already raised annually for educational and missionary objects three times as much as the united Church of Scotland did in 1843. Never had the voluntary principle in religion been carried out with more success. At Pesth, at Jassy, at Berlin, at Constantinople, seventeen missionaries and assistants were endeavouring to promote the conversion of the Jews. At Calcutta, Madras, Bombay, Poona, and Nagphur, it supported fifteen European clergymen ordained as missionaries, nine converted natives, engaged in the work of the Christian ministry, and a large band of teachers and assistants, both native and European; from whom 4,000 Indian children were receiving a complete Christian education. In Nova Scotia, the Canadas, the West Indies, the Cape, Australia, Madeira, Malta, Leghorn, and Gibraltar, there were ministers supported in whole or in part by the bounty of the Free Church, while 1,000l. annually had been entrusted to the evangelical societies of France and of Geneva, to aid in circulating the gospel over the continent of Europe.

One of her first efforts was to complete a scheme for home education, and thus in fact to make the organization of the Free Church, except in the matter of endowments, parochial and complete. There are now upwards of 600 schools, and an attendance of about 70,000 scholars. It has two normal schools, one in Edinburgh and one in Glasgow, for the training of schoolmasters. The teachers receive a salary from a general fund, which is raised by monthly contributions in all the congregations, and which is divided at the end of the year, according to a certain scale proportioned to the qualifications of the respective teachers. This fund amounts to upwards of 12,000l. annually. About 80,000l. has been expended in the building of schools, and nearly 20,000l. in the purchase or erection of normal schools.

The magnificent project of erecting a college which might vie with the ancient institutions of Scotland has been carried out with the utmost vigour, and apparently with great success. Chalmers was the chief promoter of the scheme, and he was placed at the head of the new institution. The first stone of the college was laid in 1846. In 1847 Dr. Chalmers died, but he had lived to see the institution of a seminary with nine professorships, to each of which a salary of three to four hundred pounds was attached. It had already three hundred and forty students for the sacred office; amongst whom bursaries and

scholarships had been distributed, in a single year, to the amount of 7001. The college has since been completed at a cost of nearly 40,000l. Mr. Wilson, in his sketch of the Free Church of Scotland, asserts, perhaps with a little exaggeration, that it is provided with a more complete staff of professors than any similar institution in Scotland, and with more effectual means of training an educated ministry than elsewhere is to be found in Britain. It has attached to it a Hebrew tutor, for initiating the students in the knowledge of the Oriental languages. A professor of logic, and a professor of moral philosophy, to secure efficient mental training in those branches of knowledge which are related more immediately to theological science. A professor whose function it is to instruct the students in natural theology, and the evidences of Christianity, and also in homiletics and pastoral theology, in two distinct classes. A professor of dogmatic theology, who has also a senior and junior class, suited to the progress of the students, who attend his prelections during two successive years. A professor of exegetic theology, who has also two classes, and a professor of natural science. This institution, so richly provided with living teachers, has already accumulated a library, which contains upwards of 25,000 volumes, and is believed to be the most valuable theological library in Scotland. A divinity hall has also been built at Aberdeen, and is already partially endowed. It has two professors of divinity and a Hebrew tutor, and embraces the same provision for the training of theological students which the universities of Scotland had previous to the disruption. These two institutions are

attended by about two hundred and fifty students.

What may be the issue of the vast movement which brought the Free Church into existence, and to what extent the interests of religion will be affected by it for good and evil, is a question upon which thoughtful men who look upon the scene from a distance feel some anxiety. It must be admitted, after making every abatement for the enthusiasm of a party, that the seceding clergy made an heroic sacrifice. Such examples are of inestimable benefit to mankind. We confess that the question between the four hundred confessors and the General Assembly sinks inte insignificance in our minds, compared with the illustrious example the suffering party have given to the Church of Christ in these later ages of the fidelity and disinterestedness, the indiffer

ence to consequences, and the cheerful determination to abide by their principles whatever might betide them-which it is the glory of Christian men to show. The immense sums of money, so easily subscribed by a body comparatively poor, for objects purely spiritual, deserves high praise. It is impossible to contemplate a nation capable of such things without a feeling of great respect.

The wisdom of the secession, however, is to be argued upon different grounds. Taking for granted that the lay patronage was a great evil, was it such an one as to compel the seceders to the course they took? Some concessions they had already gained. Was the right, supposing it to exist, of a congregation to exclude a minister without assigning a reason, a point of so much consequence as to demand a remedy so violent? There are times, it is true, when the purity of the Church must be maintained at every hazard, and in the judgment of Dr. Chalmers and his friends that period had arrived. On this decision the Free

Church stands.

The voluntary question, or in other words the problem whether the Christian instruction of a nation can safely be entrusted to the spontaneous liberality of individuals, has received some fresh light from the proceedings of 1843. It has been proved that the voluntary principle is sufficient, under certain conditions, to originate a vast movement; one which shall cover a whole nation, within a few years, with schools and churches in every parish. It has proved what indeed it would be an insult to Christianity itself to doubt, that there is sufficient energy in Christian men, and sufficient self-denial, to make an effort for the welfare of others, at the cost of every sacrifice, of every comfort and convenience, to themselves. But still we are to bear in mind, that men of earnest piety are few; that times of intense conflict between religious parties are never free, and never can be free, from some admixture of sordid influences; that party spirit will sometimes prompt us to part with wealth or station, when piety would in vain have asked us for the same surrender; and that a sudden burst of generosity is no sure pledge of its long continuance. Many years must elapse before either the friends or the opponents of the voluntary system, as applied to religion, will be safe in trusting much to the experiment of the Free Church of Scotland. The annals of voluntary churches pre

sent no instance, it is true, of similar success; yet Dr. Chalmers' final verdict was, upon the whole, unfavourable. "It seems very clear," he says, in the last tract he wrote, "that internal voluntaryism will not of itself do all; and with all the vaunted prosperity of the Free Church, we do not find that external voluntaryism will either make up the deficiencies of the former, or still less of itself do all either. We rejoice in the testimony of the Free Church for the principle of a national establishment, and most sincerely do we hope she may never fall away from it. I can afford to say no more than that my hopes of an extended Christianity, from the efforts of voluntaryism alone, have not been brightened by my experience since the disruption. . . . And ere I am satisfied that voluntaryism will repair the mischief, I must first see the evidences of its success in making head against the fearfully-increased heathenism, and increasing still, that accumulates at so fast a rate throughout the great bulk and body of the common people. We had better not say too much on the pretensions or the powers of voluntaryism, till we have made some progress in reclaiming the wastes of ignorance and irreligion, and profligacy, which so overspread our land; or till we see whether the congregational selfishness, which so predominates everywhere, can be prevailed upon to make larger sacrifices for the Christian good of our general population. Should their degeneracy increase to the demolition, at length, of the present framework of society, and this in spite of all that the most zealous voluntaryism can do to withstand it, it will form a most striking experimental demonstration of the vast importance of Christian governments for the Christian good of the world."— Earnest Appeal, page 52, &c. See also for the whole subject of the secession-Hanna's Memoirs of Dr. Chalmers, volume 4. The Ten Years' Conflict, by Robert Buchanan, D.D., two vols., 1852. North British Review. Record Newspaper, 1840-44. Hansard's Debates in Parliament; and innumerable pamphlets on both sides.

FRENCH PROTESTANT CHURCH.-The history of the

Protestants of France is dark and tragical. No Christian population, in any land, has suffered so long and so bitterly. From the Reformation to the nineteenth century the history

of the Reformed Church in France is an unbroken succession of frightful injustice and appalling cruelties. And it has sufferred, too, the fate which attends a vanquished minority; ceasing to be feared it ceased to be known, and under the favour of indifference, calumny and prejudice have been received and credited, and even in Protestant nations, the Huguenots have been everywhere despised.

The first Protestant congregation in France was established at Meaux in 1521. Bucer and Melancthon had visited the neighbourhood just before, and created a thirst for reformation. Calvin's translation of the Bible into French had just appeared; and it was the year of Luther's appearance before the diet of Worms to plead the cause of religious truth and liberty against the pretensions of the Court of Rome. Two remarkable men, Lefevre and Farel, were the first preachers of the reformed faith; and two noble women, the duchess of Ferrara and the queen of Navarre, were its first patrons; but the infant cause was scarcely brought before the world when a fierce persecution seemed to have crushed it, and amidst the fires of persecution it has had its home almost to the present time. The epithet Huguenot was applied to the Protestants of France in a very early period of their history. The derivation and meaning of the word are unknown, nor is it a question of much importance. Merle D'Aubigné, and others, derive it from Hugon's tower at Tours, where the Protestants assembled to worship secretly; others again from hegenen or huguenen, an old German word equivalent to our puritan. Browning, in his history of the Huguenots, has collected no less than ten different etymologies: amongst them is one of great antiquity (taken from a work printed at Lyons in 1573) which says: "Les Huguenots ont été ainsi appelés de Jean Huss duquel ils ont suivi la doctrine; comme qui disoit, les guenons-de-Huss!" Guenon is a young ape.

Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, was one of the converts of Lefevre and Farel. He joined with the former in giving a wide circulation to the four gospels in the native tongue, and placed a copy of the Bible in the hands of the king's sister Marguérite de Valois, queen of Navarre. She read it diligently, and avowed herself, if not a Protestant, a friend at least of the Reformation. She encouraged the reading of the Scriptures, afforded a refuge to the Protestant ministers at her court, appointed Roussel, one