Holy Scripture without a sermon, than after a long sermon, and one or two jejune extempore prayers; for, in the former case, if they have learn't anything, they have all been taught of God. It is truly astonishing how people who possess any devotional aspirations can endure such a mockery of Divine worship as Presbytery has imposed upon them. "My House shall be called a House of Prayer for all living," saith the Lord Almighty; but Presbytery has made it a house of preaching, and has set upon itself in this as in the other particulars above noted, the mark of its apostasy from the Kingdom of Christ. True it has, like a school of philosophy, continued to hold certain Christian verities. But the forbidding prayer to people professing to be worshippers of God, and in the only places appointed for public and Divine worship, is an act of tyranny greater and more intolerable than any that the Roman Church is chargeable with. But these departures, as well from Jewish as from Christian usage, are traceable, it may be believed, to that loss of spirituality consequent on its severance from the Body Catholic. The sap of life has oozed out, and hence its incapacity for producing the fruits of the Spirit. Not to unritual worship is to be ascribed its want of life, but its lack of life has rendered it prayerless. On the other hand, the Scottish Church entered into the furnace in 1688, an unritual, unliturgical Church, and, like Aaron's rod, it blossomed and fruited. Its inner life threw outwards that longing for prayer, which gave birth to its own Liturgy, and moved it to adopt the English Service Book. TEKEL is written upon Presbytery: two ways are open to it, the Bunsenian " Church of the future," with its pantheistic creedlessness, or the Church that now is. Stand it cannot, fall it must. God forbid that our poor countrymen should fall headlong into the bottomless gulph of German infidelity. A priesthood it has already denied and rejected in deed, though not perhaps intentionally. Let it strive to realize the wish, and seek for Apostolic orders, and all may yet be well. Let it quench the desire, and it will, ere long, rush along the broad way which German Protestantism, with its quack philosophers, has made it smooth for it to walk

upon.

The solemn League and Covenant no longer stands in the way of Presbytery's return within the Church's pale. That impediment has most providentially been removed. It is better to return in a body into the bosom of the Catholic Church, than to drop in by fragments, as it will ultimately. If the same process of dismemberment is to be undergone as has been during the preceding 160 years, what will be the fortunes of Presbytery in the succeeding century and a-half? The history of Presbytery tells us that a non-adhesiveness is its prominent characteristic. Presbytery has not that inner life which alone can enable it to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Wanting this, yet possessing the Scriptures, and a sort of Liturgy very meagre, Geneva has not been able to stand, but has lapsed into Antichrist. Germany, too, in spite of her Protestant Reformation, has flung away from herself the Christian faith. After a fashion, no doubt, it still lays claim to some faint outline of Christianity, but its philosophers are gradually removing every trace of the ancient landmarks. Whence in all likelihood its present seethings in the cauldron of revolution. It is better to speak honestly and boldly out, and be called a bigot for reward, than to witness one's own flesh and blood lapse into the misery and horror of hopeless infidelity. Miserable should we indeed be if in this life only we had hope. And without religion what can we hope for? And without a priesthood, the voice of Germany and Geneva declares, with no uncertain sound, that we cannot have religion. Philosophers teach not thus, but the rabid license of the people, the distractions of their so called Church, and the wild dreams of philosophy, proclaim the solemn truth. What matters all the crude fantastic schemes of "Churches for the future," when these very Church manufacturers are sapping the very foundations of Christianity itself. Education has been dragooned into the youth of Prussia, and has trained them, not for heaven, but the barricades and rebellion. And how is it, if every man may be his own priest, that every child may not be his own schoolmaster? Surely, if every one may teach himself or herself the whole truth of Holy Scripture, any child may learn without a schoolmaster the dead and living

languages and sciences; and each one may be his own doctor, or surgeon, or dentist, or mechanic. One has only to buy a few yards of cloth, needles and thread, and without the slightest trouble, or difficulty, or previous apprenticeship, sit down and accomplish the construction of coat, waistcoat, and trousers. If your Grace is thus thoroughly versed in the theory and practice of tailoring, I must confess my entire ignorance and incapacity for converting broadcloth into these necessary habiliments. For aught we know to the contrary the Chevalier Bunsen may be as well skilled in the theory of tailoring as in the theory of church manufacturing, and can equally well write a book on either subject, and with equal clearness and wisdom can prove the non-necessity for teachers, or tailors, or priests. How ladies may submit to the abolition of the order of dressmakers, is a question they must solve themselves. There is, however, no apparent reason why, if each lady may be her own priestess, she may not be her own dressmaker. As in the Church of the future each man is to be his own priest, it is to be presumed that each woman is to be her own priestess, except it be maintained that women have no souls, and, therefore, religion does not concern them. O for a Cervantes to write a history of ecclesiastical Quixotes, armed with grey goose-quills, and fighting on reams of foolscap with priests, priestcraft, and bigots, and erecting on dreams of their bewildered brains the imperishable platforms of a magnificent Protestant ecclesiastical Babel. It is high time to consult the Barrys and the Pugins, and other illustrious architects in stone, papier machè, or pie-crust, about designs for the splendid temple for the new Church. Its order must be composite, and its structure light and airy, and its ornaments of the tinsel and gingerbread style. In the worship of this new tabernacle, as one creed would not suffice for all the members, no creed ought to be admitted: as to the Bible, as it contains many truths unpalatable to an assembly of incongruities, the fashion of Presbytery had best be followed, and the Bible left at home, or paraded into the pulpit for form's sake. As prayers may cause some perplexity they ought to be omitted, or be mental only; but as the silent system may not be approved of by the priestesses

E

or priests, each one may be allowed to speak out, but sotto voce. But here a grave difficulty meets us; the smallest infringement of liberty of conscience and right of private judgment must be carefully guarded against, to avoid a schism. Some may follow the example of the priests of Baal, and vociferate loudly; others that of the Quakers, and prefer a piano tone. In ordinary cases one would suggest a committee for drawing up rules and rubrics, to be printed in rainbow colours; but against this idea liberty of conscience uplifts its testimony and protests; and I give it all up in despair, not professing to be a patent concentrated essence of all general councils, past or to come. Protestantism, it is clear, will be catholic in this respect, it will decide with universal suffrage in favour of the non-fixity principle; it will have neither bonds nor covenants, nor fetters of any kind; it will be free to believe or not to believe anything whatever. Protestantism will not be stationary, but will ever strive to win the prize for the discovery of perpetual motion. This at least, my Lord Duke, is no theory, it is an indisputable fact of history, that from the murder of the Cardinal Archbishop of St Andrews movement has been the order of Scottish Protestantism, as well as of German; it is perpetually boiling and casting its scum up; it walketh up and down upon the earth, and too and fro thereon, seeking rest and finding none, and ever teeming with new sects and novel theories, the prolific mother of confusion, misrule, and crime.

The Scottish Church, in spite of all her sore trials and afflictions, and casting away by her nursing fathers and nursing mothers, has not fallen, as Geneva has, into the Socinian gulph. On the contrary she is firmly and securely climbing up the hill of the Lord, upon the old paths, and good old ways of Catholic truth, as well as apostolic order. Her Apostolical succession is the mighty engine which draws her upwards, and will replace her more glorious than ever on the ancient thrones on which her fathers sat. The desolations and the breaches of many generations shall be repaired. Again shall the venerable St Andrews cast her shadow upon the deep, and illuminate with her doctrine as well as with her lights the surrounding darkness on flood and field, and holy hymns and sacred chants, as in

times of old, shall sweep o'er the bosom of the waters and gladden the mariners' hearts, because of their Mother's restoration from her long and dreary exile. And she shall no more weep, like Rachel, for her children, because they are not; in her joy she shall ask who hath gotten me all these. She will not be satisfied with a tithe of the flock, she must have all who have erred and strayed like lost sheep. She will have all fetched home to her heart, that there may be one fold under one Shepherd. She will embrace all with her arms, that she may rear them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. It is not by power, nor by might, but by the Spirit of the Most High, that this blessed reformation shall be effected. When Israel sinned, God punished Israel, and suffered His holy temple to be destroyed, and when He repented of the evil which He had sent upon his own people, He restored them again, and caused His temple to be rebuilt. The same God has sorely punished Scotland for its great sins, and He will in His own good time heal the wounds which He has inflicted; and nothing appears more significant than the entire demolition of the Mother Church of all Scotland (or at least what was reputed to be such), and at the same time the wonderful preservation of the Cathedral of the western metropolis. It is well known by what instrumentality the Cathedral of St Mungo's was preserved. Still this does not hinder the act to have been the work of an especial providence, when we remember all the circumstances of the case; the position of Glasgow in the centre of the most disaffected and fanatical district of Scotland. St Mungo's seems to stand not alone as a beacon of hope, but as a witness also that God was able to protect His own even in the midst of a violent and deluded populace. And the interest taken in its restoration is no bad sign of the times in which we live. However mixed with error, yet the Free Kirk is very zealous for a great Christian doctrine, the Divine Headship of Christ. It is from full faith in this doctrine that we look forward to the restoration of the Scottish Church, with her priesthood, altars, and sacrifice. Your Grace seems to reject the idea of a priesthood, and no wonder that you do, because you don't understand what the Church means; and with your Protestant notions cannot fathom the