of the number of them. This will open a boundless field for the liberality of our Christian brethren, -a bright and beautiful ulterior, to which every eye should be directed, that each may have in full view the great and glorious achievement of a Church commensurate with the land in which we dwell, and every heart be elevated by the magnificent aim to cover with the requisite number of churches, and, with God's blessing on the means, Christianly to educate, and, in return for our performance and prayers, to Christianize the whole of Scotland. There is a very great and high expediency in this arrangement, and is made up of the three following particulars:

First,-The provision of our existing ministers would not be neglected, because it would form a prior and preferable object, to be met and provided for in the first instance, and which would be made all the more secure, that it was bound up with so noble a fulfilment as that in which it was made to issue and have its final outgoing.

"Secondly,─It would place our whole enterprise before the eye of the public in its true character. What fixes the character of any undertaking is its terminus ad quem. Now the terminus ad quem of ours is not, even in the first instance, a provision for the ejected ministers. It is the benefit of their Christian services, and then the multiplication of these services over the whole face of our territory. One could plead and hold up his face unabashed for such a design in any company and before any assemblage. It may be stigmatized by our enemies as a beggarly expedition for a beggarly purpose. It will be no such thing. It will be a high errand of religious philanthropy,-an enlarged and liberal scheme of church extension,-carried forward by periodical, generous, and heart-stirring appeals in behalf of a great object of Christian patriotism. "Thirdly,-Such an aim, in such a direction, will not only have the effect of keeping our object altogether pure,-it will have the undoubted effect of making the contributions high. We shall soon overshoot our first and immediate object, and look back upon it as the paltry beginning of our great national undertaking. The liberalities of the Christian public will be kept at a loftier pitch, when thus supplied with a loftier aim and a larger arena. Thousands will give tenfold more than they did at the outset; and yet, after all they have given and experienced, how little have they foregone of any substantial comfort, or of so much as one enjoyment that is worth caring for, and how purely will they see rea. son for the exclamation of Hannah More, "O! how cheap is charity-O! how expensive is vanity." "Such, then, are our capabilities for a great and high work of Christian philanthropy; and Scotland, -Our own beloved land,-will be the first arena on which to realize it-I mean the first in the order of importance, and not in the order of time; for I have no idea that any of our enterprises will need for a moment to be suspended. When we carry the Church, we shall carry all the Church's schemes along with us. If faithful to God's work, God will cause our cup to overflow, and pour down such a blessing as that there shall be no room to receive it. But, confining ourselves to the operations of the great Home Mission, into which we shall then be resolved, not only might we keep possession of all the ground at present occupied by our right-minded ministers, but proceed to take possession, first, of all that heathen territory which we have not yet been able to overtake, and second, of all the Erastian territory which, for the present, we may be forced to leave behind us. It were, indeed, a great and glorious church extension, with the indispensable satellite of a commensurate school extension keeping onwardly by its side, or following closely in its train. Be sure there would be no drawing in of Christian philanthropy,-there would be an immeasurable expansion or going out of it; and that in hundreds of places not yet blessed or visited by any of its operations,-in the lanes and plebeian streets of our large towns,-in the desolate untrodden outfields of our more unwieldy parishes. There is a numerous band of youthful, zealous, and devoted agents, in the form both of students and probationers, ready even now to go forth as the pioneers of this moral wilderness, and in whose hands there might be an instant and visible display of the Christian good which a Church, shaken loose from its present entanglements and fetters, is able to accomplish. It would give rise to a strong reciprocal pulsation between the givers and the doers of this noble enterprise, who would act and react most beneficially and powerfully into each others' hands. It will be like a law of action and reaction in the moral world, when this prosperous interchange takes place between the services and liberalities of the Church's friends,-the services awakening and calling forth the liberalities,-the liberalities sustaining and extending the services.

"We trust that the arrangement now explained will give rise to an operation of pure and high principle, both in the richer and the poorer parishes. The liberality of the former will be stimulated, not alone by the mean and narrow consideration of a support for their own ministers, but by the generous and soul-expanding consideration that they are helping out a provision for the gospel in the most destitute localities of the land; and the efforts and the sacrifices of the latter will be stimulated by the honourable ambition of raising their contributions as near to the dividend as possible,-nay, in this noble work of provoking each other to love and to good works,-of raising it to the point which might enable them to say, we give as much as we receive,-in adopting the language of Paul, our own hands have ministered in full to our own necessities. But whether this be attainable or not, it is well that the ministers of our most remote and destitute localities should know that they have the capability of the whole religious public of Scotland to count upon,-yea, more, and it were one of the most precious fruits of their arrangements, that the very oldest of our ministers,-those venerable fathers who have borne the burden and heat of the day, perhaps unable to labour, yet unwilling and ashamed to remain in fellowship with a Church that has bowed the knee to an Erastian domination,-it were indeed a heartfelt satisfaction to assure all such, that they will not be forsaken by their brethren at large; but that, admitted to the highest place of honour in the free and unfettered Church of Scotland, they, to the day of their death, will be made to participate equally and alike with them in the joint offerings of her children.

"Let us announce then once for all, that what we most desiderate in this whole scheme of operations is, the maintenance and progressive increase of a general fund. Without this, our system will go to pieces, from the inherent weakness of internal voluntaryism; whereas with this, it is capable of being made commensurate to the exigencies of a whole nation. And we have a strong principle to address, when pleading for the support of a fund, the main design of which is to supply with the word and ordinances of the gospel, those districts of the country, and those classes of society, where there exists an unwillingness and inability to help themselves. For the support of this fund, Christian principle will make her strongest appeals, and a sound Christian policy will put forth her strongest efforts. Let us hope that the itinerancies which have been so effectual for the setting up of our numerous Associations,-those great feeders of the treasury,-and to set them agoing, will, if necessary, be resorted to, from time to time, and be found alike effectual for the purpose of keeping them up, and to keep them agoing, till what was done at the outset, under the force of impulse, may at length become regular and sure as me chanism, because done by the power of habit. This is the great, I had almost said the only, surveillance which the central government of the Church will require to exercise over the provinces-I mean in the matter of the Church's economics. Let this object be secured and seen to, that each Association, and each district of the country which it represents, do what it might and what it ought by the general fund, and then all that remains of this department, whether in the building of churches, or in the

supplementary efforts which might be required for a more generous sustentation of the ministers than the general fund can afford, might well nigh be left altogether to the respective localities themselves, without the restraint, often the sad and mischievous incumbrances, of central control or central legis

lation.

There is one mighty improvement which I would here venture to recommend, on the working of this part of our machinery. I would henceforth have all that is given to the General Fund, whether for building or sustentation, to be given without reservation of any sort. You will allow that nothingwhatever is added to the power of the fund for general objects, by the sending up from any part, say L.500 to it, with the intimation that all, and perhaps something more, must be taken out of it for the building of their own church. Better keep the L.500 for their own local object, and give what they mean to give, wholly and without deduction, for the general behoof of all. And let them not imagine, that by so doing no benefit will accrue to themselves. They will get such an allowance as the Building Fund will afford, towards the erection of their own place of worship. They will get what dividend the Sustentation Fund will afford, for the support of their own minister. It were a monstrously selfish expectation, surely, on the part of any parish, that they should get all, and give none; and we just recognise a greater or less degree of this said selfishness, when applicants are sharp set on getting as much and giving as little as possible. All the remonstrances of equity, and all the pleadings of Christian charity, must be set up against this habit; and I am persuaded that, when the bearings and relation ships of our whole scheme, and the various parts of it, come to be rightly comprehended, neither the remonstrances nor the appeals will be lifted in vain. It is right that you should provide for your own, do this by your separate and home liberalities. It is right that you should look not only to your own things, but to the things of others also,-do this by pouring your unburdened gifts into our metropolitan treasury. To say that you cannot afford to do both, because you cannot fully provide for both, is just as great a perversity as that a man should not subscribe both to a home and a foreign mission, because he cannot, in his own individual person, overtake the objects of either. The objects are distinct, and so to a certain extent are the principles drawn forth by them. Let them be kept distinct; and let each principle be dealt with separately, and be spoken to as it were singly and apart, on its own proper grounds. It is not for the mere simplification of our accounts that we are now pleading. I am sure that we traverse the laws of human nature when we thus blend and complicate the general with the local, or the largely and diffusively generous with the more partial and confined exertions of Christian bene volence. Let each be appealed to on its own distinct considerations; and let each be prosecuted with all energy, without jealousy, or so much as the feeling of a conflict. And as the almost uniform experience is, that he who subscribes most liberally to a foreign, also subscribes most liberally to a home mis sion: so will it be found, that he whose heart has been most powerfully quickened to the necessities of our remote and poorer parishes, will be also the most alive and the readíest of all his fellows, with heart and hand, to provide cheerfully and generously for his own.

"In thus pleading for the separation of these two objects, the general and the local, let me confess that it is because of all the objects in our scheme we feel most tremblingly alive to the interests of the General Fund. We are not in the least afraid, that if the general be kept entire and untouched for be hoof of the country at large, the requisite local and supplementary effort will be made good in one and all of our richer parishes. But we do confess our more serious apprehensions, that if the general and the local be blended together, so as that the sum available for the greater and patriotic good shall be reduced from a whole to a fraction or a remainder,-we do confess our fears, that, besides vitiating the otherwise noble and disinterested character of our appeals to the Christian public, for the support of our Church, it will not only put an end to our ulterior prospects of church and school extension, but leave it short even of the requisite dividend for the maintenance of the Protesting Church in its poorer parishes. It will, indeed, prove a mortifying issue, if, after all, the expansive and generous aspirations, along with the indefinite power, of external voluntaryism, shall be inoculated with the inherent feeble ness of internal voluntaryism, and, because of this drag and deduction laid upon it, shall fail to accomplish what we looked forward to with so much fond and confident anticipation,-the whole kingdom of Scotland covered, by its means, with a goodly apparatus, commensurate to all the moral and educational exigencies of our land, of churches, and schools, and colleges. Once the vitiating law of a partial or personal interest is put into the system, it will, as if struck with paralysis, wither into a poor, helpless, impotent thing; and we shall speedily degenerate into a mere economy of rare and isolated congregations, flourishing, it may be, in towns, but dying by inches, and at length fading utterly away, throughout the main length and breadth of the Scottish territory. Let us not therefore precipitate our final determination, but wait at least the experience of a year, till we have finally adopted a measure so big with consequences to the prosperity of our Church, and to the highest interests of the people of Scotland."

The reverend Doctor then proceeded,-I should like to impress the Assembly with the immense importance of an adequate agency. I do not mean an agency for carrying on your different operations, but one for managing the very complicated and laborious business connected with our Church. You can easily understand that a matter which may come to involve funds amounting to hundreds of thousands, is not a matter to be gone through in a superficial and desultory way, or by people who can give to its management only fragments of their time. I was delighted with a remark which fell from Mr Dunlop, as to the great importance of a liberally paid agency for carrying on the central business in Edinburgh; and we can be at no loss for fit hands in which to place this important trust. I can give my testimony to all that has been said of the high business talents of Mr Jaffray, to whom we are indebted for many of our most felicitous devices in the whole matter of our arrangements. Mr Jaffray is so well known to the Church, and knows so much of its concerns, that his services will be valuable in the highest degree to our cause. He is a person in whom we can place the greatest confidence; and I know few who could be so prompt, and at the same time judicious, in suggesting a wise expedient in the event of any difficulty that might occur. Let me also state, that in connec

tion with the business of the Financial Committee, I have derived the greatest aid from the important and laborious services of my friend Dr Gardner, of whom I will only say, that so soon as we obtained his assistance, we got per saltum into a state of great expansion and prosperity. There is a most important part of our business that requires the services of one man to be devoted to them,-I mean the management of those reciprocal influences that pass and repass between the local and metropolitan agencies. Now, Dr Gardner has not only that duty to perform, but he is so well acquainted with the Church, that, in forming itinerating agencies, his assistance is invaluable. I have experienced immense difficulties in the early part of our arrangements; the truth is, that for several weeks we were labouring under embarrassments and difficulties of a very formidable kind, till we fell upon the method of employing itinerating agencies, and then, when we did begin, we increased at the rate of more than ten a day. It is of mighty importance, therefore, that what I have suggested should be attended to, and that we should disregard, 1 would almost call it the low-minded imputation that is cast upon a scheme when that scheme employs a paid agency, and remunerates that agency liberally and cheerfully. I speak my own experience when I say, that this unworthy feeling put an end to the success of church extension altogether. I endeavoured to get an agent to whom some trifling sum was paid. After travelling over the whole country, and collecting L.20,000 in the course of a single summer, I think it was a modest enough application to ask the services of an individual who should be paid for his trouble; but the report got up that we were guilty of extravagance in the matter of our paid agency; it affected our operations in various ways, and marred greatly the effect of our plans, and I felt the impossibility of carrying on the Church Extension Scheme prosperously and successfully; indeed, it formed one of the materials that led me to give up the convenership. I am sure there is not one here but will agree with me in the propriety of appointing a well-paid and effective agency for the carrying on of our business.

I generally, in my church extension reports, selected some of the more remarkable instances of liberality on the part of our friends. I have not been able on this point to make the present report so complete as I could wish. I will only remind you of the subscriptions of the Marchioness of Breadalbane, who has given us L.1000; of Mr Ewing, L. 2000; of Mr Nisbet, L. 1000; and of Mr Douglas, L.500 as a donation, and L.500 a-year. There are others well entitled to be mentioned, but I cannot now bring them before you; there is, for example, Mr Campbell of Monzie,-who builds a church in his parish, a fact which does not appear in our report. There is also the handsome offer of Mrs Peston for a new church in the parish of Markinch. Of this description of aid there are many instances. There are, besides, artizans willing to give labour, and farmers willing to drive materials, and materials to be given,—all of which does not appear in the Report. Then there are great obligations due to those who have been most assiduous in the formation of Associations. We owe an immense deal to those gentlemen from Edinburgh who expatiated over various parts of the country, and planted several hundred Associations. Among these I take leave to name my excellent friend Mr Makgill Crichton, who, by his own individual energies, has formed no less than forty Associations, besides giving most important assistance in the formation of others. It is several years since I wished that we had only twenty Makgill Crichtons, and I think I have calculated pretty nearly, for he has formed 40 Associations, and the whole number we have is 720.

I should here mention, that the Report is sufficiently general, and does not commit the Assembly to precise or minute details. I know that there are varieties of opinion, which, I am sure, in the course of a year, will be amicably settled. As to the relations in which the general and supplementary funds should stand to each other, there is nothing fixed; but I have great comfort in the reflection, that there are two distinct channels connectible to two distinct objects. Through the medium of Associations, it is competent for you to contribute to the general fund; and there is another channel opened up, the grounds of which may be connectible to the distinct object of a supplementary fund for making up deficiences in local districts. There is a diversity of opinion as to the relationship of these objects, but I should like to see these experiments multiplied over Scotland. I should like to see Asso

ciations for both, so that at the end of the year, we might be able to calculate the progress of the two separate principles, the one for the glorious object of promoting the interests of all Scotland,—the other for advancing the interests of your own particular parishes; and I have no doubt that our experience will be so far multiplied, that we will be quite ready for a full and final decision on the subject by this time twelve months. I may here mention, and I trust with the approbation of the Assembly, that I wish the whole public had been present at our Convocation. It has been called a secret, Jesuitical conclave, met for some purpose which we were afraid to reveal (laughter)-but I wish the whole public had been present at those meetings, and also at the private meetings we lately held, which really added so much to the economics of the Church. My principles have been long known on the subject to which I a little ago referred. My opinion is, that in all the departments of the public service, public functionaries are greatly underpaid-functionaries in law and divinity, and in military and naval offices. I should like to see more of the wealth of the country diverted from those whom I may, without offence designate as the nati consumere fruges— (Laughter)—and given to the officials who fill the various departments of the public service. The first principle is, that a public functionary should do his duty well; and the second is that he should be well paid. We are now making a transition from an old to a new state of matters; and this is a point that comes naturally before us. I informed the Assembly, on a former occasion, that we conceived the capabilities of the fund were equal, according to my estimate, to the allocation of about two-thirds of the average stipends in the Establishment to each of the ejected ministers, provided that we were to continue our operations for two or three months. I said they were not yet equal to that, but that I thought, after two or three months, we should be able to allocate that sum. I stated at the same time, that instead of two-thirds of the average in the Establishment, if we were only to receive one half of the average stipend of the Establishment, that their own funds would be equal to that amount, leaving about L. 10,000 over for the support of probationers. (Cheers.) When I brought forward my first proposition, it met with no sound of approbation whatever. I was not aware whether the feeling with regard to the two-thirds was, that it was too great, or too little; but the ambiguity was resolved, when, upon stating the other proposition, that we should receive the one half, and leave over L. 10,000 for the probationers and compensation to ejected schoolmasters, there was an instant, spontaneous, and universal consent given. (Cheers.)

And here I must state, plainly and collectedly, that we hear much of the sacrifices of the clergy, but we do not hear enough of the immense sacrifices of the probationers. It would require a very profound calculator,—a very profound analyst into the moral forces that bear upon the human mind,—to determine which of the two have made the greatest sacrifices. There is no doubt that the clergymen, generally speaking, have families, and the descent on that ground is all the more grievous; but when one thinks that these probationers are, by adhering to our Free Church, foregoing the certainty of instant and ample preferment to the churches that we leave behind us-when we reflect that, apart from the considerations of family, the few years that remain to many of us on this side of death-the comforts of these few years are all that we give up,-while they give up-at the very time when youth's imaginative and youth's prospects are highly coloured-they give up the brilliant prospects of a whole lifetime. I must say, that nothing can equal my admiration of the conduct of those probationers who adhere to our Free Church; and I would infinitely rather be the panderer to the vices of the most profligate and unprincipled man in the land, than I would be the heartless negotiator between a corrupt and corrupting Government on the one hand, and those high-minded, and generous, and noble probationers on the other. The one species of panderism is to corrupt an individual, but by the other species of foul and degrading panderism, you corrupt the instructors of the people, and you thereby pour poison into the very fountain-heads of the national morality. (Great cheering.) I say, the simony that would tamper for money, is not half so atrocious as the simony that would thus tamper with principle. (Hear, hear.) I do not know to what extent Government may have interfered,-I know nothing of these negociations-but this I know, that whether these negociations have been conducted between the Government and the probationers or not, the certainty lay quite pal

pably before them, of immediate preferment to the best livings in the Church. I feel it difficult to pronounce as to the comparative extent of the sacrifices of each of the clergy who have renounced their livings, or of the probationers who have resisted the temptation of stepping into their places.

But we must not be led away by sounds. There is an immense deal to be done; and I shall not be satisfied till it is completed. I know my friend Dr Gardner has favoured me with a somewhat more moderate calculation on the subject of our funds than I am disposed to take. My expectations have been so well fulfilled,-we have so well succeeded, that I will not be satisfied until we have doubled our present number of associations, and doubled our present average from each of these associations. With regard to the collecting of our funds, it may look a little ungracious to speak of another collecting week; but you will observe, that our proposals during the first collecting week were very frequently met by the reply, "we will give nothing till the disruption takes place." Now, this is a fair ground for repeating the collection. (Laughter.) The actual object, too, is different; the object of the first collecting week was to obtain produce to go to the building fund in Edinburgh; the main object of the second collecting week will be to raise a produce to go into your own localities. It is not bidding you do any thing for us—it is bidding you belp yourselves. And I will not commend it the less to you when I say that, if in virtue of your strenuous and persevering collections to erect a church, you do not draw any thing out of the General Fund, it will enable us to give far more liberal assistance to the poorer districts of the country. It would not be prudent at this moment for the administrators of the fund to say they can afford more than 5s. a-sitting as a general rule; but if you raise, by your own exertions, as much as it is possible to obtain, you may enable us to say to the remaining localities, that we are ready to afford 10s. a-sitting. That will set all the churches a-going; and what with the labour and the materials offered us, and the expedients that will be resorted to, I have no doubt, that if we make proper exertions, we shall be put into such circumstances as will enable us to go on with comfort. Then, after providing for that object, the whole efforts of the country would be directed to the Sustentation Fund. There is another point. A good many ministers will be obliged to leave their parishes, not being able to get sites-Mr Robertson of Gartly, for one. Some will have to remove their families for sixty or seventy miles, and occupying any place of worship they can find, they will be reduced to the expense of an operose conveyance of furniture,-to the expense also of keeping two establishments, in many instances. Now, it were desirable that to meet these expenses something should be done. I would say, that the great object of the collecting week should be to make up for your own fabrics; but where there may be a surplus in a parish, where more may be raised than erects the church, I would suggest that it should be remitted to those clergymen who have these difficulties to meet. The most prominent type of this class of clergymen is Mr Swanston of Small Isles,―(cheers) and I have already referred to Mr Robertson of Gartly. Upon this point I would say, this has been the trial of faith and patience, but there is an exquisite adaptation that is quite wonderful, and one gets into circumstances that give experimental explanations of a Bible clause. You will find a Bible clause to suit every class, to meet even the most critical circumstances. The Bible has placed together "faith and patience;"-the season of faith you have now described-the season of endurance has come-the season of patience. Just conceive these clergymen returning to their homes, finding their houses in process of being disinantled, and their parishioners saddened by the prospect of an approaching separation. It is well we stay in our hilarity in presence of each other, and in the great prospect of a great sacrifice, in which the higher principles have obtained a victory over the lower. These gentlemen go to what were once their welcome and comfortable homes; and this is the spectacle that meets them when they return. I cannot venture on the description of such a spectacle as this. Going, they and their families, more especially those who are obliged to remove from their manses,-going they know not whither, and resigning all those places to which they are attached by so many foud and intense local affections, their garden walks, where they freely enjoyed the hours of their relaxation,-the peaceful study where the man of God and the man of learning enjoyed many a raptured hour in converse with his books, or which the man of piety converted into a sanctuary and held intercourse with his God-all these are resigned and given up. I have known instances of translations being resisted from causes that bring forcibly to my mind the dreadful lacerations that our disestablished ministers in country parishes are found to undergo. I once knew an instance of a most advantageous translation being offered to a minister, and the