systems; and on the threshold of the catastrophe of the Church of Scotland we pause to ask, what had Chalmers and his coadjutors done that they were doomed to such an alternative? The Church at the period the men ultimately its evangelical leaders became connected themselves with it, was in what may be regarded as the normal condition of an establishment. The majority of its ministers were "at ease in Zion," loving more the comfortable independence a benefice conferred, than the work for which that independence was bestowed. As an illustration of by no means the worst class the Robertsonian policy had given the Church, a Buteshire clergyman, whose acquaintance the late Dr. Jamieson, author of the Scottish Dictionary, made when a probationer, may be given. The young dissenting licentiate had received appointments as a preacher in the parish of this clergyman. Fortunately for Mr. Jamieson, the man, though fully sharing the irreligion, was free from the intolerance of his class. The young preacher had not been many days in the locality, when the parish minister called and intimated, that as there was plenty of room in the manse, it was useless being at the expense of separate apartments; he might therefore just leave his lodgings and live with him. After some further conversation, the clergyman began to make inquiry about Mr. Jamieson's habits of study, and his intentions as to sermon-writing. "Do you," he said

"do you mean to prepare fresh sermons for your people every week?" Jamieson assenting, the veteran mode. rate burst out into a fit of laughter at the simplicity of the young seceder, and narrating his own practice, said

"I have only preached four sermons during all the time I have been here. I deliver them every month. I always take care to change the texts, and I believe, that, with the exception of blind David, not one of my parishioners has found me out.”

In the best days of the Church's history, among her more earnest ministry, diets of visitation, especially in country parishes, were understood to be most powerful instrumentalities for diffusing and elevating the religious knowledge of the peasantry of Scotland. This fox-hunting Buteshire parson had improved upon the ancient system. "I make intimation," said he to Mr. Jamieson, "that the people of a given district are to meet me at a particular public-house, where I have dinner prepared for them. I go gradually round my parish in this way. And I believe," he added in a tone of quiet satire-"I believe the people relish my visitations much better than they are likely to do yours." "This," says Dr. Jamieson in his Autobiography, "was one of the most kindly-hearted men I ever met." And, compared with certain of the moderate clergy of his time, he was indeed quite a model minister. He at least cared for the bodies of his parishioners, and was

not more indifferent to their spiritual weal than to his own. Jamieson's visit to the scene of his labours he deemed quite superfluous; not that he had any jealousy in the matter; he simply believed that the commodity he brought with him was not wanted.

The growth of religious earnestness amongst the people in after years had so multiplied the "blind Davids" throughout the parishes of Scotland, that clergymen of the class to which the Buteshire parson belonged were everywhere found out. The nation would have none of them. The whole aim of the evangelical majority in the General Assembly had been to give effect to the convictions of this class. Already, during the brief period of its ascendancy, it had produced some of the ablest and most earnest men that ever graced the pulpits of an establishment. Not satisfied even with what could be done within the pale of the National Church, or with the ecclesiastical machinery at its command as a State-endowed institution, it had gone forth on a vigorously-aggressive crusade against that mass of irreligion and immorality, which nestles in our midst "without God and without hope in the world.” During the ten years preceding the Disruption, not less than two hundred additional churches had been built for what Dr. Chalmers called the "unexcavated heathen of our country."

Such great things accomplished by the unaided efforts

of the friends of church extension, it might have been supposed would have proved a pledge for the purely religious aims of the movement-party in the Establish ment. But it was not so. All who reasoned after this manner forgot that an establishment may possibly become too much in earnest to be any longer serviceable for the purposes of statesmen. Sir Robert Peel was the Church's friend so long as he expected a substantial quid pro quo for that friendship; but so soon as it was discovered the Scottish Church could no longer be calculated upon as a political engine, the premier proved a very candid friend indeed.

Through life Dr. Chalmers had been haunted with a dread of the spectre of democracy. On him, as on Edmund Burke, the atrocities and excesses of the first French Revolution had exerted a most obnoxious influence. It is scarcely possible now to account for the excess of terror which that event very generally inspired. Even the most robust understandings recoiled with aversion from contemplating the principles of liberty, by reason of the excesses wrought in its name. Once and again throughout his works has Dr. Chalmers depicted, in his own fervidly eloquent diction, the ruin the dreaded triumph of democracy would inevitably inflict upon general society. Alas! it was not democracy that was to deal the most terrible blow to his most cherished schemes. From that body with which politically he

had been through life associated, was the thunderbolt launched that hurled in the dust the dreams of his ardent, his holiest ambition. It was a tory majority in the Court of Session, and a tory ministry in the houses of Parliament, that upset the Revolution-settlement, and sealed with its imprimatur the derelictions of moderatism from the principles the Church had received a heritage from its confessors.

When we look at the roll of illustrious names that at this crisis led the evangelical party, it seems almost marvellous how it was they were even politically vanquished. Not only was there one man towering above the mass of the ministers of the Church, whether moderate or evangelical, at once in native genius and established fame, but there was a legion of younger men whom the "Ten Years' Conflict" had brought upon the scene lieutenants scarcely inferior to their chief as ecclesiastical combatants. The eloquence and influence of Chalmers were supplemented by the subtlety and logical acumen of Candlish, the massive power and surpassing erudition of Cunningham, the strong common sense of Begg, the transcendent pictorial power of Guthrie, the historic lore of Welsh and Hetherington, the character of Gordon, to say nothing of a host little inferior to these foremost men. The moderate party had really no men, with the exception of Dr. Cooke, Robertson of Ell on, and Dr. Robert Lee, capable