a union between the Free and United Presbyterian Churches. Why should they not unite? They were both Presbyterian, Nonconformist, Voluntary in practice at least, and agreed in holding by the Westminster Confession as their creed, excepting its chapter on the civil magistrate, which the United Presbyterians repudiated. Articles of peace were accordingly formulated by joint-committees. The United Presbyterians were all but unanimous for the union; but a powerful party in the Free Church, led by Dr Begg, stood out against it. They declared that they could not ally themselves with a Church which was voluntary in principle, which repudiated the headship of Christ over the nation, denied the duty of the civil magistrate to foster religion, and would level all Statesupported churches with the dust. So high did the excitement rise, that it was believed a disruption of the Free Church was imminent, and indeed would probably have taken place if the scheme of union had not been abandoned.

In 1872 the Education Act was passed, which took the management of the parish school from the heritors and minister, planted new schools wherever they were needed, and placed them all, as National Schools, under the management of School Boards. Looked at through an ecclesiastical medium, it perhaps lessened the influence, as it lightened the duties, of the parochial clergy; but otherwise it gave a great impetus to primary education, and it will soon be difficult to find a Scotch man or woman who cannot read, write, and count, which is something, if not all, that is desirable. But while the parish schools were thus taken from under the wing of the Church, the whole nation bore its testimony to the admirable way in which the Church had managed them for two hundred years. Children of all the sects had been educated in them, Seceders, Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, and yet, though religion was taught, no charge of proselytism was ever established, hardly ever made. They had made Scotland what it is.

In 1874 patronage was abolished, after a struggle which may be said to have gone on, with little interruption, for one hundred and fifty years. The Benefices Act had been worked with infinite labour by presbytery and General Assembly since it became law, but after a trial of thirty years it was condemned by the nearly unanimous voice of the Church. The sentimental argument which had been urged against it by Dr Chalmers, was indeed shown to be baseless. If the pious

peasantry could not give shape to their objections to an unacceptable presentee, they readily found a lawyer who, for a fee, could do so. The real vice of the measure was discovered to lie in this-that objections must not only be stated but proved and judicially cognosced. Hence lawyers required to be employed and witnesses cited, and no disputed settlement could take place without the vexation and expense of a protracted lawsuit. Moreover, when a congregation were opposed to a presentee, it was seen to be expedient to make the objections to him of as dark a colour as possible, and so the whole past career of the unfortunate man was traced, and every instance of weakness or folly, real or imaginary, was raked out of forgetfulness, to be made the ground of an objection. One year was wasted in following the case from presbytery to synod and from synod to Assembly, on the "Relevancy of the Objections ;" another year was wasted in pursuing the case from court to court on the "Merits," and when at last it was decided, the presentee was either rejected with a blackened character, blasted prospects, and a lawyer's bill of £400 or £500 to pay, without a penny to pay it, or he was inducted into the parish with the original prejudice against him envenomed by the contest, and a burden of debt which twenty years of savings from his small stipend would hardly enable him to get rid of.

So early as 1857 Dr Gillan and some others moved the Assembly on the subject. In 1859 it was taken up by Dr Robert Lee, and when his eloquent tongue was silent in death, the matter was not allowed to drop. Every year the tone of the Assembly became bolder and more decisive-it was not only that the Benefices Act was working badly, but it was felt patronage must be abolished, root and branch, to popularise the Church and enable her to hold her own in the midst of so much dissent. The patronage party, however, was still strong in the Church, and was led by a skilful leader in Dr Cook of Haddington. Others, occupying a middle position, argued for a legalised veto which would preserve patronage as a good initiative and yet prevent its abuse. It was not till 1869 that the General Assembly by a large majority condemned patronage as restored by the Act of Queen Anne, and resolved to petition parliament against it. Mr Gladstone's Government was then in power, and deferred moving in the matter, but in 1874 Mr Disraeli was in office, and a bill to I The Presbytery of Auchterarder gave its voice for this.

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repeal the Act of Queen Anne and abolish patronage was introduced and passed into law. Thus an old controversy came to an end, and the Church was freed from what she considered a yoke of bondage

Contemporaneous with these disputes regarding patronage were others regarding creed-subscription. It was argued that it was suicidal to exact subscription, according to a rigid formula, from every elder, as many intelligent men were thereby shut out from the office of the eldership, which they would otherwise adorn. No statute law, it was pointed out, made subscription on their part necessary. No duty they had to perform made it expedient. Moreover, in the majority of cases subscription was a mockery, for the half-educated elders of rural congregations had never read the Confession, and though they had read it they could not understand it, from not being trained in the polemical divinity of the seventeenth century. Other controversialists carried the argument further. Why should ministers be compelled to pledge themselves to every statement of the Confession when modern science and criticism were at least casting doubt on some of these? Why should the formula of subscription be so exacting? Moreover, the formula prescribed by the Assembly of 1711 was different from the formula prescribed by the Parliament of 1693-which of these was the one obligatory? Could the Assembly override the Estates-could the former make the door of entrance to the Church narrower than the latter had made it? And, besides all this, was it politic, in the nineteenth century, when intellectual life was everywhere astir, to bind the clergy hand and foot? In many Assemblies discussions of this kind excited the greatest interest; but though the subject was more than once remitted to a committee, it is yet unsettled, and awaits the arbitrament of the future.

We have now reached the end of our journey; for we are on the very verge of the present. But the facts of history are still unfolding themselves. After all their controversies the Scottish Churches have not yet found peace. On the contrary, questions of far deeper import are beginning to agitate them, and many people believe we are close upon changes more im portant than those involved in the Reformation of the sixteenth century. The eloquent utterances of George Gilfillan are not forgotten in the United Presbyterian Church. Professor Robertson Smith, after a struggle of five years, has been cast out of his chair in the Free Church, but he is diffusing his

learned criticism of the Old Testament all the more among the members of all the Churches. The theology of the "Scotch Sermons" is said to have leavened widely both the clergy and laity of the Established Church. Absolute atheism is spreading among the great masses who belong to no church. Disestablishment and disendowment have again become a war cry. But side by side with this there is an almost preternatural earnestness and activity on the part of those whose religious faith has never once faltered or failed. What will be the outcome of all this embroilment of opposing ideas and tendencies time alone will show. It will be for a future historian on a future day to tell the tale, but we may feel sure that in the end righteousness and truth will prevail.