to do apostolic work in calling the Gentiles. Calvin thought that he and Luther had been specially raised up to do apostolic work in unveiling the Holy Catholic Church, obscured by worldliness and superstition. We Free Churchmen are justified in holding that the group of extraordinary men, who led the Church out of bondage in 1843, were similarly fitted and appointed to do apostolic work. Let us not imagine that theirs was not a true inspiration, or that we are not under sacred obligation to have regard to it, because it was bounded by the limit of Scripture.

They would have rejoiced exceedingly to see the Church of Scotland formally reconstructed, but they held, one and all, that the condition on which alone modern States and statesmen contemplate Establishment, namely, the spiritual subordination of the Church to the State, makes the acceptance of Establishment a sin. Prior to 1843, the Church of Scotland was the only State Church in Christendom which Cunningham and Candlish recognised as placed upon a basis which Christians could scripturally defend. By an act of usurpation on the part of the Court of Session, connived at by the British Parliament, the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of the Church of Scotland, bestowed upon her by Christ, and recognised as hers in the Treaty of Union between. England and Scotland, was violated. When soft-hearted people pleaded for mild measures with the schismatic Presbyters of Strathbogie, and referred to the oath of

allegiance which had preceded their vows of ordination, Cunningham pointed out that their oath of allegiance was to a constitutional sovereign, and could not pledge them to violate the constitution. The oath of allegiance could not pledge any man to pay taxes not granted by Parliament; and Queen Victoria, said Cunningham, had no more constitutional right to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdiction north of the Tweed than to raise money at her will and pleasure. If Cunningham was wrong, then cadit questio; the Free Church is a ludicrous mistake. But it is absolutely indubitable that Cunningham was right. There is at this hour no authority on the other side. The Confession of Faith is embodied in the Treaty of Union, and the O'Connell is not born, and never will be born, who can drive coach or curricle through the memorable and glorious clause in which, mainly through the influence of Scotsmen, the spiritual independence of the Church stands enrolled in the Westminster Confession of Faith. But the Treaty of Union has not been formally repealed. You cannot ask Parliament to re-enact it. You cannot well ask Parliament to pass a law promising not to violate it in future. You want no freedom or jurisdiction beyond those which Christ has bestowed. The only course, therefore, that seems at once rational and Christian for the Presbyterians of Scotland, is to proceed with their movements towards union on grounds pertaining to the Church and the country, leaving the State entirely out of consideration.

If any Presbyterians in Scotland or elsewhere hold that it was the State that appointed the Lord Jesus Head of the Church, and that therefore the officers of the Church are at liberty to ordain and depose in the name and by authority of the State, they are in schism,—that is all. Let it be ascertained, then, to begin with, whether Presbyterians of all branches in Scotland agree in holding the doctrine of the Headship.

In 1856, Candlish said that the Established Church of Scotland was thirteen years old, while the Free Church dated from 1560. This was, in an obvious sense, true. But there is a sense in which the Free Church was born in 1843, and it is a sense which ought to be kept in mind at the Jubilee. It is no far-fetched or paradoxical statement that, ere 1843, the Church of Scotland had become too Scottish,-too much, that is to say, a merely local and national Church. In the sixteenth century, under the influence of the cosmopolitan Knox and of the colossal Calvin, whose word, teste Hooker, was law through all the Reformed Churches, she shook off the errors of the old Romish Kirk, and arose refreshed as one of the sisterhood of Reformed Churches. the seventeenth, eighteenth, and part of the nineteenth centuries, though she never quite forgot her catholicity, she had, without knowing it, dwindled into a narrower Church than that of Knox and Henderson. In 1843 she was called once more to go forward,—to realise that the world was her field,-to take note that the Church

In

of Scotland is not mentioned in the New Testament, nor even the Church of Galilee, but that the Church of Christ has marching orders until the planet be filled with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea. It is for the Free Church of Scotland, bringing from her treasuries things new as well as old, and old as well as new, to recall the sympathies and sentiments of those days when John Knox and the bishops of the Church of Edward VI. were engaged in one enterprise of Reform, and when English theologians, essentially Presbyterian, were hewing out the Articles of the Church of England from the Latin of Calvin.

The Evangelicals of the Church of England-and there are millions of them-detest sacerdotalism, believe in the Real Presence only in the sense of Christ in the souls of His people, and are essentially Presbyterian. But they have no voice. They are spirits in prison. They make pitiful appeal to the Civil Law, and receive their reward in decisions like the Lincoln judgment. From time to time some Bible Christian finds that he can bear it no longer, and writes to his bishop, as the Rev. Charles Stirling, of New Malden, wrote to the Bishop of Rochester, last November, that he must resign connection with an Established Church whose "communion tables are turned into altars,' her ministers into sacrificing priests,' her churches into 'mass-houses,' and with auricular confession inculcated, practised, and where possible enforced." Meanwhile the Free Church

of Ireland, Episcopalian but Reformed, finding that, in some church, a cross had been placed, or was to be placed, immediately behind the communion table, disallowed and prohibited even so much of will-worship. Now, I have no manner of doubt that John Knox would have been ardently in sympathy both with Mr. Stirling and the Free Church of Ireland, and that, if sacerdotalism and Erastianism were away, he would have entered cordially into communion with Episcopalian Churches.

In my humble but earnest opinion, the part providentially assigned to the Free Church, in connection with her Jubilee, is chiefly this, to initiate a Reformed Catholic League, putting no questions about ecclesiastical names or limitary distinctions, open to Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, and stipulating only that their law is the Bible, and that their Head is Christ.

P. B.

May 1893.