land-the sentiments of Dissenters as well as Churchmen.1 It was several years after this that Sydney Smith wrote for the "Edinburgh Review" his satires of Methodism and Missions -satires which are universally reprobated now, but which were greedily read and generally applauded then.

The Haldanes now began to move in the religious world. They were the sons of Captain James Haldane of Airthrie, a beautiful estate in the south of Perthshire, from which the most celebrated of Scottish spas takes its name, and close by which the villas, cottages, and churches of the Bridge of Allan now nestle warmly amid basaltic rocks and overhanging woods. Robert Haldane, the elder of the two, and already the possessor of his father's property, entered the navy, and fought with the future Lord St Vincent in the "Foudroyant." James Haldane, the younger brother, also went to sea, and quickly rose to be commander of the "Melville Castle" East-Indiaman. But both abandoned their profession; and both, about the same period, became deeply impressed with religion. Under the influence of this feeling, Robert resolved to sell his paternal estate, and conduct a mission to Bengal. In the great city of Benares, the capital of the Brahmin superstition, he proposed to pitch his tent and begin his work. He had fixed upon his associates: they were Dr Bogue of Gosport; Dr Innes, one of the ministers of Stirling; and Mr Greville Ewing, colleague of Mr Jones, minister of Lady Glenorchy's Chapel in Edinburgh. But the Court of Directors, which then ruled India, refused its concurrence, and Robert Haldane was obliged to abandon his design.

Just about the time when the Assembly of 1796 was bringing its labours to a close, Mr Simeon of Cambridge arrived in Edinburgh. His fame as a preacher and a good man had preceded him. He had travelled northwards in order to have a pleasure-tour in the Highlands; and James Haldane, whom he visited at Airthrie, agreed to accompany him. They visited Perth, Dunkeld, Killiecrankie, Blair, Taymouth, jogging along on horseback, and everywhere distributing religious tracts on the way. Simeon preached in some of the Scotch pulpits, and there were few who could preach like him; but, at the end of a few weeks, he returned back to his old quarters at Cam

1 In 1796 the Antiburghers, in general synod, passed a resolution against missionary societies; and the Cameronians excommunicated one of their number for having attended a missionary sermon preached by Dr Balfour. See Lives of the Haldanes, p. 260.

bridge, and the memory of his visit alone remained. In the spring of 1797 James Haldane set out on a tour to the west of Scotland. His travelling companion on this occasion was John Campbell, who at that time kept an ironmonger's shop in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh, but afterwards acquired a wide celebrity as an African traveller and missionary. Their object was to establish Sunday-schools, and disperse tracts. They dispersed some thousands of tracts, and established no fewer than sixty Sunday-schools,1 among the first established in Scotland. From founding schools, and handing tracts to every one he met, James Haldane proceeded to preach. He first began at Gilmerton, a collier village in the neighbourhood of Edinburgh, where he thought the gospel was not preached by the parish minister. Crowds naturally flocked to hear the sea-captain. Encouraged by the success of his effort at Gilmerton, the former captain of the "Melville Castle" proceeded to the north, accompanied by a friend. Wherever the itinerants came, they preached, taking their stand at the market-cross, or in the public street. Sometimes the town-bellman or the towndrummer gave notice to the inhabitants of where they were to hold forth. On the Sunday they generally attended sermon in the parish church; but when dissatisfied with the doctrine of the minister, they arrested the people on their way homeward, and from the top of a stair, or at the corner of a street, denounced what they considered the dangerous errors which they had heard from the pulpit. This was but the first of a series of preaching-tours made by Haldane and his companions, in which they visited almost every town and village in Scotland, and assailed what was called legal Christianity in its strongholds.

In the summer of 1798 Rowland Hill came to Scotland on the invitation of the Haldanes, to open the Edinburgh Circus as a tabernacle. Not satisfied with preaching in the circus on the Sundays, the eccentric Englishman filled up the week with sermons preached in different parts of the country, sometimes in the open air, sometimes in the churches of the Establishment. His rollicking manner, his racy humour, the anecdotes he told, the odd remarks he made, coupled with his evident earnestness, speedily drew crowds around him; and on one occasion he preached on the Calton Hill to nearly twenty thousand persons. His strange ways, however, gave offence to many. He scandalised the rigid Presbyterians by kneeling 1 Lives of the Haldanes.

when he entered the pulpit; and he scandalised a family of Seceders with whom he was sojourning by praying for his horse, which had unfortunately become lame.1

When he returned to England he published a Journal of his Scottish Tour, which was not very flattering to the spiritual pride of the nation. He passed in review the Established Church, and all the Dissenting Churches which had sprung from it. He charged them all with intolerance and bigotry. He declared that the Solemn League and Covenant was more persecuting than the Act of Uniformity. He alleged that the majority of the Established clergy did not preach the gospel; that they were moralists or infidels; that some of them preached "a mangled gospel;" others, "law and gospel wretchedly spliced together;" others, "a hungry system of bare-weight morality;" and that some deliberately attacked the truths they had engaged to uphold.2

It will readily be believed that these things could not be said and done without exciting resentment. Few men can hear themselves reviled with perfect complacency. Few ministers could be expected to bear with itinerants coming into their parishes, catching their hearers as they came out of the church on a sacrament-Sunday, or calling them together by tuck of drum and sound of bell, and solemnly assuring them that the gospel was not preached to them. The Haldanes were undoubtedly well-meaning men. The great sacrifices they made, the great toils they endured, prove how deep their convictions were. We may honour them for their honesty, their disinterestedness, their entire self-devotedness; but, at the same time, we may doubt if their zeal did not sometimes make them forget that charity which is the bond of perfectness. Rowland Hill took his estimate of Scottish piety from the men with whom he associated, and gave it a colouring of his own.

The bad feeling which had been engendered in different parts of the country found vent in the Assembly of 1799. Many synods hastened to tell the Assembly of their grievances. The Assembly instantly passed an act to meet the emergency and ordered a Pastoral Letter to be written and dispersed among the flock, to warn them of the danger to which they were exposed. The Pastoral Letter contained sentiments 1 Memoir of the Rev. Rowland Hill, by William Jones.

2 Journal through the north of England and parts of Scotland, by Rowland Hill, pp. 111, 112.

3 See Acts of Assembly, pp. 870-75.

about Sunday-schools which are now universally abandoned, and threw reflections upon the Haldanes which were not deserved. The act of Assembly consisted of two parts. By the first, it was declared that none but licentiates of the Church of Scotland were capable of receiving a presentation to any parish within its bounds. Previous to this time there had been many instances of licentiates of other Churches receiving livings in the Church of Scotland. This was felt to be a hardship by the regular licentiates of the Church, who had passed through the prescribed university education; and it was to be permitted no more. Few will challenge the wisdom of this measure, as no Church in the world places the licentiates of other religious bodies on a level with its own.

The other part of the act prohibited the ministers of the Church from employing any to preach in their pulpits besides the authorized licentiates and ministers of the Church, or from holding ministerial communion with any such persons.

This part of the act has been condemned, as unlike the liberality of the apostolic age-as unlike the catholicity of all the Protestant Churches immediately after the Reformation. It is notorious that the act pointed at the Haldanes, and at Rowland Hill. Let us look at it in that light. The former were laymen; the latter an ordained deacon1 of the Church of England. Is lay preaching apostolic? Those who remember how the disciples who were scattered by the persecution which arose at Jerusalem went everywhere preaching the Word, may be inclined to think that it is. But is this any good reason why the pulpits of an Established Church, which requires a regular training for all its licentiates, and a subscription to a special creed from all its ministers, should be thrown open to every layman who fancies he has a call to preach ? If the pulpits of the Church of Scotland are to be open to such men, what need of having licentiates, at all, fettered by creeds and trained in the schools? If laymen will preach, let them preach. They will find some place for an audience, if they can find an audience for the place, without intruding into the church. It is but justice to the Haldanes to say that they never even asked admission to the parish churches, though others, less worthy, have since both asked and received,

But Rowland Hill was a deacon of the Church of England: Should he have been excluded from the pulpits of the Church

'Rowland Hill never obtained priests' orders on account of his irregularities. See his Life by Sidney, pp. 88-93.

of Scotland? Should every Church be a close corporation? It is certain that this is the policy of almost all Churches now; but it was not always so. John Knox preached in English as well as in Genevese pulpits; but a descendant of John Knox would find access to neither the one nor the other. George Whitefield and Rowland Hill were welcomed within many of the churches of the Scotch Establishment; but after that the door was closed and barred. It was so everywhere. Rowland Hill pungently spoke the truth when he said, that if St Paul were to appear again upon earth, he would be refused admittance to his own cathedral. In the case of Scot land, however, it was temporary irritation that created the exclusion, and it has now been relaxed. Rowland Hill came to Scotland as the associate of the Haldanes; and the Haldanes had made themselves odious by their denunciations of the lukewarmness, legalism, and infidelity of the Established clergy. Rowland Hill returned to England to publish griev ous charges against the Church whose pulpits he had been generously permitted to occupy. No man will allow a calumniator to visit his house a second time.

The Established Church did not stand alone in its antagonism to Rowland Hill and the Haldanes. In 1798 the Antiburgher Synod forbade its people "to attend or give countenance to public preaching by any who were not of their communion ;" and a year afterwards actually deposed and excommunicated one of its ministers for having heard Rowland Hill and James Haldane preach. The Synod of Relief, forgetting that Gillespie, its founder, had finished his education in Dr Doddridge's Academy, and received ordination from an English presbytery, forgetting the principles of free communion which it had always cherished, ordained "that no minister should give or allow his pulpit to be given to any person who had not attended a regular course of philosophy and divinity in some of the universities of the nation, and who had not been regularly licensed to preach the gospel." Episcopalians were animated by the same feeling, and rigor ously shut their doors against their brother Episcopalian from the south. This is partly to be attributed to the exclusive spirit of the times, but it is much more to be attributed to the resentment which had been awakened by the things which had been

said and done.

"1 The

Rowland Hill arrived in Edinburgh, on a second tour, on the Friday after the Assembly had risen, and found, as he 1 Lives of the Haldanes, pp. 259-261.