most favourable to its success. We remember how he com

plained "that the Scottish Reformation, though uncompromising in its faith and free in its instincts, had no sacred inheritance of traditionary story binding it by beautiful links to the great catholic past;1 and further, as has been too long sadly apparent, had no sympathetic expansiveness for moulding into religious unity classes widely separated in material rank, and in intellectual and artistic culture" (p. 334). And again: "The Scottish Reformation, hardened, as it soon became, into a Calvinistic creed and a Presbyterian ritual, was not destined to penetrate the old historical families of the kingdom, and consequently it has failed to mould the nation-people, barons, and nobles-into a religious unity" (p. 406). We can also remember how, twelve years later, he did not scruple to admit that "there are few wise Presbyterians who do not see weaknesses in their own system from the disuse of Episcopacy (Contemp. Rev. 1872, p. 236). We remember these passages, and we recognise the echoes of a similar tone in the present Lecture-as, for instance, when we read: "If we turn from the administrative and theological aspect of the Church to its internal character-its worship and discipline-it cannot be said that the spectacle is a pleasing one. The Scottish people had unhappily lost the sense, from the Reformation downwards, not only of ecclesiastical beauty, but of ecclesiastical fitness. "THE SCRIPTURES"-the sole authority, be it remembered, which the Reformation had recognised—" CEASED TO BE READ AS AN INTEGRAL PART OF DIVINE SERVICE" (p. 287). (See also Lecture XI., p. 350, and comp. Dr Lee's 'Reform of the Church of Scotland,' who likewise complains that the Lord's Prayer also was objected to, and "universally discarded," p. 13.) Such

1 See below, Appendix, Obligation of Continuity. p. 89.

2 Dr Archibald Scott, though he writes in a highly optimist strain respecting the Established Church, seems almost to admit the same: Presbyterial supervision of ministers is not indeed what it should be." -Lect. XI., p. 345. And so does even Dr MacGregor, Lect. XII., p. 363.

passages speak for themselves; at the same time, it is only just to add that they are not unaccompanied with others, which fairly mention all that can be said in arrest of a judgment altogether unfavourable to the writer's own

cause.

But there were also elements of dissatisfaction of a different kind which could not fail to be present to Dr Tulloch's thoughts, as it fell within the scope of his Lecture to note the first beginnings, and to trace the spread of the process, of disintegration in the body of the Established Church, through the outbreak of Dissent. He does not indeed feel himself called upon to point out (as a previous Lecturer has partly done, see above, p. 7) the NEMESIS that was at work in that disintegration; but I can scarcely doubt it was present to his own mind. It did not indeed require a philosophic insight like his to perceive that the Dissent which he laments was due to the operation of causes which had their natural origin in the Revolution Settlement, made as it was to rest upon "the inclinations of the people," and placing as it did the claims of the spirituality in subjection to the civil power. The first arch-dissenters, such as the Erskines, the leaders of "the Secession," were the champions of "the inclinations of the people" in the matter of patronage (p. 270), only not from the " Moderate," but from their own-the Covenanting-point of view. The second arch-dissenters, such as Gillespie and others of "the Relief," were the champions of the lower against the higher authorities of the Church— of the Presbyteries against the General Assembly (p. 280) -in humble imitation of the grand revolts of the second order of the ministry against the first, which, as "an unsupportable grievance and trouble," had been discarded: while the arch-dissenters of the great Disruption, which followed a century later, represented only too faithfully both those principles at once. They maintained the rights of the inclinations of the people against the civil courts; and they renounced subordination to the superior juris

diction of the General Assembly, as involving an intolerable invasion of their rightful liberty. Yes! The will of man had been substituted for the will of God in regard to the establishment of the Church itself, and it would be strange indeed if consequences had not followed sufficient to show the fatal mistake of that substitution. It puzzles the wise men of this world to understand how the separated Presbyterian bodies, while they differ so little, should disagree so much. But it is in the little producing great results that the providence of God and the operation of His hands are most plainly seen.

Let the reader compare the first sentence of the Preface to the Ordination Services of the Church of England with the fundamental article of the Scotch Revolution Settlement, and it will be manifest to him at once how deep and broad is the chasm which separates the principles upon which the Church Establishments of the two countries have been made to rest.

Of all the many interesting and highly important subjects touched upon by the next (tenth) Lecturer, there is not, I think, so much as one in regard to which the Established Church comes in any way into collision, or even into contact, with our own. The names of the good men who are marshalled before our eyes as distinguished in the various departments of Christian work for their zeal and laboursuch as Principal Baird, Robert Haldane, Andrew Thomson, Dr Duff, and, above all, Thomas Chalmers-are of course not unknown to us. But cast aside, as we had been, like noxious or useless weeds, out of the current of the national life, they cannot be expected to excite in us the full sympathy we could have wished to feel; and while the consequent loss has doubtless been greater upon our side, to some extent at least it must have been experienced upon the other also.

Among the various names which Dr Charteris brings forward for special commendation, is that of Principal Hill. I should be sorry to detract from the eulogy which

is, I can well believe, deservedly passed upon the general merits of his well-known Theological Institutes, as "a noble monument of fairness, clearness, and learning." But I must decline to accept this testimony to its fairness, at least in one important instance, which I felt bound to notice on a previous occasion-I mean the passage (p. 181) in which he claims the authority not only of Hooker, but of "the learned and profound Bishop Stillingfleet," in support of a modified form of the doctrine of indifference on the subject of the constitution of the Christian ministry. What was Hooker's real opinion may be seen above, p. 16, and again below, p. 96. What is to be said of the opinion of Stillingfleet, I have pointed out in 'Outlines of Christian Ministry,' pp. 38 and 279; and more fully in 'Some Remarks on Dr Lightfoot's Essay,' p. 76 et seq.

We can have no temptation to follow Dr Charteris through the details of the conflict which led to and attended the Disruption of 1843. From his point of view (and the same is evidently shared by the next Lecturer, Dr Scott) it would appear that all the principal persons and parties of every kind,-judicial, political, ecclesiastical, —engaged in that conflict, were more or less at fault (see p. 314 et seq., and p. 322). According to Dr Scott, "Most people now look back upon the contendings which led to it with surprise and regret" (p. 321). According to Dr CharterisWhen the struggle came, "the time for wisdom was past and gone on all sides" (p. 314); so that we seem to discern a higher Power at work throughout the strife, confounding the wisdom of the wise in order to bring about some purpose of its own, which, though gradually unfolding, has not yet been manifestly revealed.—Comp. below, p. 85.

For the reason already given in speaking of the tenth Lecture, we have also but little to say of that which follows it. Of course to Presbyterians they will both be full of interest. Dr Scott exhibits, with much breadth and comprehensiveness, the energetic working of the Established Church from the Disruption to the present time;

and it cannot be doubted that the results which he specifies afford much ground for encouragement in comparison with those which have been achieved at any former period. We heartily sympathise with the tribute paid to the noble character and work of Dr Robertson, the indefatigable and single-minded champion of the Endowment Scheme (p. 339); and also to the vast and varied labours and ability of Dr Norman Macleod (p. 331). But shall we be thought hypocritical if we are tempted to take notice of the singularly naïf and apparently unconscious manner in which our Lecturer, in complaining of the treatment which his own fellow-Churchmen received from their Free Church brethren at the time of the Disruption, compares it with that which had been inflicted-it is needless to say by whom-upon our forefathers when they were disestablished in 1690? "In the north, the scenes which had occurred in 1690, and in the first twenty years of the eighteenth century, when the Presbyterian polity was being put in force, were almost literally re-enacted after 1843, when the Church sought simply to perform its duties" (p. 325). Almost literally re-enacted! The simplicity of this attempt to excite sympathy, together with the absence of any thought or recognition of the Nemesis which so plainly appears in the mere statement of the facts, would almost provoke a smile if the subject itself were of a less painful nature. Nor is this the only instance in which a sign of our Lecturer's concentrated "looking upon his own things" alone, is allowed to peep forth. He is sore-not without cause at the unbrotherly language of members of the Disruption against the Church from which they seceded. But when he has himself to speak of the attempts which our forefathers might have felt it their duty to make to recover one small portion of the benefits-viz., capability of election to university professorships-from which, without compensation of any kind, they had been thrust out at the Revolution, he can think of no more compassionate or more gentle phrase than "Episcopalian conspiracies"! (p. 341).