set him to do has been faith- 
 fully performed. Though during his life he stood ai)art 
 from the Church which he loved, it was only as a watch- 
 man on some outer tower, or like a sentinel of the times 
 of the persecution, stationed on some eminence of the 
 w^aste, to warn the assembled tongtegation of coming dan-
 
 140 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 
 
 ger; and the imperishable monuments which he has reared 
 stand forth to shed on the present the light of the past, 
 and as beacons which, however times may darken, will con- 
 tinue to mark out the course which churches and nations 
 will ultimately find it their interest as well as their duty 
 to pursue. A massy and tasteful monument of white 
 stone, erected by his sorrowing flock, as a memorial of "his 
 worth and of their gratitude," marks out his final resting- 
 place, and bears an insci'iption whose rare merit it is to be 
 at once highly eulogistic and strictly true. 
 
 Our sketch has been miserably imperfect indeed if the 
 reader has not been enabled to form from it some estimate, 
 correct though not adequate, of the character of Dr. 
 M'Crie. Ilis whole life was a powerful illustration of how 
 much a superior mind can be improved and ennobled by 
 Christian i)rinciple. It shows also how necessary integrity 
 is to the development of a high order of intellect. Had 
 the Doctor been less honest, he would have been less saga- 
 cious also. Ilis mind, like a fine instrument, took the 
 measure and tendencies of passing events ; and there were 
 no disturbing influences of selfishness to throw their mix- 
 ture of uncertainty and error into the process. His wis- 
 dom, in part at least, was a consequence of his magnanim- 
 ity. It may seem a mere fancy to couple such men as Dr. 
 M'Crie and the Duke of Wellington — the statesman and 
 general with the historian and divine ; but resembling 
 minds may be placed in very opposite circumstances; and 
 for sobriety of feeling, far-seeing sagacity, great firmness 
 of purpose, an inqiregnable native honesty, uninfluenced by 
 the small motives of party, — in short, for all that consti- 
 tutes the safe and great leader, — the standing of both 
 men, each in his own sphere, refers to a level to which very 
 few attain. Plutarch has ])arallelisms that lie less parallel. 
 "We siiall just refer, ere we close, to one or two detached 
 points in the intellectual and literary character of Dr. 
 M'Crie. 
 
 It was well remarked by Lord JeftVey, in his admirable
 
 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 141 
 
 review, that the Life of Knox " exhibited a rare union of 
 the patient research and sober judgment wliich character- 
 ize the more laborious class of historians, with the boldness 
 of thinking and force of imagination which are sometimes 
 substituted in their place." The remark strikingly illus- 
 trates a peculiar excellence of the Doctor's intellect. lie 
 could not rest on the surface of a subject, even if he had 
 wished it. It was his nature to search to the very bottom, 
 at whatever cost of labor, — to pursue some obscure fact 
 through a hundred different authoi-ities, until he had at 
 length fixed it down before him as one of the unimpeach- 
 able certainties of history. The privileged frien<ls whom 
 he at times received in his study used to be utterly appalled 
 by the huge masses of books and manuscripts which always 
 lay piled up before him for constant reference ; and so se- 
 verely and conscientiously was his judgment exercised in 
 every instance, that on not so much as one of his state- 
 ments have even his abler antagonists succeeded in casting 
 a shadow of doubt. Robertson was much his infei'ior in 
 research. . Hume, whose defects in patient investigation 
 are now pretty generally known, was immeasurably so. In 
 tracing the history of opinion and doctrine, where of neces- 
 sity the evidence must be more shadowy and intangible 
 than in Avhatever relates to conduct or action, the degree 
 of certainty at which he invariably succeeded in arriving 
 was truly wonderful. The whole bearing of bygone con- 
 troversies, their after-effects on doctrine and belief, the 
 degree in which they had led the ])arties tliey had divided 
 to modify, retract, restate, — the influence on society 
 of particular minds and ])eculiar modes of thought, — all 
 seemed to open before him as he advanced, alone and 
 unassisted, on his solitary and laborious course. 
 
 His style and manner fitted him no less for his task than 
 his unwearied perseverance. To employ one of Johnson's 
 figures, the heat of his genius sublimed his learning. It is 
 related by Gibbon, that after he had formed his determina- 
 tion of devoting himself to literature, he perused the then
 
 142 DR. THOMAS m'cRIE. 
 
 recently published histories of Robertson and Hnme. The 
 measured and stately periods of Robertson delighted him ; 
 and yet he could hope, that with much pains and great 
 study he might at length succeed in writing such a style. 
 But he read Hume and despaired. Art might enable him 
 to rival the exquisite art of the one, but art could not 
 enable him to equal the still more exquisite nature of the 
 other. Hume is one of the most readable of historians: 
 he is invariably unaffected, invariably clear. Robertson 
 palls: we admire his pages, but his volumes tire. Now, 
 Dr. M'Crie in this respect resembles Hume. His pages are 
 not so elegant as those of Robertson, but they are more 
 attractive, and the reader tui-ns over more of them at a 
 sitting. We merely peruse the history of Scotland ; we 
 devour the biography of Knox. The number of editions 
 which have appeared within the last few months, since the 
 cojiyright has expired, evinces the degree of popularity 
 which the latter work is destined to enjoy in the future. 
 The last we saw formed a two-shilhng volume ; its price 
 and appearance showed that it was intended for the com- 
 mon people ; and we paid our respects to it, at once recog- 
 nizing in it a formidable opponent of the Earl of Dal- 
 housie's arguments, the Couil of Session's encroachments, 
 and the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. 
 
 We refer, ere we close our remarks, to but one other 
 trait in the literary career of Dr. M'Crie, There is an 
 occasional quaintness in some of his finer passages, that, to 
 men deeply read in the theology of the Church's better 
 days, constitues an additional charm. His eloquence is 
 that of the divines of the Commonwealth, rendered clas- 
 sical through native taste and the study of the better 
 models. We submit, as an example, the following exqui- 
 site passage: " Wlio would be a slave! is the exclamation 
 of those who are themselves free, and sometimes of those 
 who, provided they enjoy freedom themselves, care not 
 though the whole world were in bondage. But there is a 
 sentiment still more noble than that, Wlio would be a
 
 DR. THOMAS m'CRIE. 143 
 
 slave-dealer, a patron, an aclA-ocate for slavery! To be a 
 slave has been the hard, but not dishonorable, lot of many 
 a good man and noble spirit. But to be a tyrant, — that is 
 disgrace ! To trample on the rights of his fellow-creature ; 
 to treat him, whether it be with cruelty or kindness, as 
 a dog; to hold him in chains, when he has perpetrated or 
 threatens no violence ; to carry him with a rope about his 
 neck, not to the scaffold, but to the market ; to sell him 
 whom God made after his own image, and whom Christ 
 redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, 
 and, by the act of transferrence, to tear him from his own 
 bowels, — that is disgraceful! I protest before you that I 
 would a thousand times rather have ray brow branded 
 with the name of Slave^ than have written on the palm of 
 my hand or the sole of my foot the initial letter of the 
 word Tyrant / "
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS, 
 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 It was forty-five years last May (1840) since the famous 
 debate on missions took place in the General Assembly of 
 the Church of Scotland. A race unborn at the time have 
 now reached the term of middle life ; and of those who 
 either joined in the discussion, or recorded their votes at 
 its close, very few survive. There are many important 
 facts connected with tlie history of this memorable debate, 
 "wdiich still read their lesson to the country; and during 
 the present pause in the political world, our readers may 
 deem themselves not ill employed in glancing over some 
 of its moi'e striking details. It furnishes a better illustra- 
 tion of the true character of Moderatism than they will 
 be able to find for themselves almost anywhere else ; and 
 it were surely well they should all thoroughly know what 
 sort of a religion it is which has so lately challenged for 
 itself an exclusive right to be recognized as the state 
 religion of Scotland. 
 
 Our materials are fortunately very ample. The art of 
 the reporter was but in its infancy at the time, especially 
 in Scotland ; the contemporary debates of even the Eng- 
 lish Parliament appear but as mere skeleton sketches, that 
 rather resemble lists of contents than series of speeches; 
 and yet by a rare chance there exists a report of this sin- 
 gidar debate, as ample and complete as any of the present 
 day. Modci-atism had its likeness taken at the time at
 
 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. 145 
 
 full length, and in one of its worst attitudes, and, as if to 
 prevent all suspicion regarding the truth of the picture, 
 taken apparently not by an enemy. The unfortunate Rob- 
 ert Heron, the familiar friend of Burns, and whose melan- 
 choly history has been so touchingly recorded by D'Israeli 
 in his "Calamities of Authors," lived at this period exclus- 
 ively by his exertions as an " author of all work." lie sat 
 in the Assembly during the debate as an elder for his 
 native burgh of New Galloway ; he even took a promi- 
 nent part in it; and to his singularly ready and masterly 
 pen can we alone attribute a report so unlike, in its fulness 
 and general literary tone, almost all the other reports of 
 the age. It may be well, too, to mention that, though 
 extensively circulated at the time in the form of a pam- 
 plilet, its faithfulness has never once been questioned. 
 
 It has been remarked by Carlyle, that "the history of 
 whatever man has accomplished is" at bottom only the 
 history of great men, leaders of their brethren, who have 
 been the modellers, and, in a wide sense, the creators, of 
 whatsoever the general mass of men have contrived to do." 
 Certainly, in the religious, as in the political world, we 
 find all the more remarkable events, and all the more influ- 
 ential codes of belief, clustered, if we may so express our- 
 selves, round a few great names. The history of Knox is 
 the history of the Reformation in Scotland ; the very name 
 of Calvin expresses the religious code of half the churches 
 of Protestantism. Apparently on a similar principle, we 
 find the cause of general missionary exertion in this coun- 
 try connected in an especial manner with one great name. 
 The reader of one of the most amusing novels of Scott — 
 Guy Mannering — must remember that, on Colonel Man- 
 nering's visit to Edinburgh, the lawyer Pleydell brings him 
 to the Greyfriars to hear Principal Robertson preach, and 
 that, instead of the historian, he hears bi;t the historian's 
 colleague. Sir Walter had too often sat in the Greyfriars 
 not to know that the pulpit ministrations of Robertson 
 could have formed no proper subject of favorable or
 
 146 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 striking description. They were marked but by the dead 
 inanity inseparable from an utter lack of earnestness and 
 an ignorance of the gospel. And so he described, and in 
 his happiest vein, a preacher of a very opposite stamp. A 
 man of a remarkable though somewhat ungainly appearance 
 entered the pulpit. His pale, fair complexion contrasted 
 strangely with a black wig without a grain of powder. 
 "A narrow chest and a stooping posture, no gown, not 
 even that of Geneva, a tumbled band, and a gesture that 
 seemed scarce voluntary, were the first circumstances that 
 struck a stranger." They were all forgotten, however, as 
 the preacher proceeded in his discourse — a discourse "in 
 which the Calvinism of the Kirk of Scotland was ably 
 supported, yet made the basis of a sound system of prac- 
 tical morals, which should neither shelter the sinner undSt 
 the cloak of speculative faith or of peculiarity of opinion, 
 nor yet leave him loose to the waves of unbelief and 
 schism." " Something there was of an antiquated turn 
 of argument and metaphor," continues Scott, "but it only 
 served to give zest and peculiarity to the style of elocution. 
 The sermon was not read. The enunciation, which at first 
 seemed imperfect and embarrassed, became, as the preacher 
 warmed in his progress, animated and distinct; and although 
 the discourse could not be quoted as a correct specimen of 
 pulj)it eloquence, yet Mannering had seldom heard so much 
 learning, metaphysical acuteness, and energy of argument, 
 brought into the service of Christianity. ' Such,' he said, 
 going out of the church, 'must have been the preachers to 
 whose unfearing minds, and acute though sometimes rudely 
 exercised talents, we owe the Reformation.'" He must 
 have been assuredly no common man that could have thus 
 mollified the anti-evangelical prejudices of Scott. The 
 preacher described was Dr. John Erskine, of Edinburgh, for 
 many years the revered leader of the Evangelical party in 
 the Church of Scotland. 
 
 It was the fite of Dr. Erskine, as of many a good man 
 besides, to contend on the losing side all his life long; but
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 147 
 
 he fouglit on in Lope, ever animated by the belief, in the 
 midst of present defeat and disaster, that God himself was 
 pledged to the principles which he maintained, and that 
 their ultimate triuinpli was secure. He was tlie first man 
 in Scotland to raise his voice against the war with the 
 American colonies, as alike impolitic and unjust, — as 
 opposed in principle to the sacred oracles, and as pregnant 
 with disaster to the country. His little tract, " Shall I go 
 to War with my American Brethren?" takes its place 
 among the most powerful of his productions. But the 
 warning voice was unheeded; and so, after much blood 
 had been shed, and much treasure wasted, the colonies 
 were lost to Britain. He was among the first Scotchmen, 
 too, that took an active interest in the abolition of slavery ; 
 and when twitted with the fact, in his old age, by the 
 Edinburgh lawyer who now sits on the bench, he rose, 
 with all the spirit of his most vigorous days, "to acknowl- 
 edge, and glory in the acknowledgment," — we employ 
 his own words, — "that" he was "a member of the Slave 
 Abolition Society. For why?" he added: "I wished to 
 see justice done to cruelly oppressed fellow-creatures, 
 dragged reluctantly from one quarter of the globe to 
 another to satisfy the rapacity of our countrymen, — men 
 who can boast proudly enough of their own freedom. I 
 wished, too, to see a stain, the blackest that can be con- 
 ceived, wiped away from the national character of Britain. 
 This I wished, — this is still my wish ; nor will all that 
 the gentlemen opposite can say prevent me from effecting 
 it, so far as God has given me the power." Dr. Erskiue 
 was long remarkable for the extent and expansiveness of 
 his views in connection with the general interests of 
 Christianity. They were not confined to one kingdom, 
 nor even one quarter of the globe. When yet a young 
 man, his attention had been strongly excited by the 
 remarkable revival of religion which had taken place in 
 North America, chiefly in connection with the labors of 
 that truly eminent Christian and profound thinker, the
 
 148 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 metaphysician of the New World, President Edwards ; and 
 in order to obtain the earliest and most extensive religious 
 intelligence from this quarter, in the hope of awakening a 
 similar spirit at home, he had entered into an extensive 
 correspondence with the distinguished President himself, 
 and several of his fellow-laborers. With a similar purpose 
 ])(=( also opened up a correspondence with many of the 
 more eminent divines of the continent, which he main- 
 tained during the course of his long life. And, thus stand- 
 ing, like a prophet of old, on a hill-top, scarce a cloud could 
 arise on the horizon of the religious world, or a gleam of 
 sunshine break out in even its more solitary recesses, that 
 escaped his notice. As he advanced in years, his interest 
 in tlie survey increased. He saw some great convulsion at 
 hand, which Avas perhaps to agitate all Europe ; and so 
 intense was his anxiety, that, at a period of life when the 
 few who survive so long deem their time of exertion over, 
 he set himself sedulously to the study of the German 
 language, as a new medium of knowledge, and actually 
 mastered its difficulties in a very few weeks. We may 
 mention, as a proof of the unwearied zeal of the man, that 
 evt 1 at his death, which took place in his eighty-second 
 year, he was found to have collected materials for the 
 current number of his periodical pamphlet, "Religious 
 Intelligence from Abroad." 
 
 The storm which he had foreseen in "a cloud like a 
 man's hand," at length burst out in all tlie horrors of the 
 first French Revolution. A Avhole nation recognized the 
 tenets of atheism as the moral and religious code of its 
 people, and pronounced death to be an eternal sleep. No 
 inconsiderable portion of the people of the other countries 
 of Euro|)e seemed fast treading in their footsteps. In the 
 centre of the -great moral earthquake which ensued, the 
 gilded pinnacles of society were thrown down and broken 
 in pieces ; blood flowed in torrents ; the whole face of 
 things was fearfully changed. Men who had had no pre- 
 vious quarrel with skepticism — who, like Gibbon, rather
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 149 
 
 had spent years of toilsome nights aiul hiborions clays in 
 securing its spread — M'cre struck aghast to see it resolve 
 itself into its occult elements, convulsion and murder. JMen 
 who had held by a mere semblance of the truth — the 
 Moderates of all. churches — feared that the last days of 
 the Christian religion had at length come, and that the 
 general gloom betokened its setting. The popish hierarchy 
 had fled in terror of their lives from France, routed by 
 the EncyclopjBdists and the populace. Paine and his 
 associates in our own country, backed by the previous 
 labors of the bosom-friends and honored correspondents 
 of Robertson and Blair, had commenced their ferocious 
 attack on the religion of the Bible. Even to some not 
 unacquainted with the vital energies of that Christianity 
 which God himself has sworn to maintain, the time seemed 
 a time of defeat and disaster, in which it behooved the 
 cause of religion to yield, at least for a season, and take 
 shelter till the fury of the assault might have spent itself 
 in its own mad exertions. Very difierent indeed was the 
 estimate of the aged and venerable leader of Evangelism 
 in Scotland. The time might seem to others a time of 
 inevitable retreat; he, on the contrary, deemed it a proper 
 time for advance. For nearly sixty years liad he now 
 looked forth upon the long-protracted battle, in which the 
 principles of g-ood and evil contended for the mastery; and 
 it was this dark hour, of all others, that he deemed fittest 
 for the charge. He corresponded with his friends ; he 
 encouraged them to action in the missionary field. It was 
 no time for them, he urged, to rest idly on their arms. 
 
 Nearly a century previous, a Society had been instituted 
 in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge; 
 but its funds had been at no time sulficient to enable it to 
 carry its exertions beyond the limits of the kingdom, or 
 even adequately to supply the destitution'of our Highlands 
 and Islands, its more especial field. At a middle period 
 in the century, the Moravians of Denmark had originated 
 those arduous but singularly successful schemes for the 
 
 13*
 
 150 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 spread of the gospel, through wliich the gLad tidings of sal- 
 vation had been carried to Greenland, the West Indies, and 
 many parts of Africa and Amei-ica. A very few years pre- 
 vious, some M'orthy Baptist ministers in Northampton and 
 Leicestershire had set the missionai-y example to England, 
 by originating a Society for the Diffusion of the Gospel; the 
 London Society had been established the j^ear previous ; 
 and now, in the spring of 1796, the first meeting of the 
 Edinburgh Missionai-y Society was held in this city, — the 
 truly venerable Dr. John Eiskine, the fither of the insti- 
 tution, then in liis seventy-fifth year, in the chair. One of 
 the first acts of the society was to address a circular to all 
 the ministers o-f religion in the country, and to as many 
 private individuals besides as were deemed able and will- 
 ing to assist in forwarding its objects. All the ministers 
 of the Church of Scotland were included in the list, as a 
 matter of course ; the society urged tlieir cooperation, 
 and entreated their prayers ; considerable interest was 
 €xcited over the country ; the matter was discussed in 
 synods and presbyteries ; and the immediate result at this 
 stage, in connection with the Church, was the transmission 
 of two overtures to the General Assembly of tlie current 
 year, recommendatory of a favorable consideration of the 
 missionary scheme, — one from the Synod of Moray, the 
 other from the Synod of Fife. The General Assembly 
 met, and in arranging the order of business, the 27th day 
 of May was fixed for its deliberations on the overtures on 
 missions. 
 
 Tl^e generally recognized leaders of the two parties had 
 been returned members of the Assembly — Dr. John Ers- 
 kine, now, as we have said, in his seventy-sixth year, and 
 Dr. Geoi-ge Ilill, of St. Andrews, a man then in the prime 
 of life. To the character of the first we have already 
 introduced our readers, — an introduction unnecessary, we 
 have little doubt, in the case of by far the greater number 
 of them; that of the latter is also pretty generally known, 
 but certainly much more variously estimated. "The boy,"
 
 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. 151 
 
 says Wordsworth, " is father to the man." We find the 
 embryo Moderate leader, wlien yet a lad of ciglitecn, and 
 at a time when Chesterfield was deemed a profound mor- 
 alist, writing thus to his mother from London : "I am sure 
 I am pliable enough, — more than I think sometimes quite 
 right. I can laugh or be grave, talk nonsense on politics 
 or philosophy, Jm5(! as it sicits my comjxmy, and can submit 
 to any mortification to please those with whom I converse. 
 I cannot flatter; but I can listen with attention, and seem 
 pleased with everything that anybody says. By arts like 
 these, ichich have perhaps a little meanness in them., but 
 are so convenient that one does not choose to lay them 
 aside, I have had the good luck to be a favorite in most 
 places." " In the general scramble for the good things of 
 this world," says one of the Doctor's biographers, "had 
 such a man failed, who could ever hope to succeed?" 
 George Hill did not f lil. He was unlucky in one instance, 
 in one of his patrons, through whose influence he might 
 have risen high in the English Church ; but, ere he had 
 made up his mind to enter into orders in the more aristo- 
 cratic Establishment, with a prospect of preferment supe- 
 rior to anything which Presbyterianism can offer, — a 
 course much urged on him by his friends, — liis patron 
 unluckily died. Still, however. Presbytery has its good 
 things also ; at least, half a dozen of its tolerably good 
 things make a very good thing when united ; and both in 
 practice and theoiy Hill was a pluralist. He made speeches 
 in the Speculative Club in praise of the aristocracy, by 
 M'hich he acquired very considerable eclat. To favor a 
 political friend, he became the holder of a paper vote in 
 Nairnshire, which, under the dread of being possibly sub- 
 jected to a prosecution for perjury, he again relinquished, 
 after having once exercised the privilege which it con- 
 ferred. In his twenty-second year he became Professor 
 of Greek in the University of St. Andrews ; he had been 
 offl'red by the E:u-1 of Haddington of tliose days the ])arish 
 of Coldstream ; but with prospects such as his, a country
 
 152 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 parish seemed a somewhat inconsiderable matter ; and the 
 result justified his prudence ; for ere his thirtieth year he 
 had united to his Greek j^rofessorship the second parochial 
 charge of St. Andrews. A few years after, he became 
 Professor of Divinity, and, in addition, Principal of the 
 University. He was next nominated one of his Majesty's 
 chaplains for Scotland ; next, one of the deans of the Chapel 
 Royal; and to all these profitable offices was superadded 
 the merely honorary office of dean to the Order of the 
 Thistle. If an aggregation of offices lead to an aggregated 
 amount of character, never, surely, had church party a 
 more honorable leader than the opponent of Dr. Ei-skine. 
 One of the ministers of St. Andrews, its Professor of The- 
 ology, the Principal of its University, one of his Majesty's 
 chaplains for Scotland, one of the deans of the Chapel 
 Poyal, and, finally, the dean of the Order of the Thistle, 
 all walked into the General Assembly in the j^erson of Dr. 
 Hill. 
 
 Of the character of his measures as a public man it is 
 not difficult at this time of day to form a correct estimate. 
 They are now matters of history; and the experience of 
 half a century has read its comment on the miserable nar- 
 rowness of the policy by which they were dictated. " Fred- 
 erick of Prussia," says Byron, " ran away from both the 
 first and the last of his fields." Nearly the same thing 
 may be said of Dr. Hill. He broke down as a leader in 
 both his earlier and his concluding attempts. Though 
 much superior as a theologian to Dr. Robertson, and ajjpa- 
 rently much more sincere in his beliefs, he was by many 
 degrees a less prudent man. If the historian succeeded in 
 prostrating the spirit of Presbytery, he deemed the achieve- 
 ment sufficient: its skeleton forms he sufl^ered to remain. 
 It was enough for him that he enveloped these in an atmos- 
 phere of death : there were risks connected with their 
 removal which he was too wary and too far-seeing to run. 
 He st)"cnuously resisted, for instance, every attempt to set 
 aside the Confession of Faith ; he permitted the Call to
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 153 
 
 survive in all its original integrity of form, deeming it suf- 
 ficient that in practice he had reduced it to a dead letter; 
 and during the whole of his reign — the most absolute, 
 perhaps, of any ecclesiastical leader — he allowed the 
 Assembly, without challenge, to raise every year its appeal 
 to the Legislature against patronage. Dr. Hill, as we have 
 said, was less prudent. Almost his first legislative attempt 
 was an attempt to abolish the Call. The measm-e, how- 
 ever, though strenuously defended by Dr. Cook, in his 
 biography, was regarded as too extreme by some of the 
 more wary, and with these also by not a few, we may trust, 
 of the better disposed Moderates. By the union of these 
 with the Evangelical minority the design was defeated, 
 and the Church was thus spared the signal disgrace of 
 destroying by her own act one of the most important, and, 
 surely, not the least sacred, of her liberties. He was again 
 defeated still more signally, at a much later period, in his 
 defence of the imposition of the miserably profane Test 
 Act on members of the Established Church of Scotland. 
 He deemed it no hardship, he said, for Presbyterians of 
 liberal and enlightened minds to partake of the Lonl's 
 Supper according to the mode sanctioned by the sister 
 church. He did not add that, regarded as a prelude to 
 office, it could scarce be deemed other than a very agiee- 
 able ceremony indeed. But the majority of the Church 
 thought differently, and so Dr. Hill was defeated. Unfor- 
 tunately, however, for the character of his party, there 
 were measures in which he was entirely successful. It was 
 on a motion made by Dr. Hill, in the General Assembly of 
 1784, that the appeal against patronage to the Government 
 of the country, which, year after year, from the times of 
 Lord President Dundas, had been raised by the Church, 
 was suffered to drop. He had the satisfaction, too, — though 
 we doubt whether even his biographer. Dr. Cook, will now 
 envy him the triumph, — of defeating, on the question of 
 missions, the venerable Dr. Erskine and his party, and of 
 thus branding Moderatism, though, surely, all unwittingly,
 
 154 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 full in the view of the religions world, as a principle essen- 
 tially anti-Christian. It is but justice, however, to the 
 character of Dr. ITill, to add one trait more. Very rarely 
 is the thorough Moderate, though able and accomplished, 
 a j)rofound theologian. His lack of belief in the funda- 
 mental doctrines of theology — a lack of belief similar to 
 that which obtains in the present age regarding the pecu- 
 liar dogmas of the Schoolmen, and which prevents any 
 very thorough study of their writings — has the effect of 
 inducing superficiality. Why spend much time in acquaint- 
 ing one's self with doubtful complexities, that lead to no 
 practical result? Such, however, was not the conclusion 
 of Dr. Hill. His system of theology is not without its 
 defects. His exposures of dangerous heresy and his exhi- 
 bitions of Divine truth are alike characterized by a freezing 
 chill of sentiment. But superficiality is not his fault: his 
 work is that of a masterly theologian, who at least saw 
 clearly, though he could not feel strongly. We know not 
 whether we are to seek an explanation of the fact in a 
 peculiarity of character adverted to by himself in one of 
 his earlier letters : " I am, and perhaps all my life shall 
 continue," he says, " a close student ; but I hate learning." 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 The debate on missions opened with one of those disin- 
 genuous stratagems on the part of the Moderate leader, 
 which, consorting thoroughly with the character and prin- 
 ciples of the party, have ever constituted the staple of its 
 policy, and in the management of which few men ever ex- 
 celled Dr. Hill. Trick and finesse are the proper weapons 
 of a false or unfaithful Church in a civilized age, Avhether 
 she have to defend herself against the assaults of infidels and 
 skeptics, whose doctrines, however congenial to her actual 
 be]ief>^, would lead to the alienation of her temporalities, 
 or to oppose herself a thousand times more thoroughly in
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 155 
 
 earnest to the exertions of a very different class, animated 
 by a desire of lieighteniug her character and correcting her 
 errors. 
 
 There were, as we have said, two overtures recommen- 
 datory of the missionary sclieme before tlie Assembly, — 
 one from the Synod of Moray, the other from the Synod 
 of Fife. The Fife overture was of a general, though at 
 the same time sufficiently definite character: it merely 
 urged on the Assembly the consideration of the most 
 effectual methods by which the Church of Scotland might 
 be made to contribute to the diffusion of the gospel over 
 the world. The Moray overture was more particular in 
 what it recommended. Taking it somewhat too readily 
 for granted that the course advised by the other overture 
 the Assembly was already prepared to pursue, it went a 
 step further, and earnestly urged the passing of an act 
 recommendatory of a general collection in aid of the mis- 
 sionary scheme throughout the various parishes of Scot- 
 land. Both the leaders of the Assembly were shrewd and 
 far-seeing men, and both intimately acquainted with the 
 nature of the materials on which they had to operate. 
 They alike saw that the Fife overture, if considered alone, 
 and on its own merits, might very possibly j^jass into a law, 
 which, however inoperative, would at least recognize the 
 excellence of missionary exertion ; tliey alike saw that the 
 prevailing Moderatism of tlie Assembly would be at once 
 roused to oppose the Moray overture, and tliat there was 
 no chance whatever of its passing. The great object of 
 Dr. Hill was to defeat both, and so get rid of the ti-ouble- 
 some subject of missions altogether. The great object of 
 Dr. Erskine was to get all passed in their fivor that could 
 possibly pass. Dr. Hill urged, therefore, that the overtures 
 should be considered conjuncthj. If he but succeeded in 
 getting what he already deemed the dead tied about the 
 neck of the living, he was secure, as he too justly augured, 
 of soon seeing them both equally dead. Dr. Erskine con- 
 tended, on the contrarv, that thev should be considered
 
 156 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 separately. The one, he argued, was " of a general, the 
 other of a specijic nature ; and general propositions often 
 conunand united assent, though men may differ widely 
 regarding the time and manner of applying them to prac- 
 tice." But in deliberative assemblies, arguments fail when 
 they have to contend with votes ; and it was carried, on 
 the motion of Dr. Hill, that the overtures should be con- 
 sidered, not separately, as became their character, but 
 conjunctly, as consorted best with his own invidious 
 policy. The preliminary motion virtually decided the 
 fate of the whole discussion ; but Evangelism fought on. 
 
 One of the first speakers in the debate was the Rev. Mr. 
 M'Bean, of Alves — a worthy north country clergyman, 
 uncle, we believe, of the present excellent minister of Forres. 
 The good man had come from a remote rural district, in 
 which he had been studying his Bible, and sedulously Avalk- 
 ing, in conformity with its injunctions, his useful round of 
 duty; and in rising to support the Moray overture, it does 
 not seem to have once entered his mind that there were two 
 courses of conduct open regarding it. "The propagation 
 of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ!" — Had they not all 
 been praying for it all their lives long? and was it not their 
 duty to work as well as to pray — their duty, and not the less 
 surely their high privilege and honor, that in this matter 
 they could be fellow-workers with God? "Thy kingdom 
 come." What Christian man could look forth without 
 compassion on that vast portion of the earth which was 
 still a region of thick darkness and horrid cruelty, and in 
 which poor perishing fellow-creatures, boi'n to iuimortality, 
 enjoyed no opportunity of embracing the blessed gospel? 
 And then, how great was their encouragement ! Did not 
 prophecy point their faith to a period when the knowledge 
 of the Lord would be everywhere — all around and over 
 this wide world, like the waters of a shoreless ocean? and 
 should not they, strengthened by a hope so certain, be now 
 np and doing, — using their evei-y endeavor to hasten the 
 hap[)y time, — working, as well as praying, that the king.
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 157 
 
 dom of grace might be advanced, and the kingdom of 
 glory hastened ? The good man sat down, and was suc- 
 ceeded by another speaker on the same side — the truly 
 venerable Dr. Jolinston, of North Leith. 
 
 It is scarce necessary that we advert to the character of 
 this man. We stood not long ago in a humble domicile in 
 Leith, before a rudely framed print of Dr. Johnston : it 
 had been taken in his extreme age. The strongly marked 
 and somewhat harsh features bore evidence to the ravages 
 of time ; but the course of years had worn into them the 
 expression of his habitual mood, in characters which it was 
 impossible to misinterpret, and the effect was something 
 more powerful than beauty. Never have we seen thought- 
 ful seriousness united to habitual benevolence more legibly 
 impressed. " O, sir," said the inmate of the humble domi- 
 cile, an aged woman, as she pointed to the print, — "O, sir, 
 there were few like him. For many, many a year have I 
 heard the precious gospel from those earnest, blessed lips." 
 Dr. Johnston was one of the truly excellent of the earth. 
 He rose on this occasion to signify his hearty approval of the 
 two overtures on the table, but with evidently less confi- 
 dence of success than was entertained by the north country 
 minister; for he knew better than he the character of the 
 party ranged on the opposite benches. In running over 
 nearly the same line of argument, his fears were ever and 
 anon breaking out. "Surely," he said, "however much 
 they might differ from one another in matters of civil or 
 ecclesiastical polity, they could not be other than united 
 in whatever tended to promote the kingdom of their 
 blessed Lord and Master!" What if he, in whose pres- 
 ence and in whose name they sat, and to whom one day 
 they would have all to render their final account, was now 
 waiting among them for some marked expression of their 
 sincerity in his cause ! Was the General Assembly of 
 the Church of Scotland to declare against both him and 
 it, by thwarting the means of promoting it? Means must 
 be used ; they ai-e the instruments by which God works. 
 
 U
 
 158 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 The advance of his kingdom among the heathen was tlie 
 subject of their daily prayers, but it would not do to say, 
 "Be ye warmed and clothed — be ye enlightened, reformed, 
 and saved," without doing something more. They were 
 called on to act as well as pray. Thousands, bound by 
 only their common Christianity, were stepping forward to 
 promote the missionary cause ; their heathen brethren lay 
 in their blood : would they, the Church of Scotland, pass 
 by, like the Levite, on the other side ? Paul reckoned 
 himself "a debtor to the Greek and the barbarian." Did 
 Scotland lie under no such debt? The fact that they 
 themselves had been called from heathen darkness by 
 missionary exertion in the remote past, had given a direct 
 claim upon them to the perishing heathen of all time. Dr. 
 Johnston ceased, and there rose a speaker on the Moderate 
 side. 
 
 He was a tall, handsome man, in the prime of early 
 manhood, fashionably dressed, and evidently a layman. 
 Strange to relate, he rose, not to oppose, but strenuously 
 to advocate the missionary cause. It is recorded in the 
 biography of the Rev. Thomas Scott, that, when a thought- 
 less young man, he was severely reprimanded for some 
 piece of wickedness by his master, — a person of no reli- 
 gion, and who j^retended to none, — and that from this 
 very circumstance the reprimand struck him more deeply 
 than any that had ever been dealt him. Moderatism on 
 the present occasion received a similar rebuke. 
 
 Robert Heron, a name introduced into one of the minor 
 poems of Burns,^ in a manner that too effectually precludes 
 all idea of his having been a man of serious religion, was 
 one of the many who seem born to illustrate the important 
 truth, that without prudence and conduct there is no real 
 value in talent or learning, and no virtue in genius. He 
 was the son of a ))oor weaver; and in studying for the 
 Church — for he had unluckily seen no other mode of rising 
 from his miserably depressed level — he had struggled hard 
 
 1 Epistle to Dr. Blacklock.
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 159 
 
 with all the difficulties and hardships incidental to extreme 
 poverty and an utter lack of friends. At the early age of 
 eleven, he had both to support and educate himself, by 
 mingling with his studies the labors of teaching. He 
 fought his onward way bravely. In addition to his other 
 acquirements, he completely mastered in his leisure hours 
 the French language, attained to a thorough command of 
 English, acquainted himself with general literature, wrote 
 vei'ses and essays; and, on removing to Edinburgh to at- 
 tend the classes at college, he found means of introducing 
 himself to the booksellers of the place, and of so impress- 
 ing them with ideas of the force and versatility of his tal- 
 ents, that they furnished him with instant employment. He 
 wrote translations by the score; produced original works, 
 critical, historical, topographical, which, though now forgot- 
 ten, were favorably received in their day. He delivered 
 lectures on the law of nature and of nations, on subjects 
 of taste and questions of science ; and in the keen thirst 
 of literary fame, and possessed of an iron constitution, 
 which his sixteen hours a day employment failed for years 
 sensibly to affect, he gave up his first-cherished hopes of a 
 competency in connection Avith the Church, and devoted 
 himself to literature exclusively. Rarely is the life of the 
 literary aspirant a happy one ; very rarely, except in the 
 few cases in which religion exerts its influence over the 
 Avhole conduct, is it even a comparatively innocent one. 
 The literary man of the last century, too, was almost 
 always an eccentric, unsettled being, ill-hafted in society, 
 and licensed beyond his contemporaries by well-nigh gen- 
 eral consent. Heron too soon acquired the character of 
 his class. Periods of intense study were succeeded by occa- 
 sional fits of dissipation. He was ambitious, too, of being 
 deemed rather a gentleman than a man of literature, — 
 no uncommon weakness among literary men, — and affected 
 a fiishionable style of living, which, joined to his unsettled 
 habits, had soon the effect of placing him in great difficul- 
 ties and distress. It is a melancholy fact, that no inconsid-
 
 160 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 erable portion of his History of Scotland was written in 
 jail. And yet, in the midst of his sore straits and signal 
 imprudence, this unfortunate man of genius continued to 
 cherish warm aftections, and a conscience tenderly alive, 
 even with reference to the religious standard, to the true 
 nature of his own aberrations. We find him on one occa- 
 sion thus writing to his poor parents : — "I hope, by living 
 more piously and carefully, by managing my income fru- 
 gally, and appropriating a part of it to the service of you 
 and my sisters, to reconcile your affections more entirely to 
 me, and give you more comfort than I have yet done. O, 
 forget and forgive my follies ; look on me as a son who will 
 anxiously strive to comfort and please you, and, after all 
 your misfortunes, to render the evening of your days as 
 happy as possible." In another letter we find him thus 
 speaking of his sisters: — "We must endeavor to settle 
 our dear Grace comfortably in life, and to educate our dear 
 little Betty and Mary aright." He brought a younger 
 brother, a lad of promising talents, with him to Edinburgh, 
 and supported him at college ; but he saw him sink into an 
 early grave, a victim to consumption. He then brought a 
 favorite sister to live with him. The seeds of the same 
 insidious disease were fixed in her constitution also, and 
 she too sank into the grave. For a considerable period 
 his mind seemed almost unhinged by this latter shock : he 
 quitted Edinburgh, and forgot his griefs for a time in a 
 round of unceasing literary occupation in London. For 
 several years he employed his pen in the service of the 
 English publishers, and this much more profitably than he 
 had ever been able to do in Scotland ; but his unsettled 
 habits still clung by him, and kept him poor. His originally 
 excellent constitution at length broke suddenly down, 
 undermined by his arduous and long-protracted labors, ill 
 relieved by life-wearing fits of dissipation ; and he again 
 became the inmate of a jail. And here, in the midst of 
 squalor and distress, enfeebled in body, and with a mind 
 bowed down by want and despair, he could yet derive a
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 161 
 
 glimmering of comfort from tlie fact that he had never 
 employed his pen against religion. lie was now on the 
 confines of the eternal world, for he quitted his place of 
 confinement only to die in a hospital. Who that is "him- 
 self a sinner " shall venture to say that the mercy which 
 found the penitent publican and the penitent thief did not 
 visit his neglected death-bed, on which, alas! there Avas 
 not a human friend to look ? Be that as it may, it is at 
 least justice to record, that in the memorable debate on 
 missions Robert Heron originated the motion which Dr. 
 John Erskine was well content to second. 
 
 His speech was characterized by clear good sense, with 
 no assumption — for in his case the assumption could 
 not have been other than offensive — of the devotional 
 tone. It was a demonstrable truth, he said, that Chris- 
 tianity had a happy influence on society ; that it con- 
 tributed to the temporal prosperity of states no less than 
 to the spiritual welfare of individuals. They had seen it 
 gradually ameliorating the condition of the lower orders 
 of society; it had extirpated, for instance, the domestic 
 slavery of Europe, and taken its place in the very van of 
 civilization, as the pioneer of improvement, whether intel- 
 lectual or moral. If a spirit for its diffusion had now gone 
 abroad, regulated by moderation and prudence, and if 
 there existed at the same time circumstances more favor- 
 able for giving that spirit effect than at any former period, 
 — and he was prepared to show that that spirit had gone 
 abroad, and that these circumstances did exist, — he really 
 did not see that in the General Assembly of the Church 
 of Scotland there could be any ground for difference of 
 opinion on the subject. As for favorable circumstances, 
 the extensive commerce of the country, and the consequent 
 vastness of its naval resources, might be rationally re- 
 garded as just the proper wings of missionary exertion. 
 The country stood, too, on a high table-land of science 
 and general knowledge, which could surely be made avail- 
 able in favora})ly impressing, for the best of puri)oses, the
 
 1G2 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 ignorant natives of barbarous or semi-barbarous lands. As 
 for the missionary sjjirit wliich had been awakened, could 
 there possibly be a more gratifying or joyful circumstance 
 to men who had been long complaining of the progress of 
 infidelity, and the consequent alarming decay of religion 
 a:id good morals? It was a direct test of the vigor of 
 religious feeling among them, and an evidence that infi- 
 delity was not destined to prevail. It was surely a good 
 spirit. If Christianity be an excellent thing in itself, it is 
 an excellent thing also to spread it widely. Prophecy 
 points to a time in which, from the rising to the setting 
 sun, the Gentile nations shall become willing subjects of 
 the Redeemer's kingdom. He doubted not that the diffu- 
 sion of a very general missionary spirit would be one of 
 the means through which so desirable a result was to be 
 produced ; and who knew whether they might not, at that 
 very time, be witnessing its first awakenings'? At all 
 events, he said, he could not avoid thinking that such a 
 spirit should be encouraged, awake when it might, and 
 that the only w^ay for directing it well was just for men of 
 character and abilities to take an active part in tlie exer- 
 tions to which it led. The Church of Scotland had been 
 complimented by a late distinguished philosopher, David 
 Hume, as more favorable to the cause of deism than any 
 other religious establishment. Now was the time for them 
 to prove to the world that the compliment was undeserved, 
 by zealously countenancing and assisting the honest en- 
 deavors of their fellow Christians throughout the country. 
 Otherwise he did not see how the clergy could expatiate 
 with a good grace on the general indiflference about 
 religion, if they themselves set so palpable an example of 
 that very indifferency. He concluded, however, by mov- 
 ing, not that they should immediately adopt either of the 
 overtures, but that they should appoint a committee for 
 taking the subject of them into serious consideration, and 
 on whose report the Assembly might afterwards act. A 
 matter that promised so fair was at least worthy of exam-
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 163 
 
 ination : justice demanded that tlicy should deal Avith it 
 according to its merits; and it was imperatively their duty 
 to ascertain what these merits were. 
 
 As he sat down, Dr. Erskine and the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, 
 of Gladsmuir, rose together. The venerable Doctor yielded 
 to his opponent, at that time a young man, merely remark- 
 ing, that for the present, at least, he had risen but to second 
 the motion of the "gentleman opposite," Mr. Heron. The 
 Rev. Mr. Hamilton then proceeded with his speech, — one 
 of the most carefully written, apparently, of any delivered 
 during the course of the debate, — one of the most extraor- 
 dinary ever delivered anywhere. 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 " The bruit goeth," said De Bracy shrewdly to his com- 
 panion in arms, the Templar, " that the most holy order 
 of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few infidels within 
 its bosom." David Hume, intending on one occasion to 
 be very complimentary, said nearly the same thing of the 
 Church of Scotland. Was the compliment deserved, and, 
 if so, what peculiar aspect did the infidelity of our Scottish 
 clergy assume? Was it gentlemanly and philosoj^hic, like 
 that of Hume himself? or highly seasoned with wit, like 
 that of Voltaire? or dignified and pompous, like that of 
 Gibbon ? or romantic and chivalrous, like that of Lord 
 Herbert of Cherbury? or steeped in ruffianism and vul- 
 garity, like that of Paine? or redolent of nonsense, like 
 that of Robert Owen? Or was it not rather of mark 
 enough to have a character of its own? — an infidelity that 
 purported to be anti-Christian on Bible authority, — that, 
 at least, while it robed itself in the })roper habiliments of 
 unbelief, took the liberty of lacing them with Scripture 
 edgings ? May we crave the attention of the reader, 
 instead of directly answering any of these queries, to the 
 facts and reasonings employed by the Rev. Mr. Hamilton,
 
 164 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 of Gladsmuir, in opposing the motion of poor Robert 
 Heron. Mr. Hamilton was one of the most respectable 
 Moderates of liis time. His party sliortly afterwards hon- 
 ored him with the title of Doctor of Divinity ; and when 
 searching out among their soundest men for a Moderator 
 of the General Assembly, they made choice of him. For 
 the sake of brevity, we have taken very considerable lib- 
 erties with the speakers whose more striking or more 
 characteristic ideas we have already submitted to the 
 reader ; we have given the meaning, but not the words, 
 of the first two, and only a few sentences of the last, in 
 the language which he himself employed. But we shall 
 take no such liberties with the speech of Mr. Hamilton. 
 We cannot give the whole of it, for it occupies ten rather 
 closely-printed pages ; but our extracts will be all true to 
 the original text. We could scarce translate the senti- 
 ments expressed in it into our own language, however 
 fairly, without subjecting ourselves to a charge of exagger- 
 ation and injustice. 
 
 " I should blush, Moderator," said the reverend gentleman, " to 
 rise in this venerable Assembly for the purpose of opposing a plan 
 so beneficent in its first aspect as the present, did not mature reflec- 
 tion fully convince me that its jwinciples are not really good, but merely 
 specious; that no such honor could accrue to us from supporting 
 and promoting It, as Its friends among us have fondly anticipated ; 
 and because no such benefits could In all probability result from the 
 execution of it to mankind as they have no less fondly imagined 
 and desciibed. Such being my decided sentiments on the subject, 
 I feel no reluctance to rise and state them fully. I feel this declara- 
 tion, Indeed, Incumbent on me ; nor do I hesitate to say tliat, enter- 
 taining these sentiments, it is as rnuch my duty to ivish that the house 
 may he firm and unanimous in their opposition to these overtures, as it 
 appeared the duty of those who were of a very different opinion to 
 be actuated by a very different desire. To diff'use among mankind 
 the knowledge of a religion wliicli we profess to believe and revere, 
 is doubtless a good and Important work ; as to pray for its diffusion 
 and to expect it is taught us in the sacred volume of Scripture. But 
 as even the best things are liable to abuse, and as things the most
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 165 
 
 excellent are most liable to abuse, so in the present case it happens, 
 that I cannot otherwise consider the enthusiasm on this subject than as 
 the effect of sanguine and illusive views, the more dancjerous because 
 the object is jjlausible." 
 
 The readei' will observe that the Rev. Mr. Hamilton, of 
 Gladsmuir, was animated in liis course by a strong sense 
 of duty, and that he was not at all ashamed to boast, we 
 make no doubt very honestly, and with all due modesty, 
 of the sensitive tenderness of his conscience. He next 
 proceeded to unfold the very occult jirinciples on which 
 his views of duty were based. 
 
 " To spread abroad the knowledge of the gospel among barbarous 
 and heathen nations," he remarked, " seems to me highly preposter- 
 ous, in as far as it anticipates, nay, as it even reverses, the order of 
 nature. Men must be polished and refined in their manners before 
 they can be properly enlightened In religious truths. Philosophy 
 and learning must in the nature of things take the precedence. 
 Indeed, it should seem hardly less absurd to make revelation precede 
 civilization in the order of time, than to pretend to unfold to a child 
 the Principia of Newton ere he is made at all acquainted with the 
 letters in the alphabet. These ideas seem to me alike founded in 
 error, and therefore I must consider them both as equall// romantic and 
 visionary." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton next deduced very fairly from these first 
 principles, that not only are there many millions of men Avho 
 have no opportunities of embracing the gospel, but who 
 as certainly, as he himself very pointedly said, " ought to 
 have noner The question of their responsibility naturally 
 suggested itself to him ; and his benevolent mind found in 
 solution the following singularly comfortable but not the 
 less somewhat extraordinary doctrine : 
 
 " To this question Scripture furnishes us with an answer, plain, 
 natural, and just. We are in it told that ' a man is to be judged 
 according to what he hath, not according to what he hath not.' We 
 are, moreover, told by Paul to the same purpose ' that the Gentiles
 
 166 THE DEBATE ON MISSIOiSTS. 
 
 ■which have not the law are a law unto themselves ; ' and that 'thoy 
 who are without law shall be judged without law.' So that the 
 gracious declaration of Scripture ought to liberate from groundless 
 anxiety the minds of those who stated in such moving language the 
 condition of the heathen." 
 
 He next proceeded to show how very excellent a condi- 
 tion that of the heathen may be, and caught, as he warmed 
 in his description, the very spirit of Rousseau. 
 
 " Every state of society," he said, " has vices and virtues peculiar 
 to itself, which balance each other, and are not incompatible with a 
 large share of happiness. The untutored Indian or Otaheitan, 
 whose daily toils produce his daily food, and who, when that is pro- 
 cured, basks with his family in the sun with little reflection or care, 
 is not without his simple virtues. His breast can beat high with the 
 feelings of friendship, his heart can burn Avith the ardor of patriotism ; 
 and although his mind have not comprehension enough to grasp the 
 idea of general pliilanthropy, yet the houseless stranger finds a sure 
 shelter under his hospitable though humble roof, and experiences 
 that, though ignorant of the general principle, his soul is attuned to 
 the feelings on which its jiractice must generally depend. But go — 
 engraft on his simple manners the customs, refinements, and, may I 
 not add, some of the vices of civilized society, and the influence of 
 that religion which you give as a compensation for the disadvantages 
 attending such communications ivill not refine his morcds 7wr insure his 
 happiness. Of the change of manners, the effect produced shall 
 prove a heterogeneous and disagreeable combination ; and of the 
 change of opinion, tiie effects shall be a tormenting uncertainty 
 respecting some things, a great misapjirehension of others, and a 
 misapplication perhaps of all." 
 
 It was surely no wonder that the Rev. Mr. Hamilton 
 should have exerted himself, out of a high sense of duty, 
 to shiekl from the contauiination of the gospel the virtues 
 of so ha])i)y a state. He tlien proceeded, with all the 
 mingled zeal and knowledge of the philoso])her and "qual- 
 ified minister," to sliow how very mischievous and danger- 
 ous a thing tliis same gospel is, and how very terribly it 
 woukl tend to brutalize savages.
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 167 
 
 " When they shall be told," he said, " that a man is saved not by- 
 good works, but by faith, what will be the consequence ? We have 
 too much experience of the difficulty of guarding our own people 
 against the most deplorable misapplication of tliis principle; though 
 here the people are instructed by stated and regular pastors, though 
 their minds have been early imbued with a pious and virtuous 
 education, and though they are daily warned of the folly and danger 
 of immorality under tliis pretext, we have too much experience of 
 this fatal tendency at home, I say, with all our refinement, to enter- 
 tain a rational doubt that the wild inhabitants of uncivilized regions 
 would use it as a handle for the most Jlacjrant violation of justice and 
 morality." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton, early in his speech, had admitted that, 
 could Christian missionaries be possibly found of the right 
 stamp, — men of mildly tempered zeal, — and that could a 
 heathen country blessed with civilization, and thus fitted 
 for receiving them, be also found, — though evidently, 
 according to his estimate, it required no small amount 
 of civilization to neutralize the evils of but a very small 
 amount of Christianity, — still he would have no very 
 serious objection against sending the mildly tempered 
 missionaries to the highly civilized land. On thinking 
 over the matter, however, he deemed the admission rather 
 too great, and he thus proceeded to qualify it : 
 
 " I formerly observed, that if missionaries were to be sent any- 
 where, it ought to be to that countrj' whose state of civil society 
 should appear to be fitted to receive it and improve by revelation. 
 But even supposing such a nation could be found, I should still have 
 •weighty objections against sending missionaries thither. Why should 
 we scatter our forces and spend our strength in foreign service, when 
 our utmost vigilance is required at home ? " 
 
 The concluding stroke in the following passage will 
 scarce fiil in provoking the smile of the reader. Most 
 involuntarily, evidently, did the admission which it con- 
 veys fall from the speaker. It was a grace beyond the 
 reach of art, — one at least which only our master dram- 
 atists could have equalled :
 
 168 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 " What general," said IMr. Hamilton, " would desire to achieve 
 distant conquests, and scatter for this purpose his troops over a 
 distant and strange land, when the enemy's forces were already 
 pouring into his own country, estranging the citizens irom his inter- 
 ests, and directing the whole force of his artillery against the walls 
 of his capital. / cannot hut reflect loith surprise that the very men 
 who in their sennons, by their speeches^ by their publications, in short, 
 by everything hut their own lives, are anxious to shoiv to the world the 
 groxving profligacy of the times at home, — / cannot but reflect with 
 surprise that these are the very men most zealous in p)romoting this 
 expedition abroad." 
 
 We can give, as we have said, only a part of this speech; 
 but the whole is infinitely curious. We add just two sen- 
 tences more — the concluding ones. 
 
 " Upon the whole, tchile toe pray for the propagation of the gospel, 
 and patiently await its period, let us unite in resolutely rejecting these 
 overtures. For my own part at least, I am obliged heartily to oppose 
 the motion for a committee, and to substitute as a motion in its place, 
 That the overtures from the Synods of Fife and JMoray he immediately 
 dismissed." 
 
 Mr. Hamilton ceased speaking, and sat down. On the 
 table of the General Assembly there always lies a Bible. 
 It lay there in even the darkest days of Moderate ascend- 
 ency, and neither Hill nor Robertson had dared to recom- 
 mend its removal. The venerable leader of Evangelism 
 rose, and pointed to the table. "Moderator," he said, — 
 and the brief and emphatic sentence that followed was 
 one of those which men never forget, — "Moderator, Rax 
 ME THAT Bible." The Church of Scotland has her appro- 
 priate Scripture motto, borne in reference to the burning 
 bush seen by the 2)rophet in the wilderness. Were she not 
 so well provided, — were the label still to inscribe, — we 
 could imagine many worse suggestions than that it should 
 be occupied by the laconic though quaintly-expressed 
 request of Erskine — Rax me that Bible. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. Hamilton, of Gladsmuir, in the very spirit 
 of some of o'.r contemporaries of the press, who lie, in the
 
 THE DEBATE ON xMISSIONS. 169 
 
 present controversy, out of sheer policy, nnd supply "a 
 plentiful lack" of argument by a no less marked fertility 
 of fabrication, had accused his opponents of dishonesty. 
 Like a reverend gentleman of the present day, he had, no 
 doubt, felt it to he his duty to make the charge. The har- 
 vest of the preceding year had been scanty and inadequate. 
 There obtained, in consequence, among the poorer people, 
 a very considerable amount of distress, which a collection 
 ■ — and, to the honor of British liberality, it had been a 
 very ample one — had recently been made to relieve; 
 and, though the money was not yet expended, many and 
 urgent, he stated, were the demands upon it. "Sorry, 
 therefore, was he to say, that in such circumstances of 
 calamity some of his brethren, without consulting any 
 ecclesiastical court, had not only joined aiissionary socie- 
 ties, but had also set apart to their use the money collected 
 for the poor. For such improper conduct," he added, 
 " censure was by much too small a mark of disapproba- 
 tion : it would, he doubted not, be a legal subject of penal 
 prosecution." Dr. Erskine, old as he was, was not quite 
 the man to suiFer such a charge to pass unquestioned, and 
 he now peremptorily demanded an explanation. The 
 offence, he said, if really jjerpetrated, was a criminal 
 offence, and ought to be dealt with as such ; but it would 
 not do thus to wound the character of innocent men by 
 vague insinuations i-egarding it. He was entitled, he said, 
 to urge that the cases of misappropriation should be speci- 
 fied, and the guilty individuals named ; and to urge 
 further that, should the accusation prove an unfounded 
 calumny, it should meet with the merited contempt. He 
 paused for a reply ; and the pause was a long, and, to Mr. 
 Hamilton, a singularly embarrassing one. But he at length 
 stammered out an explanation. When he had said that 
 money collected for the poor had been set apart for the 
 use of missionary societies, he had not at all meant that 
 money professedly collected for the poor had been set 
 apart to their use. He had only meant that money col- 
 
 15
 
 170 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 lected at church-doors for missionary societies had been 
 thus appropriated to missionary purposes; and that all 
 money collected at church-doors seemed to him to belong 
 to the poor. An oiFence for which censure was too small 
 a mark of disapprobation — which ought rather to be made 
 a subject of penal prosecution — resolved itself simply into 
 the fact, that Dr. Erskine, and several other ministers be- 
 sides, had made church-door collections for missionary 
 objects, with the full consent of their several sessions, with 
 full and public intimation to their several congregations 
 beforehand of the purposes to which the money was to be 
 applied, and, withal, with fair deduction from the amount 
 received of the average Sunday collections for the poor. 
 Moderatism in those days must surely have had a very 
 nice perception of crime. 
 
 The minister of Gladsmuir was, it is said, a man of mild 
 and insinuating manners, — very much a gentleman of the 
 old school, — fluent and bland, and who ever deemed it a 
 solecism in politeness to lose temper in company. We 
 have been told, however, that there were four little words 
 which he could never contrive to hear unmoved: they 
 brought a singularly unpleasant scene to his recollection, 
 and operated on him like the sight of the bodkin on Sir 
 Percy Shafton. If an acquaintance wished to see hira 
 redden and get silent in even his gayest and most con- 
 versible moods, he had but to whisper in his ear, Rax 
 ME THAT Bible. He had studied, when a very young 
 man, what Dr. Johnson had termed the art of "labored 
 gesticulation," in the belief, doubtless, that his facts and 
 his arguments would be materially strengthened by the 
 motions of his hands and his legs. He had had on this 
 occasion much to prove; and therefore, to employ the 
 language of the writer just named, he had "rolled his 
 eyes, and ])uffed his cheeks, and spread abroad his arms, 
 and stamped on the ground, and turned his eyes sometimes 
 to the ceiling and sometimes to the floor." Dr. Erskine 
 regretted that he could treat the Assembly to no such
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 171 
 
 display of oratory. In his young days, he said, the art had 
 been very little studied in Scotland. He had passed 
 through his curricuhcm at a time when there had been 
 even no professor of rhetoric in any Scotch college ; his 
 oratorical education had thus been sadly neglected ; but 
 he fain hoped the house would bear with him notwith- 
 standing. He knew, he trusted, a little of church history, 
 and a little of common sense ; and his arguments, if solid, 
 might just be permitted to stand "for what they were 
 worth, though unerabellished by the flowers of imagery or 
 the graces of style." 
 
 He referred in terms of thorough approval to the senti- 
 ments expressed by Mr. Heron : they had left him nothing 
 to add, he said, regarding the civilizing influence of Chris- 
 tianity, or in reference to the means possessed at that time 
 by our country of spreading them abroad. He went on, 
 therefore, to take a historical view of what had been 
 already accomplished in the missionary field. He alluded 
 to the missions of the Romish Church, and decided 
 shrewdly on their character. They had left no traces 
 behind them, he said, but traces of desolation and misery. 
 It was a significant fact, too, that the countries chosen as 
 the scene of them were either rich in mines, or amply fur- 
 nished, through a fertile soil and genial climate, with the 
 conveniences and delicacies of life. The fields selected 
 for their operations were fields in which power or Avealth, or 
 at least a state of luxurious indulgence, might be attained 
 to by the missionary ; and their entire history, constitut- 
 ing, as it did, a record of rapine, cruelty, and secular aggran- 
 dizement, gave evidence of a false, not of a true church. 
 Still, however, when Papists, priding themselves on their 
 own exertions, turned to Protestant churches, and asked, in 
 derision, what they had done to spread abroad the faith 
 which they professed to value, or whether their indifferency 
 regarding its promulgation did not argue the weakness of 
 their convictions of its truth, the question was by much 
 too rational to be despised. And it was a question which
 
 172 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 could be answered only by deeds. Something had ah-eady 
 been done by Protestants; — more, as if to show that it 
 was loill, not ability, which was wanting, by one of the 
 poorest and least considerable powers of Europe (Den- 
 mark) than by all the other Protestant states put together. 
 He referred to the signal labors of the Moravians, as re- 
 corded by Crantz and Latrobe. He ran over the history 
 of missions in connection with Great Britain ; that of the 
 London jVIissionary Society, instituted by royal authority 
 in the days of William, which, for many years after its 
 institution, had communicated precious light to multi- 
 tudes who would otherwise have remained in darkness. 
 He referred to the society established early in the century 
 in Scotland. He alluded briefly to the more recently 
 established societies of our several large towns — socie- 
 ties differently constituted, he said, from, each other, and 
 composed of various materials, but of all of which he 
 approved more or less, for of all the great object was the 
 same ; and, however diverse might be the sects engaged in 
 them, he deemed all points of inferior moment lost in the 
 imi^ortance of the general cause. He paused briefly to 
 consider the arguments of Mr. Hamilton. Was it really 
 so absolutely necessary that learning and philosophy 
 should precede the inti'oduction of the gospel ? He had 
 been ever accustomed to consider it the peculiar glory of 
 Christianity that it was adapted alike to the citizen and 
 the savage ; that it not only enlightened spiritual darkness, 
 but promoted also temporal civilization. The "testimony 
 of the Lord maketh loise the simpler Christ, in the days 
 of the apostles, had been made "all in all" to barbarians 
 and Scythians. Would it have been so if to barbarians 
 and Scythians Christ had not been preached ? Was it 
 not the theme of prophecy, that the benign influences 
 of the gospel should smooth down the shag of human 
 nature in realms the most barbarous and uncivilized ? 
 How else did they interpret the bold metaphors of Isaiah ? 
 "The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose; and
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS, 173 
 
 instead of the brier shall spring up the fir tree ; and 
 instead of the thorn, the myrtle tree." What was the 
 testimony of history on the point ? Did not the Fathers 
 of the second century boast that the Mauritanians, tlie 
 Getidians, and other savage nations, had submitted to the 
 government of Zion's King ? What was the experience 
 of their own times? Had they heard nothing of the labors 
 of Elliot, Brainerd, and the tw^o Mayhews, among the 
 fierce Indians of North America? Or had civilization 
 visited the bleaiv coasts of Greenland and Labrador ere 
 the Unitas Fratrxim had preached the gospel there with 
 such signal success? Some of his younger brethren oppo- 
 site, no doubt, deemed him a fanatic, and might care little, 
 therefore, for his opinions ; but the question was not one 
 of opinion ; — he could assure them he was dealing in this 
 matter with only solid and well authenticated facts. He 
 alluded to the recent scarcity, and to Mr. Hamilton's terror 
 of injuring the poor and exhausting the rich by their mis- 
 sionary claims. What signs of scarcity, he asked, did the 
 tables, equipage, or general economy of the opulent among 
 them exhibit ? Had public calamity lessened either the 
 power or inclination to extravagance? Was not rather 
 the pi'ofusion in meats and drinks as marked, — were not 
 the carriages in our streets as sumptuous, the attendants 
 as numerous, — and were not theatres, assemblies, and 
 card-tables, as much frequented as ever? "Besides," he 
 added, "I early learned, and, though old, have not forgot 
 the lesson, that the exercise of every habit naturally tends 
 to strengthen and improve it ; and therefore am I inclined 
 to think that a wish to benefit our fellow-creatures in 
 distant regions, and an occasional donation in their behalf, 
 instead of lessening, will serve to increase the compas- 
 sion of the givers for the needy at home, and thus widen, 
 instead of contracting, the channels of general benevo- 
 lence." He concluded by giving expression to his cordial 
 approbation of the motion of Mr. Heron, which he had 
 already seconded. 
 
 15*
 
 174 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Erskine was succeeded by the Rev. Dr. 
 Alexander Carlyle, minister of Inveresk ; and as the speech 
 of this gentleman was a short and very extraordinary one, 
 we shall give it entire. Dr. Carlyle was, of all his party, 
 the boldest and most uncompromising advocate of the 
 theatre, — one of the truly liberal in the case of Home and 
 his tragedy, — in short, a man enlightened enough in his 
 views of dramatic representation to have almost wij)ed 
 away the stain of bigotry and narrowness from an entire 
 Church. But there is, alas ! no perfection in whatever is 
 human ; and there were matters in which even he, with all 
 his general liberality, could be narrow and bigoted. lie 
 exhausted the charities of his nature in tolerating balls 
 and the theatre ; and for the gospel of Christ and the 
 cause of its extension he had no tolerance and no charity. 
 
 " ]\Ioderator," he said, " my reverend brother, Avliose universal 
 charity is so well known to me, has just been giving a new and 
 extraordhiary instance of it ; — no less than j)roposing an a model for 
 our imitation the zeal for propar/atint/ the Christian religion displayed 
 hy Roman Catholics. ^V^hen we see the tide of infidelity and licen- 
 tiousness so great, and so constantly increasing, in our own land, it 
 would indeed be highly preposterous to carry our zeal to another 
 and a far distant one. When our religion requires the most unre- 
 mitted and strenuous defence against internal invasion, it would be 
 highly absurd to think of making distant converts by external mis- 
 sionaries. This is indeed beginning where we should end. I have, 
 on various occasions, during a period of almost half a century, had the 
 honor of being a member of the General Assembly. Yet this is the 
 first time I remember to hare ecer heard such a proposal made, and I 
 cannot help also thinking it the worst time. As clergymen, let us 
 pray that Christ's kingdom may come, as we are assured it shall come 
 in the course of Providence. Let us, as clergymen, also instruct our 
 people in their duty; and, both as clergymen and as Christians, let 
 our light so shine before men, that, seeing our good works, they may 
 be led to glorify our heavenly Father. This is the true mode of 
 propagating the gospel ; this is far preferable to giving countenance 
 to a jilan which has well been styled visionary. I, therefore, do heartily 
 second the motion made some time ago by my young friend Mr. 
 Hamilton, that the overtures be immediately dismissed."
 
 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS, 175 
 
 PART FOUnXII. 
 
 The characters in the debate on missions stand out in 
 bold relief. There is a dramatic force and picturesqueness 
 about them. Evangelism had to contend against the cur- 
 rent of the age : it was alike denounced by the worlds of 
 literature and fashion. The politically powerful exerted 
 themselves to crush it as mischievous ; the gay and dissi- 
 pated denounced it as morose and intolerant ; the widely- 
 spread skepticism of the period characterized it as irrational 
 and absurd ; historians had written whole volumes to tra- 
 duce and vilify it; and genius had striven to render it 
 ridiculous in song. It behooved its more strenuous as- 
 sertors, therefore, to be men of at least some force of char- 
 acter; and force of character never exists without those 
 accompanying peculiaiities which in the drama of life con- 
 stitute well-marked individuality. Moderatism, on the 
 other hand, enjoyed singular advantages, tliough of an' 
 opposite nature, of developing itself in its true proportions. 
 It had not, as now, tamely and timidly to conform to the 
 influence of the pressure from without; there was scarce 
 any pressure from without at tlie time : it could venture 
 on being well-nigh whatever it wislied to be. And hence 
 strongly marked character on the part of Moderatism also. 
 From diametrically opposite but equally efficient causes, 
 specimens of both parties, singularly cliaractei'istic, were 
 exhibited in this debate. Erskine, Hill, Heron, Hamilton, 
 the simple-hearted clergyman of Alves, and the venerable 
 minister of Leith, a})pear all before us like the well-drawn 
 dramatis per sonm of a masterly i^lay. But of all the char- 
 acters exhibited, perhaps none Avere better marked than 
 that of the last speaker. Dr. Carlyle. He was a Moderate 
 on a larger scale than could be produced in the altered 
 atmosphere of the present day. In digging him out, we 
 feel as if we had fallen somehow on a fossil Moderate ; 
 and are struck, in contemplating the mighty fragments, 
 with the degeneracy of his comparatively dwarfish sue-
 
 176 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 cessors. Dr. Bryce planted nstvide the shoulders of Dr. 
 Cook would foil to overtop a single Dr. Alexander Curlyle. 
 " Both as clergymen and Christians let our light so shine 
 before men," said the reverend Doctor, " that, seeing our 
 good works, they may be led to glorify our heavenly 
 Father. This is the true mode of propagating the gospel ; 
 this is far preferable to giving countenance to a plan which 
 lias loell been styled visionary.^'' Now, it is surely natural 
 to ask, after what particular fashion was the light of the 
 Rev. Dr. Carlyle made to shine before men ? Or, what 
 was its character as light ? Or, was it light at all ? We 
 have already alluded to his libei'alily of opinion respecting 
 theatrical representation. Milton had his prejudices against 
 play-acting parsons, — "men who shamefully prostituted 
 their ministry," he said, "by writhing and unboning their 
 clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of 
 Trineulos, buffoons, and bawds." Not such, however, was 
 the feeling of Dr. Carlyle: he was more than tolerant of 
 play-acting parsons. lie was a play-acting parson himself. 
 On one occasion at least, when a select batch of Moderate 
 divines rehearsed the tragedy of Douglas in the liouse of 
 an Edinbui-gh actress, the Doctor, a large, dignified-looking 
 man, well-known among the wags of the bar as Juj)iter 
 Tonans, performed to a<lmiration the part of Old Norvcd. 
 Dr. Hugh Blair personiiied the Lady Anna. Carlyle, from 
 being an actor himself, proceeded next to be an instructor 
 of actors. The Edinburgh playhouse of those days, as 
 the reader of Ferguson's " Burlesque Elegy " must needs 
 remember, was in the Canongate. The manager was a Mr. 
 Digges, and one of the prettiest of his staff was a Mrs. 
 Ward, an actress of considerable ability, but, as was com- 
 mon at the time to the profession, of equivocal charac- 
 ter ; and poor Jupiter Tonan?, in urging his instructions, 
 "had made his light so shine" that the tongue of scandal 
 became busy. Tliecase, among other matters, was brought 
 before the Presbytery of Edinburgh ; and the reverend 
 Doctor, who seems to have been a man of infinite frank-
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 177 
 
 ness, to save the Presbytery the trouble of leading proof, 
 at once acknowledged that he had been not only in taverns 
 with the actors, but also occasionally in Mr. Digges' house, 
 hearing parts of the tragedy reheai-sed by Mrs. Ward and 
 the others; but that on no occasion had he ever ate or 
 drank with the lady, or conversed with her farther than in 
 agreeing or disagreeing to what was said about the play." 
 This was of course satisfactory ; for who could know so 
 well as the Doctor himself? When the tragedy came at 
 length to be acted, some of the clerical friends of the 
 author were led, by the interest they felt in its success, to 
 linger about the house, without actually appearing in the 
 boxes. Hence the point of a stanza, the production of 
 some Edinburgh wit of the period : 
 
 " Hid dose in tlie gi-een-roora some clergymen lay, 
 Good actors themselves, — their tvhole lives a play." 
 
 Dr. Carlyle, however, with a few others, had more courage. 
 He appeared openly among the audience, armed with a 
 bludgeon. In the course of the evening, two wild young 
 fellows, reckless with intoxication, forced themselves into 
 his box ; and the Doctor, though known, says one of his 
 biographers, from " his repeated exertions in favor of the 
 law of patronage, and his strong dislike of fanatics, by the 
 title of i/ie jjreserver of the Church from fanaticism,'''' stood 
 up at once in the character of a Xon-Intrusionist. He was 
 perfectly sober at the time, and of great muscular streno-th ; 
 and succeeded, to the great delight of the lesser gods in 
 the gallery, after a slight struggle, in ejecting both the in- 
 truders. Though a leading and influential man among his 
 party, most of them seem to have regarded his character 
 as somewhat too extreme. When appointed to preach 
 before the Lord High Commissioner, in 1760, there was a 
 solemn dissent entered on the part of some of his brethren, 
 which still exists in the records of the Church ; " and the 
 case," says Morren, " is the only one on record in which the
 
 178 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 preacher proposed by the committee was objected to in the 
 Assembly." Nearly thirty years afterwards, however, and 
 but a short time before tlie debate on missions took place, 
 he very nearly carried the principal clerkship in a struggle 
 of unprecedented keenness. He shone as a wit ; and suc- 
 ceeded at times in raising the laugh against Evangelism, by 
 his narratives of the opinions entertained on doctrine or 
 church policy by the fisher population of his parish. Some 
 Janet Skatecreel, or Donald Mucklebacket, had come, he 
 had found, to the same conclusion on a debated point with 
 the Witherspoons and Erskines, his opponents ; and he 
 rarely failed in exciting the merriment of the brethren with 
 whom he voted, by his ludicrous representations of the 
 evangelic prejudices of Janet or Donald. There were 
 cases, however, in which the laugh was turned very conclu- 
 sively against himself. He had been all his life long a keen 
 supporter of Toryism. In his exertions to support the 
 policy of Pitt and Dundas, he had, to employ the language 
 of one of his brethren, who spoke both for the Doctor and 
 himself, "risked even the friendship of his flock, and his 
 own usefulness as a pastor among them." He had taken a 
 deep interest in the bill proposed in 1793 for the augmen- 
 tation of ministers' stipends. It had been set aside, to his 
 signal mortification, by his friends the Tories; and the 
 reverend Doctor, in the ensuing Assembly, proved unable 
 to conceal his disappointment and chagrin. He went 
 the length even of charging the ministry with "ingrati- 
 tude to their best friends," and in a style fully more 
 lachrymose than pathetic; and the complaint was ludi- 
 crously paraphrased, in reply, by the singularly able and 
 accomplished Dr. Bi-yce Johnstone, in the words of Balaam's 
 ass, "Am I not thine ass, on whom thou hast ridden ever 
 since I was thine until this day?" Dr. Johnstone followed 
 up the allusion in a vein of the happiest ridicule, amid the 
 irrepressible laughter of the house; the hint was caught 
 by the eccentric Kay; and in his caricature, ^'■faithful ser- 
 vice reicardecl^'' vol. it. \>. 118, the reader may see a neatly
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 179 
 
 etched head of Jupiter Tonnns attached to a long-bodied, 
 crocodile-looking jackass, bestridden by the late Lord Mel- 
 ville. In his latter days Dr. Carlyle tired, it is said, not 
 only of preaching sermons, but also of hearing them 
 preached. Pie furnished himself with an assistant ; and 
 leaving him to his prayers, as Hume did La Roche, he 
 might himself be seen almost every fine Sunday, during 
 the time of divine service, sauntering along the Mussel- 
 buigh racecourse. The light of the reverend Doctor seems 
 to have been a beacon light ; it shone before men to show 
 them, not the course which they ought to pursue, but the 
 course which they were by all means to avoid. 
 
 He spoke just two sentences more during the course of 
 the debate on missions. Principal Hill had made a long 
 speech, which occupies nearly twelve pages of the printed 
 report, in which he at once strenuously labored to defeat 
 the missionary cause, and to deprecate, by a vein of gen- 
 eral though singularly inconclusive concession in its favor, 
 the odium which might, he feared, attach to such a course. 
 Dr. Carlyle had no such fears, and no respect, apparently, 
 for the tone of timid conciliation which they inspired. 
 Though complimented by the Principal, who quoted his 
 observations as excellent, and referred to him as his revered 
 father, the old man rose in evident impatience as the 
 younger concluded, and addressed the moderator. 
 
 " Moderator," he said, " a motion was some time ago made ' to 
 dismiss the overtures,' and I inf:ist (he fii-s^t thing to he done is to con- 
 sider of this. We may then judge of the propriety of the recom- 
 mendation and resolutions proposed by the reverend Principal ; hut 
 I desire that we ma]] first proceed to dismiss the overtures." 
 
 He might have been more tolerant of the concessions of 
 Principal Hill. They were not intended to do either him 
 or his cause any harm. Is the reader acquainted with Vol- 
 taire's story of the two Roman Catholic missionaries who 
 quarrelled at Pekin ? A Jansenist and Jesuit, both brimful
 
 180 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 of zeal for Mother Church and the conversion of the 
 Chinese, and both equally hostile, the one to the heresies 
 of Jansenius, and the other to the policy of Loyola, had 
 met in their rounds within the precincts of the Celestial 
 Court. The Jesuit denounced the five propositions, and 
 asserted the doctrines of Habert. The Jansenist also de- 
 nounced the five propositions, and repeated the sarcasms 
 of Pascal. They became angry and loud, and cuffed and 
 scratched, and tore one another's beards, and the noise of 
 the fray reached the ears of the emperor. " Clap up these 
 French Bonzes in prison," said the great-grandchild of the 
 sun, — "clap them up instantly in prison: could they not 
 have staid and quarrelled in their own country?" — "And 
 how long, sire, shall we keep them there ? " asked a man- 
 darin in attendance. "Till they have fully agreed," said 
 the emperor. "Alas, sire!" replied the mandarin, who 
 knew the sort of persons with whom he had to deal, — 
 "alas, sire! in that case you condemn them to prison for 
 life, for they xcill never arjreer Is the reader prepared to 
 find the hinging point of the joke of Voltaire converted 
 into a serious argument against missions by Principal Hill? 
 Such, however, was the case. It had been stated by Dr. 
 Erskine that there were various sects engaged in the 
 societies, in whose welfare, deeming all points of inferior 
 moment lost in the importance of the general cause, he felt 
 so warm an interest. It had been asserted further, on the 
 same principle, in the address of the Edinburgh Society, 
 — a document characterized by the reverend Princi])al as 
 breathing only "a spirit of conceit^^ and fitted merely to 
 excite feelings of " compassion bordering on contempt,^'' — 
 that they sought not to "export the shil)boleth of a party." 
 The sectarian was to be sunk in the Christian. He had 
 found, withal, in the society's regulations, that "every mis- 
 sionary to be ordained, after being approved of by the 
 society, should be remitted for ordination to the |)articular 
 religious connection to which he belonged." His reflec- 
 tions on these several p.oints we give in the words of the 
 report :
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS, 181 
 
 " Alas ! " he exclaimed, '' is this the whole extent of the liberality 
 so much professed V Is tliis the sense in which ' the shibboleth of a 
 party' is disclaimed ? What can be more palpably plain than that 
 this remission of the approved missionaries tor ordination to the 
 particular sect to which they belong (and we find that all sects are 
 invited to join in the undertaking), is, in fact, sending out ' the shib- 
 boleth of a partij' in its strictest sense — is sending out men warm 
 with the deep impression of party, and is enlisting them in hostile 
 bands against each other on the very eve of departure. How soon 
 their polemical controversies may burst forth I know not ; but when 
 they do burst forth, wretched must be the state of the half-converted 
 heathen whose spiritual darkness shall only have given place to light 
 rendered horrible by the shapeless jyhantoms of gloomy doubt and 
 degrading superstition. On account of the missionaries themselves, 
 too, when these controversies shall have appeared, the societies at 
 home may too late be led to deplore their hazardous and rash 
 attempts — may too late discover that, besides sowing misery where 
 they promised happiness, missionaries have gone to fght, not merely by 
 argument, but even — thought full of horror ! — to fight 
 
 BY CUTTING ONE ANOTHER'S THROATS IN THE BATTLES OF 
 
 RELIGION ON A FOREIGN SHORE ! If the Societies recoil with 
 horror from such an anticipated, let them be careful in due time to 
 prevent this realized, consequence." 
 
 What, compared to this, was the ingenious fiction of 
 Voltaire ! The reverend Principal, as second minister of 
 St. Andrew's, was of course a member of the Synod of 
 Fife — one of the two synods from wliich the overtures 
 under discussion had been sent to the Assembly. Why 
 omit, as it turned out he had done, opposing the trans- 
 mission of the Fife overture in the synod ? Why not 
 crush the snake in the egg ? The reasons why, as stated 
 by himself, are sufficiently characteristic. The overture, as 
 originally drawn up, bore a preamble recommendatory of 
 missionary societies. It stated "that a desirable spirit 
 had of late appeared to pervade a numerous body of our 
 fellow-Christians, in various parts of this island, for propa- 
 gating the religion of Jesus Christ." We again return to 
 the report: 
 
 16
 
 182 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 " Such, sir," said the reverend Principal, " was originally the sub- 
 stance of the preamble to this overture, and I declared, on hearing 
 it, what I have already rejieated, that should any such preamble 
 have appeared in the o\erture, I should have atrenuoiisli/ opposed and 
 divided the synod upon it. As it pleased the gentleman who pro- 
 posed it, however, to leave out this highly objectionable clause, I saw 
 no reason for refusing my assent to it as it at present stands. The 
 overture seemed to have a pious object in view ; and, if not promis- 
 ing to be useful, seemed at least to promise to be innocent, in its effects. 
 In its present form the Assembly may take it up or not, just as they 
 think proper. It is clothed in expressions so general and vague, — 
 IT RECOMMENDS AN OB.iECT SO TRULY CHRISTIAN and War- 
 ranted by Scripture prophecy, yet so great and comprehensive in 
 its aspect, involving so many perplexing considerations, and promis- 
 ing such uncertain consecjuences, — that I am inclined to 
 THINK the Assembly are not called on to consider it, but might 
 SIMPLY DISMISS IT AT ONCE, as wanting a specific object." 
 
 Great truths are laid open at times by the merest acci- 
 dents; and one of these, stuck in, evidently all involunta- 
 rily, amid the tortuous .syllogisms of the reverend Principal, 
 we find in the passage just quoted. The Fife overture 
 "recommended an object so truly Christian, that 
 he was inclined to think the assembly might dis- 
 MISS IT AT ONCE." If the one leader originated in this 
 debate a saying which might well be adopted as the 
 Avatchword of his party, we think the other was no less 
 successful in behalf of his. 
 
 But the reverend Principal was not equally open 
 throughout. Too frequently are the deliberations of pub- 
 lic bodies degraded by a mean spirit of trick. Wisdom 
 and honesty to decide regarding the fair, the good, the pru- 
 dent, are what tlie exigency demands; but some influential 
 leader rises, and substitutes cunning instead. His object 
 is not to secure, but prevent, the adoption of the proper 
 course ; :ind this object lie pursues by means which, con- 
 sorting entirely with the character of what he intends, 
 are just and honorable in but the same degree as those 
 employed by the gamester when he loads his dice. A
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 183 
 
 complete list of the various stratagems resorted to in such 
 cases would be a long one — longer by far than Bacon's 
 catalosfne of the " wares of the cunning man." Hints for 
 half a volume could have been picked up at the last Gen- 
 eral Assembly from the speeches of some four or five Mod- 
 erate elders alone. Nor, as we have already shown, did 
 the debate on missions lack its quota of trick on the same 
 side. One notable stratagem we have described as virtu- 
 ally deciding the fate of the two overtures, by binding 
 them together, Mr. Hamilton resorted to another, when, 
 in the hope of blackening the character of his opponents, 
 and thus creating a prejudice against both them and their 
 cause, he charged theni with dishonestly appropriating to 
 the support of their missionary schemes money collected 
 for the poor. Dr. Hill was more ingenious ; not only, lie 
 asserted, were missionary societies not good, but even 
 those who most strenuously defended them seemed fully 
 aware of the fact. We again quote : 
 
 " My reverend father, Dr. Erskine," he, said, " has only touched 
 their surface Avith delicacy and tenderness ; for his sagacity and 
 discernment j?ui.s< have led him to perceive that they would not hear a 
 more critical inspection. Nay, he even has gone so far as to say that 
 he approves .of all the societies which have been formed, ' more or 
 less,' — a confession ivhich seems equivalent to his owning that he does 
 not approve entirely of any." 
 
 The hit Avas only indifferently successful. Dr. Erskine 
 at once characterized the inference of the Principal as 
 unwarranted. He had not veiled, he said, through feelings 
 of delicacy or tenderness, as had been insinuated, any dis- 
 approval of the missionary societies of the country ; for he 
 did not disapprove of them, but very much the reverse. 
 If he had spoken obscurely regarding them, it was unwit- 
 tingly, not from design ; and some portion of obscurity, in 
 a speech wholly unstudied, might, he hoped, be excused. 
 In a second stratagem, of a still worse character, Princi])al 
 Hill was entirely successful.
 
 184 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 The war of the first Frencli Revolution was raging at 
 the period of the debate, and the democratic principles 
 caught by the people of Britain, as if by infection, from 
 their volatile neighbors, were now undergoing a course of 
 gradual absorption, overmastered by the intensely national 
 sj)irit which both the reverses and triumphs of the conflict 
 served to awaken. Still, however, the pest had not been 
 altogether extirpated. " Our neighbor's house was in 
 flames, and it was well," according to Burke, " that the 
 engines should occasionally play on our own." Only two 
 years had elapsed since the trials of Muir, Palmer, and 
 Gerald had taken place; and Braxfield had not yet ceased 
 reiterating his somewhat brutal joke, that our democrats 
 " would a' be muckle the better o' being hanged." Even 
 several years later, the present Lord President of the Court 
 of Session, then Lord Advocate, could ofiicially intimate 
 to the sherifl" of Banffshire that a farmer of that county, 
 who had dismissed his servant for neglecting his work in 
 attending a volunteer review, should be " stigmatized and 
 punished by the scorn and contempt of all respectable 
 men;" and instruct, further, "that on the first French- 
 man landing in Scotland he [the fiirmcr] should be imme- 
 diately apprehended as a suspected person;" and that in 
 the event of his ]iro])erty being destroyed by either the 
 enemy or the king's troojjs, " care should be taken to 
 prevent his receiving any compensation for the loss." The 
 temper of the time was one of fear and suspicion ; minds 
 of fully the ordinary strength seemed unhinged by the 
 terror of revolution; and, to excite their rage and hatred 
 against any newly established popular society, it seemed 
 but necessary to hint that there might possibly be some- 
 thing democratic in its character or tendencies. There 
 were not a few of this conspiracy-dreaded class present at 
 the time in the Assembly, mostly gentlemen of the law; 
 and the reverend Principal tlms proceeded to enlist their 
 fears full against the missionary cause. The stratagem 
 had at least the merit of being consummately ingenious,
 
 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. 185 
 
 and, as we have already said, and shall afterwards show, it 
 was entirely successful. 
 
 " Besides the considerations," he said, " which lead us to augur 
 unfavorably of these societies from the circumstances I have enu- 
 merated, there is one argument, drawn from a consideration of a 
 much more important natui-e in itself, because threatening much more 
 awful and extreme effects than even these, not, indeed, to the heathen 
 or the missionaries, hut to this country, to society at large. The politi- 
 cal aspect of the times, marked with the turbulent and seditious 
 attempts of the evil designing or the deluded against our happy 
 constitution, — against the order of everything we possess and hold 
 dear to us, whether as citizens or as men, — renders it incumbent on 
 uie to state, that I observe with serious regret not only many of the 
 striking outlines, but even many of the most obnoxious expressions, 
 or expressions similar to those which have been held with aifected 
 triumjih in the lately suppressed popular assemblies." 
 
 The Principal goes on to render the assertion as plausible 
 as possible, by quotations froui the regulations and prelim- 
 inary address of the society over which the venerable Dr. 
 Erskine presided. His art in twisting a meaning seems to 
 have been very considerable indeed. 
 
 " In the letter I have so often referred to," continued the Princi- 
 pal, " it is said, ' They [Christians] perceive that their strength has 
 been impaired by division ; that the most zealous exertions of par- 
 ticular denominations have only had a partial and temporary eflfect; 
 and that by union alone one obvious cause of failure may be com- 
 pletely removed. They wish, therefore, to make a grand, unanimous 
 effort ; to combine the wisdom, the prayers, the influence, and the 
 wealth of all their brethren in all parts of the nation, and even to 
 produce a general movement of the Church upon earth ! ' Again, 
 ' While we rejoice in these associations as proofs that the desire to 
 propagate the gospel is at present very generally excited, we beg 
 leave strongly to recommend united exertions; and we submit to all 
 such societies in Scotland, whether it will not be better to cooperate 
 than to act alone. Let us join all our resources, and proceed with 
 vigor. From harmonious beginnings at home we may perhaps be 
 enabled to go on to an enlarged concuri'cnce with similar societies 
 
 16*
 
 186 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 at a distance, and in our day to revive something of tlie liberal spirit 
 of primitive times, Avhen the multitude of them that believed were 
 of one heart and of one soul.' And yet again, ' The society shall 
 be willing to correspond with all societies and individuals who may 
 have the same grand object in view, and shall either act by them- 
 selves or cobijerate with others, as circumstances shall determine.' " 
 
 When ever before were there more terrible proofs of 
 conspiracy adduced ! and was not Principal Hill quite 
 justified in alleging that these quotations were '■''fully 
 sufficient, vyithout any addition or much comment, to icar- 
 rant'''' him '■'■in calling those societies highly dangerous, in 
 their tendency, to the good order of society at large?'''' 
 True, it seemed a rather unlucky circumstance for his case, 
 that men such as Dr. Erskine were their leading members. 
 But then, with "new members," he said, "new views would 
 be introduced ; nor was it unreasonable to dread that their 
 common fund should be perverted from its original channel, 
 and be made the means, along wuth the other obnoxious 
 circumstances mentioned, of stirring up temporal strife, 
 instead of promoting spiritual peaceP 
 
 PART FIFTH. 
 
 We are told by Plutarch, of the Romans who besieged 
 Syracuse, that after they had seen a few dozen of their 
 galleys pitched into the air from the ends of huge beams, 
 and a few hundreds of their legionaries crushed into the 
 earth by immense rocks, they became so sadly afraid of tlie 
 master magician who defended the city, that if they only 
 sjjied a small cord or ]>iece of wood above tlie walls, they 
 straightway took to their heels, crying out that "Archi- 
 medes was going to let tly some terrible engine at them." 
 A somewhat .similar terror seems to have possessed the 
 more strenuous su])porters of the Pitt and Diindiis policy 
 in our own country, for a few years before and after the
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 187 
 
 period of the debate on missions; and it was to this feeling 
 of fear and suspicion, as we have said, that Principal Hill 
 deemed it wisdom to appeal. At the distance of nearly 
 half a century, when men's minds have cooled down, it 
 strikes one with astonishment to see how very minute the 
 cord sometimes was, and how very slender the beam, that 
 filled men of at least ordinary good sense with dread and 
 suspicion. Scarce an institution could be established, on 
 however limited a scale, whether economic, educational, or 
 religious, that some one or other did not decry as a revo- 
 lutionary engine. Some became mortally afraid of benefit 
 societies, some of prayer-meetings, some of Sunday schools. 
 Masonic fraternities were deemed hotbeds of sedition every- 
 where : even parish schools came to be suspected. A 
 country magistrate of the period, naturally a benevolent 
 man, but rabid in his dread of revolution, was presiding 
 on one occasion, in one of our northern towns, on a trial 
 of some score of ragged urchins, Avho, in sacking a piece of 
 planting of its rowans, had broken a few of the young- 
 trees. He had gone through the case with great good 
 humor; there was nothing revolutionary in it. In pro- 
 posing, however, that the parents of the culprits should 
 become bound for their behavior in the future, he was 
 seconded by a brotlier magistrate of the town, who re- 
 marked, half in joke, that they had better also bind the 
 young fellows themselves, so far as a promise could bind 
 them ; and Avho, aware of their literaiy qualifications, 
 actually wrote out for them a declaration of non-nggression 
 for the time coming, wiiieh he asked them to sign. Glad 
 of the opportunity of showing they could write, they came 
 forward one by one, and adhibited their names, each suc- 
 ceeding boy in a style more clerkly than the boy tliat had 
 gone before. The country magistrate stood aghasi, for 
 he saw conspiracy and sedition in the accomplishment. 
 "What! what! what!" he exclaimed, his tem])er giving 
 way for the first time during the course of the tri:il, "all 
 these I'agamuffins able to write ! This must be put an
 
 188 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 instant stop to ! In a few years lience we shall see them 
 all hung Ibr high treason." 
 
 One of the most extreme cases illustrative of the spirit 
 of the time was perhaps that of the late Rev. Mr. Lapslie, 
 of Canipsie, — a gentleman who first introduced himself 
 to terms of familiar intimacy with the unfortunate and not 
 over-prudent Muir, of Huntshill, by the professed liberality 
 of his political principles, and who, animated by his detes- 
 tation of democracy and his hope of a pension, volunteered 
 afterwards his evidence against him, but whose testimony, 
 from the utterly infamous nature of his conduct, could not 
 be received. The history of this man would exhibit Mod- 
 eratism in its worst and most extreme phase. It may be 
 deemed unfiir, indeed, to select the ati'ocities of one indi- 
 vidual as the characteristics of a party. If, however, that 
 individual was folloioed by his party; if, in cases of 
 acquittal for scandalous crimes, in which no merely secular 
 court of the period would or could have concurred, they 
 suffered him to act as their leader; if his worst peculiar- 
 ities were but exaggerations of their own ; if, instead of 
 branding his conduct and casting him out of their society, 
 they were content to regard him as a useful and active 
 partisan ; if, in short, they homologated his actings by 
 making them to no very limited extent their own, — they 
 must be content tliat he should be regarded as at least an 
 extreme specimen of their class. For several years after 
 entering on his charge, Mr. Lapslie bore the common 
 Moderate character. lie was known to be no bigot. He 
 appeared occasionally in the boxes of the Glasgow theatre, 
 and had, it was said, a happy knack of rendering himself 
 agreeable at the tables of men in the upper ranks. On the 
 determination of government to crush the revolutionary 
 s[)irit among the people by a series of state prosecutions, 
 the incumbent of Campsie sprung up at once into notoriety, 
 and volunteered, as wc have said, his testimony against 
 Muir. He had been over-zealous, however, for the full ac- 
 femj)lishment of what he had purposed. He had attended
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 189 
 
 the sheriffs in their rounds, collecting evidence. Pie had 
 even hinted to some of the witnesses, by way of refreshing 
 their memories, that " berths might be provided for them 
 under government." When the trial came on, his testimony 
 was objected to, on the score that he was a party deeply 
 interested in the case; and, to his surprise and signal 
 mortification, the objection was sustained by the public 
 prosecutor. Muir, in addressing the jury empanelled to 
 try him, solemnly pledged himself that, if acquitted, he, 
 in turn, would become Mr. Lapslie's prosecutor, and prove 
 against him, by a cloud of witnesses, i)ractices — nay, 
 crim.es — which he at that stage forbore to characterize. 
 Though thus rejected as a witness, however, the minister 
 was not altogether disappointed. His services, though not 
 very honorable, had been at least very zealously tendered : 
 they had attracted the notice of Pitt; and a pension was 
 granted him almost immediately after the trial, which, 
 considerably more than thirty years subsequent, his widow 
 continued to enjoy. On the introduction of the militia 
 act, so unpopular in Scotland, Mi'. Lapslie exerted himself 
 to give it effect in his own parish of Campsie with such 
 hearty good-will, that some of his parishioners, to show 
 their gratitude and respect, set fire to his outhouses in the 
 night-time, and burnt them to the ground. lie distin- 
 guished himself above all his fellows by his active hostility 
 to Sunday schools and home and foreign missions, "believ- 
 ing them, in common with many other members of the 
 Cluirch," says a Avriter of tlie present day, who has sketched 
 an outline of his biogra[)hy, "to be deeply tainted with 
 democracy." The accusers of our Saviour charged him 
 with rebellion against Cajsar; we question whether there 
 were any of them more in earnest than Mr. Lapslie. The 
 latest notice of this singular divine which we have yet 
 seen is to be found in "Petei's Letters to his Kinsfolk." 
 We there find him drawn as a gray-headed old man, 
 addressing the General Assembly in strains the most 
 impassioned : " tearing his waistcoat open, baring his
 
 190 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 breast as if he had scars to show ; bellowing, sobbing, 
 weeping;" and finally sitting down, "trembling all to his 
 linger-ends, like an exhausted Pythoness." What was it 
 that had moved the old man, and why did he rave, and 
 weep, and shake his gray locks? He had been engaged, 
 soul, body, and spirit, in the defence of a Moderate clergy- 
 man accused of "illicit intercourse with his housekeeper," 
 and who fared none the worse in consequence of having 
 his case tried at a period when it was imi)ossible, in the 
 General x\ssembly, to convict Moderate ministers of crime. 
 
 We have been indulging in an episode; but it is one 
 which serves to illustrate the temper of the time, and 
 enables us to add to our series of sketches an additional 
 portrait. Moderatism has often pointed to its men of 
 science and literature — its poets, philosophers, and histo- 
 rians ; the memoiy of such long outlives that of their 
 humbler contemi)oraries. But it is well to remember that 
 it was not of literature and science that the staj)le of the 
 party was composed. It is well to enter into an examina- 
 tion of its coarser ingredients; to know somewhat not 
 only of the gifted leaders who contended against the cause 
 of missions and Sunday schools, but also of the humbler 
 men-at-arms who fought under them with a zeal and hearti- 
 ness in no respect inferior to their own. The deep cloud 
 of moral and s])iritual death which for a century brooded 
 over our country, witheiing every blossom of hope and 
 pi'omise, had its ujiper sunlit folds of purple and gold, to 
 catch and charm the eye of the distant spectator; but to 
 know it in its true chai-acter, it was necessary to descend 
 to where its lower volumes brooded over the blighted 
 surface, and there to acquaint one's self with its sulphure- 
 ous stench, its mildew-dispensing damps, its chills, and its 
 darkness. 
 
 Some such introduction, too, is necessary to enable the 
 reader either to enter fully into the character of Princi])al 
 Hill's stratagem, or rightly to appreciate the spirit of the 
 very singular political speech which it elicited. The
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 191 
 
 speaker was a young advocate named David Boyle, ruling 
 elder for the burgh of Irvine. We are inclined to hold 
 that lie could have been animated by no real zeal against 
 missions; that it was his head, not his heart, which was 
 at fault. A bit of cord hung over the wall ; a piece 
 of wood had appeared ; the wily Principal had called 
 out, "A revolutionary engine! a revolutionary engine!" 
 There were certainly many playing oft' at the time ; and 
 the zealous advocate, infected by the general terror, had 
 taken the representation too readily on trust. We insert 
 his speech entire : 
 
 " I rise, Moderator, impressed with a sense of the alarming and 
 dangerous tendency of the measures proposed in the overtures on your 
 (able, — overtures which I cannot too strongly, which the Houae cannot 
 too strongly, oppose, and which, I trust, all the loyal and toell-affecled 
 members will be unanimous in opposing. If, however, I should stand 
 sinjjjle with the two reverend Doctors and the gentleman who made 
 the motion, I should this night go down to divide tlie House. Sir, 
 numerous societies of pco])le are at all times alarming ; but at this 
 time particularly so, whatever be the professions on which they are 
 formed, or the pretexts they hold out to the world. The general 
 professed object of the present societies is, indeed, good, and at a 
 proper season would merit our countenance ; but there is nothing 
 besides this general object at all good about them; all the other circum- 
 stances respecting them are bad ; for I am free to assert — and I will 
 maintain it in the face of any member of this Assembly — that all the 
 societies ivhich have of late years existed in this country have been more 
 or less connected with politics. Yes, sir, I do say that the associations 
 of the people formed In various parts of the kingdom to petition for 
 the abolition of the slave-trade, however good their design, and 
 whether or not Innnediately arising from politics, did, at any rate, lay 
 the foundation of the political societies which have since disturbed the 
 peace and trancpiillity of the country, and have cost so much trouble 
 and difficulty to be suppressed. Still, however, the people meet 
 under the pretext of spreading Christianity among the heathen. 
 Observe, sir, they are affiliated, they have a common object, they 
 correspond with each other, they loot for assistance from foreign 
 countries, in the very language of many of 'the seditious societies. 
 Above all, it is to be marked, they have a common fund. Where is
 
 192 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 the security that the money of this fund will not, as the reverend 
 Principal said, be used for very different purposes from the professed 
 ones '? If cinji man soya that the societies: liuve not this connection and 
 tendenoj, he sajjs the thing that is not. It now, therefore, becomes us 
 as much as possible to discourage numerous societies, for whatever 
 purposes ; for, be the object lohat it maij, they are all equally had. 
 And as for those missionary societies, I do aver, that since it is to be 
 apprehended that their funds may be in time, nay, certainly loill be, 
 turned against the constitution, so it is the bounden duty of this House 
 to give the overtures recommending them our most serious disappro- 
 hation, and our immediate, most decisive opposition." 
 
 Very extrnordinary, surely, regarded as the production 
 of a man still living! It has so much of the true rust of 
 antiquity about it, that to associate it with the present age 
 by a link so unequivocal as the continued working-day 
 world existence of the speaker, does violence in no small 
 degree to the imagination. But it must have originated, 
 as we have said, wholly in misconception and mistake, and 
 should be regarded rather as an effect of the disreputable 
 stratagem of Principal Hill, operating on a mind blinded 
 by its fears and open to suspicion on only one side, than 
 as the result of spontaneous conviction. We are pretty 
 sure that the speaker, rendered wiser by the additional 
 experience of forty-five years, would now be the very first 
 to repudiate the sentiments which it expresses. He would 
 deal by them as Knox and Luther dealt by the idolatrous 
 tenets which in the days of their extreme youth they had 
 deemed it their duty to hold. A remark, however, which 
 seems naturally to grow out of the subject may not be 
 deemed either irreverent or ill-timed; and we shall intro- 
 duce it by an anecdote. 
 
 It is recorded of the celebrated Lord Monboddo, that, 
 when the great Douglas case was brought for judgment 
 before the Court of Session, he descended from the bench, 
 and, taking his place beside the clerk, there delivered his 
 oi»inion. What could have moved him ? for he assigned 
 no reason for the step. He simply rose from beside his
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 193 
 
 brethren, and came down. Men of correct moral senti- 
 ment had but to consult their feelings in order to dis- 
 cover his lordship's motives. It was remembered that, 
 previous to his elevation, he had been counsel in the case 
 for one of the parties. It was known that, in common with 
 all engaged in it, he had felt an intense interest in the 
 issue, of which he could not divest himself, now that he 
 was counsel no longer. And so it was at once inferred 
 that, feeling himself rather a party than a judge, he had 
 descended from the judge's seat, determined that, since he 
 had now, in virtue of his office, to record judgment in the 
 case, he should do so on the counsel's level, and, as it 
 were, under protest of his own conscience. Believing his 
 decision to be entirely just, he was yet sensible of an under- 
 current of prejudice powerful enough to warp his better 
 judgment. He took this mode of showing that he loas 
 sensible of it ; and though it might, doubtless, have been 
 better for him to have declined giving an opinion in the 
 case at all, it must be confessed that, since he did give it, 
 it was well it should have been under circumstances so 
 marked. 
 
 Lord Monboddo carried his prejudices with him from 
 the bar to the bench ; and he felt that he did. Are the 
 majority of our Lords of Session in the present day men 
 of stronger minds than Monboddo, or possessed of a more 
 complete control over their predilections and their antipa- 
 thies? If the question cannot be answered otherwise than 
 in the negative, is it possible to forget that in the present 
 struggle not a few of our Lords of Session are as certainly 
 parties in one character as they are judges in another? 
 We do not refer to the controversy in its more obvious 
 aspect — as a collision between two courts. In that aspect 
 the Lords of Session may indeed be described as parties, 
 and their decisions as decisions in favor of their own court. 
 But we refer to it in a more emphatic sense — as a con- 
 troversy between two great principles, Moderatism and 
 Evangelism, and to the well-known fact, that the greater 
 
 17
 
 194 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. 
 
 part of the men who now, in tlic character of judges, 
 record their decisions against the latter principle, have 
 zealously contended against it as partisans in the charac- 
 ter of ruling elders. They have passed hot from their 
 debates in the General Assembly to their seats in the 
 Court of Session, and their findings in one character agree 
 entirely with their votes in anotlier. We are far from 
 impugning tlieir motives in either capacity. We doubt not 
 they have been thoroughly conscientious ; as much so 
 when contending on unequal terms M'ith Andrew Thom- 
 son, and made to feel that he was not only an abler man, 
 but also a better lawyer, than most of themselves, as when 
 pronouncing judgment in the Auchterarder case; as much 
 so when opposing themselves to the overtures on missions, 
 as when granting interdicts against preaching the gospel 
 and administering the sacraments at the instance of the 
 clergymen of Strathbogie. We doubt not they have 
 decided conscientiously. We doubt not that Monboddo 
 decided conscientiously in the Douglas case; but Mon- 
 boddo could himself fear, that, though he judged honestly, 
 there were yet disturbing circumstances that might lead 
 him to judge erroneously: and we are convinced the 
 public would think none the worse of the majority of the 
 Lords of Session were they to manifest in some slight 
 degree a corresponding fear. 
 
 The remarks of Mr. Boyle called up Dr. Erskine, un- 
 willing as he was, he said, again to encroach on the time 
 of the Assembly. He could not understand why all asso- 
 ciations of the people, however diverse the i)urposes for 
 which they had been established, should be treated thus 
 with equal severity; or on what ])rinciple ^>ro^;)er slioukl 
 be confounded with improper objects, from their merely 
 possessing the common circumstance of being pursued, 
 with a view to tlieir accomplishment, by bodies, not indi- 
 viduals. What was there in the mere circumstance of 
 union, of force enough to convert good into evil? He 
 had yet to learn that societies formed in the cause of
 
 THE DEBATE ON ]«S[SSIONS. 195 
 
 humanity tended to render the minds of men turbulent 
 and seditious ; or that the quiet of the state could be in 
 any degree endangered by deliberations on the best pos- 
 sible means of Christianizing the heathen, or by discussions 
 regarding the more promising fields of missionary exertion. 
 Good government had nothing to dread from religion; 
 irreligion, on the other hand, was the worst foe it had to 
 combat. He 2Ji"t)ceeded to say, in language which we 
 have already quoted, that he acknowledged, and gloried 
 in acknowledging, himself a member of the Slave Abolition 
 Society; that in no degree, however, on that account, was 
 he the less attached to the constitution under which he 
 lived. He believed he had given at least as many proofs 
 of his regard for the peace of the land as the gentlemen 
 opposite ; and he was prepared, he trusted, in his humble 
 sphere, to make as many and as great sacrifices to preserve 
 it inviolate. He had no wish, he said, to see the people 
 becoming disputatious politicians ; for he had seen their 
 loose 2:)olitical speculations serving but to waste and dissi- 
 pate their minds, and thus doing them harm without 
 producing any counterbalance of good. Nor was he at 
 all pai'tial to the late democratic societies ; some of them 
 served only to show him how a few cunning men may 
 lead multitudes astray. The pretended analogy, however, 
 between these lately suppressed political associations and 
 the lately established missionary societies was by much 
 too fir strained to be just. The one class had followed 
 the other in the order of time ; but was there the slightest 
 attempt to show that in this succession there was aught 
 akin to the relation of cause and efiect? Exactly the 
 reverse was the case ; and, to convince themselves thor- 
 oughly that it was so, they had but to examine into the 
 nature of the ingredients of which the associations and 
 societies were respectively composed. He was very sure, 
 for his own part, that he saw none of their violent political 
 reformers stepping forward to take part in the missionary 
 cause. He was equally sure that those who exerted them-
 
 196 THE dehate on missions, 
 
 selves in it most were men remarkable for their simplicity 
 and purity of life, and from whom no good government 
 could have any cause of alarm. Dr. Erskine sat down, 
 and did not again mingle in the debate. The event deter- 
 mined that he should take no peculiar interest in missions 
 as a minister of the Church of Scotland ; but not the less 
 on that account did he labor in tlieir behalf as a minister 
 of the Church of Christ ; and his last work on earth, as 
 we have already intimated, was the preparation of a 
 pam2:)hlet — one of a series — suited to draw the attention 
 of the country to the good which they were the means of 
 producing abroad. His remark with regard to the flict 
 that he saw none of the more violent political reformers 
 taking part in the missionary cause is a shrewd one. We 
 have heard Chartist sermons in our time, and have 
 described the divinity of the class as a sort of Moderatism 
 possessed, — as composed of the commonplaces of a tame 
 and inefficient morality, that never made any one more 
 moral, shaken into uncouth activity by the eccentric ener- 
 gies of the revolutionary spirit. One of their preachers 
 we heard descant on missions. What particular view did 
 he take of them? or what is the opinion formed regarding 
 them by the lay theologians of Chartism ? Exactly the 
 Moderate view, as recorded in the debate of 1796. The 
 preacher denounced them as singularly absurd ; nay, more, 
 he deemed it little better than a crime to waste the 
 resources of the country in benefiting foreigners, when 
 there was so much to be done in our own country. 
 "Charity, child, charity!" said Mrs. Tabitha Bramble, in 
 entering her protest against the benevolent donation of 
 her brother, honest Matthew, — "Charity begins at home; 
 these twenty pounds would have bought me a complete 
 
 set of silks, head-dress, pinners, and ." — "Missions!" 
 
 said the Chartist orator, — "missions! — why, half the 
 
 money expended on missions would win us the charter." 
 
 The debate hastened to its conclusion. The Rev. 
 
 Messrs. Johnstone, of Crossmichael, and Shepherd, of
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 197 
 
 Mm'rkirk, together with a Mr. Dickson, ruling elder for 
 the Presbytery of Biggar, spoke in favor of the overtures. 
 Dr. Williaui Taylor, of Glasgow, and the Rev. Robert 
 Knox, of Larbert, were strenuous against them. Dr. Tay- 
 lor urged the old argument : there was a great deal still 
 to be done at home, — all the more, he said, in consequence 
 of the much that had lately been tmdone by the writings 
 of Paine, lie urged, therefore, that they should deter- 
 minedly oppose themselves to the Age of Jleason and the 
 overtures, and offer up prnyers for the spread of the gos- 
 pel. Knox, a gentleman who had been settled in his parish 
 by the military, was content to denounce the indelicacy 
 shown by members friendly to the missionary cause, in 
 taking it somehow for granted that there was more of 
 conscience in supporting than in opposing it. The As- 
 sembly divided ; and, in a house of one hundred and two 
 members, the overtures were dismissed by a majority of 
 fourteen. 
 
 The deposition of the Strathbogie clergymen was car- 
 ried, in a house of three hundred and forty-seven, by a 
 majority of ninety-seven. At least twice the number that 
 voted in the Assembly of 1796, on both sides, attended 
 the last extraordinary meeting of Commission, to record 
 their resolutions on one side. The fact is no unimportant 
 one. It shows that the languor and indifterency of the 
 middle period of the Church's history is gone ; that not 
 only the policy, but also the strength and energy, of her 
 earlier time has been revived. Xor has the deepening 
 interest been restricted to members of Assembly, or even 
 to the Church's office-bearers. The heart of the j^eople 
 has been stirred. Dr. M'Crie asked, some eight or ten 
 years ago, in reference to the widely-spread apathy which 
 prevailed even then among the peojjle regarding the coun- 
 sels of the Church, "Where were the fervent supplications 
 for the countenance and direction of Heaven in the delib- 
 erations of the Assembly, which were wont to resound of 
 old from the most distant glens and mountains of Scot- 
 
 17*
 
 198 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 
 
 land?" We can now reply to the query in other terras 
 than the Doctor did then. Many a prayer-meeting was 
 held in tlie thousand parishes of Scotland on the night of 
 the Great Meeting in Edinburgh, and there ascended 
 many a fervent petition from the truly excellent of the 
 country in behalf of their endangered Church. In one 
 northern semi-Highland parish, that reclines to the south 
 under the evening shadow of the huge Ben-wevis, three 
 several meetings of the "men" of the district, — hoary- 
 headed patriarchs, on the extreme edge of life, — attended 
 by numbers of the young, the fruit of a recent revival, 
 were held on that night, and the time of prayer was pro- 
 longed from the fall of evening to the break of day. Our 
 opponents may think very meanly of zeal of this character 
 assuming thus the form of earnest prayer; but they must 
 be profoundly ignorant if they think meanly of it as an 
 element of strength and determination. 
 
 The overtures on missions were negatived mainly on the 
 argument — we employ the words of the Rev. Mr. Hamil- 
 ton — that it was "improper and absurd to propagate the 
 gospel abroad while there remained a single individual at 
 home without the means of religious knowledge." Only 
 two years after, in direct violation of the Barrier Act, an 
 overture originating with the Moderate party, which inca- 
 pacitated presbyteries from sanctioning the erection of 
 chapels of ease, passed into a law. Moderatism could com- 
 mand majorities in the Assembly, but not in all the pres- 
 byteries of the Church ; and to the Assembly, therefore, 
 by this act, was reserved the exclusive right of erecting 
 chapels. What was the object of the measure? "To pre- 
 vent," says a Church historian of the present day [Dr. 
 Hetherington], " the erection of chapels of ease in any 
 dangerous })lace where Evangelism was already strong," 
 and to discourage the system of Church extension gener- 
 ally. The party would not give the gospel to the heathen 
 because there was much to do at home ; and they then 
 discovered that they could not give it to the people at
 
 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 199 
 
 home because it interfei'ed with their policy. But the 
 Moileratism of the present day has nothing in common, 
 say men such as the Rev. Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, with 
 the Moderatism of forty years ago. Men of such respect- 
 able calibre might show just a little more sense by select- 
 ing positions just a little more tenable. The point is 
 capable of demonstration, in even an arithmetical form. 
 The statistics of missionary exertion in connection with 
 the schemes of the Church establish the disputed identity 
 of the party, and the fixed character of its tenets. What 
 principle is it that, when it dare no longer oppose itself to 
 foreign missions, contents itself with doing nothing in 
 their behalf? The same Moderatism which so powerfully 
 exerted itself against missions in the past. What princi- 
 ple was operative in the atrocity of Marnoch ? The same 
 Moderatism whose forced settlements in the last century 
 desolated our national Establishment, and robbed her of 
 one-third of her people. What principle in the present 
 day do we find loudest in denouncing the erection of our 
 quoad sacra parishes? That same Moderatism which set 
 itself so insidiously at an earlier period to prevent the 
 erection of chapels of ease. What principle demanded of 
 the State, on a late occasion, in terms Avhich could not be 
 misunderstood, the ejection from the Church of all among 
 its ministers who took part with the people? The same 
 Moderatism which so ruthlessly secured in the past the 
 ejection of Gillespie and the Erskines. But we feel our- 
 selves engaged in an idle task. The point in reality is 
 not a disputed one.
 
 THE 
 
 EIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE. 
 
 THE TWO PARTIES IN THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Thk following formed the leading article in the first nuinber of 
 " The Witness," which was published on the 15th of January, 1840. 
 The succeeding papers are compiled from subsequent numbers of 
 that journal. — Ed. 
 
 We enter upon our labors at a period emphatically mo- 
 mentous, — at the commencement, it is probable, of one 
 of those important eras, never forgotten by a country, 
 which influence for ages the condition and character of the 
 people, and from which the events of their future history 
 take color and form. We enter, too, at a time when, with 
 few exce])tions, our Scottish contemporaries in the same 
 field — unable, it would seem, to lead, and unwilling to 
 follow — neither guide the opinions of the great bulk of 
 their countrymen, nor echo their sentiments. Strange as 
 it may seem, it is a certain fict, which in the nature of 
 things must be every day becoming more and more obvi- 
 ous, that on one of the most important questions ever 
 agitated in Scotland the people and the newspaper press 
 have taken opposite sides. 
 
 A few simjile remarks on the point at issue may show, 
 more conclusively than any direct avowal, the part which 
 we ourselves deem it our duty to take. There are parties
 
 THE TWO PARTIES IN THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 201 
 
 which continue to bear their first names long after they 
 have abandoned their oiiginal principles; and the historian, 
 in tracing- their progress, has to regulate his definitions by 
 his dates. There are parties, on the contrary, which remain 
 unchanged for ages. The followers of Wesley are in every 
 respect in the present day what they were when their 
 exti'aordinary leader first organized their society. There is, 
 on the other hand, a section of our Scotch Seoeders who 
 see nothing to fear from the counsels or the increase of 
 Popery, and who can compliment the Gowdies and Simp- 
 sons of the time on the policy which drove Fisher and 
 the Erskines out of the Church. But the remark is exem- 
 plified at least equally well by two antagonist bodies which 
 for the last century and a half have composed the same 
 corporation. The differences of the contending parties 
 within the Church of Scotland arise solely from the cir- 
 cumstance that the one retains its original principles, and 
 the other has given them up ; nor is it at all improbable 
 that it shall be decided by the issue of the present conflict 
 whether the Church shall continue to unite its old char- 
 acter to its old name, or whether for the future it shall 
 retain the name only. 
 
 The evidence which establishes the thorough identity of 
 the popular party with the original Church will be found 
 to lie very much on the surfu-e. The hereditary sympa- 
 thies and dislikes of the Scotch people are strikingly cor- 
 roborative of the facts furnished by history. Di-. Cook is 
 well-nigh as decided on the point as Dr. M'Crie. The 
 Churchmen of Glasgow who lately commemorated the 
 triumph of Presbyterianism in the days of Henderson, are 
 at one with the Dean of Faculty. The satires of Burns, 
 and the David Deans of the novelist, add weight to the 
 testimony of the first Seceders. Now, it is obvious that 
 the unchanged must possess a mighty advantage over the 
 transmuted party, — the advantage of a well-defined and 
 long-sustained character. They have been thoroughly 
 known to the people of Scotland for the last three centu-
 
 202 THE TWO PARTIES 
 
 ries. The Chalmerses and Gordons of the nineteenth 
 century agree in their theology and their views of Church 
 government with the Witherspoons and Dr. Erskines of 
 the eighteenth ; these again with the Hendersons and 
 Rutherfords of the seventeenth ; and these with the Knoxes 
 and Melvilles of the sixteenth. But we find no such con- 
 sistency in their opponents. Their sentiments have ever 
 agreed with those of the age; nor have they differed more 
 in many respects from the first fathers of our Church than 
 from their immediate predecessors on the unpopular side. 
 Dr. Bryce is not at one in his religious beliefs with Dr. 
 M'Gill, of Ayr, however closely he may resemble him in 
 his views of Church polity; nor does Mr. Pirie approxi- 
 mate, in more than his dread of such irregularities as the 
 revival at Kilsyth, and his abhorrence of the popular voice, 
 to the eulogist of Gibbon and Hume. The minority who 
 oppose the veto in 1840 differ from the majority who first 
 declared in 1784 that they no longer regarded patronage 
 as a grievance ; for, while the one, in accordance with the 
 skepticism of the age, Avould fain have abrogated the Con- 
 fession of Faith itself, the other restrict their hostility to our 
 books of discipline only ; nor, in passing upwards, can we 
 entirely identify the antagonists of Gillespie and the Ers- 
 kines with the Churchmen who in a former age could so 
 easily accommodate their conscience to the denumds of 
 Charles at the Restoration. Some few general features the 
 party have all along retained. They have ever been favor- 
 ably regarded by the men who derive their religion from 
 the stattite-book, and have ever secured to themselves the 
 jealous dislike of our Christian people. Nor will it appear 
 a mere coincidence, when we consider how naturally the 
 same opinions and sentiments propagate theujselves for 
 ages in the same locality, that, with but one solitary excep- 
 tion, the predecessors of the seven suspended ministers, 
 who have so promptly accommodated themselves to the 
 encroachments of the Court of Session, shuuld have yielded 
 an oljedience equally prompt to the unhappy act which
 
 IN THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 203 
 
 overturned Presbyterianism in Scotland, and led to the 
 longest and bloodiest persecution ever endured by the 
 Scottish Church. It is, however, of the popular party 
 alone that the experience of the country has been con- 
 tinuous and uniform, and respecting which the testimony of 
 any one age may serve for that of all the others. In seasons 
 of tranquillity it has ever constituted that portion of the 
 Reformed Church in Scotland which has given to the 
 character of the people the stamp and impress of a pure 
 Christianity; in the day of trouble and persecution it has 
 constituted the Avhole of it. There is a marked difference 
 between the fixed essential stamina of the human frame 
 and those flying humors which add mightily to its bulk at 
 one period, and enter into the composition of no jiart of 
 it at another. 
 
 Here, then, on a distinction as obvious as it is important, 
 we take our stand. The cause of the unchanged party in 
 the Church is that of the Church itself; it is that of the 
 people of Scotland, and the people know it; it was the 
 cause of their fithers, and the flithers of the Reformation; 
 it is the cause of a pure, efficient, unmodified Christianity. 
 And the cause opposed to it is exactly the reverse of all 
 this. We appeal to the people, to history, to the New 
 Testament. We appeal to even our opponents. We urge 
 them to say whether, in the expressive language of Dr. 
 M'Crie, the cry which now echoes throughout the country 
 be not the identical "cry which has not ceased to be heard 
 in Scotland for nearly three hundred years " ? We request 
 of them sincerely to consider their present position, as 
 illustrated and determined by the history of the Church. 
 Among what party (in the pages of Calderwood and 
 Wodrow, for instance) do they recognize their types and 
 representatives, and in what place and attitude do they 
 find the types and representatives of the body to which 
 they are opposed ? History is more than usually clear and 
 definite on the point : it is one of those as to which the 
 testimony of the present age regarding the past anticipates
 
 204 THE TAVIX PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 
 
 tliat of tlie future regarding the present. It would be no 
 overbold matter to class the John Frosts of our own times 
 with the Jack Cades of the time of Henry VI., or to 
 compare the pai't taken by the Mayor of Newjjort in the 
 late riots to tliat taken by the Mayor of London in the 
 disturbance of Wat Tyler. There are general similarities 
 of conduct and circumstances which occur to every one, 
 and which constitute the simpler parallelisms of history. 
 But there are also cases that are more than parallel, and 
 circumstances that are more than similar. It was identi- 
 cally the same, not a similar Christianity, which was de- 
 nounced by the Sanhedrim, and which suifered in the ten 
 persecutions. It was identically the same Protestantism 
 for whicli John ITuss endured martyrdom on the continent, 
 and George Wishart in our own country. It was identi- 
 cally the same Pi-esbyterianism for which Melville died in 
 exile, and Guthrie on the scaffold. Is there no such well- 
 marked identity of principle between the Churchmen on 
 whom the fires of Middleton and Lauderdale fell heaviest, 
 and the Churchmen exposed in the present conflict to the 
 still more merciless exactions of the Court of Session ? 
 And would not such of our bitter opponents as profess a 
 high respect for the fathers of our Church do well to 
 remember, that what has already occurred may possibly 
 occur again, and that there once flourished a very respect- 
 able party, who, when busied in persecuting the prophets 
 of their own times, were engaged also in building tombs 
 to the memory of the prophets slain by their fathers ? 
 
 THE TWIN PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 
 
 Some of our readers will be perhaps surprised to learn 
 that there are now two presbyteries in Strathbogie, — the 
 one recognized by the Church of Scotland as one of her 
 duly constituted inferior courts ; the other consisting of
 
 THE TWIN PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 205 
 
 seven suspended ministers, recognized by no Churdi what- 
 ever. It was at one time supposed that secessions from 
 the Scottish Church and the reign of Moderation would 
 have come to an end together. But there is no mind 
 sagacious enougli to calculate on all the possibilities. The 
 schism, too, seems to be spreading, and the members of 
 this newly-erected presbytery are actively engaged in 
 adding to their number one Mr. Edwards, an accomplished 
 gentleman, who understands syntax, preaches a church 
 empty, rivals Horsley in Biblical criticism, and is not less 
 a Christian than any of the seven ministers themselves. 
 Addison tells of a worthy author who wrote a large book 
 to pi'ove that generals without armies cannot achieve great 
 victories. It is to be hoped that, for the good of learning, 
 the argument still survives, and that it may jjossibly ripply 
 to clergymen, quoad civilia, when suspended by the Church 
 and deserted by the people. 
 
 The presbytery met at Keith on Wednesday last. All 
 the members attended, — the seven suspended ministers 
 and all, — and the meeting was constituted by prayer. The 
 seven insisted that their names should be entered in the 
 sederunt by the clerk, as members of court. Their proposal 
 was, of course, negatived, on the obvious plea, that so long 
 as the act of sus[)ension remains in force, they can have no 
 status in the presbytery, or any Church court whatever. 
 Mr. Mearns, the clerk, however, a son of Dr. Mearns of 
 Aberdeen, and a person of similar views with themselves, 
 engrossed their names in defiance of the legitimately con- 
 stituted members. He was, in consequence, suspended, 
 and the Rev. Mr. Bell, one of the pi-eachers appointed by 
 the Commission, chosen in his place. But the suspended 
 clerk, like the suspended clergymen, held himself none the 
 less in office for the suspension, and refused to deliver uj) 
 the records. A scene of confusion ensued. Mr. Bell, the 
 newly-chosen clerk of the presbytery, commenced reading 
 a minute of their proceedings ; Mr. Mearns, at the sugges- 
 tion of Mr. Allardyce, began reading at the same time, 
 
 18
 
 206 THE TWIX PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 
 
 and .it the pitch of his voice, the minute of the previous 
 meeting, rescinded by sentence of the Commission. The 
 legitimate members carried, that whatever might be at- 
 tempted by the pretended clerk should be held null and 
 void. It was urged on the other side by Mr. Allardyce, 
 one of the disqualified seven, that, in terms of the rescinded 
 minute, the presbytery should proceed to take Mr. Ed- 
 wards, the rejected of Marnoch, on his trials. The mod- 
 erator, Mr. Dewar, of course refused cither to recognize 
 the mover as a member of court, or the minute as a docu- 
 ment on which to found. It M'as modestly proposed by 
 Ml". Allardyce, in turn, that Mr. Dewar should be forthwith 
 removed for contumacy from the moderator's chair; and, 
 five of the remaining six acquiescing in the proposal, it 
 was pronounced that the moderator was removed, and that 
 Mr. Cruickshank, of Glass, was appointed moderator in his 
 j)lace. Mr. Allardyce next suggested that, to avoid further 
 interruption, the presbytery should retire into another 
 room, and proceed to business. And accordingly the 
 seven suspended ministers, with their disquaUfied clerk, 
 left the place of meeting for an adjoining apartment, to 
 take the rejected presentee on his trials, in terms of the 
 rescinded minute. The hona fide presbytery remained to 
 transact the real business which had brought them to- 
 gether. They were Avaited upon in the course of the 
 meeting by a deputation from Huntly, with a largely signed 
 petition from the inhabitants, respecting the building and 
 constitution of a new church. The petition was read in 
 the usual form, and ordered to be laid on the table until 
 next meeting. 
 
 Susjyended, disqualified^ rejected, rescinded, — all those 
 are English words, and bear very definite meanings. The 
 Presbytery of the Seven — a phrase, by the by, that sounds 
 veiy like the Council of the Ten — proceeded to business 
 like their brethren ; and they began, not by framing a 
 confession of fiith, or by drawing up a testimony, but 
 by taking JNTr. Edwards on his trials. They Avere not
 
 THE TWIX PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 207 
 
 compelled to do it, one of tbera remarked ; they were 
 not forced into it by hornings and captions ; and it had 
 been said in high quarters that they might not be quite so 
 precipitate. But the doctrine was a scandalous doctrine ; 
 they would listen to no delay. It was their duty to take 
 Mr. Edwards on his trials, and they were resolved to do 
 their duty. Mr. Edwards accordingly proceeded to deliver 
 the exercises prescribed to him. One of these was a dis- 
 course on the text in Peter, " By which also he went and 
 preached unto the spirits in prison." His views on the 
 passage are not stated, and we have no means of knowing 
 whether he remarked that there are discourses not unfre- 
 quently preached by the spirits in prison themselves. 
 The other exercise was a piece of Latinity, termed an 
 exegesis. 
 
 The meeting, at an early stage, was interrupted by the 
 Rev. Mr. Robertson, of Gartly. He had been sent, he 
 stated, as a deputation from the presbytery, in consequence 
 of a report which had reached them that seven individuals, 
 calling themselves the Presbytery of Strathbogie, were pro- 
 ceeding with the trials of Mr. Edwards, and he now wished 
 to know whether the report was true. " We are the pres- 
 bytery," said one, "and sent no such deputation." — "Xo 
 reply should be given," exclaimed half a dozen others. 
 " If we be interrupted in this way," remarked a member, 
 bolder than the rest, " I shall move that the person inter- 
 rupting us be taken into custody." Mr. Robertson left the 
 room, and the seven proceeded to pass judgment on the 
 exercises of Mr. Edwards. It is wonderful bow genius 
 may lie hid ; but it breaks forth at last. Mr. Cruickshank, 
 of Glass, has discovered that this hitherto neglected man 
 is elegant in his Latin and profound in his English, and 
 that he beats Bishop Horsley all to sticks in Biblical criti- 
 cism ; Mr. Cruickshank, of Mortlach, is equally decided ; 
 Mr. Masson was astonished at the research disidayed in 
 the one discourse, and the first-rate character of the other; 
 Mr. Thomson was struck with the rich scriptural illustra-
 
 208 THE TWIN PRESBYTERIES OF STRATHBOGIE. 
 
 tion ; Mr. Cowie saw the difficulty and the triumph, — the 
 defeat of Horsley, and the manly integrity of the Latin; 
 Mr. Walker saw it too ; and Mr. Allardyce, though he had 
 not caught the whole of the more classical discourse, — 
 not, of course, from any deafness, like that of the monk, 
 in his Latin ear, — was quite of the general opinion. "It 
 is sweet," says the old poet, " to be praised by those whom 
 all men agree in praising." The seven suspended minis- 
 ters are rich in classical literature, and deeply read ia 
 Horsley. The Bishop, however, has written one sentence, 
 not heretical, which perhaps Mr. Edwards has not yet sur- 
 passed : it refers to religion, and we press it on their notice. 
 "There is an incurable ignorance," says the divine, "which 
 is ignorant even of its own want of knowledge." There 
 is a sentence, too, in the classics which we think they would 
 also do well to remember. " When the gods devote men 
 to destruction, they first take away their senses." 
 
 And it is thus that these weak and misguided men are 
 setting themselves up in senseless but bitter and dangerous 
 hostility to the best interests of the Church of Scotland, 
 and acquiring for themselves a prominent, but surely no 
 enviable, place in her history. It would be a vain matter 
 to argue the point with them ; it is not argument they 
 need. It would be equally idle, but for an opposite cause, 
 to reason the matter with the Christian people of Scotland. 
 But the case is a striking one : it shows how much, and in 
 what degree, the spiritual character may be derived from 
 a secular court ; and how much and in what degree secular 
 acquirements qualify for a spiritual office. It is not enough 
 that a few obscure country clergymen find no flaw in a 
 man's literature ; it is not enough that they do not discover, 
 or perhaps seek to discover, any very gross blemish in his 
 reputation. There is an all-important change, regarding 
 which our Saviour hath declared, with the solemnity of an 
 oath, that the man on whom it hath not passed "shall in 
 no way enter the kingdom of heaven ; " and without this 
 great qiialilicatiun no other can be of any avail. Much
 
 THE TWO STUDENTS. 209 
 
 has been written on the force of sympathy, — much, doubt- 
 less, that is fanciful and idle. But there is a sympathy to 
 which our Lord refers that is not fanciful, — the sympathy 
 through which " the sheep know the voice of the good 
 shepherd, and follow him." This sympathy the people of 
 Marnoch have felt and can appreciate ; bat they have not 
 felt it with regard to the rejected presentee. 
 
 THE TWO STUDENTS. 
 
 There is a learned lawyer of the present day remarkable 
 for his long speeches, — for an ability of writing with much 
 ease what cannot be read without great difficulty, — and 
 for the secularity of his views in ecclesiastical matters. 
 This learned gentleman has written a book on the Church 
 question, iu which he discusses, among other points, the 
 essential qualifications of a young licentiate. And so com- 
 plete has he rendered the list, as to omit only a single 
 point of fitness, — that one, however, the essential point 
 emphatically described by our Saviour as "the one thing 
 needful." He describes the difficulty with which the theo- 
 logical student has often to contend, the long term of pri- 
 vation, the immense labor, the many years of study, the 
 great sacrifices in early life. He states that a parochial 
 charge is the sole object for which all that he accomplishes 
 is accomplished, or that he endures is endured. He states, 
 too, that the remuneration is not proportionally great, — 
 that the scanty income attached to parochial charges leaves, 
 after all, only a life of struggle, care, and anxiety to the 
 incumbent. He shows, besides, how inexpressibly hard it 
 would be — how very unfeeling and very cruel — to suifer 
 the effects of popular prejudice to disappoint the poor 
 scholar of his scanty and inadequate meed, after his long 
 years of cndui-ance and exertion. 
 
 About fourteen years ago we formed a very slight 
 18*
 
 210 THE TWO STUDENTS. 
 
 acquaintance with a student of divinity, who came from 
 a remote part of the country to teach a school in a village 
 on the eastern coast of Scotland, He was a young man 
 of very respectable ability, and very considerable acquire- 
 ment, lie was a person, too, of more than common 
 determination, and in setting himself to school, and in 
 passing through college, he had to contend with all the 
 difficulties incident to a humble station and very limited 
 means. He was naturally of a metaphysical turn, and had 
 carried away, when attending the moral philosophy class 
 at college, the second prize of the year. Little more can 
 be added, however, on the favorable side. There was a 
 substratum of strong animal propensity in the character; 
 some of the higher sentiments were miserably deficient ; 
 his metaphysical cast of mind had merely enabled him to 
 master the subtleties of Hume, without enabling him to 
 discover their unsolidity ; and he had no practical acquaint- 
 ance with religion. lie had determined on being a clergy- 
 man from motives of exactly the same kind which lead 
 students in the other walks to make choice of physic or of 
 law. Things are always judged of by comparison, and the 
 meed which may seem scanty and inadequate to a wealthy 
 lawyer in extensive practice is deemed an object worth 
 struggling for by men who, as mechanics or laborers, Avould 
 have had to work hard for not much more than one-tenth 
 the same amount of remuneration. 
 
 The student of divinity tared but hardly in the village. 
 His school was tolerably well attended ; it was seen that 
 he was a good linguist and a respectable mathematician, 
 and that his pupils improved under him. By and by, how- 
 ever, it was seen also that he was not at all the sort of per- 
 son a student of theology ought to be. He was naturally 
 cautious, and it was difficult to bring any direct charge 
 home against him; and yet there was a general convic- 
 tion in the village that he was not particularly sober, and 
 not very strictly honest; and a report had gone abroad 
 which, though it referred to something of a scandalous
 
 THE TWO STUDENTS. 211 
 
 nature regarding him, was yet deemed not at all scandalous 
 in itself. It was bad, but then it was true. There were 
 religious men in the village, — he had formed no close 
 intimacies with them ; there were persons of an equivocal 
 character in it, — they ranked among his most intimate 
 acquaintance. He contracted debts which he seemed 
 unwilling to pay. On one occasion he was summoned 
 into court for the rent of a hall in which he taught his 
 school ; and he rendered to the magistrate, in his defence, 
 eighteen ingenious, semi-metaphysical reasons against pay- 
 ing any rent at all. But the one simple argument of the 
 pursuer — and it amounted to little more than the "Pay 
 what thou owest" of the parable — proved an overmatch 
 for the eighteen. In short, all who knew him had come to 
 think highly of his ingenuity, and marvellously little of 
 his principles, when his struggles in attending the classes 
 both at college and the divinity hall came to a close, and 
 he was taken on his trials by the presbytery of the district, 
 to receive the finishing qualification through which im- 
 moral men are transformed, by virtue of a license, into 
 teachers of morality, and men of no religion into dissem- 
 inators of religious truth. 
 
 The clergyman of the parish in which the village is 
 situated is a conscientious and devout man. A majority 
 of his brethren in the presbytery are of the same charac- 
 ter; and they determined, if possible, to keep the school- 
 master out of the Church. They tried him on Latin and 
 Greek, on theology and the mathematics ; but the school- 
 master was quite as accomplished a scholar as most of 
 themselves. They tried to substantiate against him charges 
 of whose justice they were all morally convinced ; but the 
 schoolmaster had been cautious, and they found them, one 
 by one, vanish in their grasp. Difficulties were thrown in 
 the way, and objections raised, but the perseverance of the 
 probationer wore them down one after another ; and the 
 presbytery were at length compelled to declare him a 
 licentiate of the Church of Scotland. Still, however,
 
 212 THE TWO STUDENTS. 
 
 there was no change produced by the license, except that 
 the sclioohnaster now and then read a clever discourse in 
 the pulpit of a Moderate minister. He lived as before ; 
 never paid his debts when he could avoid paying them ; 
 got drunk occasionally with men who, as there is honor 
 even among thieves, never betrayed him ; and set his trust 
 for the future in the law of patronage and the kindness of 
 a Highland cousin. The fatal veto act of 1833 passed the 
 General Assembly, and the poor licentiate was ruined. 
 Ministers, such as the suspended seven, might have recom- 
 mended hiin ; the patrons of Mr, Clark or of Mr. Edwards 
 might have presented him ; there was no presbytery in 
 tlie Church which, under the old system, could have pos- 
 sibly avoided ordaining him ; but the people disliked and 
 suspected him, and the people would not have him. In 
 short, llie jjoor licentiate was a broken man. It is scarcely 
 necessary to add, as it does not bear essentially on the 
 end we propose, that, losing heart and liope, he soon after- 
 wards fell into open immorality, and quitted the kingdom. 
 At the time when we knew a little of the unlucky 
 student, we were intimately acquainted with a student of 
 a very opposite chai-actcr. He had received an ordinary 
 Scotch education, and had commenced business as a shop- 
 keeper in the same village in which the other taught his 
 school. He was a shrewd, vigorous-minded young man, 
 invincibly honest, and, withal, diligent and careful ; and he 
 began to save money. His mind, however, became the 
 subject of a very i-emarkable change. He began to feel 
 that what ho had been accustomed to regard as the truly 
 important business of life is really but of minor impor- 
 tance after all, and that there is a "better part" to be first 
 sought after, of incomparably greater interest and magni- 
 tude. Those doctrines of the New Testament virtually 
 rejected by a considerable party in the Church as mysteri- 
 ous and j)eculiar continually filled his mind, — the fall and 
 tlie I'estoration of man, the efficacy of prayer, the felt 
 influences of the Spirit, the inexhaustible merits of the
 
 THE TWO STUDENTS. 213 
 
 atonement. His heart was powerfully impressed, and he 
 became anxiously desirous that the hearts of others might 
 be impressed also. He thought he could tell forcibly what 
 he had felt so warmly ; and, after long and serious thought, 
 and long and eai-nest prayer, — after he had taken the 
 advice of all his better fi'iends, and had carefully examined 
 whether the guiding motive was really pure, and whether 
 he was not confounding strong inclination for the necessary 
 ability, — he shut up his shop, and entered the university 
 as a student. 
 
 Wilberforce was a very different sort of ])erson from the 
 Dean of Faculty. The refined and elevated sph-it of the 
 one could appreciate those influences of the unseen world, 
 which come breathing upon the heart, awakening all its 
 aspirations after the spiritually good, strengthening its 
 desires for the truly useful, enabling it to forget self and. 
 every petty concern, and to set before it, as the prime 
 object, the glory of God and the salvation of souls. The 
 other is a cautious calculator on the amount of the ecclesi- 
 astical fee — the Joseph Hume of the Church's tempo- 
 ralities. No man can better balance the half-charms of the 
 stipend, and the lialf-comforts of the manse, against the 
 years laboriously spent, and the privations patiently en- 
 dured, in striving to secure them. The one deplores a 
 licentiate ruined in his jirospects through the rejection of 
 the people, and sent to spend a life of obscurity in bitter- 
 ness and misery. "I do not," says the other, in writing of 
 Dr. Carey, "I do not know a finer instance of the moral 
 sublime than that a poor cobbler working in his stall 
 should conceive the idea of converting the Hindus to 
 Christianity." 
 
 But we must not lose sight of our friend the student. 
 We wish some one would tell us how it is that the Mod- 
 erates arrogate to themselves so much of the mind and 
 accomplishment of the Church. It may be mere modesty 
 asserting its right; but the present controversy at least 
 does not promise to show that they are more than second
 
 214 THE TWO STUDENTS. 
 
 best in either intellect or learning. The conscientious 
 student wrought hard. He gained no prizes the first year, 
 for he had started from a point far in the rear of all his 
 competitors ; but he was soon abreast of the front rank, 
 and in the mathematical class of the second year he was 
 declared, after a iiard contest, tlie first man. lie gained 
 several other prizes besides; and, whatever might be 
 thought of his religion, no one could well despise his 
 learning. The little money he had saved as a shopkeeper 
 failed him ere he had got half through his course. But, 
 though as little presumptuous as any man, he believed in 
 a superintending Providence, and that if he was really 
 needed in the Church some unseen path would open for 
 him as he went. And a path did open. He received 
 unsolicited employment as a tutor in a respectable family, 
 and soon after an appointment, equally unsought, to a 
 parish school. He at length finished his preparatory 
 course. He was naturally of a retiring disposition. Pie 
 had no influential friends; he was acquainted with no 
 patron ; he did not set himself to court popularity. There 
 seemed to be no way of access for him into the Church. 
 He was confident, however, that he would find something 
 to do somewhere ; something in Sierra Leone, or Tahiti, 
 or New Holland, if not at home ; and so he did not feel 
 very anxious. By and by, however, the people came to 
 take an interest in him; they began to find out somehow 
 that he was very much in earnest, and very much in duty; 
 that he was on exceedingly good terms with a number of 
 pious, old, poor people, who had only their Clu'istianity to 
 recommend them ; that he was charitable to the utmost 
 of his very limited means ; and that, when sickness or 
 distress visited a poor family in his neighborhood, he was 
 sure to visit it too. In short, the result was, that not only 
 did the people begin to like him, but it was the best peo- 
 ple Avho liked him best. A vacancy occurred in a remote 
 Highland parish, under the patronage of the Crown ; off 
 went a petition to Lord John Russell ; down came a
 
 THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 215 
 
 presentation from his lordship ; not one of the parishioners 
 so much as dreamed of the veto; and tlie friendless stu- 
 dent is now a useful and respected minister of the Church 
 of Scotland, and a zealous advocate of the popular right. 
 He is, in short, one of what a smart contemporary calla 
 the wild clergy. 
 
 We have drawn two portraits, so faithful in every trait, 
 so little indebted to fancy, that in at least one district of 
 country there are hundreds, nay thousands, who will be 
 able at the first glance to write a name under each. They 
 represent the two opposite classes of our theological stu- 
 dents, — we grant, not fairly ; — the one is a high specimen, 
 the other falls somewhat below the average. But in the 
 grand distinguishing principle, in the all-essential diiference 
 of motive, the representation is complete. The one class 
 enter the Church earnestly solicitous for the high honor of 
 being made fellow-workers with Christ; the other, that 
 they may become gentlemen of from two to three hundred 
 a year. The one class come frankly forward as the friends 
 and advocates of the non-intrusion principle ; the other 
 discover that it is a principle denounced by the law, 
 subversive of the Establishment, and most unfavorably 
 regarded by "many of the best and wisest ministers of the 
 Church." 
 
 THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 
 
 We paid our first visit to Daviot about twelve years ago, 
 — late in the summer of 1828. It was on a communion 
 Sabbath, and we went to attend sermon in the parish 
 church. The parish is situated, as most of our readers are 
 aware, in the Highlands of Inverness-shire, about six or 
 seven miles to the south of Inverness. There rises a lofty 
 rectilinear ridge directly over the town, composed of the 
 old red sandstone of the district upheaved against the 
 loftier primary regions ; a dark line of mountains appears
 
 216 THE PRESENTATION TO DA VICT. 
 
 beyond; and in toiling up the long ascent, which passes 
 from fertility and cultivation to a widely-spread sterility, 
 the stranger supposes that he is quitting the inhabited part 
 of the country altogether for the upper wilds. About live 
 miles from the town, however, he gains the top of the 
 ridge, and finds that a wide moory valley, traversed by a 
 river, and mottled here and there with a few groups of 
 cottages and a few patches of corn, intervenes between 
 him and the hills. This long, wide valley comprises the 
 greater part of the parish of Daviot, and the church, a 
 handsome little edifice, occupies the northern bank of the 
 river. We had no difficulty in finding our way. The scat- 
 tered hamlets had poured forth their little groups of grave, 
 church-going Highlanders ; and the long, wearisome ascent 
 seemed dotted with passengers to the top. We found the 
 churchyard filled to the gate with the Gaelic congregation, 
 and the wooden tent which served as a pulpit rising in the 
 midst. The entire scene was characteristic of the border 
 districts of the Highlands. There was a large admixture 
 of the Lowland garb, especially among the females ; but 
 the plaids and the bright tartans carried it over the shop- 
 furnished cloths and calicoes of the south ; and an eyis 
 accustomed to the peculiarities of the Celtic form and 
 countenance could scai-ce have mistaken the grave but 
 keen-eyed descendants of the old clan Chattan, which, 
 from time immemorial, had occupied this part of the 
 country, for an assemblage of their Saxon neighbors of 
 the plains. There was an air of deep seriousness spread 
 over the whole. The clergyman who preached from the 
 tent, himself a Highlander, was a devout, good man, of the 
 popular school, and the attention of the Highlanders was 
 riveted to the discourse. We may remark, in passing, that 
 the Highland preacher who addresses Highlanders pos- 
 sesses a mighty advantage, in his language, over the Low- 
 land preacher who addresses a rural Lowland population 
 in English. Tlie English language is unquestionably a 
 noble instrument in the hand of a master; but few j)reach-
 
 THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 217 
 
 ers, and certainly fewer congregations, acquire nearly the 
 same mastery over it that even ordinary Highland preach- 
 ers and congregations possess over the Gaelic. Almost 
 every individual, in the one case, is acquainted with the 
 whole vocabulary, — and a very expressive vocabulary it is, 
 for at least narrative, description, and sentiment ; in the 
 other case, the acquaintance is limited, among the great 
 bulk of the people, to a narrow round of ordinary terms. 
 If there be no fatal defect on the part of the preacher, a 
 Highland congregation is invariably an attentive one; and 
 rarely have we seen Highlanders more seriously attentive 
 anywhere than in the churchyard of Daviot on this com- 
 munion Sabbath. 
 
 The minister of the parish (the late Mr. M'Phail) 
 preached inside the church to an English congregation 
 of about two hundred. He was a devout and excellent 
 man — a man of very considerable wit, too. Mr. M'Ph ail's 
 discourse, like that of the Gaelic preacher outside, was a 
 very impressive one, and the congregation wore deeply 
 attentive. We were struck, however, accustomed as we 
 were to the state of matters in the north, with the small 
 proportion which the communicants of the parish bore to 
 its general population. The number of females at the com- 
 munion table considerably exceeded that of the males, 
 as is commonly the case where communicants are not 
 numerous, but the whole taken together were dispropor- 
 tionately few. And yet we could not avoid the conclu- 
 sion, notwithstanding, — a conclusion which we liave since 
 had repeated opportunities of verifying, — that the people 
 of Daviot are a serious and moral ])eople, patient of reli- 
 gious instruction, and warmly attached, like all the rest 
 of their countrymen, to the doctrines of the Evangelical 
 school. They can understand and value the religion fitted 
 by Deity to the wants and Avishes of the human heart. 
 
 The parish is under the patronage of the Crown. When 
 the good Mr. M'Phail was on his death-bed the people 
 came to understand that interest had been made in high 
 
 19
 
 218 THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 
 
 quarters to preengage Lord John Russell, if possible, in 
 favor of a certain young gentleman, who would have 
 deemed two hundred a year and a free house a very com- 
 fortable settlement. It was not quite the time they could 
 have chosen for themselves for urging anything of a coun- 
 teractive tendency with his lordship ; but they had no 
 choice, just as a Christian army, when attacked by an 
 enemy on the Sabbath, can have none ; and so they united 
 to petition Lord John that the appointment might be left 
 open. His lordship cordially acquiesced : he went even 
 further, and stated that any clergyman whom they agreed 
 in recommending would be, given to the parish. Mr. 
 M'Phail died, and rather more than two-thirds of the adult 
 male parishioners united in petitioning the Crown for the 
 Rev. Mr. Cook, one of the clergymen of Inverness, — a 
 gentleman, be it remarked, already settled as a minister in 
 a town which, from its size and population, is known all 
 over the country as the capital of the Highlands. The 
 parish of Daviot is very extensive, — we believe, from 
 eighteen to twenty miles in length ; and yet, in little more 
 than twenty-four hours all the signatures were adhibited 
 to the petition — surely, proof enough of itself that any 
 charge of canvassing the parishioners, which might be 
 preferred against Mr. Cook or his friends, could not pos- 
 sibly be just. The people of a district twenty miles in 
 extent, when exceedingly anxious to sign a petition, may 
 contrive to do so in a very short time ; but to canvass 
 such a parish, in order to render people willing who were 
 not willing before, cannot be done quite so much in a 
 hurry. It was one of the objections to Bayes, in the 
 "Rehearsal," that, for the sake of probability, he should 
 not have brought about his great changes so very suddenly. 
 Now, on the allegation that the parishioners had been 
 canvassed, — an allegation iinsupported, of course, by any 
 inquiry, for inquiry might have led to very inconvenient 
 results, — the prayer of the petition was refused. We 
 attach no blame to Lord John Russell. He has been
 
 THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 219 
 
 somewhat imprudent in believing too rashly, and that is 
 just all. 
 
 A presentation to the parish was issued, through his 
 lordship, in behalf of a young man favored by his friends, 
 but w])om rather more than two-thirds of the jieople have 
 resolved not to receive or acknowledge as their minister. 
 They could only reject him, however, through their repre- 
 sentatives the communicants, seven of whom also declared 
 against him — as nearly as may be the same proportion of 
 this class as of the other. The poor people were very 
 much in earnest. The day approached on which the seven 
 were to exercise their privilege of the veto before tlie 
 presbytery. Their fellow-parishioners were anxiously 
 solicitous that they might be able to give an independent 
 and resolutive " Xo" on the occasion, both in their own 
 behalf and in theirs, without the fear of laird or factor 
 before them, and urged them, therefore, to say whether 
 any of them were in arrears with their rent, that they 
 might instantly, by joint contribution, discharge them 
 from the obligation. The evening preceding the meeting 
 of presbytery arri\ed, and on that evening the seven com- 
 municants were interdicted by the Court of Session from 
 exercising their right. It is unnecessary to comment on 
 either the cruelty or the unprecedented nature of such a 
 proceeding. "We may instance, however, one of the dis- 
 honorable sophisms which our opponents employ in this 
 case, as a jiretty fair specimen of the whole. Instead of 
 ojjj^osing in their statements the majority of the seven 
 communicants to the minority of tlie three, and the ma- 
 jority of rather more than two-thirds of the i^arish to the 
 minority of rather less tlian one-third of it, they oppose 
 the majoriti/ of the one-third to the minority of the seven. 
 Tlie argument, it must be confessed, is worthy of the 
 cause. We may state, too, a fact which illustrates the 
 tone of feeling on the opposite side. The people of the 
 parish of Daviot are far from wealthy, Highlanders on 
 small sterile farms rarely save money; and there has
 
 220 THE COMMUNICANTS OP THE NORTH COUNTRY. 
 
 been very little laid by by the people of this moorland 
 district. In the true Presbyterian spirit, however, they 
 have declared their willingness to lay down their hardly- 
 earned pounds by tens and twelves apiece, rather than 
 submit to the intrusion of a minister who, in their con- 
 science, they believe unsuited to edify them. Such is the 
 spirit which our Dr. Bryces and our John Hopes would 
 trample into the very dust ; but by Him who commended 
 the poor widow and her humble offering it may be very 
 differently regarded. 
 
 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 
 
 In the preceding articles the Disruption controversy is Illustrated 
 in its immediate bearing on the rights of the Christian people 
 invaded by patronage. In that which follows — the second point 
 at Issue — the possession of an Independent spiritual jurisdiction by 
 the Christian Church comes into view. The majority of the Strath- 
 bogie presbytery had been suspended by their ecclesiastical supe- 
 riors ; the minority had been empowered to exercise all presbyterlal 
 functions ; and ministers had been appointed to conduct public 
 ■worship in the parishes of the former. The majority applied to the 
 Court of Session for an interdict to arrest all action of the eccle- 
 siastical authority In the matter, and the decision of the Court was 
 favorable to their claim. — Ed. 
 
 In the belief that the Church in her present struggle can 
 have no better friend than the simple truth, we presented 
 the reader in a recent number with an outline of the 
 Daviot case, and a slight, but, we trust, faithful, sketch of 
 the character of the parishioners. The poor Iliglilaiulers 
 of Daviot are not unworthy the protection of the Scottish 
 Church, though the number among them in full com-
 
 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 221 
 
 munion with her are so disproportionately few. But why- 
 are these not more numerous, since the general morals 
 of the people seem so good ? We crave the tolerance 
 of the reader should we take what may seem a circuitous 
 route in answering this question. 
 
 Civilization did not travel through Scotland with rail- 
 way speed three centuries ago. There are still very con- 
 siderable differences between different districts of the 
 country. The same fastnesses which kept out the Romans 
 and the English of old, still keep out improvement and 
 the arts ; and the Scotchman desirous to acquaint himself 
 with the manners and usages which prevailed in the days 
 of his great-grandfather, and curious to pass, as it were, 
 from the present century to the middle of the century 
 before the last, has but to transport himself to the western 
 Highlands of Ross-shire, or to some of the remoter islands 
 which lie beyond. About the period of the Union even 
 the Lowland distiicts of the north of Scotland were fully a 
 hundred years beliind the Lowland districts of the south ; 
 they were inhabited by a wilder and more turbulent race, 
 and were, with the exception of a few insulated localities, 
 Presbyterian only in name. The framework of the Scot- 
 tish Church had been erected in them, but the spirit w^as 
 wanting. 
 
 Much, however, about the time rendered remarkable by 
 the revival at Cambuslang and Kilsyth, a widely-extended 
 district in the northern portion of the kingdom became the 
 scene of a similar change. The popular mind suddenly 
 awoke to the importance of religion ; the inhabitants of 
 almost entire villages were converted ; prayer-meetings 
 were established ; clergymen became deeply fervent and 
 instant in duty ; and the morals of a considerable portion 
 of the people rose at once, from the comparatively abject 
 state which obtains in half-civilized communities, to the 
 high Christian level. It is a fact well known to persons 
 acquainted with the history of parties in the Church for 
 the last eighty years, that no inconsiderable portion of the 
 
 19*
 
 222 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 
 
 Evangelical minority in our assemblies was drawn from 
 this northern district ; and that, at a period when Moder- 
 ation was either extending its paralyzing influences over 
 the people of the south, or wholly estranging them from 
 the churches in Avhich their fathers had worshipped, minis- 
 ters of a very diflTerent theology, and of a very opposite 
 character, were scattering the good seed liberally in this 
 highly-favored nortliern province, and that the blessing of 
 God largely accompanied their labors. 
 
 The effects of the change were all the more marked 
 from the state of manners and morals prevalent at the 
 time it took place. There is a mighty difterence between 
 civilization and barbarism ; and Christianity contrasts much 
 more strongly with the one than with the other. There 
 was indisputably an all-essential difference between an 
 Ebenezer Erskine or a Thomas Bateman before and after 
 their conversion, but by no means so cognizable a difference 
 as between the New Zealand warriors described by the 
 missionary Williams before and after the same important 
 change had passed upon them. The Scottish divine and 
 the English physician were both respectable members of 
 society when pi'actically unacquainted with the truth. 
 But not even the miracle wrought by our Saviour on the 
 wild man who lived solitary among the tombs was more 
 marked in its effects than the conversion of the two New 
 Zealand chiefs, as recorded by the missionary. Previous 
 to the change which transformed them into gentle and 
 singularly compassionate-hearted men, the fierce and re- 
 morseless murderers and cannibals had never spared sex 
 nor age, — had never fought with an enemy whom they 
 had not subdued, — nor had they ever subdued a poor 
 wretch whom they had not destroyed. Now, the change 
 in our northern districts was one of striking contrast, on 
 the same principle. It took place among a rude people. 
 Jherewere cases tried at the time by the hereditary barons 
 on the court hills ; the town of Tain executed a Strath- 
 charan freebpoter on the borough gallows, several years
 
 THE COMMUNICAXTS OF THE XORTH COUNTRY. 223 
 
 after; and cattle-lifting was common in all the districts, in 
 at least the more immediate neighborhood of the High- 
 lands. On one occasion the parish of Xigg — a parish in 
 the eastern district of Ross, and one of the centres of the 
 revival — was swept, in a single night, of all its cattle by 
 a band of caterans from the west. The clergyman, Mr. 
 Balfour, a brave as well as a good and eminently useful 
 man, immediately set himself at the head of his parishion- 
 ers, pursued after the freebooters, overtook them in a Avild 
 Highland glen, fought them, beat them, and brought back 
 the cattle. 
 
 We have remarked that this northern district was a full 
 century behind the Lowland districts of the south in gen- 
 eral civilization. It is a rather striking fact, too, that the 
 religion of the revival of this ])eriod resembled, in some 
 of its accidental accompaniments, the religion of the south 
 in the previous century. Christianity is ever the same, 
 but it acts at different times on very different materials; 
 and, though the greater effects are invariably identical, its 
 minor traits occasionally differ with the character of the 
 people on Avhom it operates. There are anecdotes related 
 of the Pedens, Camerons, and Cargills, of the days of 
 Charles II., that one hesitates either to receive or to reject, 
 in at least their full extent ; there are anecdotes of an 
 almost identical character told of the later worthies of the 
 northern districts. Stories are still preserved of a Donald 
 Roy, of Xigg, — one of the first elders of the parish after 
 the reestablishment of Presbytery at the Revolution, — 
 which, if inserted in the tracts of Peter Walker, or the 
 older editions of the " Scots Worthies," would be found 
 to amalgamate so entirely with the more characteristic 
 anecdotes of these works, that the nicest judgment could 
 not distinguish betwixt them. And Donald was only one 
 of a class. 
 
 There were 2:)rayer-meetings, as we have said, established 
 very generally over the district at this period. There were 
 also meetings of a somewhat different character, and which
 
 224 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 
 
 resembled much more the meetings of an earlier age in 
 the history of the Scottish Church than the contemporary- 
 meetings of the same period in the south. In the twelfth 
 chapter of the First Book of Discijiline we find it laid 
 down, that in every town where there were "schools and 
 repaire of learned men, a certain day in every Aveek should 
 be appointed for the exercise of what St. Paul calls proph- 
 esying." The chapter recommends that meetings be held 
 for the edification of the Church, " by the interpreta- 
 tion of Scripture," and that at these meetings not only 
 should lay elders be invited to communicate their views 
 of particular passages for the benefit of the whole, but 
 also ordinary members of the Church, if qualified by grace 
 and nature for the duty. Now, meetings of exactly this 
 primitive character were established in the north at the 
 time of the revival ; and in several districts of the country 
 they still continue to be held. 
 
 A text of Scripture is proposed as an exercise at the 
 opening of the meeting; and, in the manner prescribed in 
 the First Book of Discipline, the individuals who take part 
 in it rise in succession, either to propound their views of 
 the passage, or to adduce from their own peculiar experi- 
 ence facts illustrative of its truth. We have listened with 
 wonder to the extempore addresses delivered at some of 
 these meetings by untaught men, — men from remote up- 
 land districts, who had derived their sole knowledge of 
 religion from meditation and the Bible. Their simple 
 truthfulness and earnest fervor; their exhibition of the 
 workings of the human heart under the opposing influences 
 of good and evil; their views of the eflfects of the reno- 
 vating princi))le on the one hand, and the original deprav- 
 ity, acted upon by temptation, on the other ; llieir enumer- 
 ation of the various stages through which the jiilgrim has 
 to pass, and the changes effected in his views and opinions, 
 — all these, in at least tlie choicer passages, have power-. 
 fully reminded usof Bunyan — the unapproachable Shaks- 
 peare of Christian literature. The individuals who take
 
 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 225 
 
 part in these meetings are emphatically termed " the menr 
 Though generally elders of the Church, they are not inva- 
 riably so. Death is fast wearing them out. We have seen 
 in one parish church, in the north, the elders' pew filled 
 with them from end to end, — all worthies of the right 
 stamp, who would have joyfully betaken themselves to the 
 hill-side in the present quarrel; but their honored heads 
 are all low to-day. 
 
 Now, there are three points to which we would recall 
 the attention of the reader. The striking contrast between 
 the manners and morals of the people in this district when 
 Christianity was first introduced among them with power 
 and effect, and the very opposite state of manners and 
 morals induced by its influence, is the first of these. It is 
 a curious fact, that the striking nature of this contrast, 
 though all that remains of it be now merely traditional, 
 has still a very marked influence on the people. It affects 
 till this day the popular estimate of the religious character. 
 But, unluckily, the good Protestant recollection of it is 
 associated with a somewhat Popish feeling; and the high 
 respect for the eminent Christians of a century ago is per- 
 haps not sufficiently tempei-ed by a recollection of the only 
 ground on which, eminent as they were, they could have 
 stood in the presence of Deity. Not merely is the pious 
 ancestor raised high on a pedestal over the descendant, but 
 that very pedestal proves also a stumbling-block to the 
 descendant. We need only advert to the second point, as 
 corresponding in character to the first. Nothing easier 
 than to anticipate the effects on people so predisposed, of 
 those sentiments of awe and veneration necessarily inspired 
 by the belief that the more eminent Christians of the dis- 
 trict had received, in their close walk with God, like the 
 Pedens and Cargills of a former age, gifts and powers of 
 an extraordinary character, through which they were at 
 times enabled to triumph signally over the invisible ene- 
 mies of another world, and at times to discern afar off the
 
 226 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 
 
 form and color of events while yet enveloped in the uncer- 
 tain obscurity of the future. 
 
 The peculiar character and constitution of what we may 
 term the meetings of the men is the third point to which 
 we would direct the attention of the reader. With much, 
 doubtless, that is excellent in them, they operate in the 
 track of the traditional recollections adverted to. They 
 raise, if we may so express ourselves, the standard of 
 Christian qualification, by bringing before the grcit body 
 of the people the peculiar experiences of singularly devo- 
 ted and highly meditative natures as tests for trying men's 
 spirits, and through which the believer is to judge whether 
 he has in reality received of the Spirit of truth. Now, the 
 great bulk of the population anywhere cannot form too 
 lofty ideas of Christian morality or Christian privilege, nor 
 is the estimate formed by the people of the north more than 
 adequately high. But there is a mixture of error in it, 
 inasmuch as it bears at least as direct reference to experi- 
 ences of devout natures in an advanced stage of the Chris- 
 tian pilgrimage, to gifts very rarely bestowed, and to at- 
 tainments not often made, as to the infinite merits of the 
 full atonement and the free grace of that adorable Being 
 through whom the believer can alone be rendered worthy. 
 The effects on gloomy and melancholy natures — the Lit- 
 tle Faiths, the Peebles, and the Ready-to-Halts, of the 
 Church — have been in some instances very sad. There 
 have been men in these northern districts thoroughly awak- 
 ened to a clear perception of the realities of the unseen 
 world, and whose lives were " hid with Christ in God," who 
 have yet walked in darkness all their days, anxious and 
 doubtful, and who could never command the necessary 
 confidence to approach the communion table. The great 
 bulk of the people stand afar off, impressed with feelings 
 like those which held back the Israelites of old from the 
 Mount, — not, be it remarked, because they are indifferent, 
 or deem lightly of the privilege, but because they esteeni 
 themselves not worthy. And hence it is that communi-
 
 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 227 
 
 cants in this northern district are so few. "We are acquain- 
 ted with men who -would Lay down their lives for the 
 Scottish Church, and who have ranged themselves, in the 
 present conflict, on the old Presbyterian side with all the 
 earnest determination of her first fathers, whq^have not yet 
 entered into full communion with her, and probably never 
 will. 
 
 Now, on the whole, this state of matters is much to be 
 regretted. It is by no means so bad a state as prevails in 
 some of the southern and midland parishes of Scotland, 
 where the lax morality and imperfect theology of the 
 Moderate school has thrown open the communion table to 
 people of all characters — to persons who live loosely, and 
 believe they know not what, among the rest. Still, how- 
 ever, it is bad. It substitutes, to a certain degree, the 
 standard of what we may term a traditional Christianity 
 for the Christianity of the New Testament. It excludes 
 serious and good men from sharing in a great privilege, 
 of which they will never be able to render themselves 
 deserving, but which has been purchased for them not- 
 withstanding. It renders the cause of the Church less 
 sti^png in her j^resent position, in the districts in which it 
 obtains, much as she is loved and venerated among their 
 people. Finally, it lays her open, in cases like that of 
 Daviot, to the plausible though unprincipled and unsolid 
 objections of designing enemies, who can neither be made 
 to feel nor understand the vast difference which exists 
 between callous and dead consciences indifferent to the 
 truth, and consciences scrupulously tender and anxiously 
 awake, — between the practical infidel, who will not eat of 
 the children's bread just because he has no appetite for it, 
 and the timid Christian, who, while he longs after it, is yet 
 restrained by a sense of his own unworthiness, and lives 
 on in "anhappiness without partaking of it.
 
 228 SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE THE DISTINCTIVE 
 
 SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE THE DISTINCTIVE PRIVI- 
 LEGE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 We sjieak with all due respect when we say that, had 
 our ancestors been content that our Church should have 
 been based on the same foundation with the sister Estab- 
 lishment, they might have saved themselves many a 
 harassing struggle, and many a severe and long-protracted, 
 j^ang. Three succeeding generations of our countrymen 
 might have lived and died in peace. There would have 
 been no imperative call to the battle-field ; no need to 
 brave the dungeon and the scaffold ; no necessity, when 
 broken and discomfited in the contest, to retire, as unsub- 
 dued in spirit as at first, into the wilder recesses of the 
 country, and, in the midst of privation, suffering, and death, 
 to cherish the indomitable resolution of maintaining in 
 unbroken integrity the spiritual independence of the 
 Church. We respect the English Establishment, with 
 its long list of great and good men ; but we are not to 
 place on the same level the dearly-purchased privileges of 
 our own. 
 
 It is surely well, since the struggle threatens to be a 
 protracted one, to be preparing ourselves for it — "to be 
 marking our bulwarks, and looking well to our walls." 
 There are strong grounds of hope, and great cause for 
 thankfulness. It is in no new quarrel that the Church and 
 the people of Scotland are now engaged; the testimony 
 of the past bears direct upon the present and the future ; 
 and we not only know that it is a righteous quarrel, from 
 the principles which it involves, and because it was so 
 especially the cause of the righteous in former times, but 
 because the same unchangeable One who so especially 
 favored it of old is in the same gracious manner especially 
 favoring it now. We have evidence in our favor of the 
 highest kind, and grounds of comfort on which it is even a
 
 PRIVILEGE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 229 
 
 duty to build. Nor are the minor considerations to be 
 overlooked. We have read the history of Scotland to 
 very little purpose if we are mistaken in deeming firmness 
 one of the main characteristics of the people. It is the 
 history of a determined handful, maintaining their place 
 and name among the nations more on the strength of this 
 quality than on even that of their valor itself It was 
 their firmness which gave effect to their valor, and enabled 
 them to reap the fruits of it. It was this quality which of 
 old, when English enterprise was so successful in Ireland 
 and France, imparted so different and so disastrous a char- 
 acter and issue to English enterprise in Scotland. We see 
 it paramount in the protracted struggle of our ancestoi-s in 
 the thirteenth century ; we catch a glimpse of it at even 
 an earlier period, when the Dane and the Vikingr ravished 
 our coaste ; we read it legibly inscribed in the remains of 
 the first and second wall with which the Roman belied 
 his proud vaunt of conquest ; we see it standing out in 
 high relief, and encircled with a halo of moral glory, in 
 the troublous times of Knox and Wishart ; we see it fixed 
 in one unaltered attitude during the whole of the succeed- 
 ing century, unmoved from its place by the utmost rigor 
 of fierce and remorseless persecution ; we see it, though 
 miserably misdirected and mistaken, in the one striking 
 historical incident of the century that followed, — in the 
 enterprise of the handful of half-disciplined men who 
 fought their way into the centre of the sister kingdom, 
 and bore down before them the best troops of England 
 again and again. Nor has the character changed in the 
 least ; nor is it forgotten to what country the soldiers 
 belonged who, in one of the earlier battles of the last war, 
 scattered in the charge the invincibles of Napoleon, and 
 against whom, in its latest and bloodiest fight, the pride 
 and strength of France was thrice disastrously broken, and 
 which preserved entire to the last its own iron wall. There 
 is surely ground of hope that in this quarrel, so emphati- 
 cally Scotch, so peculiarly po]nilar, so hallowed by all the 
 
 20
 
 230 THE " GKASPING AMBITIOX " 
 
 old associations, so honored in the testimonies of departed 
 worthies, so thoroughly identified with spiritual religion, 
 so eminently favored Avith the countenance of Deity, — . 
 surely there is ground of hope that in this quarrel the 
 grand national characteristic will not fail. Our Church 
 has already spoken, and spoken by her greatest man ; and 
 not only did we feel the sense of sacredness and the high 
 obligation of duty which the pledge involved, but we felt 
 also, when the irrejjressible plaudits arose around Chal- 
 mers, that it was a Scotchman who had spoken, and that 
 it was Scotchmen who approved. We repeat his emphatic 
 words: "Be it known, then, to all men, that we will not 
 retrace a single footstep. We will make no concession 
 to the Court of Session ; and that not because of the dis- 
 grace, but because of the gross and grievous dereliction of 
 principle which we would thereby incur. They* may by 
 force eject us out of our place, but they never will force us 
 to surrender our principles : and if the honorable Court 
 should again so far mistake its functions as to repeat or 
 renew its inroads, I trust they will again meet the recep- 
 tion they have already gotten, — 'To whom we gave place 
 by subjection, no, not for an hour, no, not by a hair- 
 breadth,'" It was more than Chalmers who spoke in these 
 sentences; they are instinct with the genius of the Scot- 
 tish Church, — they embody the main characteristic of the 
 Scottish people. 
 
 THE "GKASPING AMBITION" OF THE NON-INTRU- 
 SIONISTS. 
 
 We have just seen in a Liberal London newspaper — 
 favorable to the cause of dissent in the degree in which 
 dissent is j)olitical, and wholly indifferent to it in the de- 
 gree in which it is religious — a smart paragraph on the 
 Church question. It reiterates the charge of clerical ambi-
 
 OF THE NON-INTRUSIONISTS. 231 
 
 tion and usurpation first preferred against the ministers of 
 Gur Church, in the present struggle, by the Dean of Fac- 
 ulty, and then idly bandied among his party, until caught 
 up by the Voluntaries in the manner in which drowning 
 men clutch at straws. But miserably unsuited does it seem 
 to serve their purpose. Our London contemporary " has 
 repeatedly stated," he says, "that the great object of the 
 clerical non-intrusionists is to grasp the whole patronage 
 of the Church of Scotland." He adds further, that " the 
 usurpers will ultimately be defeated ; " and then concludes, 
 hardly two sentences after, by asserting that the balance 
 in favor of the non-intrusionists (the ambitious and usurp- 
 ing clergymen, be it remembered) Avas secured " by the 
 hio'gh elders elected to the General Assembly under the 
 Municipal Reform Bill. Well has it been remarked that 
 error is ever inconsistent. It is not in the nature of things 
 that good argument should favor a bad cause, or that what 
 is true should militate against which is right. 
 
 It is no very difficult matter to say how a man such as 
 the Dean of Faculty should be led, through a confusion of 
 ideas natural to his party on religious subjects, half to 
 believe his own charge. He, of course, sees that the great 
 principle for which the Church is contending cannot exist 
 without mightily strengthening one of our two ecclesiasti- 
 cal parties, and ultimately wearing out the other. He sees 
 that if the majority carry their measure, they must become 
 an immensely more preponderating majority. He sees, fur- 
 ther, that they must of course possess some measure of 
 power as such ; not quite the sort of power possessed by 
 bis friends of old, but still a species of power; and seeing 
 this, and reasoning in j^art from his own feelings, and in 
 part from a pretty close acquaintance with the governing 
 motives of his party, he concludes that this modicum of 
 power is the main object of the struggle, and, in accord- 
 ance perhaps with the professional license, describes it as 
 the only object. All this is easily understood. It is 
 equally obvious that in every struggle which terminates
 
 232 THE " GRASPING AMBITION " 
 
 decisively, the conquering party becomes the more power- 
 ful one. When Christianity rose over paganism, Christians 
 became in consequence more powerful; when Protestant- 
 ism rose over Popery, Protestants became in consequence 
 more powerful ; when Presbyteriaiiism rose over Prelacy, 
 Presbyterians became in consequence more powerful; and 
 there were no doubt respectable, gross-minded pagan, and 
 popish, and prelatic gentlemen in those days, who, like the 
 Dean of Faculty in our own times, would have looked to 
 the inevitable power as the actual prize secured by those 
 struggles, and as therefore the main object of the conquer- 
 ing parties. All this, we repeat, is easily understood ; and 
 it may be understood at least equally easily from the 
 instances adduced, that a mere consequence arising out of 
 any measure may be an essentially different thing from the 
 great end proposed by that measure. It was no thirst of 
 power that Christianized the world ; it was no thirst of 
 power that reformed the Church. 
 
 It is well to consider further the mode in which the 
 non-intrusion principle can alone add to the power of the 
 rising party, by adding, of course, to their number. It can 
 add to their power only through the medium of the people. 
 They are popular; the people love them, and they detest 
 their opponents. The non-intrusion principle, if fairly 
 established, would be simply a power conferred on the 
 peojDle of rejecting the men whom they hate. The power 
 of the popular party in the Church would be a mere conse- 
 quence, therefore, of the exertion of this power on the part 
 of the people. If the party ceased to be popular, they 
 would inevitably cease to be powerful, just in the way that 
 their unpopular opponents are ceasing to be powerful. 
 And this, then, is the kind of usurpation and grasping 
 ambition with -which they are charged ! They love the 
 pe()])le, and the peo[)le love them. They are striving to 
 jtrotect the peoj)lo from the objects of their hate, by 
 extending to them an ability of protecting themselves; 
 and they are therefore called ambitious, and usurpers.
 
 OF THE NOX-INTRUSIONISTS. 233 
 
 The Tyrant of the Cheronese 
 
 Was freedom's best and dearest friend. 
 
 But what is the particular kind of power which their 
 popularly acquired majorities is to secure to them? Power 
 to get churches for their sons and nephews ? No! The 
 people have been vetoing the sons and nephews of very 
 worthy men, because, though they liked the worthy men 
 themselves, they did not like their sons and nephews. 
 What sort of power, then ? Power of a far nobler and 
 widely different character, — power to put down the men 
 who used to force their sons and nephews into churches 
 against the will and the interests of the people, — power to 
 overrule the counsels of the hirelings who partook of the 
 people's patrimony, but who wrought not for the people's 
 good, — power to labor more and more effectually for the 
 benefit of the people, — power, through their hold of the 
 affections of the people, to spread anew the blessings of 
 Christianity among the masses broken loose from its sacred 
 and humanizing influences, — power to stem, for the good 
 of the people, the demoralizing flood of infidelity which 
 is threatening to bear them down, as it has borne down 
 the millions of other countries, — power adequately to ex- 
 tend to the people, as of old, the blessings of religion and 
 the light of learning. 
 
 The popularity of the party now happily dominant in 
 the Church constitutes more than their strength; it is 
 founded on a principle which renders it also their most 
 powerful recommendation. It was not by flatteiing the 
 people that men such as Knox and Melville became the 
 trusted and beloved leaders of the people. They led them 
 on the same high jirinciple through which the discourses 
 of our Saviour were so eminently popular, and through 
 which crowds were attracted by the preaching of the 
 apostles, wherever they went. God, in his wisdom and 
 goodness, has fitted the glad tidings of salvation which 
 he reveals to the human nature Avhich he has made. The 
 
 20*
 
 234 THE " GRASPING AMBITION," ETC. 
 
 common people listen gladly to the gospel now, as of old, 
 even when they close not with its offers; and the men who 
 jjreach it in sincerity and truth partake of its pojDularity; 
 and hence their influence with the congregations whom 
 they address. Nor has this body of men — the Evangel- 
 ical ministers of our country, the true representatives and 
 descendants of our elder worthies — ever deceived the 
 people of Scotland. What was the object of their long- 
 protracted struggles in the past? Solely and exclusively 
 the glory of God and the good of the people. The history 
 of Rome furnishes us with one example of a poor patriotic 
 man quitting his plough to lead the armies of his country, 
 and, after he had fought her battles and defeated her ene- 
 mies, returning a poor man to his plough again. The 
 history of the Scottish Church abounds in such examples ; 
 the biographies of all her better ministers repeat the story 
 of Fabricius. Who has not heard of the Herculean labors 
 of Knox, and Melville, and Calderwood, and Bruce, and 
 Henderson, and Guthrie, and those of their noble-mindec? 
 coadjutors and associates, the other saints and martyrs of 
 our Church ? Where are the patrimonies which they 
 bequeathed to their children, or what the amount of the 
 riches which they hoarded '? What was Knox's share of 
 the forfeited Church lands? Just Fabricius's share of the 
 spoils. Manfully did he struggle for these with a grasping 
 and selfish aristocracy, but it was exclusively on the peo- 
 ple's behalf However great the opportunities of accumu- 
 lation possessed by these men, they all died poor, many of 
 them in utter destitution ; but their wealth abideth not- 
 withstanding, and an assembled world will hear of it at the 
 last day. We have but to look, too, at the constitution 
 which they framed for our Church to be convinced that 
 they nourished in their poverty and self-denial no priestly 
 feeling of exclusiveness; that their struggles were no 
 Jesuitical sti'uggles for the advancement of their order; 
 that all which they did and suffered was truly and une- 
 quivocally for the cause of God and the people. With a
 
 POPULAR ESTIMATE OF THE TWO PARTIES. 235 
 
 liberality unTnatched, save in the times of the apostles, 
 they provided that the layman and his minister should sit 
 together in their ecclesiaslical courts armed with exactly 
 the same authority, and gave to the people at large the 
 power of choosing both. The Presbyterians of Scotland 
 knowing this, and knowing, too, that the kindred spirits 
 who represent these worthies in the present day are influ- 
 enced by no lower motives than those by which they were 
 animated, and that they pursue objects not merely similar, 
 but identical, are not to be deceived by the palpably unjust 
 charges of either hireling pleaders or prostitute scribes, 
 who, mean-spirited and selfish themselves, have no heart 
 to appreciate virtues removed not only beyond their prac- 
 tice, but even beyond their conception. That body are 
 surely worthy of all trust who were never yet found to 
 deceive. 
 
 POPULAR ESTIMATE OF THE TWO PARTIES. 
 
 "Rejection without reasons." How is it that the two 
 great parties in the Church have come to diifer so entirely 
 on a point like this? — that the one party are so much dis- 
 posed to trust to the people, and the other so determined 
 to place no confidence in them, unless they cannot possibly 
 help it? The question is a very simple one, but the reply 
 involves some rather important principles. 
 
 It is a striking fact, but not the less a certain one, that 
 the men most generally beloved and respected by the 
 Presbyterians of Scotland, and the men most thoroughly 
 disliked and despised by them, have been members of the 
 same profession, and have belonged to the same body. 
 The political field north of the Tweed has hitherto been 
 singularly barren in patriotism. We have a few names 
 which belong to our earlier struggles with England that 
 are worth remembering, and that we are not at all likely 
 soon to forget; but the Scottish politicians of the after
 
 236 POPULAR ESTIMATE 
 
 ages are of a very questionable character indeed. Contrast 
 our history in this respect with that of England. Where 
 are our Ilanipdens, our Seldens, our Russells, our Algernon 
 Sidneys, — where even our gallant and generous spirits, 
 noble and disinterested on a basis of romance, — our Sir 
 Philip Sidneys and Sir Walter Raleighs? Scotland reck- 
 ons no such names among those of her statesmen of tlie 
 last three centuries. The soil has been unfavorable to 
 patriotism ; the people, in consequence, down to a recent 
 date, had no political existence. We have had great 
 abundance of crafty politicians, — Mortons, and Maitlauds, 
 and Middletons, — men bent on the aggrandizement of 
 themselves and their families, and as faithful to their mas- 
 ters as their natures allowed ; but we have had no patriots, 
 if, indeed, we do not except Fletcher, of Salton; and so 
 much was he a republican of the old school, that he would 
 only have set free one-half the people, and made the other 
 half slaves. Certain it is, however, that Scotland has her 
 revered and honored names notwithstanding, — names in 
 no resjDCct inferior to those of England, and now, after the 
 lapse of centuries, much better known to the people. For 
 every Englishman who knows anything of Hampden, we 
 will find at least twenty Scotchmen who love and venerate 
 the memory of Knox. All the true patriots of our country 
 — the men who stood out disinterestedly in the cause of 
 the people, and elevated them by their labors in the moral 
 and intellectual scale — have been either ministers of the 
 Church, or persons who had caught from them the tx'uly 
 liberal spirit which genuine Christianity never fails to 
 infuse. Who was it that first addressed his "beloved 
 brethren" the "commonality," at a time when they were 
 sunk in the slavery of vassalage, and told them of a high 
 spiritual level on which, as immortal creatures for whom 
 Christ had died, they were no whit inferior to their mas- 
 ters? Who was it that assured them that, "albeit God 
 had ordained distinction and difference in the administra- 
 tion of civil policies betwixt kings and subjects, rulers and
 
 OF THE TWO PARTIES. 237 
 
 common jieople, yet in the hope of the life to come he harl 
 made all equal"? Who but the greatest and the noblest 
 of our patriots, — the man whose large-minded educational 
 schemes are still half a century ahead of our age, — who 
 shared his principles and maxims of political liberty with 
 his friend, the elegant and masculine-minded Buchanan, — 
 "principles and maxims," says Sir James Mackintosh, "de- 
 livered wuth a precision and enforced with an energy which 
 no former age has equalled, and no succeeding age has 
 surpassed," and the liberality of whose ecclesiastical polity 
 our better Churchmen are even now striving at a distance 
 to approach ? There is little wonder that the people of 
 Scotland should continue to cherish and venerate the 
 memory of Knox. 
 
 Our great reformer is the true type and rejiresentative 
 of the popular party, — the Christian patriots of Scotland. 
 It is no difficult or uninteresting matter to trace the line 
 through our country's history, from the days of Mary 
 downwards. There is, in truth, not much else on which 
 the eye can rest with pleasure. Unquestionably the author 
 of the " Scots Worthies" gave his book the right name. 
 The men whose biographies he relates were emphatically 
 the worthies of Scotland ; and the popularity of the work 
 shows how decidedly the great bulk of the population have 
 acquiesced in the propriety of the title. Nor is the pop- 
 ularity of the party less shown by the history of our Church 
 in the last century than by that of the century which went 
 before. Who but the Erskines and their followers could 
 have led away from the Established Church five hundred 
 congregations of Scottish Presbyterians warmly attached 
 to the Church of their fathers? We have been much 
 impressed by the abiding character of the memory and 
 influence of ministers of the true stamp in our country 
 districts. There are individuals of no other class so long 
 remembered by the people of Scotland ; striking passages 
 from their oral discourses, only once delivered, sometimes 
 survive the men themselves for two whole generations.
 
 238 POPULAR ESTIMATE 
 
 Even in our larger towns, where the population are more 
 in a state of flux, half a century hardly succeeds in effacing 
 the cherished recollection of an eminent niiuistei*. Dr. 
 Balfour, of Glasgow, is better remembered in that city 
 than any other man connected with the place who died so 
 many years ago ; and we question whether the recollection 
 of Dr, Andrew Thomson is not more deeply impressed on 
 the mind of the Edinburgh peo2:)le, members of tlie Church, 
 than that of any other citizen whose career of eminence and 
 usefulness terminated within the present century. There 
 does not exist a tenderer or more enduring tie among all 
 the various relationships which knit together the human 
 family, than that which binds the gospel minister to his 
 25eople. 
 
 It is not less certain, however, that there is a very con 
 siderable portion of our Scottish clergy less popular, and 
 regarded more generally with jealous dislike, tlian any 
 other class in the country ; nor is it any hatred of the 
 order through wliich they suffer, for it is identically the 
 same portion of the people who most venerate their breth- 
 ren that most dislike them. In nine cases out of ten the 
 minister of a country parish is either the man most loved 
 and respected in it, or the man least cared for, and against 
 whom the strongest prejudice is entertained. Half the 
 witticisms of the country have been made at the expense 
 of the cloth; and it will invariably be found that the more 
 secular-minded the clergy of a district become, the more 
 readily will these be picked up and repeated. The mere 
 fact of their existence shows nothing. Shimei cursed 
 David; the dragoons of the times of Charles II. were 
 merry at the expense of the men whom they jjersecuted 
 and murdered. Moderatism in Strathbogie has been pro- 
 fane in bad rhyme in attempting to be smart on some of 
 the most revered ministers of our Church ; and an Edin- 
 burgh artist, who has humor enough to make capital cari- 
 catures, and wisdom enough not to publisli his creed, has 
 been following in the same track. But in all these, and in
 
 OF THE TWO PARTIES. 239 
 
 similar instances, the joke meets wi(\\ no response in the 
 public mind. Very different is the case, however, when it 
 affects a degraded and earthly-minded clergy. There is a 
 disposition to receive and repeat. Dr. Johnson, with all 
 his high respect for the English Chm-ch, could yet solemnly 
 assure Boswell, in one of his serious moods, that he had 
 scarce ever met with a pious clergyman. The time (that 
 of the reign of Moderatism in our own country) was un- 
 questionably a time of spiritual death in the sister Estab- 
 lishment. And it is well to remember that this was also 
 the time when clergymen were the subjects of ridicule 
 among every class of the English people, high and low, 
 and the butts of almost every company. It was the atro- 
 cities of the French Revolution that first secured some 
 little degree of respect for the cloth in the upper walks of 
 society, by showing that even the husk of religion, the 
 mere empty shell, could not be safely slighted. Christian 
 clergymen cannot occupy with comfort a middle place; 
 they cannot rest in the mere mediocrity of their station as 
 gentlemen of from three to four hundred a year; and we 
 accept it as one of the many proofs of the excellence of 
 religion that such is the case. Even the men who do not 
 profess to believe in Christianity at all, tacitly confess how 
 highly they estimate its value, by the severity of their 
 animadversions on unfiithful clergymen, and the high 
 standard of morality and extensive usefulness by which 
 they try them. No one ever expects morals of a high 
 tone, or usefulness of a signal character, from the priests 
 of a false religion. Their duties are compiised in a mis^ 
 erable round of absurd rites and ceremonies ; and if they 
 do no positive mischief, — if they be content with simply 
 doing nothing, — we think they do well. But members 
 of a Christian ministry are tried by another standard. 
 
 Hence one great cause of the unpopularity of the body 
 now the minority in the Church. But there are other 
 causes besides. The Moderate school is singularly unfa- 
 vorable to the production of popular talent in the ministry.
 
 240 POPULAR ESTIMATE OP THE TWO PARTIES. 
 
 It has unquestionably produced some very able men. 
 Robertson was only inferior to his friend and contempo- 
 rary Hume ; and the sermons of Bhiir, though occasionally 
 heavy, ai'e nearly as finished pieces of composition as the 
 Loungers and Mirrors of M'Kenzie. But though such 
 men, when they exerted themselves, could no doubt be 
 listened to from the pulpit with a good deal of intellectual 
 gratification, the preachers of this school, regarded as a 
 body, have been miserably tame and inefficient. In truth, 
 Scotland does not produce talent enough, even were the 
 whole of it engaged in the Church, to fill her thousand 
 pulpits with Moderate ministers of but middling interest 
 as preachers ; and ordinary men are totally unsuited to 
 make an impression. What is there within the reach of 
 such ? The commonplaces of morality dressed up in the 
 merest commonplaces of language, — the gum-flowers of 
 false rhetoric all fashioned after one tame jjattern, — the 
 offensive pulings of a sickly sentimentality ; really there is 
 little to wonder at in finding the churches where such 
 ministers preach deserted by more than half their people, 
 and the rest fallen fast asleep. Are our readers acquainted, 
 however, with the case of men of even this stamp awak- 
 ened in the middle of their indifierence to a pervading 
 sense of the importance of the one thing needful ? — of 
 men of ordinary powers who preached inefficiently for 
 years, and then became converts to the truth ? We are 
 acquainted with cases of this kind. We are convinced, too, 
 that there are few districts in Scotland in which our read- 
 ers have not either known or heard of such, and have not 
 been struck, like ourselves, by the degree of popular talent 
 which the change seemed at once to communicate. No 
 doubt a great deal must have depended, as it always does 
 in such cases, on the new tone of earnestness imparted to 
 the preacher. Men who wish to aftect others must first be 
 afflicted themselves. Much must have depended, too, on 
 the whole mind being brought into play, — not the intel- 
 lectual part merely, but the affi^ctions and the sentiments
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 241 
 
 also. The grand difference, however, must have consisted 
 in the newly-acquired anxiety to communicate the revealed 
 truths of God, instead of the mere cogitations of the 
 speaker. The change substituted the scheme of salvation, 
 in all its infinite wisdom, for the Jejune reflections and 
 tame, inefficient moralizings of an ordinary man. Boston 
 and Willison were by no means superior men to Blair and 
 Logan, and certainly far inferior writei-s : why are they in 
 such high repute among the people of Scotland, and the 
 others left to the admiration of Moderate ministers and 
 their supporters? Simply from their being what the more 
 fashionable divines were not — faithful interpreters of the 
 mind of God. 
 
 Hence one of the most gratifying circumstances con- 
 nected with the popularity of the dominant party. It is 
 not a popularity unworthily acquired. It does not even 
 result from the gratitude of the people for important ser- 
 vices rendered to them in the past, though this, no doubt, 
 has its influence. It arises chiefly from the nice adapta- 
 tion which exists between the popular mind and the truths 
 of revelation, and the natural attachment which obtains 
 between the fliithful preacher and his flock. And hence, 
 too, the importance of what we may term the shibboleth 
 of the party, "rejection without reasons," and the dreaded 
 abhorrence with which the Moderate section regard it. 
 They have translated the phrase aright in its bearing on 
 themselves, and find that it embodies exactly the same 
 meaning with the handwriting on the wall. 
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 
 
 The Earl of Aberdeen brought forward, on Tuesday 
 last, his long-expected bill on the Church question. Cow- 
 per tells us of men who "do nothing with a deal of skill." 
 His lordship has been doing nearly as much without the 
 
 21
 
 242 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 
 
 skill. He proposes to reenact an alrearly existing law, 
 which has certainly not been suffered to fall into desue- 
 tude, and to do for the Church what he confesses the 
 Church, in even h^r present circumstances, can do for 
 herself. In one important respect, however, the proposed 
 measure is better than if it had not been so bad. It will, 
 no doubt, satisfy Dr. Cook and his friends, for it does not 
 contain a single clause which might not have emanated 
 from the Doctor himself. Dr. Muir would perhaps have 
 framed a somewhat more liberal measure, though he, too, 
 will soon be able to accommodate himself to its peculiari- 
 ties, just as he learned to accommodate himself to the 
 policy of Dr. Cook. But no individual who voted with 
 Dr. Chalmers can consistently acquiesce in the bill intro- 
 duced by the Earl of Aberdeen. It will satisfy all the 
 friends of unrestricted patronage and the old system, but 
 it will not have the effect of dividing the friends of a still 
 older and immensely better system. It will satisfy the 
 class who never yet satisfied the people; but the people 
 and their friends it will not satisfy, nor will it have the 
 effect, we trust, of breaking down the majorities of the 
 latter. 
 
 " The people have at present the right," says the Dean 
 of Faculty, in his pamphlet, — "and that they should have 
 it is most fitting, — of submitting every ground of objection, 
 of whatever kind, which they may entertain against the 
 individual, to the clergymen of the presbytery." The 
 Earl of Aberdeen, in his outline of the proposed bill, says 
 nearly the same thing, only he says it in more words. 
 The patron presents to the vacant parish ; and the licen- 
 tiate, his choice, appears before the presbytery, who ap- 
 point him to preach in the parish church to the people. 
 The people then meet ; and if the regular communicants 
 have objections to urge of any kind, the presbytery receive 
 these, either in writing or otherwise. They next sit and 
 decide u))on them. If they are held to be insufficient, the 
 settlement proceeds, and the presentee is intruded ujioii
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 243 
 
 the people ; but if the presbytery deem them of sufficient 
 force, he is set aside, and the patron presents another. 
 And such are the main provisions of the bill introduced by 
 the Earl of Aberdeen. What measure of protection does 
 it furnish which did not exist under the old system? It 
 adds, perhaps, in some slight degree, to the power of our 
 Church courts ; and yet that power was certainly veiy 
 considerable before. We find it stated by the Dean of 
 Faculty, that he is aware of no limit either to the nature 
 of the inquiries, or to the strictness of the examinations, to 
 which presbyteries may subject licentiates. The Church 
 may reject, he asserts, on any ground whatever. It has 
 unlimited authority to set aside, — unlimited authority to 
 choose. Now, if this view of the matter be correct, the 
 Earl of Aberdeen, as we have said, is merely reenacting an 
 existing law ; he is virtually doing nothing, and doing it 
 at a considerable expense. But, granting that it is not 
 strictly correct, — granting that some little additional 
 power is conferred on our Church courts, — what are the 
 Presbyterian people of Scotland to gain in consequence ? 
 What benefits did they derive from the power vested in 
 our Church courts for the greater part of the last century, 
 or in what degree would they have profited had that 
 power been rendered a very little greater? It was a 
 power in almost every instance employed either against 
 themselves or against the true tyj^es and representatives 
 of the original Church, — the pious and devoted ministers 
 whom they most loved and honored. Popular privileges 
 are essentially different things from powers conferred on 
 Church courts; and we would just request our readers to 
 mark how ready the very men who are most forward in 
 calumniating our better ministers, and in raising against 
 them the cry of clerical ambition and clerical usurpation, 
 are to extend to them, notwithstanding, those very ])owcrs 
 which they unjustly accuse them of coveting, and how 
 sedulously they would withhold every shadow of popular 
 l)rivilege. They profess to dread the encroachments of the
 
 244 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 
 
 clergy, but it is only to conceal how bitterly they dislike 
 all interference on the part of the people. 
 
 It is scarce necessary to pass over the various statements 
 of the Earl of Aberdeen. He quotes the First Book of 
 Discipline after exactly the same foshiou as Messrs. Paul 
 and Pirie, and proves, to the satisfaction of his peers, that 
 the scheme of planting vacant parishes laid down by Knox 
 — a scheme of free election, be it remembered — was less 
 popular than the one embodied in the veto act. The 
 Upper House was, of course, no place in which his lordship 
 had any chance of being set right on the point. To the 
 theology of the question there is no reference. The seven 
 suspended ministers are respectable; nor do legislators, 
 like his lordship, often look higher. Men who are too 
 virtuous to be punished as immoral are quite suited to 
 teach religious truth ; and to urge that thei'e is a very 
 opposite doctrine in the Bible would of course be fanati. 
 cal. And yet it does seem but common sense to draw a 
 distinction between negative and positive character ; nor 
 does it appear very absurd to assert that men amenable to 
 no law may be totally devoid of religion. Let us suppose 
 his lordship's bill in its present form enacted into statute 
 and acquiesced in by a majority of the Church. What 
 would be the probable, nay, the inevitable, consequences ? 
 The Presbyterian people of the country have been thor- 
 oughly aroused on the agitated question, and aroused as a 
 body. At no time were they indifferent to the principle 
 which it involves, and very keenly could thay feel, and 
 very promptly could they act upon it. In what cases have 
 the military been employed against the peasantry of Scot- 
 land since the rebellion of 1745, except in cases of forced 
 settlements? Or in what other cases have handfuls of 
 poor laboring men extended their hours of labor, and lived 
 still more hardly than before, that they might raise their 
 fifties and hundreds of pounds, — at first, to contend hope- 
 lessly in our courts of law against the intrusion of ministers 
 whom in their conscience they believed not suited to edify
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 245 
 
 them ; and latterly, to build chapels for themselves, and 
 support clergymen of their own choosing, to whose minis- 
 trations they could trust? Never did they cease to feel 
 on the subject; but hitherto they have been aroused to 
 act or resist merely in detail, — aroused by parishes at a 
 time. They are now aroused in a body ; and tremendous 
 will be the revulsion of feeling if they find they have 
 been deceived, and see the ministers in whom they trusted 
 deserting them. We would say to our clergymen, there- 
 fore, only give up the true non-intrusion principles em- 
 bodied in the veto act, and you will soon find how fatal 
 an error it was ever to have agitated them. Had you 
 contented yourselves with the provisions of the old sys- 
 tem, and suffered Dr. Cook or Dr. Muir to direct your 
 councils, you might probably have continued to exist 
 as an Establishment for thirty years: retreat from the 
 advanced position which you have taken up, and you will 
 be down in one-third of the time. You will find in the 
 supposed case the descent of a falling Church regulated 
 by the laws which accelerate the descent of other foiling 
 bodies, and fearfully increasing its rapidity in the succeed- 
 ing periods. Nor will the Earl of Aberdeen be able to 
 protect or support you. He will be wholly unable to 
 protect or supi)ort himself Yield to his counsels, and 
 timorously retreat, — give up the cause of the people, — 
 and you will go down first, and he will follow you. Con- 
 tinue to occupy the Thermopylae in which you have taken 
 up your position, and both may be saved. Your place is 
 not a new one to the venerated ministers and elders of the 
 much-loved Church of our fithers ; but never, perhaps, at 
 any period, did so much depend on their decision as now 
 depends on yours. 
 
 Supposing, however, that there should be no revulsion 
 of feeling on the part of the people, — supposing that they 
 should at once sit down under the disappointment as 
 quietly and passively as if all their present excitement was 
 merely simulated, — how would Lord Aberdeen's measure 
 
 21*
 
 246 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 
 
 operate in their behalf? We all know the kind of acquire- 
 ments which enabled the intrusionists of the last and the 
 present century to pass through the sort of vestibule formed 
 by presbyteries into the body of the Church : a little tol- 
 erable Latin, and a little somewhat less tolerable Greek ; 
 the general smattering of learning which enables clever 
 young men to write indifferent sense in middling bad Eng- 
 lish, and justifies their high opinion of themselves; and, 
 withal, that acquaintance with theology which implies a 
 sort of half-knowledge of doctrines which they do not like, 
 and which they cannot understand. Add to all this a degree 
 of character which no police court in the kingdom would 
 be able to impugn, and we have before us the qualifications 
 of an accomplished licentiate prepared for ordination, an 
 ornament to his order, and fitted, according to the estimate 
 of Moderate presbyteries, to carry away the palm from 
 Horsley. The people could neither love nor respect such 
 a man, and by the more serious among them the less would 
 he be loved and respected. Who that truly believes in the 
 New Testament can think without concern of such a cler- 
 gyman in connection Avith a parishioner anxiously awak- 
 ened to inquire, with the jailer, " What shall I do to be 
 saved ? " — or without horror of him, associated with ter- 
 rors awakened on a death-bed, — terrors regarding a future 
 state of being, of which he knows nothing, and for which 
 he cares as little ? He is presented, however, by the pa- 
 tron ; and these feelings on the part of the people, through 
 which he is rendered imaceeptable to them, are not per- 
 mitted, by his lordshi])'s 2~)rovision, to weigh as anything. 
 There is not a more definite assertion in his whole speech 
 than that the mere unncceptableness of a presentee should 
 be held no disqualification. The people must render their 
 reasons. To aftirm that in their consciences they believe 
 the ])resentee unsuited to edify them, is not stating a rea- 
 son ; it is merely expressing a belief, — merely emitting 
 such a declaration as the one required by the veto act. 
 But, even jjermitting it to stand as a reason, what weight
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 247 
 
 would the suspended ministers of Strathbogie attach to it 
 if urged by the parishioners of Marnoch against Mr. Ed- 
 wards ? or into what else would it resolve itself, if carried 
 before the higher courts, than into mere unacceptableness? 
 The "sheep know the voice of the good shepherd, and him 
 they follow;" but they will not follow a stranger. Why? 
 Because, believing him to be a stranger, he is unacceptable 
 to them. Even supposing our Church courts disposed at 
 the present time to receive as legitimate almost any objec- 
 tions, and to act upon them, what guarantee have the peo- 
 ple that this spirit is to continue ? " Good is ever strongest 
 at its beginning," says Bacon ; " evil ever strongest in con- 
 tinuance." The one exists only through unceasing effort; 
 the other gathers strength and grows up of itself We 
 remark, further, that we could not think very highly of 
 even the honesty of men who, when deciding cases on un- 
 confessed and disallowed grounds, could yet hypocritically 
 urge that they decided them on grounds of an entirely dif- 
 ferent kind. If unacceptableness is not to be recognized 
 as a legitimate cause of rejection, we would ill like to see 
 it made an actual cause, and some unsolid and paltry 
 shadow of objection employed to screen it, meanwhile, as 
 a sort of stalking-horse. Let the Church of Scotland walk 
 in unsullied integrity, as becomes her character, — her 
 motives and her actions alike open to the eye of day. 
 
 No one could have anticipated, when she took up her 
 present position, the length to which matters were to be 
 carried against her. Doubts were perhaps entertained 
 wdiether her hold of the secularities might not possibly be 
 loosened by an enforcement of the principle of the veto ; 
 but could even the shrewdest have imagined that she was 
 to be inhibited from preaching the gospel '? It was perhaps 
 deemed possible that the civil power might attempt pounc- 
 ing on her temporalities, but it was not deemed possible 
 that the civil power would attempt jostling her aside from 
 her own proper place among things spiritual. She has 
 been exposed to unlooked-for trouble. The tempest has
 
 248 THE SCOTCH PEOPLE 
 
 been unexpectedly severe ; and mni-iners are sometimes 
 content in such circumstances to return for shelter to 
 the port which they have quitted. But what might be 
 safety to tlieni would be destruction to lier. The heavily 
 freighted and laboring vessel of the Church must not 
 return. There is security in the haven to which she is 
 bound. On the open sea, too, there is comparative safety, 
 let the storm rage as it may; but inevitable shipwreck 
 awaits her if she turn her prow towards the shore which 
 she has left. 
 
 THE SCOTCH PEOPLE AND THE PEESBYTERIAN 
 CHURCH. 
 
 The people of Scotland have had many compliments 
 paid them, — some on the score of intelligence, some on 
 the score of conduct; and that portion of them on whom, 
 according to Wordsworth, " the Chui'ch has laid the strong 
 hand of her purity," has been ever held to comprise, in the 
 true, not the aristocratic sense of the term, their " better 
 classes." The numerous body of whom the Cottar of Burns 
 and the Peddler of "The Excursion" may be regarded as 
 samples and specimens, are invai-iably to be found in com- 
 munion with either the Established Church, or some one 
 or other of the several branches of Evangelical Dissenters 
 which have sprung from her. Who ever heard of an 
 intelligent Scotch Papist rising from among the people? 
 or where are even the Burnses and Tannahills that repre- 
 sent the Scottish peasants and artisans of Episcopacy? 
 The national type is decidedly Presbyterian in its intelli- 
 gence, and still more decidedly so in its worth and its 
 religion ; and if we but strike off the Presbyterian cate- 
 chumens and communicants of the country from the general 
 mass, — the men either in full communion with the Church 
 or her auxiliaries, or in the course of preparation for such 
 a union, — we leave behind merely a caput mortuum of
 
 AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 249 
 
 inert ignorance and superstition, or of fierce and reckless, 
 and, in most instances, quite as ignorant infidelity. The 
 class to which the Church is at present struggling to extend 
 those privileges which so many of her saints and martyrs 
 contended to secure to them, includes, in at least the pro- 
 portion of nineteen twentieths, the worth, the religion, and 
 the intelligence of the country. 
 
 On an estimate such as this have the non-intrusionists of 
 the Church founded the measure for the integrity of which 
 they are now called to sufier and resist. Were the estimate 
 diflferent, the measure would also be different. Cases may 
 easily be imagined in which the popular voice would be a 
 very improper element in the choice or rejection of a 
 Christian minister. An entire people may sink into infi- 
 delity, as was the case with the French people during the 
 first Revolution ; or they may lie sunk in a state of gross 
 and savage paganism, as is the case at present with the 
 great bulk of the inhabitants of New Zealand. Consult 
 the choice of the one class — the more civilized one — 
 regarding religion or its teachers, and they trick out for 
 themselves a painted prostitute in the spangled gauds of 
 the opera-house, and, after dignifying her with the name 
 of the Goddess of Reason, they prostrate themselves before 
 her in simulated worship ; or, more fantastic and more 
 horrid still, they exhume the mouldering remains of the 
 perished apostles of infidelity, and burn incense before the 
 insensate and ghastly skulls. Consult the choice of the 
 other class, and they seek out for themselves their native 
 priests to assist them in their human sacrifices. In both 
 these instances Christianity is compelled to act on a differ- 
 ent principle, — the principle on which the apostles acted, 
 — not within the Church, but in their efforts to extend the 
 Church. The missionary principle is the only one which 
 applies to the exigencies of such cases, and the people are 
 not asked to ciioose their teachers, but entreated to listen 
 to the teachers which have been sent to them. It is only 
 when a Christian body have been formed into a Chun-h, as
 
 250 THE SCOTCH PEOPLE, ETC. 
 
 was the case when Knox drew up his First Book of Dis- 
 cipline, that the principle now contended for can come 
 into operation ; and it is in the well-founded belief that 
 our parochial communicants form such a body, — that all 
 of them are members of the Church of Scotland, — that 
 very many of them are members of the Church of Christ, 
 
 — that they have a deeper stake in the appointment of 
 their ministers than ministers themselves can possibly 
 possess in their collective character, — that it is a duty 
 demanded of them individually to "try the spirits, whether 
 they be of God," — that to this solemn injunction they are 
 qualified to conform by Him who has laid it upon them ; 
 
 — it is, we assert, in this belief that our Church courts are 
 now struggling to secure to the Christian people a direct- 
 ing voice in the appointment of their pastors. If they but 
 believed, on the contrary, that these very people were " a 
 brute insensate herd," an "irresponsible, unreasonable" 
 mob, they would never once think of introducing among 
 them such a principle. They contend for their privileges, 
 as those of a Christian people in full communion with a' 
 Christian Church. 
 
 To the great bulk of our readers all this will seem suffi- 
 ciently plain and obvious. They have all heard, and many 
 of them have known from experience, of the general intel- 
 ligence of the Presbyterian people of Scotland. Rarely 
 do very superior men rise from among very ignorant masses. 
 It was a Scotch ploughman that described the " Cottar's 
 Saturday Night ; " it was a Scotch shepherd that produced 
 the "Queen's Wake;" it was a Scotch stone-cutter that 
 wrote the " Lives of the British Painters, Sculptors, and 
 Architects;" it was a Scotch weaver that bequeathed to 
 America its "Ornithology;" it was a Scotch mechanician 
 who invented the steam-engine; it was a Scotch herd-boy 
 who first explored the hitherto misunderstood phenomena 
 of the phases of the moon ; it was a Scotch mason Avho 
 planned the great Caledonian Canal, and threw the bridge 
 over the Menai. Now, from no "brute herd" could such
 
 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 251 
 
 men have arisen. The classes that look down nj^on the 
 people as irrational have not yet produced better samples. 
 Our readers are also aware of the religious character of 
 our better Presbyterian people. They are aware, too, that 
 though Milton rightly describes hypocrisy as the "vice 
 which walks unseen," it is not the less true that there is a 
 religious sympathy which draws the good together, and 
 through whose revulsions and antipathies unconverted and 
 secular-minded men are very soon discovered to be such. 
 They are aware, in short, that pious laymen are as thor- 
 oughly qualified to choose out for themselves pious, reli- 
 gious teachers, or to detect those who are not so, as the 
 general imperfection and infirmity of judgment which 
 cling to our fallen natur-e, and which insinuate their mix- 
 ture of error into all human affairs, allow us to predicate 
 of qualification in any case. 
 
 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 
 
 There is a smart paragraph taking the round of our 
 Scotch newspapers, descriptive of a recent settlement in a 
 northern parish. A vacancy occurred, through the death 
 of the incumbent, and the parishioners were presented by 
 the patron with a leet of four, two of whom were Moder- 
 ates, and two of the opposite party. Means, it is stated, 
 were taken by some of the friends of the latter to influence 
 their choice. The Moderates were men of a genial tem- 
 perament, and the people were told so. One of them, it 
 was urged, was fond of fiddling. " He will be the more 
 useful at weddings," said the people. Nor has he any 
 abhorrence, it was added, of whisky punch. "Nor we 
 either," said the people ; " we will go all the oftener to see 
 him." In short, Moderatism triumphed on the principle 
 alluded to by the jioet, that " laymen have leave to dance 
 if parsons play." The "fiddling priest" was preferred by
 
 252 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 
 
 a sweeping majority; and tlie flict is adduced by our con- 
 temporaries, either to show tliat Evangelism is struggling 
 to emancipate the people to its own hurt, or that, in some 
 cases at least, parishes choose well. We take the story as 
 we find it, with certainly no proof that it is true, but as 
 certainly with no suspicion that it is false; for we have 
 seen quite enough of Scotland and its people to know that 
 there are tracts of countiy in which incidents of the same 
 nature might readily enough occur. We are acquainted 
 with at least one district in the far north in which it had 
 become a popular saying, at a time when smuggling was 
 more common than it is at present, "Give us but a good- 
 natured exciseman, and it matters little whether you give 
 us a minister or no." 
 
 One of the great evils of Moderatism is its tendency to 
 extirpate religion altogether. It is no doubt a bad state 
 of matters when dissent is rendered inevitable in a religious 
 parish by the tyranny of a forced settlement; and it is 
 surely grievous to see the better people of the Church 
 forced reluctantly, by congregations at a time, beyond her 
 pale. But there may be a much worse state of matters 
 than this. It is better that there should be religion in a 
 parish, however harshly or cruelly it may be dealt with, than 
 that there should be none ; and there are parishes in Scot- 
 land, though the number fortunately is not great, where, 
 through the indifference and the irreligion of the people, 
 there can be no forced settlements and no dissent. We 
 resided for some time in a parish of this character about 
 sixteen years ago. It lies to the south of Edinburgh ; and 
 the parishioners, who were numerous at the time, were 
 divided, by the accumulation of capital in the hands of a 
 few, and the prevalence of the large farm system, into two 
 extreme classes, — a class on the low lev(?l of the common 
 laborer, which constituted the great bulk of the population, 
 and a class, comprising some thirty or forty individuals 
 and their flimilies, who occupied a ])lace in society rather 
 higher than the middle one. Moderatism had been
 
 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 253 
 
 entrenched in the parish pulpit for well-nigh a century, 
 and Moderatism in its most respectable form. It had 
 neither lived grossly nor taught heresy. It had done no 
 mischief; it had done merely nothing ; and, instead of 
 perverting, it had only suppressed the truth. The incum- 
 bent, at the period to which we refer, was an indolent, 
 elderly, respectable man, rather dull than otherwise, who, 
 having labored in his youth, had a sermon for every Sab- 
 bath in the year, and a few additional, and who very proj)- 
 erly asserted in them all, and challenged scrutiny, that it 
 was well to be virtuous, and not so well to be vicious, and 
 that fanaticism was a sore evil. The upper class deemed 
 him a sensible man, and heard his one sermon once a week; 
 the lower had ceased attending church altogether ; and in 
 scarce any other district of Scotland have we found a less 
 intelligent or a more irreligious people. The respectable 
 among them — for there are differences among all classes 
 — passed the greater half of the Sabbath in their beds, 
 rose to dinner, and, if the evening was fine, went saunter- 
 ing about the fields; with the less respectable. Sabbath 
 was a day of drunkenness and dissipation. It was impos- 
 sible that a forced settlement could have taken place in 
 the parish: there was not religion enough in it to suggest 
 objections or nourish dissent. The people would have 
 well-nigh as soon thought of challenging the right of one 
 of their proprietors to his lands as the right of a presentee 
 to his glebe and stipend ; and had their choice been con- 
 sulted in his nomination, a tui'n for fiddling and good fel- 
 lowship would have been powerful recommendations. It 
 affords us much pleasure to add, that a different state of 
 matters is beginning to obtain in this forlorn parish from 
 what obtained in it sixteen years ago. There is less immo- 
 rality and less ignorance and apathy, and the poor people 
 have learned to rise earlier on Sabbath, and to attend 
 church. The old and highly respectable Moderate, after 
 drawling through his last discourse, was succeeded by a 
 clergyman who preaches Jesus Christ and him crucified ; 
 
 22
 
 254 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 
 
 and the class to whom the gospel was preached of old have 
 gone to hear him. There could be such a tiling as a forced 
 settlement in the parish now, and a Secession chapel as a 
 consequence. 
 
 The apathy and indifference to religion which obtain in 
 only a few districts in Scotland are very extensively spread 
 over the sister kingdom, and dissent, in consequence, does 
 not very often originate in the Chui'ch from what we may 
 term an internal principle. The hereditary Dissenter, fixed 
 in one locality, withdraws occasionally a few individuals 
 from out the inert mass, or, as in the days of Whitefield 
 and Wesley, the itinerating Dissenter succeeds in founding, 
 though rarely, a meeting-house among them on the mission- 
 ary principle. We have been informed, however, by a 
 person intimately acquainted with the subject, that the 
 main, though, as we have said, a not very active cause of 
 dissent in England (for there are at present no very active 
 causes in operation) originates within, not without, the 
 pale of the Church, and in exactly the same way in which, 
 as we have shown, it sometimes originates in Scotland. 
 An evangelical Churchman of the Scott or Newton stamp 
 is appointed to a charge ; the inert masses are aroused by 
 those powerfully impressive doctrines of the gospel, fitted 
 by Deity himself to agitate and awaken, and which, through 
 the accompanying influence of the Spirit, render men wise 
 unto salvation; a church-going and religious people are 
 trained up under his ministry; and, after performing his 
 work of usefulness, he is summoned to his reward, and 
 I^asses away. A stranger succeeds him, whose voice the 
 sheep do not know, and whom therefore they will not fol- 
 low, — perhaps, according to Cowper, " a cassocked hunts- 
 man and a fiddling priest," — at least a person who, like 
 our old ])nsl()r in llic southern parish, neither knows the 
 gospel nor cares for it, and who tells his poor hearers that 
 it is good to be good, and bad to be bad, and wise to 
 eschew fuiaticism. Dissent is the inevitable consequence 
 of such an aj)pointment in such a parish; but who does
 
 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 255 
 
 not see that the cause is a mixed one, and that the Evan- 
 gelism of the one preacher has as certainly led to it as the 
 Moderatisni of the other ? Puseyism contends for what 
 it terms the apostolic succession ; and, as the question is 
 mixed up with religion, men of sense try to avoid smiling 
 at its amazing absurdity, except when they are not seen. 
 But there is a real apostolic succession to which it is well 
 to attend, and the neglect of which is injurious to the 
 Church of England now, and has inflicted incalculable 
 injury on the Church of Scotland in the past. The true 
 apostolic succession was kept up when Thomas Scott suc- 
 ceeded John Newton ; but it would have been woefully 
 broken had he been succeeded by the Rev. Titus Oates or 
 the Rev. Dr. Dodd. Nor would the imposition of the Bish- 
 op's hands have mended the matter in the least. Is our 
 own Chui'ch in no danger of breaking the apostolic suc- 
 cession in a certain district, should the ministrations of the 
 Commission's ministers come to be superseded there? The 
 people two years ago might have chosen a minister for his 
 skill in fiddling ; but they would choose and reject on very 
 different principles now. 
 
 There is a sufficiently obvious inference which we draw 
 from the fact furnished us by our contemporaries. The best 
 argument against slavery is deduced from the degradation 
 of character which slavery induces. It brutalizes those 
 whom it oppresses, and renders them unfit for liberty ; but, 
 so fiU" from seeking for its apology in the abuses of slavery, 
 and so far from arguing that it should be tolerated or main- 
 tained because it is so execrable as to affect not only the 
 physical, but also the mental condition of men, we contend 
 that it is those very abuses, and those most mischievous 
 effects, which render it so intolerable. Did it affect only 
 the bodies of the unfortunates subjected to it, the aboli- 
 tionist would be loss the benefactor of his species, and 
 more on a level with the class whose benevolent exertions 
 are restricted to the prevention of mere animal suffering. 
 Now, it is with Moderatism as with slavery. The one first
 
 256 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 treats men as if they were unfit for liberty, and tlien 
 renders them in reality unfit for it; the other first treats 
 them as if they were unfit to exercise any influence in the 
 appointment of their spiritual teachers, and then renders 
 them unfit for it, by weaning out the religious feeling from 
 among them, and the knowledge of religious truth. But 
 where, in either case, does the remedy lie? In destroying 
 the power of the slaveholder, and emancipating the slave ; 
 in removing the prop on which Moderatism has leant, and 
 without which it must ultimately fall. In the one case we 
 emancipate a slave unfit for freedom. Yes, but he will 
 never be fitted for it in slavery. Set him free, and, as hap- 
 pened to the king of Babylon of old, the beast's heart will 
 leave him, and the heart of the man return. In the other 
 case we extend a privilege to people, some of whom are 
 unfitted to exercise it aright. True ; we are reminded of 
 that by the very men who rendered them unfit. But the 
 privilege is in very bad hands already. An unrestricted 
 patronage gives ten inefllicient Moderates to the Church, to 
 darken the popular mind and paralyze the popular judg- 
 ment, for every one that the people will give to it ; and, 
 though a few mistakes will be made in those hapless par- 
 ishes in which Moderatism has been longest encamped, the 
 truth will be gradually spreading around them; nor is it 
 likely that they can long continue to reverse the miracle 
 in Goshen, by remaining insulated districts of darkness 
 walled by light. 
 
 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN versus THE PEOPLE OF 
 SCOTLAND. 
 
 TiiK Earl of Aberdeen has determined to press the 
 second reading of his bill. The Church of Scotland has 
 had many enemies to contend with, — the priest, the pre- 
 late, and the dragoon ; Moderatism, Voluntaryism, the
 
 AND THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 257 
 
 Court of Session, and the author of an unreadable pam- 
 phlet. And yet it is the Church of Scotland still. We 
 trust it is also destined to survive his lordship's measure. 
 The reader has heard of an eagle "struck at and killed" 
 by a " mousing owl," but such prodigies do not happen 
 every day; and we can hope that that Church of Christ, 
 and the people, which outlived a century and a half of 
 fierce persecution and the bitter hostility of five succeed- 
 ing monarchs, — two of them at least skilful in playing 
 on double meanings, and one of them remarkable for 
 making long speeches and unreadable books, — may also 
 outlive the assaults of a diplomatist skilful in concealing 
 his intentions by carefully selecting his words, and of a 
 special pleader, always more successful in making his 
 addresses long than his meaning plain. It will be foul 
 shame and dishonor to the people of Scotland if they 
 suffer the Church of their fathers to sink beneath men of a 
 lower grade than even the subsidiary tools of the enemies 
 and persecutors who arrayed themselves against her of 
 old. Our ancestors would have little recked the enmity 
 of Rothes and Mackenzie, had not the craft of the one and 
 the sophistry of the other been backed by the malignant 
 despotism of Charles. 
 
 It were well that the Presbyterian j^eople of Scotland 
 should consider how deeply their interests are involved in 
 the present struggle. We address ourselves to them as 
 one of themselves, — simply as one of the humbler people, 
 come out a single step in advance in this quarrel to speak 
 for the rest. We say, therefore, both for them and our- 
 selves, that we have no other stake of equal importance 
 and value with our stake in the Church. Toryism in its 
 first elements, and regarded simply as feeling, does not, 
 and cannot, constitute the politics of the common people ; 
 there are, alas ! few among them easy enough in their 
 present position and circumstances to have no desire of 
 change ; and Avhat can be more natural than that men 
 in the lower walks of society should solace themselves, 
 
 22^
 
 258 THE EARL OP ABERDEEN 
 
 amid obscurity and toil, with the well-grounded belief 
 — a belief sanctioned alike by reason and revelation — 
 that they are in no degree an inferior race of creatures to 
 the men set in authority above them; that their minds, 
 in many instances, are of no lower order, and that most 
 certainly their immortal souls are of no lower value? And 
 hence a natural Whiggism, which must ever exist in the 
 lower levels, whether the name exists or no. We are not 
 political in making the remark ; we speak with no refer- 
 ence to party ; we state merely a fact. In this whiggish 
 feeling the politics of the people have their origin. The 
 laboring man snatches at every semblance of reform, for 
 reform promises to better his condition. But the experi- 
 ence of eight years has shown how little mere statesman- 
 ship can do for the masses. The men who labored twelve 
 hours per day before the Reform Bill passed, labor twelve 
 hours still ; taxation does not press less heavily on the 
 poor now than it did then ; nor are the sufferings of the 
 country less, nor has its crime diminished. Goldsmith was 
 quite in the right when he asserted that little of the misery 
 endured by mankind can be cured by either kings or laws. 
 We would be unworthy of freedom were we to assert that 
 there is no diffei-ence between the slave and the freeman, 
 however sunk in poverty the freeman may be. There is a 
 wide difference. The freeman may, and he often does, toil 
 harder, and he may, and he often does, endure more. We 
 ourselves have toiled as hard as any slave in the colonies, 
 and for well-nigh as little — food and raiment. But in 
 the midst of toil and of poverty the mind of the freeman 
 grows, the intellect ripens, and the sentiments expand ; 
 whereas the mind of the slave shrivels and decays. It is 
 chiefly with reference to the better part of man that the 
 poor mechanics and laborers of Scotland are more advan- 
 tageously circumstanced in the present day than the vas- 
 sals of Poland or tlic serfs of Russia. In addressing 
 ourselves to this class — the "men of handicraft and hard 
 labor" — we say it is incomparably of more advantage that
 
 AND THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 259 
 
 yon should have a voice in the nomination of your parish 
 minister, than of the men who represent in Parliament the 
 districts to which you belong. Members of Parliament 
 can do very little for you, and you are noAV beginning to 
 discover that such is the case. Ministers, if truly men of 
 God, can do a great deal. We speak to the experience of 
 such of our humbler countrymen as believe in sincerity the 
 truths Avhich the Scriptures reveal. We say, freedom is 
 valuable to you, not because you fare better in consequence 
 of freedom, nor yet because you toil less : such is not the 
 fact; — yon do not fare better, — you do not toilless: it 
 is valuable to you from the independence of mind which 
 it cherishes. Slavery has meannesses and vices inseparable 
 from it, from which you are exempted ; and your circum- 
 stances, though narrow, need be accompanied by none of 
 that narrowness of intellect almost associated with slavery. 
 And if such be the case, — if your advantages be chiefly 
 advantages of mind, — shall we deem lightly of what 
 relates to the better portion of tlie mind, and which 
 involves its concerns for eternity ? You are not creatures 
 of this world only. The God who, in his great munificence, 
 bestoAved upon you immortal souls, has revealed unto you 
 their priceless value, and the only way, through the blood 
 of a Redeemer, in which your salvation can be secured. 
 And one of the chief means which he has appointed for 
 bringing you into that only Avay is the preaching of his 
 M'ord. Of how much importance is it, then, that the 
 word be faithfully preached to you ! 
 
 Now, under the influence of tlie system espoused by the 
 Earl of Aberdeen, and which his measure has been framed 
 to reestablish, the people need not expect that the gospel 
 will be faithfully preached to them. They have but to 
 remenaber the past, in order to enable them to judge, in 
 this respect, of the future. They have but to look at the 
 class of clergymen by whom his lordship's measure is so 
 zealously advocated, in order to conceive what sort of a 
 Church the body would form of themselves. The ultimate
 
 260 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN 
 
 fote of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill will decide whether 
 the pntrimony of the Church is in reality to constitute, as 
 was originally intended, the patrimony of the people, or 
 whether, for somewhat less than half a generation, and ere 
 it be thrown into the general fund, it is to be appropriated 
 to the support of a corporation of time-serving clergymen, 
 — a class of public stipendiaries of all others the most 
 useless, and which the dictates of a wise economy would 
 select first for suppression, in a course of financial reform. 
 In what degree would Scotland be the better of a thousand 
 empty churches, in which men ignorant of the gospel 
 would, with their lifeless ministrations, desecrate the Sab- 
 bath for hire? It is impossible, in the nature of things, 
 that the ministers of any religious establishment can be 
 merely a harmless race. They must rank among either the 
 benefactors or the enemies of a country ; they must be 
 as blessings or as curses to it. Our Saviour himself has 
 declared that there can be no neutrality where religion is 
 concerned, and that those who are not for him are against 
 him. Nor need we appeal to history to show that the 
 mere priest — the mere creature of patronage, the mere 
 tool of power — has been ever an enemy of the general 
 welfare and of popular improvement. The Church of 
 Scotland must be either a great benefit or a great evil to 
 the people ; it must be — what Knox and the first fathers 
 of the Reformation intended — a dispenser of benefits, 
 moral and intellectual, — a nurse of knowledge, of virtue, 
 and religion ; or it must bear as a nightmare on the ener- 
 gies of the country, until at length the popular indignation 
 gather strength and shake it off. It is well that the people 
 of Scotland should know that these alternatives are in- 
 volved in the adoption or rejection of the Earl of Aber- 
 deen's bill. The future history of the Church cannot 
 resemble its history in the past century. It must inevitably 
 either sink into a lower depth of inefficiency, or rise into a 
 more general and extended usefulness; and it is well that
 
 AND THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 261 
 
 the people of Scotland slionld consider how necessaiy a 
 result this must prove of the fate of his lordship's bill. 
 
 In the last century the two antagonist parties of the 
 Church were spread over her parishes like the wheat and 
 the tares in the one field. An inefficient and time-serving 
 clergy were in many instances the near neighbors of min- 
 isters conscientiously faithful and eminently useful. The 
 policy of our ecclesiastical courts was unequivocally bad, 
 because our majorities were so ; but in many a parish and 
 in many a district were the true objects of the Church 
 accomplished, and the true interests of the people pursued, 
 through the influence of a devout and diligent minority. 
 But there are two causes which must effectually operate in 
 preventing any return to such a state of things in the 
 future. The old Presbyterian 2J^rty in the Cliurch have 
 taught the patrons and the patronage-assertors of Scotland 
 — men such as the Earl of Aberdeen — a lesson which 
 they will not soon forget. They have taught them that so 
 essentially ])opular is Presbyterianisra in its original integ- 
 rity, that it is impossible for it to acquire power without 
 directly militating against the abuse of unrestricted jiat- 
 ronage ; and their influence, therefore, will be exercised in 
 carefully excluding it. What more natural than that for 
 the future the patron should present to the people's hurt, — 
 not to his own? or that he should introduce exclusively 
 into the Church members of the party whose very exist- 
 ence is bound up in patronage, and who, with the instinct 
 of self-preservation, would compass sea and land to preserve 
 it in its unbroken malignity ? But the second cause craves 
 more serious thought, as it regards a more urgent danger. 
 What is to become of our present majority ? England 
 saw two thousand of her Presbyterian clergy ejected from 
 their livings and their churches in one day, and there were 
 several hundreds of surely our best ministers ousted about 
 the same time from the parishes of Scotland. Are our 
 countrymen of the present age prepared for witnessing a 
 similar exercise of power on the part of either the Court
 
 262 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN, ETC. 
 
 of Session or the House of Lords? Are they prepared to 
 give up the men whose sole crime it is that tliey have stood 
 up to assert in the people's behalf, agreeably to our original 
 standards, that no minister be "obtruded into any church 
 contrary to the will of the congregation " ? Are they 
 prepared to give up the Church itself? For what is the 
 Church, apart from its better ministers, but a piece of dead 
 framework of importance to the hirelings who derive from 
 it a provision for themselves and their families, but of no 
 value whatever to the people? Or do they think that our 
 more devout and more excellent clergymen, in the face of 
 their solemn professions, will learn to accommodate their 
 consciences to the provisions of Lord Aberdeen's bill, and 
 proceed forthwith, in union with the Dr. Cooks and Dr. 
 Bryces of the Church, to force the Youngs and Edwardses 
 of Auchterarder and Marnoch on the reclaiming people? 
 Assuredly the poor man's main stake is involved in this 
 quarrel. It would be the duty and the interest of the 
 2)eople of Scotland heartily to oppose his lordship did he 
 merely set himself to rescind the Reform Bill. It has not 
 done much for the poorer people. Legislation can neither 
 lighten their toils, nor make them happier under them; 
 but at least some of the moral eifects of the bill have been 
 good. It has brought public opinion to bear against niany 
 abuses. It brought it to bear on the abolition of the slave- 
 trade, and led to a great act of national justice in the final 
 emancipation of the slave. But were the Earl of Aberdeen 
 to blot the Reform Bill out of the statute-book, he would 
 inflict but a slight and trivial injury on the people of 
 Scotland, compared with the injury which he now con- 
 templates. 
 
 That people possess a power in the present day which 
 they did not possess in the days of Sir George jMackenzie, 
 nor yet in the days of Bolingbroke. We are told that, 
 shortly after the Union, the Scotch representatives found 
 themselves entirely lost among the Commons of England, 
 who opposed them in every national question, in the
 
 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY, ETC. 263 
 
 proportion of nearly ten to one. But they soon discovered 
 a remedy. Tlie English were divided into two great and 
 nearly equally balanced parties ; and though the forty-five 
 Scots formed a very poor minority of themselves, they 
 found that whatever side they chose to range themselves 
 upon became straightway the majority. They discovered 
 that they could adjust the scales, though they could not 
 outweigh even the lightest of them; and they became 
 influential in consequence. Parties in the present day are 
 more equally balanced than they were in the days of Queen 
 Anne ; and it were well for Scotchmen to consider whether 
 it be not their duty to give that prominence to the interests 
 of their country now which their ancestors did a hundred 
 and twenty years ago. Questions of the first magnitude 
 should always have the first place assigned to them ; and 
 it is of immensely more importance to even the Conserva- 
 tive Presbyterians of Scotland that the Earl of Aberdeen's 
 measure should be defeated, than that the Earl of Aberdeen 
 should form the member of a new cabinet. Our contem- 
 porary the Globe has a pertinent remark on the subject: 
 " "We have not a particle of doubt," says this able papei*, 
 "in affirming that the spiritual independence of the Scot- 
 tish Church, and the efiiciency of the will of the Scottish 
 people, are things the fate of which politicians have not 
 to determine, and which determine the fate of politicians." 
 
 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY ON LORD 
 ABERDEEN'S BILL. 
 
 In the debate which Mr. Miller described in the following article, 
 the bill by which Lord Aberdeen had essayed to terminate the 
 agitation in the Church of Scotland fell under the logic and sar- 
 casm of Dr. Cunningham. His lordship saw fit to withdraAV his 
 measure. — Ed.
 
 264 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY 
 
 The present struggle threatens to be a protracted one. 
 But there is no lack of symptoms on the part of both the 
 friends and the opponents of the popular principle,- which 
 indicate the final result. Our readers will find a full report 
 in our columns of the proceedings of the Edinburgh Pres- 
 bytery at its meeting of Wednesday last. The chief busi- 
 ness of the meeting arose out of the present position of the 
 Church in connection with the attempt of the Earl of 
 Aberdeen to convert into law the mischievous absurdities 
 of the Dean of Faculty [Hope] ; and the decision arrived 
 at by the presbytery, by an overpowering majority, and 
 after a discussion of six hours, was to petition Parliament 
 against his lordship's bill, as directly subversive of the 
 spiritual independence of the Church, and wholly at vari- 
 ance with the genius of Presbytery. No report, however 
 litei'al, can convey an adequate idea of a debate so ani- 
 mated and interesting as that which took place on this 
 occasion. There is a vast difference between a series of 
 speeches spread over a few closely-printed columns, and a 
 spirit-stirring u?*ua voce discussion ; but our report must be 
 very defective indeed if it does not convey the impression 
 of strength contending with weakness, and show that there 
 was much feebleness and much timidity on the one side, 
 and much courage and great power on the other. The 
 cause, backed by the decision of our law courts, and by a 
 considerable portion of the wealth and a large proportion 
 of the aristocracy of the country, must ultimately go down, 
 for there is no heart and no strength in it. 
 
 We fain wish we could give our readers at a distance 
 some such idea of the late meeting of 2)resbytery as we 
 ourselves have had an opportunity of forming. The Pres- 
 bytery of Edinburgh is the most ancient in the kingdom. 
 It may be regarded as the nucleus of the Scottish Church. 
 According to Knox, "before that there was any public 
 face of the true religion in this realm, it had pleased God 
 to illuminate the hearts of many private persons, who, 
 straightway quitting the idolatry of Papistry, began to
 
 ON LORD ABERDEEN'S BILL. 265 
 
 assemble themselves together." They elected out of their 
 number good aud judicious men, such as "God by his 
 grace" had best quaUfied for their elders and teachers; and 
 from this small beginning, principally within tlie town of 
 Edinburgh, arose the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. 
 There is nothing to mark the antiquity of the presbytery in 
 the hall in which they assemble. It is a modern erection, 
 lighted from above, with a few portraits suspended on the 
 walls, and a bust or two placed on brackets. There is a 
 gallery for strangers, of limits all too scanty on occasions 
 such as that of Wednesday last, and the members occupy 
 the area below. From a front seat, which we were fortu- 
 nate enough to secure, we could overlook the whole. The 
 parties, instead of being ranged on opposite sides, were 
 mixed up together, and apparently for a very excellent 
 reason — the non-intrusionists were all too numerous, and 
 their opponents too few. The original Presbyterians bid 
 fair to fill all their own house, as at first; and if Mod- 
 eratism insists on retaining its own side, it must proceed 
 forthwith, as in the days of Gillespie, to eject and expel. 
 
 Some of the better known names in the presbytery are 
 borne by men of very striking appearance. Dr. Muir is an 
 eminently handsome man — thin, gentlemanly, dignified, 
 tastefully dressed, with a well-formed head of moderate 
 size, such as a phrenologist would expect to find on the 
 shoulders of a person rather of fine taste than of compre- 
 hensive genius. We would have deemed him quite in his 
 proper place in the Upper House of Parliament, either as 
 a lord spiritual or lay. Dr. Gordon is also a strikingly 
 handsome man, but with a much more remarkable develop- 
 ment of head. It is a head of the Melancthon type, — 
 high, erect, with an overpowering superstructure of senti- 
 ment on a narrow base of propensity, and a forehead rising, 
 as in the case of Shakspeare and Sir Walter Scott, to the 
 top of the coronal region. Combe, in one of his phreno- 
 logical works, give a print of a similar head, and states 
 that among the heads of many thousand criminals which 
 
 28
 
 266 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY 
 
 he has exarainecl, he had in no instance found a resembling 
 development. If, however, the Earl of Aberdeen carry his 
 measure, prisons will be quite the place to find them in, 
 and the phrenologist will require to modify his statement 
 by a note. Among the figures of the younger members of 
 the court, that of Mr. Guthrie is one of the most striking. 
 He is an ei*ect, lathy, muscular man, of rather more than 
 six feet two inches, who would evidently not have been 
 idle at Drumclog, and who, if employed at all, could not 
 be employed other than formidably. Though apparently 
 imder forty, the hair is slightly touched with gray, and 
 the features, though beyond comparison more handsome 
 than those of his ancestor the martyr, bear decidedly 
 a similar cast and expression. The appearance and figure 
 of Mr. Cunningham is scarcely less striking than that 
 of his friend Mr. Guthrie. He is tall, but not so tall, 
 though rather above than below six feet, and powerfully 
 built. His head is apparently of the largest size, — of 
 the nemo me impune lacessit calibre ; and the tempera- 
 ment is of that firm bilious cast which gives to size its 
 fullest effect. 
 
 Mr. Cunningham commenced the debate in a speech of 
 tremendous power. The elements were various: a clear 
 logic, at once severely nice and popular ; an unhesitating 
 readiness of language, select and forcible, and well fitted 
 to express every minuter shade of meaning, but plain, and 
 devoid of figure; above all, an extent of erudition, and an 
 acquaintance with Church history, that, in every instance 
 in which the argument turned on a matter of fact, seemed 
 to render opposition hopeless. But what gave peculiar 
 emphasis to the whole was what we shall venture to term 
 the propelling power of the mind, — that animal energy 
 which seems to act the part of the moving power in the 
 mechanism of intellect, — which gives force to action and 
 depth to the tones of the voice, and impresses the hearer 
 with an idea of immense momentum. There were parts 
 of Mr. Cunningham's speech in which he reminded us of
 
 ON LORD Aberdeen's bill. 267 
 
 Andrew Melville when he put down bishops Barlow and 
 Bancraft, and shook the lawn sleeves of the latter; and 
 we could not help wishing that, by any possibility, circum- 
 stances should be so ordered as to afford him an opportunity 
 of trying conclusions face to face with tlie Earl of Aber- 
 deen. His powers of sarcasm are great, and of a peculiar 
 character. He first places some important fact or argu- 
 ment in so clear a light that there remains no possibility 
 of arriving at more than one conclusion regarding it. He 
 then sets in close juxtaposition to it the absurd inference 
 or crooked misstatement of an antagonist, and bestows 
 upon his ignorance or his absurdity the plain and simple 
 name. White is always white with Mr. Cunningham, and 
 black black, and he finds no shade of gray in either. His 
 confidence in matter of foct, based on an extent of erudi- 
 tion recognized by all, tells with a crippling efiect on his 
 opponents. He referred, during his speech, to the often- 
 repeated sophism denying the non-intrusion of the early 
 reformers — Knox, Calvin, and Beza. What, he asked, do 
 the Earls of Aberdeen and Dalhousie know of the opinions 
 of these men ? This much, and no more. Lord Medwyu 
 inserted in his speech on the Auchterarder case a few 
 partial and garbled extracts from the writings of Calvin 
 and Beza, which, in their broken and unconnected state, 
 seemed to bear a meaning at vai-iance with the principles 
 which the men in reality held. Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, 
 quoted the passages at second-hand, not omitting even the 
 errors of his lordship's printer. The Earls of Dalhousie 
 and Aberdeen quoted them at third-hand from Mr. Robert- 
 son. And such is the entire extent of their lordships' 
 information on the subject, and such the amount of their 
 authority. He then proceeded to show what the views of 
 the reformers on non-intrusion really wei'e ; — that they all 
 held, with the ancient fathers, the doctrine for which the 
 Church is now contending. "There is no member of this 
 presbytery," he added, "who will question the fact." And 
 be was quite in the right ; no member did question it.
 
 268 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY 
 
 He oft'ercd to prove, further, tliat Dr. Muir, on the agitated 
 question, liolds exactly the principles of Cardinal Bellar- 
 mine; and the Doctor took particular care not to demand 
 the proof. 
 
 Mr. Cunningham was followed by the Lord Provost of 
 Edinburgh, — a gentleman who has been a reformer all his 
 life long, and who evidently feels that, in the present strug- 
 gle, he is occupying exactly his old ground. He was 
 listened to with much respect. His remarks were charac- 
 terized by a vein of sound good sense and much gentle- 
 manly feeling. Dr. Muir then rose to express his approba- 
 tion of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. 
 
 How, we asked, when listening to the powerful logic of 
 Mr. Cunningham, will Dr. Muir contrive to find answers to 
 arguments such as these ? We might have spared our- 
 selves the query. Dr. Muir did not attempt finding answers 
 to them. He spoke as if no one had spoken before him. 
 He reiterated all his old assertions, and assured the meeting 
 that he was thoroughly conscientious and quite in earnest. 
 Pascal could mortify his senses by shutting his casement 
 on a delightful prospect. Dr. Muir restrains the reasoning 
 faculty in the same way out of a sense of duty, and eschews 
 argument as a gross temptation. When convicted of an 
 absurdity, he talks of persecution, and clings to an exposed 
 misstatement with the devotedness of a faithful nature 
 true to a friend in distress. He carries on every occasion 
 all his tacts and all his opinions home with him. Nothing 
 adds to their number, — nothing diminishes them ; and 
 when the day of battle comes, he brings them out with him 
 again. His troops fight none the worse for being killed; 
 they rise, all gory, like Falstaff 's opponents, and fight by 
 the hour; his antagonists complain, with Macbeth, that his 
 dead men come to " push them from their stools." 
 
 He was followed by Mr. Penny — a smart gentleman, 
 who is tedious with very marked effect — on the same 
 side, and succeeds, when he is particularly pathetic, in mak- 
 ing; his audience irav. He was liberal in tendering to the
 
 ON LORD Aberdeen's bill. 269 
 
 presbytery the benefit of his law, and generously advised 
 them to submit to the Court of Session, without cherishing 
 the remotest expectation of being paid for liis advice. He 
 excels, too, in divinity. His speech gradually rose into a 
 sermon ; and when he came to the most serious part of it, 
 the gallery laughed. He was succeeded, in reply, by the 
 Rev. Mr. Begg, of Liberton. 
 
 Of all the gentlemen whom the caricaturists have failed 
 in rendering ridiculous, Mr. Begg has escaped best. Some 
 of the others are striking likenesses. There is no likeness 
 in the case of Mr. Begg. There is no exaggeration of fea- 
 ture or figure for the artist to catch, and so he has caught 
 none. He is a young, good-looking man, rather above the 
 middle size, with a well-developed forehead, — frank, vig- 
 orous, and energetic. His brief speech contained one or 
 two pointed hits, which told Avith excellent effect, and a 
 historical statement of much importance in its bearing on 
 the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. 
 
 He was succeeded by the Rev. Mr. M'Farlane. We are 
 admirers of the good sense and poetical feeling, but not of 
 the style, of Plarvey ; whereas the Rev. Mr. M'Farlane 
 seems to admire only his style. He rounds his sentences 
 after the same model, and leaves out only the poetry and 
 the good sense. His flowers are all sun-flowers. Pliny 
 speaks of an orator who used to set his periods to music: 
 we are convinced that, if Mr. M'Farlane were well watched, 
 he would be found modulating his periods by the fall sym- 
 phonies of the Jewsharp. All feel, however, that when 
 delivered in public they want their necessary and original 
 accompaniment; and we think the reverend gentleman 
 should benefit by the hint, A respectable and sensible 
 man, a Seceder, sat beside us. "Ah," he exclaimed, with 
 a groan, " a weak brother ! " The Rev. Mr. Bennie fol- 
 lowed, in a sparkling, witty speech, that at once awakened 
 the gallery, and cost the moderator a considerable amount 
 of trouble. All was extempore : there was not one idea 
 which did not bear reference to some previous remark from 
 
 23*
 
 270 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 
 
 the opposite side, and yet every sentence had the point of 
 an epigram. The labored dulhiesses of an inane and feeble 
 mind have rarely been more pointedly contrasted with the 
 spontaneous felicities of a mind singulai'ly ingenuous and 
 fertile than on this occasion. Drs. Clason and Gordon fol- 
 lowed in addresses, brief, but of great moral weight, and 
 conceived in an admirable spirit; and the whole was 
 wound up by Mr. Cunningham. 
 
 Nothing more tended to the spread of the Reformation 
 than the public disputations between the reformers and 
 their opponents. There was breadth of principle and force 
 of argument on the one side, united to generous feeling and 
 conscious integrity ; and merely sophistry, meanness, mis- 
 statement, and the disreputable shifts of a petty ingenuity, 
 on the other. On every occasion on which they met, the 
 better cause prevailed ; and the people saw and felt that it 
 did. Good argument is always popular argument. If Dr. 
 Muir and his friends really wish well to the people of Scot- 
 land, they could still hold by their peculiar opinions, and 
 yet be of great service to them. All that is necessary is to 
 grant their opponents such opportunities of meeting with 
 them in the various parishes of the country as they afforded 
 them at the meeting of the Edinburgh Presbytery on Wed- 
 nesday last. 
 
 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 
 
 The Moderate and Evangelical parties, differing in their views of 
 Churcli government, differed also, throughout the wliole course of 
 tlu'ir history, in their cast of sentiment touching the religious life. 
 Tiic one, pushing the supernatural element in Christianity gently 
 into the background, and seeking no more, by way of realizing the 
 Christian character, than a general observance of moral precej)t, a 
 polite tranquillity of feeling, and a cultured elegance and propriety, 
 recoiled in timorous suspicion from all religious emotion, sudden in
 
 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 271 
 
 occurrence and transcendent in degree. The other, throwing the 
 supernatural elonient into commanding prominence, explicitly 
 declaring the exertion of Divine and creative energy indispensable 
 in the formation of Christian character, regarded every agitation of 
 the popular mind arising from a religious cause with that deep, 
 reverent, and sj-mpathizing interest which befitted a direct manifes- 
 tation of Divine power. This, like every other distinction between 
 the parties, was vividly apprehended and profoundly understood by 
 Mr. Miller. It is brought out in the following article. " Dr. IMuir's 
 Declaration," to which reference is made, can be easily imagined as 
 a manifesto on the part of certain of the Moderate leaders. — Ed. 
 
 We extract the following interesting notice of one of 
 the recent revivals in Ross-shire, from the Inverness Cou- 
 rier of \Yednesday last. It comes from the pen of a, cor- 
 respondent of that paper, — a person who seems to have 
 witnessed what he describes in no light or irreverent spirit; 
 and Ave have been fovored with several private letters on 
 the subject from the same part of the country, which cor- 
 roborate his statements: 
 
 " The great religious movements which are taking place in various 
 quarters of this county are drawing a large share of attention ; and 
 a short account of what has occurred in the parish of Alness may 
 not be uninteresting to some of your readers. 
 
 " The usual fast-day prej)aratory to the celebration of the Lord's 
 Supper was held on Thursday, the 30th ultimo ; but nothing remark- 
 able Avas observed on that day. The first symptoms of anything like 
 an awakening made their appearance on the Friday evening, when, 
 under the ministrations of that faithful and self-denying servant of 
 God, the Rev. ]\[r. ]\Iacdonald, of Fcrintosh, a considerable number 
 ■were brought under concern, and made to cry out, beneath the 
 stings of an awakened conscience, ' What must we do to be saved? ' 
 During the sermon which completed the duties of the sacramental 
 Sabbath, the movements in the congregation, which had been begun 
 on the Friday evening, were increased to a much greater extent. 
 Then, but more especially on the services of the following day
 
 272 REVIVAL IX ALNESS. 
 
 (Monday), one could not cast his eyos around in any direction 
 among the thousands collected on tlie occasion, without witnessing 
 in almost everj' half dozen of heai-ers one, if not more, deeply 
 moved, — some sobbing audibly; others, evidently by the greatest 
 effort, restraining themselves from bursting out aloud ; while many, 
 utterly unable to command their emotions, gave vent in loud screams 
 to their agonized feelings. Nor was this confined to any age or sex. 
 The young and the aged, the gray -headed man and the child of 
 tender years, might everywhere be observed deeply aifected ; and 
 we conceive we are within the mark when we say, that on this occa- 
 sion many hundreds were brought under serious impressions ; for 
 there is scarcely a family in the district but has one, two, or more of 
 its members under deep convictions. It was truly a heart-stirring 
 sight; and we could wish that those who make a mock of such scenes 
 could have looked upon it. Insensible to every good and holy feel- 
 ing must he have been who could have beheld it with cold indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 '■ When witnessing or hearing of such events, one is irresistibly 
 led to ask. Is this the work of the Spirit of God ? Though time 
 alone can give a perfectly satisfactory answer to this question, yet 
 there are circumstances attending this particular work which tend 
 to show that it is indeed genuine, and not spurious. This revival 
 has followed the means which the word of God teaches to employ. 
 Prayer-meetings have for some time been established through the 
 parish by the faithful and zealous clergyman, Mr. Flyter, who has 
 now had the satisfaction of seeing his labors blessed and his suppli- 
 cations answered. There was nothing in the instrument which could 
 lead us to attribute the result to him. He is well known to all who 
 heard him ; and his style of preaching is as familiar to most of them 
 as is that of their own clergymen ; and he has been often known to 
 proclaim the thunders of Sinai with as much, if not with greater 
 foi'ce, on previous occasions. Indeed, the terrors of the law and 
 the consolations of the gospel were, as they ever ought to be, blended 
 together." 
 
 We passed a few days during the sumniers of the last 
 two years in the scene of the revival. It is a semi-IIigh- 
 land district of considerable extent, bordered by the Frith 
 of Cromarty on the south, and ascending, towar^Is the 
 north, from a richly variegated and comparatively populous
 
 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 273 
 
 level, into a mountninoiis and tliinly-iuhabited tract of 
 country. The whole forms a portion of what hns been 
 termed the land of the Monroes, — a clan described by 
 Buchanan as one of the most warlike in Scotland, and 
 which, unlike most of our Highland clans, embraced, at an 
 eai'ly period, the doctrines of the Reformation. The name 
 has since been widely spread. It gave to Gustavus Adol- 
 phus some of his bravest general officei'S, and to the United 
 States of America one of their best presidents. But though 
 now considerably mixed with other names, through the 
 breaking up of the feudal system, it still abounds in the 
 district. The jjeople in general are a simple, but nol 
 unintelligent race, and warmly attached, through the asso- 
 ciations of nearly three centujies, to the Church of Scot- 
 land. There is a hollow still shown among the hills, where 
 their ancestors used to meet for religious worship during 
 the persecution of Charles II. Their minister of thai 
 period had been amongst the faithful few who, in the 
 northern portion of the kingdom, had chosen rather to 
 quit their livings than outrage their consciences; and, 
 despite the utmost eftbrts of the Bishop of Ross, — as 
 thorough an Erastian as Dr. Bi-yce himself, — he succeeded 
 in finding protection among his people for nearly thirteen 
 years after the term of his ejectment. In the year 1G75, 
 says Wodrow, he celebrated the communion on the bor- 
 ders of his parish, amid an immense concourse; and "so 
 plentiful was the effusion of the Spirit, that the oldesu 
 Christians present never witnessed the like." Among many 
 others, says the historian, one poor man, who had gone to 
 hear him merely out of curiosity, was so affected, that whei. 
 some of his neighbors blamed him for his temerity, and 
 told him that the bishop would punish him for it by taking 
 away his horse and cow, he assured them that in such a 
 cause he was content to lose not merely all his worldly 
 goods, but his head also. Eventually, however, the good 
 minister fell into the hands of his enemies, and, after wear- 
 ing out many years, amid squalor and wretchedness, in a
 
 274 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 
 
 dungeon of the Bass, he wns released but to die — a vic- 
 tim to the cruel hardships to which he had been subjected. 
 The parish at a later period, under the ministry of the 
 author of an admirable Treatise on Justification, well 
 known to theologians (Mr. Fraser, of Alness), was the 
 scene of a second revival. It took place sometime about 
 the middle of the last century ; nor had its effects Avholly 
 disappeared at the time of our last visit. The district had 
 still its race of patriarchal worthies, though every year was 
 lessening their number, for the greater part of them had 
 reached the extreme verge of life. There was, besides, a 
 hereditary respect and reverence among the people in gen- 
 eral for the beliefs and the services of religion. They 
 remembered their fathers — the lives which they had 
 lived, and the hope in which they had died ; and the recol- 
 lection had its legitimate influence. It has been common 
 with skeptics of a low order — men who absurdly borrowed 
 their analogies more from the principles of human juris- 
 prudence than from the inevitable laws of nature — to 
 challenge the great truth of revelation, so often exemplified 
 in the history of nations and of families, that the iniquities 
 of the ancestors are visited on the descendants. And yet 
 ■we see in a thousand instances that, from the very nature 
 of things (another name for the will of Deity), the law 
 must as certainly exist as the law of gravitation itself. 
 The corresponding truth embodied in the same command- 
 ment, that blessings and mercies are conferred on thousands 
 among the posterity of the faithful and the devoted, has 
 been less marked and seldoiner challenged ; but it is, like 
 the other, a truth often confirmed by expei'ience, and in no 
 cases more frequently than in cases of revivals. Where 
 the Divine fire has been kindled of old, it seems ever readi- 
 est, though often after long intervals, to ascend anew ; and 
 the cause, so far as such things can be accounted for on 
 understood principles, seems to be the one just hinted at 
 in the case of the parishioners of Alness. There survive 
 in such localities fond and respectful recollections of the
 
 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 275 
 
 worth of the departed, associated with what we may term 
 a traditional belief in the excellence of Christianity; and 
 thus the mind is kept more open to receive as good what 
 their ancestors proved and testified to be emphatically so. 
 
 We visited Alness, on tlie last occasion, early in the 
 May of 1839, when the excellent clergyman of the parish 
 was on the eve of setting out for the General Assembly. 
 The Auchterarder case had been just decided in the House 
 of Lords, and the present difficulties of the Church were 
 very generally anticipated by the graver parishioners. 
 There was a deep interest excited in this remote district. 
 Dr. M'Crie, in writing of the General Assembly seven 
 years ago, laments the indifference with which its meetings 
 had come to be regarded by the people, compared with 
 the deep interest which their fathers had felt in them. 
 " Where," he asks, " is the general anxiety of the country, 
 and where the fervent supplications for the countenance 
 and direction of Heaven, in the deliberations of the Assem- 
 bly, which were wont to resound from the most distant 
 glens and mountains of Scotland ? " We could have in- 
 stanced at least one district. The "»we/i" of Alness, at 
 the time of our visit, were holding their prayer-meetings 
 in behalf of the Church ; and we need hardly say on 
 which side their minister came to register his vote. Mod- 
 eratism has disturbed the country with its forced settle- 
 ments, but it never yet excited the spleen of a newspaper 
 press by its revivals, and it always flourishes most where 
 there are no prayer-meetings to perplex its operations. 
 
 We perceive the minister of an adjacent parish has 
 affixed his name to Dr. Muir's declaration, — a circumstance 
 which has enabled his parishioners fully to understand it. 
 This gentleman has been now about four and twenty years 
 in the enjoyment of the temporalities of the cure. When 
 obtruded upon the parish, it contained no Dissenters. The 
 people, like their neighbors, were marked by their church- 
 going habits; and the church, a roomy and commodious 
 building, was filled every Sunday from gable to gable.
 
 276 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 
 
 About one per cent, of the parishioners attend it now. 
 Witliin the last few years a meeting-house has sprung up 
 in its neighborhood. Some of the younger people during 
 the time of divine service wander into the fields ; the rest, 
 who have not quitted the Church, travel far to attend the 
 ministrations of the clergymen of other parishes. The 
 whole congregation did not comprise twenty persons when 
 we heard sermon under the intrusionist about a twelve- 
 month ago, and of these nearly one-half had fallen asleep 
 ere the middle of the service. And such, as instanced in 
 Alness and this unfortunate parish, are the comparative 
 merits and comparative popularity of the two parties in 
 the Church. Would Sir Robert Peel and the Earl of 
 Aberdeen deem it a stroke of profound statcmanship to 
 pass a measure which Avould have the effect of ejecting 
 from their charges men such as the minister of Alness, and 
 of setting men such as liis neighbor in their place? And 
 yet there is scarce a Presbyterian in Scotland so ignorant 
 as not to know that such would be the effect of the bill 
 which the one so unwillingly relinquished, and which the 
 other would have supported so readily. 
 
 The Rev. Mr. M'Donald, of Ferintosh, whose labors have 
 been so signally honored in the recent reviA%als in Ross- 
 shire, has been long known and esteemed in that part of 
 the country as one of the soundest and most zealous divines 
 in the Church. How marvellously have times changed 
 within tlie last twenty years ! Little more than that period 
 has elapsed since this gentleman was summoned to tlic l)ar 
 of the General Assembly for |)reaching, in the Strathbogie 
 and Aberdeen districts, exactly the same doctrines which 
 have been rendered so })Owerful to alarm and awaken within 
 the last few months in Tarl)at, Tain, and Alness: He had 
 been guilty of |)reaching the gos))el where, in these days, 
 the gospel was very rarely heard. Dr. Mearns, of Aberdeen, 
 another of Dr. Muir's supporters, took the lead among his 
 assailants ; but, notwithstanding all the energy and zeal 
 of the party, the case unaccountably broke down, and
 
 REVIVAL IX ALNESS. 277 
 
 Mr. McDonald was discharged unharmed. His assailants, 
 however, contrived to legishite on the subject by way of 
 prevention, and embodied their decision in the shajje of 
 a declaration, denouncing it as " irregular and unconsti- 
 tutional for a minister of the Church to perform divine 
 service in the meeting-honse of a Dissenter, or, during 
 his journeys from place to place, in the open air, in other 
 parishes than his own." We find a masterly review of the 
 whole case, by Dr. Andrew Thomson, in the "Christinn 
 Instructor " for 1819; and rarely has irreligion and intol- 
 erance, when masquerading under the forms of an eccle- 
 siastical decision, been more powerfully exposed. The 
 Doctor had to battle in the minority in these days, and to 
 endure many a defeat ; but his labors were not in vain. 
 He did not influence his opponents, for that would have 
 required something more than argument, — something on 
 their part as well as on his, — candor, perhaps, and Christian 
 principle ; but the country listened to him ; and so exten- 
 sive and so marked has been the change, that the very 
 individual whom he then defended against the wrath of 
 the Presbytery of Strathbogie was empowered by the 
 Church last spring to do in that district what he then 
 narrowly escaped being thrust out of the Church for doing. 
 Mr. M'Donald, of Ferintosh, was one of the ministei-s lately 
 deputed by the Commission to preach in Strathbogie. 
 
 There is much comfort in the reflection, that in the time 
 of the Chui'ch's difficulties her adorable Head should be 
 thus manifesting himself in her favor. It will matter little 
 who may be among her enemies if he rank among her 
 friends. The Book of Providence contains many difficult 
 passages; but there are others of which the meaning seems 
 comparatively obvious; and of these not a few refer to 
 periods of revival in the Church. The time of the second 
 Reformation was one of these. The ]iurpose of mercy at 
 that period extended to more than individuals, — it em- 
 braced the entire Church. There was a season of severe 
 and protracted tiial at hand ; and the infusion of new 
 
 24
 
 278 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 
 
 vigor gave earnest that the " strength was to be according 
 to the need," and that she was to survive the struggle, 
 and ultimately to triumph in it. Had she been destined 
 to extinction, her vigor would not have been increased. 
 Another very remarkable period of revival occurred in the 
 west of Scotland shortly after the time of the Secession. 
 The Church had sunk into a state of miserable depression. 
 Her strength seemed passing wholly from her to the body 
 of devout and venerable men whom the high-handed 
 majorities that constituted at once her weakness and her 
 shame had thrust beyond her pale ; her people were joining 
 them in thousands; and it seemed as if the mei'e copwi 
 tnortuum that remained behind could not long continue to 
 exist. The breath of public opinion in less than half an 
 age Avould have acquired strength enough to sweep it 
 away; for, though an Establishment has existed in Ireland 
 without the people for centui-ies, it could not exist in 
 Scotland without them for half a century. The characters 
 of the two nations are essentially different. At this crisis, 
 however, the separation to a considerable degree was staid. 
 The Revival at Cambuslang, Kilsyth, Kirkintilloch, and 
 Muthill, took place. There was thus proof vouchsafed 
 that, though many of God's people had left the Church, 
 God himself had not left it ; and, in consequence, thousands 
 who would have otherwise gone over to the Secession 
 remained in her communion. Chatham, as quoted by 
 Junius, could speak of infusing a new i)ortion of health 
 into the constitution of the country, to enable it to bear 
 its infirmities. There was thus a new portion of health 
 infused into the Church, and she was enabled to bear the 
 infirmities under which she would otherwise have sunk, 
 until a day when, with invigorated powers, she has begun 
 to shake them off. The history of the future can alone 
 read the legitimate comment on the economy of Provi- 
 dence in the present revivals ; but who can doubt that 
 they are tokens of mercy ? They read a lesson to religious 
 Dissenters which they would do well to ponder in connec-
 
 CONSERVATISM OX REVIVALS. 279 
 
 tion with the advice given by Gamaliel to the Jewish 
 Council. If God be for us, assuredly they should not be 
 asrainst us. 
 
 CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 
 
 "Mt friend Smart," said Johnson, " used to show the 
 disturbance of his mind by falling upon his knees and 
 saying his prayers in the street. He was deemed mad, 
 sir ; and yet, rationally speaking, it is much greater mad- 
 ness not to pray at all, than to pray as poor Smart did; 
 though I am afraid there are so many who do not pray, 
 that, through the generality of the neglect, people never 
 think of calling their understandings in question." Now, 
 what was strong sound sense in the days of Johnson is 
 very excellent sense still. If a man look exclusively to 
 the approbation of his neighbors, it is very unsafe for him 
 to deviate from the ordinary course, and quite as much so 
 to rise above the common level of conduct as to sink 
 beneath it. There is a mediocrity of virtue which it is 
 dangerous to exceed, and a subdued style of religion, 
 "content to dwell in decencies forever," to which men 
 who are often loudest in their praise of toleration extend 
 their tolerance exclusively. The Judaism of Gamaliel 
 would have been esteemed by this class as the well-regu- 
 lated religion of a man of sense ; the overpowering con- 
 victions of Paul, after his journey to Damascus, they would 
 have denounced as fanaticism. They deem the form of 
 Christianity which can exist independently of conversion a 
 much better thing than the Christianity which conversion 
 must precede ; and regard the man whom the sense of an 
 awful futurity never moved as a wiser person than the 
 man whom it moves so dee])Iy that he proves unable to 
 conceal his feelings. 
 
 Now, to the unrecked madness of this class — the class 
 whose numljer, according to Johnson, prevents peojjle from
 
 -SSO CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 
 
 calling tlioii- understandings in question — does the recent 
 work of revival in Scotland owe the opposition which it 
 has received, and the contumely which has been heaped 
 upon it. The myriads of which the chassis composed have 
 been startled from their propriety by discovering that the 
 principle which was potent enough to overpower the jailer 
 of old, and to compel him to cry aloud in anguish and 
 uncertainty, should have lost none of its energy since, and 
 that it operates on the human mind now after exactly the 
 same fishion that it operated then. An attenuated and 
 shrivelled form of Christianity had become one of the 
 decencies of society, and men took praise to themselves 
 for treating it with good manners. Ileligion had sunk 
 into a respectable mediocrit)^ and had become, therefore, a 
 fit subject for being not only tolerated, but recommended, 
 by the class who would have extended neither recommen- 
 dation nor tolerance to its Author. We remarked on a 
 former occasion that the natural principle of admiring or 
 enduring only the mediocrity of virtue was exemplified on 
 Calvary with a peculiar force and emphasis, of which the 
 history of the universe can afford no other instance, by 
 showing that it was as fatal to rise infinitely above as to 
 sink greatly below the medium and average line. The 
 world could tolerate neither our Saviour nor the two 
 thieves, and it therefore crucified both him and them. 
 And Christianity in Scotland no sooner begins to resemble 
 its Master, than the men who tolerated, and even admired 
 it in its state of tame and inefficient mediocrity, turn round 
 to spit and revile, and, in short, to treat it exactly as they 
 would have treated Him. We speak, of course, of only 
 its more respectable enemies, the mediocritists, — the men 
 who, though they would have crucified our Saviour, would 
 have crucified the thieves also. We do not speak of the 
 men who, like some of our contemporaries, would have 
 accomplished only half the work, by suffering the malefac- 
 tors to esca])e. 
 
 Among the more respectable class we rank a Liverpool
 
 CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 281 
 
 conservative journal, to which our attention has just been 
 called, — a strenuous advocate of Protestantism in Ireland, 
 and of Church extension on the Episcopalian basis. This 
 paper collects its facts from the Aberdeen Herald, and 
 decides unhesitatingly, on the evidence furnished, that the 
 " proceedings" at Rosskeen must have been at least " un- 
 seemly, if not blasphemous;" and expresses a wish that 
 the leaders in the Church should exert themselves " to 
 prevent, or at least restrain, such outbreakings of ignorant 
 fanaticism." Now, with the Aberdeen Herald we have no 
 controversy. "We believe the ingenious editor advocates 
 the substitution of a knowledge qualification for the exist- 
 ing property qualification, — unquestionably in the sincere 
 and honest hope of furnishing the country with a more 
 liberal and efficient constituency. We understand, too, 
 that he excludes all religious knowledge from his scheme, 
 in the natural and not very blamable fear of being 
 himself deprived of the franchise through the exercise of 
 his own test. Some of the remarks of the Liverpool con- 
 servative, however, we shall take the liberty of examining : 
 
 " We cherish the most sincere regard for the Church of Scotland, 
 and wish to see her shine in the pure and chastening light of other 
 and worthier days ; but it is impossible to witness such proceedings 
 without experiencing feelings of the deepest regret and alarm. We 
 should not perliaps have noticed this affair at Rosskeen at all, had 
 we not been aware that any apology founded upon the obscurity of 
 the place cannot be offered or pleaded by the Church ; for it is 
 not many months since our attention Avas drawn to similar scenes in 
 the vicinity of Glasgow, which several otherwise estimable clergy- 
 men of the Establishment endeavored to justify. We allude to the 
 fanatical follies perpetrated at Kilsyth, and defended by the Rev. 
 Mr. Burns and other ministers, who ought to know better, and 
 entertain more elevated views of religion." 
 
 Now, this ])assage was written by a gentleman Avho pro- 
 fesses to believe in the thirty-nine articles, who denounces 
 the anti-scrii^tural policy of the present ministry, depre- 
 
 21*
 
 282 CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 
 
 cates the spread of Popery, laments over the decline of 
 Protestantism in Ireland, and advocates the extension of 
 the English Church. It is fraught with instruction. It is 
 because the conservatives who can think and write in this 
 manner are so numerous that the party are so inefficient, 
 and that they so utterly belie their name. Why is it that 
 Protestantism in the Episcopalian Church of Ireland should 
 have seen, during a century and a half, the Roman Catho- 
 lic population of the country doubling and quadrupling 
 around it, Avithout any corresponding increase in the 
 limited number of its own adherents, — that, in brief, on 
 this uidiappy arena practical error should have proved a 
 stronger principle than ostensible and theoretic truth ? 
 Simply because the practical error had a principle of 
 vitality in it, — that it was a vigorous and powerful super- 
 stition, — and that the nominal fiith opposed to it wanted 
 life and vigor. Dead forms of truth cannot contend with 
 living principles, be the principles as base or erroneous 
 as they may. Living Socialism is an overmatch for dead 
 Christianity. Now, one of the grand errors of what we 
 have termed the mediocritists in religion — a class that 
 still hold nineteen-twentieths of the patronages of the 
 Church, and who have long overlaid its energies both in 
 England and our own country — arises from their igno- 
 rance of this imj^ortant, though surely simple, fact. They 
 established a dead Protestantism in Ireland, and yet cal- 
 culated on its strength as living truth. They patronized 
 an inefficient Moderatism in Scotland as a rational and 
 modified form of Cliristianity, and held that, as it was in 
 the main a very excellent and sensible thing, with no fanati- 
 cism in it, the masses would straightway submit their pas- 
 sions to its government. And now, a numerous body of 
 tlie same class, though with, we trust, a mixture of good 
 and wise men among tliem, are employed in extending their 
 Church — tinisling, doubtless, tlirough a religion which es- 
 chews i-eviv:ils, to absorb dissent and annihilate Chartism. 
 Would that they were more intimately acquainted with
 
 CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 288 
 
 the laws which regulate antagonist forces, and knew better 
 how to calculate on their respective degrees of power! 
 There is more strength in Chartism alone, weak and dis- 
 reputable as it is, than in all the modified Christianity in 
 England that scoffs at revivals. The man who writes as 
 above of the work of revival in Ross-shire, — a Avork in 
 which Episcopalians such as John Newton and Thomas 
 Scott, or Archbishops Usher and Leighton, would have 
 rejoiced to join, — can write as follows, and in the same 
 column, of religious education : 
 
 " The Church appears to have thrown off the lethargy which 
 temporizing and undecided legislation had brought upon her, and to 
 have set herself to work, as far at least as this extensive diocese is 
 concerned, for the regeneration of our deluded population, in right 
 good earnest. There can be no doubt whatever on the minds of 
 any persons who have given attention to the subject, that the in- 
 struction of the middle classes on religions principles has been lament- 
 ably neglected, or that dissent and infidelity have labored to sow 
 their tares in ground predisposed to receive and nurture their vicious 
 qualities. To this, in a great measure, may be ascribed the preva- 
 lence, in the present day, of Chartism, Socialism, Radicalism, and 
 the other delusions of which the merely scientifically tutored is so 
 frequently made the victim." 
 
 There is a moral chemistry in the ecclesiastical questions 
 agitated in Scotland in the present day that is fist decom- 
 posing the old elements of party. How completely, for 
 instance, does our first extract neutralize the effect of the 
 second. Dugald Dalgetty was of opinion that "Protes- 
 tantism " was a very respectable watchword when pay was 
 good and quarters comfortable ; but the confession betrayed 
 the mercenary. Now, on a similar principle, the Conser- 
 vative who wishes to render "religious education" an effec- 
 tive watchword for political purposes in Scotland, should 
 avoid sneering at religious revivals. We find our contem- 
 porary mightily prefers the policy of Dr. Bryce in Church 
 matters to the policy of Dr. Chalmers. His idea of religion
 
 284 CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 
 
 seems to be, that it is a principle at once very pliant and 
 very powerful, — a something for the Court of Session to 
 control at will, but able to control everything else, however 
 potent, — a moving power, that, like steam, can overthrow 
 mountains, and yet be turned off by a stop-cock, — a Sam- 
 son, feeble and irresistible b}' turns, that can be bound with 
 green withes at one time, and set loose to rout an embattled 
 host at another. A word in his ear. If the stop-cock be 
 able to turn it off, the mountain will never be levelled by 
 it. If the green withes bind it, the Philistines have noth- 
 ing to fear from it. The religion represented by the 
 Moderatism of Scotland is a principle which would yield 
 readily to the Court of Session ; but there does not exist 
 a single antagonist power to which it would not yield as 
 readily. It is a princij^le destined, not to control, but to 
 be controlled. 
 
 We have oftener than once expressed our thorough 
 confidence in the work of revival in Ross-shire. We are 
 acquainted with the ministers engaged in it, the style and 
 manner of their preaching, and the doctrines which have 
 been rendered effectual in its production ; and we are 
 assured a time is yet coming when many of its present 
 enemies will be content to speak of it in a different tone. 
 There is a numerous class who can more than tolerate 
 religion in its reflection, though they may hate it heartily 
 in its real presence, — who can admire it when it becomes 
 the theme of poetry, or is embodied in a classic literature, 
 but not before, — who deem family worship a very excel- 
 lent thing in the stanzas of the "Cottar's Saturday Night," 
 and Christianity a noble principle in the pages of Cowper. 
 Now, to such men religion appears good in its reflex influ- 
 ences, though not in itself; and to such the scene of the 
 revival will present appearances in the future more in 
 accordance with their taste and fancy than those which it 
 exhibits at jiresent. The effects of a similar revival in the 
 district, which touk place in the early half of the last 
 century, were felt in it for more than eighty years after.
 
 THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 285 
 
 There were few dwellings, however humble, in which, 
 regularly as the day rose and set, family Avorship was not 
 kept; and in the course of an evening walk the voice of 
 psalms might be heard from almost every hamlet. There 
 was a higher tone of morals among the inhabitants than 
 in many localities at least as generally favored ; more 
 content, too, with not less privation ; — no Chartism, no 
 Socialism, no infidelity. The people, in short, were what 
 the statesmen termed a "well-conditioned people." Eifects 
 such as these should render even the utilitarian tolerant 
 of revivals; and why not also the litterateur? They have 
 to wait only a very little. 
 
 THE OUTRAGE AT JNIARNOCH. 
 
 The instalment of Mr. Edwards in the temporalities of 
 Marnoch took place on Thursday last, and proved the 
 occasion of a scene without precedent in the history of 
 the Church of Scotland. On many former occasions have 
 the forms of religion been prostituted to serve very vile 
 purposes. On many occasions has the disguise of profes- 
 sion proved all too flimsy to cover the meanness of the 
 objects which it has been assumed to conceal. But on no 
 former occasion has the jirostitution been equally public, 
 or the utter inadequacy of the disguise rendered palpable 
 in the same degree to a circle equally extensive. To the 
 profanation at Marnoch the eyes of an entire community 
 have been directed, and the consequences which it involves 
 affect the religious interests of a whole kingdom. 
 
 A heavy snow-storm had burst out on the preceding 
 Wednesday ; and on the morning of Thursday the country 
 round Marnoch was deeply enveloped in snow. Huge 
 wreaths of drift had choked up every road and pathway, 
 and the stream Avhich sweeps ])ast the manse and church- 
 yard was toiling, brown and swollen, through the half-
 
 286 THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 
 
 melted accumulations that in some places arched it over 
 from bank to bank, and in others had sunk undermined 
 into the torrent. It was no day for journeying pleasantly, 
 or even safely; but the interest of the people of the neigh- 
 boring parishes had been deeply excited in behalf of their 
 poor neighbors, and hundreds might be seen wending 
 over the heights in all directions in lines of six or eight, — 
 some robust man in each party breaking a way through 
 the snow for the rest. Before eleven o'clock a crowd had 
 gathered round the church, sufficient almost to have filled 
 it twice over. There were individuals present from Keith, 
 from lluntly, from Banff, from Portsoy ; — all the parishes 
 for miles round had sent out their spectators ; and, assur- 
 edly, the spectacle which on that occasion they witnessed 
 will never be effiiced from their memories. Mr. Edwards 
 and his friends arrived before noon ; and, after commencing 
 the business of the day, with singular approi^riateness, by 
 breaking into the manse through a window, they moved 
 on to the church. In a few seconds the building was 
 crowded almost to sulFocation. The parishioners ranged 
 themselves in the body of the edifice; the strangers occu- 
 pied the galleries, and clustered in dense masses outside 
 the windows and doors; a few Edinburgh lawyers were 
 seated in a ])ew in the centre; and — curiously enough — 
 tlie reporter of an Intrusion newspaper in the pulpit. One 
 of the suspended clergymen opened the proceedings by 
 prayer; and the words took the form of an address to 
 Deity, but they were listened to merely as the necessary 
 adjuncts of an act of outrageous injustice and oppression; 
 and. yet, strange as it may seem, the attention of the audi- 
 ence proved all the moi'e deep in consequence of the 
 estimate. Every plirase employed seemed to gather new 
 meaning from its utter inappropriateness ; and, impressed 
 through the force of contrast, the dead commonplaces of a 
 lifeless devotion seemed starting into frightful activity 
 througli tlie influence of a spirit of possession. Wlien tlie 
 form was over, and the gentleman had sat down, an elder
 
 THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 287 
 
 of the parish rose, and demanded of him. for himself and 
 his fellow-parishioners, by what authority he and his breth- 
 ren had met there. Mark the reply ! " By the authority," 
 he said, " of the National Church, and in the name of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ ! " A shudder ran through the meeting. 
 It was again demanded of the suspended clergymen, on 
 the part of the people, in whose name, and in what ca- 
 pacity, they had met there ; and the gentleman who had 
 opened by prayer reiter.ated his assertion, and with similar 
 effect as before. It was demanded of them whether their 
 appearance was sanctioned by the authority of the General 
 Assembly, or made in direct opposition to that authority; 
 and the question met with no reply. The people declined 
 to sist themselves at the bar of what they could not regard 
 as a court either civil or ecclesiastical, and read, by their 
 agent, a solemn protest to that effect, in which, deprecating 
 the great wickedness and tyranny about to be inflicted 
 npon them, and the gross mockery of justice and desecra- 
 tion of religion which its forms involved, they stated that, 
 before a competent and lawful presbytery, they were pre- 
 pared to prove objections to the life, qualifications, and 
 doctrine of the obnoxious presentee, sufficient not only to 
 preclude his admission into the Church, but even to justify 
 his deposition if previously admitted. But what weight 
 could be allowed to statements such as these by men whose 
 very appearance in that place was a trespass? The protest 
 was read ; and the people, gathering up their Bibles from 
 the pews, rose in a body, and quitted the church. There 
 were old gray-headed men among them, who had wor- 
 shipped within its walls for more than half a century, — 
 men, too, in the vigorous prime of manhood, — others just 
 entering on the stage of active life. All rose, and all went 
 away, — many of them in tears. It was the church in 
 which. Sabbath after Sabbath, their fathers had met to 
 worship ; it had formed the centre of many a solemn 
 association, many a sacred attraction ; and they Avere now 
 quitting it forever. Even the "buyers and sellers in the
 
 288 THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH, 
 
 house of God" — the men to whom persecution is business 
 — seemed awed and impressed for the time. "Will they 
 all go ? " they were heard to whisper. Yes, all went ; the 
 pews were emptied from gable to gable. The sacred and 
 the civil may be mixed up and confounded in idea by 
 courts and individuals ; but it has been ordained by God 
 himself that their natures should keep them apart. No 
 secular power on earth can impose a minister on a people. 
 The control of judges and magistrates affect, as in this 
 remarkable case, the temporalities only. The experiment 
 has been tried ; and our readers may see the case of con- 
 flicting jurisdictions virtually decided by the extent and 
 degree to which the Court of Session can give a clergyman 
 to the parishioners of Marnoch. And it is well to remem- 
 ber that to secure a result so disastrous — to verify the 
 same ruinous experiment on an immensely larger scale — 
 has the Earl of Aberdeen been struggling to legislate for 
 the people of Scotland. 
 
 The parishioners, after quitting the church, held a brief 
 but impressive meeting in a hollow at the foot of the hill 
 on which the edifice has been erected. The day was still 
 dreary, and the snow lay thick and white around them. 
 And in that snowy hollow, oppressed by a sense of the 
 grievous outrage to which they had been subjected, but 
 more in grief than in anger, they expressed their settled 
 detei'mination never, by word or act, to recognize as their 
 minister the man to whom the patrimony of their church 
 had been adjudged, and to adhere to one another in all 
 their future efforts for obtaining redress of the wrong; and 
 then, separating in silence, they returned by different routes 
 to their respective homes. The church meanwhile had 
 become a scene of tumult and confusion. The strangers 
 outside had rushed into the body of the building when the 
 parishionei's had quitted it, and had begim to express their 
 sense of the sacredness of the service by shouts and hisses, 
 and the flinging of missiles. Assuredly the secular party 
 may read liicir future fortunes in the incident, sliould the
 
 THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 289 
 
 same wretched success attend them in the present struggle 
 on a large scale that has attended them in the parish of 
 Marnoch. Miserable, in such an event, would their fiite 
 prove : the sui-ges of popular indignation would rise and 
 overwhelm them ; and who, among the millions of the em- 
 pire, would raise an arm in their defence? A magistrate 
 entered the church in the midst of the tutnult, — a man 
 much respected in the district, — and succeeded in restoring 
 order. He had no sympathy Avith the representatives of 
 the civil court in the profanation in which they were en- 
 gaged. No one could be more hostile to the settlement of 
 Edwards; and hence, in no small degree, through his influ- 
 ence with the people on that account, his ability of protect- 
 ing the miserable objects of their hatred and contempt. 
 An incident at this stage brought out very strikingly how 
 entirely the parishioners had left the church. An individ- 
 ual present complained to the magistrate, who is himself a 
 parishioner, that the Marnoch people had taken as active a 
 part in the riot as any of the rest. He was asked, in turn, 
 where these Marnoch people were, and succeeded in point- 
 ing out a young man in one of the galleries, — the only 
 parishioner present, — who stated, when questioned, that he 
 had taken no part whatever in the disturbance, and was 
 only there because he could not get out through the crowd. 
 There was a passage immediately cleared for him ; and 
 thus, ere the actual work of intrusion began, the last parish- 
 ioner present was enabled to leave the church. 
 
 In these circumstances the ordination proceeded. The 
 bellman of a neighboring parish ofliciated as j^recentor; 
 there were prayers repeated, in which God was named, 
 that the stipend of Marnoch might be appropriated to the 
 support of Edwards; and the ])reacher argued, in his dis- 
 course, that the men through whose agency he was thrust 
 upon the people should be accounted ministers of Christ! 
 Never, surely, on any former occasion, did arguments tell 
 with more wretched effect. Ministers of Christ ! It was 
 unnecessary to ask from whom they had derived their 
 
 25
 
 290 THE OUTRAGE AT MARNOCH. 
 
 authority ; the business of the day read a too unequivocal 
 comment on the question, and answered it too surely. Mr. 
 Edwards stood up in that crowded assembly. He declared, 
 with all the solemnity of an oath, that he would subject 
 himself to the superior judicatories of the Church, and 
 seek earnestly to maintain her unity and peace, whatsoever 
 troubles or persecutions might arise. He affirmed, in the 
 hearing of all, that zeal for the honor of God, love to Jesus 
 Christ, and desire of saving souls, had been his great 
 motives and chief inducements to enter into the functions 
 of the holy ministry, and not worldly designs or interests 
 of any kind. He asserted that he had used no undue meth- 
 ods, either of himself or through others, in procuring .his 
 call to the jiarish. What call? He promised, too, that, 
 through Divine grace, he would perform among the people 
 all the duties of a fliithful minister of the gospel. Every 
 eye was turned upon him, and there was no longer any dis- 
 position evinced to hiss or hoot. Even the more volatile 
 portion of the audience were tamed into sobriety and seri- 
 ousness for the time. A deep shudder again ran through the 
 assembly. The mummery proceeded. There were hands 
 laid upon his head ; and he became a minister of Christ in 
 the sense understood by the men through whom his voca- 
 tion was conferred. It is customary for an acceptable min- 
 ister on such occasions to receive the hearty welcome of 
 his people at one of the doors of the church. But no such 
 welcome awaited on Mr. Edwards. Mr. Peterkin, of Edin- 
 burgh, the legal agent of the suspended clergy, wished him 
 much joy ; Mr. Robertson, of the Aberdeen Constitutional, 
 and Mr. Adam, of the Aberdeen Herald, shook hands with 
 him as they hurried past to assert the popularity of Intru- 
 sion ; a captain of police in attendance took his arm to 
 escort him through the crowd ; and, as he turned his back 
 on the desecrated edifice, the assembled hundreds hissed 
 him from the door. And such arc the more striking partic- 
 ulars of an event destined to occupy a prominent place in 
 the history of the Church of Scotland.
 
 THE OUTKAGE AT MAENOCH. 291 
 
 It is unnecessary to offer a single remark on the subject. 
 The lessons which it inculcates almost every one may read. 
 Religion is the business of time for eternity ; and without 
 an all-pervading conviction of its importance, and a deep- 
 seated belief in the reality of its objects, life passes un- 
 blessed by its influences, and death conies uncheered by its 
 hopes. It comprises the arts of living well and of dying 
 safely ; and it lives and bi'eathes in an element of faith. 
 But not only must there be an all-pervading belief in its 
 objects, but also in the honesty, sincerity, spirituality of its 
 messengers. They must be regarded as sent ; and it is with 
 this vital element of belief that the civil or the secular 
 cannot interfere. Where is there a power on earth that 
 can inspire the people of Marnoch with confidence in the 
 character of the man who must henceforth walk in shame 
 and dishonor among them, and bear, as if in scorn, the 
 name of their pastor ? Through what form or process are 
 the dying to be led to long for his presence at their bed- 
 sides, or to wish for an interest in his prayers'? Through 
 what influences are men awakened to anxiety for their 
 spiritual state to be brought to ask counsel or guidance of 
 him ? Can the civil court stretch out its arm in the mat- 
 ter, and be as God between this man and the people ? It 
 has already done its utmost, and the deplorable scene of 
 Thursday last has been the result. The country, we reit- 
 erate, may see in the case of Marnoch the true power of 
 the Court of Session in the spiritual field. It may see, 
 besides, the fate which awaits the Christian people and the 
 National Church, if the secular element prevail in this 
 eventful and surely most important struggle.
 
 292 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES OF THE 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES OF THE SETTLEMENT AT 
 MARNOCH. 
 
 Chesterfield has exemplified his ideas of indecency 
 somewhat whimsically, by remarking that, though there 
 may be nothing improper in dancing in a ball-room, it 
 would be decidedly indecent to dance at church. He was 
 in the right at least in referring to the church for the illus- 
 tration. What would pass without remark in a place less 
 solemn becomes coarse and indecent there. What would 
 be siniply business in a lawyer's office strikes as a gross 
 impertinence in the house of prayer ; and an air which 
 might grace the jockeyism of Newmarket, would shock, 
 when exhibited in the pulpit or the elder's pew, as impious 
 and profane. The appearance of some of the suspended 
 clergymen on the morning of the settlement seems to have 
 happily exemplified the remark of Chesterfield. None of 
 our readers can have forgotten the striking picture drawn 
 by Chalmers of the " coarse and contemptuous clergymen, 
 booted and spurred for riding commissions," who assisted 
 in perpetrating the forced settlements of the last century, 
 — men «ow gone down to dishonored graves, whose mem- 
 ories rot unburied in the recollection of the country, and 
 whom even their successors in principle and policy deem 
 it prudent to denounce and disown. Archbishop Beaton 
 in his steel harness was comparatively respectable : he was 
 a bold, though not an honest man. The booted and 
 sjDurred clergymen drawn by Chalmers Avere as despicable 
 as they were wicked. Now, it is curious to observe how 
 closely the perpetrators of the forced settlement at Mar- 
 noch resembled, in externals at least, the abettors of forced 
 settlements in the last age. They entered the church 
 apparently in high spirits, — one dangling a thick, short 
 riding-whip, another sporting a stout stick, excellently fit- 
 ted for a market brawl. All had the air of men wonder-
 
 SETTLEMENT AT MARNOCH. 293 
 
 fully well pleased, and quite aware that they were on the 
 eve of doing something clever. Whips and sticks were 
 laid on the pew before them, intermixed in grotesque con- 
 fusion with sparsely written documents tied up in tape — 
 decisions of court and opinions of counsel. Bibles some- 
 how they seemed to have forgotten, or, perhaps, rather left 
 designedly behind them, as mere bundles of ex parte docu- 
 ments on the other side. And there they sat, all looking 
 smart, and waiting very knowingly till the pcoi)le should 
 sist themselves at their bar. Among them was Mr. Ed- 
 wards, encircled by gentlemen of the law who hold by the 
 theology of the Court of Session, and kindly regarded, 
 too, by gentlemen of the j^i'ess chiefly remarkable for 
 holding by no theology at all. Like the young man sent by 
 the sons of Eli with a flesh-fork to desecrate the sacrifice 
 of the people, and to make men "abhor the offering of the 
 Lord," he had come to take by force what without force the 
 people would never have yielded him. The business of the 
 morning went on. During the reading of the solemn and 
 well-judged protest of the congregation, there were nods, 
 and Avinks, and half-suppressed chuckles, among the party. 
 The joke was by no means apparent. A man thoroughly 
 convinced that the hundreds around him had all been born 
 to immortality, and had all souls to be lost or saved, could 
 hardly afford being merry on any such occasion ; but it 
 was certainly no conviction of the importance of man's 
 destiny that had brought the party there. As for the 
 joke, all our readers know that to occupy the chair of the 
 scorner requires neither the perception of wit nor the 
 peculiar inventive power in which wit originates. Men of 
 wonderfully little sense or humor can sneer and make 
 merry at whatever involves eternal interests, or concerns 
 the cause of God. 
 
 Their merriment, however, received a check. A man 
 may repeat a lie, it has been said, until at last he actually 
 brings himself to believe it. Now, among the Intrusion- 
 ists present there were not a few who had done more in
 
 294 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES OF THE 
 
 the cause than barely work for their fee by drawing up 
 papers and making sjieeches, — men who had busied them- 
 selves, into the bargain, in asserting in ne\vsj)apers and 
 magazines the popularity of their principles, and that the 
 movement in the country was confined almost exclusively 
 to a few clerical agitators. When, however, the people 
 rose and left the church in a body, they were undeceived, 
 and looked somewhat crest-fillen. Mr. Peterkin found 
 that the author who writes Colwnns for the Kirk in the 
 Observer had deceived him. Another legal gentleman 
 present began to discover that he had been not a little 
 misled by the statements in " Blackwood." The people 
 are of some importance, after all ; and we question whether 
 a thousand Court-of-Session Mr. Edwardses, in the thou- 
 sand manses of Scotland, would compose a Church that 
 would come quite up to the idea of even the Lord President, 
 or whether he would deem the body and members in such 
 a case more than woithy of their secular and only head. 
 The jieople all went away : the Intrusionists remained 
 behind, chop-fallen and blank. The fate of the Earl of 
 Aberdeen's intended measure was sealed by that act. His 
 lordship has read it aright. It has taught him that there 
 are things which lie beyond the reach of diplomacy; that 
 he has misrepresented and calumniated the best and most 
 revered men of his country to little purpose ; and that it 
 is one thing to lend a ditninished and still sinking influence 
 to the party under whose sway religion has ever sickened 
 and ])ined away, and quite another to legislate for the peo- 
 ple of St'otland, The tumult began, and the fears of the 
 Intrusionists seem to have been very marked and very 
 edifying. The disturbers are represented as merely a few 
 thoughtless lads in the gallery, who took, unwarrantably 
 enough, to the flinging of snow-pellets and the making of 
 noises. Men of fortitude have borne as much without 
 wincing; and the men of the court had brought both 
 whijjs and sticks with them, on the principle, apparently, 
 that made the Copper Captain gird himself with a long
 
 SETTLEMENT AT.MARNOCH. 295 
 
 sword ; but, too meek to fight, and not quite prepared for 
 martyrdom, they sat cowering and shivering in the pew, 
 staring at one another with pale and piteous faces, miser- 
 ably afraid to remain where they were, but by far too 
 frightened to rise and go away. The missiles fiew thick 
 and fast. The editor of the Constitutional seems to have 
 taken a snowball, in his iuiminent terror, for a piece of 
 flying seat; and a bit of a wandering cigar, which, if it 
 came lighted, must have very much resembled a bomb- 
 shell, seems to have struck utter astonishment to the inmost 
 soul of the editor of the Herald. Both gentlemen, with 
 the rest of the party, doubtless wished themselves at home. 
 The noises continued, enlivened by an occasional snow- 
 ball ; business stuck fast, — so did the Intrusionists ; and, 
 as the aftei'uoon began to close in, a shade of deeper anxi- 
 ety and terror lengthened their faces, as they surmised 
 the possibility of being left in the dark to the tender mer- 
 cies of the urchins in the gallery. We are no advocates 
 of violence or outrage ; but we justify neither when we 
 remark, that the party may estimate the weight of their 
 religious character, and the degree of moral force which 
 they possess, from this event. They but experienced the 
 reflex influence of their own character coming back to 
 them from the people. Our former remarks on this part 
 of the subject have, we are happy to find, given great 
 offence to the Aberdeen Herald, which has ])roduced an 
 article on the subject, chiefly remarkable — and we are 
 serious when we say so — for the editor thanking God, 
 Johnson expressed his pleasure on one occasion that his 
 publisher should have grace enough to thank God for any- 
 thing. We are far from sure in this case, however, that 
 the unluip])y northern editor, instead of breathing a prayer, 
 is not mouthing an oath. 
 
 To |)roceed. Hope was well-nigji gone from the party, 
 when a magistrate and an officer of j)orice a])pearCd. The 
 snowballs and the noises ceased, Mr, Walker, of Huntly, 
 who had borne up wonderfully in the time of terror, grew
 
 296 SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES OF THE 
 
 nervous nt the siuldcn reverse ; and forgetting, in his con- 
 fusion of idea, that he was tlie Court of Session's minister, 
 began to issue orders to the magistrate, instead of Avaiting 
 to receive orders from him. His advisers, however, soon 
 set him right. The magistrate, well knowing his place 
 and his new powers, dictated to the officiating clergyman 
 the length of his sermon ; and he also, knowing his place, 
 made it as short as he was bidden. There were some very 
 remarkable jjassages in the discourse. It was seriously 
 stated by the clergyman that the obnoxious presentee had 
 "long set his heart on becoming minister of the parish; 
 that the firmness with which he had ])ursued his object 
 jjlainly showed him to be a man who could be daunted by 
 no common difficulties, or turned aside by no considera- 
 tions of labor or anxiety;" and that the "same firmness, 
 perseverance, and zeal," which in this instance had ren- 
 dered his aim successful, would now be directed in fur- 
 thering, through extraordinary exertion, the spiritual inter- 
 ests of the people. It must be confessed the argument is 
 singularly wide in its scope. If there be aught of solidity 
 in it, then has the Church most to hope from her bitterest, 
 keenest, most inveterate enemies. What may not Chris- 
 tianity owe to the activity of Robert Owen, or the zeal of 
 the Jesuits? There must have been much of good to 
 expect, on this [iriitciple, from the infidelity which in 
 Paine, Hume, and Voltaire, so ])owerfully assailed religion 
 Avith the pen. There must have been as much to expect 
 from the Bonners, Beatons, Claverhouses, that pursued her 
 with fire and the sword. Nay, if we are to ground our 
 hopes exclusively on qualities such as firmness, persever- 
 ance, activity, and zeal, without taking into account the 
 objects which they are exerted to secure, where shall we 
 find created being more hopeful than that terrible Spirit 
 of untiring energy, who, devoid of hope, defeated, miser- 
 able, and oj)cn to the eye of Omnii)otence, never once 
 slacks in his zeal or relinquishes his purpose ? Another 
 passage of the gentleman's discourse was more striking
 
 SETTLEMENT AT MARNOCH. 297 
 
 Still. He alluded to the guilt of pastors who warn not the 
 people. "The minister," he said, " who neglecteth to do 
 this is not the people's pastor, but a hireling^ loho careth 
 not for the flock, but for the wages, — who scatters the 
 flock, and drives them away from the fold ; and great is 
 his guilt, and great will be his condemnation. He is an 
 unjust steward; and woe will be to such a pastor." What 
 wonder that the audience should have shuddered to hear 
 truths so solemn delivered in circumstances that read upon 
 them so striking a comment! The preacher finished his 
 discourse ; ami, coming down from the pulpit, heard Mr. 
 Edwards take upon him vows of equal solemnity, and then 
 constituted him minister to Peter Taylor of Foggie-loan. 
 
 The parish of Marnoch is one of the most populous 
 country parishes in the north of Scotland. The [)arish- 
 ioners are a sober and industrious race of people, who have 
 hitherto led quiet and peaceable lives, undisturbed by 
 political agitation. But they are far from being an igno- 
 rant or unintelligent race. They partake largeh', on the 
 contrary, iii the characteristic shrewdness of their better 
 countrymen, and share deeply in the old Scottish predilec- 
 tion for theological study. Of one theological work no 
 fewer than sixty copies have been sold in the parish ; a 
 Sabbath-school library, lately established among them, 
 already contains two hundred and fifty volumes ; and so 
 deeply are they interested in the cause of the Church, that 
 petitions in her behalf, asserting her spiritual independence, 
 have received five hundred signatures among them in the 
 course of a single day. There are men in the ])arish who 
 have missed scarce a meeting of presbytery or synod since 
 the proceedings which have obtruded Edwards u])on them 
 began, — one tradesman, in particular, whose interest in 
 the case had led him to travel, mostly on foot, from church 
 court to church court, not less than a thousand miles. 
 And those jieople, under the reign of Moderatism, would 
 have been lost to the Church. But Ave live in a better 
 time. The ^iwWv nml follv of forced settlements attach no
 
 298 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1811. 
 
 longei* to our ecclesiastical courts. The minion of the 
 Court of Session may fotten on the temporalities of Mar- 
 noch, but he forms no part of the Church of Scotland. It 
 is he, not the people, Avho is severed from her communion. 
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 PART FIRST. OPENING OF THE ASSEMBLY. 
 
 The General Assembly of the Church commenced its 
 sittings on Thursday last. Perhaps on no former occasion 
 was the preliminary jiageant marked by a degree of splen- 
 dor equally great. Royalty put on all its robes in the 
 person of its representative, and summoned together all 
 its attendants. The civic magistrate was there with his 
 mace, the soldier with his sword ; there was much show 
 and glitter, — pages, and lackeys, and guards, and along 
 line of coaches, — antique insignia, that the same mental 
 faculty to which we owe the metaphor and the allegory 
 had devised ages ago, to symbolize the functions and 
 authority of office ; robes and liveries of uncouth splendor, 
 — heirlooms of the same early period, and whose fantastic 
 gayety, like the richly-tinted lichens of some ancient 
 obelisk or mighty oak, seemed indicative of the vast an- 
 tiquity of the institutions to which they had so long been 
 attached ; above all, immense multitudes of spectators 
 thronging the streets far as the eye could reach, and which, 
 forming of themselves by far the most imposing part of 
 the spectacle, served also to show that the love of such 
 pageantries lies all too firmly imbedded in man's nature for 
 the utilitarian or the economist to dislodge or eradicate. 
 Such were the comi)onents of the ])ageant; and the nat- 
 ural effect of the whole was to lead men's minds into the 
 ]):ist. It was scarce possible to cast the eye along the 
 glittering linei of bayonets stretching away in long per-
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GEXEKAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 299 
 
 spective, or to mark the flasliing sabres of the dragoons, 
 without calling to recollection that both had been far 
 differently employed for more than a century, and that 
 Presbyterianism is now the established religion of Scot- 
 land, not because the state preferred it, but because, in 
 opposition to kings and courts, backed by the civil magis- 
 trate and the military, the people preferred it, and held by 
 it in distress and persecution, until at length, in the good 
 providence of God, the oppressors Avere removed from 
 their high ])laces, to Avear out life in beggary and exile, 
 and what was so emphatically the national religion became 
 perforce the recognized religion of the state. The mind 
 wandered from the pageant of Thursday, with all its liveried 
 pomp and solemn glitter, to a scene of lonely heaths, where, 
 amid the graves of their slaughtered kindred, a persecuted 
 people worshipped God agreeably to the dictates of con- 
 science enlightened by his word, and where the mountain 
 echoes, ever and anon awakened by shouts of mingled 
 rage and exultation, or the patter of the deadly musket, 
 told too surely that the murderous men-hunters were 
 abroad. 
 
 The tone of the Assembly, as indicated by its first meet- 
 ing, gave evidence that the privileges purchased at so 
 mighty a cost by the ancestors will not readily be relin- 
 quished by their descendants. It is difficult to catch the 
 traits of expression — if we may so speak — of a great 
 assemblage animated by some powerful feeling. The pre- 
 liminary pageant outside, like the fringe or the foldings of 
 a robe, presented a comparatively easy sul)ject for the 
 pencil; one could have cut a model of it out of tin or 
 pasteboard. The expression of the meeting witliin — 
 resembling rather the features animated by the mind — 
 can be less adequately described. Nothing, however, could 
 be more obvious than what the expression conveyed. It 
 bore, in all its traits, the stamp of earnestness and deep 
 interest. The densely occupied galleries, with their " over- 
 bellying crowds," and where scarce an additionul spectator
 
 800 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 could have found standing-room; the fixity of posture, 
 with the general movement at every pause, both so indica- 
 tive of fixity of attention; the universal "hush, hush," 
 when the slightest noise in some over-crowded corner 
 threatened to rob the audience of but a fragment of the 
 debate; the oneness of direction in every face; the 
 forward attitude ; the hand raised to the car, — all served 
 to show liow tlioroughly men are beginning to appreciate 
 the importance of our great ecclesiastical struggle. The 
 well-filled area, too, thronged at so early a stage by well- 
 nigh all the members of Assembly ; the jealous and 
 watchful care evinced at every step of the proceedings, 
 lest a single hair's breadth should be inadvertently yielded 
 up; the uncompromising character of the majority, grow- 
 ing in numbers and stern resolution as the opposition in 
 high places thickens and darkens over them ; the excite- 
 ment, increasing as the debate proceeds, until at length the 
 interest grows all too painful, and the hour of dismissal 
 comes as a felt relief to even the most eager, — such were 
 some of the more strongly-marked circumstances indicative 
 of the temper of the Assembly, and by far too prominent 
 to escape the notice of even the least observant. It is a 
 significant fact that, in its first vote, — a vote involving 
 the main principles of the contest in their most prac- 
 tical form, — the Assembly should have declared its de- 
 termined adherence to its principles by a majority of two 
 hundred and fifteen to a minority of eighty-five; for such, 
 in the division pressed on Thursday, has been the over- 
 pow^ering majority against the motion of Dr. Cook that 
 the commissions from what he termed the minority of 
 the Presbytery of Strathbogie should not be received. 
 We may remark in the passing that the negative character 
 of his motion — the unwillingness it implied of presenting 
 in a positive form the claims of the deposed — is not 
 without its meaning. When the wild beast droops the 
 eye it meditates a retreat ; and there is evidently a 
 drooping c^ the eye here. The intense interest felt in the
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 301 
 
 proceedings of this Assembly — an interest whicli, for the 
 present at least, seems to swallow np the consideration of 
 all other concerns — bears reference, doubtless, to the 
 important struggle in which the Church is engaged, and 
 on the issue of Avhich so much depends ; but we cannot 
 aA'oid the conclusion that there is another important cause 
 in operation. The skeleton Assemblies of half a century 
 ago — Assemblies composed of mere handfuls of members, 
 and which but Iialf excited the half-fledged curiosity of a 
 few listless idlers, who came to yawn in the galleries, or 
 to mark peculiarities of elocution or diversities of style — 
 owed their unpopularity, not exclusively to the essentially 
 unpopular character of Moderatism, but also to the skepti- 
 cism of the age. A wide-spread indifferency affected all 
 the churches of Europe. The desires and wishes of men 
 restricted to the present scene of things expatiated so ex- 
 clusively in the political field, — a miserable Eden, surely, 
 possessed of no tree of life, and into which death and sin 
 had entered, — that they sought none other; and, save to 
 a chosen few, those hopes which, founding on the immor- 
 tality of the soul and the revealed will of God, look far 
 into the future, seemed mere hallucinations of a past state 
 of things, whose unsolid character the intelligence of a 
 jDractical age had at length succeeded in demonstrating. 
 The case seems difterent now. The reaction in favor of 
 belief has begun powerfully to operate in both false and 
 true churches. Popery is evidently rising. Protestantism 
 seems fiist quitting the neutral ground it had so long 
 occupied, by two opposite outlets, and aggregating its 
 divided forces on opposite sides, — here advancing towards 
 its original type, there precipitating itself full on Rome. 
 The felt reference to the spiritual nature and future state 
 of man exerts, as of old, its influence on human affiiirs. 
 Ecclesiastical questions promise to be no longer subordi- 
 nate to merely ])olitical ones; and the General Assembly 
 of the Church of Scotland is felt, in consequence of this 
 change, even by worldly men, to represent one of the 
 
 26
 
 302 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1S41. 
 
 greatest interests of the kingdom. It is only fifteen yenrs 
 since Canning, in his place in Parliament, predicted that 
 the first war in Eurojje would be a war of opinion. It 
 was of political opinion he spoke. He had watclied the 
 accumulation, and marked the evident dii-ection, of that 
 power which has since produced the revolutions of France 
 and Belgium, and extended the franchise over Britain and 
 Ireland. But the present is, above all others, a time of 
 sudden change. The tide whose rise he marked has since 
 fallen, leaving no inconsiderable mass of impurity and 
 corruption behind it; and the current is now setting in 
 full in an opposite direction. The political war is past, 
 and the next gi-eat conflict of the world will be in all 
 probability a conflict, not of secular, but of religious 
 opinion. 
 
 It would be well to be prepared for it. There is no class 
 of ai'guments which worldly men set aside with a feeling so 
 ineffably contemptuous as the class derived from prophecy. 
 There has been, no doubt, abuse in this province, as in all 
 others ; but it is the only province in which the sober and 
 I^roper use has been denied in consequence. We shall ven- 
 ture to refer to it, notwithstanding the virtual prohibition. 
 Many of our more judicious interpreters of prophecy are 
 ranch in error if the Church be not entering, in the present 
 time, on a period of protracted conflict, in which, though 
 she may have to long often and vehemently for peace as a 
 blessing, she shall have to contend for the right as a duty ; 
 nay, to struggle, perchance, for very existence. If such 
 is to be the event, it would be surely well for "him that 
 believeth not to make haste." If there is to be no " dis- 
 charge in this war," let us look well to the posts in which 
 the providence of God has placed us, and exert ourselves, 
 in his strength, that they be maintained. Let us not desert 
 them. Better to be in his battle than in quiet elsewhere. 
 The evening will at length come, and we shall lay us down 
 and be at rest. It is scarce possible to take a cool survey 
 of the various stages of the present conflict, without being
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 303 
 
 Struck by a remarkable peculiarity in its character. Cow- 
 ley, in one of his graver pindarics, — "The Ode to Destiny," 
 — describes a game of chess, in which the various figures 
 seem to move of themselves along the board, with appar- 
 ently no hand to guide them. He sees skilful and unlucky 
 moves. A pawn rises to the top, and " becomes another 
 thing and name." A knight^ " that does bold wonders in 
 the fray," amazes him with its success. He approves the 
 gaining, censures the losing party, — admires their better 
 moves, condemns the fldse and unfortunate ones. But the 
 moves are not theirs. He raises- his eyes from the board, 
 and sees two shadowy figures bending over it, and propell- 
 ing the pieces along the squares. And such, he exclaims, 
 is the game of life. 
 
 "With man, alas! no otherwise it proves, — 
 An unseen hand makes all the moves : 
 And some are ^reat, and some are small. 
 Some climb to good, some from good fortune fall ; 
 Some wise men, and some fools, we call, — 
 Figures, alas! of speech, for Destinj- plays us all." 
 
 Destiny is not the word : the Scriptures, and, from these, 
 the Confessions and Catechisms of our Church, furnish us 
 with a better. With this emendation, however, we have 
 been often reminded of Cowley's seemingly extravagant 
 fiction, during the course of the present controvei'sy. "An 
 unseen hand makes all the moves." The game has got 
 very palpably beyond human management. But the event 
 is in the hands of God. We cannot see it; we cannot see 
 even the nearer moves ; we can see only our duty. We 
 can but see that in this quarrel we must assert the Head- 
 ship of Christ and the rights of his people. And certainly, 
 though the shore be dim and distant, the compass is true.
 
 304 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 PART SECOND. THE MODERATES. 
 
 We attempted in our last a brief — we are afraid rather 
 inadequate — description of the opening ceremonies of the 
 General Assembly, and the aspect of its first meeting. 
 There are few things more tiresome than a speech from 
 (Some nameless member at the close of a long debate, in 
 which the superior men of the meeting or Assembly have 
 already taken part, and of which the important and leading 
 points have been fairly exhausted. And as articles on the 
 merits of the questions discussed might seem, in connec- 
 tion with the very ample report given in our paper, but 
 mere supernumerary speeches, — speeches of the kind 
 which exercise, not the judgment, but the patience, and 
 make men clamorous for the vote without in the least 
 affecting it, — we shall rather attempt conveying to our 
 readers some idea of the appearance of the Assembly, and 
 of its leading men, than venture to solicit their atten- 
 tion to the subjects with which the Assembly has had to 
 deal. It is not in the nature of the mind to be contented 
 with the mere names of men, or the mere dry details of 
 events. The imagination, even where least active, is ever 
 engaged in drawing scenes and portraits ; and hence the 
 widely-spread popularity of that style of composition in 
 which Bunyan and Scott were such masters, — the style in 
 which narrative, reflection, and dialogue are blent, and 
 relieved by description. It is, of all other styles, the best 
 suited to satisfy, if wq may so express ourselves, the crav- 
 ings of the entire mind. 
 
 We stand fronting the Lord High Commissioner, a 
 robust, handsome man of forty-nine, in a military uniform, 
 and see the moderator seated immediately below, and the 
 table of the House in front laden with books and papers. 
 There are one or two men in lawyers' gowns beside it, 
 with large bunches of gray horse-hair on the outsides of 
 their head, and high notions of the Court of Session
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 305 
 
 within. In the crises in which the countenance is smooth 
 and youthful, there is to an unaccustomed eye something 
 singuLavly hidicrous in a disguise so uncouth. It must, no 
 doubt, have been deemed impressive some two or three 
 centuries ago ; but few in the present day will maintain 
 that the horse's hair might not have been left in the 
 horse's tail, and yet the learned gentlemen have looked 
 none the less wise. A few leading men surround the 
 table. The antagonist parties are ranged fronting each 
 other, on the seats that rise on the opposite sides, or 
 mingle together on those in front. Mark how very thin 
 the ranks of Moderatism have become. They occupy 
 merely a few of the nearer scats, forming, as it were, but 
 a front lining to the Avide vacuity behind. The party seems 
 melting away, like icebergs in summer. There is, on the 
 contrary, a dense, compact square on the opposite side, 
 that stretches far under the gallery, and Avhich is visibly 
 adding to its numbers year after year. We restrict our 
 sketches at present to the decaying party. Whatever else 
 may be affirmed regarding tliem, it cannot be denied that 
 they Avear in general a very comfortable air. If it be per- 
 secution that is thinning their numbers, it must be of a 
 kind under Avhich the individual thrives, though the cor- 
 poration perishes. In nine cases out of ten, they are^ in 
 the language of WordsAVorth, " rosy men, right fair to see." 
 Observe, first, that elderly man seated at the foot of the 
 table. The face, a strongly-marked one, seems indicative 
 of shrewdness and self-j^ossession. The features are some- 
 what of the Roman cast, except that the nose droops more 
 over the upper lip than in the Roman type, and the cheeks 
 are more pendulous and square, rather militating in their 
 expression — Avhich seems to speak of the languor and 
 relaxation of advanced life — against the general cast of 
 the countenance. The forehead is Avell and equally devel- 
 oped, but by no means very striking. The same remark 
 applies to the coronal region, Avhich is bald. There is no 
 surplus amount of sentiment, if phrenology speak true, and 
 
 26*
 
 306 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1811. 
 
 certainly no marked defect. The liead is rather a large one, 
 but by no means of the largest calibre. He is rising to s] eak, 
 and the general hush shows that the Assembly deem him 
 a man deserving of being attentively listened to. Mark 
 his figure : it is compact, well built, and of the middle size. 
 Age has in no degree exaggerated the rather handsome 
 outline; but we may discover its effects on the figure not- 
 withstanding. He stands with equal weight on both legs, 
 and the effect is that appearance of stiffness incident to 
 advanced years, which painters remark as inevitable to the 
 attitude. When standing, too, he uses a slender staff. 
 There is nothing particularly emphatic in his mode of 
 speaking. Nature never intended that he should be a 
 great orator; the necessary depth of feeling and vigor 
 of imagination were denied, and he seems to have known 
 it; but shrewdness, self-possession, and good sense were 
 given ; and, availing himself of these to the full extent, he 
 has rendered himself eminently skilful as a debater. He 
 is thoroughly a man of business. Some' of our readers 
 must have already recognized in our description Dr. 
 George Cook, ostensibly, if not in reality, the leader of 
 the Moderate party, and unquestionably one of their 
 ablest men. 
 
 The reputation of Dr. Cook is a mere shadow beyond 
 the precincts of our ecclesiastical courts. So fiir from 
 being a European reputation, it is not even a British one. 
 He is the author of a very sensible History of the Scottish 
 Church, which people do not read in Scotland, and which 
 is not known elsewhere; and of a very respectable biogra- 
 ])hy of Principal Hill, which gathers dust undisturbed in 
 the shelves of our public libraries. The works of great 
 authors make them a name; but in the case of Dr. Cook 
 the process is reversed, — it is his celebrity as a Church 
 leadfer that has made a name for his works. His historical 
 volumes appeared at nearly the same time with the "Life 
 of Knox," by Dr. M'Crie, and both works traverse nearly 
 the same ground, and discuss the same principles. What
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 307 
 
 have been tlieir respective histories as literary undertak- 
 ings, or what tlie comparative amount of influence wliich 
 they have exerted on opinion? It is wholly unnecessary 
 to answer the question ; it is quite enough to ask it. The 
 great historical genius has reared a monument to the fame 
 of his country conspicuous over Europe, and w"hose preg- 
 nant record has been translated into well-nigh all her 
 tongues. The man of respectable general talent who set 
 himself to wi'ite history is himself a sort of finger-post, 
 visible in a narrow area, by which we contrive to find out 
 his work. The same character of obscure respectability 
 attaches to his labors as Professor of Moral Philosophy in 
 the University of St. Andrews. Is the fact questioned ? 
 If ill-founded, it can surely be easily met. What truths 
 has he discovered ? What new system has he invented ? 
 What old one has he invigorated ? What fresh impulse 
 has he given to the study of his science ? What sti-iking 
 figure even, or happy illustration, has he originated ? Who 
 quotes his remarks'? Who asserts his originality? There 
 is but one answer — "None!" Dr. Cook is simply a man 
 of good sense, conversant with tangibilities, — things that 
 can be seen and handled, — but singularly ill-fitted to calcu- 
 late regarding the invisible elements of power by which 
 the tangible and the material are moved and governed. 
 He is eminently a matter-of-fect man ; but the balance by 
 which he weighs is a balance of only one scale, and he 
 overloads it with the temporal and the secular. Few men 
 stand more in need of knowing, as a first principle, that 
 the invisible may be without body, and yet not without 
 weight. 
 
 Xow, mark, beside the Doctor, a man of a very different 
 api)earanee, — in stature not exceeding the middle size, 
 but otherwise cf such large proj)ortions that they might 
 serve a robust man of six feet. We read of ships of the 
 line cut down to frigates, and of fi'igates cut down to gun- 
 boats. Here is a very large man cut down to the mid-lle 
 size ; and, as if still further to exaggerate the figure, there
 
 308 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 is a considerable degree of obesity besides. Hence a very 
 marked uncouthness of outline, with wbicli the gestures 
 correspond. But it is an uncouthness in which there is 
 nothing ludicrous : it is an uncouthness associated evi- 
 dently with power, as in tlie case of Churchill and Gibbon, 
 or in the still better known case of Dr. Johnson. Mark 
 the head. It is of large capacity, — one of the largest in 
 the Assembly, perhaps, and of formidable development. 
 The region of propensity is so ample that it gives to the 
 back part of the head a semi-spherical form. The fore- 
 head is broad and perpendicular, but low, and partially 
 hidden by a profusion of strong black hair, largely tinged 
 with gray. The development of the caronal region is 
 well-nigh concealed from the same cause ; but, judging 
 from the general flatness, it is inferior to that of either the 
 posterior or anterior portions of the head. The features 
 are not handsome ; but, in their rudely-blocked massive- 
 ness, there are evident indications of coarse vigor. He 
 speaks, and the voice seems as uncommon as the appear- 
 ance of the man. There is a mixture of very deep and 
 very shrill tones, and the eifect is heightened still further 
 by a strong northern accent ; but it rings powerfully on 
 the ear, and, in even the remoter galleries, not a single 
 tone is lost. That man might address in the open air 
 some eight or ten thousand persons. He is the very beau 
 ideal of a vigorous democrat, — a popular leader, born for a 
 time of tumults and commotions. Dr. Johnson threatened 
 on one occasion to raise a mob; and no one acquainted 
 with his indomitable force of character can doubt that 
 Dr. Johnson could have done it, and that the mob would 
 have looked up to him as their leader. The man we de- 
 scribe — if there be truth in natural signs, or if nature has 
 written her mark with no wilful intention to deceive — 
 could lead, and head a mob too. But where is conjecture 
 carrying us ? That uncouth, powerful-looking man, so 
 fitted apparently for leading the masses broke loose, is the 
 great friend and confidant, and, so far at least as argument
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1811. 309 
 
 and statement are concerned, the grand caterer, — flapper, 
 as Gulliver would perhaps say, — of the tory Earls of Dal- 
 housie, ITaddington, and Aberdeen. If nature intended 
 him for a popular leader, never surely was there an indi- 
 vidual more sadly misplaced. We have before us the 
 redoubtable Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, — the second name, 
 and first man, of his party. 
 
 Mr. Robertson is a good illustration of what can be ac- 
 complished by sheer force of character. He is eminent in 
 no one department of literature or science. His mind is as 
 little elegant as his person. His style is cumbrous and 
 heavy, unenlightened by fancy, or uninformed by philo- 
 sophical principle. His range of fact is exceedingly narrow ; 
 his learning not above the average of country clergymen. 
 He set himself to promulgate to the world, in a bulky pam- 
 phlet, the views on Non-Intrusion entertained by the early 
 reformers; and, omitting entirely the previous step of first 
 acquainting himself with what he professed to communi- 
 cate, he drew his knowledge, as he Avrote, from the speeches 
 of the Lords of Session in the Auchterarder case, copying, 
 all unwittingly, in his extracts, the very blunders of the 
 printer as part of the text. He pronounced on the judg- 
 ment of Calvin at a time when he only knew Calvin in the 
 quotation of Lord Medwyn. And yet, though thus super- 
 ficial and unaccomplished, with no name beyond the Scot- 
 tish Church or the present controversy, Mr. Robertson is 
 undoubtedly the natural head of his party, — the leader of 
 the forlorn hope of Moderatism. He has character, cour- 
 age, momentum, and unyielding firmness. 
 
 Observe, next, that elderly and yet active, young-looking 
 man in the front seat. He is of the middle size, slightly 
 but well made,' and, for a Scotchman, singularly mercurial 
 in all his motions. There is nothing remarkable in the 
 form of the head or forehead, and the size certainly does 
 not exceed the average, if, indeed, it does not fall much 
 below it. The features would be handsome were it not 
 for that singularly disagreeable Voltaire-like expression, —
 
 310 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 18U, 
 
 quite enough of itself to mar tlie beauty of an Apollo. 
 There is a fidgetiness about the figure, an api)arent ina- 
 bility of sitting still, a soi't of uneasy-conscience activity. 
 The hea<l jerks from the right to the left, and from the left 
 to the right again. Never was there a more inveterate 
 whisperer, or a more persevering smiler of smiles. Let 
 fortune frown as it may, that man has always a smile in 
 store, — we should perhaps rather say a silent laugh ; but 
 he would be a miserable physiognomist who could mistake 
 his smiles for those of enjoyment or triumph. "These 
 things are my diversion," said Pope to Richaivlson, point- 
 ing with a ghastly grin to one of the pamplilets with which 
 he was ceaselessly annoyed. "These things are but my 
 diversion." — "May Heaven preserve me! " ejaculated Rich- 
 ardson, as he quitted the room, "from diversion such as 
 has been this day the lot of Pope." The smiles of the 
 figure before us become contorted at times, like those wit- 
 nessed by the guidsire of Wandering Willie amid the 
 ghastly revellers in " Red-Gauntlet," when his very nails 
 became blue with horror, and the marrow was chilled in his 
 bones. The mercurial, smart, oldish-young man has risen 
 to speak. His voice is clear, — so is his style; but, unlike 
 the otlier two speakei's, he succeeds in but a very faint 
 degree indeed in attracting the attention of the House. 
 Thei-e is a dei)lorable want of weight about him, both mor- 
 ally and intellectually; and the audience seem but to listen 
 occasionally, to pick up from him extreme notions, obsolete 
 for nearly the last (piai'ter of a century, but curious as illus- 
 trative of the Moderatism of the last age. We have before 
 us a Moderate of tho extreme school, — a man true in all 
 respects to the old character of his pai-ty, — Dr. James 
 Bryce, of Calcutta. 
 
 There are amusing points about the Doctor's character; 
 and of all the Church's opponents, he is perhajis the man 
 whom the Church could worst aflford to lose. The opposi- 
 tion of the others, however determined, is modified in its 
 ostensible object, if not in its intensity, by the pressure
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841, oil 
 
 from without. The Doctor's opposition is the unchanged 
 opposition of the year 1796, so fomous in the annals of the 
 Church for its debate on missions. We have now before 
 us the first literary production of Dr. Bryce, in the form of 
 a volume of 380 pages, — a jjrize essay, entitled a "Sketch 
 of British India," It was written to maintain that "to 
 attem])t diffusing Christianity in India by means of mis- 
 sionaries (we employ the Doctor's own words), would be a 
 work not only fruitless in the issue, but dangerous to the 
 peace and prosperity of that country, and ultimately fatal 
 to the British empire in the East." This prize essay proved 
 the foundation of the Doctor's fortunes. No danger to 
 the interests of British commerce in Hindustan could be 
 apprehended from a man holding such rational views ; and 
 so Dr. Bryce was sent out by the East India Company to 
 represent Scottish Presbyterianism in Calcutta, and to 
 eschew missions. Has the Doctor been since converted to 
 other views? Why not, then, give the public at least one 
 pamphlet that will read, in the form of a "true and faith- 
 ful narrative of the conversion of the Rev. Dr. James 
 Bryce"? It would form, surely, a very curious Avork in 
 itself, and an interesting addition to Dr, Crichton's two- 
 volume list of converts besides. Cowper speaks of his 
 letters as the mere "shavings" of his mind, — things planed 
 off and cast away. Few minds of the present day cast off 
 more shavings than that of Dr. Bryce ; but it is a mere 
 deal-mind to the back. He published his prize essay in 
 Scotland : it saw the light, and died. Pie preached news- 
 paper paragrajjhs in India: they not only died themselves, 
 but were well-nigh the means of killing others. He printed 
 sermons, and accused Dr, Andrew Thomson of making 
 money by reviewing them. Do any of our readers know 
 anything of the sermons of Dr. Bryce? And now he is 
 casting off shavings as lustily as ever on the Church ques- 
 tion. The number, however, is no doubt exaggerated. 
 Almost all the more absurdly Erastian pamphlets, which 
 cannot be read even by the men who try, are attributed to 
 the pen of Dr. Bryce.
 
 312 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 18tl. 
 
 The more notable men of the party are soon exhausted. 
 Observe, a little to the Doctor's right, that tall, thin man, 
 with the singularly grave cast of countenance, and the 
 very long neck and face. We have described Mr. Robert- 
 son, of Ellon, as a large man cut down to the middle size. 
 Here, on the contrary, we have a man of the middle size 
 stretched out to a stature of some four or five inches more 
 than nature seemed to have intended. It would appear, 
 too, as if the elongating process had been restricted chiefly 
 to the neck, face, and head. Has the reader ever marked 
 how figures seem to lengthen when viewed through a pane 
 roughened by the bulb on which the glass had been formed ? 
 The appearance may convey some idea, though an exag- 
 gerated one, of what we describe. That rather peculiar- 
 looking man is Dr. Hill, Professor of Theology in the 
 University of Glasgow, — the gentleman preferred by the 
 Senatus to Dr. Chalmers. We need hardly add that he 
 is a grave mediocritist, a solemn enuuciator of common- 
 places, a man who never originated a great thought, and 
 who never sported with a small one. Shall we, describe 
 any of the others? That rather good-looking man, with 
 the gray head, brown whiskers, straight nose, fresh com- 
 plexion, and very sharp facial angle, is Mr. Bisset, of Bour- 
 tie, who bids Church extensionists peruse his pamphlet, and 
 pause ; and the adust, robust, middle-aged, less handsome 
 man beside him is Mr. Paull, of Tullynessle, whose sur- 
 name begins with the same letter as that of Mr. Pirie, of 
 Dyce. They are both decidedly the most influential men 
 in their respective Sessions, and, like the man in the play, 
 have been speaking prose all their lives long. 
 
 PART THIRD. THE EVANGELICALS. 
 
 The better-known men of the minority we exhausted In 
 our last ; we now turn to the vastly more numerous body 
 on the left of the moderator — the party who represent in
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1811. 313 
 
 the Assembly the great majority of the members and 
 elders of the Church of Scotland, and, with but a very few 
 exceptions, all its lay members. In one respect they ditfer 
 strikingly in their appearance, as a body, from their antag- 
 onists. There are among them many aged and venerable 
 men, — quite as many, at least, as on the oj^posite side. But 
 their proportion of men in early or middle life is greater 
 in a very marked degree. Slight as the circumstance may 
 seem, it is in reality an important one. It indicates the 
 tendencies of the age and the history of the parties, and 
 whispers of a principle of death and diminution on the 
 one side, and of vitality and increase on the other. The 
 same remark applied in this country, in the times of the 
 Reformation, to those two antagonist parties of which the 
 one lield by the obsolete superstition, and the other by the 
 revived faith. Few conversions take place late in life. It 
 has been stated by Dr. M'Crie that the conversion of the 
 elder Argyle, when a very old manTwas an extraordinary 
 instance, and that it stands almost alone in the history of 
 the Scottish Reformation. Ptizier, in his " Biography of 
 Luther," remarks, in a similar style, that it was chiefly the 
 young, or at least men Avho had not passed the term of 
 middle age, who ranged themselves on the side of the 
 restored Christianity, and fought the battles of Protes- 
 tantism. 
 
 The moderator of the Assembly has just risen to mark 
 the rise of a member of court. There is a peculiar dig- 
 nity in the manner and appearance of Dr. Gordon, and a 
 noble and manly beauty in the countenance. His stature 
 does not exceed the middle size, and yet the figure so fills 
 the eye that he appears tall. The complexion is fresh and 
 clear, but the face is thin, and the hair bears its marked 
 tinge of bright silver. The forehead is of extraordinary 
 height — quite as tall and erect as even that in the more 
 idealized portraits of Shakspeare ; and, though the breadth 
 is less, it is quite as finely rounded a-top. "A forehead of 
 that type," said the late Dr. Spurzheim, when in Edinburgh 
 
 27
 
 314 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 184L 
 
 a good inany years since, " is one of perhaps the least com- 
 mon which nature produces." Thei'e is not in the whole 
 Church a more exquisitely elegant or truly noble mind 
 than that of Dr. Gordon, or one whose courage, with all 
 his gentlcTiess of disposition, wpuld mount higher in a 
 time of extremity. 
 
 Now, mark that elderly gentleman standing at the end 
 of one of the middle seats, against the crimson-covered 
 barrier which fences off the Lord High Commissioner's 
 portion of the house from the central portion assigned to 
 members of Assembly. He h:is risen, not to speak, but 
 merely for change of posture, for the debate has been pro- 
 tracted, and he has been patiently waiting it out, to record 
 his vote with the evangelical party in the cause of disci- 
 pline and reform. He is a nian rather above the middle 
 stature, well made, and, though plainly, very neatly dressed. 
 Age has silvered his hair, and there is a slight stoop of the 
 shoulders ; but the vigor of the figure is left unimpaired ; 
 and the silent though emphatic testimony of the counte- 
 nance, the compression of mouth indicative of firmness, 
 the cast of sober thought which dwells in the singularly 
 significant lines of the forehead, the deeply contemplative 
 expression of eye, all indicate an intellect in its prime. 
 The complexion is pale, but healthy. Observe the form 
 of head. The silvery hair clusters round the forehead; 
 but causality, rising full, broad, and high, from an ample 
 base formed by largely developed knowing organs, stands 
 out like a tower, shading the locks, as it were, to either 
 side, and strongly catches the light on its rounded upper 
 line, as in the portraits of Burke and Franklin. We have 
 before us a man of more than European reputation, — a 
 man whose name, pronounced in any part of the world in 
 which letters are cultivated or science is known, would at 
 once ensure recognition and respect. No writer of the 
 present age unites a higher degree of literary ability to 
 exact science ; no writer of our own country unites them 
 in a degree equally high. The Earl of Aberdeen, true to
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1&41. 315 
 
 liis character as a diplomatist, and indifferent apparently 
 to character of any other kind, could describe the evan- 
 gelical party as composed of men low in accomplishment 
 and intellect compared with their opponents. Spoke his 
 lordship the truth ? We stake the intellect and accom- 
 plishment of that one man, not merely against those of 
 any individ-ual on the opposite side, but against the intel- 
 lect and accomplishment of the whole opposite side put 
 together; appealing confidently to the country for its 
 verdict in the case, and yet confining our statement of the 
 merits to the bare pronunciation of a name. That man, 
 with the nobly philosophic forehead, and (to quote from 
 his own description of Sir Isaac Newton) " the fine head 
 of hair, as white as silver, without baldness," is Sir David 
 Brewster. 
 
 The part taken by Sir David in the present struggle is 
 suited to tell powerfully on ingenuous minds in behalf of 
 the Church. When the collision between the civil and 
 ecclesiastical courts took place, he had not made up his 
 mind on the problem which it involved. He saw too 
 clearly, however, not to see that the question was no indif- 
 ferent one, or one in which he could remain neutral, but 
 that, as a subject of the realm, and a member and office- 
 bearer in the Church, it would be imperative on him to 
 act some determinate part regarding it. He accordingly 
 set himself carefully to examine. He read, and studied, 
 and brought to bear upon the subject the same powers of 
 patient investigation which had rendered him so eminently 
 successful in the field of scientific inquiry. What has 
 been the result? It is only necessary to mark the ])Osition 
 he has taken up in order to ascertain the conclusion at 
 which he has arrived. But there were, perhaps, disturbing 
 influences that interfered with the process. Will it be 
 deemed a disturbing influence that Sir David was born a 
 reformer; that throughout life he has been the determined 
 opponent of sinecurists, who jirofess to teach, and do 
 nothing, and uncomjiromisingly hostile to every immor-
 
 31G SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 ality in the class who set themselves to ncquire a smatter- 
 ing of theology, in order that they may become qualified, 
 in the sense of Dr. Cook, to teach it again for a bit of 
 bread ? 
 
 The moderator again rises. A loud, ruffing noise has 
 broken out in the galleries. At least two-thirds of the 
 members of Assembly have joined in it, and the business 
 of the court is interrupted. A very distinguished mem- 
 ber has just entered. He is a man well stricken in years. 
 His pace is slow, and his locks, like those of the two gen- 
 tlemen just described, are bathed in silver, — "the lyart 
 liaffets wearing thin and bare." His person is large and 
 raassy, though his stature does not perhaps exceed five 
 feet nine or five feet ten inches ; and there is no tendency 
 to obesity. He is very plainly dressed. The complexion 
 is pale, the face large, and the features uncommonly firm 
 and massy. There is an inexplicable, mysterious, unde- 
 scribable something in the expression, that inspires awe 
 and respect. And mark the head. It would be saying 
 marvellously little were we but to say that there is not 
 such another head in the house, — we may add, not such 
 another head in Edinburgh, in Scotland, Britain, Europe. 
 The breadth across the forehead is what the phrenologists 
 terra not simply large, but enormous. The length, too, in 
 profile, is so very great, that the bulky heads around seem 
 but of moderate size. The front portion, however, from 
 the ear to the forehead, is considerably massier in propor- 
 tion than the posterior region, and stands up more con- 
 spicuously ; and there is a noble development a-top. He 
 has seated himself a few feet to the moderator's left. The 
 grave, deep expression seems as fixed as the features to 
 which they impart so solemn a character. But he is evi- 
 dently following the speaker — one of the most powerful 
 in the house — with much interest; and all at once the 
 countenance is lighted up in a manner as difficult to 
 describe as the expression which has just disappeared. 
 We can compare it to but the sudden lighting up of aa
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 317 
 
 alabaster vase, or to an instantaneous gleam of sunshine. 
 The expression slowly changes, until it has passed into the 
 more habitual one ; and he rises to address the Assembly. 
 All at once every individual present has grown a zealous 
 conservator of the peace ; but for half a moment the 
 "hush, hush," is too general, and makes more noise than 
 it allays. 
 
 The speech has the disadvantage of being read, not 
 spoken, and read at first with several stops and interrup- 
 tions, and in a rather low though audible tone. But there 
 is an intense attention already excited, despite the appai'- 
 ent disadvantages. As the speaker proceeds, the voice 
 rises, strengthens, deej^ens, till it seems to roll in thunder 
 through the house. There is energetic action, confined 
 chiefly, however, to the right arm and shoulder. The 
 earnestness is overpowering. Even the dullest hearer, 
 firing as he listens, feels himself carried along by the o'er- 
 mastering force of an eloquence whose components can 
 scarce be analyzed, but which is at once jiower of charac- 
 ter, of argument, and of illustration, — an irresistible sin- 
 cerity, that, through a magic sympathy, makes others sin- 
 cere too, at least for the time, — and a vehement poetry, 
 that seems but toj^ass through the imagination that it may 
 assail and overi)ower the heart. Eloquence has been com- 
 pared to a stream ; but here the comparison seems inade- 
 quate. We must liave overbearing ponderosity and heat 
 as well as resistless rapidity. We must have weight as 
 well as motion. If yve illustrate by a stream at all, it must 
 be by a stream of dense, molten lava pouring down the 
 steep side of a mountain, and floating away on its surface 
 rock and stones, and entire buildings. " There is no man," 
 said JeflTrey of the present speaker, "that so enables me to 
 form a conception of the oratory of Demosthenes." Need 
 Ave name the far-known leader of the Scottish Church, Dr. 
 Thomas Chalmers, " the greatest of living Scotsmen," or 
 attempt drawing the character of a man more extensively 
 known than perhaps any other of the present age, and 
 destined to grow upon posteritv?
 
 318 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 Mark, in the same corner of the house, but several seat- 
 breadths further away from the moderator, a person of a 
 very different appearance. He is below the middle stature, 
 and, though turned of thirty by perhaps five or six years, 
 seems at this distance, from the smallness of his features 
 and figure, some years younger.. His person is well formed, 
 his features good, and the expression seems indicative of 
 great activity and energy. The forehead is very remai'k- 
 ablc. We are by no means sure of the truth of phrenology 
 in its minuter details ; but nature does certainly seem to 
 set her mark on the foreheads of men of extraordinary 
 capacity. In the man before us, the part immediately 
 above the eyes — the seat, it is alleged, of the knowing 
 organs — is in exact proportion to the face below; but the 
 upper part swells out in the region of causality and com- 
 parison, especially in the former, so that it projects at 
 either side, and forms a broad bar across. There is perhaps 
 scarce a head in the kingdom in which the reflective organs 
 are more amply developed ; and the mind consorts well in 
 this instance with the material indications. They mark 
 decidedly one of the ablest men in the Church, — a man 
 fitted for every walk of literature, — Avhether power or 
 elegance of intellect, just taste, or nice discrimination, be 
 the qualities required. It is curious to remark how un- 
 willing people generally are to believe that a person by 
 much too short for a grenadier may yet be a great man. 
 It is at least equally curious to note the delight which 
 nature seems to take in iterating and reiterating the fact. 
 A very large proportion of the intellect of the age just 
 j)assing away was lodged with men who fell short of the 
 middle size. Napoleon was scarcely five feet six inches in 
 height, and so very slim in early life as to be well-nigh lost 
 in his boots and his uniform. Byron was no taller. Lord 
 Jeffrey is not so tall. Campbell and Moore are still shorter 
 tlian Jeffrey; and Wilberforce was a less man tlian any of 
 them. The same remark has been made of the great minds 
 of England who flourished about the middle of the seven-
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 18-11. 319 
 
 teenth century. One very remarkable instance we may 
 perhaps exhibit to the reader in a new aspect. In the 
 August of 1790, some workmen, engaged in repairing the 
 churcli of St. Giles, Cripplegate, found under the floor of 
 the chancel an old coflin, which, as shown by the sexton's 
 register, had rested there undisturbed for a hundred and 
 sixteen years. For a grown person it was a very small 
 one. Its length did not exceed five feet ten inches, and it 
 measured only sixteen inches across at the broadest part. 
 The body almost invariably stretches after death, so that 
 the bodies of females of the middle stature require coffins 
 of at least equal length ; and the breadth, even outside, 
 did not fully come up to the average breadth of shoulder 
 in adults. Whose remains rested in that wasted old coffin? 
 Those of a man the most truly masculine in his cast of mind, 
 and the most gigantic in intellect, which Britain, or the 
 world, ever produced, — the defender of the rights of the 
 people of England ; as a scholar, first among the learned 
 of Europe; as a poet, not only more sublime than any 
 other uninspired writer, but, as has been justly said, more 
 fertile in true sublimities than all other uninspired writers 
 put together. The small old coffin disinterred from out the 
 chancel of St. Giles contained the remains of that John 
 Milton who died at his house in Bunhill Fields in the win- 
 ter of 1674, — the all-powerful controversialist who, in the 
 cause of the peo]>le, crushed the learned Salmasius full in 
 the view of Europe, — the poet who produced the "Para- 
 dise Lost." But we find we have exhausted our space for 
 the present, ere we have finished or named our portrait. 
 
 PART FOURTH. THE EVANGELICALS. 
 
 We resume our halffinished portrait. The gentleman 
 whose appearance was sketched in our last has risen to 
 address the Assembly, and a general "hush" runs along 
 the galleries, like that which greeted the speaker previously
 
 320 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 described. The voice is clear and well modulated ; the 
 action simple. The arm is stretched out at an angle raised 
 a very little above the horizontal ; but, as the speaker 
 warms, the angle rises. Mark, first, the wonderful flow of 
 language. Of all the members of Assembly, that member 
 has perhaps the readiest command of English ; and his 
 spoken style the most nearly approaches to a written one. 
 The words pour in a continuous stream, fitting themselves, 
 with a singular flexibility, to every object which they 
 encircle in their course ; insinuating themselves, if Ave may 
 so speak, into the innermost intricacies of every thought ; 
 sweeping, with a steady certainty, along the lines of every 
 distinction, however nicely drawn ; and, while thus exqui- 
 sitely true to the mental processes whose findings they 
 signify, modulating themselves, as if by some such natural 
 law as that which gives regularity and beauty to the crys- 
 tal, into the combinations which best satisfy the ear, and 
 accord most ti"uly with the rules of composition as an art. 
 Language is a noble instrument, thougli there be but few 
 who can awaken all its tones. There is something very 
 different in the extempore power here exhibited, from that, 
 slowly exerted through complete mastery over language, 
 shown by our more accomplished writers, — something so 
 different that it is a comparatively rare matter to find the 
 same individual possessed of both. The language of Fox, 
 so fluent and powerful in debate, trickled but slowly, and 
 not very gracefully, from his pen. The written style of 
 Chatham was loose, redundant, and not overladen with 
 meaning. And both Dryden and Addison, on the other 
 hand, and, we may add, our own countryman, Adam Smith, 
 though great masters of English as authors, — men thor- 
 oughly acquainted with every nicety and elegancy of the 
 tongue, — could scarce find words enough, when tliey 
 spoke, to cxj)ress their commonest ideas. But some few 
 happy geniuses liave been masters of language in both 
 departments, and have spoken and written with equal 
 power and facility ; and we have one of these in the
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1811. 321 
 
 speaker before us. Cowper could remark to his friend 
 John Newton, in a half-sad, half-sportive vein, that the 
 world was singularly unwilling to admit any style to be 
 good which recommended Christianity; and most of the 
 Avritings of this gentleman labor under this disadvantage. 
 Bat the man who ventures to deny them the praise of 
 great vigor and great elegance, would himself require to 
 stand on higher literary ground than that occupied by any 
 enemy of tlie Cross in the present day. 
 
 The subject of the speech is a question of heresy. There 
 have been numerous charges preferred against the pannel, 
 all of them very serious, — all referring to beliefs within 
 whose sphere of operation the offers of the gospel must 
 have been rendered of non-effect; but they have been 
 submitted to the court in a detached and separate form, 
 and we feel disposed to wonder how any one mind could 
 have fallen into error on so many different points. Mark 
 how the speaker grapples with the subject, — how he 
 traces the various branches of heresy to one common root, 
 — demonstrating to the conviction of all that they form 
 parts of a coherent system, — a system as coherent as that 
 of Robert Owen, or Hume, or Hobbes ; and that the pan- 
 nel, having once laid down his erroneous first principles, 
 must have been as miserable a logician as a divine had he 
 not derived from them all the various inductions of error 
 which form the counts of the indictment. And, this point 
 firmly established, mark now how the speaker brings the 
 various counts to the standard of God's word. Mark how 
 irresistibly complete in every case the demonstration of 
 the errors, and yet how very brief the statement. We 
 need hardly add that this singularly able and accomplished 
 man is the gentleman whom the Earl of Abei-deen would 
 have so fain recommended to the Calton Jail, — the Rev. 
 Mr. Candlish, of St. George's. 
 
 But who is that tall and very strongly-built man in the 
 same corner of the house ? — so strongly built, that we are 
 scarce aware his stature considerably exceeds six feet,
 
 322 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 except when we see men of the ordinary size beside him. 
 He is large-limbed, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and 
 his very large head is covered by dark-brown hair, as 
 thickly curled as that of the Hercules Farnese. His com- 
 plexion is pale, indicating perhaps a sedentary life and 
 studious habits ; the nose is slightly aquiline, the com- 
 pression of the lips speaks of firmness ; but the general 
 expression is one of mildness and tranquillity, and he 
 seems marked by a peculiar quietness of manner. A 
 speaker on the opposite side has been making some very 
 strong statements, and the gentleman we describe has 
 been marking a few jottings, in the course of the speech, 
 in a small memorandum-book. His employment has been 
 matter of remark in the galleries. There has been a good 
 deal of Avhispering among the audience, and the whisperers 
 invariably turn their eyes in his direction ; and some of 
 the more disadvantageously placed among them stand up 
 on tip-toe to catch a glimpse of him. He rises, for the 
 other speaker has sat down, and comes forward to the 
 open space beside the table of the house. One-half the 
 spectators in the galleries and the area behind rise too, 
 
 — rather, it would seem, in consequence of some sympa- 
 thetic influence than from any exertion of the will; but 
 the cry of " seats, seats ! " brings them all down again, and 
 silence is instantly restored. The speech opens with a 
 few vigorous, compact, logical sentences, enunciated in a 
 tone of subdued power, but peculiarly indicative of firm- 
 ness and resolution. The style is less flexible than that 
 of the former speaker described, and, though the sen- 
 tences roll on without pause or interruption, less copious ; 
 but there is an even more concentrated strength, and the 
 precision is at least equally great. Mark how the words 
 arrange themselves into sentences, which could be punctu- 
 ated more readily tlian those now flowing from our pen, 
 
 — so very distinct are tlic members, and so very defined 
 the meaning. Mark, too, the strictly logical sequence of 
 the thoughts, the clearness and order of the propositions,
 
 SKETeHES OP THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 323 
 
 and how the inevitable and undeniable conclusions, con- 
 densed into the concluding members of single sentences, 
 give more than epigrammatic point to the style. The 
 amount of meaning thrown at times into a short, compact 
 antithesis is altogether amazing. The speaker warms as 
 he proceeds. The voice heightens ; and such is the force 
 and energy of the tones, that the arguments seem pro- 
 jected, missile-like, against his opponent. There is corre- 
 sponding action. The right fist, firmly clenched, is raised 
 every two seconds to the shoulder, and then aimed with 
 tremendous force in the direction of the floor. We are 
 reminded of the "iron man of iron mould" in the allegory, 
 who went about with his huge flail, beating out the grains 
 of truth from the chaff" and stubble of filsehood. How 
 palpable every incongruity in the reasonings of his an- 
 tagonist has been rendered ! how thoroughly have the 
 misstatements been exposed! how completely have the 
 sophisms been frittered to pieces ! And now, after every 
 flaw in their structure has been pointed out, they are held 
 up, as it were, at arm's length, to the derision of all. So 
 entire is the exposure, so very finished the demolition, 
 that, without the employment of a single ludicrous idea, 
 the effect is that of the most caustic ridicule. An expres- 
 sion of blank helplessness falls on almost every counte- 
 nance on the opposite side of the house. These arguments 
 cannot be met, these statements cannot be gainsayed ; 
 and they know it. The speaker nas finished, and the indi- 
 vidual who has encountered so tremendous an overthrow 
 rises; but he rises like William of Deloraine, when, dizzy, 
 blind, and haggard, he staggered into the lists " a ghastly 
 and half-naked man." He has concluded, in his confusion, 
 that some reply is essential ; but his thoughts are scat- 
 tered ; and so, after saying nothing in a few sentences, 
 he sits down again. Who is this right stout man-at-arms 
 who has wrought such signal confusion in the array of the 
 opposition? Our readers are, we doubt not, ])rcpared 
 to fui-nish the name, — Mr. William Cunningham, of Ediu- 
 bursh.
 
 324 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 Turn next to that gentleman a few paces away. His 
 stature rises a very little above the middle size ; but his 
 person, though well proportioned, is rather delicate than 
 robust. There is something very gentlemanly in the 
 whole appearance. An air of openness and courtesy per- 
 vades the countenance ; the complexion is fresh ; the 
 features are small ; the nose straight and sharj:), but not 
 prominent ; the forehead well developed. He is a man 
 evidently not turned of forty, and yet the head is bald, 
 showing a fine fulness in the region of sentiment. He 
 rises to address the Assembly, and a deep attention is 
 instantly excited. His voice, thougli clear, is not strong; 
 but the silence, from this circumstance, is just all the more 
 deep. And mark the classic beauty of the language, and 
 how very nicely the words fit the ideas which they are 
 employed to express. There is a singular acuteness of 
 intellect exhibited, a minuteness of information — espe- 
 cially regarding the territorial lines of demarcation between 
 the civil and the ecclesiastical — that renders cavil hope- 
 less, and a staid sobriety of judgment that solicits and 
 ensures confidence. Few men so completely possess the 
 art of making facts tell by placing them in a light so clear 
 that the just inference becomes inevitable ; and they thus 
 come to serve the purposes of both fact and argument too. 
 There is a refreshing manliness of spirit in the whole tone, 
 and a nobleness of aspiration after the good, the just, 
 the fair, the honorable, which even the men who differ 
 from him most, if in any degree men of candor and right 
 feeling, cannot but recognize and esteem. A gleam of 
 imagination occasionally lights up the simple elegance of 
 his style, and he concludes in a vein of chaste and graceful 
 poetry. That speaker is Alexander Dunlop, — a man 
 authoi'itatively quoted in our civil courts in questions of 
 ecclesiastical i)olity, and well and honorably known in 
 the present momentous struggle as a powerful champion 
 on the side of the Church, and a shrewd and sagacious 
 leader.
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1811, 325 
 
 The Church of Scotland has hereditary claims on Mr. 
 Dunlop. Her cause is a family one — a sort of heir-loom. 
 One of his ancestors — the well-known Principal Carstairs, 
 the friend and adviser of William of Orange — was sub- 
 jected, for her sake, in the persecution of the seventeenth 
 century, to the thumbkins, and bore the torture without 
 shrinking. An ancestor in the male line, now known as 
 the elder Dunlop, to distinguish him from his descendant, 
 was the editor of that admirable Collection of Confessions 
 of Faith, Catechisms, and Books of Order and Discipline, 
 of public authority in the Church, published early in the 
 last century, and now recognized as so valuable that it 
 sells for some four or five times the original price. The 
 cause of the Church is thus a hereditary cause to this gen- 
 tleman, — a circumstance which must no doubt have had 
 its predisposing influence ; but it does surely bear on the 
 present collision, that the lawyer who was deemed of 
 highest authority in Scotch ecclesiastical law ere the con- 
 flict began, — a man whose opinions and facts on ecclesi- 
 astical questions have been quoted by pleaders as decisive, 
 and sustained by judges as just, — should have so deter- 
 minedly and unhesitatingly taken up his position on the 
 side of the Church. The special pleaders who now most 
 strenuously oppose him were in the habit, scarce three 
 years ago, of quoting him as an authority. We do not 
 know a better illustration than Mr. Dunlop of Bacon's 
 remark, "A man young in years may be yet old in hours, 
 if he has lost no time." Commentators on law rarely 
 pass into authorities during their lives, and are not often 
 referred to in court by their contemporaries ; and yet we 
 have learned that Mr. Dunlop was little turned of thirty 
 when his work on " Parochial Law" came to be regarded 
 as of standard authority. 
 
 Mark, now, that gentleman in the seat under the gallery. 
 He is of the middle size, and well but not strongly made. 
 His complexion is of a transparent paleness,* that speaks 
 perhaps of severe study, perhaps of delicate health, — very
 
 326 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841."- 
 
 possibly of both. His features are regular; the nose is of 
 the straight Grecian form ; the forehead is of Large capac- 
 ity, and very amply developed in the region of causality. 
 There is a cast of abstraction in the expression. His age 
 approaches fifty, and yet, though pale and thin, we might 
 well deem him some ten years younger, from the transpar- 
 ency of the complexion, and the smooth, un wrinkled char- 
 acter of the skin. We have before us Dr. David Welsh, 
 the friend and biographer of the great metaphysician Dr. 
 Thomas Brown, and one of the most acutely philosophic 
 intellects of Scotland in the present day. His biography 
 of his friend, independently of its merits regarded as a 
 well-written narrative of tlie incidents and events Avhich 
 marked the life of an extraordinary man, is one of the 
 finest pieces of nietaphysical criticism which the present 
 century has produced. Dr. Welsh stands very high as a 
 professor of Church History, — a professorship which, in 
 the last age, when there were many to assail the Church, 
 and few to defend her, was held to require less talent than 
 any of the others, but which has now come to be differ- 
 ently regarded. In no department of history is a profound 
 philosophy more indispensably necessary ; in no department 
 has intellectual power, added to Christian principle, a more 
 promising field of usefulness. How much has Dr. IM'Crie 
 accomplished as an ecclesiastical historian ! and how im- 
 mense the influence which his writings exercise on public 
 opinion ! The professor of Church History has to meet with 
 antagonists' such as Hume and Gibbon. Moderatism in 
 the last age could cultivate the friendship of these men, 
 and yet hold, even when complimenting their philosophy 
 and their literature, that men of the most ordinary capacity 
 were qualified to counteract the poison which they were 
 assiduously spreading in the historical track. Another 
 opinion prevails now ; and so Dr. Welsh is Professor of 
 Church History in the University of Edinburgh. His tes- 
 timony on th*e side of the Church in the present struggle 
 we deem very valuable. It bears on tlie same point with
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OP 1841, 327 
 
 that of Mr. Dnnlop, but it vests on its own independent 
 grounds. Their separate evidence has the merit of being at 
 once distinct in basis and uniform in bearing. We have 
 in the one the highest authority in Scotch ecclesiastical 
 law, in the other the highest authority in Scotch ecclesi- 
 astical history. 
 
 PART FIFTH. THE EVANGELICALS. 
 
 We resume our sketches. A gentleman of a very strik- 
 ing figure has just entered the court, — evidently a mem- 
 ber of some note, for there runs along the gallery a hurried 
 whisper, and we may here and there see an extended finger 
 pointing him out to a sti'anger. He is an erect, muscular, 
 lathy man, some six or seven inches above the ordinary 
 stature. His height, at the lowest estimate, cannot fall 
 short of six feet two inches ; and the mould into which his 
 large frame has been cast, "the square-turned joints and 
 length of limb," indicate mingled strength and activity. 
 He is standing manfully in the breach, in the present con- 
 flict, in behalf of the Church, and has to encounter many 
 an assailant; but were the breach not a figurative, but 
 an actual and material one, — such a breach as the can- 
 non of Napoleon made in the walls of Jean d'Acre, — and 
 were that gentleman's well-pointed arguments converted 
 into a good half-pike, there are very many ingenious men 
 in the opposition who would entertain serious objections 
 against joining issue with him on the question of its prac- 
 ticability. The countenance is marked by the lines of 
 resolution and firmness. The complexion is dark, indicat- 
 ing what ]")hrenologists term the bilious temperament, and 
 the ficial angle unusually full, approaching more nearly to 
 an angle of ninety than is at all common in even the Cir- 
 cassian type of head. The head appears large for the body, 
 large as that is; and, when seen in profile, such is the 
 length from the ear to tlie forehead, that the line of the fiice
 
 328 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 forms almost a square with the line a-top. Though not 
 yet turned of forty, the thick strong hair, originally coal 
 black, is tinged with gray, and, with the deep lines of the 
 countenance joined to the dark complexion, speaks appar- 
 ently of a jieriod of life more advanced. He has risen to 
 speak. Mark the clearness and power of the tones. They 
 already reverberate through the house, though pitched 
 apparently on a much lower key than that to which they 
 are capable of ascending. Some of his remarks have pro- 
 voked the anger of the opposition, and there rises a con- 
 fused Babel-like hubbub of sound, loud enough to drown 
 any two ordinary voices. Not that of the speaker, how- 
 ever. Mark how it also rises liigher and higher as the 
 confusion swells ; and we can still hear it ringing over all, 
 "loud as a trumpet with a silver sound." The clamor sub- 
 sides, and the speaker proceeds. The ideas are as clear as 
 the tones in Avhich they are conveyed, and there is much 
 readiness of wit, and great lucidity of statement; but the 
 chief element of the speaker's jiower is his felt sincerity. 
 There is a thorough, straightforward honesty of purpose 
 about him, joined to an unfeigned, earnest zeal for the 
 great first principles from Avhich he derives all his deduc- 
 tions, that, without disarming the hostility of his opjionent, 
 at least robs it of much of its bitterness. He can say 
 severe things at times — very severe things — of Moder- 
 atism, with its dead, inefficient form of Christianity, — a 
 body without life, and in which the fermentation of putrid- 
 ity has long since begun. He can say still severer things 
 of the aristocracy, — of the self-seeking and exclusive 
 spirit which led them of old to grasp what should have 
 been in reality the patrimony of the people, the educa- 
 tional and ecclesiastical funds of the country, through 
 which schools and churches should have been erected and 
 endowed ; and very severe things of their mean and nar- 
 row-sighted policy in the present day. But there is 
 "nouu^Iit set down in malice." AH arises from an honest 
 conviction, unembitlered by a single grain of the odium
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 329 
 
 theologicum., when he assails what he knows to be but a 
 shadowy and unsubstantial semblance of religion, and, 
 undisturbed by one particle of democratic jealousy, when 
 he denounces, as alike wicked and foolish, the course pur- 
 sued by the great body of the titled and high-born of our 
 country. Mark his dress. He is no clergyman ; and, were 
 he to come to count descents with the gentlemen on the 
 opposite side who are so very forward in maintaining the 
 cause and asserting the dignity of certain noble lords, — 
 quite as forward as if they were their footmen, and engaged 
 in battling, as in duty bound, for the honor of their livery, 
 — it would be found that of these noble earls — for of 
 their supporters and apologists we say nothing — not a 
 few would deem their genealogies mightily improved could 
 they but claim relationship with some of his progenitors. 
 We have before us Mr. Maitland Makgill Crichton, of Ran- 
 keillor, — a gentleman one of whose ancestors in the male 
 line was the friend of Knox, and a fellow-worker with hina 
 in the cause of the Reformation, — who can show, ranged 
 among his family portraits, the portraits of that General 
 Leslie who led the armies of the Covenant, and who is 
 the undoubted representative in the present day of the 
 ancient Lords of Crichton and Fendraught, though he has 
 not yet asserted the title. 
 
 It is singularly gratifying to meet with the good old 
 Church names still enrolled on the side of the Church. 
 The two vocables "Argyll" and "Aberdeen" express, 
 when associated with the historical recollections proper to 
 each, the whole controversy. It is particulai-ly interesting, 
 too, to find names that had well-nigh disappeared for the 
 greater part of two centuries coming again into view, fixed, 
 as it were, in exactly the same places as of old, — just as 
 the fixed stars appear, when the night falls, in the very 
 position in which they had been seen when the night fell 
 last. We see in the list of the eldership the name of Brodie 
 of Lethen, and that of another younger scion of the family. 
 Presbytery, in our northern districts, had very few assert- 
 
 28*
 
 330 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 ers during the persecutions of the seventeenth century ; 
 but its few it had, — men who could both dare and suiFer 
 for its sake ; and among these the Brodies of Lethen take 
 a prominent ph^ce. We have now before us a very scarce 
 old work, the "Diary of Alexander Brodie, of Brodie," one 
 of the Senators of the College of Justice of 1650, a staunch 
 Covenanter, and a man of deep and fervent piety. We find 
 in his notes frequent mention of his neighbor and relative, 
 Brodie of Lethen, a person of a similar stamp. The time 
 was one of great trouble and perplexity, — the winter of 
 1654. Glencairn and his Highlanders were in possession 
 of the open country. The season was singularly severe; 
 for the sea had risen further on the land than for forty 
 years before, and the Findhorn was coming down red from 
 the hills, so high in flood as to be unfordable for several 
 days, and the Highlanders could not get across to wreak 
 their vengeance on Lethen. But at length they came, and 
 burnt every house to the ground, with all the corn stored 
 up from the previous autumn for the sustenance of the 
 family and its dependents. When the enemy departed, 
 the inmates, scattered for the time, again met. They met, 
 in that dreary season, amid the blackened and wasted 
 walls, when every streamlet was swollen into a river, and 
 the winds howled amid the roofless and darkened turrets; 
 but with what intent? We employ the simj^le language 
 of the diary, "To come under a new, firm, inviolable cov- 
 enant with God, that they should be his, and he should be 
 theirs." The vows of each are recorded. " Old Lethen^'' 
 says the diary, "renewed his acknowledgments, and prayed 
 the Lord for a willing, honest heart ; and desired to give 
 up hinrsclf and his wealth, family, children, wife, and his 
 own life, to the Lord, that he might be glorified in them, 
 and that his life might not be in himself and to the world, 
 but ^o, in^ and for the Lord." His son, the heir of the 
 house, was equally decided. " He professed his willing- 
 ness to consecrate himself and his to God, and that, as 
 long as he had a house or flimily, it should be the Lord's,
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1811. 331 
 
 He alone should be worshipped in it; and he should have 
 no God but Him." Now, we do think it well that the old 
 Presbyterian party should reckon among its adherents so 
 many of the old Presbyterian names. 
 
 But Ave digress. Mark that elderly man beside the table. 
 He is of the middle stature, but stoops slightly. His com- 
 plexion is pale, inclining to sallow; the head, though not 
 large, — at least not of the largest size, — is well propoi-- 
 tioned ; and we may mark it in its full development, espe- 
 cially in the regions of intellect and sentiment, for it is 
 very bald. Has the reader ever seen Holbein's portrait of 
 Erasmus, or a faithful print of it? Mark, then, that coun- 
 tenance: the form of the nose, the compression of the thin 
 lips, the acute and watchful expression of the eyes, the 
 very complexion even, is that of the elegant and subtile- 
 minded scholar of the age of Luther, M'hom no shade of 
 distinction ever escaped, and who, if not always powerful, 
 was at least always ingenious. He rises to speak, in reply 
 to a spruce lawyer on the opposite sicle. The voice is not 
 strong, — we at first hear very imperfectly, — but, though 
 not strong, it is clear; and as the speaker warms, the tones 
 heighten. He is evidently cutting the nerves of his oppo- 
 nent's logic, not with a weighty weapon, but with a sharp 
 one. The process has a considerable degree of quietness 
 about it ; but the stroke is reiterated, and the nerves divide. 
 We have before us Dr. Patrick Macfarlan, of Greenock. 
 
 It has been often remarked that the two grand parties of 
 the British legislature — its whigs and its tories (we em- 
 ploy the words in their old meaning) — are alike necessary 
 in preserving the balance of the state. With but the one 
 party the wheels of government would revolve too rapidly; 
 with but the other, they would either stick fist or slide 
 backwards ; with both united, there is at once force enough 
 to propel, and vis inertice enough to counteract any over- 
 plus energy in the moving power. And hence slow but 
 well regulated motion. Now, we can imagine two such 
 parties in a Church blessed with a representative goV"
 
 332 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 ernment like ours, of Avliich, somewhat in the manner 
 described, the one would be of signal use to the other, — 
 parties opposed to a considerable degree in ecclesiastical 
 jjolity, but thoroughly at one in their views of doctrines 
 and duties. These are certainly not the parties which 
 divide it at present. It would be too much to have in the 
 Church a single minister who did not preach the gospel ; 
 nor could any good, but, on the contrary, much evil result 
 from his being there. And in the ranks of Moderatism, 
 how many are there by whom the gospel is not preached, 
 and to whom it is not known! But in the array of their 
 opponents it is easy to discover the elements of two parties 
 which might coexist in the Church for good, — one of them 
 as a regulating influence, the other as an impelling force. 
 We recognize in Dr. Macfarlan one of these personified ; 
 and, of course, employ the word in its best sense when we 
 say that in matters ecclesiastical he represents the tory. 
 The Doctor, some thirty yeai's ago, was a sound Non-In- 
 trusionist, friendly to' a modified patronage. He has seen 
 since that time nearly all his party shooting ahead of him ; 
 but what the Doctor was thirty years ago the Doctor is 
 still. He is just a sound ISTon-Intrusionist, friendly to a 
 modified patronage. Did the reader ever see on the banks 
 of a navigable river a beacon fixed in the foreground, and 
 the vessels sweeping past? 
 
 Now, mark that strongly-featured man a few benches 
 away. He is barely of the middle size, and stoutly made. 
 The nose has an almost Socratic degree of concavity in its 
 outline ; — indeed, the whole profile more nearly resembles 
 that of Socrates, as shown in cameos and busts, than it 
 does any other known profile to whom we could compare 
 it. The expression of the lower part of the face indicates 
 a man who, if once engaged in battling in a good cause, 
 would fight long and doggedly ere he gave up the contest. 
 The head is also marked by the Socratic outline in a sin- 
 gularly striking degree ; the forehead is erect, broad, high, 
 and the coronal region of immense development. He rises
 
 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 333 
 
 to speak. His voice, though not finely modulated, is pow- 
 erful ; his style of language plain, energetic, and full of 
 point, — such a style as Cobbet used to write, and which, 
 when employed as a medium for the conveyance of thoughts 
 of large volume, is perhaps of all kinds of style the most 
 influential. He is evidently a master of reason ; and there 
 runs through the lighter portions of his speech a vein of 
 homely, racy humor, very quiet, but very eflective. That 
 speaker is Andrew Gray, of Perth, one of the vigorous and 
 original minds which the demands of the present struggle 
 have called from comparative obscurity into the contro- 
 versial arena, full in the view of the country. Mr. Gray's 
 admirable pamjihlet, "The Present Conflict," took the lead, 
 we believe, of all the publications of which tlie unliappy 
 collision between the civil and ecclesiastical courts has 
 been the occasion ; and it must be regarded surely as no 
 slight proof of the judgment of the man, that of all the 
 positions he then took up, not one has since been aban- 
 doned. He marked out the Torres Vedras of tiie ques- 
 tion, and the lines have not yet been forced. 
 
 But we find we must run hurriedly over a few of the 
 remaining characters, indicating, as we pass, rather the 
 subject of a portrait than attempting to draw one. That 
 pale, thin, middle-sized man in black, with the prominent 
 features and thoughtful air, is Mr. Charles J. Brown, of 
 Edinburgh, — a man of an acute and nicely logical mind, 
 and inferior as a theologian to perhaps no minister in the 
 Church of Scotland. The gentleman beside him, with the 
 snow-white hair, ample furehead, and dark eyebrows, is 
 Dr. Thomas Brown, of Glasgow, — one of the most re- 
 spected clergymen in the kingdom, — a man who succeeded 
 Dr. Chalmers in one of his city charges, and yet preserved 
 the congregation entire ; and who, at an age not far re- 
 moved from the threescore and ten, preserves all the 
 intellectual freshness and vigor of his youth. The thin, 
 handsome, erect, elderly man beside the moderator's chair, 
 with the slender ebony cane in his hand, is Dr. Makellar,
 
 334 SKETCHES OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF 1841. 
 
 the moderator of Inst Assembly, — a gentleman chosen to 
 the office from the general weight of his character, and the 
 trust reposed in him by the Church, as one in whom, in 
 times of difficulty and trial, the most thorough confidence 
 could be placed. There is a very fair representation of the 
 magistracy of the country on these benches. The Church, 
 if in a state of rebellion, has certainly very singular abet- 
 tors. That gentlemanly man in black, rather below the 
 middle size, is Sir James Forrest, of Comiston, Lord Pro- 
 vost of Edinburgh. The taller man, a few seats away, is 
 the ex-Provost of Glasgow. The eminently handsome, well- 
 built man, of at least six feet, Avho has just taken his place 
 in the front seat, is the Sheriff of Fife. The aristocracy 
 have also their representatives; and well would it be for. 
 the country if the average character of the class stood as 
 high in all that regards the truly good and honorable as in 
 the sample which these benches furnish. The lawyers, too, 
 muster strong; and so we deem it an interesting feature 
 of the collision to find so many of these taking their stand 
 with the Church, in determined opposition to the decisions 
 of the civil court, — holding, as we do, that, w'ere the case 
 a fairly balanced one, the professional bias M'ould have 
 inclined them all the other way. Our readers cannot fail 
 to remember that such was very strikingly the case in the 
 collision which took place last year between the House of 
 Commons and the Court of Queen's Bench. Almost all 
 the lawyers of England declared on the side of the court. 
 But we have exhausted our space in passing over a few 
 of the better known names of the party. The list contains 
 many others which we might pronounce with but small 
 chance of recognition on the part of the reader, — the 
 names of humble laborers in the gospel, of Avhom the 
 Avorld knows little, but wdiose ministry God has blessed 
 for the conversion of souls, and who, in their obscure, 
 though surely not unimportant spheres of usefulness, are 
 loved and honored as the instruments of much good. It 
 would be a dark day for Scotland that Avould see them
 
 SCOTTISH LAWYERS : THEIR TAVO CLASSES. 335 
 
 ejected from their charges, and strangers thrust into their 
 places, — shepherds whose voices the flocks would not 
 hear, and whose unblest footsteps they would fear to fol- 
 low. Thus melancholy, however, must be the result, if 
 the civil cot;rt succeed in maintaining its place within the 
 territory which it has so unhappily invaded. The Church 
 cannot recede. She has marshalled her front of defence 
 on the last rood of ground which she can conscientiously 
 occupy, either with respect to the spiritual welfare of lier 
 people or the honor of her Divine Master. There remains 
 for her no back-ground space on which to form within the 
 I^ale of the Establishment. She has already arrived at her 
 last barrier. 
 
 SCOTTISH LAWYERS: THEIR TWO CLASSES. 
 
 Saddletree, in the "Heart of Mid-Lothian," is made 
 to exclaim, in astonishment, "Who ever heard of a lawyer 
 that w^ould suffer for any one religion or other!" There 
 may be humor in the joke, but certainly no truth. Some 
 of the most eminently religious men which either this or 
 the sister country ever produced have been distinguished 
 members of the legal profession. Sir Matthew Hale, not 
 more eminent for his unbending rectitude as a judge than 
 for the profundity of his attainments as a lawyer, cultivated 
 a close walk with God ; and w^e knoAy not iu the Avhole 
 round of English theology a more thoroughly spiritual 
 composition than his discourse on the Knowledge of Christ 
 Crucified. Among his contemporaries of the legal profes- 
 sion in our own country we reckon one of our martyi's, 
 Archibald Johnstone, Lord Warriston. The early half of 
 the following century had likewise its lawyers of eminent 
 piety. The writings of Lord President Forbes show that 
 the ablest jurist of his age or country was also one of its 
 best and most devout men. His predecessor, Lord Presi-
 
 836 SCOTTISH LAWYERS : THEIR TWO CLASSES. 
 
 dent Dundas, was also a man of personal piety. As the 
 century advanced, however, that night of spiritual dark- 
 ness which had sunk so gloomily over the Scottish Church 
 involved the Scottish bar in a gloom at least equally deep, 
 and still more palpably haunted by the gross and obscene 
 shapes which come abroad at such seasons. There are 
 writers of the present day who, though not at all particu- 
 larly squeamish regarding Avhat and how they describe, 
 can do little more than hint at the grossnesses and de- 
 baucheries which had come to characterize our Scottish 
 lawyers of this period. Lockhart, in his "Life of Burns," 
 speaks of their " tavern scenes of audacious hilarity," and 
 but insinuates the rest. Heron, Avho must have known of 
 the matter from more than hearsay, attributes the ultimate 
 ruin of the poor poet to the influence of their example. 
 There still survive traditional anecdotes and hon mots of 
 the class, that, like plague-spots on the walls of a building, 
 serve to show how tainted the atmosphere must have been, 
 and how deep the infection. We find inklings, too, to the 
 same effect in the early life of Scott, — more than mere 
 hints of great intemperance, joined to great profanity. 
 The Faculty of this period, though it seems to have had 
 marvellously few Christians, had, notwithstanding, its many 
 elders; and, as might be anticipated, we discover a fierce 
 extreme of opinion on religious subjects in almost every 
 instance in which they registered their views in our church 
 courts, — a bitterness of hostility to the gospel truly won- 
 derful. In the famous debate on missions (1796), the cler- 
 ical leaders of Moderatism were content merely, as in the 
 case of Mr. Hamilton, of Gladsmuir, to denounce the gospel 
 as something so immoral and bad, that, if communicated 
 to the heathen, it could not fail of destroying their native 
 virtue ; or, as in the case of Principal Hill, to oppose the 
 scheme of sending it out of the country, slieerly from a 
 fear lest the missionaries, when they got beyond the reach 
 of the law, should quarrel on points of speculative divin- 
 ity, and cut one another's throats. The lawyers who
 
 SCOTTISH LAWYERS : THEIR TWO CLASSES. 337 
 
 mingled in the debate took higher ground ; and it is a fact 
 worth noticing, that at least one of these lawyers sits on 
 the bench in the present day.^ The divines only argued 
 that missionary societies should not be encouraged because 
 they were in the main mischievous and foolish. The 
 lawyer who is now a magistrate proposed that they should 
 be dealt with as bands of conspirators leagued against the 
 state. We need hardly add that he forms one of the 
 majority who have decided against the Church. 
 
 A change, however, came over the Scottish bar. The 
 irreligion of the class had become Avell-nigh universal, 
 when, to employ the language of the " Presbyterian Re- 
 view," "through the influence of a revival, proceeding 
 entirely from within, converts to Christianity were raised 
 up from among the ranks of the careless, the worldly, and 
 the infidel." Lawyers at least not inferior in talent and 
 accomplishment to any of their contemporaries began to 
 walk professedly by the light of revelation, and to illus- 
 trate, by the purity of their lives, the excellence of what 
 they professed; and a return to the old beliefs heralded, 
 in almost every instance, a return to the old Presbyterian 
 views of Church government. The bar during the darker 
 period had produced many advocates of popular rights, 
 some of them eminently able men ; but the rights they 
 asserted were jjolitical, not religious ; for while its earlier 
 whigs had been cast, if we may so express ourselves, into 
 the Scottish Presbyterian mould of their country, its whigs 
 of the middle period had been mere iri-eligious English- 
 men. The most zealous protester against the first act of 
 intrusion perpetrated in Scotland under the infamous law 
 of Bolingbroke' was Duncan Forbes: his zeal was that of 
 the whig grafted on the Christian. The pointed remon- 
 strance directed against patronage by the General Assem- 
 bly about the time of the Secession was drawn \\p by Lord 
 President Dundas. And the authorship of the period, as 
 connected with the bar, bore a similar stamp. Lord Dreg- 
 
 1 Lo)d I'rcsideut Boyl»- 
 
 21)
 
 338 SCOTTISH lawyers: their two classes. 
 
 horn's pamphlet against patronage is one of perhaps the 
 ablest which has yet appeared on the subject. Though no 
 religious man himself, he had eminently pious relatives; 
 and tlius, while he, as it were, saw the question with his 
 own eyes, he seems to have felt regarding it with their 
 feelings. Another able pamphlet of the time, written in 
 the same track, was the composition of a second lawyer, 
 Crosbie, the Councillor Pleydell of "Guy Mannering," — 
 the acute, conscientious, warm-hearted Pleydell, who never 
 thought other than justly, and whose feelings were ever 
 as generous as his reasonings were sound. He, too, was a 
 determined opponent of patronage. But when lawyers 
 ceased to be religious, patronage ceased to be felt as a 
 grievance, and their whiggism took exclusively a secular 
 form. Whatever might be their ideas, too, regarding in- 
 dependence of every other kind, of spiritual independence 
 they had none. It was not until the old beliefs were 
 revived among them — the beliefs held by Forbes and 
 Diindas, and for the maintenance of which Warriston had 
 died — that the old principles came to be again asserted. 
 And hence that most important portion of the Church 
 party in the present struggle drawn from the ranks of the 
 legal profession. 
 
 It would, however, be saying a great deal too little were 
 Ave to say that, while this religious section of the Faculty 
 are zealous in behalf of the Church, the portion whose 
 character has undergone no change are merely indifferent 
 to it. There is a bitter hostility evinced. The times in 
 which a mechanic could fight for the honor of his craft are 
 over, but not the times in which a lawyer can contend for 
 the jurisdiction of his court. There is a^tangibility, too, 
 about the claims of the Court of Session, in the present 
 instance, which, to a man conversant with the tangible 
 only, seems to have peculiar force. They relate to the seen 
 and temporal, — to things which are the objects of his own 
 belief; whereas the things to which the claims of the 
 antagonist court chiefly refer are but the objects of the
 
 THE NEW POLICY : EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 339 
 
 beliefs of other men. There is a strange confounding, too 
 (a common mistake among lawyers), of the right with 
 what they deem the enacted. There is, withal, a blind, 
 but too natural dislike of the spiritual element, which, 
 having not seen, they yet hate. And hence the hostility 
 of this class. They are by much more numerous than the 
 other; but, in at least a moral and religious point of view, 
 the hostility of the many weighs immensely less than the 
 support and friendship of the few. 
 
 THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 
 
 " We have now but one safe course of tactics left us," 
 said a shrewd divine of the unpopular party, a member of 
 the General Assembly of last year, — " we have now but 
 one safe course of tactics left us : we must unite evangel- 
 ical preaching to the Moderate policy." He spoke to only 
 a small knot of friends, but the remark has got abroad. 
 Unimportant as it may seem, it is more pregnant with 
 meaning than half the speeches of his party ; and we are 
 much mistaken if in the present juncture the Church has 
 not more to fear from the course which it recommends 
 than from the Protest of the Rev. Dr. James Bryce, late 
 of Calcutta, or the Declaration of the Rev. Mr. James 
 Grant, still of Leith. 
 
 None but a bigot will dare restrict the piety of Chris' 
 tendom to his own Church or his own party ; but there is 
 no bigotry in affirming that the piety of almost every 
 Church and sect has its own peculiar type. The inopera- 
 tive, mystic piety of Rome, as illustrated in Fenelon and 
 Madame Guyon, was very dissimilar in aspect to the nuuily, 
 active, spirit-stirring piety of the Puritanism of England, 
 as illustrated in its Calamys, Baxters, and other worthies 
 of the times of the Commonwealth. The piety of the 
 Scoto-Episcopal type, as illustrated in Leighton, with ita
 
 S40 THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 
 
 quiet tolerance of all impurity and all oppression, was 
 assuredly a very different tiling in appearance from the 
 stern covenanting piety of Presbyterian Scotland, as illus- 
 trated in Melville and Henderson, with its noble declara- 
 tion of eternal warfare against all abuse and all tyranny. 
 The basis of Christian principle was the same in each. 
 We have as little doubt of the vital Christianity of Madame 
 Guyon as of that of Richard Baxter himself; and we be- 
 lieve Leighton to have been as sincerely pious as Hender- 
 son. But while the foundations Vere the same, the super- 
 structures were different. In the language of the inspired 
 volume, "hay and stubble," as certainly as "gold and 
 silver," may be piled on the rock Avhich human hand has 
 not laid. The piety of every Christian Church has its 
 own type; and the peculiar and well-marked type of the 
 piety of Presbyterian Scotland is utterly at variance Avith 
 the policy of Moderatisra. If there be any one trait 
 stamped more legibly on the character of the piety of our 
 Church than another, it is the regard which she has ever 
 manifested for the will of her Christian people in the for- 
 mation of the pastoral tie. If any one great principle 
 stand out prominently in her history as the main object 
 of her severe and long-protracted contendings, it is the 
 principle which imperatively demands that she take her 
 spiritual law from only her spiritual Lord, and pay respect 
 in all things which pertain to eternity only to Him by 
 whom the "praises" of "eternity are inhabited." It will 
 prove by no means very easy to reconcile, within the Scot- 
 tish Church, Evangelical doctrine with Moderate policy. 
 The associations of three centuries conspire to render the 
 coalition a monstrous one. True, in a few extreme cases, 
 such a coalition seems already to exist ; but the Evangelism 
 in these cases will be found to be either Evangelism in a 
 deplorably false position, or Evangelism of a radically 
 extrinsic type. In the belief, however, that the Church 
 may be in some little danger at present from the policy 
 recommended by the Moderate divine, we would fain call
 
 THE NEW POLICY : EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 341 
 
 the attention of our readers to the consideration of the 
 two chisses of persons in wliom the coalition which he 
 proposed seems actually effected. 
 
 We would first remark, that a very minute portion of 
 the Evangelism of the Scottish Establisnment is Evangel- 
 ism of the Scoto-EpiscojDal type. We have our sighers 
 after an "audible response" from the congregation, — men 
 who would deem it no very great hardship to be compelled 
 to vse the sign of the cross in baptism, and who are such 
 sticklers for the existence of a certain mysterious virtue 
 in the rite of ordination, derived somehow, by descent 
 ceremonial, from the times of the apostles, that the Pusey- 
 ites of England openly challenge them, in their leading 
 organs, as worthy brethren lucklessly misplaced. It is no 
 marvel to find the Evangelism of such men dissociated 
 from at least the non-intrusion doctrine. All such have in 
 them the germ of the true priest. They must of necessity 
 regard every clergyman, however secular in his personal 
 character, as i^ost^essed of something sacred which the people 
 want. He is at least an ordained brother; he is vested in 
 the priestly office, and the priestly office is a high and holy 
 thing; and if ordination be so good a matter in the indi- 
 vidual, what must not multiplied ordinations be in the 
 ecclesiastical court? What weight can the voice of a 
 parish have, compared with the judgment of a presbytery, 
 — the assent or non-assent of a mass of the profime, unor- 
 dained /«y, set off against the solemn decision of a sacred 
 conglomeration of the ordained ecclesiastical/ Hence, 
 too, much of that monstrous tolerance of evil in the Church 
 which is peculiar to the Evangelism of this type. Arch- 
 bishop Leighton and Archbishop Sharpe were dignitaries 
 of the same Church at the same time, — " brothers in Goif^ 
 All that is sacred in ordination, according to the Puseyite 
 code, could have been derived from Pope Alexander III., 
 though foul with incest and red with murder, or from 
 Cardinal Beaton, after he had let Mrs. Marion Ogilvy out 
 through the castle postern. Is it frou* a consiileration of 
 
 29*
 
 342 THE NEW POLICY: EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 
 
 this kind that some of our very few Scoto-Episcopal Pres- 
 byterians can open their pulpits, tliougli they tlieinselves 
 preach only the gospel, to brethren who neither preach it 
 themselves, nor yet know it, except through the instinct 
 by which they hate it when preached by others! — or that 
 they can make common cause in the present struggle with 
 a party tolerant of all abuses, and infamous for all ? They 
 are a class from whom the people of Scotland have some- 
 what to fear, and nothing to hope. They gild, by their 
 purity of character, the feculent grossness of their party, 
 as the mountebanks of the last age used to gild their pills. 
 They have the merit of doing their duty in their own 
 parishes, and of pursuing a course of policy which goes 
 far to secure tJiat duty be not done in any other parish 
 besides, — affecting all the time to confine their interest as 
 ecclesiastics each to his own little sphere. We are of the 
 opinion that the moral of Archbishop Leighton's life has 
 never yet been fully read, and that it addresses itself pow- 
 erfully to this class. Our readers must have heard of the 
 happy reply attributed to him, when, ere his final decision 
 in favor of Episcopacy, he Avas asked, in a phraseology 
 common to the period, whether he did not "preach to the 
 times?" — "When so many preach to the times," said 
 Leighton, " surely one solitary divine may be forgiven 
 should he preach for eternity." What was the result, as 
 shown in the history of his life? In failing to preach to 
 the times, — in failing, in other words, to assert thegreat 
 principles for which Christ's people were then contending, 
 and for which his father had suffered, — he failed also, 
 palpably, utterly, lamentably, to preach for eternity. Ex- 
 cept for his writings, — and these had no connection what- 
 ever with his unhappy choice, — never was there a more 
 profitless life. His piety — and who can doubt its depth 
 or fervency ? — was neutralized by his position. lie saw 
 evil triumphing in his own party, and good depressed and 
 persecuted in the antagonist one; and at length, quitting 
 his office in despair, — for the fruits of all his labor had
 
 THE NEW POLICY : EYAXGELICAL MODERATES. 343 
 
 been but disappointment, and worse, — he retired into 
 private life, and died in obscurity. His story has not yet 
 been written with an eye to its true meaning. 
 
 So much for our Scottish Evangelism of the radically 
 extrinsic type. Its Evangelism of an opposite kind, in a 
 false position, though the amount be fortunately very 
 small, — so small that our readers could run over all its 
 representatives on fewer than half their fingers, — is a still 
 more deplorable object. Its unseemly, and surely most 
 unenviable and uneasy position, will be found to have 
 originated entirely in some peculiarity of personal charac- 
 ter. There is a class of peculiarities which arise from 
 overweening conceit, and M'hich are of all human frailties 
 the most irresistibly ludicrous. Comedy has gleaned a 
 rich harvest from among them in the past, and every age 
 and every locality produce their fresh supply. There is a 
 period of life — the period between boyhood and early 
 youth, the adolescent stage of human existence — Avhen 
 it is natural for almost all to over-estimate themselves; 
 and perhaps this is not less necessaiy than natural. The 
 confidence felt is a moving power to urge the aspirant 
 npward and onward in his toilsome career. . But the 
 ability of forming a juster estimate of himself comes as he 
 proceeds. He feels that his powers have their limits; 
 that there is much which he cannot perform at all, and 
 much in which he is excelled by others ; and, as years 
 mature his understanding, and difficulties test his strength, 
 he learns to think soberly and justly of himself Such is 
 the ordinary course. Minds there are, however, in which 
 the overweening confidence of adolescence lasts all life 
 long, — men of the ordinary stature, who mistake them- 
 selves somehow for giants, and who cannot be convinced, 
 frame the argument as we may, that they are not looking 
 down on all their fellows. It is a fact which we shall 
 scarce need to prove to at least one-half our readers, that 
 by much the greater part of the fiilsely placed Evangelism 
 of the Church has been fixed in its miserable attitude by
 
 344 THE NEW POLICY : EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 
 
 this ludicrous but not the less lamentable weakness; that 
 the few men now opposed to the measures of their breth- 
 ren, but who not many years ago, some of them not many 
 months ago, were zealous beyond measure in a similar 
 track, are men whose overweeuing conceit rendered them 
 standing jests among the lighter spirits of their several 
 districts, and for whose laughable vanities the graver class, 
 who deemed them good but weak men, found it no easy 
 matter to apologize. 
 
 Let us imagine a clergyman of no more than the ordi- 
 nary calibre snugly placed in a country parish, — indolent 
 but res]icctable, — remarkable for being emphatic in his 
 commoni)laces, and for having nothing else to be emphatic 
 in, — zealous above all his brethren in his denunciations 
 against patronage, and apt to be particularly severe on 
 some of the best of them, just because their denunciations 
 were less frequent and less loud than his own; — let us, 
 we say, imagine such a jjerson dreaming on his sofa that 
 he was decidedly one of the first men, if not, indeed, the 
 very first man, in the Church, Let us imagine him dis- 
 covering that he had a very large head, and that it required 
 a very large hat. Let us imagine him measuring and re- 
 measuring, and, in sliort, finding out that he was a singu- 
 larly great man, and then fully resolving on serving himself 
 heir to Dr. Andrew Thomson in the leadership of the 
 Church. Let us further imagine him throwing up his 
 parisli with this view, and accepting of a chapel in a large 
 town. Of course, to a person like him the Avay to the 
 first places in the Establishment could not be other than 
 open. Let us imagine him taking every opportunity of 
 speaking in the inferior church courts, — making long 
 speeches on great questions because they were important, 
 and long speeches on little questions because it was inge- 
 nious to show how much could be made out of them. Let 
 us imagine him successful in rendering himself a very sad 
 bore, and a very grievous hindrance to all manner of busi- 
 ness, with no one to listen to his speeches or to reply to
 
 THE NEW POLICY : EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 345 
 
 them, — with a drowsy moderator in front of him, and 
 sleeping reporters behind. Let us then imagine him turn- 
 ing to the press, big as ever with his own importance, and 
 magnanimously resolved pn confounding the sleepers by an 
 eloquent appeal to an impartial public. Let us imagine 
 him well-nigh realizing the story of the Welsh curate in 
 Joe Miller, who, in printing a sermon, requested the book- 
 seller to throw off as many copies as there were families in 
 the united kingdom ; but, when urging on his publisher a 
 second edition, let us imagine almost the whole of the first 
 returning unsold. Finally, let us imagine him concluding 
 that half the public and two-thirds of the Church had 
 entered into a conspiracy to eclipse his bright genius, 
 — thoroughly convinced as ever of his clear claim to the 
 leadership, — jealous of Dr. Chalmers, — certain that our 
 Grays, Cunninghams, Candlishes, and Dunlops, are but 
 vain, light men, with hats immensely smaller than his 
 own, — publishing a dull, bulky pamphlet, crammed with 
 borrowed thoughts and original vituperation, in the hope 
 of settling the present controversy and crushing his old 
 friends, and, in short, making common cause with Mod- 
 eratism, — and all this in the evangelical garb. Our 
 draught may be but a mere fancy sketch; but if it be 
 otherwise, has the Church any very great cause to regret 
 the opposition of such a man ? 
 
 Let us imagine yet another case. Let us conceive, if 
 we can, a man vain to a proverb, equally convinced of his 
 oratorical powers with the other, and of his natural right 
 to be a leader in the Church. Let us imagine him ever 
 involved, on the score of personal dignity, in controversies 
 the most ludicrously small, — engaged, for instance, heart, 
 soul, and spirit, in asserting, to the confusion of all and 
 sundry, that his newly erected church should be called the 
 ^first church of the town to which it belongs. Let us 
 imagine him, confident of his own unparalleled powers, 
 refusing his pulpit to a man such as Dr. Andrew Thom- 
 son. Our Saviour taught more than good manners when
 
 346 THE NEW POLICY : EVANGELICAL MODERATES. 
 
 he instructed his followers to choose the humbler places 
 when they sat at feasts; let us imagine the injunction 
 reversed by the individual whose character we describe. 
 While yet a young man, let us imagine him pressing him- 
 self forward, all unbidden, in our venerable Assembly, 
 amid the aged fjithers of the Church. Let us imagine him 
 engaged in endless speeches that could not be listened to, 
 and grown a thorough master of that particular species of 
 fine speaking which rejoices in supernumerary adjectives. 
 But though thus forward and vain, let us conceive of him 
 also as a zealous assertor of the original principles of Scot- 
 tish presbytery, — as going along with the Church in all 
 her decisions, — as committing himself, in reported speeches 
 and printed sermons, to all her principles, — as publicly 
 recognizing her leaders as men of God, — as, in short, a 
 foot-soldier in the very vanguard of the party, and only 
 nothing more because, despite of his own estimate, nature 
 had denied the necessary power. Imagine him either 
 piqued to find it so, or that a dangerous crisis has at length 
 come, and stealing meanly away by a side-path, of which, 
 of the hundreds present, only one other individual could 
 avail himself, and that one, by his own confession, not a 
 member of the Evangelical party. But our sketch is not 
 yet completed. Imagine the subject of it taking his 
 place, not many months subsequent, at a political dinner, 
 and rising, after one of the bitterest Intrusionists in Scot- 
 land, to denounce the very party for whom he had so long 
 spoken and written, whose principles he had professed, and 
 whose determinations he had defended, as a party witli' 
 whom he had "no sympathy," and who were but urging 
 the fill of the Establishment " in the desperation of human 
 prided Was it not enough that he had saved himself? 
 Surely a very little magnanimity might have enabled hira 
 to spurn the commonest trick of the renegade. This, too„ 
 may be but a fancy sketch ; but if it be otherwise, we again 
 ask, has the Church any very great cause to regret the 
 opposition of such a man ?
 
 MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 347 
 
 It is scarce necessary to remark in connection with such 
 men, and especially the first, that it is one of the many 
 advantages of our Presbyterian Church that every man 
 finds his true level in it. We have our leading bishops, 
 but they are all bishops of Heaven's making. It is through 
 no indirect or unworthy influence that the ablest men take 
 the first place in our Assemblies, and that character asserts 
 its power there with all the force of a natural law. This, 
 however, is not the point. We have described two classes 
 who either already unite, or are on the eve of uniting, the 
 doctrines of Evangelism to the Moderate policy. Their 
 joint numbers would scarce amount to half a score; but 
 much has been made of their characters in the present 
 controversy, especially of those of the first class; and the 
 Church's worst enemies have copiously quoted and enthu- 
 siastically cheered the pamphlets and speeches of the 
 othei's. We would say to the people. Beware of all of the 
 Moderate party who are on the eve of joining them. 
 
 MODERATISM: SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 
 
 Let us suppose a young man, brought up in all the 
 deadness of Moderate principles from his very childhood, 
 naturally quiet and amiable, and of a soft, retiring disposi- 
 tion. Let us suppose him marked out by his friends for 
 the Church, just as they might have marked him out for 
 physic or the law, and he himself, with little inclination 
 one way or another, acquiescently pursuing the necessary 
 studies. Let us suppose him at length settled in a parish, 
 
 — respectable in acquirement, unexceptionable in conduct, 
 and possessed, as a clergyman, of that sort of negative 
 character which has formed a starting-point to thousands, 
 
 — a starting-point, in their upward career, to some who 
 have subsequently become at once props and ornaments 
 of the Church, — a starting-point to others in their course
 
 348 MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 
 
 downwards to a level of degradation too low to be reached 
 by any except scandalous and unfaithful ministers. Let 
 us imagine him at this stage with all his predilections in 
 favor of the Moderate policy, the whole course of his 
 education bearing full upon it, and himself as yet unquali- 
 fied to understand anything higher, though, through the 
 influence of a temper naturally quiet and retiring, little 
 disposed to take a prominent part in church courts. 
 
 Let us next imagine a silent but very wonderful change 
 taking place in his character. Let us imagine the breath 
 of a living Spirit kindling up into light and heat the 
 hitherto dead embers of his painfully gathered though but 
 inadequately understood theology. " The wind bloweth 
 as it listeth ;" nor can we say why, in the stillness of the 
 calm, the sudden breeze should rise at times in the recesses 
 of some solitary valley, and heap together and carry up- 
 wards in its eddies the hitherto unseen and scattered foli- 
 age. Suppose, however, the change not restricted to the 
 clergyman whom we describe. Let us imagine it also 
 extended to many of his people, — a singular reformation 
 taking place among them, — open immoralities suppressed, 
 and an anxious concern awakened in hundreds together 
 regarding the realities of the unseen world. Let us ima- 
 gine their minister, thoroughly impressed and in earnest, 
 entering on a course of duty very different from the skel- 
 eton round which he had at first proposed to himself, — no 
 longer restricting himself to even Sabbath-day ministra- 
 tions, — not even restricting himself to dnys at all, but 
 atrociously guilty of the very abomination of his party, — 
 preachings by night; guilty even, according to Rowland 
 Hill, of being an instrument in the "conversion of souls at 
 unseasonable hours." And yet we can imagine such a man, 
 thus zealous and sincere, but thus retiring also in his habits, 
 and little disposed to take an active part in church courts, 
 remaining nominally, and for a brief transition period at 
 least, hi the ranks of Moderatism. His doctrines can be 
 no longer the doctrines of his party; his policy, were be
 
 MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 349 
 
 called on to act, could be quite as little their policy. It 
 would be as impossible for him to obtrude a hireling, igno- 
 rant of God and religion, on a parish such as his own, as it 
 would be for him to preach a gospel that had not Christ in 
 it. But, though impelled to preach, he is not compelled 
 to act. The prejudices of his education have still their 
 hold of him; and so, nominally at least, he still ranks on 
 the side of Moderatism. Would that the party had many 
 such ! In the first place, they might do it good ; in the 
 second, it is scarce possible, in the nature of things, that it 
 could retain them long. It is not on one occasion only 
 that Evangelism has drawn even her leaders from the 
 ranks of the opposition. Henderson had but to be con- 
 verted, and the timeserver and the intrusionist became the 
 first man of Scotland in forwarding the work of the sec- 
 ond Reformation. 
 
 There is another though less decided class whom it is 
 also but justice to mention. The increase of Evangelism 
 in the country has excited much bitter hostility and much 
 determined opposition. There are both ministers and 
 elders in the Church of Scotland, and especially the latter, 
 whose entire exertions in their official capacity have been 
 exertions against this principle and its workings. Were 
 we to strike out of their catalogue of doings and sayings 
 all they have done and said against missions, all they have 
 spoken and written against revivals, all their canvassings 
 and pamphleteering against church extension, all their 
 efibrts, secret and open, to secure the subjection of the 
 spiritual to the secular power, all their severe and pro- 
 tracted labors to open our parishes to the intrusion of 
 Youngs and Edwardses, and to show that it should be so, 
 — were we to denude them of their deeds of this and a 
 similar character, we would leave them nothing to connect 
 them, even incidentally, with vital Christianity. The whole 
 of their acts that have borne on religion in any way have 
 been acts in the opposition. But the party has another 
 and better class, — men brought up Moderates, and who 
 
 30
 
 850 MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 
 
 still record their votes on the Moderate side, — who nre 
 by no means devoid of the feeling tliat the standard of 
 duty is unequivocally an Evangelical standard. They are 
 men in most instances pretty far advanced in life, by no 
 means devoid of conscience, nor yet unimpressed by the 
 truths of revelation ; and who, after having preached 
 Moderatism long enough to discover that it is but of very 
 little use, have been groping doubtfully, and in much dark- 
 ness and feebleness, after a "more excellent way." Instead 
 of opposing the schemes of the Church, some of the class 
 have done their little all to help them. They have been 
 stirred up, partly through a growing seriousness, and paitly 
 by the example of some of their neighbors of the popular 
 party, to more diligence than they were wont to exercise in 
 their parochial labors; and if little fruit has been produced, 
 there has been at least a desire awakened for its produc- 
 tion. They at least respect Evangelism. "Be thankful," 
 said one of the class, an aged and respectable man, to some 
 young ministers, his co-presbyters, — "be thankful for the 
 time in which you have come into the Church. When xce 
 entered it, there was less light and lower views of duty." 
 Of this section of Moderatism we say just what we have 
 said of the other. Would that it were a more numerous 
 one ! It is at least convinced of a truth, which men such 
 as Dr. James Bryce will be slow to learn, — the truth that 
 Evangelism is the vital principle of Presbytery, — that it 
 could have no life without it as a Church, and no stability 
 without it as an Establishment. 
 
 It is no matter of regret, we repeat, that Moderatism 
 should have its better classes. The true matter of regret 
 respecting it is, that the individuals of which tliose classes 
 are composed should be so very few. Tlie j^arty has its 
 statistics, — its imquestionable and unquestioned tabular 
 exhibitions of chai-acter; and in these we unfortunately 
 find its average modicum of usefulness fixed exceedingly 
 low. Good character is a good thing, however ; and though 
 an over-large supply of it might render a schism in the
 
 MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. 351 
 
 party scarcely less inevitable, in the event of any ill-advised 
 perseverance in the course chalked out by the protesters 
 of the Commission, than that course would render inevitable 
 a schism in the Church itself, still the party love to avail 
 themselves of the respectability which it imparts. It is 
 marvellous how often single names are referred to, and 
 how the character of one is made to serve for a hundred. 
 We have been reminded of the fact, we know not how 
 often, by an old, and, we are afraid, not very pointed story, 
 told us by an aged relative, some five and twenty years 
 ago. At a time shortly after the old pious race of Scotch 
 sailors described by Peter Walker had worn out, and long 
 ere seamen's chapels and Methodism had done aught to 
 raise a serious race in their stead, our sailors were a decid- 
 edly irreligious class. Honest old John Menzies, of Aber- 
 deen, however, who lived at this time, was not only one 
 of the bravest and most skilful seamen connected with the 
 port, but also one of the most truly pious men of the city. 
 Almost every one knew and respected John Menzies. A 
 party of very decent women had met at Leith, and the 
 conversation turned, among other things, on the irreligion 
 of sailors. "Ah ! poor fellows," said one of the women, " we 
 should not judge over rashly; there are surely good men 
 among them. For my own part, I can say that one of the 
 very best men I know is a sailor." — "That, cummer, may 
 well be," said another woman ; " I also know a sailor who 
 is the worthiest man alive." — " And I, too," said a third, 
 "know a sailor who has very few equals." This, of course, 
 looked remarkably well ; tliree Christian sailors found on 
 so slight a survey, it was hard to say how long the list 
 might become. Unluckily, however, the women came to 
 compare notes, and discovered, in consequence, that their 
 three super-excellent sailors just resolved themselves into 
 honest old John Menzies, of Aberdeen.
 
 352 prater: the true and the counterfeit. 
 
 PRAYEE: THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. 
 
 "It has been long held by the people of Scotland, that 
 prayers laboriously polished in the study ere repeated by 
 rote in the pulpit, — fine addresses to Deity smoothed up 
 with the same small care which sonneteers bestow on odes 
 to their mistresses' eyebrows, — are in reality very poor 
 sort of things." We said so a paper or two ago ; but the 
 justice of the reflection has been challenged. We hold 
 tliat it has its foundation, not in prejudice, but in truth. 
 
 A Scotch Highlander, who served in the first disastrous 
 war with the American colonies, was brought one evening 
 before his commanding officer, charged with the capital 
 oflTence of being in communication with the enemy. The 
 charge could not well be preferred at a more dangerous 
 time. Only a few weeks had passed since the execution 
 of Major Andre ; and the indignation of the British, exas- 
 perated almost to madness by the event, had not yet cooled 
 down. There was, however, no direct proof against the 
 Highlander. He had been seen in the gray of the twilight 
 stealing from out a clump of underwood that bordered on 
 one of the huge forests which at that period covered by 
 ranch the greater part of the United Provinces, and which, 
 in the immediate neighborhood of the British, swarmed 
 with the troops of Washington. All the rest was mere 
 inference and conjecture. The poor man's defence was 
 summed up in a few words : he had stolen away from his 
 fellows, he said, to spend an hour in private prayer. " Have 
 you been in the habit of spending hours in private prayer?" 
 sternly asked the officer, himself a Scotchman and a Pres- 
 byterian. The Highlander replied in the affirmative. 
 "Tlien," said the other, drawing out his watch, "never in 
 all your life had you more need of prayer than now; kneel 
 down, sir, and pray aloud, that we may all hear you." The 
 Highlander, in the expectation of instant death, knelt
 
 prayer: the true and the counterfeit. 353 
 
 down. His prayer was that of one long acquainted with 
 the appropriate hinguage in which the Christian addresses 
 his God. It breathed of imminent peril, and earnestly 
 implored the divine interposition in the threatened danger, 
 — the help of Him who, in times of extremity, is strong 
 to deliver. It exhibited, in short, a man Avho, thoroughly 
 conversant with the scheme of redemption, and fully im- 
 pressed with the necessity of a personal interest in the 
 advantages Avhich it secures, had made the business of 
 salvation the work of many a solitary hour, and had, in 
 consequence, acquired much fluency in expressing all his 
 various wants as they occurred, and his thoughts and 
 wishes as they arose. "You may go, sir," said the officer, 
 as he concluded: "you have, I dare say, not been in cor- 
 respondence with the enemy to-night. His statement," he 
 continued, addressing himself to the other officers, "is, I 
 doubt not, perfectly correct. No one could have prayed so 
 without a long apprenticeship ; the fellows who have never 
 attended drill always get on ill at review." 
 
 Now, we are of opinion that the commanding officer 
 evinced very considerable shrewdness in this instance. We 
 learn to make our common every-day language a ready 
 medium of communicating all our various thoughts and 
 feelings, Jus^ because it is our common every-day language, 
 — just because, through constant habit, we come so inti- 
 mately to associate the arbitrary signs with the ideas which 
 they represent, that at length, ceasing to mark their dis- 
 tinct existence as signs, they become identical with the 
 thoughts of which they were at first but the instruments. 
 There is surely no fanaticism in arguing after this fashion ; 
 nor was the Scotch officer in any degree a fanatic, though 
 he carried the principle a little further. He argued that 
 the men with whom prayer is a habit acquire the language 
 of prayer; and it was on this principle that he tested the 
 suspected Highlander. The mechanic and the tradesman 
 learn to wield their technicalities — so stiff and unmanage- 
 able to all but themselves — with as much ease as if they 
 
 30*
 
 354 PRAYER : THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. 
 
 were the commonest vocables of the language. The vo- 
 cabularies of chemistry and the mathematics, of geology 
 and botany, however difficult and repulsive to others, never 
 encumber the chemist or the mathematician, the geologist 
 or tlie botanist; they serve, on the contrary, to impart 
 clearness to their thinking and fluency to their reasonings. 
 But no one ever mastered these vocabularies without much 
 practice and study ; and, in like manner, the closet has its 
 vocabulary, which it also requires practice and study to 
 master. In the every-day communications which the 
 Christian holds with his God, there are other thoughts 
 conveyed, and other feelings expressed, than those which 
 he employs in his every-day converse with his fellows. 
 The recesses of the internal man are laid open ; the bias 
 to evil, though manifested in but embryo imaginings and 
 hidden moods, is confessed and deplored in language varied 
 according to the character of the imagination or the com- 
 plexion of the mood ; there are implorations for assistance 
 against enemies felt, though invisible, and the nature of 
 whose ever-varying assaults is suggestive of the ever-vary- 
 ing petition. The circumstance, too, that it is God who is 
 addressed, gives a peculiarity to the style. We walk erect 
 in the presence of our fellows; and as it is the privilege 
 of our species to walk erect, shame to the low and mean 
 natures that do otherwise ! But is there any one who can 
 prostrate himself before his Maker in a humility too pro- 
 found ? All revelation, too, with its vast breadth of mean- 
 ing, — that breadth which, the more we examine it, expands 
 the more, — is composed of but the elements, the materials 
 of prayer; and an intercourse with God for a thousand 
 lifetimes united would not sufiice to employ them all. 
 Prayer is so mighty an instrument that no one ever 
 thoroughly mastered all its keys. They sweep along the 
 infinite scale of man's wants and of God's goodness. But, 
 comparatively at least, this instrument has been mastered ; 
 it is mastered to a considerable degree by every converted 
 man. He acquires the vocabulary of the closet as the
 
 prayer: the true and the counterfeit. 355 
 
 proper Inngnnge of the state of Avhich he has become a 
 free denizen, and his fellow-citizens recognize it as their 
 comnion tongue. The Scotch officer was not altogether 
 ignorant of it ; and to the positive existence of such a 
 language the anecdote of his experiment on the Highlander 
 owes its point. 
 
 To the Christian possessed of the language of the closet 
 we very decidedly oppose the mere Moderate, by whom 
 that language has not been acquired. Nay, we go further. 
 We affirm that the ability of recognizing this language 
 through that sympathy which soul holds with soul, and 
 that perception through which experience recognizes its 
 kindred experience, are elements, and no unimportant 
 ones, of the present controversy. We would deem a 
 Christian people fully justified in rejecting every clergy- 
 man in whose prayers they did not recognize this language. 
 We know there are good men who write their prayers. 
 We are aware that Knox wrote prayers for the rude and 
 untaught people of Scotland, whom it was his high and 
 honorable vocation to civilize and instruct; but tlie lan- 
 guage in which they were written was the heart-stirring 
 language of the closet. They were altogether different 
 from the things we censure, — those pieces of labored 
 feebleness, whose polish is but the polish of baldness, — 
 things that are not prayers, but the semblances of prayers, 
 — not substance, but the reflections of substance, — the 
 mere echoes of hearts that reverberate because they are 
 hollow.. And the difference can be well felt. It can be 
 tried by the test of the Scotch officer. On grounds such 
 as these we again repeat our remark, — we repeat, that "it 
 has been long held by the people of Scotland," and held 
 justly, "that prayers laboriously polished in the study ere 
 repeated by rote in the pulpit, — fine addresses to Deity 
 smoothed up with the same small care which sonneteers 
 bestow on odes to their mistresses' eyebrows, — are in real- 
 ity very poor sort of things, — mere embodiments, in most 
 instances, of an inefficient world-hunting Moderatism, that 
 plays at sentence-making."
 
 356 MR. ISAAC TAYLOR ON THE 
 
 MR. ISAAC TAYLOR ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE 
 CHURCH. 
 
 Nothing proper to a Church and State system, says the 
 celebrated author of " Ancient Christianity," in his work 
 on " Spiritual Despotism," published some years since, — 
 '■'■ nothing proj^er to a Church and State system demands 
 the subserviency of the Church to the /State." Such is the 
 decisive declaration of one who, himself from principle an 
 Episcopalian, yet laments with the greatest earnestness 
 over the "fatal sitrrender" which the Church of England 
 has made to the State of her spiritual prerogative and 
 independence, — a step which he regards as in a jireemi- 
 nent degree the source of those perilous circumstances by 
 which she is surrounded. And in this we believe liim to be 
 not far from the truth. A Church maybe subject to many 
 corruptions, and may tolerate many abuses; but until she 
 divests herself, as the Church of England has in great 
 measure done, of the powers of government and the reins 
 of discipline, — of her spiritual independence and free- 
 dom, — she possesses within herself that machinery, a due 
 exercise of which may accomplish her purification and re- 
 vival. Deprived of these powers, however, the well-spring 
 of her vitality is poisoned ; she floats a helmless, mastless 
 hulk upon the waves, " at the merciment," to quote the 
 words of Mr. Taylor, " of her foes and of her friends." 
 
 We are strongly of opinion, from the incidental expres- 
 sions made use of by this deservedly esteemed writer in 
 the work referred to, that, were his attention turned to 
 the present contest of our Cliurch with the civil despotism 
 of the day, he would have no hesitation on which side to 
 take his stand. He would hesitate not — as he presumes, 
 with reference to the Church of England, that no "prac- 
 tical and impartial" man would hesitate — "to give his 
 aid in restorins: to the Established Church that indepen-
 
 INDEPETiTDENCE OF THE CHURCH. 357 
 
 t>ENCE and those vital functions which Christianity de- 
 Tuands for her," and which the Scottish Reformers, in 
 contradistinction to those of England, secured to us in 
 a manner conformable to God's word, and which, they 
 fondly imagined, Avould preserve us from further molesta- 
 tion. Thus he speaks of the English Establishment: — 
 " Too long she has consented to be mocked with the 
 empty forms of independence ; and is now so placed that 
 she must assert and regain her lost prerogatives, or fall 
 lower still. The assembling of convocation effectively at 
 her own discretion, and for the exercise of substantial 
 functions, — the unprompted election of her bishoj^s, and 
 the annulling of lay encroachments upon ecclesiastical 
 property [an evil that we also wish to see 'annulled'], — 
 are obvious points of that Church reform which the course 
 of events demands." How refreshing is it, in a Church 
 which, with all her boasted emblazonries of rank and pre- 
 tension, is trodden under foot by an iron desjiotism, to 
 meet with one of such congenial sentiments with ourselves, 
 who can proclaim aloud, with equal boldness and ability, 
 her degraded and enslaved condition, and the means 
 necessary to be adopted for reinstating her in that status 
 which it behooves the Church of Christ to occupy! Mr. 
 Taylor advocates an infusion of lay blood into the organic 
 government of the Church, — the complete disenthralmcnt 
 from the bonds of state supremacy ; and looks forward to 
 the accomplishment of these reforms, along with a correc- 
 tion of the abuses of j^atronage, — such an amendment of 
 the whole system "as would concede something to the 
 people, and absolutely exclude the merchandise of souls," — 
 as fitted to acquire for the Establishment, what she is not 
 now possessed of, the submissive and cordial reverence and 
 regard of her people. He does not, indeed, acknowledge 
 the scriptural right of the people to a direct voice in the 
 appointment of their ministers. But the conclusion at 
 which he arrives on this point from another source of 
 evidence may have equal weight with those who make
 
 358 ISAAC TAYLOR ON CHURCH INDEPENDENCE. 
 
 primitive prnctices and ancient fathers the "gods of their 
 idolatry ; " and it is, so far as it goes, very satisfactory, as 
 coming from one who has made tiie history of the pristine 
 churches a sabject of deep and fruitful study, and whose 
 predilections are all in favor of the hierarchical system of 
 the Church of England. "In fact," he says, "though not 
 to be traced in the canonic writings, the popular voice 
 and sutfrage in the election of the bishop unquestionably 
 obtained a very early prevalance, and those who absolutely 
 excluded the will of the people in the choice of their 
 pastors, although not reproveable by the letter of Scrip- 
 ture, yet 0[)pose one of the most ancient and universal of 
 ecclesiastical usages." 
 
 In his summary of scriptural proofs concerning the dif- 
 ferent forms of Church government, we scarcely think that 
 Mr. Taylor at all grapples with or meets the arguments 
 and facts by which the system of Presbytery may be main- 
 tained from the Avord of God. He no doubt expresses in 
 an able manner the incoherent and destructive nature of 
 Congregationalism ; but he seems chary of coming into 
 too close collision with the advocates of Presbyterianism. 
 We leave it, liowever, for our readers to judge how far he 
 has in the following passage portrayed the leading charac- 
 teristics of the two Establishments of this country. "If a 
 choice were to be made between two actual forms of Pi"es- 
 byterianism and Episcopacy, whereof the first a<lmits the 
 laity to a just and apostolic place in the management and 
 administration of the Church, Avhile the second absolutely 
 rejects all such influence, and at the same time retains for 
 its bishops the baronial dignities and the secular splendor 
 usurped by the insolent hicrarchs of the middle ages, then, 
 indeed, the balance would be one of a diftei-ent sort; and, 
 unless there were room to hope for a correction and reform 
 of political prelacy, an honest and modest Christian mind 
 would take refuge in the substantial benefits of Presbyteri- 
 anism." We are inclined to believe that the writer has in 
 these lines, i)erhaps altogether unwittingly, been trying his
 
 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 359 
 
 hand at portrait-painting; and that the contrast between 
 the "counterfeit presentment of the two brothers" tells 
 by no means against our northern Establishment. 
 
 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 It was natural, as the crisis of the conflict approached, that the 
 Evangelical party throughout the parishes of Scotland should adopt 
 such an organization as might enable them most effectively to pro- 
 mote their principles and vindicate their position. Hence arose 
 the Defence Associations which figure in the following article. — Ed. 
 
 It was an important stop, not for our country only, but 
 for the whole human species, when our humbler country- 
 men of old, associating for mutual defence, surrounded a 
 few mean villages with rude walls, and procured their 
 Charters of Community from monarclis jealous of the 
 proud barons, their oppressors. Our historians, especially 
 the earlier ones, have dwelt almost exclusively on the hard- 
 fought battles of our country', on the barbarous feuds of 
 proud and haughty barons, the intrigues of courtiers, and 
 the negotiations of statesmen. Our poets and romancers 
 have revelled amid the uncouth splendor of courts that 
 were but conning their first lessons in politeness, and have 
 exhausted their power of narrative and description on the 
 barbaric pomp of tournaments, and the spirit-stirring 
 scenes of war and the chase. Transactions and events of 
 an immensely more important character have been passed 
 over undescribed. In tracing to its earliest origin the lib- 
 erty of our country, we would pass over kings, barons, and 
 knights, — all that has been permitted hitherto most to 
 occupy the memory and fill the imagination, — and, de- 
 scending from the castle and the palace, we would select, 
 as the true benefactors of the present time, the denizens of
 
 3G0 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 a humbler sphere. We would pick out the rude mechanic 
 plying his simple art in his humble cottage, behind the 
 rampart of undressed stone which his own hands had 
 assisted to rear, — his blackjack of hammered iron, and his 
 round head-piece suspended from the rafters above, — his 
 sword crossed over his long bow, and his six-eln spear 
 stretching athwart the wall. Burgher does not sound half 
 so nobly as knight ; but it is to the burgher, not to the 
 knight, that we owe the liberty of the subject, the manu- 
 mission of the vassal, the emancipation of the slave, human- 
 izing commerce, equal laws, the arts of social life, and the 
 first asylums and baiting-places of the Reformation. The 
 association of the oppressed many against the grinding des- 
 potism of the powerful few has been peculiarly blessed in 
 almost all the states of Europe, and nowhere more emphat- 
 ically blessed than in our own country. Nay, had we to 
 furnish appropriate emblems of the despotism over which, 
 in their long struggle, the people ultimately triumphed, 
 and of the liberty which they at length achieved, — if we 
 could scarce find a fitter symbol of the one than some 
 proud baronial castle, with its huge gray walls thinly 
 sprinkled with iron-barred windows, its overhanging bar- 
 tizans, its deep moat, its jealous drawbridge, its cruel 
 dungeon hid deep from the air and the sun, its court of 
 summary trial, and its grave-besprinkled mound of execu- 
 tion, — we could scarce devise a more appropriate repre- 
 sentative of the other than some humble town, rudely but 
 strongly walled round, its hardy inhabitants trained to 
 arms, and bound by the most solemn engagements recipro- 
 cally to defend each other, its straw-covered council-house 
 rising in the midst of its one irregular street, its narrow 
 and crowded dwellings clamorous with the sounds of me- 
 chanic labor, a few armed burghers watching at its gate, 
 and the sweeping declivity below thickly besprinkled with 
 its minute and multitudinous patches of cultivation. 
 
 Now that a crisis has arisen in which it is necessary for 
 the people of Scotland again to unite, as of old, it is well
 
 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 861 
 
 to consider the kind of arms which it is most their safety 
 and interest to wield, and the class of enemies against 
 which they would do well first to direct them. Our ances- 
 tors commenced operations by drawing closely together, 
 and surrounding their humble dwellings with a wall. They 
 would scarce have succeeded in obtaining their charters 
 of community had they applied for them in the character 
 of defenceless serfs. Then* descendants must also draw 
 closely together; but wall-building will scarcely avail 
 them. It must be their work rather to demolish walls 
 erected already. 
 
 Our Church Defence Associations may be made to sub- 
 serve a very important purpose. We have had occasion 
 to remark, oftener than once, that in many of our rural 
 districts political opinion is still a serf bound to the soil. 
 It is not men, in most of these, to whom the Reform Bill 
 has actually extended the franchise ; it is acres. It is not 
 farmers, but groups of fields, estimated in the laird's rent- 
 book at fifty pounds per annum, that enjoy the privilege 
 of returning representatives to Parliament. The tenant 
 is but the mouth-piece of his farm, and the proprietor his 
 prompter. Now, without being particularly political, we 
 must just say that this is not at all what should be. Opin- 
 ion should not be a serf bound to the soil. It is men, not 
 acres, who should enjoy the franchise. It is not according 
 to the British constitution, either as it was or is, that a 
 proprietor should possess as many votes as he possesses 
 farms ; and it is well to remember that, as for every privi- 
 lege which man enjoys man shall have to give an account, 
 the tenant, though he can transfer his vote to his landlord, 
 cannot transfer to him his responsibility. It may be quite 
 right, if he so will it, that he should vote with his land- 
 lord ; but it is at least equally right that he should vote 
 with him only because he wills it, and is convinced in his 
 own mind that his determination is a good one. In a 
 point of singular advantage for observation, we have been 
 often astonished to see how implicitly even a rack-rented 
 
 31
 
 362 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 
 
 tenantry seemed to have taken it for granted tliat the vote 
 was their proprietor's, not theirs. Regularly as term-day 
 came round, the rent, to its last shilling, had to be pro- 
 duced ; and, had bank-agents been as unaccommodating 
 as the laird, almost every Martinmas might have witnessed 
 its roups of live-stock and utensils; and yet, notwithstand- 
 ing, every dissolution of Parliament saw the votes of an 
 oppressed tenantry thirled to the manor-house. Our 
 Church Defence Associations are admirably suited to cor- 
 rect this evil. There are many merely political questions 
 on which it is difficult for plain men to form an opinion, — 
 many, too, in which there is so equal a balance of right 
 and wrong, that one might hesitate to encounter a con- 
 tingent evil, however slight its character, in deciding either 
 for or against them. But no true Presbyterian in Scot- 
 land, however little skilled in politics, will experience any 
 difficulty in making up his mind on the Church question, 
 in its bearing on scenes such as that of Culsalmond and 
 Marnoch. Directed and impelled by our Defence Associa- 
 tions, we trust to see it insinuate its wedge between the 
 Intrusionist landlord and the votes of his Non-Intrusionist 
 tenants ; and we are of opinion the attention of our 
 friends cannot be too strongly directed to this point. The 
 wealthy commoner who reckons fifty farms on his roll, and 
 the farmer, his tenant, who rents, at fifty pounds per 
 annum, one of the smallest of them, are placed politically 
 on exactly the same level, and it is surely high time that 
 both the proprietor and the farmer should begin to 
 know it. 
 
 All other Scottish parties have been already drawn out 
 into the political arena ; they have been already tasked to 
 their full strength, each against its antagonist party ; nor 
 has there been a means left untried by which the jjower 
 of any one of them might be increased. But, the Presby- 
 terianism of the Church of Scotland has not yet been 
 drawn out in its character as such. It has been lost amid 
 other and lower parties ; and, now that it is gathering to a
 
 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 363 
 
 head in its own proper form, it may be well conceived of 
 as a new force marching into the heart of a lengthened 
 fray. We have referred to a kind of political vis inertia?. 
 Mr. John Dunlop, in his masterly work on association, tells 
 us, in illustrating this principle, that in 1789, when the 
 whole existing state of society in France seemed ready to 
 explode, and when the assembling of the States-General 
 was commenced, the great body of the common people 
 remained such careless spectators of the universal commo- 
 tion and struggle which was impending, that few of them 
 took the trouble of voting at the elections, and that where 
 a thousand were expected to come forward, not perhaps 
 fifty made their appearance. There has been more of this 
 vis inerticB among the Presbyterians of the Church of 
 Scotland than perhaps any other body in the kingdom. 
 But we have in the present controversy a force potent 
 enough to overcome it ; and it will, we trust, be a main 
 object with our Church Defence Associations to bring this 
 force to bear. The passive must be converted into the 
 active throughout the country. The "grave livers" of 
 Scotland have never been drawn out in any purely secular 
 quarrel ; nor has the country, in any of her popular strug- 
 gles, presented a very imposing attitude without them. 
 They have ever constituted her strength. The poet of 
 Scotland who so truly described himself as " prompt to 
 learn and wise to know," but whose wisdom and knowledge 
 too little influenced his own unhappy career, could see 
 clearly from wliat scenes the glory of his country arose, 
 and in what class her strength mainly consisted. Too 
 little serious himself, he could yet recognize in her humble 
 men of devotion and prayer her " guard and ornament," 
 her best wealth in her times of peace, and her encircling 
 "wall of fire" in her day of trouble. We can trust that, 
 with the Divine blessing, on wliieh all must de]K'ud, our 
 fast-forming asr,oci:itions will show that he did not over- 
 estimate their importance.
 
 364 FORESHADOWINGS. 
 
 FORES HADOWINGS. 
 
 Whatever God in his wisdom may have designed as 
 the termination of the existing troubles, it were well that 
 for the present at least the Church and people of Scot- 
 land should be prepared for a time of extremity. Nor do 
 Ave entertain any fear of inducing a timid feeling among 
 the assertors of the present quarrel by referring to the 
 imminence of the danger. Some of our readers will per- 
 haps remember the remark of Burns on one of the criti- 
 cisms of a friend, who suggested that he should strike out 
 from his sublime address of the Bruce the alternative of 
 the "gory bed," as impolitic in the circumstances. It 
 tended to make death frightful, said the critic, and pre- 
 sented a discouraging and disagreeable image, which the 
 skilful general would scarce venture to suggest to his 
 troops on the eve of a great battle. Burns knew better. 
 " It was the battle of Bannockburn," said the poet, " which 
 they were going to fight ; and the man who would have 
 shrunk at the image of the ' gory bed ' was no man fitted 
 to fight there." 
 
 It is imperatively necessary that the country be thor- 
 oughly aroused. Its chance of escaping from the present 
 imminent danger (if in such a matter we may speak of 
 chance) will be in exact proportion to its sense of it. All 
 must have remarked how very difficult it is to realize ex- 
 traordinary events as things of probable occurrence in one's 
 own times. We acquaint ourselves with matters in their 
 ordinary course, — with the common, evcry-day affiiirs of 
 life, — and give to our anticipations of the future, from an 
 inherent law of our nature, the complexion of what we 
 may term our average experience of the present. And 
 hence the difficulty to which we refer. Occurrences simi- 
 lar to those more striking events of history which belong 
 to experience in its extended sense, but not to our own
 
 FORESHADO WINGS. 365 
 
 individual experience, are almost never anticipated as 
 probable ; nay, even their very possibility is held doubtful. 
 A sort of instinctive, unreasoning skepticism declares 
 ao-ainst theni. Many of our readers must remember with 
 what feelings, some fifteen or twenty years ago, tliey were 
 in the habit of regarding the narratives of those terrible 
 visitations of the plague which, as late as the middle half 
 of the seventeenth century, used from time to time to thin 
 the population of Britain. Visitations of so frightful a 
 character were viewed as belonging exclusively to the past, 
 — so exclusively, that their return seemed scarce possible. 
 It seemed well-nigh as probable that the country should 
 again see that John Milton who had to remove from his 
 house in Bunhill Fields during the ravages of the pest, 
 as the ravages of the pest itself; and sad stories of dead 
 bodies dragged on hurdles to the nearest hillock, and 
 thrown into hastily-scooped graves, — of whole hamlets 
 left desolate, — of strange barriers arresting the progress 
 of the disease in crowded cities, — barriers such as slender 
 runnels of water or cross lanes, — of clouds of vapor stand- 
 ing up like erect walls over the infected districts, — of 
 cottages burnt to the ground, for all their inmates had 
 perished, and all within reeked with the rank steam of 
 infection ; — these and many such narratives seemed merely 
 dreams of tradition, — not sober realities, but a sort of 
 misty extravagances, which, however connected with the 
 past, no one could associate with times so sober as the 
 present. Southey, in one of his earlier prose writings, 
 ventured to urge the probability of the return of such 
 strange and terrible visitations, and the suggestion was 
 regarded as wild and unnatural — as the somewhat outre 
 stroke of a bold writer straining after effect. We have 
 lived; however, to see cholera strike down a hundred 
 millions of the human species ; we have seen it, regulated 
 by its own eccentric and inexplicable laws, ravaging our 
 cities and villages, as if its districts had been assigned to 
 it by the rule and the measuring line. Clouds of murky 
 
 31*
 
 366 FORESHADOWINGS. 
 
 vapor have stood up for days and weeks together over 
 our towns, as if the destruction that was pressing upon 
 them had taken to itself a visible form ; cottages have 
 been again burnt to the ground for the same sad cause as 
 of old ; and, as the flames arose, we have seen their light 
 flashing on the lonely graves of their perished inmates, — 
 graves scooped out of wooded hillocks, far from church- 
 yards and every accustomed place of sepulture, or on the 
 skirts of mountain-streams, or the vei'ge of solitary sea- 
 shores. Events similar to those which we could scarce 
 credit as possible in connection with our own country and 
 our own time some eighteen or twenty years ago, are now 
 registered in our experience as portions of our country's 
 recent history. And it is well to remark that this sort 
 of instinctive skepticism applies as certainly to signal 
 atrocities perpetrated by men, as to extraordinary visita- 
 tions in the providence of God. A repetition of the Irish 
 massacre seems as impossible now as a visit from the pest 
 appeared twenty years ago. Men are still slow to believe 
 that our civil courts in the nineteenth century may be 
 found as decidedly opposed to Christ, his cause and gov- 
 ernment, as they were in the seventeentli. The atrocities 
 of forced settlements, though we see them occurring 
 around us, still seem rather to belong to a former age 
 than to the present time ; and the latest era of persecution 
 for conscience' sake continues to appear as if it had closed 
 when William III. landed in Torbay. It were well for 
 the country to be thoroughly aroused from the indiffer- 
 ency which this natural, though not the less irrational, 
 skepticism induces. The revolutionary cycle seems fast 
 revolving in Britain. In Scotland, at least, we now stand 
 on the very brink of some of the more intolerable evils 
 by which great convulsions are invariably preceded ; and 
 in a very few months, if the Presbytcrianism of the coun- 
 try bestir not itself all the more vigorously, it shall have 
 to witness, as of old, the disestablishment of the national 
 religion, and the ejection from their charges of all its
 
 FORESHADO WINGS. 367 
 
 better pastors. There are more than the controversies 
 of the seventeenth century reviving. 
 
 To the people in the present crisis we have but one ad- 
 vice : they must arouse, associate, prepare themselves. If 
 they but stand still, it will be to witness the infliction of 
 one of the widest spread desolations that ever yet visited 
 their Church or country. There were only two hundred 
 parish churches shnt up on the first Sabbath of the winter 
 of 1662, through the policy of Commissioner Middleton, 
 backed by the tyranny of Charles. The policy of our 
 Hopes and Aberdeens, backeil by Sir Robert Peel, threat- 
 ens to shut np at least twice that number, and to render 
 the others of as little value to the community as the 
 churches occupied by the curates during the disastrous 
 reign of Prelacy. There can be no doubt that the people 
 will be thoroughly roused ; but it is all-important that they 
 should be roused in time. It is all-important that they 
 should be roused rather to prevent evil than to avenge it. 
 They err egregiously who hold that one A'igorous blow, 
 through which the Evangelism of Scotland would be thrust 
 beyond the pale of her Establishment, would restore quiet 
 to the country. It would restore to it such quiet as the 
 similar blow dealt to it by Middleton did, — a quiet com- 
 pared with Avhich all the popular ebullitions of either the 
 present century or the last would be scarce worthy of 
 being regarded as popular ebullitions at all. But it would 
 be well, surely, for both the Church and her enemies that 
 the experiment should not be made. The fight at present 
 is on the breach. Better that it should be decided thure 
 than by blowing up the citadel at a later stage.
 
 368 TEANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 An .ict of Parliament is confessedly a dry-looking docu- 
 ment ; a collection of acts forms a dull, unreadable book. 
 If Ave double the amount, the fatigue of perusal necessarily 
 doubles ; the density increases in due proportion as the 
 volumes spread over the shelves, and reaches its acme 
 as they multiply into a complete law library. A heavy 
 atmosphere presses upon the dust that gathers over the 
 folios of Themis, and its dense va})ory folds reflect a mirage 
 of only slumbrous images. The tall, weighty columns, each 
 with its single broad margin patched over with notes, like 
 a pond-edge studded with bogs; the sections and para- 
 graphs doled out by the talc, as if the framers had been 
 fearful, seemingly not without cause, of repeating the same 
 provision twic(>, — here and there the blunder actually com- 
 mitted, notwithstanding the i)recaution, — here and there 
 the opposite mistake of a provision running counter to the 
 rest, turned, as it were, thwartways in the passage, as logs 
 sometimes do when floated down a stream ; the long, loose, 
 unmusical sentences, that forget themselves, and run into 
 paragraphs; the thick, dense words, that seem selected 
 with the express design of eclipsing the meaning, — that 
 at least, in many instances, serve admirably to effect the 
 ap|)arent purpose; the glimmering cross-lights of idea that 
 meet the student at every turning, with all the perplexing 
 bewilderment, but none of the picturesqueness, of cross- 
 lights in an ancient building ; the equable, slumbrous, 
 Lethe-like rumble, rumble of the style ; the general resem- 
 blance of every one leaf to every other, — of page to page, 
 of section to section, of act to act; and then the enormous 
 amount of the whole, — one fifty pages following another 
 fifty pages, — the bookbinder interposing his fence of
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 369 
 
 pasteboard and calf when we number the thousand, — then 
 another thousand commencing, — then another,and another, 
 and another, — and, after numbering the term of Methu- 
 sehdi's years twenty times told, the thousands as if still but 
 beginning ; — truly it seems no way wonderful that so 
 many lawyers should be so little acquainted with law, or 
 that they should find it so much easier a matter to listen 
 to the decisions of the dozen arbitrary legislators of the 
 Court of Session, than to plod through the acts of the 
 hereditary and representative legislators of the two Houses 
 of Parliament, It is easier to listen to decisions than to 
 plod through acts; just as it is obviously easier to pick up 
 the smattering of information which passes current in the 
 gossip of the day, than to ground one's self thoroughly in 
 the knowledge which is to be derived from books. " Gigan- 
 tic geniuses, fit to grapple with whole libraries," are not 
 geniuses of every-day production ; but men qualified to col- 
 lect news occur in crowds, go where we may ; and hundreds 
 of the class write " solicitor," " advocate," or " W. S." on 
 their door-plates, and attend the Parliament House, 
 
 But if it be thus a heavy matter to read law as stored 
 up in huge folios, it is far from being a heavy matter to 
 read it as written on the face of a country. We pass 
 from the sign to that which the sign represents. All is 
 cold and obscure abstraction in the one ; all is breathing, 
 animated existence in the other. Let us take, by way of 
 example, but a single act, — the act through which Com- 
 missioner Middleton overturned Presbyterianism in Scot- 
 land. It is merely a piece of bad, unideal prose in the 
 statute-book ; but what a deeply interesting though fearful 
 tragedy of many scenes does it not appear amid the hills 
 and fields, and in the towns and villages of our native 
 country ! Gibbets rise tall and black over assembled 
 crowds ; and we see in the hands of the public executioner 
 gray-haired men of God, content rather to die than deny 
 their Master. The churches of the land are silent, or re- 
 echo only the mutterings of a debasing superstition. The
 
 870 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 voice of psalms mingles on the hills with the patter of 
 musketry. There is cold, and hunger, and violent death, 
 amid yonder rocks and moors, and in those solitary dens 
 and caves. Thousands die on fields of battle, or are forced 
 into exile, immured in dungeons, borne away to be sold 
 as slaves in the colonies, perish in tempests chained to the 
 sinking wreck, or welter under flood-mark, as the tide rises, 
 tied down amid the ware and tangle of the shore. There 
 is blood everywhere, as in the land of Egypt when Moses 
 called up the first plague. Blood in council-chambers, — 
 blood on the boots and the thumbkins, — blood on the 
 ermine of the judge, — blood on the lawn of the bishop, 
 
 — blood on the scaffold and the headsman's axe, — blood 
 in the churchyard, where the debased criminal and the 
 honored martyr are huddled together in a common grave, 
 
 — blood beside the cottage wall, where the lonely Madow 
 watches the corpse of her murdered husband. The rising 
 sun is reflected on pools of blood, that thicken amid the 
 hills beside new-made graves ; it sets upon blood freshly 
 spilt on fields strewed with yet quivering carcasses; the 
 Clyde flows sullenly along the arches of Bothwcll, and the 
 eddies are ci'imsoned with blood. There is blood every- 
 Avhere; and the cry of the land rises to Heaven. How 
 very terrible the reading of this iniquitous act, when we 
 thus pass from the statute-books of the country to its 
 histoiy^ — from the sign to the thing signified ! We peruse 
 the scene a little longer. An empty throne appears in the 
 distance; a bigot king wanders, discrowned, in pitiable 
 exile ; and the last of his descendants perishes, in scorn and 
 beggary, in a foreign land. Take, as another example, the 
 scarce less iniquitous act of Queen Anne, and peruse it in 
 a similar manner. A dense fog of indifferency and practi- 
 cal error creeps over the grand religious institution of the 
 country, and in district after district its moral influence 
 becomes more than neutralized ; for, instead of ministering 
 to the religious feelings of the people, it but serves to shock 
 and outrasze them. Not a few of our churches become
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 371 
 
 scenes of violence and perjury; from not a few of our 
 pulpits there are doctrines promulgated which souls cannot 
 receive and live ; and the better men of the country, unable 
 to eject those who buy and sell, — those whose traffic, 
 darker than that of the money-changers of old, is a traffic 
 in men's souls, — quit in sorrow the place so grossly dese- 
 crated. One humble chapel rises after another amid their 
 hamlets, where they worship in the purity and freedom 
 with which their fathers worshipped. But the compara- 
 tively indifferent sink into yet deeper indiffei'ence. No 
 man cares for their souls ; for when did the hireling care 
 for his flock ? The evening and morning hymn is silenced 
 in many a cottage. Immorality and improvidence come 
 in like a flood. The Sabbath becomes a day of weariness, 
 — fit preparation for its becoming a day of toil. The old 
 spirit of honest independence evaporates; for, in a state 
 of slavery to vice, the whole abject feelings of the slave 
 are induced ; the pauperism of the country multiplies a 
 hundred-fold, and, fierce in its distress, threatens to play 
 the footpad with our capitalists and proprietary. And 
 when at length, after the lapse of a century, the spirit of a 
 better time revives, it finds but a mutilated body to ani- 
 mate, — a body palsied in part, — shorn of not a few of 
 its members, and bearing within, in, alas ! no small amount, 
 the seeds of corruption. We peruse exactly the same 
 statute, in an abridged form, in the settlements of Marnoch 
 and Culsalmond ; and what honest man so dull as to miss 
 its true meaning in digests so clear, pointed, and concise? 
 
 It is ever an important matter to be able thus to trans- 
 late written laws, if we may so speak, into overt acts and 
 their consequences. It is a higher ability in its perfection 
 than that of the mere lawyer; it is the ability of the 
 profound statesman and legislator. All men, however, 
 possess it in some degree — even men who cannot so much 
 as read written law ; and it is to the general diffvision and 
 exercise of this feculty that the Church, in the present con- 
 troversy, owes the support of so preponderating a majority
 
 372 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 of the people. If lawyer-like misinterpretation of statutes, 
 or the calumnies of seven-eighths of the public press, could 
 have misled them, they would have been all on the other 
 side. Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, would not have been plau- 
 sible, nor the Earl of Aberdeen diplomatic, in vain; nor 
 would almost all have seen fallacies deplorably palpable in 
 the arguments of Dr. Cook, and in the utter lack of solidity 
 in the motion of Dr. Muir. It was the general ability of 
 translating into the tangibilities of action the misinterpi-e- 
 tation and the calumnies, the plausibilities and the diplo- 
 macy, the arguments and the motion, that rallied her sup- 
 porters round the Church. We are told by the lawyers, 
 for instance, that spiritual independence in connection with 
 the Establishment means just no more than that degree of 
 independence which the Court of Session now chooses to 
 allow her. We test the doctrine by the tangibilities of 
 history, — action seen retrospectively, — and find that, if it 
 be true, all the histories of our Church and country must 
 be false. It must be entirely false that, in the long battle 
 of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Church 
 was ultimately victor ; it must be false that the charter 
 granted to her in 1592 is still unrepealed, — that there was 
 a revolution settlement in her favor, or that an act for 
 securing the independence of her government formed a 
 basis of the treaty of union. And accordingly we find 
 that, by a strange enough fiction of law, the unreality of 
 all this is actually taken for granted by the assertors of the 
 doctrine, and that, as if there had been no charter, no revo- 
 lution settlement, no treaty of union, they argue that the 
 Black Acts of 1584 are still in force, — acts which, accord- 
 ing to even Principal Robertson, were repealed only eight 
 years after their enactment. If tliis doctrine be true, these 
 statutes are still the law of the Church, and all the rest of 
 her history is a lie. And to what do the calumnies of the 
 ])ress amount when translated into events? What sort of 
 liglit do the oulragcs at Mai-nocli and Culsalmond throw 
 on the ofl-re)>eated assertion, that it is clerical i)ower, not
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 373 
 
 popular right, for which the Church is contending? What 
 clerical party, on the meanest and most grossly palpable 
 of subterfuges, were content to increase their own power 
 at the expense of the people there ? And in what party, 
 on the other hand, did the people recognize their best and 
 most devoted friends? 
 
 A similar translation of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill at 
 once fixes its character. If the bill be a desirable bill, then 
 the dilemma, in which ministers of the gospel could do 
 only one of two things, — either outrage their own con- 
 science by pronouncing reasons of objection to be good 
 which, from the very nature of things, they could not 
 know to be either good or otlierwise, or of outraging the 
 consciences of congregations by subjecting them to forced 
 settlements, — this, we say, if the bill be desirable, would 
 be, of consequence, a desirable dilemma. We have read 
 somewhere of the Code Napoleon, that in at least one 
 important respect it differs materially from the statute- 
 book of our own country. The bearing of our statutes on 
 special cases is fixed by decisions ; the laws of the Code, 
 on the contrary, are illustrated by exam]»les. Special cases 
 are imagined beforehand ; and it is the pait of the magis- 
 trate to compare with these the cases which actually occur, 
 and to decide accordingly. Examples conceived on a sim- 
 ilar principle would be fiital accompaniments to the bill of 
 Aberdeen. Nor are we quite sure that they would tell 
 very decidedly in favor of the liberum arhitrium. There 
 are cases, at least, in which even it would translate lamely 
 enough into fact, — cases in which presbyteries and synods 
 might be as free from the necessity of j^erpetrating forced 
 settlements as Adam was free, ere the Fall, from all com- 
 pulsion to sin, and in wliich their freedom might possibly 
 be not better employed. At all events, in all human affairs 
 the balance of justice wavers least when there are efficient 
 checks to steady it. These, however, are but desultory 
 remarks, and serve merely to introduce the subject which 
 we sat down to illustrate. It is our purpose to attempt 
 
 32
 
 374 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 translating into fact one or two of the plausibilities of Mr. 
 Robertson, of Ellon, one or two of the arguments of Dr. 
 Cook, and, perhaps, one or two of the assertions of Dr. 
 Muir ; and to show that it has been chiefly through a tacit 
 process of translation of the kind we describe that they 
 have so ntterly failed in impressing the religious portion 
 of the community, or other than an inconsiderable portion 
 of the Scottish public in general. We are told that Candid 
 remarked with surprise, in the Court of El Dorado, that 
 the hon mots of the king, even after they had been trans- 
 lated, still remained bon mots. The reverse of this will be 
 found to be exactly the character of the principles which 
 we intend translating into fact. They decompose, and 
 become mephitic in the process, — 
 
 " Woman to the waist, and fair, 
 But ending foul in many a scaly fold." 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 Corporal Trim translated the fifth commandment into 
 fact by settling on his aged parents the full half of his 
 meagre pay as a soldier. Intrusion and non-intrusion, 
 patronage and anti-i:)atronage, are things equally capable 
 of being translated into fact; nor is the process too difficult 
 a one to be mastered by men well-nigh as humble as even 
 the corporal himself. The tangibilities which these terms 
 express bear upon all. The country may have its tens of 
 thousands on whom a clergyman has never been intruded, 
 and its hundreds of thousands who have never had an 
 opportunity of exercising their choice in the selection of a 
 clergyman for themselves; but it docs not contain a single 
 individuid, to whom religion is anything, whether Church- 
 man or Dissenter, who is not living in a certain felt relation 
 to some one or other of the tangibilities of intrusion or 
 non-intrusion, patronage or anti-patronage. We ourselves,
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 375 
 
 for instance, have lived at different periods of our life in 
 relation to them all, — now subjected to the evils of an 
 unmitigated patronage, now participating in the limited 
 privileges of a bare non-intrusion principle, now enjoying 
 all the many signal advantages of free, uncontrolled choice. 
 We have shared, in turn, in all that the Church is contend- 
 ing for, and in all she is contending against; and a piece 
 of simple narrative, bearing on the circumstances of each 
 case, may at once serve to illustrate our meaning, and to 
 show not only how very important the princijiles of the 
 present controversy are, but the secret also of the people's 
 thorough understanding of them. 
 
 Tliere are parishes in Scotland which contain areas of 
 about twelve hundred square miles, and whose parish 
 churches were some twenty years ago removed from the 
 parish churches in their nearest neighborhood by a long 
 day's journey. We resided in one of these for part of a 
 twelvemonth, ere the government had given its supple- 
 mentary chapels to the Highlands, and saw, for the first 
 time, at the bottom of a little sandy bay that opened into 
 the boisterous Atlantic, a Scottish parish church, between 
 which and the nearer places of worship there stretched 
 forty miles of wild sea-coast on the one hand, and fifty 
 miles on the other. A stormy sea of barren hills occupied 
 the interior; and the eye, in passing from the serrated 
 peaks and gray, dizzy precipices of the higher grounds, 
 encountered scarce anything more inviting on the lower 
 than dark moors, and still darker morasses, — long, narrow 
 plains at the bottom of retiring bays, overblown by sand, 
 
 — and rock -skirted promontories studded with stone. It 
 was no favorable locality for illustrating the excellence of 
 the Voluntary principle. All the more respectable sort of 
 jieople who can treat themselves on Sabbaths to a joint 
 and a decent suit of broadcloth contrive also to treat 
 themselves to a sermon; but — alas for the utterly poor! 
 
 — nineteen-twentieths of the simple inhabitants of this 
 wild district could treat themselves to neither Sabbath
 
 376 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 joints nor broadcloth. For at least one-third part of every 
 year they hud no meal, even, and scarce any potatoes; — 
 their chance of proA'isions for the day depended almost 
 exclusively on the uncertain fishing of the night; and they 
 had to rest wholly for their religious provision on the 
 National Establishment. Voluntaryism had done nothing 
 for them, and could do nothing. But what had the Estab- 
 lishment done ? It had given them a qualified minister, — 
 a man who had been tried for a very gross crime by the 
 General Assembly, but at a period when the General As- 
 sembly was the one court in Europe in which no such 
 accusation was in any instance followed by conviction ; 
 and so, though all the parish held him guilty, he was still 
 a qualified minister. Pie was naturally a dull man, of 
 somewhat less than average intellect, based on a strong 
 animal nature ; and his pulpit ministrations were perhaps 
 the most miserable things of the kind ever heard, — pieces 
 of disjointed patchwork, badly read, borrowed in part 
 without judgment, and, where original, written without 
 care or thought. It was im])ossible to listen to them. 
 Regarded in a religious light, they were desecrations of 
 the Sabbath; in an intellectual, mere lullabies to set men 
 asleep. The manse was one of the houses in the parish in 
 which no family worship was kept, save for one week in 
 the year, — the week in wdiich the sacrament was dis- 
 pensed, — and then, in order to appear as decent as possible 
 in the eyes of one or two low-country ministers who 
 usually came to assist on such occasions, the family were 
 called together, and the form gone through. We saw in 
 one instance an act of discipline performed in the parish. 
 The minister had come home from his morning walk fierce 
 with passion, — actually bellowing. His two elders were 
 instantly sent for, to hold a session ; and three boys were 
 brought before them to undergo the censure of the Church. 
 The little fellows had met their minister in his walk, and 
 had deemed it excellent sport to remind him, somewhat 
 too cirt'tiinstantially, of the offence for which, a few years
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 377 
 
 before, he had been tried by the General Assembly. And 
 such was an average specuTien of the resjiect entertained 
 for him by his parishioners. We cannot give the darker 
 shades of this picture; Ave shall not even hint at them. 
 Be it enough to say, that such was the only clergyman in 
 a tract of country considerably more than thirty miles 
 square, and that we had no alternative, for some thirty 
 Sabbaths together, but that of either attending his church, 
 or of attending no church at all. To have heard sermon 
 anywhere else would have involved a two-days' journey. 
 Here, then, so far as we ourselves and ninety-nine hun- 
 dredths of the poor jiarishioners were concerned, the worst 
 tangibilities of intrusion were involved. Arguments trans- 
 lated into facts the most stubborn bore equally against the 
 plausibilities of Voluntaryism on the one hand, and the 
 sophisms of Moderatism on the other. The reservoir pro- 
 vided here at the public expense was but an accumulation 
 of filth, breathing miasma and infection. Then, M'hy care 
 for its maintenance ? say the Voluntaries. Because there 
 was none other in the locality, and the jjcople perished for 
 thirst. Then, why now endanger its existence? say the 
 Moderates. Because, existing as a mere tank of stagnant 
 corruption, it mattered not to the surrounding country 
 whether it existed or no; or, we should perhaps rather 
 say, its existence, in the circumstances, was a positive evil. 
 We exert ourselves, therefore, not to break down the 
 reservoir, but to purify it, — to cleanse it from the feculent 
 poison which has long reeked and festered in it^ and to fill 
 it with the pure and living stream, that all around may 
 drink and be refreshed. This, however, is not quite what 
 we intended to say. We set out by remarking that the 
 country does not contain a single individual, to whom 
 religion is anything, who is not living in a certain felt 
 relation to the tangibilities of intrusion or non-intrusion ; 
 and we thus present the reader with one passage in our 
 experience of the tangibilities of intrusion. Need we say 
 that gladly would we have exercised the veto on the 
 
 32*
 
 378 TRANSLATIONS INTO FAoT. 
 
 appointment of this Highland minister of the Moderate 
 scliool, or that all his people would eagerly have joined 
 with us? Of the latter, we may just remark, that they 
 were a simple-hearted, inoffensive race of men, not indif- 
 ferent to the blessings of the gospel, and not too unintelli- 
 gent to distinguisli it from its counterfeits. 
 
 We changed the scene for a district in the south of 
 Scotland, not five miles from the Scottish capital. It 
 would be worth while inquiring how it should almost 
 always hapjoen that the common countiy people in the 
 neighborhood of large towns are less intelligent, not only 
 than the common people of the towns themselves, but also 
 than the common country people who reside in more 
 sequestered localities. Such, however, in our individual 
 experience at least, we have ever found to be the fact. 
 We have seen shaded maps, on which, from the statistics 
 of crime as furnished by the criminal courts of the several 
 districts, a darker or lighter shade was given to particular 
 localities. Here, wliere crime most abounded, the shade 
 was intensely deep; there, where it was somewhat less 
 frequent, a lighter ti'nt spread over the provinces ; yonder, 
 where it was less frequent still, the tint was still lighter ; 
 and a fliint twilight tinge indicated a yet lower degree of 
 delinquency than characterized even the lowest of the 
 other three. Could the comparative ignorance and intelli- 
 gence of the several provinces of a country be marked out 
 in a similar manner, we are convinced that Avell-nigh all 
 our large towns would present the singular aj^pearance of 
 specks of comparative light, encircled, if we may so speak, 
 by halos of darkness; and that a medium tint, here 
 darker, there lighter, would spread over the country be- 
 yond. In the southern locality to which we had now 
 removed we found ourselves within the very circle of one 
 of these tenebrific halos. There was a stagnant vacancy 
 of mind among the people, — a slumbrous lack of intelli- 
 gence, — and at least as strongly-marked an indifference 
 to religion as to all kinds of useful secular knowledge^
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 379 
 
 Carters, common laborers, and ftrm-servants formed the 
 great bulk of the population, with a thin sprinkling of me- 
 chanics, petty dealers, and public-house keepers. Church- 
 going among the carters and laborers seemed to have 
 entirely worn out ; the farm-servants were better but by a 
 single degree ; and, whatever one might have thought of 
 religion itself, there was certainly little to afford pleasure 
 in contemplating the more palpable eifects of the want of 
 it here. The men, dirty and unwashed, and in their week- 
 day clothes, might be seen loitering about their hamlets 
 every fair Sabbath morning, more especially about the 
 public houses, to which, in the villages, according to the 
 too faithful description of Cowper, almost every tenth step 
 conducted the traveller. The Sabbath evening ])assed in 
 brawling and coarse debauch. Not the Highland parish 
 itself presented to the Voluntary a field more hopeless, 
 though, of course, from an entirely different cause. In the 
 southern locality there Avas money enough consumed on 
 the taverner to have supported half a dozen clergymen ; 
 but while there existed a strong appetite for wliat the 
 taverner had to give, there existed no appetite whatever 
 for what the clergyman had to give. The supply was fitted 
 to the demand, on the true Adam Smith principle, and 
 there were no efforts made at the time to lessen the one 
 kind of appetite, or to create the other. The parish had, 
 of course, its qualified minister, — a respectable, indolent, 
 not unsensible Moderate, within whose bounds of supei'in- 
 tendence one could have lived for years not in the least 
 in danger of his coming to the knowledge of the fact. 
 We never saw him, though we resided a considerable part 
 of two twelvemonths in his parish, except in the pulpit. 
 There, however, we have heard him read, rather drowsily, 
 a sort of essays called sermons, in which there was now 
 and then a respectful allusion to Christianity as something 
 very good, and neither nonsense nor heresy, but in which 
 flat and unprofitable vacancy Avas occupied by but the 
 uncertain echoes of ill-defined thought, and in which no
 
 380 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 Snvionr was offered to a ])enshing people, and no scheme 
 of salvation unfolded to them through his blood. A 
 respectable rural congregation — small, compared with the 
 population of the parish, but not very small absolutely — 
 dozed around him in the pews, or in waking fancy sowed 
 their turnips or reaped their corn. In relation to ourselves, 
 at least, the case was one of decided intrusion. We would 
 have vetoed, if we could, this inoffensive Moderate, of 
 whom nothing worse could be said than that he was 
 of no manner of use ; we would have vetoed him, and 
 have taken very conscientiously, when we had done, the 
 necessary declaration. In this southern district, however, 
 less than a journey of two days sufficed to bring us out 
 and home froni other churches than the parish one. Dr. 
 M'Crie preached within fewer than five miles of us; and 
 so, quitting our state-provided minister, we became Dis- 
 senter for the time. One example more of a similar kind. 
 The Voluntary controversy had burst out in its first 
 fury, and, with certainly no long-cherished prejudice in 
 favor of Establishments to mislead us, — with A-ery con- 
 siderable experience, too, of the working of at least one 
 Establishment, — we had quietly taken our side. We had 
 gone to reside in a southern burgh, filled at the time with 
 the buzz of jDolitics and the din of controversy. Volun- 
 taryism mustered strong, and an incipient Chartism still 
 stronger; and, not particularly enamored of the spirit of 
 either principle, we naturally sought the parish church in 
 preference to any of the three chapels of the place. We 
 had no previous knowledge of the party to which the cler- 
 gyman belonged. We knew merely that he was a cler- 
 gyman of the Establishment; and establishment at that 
 period was the great watchword of the party to which we 
 had attached ourselves. We found that he was a gentle- 
 man, — certainly not gross, and by no means either unac- 
 complished or uninformed. There was a considerable 
 amount of elegance in his discourses. A laudable degree 
 of care had been obviously bestowed on the composition.
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 381 
 
 The thinking, if neither bold nor original, had enough of 
 vigor to solicit the attention of some of his more intelligent 
 people, — almost all conservatives, — and his perorations, 
 generally neat, bore always some complimentary reference 
 to a Saviour, and to some inexplicable benefit which He 
 had bestowed upon mankind. But what that benefit was, 
 or how mankind might avail themselves of it, this respect- 
 able gentleman neither knew himself, nor could he tell it 
 to others. His theology rose no higher than that of Blair; 
 his ability of enforcing it was considerably lower; and had 
 we been set to pick out in all literature, sacred and secular, 
 the compositions which his discourses least resembled, we 
 "would have selected the Epistles of St. Paul. It was pity 
 for him ! He was generous and hospitable, though a little 
 imprudent^ perhaps ; for he sometimes gave dinners on Sab- 
 bath, — a thing which no Moderate minister should do in 
 these latter evil days, however much inclined. He could 
 occasionally give his pulpit, too, to men of his own party 
 so much more extreme than himself, that even his congre- 
 gation — a sufficiently Moderate one — were accustomed 
 to complain. The only sermon and prayers we ever heard 
 from a clergyman confessedly not Unitarian in which even 
 the name of Christ did not occur, we heard delivered from 
 his pulpit, but not by himself. We continued to attend 
 his church for nearly two months ; but, beginning to find 
 that establishments may be countenanced at too high a 
 price, we left him for the time, and went over to the Vol- 
 untaries. Nor was the change, in this instance at least, 
 very advantageous ; but if the animating spirit was not 
 superior, the form of words was at least more sound. We 
 need scarce add, that our relation to this accomplished 
 and highly qualified minister Avas the intrusion relation ; 
 that we would have vetoed him if we could, and taken the 
 declaration. But it is high time to illustrate the opposite 
 principle, — the non-intrusion one, as opposed to the anti- 
 patronage principle on the one hand, and to the intrusionist 
 principle on the other. A single instance mav serve to
 
 382 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 translate it into fact. We have lived under the ministry 
 of men whom we would not have chosen, and whom we 
 could not have rejected. 
 
 A country parish far from towns, with a simple rural 
 population considerably out of the way of the influence 
 of our lighter periodical literature, and with the Shorter 
 Catechism stereotyped on their general tone of thinking; 
 — a good sincere man, of moderate ability, laboring among 
 them in the ministry, walking conscientiously his round 
 of duty, and useful and acceptable in that round, not so 
 much ironi any intrinsic fitness in himself, as from his 
 practical acquaintance with that scheme of salvation which 
 He who adapts all liis means to the accomplishment of 
 his ends has thoroughly accommodated to the wants and 
 wishes of the human Jieart. We liave lived in such par- 
 ishes, and under the ministry of such men. We have 
 remarked, too, that such parishes, left to their free choice, 
 would select for themselves such men. The higher order 
 of minds would scarce fit them equally well; — a principle 
 which applies in a similar degree to all literature and all 
 philosophy. Between the loftier and the humbler minds 
 there must exist an intermediate class ; Avanting which, the 
 lowlier could receive no benefit from the loftier. Burke 
 was unintelligible frequently in even the House of Com- 
 mons ; .and until Colin JMaclaurin brought down the 
 "Principia" of Newton to the still high level of the pre- 
 vious flights of philosophy, men of no ordinary intellectual 
 stature had to take its extraordinary merits on trust. It is 
 on identically the same princi])le that in a simple country 
 district the gospel would be more acceptable and more 
 useful from a Boston than from a Butler. And hence the 
 importance of permitting men, in such matters, both to 
 judge and choose for themselves. The mind requires its 
 particular fit as certainly as the body, and, when enlight- 
 ened by Christian principle, takes its own measure best. 
 What we meant to remark, however, was, that in such 
 parishes we have felt ourselves living in relation to the
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 383 
 
 tanjyibilities of tlie iiiL're non-intrusion principle. Left to 
 ourselves, we would have perhaps chosen men of a higher 
 intellectual order, — men such as, in Edinburgh for in- 
 stance, all, whether Churchmen or Dissenters, can virtually 
 choose for themselves, in virtue of their living in relation 
 to the tangibilities of the anti-patronage principle ; but 
 never surely would we have vetoed such men. 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 John Knox might have been an English bishop had he 
 willed it. It is matter of history that the offer of a diocese 
 was made him at the special request of Edward VI., backed 
 by his council; and, could honors and emoluments, and 
 the favor of royalty, have biassed the reformer, Puseyisra 
 would now be looking up to him as one of her transmitters 
 of the apostolic virtue. He would have formed a con- 
 necting link in the long electric cliain through which she 
 charges her surplice-coated vessels of the altar with the 
 subtile and fiery fluid which already lights tapers there, 
 and bids fair ere long to kindle up fagots. But Knox 
 himself, in the supposed case, like all the better bishops, 
 his contemporaries and friends, would have been utterly 
 unconscious of what he conveyed. The tractors of the 
 mesmerist take as much note of the planetary fluid which 
 they are said to transmit, as he would have done of the 
 apostolic ichor. We are told by Dr. M'Crie of the Lati- 
 mers and Cranmers, his associates, that they Avere " stran- 
 gers to those extravagant and illiberal notions which were 
 afterwards adopted by the fond admirers of the hierarchy 
 and liturgy. They would have laughed," says the histo- 
 rian, "at the man who would have seriously asserted that 
 the ceremonies constituted any part of the 'beauty of 
 holiness,' or that the imposition of the hands of a bishop 
 was essential to the validity of ordination. They would 
 not have owned that person as a Protestant who would
 
 384 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 have ventured to insinuate that where this was wanting 
 there was no Christian ministry, no ordinances, no Church, 
 and i^erbaps — no salvation." Nor are we left to guess at 
 the opinions of Knox on the subject. In the concluding 
 chapter of the " First Book of Discipline " — a work hastily- 
 drawn up, but of which the well-matured materials must 
 have revolved as thought in the mind of the reformer for 
 years — we are told that the Popish priesthood, "having 
 received no lawful calling to the holy ministry, are utterly 
 devoid of either power or authority to administer the 
 sacraments of Christ." For it is " not the clipping of 
 crowns," it is added, " nor the crossing of fingers, nor the 
 blowing of those durabe dogges called the bishops, nor yet 
 the laying on of their hands, that maketh true ministers 
 of Christ Jesus." What then ? Certain it is that what 
 Rome itself did not possess, Rome could not have con- 
 ferred on others. But how are true ministers made? Hear 
 the reformer himself. " By the Spirit of God, first of all, 
 inwardly moving the heart to seek to enter into the holy 
 calling for Christ's glory and the profite of his Kirk ; there- 
 after by the nomination of the people, the examination 
 and approval of the learned, and public admission by both 
 the Church and the flock." Assuredly a more likely mat- 
 ter! — a better scheme, obviously, than the clipping or 
 crossing process, the blowing of the "durabe dogges," or 
 the laying on of their hands. Knox lived three centuries 
 ago ; but we are quite content to stake his masculine 
 understanding against that of Newman and Pusey united, 
 giving them all the odds of the world's ^^I'ogress into the 
 bargain. 
 
 Now, there are great trutlis embodied in this singularly 
 jiregnant sentence of the reformer, and very admirably do 
 they translate into fact. They describe adequately the 
 qualified minister, in the only rational definition of the 
 term, — a man qualified to be useful in his high walk of 
 duty, because called to it by God himself, chosen by the 
 people, and admitted by the Church. We sketched in our
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. oSiJ 
 
 last, as specimens of a numerous class, three several clergy- 
 men under whom we had been living at different times in 
 the intrusion relation, and described them as all qualified 
 ministers according to the Moderate definition. One of 
 the statements of Dr. Cook, in the anti-patronage debate 
 of last General Assembly, fully bears us out. The con- 
 fessed leader of his party rose to say, that "absolute 
 patronage had never been known in this country." There 
 was laughter, as well there might be, from the opposite 
 benches, and cries of "Marnoch!" "Marnoch !" — " Will 
 the gentlemen hear but my explanation?" said the reverend 
 Doctor, somewhat testily. " It will remove all ground for 
 the merriment they have manifested. Can a patron go 
 elsewhere but to a man who has afHxed to him the stamp 
 of the Church's approbation ? No man can be brought 
 into a living whom the Church has not solemnly and 
 carefully examined, and declared fit for the work of the 
 ministry." And to exactly the same effect is the doctrine 
 maintained by Mr. Robertson, of Ellon. It is on this 
 principle, he holds, that the late Presbytery of Strathbogie 
 did right, not wrong, in giving the qualified minister 
 Edwards to the parish of Marnoch. It is on this principle 
 that, nicely conscientious, he cannot sustain mere dissent 
 on the part of the people as an adequate ground for reject- 
 ing a presentee, and demands, therefore, tangible reasons 
 of objection on which he may sit and judge. His entire 
 hostility to the veto is founded on this principle, — the 
 principle that all the licentiates and all the ministers of 
 the Church must be held qualified, unless the contrary can 
 be established ; just as in the eye of the law all men must 
 be held innocent of crime unless they can be proven guilty. 
 And on nearly a similar basis did Dr. Muir found his motion 
 in the General Assembly of 1839. The fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the party involves, when translated into fact, either 
 the great and palpable falsehood that all the ministers and 
 all the licentiates of the Church of Scotland are qualified 
 to edify the body of Christ, and, of necessity, not only 
 
 33
 
 886 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 members of that body themselves, but also peculiarly fitted 
 for their calling- by God himself; or the equally palpable 
 falsehood that the Christian people have no other measure 
 of duty, with respect to what and whom they hear, than 
 the ability of church courts to detect delinquency and 
 error. We draw bolt and bar every night, and set a guard 
 in our streets, in the belief that there may be thieves and 
 men of violence abroad. Fling open your doors, says 
 Moderatism, and dismiss the watch. The millions of the 
 country are all honest and inoffensive, except the few hap- 
 less individuals who have been convicted of crime in the 
 High Court of Justiciary, and either thrust out of the 
 world or banished the kingdom. 
 
 We have opposed the priest-making of Puseyism to the 
 process through which, according to Knox, true ministers 
 of Jesus Christ are made. The one is all sheer material- 
 ism, — ""crossing," "clipping," "blowing," and the "laying 
 on of hands." The very basis of the otlier is spiritual. 
 But. it is not all spiritual. It is in part spiritual, in part 
 intellectual, and, if we may so express ourselves, negatively 
 moral ; and it will be found that it is the merely negatively 
 moral and intellectual portions of it wliich Moderatism 
 selects, and that the spiritual is altogether rejected. It 
 approaches the Puseyite scheme to the nearest degree 
 possible in the circumstances ; but in one very important 
 respect, each tried by its own standard, it falls materially 
 below it. 
 
 " We cannot try men's hearts," said the old statesman, 
 when passing judgment on the favorite of a friend who 
 had been recommended as fiiithful, but rejected as incom- 
 petent, — "we cannot try men's hearts, but we can at least 
 catechize their heads." Now, there is a provision in the 
 scheme of Knox for the catechizing of the head. The 
 approbation of learned ministers, appointed for the purpose 
 of examination, is a sine qua non to admission. Character, 
 too, in the negative sense, is held to be at least equally 
 important. "It is to be observed," says the reformer,
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 387 
 
 "that no person noted with publique infamie be either 
 promoted to the regiment of the Church, or retained in 
 ecclesiastical adiniuistration." And such, in the constitut- 
 ing of a true ministry, was the part given to church courts, 
 in contradistinction to the part assigned in the same work 
 in the first instance to the Spirit of God, and the part 
 assigned to the people in the second. The Church, ac- 
 cording to the Puseyite scheme, deals with the material- 
 isms of ordination, reckoning on a necessarily accompany- 
 ing virtue ; the Scottish Church, in her courts, according 
 to somewhat less than one-half the scheme of Knox, deals 
 with matters equally tangible and evident, — matters of 
 doctrine, acquirement, and, in the low judicial sense of the 
 term, character. Dr. Pusey and his friends give us the 
 evidence of our senses for the crossing, the blowing, and the 
 laying on of hands. Dr. Cook and his friends, selecting 
 one portion of the scheme of Knox, profess equally to give 
 us the evidence of our senses for the literature, the theol- 
 ogy, and, if we may so express ourselves, the lack of char- 
 acter positively bad. Both deal equally with tangibilities; 
 but there is this striking ditferencc between them : the 
 tangibilities in the case of Puseyism, viewed in connection 
 with its own ostensible beliefs, are fraught with a necessary 
 virtue. In virtue of his baptism, the priest is a regenerated 
 man; in virtue of his ordination, — we apologize to our 
 readers for using such terms, but they are those of the 
 party, — in virtue, we say, of his ordination, he is both 
 qualified to regenerate others, that is, to baptize them, and 
 io feed their souls with the body of the Lord^ — that is, to 
 administer to them the sacrament of the Supper. Mod- 
 eratism is less consistent. It does not hold that baptism 
 is regeneration ; it does not hold that the sacrament of the 
 Supper is the body of the Lord; it does not hold that any 
 of those tangibilities on which it insists — literature, the- 
 ology, or negative character — is what the sacraments are 
 not — conversion. It holds — for in the circumstances it 
 is impossible it should hold otherwise — it holds that a
 
 388 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 fully qualified and accomplished minister — one who, 
 according to Dr. Cook, cannot, in the nature of things, 
 be intruded, no, not into a Culsalmond or a Marnoch, 
 seeing that the " Church has affixed to him the stamp of 
 her approbation," and whom Mr. Robertson could not con- 
 scientiously reject in virtue of any rejection on the part 
 ol' the people — may be, notwithstanding, an unconverted 
 man, practically unacquainted with the gospel himself, and 
 with neither wish nor will to urge the acceptance of it 
 upon others. 
 
 But though such be the consistency of Moderatism, 
 not such was the scheme, nor such the views, of Knox. 
 Church courts were left to deal with facts and arguments, 
 
 — to catechize the head and the life of the presentee. To 
 the people a part at least equally important was assigned, 
 and in which, resting as it did between God and their con- 
 science, the Church too well knew her duty to interfere. 
 
 "Christ the Head of every man!" There is a duty, 
 doubtless, which the Church owes to her adorable Head, 
 and to the people her members. But in no degree does 
 that duty supersede the duty which every individual 
 member owes to Christ as his Head ; and his responsibility 
 for what and how he hears is a responsibility which he 
 cannot roll over upon any Church. Churches, however 
 false and detestable, are never to be summoned to the bar 
 of judgment. Their portion is in this world exclusively. 
 The tyrants of the Inquisition must be there, — the assas- 
 sins of St. Bartholomew's day, — the bloodhounds of the 
 Irish massacre, — the mui'derers of Hamilton, and Wishart, 
 and Walter Mill, — the kindlers of the flames of Smith- 
 field, — the iron-hearted persecutors of the Piedmontese, 
 
 — all who in the cause of Rome pursued to the death the 
 saints of the living God. But Rome herself will not be 
 there. Her judgment shall be in this world. Long ere 
 the great white throne shall be set, or the books opened, 
 
 — ere the sea, and death, and hell, shall give up their dead, 
 . — must her place be void among the nations, — a dark
 
 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT, 389 
 
 and silent blank, where there shall no light shine and no 
 voice be heard, and from which, for ages and centuries, 
 shall the smoke of her burning ascend ; while around and 
 over shall the great voice of much people be heard, prais- 
 ing God "for his righteous judgments" in "avenging the 
 blood of his servants at her hand." Nor will the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church stand at that awful bar. Not Rome 
 herself wears a redder surplice, nor do her hands smell 
 more rankly of murder. But her portion will be assigned 
 her in this present world also. One Church only shall 
 abide the day of the Lord's coming, — that Church, of all 
 climes and all ages, which shall comprise all saints, and the 
 roll of whose members is the Book of Life. It is as indi- 
 viduals, each man apart, that all shall have to stand at the 
 bar of final judgment ; and hence the necessary recognition 
 of the will of the j^eople in all for which the people shall 
 have to answer there. Hence, too, the solemn bearing of 
 the doctrine of Christ's Headship on the existing contro- 
 versy, not only, and not chiefly even, in its connection 
 with the Scottish Church, but in its bearing on every one 
 of the Church's members individually. To Christ, as his 
 Head and King, must every man render an account of how 
 and what he hears. And hence the peculiar fitness of the 
 enlightened and truly Christian principle of Knox. Mark 
 the close adaptation, the one to the other, of the two first 
 qualifications which he lays down as essential to the char- 
 acter of the minister of Christ, and the formation of the 
 pastoral tie. The first, in an especial manner, concerns 
 the minister himself It involves as its basis conversion 
 to God, for witliout conversion qualification cannot exist; 
 and then, further, "the Spirit of God inwardly moving 
 the heart to seek to enter into the holy calling of the 
 ministry, for Christ's glory and the profit of the Kii-k." On 
 this surely most important foundation rests the ordination 
 formulas of both the English and the Scottish Church. 
 Hence the solemn avowal of the candidate for orders in 
 the one, that he judges himself "to be inwardly moved by 
 
 33*
 
 390 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 
 
 the Holy Ghost to take the office upon him." Hence the 
 not less solemn pledge of the licentiate in the other, that 
 " zeal for the honor of God, love to Jesus Christ, and desire 
 of saving souls, are his great motives and chief inducements 
 in entering into the functions of the holy ministry, and not 
 worldly designs and interests." But this is not enough. 
 For the truth of this solemn oath there is but one man 
 responsible, — he who takes it; whereas, the consequences 
 and character of his ministry must inevitably affect more 
 than himself; — the people have also their responsibility. 
 If he must render an account of what and in what spirit he 
 jjreaches, they also must render an account of what and in 
 what spirit they hear. "Christ is the Head of every man." 
 And so the people's turn comes next. It is the people who 
 must nominate. By the light which God has vouchsafed, 
 — by their sympathies, their experience, and their knowl- 
 edge, as Christians, — by those deeply based, undefinable 
 feelings through which the voice of the true Shepherd is 
 distinguished from that of the stranger and the hireling, — 
 through, in short, that entire capacity in Christ's people 
 to which the command, '-Beware of false teachers," is 
 addressed by Christ himself, — must their views be regu- 
 lated, their choice directed. It is they, the peoj^le, not 
 Ijresbyteries or synods, who are mainly interested in the 
 matter. Life and death must tell of it. Throughout time 
 the complexion of their spiritual being may depend upon 
 it. Its effects, as it regards them, are to stretch onwards 
 through eternity, and reach the dread bar of final judg- 
 ment. And who, in a question so vital, shall dare inter- 
 fere, and take the decision out of their hands, though all 
 unable, in the impotence of presumption, to divest them 
 of the attaching responsibility? Who are the prophets 
 prepared to stand in this gap ? Muirs, Cooks, and Robert- 
 sons? One tells us there can be no such thing as intrusion 
 in the circumstances, seeing that all clergymen are alike 
 qualified : " There is no man to whom a patron can go who 
 has not affixed to him the stamp of the Church's approba-
 
 THE TWO CO]SrFLICTS, 391 
 
 tion." Another assures us that his conscience intei-feres, 
 and that he must be i^ermitted, therefore, to decide for the 
 Marnochs and Culsahnonds of the country, that Edwardses 
 may be thrust into the one, and Middletons into the otlier. 
 A third takes a still bolder flight. The wise, the good, the 
 venerable of the country, assert the principle of Knox ; 
 and he coolly tells them that they are just "taking a forward 
 step in the great march, the end of which would be, in 
 Scotland, the dissemination of intidelity and misrule." 
 
 It is unnecessary to show how miserably these men fail 
 in their duty, by thus absorbing that of the people into 
 their own, — confounding, by something immensely worse 
 than any mere confusion of idea, the examination of the 
 Church with the privileges of the flock. Nor need Ave 
 again refer to the nice and masterly precision with which 
 Knox could line out the provinces of each. It would be 
 no easy matter to exhaust our subject. It stretches along 
 the entire line of the existing controversy. Every princi- 
 ple has its corresponding fact ; every argument its answer- 
 incr illustration. 
 
 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 
 
 We have had occasion oftener than once to remark the 
 great celerity of movement, if we may so speak, which 
 characterizes the events of the present age. It would 
 seem as if the locomotive and the railroad had been intro- 
 duced into every department of human aftairs, — as if the 
 amount of change which sufliced in the i^ast scheme of 
 Providence for whole centuries had come to be compressed, 
 under a different economy, within the limits of less than 
 half a lifetime. Events thicken in these latter scenes of 
 the great drama. There is a condensation of the matter 
 as the volume draws to its close — the adoption of a closer 
 and denser typo. One seems almost justified in holding 
 that the great machine of society is on the eve of being
 
 392 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 
 
 jDrecipitated on some all-important crisis, and that the 
 rapidity with which the wheels revolve marks the sudden 
 abruptness of the descent. 
 
 Now, there is at least one advantage which should be 
 derived from living in such a time. It furnishes ojiportu- 
 nities which have a tendency, if well employed, of length- 
 ening the terra of one's rational existence. It provides 
 reflection with the materials of extended observation, and 
 enables us to weigh one class of events against another, 
 not, as our flithers did, in two imequal scales, — the one 
 furnished by personal exi)erience, the other by the uncer- 
 tainties of historical narrative, — but in the more equally 
 adjusted balances of personal experience alone. A Scotch- 
 man of the times of Charles I. knew of only religious 
 struggles. It was the one question of the age, whether all 
 religious light was to pass to the people through the me- 
 dium of Laud and his coadjutors, broken into a colored 
 maze of decei^ive splendor, in which every object put on 
 a false and distorted appearance ; or whether they should 
 not look direct on that Sun of Revelation which, more 
 emphatically than in the meaning of Solomon, " it is a 
 good thing to behold," and whose bright yet sober efful- 
 gence is the untinted medium of truth. A century passed, 
 and a sleepy expression of mediocre power and half-intel- 
 ligence rested on the face of British society. The great 
 leligious struggle had been over for more than an age ; and 
 the denizens of the time, in summing up the portion of his- 
 tory which fell within the range of their own experience, 
 could have told of little else than of the petty intrigues of 
 corrupt and selfish statesmen, or of the conflicting clainis of 
 rival 2:)rinces, — men by whom kingdoms, with their people, 
 were i-egarded as but mere family properties, and wars as 
 but a sort of lawsuits that determine their disposal. There 
 l^assed half a century more, and all was changed. The 
 masses were in motion ; the great interests of classes and 
 communities were agitated; and politics had become a 
 desperate game, at which the people played deeply against
 
 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 393 
 
 their rulers, witli happiness and freedom as the supposed 
 stake, and at the close of which, falling into a true gam- 
 bler's quarrel, they filled tlie earth with anarchy, violence, 
 and blood. The series of these three great states of things, 
 if we may so express ourselves, occupied two whole cen- 
 turies. Individual experience stretched but a little way 
 along the line. It could know, in its own proper character, 
 of only one of the three conditions. Its borrowed recol- 
 lections of a former state of things failed adequately to 
 mingle with its observations of a present state. They were 
 not 2)'it'sonal recollections; there was substance on the one 
 hand, mere shadow on the other. Men looked on a gray 
 and silent past, through the darkened and colored glass of 
 history, as merely curious inquirers; while on the living, 
 bustling, tangible realities before them they gazed through 
 the clear atnaosi)here of sentient existence, as earnest, 
 excited, interested si)ectators. 
 
 Through that quickening of the wheels of Providence 
 to which we advert, the case is essentially different now. 
 Individual experience embraces the three distinct states; 
 and men in tlie pride of middle manhood, who have not 
 misused their ex))erience, know at least a little of each. 
 The intrigues of mere individuals form no inconsiderable 
 portion of our country's history during the reign of George 
 IV. ; so much so, that from the trial of Caroline to the 
 death of Canning there seems little that may not bo 
 referred to the petty manceuvring of diplomatists, or to the 
 piques or partialities of the sovereign. With the times of 
 William, however, a sterner element is introduced ; the 
 masses become the all-potent moving-power of the state 
 engine, and for a time legislation serves but to index their 
 wishes. A noiseless revolution then succeeds. There is 
 a sudden shifting of scenes, a changing of actors, a thorough 
 revival of principles, nnseen, on at least the surface of 
 affairs, since the times of the Charleses. The antagonist 
 parties that at the Reformation shook all Europe with the 
 violence of their conflict, rise in their most characteristic
 
 894 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 
 
 form, in the two great establishments of tlie empire ; and, 
 though tlie contest at its present stage may be regarded as 
 but an affair of outposts, the war has already begun. 
 Twenty years iiave thus repeated to us the lessons of two 
 centuries. 
 
 We are afraid it will scarce be disputed that the great 
 political movement of the country has terminated in dis- 
 appointment among at least the masses. Chartism, how- 
 ever doubtful its evidence on other matters, testifies all 
 too truly, by the very extent of its own existence, that the 
 ]ihysical condition of the people has not been bettered. 
 The election committees of the House of Commons 
 demonstrate all too unequivocally that their moral charac- 
 ter has not been improved. Nay, to state the case in neg- 
 atives is to do it injustice. Indirectly, at least, the tone 
 of our national morality has been greatly lowered. Whigs, 
 Tories, Radicals, Chartists, are all alike in error, if ever 
 before there sat a British Parliament based on so large an 
 amount of bribery and corruption as the Parliament so 
 lately called together under the provisions of the Reform 
 Bill, and to secure the return of which nearly a million of 
 the people registered their votes. Are our religious strug- 
 gles to terminate in disaj^pointment equally marked and 
 lamentable? — to leave behind them, even though success- 
 fully maintained, no nobler trophies among our people than 
 the 2)angs of an ever-accumulating physical distress, or 
 tlic atrocities of an ever-sinking moral degradation? We 
 have formed far other hopes ; nor are there indications 
 wanting which serve to show that in these hopes it is not 
 irrational to indulge. The signal success which in the past 
 year has attended the several schemes of the Church, 
 during a season of great depression and distress, is of itself 
 a sign of encouragement. In tones more significant than 
 those of speech, it reminds the class who, on the plea of 
 "lacking leisure to do good," are solicitous to cease from 
 the present conflict, that He who decreed of old that the
 
 THE TWO COXFLICTS. 395 
 
 walls of Zion should be " built in troublous times," can 
 build them in troublous times still. 
 
 It furnishes no incurious or uninstructive employment to 
 run over the various features of the two great popular 
 movements which have agitated Scotland during the last 
 twelve years, — the jjolitical and the ecclesiastical. They 
 present themselves to us as a series of scenes ; but Ave 
 shall lack time even for bare enumeration. In the ""Vision 
 of Don Roderick," the dead stillness is broken by the blast 
 of a trumpet, and straightway the giant Destiny arises, 
 and, striking down with his iron mace the curtain of rock 
 which interposes between him and the future, all in an 
 instant becomes violence, commotion, and war. We have 
 a similar recollection of the first beginnings of the great 
 political movement. We stood, in a calm, still evening, 
 early in the August of 1830, — only twelve yetirs ago ! — 
 beside a half-deserted seaport in the north of Scotland. 
 A fleet of fishing-boats, bound for the herring-bank, mottled 
 the ofting ; a large French lugger lay moored beside the 
 quay, with her huge brown sails drooping heavily from her 
 masts in the calm. Groups of town's-people, mostly me- 
 chanics, sauntered along the shore, or rested in front of 
 the lugger, looking curiously on the foreigners. The 
 entire scene seemed representative of quiet industry enjoy- 
 ing a leisure hour amid the repose of nature. But "hark 
 the twanging horn !" It Avas the post coming in. A few 
 minutes elapsed, and then a newspaper, damp from the 
 folds, was handed to one of the mechanics. Plow stran^-ely 
 exciting, how tremendously important, the tidings which 
 it conveyed! "Revolution i:s" France!" — three days' 
 Avar in the streets of Paris! — the government over- 
 powered! — the king dethroned! — the people signally 
 victorious ! Huzza ! It Avas interesting to mark the sud- 
 den effect, — the instant hive-like buzz that arose among 
 the congregating groups ; the excitement among the 
 French crew, none of whom could read English, but to 
 whom, notAvithstanding, the im})ortant neAvspaper Avas
 
 396 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 
 
 handed ; the unnatural effect of their strange French 
 pronunciation of the English words, as they hurried over 
 them, made all the more strange and unnatural by the 
 intense empliasis with which the words were accompanied, 
 and whicli spoke so unequivocally of the overpowering 
 anxiety to know what they conveyed. 
 
 It was the first blast of the trumpet that had blown, and 
 the whole British people awoke. There ensued a period 
 of unquiet agitation and sanguine hope, — agitation in 
 which all among the laboring classes shared, and hope in 
 which they all indulged. Scarce any one deemed himself 
 so obscure but that some of the anticipated good might 
 reach him. There was at least some indirect advantage 
 to be derived to him ; his labors were to be less, or his 
 remuneration greater, or he was at least to walk more on 
 a level witli the aristocrats of the country. The future 
 liistorian of this stirring period would require no slight 
 skill adequately to represent the general expression of 
 society, if we may so speak, during its high fever of excite- 
 ment and expectation. Some of the earlier effects might 
 be easily anticipated. There is scarce a village in Britain 
 that cannot point out its wrecks of tlie Reform Bill, in the 
 forms of broken-down and dissipated mechanics and bank- 
 rupt shopkeepers. Not that the Reform Bill was bad ; we 
 see it interposed by the providence of God at the present 
 time as a bulwark between the Church of Scotland and 
 the miserable politicians wlio would so fain crush and 
 destroy her. But, if not bad in itself, it at least led to 
 much that was bad. The village trader, whose predeces- 
 sors in business had gone on quietly, adding pound to 
 jjound, and had risen, on their hard-earned and lionest 
 savings, to the enjoyment of the acconqjanying modicum 
 of respect and influence, found a different way to rise, — a 
 way which the acconq)anying munici])al reform, no doubt 
 good in itself also, threw more widely oj)en to him than 
 even the extension of tlie i)arliamentary franchise. In- 
 fluence, respect, civic honors, and authority, were the
 
 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 397 
 
 rewards of his predecessors in business, if they but pros- 
 pered in their calling. He, on the other hand, found a 
 way to civic authority without prospering in his calling ; 
 nay, of which, if he availed himself, all hope of prospering 
 in his calling might be rationally regarded as at an end. 
 He learned to canvass for votes on his own behalf, and 
 rose to the dignity of a bailie. He learned to canvass for 
 his friend the member, and enjoyed the unspeakable honor 
 of handing the great man through the streets on the day 
 of the election. He became eloquent on platforms, bril- 
 liant at public dinners, skilful in the framing of resolutions, 
 happy in the drawing up of patriotic petitions ; acquired, 
 in short, the whole trick of public business, and, in nine 
 cases out of ten, winded up his own by getting into the 
 Gazette. A general unsettledness possessed the com- 
 munity, — the unsettledness of salient hope. In almost 
 every village there were two great classes, — the solicitors 
 and the solicited ; and as the spirit of Young Reform was 
 honest, enthusiastic, sincere, the soliciting class exerted 
 themselves for the general good and their own individual 
 glorification ; while the class solicited wei-e jiassively patri- 
 otic just for the general good alone. But the spirit of 
 Young Reform became less honest as it grew older. 
 Experience came to teach unwilling pupils that there lies 
 but little within the reach of mere statesmanship. The 
 over-toiled poor had to work as long and to flire as hardly 
 as before. Periods of depression came on, as if there had 
 been no extension of the franchise. The funded debt 
 increased, as if the Reform Bill had never passed the 
 Lords. Men became weary, too, of seeing a vulgar u|)start 
 aristocracy of cunning canvassers and adroit beggars of 
 votes taking the places of the soldier and not worse 
 burghal ai-istocracy, who had carried things all their own 
 way under the ancient regime^ and of finding that the new 
 men, like the old, were getting places in the colonies for 
 their sons, and places in the excise for their nephews, and 
 the people meanwhile none the better. Chartism broke 
 
 34
 
 398 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 
 
 off, indignant, and set up for itself. A quieter and tamer 
 class crept silently into the opposite scale, and solaced 
 themselves, when registering their tory suftVages, by call- 
 ing them conservative. Worst of all, franchise-holders 
 began to consider by thousands whether, as they could do 
 almost nothing for the country by giving their votes, they 
 might not do just a little for themselves by selling them ; 
 and hence the election markets of the country, with their 
 ticketed oaths and })riced perjuries. The generous romance, 
 the high-toned enthusiasm, of Young Reform, evaporated 
 as he rose in years, until at length, changing his character 
 altogether, he sunk into a worn-out and selfish trucklei", 
 devoid both of virtue and the belief in it; and thus what 
 had been Young Reform became Old Corruption. 
 
 Nor has the great political fever been more fivorable to 
 the intellectual than to the moral character of our country. 
 A few contemplative natures there are that need no other 
 spur to quicken them in the pursuit of knowledge than just 
 the love of it. But it is flir otherwise with the great bulk 
 of the species. In the average intellect attention never 
 concentrates save under the influence of some serious 
 belief And hence the superficiality of a merely political 
 people. They catch up shadows of opinions, impalpable 
 and unreal as those thin films which, according to the old 
 metaphysicians, bodies in the light are continually casting 
 off, and which Avere regarded as the direct causes of vision. 
 They are less the recipients of knowledge than the objects 
 on which a kind of knowledge is reflected, — mere blank 
 tablets, athwart which a periodical press throws, like a huge 
 magic-lantern, its fuitastic and ever-shifting images. The 
 period of political excitement created no thinkers. There 
 was not enough of earnestness left among the people, after 
 the first delirium had i)assed, to give motion or direction 
 to tlicir thouglits. It was Christianity through Avhich 
 the ])opular mind in Scotland was originally develojied; 
 through Christianity alone can it be awakened anew. The 
 distracting tiumoil of secular politics, with tlic accom-
 
 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 399 
 
 panying excitement, has ever served but to dissipate and 
 weaken it. 
 
 From the ecclesiastical struggle we anticipate effects of 
 a very different character from those produced by the 
 political one ; and certainly the first fruits are not of a 
 kind suited to disappoint expectation. Both struggles 
 might be represented, we have said, in a series of scenes ; 
 nor would tlie scenes charactei-istic of the ecclesiastical 
 strug<:;le form the less striking series of the two, — whether 
 we choose to draw from the atrocities that impart to the 
 resistance of the Church its character of stern necessity, 
 or from the strange instances of discordant coalition 
 exhibited in the motley array of her assailants, or from 
 the courts in which bewigged and berobed law deals upon 
 her its censures, in all the conscious bravery of horse-hair, 
 white ribbon, and taffeta, and devoid only of moral weight; 
 or, more pleasing surely, from the spectacle of earnest 
 multitudes gathered together in her behalf, and prepared 
 to assert her cause in its true character, as Scotland's old 
 hereditary quarrel ; or from the evening meeting in some 
 rural hamlet, to which, from distant glens and solitary hill- 
 sides, a devout and thoughtful people have gathered, to 
 wear out the night in implorations to. Heaven for her 
 safety; or from scenes of family devotion in many a lonely 
 cottage, in which her name and her cause are not forgotten 
 when gray-haired patriarchs wrestle in prayer with their 
 God. 
 
 Very much still remains to be done ; but we accept as a 
 token of good in her behalf the strengthening devotional 
 feeling of the country, — the deeper tone of s])irituality 
 imparted to the ministrations of so many of her clergymen, 
 — the great increase in the number of her prayer-meetings; 
 nay, it is something, too, that Moderatisra itself, provoked 
 to unwonted diligence, should be attempting, with a hand 
 stiffened by disuse, to trace out the line of duty. Instances 
 are not wanting in which, awaking from its sleep of a cen- 
 tury, it has half striven, in its bewilderment, to escape from
 
 400 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 
 
 its dreams of effete commonplace into the living realities 
 of the gospel; and we have higli authority for saying that 
 it is well Christ should be preached, even though preached 
 out of contention. There is much implied in that marked 
 increase which has taken place, during the course of the 
 last twelvemonth, in the funds of the various schemes of 
 the Church, and to which we have already referred. It 
 conclusively proves that the controversy in which she is 
 entangled has had no narrowing or secularizing effect on 
 the minds of the classes most engaged in it; that its 
 tendencies are of a directly opposite character; and that, 
 amid harassments and perplexities at home, there ha§ been 
 more thought of our countrymen abroad destitute of the 
 means of religious instruction, — of the poor benighted 
 Hindu, of the long-lost house of Israel, of the young 
 among ourselves growing up in ignorance, and of the old 
 and middle-aged passing on in darkness to their graves, — 
 than at periods when the peace among us was unbroken, 
 and all our narratives of persecution belonged exclusively 
 to the past. Nor are there proofs wanting that the effects 
 of the struggle are good intellectually. Our litterateurs 
 need be in no fear of seeing the country thrown back into 
 a state of barbarism. It was in times such as the present 
 that the humble peasantry of Scotland learned to foil at 
 their own weapons the most skilful controversialists of the 
 persecuting Church, and left their death-testimonies to 
 posterity, to bear witness alike to the indomitable firmness 
 and integrity with which they maintained their princii)les, 
 and to the high degree of intelligence which they had 
 learned to exei't in the defence of them. " The severities to 
 which he had been subjected," says Sir James Mackintosh, 
 "had led Bunyan to revolve in his own mind the principles 
 of religious freedom, until he had acquired the ability of 
 baffling, in the conflict of argument, the most acute and 
 learned among his persecutors." There is an important 
 principle involved in the remark. It exhibits the necessity 
 whicli stimulates to thought and invention, arising direct
 
 THE TWO CONFLICTS. 401 
 
 out of religious belief acted on by persecution, — a princi- 
 ple the efficacy of which may be soon tested in Scotland, 
 as of old. Meanwhile there is a degree of interest excited, 
 which has already operated favorably on the popular mind. 
 Men are falling back upon the past, with all its earnest 
 feeling and deep thinking, who were content hitherto to 
 skim over the cold superficialities of the present. The 
 Reformation is recognized once more as super-erainently 
 the great event of modern history ; and there is more read 
 and known regarding it than at any other period for the 
 last hundred years. It is a fiict of some importance that 
 our ecclesiastical histories have become the most popular 
 and salable books of the time. 
 
 "I have ever been an enemy to religious strife," said 
 Lord Dunfermline, in allusion to the existing controversy, 
 when throwing his entire weight into the opposite scale, 
 — "I have ever been an enemy to religious strife." His 
 lordship had gained a great deal by the political "strife," 
 then well-nigh at its close, — influence, title, broad lands, 
 and solid guineas ; whereas by the " religious strife " he 
 could expect to gain nothing. Besides, its cross move- 
 ments had thrown him out in his calculations, and con- 
 verted the last political act of his life into a somewhat 
 ludicrous blunder. And so, as the singularly charitable 
 advocate of the grossnesses of intrusion, and the singularly 
 liberal detester of the just rights of Christian men, he 
 looked very magnanimous, and denounced "religious strife." 
 We have attempted placing the two stnfes before our 
 readers in some of their more palpable eflects. Both were 
 alike ordered by the Disposer of all things, and their time 
 and their bounds set, with no reference, surely, to the 
 antipathies or predilections of churchmen or politicians. 
 Peace and war come alike from God. But it seems no 
 difficult matter to say which of the two seems the nobler 
 and more hopeful battle, or in which it is most a privilege 
 to be called to contend. 
 
 34*
 
 402 TENDENCIES. 
 
 TENDENCIES. 
 PART FIRST. 
 
 One finds but little difficulty in estimating the tenden- 
 cies of a bygone time in the puge of history. The events 
 stand out in a clear light, portable in bulk, and arranged 
 in due order. We see in what they have begun and in 
 what they have terminated ; and arrive, with scarce an 
 eiFort, at our conclusions regarding their general scope and 
 bearing. Bat it is far otherwise with the tendencies of a 
 present age. It is no such easy matter to estimate theii' 
 strength and direction. We are too deeply interested in 
 the passing events to appreciate them justly, or we are 
 interested in them too slightly, and our indilFerency has 
 equally the effect of setting our judgments at fault. They 
 bulk large or small in our minds, less in agreement with 
 their own true proportions than in accordance with the 
 medium of predilection or prejudice through which we 
 survey them. We are too much among them, and too 
 near them, to see them as they really are, or to mark the 
 direction in which they are bearing us in their course. The 
 current of tendency in the past, as exhibited in history, is 
 a clear, transparent stream, that sparkles in the sunsliine. 
 As involved in the occurrences of the present, it is a turbid 
 and sullen tidcj with a sombrous curtain of cloud resting 
 over it and on either hand, and with thick darkness before. 
 The voyager finds it a comparatively easy matter to trace 
 his course on the chart. The observations are already 
 taken to his hand on the graduated margin, and carried 
 carefully across by the reticulated lines ; and the ocean he 
 is crossing must be a wide ocean indeed if he does not see 
 the land "vvhicii he has left a very few inches astern of him, 
 and the land to which he is going a very few inches ahead. 
 But it is a quite different matter to trace his course over
 
 TENDENCIES. 403 
 
 the broad and living sea, with its tossing waves and its 
 perplexing currents, when the distant horizon sinks all 
 around him over a trackless waste of waters, and he knows 
 that far beyond the line of that wide circle, where sky and 
 sea seem to meet, the waste spreads on, and on, and on, for 
 iiundreds and thousands of miles. And when all is dark 
 with sleet and rime, and his bark is staggering onward 
 before the tempest ; when wild uproar and giddy tumult 
 reign below, and gloom and thick cloud darken the heavens 
 above ; when no star looks out from amid the rack by 
 night, and no sun shines through the thick fog by day ; 
 when, amid the restless welter of the deck, he has lashed 
 his pilot to the helm, and stationed his forloi-n watch in the 
 top^ — he must be content to confess a lack of knowledge 
 as certainly as a lack of power, and that he is in no degree 
 less able to control tlie irresistible waves and winds that 
 are driving him involuntarily on, than to say where they 
 have brought him, or to what untried scenes of terror or 
 peril they are hurrying him away. 
 
 But however difficult it may be to estimate the true 
 tendencies of a present age, it is all-important that they 
 should be estimated ; just as it is all-important to the 
 voyager in the storm that he should know where he is, and 
 to what coast he is driving. And it is peculiarly important 
 in an age like the present, when the powers of good and 
 evil seem as if mustering: their forces for some signal 
 struggle. 
 
 We are told by chivalrous old Barbour, in his " Acts 
 and Achievements of the Bruce," that when 
 
 " Sir Aymer and Johne of Lome, 
 Chasit the kingc with hounde and home," • 
 
 the pursuing body despatched five of their lightest and 
 most active men to overtake the hard-pressed Avairior, then 
 in full view, and to detain and hold him at bay until the 
 coming up of the rest. And overtake and bring him
 
 404 TENDENCIES. 
 
 to bay they did. But ere tlie main force of Lome and Sir 
 Aynier could reach the green holm in which he had turned 
 on his pursuers, the sward was cumbered by five bleeding 
 and mutilated corpses, and the formidable fugitive had 
 again shot far ahead. The Church of Scotland has not 
 flired so well. The Voluntary controversy overtook her 
 in her course during the dominancy of a whig ministry, 
 and had unquestionably strength enough to keep her at 
 bay during a time which she could have employed, had she 
 not been so entangled, as peculiarly opportune and fivor- 
 able for securing her safety. Placed in an eminently pop- 
 ular position, and warmly supported by her lay members, 
 who felt that her quarrel was in reality theirs, she had to 
 deal with a government whose only mode of estimating 
 the importance of religion was by determining the votes 
 that it could command, and to whom, with more than the 
 emphasis of the old proverb, "the voice of the people was 
 the voice of God." The religious element, in its character 
 as such, never entered into their calculations. If the popu- 
 lar power of Scotch Voluntaryism mustered as twenty, 
 and the popular power of the Scotch Establishment as 
 twenty-one, they would just have subtracted the lesser 
 from the larger sum, and have given the Church the benefit 
 of the balance. Every vote against her was regarded as a 
 positive deduction from the justice of her claims. And it 
 was under a government of this character that the Volun- 
 tary controversy broke out, to divide the popular forces of 
 the country, and to place our rulers for the time in the cir- 
 cumstances of the ass between the two bundles of hay. 
 Let political Voluntaries assert what they may, the con- 
 troversy is now dead — dead as any of the five hapless pur- 
 suers of the Bruce, who, like evangelic Dissent in this 
 instance, were so active to their own hurt. But it is all too 
 apparent that, ere it sunk into utter weakness and died, it 
 accomplished its work. It entangled and detained the 
 Church at a time when otherwise she would have been 
 employed in making secure her safety through the popular
 
 TENDENCIES. 405 
 
 influences ; and, when thus entangled and kept at bay, 
 other enemies came up. 
 
 The same change of ministry' which had the effect of 
 placing an already sinking Voluntaryism hors de combat 
 had the effect of placing a much elated and sanguine Mod- 
 eratism in what Moderatism itself deemed a position of 
 great strength. It saw full before it a scene of triumph, 
 — the return of the days of its old majorities, and of its 
 high-handed and much-loved policy; and all that seemed 
 necessary to secure almost instant victory was just one 
 bold stroke. Hence the unceasing exertions of Moderate 
 influence with the conservative government to baflie all 
 attempts at even an indifterently fair adjustment of the 
 controversy. The Church, in her course towards safety, — 
 a course that had now become much more dubious and 
 uncertain than before, and which promised, humanly speak- 
 ing, much fewer chances of escape, — had to contend with 
 an enemy formidable mainly from the entanglement and 
 delay that it occasioned. Moderatism had most certainly 
 no intention of bringing down the Establishment. It is 
 well aware how very miserably it would fare without it. 
 We give our present Lord Justice-Clerk [Hope] full credit 
 for attachment to the Scottish Establishment, and believe 
 that, had he to choose between two great evils, he would 
 rather see it Evangelistic than Puseyite. At this most 
 important result, however, has the Church now arrived, 
 and the question has assumed a new aspect in consequence. 
 It is a point virtually decided by the resolutions of the late 
 Convocation, that the existing controversy shall be either 
 settled on fair, n on -intrusion principles, or that the Estab- 
 lishment of Scotland shall not be a Presbyterian Establish- 
 ment. The second enemy that has entangled and kept the 
 Church at bay promises soon to* sink into a state of as 
 great powerlessness as her first enemy. But it, too, may 
 have accomplished its work. The great apostasy has been 
 meanwhile rising into strength in England, and asserting 
 
 1 The accessiou of the Conservatives to power in 1841.
 
 406 TENDENCIES. 
 
 its place as the master principle of that kingdom. It was 
 powerless at the time when Voluntaryism contended with 
 our Churcli. When Moderatism contended with her, its 
 joints were still unknit, its muscles undeveloped, its 
 strength rather prospective than actual. But it is an im- 
 mensely stronger principle now. The Church has been 
 detained and entangled in her course by antagonists much 
 indeed her inferiors in prowess ; but ere she has succeeded 
 in fully mastering them, it would seem as if the main body 
 of the enemy had come up. How strange if, in the revo- 
 lutions of those cloud-enveloped and mysteriously-compli- 
 cated wheels of Providence which the prophet in vision 
 saw, the efforts of Voluntaries, many of them truly Chris- 
 tian men, and the active hostility of Moderates, men 
 at least hostile to superstition and to the dogmas of the 
 "malignant Church," shotdd turn out to be but mere 
 diversions, made all blindly and unwittingly in favor of 
 the great apostasy ! 
 
 There can be at least little rational doubt that Puseyism 
 will now exert an influence on the adjustment of our 
 Scottish Church question which at an earlier period it 
 could not have exerted. When Voluntaryism began its 
 opposition, Puseyism liad no existence; when Moderatism 
 began its opposition, Puseyism was comparatively weak. 
 Nay, independently of both, the Church, in her present 
 position, had she been but prepared to take it up, might 
 have very possibly compelled a fair and liberal settlement 
 from Conservatism when Sir Robert Peel entered upon 
 office, or from Liberalism ere Lord Melbourne quitted it. 
 Neither of these statesmen, left to themselves, could liave 
 contemplated for a moment the disestablishment of the 
 national religion of Scotland, with all the long train of 
 evils which such an event must of necessity draw along 
 with it, as a thing to be permitted in any circumstances. 
 But a new party has become strong in the political field, 
 that, through the disturbing influence of an element of 
 religious belief, will be wholly incapable of estimating
 
 TENDENCIES. 407 
 
 these evils aright. We say an element of religious belief, 
 It is common to all sincere religionists, whether their 
 creed be a true or a false one, to "hope against hope," — 
 to Jiope at least against probability, — to shut their eyes 
 to what seem the teachings of experience in cases in which 
 these teacliings run counter to some promise of their 
 religion, and- to open them to the promise only. We 
 believe, as Christians, for instance, that the knowledge 
 of the Lord shall one day cover the whole earth. Why ? 
 Do we find grounds for any such belief in either the pres- 
 ent state of things or in the world's past history? Very 
 slight grounds indeed. If wc see true churches springing 
 up in one })art of the globe, do we not see them dying 
 out in another? Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands have 
 their Christianity. Yes; but Avhat has become of the 
 Seven Churches of Asia? America has had her revivals. 
 Yes; but how much of the living religion of the Reforma- 
 tion is now to be found on the Continent of Europe? 
 We do not found our belief in the ultimate triumph of our 
 religion on the evidence of history, or on a survey of the 
 present prospects of society. We have a much better foun- 
 dation ; Ave ground it on the promise of our God. And, 
 let the probabilities run as they may, it is a belief which 
 we shall therefore continue to hold fast. Now false, like 
 true churches, have their beliefs, firmly held after this 
 fashion, which run counter to the probabilities ; nor can 
 there be elements that more disturb calculations, or that 
 lead to the perpetration of greater follies and crimes. 
 Puseyism indulges in them ; nor has there been any lack 
 of indication regarding the j^oints on which they are con- 
 centrated. There is not one of our readers more thor- 
 oughly based in the belief that China, or Hindustan, or 
 the Persian empire, shall be one day Christian, than 
 Puseyism is grounded in the belief that Scotland shall 
 be one day Puseyite. It is formidable, in a crisis like the 
 present, to have to come in contact with such a principle. 
 The rational weighers of probabilities are easily dealt
 
 408 TENDENCIES. 
 
 witli; not so the blind hopers against hope. Men of 
 expedienay, such as Sir Robert Peel, — men less in danger 
 of believing anything they don't see than of doubting 
 Avhen they ought to believe, — will find no difiiculty, as 
 we have said, in at least estimating the circumstances in 
 which our country is at present placed. Sir Robert, two 
 years ago, would have acted in due accordance with such 
 an estimate. But it is at least questionable whether the 
 expediency party which he represents is powerful enough 
 to act upon it now. The hopers against hope — the bigots 
 who "believe because it is impossible" — muster strong 
 in the rear of our statesmen of mere expediency. Their 
 influence to disturb, disarrange, disappoint, is great, and 
 will, we doubt not, be vigorously exerted. We have to 
 expect, in consequence, we are afraid, much wilful mis- 
 representation, much intentional misapprehension, much 
 exaggeration of our claims as unreasonable and absurd, 
 much insinuation that our designs are selfish and dis- 
 honest; delays ingeniously spun out to wear us down; 
 perhaps a bill meanly equivocal in phrase, framed inten- 
 tionally to palter in a double sense; perhaps no bill at all. 
 If such be the state and apparent tendency of things, 
 what course ought the Church to pursue? Is it at once 
 her interest and her duty vigorously to persevere in form- 
 ing her congregational associations, and in securing every- 
 where the adherence of her jDeople ? Her better consola- 
 tions and encouragements are to be derived from the 
 highest of all sources; but there can be no harni in 
 remembering, besides, that if there be powerful principles 
 opposed to her, the principles for which she has to con- 
 tend have been, ever since the Reformation at least, by 
 much the strongest in Scotland. "It matters not," says 
 Carlyle, in his quaint but striking manner, — "it matters 
 not though a thing be a small thing; if it be a true thing 
 it will grow." Cromwell and ISTapoleon were once puny 
 infants. But there was a principle of life in them, and of 
 undeveloped power; and so they both grew up to be very
 
 TENDENCIES. 409 
 
 great men. Rather more than a century ago, Moderatisra 
 cast out of the Church of Scotland four clergymen. A 
 small matter, it may be tliought. Yes; small in much 
 the same way that the infant Cromwell and the infant 
 Napoleon were small. The transaction involved one of 
 the principles of our present controversy. The thing was 
 a small thing in itself, but then it embodied a great and 
 true principle, and so the small thing grew. And in the 
 present day, the four rejected clergymen are represented 
 by five hundred clergymen and by five hundred thousand 
 people. If the worst comes to the worst with the Church 
 of Scotland, she bids fiiir to begin her course, not as a 
 small, but as a very great thing, — to begin with the five 
 hundred ministers and the five hundred thousand people. 
 And to the life-imparting, growth-securing principle of 
 the Secession, she adds another master-principle whose 
 strength has also been amply tested in Scotland. The 
 contendings of the Secession in the last century involved 
 mainly the non-intrusion principle. The contendings of 
 our Presbyterian fathers in the previous century involved, 
 mainly, the great doctrine that Christ is the only Head of 
 the Church, and that, in the things which pertain to his 
 kingdom, she owns no king or lord but him. And in our 
 present struggle both these principles of strength nre 
 united. We have glanced, however, at but a small portion 
 of our subject ; it is of great extent, and as important as 
 extensive ; and we shall embrace an early opportunity of 
 returning to it. 
 
 PART SECOND. 
 
 It is a widely-spread belief of the present time, and 
 certainly one of its not less striking characteristics, that 
 the men of the passing generation are to be the spectators 
 of a series of stranger changes and more remarkable revo- 
 lutions than have been witnessed in almost any former 
 
 35
 
 410 TENDENCIES. 
 
 period of tlie world's history. We say, widely spread. It 
 is a belief tliat professes to be founded on Sci'ipture, and 
 has, in consequence, one set of limits in the far-diffused 
 infidelity of the masses. Nay, more, it professes to be 
 founded on an interpretation of Scripture exclusively 
 Protestant, and has thus anotlier set of limits in the super- 
 stitions of Puseyism and Popery, that still further restrict 
 its area. But outside these lines of boundary, inevitable 
 in the present state of Christendom, — outside of infidelity 
 on the one hand, and of Popery and Puseyism on the 
 other, — it may well be described as a belief extensively 
 diffused. There is scarce a country in the world in which 
 Protestantism exists as a living faith, from America to Aus- 
 tralia, and from Australia to Great Britain, in which it does 
 not exist. There is scarce a Protestant body, from the 
 Episcopalian to the Independent, from the Baptist to the 
 Presbyterian, in which it has not its zealous assertors. It 
 may be found in minds of almost every calibre, — in union, 
 in some instances, with great doctrinal extravagances, and 
 active, ill-regulated imaginations, — united, in others, to 
 codes of belief soundly orthodox, and to great general 
 sobriety and strength of judgment. The extent to which 
 it prevails renders it one of perhaps the more remarknble 
 traits of the religious world in the present day. Beliefs 
 of a somewhat similar character have spread not less 
 widely at other times. A belief that the end of the world 
 was close at hand had immense influence in stirring up our 
 ancient barons and their retainers to engage in the earlier 
 crusades; but it was the belief of a barbarous and unin- 
 formed age, alike remarkable for the credulity of a super- 
 stitious laity and the pious frauds of an unprincipled 
 priesthood. A belief obtained very generally among Pa- 
 pists early in the latter half of the seventeenth century, 
 that the year 1GG6 was to be marked by some great 
 religious revolution and the coming of Antichrist ; and, 
 through a curious coincidence, the Jews pretended, says 
 Voltaire, that their Messiah was to come this year, — a
 
 TENDENCIES. 411 
 
 delusion which led in part to the temporary success of that 
 singular impostor Sabbatei Levi ; while in England, says 
 Burnet, "an opinion did run through the nation" that this 
 year was to usher in the day of judgment. But the beUef, 
 thus various in its character, and which is said to have 
 originated in a vulgar misapprehension of the mystic num- 
 ber in the Apocalypse 666, was restricted, like the other, 
 to the superstitious and the ignorant. It is a peculiarity of 
 the existing belief, that it is entertained by all our more 
 eminent expounders of prophecy in the present time, anl 
 that the writings of well-nigh all the more judicious tx- 
 pounders of the past bear upon it also. The Medes, Til- 
 lingasts, and Flemings of the seventeenth century point 
 direct in the same line with the Keiths, Brooks, and Bick- 
 ersteths of our own. 
 
 The fact is unquestionably a curious, and surely not 
 unimportant one, in its character as a fict. It was curious, 
 even as a fact, that a belief should have prevailed through- 
 out the world, in the days of Augustus Cffisar, that some 
 very great personage Avas just about to appear upon earth ; 
 nor Avas the importance of the belief lessened in the least 
 through the mistakes and misapprehensions to which, in 
 some instances, it led. It was no doubt sufficiently absurd 
 in Virgil to imagine he had found the wonderful child for 
 whom the whole world was waiting, and under whose reign 
 "the serpent's brood shall die," in the obscure Salonius, 
 the infant son of Pollio. It was scarce less absurd in 
 Tacitus, in the following century, to hold that he had dis- 
 covered the king " who was to come forth of Judea, and 
 reign over the whole earth," in the Emperor Vespasian. 
 But perversions and misconceptions such as these militated 
 in no degree against the general basis of reality in which 
 the belief itself was founded. It had its foundations in 
 truth, however wrapped up in the empty and untangible 
 obscurities of Sybilline jtrediction, or mixed with the gross 
 and palpable delusions of an impure idolatry, or misdi- 
 rected by the active but blind ingenuity of philosophic
 
 412 TENDENCIES. 
 
 historians or accomplished poets. And the incident of tlie 
 eastern sages, as recorded in Matthew, shows iis that it was 
 a behef through which, employed aright, the Saviour might 
 be found, even by men outside the pale of Judea. This 
 genei-al belief of the period, so curiously handed down to 
 us in pagan literature, was in reality a warning in Provi- 
 dence to the whole world that the King of the world was 
 coming. 
 
 Now, we speak advisedly when we say, that not since 
 that time was there any belief founded in prophecy at once 
 so widely spread and entertained by men of such general 
 solidity of understanding as the belief of the present age, 
 to which we refer. It has no doubt been exhibited, like 
 the other, in many a various phase of absurdity and delu- 
 sion. All our readers must have heard of Lady Hester 
 Stanhope, avIio died, a few years since, amid the upper 
 wilds of Lebanon, in the full expectation that she was to 
 be visited there by the Saviour in person, and who kept in 
 her stable a horse on which he might ride. They must be 
 acquainted, also, with the extravagances, in the same line, 
 of the followers of Campbell and Irvine. They may have 
 differed widely, too, from the peculiar views of the vari- 
 ously-composed body known as the "Personal Reign Men" 
 of the present day, and perhaps thought of the class with a 
 sort of tacit reference to the " Fifth Monarchy Men" of 
 the times of the Commonwealth. We question, however, 
 whether it Avould be in any degree more wise to slight the 
 belief in which these extravagances have originated now, 
 than it would have been wise to have slighted t)ie belief in 
 Avhich the extravagances of Virgil, and not a few of his 
 contemporaries, originated in the reign of Augustus Cojsar. 
 The belief which furnished the Roman poet with but the 
 occasion of a mean compliment to the reign of a cunning 
 isurper, led to far higher results in the case of the eastern 
 .sages; the belief which, operating on the crazed imagina- 
 tion of a Lady Stanhope, terminated in but an insane 
 folly, may be a very different thing indeed in the mind of a
 
 TENDENCIES. 413 
 
 Dr. Keith; and we think there can be at least no harm in 
 urging on our readers an examination into the extent to 
 which it in reality prevails, and of the data on which it 
 professes to be founded. There is at least nothing fanatical 
 in the advice. It can be in no degree irrational to devote 
 one's self humbly and prayerfully to the careful study of 
 that portion of Scripture regarding which Christ himself 
 has so emphatically said, " Behold, I come quickly : blessed 
 is he that keepeth" in mind "the sayings of the prophecy 
 of this book." There is but one book in the whole Bible 
 to which the blessing 'particularly refers. It is the book 
 on which this belief of the religious world professes to be 
 specially based, — the belief that the present remarkable 
 pause among the kingdoms of Europe is but a pause pre- 
 ceding some great hunicane, in which the very foundations 
 of society may be unfixed, — that the sixth vial is now in 
 the course of being poured out on the vast river Euphra- 
 tes, to dry up its failing waters in the sight of peoples and 
 nations that have peace given them meanwhile, as if to 
 enable them the more carefully to mark the sign, — and 
 that, Avhen that sign shall be accomplished, there shall 
 burst forth upon them a storm like that which the prophet 
 saw in the cave, when " a great and strong wind rent 
 the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, before the 
 Lord." 
 
 The inquirer, in the course of his search, and especially 
 when setting himself to examine rather the extent and 
 varieties of the belief than the grounds of it, will scarce 
 fail of finding many curious passages, — some of them, 
 no doubt, very extravagant, some of them eminently 
 striking; and the following passage among the rest: 
 "When the beast of Rev. xiii. 1 is described," says a 
 writer of the present year, "Ae has iqwn his ten horns 
 ten croicns ; but when the beast of Rev. xvii. 3 is repre- 
 sented as carrying the woman, he still has ten horns, hut 
 he has not a croicn upo)i any horn.'''' And who, ask our 
 readers, can be the writer of this wildly democratic, this
 
 414 TENDENCIES. 
 
 fiercely revolutionary passage, — this passage that in reality 
 outdoes, in its quietness, the loudest treason of the most 
 ostentatious Chartism ? No democrat, no revolutionist, 
 we assure them. It was written in a quiet English vicar- 
 age, by a beneficed clergyman, — a man who, believing, 
 indeed, that the present age will not pass before all the 
 ten horns of the beast shall want their crowns, has yet 
 evidently no other interest in the democratic spirit than 
 that which he takes in it as one of the signs of the times. 
 That such passages should be written and published by 
 such men, must be regarded as one of the signs of the 
 times also, and, we are of opinion, one of not the least 
 significant. The phase which it presents may be well 
 deemed extreme ; but, as one of the many phases exhib- 
 ited by a widely-extended belief, remarkable, iu all its 
 multitudinous aspects, for its unity of general scope and 
 direction, we deem it not without its degree of startling 
 interest. 
 
 But, in speculating on the effects of the disestablishment 
 of the religion of Scotland, let us deal with the i)robabili- 
 ties of the event as if no such belief existed. It is of signal 
 importance, at a time like the present, that a conviction so 
 widely spread should be carefully examined. If found to 
 be solid, it may greatly influence conduct; but it must not 
 be perniitted to inlluence calculation. There can, how- 
 ever, be no harm in referring to the somewhat shrewd 
 circumstance, that the calculations and the belief fill with 
 revolution exactly the same period of time. He must 
 know exceedingly little of the history of either Presby- 
 terian Scotland or of revolution in general, who believes 
 that our vexatious Church controversy is to sink at once 
 into quiet whenever some five hundred ministers and some 
 five hundred thousand people shall have quitted the Estab- 
 lishment. It is only then, properly speaking, that the war 
 is to begin. Revolutions go commonly, like twin stars, by 
 pairs. There is first a comparatively quiet revolution, and 
 then a much more noisy one; and the civil courts have
 
 TENDENCIES. 415 
 
 succeeded in accomplishing only the quieter of the two. 
 They have succeeded in revolutionizing the constitution 
 of the Church of Scotland ; and when they shall have 
 disestablished lier, the work, so far as it is theirs, shall be 
 complete. But the other revolution is still altogether 
 future. The revolution of Charles I. was pretty nearly 
 accomplished when John Hampden had been made to 
 suffer fine and imprisonment in England, and the service- 
 book of Laud had been introduced into the High Church 
 of Edinburgh. But then came the counter-revolution, and 
 it was not fully accomplished until a discrowned head, 
 melancholy of visage, and with locks prematurely gray, 
 had dropped with hollow sound on the scaffold at White- 
 hall. The revolution of James was well-nigh complete 
 when the refractory bishops had been sent to the Tower ; 
 the counter-revolution was not completed until after Wil- 
 liam had landed at Torbay. Charles the Tenth brought 
 his revolution to a close when he had revoked and disan- 
 nulled the constitution of France ; but it took three days 
 longer, and a considerable amount of hard fighting besides, 
 to bring to a close the revolution that followed. Such, in 
 short, is the general history of revolution. Such, we are 
 certain, has been its invariable history in Scotland in con- 
 nection with the Presbyterianism of the country. The 
 war, we repeat, instead of drawing near a close, is but on 
 the eve of beginning. 
 
 It will be carried on under one set of circumstances in 
 our country districts, and under another set in our large 
 towns. Democracy has its strongholds in the one, Conser- 
 vatism in the other; and in the more democratic localities 
 will the war be hottest at first. All the churches of Aber- 
 deen connected with the Establishment will fall vacant 
 in one day. With these, four-fifths of the churches of Glas- 
 gow, four-fifths of the churches of Edinburgh, and, in short, 
 in nearly corresponding proportions, the churches of almost 
 all the other large towns and cities of Scotland. Nor is it 
 merely ministers that these churches will lack ; they will
 
 416 TENDENCIES. 
 
 lack also congregations. Moderatisni has spoken of its 
 five hundred licentiates patriotically waiting on tiptoe to 
 rush, each like an ancient Curtius, into the five hundred 
 perilous breaches that are to be made on this occasion in 
 the Establishment. But it has not yet said anything of 
 five hundred waiting congregations. The gap made by the 
 congregations must remain unfilled, like the gaps made by 
 the Indian tomahawk in the cranium of Lieutenant Les- 
 mahago. Now, it is a very simple fact, but a not unimpor- 
 tant one, that it is the congregations who pay the seat-rents; 
 whereas the patriotic licentiates, instead of paying the 
 rents, will be able only to benefit the community by receiv- 
 ing the stipends. It is also a fact, that in Glasgow, Paisley, 
 Dundee, Aberdeen, and several of our other large towns, 
 the magistrates receive the rents with one hand, and pay 
 the stipends with the other ; and we are afraid it would 
 scarce fail to put the good men somewhat out, should the 
 inveterate old habit be so broken upon through an inability 
 of finding emjjloyment for the receiving hand, that they 
 would have to restrict themselves to the use of the paying 
 hand exclusively. 
 
 Out of the twenty-nine pulpits of Ross-shire, twenty 
 would be left vacant ; and to persons at all acquainted with 
 the character of Scotch Highlanders in the present age it 
 is quite unnecessary to say what would be the nature of 
 the ferment which such an event would occasion. Our 
 Highlanders are a patient people : they have, alas ! been 
 much trampled upon, and they have borne it quietly. But 
 though a ])atient, they are not a weak people ; nor are they 
 unintelligent. They have got names, in their simple, 
 expressive Gaelic, for the two parties in the Church. They 
 describe the clergy of the one party as "the ministers who 
 care for their souls," and those of the other as "the minis- 
 ters who do not." They understand perfectly, too, the 
 true nature of a religious Establisment. They regard it, 
 not as a pension fund set apart for the sustenance of a use- 
 less clergy, but as a provision made for their benefit. It is
 
 TENDENCIES. 417 
 
 but a few years since a party of thera, ejected from their 
 homes in the north of Scotland, left in quiet sadness their 
 mountain hamlet, on their journey to the sea-port from 
 which they were to take ship for America, They had been 
 previously ground down by the exactions of a needy and 
 rapacious landlord, until their lives had become ceaseless 
 struggles between want and hard labor; and the feeling 
 that binds Scotch Highlanders to their native soil had been 
 in some degree weakened in consequence. But it icas 
 their native soil that they were leaving, and so they quitted 
 it, as we have said, in silent sorrow. In their onward jour- 
 ney they passed the parish church. It was the one part 
 of all the country that was theirs: it was their only prop- 
 erty. It was the only thing that the landlord had not been 
 able to tax, until, like the hard-earned fruits of their labors, 
 it had become his own. It was theirs, and they were now 
 leaving it forever. A host of recollections rushed upon 
 them, at once tender and sacred; and there, beside the 
 much-loved building, and amid the ashes of their fathers, 
 they lifted up their voices and wept. And it is men such 
 as these that the revolution of the civil courts is now on 
 the eve of robbing of their only property. It would be 
 utter madness to speak of resistance. They will not resist ; 
 their much-loved ministers have taught them better; but 
 let these twenty churches be thrown vacant, — let all 
 the evangelistic churches of the Highlands be thrown 
 vacant, — and the cause of the aristocracy in Scotland will 
 count weaker from the date of the event than it had hith- 
 erto done, by thirty thousand fighting men. Conservatism, 
 too, may give up at least the northern Highlands as a polit- 
 ical field whenever it pleases. One of the first effects of 
 the revolution in country districts everywhere will be a 
 thorough separation between the intrusion landlord and 
 the non-intrusion tenant. The political feeling never at- 
 tained to great strength among the rural population of 
 Scotland. It is the })roprietary and the acres of the coun- 
 try that have hitherto voted at elections. Landlords have
 
 418 TENDENCIES. 
 
 been in the habit of bringing the representatives of their 
 estates with them to the poll, and their estates have inva- 
 riably turner] out to be of the same mind with the land- 
 loids themselves. There is now a new element introduced, 
 or, rather, an old element revived ; and our proprietary 
 would do well to take the measure of its strength. " All 
 for the Church, and somewhat less for the state," was a 
 leading principle of the old Scotch whig, as drawn by 
 Belhaven in the days of the Union ; and it will be found 
 that the character still applies. But we are indicating, and 
 that feebly, not so much the first beginnings of the war in 
 our country and Highland districts, as the directions which 
 these first beginnings are likely to take. We feel that we 
 are only entering on our subject. 
 
 PART THIRD. 
 
 Is the reader acquainted with that singularly amusing 
 and interesting Avork, the "Autobiography of Heinrich 
 Stilling"? Heinrich, a German of the true type, — for 
 to a simplicity so extreme that it imparted a dash of 
 eccentricity to his character, he united great natural pow- 
 ers, and acquirements of no ordinary extent and variety, 
 — had passed, in his eventful career, through many changes 
 of station and employment. In early life he had wrought 
 as a journeyman tailor in an obscure province. In his first 
 stage of advance he had taught a village school. In the 
 second, he had acted as a sort of mercantile clerk and 
 agent. In the third, he had applied himself to the study 
 of medicine, and practised with various success as a 
 physician in a tenth-rate German town. In a fourth, he 
 had added the practice of surgery to that of i)hysic, and 
 had learned to couch for the cataract. lie had received, 
 in a iiflh, an appointment to a professorship of agriculture 
 and commerce in a provincial academy. In a sixth, he had 
 been transferred, first to one university, then to another
 
 TENDENCIES. 419 
 
 of higher standing and celebrity, and distinguished him- 
 self by his lectures on the economical, financial, and statis- 
 tical sciences. Continuing to practise gratuitously as an 
 oculist, he acquired a degree of skill perhaps unequalled at 
 the period over Europe, and became the honored instru- 
 ment of restoring to their sight many hundreds of the 
 blind. He rose high in fame as an author ; did much, 
 through the exercise of his very popidar powers, to stem 
 the flood of neologic rationalism, which, during the latter 
 half of the last century, deluged the continent; asserted, 
 in his writings, in opposition to the cold, inoperative Theism 
 disseminated from France as a centre, that "God must and 
 will be worshipped in his Son," and that "in Christ, and in 
 Christ only, is the Father of men to be found." And, 
 after a long and singularly useful life, he died, about thirty 
 years ago, in the possession of the esteem of all good men, 
 with a long list of honorary titles attached to his name, a 
 popular and influential writer, a leading professor of the 
 practical sciences, a doctor of philosophy and medicine, 
 and private aulic councillor to the Grand Duke of Baden. 
 We refer to his strangely varied and surely not inglori- 
 ous career for the sake of an illustration which it furnishes, 
 in connection with one of the more striking peculiarities 
 of his character. As he rose, step by step, in his course, 
 he was ever in the habit of seriously inquiring of himself 
 whether he had yet reached the proper place to which 
 Providence in an especial manner, as he thought, had been 
 guiding him from his youth up. He had all along felt 
 himself gravitating, through the force of events, if we 
 may so speak, towards some unknown vocation, the true 
 destiny of his life, — as the sun, with all its planets, is said 
 to gravitate towards an unseen and mysterious centre, 
 hidden deep in the profound of space; and, believing that 
 there awaited him some peculiar, specific work to perform, 
 he Avas solicitously anxious at each stage to know whether 
 he had yet entered on the exercise of it, or whether he 
 might not continue to await the call of duty inviting him
 
 420 TENDENCIES. 
 
 to some other sphere of action. There can be little doubt 
 that he carried the feeling to an extreme more in accord- 
 ance with the peculiar mysticism of the German than the 
 sober common-sense of the British character; but the 
 doubt need be quite as slight that, in the great majority 
 of cases, men err on the opposite side, and err much more 
 fatally than Stilling did. It is much to know one's real 
 place and vocation, — so very much, that half the blunders 
 and mishaps which occur in life, including all that is ridic- 
 ulous in the classes that shoot above their proper mark, 
 and almost all that is most pitiable among the classes that 
 shoot beneath it, occur just in consequence of their not 
 knowing their legitimate sphere and proper employments. 
 They fail to ajipreciate their true destiny, and make ship- 
 wreck in consequence; just as those who failed to solve 
 the enigmas of the Sphinx Avere destroyed by the monster 
 as a penalty of their misapprehension. 
 
 But Avhy so obvious a remark? It may be found not 
 without its bearing, we are of opinion, on the present crisis 
 of the Scottish" Church. It may at least serve us to illus- 
 trate what we might be perhaps unable to make equally 
 plain without it. The disestablished Chui'ch of Scotland 
 bids fair to take up a place not occupied by any Church in 
 Europe since the times of the Reformation; and it would 
 be well that all sincerely interested in her welfare, and the 
 work which in times past she has been honored to carry 
 on, should not mistake it. We can imagine scarce any- 
 thing more fitted to be fatal than a misapprehension of 
 her true place — her proper employment; and it is impos- 
 sible not to see that there may in some instances be con- 
 siderable danger of such a misapprehension. The question 
 which, with respect to himself j cost Heinrich Stilling so 
 much grave thought and severe self-examination, should 
 seriously engage every n)ember of the Free Church of 
 Scotland with respect to her. What, in the i)resent great 
 crisis, is her proper ])lace ? — what her true vocation ? Of 
 one thing we may be assured : the separating pi'ocess of
 
 TENDENCIES. 421 
 
 which her contest with the civil powers has been so re- 
 markably the occasion, and which, in its various stages of 
 involuntary classification, serves so strikingly to remind 
 one of the testing trials of the bands of Gideon, bears 
 reference to some very important end. "We may be assured, 
 further, that the work prepared for the parties which it 
 divides will be in meet accordance with their respective 
 characters. 
 
 Among the prose writings of the poet James Montgom- 
 ery there is an exceedingly curious little piece, less knovvn 
 than most of his other writings, designated an " Apocry- 
 phal Chapter in the History of England," which purports 
 to describe a state of matters induced by the total ex- 
 tinction of Christianity in the country. There are many 
 curious incidents narrated in it; and one of the most 
 curious is a sort of missionary enterprise, undertaken with 
 the design of restoring the vanished fliith, by the country's 
 more prudent skeptics and more sagacious men of tlie 
 world. So long as Christianity existed among them, we 
 are told, they had been indifferent to it at best ; some of 
 them had made it the subject of not very respectful jokes, 
 — some of them had openly contemned it; but, now that 
 it was gone, they suddenly opened their eyes to the start- 
 ling flict, that a vast and irresistible mass of depraved, 
 reckless, hunger-bitten intelligence was preparing to bear 
 down upon them and destroy them, and that the only 
 barrier efficient to protect them in the circumstances was 
 just the Christian sv^yerstition. That barrier, therefore, 
 they had set themselves determinedly to reerect. They 
 went out to preach, says the poet, in " market-places and 
 town-halls, and on oratorio evenings at the theatres; but, 
 alas ! never having knovvn much of the matter, and 
 having cared less, — having the misfortune, too, of being 
 pretty widely known, and of being conscious of it, — they 
 drivelled so exquisitely, in their confusion, as to ])rovoke 
 at once the scorn and the wrath of the multitude, who 
 presently silenced them with such missiles as were wout 
 
 36
 
 422 TENDENCIES. 
 
 to be thrown on better men in the days of Whitefield and 
 Wesley." 
 
 Now, the incident is of course a fictitious one; but it is 
 not on tliat account without its Large admixture of truth. 
 It is true to nature, if not to fact; and the country will by 
 and by have an opportunity, it is not improbable, of seeing 
 many counterparts to it among the real occurrences of the 
 time. The residuary Establishment will find it as neces- 
 sary to exert itself in behalf of a nominal Evangelism, 
 when the truth shall have left it, as it was found necessary 
 by the skeptics of Montgomery's "Apocryphal Cliapter" to 
 exert themselves in the behalf of Christianity. Moderat- 
 ism will find itself in circumstances in which, for the first 
 time, its very existence shall have to depend on its minis- 
 terial exertions; and, for a season at least, violent exertions 
 will be made. The dead body will be galvanized in all its 
 limbs and features; and if the wild convulsions and con- 
 tortions fail to resemble life, they will have at least the 
 merit of being exceedingly like possession. But the im- 
 pulse, though more than sufliciently energetic in the com- 
 mencement, will not, and cannot, be permanent. The 
 stone of Sisyphus will return to where it gravitates. It has 
 been well and philosophically remarked, that no man ever 
 changed his true character merely by determining to change 
 it. There is something more than the sheer force of resolu- 
 tion required. And what is true of the individual is equally 
 true of every body composed of individuals. Moderatisra 
 will set itself to work with, no doubt, a dogged determina- 
 tion of working hard and long. It will strive for a while 
 to transmute into activity, by sheer dint of resolution, its 
 native indolence of character. It will set itself to propel 
 the ponderous axles and pinions of the Establishment by 
 main strength ; but that which should be the grand mov- 
 ing power of the machine it will assuredly neglect. It 
 will merely set its shoulder to the master wheels. The 
 sole moving power of any Church, whether established or 
 disestablished, — the only moving power, indeed, that is
 
 TENDENCIES. 423 
 
 of the slightest value, that is not rather mischievous than 
 beneficial, — is that power which acts through converted 
 ministers and office-bearers, with all the permanent efficacy 
 of a fixed law. And as this moving power Moderatism 
 neither has nor wishes to have, its exertions must of neces- 
 sity be both inoperative aiid short-lived. The remark 
 refers mainly to Moderatism of the genuine type; for 
 mainly to Moderatism will the throes and spasms of this 
 period of convulsion be restricted. The Quietism of the 
 residuary Establishment will walk softly, according to its 
 nature, — then, as now, appalled rather than stimulated by 
 the disruption. Its Rowism will continue to halt lamely, 
 like a patient with an unset bone. Its Politico-Evangelism, 
 as if palsy-struck for the time, will cower helplessly under 
 the consciousness that when a religious ministiy has lost 
 its character, its zeal comes to be regarded as but the mere 
 ebullitions of an offensive selfishness, and that to remain as 
 quiet as possible is its true policy in the circumstances, 
 seeing that the more thoroughly it may succeed in hiding 
 itself, the better may it hope to fare. 
 
 Now, it would be much, we repeat, for the disestablished 
 Church to know at such a time its true place and vocation. 
 It will stand on high ground, and this not merely in the 
 eyes of religious men all over the world, but also in the 
 estimate of mere men of honor. 
 
 A clergyman, not a hundred miles from Edinburgh, who 
 gave in his adherence to the resolutions of the Convoca- 
 tion, felt, since the late discussion in Parliament, that he 
 had taken a step of doubtful prudence ; and, sitting down 
 all alone, with the glebe in his front and the manse in his 
 rear, he resolved, in the first place, to let his signature in 
 the fatal list stand for nothing, and to exert himself, in 
 the second, whenever the opportunity should occur, in 
 repealing the veto. Not quite satisfied, perhaps, with the 
 resolution at which he had arrived, and naturally desirous 
 of making up by the gratulations of others what was want- 
 ing in bis own, he bethought himself of one of his neigh-
 
 424 TENDENCIES. 
 
 bors, — an Intrusionist heritor, — much a Modei*ate and a 
 man of tlie world, who had sturdily opposed him hitherto 
 in all his movements on the side of the Church, but whom, 
 in the main, he had tbund respectful and not unfriendly. 
 
 I must just call on Mr. , he said, and tell him what I 
 
 have at length determined on doing, and that w^e are 
 much more likely to agree for the future than hitherto. 
 And call on him he accordingly did. But, alas! there 
 awaited the poor man none of the anticipated congratula- 
 tions. The heritor, unluckily a gentleman, and acquainted, 
 with the code of honor, though ignorant of the constitu- 
 tion of the Scottish Church, heard him patiently avow 
 his altered sentiments and resolutions, and then, seriously 
 
 addressing hitn, " Mr. ," he said, " hitherto I deemed 
 
 you and your party in the wrong; but, though I opposed, 
 I respected you ; and, regarding you as honest in your con- 
 victions, I had pleasure in recognizing you as my minister. 
 I must now beg leave to say that you have found means 
 to change my opinion, and that I can attend your minis- 
 trations no longer." 
 
 We instance the story merely to show that there are 
 points of a practical bearing in the existing contest which 
 even mere men of the world can thoroughly appreciate. 
 The man honest in acting up to his convictions, and who 
 can make large saci'ifices for the sake of principle, is deemed 
 at least an honorable man by the numerous class ignorant 
 of those higher motives which bear reference to an unseea 
 world. With the members of this class, in spite of them- 
 selves, the disestablished Church must stand high, — a wit- 
 ness to the importance of truths little known or heeded, 
 but which are destined, in these latter times, to grow upon 
 the notice of the world, to constitute the great watchwords 
 of its terminal struggle between the powers of good and 
 of evil, and to receive their final confirmation at the last 
 day from that adorable Sovereign of all, whose right 
 equally it is to rule over the nations now, as to judge 
 them then. With the men who in reality know the truth.
 
 TENDENCIES. 425 
 
 whether at home or abroad, the position of the disestab- 
 lislied Church will be better appreciated. The testing- 
 trial has been protracted and severe ; the chaff and dust 
 have been blowing off at every stage in the process. It 
 will be a chosen and well-tried band that, at the last stage, 
 now apparently so near, shall go forth from the Establish- 
 ment, leaving behind them the residual culm and debris; 
 and, let party assert what it may, the sacrifice ultimately 
 will not be nnder-estimated. The religious feelings of the 
 country will be on their side ; nay, the very consciences of 
 their opponents will be on their side also, in the degree at 
 least in which these consciences are enlightened and awak- 
 ened ; and, as in other times, death-beds, despairing and 
 unblest, shall yield an impressive testimony in their favor. 
 Now, it would be of vast importance for the Church to 
 be fully conscious of all this. In her new circumstances 
 she W'ill be exposed to peculiar temptations and dangers ; 
 and there is nothing which, with the blessing of her Great 
 Head, seems so suited to guard and strengthen her against 
 these as a right apprehension of her true place and stand- 
 ing. It would be well for her to know where her strength 
 lies ; it would be well for her to know, also, in how many 
 different ways it might be possible to make that strength 
 less. The history of our Scottish seceders — so very preg- 
 nant a one, that we much regret it has not yet been 
 written in a style worthy of it, and which we would fain 
 recommend as a theme not nnsuited to the pen of the 
 ablest and most judicious writer of the joarty, Mr. M'Crie 
 — is full of instruction to the Church in her present po- 
 sition. It reads its significant lessons also to the Church's 
 opponents. What, however, we would specially advert 
 to at present, in connection with it, is the important fact 
 that the first seceders, goaded, no doubt, by that persecu- 
 tion which maketh even wise men mad, suffered them- 
 selves, in the latter stages of their struggle, to lose temper, 
 and that, as a consequence of losing it, they lost also 
 much of the power which their position would have oth-
 
 426 TENDENCIES. 
 
 erwise sccuretl to them. When thrust violently out of 
 the Church, they carried with them the warm sympathies 
 of all its better people. They had taken their stand on 
 the old Presbyterian ground, and had maintained the 
 ancient quarrel nobly, and in a right spirit. Though weak 
 in the ecclesiastical courts, they were morally strong, for 
 they had much of the strength of Scotland behind them, 
 and the high-handed tyranny of Moderatism was exactly 
 the sort of thing best fitted to strengthen them yet fur- 
 ther. They failed, however, fully to realize the true nature 
 and importance of their position. They quitted the 
 Church under the irritation of defeat. They felt that they 
 had been wrongously overborne and beat down, on ground 
 on which, constitutionally, they had a right to stand ; and 
 we are much mistaken if their after mishaps and dissen- 
 sions may not be traced mainly to their indulgence in this 
 unhappy feeling. The same men who, during the series 
 of persecutions to which they had been subjected in the 
 church courts, had acted with uniform temper and judg- 
 ment, lost all command of themselves when they came 
 afterwards to discuss, in their free, independent synod, 
 points o^ not the higliest possible importance; and, after 
 a series of the most deplorable and ill-judged wranglings, 
 they broke up into separate parties, that refused to hold 
 all communion with one anothei*. This lesson, we repeat, 
 is eminently instructive. There is much which ouglit to 
 be guarded against in the irritation which persecution 
 induces. And there is another danger to be avoided, 
 against which it is possible the first seceders were not 
 sufiiciently watchful. It is perhaps natural for men who 
 have suffered for conscience' sake to feel that they have, 
 as it were, purchased a right, by their sacrifices, to main- 
 tain their peculiar opinions bluntly and uncompromisingly. 
 The state induced is, for obvious reasons, unfavorable to 
 a spirit of conciliation and concession, and hence, probably, 
 in part at least, the unhappy differences of the first se- 
 ceders. Men who had submitted to the loss of all rather
 
 TENDENCIES. 427 
 
 than yield to even the supreme judicatories of the Church, 
 felt afterwards very little inclination to yield to one an- 
 other. Now, to enable the Free Church of Scotland 
 rightly to profit by the teachings. of history in this in- 
 structive case, there seem to be but two things necessary 
 — a sedulous cultivation, through the appointed means, of 
 the spirit of her Master, and a right appreciation of the 
 high place which she seems destined to occupy. 
 
 The course of the Church is becoming plainer every 
 day ; but, like every other course which every other 
 Church on earth has pursued, it is not quite devoid of its 
 shoals and quicksands, on which the unwary might make 
 shipwreck; and it maybe found no unprofitable task to 
 map out a few of the more formidable of these. 
 
 PART FOURTH. 
 
 It is of the nature of Protestant dissent in free states 
 in which there exist established religions, to take its stand 
 on the side of Liberalism. There are principles involved 
 in its character and position that determine its political 
 place, if we may so speak, with well-nigh the certainty of 
 a fixed law; and it must be sufficiently obvious that if 
 such be the tendency of dissent generally, the bias in 
 the Free Church of Scotland cannot fail to be i/iightily 
 strengthened by the peculiar circumstances of her situa- 
 tion. 
 
 In the first place, she must necessarily recognize her 
 disestablishment as a consequence of a most unjustifiable 
 revolution effected in the very vitalities of her constitution, 
 through the aggression of the civil courts, seconded, in the 
 narrowest spirit of partisanship, by the existing govern- 
 ment. In the next place, it is impossible not to see that 
 the persecuting influence will be brought to press hard 
 upon her, especially in country districts, through the 
 agency of the privileged classes, — the classes who possess
 
 428 TENDENCIES. 
 
 the lands and inhabit the manor-houses of the country. 
 It is obvious, too, that there are points at wiiich the resid- 
 uary Establishment, backed by the power of the secular 
 courts and the state, will be made to abut against her 
 with harassing and irritating effect. Questions will be 
 necessarily arising between the skeleton Church and the 
 national Church de jure, in which the powers that be will 
 prove themselves no impartial adjudicators ; and thus there 
 bids fair to be induced among the adherents of the Free 
 Church a spirit of disaffection with the order of things, 
 through which they will be made to suffer. There are 
 analogies, too, between the important spiritual rights for 
 which they contend, and the secular claims asserted by 
 Liberalism, which must exert, in some cases, a sort of fra- 
 ternizing influence. The cause of religious liberty ever 
 involves that of civil liberty also. For two whole centu- 
 ries — from the times of the Reformation until the earthly 
 principle, true to its original character, degenerated into 
 mere license, — another name for tyranny, — and demanded, 
 not only emancipation from the rule of man, but uncondi- 
 tional release from the laws and government of God also 
 — it went hand in hand with the spiritual principle. With 
 the return of the old circumstances — circumstances in 
 which the pressure of persecution will be again felt — the 
 old coalition among the classes who suffer will be again 
 formed. In short, the inevitable tendency of the disrup- 
 tion of the Establishment will be to increase the movement 
 party in the country, by imparting, from causes such as we 
 have enumerated, a deep tinge of radicalism to minds 
 which, but for that event, would have remained under the 
 control of the conservative influences. 
 
 Now, what, we ask, with such a state of things in pros- 
 pect, will be at once the duty and the interest of the Free 
 Church of Scotland? Here is a powerful current, that 
 threatens to set in athwart her course. How should she 
 steer with regard to it? Exactly as the mariner steers, 
 who, in crossing the Atlantic, takes into account the influ-
 
 TENDENCIES. 429 
 
 ence of the great Gulf Stream, and directs his course a few 
 points higher than his destined port, in order to counteract 
 its effects and make allowance for leeway. If the Church 
 become in all her congregations what some of our Dissent- 
 ing bodies have become, — a mere congeries of political 
 societies, — she will inevitably make shipwreck, and perish. 
 There is no more dissipating element in existence, with 
 regard to all that constitutes the life and strength of reli- 
 gion, than the political element. 
 
 Let us look steadily at the matter. The Church, we 
 would first remark, has been removed, in the course of 
 Providence, from all temptation of making common cause 
 with the whigs. She has scarce more to do with them as 
 a party than with their antagonists the tories. Her friends 
 and her enemies are ranked equally on both sides. Lord 
 John Russell and Sir Robert Peel make common cause 
 against her. The Church has been removed, we repeat, from 
 all temptation of making common cause with the whigs. 
 She has been taught, in a manner sufficiently significant, 
 that her cause and theirs, however assimilated by apparent 
 analogies, is not at all identical ; it is in no degree more 
 identical with that of the radicals as a party; and in the 
 history of her struggle for the last three years, she has had 
 proofs in abundance that Chartism is determinedly hostile 
 to her. It would seem as if Providence, in the course of 
 events, was shutting her out of that political field, in the 
 mazes of which she might otherwise lose herself If there 
 be a perilous current threatening to bear her away in one 
 direction, the breath of heaven is evidently swelling her 
 sails in the other; and we think she would do well to 
 profit by what must be deemed more than mere warning 
 in the case, — what must be regarded rather as the com- 
 pulsory guidance extended by a wise and tender parent to 
 a child, which, if left to itself, might, in its ignorance and 
 its wilfulness, go grievously astray. There is a call in Pro- 
 vidence to the Church that she dissipate not her powers 
 iu the political field.
 
 430 TENDENCIES. 
 
 The subject is so important that we may be permitted 
 to indulge in an additional remark or two regarding it. 
 If, during the last twelve years, any one lesson has been 
 taught to the country with more point and emphasis than 
 any other, it is the lesson that no one should trust very 
 implicitly to any merely political party, or expect very 
 great advantages from any merely political change. In 
 the course of that eventful period we have seen Whiggism 
 come into office in the character of a powerful principle, 
 and ejected from it in the character of a weak and effete 
 one ; and it must have required but ordinary powers of 
 observation to see, from the peculiar data furnished during 
 this time, that such must be forever the fate of Liberalism 
 in Britain, until an age ai-rive in which the majority of 
 both statesmen and the people shall be pervaded by a 
 spirit of vital Christianity. A recurrence of cycles has 
 been often remarked in the history of states and peoples, 
 — cycles in Avhich long periods of despotism are followed 
 by comparatively brief and stormy periods of liberty run- 
 ning wildly into license, and in which these are succeeded 
 by long periods of despotism again. Chateaubriand has 
 written a whole volume on the subject, — a sparkling, 
 if not a very solid one, — in which he shows that all 
 history is little else than a record of these cycles of alter- 
 nate despotism and license. They form, if we may so 
 speak, the gusts and pauses of the great moral storm which 
 sin has raised in the world, and which must continue to 
 rage until He who stilled the tempest of old shall, when 
 the appointed time comes round, command it to be still 
 also. Now, we have just seen one of these cycles revolve 
 in Britain in a comparatively still atmosphere. Among 
 a less civilized people, or in a Avorse balanced constitu- 
 tion, it would have taken the more strongly marked form 
 of a stormy revolution, preceded and followed by a state 
 of despotism. In Britain it has been of a quieter and more 
 subdued character ; and Ave may see in its Avorkings, in 
 consequence, some of the laAvs in Avhich these ever-recur-
 
 TENDENCIES. 481 
 
 ring cycles originate ; just as we may see, through the 
 unbroken eddies of a river, those irregularities of bank and 
 bottom by which the eddies are produced ; Avhereas, in 
 the wilder rapids, where all is foam and uproar, we find 
 the disturbing agents concealed by the very turmoil which 
 they occasion. 
 
 Whiggisra, out of oflSce in this country, and purified by 
 being much and long in a minority, addresses itself, in all 
 its questions of real strength, to the natural consciences 
 of men, and finds a ready response among the classes in 
 whom no selfish interest disturbs the free exercise of the 
 guiding power with respect to the particular points agi- 
 tated. Nor is the principle to which it appeals — the 
 native sense of right — by any means a weak one, in 
 matters in which it does not meet, in those Avho entertain 
 it, with a sense of personal advantage as an antagonistic 
 power. The cry, "Emancipate your slaves," for instance, 
 was just the proper voice of this natural sense of right; 
 and it was a loud and jDOwerful cry. It procured eventu- 
 ally the good which it demanded. Be it remembered, 
 however, that it arose from men who derived none of their 
 •wealth from the thews and sinews of the slave. It was a 
 cry in which the merchants of Liverpool or the planters 
 of the West Indies did not join. And why? Did these 
 men want natural conscience ? or were their wives and 
 daughters, who made common cause with them, less influ- 
 enced by the sense of right than the other wives and 
 daughters of England and the colonies? No. We are 
 convinced it would be unjust to say so. They were per- 
 sons of just the average rate of virtue; but their sense of 
 right was controlled and overpowered by what, in the 
 unrenewed human character, is, and always must be, an 
 immensely more powerful principle, — the sense of pcrson/tl 
 advantage. And so the entire class — though on other 
 questions of right and wrong that did not involve their 
 personal interests they might and would have been suffi- 
 ciently sound — struggled hard to prevent the emancipa-
 
 432 TENDENCIES. 
 
 tion of the slave. The illustration is pregnant with those 
 principles which serve to unlock the problem of the 
 political cycle. Let us but imagine the great bulk of the 
 nien who called loudest for the emancipation of the slave 
 at one time, becoming, through some unexpected turn of 
 fortune, slaveholder at another, — their possessory fe,elings, 
 as in the case of the planters, converted into principles of 
 greater strength than their sense of right, — and we have 
 Whiggism before us in its character in and out of office. 
 Its strength in the opposition is the strength of the natural 
 conscience ; it becomes weak in office, because it comes 
 under the influence of the selfish and possessory feelings, 
 and because, in the average human character, these inva- 
 riably prevail as principles of action over the conscientious 
 ones. And be it remarked that this character of average 
 virtue must as certainly be that of every merely political 
 party numerously composed, as the stature of the members 
 that compose it must, wdien thrown into the aggregate, 
 and divided by their number, be of the average height, or 
 their longevity, when similarly treated, be of the average 
 duration. Individuals may attain to a much higher rate 
 of virtue, — individuals may be generous, disinterested, 
 much influenced by the better motives, and little moved 
 by the Avorse, — but bodies must continue to bear the aver- 
 age character; bodies must continue to be moved more 
 strongly by the selfish than by the generous feelings, 
 until a period arrive Avhcn, through the diffusion of a 
 Christianity not merely nominal, but vital and real, the 
 virtue of society shall be elevated to the high level of the 
 converted man. And till that time come, the political 
 cycle must continue to revolve, like the giddy and restless 
 Avlieel to which the Psalmist compared the wretched unrest 
 of his enemies, exciting hopes to produce only disappoint- 
 ment, agitating men's minds and arousing their passions, 
 but leaving their characters unimproved, and lessening in 
 no degree the amount of their unhappiness. 
 
 Does the remark seem rather declamatory than solid?
 
 TENDENCIES. 433 
 
 We are convinced it contains an important truth, which 
 bears with no indirect effect on the true vocation of min- 
 isters of the gospel. The Free Church of Scoth^nd has 
 nobler and better work before her than can be found in 
 climbing the political wheel, and in seeing it ever and anon 
 descending to the mediocre level above, to which society 
 cannot permanently rise so long as its average virtue is 
 that, not of renewed, but of unregenerate nature. She 
 will have many temptations to cast herself into the move- 
 ment party. It would be well for her to know that they 
 are, in almost every case, temptations to be resisted. There 
 is, in particular, one specific form in which, in at least our 
 country districts, temptation bids tair often to present itself 
 In almost all the rural parishes of Scotland, the great bulk 
 of the people will be determinedly on her side, and the 
 great bulk of the lairdocracy as determinedly opposed to 
 her; and where the large farm system prevails, and the 
 political franchise is enjoyed by only some five or six 
 individuals in a parish, and these, mayhap, all Moderates, 
 it may be deemed desirable, in order to give her weight in 
 the political scale, that the franchise should be extended. 
 A species of radicalism threatens to be thus induced, at 
 one, in at least its main doctrine, Avith the universal suf- 
 frageism of the mere political radical and chartist; and 
 members of the Free Church would perhaps do well to be 
 on their guard against it. The true character of universal 
 suffrage cannot be adequately tested by any reference to 
 its pi'obable style of working in a quiet Presbyterian 
 parish, or to the moral and intellectual fitness for the 
 franchise of our humbler classes, where best instructed, 
 and most under the influence of religion. It must be 
 judged with reference to its probable effects in the aggre- 
 gate. The popular voice in the Scottish parish might be 
 right; but the important question to be determined is, 
 whether the po])ular voice all over the British emiiire 
 would be right. We much fear it would not. Civil and 
 religious liberty have long gone hand in hand, and their 
 
 37
 
 434 TENDENCIES. 
 
 names have been so united for centuries in toasts and 
 watchwords, that we can scarce mention the one without 
 calUng up the other. It does not seem at all unlikely, 
 however, that there is a time coming when what will be 
 termed civil liberty shall cease to tolerate religious liberty. 
 The question bids fair to arise. Is a citizen to be denuded 
 of his rights of Christian membership simply for acting in 
 accordance with both the spirit and letter of the law of 
 his country? — a law constitutionally enacted, be it re- 
 marked, by the people's representatives. And thus the 
 case promises to be so stated, that the spiritual liberty of 
 retaining in the Church's own hands the power of the keys 
 will be deemed not only an aggression on the civil liberty 
 of the subject, but an offence also against the representa- 
 tive majesty of the people. The two liberties will be 
 brought into direct collision as antagonist powers. That 
 liberty which constitutes the heau ideal of the chartist is 
 invariably of an Erastian cast; and the class, if such there 
 be, who may long for universal suffrage on the Church's 
 behalf would do well to be aware of the fact. There are 
 Voluntary spirit-dealers in Edinburgh that sell whisky on 
 Sabbath under the protection of Mr. Home Drummond's 
 act, and deem it a very absurd thing that their churches 
 should have a different law on the subject. Their churches 
 have a right to make the fourth commandment a test of 
 communion, and in this right their religious liberty is 
 involved. But it is Mr. Home Drummond's act that 
 involves the civil liberty of the spirit-dealing members. 
 A persecution originating among the masses on principles 
 such as these might be a very terrible one. In her troubles 
 hitherto, the earth has invariably helped the woman. It 
 is not improbable that a time of trouble may yet arise in 
 Avhich the earth will refuse to lielp her. 
 
 One of our main objections, however, to a course of 
 political agitation on the part of the Church is the dissi- 
 pation of strength and spirit, if we may so speak, which 
 such an agitation must induce. The political element in
 
 TENDENCIES. 435 
 
 this country is rather a restless than a strong one. It acts 
 vigorously up to a certain point, and there fails at once. 
 The contest comes. Votes are recorded ; the stronger 
 party gains ; the losers sit down under the disappoint- 
 ment, to console themselves as they best may ; and this is 
 just all. There are no great sacrifices demanded, and 
 none made ; and a habit comes to be formed, in con- 
 sequence, by no means fevorable to those larger and more 
 serious demands which in times of trouble religion makes 
 on her adherents. It is a fact not unworthy of notice, 
 that the merely politico-Evangelicals of the Church soon 
 left her. They voted, spoke, and canvassed for her reform 
 bill, the Veto Law, regarding votes, speeches, and can- 
 vassings, as just the proper enginery of party, and then 
 left her when a time of suffering arrived, because suiFering 
 is no word in the vocabulary of the mere partisan. The 
 spirit of the ordinary ten-pound freeholder who records 
 his vote in behalf of his party, and does no more, is an 
 essentially different thing from that of the martyr ; and it 
 is the spirit of the martyr that Christianity, in times like 
 the present, demands. We would not have indulged in 
 these desultory remarks, were the danger to which they 
 refer less imminent. It can scarce be necessary to add, by 
 way of qualification, that it is one thing to become a mei-e 
 political society, and quite another to perform in the right 
 spirit 2>olitical duties. Many of the members of the Free 
 Church must possess, as members of the community? 
 political privileges; and to these, as to privileges of every 
 other kind, a sense of responsibility must attach. They 
 must exercise them, and their voices iu the legislature of 
 the country must, in the aggregate, be found influential. 
 In a constitution such as ours, the strength of parties must 
 continue to fluctuate. There will be periods of action and 
 reaction ever recurring. The cycles will revolve as before. 
 In the commencement of these cycles, when the spirit of 
 liberty remains still fresh and unweakened by the selfish 
 influences, permanent advantages in the cause of right
 
 43G TENDENCIES. 
 
 will continue to be gained. In the commencement of the 
 last cycle, for instance, the slave was emancipated ; and 
 the friends of the Church would do well to possess their 
 souls in patience, and watch, in the Church's behalf, the 
 commencement of the next cycle. It is one thing to 
 direct to right ends the political power of a party, and 
 quite another to be carried away by it. 
 
 But our subject lengthens on our hands, and there are 
 various other points on which it might be well to touch. 
 How ought the Free Church to deal by the residuary 
 Establishment? — how by the Voluntaries'? — how by the 
 bitterer opponents among the lairdocracy ? What other 
 dangers has she to fear besides the great danger of dissi- 
 pating her power and lowering her character in the politi- 
 cal field ? How shall she best guard against the growth 
 of a narrow and exclusive spirit ? and on what objects 
 mainly should she concentrate her energies ? 
 
 PART FIFTH. 
 
 How ought the Free Church to deal by the residuary 
 Establishment, and how by the Voluntary body? We are 
 convinced that very great danger may be incurred by mis- 
 taking the true course with regard to either. A war of 
 extermination waged blindly against the one, or an equally 
 blind union formed with the other, for but the purpose of 
 carrying on that war with greater effect, could scarce fail 
 to be attended with disastrous consequences to the Free 
 Church of Scotland. Her strength would leave her in the 
 struggle, and she would sit down at its termination, what- 
 ever the result, in a lower and far less advantageous posi- 
 tion than that which, when the disruption takes place, it 
 will be assuredly her destiny to occupy. 
 
 Let us remark, in the first place, that nothing seems 
 more natural, in the circumstances, than that she should 
 rush headlong into such a war. It seems quite as much a
 
 TENDENCIES. 437 
 
 thing to be expected, on the ordinary principles which 
 govern human conduct, as that, in the hour of her ex- 
 tremity, she should have yiekled to the encroachments of 
 the civil power rather than forfeit her endowments, and 
 have set herself down degraded and useless, — one of the 
 less respectable sinecurists of the state ; for it is as natural 
 for a man to strike when he is injured, as to cry for quarter 
 when he is overcome. In the j^arty who will continue to 
 harbor within the Establishment, the Church must recog- 
 nize of necessity the men who have injured her most 
 deeply ; and the recent agitation of the Voluntary contro- 
 versy must serve to draw her attention to the exact point, 
 if we may so speak, at Avhich the retributive blow might 
 be dealt at least most readily, if not with most effect. 
 There is a line of batteries already thrown up against the 
 Establishment, simply in its character as such, conspicuous 
 enough to catch every eye ; a numerous and formidable 
 body lie entrenched behind these ; and all that may seem 
 necessary in order to secure the overthrow of the be- 
 leagured institution, in its miserably undermined and 
 exhausted condition, may be just to join forces with the 
 besiegers, and, with numbers and artillery increased in the 
 proportion in which those of the garrison will be dimin- 
 ished, attempt carrying it by storm. Independently, too, 
 of this natural feeling of hostility, and of the circumstances 
 which may well serve to direct it into the Voluntary chan- 
 nel, the Free Church must inevitably meet with an amount 
 of provocation from the skeleton Establishment which Vol- 
 untaryism has never yet received from any Establishment 
 whatever. There will be a struggle for the possession of 
 the people between the Church and the endowed institu- 
 tion, in which the latter, conscious of its weakness in all 
 that constitutes moral and religious character, will call to 
 its assistance the foctor and the landlord ; the same coarse 
 instruments of persecution which were employed in Eng- 
 land in the middle of the last century against the followers 
 of Whitefield and Wesley will be set into operation at the 
 
 37*
 
 438 TENDENCIES. 
 
 bidding or through the influence of the residuary Estab- 
 lishment in Scotland, against disestablished Evangelism ; 
 and in wide districts of country the state endowment wull 
 take, in consequence, the very re^julsive form of a sort of 
 government grant for putting down the gospel. The 
 Establishment will be recognized as an unsightly incubus, 
 squatted in all its leaden Aveight on the very bosom of 
 religious liberty; and the feeling for its destruction bids 
 fair, in consequence, to mount very high. A war against 
 the Establishment seems quite as natural in the circum- 
 stances, we repeat, as it seems natural that the Church, in 
 her hour of extremity, should have quitted her hold 'of 
 her spiritual privileges, and clung fast to her endowments. 
 But we can trust that the Free Church of Scotland is 
 destined to baffle the calculations of mere men of the 
 world, however sagacious, on more questions than one. 
 They have already seen her casting into the golden balance 
 of the sanctuary, with its one scale visible to the material 
 eye, and its other scale invisible save to the eye of faith, 
 all her worldly possessions, and seen what to them must 
 have been a mysterious and unknown quantity outweigh- 
 ing them all. And we anxiously hope that those Avho, 
 calculating on data such as we have indicated, trust in a 
 short time to see the Free Church a community of Volun- 
 taries, are destined to be disappointed as signally. We 
 deem it of paramount importance, at a time like the 
 present, that she cleave to her Establishment principles. 
 We say, at a time like the present. We would have 
 deemed it of great importance at any time, especially in 
 connection with that testimony which the Church of Scot- 
 land, in all her periods of trouble, has been so peculiarly 
 called on to maintain, ^- her testimony for the Headship 
 of Christ, not only over the Church, but over states and 
 nations in their character as such; and with this testimony 
 we deem the Establishment principle closely interwoven. 
 But we are much mistaken if there are not peculiar cir- 
 cumstances, in the present time, which conspire, on other
 
 TENDENCIES. 439 
 
 accounts, to rendei* the maintenance of the j^rinciple more 
 important politically than perhaps at any previous period 
 since the Revolution. 
 
 We do not take our place among those radicals and 
 chartists of the day who can see nothing admirable in the 
 framework of the British constitution. We hold, on the 
 contrary, by the old-fashioned belief so well expressed by 
 De Lolme, and so invariably entertained by all the more 
 philosophic intellects of the last century, that the consti- 
 tution of Britain is by far the most perfect which the 
 world has yet seen. Many a favoring providence, which 
 human means could never have effected, and whose remote 
 consequences lay far beyond the reach of human sagacity, 
 have conspired to render it what it is. It would be as 
 impossible for mere politicians to build up such a consti- 
 tution by contract, as it would be for them to build up an 
 oak, the growth of a thousand summers. We need scarce 
 add, so obvious must the remai'k seem, that the man or 
 party who stands upon confessedly constitutional ground 
 must have a mighty advantage over the man or party who 
 stands on some unrecognized principle which one individ- 
 ual may deem good, and another quite the reverse. One 
 British subject holds, for instance, that the murderer should 
 be put to death ; anothei*, that death is too severe a pun- 
 ishment for any crime, even for murder itself; and the 
 point of difference betwixt them, regarded merely as a 
 matter of argument, leaves much, no doubt, to be said on 
 both sides. But, for all practical purposes, how immense 
 the advantage derived to the former from the circumstance 
 that his principle is a constitutional principle! In the 
 same way, how very great the advantage which the ten- 
 pound freeholder, dej)rived unjustly of his franchise, pos- 
 sesses over the mere chartist, prevented from voting 
 because he wants the qualification ! The freeholder can 
 base his claim on constitutional ground ; the chartist can 
 base his on but what he deems the intrinsic justice of one 
 of the Five Points. Now, be it remarked, that the Volun-
 
 440 TENDENCIES. 
 
 tary jDrinciplo is not a, constitutional principle ; it is less so 
 than some of the Five Points even. It is as little so as 
 that of the man who contends that the niurderer should 
 not be put to death. Tlie Establishment principle is the 
 constitutional one ; and there are battles in prospect which 
 can be fought on this ground alone. And so signally im- 
 23ortant do these conflicts jiromise to be, that the integrity, 
 nay, the very existence, of the constitution, may come to 
 be staked upon them. Let us refer to just two of the 
 number, — one of these a highly probable occurrence, the 
 other at least a possible one. 
 
 It is far from improbable, as we have repeatedly shown, 
 that the skeleton Establishment, in its time of exhaustion 
 and peril, may call to its aid. the Episcopacy of England, 
 and barter its Presbyterial forms for that assistance with- 
 out which it may find it altogether impossible to subsist. 
 Now, on what ground, we ask, could the people of Scot- 
 land raise their pi'Otest with most effect against a transac- 
 tion so utterly iniquitous in itself, and so pregnant with 
 disastrous consequences to the country? How best fight, 
 on this question, the battle whose result may be found to 
 determine ultimately that of the great battle of Protest- 
 antism itself? As a Voluntary ? The Voluntary has not 
 a handbreadth of constitutional ground on which to fight 
 it. His quarrel is with establishments in the abstract,— 
 a quarrel in no degree less alien to the genius of the con- 
 stitution than the cause of tlie chartist. He could assail 
 a Scoto-Episcopal Establishment witli but the arguments 
 which he has already employed in assailing a Scoto-Pres- 
 byterian Establishment. He could but propose dealing 
 with it as the chartist proposes dealing by the House 
 of Lords. But in the CA^ent of an invasion such as we 
 anticipate, howvery different the ground wliich the assert- 
 ors of the Establishment principle could occupy ! The 
 opponent of all establishments could appeal to but a sort 
 of unembodied conviction, Avhich he himself entertains, — - 
 a something which hovers between an o2Jiuion and a belief
 
 TENDENCIES. 441 
 
 in his mind, and which would underlie, of necessity, the 
 insuperable disadvantage of being denied the status of 
 a first principle. The assertor of establishments could 
 appeal, on the contrary, to the plain letter of the constitu- 
 tion. He would be placed in the circumstances, not of the 
 chartist, alleging that he had a right to exercise the fran- 
 chise in virtue of one of the Five Points, but of the ten- 
 pound freeholder, asserting that he had a right to exercise 
 the fi'anchise in virtue of his ten-pound fi'eehold. He 
 could take his stand on the treaty of union ; he could take 
 his stand on the unequivocal pledge embodied in that sol- 
 emn oath which, all our monarchs have sworn at their 
 accession, from the days of Queen Anne to the days of 
 Queen Victoria. In raising his protest, he could remind 
 the advisers of the Crown that high treason against the 
 constitution is still a capital ofifence. He could caution 
 ministers of the state — not in the style of a wild, blood- 
 thirsty democrat, but with the sobriety of a British subject, 
 aware of his rights, and determined to assert them — that 
 they were in danger of rendering themselves amenable to 
 the fate of Strafford. To political Churchmen, bent on the 
 conquest of Samaria^ and enamored of the principles of 
 Laud, he could point, in no spirit of intolerance, to the 
 bloody scaffold of the zealot. So long as Puseyisra was in 
 the ascendency, he could maintain against it, on constitu- 
 tional ground, a war of appeals and protests; and he 
 could occupy the hour of reaction, when that hour came, 
 in tabling his articles of impeachment for high crimes and 
 misdemeanors against the constitution. Surely, a vantage- 
 ground of such mighty importance is not, at a time like 
 the present, to be lightly abandoned. 
 
 Let us advert to just one point more. If Popery be not 
 destined to rise in this country, and become for a time the 
 dominant j)ower, not a few of the country's best and most 
 sagacious men have greatly misunderstood the mind of 
 God as revealed in prophecy. And certainly not since the 
 days of James VII. did its rise seem more probable, from
 
 442 TENDENCIES. 
 
 causes in actual operation, than at tlie present time. It is 
 of importance, surely, in preparing for the coming contest, 
 that those remaining ramparts of the constitution which 
 were reared with a direct view to it — reared to bear 
 point-blank against Popery — should at least not be suf- 
 fered to fall into a state of dilapidation and decay ; and, 
 among these, where shall we find a bulwark half so impor- 
 tant as that which the doctrine of the Protestant Succes- 
 sion furnishes ? Hume himself — a man not at all apt to 
 be biased in his judgments by religious predilections — has 
 characterized this doctrine as a leading one in the consti- 
 tution ; nay, as, beyond any other, the doctiine that fixed 
 the constitution. Pie has described it as the grand expe- 
 dient through which the long controversy between the pre- 
 rogatives of the Crown and the rights of the people was 
 terminated in favor of the latter. "It obtained," he says, 
 " every advantage, as far as human skill and wisdom could 
 extend." "It established the authority of the jtrince on 
 the same bottom with the privileges of the people. By 
 electing hini in the royal line, Ave cut off all hopes of am- 
 bitious subjects, who might in future emergencies disturb 
 the government by their cabals and pretensions ; by ren- 
 dering the crown hereditary in his family, we avoided all 
 the inconvenience of elective monarchy ; and by excluding 
 the lineal line, we secured all our constitutional limitations, 
 and rendered our government uniform and of a piece. 
 The people cherish monarchy because protected by it ; the 
 monarch favors liberty because created by it; and thus 
 every advantage is obtained by the new establishment." 
 The pliilosopher remarks further — and surely his testi- 
 mony on the point may be received without scruple — 
 that " the disadvantages of recalling the abdicated family 
 consisted chiefly in their religion, — a religion prejudicial 
 to society, and which affords no toleration, or ]ieace, or 
 security, to any other communion." Now, be it remem- 
 bered, that we live in a time when, by an already power- 
 ful and still rising party, this doctrine of the Protestant
 
 TENDENCIES. 443 
 
 Succession is covertly assailed, and the revolution through 
 which it Avas secured assailed not so covertly. They 
 already designate it as the rebellion of 1688. The conver- 
 sion of the British monarch to Roman Catholicism, did 
 no such doctrine exist, would be a glorious event in the 
 annals of Popery. The rising apostasy would hold in the 
 throne of the united kingdom such a post of vantage as 
 the whole world could not equal. It has its golden dreams 
 regarding it now, — dreams which, if destined to rise into 
 power, it will assuredly strive hard to realize ; and the 
 only constitutional point on which Protestantism could 
 jjlant itself in its war of defence would be just the point 
 furnished by this doctrine. But could Voluntaries occupy 
 that point ? Could it be occupied by the man Avho asserts 
 that religion is but the business of individuals, and that 
 states and nations, in their character as such, should have 
 no religion ? Assuredly not. If religion be but the 
 business of individuals, the British monarch, in his charac- 
 ter as an individual, has a light to choose a religion for 
 himself If states, as such, should have no religion, on 
 what right princii)le can it be held that states should deter- 
 mine the religion of their sovereigns? The doctrine of the 
 Protestant Succession falls at once if dissociated from the 
 principle of national religion. It is a doctrine behind 
 which no consistent Voluntary can entrench himself. 
 
 We would fain press on every member of the Free 
 Church the great importance of the establishment princi- 
 ple. To lay it down at a time like the present would be 
 such an act of madness as if a warrior divested himself of his 
 armor on the eve of a great battle, and then entered naked 
 and defenceless into the fray. It furnishes the only ground 
 on which coming contests are to be maintained, and the 
 cause of PresbA-tery and of Protestantism asserted. 
 
 But it is one thing to hold resolutely by the establish- 
 ment principle, and quite another to determine on the 
 course proper to be pursued respecting some existing 
 Establishment. The government, in its wisdom, has been
 
 444 TENDENCIES. 
 
 pleased to endow Maynooth. It is quite possible, bow- 
 ever, A'igoi'ously to oppose the yearly grant to that institu- 
 tion, without being in the least a Voluntary. A Convo- 
 cationist may bold firmly, on similar grounds, by the 
 establishment principle, and yet set himself in determined 
 opposition to the residuary Establishment. Be it remarked 
 that, had not the latter been converted into something 
 which he deemed exceedingly bad, he would not have 
 quitted it. He foregoes its temporal advantages rather 
 than remain in connection with it. Rather than acquiesce 
 in the revolution which has been effected in it, by yielding 
 allegiance, in matters spiritual, to the revolutionizing 
 2:>ower, he gives up his whole living, and, thus resembling 
 one of those French royalists who preferred submitting to 
 voluntary exile to taking the oaths to the Convention, 
 what principle is there to prevent him from resembling 
 these royalists still further, by taking up arms against it? 
 For our own part we are utterly unable to see any. If in 
 reality revolutionized into so bad a thing that honest men 
 refuse to remain within its pale, even though their whole 
 means of living, altered in character by the revolution, 
 be held out to them as a bribe for doing so, on what 
 grounds could they be censured for making war on it? 
 We have but one reply to the question, — we can see 
 none. 
 
 In this, however, as in all other things, it may be well 
 to employ St. Paul's distinction between the expedient 
 and the lawful. A war of the kind might be entirely just, 
 but we are far from being convinced that it would be in 
 any degree expedient. Unlike the Voluntary controversy 
 in its principles, it would yet resemble it in its effects. It 
 would scarce fail to assume in its progress the secularizing, 
 semi-political form which would best consort with its semi- 
 political character; and the deep-toned religious feeling 
 which has, we trust, been strengthening in the course of 
 the present controversy, would infallibly evaporate in the 
 progress of a controversy in which the Free Church would
 
 TENDENCIES. 445 
 
 have a great many more hands to assist her than now, but, 
 we are afraid, much fewer hearts to pray for her. Nay, 
 that very assistance would be of itself an evil. It would 
 mix up her people, through the influence of a common 
 object, with Destructives and mere Voluntaries, — men at 
 one with them in their hostility to the residuary Estab- 
 lishment, but thoroughly at variance with them in their 
 principle of action ; and they would derive, to a certainty, 
 no benefit from the contact. But one inevitable eftect of 
 the controversy we would deploi'e more than any of the 
 others. It would sui-round, as with a wall, the residuary 
 Establishment, and freeze within it — bind up, as if in ice 
 — many a well-meaning man, infirm of resolution, and 
 halting at present between two opinions, who, Avere the 
 matter managed otherwise, might be solicited and drawn 
 forth. Voluntaiy opinions were decidedly on the increase 
 in this country some fifteen or twenty yeai's ago. The 
 Voluntaiy controversy broke out; men took their side; 
 and from that moment Voluntaryism ceased to increase. 
 The Free Church must deal more wisely; nor, in this 
 respect at least, is her course a difficult one. There are 
 strong religious sympathies operating in her behalf; she 
 has but to throw herself full upon these by engaging heart 
 and soul in her proper woi'k, — the evangelizing of the 
 country. It is a highly dangerous matter for two vessels 
 to meet in rude collision in the open sea, — so dangerous, 
 that there are instances not a few in which the effects have 
 been fatal to both. But the loadstone rock of Avhich avo 
 read in the Eastern tale, with its long flight of stairs and 
 its tower atop, was in no danger whatever. It did not go 
 out of its way to run down vessels ; it merely exerted its 
 attractive j^ower, while they were yet at a distance, in 
 drawing out their nails and fastenings, and they then fell 
 to pieces of themselves. The Free Church would do Avell 
 not to set herself to run dotcn the residuary Establishment, 
 but to employ her attractive influence in drawing out its 
 few remaining fastenings. 
 
 38
 
 446 TENDENCIES. 
 
 If it be comparatively easy to say how the Free Church 
 should deal by Voluntaryism, it seems a still moi-e sim])le 
 matter to say how she should deal by Voluntaries. The 
 controversy is over for the time for all practical purposes. 
 It divided many excellent men ; it divided also many men 
 who were by no means excellent. Never, in this respect 
 at least, was there a more unfortunate quarrel. It found 
 the pious Chuichman linked close to the Evangelic Dis- 
 sentei', and, tearing them apart, united the one to some 
 malignant tory, — a mighty friend to establishments, but 
 a bitter hater of the Cross ; and bound tlie other to some 
 miserable intidel, not more an enemy to religious estab- 
 lishments than to religion itself There were strange 
 unions etfected on both sides. Of the five northern pro- 
 prietors who have refused the Convocationists sites on 
 their lands, three were such sound Establishment men 
 that they stood contested elections on the strength of their 
 attachment to tlie principle. And Vohnitary journalists, 
 who wouhl have filled whole columns with frothy indigna- 
 tion had these proprietors been Irish ones and the Convo- 
 cationists Papists, have given a place in their pages to 
 their insolent and repulsive e]iistles, without the addition 
 of note or comment, as if the religious liberty of the 
 country was in no way involved in the case. The fact has 
 thus a double bearing, and is illustrative of the rubbish on 
 both sides. Be it remarked, that the mingled heap of grain, 
 dust, and chaff which the controversy gathered up on the 
 part of the Church, has been thoroughly winnowed of late; 
 whereas the corresponding heap on the Voluntary side still 
 remains Avhat it was. Providence has not yet seen meet 
 to apply the fan, — an obstacle, it may seem, in the way 
 of union. It is probable, however, that in thus speaking 
 of a, union of Voluntaries and Establishment men we 
 make use of wrong terms, — we make use of terms of 
 difference, not of agreement, — and fall into some confusion 
 of idea in consequence. With the Voluntary, simply in 
 his character as a Voluntary, a devout Churchman can have
 
 TENDENCIES. 447 
 
 no sympathy ; with a Churchman, shnply in liis character 
 as a Churchman, tlie devout Vohintary can have no sym- 
 pathy. Vokintary and Churchman are their terms, not of 
 agreement, but of diflference, — their respective battle-cries 
 when they fought against one another. It woukl be absurd 
 to dream of a union coiixtensive with their designations 
 of difference ; it can be coextensive witli but their senti- 
 ments of agreement. It can be but a reunion of Christian 
 with Christian ; not a heterogeneous coalition between 
 mere Voluntaries and mere Establishment men. 
 
 PART SIXTH. 
 
 How ought the Churcli to deal by her bitterer opponents 
 among the land-owners of the country? We very recently 
 propounded the question, in one of our serial articles, as 
 Avorthy of consideration. Only a fevv weeks have passed, 
 and the hostility, whose scope and direction we could but 
 anticipate then, has taken a determinate course, and become 
 embodied in action. Events move quickly in these latter 
 stages of the controversy, — so quickly that well-nigh half 
 the anticipations of the "Tendencies" have been already 
 converted into facts. We are continually reminded of the 
 striking figure of that old poet who complained that the 
 language was growing upon and covering np his earlier 
 writings, as the flowing sea grows upon the sand, and oblit- 
 erates and covers up all its tidal lines and all its ripple- 
 markings. One northern baronet, who is an Episcopalian, 
 denies the Convocationists sites on his lands because he 
 himself is not a Convocationist ; another northern baronet, 
 who is a philosopher, denies them sites on his lands because 
 they weakly prefer the Assembly's Shorter Catechism to 
 the Catechism of Phrenology ; a third northern baronet, 
 who is a Presbyterian, denies thena sites on his lands 
 because he has a thorough respect for them, and agrees 
 with them in all matters essential. The pretexts are
 
 448 TENDENCIES. 
 
 various, but the overt acts are the same. In each and every 
 case the rights of property ai-e stretched to overbear the 
 rights of conscience, and the principle virtually embodied, 
 that the country's acres should determine the country's 
 religion. 
 
 Now, there must be something monstrously wrong 
 here : property can have no such rights attached to it. A 
 sophism in argument may escape at times the detection of 
 even acute intellects ; whereas a sophism in action lies 
 open, from its very nature, to the detection of every hon- 
 est mind. The common sense of mankind|>is sufficient to 
 ensure its discovery ; and even were common sense to fail, 
 common feeling would fasten upon it with the unerring 
 precision of an instinct. The sophism in action never 
 escapes ; and the practical sophism of our northern propri- 
 etors, that the rights of property may be so stretched as 
 legitimately to overbear the rights of conscience, has been 
 already appreciated in its true character all over Britain. 
 Wherever over the world the vital influences of Christian- 
 ity exist, — nay, wherever there exists common sense and 
 common honesty, associated with the tolerating principle, 
 — policy such as theirs must be at once recognized as 
 grossly offensive and fragrantly unjust. 
 
 There is an element of strength in the circumstance that, 
 in order to estimate aright the policy of such men, it is not 
 at all necessary one should hold by the principles of the 
 Convocationists. Our readers are not Papists: they be- 
 lieve, on the contrary, that the conversion to Protestant- 
 ism of the deluded adherents of the Man of Sin would be 
 one of the most desirable events which could possibly take 
 place in the Christian world. But not on that account, 
 were the Protestant proprietors of Ireland to deal by their 
 Papist tenants and cottars as our northern bai'onets are 
 dealing by their Presbyterian ones, would they have any 
 hesitation in making up their minds regarding the real 
 nature of the transaction. It would at onee appear to them 
 in its true character, as an act of coarse and repulsive
 
 TENDENCIES. 449 
 
 oppression; and as coarse and repulsive must such acts be 
 ever held in the common sense of mankind, Avhether the 
 objects on which they are brought to bear be Presbyterian 
 or Popish. 
 
 In stretching the rights of property so far that they over- 
 lay the rights of conscience, there is a monstrous sophism 
 involved, which all can at least feel ; and the circumstance 
 has served to originate many a curious speculation I'egard- 
 ing the true limitations of the right of the proprietor, 
 among a people never yet characterized by any peculiar 
 obtuseness of intellect. And certainly the age of the 
 Chartist and the Radical is not quite the age which a wise 
 proijrietor would choose for forcing such inquiries on the 
 masses. The speculations which necessity imposes upon a 
 people are generally very acute, and rarely inoperative 
 in the end. We are told of Bunyan by Sir James Mack- 
 intosh, that "he foiled the magistrates, the clergy, the 
 attorneys, who beset him, in every contest of argument, 
 especially in that which relates to the independence of reli- 
 gion on the civil authority ; for it was a subject on which 
 his naturally vigorous mind was better educated by his 
 habitual meditations, forced upon him by necessity, than it 
 could have been by the most skilful instructor." There 
 were many in the age of Bunyan to whom the despotism 
 of Charles and his brother rendered such meditations 
 habitual; and when those reached their degree of ultimate 
 intensity, like those fluids that crystallize at a certain point 
 of saturation, they solidified into the great national act, 
 which w^e are now accustomed to designate as the Revolu- 
 tion of 1688. It is unwise, we repeat, on the part of the 
 proprietary of the country, to force upon its people a train 
 of inquiry regarding the rights of the proprietor, — espe- 
 cially unwise at a time like the present, when there are so 
 many disturbing elements to lead to extreme conclusions. 
 Chartism has arrived at its own characteristic findings, — 
 findings which it embodied last year in its great petition ; 
 and were the infection to spread among the soberer and 
 
 38*
 
 450 TENDENCIES. 
 
 more solid classes of the community, tlie effects might be 
 fatal. It is of importance, liowever, — for the strength of 
 opinion always depends eventually on the breadth and 
 soundness of the foundations on which it rests, and there 
 are sacred rights of property against which no man, or no 
 class of men, can safely transgress, even in speculation, — 
 it is of importance, we say, that the people of the Free 
 Church should entertain just sentiments on this matter, 
 from which no insolence of insult, or no degree of oppres- 
 sion, should be permitted to drive them. 
 
 It was one of the enormous hardships to which the 
 Puritans of England were subjected in the reign of Charles 
 II. that " every Dissenting clergyman was forbidden from 
 coming within five miles of his former congregation." 
 Now, there are proprietors of the north of Scotland who 
 will be able, if they but carry their threats into execution, 
 to ])revent Presbyterian clergymen from residing within 
 twenty miles of their former congregations. But, monstrous 
 and tyrannical as such a power may seem, has not every 
 man a right, it may be asked, to do what he pleases with 
 his own? and does not the power of the proprietor arise 
 solely, in this instance, from just the legitimate exercise of 
 this right? Nay, not so fast. It is true, there are cases 
 in which a man may do Avhat he pleases with his own ; but 
 it can be in only those cases in which the effects of what 
 he does terminate with what is his own ; and not even in 
 the whole of these. He may employ the bludgeon which 
 he has purchased in any and every way in which that 
 bludgeon is alone concerned ; but he must not employ the 
 bludgeon which he has purchased in breaking his neigh- 
 bor's head ; for, though the bludgeon be his own, the head 
 is not. Nay, further, he must not employ the bludgeon 
 which he has bought in cruelly maltreating the horse ■ 
 which he has also bought? There are thus cases in which 
 he may not do wlint he pleases witli his own. Tiie law 
 takes into account n^t only the sense of suffering in the 
 irrational animal wliich is his, but also tlie feelings of his
 
 TENDENCIES. 451 
 
 neighbors with regard to the suiferings of that iri-ational 
 animal, and fines and imprisons him for outraging them. 
 The rule that a man may do what he pleases with his own 
 is a rule of exceptions and limitations. Now, be it remem- 
 bered that, though the acres of the north country belong 
 to the proprietors of the north country, its religion does not 
 belong to them. The bludgeon is theirs, but not the head ; 
 and if they violently employ those acres to the detriment 
 of tliat religion, they do so at their imminent {>eril. Nay, 
 by putting these acres to other than the recognized and 
 legitimate use, they grievously shock and outrage the 
 feelings of their neighbors: that they also do at their peril. 
 If it be at all just to protect those proper feelings which 
 sympathize in the sufferings of the brute creation, does not 
 immutable justice decree that those higher sentiments of 
 the soul which rest on the Son of God as their proper 
 object, and those rights of conscience which bear reference 
 to his law exclusively, should be at least equally shielded 
 from violence and outrage ? The rights of property can 
 be but coextensive with the true ends and purposes of 
 property. The possessor of a field tills, sows, and then, 
 that he may reap the fruit of his labor, carefully encloses 
 it; and the law affords him its protection by punishing the 
 trespasser, just because the trespasser interferes with the 
 true end and purpose for which property is held. But 
 property is not held in order that the course of useful 
 science may be arrested; and so, when government is 
 employed in taking a trigonometrical survey of the king- 
 dom, it empowers its surveyors to enter the man's field, if 
 necessary, and fix their theodolites there. Property is not 
 held in order that an important branch of national industry 
 may be put down ; and so, should the field be on the sea- 
 shore, a herring-curer, if he can find no other place on 
 which to heap uj) liis fish, in order to get them transferred 
 to his casks, may fence off a portion of it, and heap them 
 up there, giving, of course, remuneration fully adequate 
 for the produce which he may have trampled down, or tlie
 
 452 TENDENCIES. 
 
 general deterioration which lie may have occasioned. 
 Property is not held in order that great and beneficial 
 designs may be successfully thwarted ; and so Parliament, 
 if it see meet, may empower some projector or joint-stock 
 company to cut a deep canal into the centre of the man's 
 field, or to span it over with some vast viaduct, or to cut 
 it asunder by some broad thoi'oughfare. The rights of 
 property, we repeat, are but coextensive with the ends 
 for which property is held ; and he who, on any pretext, 
 stretches these rights so as to render them subversive of 
 the rights of conscience, is guilty of as flagrant injustice 
 as if he had had no property on which to take his stand. 
 He is simply a persecutor, worthy the unqualified detesta- 
 tion and abhorrence of mankind ; and his worn-out plea, 
 that he has a right to do what he may with his own, is but 
 a miserable sophism, in every way worthy of the deeds of 
 wrong and oppression of which he renders it the apology. 
 But it can scarce be necessary to insist on points of a 
 character so palpable as these. 
 
 It will not be enough, however, thus to remove the bars 
 and obstacles which might otherwise prevent the current of 
 popular opinion from dashing full against the persecuting 
 proprietary of the country. So great is their power, and 
 so many the means of annoyance within their reach, that, 
 had the Church to maintain with them merely a political 
 quarrel, she would scarce fail to be o'ermastered and borne 
 down in the conflict, however unequivocally in the right. 
 The tide of popular sympathy would set in too late and 
 too feebly to avail her. She must not forget in what, 
 under God, her strength lies, — that she has a hold of the 
 religious feelings of the country ; and that wherever she 
 succeeds in enlightening a conscience dark before, there 
 also does she of necessity succeed in making good a lodg- 
 ment from which the power of the landlord and the factor 
 will be utterly unable to expel her. She is strong, doubt- 
 less, in the popular character of the rights for which she 
 has so resolutely and so devotedly 'contended, — strong oa
 
 TENDENCIES. 453 
 
 a principle somewhat similar to that through which the 
 whigs were strong when, after carrying the Reform Bill 
 by a bare majority in the lower House, they dissolved 
 Parliament, and appealed to the country. But were her 
 strength of this merely semi-political kind, — were it based 
 on but the popularity of her principles, — it would be a 
 strength insufficient for her. It would evaporate in the 
 furnace. The only strength which can ultimately avail 
 her must lie in the unchanging fealty of converted hearts. 
 Wherever she is rendered the honored means of a conver- 
 sion, there she secures an inalienable friend, fitted to abide 
 in her behalf the day of trial. We have been often struck 
 by the remarkable figure in the Apocalypse, in which the 
 witnessing Church is represented as lying slain in the 
 great city. The dead bodies of the two prophets are 
 exposed in the street ; the sounds of mirth and Avassail 
 ring loud around them ; and there is rejoicing and giving 
 of gifts because they are gone. What more hopeless than 
 a cause sunk so low that its sole representatives are two 
 lifeless carcasses, cruelly denied the repose and shelter of 
 the tomb, and exposed to the heartless insults of an un- 
 generous enemy ! They lie festering and dead ; a moment 
 passes, and, lo ! " the spirit of life from God has entered 
 into them;" they stand upon their feet; o'ermastering 
 astonishment and terror fiill upon all beholders; and in 
 the presence of their enemies a great voice from heaven 
 talks with them. In even her darkest day there are hopes 
 to which the Church may continue to cling. The numbers 
 and energy of her assertors will bear no chance proportion 
 to the conversions of the country; and one of those seasons 
 of wide-spread and sudden revival which are, we trust, des- 
 tined to characterize and bless the latter day, would have 
 the efifect of raising her up at once, like the resuscitated 
 bodies of the slain prophets, a terror to her enemies, and 
 a wonder to all. Her strength must lie in the conversions 
 of the country, and her chance of success, humanly speak- 
 ing, in directing all her exertions under an abiding sense
 
 454 TENDENCIES. 
 
 of the importance of the fact. It is, in truth, the grand 
 secret, which her friends know, and her enemies do not. 
 
 Ere we conclude for the time, let us add one remark 
 more. The true way of utterly ruining the cause of the 
 Free Church, wlien the crisis comes, would be simply to 
 yield to those feelings of excitement which in some dis- 
 tricts it may well occasion, and fly in the face of the law. 
 Let the authorities be supplied with but a single act 
 through which a cliarge of outrage and bona fide rebellion 
 may be fixed upon the Church, and there will be means 
 instantly exerted to put her down, which have not been 
 employed in Britain since the times of the j^ersecutions of 
 the Charleses. A few ploughmen, assisted by the bedraVs 
 son, in Culsalmond, smoked their pipes in the parish church, 
 and broke some dozen or a score of panes, and straightway 
 a detachment of the military were marched into Strath- 
 bogie, and there was a justiciary trial got up, at which an 
 enlightened jury decided there was nothing to try. The 
 soldiery and the Justiciary Court would be but imperfectly 
 typical of the means which, in the result of some unhappy 
 outbreak, would be set in instant requisition to crush the 
 dissociated Church. The menials of Pilate and Caiaphas 
 are coming out against her with their swords and staves ; 
 but a too zeglous Peter must not be permitted to strike in 
 lier defence. It is essential to her well-being — perchance 
 to her very existence — that all the outrages should be 
 perpetrated by her opponents. It was O'Connell's most 
 important lesson to the people of Ireland that they sliould 
 keep their tempers and the peace. We would warn, in 
 especial, warm-hearted friends of the Church in the High- 
 lands, — the fighting men of Scotland, — the men who, in 
 not a few districts,-Hjre to be separated violently from their 
 beloved ministers, and to see miserable hirelings set in their 
 place, — that they may do much for her by tlieir prayers, 
 but nothing, and less than nothing, for her by their swords; 
 that they cannot strike a single blow in her behalf which 
 Avill not be made to descend with tenfold eftect on her own 
 honored head.
 
 MR. Forsyth's "remarks." 455 
 
 MR. FORSYTH'S "REMARKS." 
 
 It has been made a principle in selecting these articles to omit 
 those of a decidedly personal character. A vein of original and 
 powerful humor entered, however, so largely into Mr. ]\iiller's writ- 
 ing in defence of the Evangelical party, that it was desirable to 
 have some manifestation of it In the present volume. The following 
 article conveys no idea of Mr. ]\IIller's keener irony and more 
 refined satire. It is in his roughest style, but, so far as it goes, it is 
 characteristic, and it is believed that its broad humor can now be 
 enjoyed without the infliction of pain upon any. — Ed. 
 
 There has appeared within the last few weeks a very- 
 remarkable little work, on our ecclesiastical sti-uggle, from 
 the pen of Robert Forsyth, Esq., advocate, an Edinburgh 
 philosopher, who settled the principles of moral science 
 rather more than thirty years ago, and who has now very 
 laudably come forward — impelled by patriotic feeling 
 and a strong sense of duty — to settle the Church ques- 
 tion. He found himself ^'■not entitled,^'' he saj^s, "to look 
 on in silence." The mere capacity of doing good suggests 
 always to well-regulated minds the absolute necessity of 
 doing it; and so, Avhile very many individuals who have 
 not MTitten essays on moral science, nor acquainted them- 
 selves with the secret causes of the immortality of the 
 soul, have felt that they had a right to maintain the char- 
 acter of silent spectators, Mr. Forsyth, finding that he had 
 no such right, — that he was not "entitled to look on in 
 silence," — has been, of course, precipitated into author- 
 ship ; and his pamphlet, which has the merit, as we have 
 said, of being a very remarkable one, has already attracted 
 the favorable notice of most of our Edinburgh contempo- 
 raries, "A very excellent and seasonable treatise," says the 
 Edinburgh Advertiser, and characterized by " great ability
 
 456 MR. FORSYTH'S "REMARKS." 
 
 and research." Assuredly yes, says the Evening Post; 
 "it exposes with equal profoundness and originality the 
 illegal and dangerous proceedings of the democratic party 
 in the Church." "The pamphlet of Mr. Forsyth seems to 
 us an able one," adds the Scotsman / it " sets the preten- 
 sions of the non-intrusionists in a very clear light," and 
 "we would direct attention to it, as presenting the ideas 
 of a well-informed, experienced, and religiously-disposed 
 man." And the Observe^' tells his readers that it is a work 
 eminently worthy even his notice, though, from a press of 
 occupation, he has not been able to notice it as yet. 
 
 Now, all this is certainly high praise. It has been often 
 satisfactorily shown that the opinion of the Scottish news- 
 paper press is just the opinion of the people of Scotland ; 
 of course, by parity of reason, the opinion of the Edin- 
 burgh press must be just the opinion of the people of 
 Edinburgh ; and here have we our intelligent and respect- 
 able citizens, whig and tory, harmoniously at one in regard- 
 ing the pamphlet which Mr. Forsyth has been so happily 
 necessitated to produce, as seasonable, excellent, able, 
 original, profound, clear in the light which it casts, and 
 full of research, — and in eulogizing Mr. Forsyth himself 
 as an " experienced, well-informed, and religiously-disposed 
 man." Now, it would be, of course, absurd on our part to 
 risk an opinion in direct opposition to all this. We may 
 venture to remark, however, tliat Mr. Forsyth's pamphlet, 
 though much more consistent than any other production 
 which has appeared on the same side, and though, in the 
 main, somewhat more amusing, has the disadvantage of 
 being not quite complete in itself. Many of its more 
 striking passages bear tacit reference to the doctrines of 
 his great philosophical work, — reference so direct, that, to 
 a man unacquainted with the peculiarities of the doctrine 
 developed in his "Principles of Moral Science," his Church 
 principles must often ajjpear either altogether obscure, or 
 in a very considerable degree extreme, if not irrational. 
 And this, we say, is decidedly a defect. We hold that
 
 MR. FORSYTH'S " REMARKS." 457 
 
 Mr. Forsyth's pataphlet on the Church question should be 
 in every respect as independent of his great philosophical 
 work as his gi-eat philosophical work is independent of his 
 pamphlet on the Church question. Mr. Forsyth must be 
 surely aware that, in this unthinking and superficial age, 
 in which metaphysics languish, there are many men and 
 many women deeply interested in our ecclesiastical strug- 
 gle who have yet cultivated no close acquaintance with 
 his " Principles of Moral Science." 
 
 "The truths of Butler are more worthy the name of 
 discovery^'' says Sir James Mackintosh, " than any with 
 which we are acquainted." We infer, from the assertion, 
 that Sir James must have been ignorant of the ethical 
 philosophy of Mr. Robert Forsyth. It was reserved for 
 this man of high philosophic intellect to discover, early in 
 the present century, after first spending several years as a 
 licentiate of the Church of Scotland, that though there are 
 some human souls that live forever, the great bulk of souls 
 are as mortal as the bodies to which they are united, and 
 perish immediately after death, like the souls of brutes. 
 Thinking souls, such as the soul of Mr. Robert Forsyth, 
 continue to think on forever ; but the vast rabble of souls, 
 that either do not think at all, or think to littie purpose, 
 curl, and revolve, and expand, for a very little after they 
 are exhaled from the body, somewhat like the pufi" of a 
 cigar in a quiet atmosphere, and then melt away into 
 nothing. Of what possible use, argued the philosopher, 
 could the souls of the mere populace be in another world ? 
 In the present they are of very considerable value. They 
 constitute a sort of moving power to the bodies of our 
 artisans, clerks, and manufacturers. They produce hats, 
 and shoes, and broadcloth, and law documents; they build 
 houses, and keep shops, and makes sausages and suits of 
 clothes ; but in the future state they would be of quite as 
 little value as the steam or water power of a mill or engine 
 dissociated from the cranks of the engine or the pinions 
 of the mill, and sublimed to the dignity of a soul. Where 
 
 39
 
 458 MR. Forsyth's " remarks." 
 
 there are neither heads nor feet there can be no demand 
 for either hats or shoes. No attenuated tailor-soul will be 
 required to take measure with his figured tape of the 
 thinking part of Mr. Robert Forsyth, or to illuminate his 
 disembodied sensorium Avith rows of buttons. He will be 
 independent of broadcloth and of bend leather, and miss 
 neither his clerk nor the butcher's shop. All must have 
 heard of the famous argument once maintained between 
 Corporal Trim and Uncle Toby regarding the souls of 
 negroes, and how the honest old captain came finally to 
 the conclusion, that if the blacks have not souls as certainly 
 as the Avhites, " it is a sad setting up of one man over 
 another." Now, a similar thought seems to have crossed 
 the mind of the j^hilosophic Mr. Forsyth ; nor can we 
 imagine aught more suited to render a person of a benev- 
 olent disposition uneasy ; but a further discovery served at 
 once to remove the painful feeling. Pie discovered, by 
 a singularly ingenious process, that the happy few who 
 inherit immortality achieve it for themselves. They work 
 it out simply by dint of thinking. The ploughman's soul 
 does not sink into annihilation simply because it is the soul 
 of a ploughman, nor does the shoemaker's soul perish qua 
 shoemaking soul. They perish just because they have not 
 been exercised in thinking, — just because they have not 
 been writing treatises on moral science, or pamphlets on 
 the intrusion side in the Church question. The sensoriums 
 of a Burns and a Bloorafield may be living yet. If souls 
 die, it is all their own fault. They do not take exercise to 
 render them strong and hardy, and so perish the moment 
 they step out of doors; just as children over-delicately 
 nurtured and kept in an over-heated nursery are killed at 
 times simply by running out into the cold. All the hardy, 
 well-trained souls survive. But we are doing less than 
 justice to Mr. Forsyth in not employing his own philo- 
 sophic language. 
 
 " From the capacity that is conferred upon the human mind of
 
 MR. Forsyth's « remarks." 459 
 
 advancing in perpetual improvement, we conclude that it is destined 
 
 for immortality But it is not to every individual that thif 
 
 capacity or this destiny belongs. Some minds are too undiscerning 
 to perceive the value of intellectual improvement. Other minds 
 become so deeply enamored of certain pursuits peculiar to their 
 present state, that they will be unable to burst through the fetters of 
 habit, and to engage in the study of what is good and excellent in 
 the works of their Maker. These minds, having no emphiynient in 
 which to occupy themselves, would exist hereafter in vai?}. ; and such 
 is the constitution of mind, that if it is not employed, it sinks into 
 thoughtlessness, and loses its intelligent character. But those minds 
 that engage in the pursuit of intellectual improvement, or in the study 
 and diffusion of science, when they remove from this world will find 
 themselves only placed in a better situation for advancing success- 
 fully in their career. Their employment cannot come to an end, 
 for it is infinite ; and their minds v.'ill continue forever to become 
 still more active, more discerning, and more enlarged. It is no 
 mean prize, then, that awaits the lovers of Wisdom. She is lovely 
 in herself, and worthy of all regard and pursuit ; but she is not given 
 to man as a bride without a dowry. The possession of her communi- 
 cates no less than immortal life. This is the highest prize in the 
 
 great lottery of existence Let it never be forgotten, then, for 
 
 whom it is that immortality is reserved. It is appointed as the portion 
 of those who are worthy of it ; and they shall enjoy it as a natural 
 consequence of their worth. This is a part of the plan according to 
 which the Mighty Arlfst has formed the universe. Whatever is 
 defective or imperfect, and has no tendency to improvement, will 
 gradually pass away and disappear forever ; but the minds that shoot 
 vigorously towards excellence will be cherished, and endure and 
 flourish without end. And this is all that can be said with any tolera- 
 ble degree of certainty on so obscure a subject." — Principles of JSFnral 
 Science, 1805, pp. 501, 502. 
 
 But though beyond this Mr. Forsyth did not arrive at 
 certainty (and unquestionably minds of a lower and less 
 philosophic nature could scarce have carried demonstration 
 so far), he was enabled, through the exercise of that fine 
 faculty, imagination, to go a very considerable way further. 
 In an exquisite allegory, attached, by way of appendix, to 
 the chapter in which his great discovery is promulgated,
 
 460 MR. PORSYTH'S " REMARKS." 
 
 we are presented with a view, singularly graphic and pic- 
 turesque, of the expectoration of souls. The reader of the 
 "Principles of Moral Science" is suspended in mid-air, 
 witli Mr. Forsyth, in the character of the " Angel of In- 
 struction," beside him ; and on the earth beneath he is 
 made to see all the dying, brute and human, engaged in 
 vomiting souls. The view somewhat resembles that 
 which the adventurous sailor takes from the maintop of a 
 crowded and tempest-overtaken transport, when horrible 
 nausea occupies the laboring passengers below. We see 
 the "souls of dying men departing from their' bodies," and 
 the "souls of dying beasts." We mark the spirits of the 
 beasts coming creeping out, like half-suifocated wasps 
 escaping from the fumes of the deadly sulphur, when, in 
 the silent twilight, some reckless urchin assails with fire 
 and brimstone their devoted citadel, and then squatting 
 themselves down in the open air, and quietly evaporating ; 
 or, to employ Mr. Forsyth's own classic illustration, "melt- 
 ing away gradually, like the cloud rising from the river, 
 which the morning sun drinks up." Not so tranquil, how- 
 ever, the process through which the spirits of unthinking 
 men pass into annihilation. " The so*ls of dying men are 
 more active," says Mr. Forsyth, "than the souls of dying 
 beasts, for they spring upward, and seem to look around 
 them, as if seeking for some work wherein to labor." They 
 come frothing out like small beer in the dog-days, just 
 escaped from the bottle, and wheel round and round in 
 uneasy and short-lived activity, like drops of boiling oil 
 sprinkled from a dipped rush-light on the colder oil of the 
 lamp; or like vivacious lady-birds stuck fast upon pins; 
 or like the wicked old lady in Beckford's Vnthec, the 
 rapidity of whose revolutions rendered her altogether 
 invisible. But, soon squatting themselves down in utter 
 exhaustion, they evaporate, " and ])ass away, and are for- 
 gotten, and no trace of them remains." Veiy different, 
 however, is the destiny of vigorous souls of profound 
 thought and solid acquirement, — the souls that have
 
 MR. Forsyth's "remarks." 461 
 
 " engaged in the pursuit of intellectual improvement," and 
 produced treatises on moral science. They "never lose 
 their activity, nor foil asleep at all, like the rest." They 
 visit "the sun, and the moon, and other worlds," expatiate 
 at laro-e over the Avhole earth and the whole sea, make 
 their way into the recesses of Mr. Forsyth's study, and 
 there acquaint themselves thoroughly with his opinion on 
 the Church question, long ere his invaluable manuscripts 
 have passed into the hands of the publisher. Well has it 
 been remarked by this Edinburgh philosopher, that "it is 
 no mean prize that awaits the lovers of wisdom." 
 
 Now, without some previous acquaintance with this fine 
 philosophy, there are passages in Mr. Forsyth's Church 
 pamphlet the force of which cannot be adequately appre- 
 ciated. And hence, Ave urge, the incompleteness of the 
 work, regarded as a whole. The happy few who have 
 mastered his "Principles" must, of course, feel themselves 
 quite qualified to enter into the deeper meanings of his 
 "Remarks." But why Avrite for only the happy few? 
 Why not render his pamphlet as independent of his "Prin- 
 ciples" as he has already rendered his " Principles" inde- 
 pendent of his pamphlet? All interested in the Church 
 question are not, Ave repeat, deeply read in the metaphysi- 
 cal discoveries of Mr. Forsyth. And yet, Avhat, Avithout a 
 knowledge of the great discovery whose results Ave have 
 just communicated to our readers, is the real force of a 
 passage such as the one in which Mr. Forsyth sets himself 
 to annihilate the Veto? United to his discovery, it is all- 
 potent ; dissociated from it, it is a piece of mere common- 
 place. "We quote from his pamphlet : 
 
 " A young man," says Mr. Forsytli, " after employing liis best 
 years, and considerable expense, in a university education, and 
 the study of the learned languages and of theology, Avould, according 
 to custom, present himself for examination before the presbytery of 
 his birth or residence. He is declared qualified to preach, and is 
 allowed to preach for any minister employing him. Yet, on receiv- 
 
 39*
 
 462 MR. Forsyth's "remarks." 
 
 ing a presentation from the Crown, or some other patron, he might 
 find his prospects blasted, because a number of clowns had been 
 pleased to say, without assigning a reason, that they dissented from 
 his settlement, whether because they wished some other individual, 
 or wantonly acted to show their power. Admission to the com- 
 munion table affords no test of the ability of a man to decide on the 
 qualifications necessary to a minister who is to instruct men in the 
 history and principles of Christianity. A man may be a sincere 
 believer in the gospel, and of the most decent life, who yet is truly 
 an illiterate person, engaged in mechanical labor. To say that such 
 a man shall have power to ruin the prospects of a learned man, 
 against whom he can state no well-founded objections, is palpably 
 absurd." 
 
 Now, if this passage be taken simply as it stands, even 
 Mr. Forsytli's warmest friends must be forced to allow that 
 it is by no means a striking one. Dr. Cook has said as 
 ranch, and Dr. Bryce, and the Edinburgh Advertiser^ and 
 the gentleman who in the Observer writes " Columns for 
 the Kirk." But, taken in connection with Mr. Forsyth's 
 great discovery, even the Witness itself must confess that 
 it does all it was intended to do, — that it annihilates the 
 Veto. Let the reader mark well some of the }:)hrases 
 employed: "Number of clowns," — "admission to the 
 communion table no test of ability," — "illiterate person 
 engaged in mechanical h'lbor." These are all phrases of 
 deep significancy when coupled with the discovery of Mr. 
 Forsyth. In his " Principles of Moral Science " we are 
 expressly told tliat "men who spend their lives in the 
 unremitting drudgery of such kinds of labor as require 
 little exercise of the mind, are apt to sink into a state of 
 indolence and stupidity." "They become incapable of 
 thinking," it is added ; " and if at any time they make an 
 unusual exertion towards it, their attention soon wavers 
 and fails, and they speedily relinquish an effort that is so 
 sensibly above their strength." They are, in short, men 
 whose souls, like the souls of brutes, perish at death, 
 Mark, next, the antagonist class of plirases used in con-
 
 MR. Forsyth's "remarks." 463 
 
 nection with the licensed candidate: " University educa- 
 tion," — " leai-ned hinguages," — " theology, " — fitted to 
 " instruct in the history and principles of Christianity," — 
 "qualified preacher," — "learned man." There is an 
 achieved immortality of soul implied in the very terms. 
 The human souls that do not die, says Mr, Forsyth, in his 
 "Principles," are the souls that, when on earth, are "en- 
 gaged in the pursuit of intellectual improvement, or in the 
 study and diffusion of science." Now, in how striking a 
 light does not this place the entire question ! True, it 
 militates with much directness against the great bulk of 
 our Scottish patrons, — men whose souls, on Mr. Forsyth's 
 showing, could be of no manner of use in the other world, 
 unless, indeed, the other world had its mail-coaches to 
 drive, and its dog-kennels to superintend, and its tourna- 
 ments to ride tilts at; and whose minds, as they have been 
 doing nothing whatever to improve and strengthen them, 
 must of necessity be thin, weak, rickety minds, disposed 
 to evaporate in the moment of expiration. But, then, does 
 it not make more than amends by at once clearing up the 
 line between the rights of licentiates and the claims of the 
 people ? We can scarce imagine anything more prepos- 
 terous than that plebeian clowns — poor illiterate plough- 
 men and mechanics — men whose spirits must wriggle in 
 uneasy consciousness for some ten or twelve minutes after 
 death only to give up existence forever — should be once 
 permitted to stake their supposed sj^iritual interests against 
 the well-based temporal welfare of some meritorious man 
 of learning, who has studied his soul into immortality, and 
 who, in following up his high destiny, may one day play 
 somersaults in the sun's fiery atmosphere, or disport, de- 
 lighted, amid glowing pumice and molten lava, in some 
 sublime volcano of the moon. There is a flood of light 
 cast here on the cases of Dunkeld and Auchterarder, and 
 on the intrusions of Culsalmond and Marnoch. 
 
 We had marked several other passages for quotation in 
 the pamphlet of Mr. Forsyth ; and, from the respect which
 
 464 MR. Forsyth's "remarks." 
 
 we must at all times entertain for the "ideas of a well- 
 informed, experienced, and religiously-disposed man," may 
 possibly again return to them. By the way, is it not a 
 gratifying circumstance to find that the Scotsman is begin- 
 ning to think all the better of people for their religion? — 
 nay, that he now actually knows what religion is? There 
 is still hope of our contemporary. He had a lugubrious 
 article, some few weeks ago, on the damage which he has 
 sustained in his circulation from the misrepresentations of 
 ministers and the insinuations of ministers' wives. They 
 have censured him as Socinian, — ; they have denounced, 
 him as infidel. But their hostility will now surely cease. 
 They may be assured that he has learned to set a high 
 value on "religiously-disposed men," and to know them 
 wherever he finds them. With regard to the philosophic 
 Mr. Forsyth, our reflections are more melancholy. He 
 was at one time a licentiate of the Church of Scotland, 
 and yet the Church lost him. There are respectable 
 citizens of Edinburgh who have heard him preach in the 
 West Kirk; and it is a fact, known to at least a few, that 
 he was a candidate, on one occasion, for the parish of 
 Liberton. But the mortal rabble, who have not learned to 
 think, — the dying illiterate, born to plough and make 
 shoes, — Avere unable to value him as they ought; and so, 
 setting himself to the study of the law, and to the dis- 
 covery of the true principles of moral science, the Church 
 lost him. And, save for tliis untoward circumstance, this 
 fine old Moderate of the classical model of Robertson and 
 Blair would be now a leader in the General Assembly, on 
 the side that lacks talent most. How tantalizing the 
 reflection ! We must add further that the perusal of his 
 writings of remoter and more recent date has awakened in 
 our mind a rather melancholy thought, which we scarce 
 know how to express. "Let it never be forgotten," he 
 says, in promulgating his discovery regai'ding the immor- 
 tality of the great bulk of human souls, — "let it never be 
 forgotten, that whatever has no tendency to improvement
 
 STATE CARPENTRY. 465 
 
 will gradually pass away, and disappear forever." Now, 
 it is a solemn but not the less indisputable flxct, that there 
 has been no improvement in the writing or thinking of 
 Robert Forsyth, Esq., advocate, for the last thirty-seven 
 years. Nay, the reverse is very palpably tlie case. He 
 writes worse, he thinks less vigorously, he has less of 
 taste, his style is rouglicr, and liis grammar less unex- 
 ceptionable, than when he fixed tlie principles of moral 
 science in the good year 1805. Alas for the inference ! 
 but we at least have determined not to draw it. 
 
 STATE CARPENTRY. 
 
 It has been remarked, tliat in proportion as our English 
 dramatists sank in the genius of their ])rofession, tliey made 
 amends in some sort by becoming adepts in all the merely 
 mechanical parts of it. If they could no longer attain to 
 the sublime in their poetry, they at last succeeded in 
 making unexceptionable thunder. If their dialogues were 
 no longer easy and natural, no one could say the same of 
 their side-scenes of painted canvas or their snow-showers 
 of white paper. If wit no longer flashed athwart the 
 scenes, never in any former time were their flaslics of 
 ground rosin equally vivid. If their descriptions were 
 tame, so were not their draperies and drop-curtains. Tlieir 
 plots might be unskilfully managed, but their trap-doors 
 were wrought to admiration. They were masters of cos- 
 tume, if not of character; and ghosts, lions, and tempests, 
 Nahum Tates and Elkannah Settles, amply occupied the 
 place of truth, power, and nature, William Shakspeare 
 and Philip Massinger. The poets disappeared, but their 
 successors, the playwrights, were ingenious after their 
 kind. 
 
 We live in an age in which, apparently for some pur- 
 pose of judgment, the more prominent actors on the poiiti-
 
 466 STATE CARPENTRY. 
 
 cal stage are but a kind of mechanists and playwrights, — 
 men that bear the saine sort of relation to true statesmen 
 that the Sliadwells and Settles of the English drama bore 
 to its Jonsons and Fletchers of an earlier period. There 
 is this difference, however, that whereas the playwrights 
 were skilful after their kind, our mec])anical statesmen are 
 not. They are by no means mechanical statesmen of a 
 high degree of skill. Their trap-doors creak in the open- 
 ing; their ghosts awkwardly drop the winding-sheet in 
 tlie rising ; their lions betray the pasteboard ; when they 
 thunder, we detect the roll of the rusted shot in the iron 
 kettle ; and wlien they ligliten, the rosin puffs unkindled 
 in a cloud of white dust athwart the stage. They are state- 
 wriglits of an inferior grade. 
 
 Never was there an age or country in wliich problems 
 of more signal difficulty or of more awful importance rose 
 to demand the practical solution of the true statesman 
 than rise in Britain at the present day. Tlie masses are 
 sinking everywhere into perilous ignorance, — degenerating 
 into a vast brute power, terrible of fang and claw, and 
 more terrible still in the brute heart that is growing up 
 within it, growling in its den in uneasy hunger, and threat- 
 ening to burst out, that it may lap the blood and tear the 
 entrails of these poor state carpenters. And lo! they are 
 setting themselves to see whether they cannot smooth 
 down the shag of its degenerate nature, and humanize its 
 heart again by a scheme of Puseyite education. Tliey are 
 trying whether it may not be tamed into quiet and good 
 order just by ])arading a few ghosts in front of it, — old, 
 dry, bloodless gliosts of the apostolic succession, baptismal 
 regeneration, and the real j^resence, — and by getting up 
 behind these a picturesque screen of pillared aisles and 
 transepts, crosses and choirs, organs and stained glass. 
 They have fiUen, in their wisdom, on a sclieme resembling 
 that of the ingenious breeder of live stock, who fixed bits 
 of looking-glass in the walls of his l>ig-styes, immediately 
 behind the feeding-trouglis, that the animals within might
 
 STATE CARPENTRY. 467 
 
 occupy their Avhole minds in admiring the impalpable 
 images, and feed, in consequence, with the quiet and profit 
 which a state of pleasurable excitement induces. Between 
 the two schemes, however, there obtains this mighty dif- 
 ference, that whereas the swine-feeder associated his bodi- 
 less images with his well-filled feeding-troughs, our less 
 intelligent governors trust to the bodiless images alone, 
 without taking into account in what manner the poor brute 
 power is to be fed, or caring a flirthing whether it is to 
 feed or no. And so they strain hard in their Factory Bill 
 to raise their obsolete images, — their old scarecrow ghosts, 
 — things in which they themselves, with reference to them- 
 selves, have no faith whatever. But they lack the true art 
 of the playwright ; and, lo ! amid the clapping of trap- 
 doors and the creaking of hinges, the wretched design, as 
 defective in its management as deplorable in its concep- 
 tion, stands palpable to all. And then, how exquisitely 
 mean their style of dealing with the growing pauperism 
 of the country, that frightful gangrene which is so fast eat- 
 ing into its very vitals ! How utterly unable have they 
 shown themselves to seize on one principle of power, — 
 one moral element, — through which the plague might be 
 staid ! By dint of great mental exertion they have con- 
 trived to learn that sixpence of assessed money, after due 
 deductions for the expense of collection and superin- 
 tendence, is well-nigh adequate to the pui-chase of a three- 
 penny loaf, and that rather fewer threepenny loaves are 
 demanded by the hungry pauperism of the country when 
 they are eaten in workhouses or on the treadmill than 
 when eaten in any other way. And this is just all they 
 know. Those great moral means of adding to the general 
 health of the body politic, through which it might be made 
 to absorb its pauperism, just as a sound natui-al body 
 absorbs the extravasated blood and inert matter of a severe 
 contusion, filling with life and feeling what had become 
 dead and insensate, they altogether lack the ability of 
 comprehending. There is uo guiding moral sense within
 
 468 STATE CARPENTRY. 
 
 them sufficiently enliglitonecl by revolution to lead their 
 intellects into the right track ; and so they wander blind 
 in a perplexing labyrinth of mean and inadequate expe- 
 dients. 
 
 Never, perhaps, was there a time in which the exigencies 
 of the kingdom so enormously overtopped the capabilities 
 of its rulers. Our own poor Scotland, in her periods of 
 greatest difficulty hitherto, had always her great men, — 
 rulers fitted to the time, and adequate to the work of her 
 deliverance. She lay in a rude state when Edward I. 
 attemjjted her subjugation ; and it might have seemed a 
 very small matter whether her fierce and barbarous peo- 
 ple, our early ancestors, should have lived as the slaves of 
 England, or have continued to enjoy the wild liberty of 
 their half savage condition. But there were great though 
 remote consequences involved in the preservation of her 
 independence. She had purposes to serve in the economy 
 of Providence which could not be effected by an enslaved 
 province ; and so, in her time of extremest peril, God called 
 upon two great men to fight her battles, — men of that 
 very type and mould of greatness that was best fitted for 
 her deliverance in such an age, — iron-headed, iron-handed 
 champions, whose very nature it was that they could 
 neither yield nor despair. They had a long and a sore 
 battle to maintain in her behalf; and one of the two, ere 
 its close, fell under the axe of the headsman. But they 
 were thoroughly fitted for the appointed work, and so the 
 appointed work was thoroughly done. A great moral 
 revolution drew on. The Man of Sin, red with murder 
 and reeking with impurity, was to be struck down in Scot- 
 land. The people that had been preserved from the domi- 
 nation of a foreign state had now to be delivered from the 
 thrall of a degrading superstition. The exigencies of the 
 contest demanded quite a different kind of greatness from 
 that of Wallace and the Bruce; and so John Knox was 
 called forth to fight out the quarrel in behalf of the truth; 
 and he did fight and gain it. The contest altered in its
 
 STATE CARPENTRY. 469 
 
 character; it had to be maintained for the rights of con- 
 science, not with an ecclesiastical power, but with the civil 
 magistrates. The dauntless reformer Avho had fought in 
 the front of the first battle had passed to his reward, and 
 he seemed to have left no man behind him fitted to take 
 his place; but there was one Andrew Melville, a poor, 
 sickly, orphan boy, attending one of our public schools at 
 the time; and when a leader was most needed, — needed 
 so much that the cause of civil and religious liberty seemed 
 'lost for want of one, — Andrew Melville was summoned to 
 take the lead. And so the battle was carried on. At the 
 second Reformation, the same want was felt as at the first ; 
 but it was necessary that the cause should prevail, and so 
 the quiet manse of Leuchars furnished in Henderson a 
 leader adequately fitted to grapple with every difticulty of 
 the time, and whose extraordinary commission was at 
 once recognized by his country. How wofully difl:erent 
 the state of matters with regard to our governing powers 
 of the present day! One is continually reminded of the 
 complaint of the kelpie in the old legend, — "The hour is 
 come, but not the man." Great exigencies have feund lit- 
 tle men to grapple with them, and in a style, of course, that 
 exhibits the character of the men, not of the exigencies. 
 The stratagems by which chambermaids out-manoeuvre 
 one another in the graces of their mistresses have been 
 substituted for the large principles by which the guidance 
 of great aflfairs should be invariably regulated ; and ques- 
 tions that affect the deepest feelings, and involve the 
 vastest consequences, — questions that can have rest on 
 only the basis of eternal truth and justice, — have been 
 attempted to be settled through the exercise of exactly the 
 same kind of arts that are employed by jockeys when they 
 sell horses at fiiirs. We are reminded of the text in which 
 God represents himself as taking away, for the sins of a 
 people, the prudent and the counsellor, the captain and the 
 honorable, the judge and the prophet; and appointing 
 
 40
 
 470 STATE CAKPENTRY. 
 
 "children to be tlieir princes, and babes to have rule over 
 them." 
 
 The Church question has been again brought before the 
 House of Lords, and with just the usual result. Truly, 
 the part taken by her Majesty's Government in these 
 barren discussions Avould be eminently ludicrous were it 
 not so pitiable. Has the reader ever seen a nervous 
 gentlenian running on tiptoe with liis coat-tails tucked up 
 under liis arm, magnanimously resolved on clearing at a 
 leap some formidable five-feet ditch, but stopping abruptly 
 short at the edge, at once panic-struck and angry, and 
 merely gazing across for lack of courage to do more? Has 
 he seen him repeat and re-repeat the vast effort, and bring 
 it in every instance to the same grave conclusion ? If so, 
 he will find it no easy matter to fall on a fitter emblem of 
 my Lord Aberdeen and his coadjutors than the nervous 
 gentleman. Ever and anon his lordship tucks up his coat- 
 tails, and, taking a vast run, to clear at a bound the Church 
 question, gets panic-struck just as he reaches its nearer 
 edge, and, standing stock still, grins angrily across. His 
 lordship, and his lordship's coadjutors, have not yet felt 
 what it is they have to deal with. The steam of their 
 ministerial Sunday dinners so obscures their dining-room 
 panes, that they fail to see through them the religious 
 l)eliefs of the country. They mark on the dimmed glass 
 what they deem impalpable shadows stalking past, and as 
 impalpable shadows they persist in ti'eating them. Fools 
 and slow of heart, who have failed utterly to know the 
 day of their visitation ! Do they not even yet see that it 
 is not with a handful of clergymen, but with the deeply- 
 based religion of Scotland, that they have to do? — that 
 they have come in rude collision, in their blindness, with a 
 principle which, in its long struggles, has been often over- 
 borne and grievously oppressed, but never eventually over- 
 come, and whose battles, once begun, never terminate till 
 opposition dies ? 
 
 The Chui'ch, however, should feel grateful to the Earl
 
 STATE CARPENTRY. 471 
 
 of Aberdeen for the declarations of his short speech. Tlicy 
 are not in the least equivocal. We find his lordship com- 
 plaining, in his introductory sentence, of a certain existing 
 desire "to extort from her Majesty's government, at the 
 last moment before the meeting of the General Assembly, 
 some declaration different from that which had been 
 already deliberately given." And this desire, as her Maj- 
 esty's government had thorougldy made up their minds 
 on the matter, liis lordship deemed, of course, a very 
 annoying sort of thing. We find him politely adding, 
 however, that " he had no objections agaix to state the 
 nature of tlie measure which, at ^fittin(j time, her Majesty's 
 ministers were ready to bring forward." 
 
 "Again to state!" These are plain English words, 
 and they mean that what his lordship on this occasion had 
 no objection to state was, not a new revelation of the 
 mind of government, but a revelation which had been 
 made on some occasion before. They unequivocally |)re- 
 mise that his lordshij)'s statement was but the repetition 
 of a former statement ; and obvious it is that that former 
 statement cannot be held to mean some vague, little marked 
 statement of some uninfluential member of the Cabinet, 
 but just none other than the statement "deliberately 
 given," with express reference to which his lordship had 
 resolved not to be entrapped into any antagonist declara- 
 tion. Now, where shall we find this deliberate statement? 
 There was no allusion made in her Majesty's speech to our 
 Scottish Church question. Her Majesty's speech was a 
 great document, filled with quite higher matters, — matters 
 such as her Majesty's gratitude for the Scottish lath-arches 
 and Scottish huzzas, which arose in honor of her Majesty's 
 last year's visit. Virtually, however, the Church question 
 had a queen's speech of its own ; and this sort of queen's 
 speech — a public document embodying the deliberate 
 declaration of her Majesty's government — their stereo- 
 typed scriptural canon, from which they were too good 
 Christians to be driven, — bears tlie name of '■'•Sir James
 
 472 STATE CARPENTRY. 
 
 Graham^s Letter." There exists no other "deliberately 
 given declaration" on tlie part of government, to which a 
 crown minister could refer ; and our readers would do well 
 to ponder the Earl of Aberdeen's frankly avowed resolu- 
 tion regarding it. 
 
 His lordship's restatement of its conditions is in a some- 
 what short-hand style, though not quite unmarked by the 
 adroitness of the diplomatist. He condenses the rather 
 tedious sophistry of the red-hair argument into a not 
 iinplausible-looking sentence, which intimates liberty of 
 objection on the part of the people, and freedom of judg- 
 ment in deciding on the grounds, on the part of the 
 Church ; with the proviso, however, that these grounds 
 should be in every case faithfully recorded. The people 
 may object, if they please, to the red hair of the presen- 
 tee ; and then the Church, should it also conscientiously 
 dislike red haii', and so deem the objection a solid one, has 
 straightway but to enter on its books, — " Unsuitable pre- 
 sentee^ — red-haired; people and we donH like red hair ;'''' 
 and then — why, then, the red-haired presentee must just 
 be content to despair of his settlement, unless, indeed, 
 there be some hope for him in those details and modi- 
 fications of the measure which the Earl of Aberdeen 
 "abstained purposely from entering into," lest "certain 
 persons" should misinterpret and misrepresent them. The 
 comment of Lord Brougham on this important portion of 
 the noble earl's speech was sufficiently emphatic. " If his 
 noble friend's announcement was understood in one sense," 
 he said, " it would be an utter abandonment of the claims 
 of the civil courts, and would be calculated to excite much 
 alarm ; " but " taken in another view, it was quite consist- 
 ent with sound docti'ine and civil rights, and did not touch 
 patronage." He might well have added that the Church 
 was quite at liberty to repose as confidently as she could 
 on the one meaning; and lawyers, such as his lordship, to 
 seize fast hold of the other. 
 
 The Earl of Aberdeen stated further, in just accordance
 
 STATE CARPENTRY. 473 
 
 with his introductory sentences, that " the broad and gen- 
 eral principles on which the government were ready to 
 act" were in " conformity with the declarations that had 
 been often made by him;" and "that it remained to be 
 seen whether the General Assembly, after what he had 
 said, would think it necessary to secede, or to wait for the 
 purpose of ascertaining what her Majesty's government 
 intended to propose to the legislature." There must surely 
 be some confusion of idea here. Had the noble earl set 
 out by stating that her Majesty's government were at 
 length determined to give some declaration " different from 
 that wliich they had already deliberately given," — had he, 
 instead of using the significant '■'■ again to state^'' used the 
 equally significant '•'■ state for the first time" — had he said 
 that their broad and general principles of settlement were 
 principles not in conformity with their previously emitted 
 declarations, but, on the contrary, principles which they 
 had but recently taken up, — principles newly adopted by 
 them, not the old ones, — tlien, on at least his lordship's 
 showing, there might be some plausible reason for delaying 
 the secession, just "for the purjjose of ascertaining what 
 government intended proposing to the legislature." But 
 seeing that the principles of this prospective measure are 
 confessedly the old principles, where, we marvel, lies the 
 reason for delay? With measures on the old principles 
 the Church is sufiicieutly acquainted already ; she has seen 
 and does not like them ; they are disagreeable sights at 
 best ; and she would be but little in earnest should she 
 lengthen out delay until the "fitting" but undeterminate 
 time when her Majesty's government may think proper to 
 add one more to their number. The Earl of Aberdeen's 
 concluding remark might surely have been spared, and yet 
 it is possible enough to find an apology for it too. "If 
 they'''' [the Evangelical party] "did think it necessary to 
 secede at once," said his lordship, "he imagined that they 
 would be scarcely able at the last day to call on the God 
 of truth to witness that they had been driven to this coui'se 
 
 40*
 
 474 STATE CAEPENTRY. 
 
 by the persecution of the legishiture." " Wiien you con- 
 sider," says Curlyle, iu an eulogiuin on Crouiwell, — " when 
 you consider that OUver believed in a God, the difterence 
 between Oliver's position and that of the subsequent gov- 
 ernors of this country becomes, the more you reflect on ^t, 
 the more immeasurable." His lordsliip's allusion to Deity 
 here, charitably regarded, and taken in connection with 
 the fact that his lordship is one of those governors, may 
 tell, after all, to his lordship's advantage. 
 
 In shipwreck much depends on knowing the exact mo- 
 ment in which the wreck, fast beating to pieces on a lee 
 shore, may be quitted with greatest chance of escape ; and 
 it requires both resolution and presence of mind to enable 
 the seaman promptly to avail himself of it. Much de- 
 pends, in battle, on knowing the exact moment in which 
 the charge may be made with most effect. It would be 
 well that on Thursday the Church should not linger, no 
 not for a moment, beyond the propitious hour, within the 
 wreck of the Erastian Establishment. It might be fatal 
 to convert her broad, unanimous question of principle into 
 a contracted, disputed question of time, — a question re- 
 specting an hour or a day, — a question whether the sepa- 
 ration should take place at one instant or at another, — 
 whether it should be an incident of the eighteenth, or of 
 the nineteenth, or of the twentieth. It Avould be quite 
 worthy of our state carpenters to exert themselves heart 
 and soul in striving to transpose the whole matter into a 
 question of hours and minutes, — to hold out some vagne 
 promise, to tuck up their coat-tails at the last moment, and 
 cry out: " O, wait for one short half-week, till we have 
 gathei-ed way, and we shall then overleap the separating 
 ditch, and bo altogether with you." But it would be 
 quite unworthy of the Church to suffer the slate-wrights 
 so to entrap her.
 
 THE DISRUPTION. 475 
 
 THE DISPwUPTION. 
 
 The fatal die has been cast. On Thursday last the 
 religion of Scotland was disestablished, and a principle 
 recognized in its stead which has often served to check 
 and modify the religious influences, but which in no age 
 or country ever yet existed as a religion. Not but that 
 it has performed an imjDortant part, even in Scotland. It 
 has served hitherto to control the Christianity of the 
 Establishment — to dilute it to such a degree, if we may 
 so speak, as to render it bearable to statesmen without 
 God. And now its appointed work seems over. It con- 
 stituted at best but the drag-chain and the hook — things 
 that have no vocation apart from the chariot. But the 
 time has at length arrived in which the state will bear 
 with but the hook and the drag, apart from tliat which 
 they checked — with but the diluting pabulum, apart from 
 that which it diluted ; and so a mere negation of Chris- 
 tianity — an antagonist force to the religious power — has 
 been virtually recognized as exclusively the piiiiciple 
 which is to be entrenched in the parish churches of Scot- 
 land. The day that witnessed a transaction so momentous 
 can be a day of no slight mark in modern history. It 
 stands between two distinct states of things — a signal to 
 Christendom. It holds out its sign to these latter times, 
 that God and the world have drawn off their forces to 
 opposite sides, and that His sore and great battle is soon 
 to begin. 
 
 The future can alone adequately develop the more 
 important consequences of the event. At present we shall 
 merely attempt jn-esenting tlie reader with a few brief notes 
 of the aspect which it exhibited. The early part of Thurs- 
 day had its periods of fitful cloud and sunshine, and the 
 tall, picturesque tenements of the Old Town now lay dim 
 and indistinct in shadow, now stood prominently out in
 
 476 THE DISRUPTION. 
 
 the light. There was an unusual throng and bustle in the 
 streets at a comparatively early hour, which increased 
 greatly as the morning wore on towards noon. We marked, 
 in especial, several knots of Moderate clergy hurrying 
 along to the levee, laughing and chatting with a vivacity 
 that reminded one rather of the French than of the Scotch 
 character, and evidently in that state of nervous excite- 
 ment which, in a certain order of minds, the near approach 
 of some very great event, indetei-minate and unappreciable 
 in its bearings, is sure always to occasion. 
 
 As tlie morning wore on, the crowds thickened in the 
 streets, and the military took their places. The principles 
 involved in the anticipated disruption gave to many a 
 spectator a new association with the long double line of 
 dragoons that stretched adown the High Street, far as the 
 eye could reach, from the venerable Church of St. Giles, 
 famous in Scottish story, to the humbler Tron. The light 
 flashed fitfully on their long swords and helmets, and the 
 light scarlet of their uniforms contrasted strongly with the 
 dingier vestments of the masses, in which they seemed as 
 if more than half ingulfed. When the sun glanced out, 
 the eye caught something peculiarly picturesque in the 
 aspect of the Calton Hill, with its imposing masses of 
 precipices overtopped by towers and monuments, and its 
 intermingling bushes and trees now green with the soft, 
 delicate foliage of May. Between its upper and under 
 line of rock a dense living belt of human beings girdled 
 it round, sweeping gradually downwards from shoulder to 
 base, like the sash of his order on the breast of a nobleman. 
 The Commissioner's procession passed, with sound of 
 tvumpet and drum, and marked by rather more than the 
 usual splendor. There was much bravery and glitter, — 
 satin and embroidery, varnish and gold lace, — no lack, in 
 short, of that cheap and vulgar magnificence which can bo 
 got up to order by the tailor and the upholsterer for carni- 
 vals and Lord Mayors' days. But it was felt by the assem- 
 bled thousands, as the pageant swept past, that the real
 
 THE DISRUPTION. 477 
 
 spectacle of the day was a spectacle of a diiFeient char- 
 acter. 
 
 The morning levee had been marked by an incident of 
 a somewhat extraordinary nature, and which history, 
 though in these days little disposed to mark prodigies and 
 omens, will scarce fail to record. The crowd in the Cham- 
 ber of Presence was very great, and there was, we believe, 
 a considerable degree of confusion and pressure in conse- 
 quence. Suddenly — whether brushed by some passer by, 
 jostled rudely aside, or merely affected by the tremor of 
 the floor communicated to the partitioning — a large por- 
 trait of William the Third, that had laeld its place in Holy- 
 rood for nearly a century and a half, dropped heavily from 
 the walls. " There," exclaimed a voice from the crowd, 
 " there goes the revolution settlement." 
 
 For hours before the meeting of Assembly the galleries 
 of St. Andrew's church, with the space behind, railed off 
 for the accommodation of office-bearers not members, were 
 crowded to suffocation, and a vast assemblage still contin- 
 ued to besiege the doors. The galleries from below had 
 the " overbellying" appearance in front described by Blair, 
 and seemed as if piled up to the roof behind. Immedi- 
 ately after noon the Moderate members began to drop in 
 one by one, and to take their places on the moderator's right, 
 while the opposite benches remained well-nigh empty. 
 What seemed most fitted to catch the eye of a stranger 
 was the rosy appearance of the men, and their rounded 
 contour of face and feature. Moderatism, in the present 
 day, is evidently not injuring its complexion by the com- 
 position of " Histories of Scotland " like that of Robertson, 
 or by prosecuting such "Inquiries into the Human Mind" 
 as those instituted by Reid. We were reminded, in glanc^ 
 over the benches, of a bed of full-blown piony-roses glis> 
 tening after a shower ; and, could one have but substituted 
 among them the monk's frock for the modern dress-coat, 
 and given to each crown the shaven tonsure, not only 
 would they have passed admirably fo'- a conclave of monks
 
 478 THE DISRUPTION. 
 
 met to determine some weighty point of abbey-income or 
 right of forestry, but for a conclave of one determinate 
 age, — that easily circumstanced middle age in which, the 
 days of vigil and maceration being over, and the disturb- 
 ing doctrines of the Reformation not yet aroused from out 
 of their long sleep, the Churchman had little else to do 
 than just amuse himself with concerns of the chase and 
 the cellar, the larder and the dormitory. The benches on 
 the left began slowly to fill, and on the entrance of every 
 more distinguished member a burst of recognition and 
 welcome shook the gallery. Their antagonists had been 
 all permitted to take their places in ominous silence. The 
 music of the pageant was heard outside; the moderator^ 
 entered, attired in his gown ; and ere the appearance 
 of the Lord High Commissioner, preceded by his pages 
 and mace-bearer, and attended by the Lord Provost, the 
 Lord Advocate, and the Solicitor-General, the Evangelical 
 benches had filled as densely as those of their opponents ; 
 and the cross benches, ap2:)ropriated, in perilous times like 
 the present, to a middle party careful always to pitch their 
 principles below the suffering point, were also fully occu- 
 Y)ied. Never before was there seen so crowded a General 
 Assembly. The number of members had been increased 
 beyond all precedent by the double returns; and almost 
 every member was in his place. The moderator oj^ened the 
 proceedings by a deeply impressive prayer; but though the 
 silence within was complete, a Babel of tumultuary sounds 
 outside, and at the closed doors, expressive of the intense 
 anxiety of the excluded multitude, had the effect of ren- 
 dering him scarcely audible in the more distant parts of the 
 building. There stood beside the chair, though on opposite 
 sides, the meet representatives of the belligerent parties. 
 On the right we marked Principal M'Farlan, of Glasgow, 
 — the man, in these altered times, when missions are not 
 held disreputable, and even Moderates profess to believe 
 
 1 The late Kev. Dr. Welsh, Trofessor of Church History in the University of 
 Edinburgh.
 
 THE DISRUPTIOlSr. 479 
 
 that the gospel may be communicated to savages without 
 signally injuring their morals, who could recommend his 
 students to organize themselves into political clubs, but 
 dissuade them from forming missionary societies. On the 
 left stood Thomas Chalmers, the man through whose in- 
 domitable energy and Christian zeal two hundred churches 
 were added to the Establishment in little more than ten 
 years. Science, like rehgion, had its representatives on 
 the moderator's right and left. On the one side we saw 
 Moderate science personified in Dr. Anderson, of New- 
 burgh, — a dabbler in geology, who found a fish in the Old 
 Red Sandstone, and described it as a beetle. We saw 
 science not Moderate^ on the other side, represented by Sir 
 David Brewster. 
 
 Tlie moderator rose and addressed the House in a, io.^ 
 impressive sentences. There had been an infringement, he 
 said, on the constitution of the Church, — an infringement 
 so great that they could not constitute its General Assem- 
 bly without a violation of the union between Church and 
 State, as now authoritatively defined and declai-ed. He 
 was therefore compelled, he added, to protest against pro- 
 ceeding further; and, unfolding a document which he held 
 in his hand, he read, in a slow and emphatic manner, the 
 protest of the Church. For the first few seconds, the 
 extreme anxiety to hear defeated its object; the universal 
 hush, hush, occasioned considerably more noise than it 
 allayed. But the momentary confusion was succeeded by 
 the most unbroken silence ; and the reader went on till 
 the impressive close of the document, when he flung it 
 down on the table of the house, and solemnly departed. 
 He was followed, at a pace's distance, by Dr. Chalmers ; 
 Dr. Gordon and Dr. Patrick M'Farlan immediately suc- 
 ceeded ; and then the numerous sitters on the thickly occu- 
 pied benches behind filed after them, in a long, unbroken 
 line, which for several minutes together continued to 
 thread the passage to the eastern door, till at length only 
 a blank space remained. As the well-known faces and
 
 480 THE DISRUPTION. 
 
 forms of some of the ablest and most eminent men that 
 ever adorned tlie Church of Scotland glided.along in the 
 current, to disappear from the courts of the state institu 
 tion forever, there rose a cheer from the galleries, and an 
 impatient cry of "Out, out," from the ministers and elders 
 not members of Assembly, now engaged in sallying forth, 
 to join with them, from the railed area behind. The cheers 
 subsided, choked in not a few instances in tears. The 
 occasion was by far too solemn for the commoner manifes- 
 tations of either censure or approval : it excited feelings 
 that lay too deep for expression. There was a marked 
 peculiarity in the appearance of" their opponents, — a blank, 
 restless, pivot-like turning of head from the fast emptying 
 benches to one another's faces ; but they uttered no word, 
 not even in whispers. At length, when the last of the 
 withdrawing party had disappeared, there ran from bench 
 to bench a hurried, broken whispering: "How many?" 
 "How many ? " — "A hundred and fifty?"— "No." — "Yes." 
 " Four hundred ? " — " No ; " and then for a moment all 
 was still again. The scene that followed we deemed one 
 of the most striking of the day. The empty, vacated 
 benches stretched away from the moderator's seat in the 
 centre of the building to the distant wall. There suddenly 
 glided into the front rows a small party of men whom no 
 one knew, — obscure, mediocre, blighted-looking men, that, 
 contrasted with the well-known forms of our Chalmerses 
 and Gordons, Candlishes and Cunninghams, M'Farlans, 
 Brewsters, and Dunlops, reminded one of the thin and 
 blasted corn-ears of Pharaoh's vision, and, like them, too, 
 seemed typical of a time of famine and destitution. Who 
 are these? was the general query; but no one seemed to 
 know. At length the significant whisper ran along the 
 house, "The Forty." There was a grin of mingled con- 
 tem])t and com2)assion visible on many a broad Moderate 
 face, and a too audible titter sliook the gallery. There 
 seemed a degree of incongruity in the sight, that partook 
 highly of the ludicrous. For our own part, we were so
 
 THE DISRUPTION. 481 
 
 carried away by a vagrant association, and so missed Ali 
 Baba, the oil-kettle, and the forty jars, as to forget for a 
 time that at the doors of these unfortunate men lies the 
 ruin of the Scottish Establishment. The aspect of the 
 Assembly sank, when it had in some degree recovered 
 itself, into that expression of tame and flat commonplace 
 which it must be henceforth content to bear, until roused, 
 happily, into short-lived activity by the sharp paroxysms 
 of approaching destruction. 
 
 A spectacle equally impressive with that exhibited by 
 the ministers and elders of the Free Church, as they 
 winded in long procession to their place of meeting, there 
 to constitute their independent Assembly, Edinburgh has 
 certainly not witnessed since those times of the Cove- 
 nant when Johnston of Warriston unrolled the solemn 
 parchment in the churchyard of the Greyfriars, and the 
 assembled thoiisands, from the peer to the peasant, adhib- 
 ited their names. The procession, with Dr. Chalmers, and 
 the moderator in his robes and cap of office, at its head, 
 extended, three in depth, for a full quarter of a mile. The 
 Lord Provost of the city rode on before. Rather more 
 than four hundred were ministers of the Church; all the 
 others were elders. Be it remembered, that the number of 
 ministers ejected from their charges at the Restoration, and 
 who maintained the struggle in behalf of Presbytery dur- 
 ing the long persecution of twenty-eight years, amounted 
 in all to but three hundred and seventy-six ; but then, as 
 now, the religious principles which they inaintained were 
 those of the country. They were principles that had laid 
 fast hold of the national mind, and the fires of persecution 
 served only to render their impress ineradicable. We trust 
 in a very few weeks to see the four hundred increased to 
 five. Is it not strange how utterly the great lessons of his- 
 tory have failed to impress the mean and wretched rulers 
 of our country in this the day of their visitation ? Bishop 
 Fairfoul, when urging on the act that desolated the par- 
 ishes of Scotland, assured Commissioner Middleton that 
 
 41
 
 482 THE CLOSE. 
 
 there would not be ten in his diocese who would not pre- 
 fer sacrificing their principles to losing their stipends ; and 
 Commissioner Middleton believed him. The time of ejec- 
 tion came. On the last Sabbath of October, 1662, the 
 Presbyterian ministers preached and bade farewell to their 
 congregations ; and on that day, as we find it stated by 
 Burnet, two hundred churches were at once shut up, and 
 abandoned equally by pastors and by people. "And never," 
 says Kirkton, " was there such a sad Sabbath in Scotland." 
 Great was the astonishment, and even consternation, of the 
 government. "They had committed," says Hetherington, 
 "the grievous error into which unprincipled men are so 
 apt to fall, of concluding what the Presbyterian ministers 
 would do by what they themselves would have done in 
 similar circumstances, and saw their ei'ror when it was too 
 late to repair it." The struggle went on for more than half 
 an age, and terminated only when a dynasty had changed, 
 and a discrowned king wandered in unhappiness, and 
 begged, an exile in a foreign land. 
 
 THE CLOSE. 
 
 The Free and Residuary Assemblies have closed their 
 sittings; the over-strung mind of the Scottish public 
 demands its interval of rest, and thrilling excitement and 
 incessant labor give place, for a brief period, to compara- 
 tive quiescence and repose. For our own part, for at least 
 a few months to come, we shall see the sun rise less fre- 
 quently than we have done of late, and miss oftener the 
 earliest chirp of the birds that welcome the first gray of 
 morning from among the old trees of Heriot's and the 
 Meadows. The chapter added to the History of the 
 Church of Scotland has just been completed. The con- 
 cluding page presents the usual blank interval; and we feel 
 inclined to lay down the volume for a space, and ponder 
 over its contents.
 
 THE CLOSE. 483 
 
 Almost all our readers must be acquainted with Hether- 
 ington's admirable History of the Church of Scotland, — 
 our only existing ecclesiastical history that brings down its 
 eventful narrative to times so near the present as to record 
 in its latter pages the events which but a year or two ago 
 were exhibited as matters of news in the public prints. 
 The unfinished appearance of the close of this volume must 
 have been remarked by all its readers. It reminded us 
 always of an interesting story, with a handful of the con- 
 cluding leaves torn away. It was a drama mutilated in the 
 terminal scenes of the fifth act. The current of the narra- 
 tive flowed onwards, broadening and deepening in its inter- 
 est to one definite point of time, and then, like the current 
 which Mirza saw in his vision, disappeared abruptly in the 
 thick mists of futurity, just when the signs of some great 
 change had increased most in numbei', and become most 
 palpable in their indications. The historian may now com- 
 plete his work by uniting to his concluding chain of occur- 
 rences the catastrophe in which they have terminated. 
 The old state of things is over, and a new state has begun. 
 
 There are points of prominent interest involved in the 
 event, which must be apparent to all. It is now exactly 
 two hundred and eighty-three years since the General 
 Assembly of the Church of Scotland held its first meeting, 
 and laid down in its First Book of Discipline, and its first 
 Confession of Faith, the truths in which it believed, and 
 the principles by which its government was to be regu- 
 lated. These embodied in all their breadth the Redeem- 
 er's rights of prerogative as sole Head and King of his 
 Church, and, with these, all those duties and privileges of 
 the Church's members which his rights necessarily involve 
 and originate. They brought out everywhere the grand 
 master-idea, that wherever God, as King, promulgates a 
 law, there must there spring up on the part of man, as his 
 subject, not merely a corresponding duty, but also a right ; 
 a duty in relation to his adorable King, a right in rela- 
 tion to his fellows ; the duty of obedience with respect
 
 484 THE CLOSE. 
 
 to the one, the right of being at perfect freedom to obey 
 witli regard to the others. The fogs of a dreary supersti- 
 tion had enveloped for ages the throne of Deity; God had 
 been long an unknown and unrecognized Sovereign ; and 
 it was necessary, therefore, that his rights should be 
 broadly assei'ted. An iron despotism had pressed upon 
 the people. It was imperative, therefore, that their corre- 
 sponding rights — their rights, which originate in his 
 rights — should be broadly assei'ted also ; and on this 
 master-idea — the fundamental idea of all revelation — 
 the Church of Scotland, in accordance with the Divine 
 pattern, built up her Confession of Faith and her Book of 
 Discipline. The points most prominently developed in 
 her first General Assembly must be flTmiliar, through these 
 well-known works, to all our readers. Her doctrine of the 
 Divine Headship, her doctrine of spiritual independence, 
 her scheme of ecclesiastical discipline, and her broad 
 anti-patronage principle, rose ujj in high relief The 
 I'elation, too, in which she stood to all the other Reformed 
 Churches of the world was one of peculiar raai-k. Her 
 great leader had been, only a few years before, one of the 
 chajjlains of the King of England. He had been the chosen 
 minister, at an early period, first of a congregation at 
 Frankfort, then of a congregation at Geneva. He had held 
 communion with Evangelism wherever he had found it; 
 and the Church to which he belonged, and which he led, 
 had, like himself, her bonds of Christian communion and 
 fellowship extended all over Europe. Wherever there 
 existed a Church of the Reformation, there the Church 
 of Scotland recognized a sister and ally. 
 
 Now, let the reader but compare her last General As- 
 sembly, in which Evangelism maintained its jjlace, — the 
 Assembly of 1842, — with her first General Assembly, — 
 that of 1560; and we are sure he will scarce fail to be 
 struck by the resemblance. There was not a single prin- 
 ciple prominently maintained in the one that was not 
 determinedly asserted in the other. It would seem as if,
 
 THE CLOSE. 485 
 
 in completing her cycle of nearly three centuries, she had 
 taken a few steps in advance over the identical ground 
 from which she had at first started. Her last Assembly was 
 just her first Assembly come back again. The doctrine of 
 the Divine Headship asserted its prominent place, as at 
 first, in due connection with the old mastei'-idea that the 
 rights of the Divine King originate, of necessity, inalien- 
 able rights of his subjects; and hence her struggle with tlie 
 invading civil power, to preserve intact her spiritual inde- 
 pendence. She asserted her discipline ; and, in the due 
 exercise of the keys, ejected and shut out of her com- 
 munion the thief and the swindler, holding fast the door 
 against the beleaguering force that would have so fain 
 thrust them in again. She received friendly letters and 
 deputations, as of old, from her sisters of the Reformation. 
 She repealed the infamous act of 1799, that had placed her 
 in a state of non-communion with the whole Christian 
 world. And, passing upwards from the mere non-intrusion 
 principle of her Second Book of Discipline to the free- 
 election principle of her First Book, she solemnly avowed, 
 with her great founders, that "it appertaineth to the 
 people, and to every several congregation, to elect their 
 minister." The last step completed the cycle, — it was all 
 that was wanting to complete it ; and the Church of Scot- 
 land stood once more on the identical ground from which 
 three centuries ago her career of usefulness had beirun. 
 How exquisitely true to Goldsmith's fine simile ! The 
 beleaguered hare, when pursued by "hounds and horses," is 
 described as "panting to the place from which at first she 
 flew." Her course may have included many a distant 
 track, and involved many a tortuous winding; but she 
 dies in her form at last. Is it not a significant circum- 
 stance, that the Church disestablished by a British Parlia- 
 ment in 1843 should be in every respect, down to even the 
 minutest point, the identical Church established by a Scot- 
 tish Parliament in 1567? Restored in all her lineaments, 
 Bhe quits, just as she entered it, the asylum furnished her by 
 
 41*
 
 486 THE CLOSE. 
 
 the state, for the state refuses to grant her harborage any 
 longer on the old terms; and, shaking off the dust of her 
 feet in testimony against it, she again sets out on her pil- 
 grimage with the same hostile world around her, and the 
 same unchanging God above, — that world in which her 
 Master suffered, and which he will one day thoroughly 
 overcome, — and that God for the integrity of whose laws 
 she has contended, and who has promised that in her hour 
 of persecution he will be with her in the fire. 
 
 Curiously significant as this circumstance may seem, it 
 has found in the Disruption a kind of counterpart, if we 
 may so speak, which we deem at least equally curious and 
 significant. Has the reader ever marked a watch-spring 
 snapping in the centre, and the two fragments, which in 
 their entire state formed but one circle, coiling into two 
 independent circles, that j^rcsented to each other no point 
 of reunion? The Disruption no sooner takes place than 
 each, through a principle of elasticity in itself, instantane- 
 ous in its operation, is bent away in a direction diametri- 
 cally opposed to that of its neighbor. And such, on an 
 immensely extended scale, has been the effects of the 
 Disruption in the Church. Its two parties, that, for so 
 many years formed, ostensibly at least, but one body, have 
 no sooner drawn aj^art, than, moved each by its own 
 internal principle, they have coiled up into antagonistic 
 bodies. The residuary Assembly of 1843 has been even 
 more remarkable than the General Assembly of 1842. It 
 required a series of years to bring up Evangelism to the 
 identical ground occupied by our first reformers ; whereas, 
 to throw Moderatism back to the ground which it occupied 
 in its palmiest days — to throw it back a whole half-cen- 
 tury — was but the work of a moment. To use the figure 
 of Cowper, " the bow, long forced into a curve," and then 
 suddenly released, has "flown to its first position with a 
 spring." Is it not strange how very obviously, in these 
 latter days, almost every form and modification of religion 
 among us is returning to its original type ? There is a
 
 THE CLOSE. 487 
 
 resurrection everywhere of the identical bodies in which 
 their deeds of good or of evil were wrought of old. Laudism 
 stands erect in England, with all its rags of Rome about 
 it, like a thief surrounded in court by the property which 
 he has stolen. Rome herself has revived among us, and 
 receives, in her true character, the patronage and support 
 of the state. The Evangelism of our first reformers comes 
 forward, disestablished and denounced, to begin among the 
 people anew her peculiar work of refoi-mation. And now, 
 here is Moderatism shutting itself up from the communion 
 of all Christendom, — recognizing the secular power as 
 possessed of sole authority to bind and to loose, — throw- 
 ing up at once the reins of discipline, — brim-full as ever 
 of cruel pity for its erring ministers, — coarsely regardless 
 as ever of those sacred rights of the people which originate 
 in their duties, — true, in short, in every respect to its 
 original type, — the identical Moderatism of the days of 
 Robertson and of Hill. Graves are opening in these latter 
 times, and churches are coming forth, restored to their 
 original state and condition. What does so wonderful a 
 resurrection portend? Is there no hour of judgment at 
 hand, in which there is a throne to be set, and books to be 
 opened ? 
 
 How very brief a period has elapsed since the govern- 
 ment of this country could have settled at small expense 
 the Church question ! and how entirely has it passed be- 
 yond the reach of human adjustment now! In disestab- 
 lishing the religion of Scotland, tliere has been a breach 
 made in the veiy foundations of national security, Avhich 
 can never be adequately filled up. The yawning chasm is 
 crowded with phantoms of terror. There are the forms of 
 an infidel Erastianism in front, and surplices, crosses, and 
 treble crowns in the rear ; while deep from tlie darkness 
 comes a voice, as of many waters, the roar of infuriated 
 multitudes broken loose from religion, and thirsting for 
 blood. May God avert the omen ! That man must have 
 studied to but little purpose the events of the last twelve
 
 488 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 
 
 days who does not see that there is a Guiding Hand order- 
 ing and regulating all. The pawns in this great game do 
 not move of themselves ; the adorable Being who has 
 " foreordained whatsoever cometh to pass " is working out 
 his own designs in his own way. The usurpations of civil 
 magistrates, the treachery of unfaithful ministers, the 
 errors and mistakes of blind-hearted and incompetent 
 statesmen, all tend to accomplish his decrees ; and it would 
 be well, surely, since in one way or other all must forward 
 his purposes, to be made to forward them rather as his 
 fellow-workers than as his blind, insensate tools. Let the 
 disestablished Church take courage; there is a time of 
 severe conflict before her ; but the result of the battle is 
 certain. 
 
 UNION AND ITS PEINCIPLES. 
 
 Some of our readers must have witnessed the singularly 
 imposing scene at Canonmills, on the evening of Sabbath 
 the 28th May, Avhen Edinburgh so poured out its inhab- 
 itants to attend the ministrations of the Free Church, that 
 the vast hall, containing with ease an assemblage of three 
 thousand persons, could receive scarce a tithe of the whole ; 
 and when, after the building had been filled with its one 
 huge congregation to overflowing, and many thousands 
 had returned disappointed to their homes, such vast multi- 
 tudes still continued to linger outside, that they were 
 formed into five congregations more. Perhaps on no for- 
 mer occasion was Edinburgh the scene of a spectacle so 
 extraordinary. The unbroken stream of human beings 
 that continued to pour downwards from the city, long 
 after a counter-current, like an eddy tide creeping along 
 the shore, had begun to ascend, giving evidence that hun- 
 dreds had been already disappointed ; the vast masses 
 that blackened the area around the building, and choked 
 up every avenue of access ; the crowds that besieged the
 
 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 489 
 
 doors; the mustering into distinct groups, as congrega- 
 tion after congregation was formed in the open air, under 
 a dark and lowering sky; the voice of psalms arising 
 from so many contiguous points, imited and yet distinct, 
 as if each of the six assemblages had been but an indi- 
 vidual worshipper ; and then, when the clouds broke and 
 the rain descended, the i)erseverance manifested by each 
 of the groups in holding its place in undiminished bulk 
 around the preacher, like our Scottish congregations of 
 old, faithful in times of trial, till at length the showers 
 ceased, and the quiet of a mild though sombrous twilight 
 settled down over the whole, — the spectacle, in short, 
 with all its various accompaniments, formed one of those 
 pregnant scenes which grow upon the mind, affecting the 
 imagination more powerfully when called up in memory at 
 an after period than even when under the eye, and that, 
 from this quality of increasing instead of diminishing in 
 bulk as months and years intervene, are once witnessed 
 never to be forgotten. 
 
 Imposing and imprecedented, however, as the spectacle 
 must have seemed, the present age bids fiir to witness 
 many such. They seem destined to form one of the char- 
 acteristic marks of these latter times, in which religious 
 questions are so fast assuming their old place and impor- 
 tance. The spectacle described took place, as we have 
 said, on the 28th May. Only four days passed, and the 
 capital of the sister kingdom became, in turn, the scene of 
 a spectacle which, if less picturesque in its details, Avas 
 almost identical in its character. Exeter Hall — a build- 
 ing which accommodates with comparative comfort, in its 
 one huge apartment, fully five thousand persons — was 
 crowded by at least six thousand ; and out of the surplus 
 multitudes that could not gain access, two other large 
 meetings were formed. What object could have drawn 
 together such immense crowds, — an object, says one of 
 the speakers who addressed the larger meeting, in an 
 exjjlanatory letter to the editor of the Patriot^ altogether
 
 490 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 
 
 new to the religious public? They assembled to lay the 
 foundations of an expansive scheme of Christian union 
 among all the various Evangelistic Churches of the empire ; 
 and there met on the same platform, for the purpose of 
 cordial cooperation in this good cause, Baptists and 
 Moravians, Presbyterians and Episcopalians, Wesleyans, 
 Independents, and Lutherans. Every Evangelistic Church 
 sent its representatives; and the absence of all representa- 
 tion on the part of the others served but to indicate their 
 character. The Papist was not there, nor the Puseyite, 
 nor the High Churchman, nor the Socinian, nor the Uni- 
 tarian, nor the llesiduary. The two extremes were want- 
 ing, — Erastianism and semi-infidelity were absent on the 
 one hand, and superstition and priestly domination on the 
 other. 
 
 It cannot, we think, be doubted that, in the religious 
 world, the current has at length fairly set in in favor of 
 union and cooperation. The Evangelistic Churches are at 
 length yielding to the emergencies of time. During a long 
 period of external quiet they existed as a congeries of 
 independent states, rather more at peace, we are afraid, 
 with the world without than with one another. Each had 
 its own disputed rights and by-laws, — its own municipal 
 and burghal privileges, — for which it stood up quite often 
 enough against its fellows; and they forgot at times, in 
 the heat of controversy, the great federal union by which 
 they had been bound together. They differed as near 
 neiglibors sometimes differ when there is no common 
 enemy to annoy them. But the exigencies of the time 
 demand a wiser and more expansive course of policy. 
 Persia is on the march, and so Athens and Lacedemon 
 must resign their piivate quarrels, and arm, not in front of 
 one another, but side by side. Ilitlierto the confederated 
 states have held but tlieir own local ]>ar]iaments ; we hail 
 in the Exeter Hall meeting on Thursday tlie rudiments of 
 a general congress. The armies of the rising apostasy 
 are mustering on every side of us. A decrepit Erastian-
 
 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 491 
 
 ism holds the temporalities of the Scottish Establishment, 
 not so much on its own behalf as on behalf of Puseyite 
 Eijiscopacy, in the way that a guardian holds property for 
 a minor; of the temporalities of the English Establish- 
 ment, Rome, under a false name, has already entered on 
 possession. The invading power has seized, either in its 
 own proper character or by proxy, on the strongholds and 
 fortalices of the country ; and it is high time, therefore, 
 and more than time, that Protestantism should be calling 
 her war councils, and laying down her lines of defence. 
 
 The bond of union in such councils — the constitution, 
 if we may so speak, of such general congresses — does not 
 threaten to involve, if a spirit of wisdom and charity be 
 present, any very formidable difficulty. It was moved at 
 the great Exeter meeting, by the Hon. and Rev. Baptist 
 Noel, that the meeting had assembled on the grounds fur- 
 nished by truths conmion to all the Evangelistic Churches, 
 especially on that first 2:)rinciple of the Reformation, "the 
 sufficiency and authority of the holy Scriptures as the sole 
 rule of Christian faitli, and the right of private judgment," 
 — that "it recognized as the bond of union the great doc- 
 trines unanimously received by all Evangelical Christians, 
 such as the doctrine of the holy Trinity, of the infinite 
 love of the Father, of the perfect atonement of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, of the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit, of 
 justification by faith alone, and of the necessity of regen- 
 eration to a Christian life and character ; " and, further, that 
 the meeting held "the agreement in these fundamental 
 truths among Evangelical Christians to be so unanimous in 
 substance and spirit as to form a firm foundation for con- 
 cord and union." To somewhat similar effect were the 
 remarks of Dr. Candlish in our Free Assembly, on the 
 bicentenary commemoration of the Assembly of Westmin- 
 ster, — a meeting well suited, we trust, to forward and 
 mature the scheme of general cooperation. Though the 
 committee appointed in reference to the commemoration 
 contemplated, he said, a meeting of churches holding the
 
 492 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 
 
 Westminster standards, they by no means wislied it to be 
 understood that they included in their design no other 
 churches. Were it of a character so restricted, some of 
 their best friends would be excluded,- — such a body, for 
 instance, as the Wesleyan Methodists. Their scheme em- 
 braced, he repeated, the Avhole Evangelistic Churches of 
 Christendom. 
 
 As forming the true pale of these churches, we recog- 
 nize just two barriers. There are two walls, if we may so 
 si^eak, which shut in the Evangelistic bodies on opposite 
 sides from all those churches with which they must not and 
 cannot associate. The one, where Christianity abuts on the 
 antagonist, superstition, is the Avail of baptismal regenera- 
 tion ; the other, where Christianity abuts on the antagonist 
 infidelity, is -the wall of Christ's mere humanity. These are 
 impassable barriers. We cannot scale the rampart above ; 
 we cannot ford the moat below ; we cannot join hands with 
 the parties that lie entrenched behind. Docs the Socinian 
 and the Unitarian long for union on the one hand? — then 
 let them unite with their proper congener the Deist. Does 
 the High Churchman and the Puseyite long for union on 
 the other? — then let them unite with their proper con- 
 gener the Roman Catholic. Between these and the Evan- 
 gelistic Churches there can be no union. From the one 
 wall there stretches away a dolorous region of ice and dark- 
 ness, under the polar night and polar winter of Popery, in 
 which no plant of grace can thrive, or where, if the true 
 seed falls, carried as if by the winds, it produces, amid the 
 chills and tlie gloom, merely a stinted and colorless verdure, 
 that speaks of but the lack of the cheering light and the 
 absence of the genial warmth. From the other wall there 
 spreads an arid and burning waste of fluctuating sand, — 
 tlie howling desert of infidelity, — watered by no refresh- 
 ing rain or by no living spring, and where, if the seed fills, 
 it lies inoperative and dead forever. Of the temperate 
 and well-watered region between, it is one's proper jjart, at 
 a time like the present, to look rather to the spiritual pro-
 
 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 493 
 
 duce than to the phenomena, if we may so speak, of its 
 various climates. All the churches of this zone, in which 
 conversion from sin to God takes place as the legitimate 
 end and object of their ministrations, are to be regarded as 
 sister churches. What, for instance, constitutes the chief 
 bond of union between the Free Church and that body to 
 which Dr. Candlish so directly alluded, — the Wesleyan 
 Methodists ? The fact mainly that, notwithstanding cer- 
 tain doctrinal differences, our common Father recognrzes 
 both bodies, by sending down upon them his Spirit, and 
 thus appropriating in both, through conversion, a seed to 
 Himself God owns Wesleyanism, and therefore we own 
 it. He owns, after a similar manner, the Presbyterianism 
 of Scotland, and therefore Wesleyanism owns it in turn. 
 And this we hold to be a simple and perfectly intelligible 
 bond of union. It is a bond which furnishes us with the 
 principle on which Wesleyanism, and the other Evangelis- 
 tic bodies similarly circumstanced, may well join with us 
 in commemorating the bicentenary of our Westminster 
 Assembly. Our standards are not theirs in every respect; 
 but if they recognize them in the main as great boons to 
 the world, — works through which, by the blessing of God, 
 many conversions have been effected and the beliefs in 
 great truths kept alive, — if they look upon them, in con- 
 nection with the Presbyterianism of Christendom, in the 
 same light in which we look upon the labors of the earlier 
 Methodists in connection with its Methodism, — then most 
 certainly may they join us with all cordiality in our bicen- 
 tenary commemoration. 
 
 The reader will perhaps forgive us should we illustrate 
 our views on this subject by a simple story. We remem- 
 ber telling it once before, in a rather Avidely-circulated 
 periodical; but our object on that occasion was somewhat 
 different from the present, and we addressed a very differ- 
 ent circle of readers. We may jjerhaps be j^ermitled to 
 urge, by way of apology, that if we somewhat exceed the 
 conventional limits of the article-writer of the jiresent day, 
 
 42
 
 49J: UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES, 
 
 we keep fiir within tliose of the article-writer of the clays 
 of Queen Anne, when Whiggisin was at once elaborate and 
 hapjiy in the 'Freeholder^ and Toryism in the Examiner 
 and the Craftsman. 
 
 Need we point out the rationale of the story, or the 
 moral which it caiiies? Willie had quitted the north 
 country a respectable Presbytei-ian, but it was not until 
 after meeting in the south with some pious Baptists that he 
 bad become vitally religious. The peculiarities of Baptist 
 belief had no connection whatever with his conversion; 
 higher and more generally entertained doctrines had been 
 rendered efficient to that end ; butjasisjexLceedingly com- 
 mon in such cases, lie bad closed with the entire theologi- 
 cal code of the men who had been instrumental in the 
 work; and so, to the place which he had left an uncon- 
 verted Presbyterian, lie returned a converted Baptist. 
 Certain it Avas, however, — though until after his death 
 his townsmen failed to apprehend it, — that Willie was 
 better fitted for Christian union with the truly religious 
 poition of them in the later than in the earlier stages of his 
 cai-eer. Willie the Presbyterian was beyond comparison 
 less their Christian brother than Willie the Baptist, maugre 
 cfieir diversity of opinion on one important pouit. And in 
 course of time they all lived to see it. We may add that, 
 of all the many arguments promulgated in fiivor of tolera- 
 tion and Christian union in this northern town, there were 
 none that told M'ith better effect than the arguments fur- 
 nished by the life and death of Willie Watson, the "poor 
 lost lad." 
 
 It is now fifty years since Willie Watson returned, after 
 an absence of nearly a quarter of a century, to his native 
 place, a seaport town in the north of Scotland. He had 
 been employed as a ladies' shoemaker in some of the dis- 
 tricts of the south. No one at home had heard of Willie in 
 the interval; and there was little known regarding him on 
 his return, except tliat, when he had quitted town many 
 years before, he had been a neat-lianded, excellent work-
 
 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 495 
 
 man, and what the eklerly people called a quiet, decent lad. 
 And he was now, though somewhat in the wane of life, a 
 more thorough master of his trade than before. He was 
 quiet and unobtrusive, too, as ever, and a great reader of 
 serious books. And so the better sort of the people were 
 beginning to draw to Willie by a kind of natural sympathy. 
 Some of them had learned to saunter into his workshop in 
 the long evenings, and some had grown bold enough to 
 engage him in serious conversation when they met with him 
 in his solitary walks; when out came the astounding iact, 
 — and, important as it may seem, the simple-minded 
 mechanic had taken no pains to conceal it, — that during 
 his residence in the south country he had left the Kirk 
 and gone over to the Baptists. There was a sudden revul- 
 sion of feeling towards him, and all the people of the town 
 began to speak of Willie Watson as " a poor lost lad." 
 
 The "poor lost lad," however, was unquestionably a very 
 excellent workman ; and as he made neater shoes than 
 anybody else, the ladies of the place could see no great 
 harm in wearing them. He was singularly industrious, too, 
 and indulged in no expense, except when he now and 
 then bought a good book, or a few flower-seeds for his 
 garden. He was, withal, a single man, with only an elderly 
 sister, who lived with him, and himself, to provide for ; 
 and what between the regularity of his gains on the one 
 hand, and the moderation of his desires on the other, 
 Willie, for a person in his sphere of life, was in easy cir- 
 cumstances. It was found that all the children in the 
 neighborhood had taken a wonderful fancy to his shop. 
 He was fond of telling them good little stories out of 
 the Bible, and of explaining to them the prints which he 
 had pasted on the walls. Above all, he was anxiously 
 bent on teaching them to read. Some of their parents 
 were poor, and some of them were careless ; and he saw 
 that, unless they learned their letters from him, there was 
 little chance of their ever learning them at all. Willie, in 
 a small way, and to a very small congregation, was a kind 
 of missionary ; and, what between his stories, and his \nc-
 
 496 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 
 
 tures, and his flowers, and his apples, his labors were won- 
 derfully successful. Never yet was school or church half 
 so delightful to the little men and women of the jilace as 
 the shop of Willie Watson, "the poor lost lad." 
 
 Years of scarcity came on ; taxes were high, and crops 
 not abundant ; and the soldiery abroad, whom the country 
 had employed to fight in the great revolutionary war, had 
 got an appetite at their work, and were consuming a great 
 deal of meat and corn. The price of the bou rose tremen- 
 'dously; and many of the townspeople, who were working 
 for very little, were not in every case secure of their little 
 when the work was done. Willie's small congregation 
 began to find that the times were exceedingly bad. There 
 were no more morning pieces among them, and the por- 
 ridge was always less than enough. It was observed, 
 however, that, in the midst of their distresses, Willie got 
 in a large stock of meal, and that his sister had begun to 
 bake as if she were making ready for a wedding. The 
 children were wonderfully interested in the work, and 
 watched it to tlie end, — when lo ! to their great and 
 joyous surprise, Willie began and divided the whole baking 
 amongst them. Every member of his congregation got a 
 cake. There were some who had little brothers and sisters 
 at home who got two ; and from that day forward, till 
 times got better, none of Willie's young people lacked 
 their morning piece. The neighbors marvelled at Willie. 
 To be sure, much of his goodness was a kind of natu- 
 ral goodness ; but certain it was, that, independently of 
 what it did, it took an inexplicable delight in the Bible 
 and in religious meditation ; and all agreed that there was 
 something strangely puzzling in the character of "the poor 
 lost lad." 
 
 We have alluded to Willie's garden. Never was there 
 a little bit of ground better occupied. It looked like a 
 piece of rich needlework. He had got wonderful flowers, 
 too, — flesh-colored carnations streaked with red, and i-oses 
 of a rich, golden yellow. Even the commoner varieties — 
 auriculas and anemones, and the party-colored polyanthus
 
 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 4^7 
 
 — grew better with Willie than with anybody else. A 
 Dut'chman might have envied him his tulips, as they stood, 
 row above row, on their elevated beds, like so many soldiers 
 on a redoubt ; and there was one mild, dropping season in 
 which two of these beautiful flowers, each perfect in its 
 kind, and of different colors, too, sprung apparently from 
 the same stem. The neighbors talked of them as they 
 would have talked of the Siamese twins ; but Willie, though 
 it lessened the wonder, was at pains to show them that the 
 flowers sprung from diflTerent roots, and that what seemed 
 their common stem was in reality but a green, hollow 
 sheath, formed by one of the leaves. Proud as Willie was 
 of his flowers, — and, with all his humility, he could not 
 help being somewhat proud of them, — he was yet consci- 
 entiously determined to have no miracle among them, 
 unless, indeed, the miracle should chance to be a true one. 
 It was no fault of Willie's that all his neighbors had not 
 as fine gardens as himself. He gave them slips of his best 
 flowers — flesh-colored carnation, yelloAv rose, and all. He 
 graflfed their trees for them, too, and taught them the exact 
 time for raising their tulip-roots, and the best mode of jire- 
 serving them. Nay, more than all this, he devoted whole 
 hours at times to give the finishing touches to their jjar- 
 terres and borders, just in the way a drawing-master hays 
 in the last shadings and imparts the finer touches to the 
 landscapes of a favorite pupil. All seemed impressed with 
 the unselfish kindliness of his disposition ; and all agreed 
 'that there could not be a warmer-hearted man or a more 
 obliging neighbor than Willie Watson, "the j^oor lost lad." 
 Everything earthly must have its last day. Willie was 
 rather an elderly than an old man, and the childlike sim- 
 plicity of his tastes and habits made people think of him 
 as younger than he really was. But his constitution, never 
 a strong one, was gradually failing ; he lost strength and 
 appetite ; and at length there came a morning on which he 
 could no longer open his shop. He continued to creep out 
 at noon, however, for a few days after, to enjoy himself 
 
 42*
 
 498 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 
 
 nmong bis flowers, with only tlie Bible for his companion; 
 but in a few days more he had declined so much lo\yer, 
 that the effort proved too much for him, and he took to 
 his bed. The neighbors came flocking in. All had begun 
 to take an interest in poor Willie ; and now they had 
 learned that he was dying, and the feeling had deepened 
 immensely with the intelligence. They found him lying 
 in his neat little room, with a table, bearing the one beloved 
 volume, drawn in beside his bed. He was the same quiet, 
 placid ci-eature he had ever been, — grateful for the slight- 
 est kindness, and Avith a heart full of love for all, — full to 
 overflowing. He said nothing of the Kirk, and nothing 
 of the Baptists ; but earnestly did he urge on his visitors 
 the one master truth of revelation. O, to be secure of 
 an interest in Christ ! There was nothing else, he assured 
 them, that would stand them in the least stead, when, like 
 him, they came to die. As for himself, he had not a single 
 anxiety. God, for Christ's sake, had been kind to him 
 during all the long time he had been in the world ; and 
 He Avas now kindly calling him out of it. Whatever He 
 did to him was good, and for his good ; and Avhy, then, 
 should he be anxious or afraid ? The hearts of Willie's 
 visitors were touched, and they could no longer speak or 
 think of him as "the poor lost lad." 
 
 A few short Aveeks Avent by, and Willie had gone the 
 Avay of all flesh. There was silence in his shop ; and his 
 flowers opened their breasts to the sun, and bent their 
 heads to the bee and the butterfly, Avith no one to take- 
 note of their beauty, or to sympathize in the delight of 
 the little Avinged creatures that seemed so happy among 
 them. There Avas many a Avistful eye cast at the closed 
 door and melancholy shutters, by the members of Willie's 
 congregation ; and they could all point out his grave.
 
 APPENDIX 
 
 The Free Church of Scotland originated in a straggle for spiritual 
 independence Its constituent members refused to recognize the right of 
 civil courts to supervise its spiritual sentences. The Court of Session in 
 Scotland decided that, as the church was supported by the state, it was 
 under the jurisdiction of the state, in spiritual as well as temporal con- 
 cerns. The courts of appeal in England confirmed this decision, after 
 long and patient deliberation. The advocates of spiritual independence 
 found themselves, therefore, shut up to one of two alternatives : either to 
 bow to the decision and yield to the authority of the state, or to sever 
 themselves from the Established Church at the sacrifice of their stipends 
 and parsonages and houses of worship. They did not hesitate ; and their 
 exodus in a body from the General Assembly, and the organization of a 
 new churcli, filled all Scotland with wonder or admiration. 
 
 They exulted in having attained spiritual freedom, though at great cost, 
 and supposed tliat, by the sacrifice of support from the state, they were 
 released from its jurisdiction. But their freedom was subjected to new 
 perils. The Court of Session again laid claim to the right of supervision 
 over the spiritual discipline of the Free Church. The following statement 
 of the Cardros'^ case, which has given rise to a new struggle between the 
 Free Church and the civil courts, is taken from the Appendix to the Eng- 
 lish edition of this volume : — 
 
 "Mr. M'MiUan, while Free Church minister of Cardross, was, under
 
 500 APPENDIX. 
 
 two separate counts, charged by the Presbytery of Dumbarton, of which 
 he was a member, witli drunkenness, or with being ' the worjc of drink ; ' 
 and also, under a tliird count, of immodest conduct towards a married 
 female, with certain aggravations. The Presbytery, after hearing evi- 
 dence, found, by a majority, the first count in the libel not proven ; the 
 second count, by a majority, proven, with the exception of indistinctness 
 of articulation ; and with respect to the third count, they set aside the 
 aggravating circumstances, and by a majority found a pai't of it proven. 
 
 " Against this judgment Mr. M'Millan appealed to the Synod, the next 
 highest court, who, after hearing parties, unanimously discharged the 
 first count of the libel, and by a majority found the second and third 
 counts not proven. 
 
 " An appeal against this decision was taken by certain members of the 
 Synod, and the matter accordingly came before the General Assembly, 
 the supreme court of the church. After the case had been debated at 
 great length on both sides, the General Assembly, on the motion of 
 Dr. Candlish, seconded by George Dalziel, Esq., W. S., by a large major- 
 ity delivered the following judgment ' That on the first count of the 
 minor proposition of the libel, the Assembly allow the judgment of the 
 Synod to stand ; on the second count of the minor proposition of the libel, 
 sustain the dissent and complaint and appeal, reverse the judgment of the 
 Synod, and afiirm the judgment of the Presbytery finding the charge in 
 said count proven ; and on the third count of the minor proposition of 
 libel, sustain the dissent and complaint, reverse the judgment of the Synod, 
 and find the whole of the charge in said count, as framed originally in the 
 libel, proven.' 
 
 " In consequence of this decision, Mr. M'Millan was suspended sine die 
 from the office of the holy ministry, and the pastoral tie between him and 
 the congregation of Cardross was dissolved. 
 
 " Mr. M'Millan hereupon raised an action in the civil court to prohibit
 
 APPENDIX. 501 
 
 the General Assembly from carrying out their sentence ; and on an inter- 
 dict being served upon that body, he was cited to appear at their bar to 
 answer for his conduct. Having appeared at the time appointed, and ad- 
 mitted that he had raised the action in question, the Assembly at once 
 unanimously passed sentence of deposition upon him. Mr. M'Millan now 
 raised other two actions in the civil court against the General Assembly, 
 and individual members of it, for a reduction of their sentences, and claim- 
 ing damages." 
 
 In these suits the Free Church at first refused to appear as a party, put- 
 ting in the pleas that in spiritual matters it is independent of civil jurisdic- 
 tion ; and that by the Constitution of the Church it is made a duty to 
 depose from tlie ministry, by a summary process, any clergyman who 
 applies to the civil court for redress against its discipline. 
 
 These pleas were overruled by Lord Jerviswoode, of the Court of Ses- 
 sion, and the Free Church was enjoined to produce its Constitution in 
 court, that the court might decide whether in this act of discipline it had 
 conformed to the Constitution. In announcing this decision, the learned 
 judge virtually denied the distinctions between things spiritual and things 
 civil, and between the church as under the authority of Clirist and an 
 association of individuals formed by mutual consent. He distinctly 
 claimed that tlie Free Church in its dealings with its members is amena- 
 ble to the civil courts, like any voluntary association ; and that even in 
 cases of suspension or deposition for spiritual offences. The committee 
 of the Free Church, though denying utterly the authority of the court, 
 thought it expedient to yield to the decision, so far at least as to submit 
 the Constitution of the Church to its inspection. 
 
 Here the matter rests for the present ; but, as may readily be seen, the 
 gravest issues are involved. If the court overrules the sentences of the 
 church, it will virtually restore Mr. M'Millan to the ministry from wiiich 
 he has been deposed, and reinstate him in the pastoral connection which
 
 502 APPENDIX. 
 
 has been dissolved. In short, it will nullify the spiritual power of the 
 church, and make it completely subordinate to the state. All other 
 churches will be shorn of independence by the same decision, and the 
 most odious form of state absolutism will be asserted. A struggle must en- 
 sue in Scotland which will convulse its social order, and array the spirit- 
 ual forces in solid phalanx against the civil power ; for the spiritual freedom 
 won by the Reformation will not be surrendered by those who have been 
 taught by their own history, no less than by the Bible, to give unto Cae- 
 sar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. 
 
 The previous paragraphs were written more than two years ago. Since 
 that time the Court of Session, with a full bench, has dismissed the 
 appeal of Mr. M'Millan, on certain technical grounds, but without renounc- 
 ing the jurisdiction claimed by Judge Jervisvvoode. Mr. M'Millan, with 
 a pertinacity worthy of a better cause, has commenced suits against the 
 Moderator of the Assembly which deposed him, and many of its prominent 
 members ; but none of them have come to trial, and the spiritual authority 
 of the Free Church is, therefore, still held in suspense. 
 
 
 /
 
 530 BROAD'WAY, NEW TOKK, 
 
 October, 1S80. 
 
 NEW BOOKS 
 
 AND NEW EDITIONS OF IMPORTANT BOOKS, 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 ROBERT CARTER & BROTHERS. 
 
 *j(i* Any Book in this Catalogue, not too larr/e to go by mail, will be sent postage 
 prepaid, on receipt of the price. 
 
 The End of a Coil. A Story. By the author of the " Wide Wide 
 World." 717 pp. §1.75. 
 
 My Desire. A Tale. By the author of the " Wide Wide World." 
 
 $1.75. 
 
 Christie's Old Orgran, Saved at Sea, and Little Faith. 
 
 In one volume. -ILOO. 
 
 Christ and His Relig^ion. By Rev. John Reid, author of 
 " Voices of the Soul," &c. $1.50. 
 
 The Sun, Moon, and Stars. By Agnes Gilberne. 'Uistrated. 
 12mo. $1.50. 
 
 The Gentle Heart. By Rev. Alex. Macleod, D.D., author of 
 " Wonderful Lamp," &c. $1.25. 
 
 Tlie Cup of Consolation ; or. Bright Messages for the Siok- 
 Bed. $1.25. 
 
 In ChristO. By J. R. Macduff, D.D. 
 
 ''^^aniily Prayers. By J. Oswald Dykes, D.D. 
 
 Voices of Hope and Gladness. By Ray Palmer, D.D $1.50. 
 
 Modern Scottish Pulpit. Sermons by Scottish Ministers. 
 8vo. §1.50. 
 
 * Murdock's Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History. A cheap 
 
 edition. Three volumes in one. l,4til pp. $3.00.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Nora Crena. By L. T. Meade. $1.25. 
 
 Andrew Harvey's Wife. By L. T. Meade. $1.25. 
 
 * Pool's Annotations. 3 vols. Royal 8vo. 3,077 pages. In cloth. 
 
 Price, .$7.50. (Half the former price.) 
 
 "Pool's Annotations are sound, clear, and sensible; and, taking for all in all, I 
 place bim at the bead of English commentators on the whole Bible. " — Rev. J. C. liijle. 
 
 * MatthcAV Henry's Commentary on the Bible. 6 vols., 
 
 quarto. (Sheep, -$20 00.) Cloth, $15.00. Another edition in 9 vols., 
 octavo. Cloth, .$20.00. 
 
 Eev. C. H. Spurgeon says: "First among the mighty for general usefulness we 
 are bound to mention the man whose name is a household word,— Matthew Henry. 
 He is most pious and pitliy, sound and sensible, suggestive and sober, terse and 
 trustworthy. ... I venture to say that no better investment can be made by a 
 minister than that peerless exposition." 
 
 * I>r. McCo.sb's Works. New and neat edition (reduced from 
 
 $15.00). 5 vols., 8vo., uniform, $10.00. Comprising: — 
 
 1. Divine Goveknment. 3. The Intuitions of the Mind. 
 
 2. Typical Forms. 4. Defence of Fundamental Truth. 
 
 5. The Scottish Piiilosopht. 
 
 Any volume sold separatt'l/j at $2.00. 
 
 " Thousands of earnest, thoughtful men have found treasures of argument, illus- 
 tration, and learning in these pages, with which tlieir minds and hearts have been 
 enriched and fortified for better work and wider influences." — N. Y. Observer. 
 
 Dr. McCosii's Logic. 12mo $1.50 
 
 Christianity and Positivism. 12mo . . 175 
 
 * Dr. Merle D'Aubigrne's History. 13 vols., uniform f 12.50, 
 
 viz. : — 
 
 * History of the Keformation in the Sixteenth Century. 
 
 5 vols. Brown cloth. In a box. $4.50. 
 
 w History of the Keformation in the Time of Calvin 8 vols. 
 Brown cloth. In a box. Reduced from $16.00 to $8.00. 
 
 " The work is now complete ; and these later volumes, together with the original 
 five, form a library relating; to the Reformation of incalculable value and of intense 
 interest. The pen of this master of history gave a charm to every thing that he 
 touched. — N. Y. Observer.
 
 ROBERT CARTER &- BROTHERS. 3 
 
 Ouide to Family Devotion. By the Rev. Alexander Fletcher, 
 D.D. Royal quarto, with 10 steel plates (half morocco, §7.50; Tur- 
 key morocco, $12.00), cloth, gilt, and gilt edges, .'55.00. 
 
 " The more we look over the volume the more we admire it, and the more 
 heartily feel to commend it to families and devout Christians. It is emi>hatically a 
 book of devotion, from the standpoint of an intelligent, broad-minded Christian 
 minister, who has here expressed many of the deepest emotions and wants of tlie 
 Boul. The selections of Scripture and the hymns are all admirably adapted to in- 
 crease devotion ; and the prayers are such as can but aid the suppliant, even when 
 not uttered from his precise standpoint, and are especially valuable to many heads 
 of families who tind it difficult to frame words for themselves in conducting family 
 worship." — Journal and Messenger. 
 
 The A. L. O. E. Library. In 55 vols., 18mo, in a neat wooden 
 case, $40.00. 
 
 " All these stories have the charm and pure Christian character which have 
 made the name of A. L. O. E. dear to thousands of homes" — LiUkeran. 
 
 " The writings of this author have become a standard, and the mystic imprint, 
 A. L. O. E., is ample assurance that the truth of the Gosjjel is beneath." — 
 Episcopalian. 
 
 JBlekersteth (Kev. E. H.). Yesterday, To-day, and Forever. 
 A Poem. Pocket edition, .50 ; 16mo, $1.00 ; 12mo, $1.50. 
 
 "If any poem is destined to endure in the com panionshiji of Milton's hitherto 
 matchless epic, we believe it will be 'Yesterday, To-day, and Forever.' " — Lor 
 don Globe. 
 
 Butler (Rev. William Archer). Sermons. 2 vols., .'J2.50, 
 Lectures on Ancient Philosophy. 2 vols., §2.50. 
 
 " A few weeks ago we spoke of the reprinting, by Carter & Brothers, of the Ser- 
 mons of Archer Butler, a body of preaching so strong and massive as to be really 
 wonderful. The ' Lectures on Ancient Philosophy' that are now added, were de- 
 livered at the University of Dublin, about the year 1840, when the author was 
 scarcely thirty years old." — Watchman. 
 
 The Book and Its Story. 12mo. 81 50. 
 
 Fresh Leaves from the Book and Its Story. 12mo. 
 .^1.50. 
 
 " Let any one who is inclined to think the bare Scriptures ' dry ' reading, i)eruse 
 them in connection with a volume like this, and they will be clothed to him with a 
 new life. He will learn how the separate books of the Bible were, as it were, built 
 into one another, and made to form a glorious whole : he will read intelligently 
 and with deep interest." — Keystone.
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY 
 
 Boiiar (Horatius, D.D.). llj-mus of Faith and Hope. 3 vols., 
 
 lyiiio. S2.2o. 
 
 Bible Tliouglits and Themes. 6 vols. 12mo, viz. : — 
 
 Genesis $2 UO Acrs, &c §2.00 
 
 Old Testament . . . 2.U0 Lesseu Epistles . . . 2.00 
 Gosi'ELs 2.00 Hevelatio.v 2 00 
 
 "With 110 atteiniit at exposition, except what is found in comparing Scripture 
 ■with .Scripture, ami chawing illustrations anil means of iuipresfiing rich gospel 
 truth from almost every source, the author proceeds with theme upon theme, gi\f- 
 ing floods of eillfying and comforling hght from beginning to end. It is a good 
 book for the private Christian to have on his table for frequent use, and ministers 
 will often tind iu it that which will be suggestive and useful.' — CUrktiau In- 
 stnictor. 
 
 Way of Peace . . $0.50 The Rent Veil $125 
 
 Way of Holiness . . .00 My Old Letters .... 2.00 
 Night of Wei:ping . .50 Hyjuns of the Nativity, gilt, 1.00 
 Morning of Joy . . .60 The Christ of God . . . 1.25 
 
 .•"OLLOW THE Lamb . . .40 Truth and Error 60 
 
 The Everlasting Righteousness .... $0.60 
 
 Chalmers (Thomas, D.D.). Sermons. 2 vols, in one. $3.00. 
 
 Cowper (Wm.). The Task. Illustrated by Birket Foster. $3.50. 
 
 Cuyler (Rev. T. L.). 
 
 Pointed Papers $1.50 
 
 Thought Hives 1.50 
 
 Ejifty Crib 1.00 
 
 '• Dr. Cuyler holds steadily the position which he reached years ago, as the best 
 ■writer of pointed, racy, religious articles in our country." — Presbyterian. 
 
 Dick (John, D.D".). Lectures on Theology. 8vo. $3.00. 
 
 " It is, as a whole, superior to any other system of theology iu our language." ' 
 Christian Journal. 
 
 Dickson (Rev. Alexander, D.D.). 
 
 All About Jesus $2.00 
 
 Beauty for Ashes 2.00 
 
 "His book is a ' bundle of myrrh,' and will be specially enjoyed by those who 
 are in trouble." — Rev. Dr. IV. M. Taylor. 
 
 " Luscious as a honeycomb with sweetness drawn from God's word " — liev, 
 Ih: Cuyler.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 MAR 9 73 
 
 INTERLIBRARY 
 
 FEB 2 3 1973 
 
 THREE WEEKS FROM DATE 
 
 Form L9-32m-8,'58(5876s4)444
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 AA 000 995 257 3