during the coming year in a spirit of Christian kindness and forbearance; and I have no doubt that all, whatever may be their views, will have a most anxious desire to discover what may really be the truth in regard to this matter. (Cheers.) Mr D. MITCHELL, farmer, Philiphaugh, who was very indistinctly heard, defended the poorer and country congregations from the aspersions that, he said, had been cast upon them, and predicted that the Sustentation Committee's proposal, if carried into effect, would lead to many difficulties and dangers. He warned the Assembly especially against rashly withdrawing the ministers from country charges. He acknowledged that the poorer congregations had not done their duty, but the richer were by no means in a position to cast the first stone at them. He had been much mortified to hear the imputations that had been cast on the poorer congregations, and trusted that in future they would be refrained from; and that whatever might be the decision of the Assembly, all parties would cordially co-operate in carrying it into effect. (Applause.) Dr DUFF, who was received with loud applause, said,-Moderator, I merely wish, at this late hour, to make one or two remarks of a very fragmentary kind, and wholly supplementary to the elaborate statements of gentlemen who have preceded me. I do so with all earnestness and humility, because I believe no one in this House entertains for Dr Begg a more profound respect than I do. I believe there is no member of this House who, in various capacities, has done more in reality to maintain the principles and character of this Church than he has done, and he is therefore entitled to our gratitude. (Applause.) With this sentiment for Dr Begg, I feel ready at any time to express my mind freely and frankly in his presence. Let me therefore, first of all, remark as to the use of such words as "bribery" and "communism." There may be attachable to these terms something so odious in public estimation, that I would entreat of him, as a brother, to let them drop into desuetude in discussions like the present. (Applause.) I am persuaded that our friend and brother has no design to cast unnecessary odium on the modified scheme proposed, after much anxious deliberation by the Sustentation Committee; but having in his own mind a clear idea of what he means to convey, he may not precisely apprehend the effect of such strongly figurative phrases on the minds of others. The world, however, has hitherto, as Paley remarks, been guided by names more than by perhaps anything else; and it therefore becomes us, especially in the Supreme Ecclesiastical Courts, to be exceedingly scrupulous in the use of words which we throw out in such discussions ;- ―our friend on this subject said, that if we go into the proposed principle with respect to the Sustentation Fund, we must also carry it into effect with respect to all the other Schemes of the Church. Now, it may be obtuseness, or a sort of mental obfuscation, on my part-(laughter,) --but there does seem to me to be a very palpable and clearly defined distinction between the Sustentation Fund and every other scheme of the Church. The position of this Fund is this:-Here are men who give themselves up, soul, body, and spirit, to the work of God in their congregations. They are out and out labourers for the benefit of their congregations, and the members of these congregations are bound in justice to uphold these labourers. Their support is not a matter of mere generosity or liberality, but of downright justice and equity. With reference to all the other schemes, they are not so much founded on abstract justice, as on liberality, Christian love, and benevolence. No one would plead more earnestly than I for immensely larger outpourings of liberality towards our various missionary under takings, Home and Foreign; but I plead their cause, not on grounds of rigid justice, but of benevolence, love, and good will to men. I must maintain, however, that to my mind, as a matter of common sense, and common honesty, members of congregations are, with respect to the Sustentation Fund, bound in downright stern justice to see to it that the labourer has a reward somewhat commensurate with the value of his labours;-let me make one other remark with reference to the use of analogies. I know no man who can introduce them more happily than Dr Begg; but it should be remembered that all apparent analogies are not real ones. (Hear, hear.) There are analogies, which, like those of Butler, have in them a logical and argumentative force. They are designed to demonstrate some point. There are other analogies which are mere illustrations, designed to illustrate or render intelligible something already proved. If the latter be meant to be taken for the former, they are false analogies. Now, there is no one species of fallacy more current than that founded on false analogies. (Hear, hear.) That one of the gun, for instance (laughter)—would be a very happy one, as a popular illustration, provided it were thoroughly applicable, provided that to which it was applied had first been proven. In India we have to do with a people who have always at command a stock of apparently plausible arguments that turn out to be mere semblances and false analogies. We are pestered everlastingly with these analogies. (Laughter.) It is a theory of Braminism, for example, that all religions are equally pleasing in the sight of God. They say to us, "In your country, you have iron mines, and so on. In ours we have nothing of that kind; but we have rice, and other products of our own. You have one kind of animals; we have another. God has given each of us different plants and animals in different regions; and so with religion; each country has its own; and each may be best for its respective country." And then, by way of proving this, they will say," Look at Government House ;"-for it so happens that the building is a somewhat irregular square, and on each side a road leading up to it; and, in allusion to this, it is common for them to ask, "Are there not four roads to Government House?" (Laughter.) And so they argue that any road, that is, any religion, or the distinctive religion of any people-will take them to heaven. Now, if it were proved that all religions will take us to heaven, the illustration would do very well. And so with reference to the matter of the gun. (Laughter.) The point to which that illustration or seeming analogy has been applied, first requires to be proved before we can admit its applicability. I make this remark, because I know the minds of many people in this country as well as in India, are carried away sometimes by such analogies, when ten thousand arguments would not move them. One other remark as to the appeal which is incessantly made to the Bible in this matter, for express verbal authorisation with reference to the particular mode proposed in carrying out the principle of equity and equality in contribution. No one can be more fully of opinion than I that we should make the Scriptures at all times our light and our guide; but I do feel that with reference to many of the detailed arrangements connected with Christian enterprises, we will come to the Bible in vain for any direction. In the Bible We get great principles, but particular ways and modes of carrying these into practice are left very much to our common sense, our reason, and our conscience. Great principles are laid down to us, but our discretion must help us to their practical application. For instance, I have been often taunted with regard to carrying on missionary enterprise, by parties who say, Where have you warrant for setting up mixed schools of the character now in vogue, in connection with your missionary institutions?" I do not know that I could adduce any direct verbal warrant from Scripture for certain portions of these admirable agencies, as conducted in our modern evangelistic enterprise. Again, they turn round and say, "Printing the Bible is not what is commanded, but preaching it; and we see nothing about printing presses in the Bible-(laughter)-nor of tract distribution, &c." In fact, with reference to our whole machinery, we will look in vain for many of the actual details of our most efficacious agencies. Great principles are laid down and great duties are inculcated, but there are hundreds of things quite warrantable as ways and means of carrying them out, which we will not find authorised in set or specific form. But, to conclude, Sir, what we most want is a large effusion of the Spirit of God amongst us; and the tone and temper that have characterised all of the speakers to-night have been such as to call forth expression of gratitude to God, that he has so overruled our spirits, that not an angry word of crimination or personal invective has escaped any lips. Let us take it as a sign for good for the future. Let us pray that the heavens may open over our heads; and if the soil of our hearts be richly watered by the dews of grace, peace and prosperity will be in our borders. And, subordinate to this, if we were only to have our minds more thoroughly saturated with the great principles of our Disruption Church, that, too, would help exceedingly to carry us forward. There is now rising up in the midst of us a new generation, comparatively ignorant of these principles. They have not been rocked amid the same storms and tempests of opposition, and the good seed has not, therefore, taken such deep root in them. But I refer them with great delight of heart to the proposal lately made, which has been furthered, I believe, by Mr Gray of Perth, whose large and liberal mind is always busy with some good design-(applause) that a work which has already done eminent service to this Church, and to the cause of God on the earth,-a work which I was delighted once to find, even on one of the peaks of the Himalaya in the hands of a member of the Church of England, who told me that it had in his mind thrown an entirely new light over the whole subject of ecclesiastical polity,-the "Ten Years' Conflict," by Dr Buchanan, -that this work should now be published in a cheaper form, and universally circulated through the Church. If all of the members of this great Assembly would lay this matter to heart, and commend the work earnestly to their congregations, so that every reading man and woman should have it, and be soul-saturated with its principles, it would do more for the Sustentation Fund than ten thousand speeches, however precious in themselves, from the most eloquent lords or ordinary members of this General Assembly. (Applause.) Dr CUNNINGHAM said, I am saved the necessity of entering into any thing like an elaborate discussion of this question, by the fact, that no opposition is intended to be made to the motion which I had the honour to second, and by the very full and elaborate defence of the great leading principles in the recent proceedings of the Sustentation Committee, which have been laid before the House by Sir Henry W. Moncreiff, in which I cordially concur; and also in consequence of the important supplementary observations of Dr Duff. In these circumstances it were unnecessary for me to enter into the discussion of this question; and I would fain hope that there will be no disposition on the part of the House to prolong the discussion. I believe that we have got from the discussion nearly the whole amount of the good and real benefit to be derived from it. I would fain hope that the practical observations of Dr Duff will sink deep into the minds of all the members of the House, and that henceforth we will be influenced by them. (Hear, hear.) In these circumstances, I would just like, without pretending at all to discuss the question, in a sentence or two to impress upon the House my thorough conviction, that the question which is now again to be submitted to the consideration of the Church,—the question which is to form the subject, as I trust it will do, of much friendly intercourse, and, it may be, of much earnest and brotherly discussion, of much serious reflection, and of much earnest prayer, during the approaching twelve months, I believe the question which is thus to be placed before the Church really and substantially involves this: Whether or not the Sustentation Fund is henceforth to continue in the Free Church of Scotland? I believe that is really the practical point involved in the settlement of this question now before us. I think I could very easily go over nearly the whole of what my friend, Dr Begg, laid before you, and, in analyzing it, I could, I think, prove that almost every leading proposition which he attempted to enforce just amounted practically to this, that we could not have a Sustentation Fund; that there were no means, no materials, no provisions, no arrangements, which were adequate to accomplish that; and that really the only alternative before us was just to abandon the Sustentation Fund in its true and proper character as established by Dr Chalmers, on which every minister fairly and honourably doing his duty to the common fund stands, in virtue of doing so, on a footing of fraternal and independent equality; and that in place of that, we are to have henceforth a mere aid fund, in which the aid-giving congregations are to contribute for the support of the aid-receiving congregations, and in which, of course, the aid-giving congregations, or their representatives, virtually exercise a control over the aid-receiving congregations, having the control of the money by which they are to be supported. And nothing could have surprised me more,—and that in a man of Dr Begg's acuteness and sagacity,-than the putting forth the idea, that by the scheme now proposed we were establishing something like a kind of central tyranny over every poor country minister, and over the poor congregations. Nothing surely can be more manifest than this, that the more you deviate from the principles of an equal and independent Sustentation Fund, and the more you approach the position of making a decided and palpable distinction between aid-giving and aid-receiving congregations, the more you tend to establish a central tyranny, and the more you lean in the direction of making the 500 aid-receiving congregations the subservient dependants-and I say that that will be the tendency-of the 200 aid-giving congregations, or of the few influential men who, acting virtually as their almoners, would represent the money power which would rule over and govern the great body of our congregations. I believe that, substantially, the question now proposed for consideration is this: There are practical difficulties connected with the administration of it, which may involve us in difficulty; but on a question of principle I have never seen the slightest difficulty; and I cannot yet conceive of anything like a feasible ground lurking in it which does involve any dereliction of principle. There is nothing here but just the indispensable necessity in a common fund and mutual insurance, that all parties connected with it have some security that each and all are doing their duty fairly and honourably to it. Unless we can in some way secure that, the Sustentation Fund manifestly cannot last. We have the most solemn and recorded declaration of Dr Chalmers, that if we go on with the Sustenta tion Scheme on its present footing, the inevitable result must be ruin. That is clear. We have his solemn and recorded conviction-I mean on the Sustentation Fund as such, or in that character--that, in order to prevent this result, we must have in the provisions and arrangements of the scheme itself, something fitted to operate as a check on sluggishness and selfishness, and as a stimulus to activity and liberality. These two priuciples are the great legacies which Dr Chalmers has left behind him. There is, first of all, the desirableness of a Sustentation Fund. That is an important point. There is, secondly, the impossibility of the Sustentation Fund being continued upon the present footing of things. That is also an important point. And there is, thirdly and lastly, the indispensable necessity, in order to the maintenance of the Sustentation Fund, of the scheme itself being so arranged as to contain in gremio provisions which will operate in the way I have described. These are the great principles by which we ought to be guided; and whatever difficulties may arise, however much it may be misconceived, and even although we may be ultimately forced to abandon the scheme, and to organise something tending more in the direction to which I have adverted, I will never regret having endeavoured to do something in the first instance, and as an intermediate position at least, to preserve the Sustentation Fund. I say to preserve the Sustentation Fund, and to prevent the introduction of a system, the manifest tendency of which is to split up the Church into two sections,— the aid-giving and the aid-receiving, and to extend the influence of the one over the other, and to convert the largest class of congregations into the subservient stipendiaries of the smaller and wealthier portion. (Applause.) - Professor MILLER then rose and said,—At this advanced period of the evening, and after what I have heard, I will not presume to make any speech, but simply to make a few observations upon each of the statements which we heard from the two able gentlemen whom, I think, without saying anything invidious, we may characterise as representing the opposition in this question. And first, as to my friend Dr Begg, I am just afraid that, from the sanguine view which he seems to take of the existing machinery of the Sustentation Fund, and the present pecuniary result at which we have this year arrived, a false impression calculated to produce an unhealthy state of mind may go forth to the public in reference to that result. When Dr Begg tells us to look at the aggregate result of the collections to this great Fund, and to observe that it amounts to nearly £100,000, or the interest of two millions, it looks well, and we are bound and called upon,and I trust we all feel grateful to Almighty God when we contemplate that great result; but then, when Mr Handyside and Dr Buchanan come to take that great sum to pieces,—to divide it into the dividend, we find, not only that it is not equal to last year's dividend, but that it is an inconsiderable, and yet a considerable, sum below it; and that gives the matter, in my mind, a totally different aspect. (Hear, hear.) And when we consider that some years ago we made up our minds as a Church that we would be satisfied with nothing less than £150 of an annual stipend to each minister of the Church as a minimum, and yet that we are getting lower, and lower, and lower in the scale, then I for one am inclined not to look to the sum in the aggregate, but to look at it so subdivided, and to say (and I do so with grief, and with a feeling that we should take shame to ourselves), here, again, is another failure; and therefore, when Dr Begg congratulates this Assembly upon the present condition of the Sustentation Fund, I take |