CHAP. XV. sense of their own weakness: and then courage, inspired by the thought of that aid and strength which were to be obtained out of His fulness who formed all their boasting and all their defence. Never in the history of our church were such feelings and The need of such acknowledgments more called for than now: and in the transition we are making, it becomes us to reflect on such sentiments as these, Not me, but the grace of God in me,'—and, 'let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.'" humility. sembly chosen; and read. When the moderator concluded his address, the Rev. Dr. Duncan, of Ruthwell, moved that the Rev. Dr. Clason, of Edinburgh, and the Rev. Thomas Clerks of As- Pitcairn, of Cockpen, be appointed clerks of the the Protest assembly. These gentlemen having assumed their places at the table,-a copy of the protest which had been taken in the presence of the queen's commissioner was read, along with the names attached to it. "The number who had signed that protest," said Dr. Candlish, when the reading of the document had been completed, "were a majority of those whom alone they could recognize as the lawful members of assembly: and he had to propose that the protest should reference to lie open for signature by other members, and that their signatures should be held ipso facto as admitting them members of this assembly. In addition to this protest, a concurrence in it had been signed by those who were not members of assembly, and he had now to propose that the assembly should at once assume into their body, as members of the house, all the ministers who had signed that concurrence, together with one elder from every adhering kirk-session." The Candlish in those who may ad here to the Protest. reference to sion of their &c. of the busi House. motion was adopted with the most cordial unanimity. CHAP. XV. The Rev. Dr. Patrick M'Farlan thereupon proposed Motion of Dr. the appointment of a committee to consider in what the demis way, consistently with the forms of law, the individual benefices, protesting ministers could best, and most speedily, complete the renunciation of their benefices. Another committee was appointed to prepare an address to her majesty, for the purpose of announcing, formally and respectfully to the head of the state, the fact of the disruption, and the grounds on which the church had thus renounced her establishment. On the motion of Mr. Dunlop, arrangements were made for proceeding, at subsequent diets, with the ordinary business of the church, and especially in so far as it related to her great missionary and educational schemes. The tem- Arrangement porary jar occasioned by the act of separating from ness of the the state, was already over, and the church, unchanged in any one point or particular of her ecclesiastical constitution and internal economy,—with her standards, her laws, and her whole presbyterian policy intact and entire,-held on her course as if nothing had occurred. A single word was employed to mark the event which had taken place. She had arisen from the dust in which the temporal power had sought to prostrate her divine prerogatives: she had scornfully cast from her neck the bands by which civil supremacy would have fettered the exercise of her The Church spiritual functions: she had restored into the state's and followed hands those secular immunities and emoluments, the possession of which had been made the pretext for attempting to rob her of her sacred liberty: she had put on the beautiful garments in which the bridegroom had left all Christ. CHAP. XV. had arrayed her when he brought her out of the bondage of Babylon three centuries before, and in order to hand down to posterity a simple, but significant memorial of this moral triumph, and of the sacrifice WordFREE, at the cost of which it had been won, she had selected the memory this, as the superscription that was henceforth to be written over her, The single perpetuates of this noble deed. THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. The Bond and the Free. bly of the Establish. ment, when the protest drawn. CONCLUSION. BEFORE drawing this history to a close, a brief glance must be bestowed, first, upon the Bond establishment, and last upon the Free church, which had forsaken it. When the protestors withdrew from St. Andrew's church, the skeleton of an assembly that was left behind proceeded to put its shattered framework into The Assem- shape and motion. To restore the lost equilibrium of a now one-sided house, the section already noticed ers had with by their self-invented name of the Forty, hastened to cast their great weight into the empty scale. Rushing across the house, Curtius-like to fill up the yawning gulph which the recent ecclesiastical earthquake had made in the forum of the church, they threw themselves upon the deserted benches of the nonintrusionists. In the places that had been occupied non-intru by Drs. Chalmers and Gordon, Candlish and Cunningham, Dr. Cook now beheld, confronting him, other foemen whom that veteran moderate leader pro The Forty take posses sion of the sion bench es. a CHAP. XV. Dr. Cook does force the not all at once en rigorous re gime of moderatismi. bably considered not quite so "worthy of his steel.” Not to shock their tender sensibilities too severely or too soon, he allowed the delicate question of the position of the deposed ministers of Strathbogie to stand over till subsequent day. These men had commissioned two of their number, as they did the year before, to represent them as members of assembly. Among the soi disant reformers, on whom it now devolved to guard the spiritual independence of the establishment, some had voted, and many more had concurred, in the deposition of the seven brethren, and all of them had hitherto professed to regard it as, at the very least, a competent ecclesiastical act, which only another, and opposite exercise of church authority could set aside. To sit down, therefore, side by side, with these deposed men to treat the solemn deed done in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by the general assembly of the church of Scotland, as if it were a thing The Forty get of nought, was a step to which they could expected, all at once, to make up their minds. the question actually came on, a few days afterwards, on Monday the 22d of May, and when Dr. Mearns, ters. with the imperturbable consistency of his own rigid and unyielding moderatism, declared, that the sentences of suspension and deposition which had been pronounced upon the seven ministers "were ab initio null and void,”—and that, without more ado, these ministers must be held and recognized as having always been, and as being now, in full possession of all their ministerial and presbyterial rights and pri- The deposi vileges: the sensation produced among the remanent representatives of evangelical and reforming principles May. a few days not be to make up their minds to the pros pect of owning the de posed men as minis tion declared ab initio, null and void, on 22d Rev. Mr. Storie threatens Dr. Cook with a new Rev. Mr. Stewart of will on no account leave the pro CHAP. XV. was very considerable. The Rev. Mr. Storie of Roseneath warned Dr. Mearns of the danger his motion might be found to involve, and "stated that upon this secession question he anticipated another secession." The Rev. Mr. Tait of Kirkliston "could not agree to the proposition involved in Dr. Mearns' motion, that, in reality, no sentence of deposition had been nounced." The Rev. Mr. Stewart of Sorn, who had been, till very recently, a flaming professor of nonintrusion and spiritual independence principles, supported Mr. Storie's views in everything, save in the hint about a new secession. "He trusted indeed that Sora remon his reverend friends on the other side (Dr. Mearns, &c.) would weigh well the consequences which would Assembly. follow, if they carried their motion; but let their decision be what it might, he would never leave this assembly nor the church." Dr. Mearns had, no doubt, weighed the consequences of his motion well enough, and had seen nothing to fear; and though the Rev. Dr. Hill of Glasgow tried, by a gentler motion, to let Mr. Storie and his friends somewhat more softly down, the spirit of Aberdeenshire was now in the ascendant, and the motion of Dr. Mearns was carried by a majority of 148 to 33. The reader will not fail, in passing, to observe, that these two numbers united fall greatly short of the number, 203, who had signed the protest, and who had subsequently constituted the assembly of the Free church of Scotland. Dr. Cook's motion car ried by 148 to 33. This was already the second trial by which the submissiveness of Mr. Storie and his confederates had been put to the test. On the forenoon of that same day the veto-law had disappeared, by a process |