Even Dr. Arnold said, 'no human power could save the English church as it then was.' The Melbourne-cabinet were assumed to be reckless whether the establishment were swept away or not. Sydney Smith, in his own sarcastic way, had said, 'Viscount Melbourne declared himself quite satisfied with the church as it was, but if the public had any desire to alter it, they might do as they pleased.' The episcopal functionaries, although they had been warned to set their houses in order,' resolved to meet the gathering storm as best they could. An astute hanger-on in prelatical society suggested that it would be well that the establishment principle should be publicly maintained; for the arguing that abstract question would, it was hoped, draw off the popular attention from many admitted grievances in the church. It was a clever policy, and it has succeeded for a time. Application was made to Dr. Chalmers to explain, in a course of lectures, the true theory of a religious establishment, and to demonstrate that it is the only instrument adapted to the universal religious instruction of the people. He assented to the proposal, and delivered his first lecture, in April, 1838, to a picked audience,' that is, to the magnates, the princes, the literati, the gay and the insipid of May-Fair, who, after all, are not the English people, nor England's best and bravest, and who probably would lose the same fractional portion of listlessness, and would be as much amused and edified by Mr. Carlyle's mysterious utterances on Hero-worship as by Dr. Chalmers' orations in defence of establishments. The fallacies of his verbose eloquence have been fully exposed long ago, by Dr. Wardlaw and others, and our space does not permit us even to enumerate them here. But, in truth, the fulminant Scot scathed not that at which he pointed his denunciation. That hated voluntaryism gains strength among us still. These lectures certainly added to their author's fame, and in quarters where previously his reputation had been insignificant. 'Leading journals' flattered him, and fair auditors simpered out applause; but while, on the one hand, he did but little to show the impracticability of the principle he decried, on the other hand he was only convincing the convinced. The late Duke of Cambridge, no great authority certainly, except in prandial matters, was present at one of these lectures, and at its close delivered himself of the following sapient dictum: 'Monstrous clever man-he could teach anything.' Probably, his jovial royal highness may be taken as a type of the auditory on the occasion. It cannot be doubted, but that these lectures -as they were published and circulated throughout the country-rekindled the zeal of the Anglican clergy, revived in some measure the odium theologicum, and also subsequently gave

rise to much wholesome discussion. These lectures will have probably only a short-lived reputation, and they are now but little referred to. They bear some marks of priestly assumption, and the arguments contained in them have received the best possible refutation from the events in the subsequent history of their author; and we are persuaded that the more enlightened the public mind becomes, and the more evangelical principles permeate that mind, the more contradictory to reason and to Scripture, and therefore the more impolitic and unjust will appear an established religion, whose chief support is the secular power, and whose ready resource is the distress warrant, the fine, and the dungeon. The day is not very remote in which the whole system will be greatly modified, if not utterly swept away.

In 1840, Dr. Chalmers entered upon the seventh decade of his life, and it was a favourite speculation of his, that this period, if possible, should be turned into the Sabbath of our earthly pilgrimage, and spent sabbatically, as if on the shore of an eternal world, or in the outer courts, as it were, of the temple that is above-the tabernacle in heaven.' He longed for such an old age as his mother had enjoyed, in which the increasing infirmities of nature seemed always to produce a corresponding spiritual advancement towards the purity and peace of heaven; so that her long widowhood was a perfect feast and foretaste of the blessedness that awaits the righteous.' Dr. Chalmers hoped that so soon as this last decade of his years had commenced, he would be able to retire from the activities and anxieties of public life; but that Divine Disposer of human affairs, whose servant he had long been, had a great employment for him before his public work was done. As a result, to a considerable extent, of his indefatigable exertions, a great improvement had been effected in the collegiate training of the candidates for the sacred ministry, and many of the Scottish clergy, whose vices were notorious, had been deposed from their office. The missionary enthusiasm, the direct index to the positive religiousness of a community, had been kindled in the land. Schools had been planted in remote districts; the General Assembly was engaged rather in devising schemes of practical religious benefit to the people, than in discussing agitated political questions; and there was the visible glow of a great reformation in many parts of the country. But the reformatory tendency of the Scottish church was destined to be abruptly checked by disastrous ecclesiastical dissensions.

Shortly after the assembly had passed the veto-law of 1834, Lord Kinnoul presented a minister to the vacant parish of Auchterarder, in Perthshire. After this person had occupied

the pulpit for two successive Sabbaths, a day was appointed for inviting the congregation to express their approval of his ministry, and their concurrence in his appointment. The parish contained three thousand inhabitants; and the communicants, to whom it belonged to exercise the right of expressing their concurrence in the appointment, numbered three hundred; and of these only two came forward to sign the call.' To prevent the appearance of haste in the proceeding, the presbytery adjourned for a fortnight, and then they were unanimous in their dissent. The rejected minister-whose appointment was illegally resisted-appealed to the synod of Perth and Stirling, and subsequently to the General Assembly of 1835. Failing to obtain his object, the minister and his patron at length resolved to prosecute the presbytery before the civil tribunals, and an action was commenced in the Court of Session, in which the court was prayed to pronounce the ejection of the minister illegal, and to compel the presbytery to take him upon trial, and, if found qualified, to ordain him as a minister of the parish. After lengthy pleadings, the judges, by a majority of eight to five, decided in favour of the minister and his patron, and declared that the presbytery had acted ille gally, and in violation of their duty.' At its meeting in 1838, the General Assembly instructed its legal officer to appeal to the House of Lords against the decision of the Court of Session, After the lapse of nearly a year, the judgment of that august tribunal was pronounced by Lords Brougham and Cottenham, dismissing the appeal, and confirming the decision of the Court of Session. These eminent judges, in commenting on the act of Queen Anne, by which patronage had been restored, decided that the sole business of the church, in judging of the qualification of any presentee, was to inquire into his life, literature, and manners;' so that, according to this doctrine, the congregation, or body of the communicants, were deprived of all influence in the settlement of the minister; and if a person were presented to any church who had been already ordained, it was declared, that as by the very act of such ordination, the church had already approved him, no other congregation had liberty either to question his suitability or to reject him.

The

The judgment of the House of Lords was pronounced in May, 1839, and the General Assembly met a fortnight afterwards, to deliberate on the policy to be adopted, and on the course to be pursued in the intricate state of affairs. great powers of Dr. Chalmers were fully equal to the momentous crisis. In a speech of three hours' duration, he exhorted that conclave to remember the history of their fathers, who suffered cruel persecution rather than yield that which con

science bade them maintain; and that the Great Author of Christianity had himself taught, that His kingdom was not dependant either on the smile or on the frown of the world, but that the church, although her subsistence came from the state, was bound to refuse the state the right of interference in her doctrine, discipline, and forms of government. He concluded by moving that the assembly should regard the vetolaw as abrogated, and proceed as if it had never passed;' a resolution which was adopted by a large majority. Thus began that conflict between the evangelical party in the church and the civil power, in which the Scottish establishment was to be shaken to its centre, and a new Christian society to be formed in the land, new in its position, in its principles, and in its mode of action also. The assembly began immediately to act upon this resolution, by sending a large deputation to London, to beseech the government to extricate the church from her painful position of antagonism to the civil power. Lord Melbourne was willing to receive them, only, as he expressed himself on a former occasion, he hoped that dd fellow Chalmers was not one of them.' It was impossible that the government, already harassed and hampered by other serious matters, could interfere effectively between the church and the law-courts. The question in dispute had not as yet been sufficiently discussed. The public mind was not keenly sensible of its importance; and the government saw that it might lead to such momentous issues, that it involved not merely the peace and safety of the Scottish church, but the very existence of all religious establishments whatsoever. The question became still more complicated, and the attitude of the church more and more determined in her opposition, by events which speedily followed this abortive negotiation. In 1837, a minister was presented to the vacant parish of Marnoch, which contained 2800 inhabitants, of whom 300 were qualified to vote for or against the presentee. Only one individual, and he an innkeeper, signed the call' to the minister; and the presbytery refused to proceed with his settlement. The rejected minister at once sought the aid of the law-courts, whose decision, as in the former instance, was in his favour. Parliament, in the meantime, had re-assembled, and in February, 1840, a deputa tion from the General Assembly once more came to London to petition the aid of the government. The whigs, who probably speculated in turning the agitation to political account, faltered, and postponed the production of a measure; and the disgusted deputation besought the aid of the tory leaders, with whom they and their constituents had much more in common than with the whig cabinet. Lord Aberdeen at length introduced a

measure into the House of Peers, which, he hoped, would meet the views of the majority in the Assembly, and would extinguish the flame of discord in the church. This measure, although it was the best that a tory advocate of establishments could frame, left the judgment of the House of Lords and the law of patronage, on which that judgment was founded, untouched: and it was altogether unacceptable to the petitioners.

In August, 1840, the chair of theology in the University of Glasgow became vacant, and his friends were eager that Dr. Chalmers should become a candidate for the office. The election rested with the Senatus Academicus; but he was not a favourite with the illustrious men composing that body, the greater number of whom were opposed to the non-intrusion agitation. They refused to appoint him; and it was remarked at the time, that Sir James Graham, the then Lord Rector of the University, and who, in his day, has played many parts, went down expressly to vote against the venerable philosopher whom Paris and Oxford had delighted to honour.

During the whole of 1841, the conflict continued between the church and the civil power-a conflict which daily increased in earnest bitterness; and towards the close of that year, it began to be whispered that a disruption would ensue, if the government could not propose a satisfactory settlement of the question in dispute. In the May of the following year, at the session of the Assembly, a proposition was brought forward by Dr. Cunningham, and supported by Dr. Chalmers, that patronage ought to be abolished. This resolution was carried by a very large majority; and thus another mighty link between the evangelical portion of the church and the state was broken, and that for ever. In June, the premier, Sir Robert Peel, informed the House of Commons, that, after mature deliberation, the government had abandoned all hope of settling the question in a satisfactory manner; and the evangelical party held a solemn convocation in the following winter, in Edinburgh, to deliberate on the proper course to be pursued, and which all were convinced would be final. Four hundred and fifty ministers assembled, of whom 427 concurred in the resolutions passed at that meeting, and which were forwarded to the government. In these the subscribers committed themselves to a relinquishment of the temporalities of the church, if they were not permitted to hold them but on the condition of being subjected to the civil courts in things spiritual.' The government, in replying, declined to frame any measure to meet this proposal; and it was clear that the non-intrusionists had no choice but to relinquish their parishes, and to form themselves into a distinct religious society. We know not what other reply the government, bound