Chapter XI: Conclusion: Of the War in Affghanistan (2)

But these divisions exist, and no amount of regret for the mischief which they occasion will serve to lessen them. We are not disposed to give up a single tenet which we hold as Free Churchmen; and our brother Protestants of the other denominations are, we find, quite as tenacious of their distinctive holdings as ourselves. And so the evils consequent on disunion in infant colonies and settlements-evils which, when once originated, continue to propagate themselves for ages--must continue, in cases of promiscuous emigration, to be educed, and Rome to profit by them. We find a vigorous attempt to grapple with the difficulty, by rendering emigration not promiscuous, but select, originated by a branch of the New Zealand Company, which we deem worthy of notice. It is calculated, from the proportion which they bear to the entire population of the country, that from a thousand to fifteen hundred Free Church people emigrate from Scotland every year. A number equal to a large congregation quit it yearly for the colonies; but absorbed among all sorts of people--in Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the United States, Australia, and Southern Africa, etc. etc.--these never reappear as congregations, but are subjected, in their scattered, atomic state, to the deteriorating process, religious and educational, to which we have referred as inevitable under that economy of promiscuous emigration unhappily so common in these latter times. In an earlier age the case was different. The Pilgrim Fathers who first planted New England were so much at one in their tenets, that they had no difficulty in making the laws of the colony a foundation on which to erect the platform both of a general church and of an educational institute; and till this day, the character, moral and intellectual, of that part of the States tells of the wisdom of the arrangement. Now why, argue the Company, might not a similar result be produced in the present age, by directing the Free Church portion of the outward stream of emigration, or at least a sufficient part of it, into one locality? If the disastrous effects of division cannot be prevented by reconciling the disagreements of those who already differ, they may be obviated surely, to a large extent, by bringing into juxtaposition those who already agree. And on this simple principle the Company has founded its Free Church colony of Otago. Of course, regarding the secular advantages of the colony, we cannot speak. New Zealand has been long regarded as the Great Britain of the southern hemisphere. It possesses for a European constitution peculiar advantages of climate; the neighbourhood of the settlement, for several hundred miles together, is deserted by the natives; Government is pledged to the appointment of a Royal Commissioner to watch over the interests of Her Majesty's subjects in connection with the Company, and to afford them protection; the committee for promoting the settlement of the colony includes some of the most respected names in the Free Church; and thus, judged by all the ordinary tests, it seems to promise at least as well as any other resembling field of enterprise open at the present time. But respecting the principles involved in this scheme of colonization, we can speak more directly from the circumstance that we find them recognised as just and good by the General Assembly of our Church. The records of the Assembly of 1845 bear the following deliverance on the subject:--'The General Assembly learn with great pleasure the prospect of the speedy establishment of the Scotch colony of New Edinburgh [now Otago] in New Zealand, consisting of members of the Free Church, and with every security for the colonists being provided with the ordinances of religion and the means of education in connection with this Church. Without expressing any opinion regarding the secular advantages or prospects of the proposed undertaking, the General Assembly highly approve of the principles on which the settlement is proposed to be conducted, in so far as the religious and educational interests of the colonists are concerned; and the Assembly desire to countenance and encourage the association in these respects.'

We have seen the waste of mind which takes place in the colonies of a very highly civilised country adverted to in a rather fanciful and rationalistic connection with the desponding reply of the captive Jews to their spoilers: 'How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?' Ages, sometimes whole centuries, elapse, remarks the commentator, ere the colonies of even eminently literary nations come to possess poets and fine writers of their own. There is first a struggle for bare existence among the colonists, during which the higher branches of learning are necessarily neglected; and when a better time at length comes, the general mind is found to have acquired, during the struggle, a homely and utilitarian cast, which militates against the right appreciation, and of course the production, of what is excellent. And thus the true divinities of song fail to be sung in a foreign land. There is, we doubt not, truth in the remark, though somewhat quaintly expressed, and somewhat doubtfully derived. The necessities of a colony in its youth, and the peculiar cast of mind which they serve to induce, are certainly not favourable to the development of poetic genius. But there is, alas! another and more scriptural sense in which the 'Lord's song' too often ceases to be sung in a strange land. We have already adverted to the process of deterioration, moral and religious, through which it comes to be silenced; and it is one of the advantages of the Otago scheme, that it makes provision in, we believe, the most effectual way possible, in the present divided state of Protestantism, for preventing a result so deplorable. Youth is an important season, as certainly in colonies as in individuals; and we question whether the characteristic recklessness of Yankeeism in the far west and south may not be legitimately traced to the neglected youthhead of the States in which it is most broadly apparent. The deterioration of a single generation left to run wild may influence for the worse, during whole centuries, the character of a people; and who can predicate what these colonies of the southern hemisphere are yet to become? They may be great nations, influencing for good or evil the destinies of the species in ages of the world when Britain shall have sunk into a subordinate power, or shall have no name save in history. Those records of the past, from which we learn that states and peoples, as certainly as families and individuals, are born and die, and have their times of birth and of burial, may serve to convince us that the melancholy reflection of one of our later poets on this subject is by no means a fanciful one:

'My heart has sighed in secret, when I thought
That the dark tide of time might one day close,
England, o'er thee, as long since it has closed
On Egypt and on Tyre,--that ages hence,
From the Pacific's billowy loneliness,
Whose tract thy daring search revealed, some isle
Might rise, in green-haired beauty eminent,
And like a goddess glittering from the deep,
Hereafter sway the sceptre of domain
From pole to pole; and such as now thou art,
Perhaps New Zealand be. For who can say
What the Omnipotent Eternal One,
That made the world, hath purposed?'

_June 16, 1847._

FINE-BODYISM.

Of all the dangers to which the Free Church is at present exposed, we deem the danger of _fine-bodyism_ at once the least dreaded and the most imminent. And the evil is in itself no light one: it marks, better than any of the other _isms_--even the heresies themselves--the sinking of a Church that is never to rise again. Churches have been affected by dangerous heresies both of the hot and the cold kinds, and have yet shaken them off and recovered. The Presbyterians of Ireland, now so sound in their creed, were extensively affected, little more than half a century ago, by Arian error and the semi-infidelity of Socinus; and the Church that in 1843 had become vigorous enough to dare the Disruption, recorded in the year 1796 its vote against missions, and framed in the year 1798 its law against church extension. But we know of no Church that ever recovered from _fine-bodyism_ when the disease had once fairly settled into its confirmed and chronic state. In at least this age and country it exists as the atrophy of a cureless decline. It were well, however, that we should say what it is we mean by _fine-bodyism_; and we find we cannot do better than quote our definition from the first speech ever delivered by Chalmers in the General Assembly. 'It is quite ridiculous to say,' remarked this most sagacious of men, 'that the worth of the clergy will suffice to keep them up in the estimation of society. This worth must be combined with importance. Give both worth and importance to the same individual, and what are the terms employed in describing him? "A distinguished member of society, the ornament of a most respectable profession, the virtuous companion of the great, and a generous consolation to all the sickness and poverty around him." These, Moderator, appear to me to be the terms peculiarly descriptive of the appropriate character of a clergyman, and they serve to mark the place which he ought to occupy; but take away the importance and leave only the worth, and what do you make of him? What is the descriptive term applied to him now? Precisely the term which I often find applied to many of my brethren, and which galls me to the very bone every moment I hear it--"_a fine body_"--a being whom you may like, but whom I defy you to esteem--a mere object of endearment--a being whom the great may at times honour with the condescension of a dinner, but whom they will never admit as a respectable addition to their society. Now, all that I demand from the Court of Teinds is to be raised, and that as speedily as possible, above the imputation of being "_a fine body_;" that they would add importance to my worth, and give splendour and efficacy to those exertions which have for their object the most exalted interests of the species.'

The Free Church has for ever closed her connection with the Court of Teinds; but her danger from _fine-bodyism_ is in consequence all the greater, not the less. The Sustentation Fund is her Court of Teinds now; and it is to it that she has in the first instance to look for protection from the all-potent but insidious and vastly under-estimated evil under which no Church ever throve. The outed ministers are comparatively safe. Unless prudence be altogether wanting, and the wolf comes to the door, not, as in the child's story-book, in the disguise of a soft-voiced girl, but in that of a gruff sheriff's officer, they will continue to bear through life the old status of the Establishment, heightened by the _éclat_ of the Disruption. But our younger men of subsequent appointment stand on no such platform, nor will any of their contemporaries or successors step upon it as a matter of course when the heroes of the conflict have dropped away, and they come to occupy their vacant places. Their status will be found to depend on two circumstances, neither of them derived from the men of a former time--on their ability to maintain a respectable place among the middle classes, and on their scholastic acquirements and general manners. A half-paid, half-taught, half-bred minister of religion may be a very excellent man; we have seen such, both in England and our own country, among the non-Presbyterian Dissenters who laboured to do well, and were exceedingly in earnest; but no such type of minister will ever be found influential in Scotland, either in extending the limits of a Church, or in benefiting the more intelligent classes of the people. And the two circumstances of acquirement and remuneration will be found indissolubly connected. A Church of under-paid ministers, however fairly it may start, will, in the lapse of a generation, become a Church of under-taught and under-bred ministers also. Nor is there any chance that the evil, once begun, will ever cure itself, for the under-bred and the under-taught will be sure to continue the under-paid. That animating spirit of a Church, without which wealth and learning avail but little, money now, as of old, cannot buy; but the secular will be ever found to depend on the secular,--the general rate of secular acquirement on the general rate of secular remuneration; and unless both be pitched at a level very considerably above that of the labouring laity, which constitutes the great bulk of congregations, even the better ministers of a Church need not expect to escape _fine-bodyism_. And once infected with this fatal indisposition, they must be content to suffer, among other evils, the evil of being permitted to lay whatever claim to status they may choose, without challenge or contradiction. 'Oh yes,' it will be said, should they assert that their Church is the Church of the nation, and that it is they themselves, and not the ministers of the Establishment, who are on the true constitutional ground,--'Oh yes, Church of the nation, or, if ye will, Church of the whole world, or, in short, anything you please; for you are _fine bodies_.' Chalmers exercised all his sagacity when he demanded of the Court of Teinds 'to be raised, and that as speedily as possible, above the imputation of being a _fine body_.' And what Chalmers demanded of the Court of Teinds, every minister of the Free Church ought to ask of the Sustentation Fund.

But how is the demand to be effectually made? It is well known to statesmen, who, when they once get a tax imposed by Parliament, can employ all the machinery of the police and the standing army--of fines, confiscations, and prisons--in exacting it, that yet, notwithstanding, in the arithmetic of finance two and two do not always make four. There are certain pre-existing laws to be studied--laws not of man's passing, but which arise out of man's nature and the true bearings and relations of things; and unless these be studied and conformed to, the Parliament-imposed tax, though backed by the constable and the jail, will realize but little. And if the statesman must study these laws, well may the Church do so, who has no constables in her pay, and to whom no jail-keys have been entrusted. It ought, we think, to be regarded as one fundamental law, that whatever has been gained by the seven years' establishment of the Fund, should not be lightly perilled by bold and untried innovations. True, there may, on the one hand, be danger, if let too much alone, that its growth should be arrested, and of its passing into a stunted and hide-bound condition, little capable of increase; but the danger is at least as great, on the other, that if subjected to fundamental changes, it might lose that advantage of permanency which whatever is established possesses in virtue of its being such; and which has its foundation in habit, and in that vague sense of responsibility which leads men to give, year after year, what they had been accustomed to give in the previous years, just because they had given it. Let it not be forgotten, that though much still remains to be done in connection with this Fund, much has been done already--that a voluntary tax of about eighty thousand pounds per annum, raised from about one-third, and that by no means the wealthiest third, of the Scottish people, is really not a small, but a great one--and that as great, and as worthy of being desired and equalled, do the other non-endowed Churches of the country regard it. No tampering, therefore, with its principle should be attempted: he was an eminently wise man who first devised and instituted it,--not once in an age do churches, or even countries, get such men to guide their affairs,--and it ought by all means to be permitted to _set_ and consolidate in the mould which he formed for it. We would apply in this case the language of a philosophic writer of the last age, when speaking of government in general:--'An established order of things,' he said, 'has an infinite advantage, by the very circumstance of its being established. To tamper, therefore, to try experiments upon it, upon the credit of supposed fitness and improvement, can never be the part of a wise man, who will bear a reverence for what carries the marks of the stability of age; and though he may attempt some improvements for the public good, yet will he adjust his innovations as much as possible to the ancient fabric, and preserve entire the chief pillars and supports of the institution.'

It ought, we hold, to be regarded as another law of the Fund, that the means taken to increase it should be means exclusively fitted to lead the givers to think of their _duties_, not of their _rights_. The Sustentation Fund is not the result of a tax properly so called, but an accumulation of freewill offerings rendered to the Church by men who in this matter are responsible to God only. What the Church receives on these terms she can divide; but what the givers do not place at her disposal--what, on the contrary, they reserve for quite another purpose--she cannot lay hold of and distribute. It is not hers, but theirs; and the attempt to appropriate it might be very fatal. Hence the danger of the question regarding the appropriation for general purposes of supplements, which was mooted two years ago, but which was so promptly put down by the good sense of the Church. It would have led men to contend for their rights, and, in the struggle, to forget their duties; and the battle would have been a losing one for the Fund. We regard it as another law, that the distribution of the sustentation money entrusted to the Church should be a distribution, not discretionary, but fixed by definite enactment. A discretionary licence of distribution, extended to some central board or committee, even though under the general review of the Church, could not be other than imminently dangerous, because opposed in spirit to the very principle of Presbytery. And if Presbytery and the Sustentation Fund come into collision in the Free Church of Scotland, it is not difficult to say which of the two would go down. It has been shrewdly remarked by Hume, that in monarchies there is room for discretionary power--the laws under a great and wise prince may in some cases be softened, or partially suspended, and carried into full effect in others; but republics admit of no such discretionary authority--the laws in them must in every instance be thoroughly executed, or set aside altogether. Every act of discretionary authority is treason against the constitution. And so is it with Presbytery. Give to a central board or committee the power of sitting in judgment on the circumstances of ministers of their body, and of apportioning to one some thirty or forty pounds additional, and of cutting down another to the average dividend, and, for a time at least, the Presbyterian independence is gone. But the reaction point once reached--and in the Free Church the process would not be a very tedious one--the discretionary authority would be swept away in the first instance, and the Sustentation Fund not a little damaged in the second. It is of paramount importance, therefore--a law on no account to be neglected or traversed--that the distribution of the Fund be regulated by rules so rigid and unbending, and of such general application, that the manifestation of favour or the exercise of patronage on the part of the board or committee authorized to watch over it may be wholly an impossibility.

It is, in the next place, of importance carefully to scan the sources whence the expected increase of the Fund is to come. The givers in the Free Church at the present time seem to lie very much in extremes. A considerable number, animated by the Disruption spirit, contribute greatly more to ministerial support, in proportion to their incomes, than the old Dissenters of the kingdom; but a still larger number, reposing indolently on the exertions of these, and in whom the habit has not been cultivated or formed, give considerably less. It was stated by Mr. Melvin, in the meeting of the United Presbyterian Synod held on Wednesday last, that, 'on an average, the members of weak congregations in connection with their body contributed to the support of their minister about 14s. 6d. per annum, besides about 2s. 6d. for missionary purposes, while some of them contributed even as high as 25s. to 26s.' Now, an average rate of contribution liberal as this, among the members of country congregations in the Free Church, would at once place the Fund in flourishing circumstances, and render it, unless its management was very unwise indeed, sufficient to maintain a ministry high above the dreaded level of _fine-bodyism_. Nor do we see why, if we except the crushed and poverty-stricken people of some of the poorer Highland districts, Free Church congregations in the country should not contribute as largely to church purposes as United Presbyterian congregations in the same localities. The membership of both belong generally to the same level of society, and, if equally willing, are about equally able to contribute. Here, then, is a field which still remains to be wrought. Something, too, may be done at the present time, from the circumstance that the last instalment of the Manse Building Fund is just in the act of being paid, and those who have been subscribing for five years to this object, and formed a habit of periodic giving in relation to it, may be induced to transfer a portion of what they gave to the permanent fund, and so continue contributing. Ere, however, they can be expected to do so, they must be fairly assured that what they give is to be employed in strengthening and consolidating the Church, and in raising her ministers above the level of _fine-bodyism_, not in adding to her weakness by adding to her extent. Until a distinct pledge be given that there shall not be so much as a single new charge sanctioned until the yearly dividend amounts to at least a hundred and fifty pounds, we must despair of the Sustentation Fund. One may hopefully attempt the filling up of a tun, however vast its contents; but there can be no hope whatever in attempting the filling of a sieve. And if what is poured into the Sustentation Fund is to be permitted, instead of rising in the dividend, to dribble out incontinently in a feeble extension, it will be all too soon discovered that what we have to deal with is not the tun, but the sieve; and the laity, losing all heart, will cease their exertions, and permit their ministers to sink into poverty and _fine-bodyism_.

_May 15, 1850._

ORGANSHIP.

Some six or eight months after the Disruption there occurred an amusing dispute between two Edinburgh newspapers, each of which aspired to represent the Establishment solely and exclusively, without coadjutor or rival. The one paper asserted that it was the _vehicle_ of the Established Church, the other that it was the Church's _organ_; and each, in asserting its own claim, challenged that of its neighbour. The organ was sure that the vehicle lacked the true vehicular character; and the vehicle threw grave doubts on the organship of the organ. In somewhat less than half a year, however, the dispute came suddenly to a close: the vehicle--like a luckless opposition coach, weak in its proprietorship--was run off the road, and broke down; and the triumphant organ, seizing eager hold of the name of its defunct rival as legitimate spoil, hung it up immediately under its own, as a red warrior of the West seizes hold of the scalp of a fallen enemy, and suspends it at his middle by his belt of wampum. The controversy, however, lasted quite long enough to lead curious minds to inquire how or on what principle a body so divided as the Established Church could possibly have either vehicle or organ.

If the organ, it was said, adequately represent Dr. Muir, it cannot fail very grievously to misrepresent Dr. Bryce; and if the vehicle be adapted to give public airings to the thoughts and opinions of the bluff old Moderates, those of Dr. Leishman and the Forty must travel out into the wind and the sunlight by an opposition conveyance. One organ or one vehicle will be no more competent to serve a deliberative ecclesiastical body, diverse in its components, than one organ or vehicle will be able to serve a deliberative political body broken into factions. Single parties, as such--whether secular or ecclesiastical--may have their single organ apiece; but it seems as little possible that a Presbyterian General Assembly should have only one organ representative of the whole, as that a _House of Lords_ or a _House of Commons_ should have one organ representative of the whole. An organ of the Establishment in its present state of disunion, if at all adequately representative, could not fail to resemble Montgomery's strange personification of war: 'A deformed genius, with two heads, which, unlike those of Janus, were placed front to front; innumerable arms, branching out all around his shoulders, sides, and chest; and with thighs and legs as multitudinous as his arms. His twin faces,' continues the poet, 'were frightfully distorted: they glared, they grinned, they spat, they railed, and hissed, and roared; they gnashed their teeth, and bit, and butted with their foreheads at each other; his arms, wielding swords and spears, were fighting pell-mell together; his legs, in like manner, were indefatigably at variance, striding contrary ways, and trampling on each other's toes, or kicking each other's shins, as if by mutual consent.' Such would be the true representative of an organ that adequately represented the Establishment.

We are led into this vein on the present occasion by a recent discussion in high quarters on the organship of the Free Church,--a Presbyterian body, be it remarked, as purely deliberative in its courts as the Parliament of the country, and at least sufficiently affected by the spirit of the age to include within its pale a considerable diversity of opinion. It is as impossible, from this cause alone, that the Free Church should be represented by a single organ, as that the _House of Commons_ should be represented by a single organ. The organ, for instance, that represented on the education question the Rev. Mr. Moody Stuart, would most miserably misrepresent the party who advocate the views of the great father of the Free Church--the late Dr. Chalmers.

The organ that represented the peculiar beliefs held, regarding the personal advent, by the party to which Mr. Bonar of Kelso belongs, would greatly misrepresent those of the party to which Mr. David Brown of Glasgow and Mr. Fairbairn of Saltoun belong. The organ that advocated Dr. Cunningham's and Dr. James Buchanan's views of the College question, would be diametrically opposed to the view of Dr. Brown of Aberdeen and Mr. Gray of Perth. The organ that contended for an ecclesiastical right to legislate on the temporalities according to the principle of Mr. Hay of Whiterig, would provoke the determined opposition of Mr. Makgill Crichton of Rankeillour. The organ that took part with the Evangelical and Sabbath Alliances in the spirit of Dr. Candlish of St. George's, would have to defend its position against Mr. King of St. Stephen's of the Barony; and the organ that espoused the sentiments held on tests by Mr. Wood of Elie, would find itself in hostile antagonism with those entertained on the same subject by Mr. Gibson of Kingston. And such are only a few of the questions, and these of an ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesiastical character, regarding which a diversity of views, sentiments, and opinions in the Free Church renders it impossible that it can be adequately represented by any one organ, even should that organ be of a purely ecclesiastical character. But a newspaper is _not_ of a purely ecclesiastical character; and there are subjects on which it may represent a vast majority of the people of a Church, without in the least degree representing the Church itself, simply because they are subjects on which a Church, as such, can hold no opinions whatever.

It is, for instance, not for a Church to say in what degree she trusts the Whigs or suspects the Tories--or whether her suspicion be great and her trust small--or whether she deem it more desirable that Edinburgh should be represented by Mr. Cowan, than mis-represented by Mr. Macaulay. These, and all cognate matters, are matters on which the Church, as such, has no voice, and regarding which she can therefore have no organ; and yet these are matters with which a newspaper is necessitated to deal. It would be other than a newspaper if it did not. On these questions, however, which lie so palpably beyond the ecclesiastical pale, though the Church can have no organ, zealous Churchmen may; and there can be no doubt whatever that they are questions on which zealous Free Churchmen _are_ very thoroughly divided--so thoroughly, that any single newspaper could represent, in reference to them, only one class. The late Mr. John Hamilton, for instance--a good and honest man, who, in his character as a Free Churchman, determinedly opposed the return of Mr. Macaulay--was wholly at issue regarding some of these points with the Honourable Mr. Fox Maule, who in 1846 mounted the hustings to say that the 'gratitude and honour of the Free Church' was involved in Mr. Macaulay's return. And so the organ that represented the one, could not fail to misrepresent the other. Now, we are aware that on this, and on a few other occasions, the _Witness_ must have given very considerable dissatisfaction in the political department to certain members of the Free Church. It was not at all their organ on these occasions; nay, at the very outset of its career, it had solemnly pledged itself _not_ to be their organ.

The following passage was written by its present Editor, ere the first appearance of his paper, and formed a part of its prospectus:--'The _Witness_,' he said, '_will not espouse the cause of any of the political parties which now agitate and_ _divide the country_.' 'Public measures, however, will be weighed as they present themselves in an impartial spirit, with care proportioned to their importance, and with reference not to the party with which they may chance to originate, but to the principles which they shall be found to involve.' Such was the pledge given by the Editor of the _Witness_; and he now challenges his readers to say whether he has not honestly redeemed it. Man is naturally a tool-making animal; and when he becomes a politician by profession, his ingenuity in this special walk of constructiveness is, we find, always greatly sharpened by the exigencies of his vocation.

He makes tools of bishops, tools of sacraments, tools of Confessions of Faith, and tools of Churches and church livings.

We had just seen, previous to the _début_ of the _Witness_, the Church of Scotland converted by Conservatism into a sort of mining tool, half lever, half pickaxe, which it plied hard, with an eye to the prostration and ejection of its political opponents the Whigs, then in office; and not much pleased to see the Church which we loved and respected so transmuted and so wielded, we solemnly determined that, so far at least as our modicum of influence extended, no tool-making politician, whatever his position, should again convert it unchallenged into an ignoble party utensil. With God's help, we have remained true to our determination; and so assured are we of being supported in this matter by the sound-hearted Presbyterian people of the Free Church, that we have no fear whatever, should either the assertors among us of the unimpeachable consistency of the Conservatives, or of the immaculate honesty of the Whigs, start against us an opposition vehicle to-morrow, that in less than a twelvemonth we would run it fairly off the road, and have some little amusement with it to boot, so long as the contest continued. The _Witness_ is not, and, as we have shown, cannot be, the organ of the Free Church; but it is something greatly better: it is the trusted representative--against Whig, Tory, Radical, and Chartist--against Erastian encroachment and clerical domination--of the Free Church people. There lies its strength,--a strength which its political Free Church opponents are welcome to test when they please.

We must again express our regret that the article on the Duke of Buccleuch, which has proved the occasion of so much remark, spoken and written, should have ever appeared in our columns; and this, not, as the agent of the Duke asserts, because it has been _exposed_, but because of the unhappy unsolidity of its facts, and because of that diversion of the public attention which it has effected from cases such as those of Canobie and Wanlockhead, and from such a death-bed as that of the Rev. Mr. Innes. Our readers are already in possession of our explanation, and have seen it fully borne out by the incidental statement of Mr. Parker. We would crave leave to remind them that the _Witness_ is now in the ninth year of its existence; and that during that time the Editor stated many facts, from his own observation, connected with the refusal of sites, and other matters of a similar character. He saw congregations worshipping on bare hill-sides in the Highlands of Sutherland, and on an oozy sea-beach on the coast of Lochiel; he sailed in the Free Church yacht the _Betsey_, and worshipped among the islanders of Eigg and of Skye. Nor did he shrink from very minutely describing what he had witnessed on these occasions, nor yet from denouncing the persecution that had thrust out some of the best men and best subjects of the country, to worship unsheltered amid bleak and desert wastes, or on the bare sea-shore.

And yet, of all the many facts which he thus communicated on his own authority, because resting on his own observation, not one of them has ever yet been disproved; nay, scarce one of them has ever yet been so much as challenged.

Of course, in reference to the statements which he has had to make on the testimony of others, his position was necessarily different; and a very delicate matter he has sometimes found it to be, to deal with these statements. A desire, on the one hand, to expose to the wholesome breathings of public opinion whatever was really oppressive and unjust; a fear, on the other, lest he should compromise the general cause, or injure the character of his paper, by giving publicity to what either might not be true, or could not be proven to be true,--have often led him to retain communications beside him for weeks and months, until some circumstance occurred that enabled him to determine regarding their real character and value. And such--with more, however, than the ordinary misgivings, and with an unfavourable opinion frankly and decidedly expressed--was the course which he took with the communicated article on the Duke of Buccleuch.

That the testing circumstance which _did_ occur in the course of the long period during which it was thus held _in retentis_ was not communicated to him, or to any other official connected with the _Witness_, he much regrets, but could not possibly help.

In the discussion on the Sites Bill of Wednesday last, the Honourable Fox Maule is made to say, that 'the _Witness_ contained many articles which had been condemned by the Church.'

Now this must be surely a misreport, as nothing could be more grossly incorrect than such a statement. The voice of the Free Church--that by which she condemns or approves--can be emitted through but her deliberative courts, and recorded in but the decisions of her solemn Assemblies. On the merits or demerits of the _Witness_, through these her only legitimate organs, she has not yet spoken; and Mr. Maule is, we are sure, by far too intelligent a Churchman to mistake the voice of a mere political coterie, irritated mayhap by the loss of an election, for the solemn deliverance of a Church of Christ. With respect to his reported statement, to the effect that the _Witness_ 'contained many articles which had done great harm to the Free Church,' the report may, we think, be quite correct. The _Witness_ contained a good many articles on the special occasion when the Free Churchmen of Edinburgh conspired--'ungratefully and dishonourably,' as Mr. Maule must have deemed it--to eject a Whig Minister, and to place in his seat, as their representative, a shrewd citizen and honest man.

And these lucubrations accomplished, we daresay, their modicum of harm. With regard, however, to the articles of the _Witness_ in general, we think we can confidently appeal in their behalf to such of our readers as perused them, not as they were garbled, misquoted, interpolated, and mis-represented by unscrupulous enemies, but as they were first given to the public from the pen of the Editor. Among these readers we reckon men of all classes, from the peer to the peasant--Conservative landowners, magistrates, merchants, ministers of the gospel. Dr. Chalmers was a reader of the _Witness_ from its first commencement to his death; and he, perusing its editorial articles as they were originally written--not as they were garbled or interpolated in other prints--saw in them very little to blame.

Not but that some of our sentences look sufficiently formidable in extracts when twisted from their original meaning; and this, just as the Decalogue itself might be instanced as a code of licentiousness, violence, and immorality, were it to be exhibited in garbled quotations, divested of all the _nots_. In the _Edinburgh Advertiser_ of yesterday, for instance, we find the following passage:--'It [_The Witness_] has menaced our nobles with the horrors of the French Revolution, when the guillotine plied its nightly task, and when the "bloody hearts of aristocrats dangled on button-holes in the streets of Paris." It has reminded them of the time when a "grey discrowned head sounded hollow on the scaffold at Whitehall;" insinuating that, if they persisted in opposing the claims of the Free Church, a like fate might overtake the reigning dynasty of our time.'

When, asks the reader, did these most atrocious threats appear in the _Witness_?

They never, we reply, appeared in the _Witness_ as threats at all. The one passage, almost in the language of Chateaubriand, was employed in an article in which we justified the sentence pronounced on the atheist Patterson. The other formed part of a purely historic reference--in an article on Puseyism, written ere the Free Church had any existence--to the Canterburianism of the times of Charles I., and the fate of that unhappy monarch. We thought not of threatening the aristocracy when quoting the one passage, nor yet of foreboding evil to the existing dynasty when writing the other. On exactly the same principle on which these passages have been instanced to our disadvantage, the description of the _Holoptychius Nobilissimus_, which appeared a few years ago in the _Witness_, might be paraded as a personal attack on Sir James Graham; and the remarks on the construction of the _Pterichthys_, as a gross libel on the Duke of Buccleuch. It is, we hold, not a little to the credit of the _Witness_, that, in order to blacken its character, means should be resorted to of a character so disreputable and dishonest. From truth and fair statement it has all to hope, and nothing to fear.

_June 14, 1848._

BAILLIE'S LETTERS AND JOURNALS.

This is at once the handsomest and one of the best editions of the curious and very interesting class of works to which it belongs, that has yet been given to the public. It is scarce possible to appreciate too highly the tact, judgment, and research displayed by the editor; and rarely indeed, so far as externals are concerned, has the typography of Scotland appeared to better advantage. It is a book decked out for the drawing-room in a suit of the newest pattern,--a tall, modish, well-built book, that has to be fairly set a-talking ere we discover from its tongue and style that it is a production not of our own times, but of the times of Charles and the Commonwealth. The good, simple minister of Kilwinning would fail to recognise himself in its fair open pages, that more than rival those of his old _Elzevirs_. For his old-fashioned suit of home-spun grey, we find him sporting here a modern dress-coat of Saxony broadcloth, and a pair of unexceptionable cashmere trousers; and it is not until we step forward and address the worthy man, and he turns upon us his broad, honest face, that we see the grizzled moustache and peaked beard, and discover that his fears are still actively engaged regarding the prelatic leanings of Charles II., 'now at Breda;' though perchance not quite without hope that the counsel of the 'wise and godly youth' James Sharpe may have the effect of setting all right again in the royal mind. We address what we take, from the garb, to be a contemporary, and find that we have stumbled on one of the seven sleepers.

We deem it no slight advantage to the reading public of the present day, that it should have works of this character made so easy of access. It is only a very few years since the student of Scottish ecclesiastical history could not have acquainted himself with the materials on which the historian can alone build, without passing through a course of study at least as prolonged as an ordinary college course, and much more laborious. Let us suppose that he lived in some of the provinces. He would have, in the first place, to come and reside in Edinburgh, and get introduced, at no slight expense of trouble, mayhap, to the brown, half-defaced manuscripts of our public libraries. He would require next to study the old hand, with all its baffling contractions. If he succeeded in mastering the difficulties of Melville's _Diary_ after a quarter of a year's hard conning, he might well consider himself a lucky man. Row's _History_ would occupy him during at least another quarter; Baillie's _Letters and Journals_ would prove work enough for two quarters more. If he succeeded in getting access to the papers of Woodrow, he would find little less than a twelvemonth's hard labour before him; Calderwood's large _History_ would furnish employment for at least half that time; and if curious to peruse it in its best and fullest form, he would find it necessary to quit Edinburgh for London, to pore there over the large manuscript copy stored up in the British Museum. As he proceeded in his course, he would be continually puzzled by references, allusions, initials; he would have to consult register offices, records of baptisms and deaths, session books, old and scarce works, hardly less difficult to be procured than even the manuscripts themselves; and if he at length escaped the fate of the luckless antiquary, who produced the famous history of the village of Wheatfield, he might deem himself more than ordinarily fortunate. 'When I first engaged in this work,' said the poor man, 'I had eyes of my own; but now I cannot see even with the assistance of art: I have gone from spectacles of the first sight to spectacles of the third; the Chevalier Taylor gives my eyes over, and my optician writes me word he can grind no higher for me.' It will soon be no such Herculean task to penetrate to the foundations of our national ecclesiastical history. From publications such as those of the Woodrow Club, and of the _Letters and Journals_, the student will be able to acquire in a few weeks what would have otherwise cost him the painful labour of years. Nor can we point out a more instructive course of reading. In running over our modern histories, however able, we almost always find our point of view fixed down by the historian to the point occupied by himself. We cannot take up another on our own behalf, unless we differ from him altogether, nor select for ourselves the various subjects which we are to survey. We are in leading-strings for the time: the vigour of our author's thinking militates against the exercise of our own; his philosophy enters our minds in a too perfect form, and lies inert there, just as the condensed extract of some nourishing food often fails to nourish at all, because it gives no employment to the digestive faculty. A survey of the historian's materials has often, on the contrary, the effect of setting the mind free. We see the events of the times which he describes in their own light, and simply as events,--we select and arrange for ourselves,--they call up novel traits of character,--they lead us to draw on our experience of men,--they confirm principles,--they suggest reflections.

Some of our readers will perhaps remember that we noticed at considerable length the two first volumes of this beautiful edition of Baillie rather more than a twelvemonth ago. The third and concluding volume has but lately appeared. It embraces a singularly important period,--extending from shortly before the rise of the unhappy and ultimately fatal quarrel between the Resolutioners and Protesters, till the re-establishment of Episcopacy at the Restoration, when the curtain closes suddenly over the poor chronicler, evidently sinking into the grave at the time, the victim of a broken heart. He sees a stormy night settling dark over the Church,--Presbytery pulled down, the bishops set up, persecution already commenced; and, longing to be released from his troubles, he affectingly assures his correspondent, in the last of his many letters, that 'it was the matter of his daily grief that had brought his bodily trouble upon him,' and that it would be 'a favour to him to be gone.' From a very learned, concise, and well-written Life, the production of the accomplished editor, which serves as a clue to guide the reader through the mazes of the correspondence, we learn that he died three months after.

Where there is so much that is interesting, one finds it difficult to select. The light in which the infamous Sharpe is presented in this volume is at least curious. Prelacy, careful of the reputation of her archbishops, makes a great deal indeed of the bloody death of the man, but says as little as possible regarding his life and character. The sentimental Jacobitism of the present day--an imaginative principle that feeds on novels, and admires the persecutors because Claverhouse was brave and had an elegant upper lip--goes a little further, and speaks of him as the venerable Archbishop. When the famous picture of his assassination was exhibiting in Edinburgh, some ten or twelve years ago, he rose with the class almost to the dignity of a martyr: there were young ladies that could scarce look at the piece without using their handkerchiefs; the victim was old, greyhaired, reverend, an archbishop, and eminently saintly, as a matter of course, whatever the barbarous fanatics might say; and all that his figure seemed to want in order to make it complete, was just a halo of yellow ochre round the head. In Baillie's _Letters_ we see him exhibited, though all unwittingly on the part of the writer, in his true character, and find that the yellow ochre would be considerably out of place. Rarely, indeed, does nature, all lost and fallen as it is, produce so consummate a scoundrel. Treachery seems to have existed as so uncontrollable an instinct in the man, that, like the appropriating faculty of the thief, who amused himself by picking the pocket of the clergyman who conducted him to the scaffold, it seems to have been incapable of lying still. He appears never to have had a friend who did not learn to detest and denounce him: his Presbyterian friends, whom he deceived and betrayed, did so in the first instance; his Episcopalian friends, whom he at least strove to deceive and betray, did so in the second. We are assured by Burnet, that even Charles, a monarch certainly not over-nice in the moral sense, declared James Sharpe to be one of the worst of men. His life was a continuous lie; and he has left more proofs of the fact in the form of letters under his own hand, than perhaps any other bad man that ever lived.

In Baillie he makes his first appearance as the Presbyterian minister of Crail, and as one of the honest chronicler's greatest favourites. The unhappy disputes between the Resolutioners and Protesters were running high at the time. Baillie was a Resolutioner, Sharpe a zealous Resolutioner too; and Baillie, naturally unsuspicious, and biassed in his behalf by that spirit of party which can darken the judgment of even the most discerning, seems to have regarded him as peculiarly the hope of the Church. He was indisputably one of its most dexterous negotiators; and no man of the age made a higher profession of religion. Burnet, who knew him well in his after character as Archbishop of St. Andrews, tells us that never, save on one solitary occasion, did he hear him make the slightest allusion to religion. But in his letters to Baillie, almost every paragraph closes with the aspirations of a well-simulated devotion. They seem as if strewed over with the fragments of broken doxologies. The old man was, as we have said, thoroughly deceived. He assures his continental correspondent, Spang, that 'the great instrument of God to cross the evil designs of the Protesters, was that _very worthy, pious, wise, and diligent young man_, Mr. James Sharpe.' In some of his after epistles we learn that he remembered him in his prayers, no doubt very sincerely, as, under God, one of the mainstays of the Church. What first strikes the reader in the character of Sharpe, as here exhibited, is his exclusively diplomatic cast of talent. Baillie himself was a controversialist: he wrote books to influence opinion, and delivered argumentative speeches. He was a man of business too: he drew up remonstrances, petitions, protests, and carried on the war of his party above-board. All his better friends and correspondents, such as Douglas and Dickson, were persons of a resembling cast. But Sharpe's vocation lay in dealing with men in closets and window recesses: he could do nothing until he had procured the private ear of the individual on whom he wished to act. Is he desirous to influence the decisions of the Supreme Civil Court in behalf of his party? He straightway ingratiates himself with President Broghill, and the court becomes more favourable in consequence. Is he wishful to propitiate the English Government? He goes up to London, gets closeted with its more influential members. It was this peculiar talent that pointed him out to the Church as so fit a person to treat with Charles at Breda.