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Andrews to Edinburgh. In Edinburgh, he was surrounded with a group of coadjutors worthy of himself, of whom he was the central figure. The "voluntary controversy,” the elements of which had been gathering for nearly half a century, now burst forth over Scotland with the fury of a tornado. Soon the leading men, alike of the Establishment and Dissent; were drawn into its vortex. A spirit of the most rigorous inquiry and investigation was abroad, searching, as with a lighted candle, the corruptions, real or supposed, of the Scottish Church. In the pictures which the leading voluntary agitators drew of the Kirk of Scotland, her sons scorned to recognize their mother; denouncing their representations as caricatures, but conscious of the power they wielded over the popular mind. Dr. Chalmers,―irritated that the popular feeling threatened to leave the evangelical party

"Like some gallant bark,

Well built and tall, which angry tides have left
To rot and moulder in the winds and rains
Of heaven,"

-exclaimed, "The Voluntaries have taken the platform, we must follow them there." They did follow them. The voluntary controversy merged in the non-intrusion controversy. The leaders of the evangelical section of the Scottish Church carried into her courts the sentiments to which they had given utterance from the

platform. These sentiments, acted out, speedily brought them into conflict with the Court of Session and the Imperial Parliament. It was in the crisis of the struggle the quondam stone-cutter's voice was first heard as a controvertist. A sleepless night passed by Mr. Miller, after learning the decision of the House of Lords in the Auchterarder case, resulted in "A Letter from one of the Scotch people to the Right Hon. Lord Brougham." This letter was despatched from Cromarty, so soon as finished, to the manager of the Commercial Bank, Mr. Robert Paul, a gentleman who had shown Mr. Miller no small kindness. Mr. Paul carried the pamphlet to his minister, then the Rev. Mr. Candlish of St. George's. On perusing it in manuscript, the keen eye of the leader of the Free Church detected in its writer the man his party had been looking out for to edit their contemplated organ. At once, in the extent of its popularity, and in the circles into which it found its way, this first brochure was a successful hit. It was read by most of the members of the ministry of the day, including the late Lord Melbourne. Daniel O'Connell enjoyed its racy English, and Mr. Gladstone noticed it with approval in that elaborate work on "Church Principles," which Lord Macaulay subjected to such a trenchant criticism.

Thus does the Cromarty-bank clerk address the ex-Lord Chancellor of England:

"With many thousands of my countrymen, I have waited in deep anxiety for your lordship's opinion on the Auchterarder case. Aware that what may seem clear as a matter of right, may be yet exceedingly doubtful as a question 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 favour, 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 you 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, for I understate the case, that you held them unworthy of being emancipated from the thraldom of a degrading law,-the remnant of a barbarous code, which conveys them over by thousands and miles square, to the charge of patronage-courting clergymen, practically unacquainted with the religion they profess to teach. Surely the people of Scotland are not so changed, but that they know at least as much of the doctrines 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 said that we had better rest contented with the existing statutes, as interpreted by your lordship, than involve ourselves in the dangers and difficul ties of a new enactment! Nay, more wonderful still! all your sym

pathies on the occasion seemed to have been reserved 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 nave 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 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 gnidance 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 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 re-enactment to so great a statesman and so ingenious a writer as Bolingbroke ;-nor yet from its having received its full

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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

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