ment can be made to fall on the Presbytery of Glasgow, and the Church in general, so far as she has wronged any. Suppose it had been intended to make almost a total clearance of the Church, and appoint assistants and successors upon system, every twenty years, and the first clearance had taken place rather before 1840; it would have been a novel sight to see how they all enjoyed their hundred pounds a year, kept from them all for fully five years. Suppose there could have been objections raised, and delay effected, by throwing the whole into Court by an action of multiplepoinding, which the agents and advocates could delay for years, till, like the cats and the cheese, the whole had almost have been devoured. We should have liked to see how Principal Macfarlan, Norman Macleod, Robert Buchannan, Lewis Rose, and others, would have looked at the end of that period. Suppose that the Residuaries and successors, full and fair, had got upon these gentlemen while the presbytery house was crowded with eager listeners and pigeon carriers, and have cracked their jokes, observing how dark Norman Macleod's countenance appeared, how he hung his nether-lip, how holed, and ragged, and clouted his clothes had become. Had they observed how the Principal's port and bearing had changed, how his crest had fallen, how he had lost that self command of which he so much boasted; how Robert Buchannan had become less pert; how his wit had gone, how he had not a stone to cast at a dog; how Lewis Rose had lost his forwardness; how Dr Black had been reduced to a shadow, how he never had a brief remark to make now; how Dr Leishman and the Forty had all become as dead men; how William Proudfoot of Strathaven had lost all his smirks and smiles; how Dr Muir of Edinburgh, and his 260 followers had quelled. No pilgrimages now to Strathbogie! Dr Muir made now no attempts to keep Mr Smith out of the Tolbooth. Mr Smith then would have a much severer tirade, so that none would provoke him with impunity. Dr Simpson and Dr Bennie would now be as quiet as lambs. Dr Dobie's property, like too many others, has passed out of the family. Mr Muir, Gartferry; Mr Gray, Auchengeich; Dr Jeffray, Baads; Mr King, Woodneuck; John Colquhoun, Garnqueen; Mr Scott, Auchinloch; and Miss Calder, Daviston; has still hers, soon to pass to Jean Carse, who did not, when in Adam's Wells, care for the connexion. Does Mrs Sharp ever visit Adam's Wells? Some of these men should take the management of Chryston Chapel, and not allow Mr Young to traffic in seat-rents, else the Presbytery will again be at him. Alexander Baxter, John Cullen, Alexander Buchannan, Thomas Downie, David Buchannan, John Reid, Alexander Baird, John Robertson,

and Matthew Stark, tailor, Chryston, and many more, can surely be got to deliver Mr Young from as inhuman torture, which will be inflicted upon him by the Presbytery, as was inflicted upon Walter, Earl of Athol, and his accomplices, for murdering James I. in the Black-Friars Monastery at Perth, in 1437. Begg and Guthrie were always upon the platform; Gordon, Bruce, and Buchannan made little noise; Buchannan, and Paterson, Glasgow, and even Dr Macfarlan, Greenock, were in the front of the fray. Henderson, Lorimer, and Forbes, followed in the train. Long did they threaten to throw the stipends to the winds, but when the experiment was tried, instead of the shout of victory, the wailing of misery arose. Disappointment and dismay were to be beheld in every countenance. The Church, which before was marching on to consummate perfection to the Third Reformation, and to the extermination of Moderatism,-the Church, which Lord Moncrieff, so late as 1836, thus eulogized: We all hold our Establishment to be the most glorious edifice that was ever reared by the wisdom of man. And though his own party had the complete management of that Church, in the short space of seven years it was abandoned by himself and his whole family, at least by two of his sons, the one a minister, and the other an advocate and elder. She was held at that time to be fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners; and yet in seven short years of prosperity, while no other hands had touched the helm, she became, in the graphic language of Chalmers, a moral nuisance that ought to be swept from the face of the country; and, in the bolder language of Macdonald of Ferintosh, A God dishonouring, a Christ denying, and soul destroying institution. An abomination which no true Christian can touch or approach, without carrying away pollution, and being guilty of a heinous sin. Dr Macfarlan states to the Duke of Sutherland, that he was not prepared to justify every strong expression used by his friends, lay and clerical, in the fervour of public speaking; but bold as the position may appear, I take it upon me to say, for the Free Church of Scotland, that our object is not the overthrow of the Establishment. We hold the Establishment principle as strongly as when we were ministers of the Establishment. We hold that the Church of Scotland has been robbed of its liberties. We propose to go annually to Parliament with the Claim of Rights in our hand, and demand their restoration. And if the day shall come, when the State shall do justice to Scotland, by inquiring into our claims, and granting us redress, I may not say positively that we shall join the Establishment, but certain I am, that none of the inhabitants of the realm

will hail so blessed an event with greater joy, than the ministers and people of the Free Church, or more cordially enter, if permitted, into communion with their brethren of the Establishment, and they will co-operate with them in every good work. Meanwhile, the last General Assembly of the Established Church, among other extraordinary proceedings, passed an act prohibiting ministerial communion with the pastors of other churches, thus preventing, as far as possible, all intercourse in spiritual matters between them and the ministers and the people of the Free Church. Dr Chalmers thus vindicates himself. The reader will at once see why I thought I could at one time tolerate patronage. I now resist it, and though I did at one time zealously advocate the cause of establishments, I now stand opposed to them. The change is not in me, but in the whole system of our Scottish patronage, and in the whole theory and working of our Scottish Establishment. If Mr had leisure for a comprehensive view of the whole argument, he would perceive how possible, and how consistent it is, that one should vindicate the principles of a religious establishment, and yet prefer a Voluntary to an Erastian Church; or how one should, for the sake of a universal Christian education, desiderate an endowment at the hands of the State; and yet, when the State claims, in return, a right of control over the sacred matters of ordination, and discipline, and government, in things spiritual, such an endowment should be regarded as a moral nuisance, and that a church so supported, while at the same time so enthralled, should be swept as a moral nuisance from the face of the country. But though it is competent for our ministers, with that freedom of thought and expression which is the privilege of all, to say of the Scottish Establishment, as now transformed and vitiated, that it is a pernicious institute, which, if not delivered of its recent great corruption, had better be removed from our country altogether; it is not competent for them to attempt this in any other way than by the peaceful instrumentality of reason and scripture, brought to bear on the understandings of men. It is not for them to lift either the hand of violence against the institutions of their country, or the tongue of abuse against the characters, whether of individuals or of bodies of men. Their weapons are not carnal, but spiritual. Their proper business is directly to do their own work, and they are not called upon to sit in judgment upon others. And it delights me to observe, that there is a rapid convergency towards this, as the settled and general habit of the Free Church. Dr Robert Lee, Old Greyfriars, has been attempting to show that Erastus did not teach the doctrines imputed to him. He, and

Bennie, and Barclay, and Stewart, and Stevenson, and others, did not act with good taste, independent of consistency with Scotland's covenanted work of Reformation, or as ministers of the Church of Scotland, when they supported the grant to Maynooth, in such offensive terms that John Hunter said he never heard, and would not sit to hear, such language in the Presbytery of Edinburgh. We praise Dr Lee for his openness, and candour, and liberality, and deeply lament that any minister of the Church of Scotland should have given the most indirect countenance to Popery. The Dumfries and Galloway Standard, in March 1844, noticed his doctorate in too severe terms. The University of St Andrew's have conferred the degree of D.D. on the Rev. Robert Lee, minister of Old Greyfriars Church, Edinburgh, and on the Rev. Thomas Crawford, minister of Glammis. [What moppets are made doctors now-a-days! Lord Byron, at Cambridge, trained a bear for a degree. There is a handsome setting spaniel near by, which we think seriously of taking into training for a doctorate, now that we hear of the success of Mr Robert Lee. One thing is in favour of our spaniel, that he never wrote an Arminian Catechism.] We do not think Dr Lee will go so far as to write an Arminian Catechism. Dr Crichton, in the Advertiser, after stating that the Free Church differs only from the Church on a point of civil law,-that the two churches are divided only on a legal point of discipline and government, adds, they amalgamate with Voluntaries, Baptists, with Arians, and Socinians; they fraternize with American slave-holders, who hold three millions of human beings without learning, without the Bible, without the marriage contract. Without amalgamating with Arians and Socinians, which we cannot credit, they have gone sufficiently far, when they have amalgamated with some of the Voluntaries. If Balmer and Brown hold the same doctrinal opinions taught by Erskine and Fisher, they have been much vilified, and Drs Hay and Marshall, and others, are not blameless. Marshall, with all his severity, we cannot think would have gone so far without cause, but the expressions published in the papers seem not a whit better than those for which the talented Wright of Borthwick was deposed. We would think with Dr Marshall, that the case was not proceeded in regularly, nor brought to a regular issue. Mr Lawson of Selkirk, at a previous Synod, brought forward and supported an overture which did not much credit to some of their heads. The overture was to revise the standards. Did not the researches of geology, he asked them, throw doubt, not on the Mosaic account of the creation, but on the manner of explaining

that account? and might they not, with perfect consistency with Genesis 1st, assume that our globe was inhabited by inferior creatures many ages before the creation of man? Dr Hay of Kinross opposed the overture. According to Mr Lawson's view, nothing would do but a new Confession altogether, and among other things, this Confession was to be drawn up to suit the views of geologists, to whose theories and suppositions there was no end. Dr Balmer referred to the example given by Mr Lawson, as evidence of the necessity of revision, particularly to the period of time employed in the creation, and the exact meaning of the passage. Had God made that a term of communion ? Mr Smart, Leith, said it was alleged that there are some persons chargeable with deviation from the standards, and if the overture be carried to revise, abridge, and alter our standards, it will have the effect of covering these deviations from our standards. Dr John Ritchie, Potterrow Church, never liked the word standard. He did not care what became of the Confession, provided they got a better in its place. It was so covered over with the rust of antiquity, that some people entertained a sort of Popish veneration for it. Yet the Confession of Faith was the common bond of Protestantism among the denominations of this country, and it was regarded by many as a centre point round which the various sections of the Church in this country might yet unite. Dr Young, Perth, was assured they could not abbreviate the Confession of Faith, nor make it more agreeable to the word of God. He was more convinced than he was thirty years ago that the Confession was perfectly agreeable to the Word of God. Dr Brown of Dalkeith said the language in reference to baptism savoured of baptismal regeneration. The six days creation, and the marrying the sister of a deceased wife, which many regarded as unauthorised, called for alteration. 129 voted alter, 84 not. That is a splendid specimen of Voluntary legislative and executive wisdom. Will they ever prove that there were creatures on the globe ages before Adam was made? Will they ever prove that the earth, since it was launched from the Almighty's band by his fiat, did not revolve equably about its axis at the rate of 15 degrees in an hour? The rotation of the earth determines the length of the day. It is quite the same whether we begin the day like the Jews at six afternoon, like us, at twelve midnight, or like astronomers, at twelve noon. By what means will they prove, and the onus probandi lies upon them,-that the Almighty did not make the world in six of these days? He wrote with his own finger that he did so, Exod. xx. 8—11; xxxi. 18; xxxii. 15, 16; xxxiv. 1-8, 28. They have more than the first chapter of