speculations began but yesterday; that our popular struggles have been struggles for the right of worshiping 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 principles of civil liberty was merely a sort of chanceconsequence 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 relative, at a period when your judgment was comparatively uninformed, has not had the effect 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 countrymen 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 knowledge of the scriptures; aged men who sat under his ministry have assured me, that in hurrying over the New Testament, he had missed the doctrine of the atonement. Great as an author and a man of genius,-great in his enduring labours 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 re-enactment to so great a statesman and so ingenious a writer as Bolingbroke ;-nor yet from its having received its full and practical efficiency from so masterly a historian, and so thorough a judge of human affairs as Robertson;-nor yet, my lord, from the new vigour which it has received from the decision of so profound a philosopher, and so accomplished an orator as Brougham."

Roused by his labours, even while yet unaware of the success of his first effort in defence of just principles of ecclesiastical polity, Mr. Miller had begun a second pamphlet. About the year 1820 a remarkable case of intrusion had occurred in a neighbouring parish. Lapse of time had rendered the people indifferent or

forgetful of the violence that had been done to their Christian rights, and probably, like his neighbours, Mr. Miller had not hitherto thought much over the matter; but Lethendy, Marnock, and Auchterarder had now thoroughly awakened the more earnest portion of the membership of the Scottish Church. Mr. Miller's zeal was at white heat, and on a Saturday evening he set out for the house of a friend, that he might attend the deserted church on the following Sabbath, to glean from actual observation the materials of a truthful description, which, he trusted, would tell in the controversy. That description Mr. Miller has given entire in his "Schools and Schoolmasters," nor shall we mutilate the passage:

"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 influence, the light of Reformation had been introduced into this remote corner, at a period when all the neighbouring districts were enveloped in the original darkness. In a later age it had been honoured by the fines and proscriptions of Charles II.; and its minister, one of those men of God whose names still live in the memory of the country, and whose biography occupies no small space in the recorded history of her 'worthies-had rendered himself 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 sunshine, 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

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their summits; the hills of the middle region were feathered with wood; a forest of mingled oaks and larches, which still blended the tender softness of spring with 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 magnificent gateway of rock. But the little groups which I encountered at every turning of the path, as they journeyed with all the sober, well-marked decency of a Scottish Sabbath morning, towards the church of a neighbouring parish, interested me more than even the scenery. The clan which inhabited this part of the country had borne a well-marked character in Scottish story. 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 Huntly. It fought the battles of Protestantism in Germany, under Gustavus Adolphus. It covered the retreat of the English 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 indication that the original characteristics survived in their full strength; and it was a strength that inspired confidence, not fear. There were grey-haired, patriarchal-looking men 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 with the object of the journey, in the appearance 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 has lately sprung up in the parish, and these formed part of the congregation. 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 buryingground, thickly sprinkled with graves and tombstones, 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 away half an hour in sauntering among the stones, and deciphering the in

scriptions. I could trace in the rude monuments of this retired little spot a brief but impressive history of the district. The older tablets, grey and shaggy with the mosses and lichens of three centuries, bear, in their uncouth semblances of the unwieldy battle-axe and doublehanded sword of ancient warfare, the meet and appropriate symbols of the earlier time. But the more modern testify to the introduction of a humanizing influence. They speak of a life after death in the 'holy texts' described by the 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 feared 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.MAN.OF.GOD.AND. FAITHFVL. MINISTER.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 remarkable words :-'THIS.STONE.SHALL. BEAR. WIT

NESS. AGAINST.THE. PARISHIONERS.OF.

IF.THEY.BRING. ANE. UNGODLY. MINISTER.IN.HERE.

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* *

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 minister fattens on his hire, useless and contented!

"I entered the church, for the clergyman had just gone in. There were from eight 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' in the parish, composed the entire congregation. I wrapped 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 reached the middle of his discourse, which he read in

an unimpassioned monotonous tone, nearly one-half his skeleton congregation had fallen asleep, and the drowsy listless expression of the others 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 whom 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 would have been marvellous indeed, if writing like this, and the appearance of such an ally at so critical a juncture, had not created a sensation. The non-intrusion party powerful in the church courts; victorious over the moderates in every General Assembly; proudly elate with its triumphant position, had yet one sad drawback to its popularity;-it was but feebly supported by the press of Scotland. Whig journalists could not aid a movement which threatened to overthrow that peculiar subordination of the church to the state, with which the traditions of their party had immemorially associated a regulated liberty. It was also somewhat unfortunate, and contributed not a little to a misconception of the real aims of the non-intrusionists, that many occupying advanced positions in the movement-party of the church, had,