this very design, to keep that great and solemnising fact continually before the minds of His professing people.

These Churches were, all of them, organised communities of professing believers in His name, and it is in that character that they are addressed. The Lord deals in these epistles, not only with the general state of religion among the members of the seven Churches, but very specially with their corporate acts and proceedings. As their Head and Lord, their Divine Overseer and Ruler, He claims and asserts supreme authority over them. He commends the Church of Ephesus for the faithful exercise of discipline in trying and disowning false apostles, while He reproves it for tolerating the deeds of the Nicolaitanes. In a spirit of the same holy jealousy for the purity of His house, He warns both the Church in Pergamos and the Church in Thyatira, to beware of persisting in their criminal connivance at the existence in the midst of them of various forms of error and wickedness, against which the rod of discipline ought to have been firmly and vigorously used. With like zeal for the honour of His cause and the vindication of His truth, He promises His special protection and blessing to the Church in Philadelphia, because, in trying circumstances, it had kept His word, and had not denied His name. And in particular, and in regard to all these Churches, He notes most pointedly the state and measure of their spiritual life, as exhibited by the presence or absence of its corresponding fruits, in works of faith and labours of love.

If He be indeed the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, the authority which He thus claimed and exercised in the beginning of the gospel belongs to Him still. Over backsliding Churches that will not repent and do the first works, that awful threatening impends, "I will come unto thee quickly, and remove thy candlestick out of his place." Upon Churches that have a name that they live, and are dead, and that refuse to watch, and to strengthen the things which remain, and that are ready to die, He "will come as a thief." Churches that are neither cold nor hot He "will spue out of His mouth." And, on the other hand, it is not less true of Churches that have kept the word of His patience, that He will keep them "from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”

Fathers and Brethren, it is unquestionably this immediate responsibility to the Lord Jesus Christ, our great Head, by which, beyond and above all other considerations, our minds ought to be impressed when met, as we now are, in this General Assembly. "The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our King, the Lord is our Lawgiver,-He will save us !"

In this view, what a privilege, what a happiness, what a paramount duty it is, to stand fast in the liberty wherewith He hath made His people free! With a great price purchased we this freedom; but the purchase was worth it all. If we fail to carry out the mind of Christ in exercising the government of that branch of His Church which has been committed to our care, the fault must be our own. Upon the table of this house there lies no statute-book but the Bible. Any subordinate acts or formularies that are of authority among us are simply applications of the doctrines and principles of that supreme standard. We receive them, not in deference to any human authority, but as being, in the judgment of our own conscience, bound upon us by the authority of Christ. So long as such is our judgment regarding

them, they are retained. So soon as we are convinced that that judgment is erroneous, they are altered or annulled. The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the supreme and only law of the Free Church of Scotland. (Applause.)

In saying this, it needs not that I should assure my fathers and brethren how far I am from forgetting that, though we are not exposed to the blinding influence or to the constraining force of any foreign or secular law imposed upon us from without, we are exposed to the false bias which the mind so often receives, in dealing with even the most sacred of the things of God, from its own errors and corruptions. Against these sources of danger to the wisdom and to the uprightness of our proceedings as rulers in the house of God, we cannot be too sedulously or too prayerfully on our guard.

Still, it is a noble distinction and an inestimable blessing to be a Free Church, and to be subject, in dealing with these spiritual things which we are here to handle, to no law but that of our Divine Master, revealed and written in His Word. We are not called upon, nor do we desire, to assume the function of judging other Churches which, in this respect, occupy a position essentially different from our own. To its own Master every Church, like every individual servant of Christ, standeth or falleth, There are Churches, like that of England, and like most of those on the continent of Europe, which have never known what it is to possess freedom, in matters spiritual, from secular control. And the circumstances in which these Churches thus find themselves placed must always be taken into account by every one who would form a candid opinion regarding them.

At the same time, it is surely neither to violate Christian charity, nor to betray a spirit of arrogance, to say that such a state of things is not, and cannot be conducive to the real welfare either of Church or State. Upon the State it lays a responsibility which it is not called upon nor competent to bear-the responsibility of directly or indirectly governing the house of God, From the Church it takes that responsibility a responsibility from which, in God's sight, it can never lawfully be absolved. The mischiefs resulting from such a confounding of things sacred with things civil, are becoming increasingly apparent in the times in which we live, and are already putting forces in motion which, if they be not timeously considered, may breed changes more violent and more extreme than may be consistent with the welfare of either the State or the Church.

As regards that particular Church Establishment whose emoluments and advantages we felt ourselves constrained by the imperative demands of conscience and of Christian duty to surrender seventeen years ago, it is not possible that we can make light of the difference between its position and ours. For us to do this, so long as we retain the principles of the Disruption, were no charity, but only the affectation of charity, which is far more offensive to every honourable mind than even the most unreasonable prejudice or the most foolish anger. (Applause.) Things remaining as they are with them on the one hand, and with us on the other, our very existence must ever stand forth in the face of the world as a public protest against that yoke of bondage in matters spiritual from which we withdrew, and to which the remanent Establishment bowed its neck in 1843. (Applause.) Any other protest than

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this we do not need, nor do we wish to make. It is a protest in support of which sacrifices were made and sufferings were endured, the extent and the severity of which will never be known till the day of the Lord shall declare them. It is a protest to which the best part of a million of the Scottish people have set to their seal. It is a protest which is already recorded on the page of history, and from which it can never be effaced. (Applause.) Last and best of all, it is a protest which we may venture, without presumption, to believe that God has been pleased to honour and bless. For who can look back on all the way by which we have been led onwards to our present position, from the straits and the destitution of our exodus to the "large and wealthy place" into which we have been brought, without being moved in gratitude and wonder to exclaim, "What hath God wrought! Truly the Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad!" Let it be our desire and prayer to be enabled to do great things for Him. Towards this grand object let our thoughts and efforts be chiefly turned. In our new and noble position we have other and better work to which to address ourselves, than that of casting stones at those whom we have left behind us, that hath the key of David hath set before us an open door, and no man can shut it against us, unless we shut it ourselves. Both at home and abroad He is every day multiplying our means and opportunities of usefulness. In nearly all the far-reaching colonies of the British Crown, there are wide fields already white unto the harvest, inviting us to reap them down. From South Africa, and especially from the great continent of India, the cry to us is loud and incessant to come over and help the too limited and burdened band of missionaries, who are struggling, as it were single-handed, against those gigantic systems of heathen superstition, amid which millions are perishing for lack of knowledge. And here, in our own native land, in the streets and lanes of the crowded city, in the highways and hedges of many of our rural districts, where a teeming and too long neglected population are living and dying in utter estrangement from all the ordinances and influences of the gospel, there is a work laid to our hand as blessed as it is great. In the view of such demands upon the liberality and the labours of this Church, what need, what urgent need, have we of a fresh and more abundant baptism of the Holy Spirit!

And here, Fathers and Brethren, suffer me, in much humility, but with affectionate earnestness, to remind you that this is the victory which overcometh the world, even our faith. It is that Divine grace alone which will cause us always to triumph in Christ, and that will make manifest the savour of His knowledge by us in every place. If these great enterprises of which I have spoken are to prosper in our hands, the Church herself must be alive to her immense responsibilities, and must be cultivating close communion with her living Head. If she is to arise and shine with a widely diffusive and saving light into the deep darkness→→ whether of the lapsed masses at home or of the heathen abroad the glory of the Lord must arise upon herself, upon her own ministers, and upon her own congregations. If she is to send forth either into the waste places of our own country, or into the spiritual wildernesses of our faroff missionary fields, streams of living water, the rock must be smitten, the fountain must be opened, within her own sanctuaries. Only a living Church can regenerate a dead world.

Let us rejoice and give God thanks that in this respect we have recently been holpen with at least a little help. The Lord has been reviving His work. Two years ago, our Assembly was deeply stirred by the intelligence that came to us from afar, of what God was doing in the United States of America. One year ago the impression was deepened, and the quickening influence increased, by the assurances we then received that the pregnant cloud had swept onwards across the great ocean, and was then sending down upon Ireland, within sight of our own shores, a plenteous rain. This year the solemnising fact is before us, that the same precious showers have been, and are even now, falling within the limits of our own beloved land.

Truly God's way is in the deep, and His path in the great waters, and His footsteps are not known. The laws that regulate His mighty and majestic movements, both in the natural and in the spiritual world, are often far beyond the ken of human philosophy. Once and again, within the memory of the existing generation, a deadly pestilence, breaking out in the distant East, came sweeping on like a destroying angel, breathing destruction, as it passed, upon every land, from the banks of the Ganges to the British Isles. There is a mystery hanging to this hour around both the law of propagation and the mode of working of that desolating Scourge. But this circumstance affects no man's belief in the reality of that memorable visitation, or in the terribleness of its power. If now, then, in this contrary movement-contrary alike in its nature and in its course there be also much that baffles every attempt to unlock its secrets, let no such consideration blind us to the great and glorious fact that under its gracious influence multitudes have passed from death unto life. We know who hath said, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but cannot tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." In the exercise of His Divine sovereignty, He sends that blessed Spirit when and where and how He pleaseth.

But while it becomes us to remember these things, and reverently to recognise and bow before the mystery which is inseparable from the very nature of a great religious awakening like that which is now abroad, we are not, on the other hand, rashly and ignorantly to assume that there is nothing but mystery in such movements, and that we can do nothing in the way of either hindering or promoting them. Just as we know that there are certain physical conditions which more or less affect the course and the character of such a pestilence as that already spoken of, we also know that there are certain spiritual conditions, which, according to their prevalence, may be expected to tell on the course and character of a religious revival. It is possible to grieve the Spirit of God; it is possible to quench the Spirit ; and whatever is of a nature to do so must needs bear, with a fatally adverse influence, on the revival of religion. The very existence and ongoing, therefore, of such a work in our day lays upon us a most solemn responsibility. To be hostile to it, or even to be heedless of it, were to dishonour God, and thereby to provoke Him to withdraw the blessing which we had thus despised. We are not, indeed, with blind and headlong credulity, to accept as the work of God that which bears no sufficient evidence of having come from His hand. But it becomes us equally to guard against giving way to that coldly critical spirit which can see only the human errors or weaknesses attendant

on such a movement, but which has no eye for the tokens pervading it of God's own presence and power. (Applause.) It is possible for even sincere friends of Christ's cause to be over-cautious and hesitating on a question of this kind. They may be far more exacting on the subject of proof than the case really requires, or perhaps allows. On such a question a generous confidence is more likely to be well-pleasing in the sight of God than the slow and difficult, if not also reluctant, assent which is yielded only when it is no longer possible to withhold it. "Thomas," (said our Lord on a memorable occasion,) "because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed; blessed are they who have not seen, and yet have believed."

Perhaps there is no similar movement of which we have any record in history that was ever subjected to a closer and more searching scrutiny than the one to which these observations refer, and which, for eight or nine months past, has been stirring to their inmost depths, both in town and country, multitudes of the people in our own land. We live in an age of which it is emphatically true to say, that it questions everything, and takes hardly anything on trust. That the present religious revival should have stood the test of such a censorship may well be regarded as more than enough to set all suspicion of its genuineness at rest. We, as a Church, accept the revival as a great and blessed fact; and this, after having adopted all competent means to satisfy ourselves that it is so. We have not only sought information from other Churches as to its aspects and effects among them, but we have received numerous and explicit testimonies from ministers and members of our own Church as to the mighty and gracious influence it has been exerting among our own people. Whole congregations have been seen bending before it, like the trees of the forest before a rushing mighty wind. Nor is it the least memorable or marvellous feature of its working, that it has been perhaps most conspicuous among those very classes of society who hitherto have been the least accessible to any religious influence whatever. In a word, among those very sections of our population of whom it would have seemed most natural doubtingly to say, "Son of man, can these bones live?"-there pre-eminently and conspicuously it is that the Breath has been coming from the four winds, and breathing upon the slain; and that they have been rising and standing upon their feet, not yet, indeed, an exceeding great army, but enough surely to shame us out of our want of faith in the promises and in the power of God!

In the presence of such events, and with the voice which they utter sounding in our ears, it becomes us, Fathers and Brethren, to be, each of us, speaking to himself in such words as these "I will stand upon my watch, and set me on the tower, and will watch to see what He will say unto me, and what I shall answer when I am reproved." In such an attitude, of humble, prayerful, wakeful readiness to hear and know what the Lord would have us to do, we shall be in the best case for faithfully performing all those duties which devolve upon us in this General Assembly. And thus also may we hope to draw down upon ourselves, upon our Church, and upon our country, a more abundant effusion of the Holy Spirit; which may God, of His infinite mercy, grant, and to His name shall be all the praise. Amen! (Loud applause.)

After appointing the usual Committees relative to the business, the Assembly adjourned.