or legal fiction-whereby, as in the analogous case of Adam, we were all that one man; and in virtue of that union, without which we cannot understand his suretyship, or substitution, or imputation, his meri torious obedience, if we belong to the all, to the totality in whose room the Incarnate One appeared, is as much our own as if we had done it all ourselves. We should like to know what benefit accrues from seeking to extend it beyond the company who will embrace it, especially for those who will have salva. tion hinge upon a man's own will. But with an inconsistency the most extraordinary, they argue for an atonement for such as scorn to receive it. Calvin's language is admirably precise where he extends it to those who will embrace it. On this point Dr Candlish's hypothesis in reference to the possible postponement of the expiation till the close of the dispensation, is one of the most valuable contributions ever made to this department of theology, and on their principles we are at a loss to see how they can escape its force. But they are, in truth, embarrassed by the mere element of time. There is no weight in the argument, that a fact of equal breadth must lie behind the universal offer, and form its basis. We have already pointed out that two such truths meet in a higher unity, and that it behoves us meanwhile, with all modesty, to view them as parallel.

We arraign this system as undermining the reality of the Father's love. Mr Kirk,† in a holy indignation, pitifully misplaced, exclaims, "Shall we limit the Holy One by confining his life-giving love to a favoured few? blessed be Jehovah, he does not thus limit the boundless blessings of his own free salvation!" He repudiates election, in the current language of infidelity, as God's partiality; but, what he thus distributes over all, is, from the very fact that all do not partake of it, rendered effectual to none. To Mr Kirk's charge of partiality we let God himself reply: "Have not I a right to do as I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil because I am good?" As we observed above, in reference to the Divine sovereignty in redemption, so here, we say, the controversy turns, in the first instance, not so much on the extent of the Father's love, as on its reality; but this system, emerging from the bosom of an age not a little impregnated with a shallow scepticism, begins at the opposite point. As the advocates of the nonelect, the citadel to which they rush when overtaken by a difficulty is, that all must share alike; and, by this primary axiom of theirs, they even presume to interpret the authoritative Word of God. They impugn God's absolute right to bestow salvation, as men bestow their alms, to whom he will; but what they gain in compass they lose at the centre. They forget, in their anxiety for friendly union with the spirit of the age, that the advantage which they gain by enlarging the extent of God's love is more than countervailed at another point-they strip it of its efficacy and reality. They give to the world, at the cost of undermining the security of the redeemed. God's love finds out its objects.

On this ground they tell not sinners of a gospel, but of a mere inefficacious though benevolent desire in the Divine mind. But, let the Master's voice be heard, and we challenge them to expound his words in their sense if they can : "All that the Father

1 John ii. 2. Expiationem a Christo partam ad omnes extendo qui Evangeliam fide amplexi fuerint. † Way of Life, p. 9,

giveth me shall come unto me." And so we might adduce a hundred no less express and impregnable, and tell of the five links (Rom. viii. 29) which will be adored long after Morisonianism is sunk into oblivion under the rebuke of that God whose glory it as sails; but we forbear. As a mark of conscious weakness, they have ceased to use the words of Scripture on the questions of the divine sovereignty. For it is a rule with us, which we have never yet seen ground to modify, that men feel they stand on ground more than equivocal if they cannot freely use, and use without restraint, the words of Scripture on every point. While the world lasts, the little flock will always rejoice, according to their Lord's direction, because their names are written in heaven; and, while the world lasts, his ministers will love election in the proportion in which they drink into the same spirit with Him whose first sermon in Nazareth was impregnated with the glorious theme; and who, when he rejoiced in spirit, rejoiced, as we are expressly told, because the Father had hid these things from the wise and prudent, and revealed them unto babes.

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And now we take leave of this system for the present, but not altogether. It is not a system on which any man may safely pillow his soul. That excellent Puritan divine, T. Hill, was wont to say, Every true Christian hath something here (in his breast) that will frame an argument against Arminianism." We say the same of Moisonianism. We have shown that it tends to subvert the whole efficacy of the work of Father, Son, and Spirit; and now we conclude in the noble words of Luther :*. "I confess for myself, that, eren if it were possible, I would not have free-will committed to me, or anything whatever left in my hand whereby I might endeavour after salvation: not merely because I could not, amid so many adversities and dangers, and, moreover, opposing devils, withstand and retain it, since one devil is more powerful than all men, and no one man would be saved; but because, even if there were no hazards, no adversities, no devils, I should be constrained perpetually to labour in uncertainty, and to beat the air.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL AND THE

REVIEWS.

It was to be ex

Ir an author must be regarded as fortunate when his work attracts the attention of our leading Reviews, the Duke of Argyll must be admitted to be a remarkably fortunate author. The Quarterly, the North British, and the British Quarterly, Reviews, have each bestowed an article on the recent work of his Grace, entitled, Presbytery Examined. pected that the North British Review would take up the subject of the Duke's Essay with a full and clear conception of its true nature, place it on the right ground, and treat it according to its proper principles; and we need scarcely say, that such an expectation has been admirably realized. We could not give his Grace a better advice than that he would peruse and re-peruse that review with the most earnest and profound thought of which he is capable, being well assured that such a study could not fail to prove sig. nally beneficial to both his knowledge and his judgment. There was not much reason to expect that the British Quarterly would be able to perceive the * Luther, tom. iii., p. 229.

real merits of the question-not for want of general ability, but because it is so peculiarly Scottish and Presbyterian, that no English Dissenter can readily place himself in a position from which it can be rightly viewed. And so it has happened. The article dilates eloquently enough on the state of Christianity in general at the present time; but displays a very meagre conception of the real nature and design of the Duke's work, while it indulges in some petty sneers at the Free Church, on matters which it manifestly misunderstands. Some measure of approbation is also given to the strength of principle and firmness of character displayed by the Free Churchwhich, indeed, it would have been somewhat difficult to dispute; and for that amount of approbation we must be as grateful as we can.

But the Quarterly Review has done more than we could have expected-it has produced a complete and unanswerable refutation of his Grace's historical essay, so far as regards the leading principle of that production. Our readers are already aware that the Duke of Argyll has promulgated a new theory of the history of the Church of Scotland, entirely subversive, if it could be proved, of what has always hitherto been regarded as the primary principle and basis of that Church, and that he has laboured most strenuously to prove that his theory rests on the authority of John Knox. We need not again dissect the Duke's paradoxical argument; but we think it right to make our readers aware of the manner in which a thoroughly Anglican, but very able, writer deals with it. For this reason we extract a few passages from the Quarterly Review, which will be admitted to be both pointed and powerful:

"In short, it appears to us that throughout his work the Duke of Argyll has, to a great extent, confounded two things which are entirely distinct-a disposition to admit laymen to a large share of power in the government of the Church, and a tendency to draw but slightly, or even to efface, the demarcating lines between Church power and State power. To the first, the Scotch Reformers were well inclined; the last they vehemently eschewed. It is from this latter tendency that their system took its historical character. It may, indeed, be true, that, without admitting the laity as colleagues in their Church courts, they never would have been able to resist with any success the royal claim of jurisdiction. But although the introduction of laymen into their courts was essentially conducive to the establishment of the independence of their Church, expressed by them under the form of the 'alone headship,' the latter, and not the former, was really their main principle and their governing passion, as it has also been the most remarkable result of their labours. But it is undoubtedly a great feat which the Duke of Argyll has attempted- -no less than to show that all Scottish Church history has, by all former historians of all opinions, been turned inside out and upside down, and that the broad theory of Erastianism-developed as it has been, beyond the conceptions of its author, by the ingenuity and the caprice of modern speculation-derives its most signal illustration and most emphatic support from the principles of those whom a blinded world has hitherto supposed to have spent their best energies in resisting every approach to it. If bravery were the prime virtue of an historical essayist, we should say none has ever made a better title to be field-marshal. But, in truth, he is labouring to overcome nature, to lord it over fact; he deals with hopelessly stubborn and impracticable materials; and as he more and more vigorously applies the hammer, another and another chisel snaps upon the stone.

"There can be no mistake about what we have described as the Duke's own opinion. He conceives that a separation between Christians met to legislate for the visible society of Curist, and Christians met to legislate for the society of the world' (p. 228), is necessary now, and may perhaps be necessary until the end of time; but that it is a necessary evil. It is a division which, so far from flowing from the will of God, would be utterly done away were his will even tolerably

fulfilled.' (Ibid.) The normal state of man, in his view, is that in which all the concerns of the spiritual kingdom-all that appertains to the discipline of the soul of man-shall be regulated by (doubtless devout) secretaries of State. To this condition only our corruptions prevent us from attaining, but it is to it that we are always to endeavour to approximate; and, of course, for this purpose we must strive to elevate the character of the State nearer and nearer to the Christian standard, that it may be fitted at length to undertake the whole extent of its proper functions.

"We will not stop to discuss the merits of a theory opposed, we conceive, to the universal sense of Christendom, though reproduced from time to time during the last two centuries in the brains of ingenious but visionary students. We will not ask how it is that the Duke of Argyll, who follows Dr Arnold in contending that all Church power should be wielded by the State, abandons him in the first corollary which he himself drew from his proposition, namely, that the legis lature should be composed of Christians only, and, by speech and vote, endeavours to secure the admission of Jews to the administration of a power as much spiritual as civil. But we must protest against that extreme of speculative wilfulness into which talent and facility often bewilder their possessor, and which alone can coerce the history of Scottish Presbytery Let us, if we wish to find instances of approximations, more into speaking the language that, of all others, it most abhors. or less marked, to the Erastian theory, repair to Henry VIII. and his Episcopal Commissions-to which, however, the Duke of Argyll can never have referred, or he could not have written as he has done (p. 285) that all the authority of the bishops was vice-regal'-for the terms of the commissions themselves make an express reference to the distinct spiritual authority of the bishops-to the ordinance that constituted the Westminster convention, in 1643-to Cromwell, who suppressed the General Assembly--to the history of Germany and the peace of Westphalia-to the Emperor Nicholas and him, if he so much desires it, to the undoubted precedent and his nominated Synod of select prelates; let us go back with respectable authority of Nebuchadnezzar (Dan. iii.); let us go anywhere rather than to the abode of Scottish Presbytery. It has made for itself a name and a place in the history of Protestantism almost wholly by means of a very strong, continuous, practical assertion of a real spiritual power in the world, given by our Lord, though not given to a priesthood nor by ministerial succession, and though totally distinct from the power of order in the hands of the civil magistrate, and to be exercised through the medium of a different organizationgiven in fact to the body of Christians at large, and to be developed and exercised in such a manner as shall accord with their conscientious judgment, and shall own their free will for its origin; and no sophism will suffice to cheat it out of an identity ascertained by nearly three centuries of chequered and searching experience.

"We need not follow the Duke of Argyll through his condensed narrative of the principal crises in the history, from the first outbreak of 1560 to the settlement at the Revolution. He is entirely above misrepresentation; and he gets rid of the facts, to which Presbyterians appeal as their continuous testimony in favour of the alone headship' of our Saviour in the Church, not by artifice or suppression, but by his comprehensive doctrine that all these things were 'local and accidental.' What they knew, they felt, they said, they wrote, they did, was nothing to the purpose: there was inconsistency here, or confusion there; and the most unfortunate of all was, that they omitted the negative in their leading proposition (Con fession, chap. 30), which should run thus The Lord Jesus, as King and Head of his Church, hath' NOT therein appointed a government in the hand of Church officers distinct from the civil magistrate.'

"We are far from meaning to assert that the dogmatic development of the principle as it stands has been uniform and consistent; on the contrary, it has been much otherwise. The Confession of Faith, while it asserts the distinctness of the ecclesiastical from the civil power, defines so largely (chap. 33) the functions of the magistrate in sacris, that if we estimate Scottish Presbytery only by what is on paper, there is some partial colour for the propositions of the work before us. The Confession of 1560 may, as the Duke of Argyll contends, verge towards an identification of the ideas of Church and Commonwealth. Knox thought, no doubt, much more of binding together those who were engaged in a common cause -a cause for life and death, as they viewed it, both spiritually

and temporally-than about determining by anticipation the relations which should be established by them among themselves when the battle was at an end, and when victory would have opened to them the perspective of a new world. But we hold these two canons to be sound and indisputable-First, That when we are endeavouring to appreciate the primary and essential,' as distinguished from the local and accidental,' tendencies of a system, we should view them not in their crude, irreflective, and almost anarchical beginnings, when the first weapon that offers itself is seized for the purpose of the moment; but when they have acquired some degree of development, and have become conscious, deliberative, and mature. Secondly, That as we must not estimate the Church of Rome by the Tridentine Canons alone, we must not estimate Scottish Presbytery by the mere words of its Confession, but admit its whole life and actions as a commentary upon them. In the Duke's own language, 'the history of a Church is no bad exponent of its dogmas.' (P. 163.) On these principles he himself proceeds when his foregone conclusions will profit by them. For the institution of superintendency, adopted by Knox, but not by Melville, is explained away as belonging to the crude period of transition and its peculiar exigencies. But then, when Knox identifies the Church and State, and Melville divides them, and even lets us hear the clank of the keys', the later phenomenon is the local and accidental one, and the earlier the primary and essential. Now, we ask, why are second thoughts to be preferred in the one case, and first thoughts in the other-and either Knox or Melville to be ratified or repudiated, according as each may serve that alternating process of compression and expansion, of elongation and curtailment, by which the stout progenitors of the Free Kirk are to be metamorphosed into sickly patients of Erastus?

"By the alone headship,' says the Duke of Argyll, the Scotch Reformers meant to express a principle of the greatest value and importance-the right of the visible Church to the principle of self-government (p. 166), though he subjoins that this is rather a natural right than a scriptural one. (P. 171.) What is meant by the right of the Church to selfgovernment, if it be predetermined that in the best condition of human things the whole affairs of the Church are to be managed by those whom the voice of the nation may have intrusted with civil rule? It would be a much simpler way of expressing this doctrine to say-The Church is not properly a society at all,except while the nation refuses to be Christian. When the nation has become Christian, its religious affairs become a portion of the public interests, which are managed by its government; and its religious liberties, like its commercial or its judicial liberties, are only a portion of its political rights. The word Church is a word intended for a crude and incipient state of things, anterior to that in which the gospel has penetrated the mass. When the community has been thus pervaded, that word serves no purpose but to confuse the uninstructed mind, or to afford an opening for the assumptions of priestcraft. National unity requires that the governing power should be one, and as Parliament is still Parliament, whether it legislate for trade or finance, or art or war, so let it still be Parliament when it receives petitions upon the Homoousion, or passes a bill to prevent misapprehensions upon the efficacy of Baptism.

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We again, and finally, protest against this mode of dealing with history. It is not in these pages that the religious principles of Presbyterianism, Scottish or other, are to be vindicated. But let us, at least, take them as they are; let us not tamper with the records of the past: either they were right, as some say they were, or at least they had their own lesson to teach, and their own warnings to convey. Whatever may be said or thought of it, at least it is definite, masculine, and positive. It has a character of its own-a countenance of lines deep drawn and ineffaceable. It has shown a tenacity of life, a substantiveness of view, an earnestness of purpose, which give it a place exalted and alone among its sisters of the Continental Reformation. With art, with philosophy, with literature, with refined and polished life, it has had little or no connexion. Where these have grown up within the domain of Scottish Presbyterianism, it has not been by her aid-it has often been under her frown; and they have uniformly lived and worked in open or concealed hostility to her. Take the contemporary lights of nearly an hundred years back -Hume, Smith, Fergusson, Thomson, Home, Robertson. Some of them were in open, in deadly war with her; not one represented in any degree the really distinctive features of her

character. The last led her Assembly; but if we ask the oracles of the popular sentiment,' he was as Falieri among the Doges, or Ganganelli among the Popes. Her spirit may have been intolerant-her theology, narrow as the glen and barren as the hill-top-her relations with civil society uneasy: yet the question is, what she was, not what we think she should have been. with tones clear and loud at least, if not melodious-as we And that question was answered, Southerns esteem melody-in all the great epochs of her history-in 1560, in 1580, in 1638, in 1689, and last, not least, in 1843. We mean no aspersion upon the more moderate and most justly respected body who now form the Established Church of Scotland; but speaking with regard to matter of fact only, not to praise or blame, it is among the ranks of those who have seceded from them that we must seek the descendants of Knox and Melville, of Henderson and Rutherford, to say nothing of Cameron or Cargill. Let us frankly accept all men and all systems, when we travel back into the past, in their own sense and their own spirit. If we attempt to make them the exponent of ours-if we are resolved that history shall be a mirror in which we are only to see ourselves reflected, instead of a telescope to enable us to bring near, to scan, and to realize, the thoughts, words, and deeds of those now distant from us, we shall have our reward in losing all fruit from our ingenious toil-we shall find ourselves returned upon ourselves, and that, too, not as our natural selves, such as God has made us and fitted us for our own time and place, but ourselves travestied and distorted-trees transplanted without their earth, their foliage thin and discoloured, their roots having no grasp upon the soil. Such are the results of eclecticism of a determination to teach facts what they shall be, instead of learning what they are to pick historic order in pieces, and reconstruct it according to the newest fashions."

The noble Duke will not, we apprehend, be much gratified with the reception which his historical labours have met with from the Quarterly Review. But we should rejoice were it to have the effect of leading him to resume his studies, freed from the fascinating influence which the theories of Arnold and Bunsen have exercised in blinding and misleading him; and were it also to induce him to lay aside that tone of petulance and self-confidence which is alike uncourteous in a man of rank, and unseemly in a young and inexperienced author. His real knowledge, we trust, will increase, his judgment ripen, and his literary ability acquire additional skill and power. But when these points shall have been attained, we are very sure that he will be most heartily willing to permit his recent historical essay to sink into utter oblivion.

Had our space permitted, we meant to have directed the attention of our readers to some very able articles in the British Quarterly, which well maintains its high reputation; and also to the recent Number of the North British, which is one of general excellence, containing well selected articles, some of which display great power and precision of thought and language.

THE LANGUAGE OF THE LIPS; OR, A NEW MODE FOR INSTRUCTING THE DEAF AND DUMB.

THE ordinary method of holding communication with those of our unfortunate fellow-creatures who are bereaved of the faculties of speech and hearing is, confessedly, a very imperfect one. The plan usually followed is the employment of arbitrary signs made with bet-at the best, a clumsy contrivance, and one which the fingers, denoting the different letters of the alphacan only be practised by the few who have studied the mystic evolutions of finger and thumb, by which the words are painfully spelled out with the aid of

shrug and grimace. It is not meant, however, to condemn the use of this or any mode of communication which may be adopted. Far less do we propose to supersede the necessity of instructing the deaf and dumb in the arts of reading and writing, or even to throw discredit on the attempts which have been made to teach them the use of speech, painful as it may be to hear the discordant and inarticulate sounds produced by these attempts. The plan which we now mean to suggest relates entirely to the mode of holding communication with the deaf and dumb. And it must be admitted, we think, that, désirable as it may be to open up such a medium of communication as would enable them to impart their ideas and feelings to others, it is still more so, that they should enjoy a medium whereby the ideas and feelings of others may be communicated to them; in other words, it is better that we should supply the want of learning to them than the want of speech; for, without entering on the nice question which of their wants is the most deplorable, it is obvious, that when both the faculties are actually wanting, and can only be partially supplied, it is of far more importance to the unfortunate individual himself that he should be put in the way of acquiring oral instruction from others, than | that he should be able to communicate, in a rude and imperfect form, his own ideas and impressions. If even with those who possess both the faculties, it is a point of wisdom to be "swift to hear, slow to speak," how much more with those whose ears God has shut against the voice of man, and who can only aim at speaking "with stammering lips and another tongue!" The plan we have to propose rests on the fact, not so generally attended to as it deserves, that every letter of the alphabet not only has a distinct sound of its own, but requires, in order to its pronunciation, a distinct formation of the mouth, lips, and other organs of speech. Every one may easily satisfy himself on this by pronouncing, or observing another pronounce, distinctly the letters of the alphabet. It will be found that even those letters which appear to approach most nearly to each other, differ as much in regard to look as to sound that it is impossible two different sounds can be uttered without a corresponding change in the position of the muscles and organs of speech. The same remark applies, of course, to words. Every word has its visible symbol or series of symbols, according to its syllables, by which its pronunciation may be rendered as visible to the eye as it is audible to the ear. These symbols are either facial, labial, dental, or lingual; in other words, formed by the face, lips, teeth, or tongue. Let any one try it, and he will soon, after a little practice, become satisfied that not a single word can be uttered without its peculiar visible sign, distinguishing it from every other word. It is in obedience to this law of nature that we instinctively look in the face of the person who is addressing us: the eye is unconsciously lending its aid to the ear in deciphering his discourse.

Now, it must be very obvious that, with such a fact and such a law existing in nature, it is as possible, with an ordinary degree of study and attention, to acquire the art of understanding these visible signs, as to acquire the knowledge of the audible sounds. The latter, indeed, being the more natural mode of comprehending speech, must be the easier of the two; but it is important to know that the one acquisition may be made with as much certainty, though not with the same celerity, as the other. In the case of the deaf and dumb, it is well known that, in the ab

sense of other means of communication with the external world, the faculty of sight is uncommonly acute; and on this peculiarity we calculate largely in estimating the probable success of our scheme.

What we propose, therefore, is, that the mute be taught these visible symbols in much the same way as the child is taught the audible sounds. Beginning with the alphabet, let him be taught to associate each letter with the peculiar formation which its pronunciation induces on the organs of speech. From letters let him advance to syllables, from syllables to words, from words to sentences. In conducting this mode of tuition, diagrams representing the signs might be useful, but nothing can excel the living mouth of the teacher himself. By a little practice, and inducing the pupils to imitate the different formations required, it will be found that they will become deeply interested in the study, and soon acquire the art of understanding what is spoken before them, and ultimately of holding converse with each other.

The writer of these lines may state, that this is no untried theory. Besides other cases which he has heard of, he knew one, that of a young woman from the country, Mary, lately deceased, who, though perfectly deaf from a very early period in life, contrived to instruct herself in this art of understanding what may be termed the language of the lips. To such perfection had she arrived, that she could not only comprehend with ease every question put to her from sɗing it pronounced, but could follow the whole services of the Sabbath, and give a most intelligent account of the sermon, noticing those passages which struck her as peculiarly appropriate or impressive. Of course, her own minister, whom she was accustomed to see speaking, she understood best; and she found considerable difficulty in following those speakers who did not articulate distinctly, or who had got into a slovenly guttural pronunciation, hard to be understood even with the use of one's ears. Mary was able to articulate a little herself, though indistinctly; and being a woman of some spirit, when engaged in controversy, she would attack her adversary first in front with a volley of argument or rebuke, and instead of waiting the rejoinder, she would, like the Sikhs in the late Indian campaign, turn her back on the enemy, and present the impenetrable shield of "the deafest side of her head" to the meditated assault. Lest this should be thought a singular or too favourable case, it may be mentioned, that a trial was made on a few deaf and dumb children connected with an institution in town, and met with the greatest success, though, in consequence of that institution having been given up, it never got fair play.

It is extremely difficult to prevail on certain parties accustomed to move on in the old ruts of education, to introduce anything that has the appearance of novelty, or which may strike them at first sight as impracticable, or which some old stager has assured them has been tried and found wanting. But the plan we have now suggested is founded on nature. The language of the lips is Nature's own interpreter; and in the full assurance of this, we wait with patience the time when prejudices will yield to facts; and when the deaf and dumb, no longer secluded from the intercourse of society, or doomed to exhibit their defects by oddlooking manipulations, will be enabled to share with their more highly privileged fellow-men the pleasures of the social circle, the entertainments of the lecture-room, and the higher enjoyments of the sanctuary.

"SPECIAL ENDOWMENTS."

IN speaking of the peculiarities of the Free Church in the Highlands in our last Number, we mentioned, amongst other possible plans for dealing effectually with the spiritual destitution there, the creation of "special endowments" for necessitous districts. We find that in certain quarters this expression has been misunderstood and misrepresented. We shall not say that this has been done intentionally. In certain quarters there seems to be the very same kind of ignorant prejudice against the very word "endowment" that a bull is said to have against a piece of red cloth. Let the word only be named, and off they set at once, all sorts of evils being immediately apprehended-it must be from government that such "endowments" are expected-the Free Church is about to go back to an alliance with the State, and perhaps even to make a compact with Popery, that she may be quietly allowed to eat her commons out of the same trough with the Beast," &c. We need scarcely say that such an idea never entered into our mind. The endowments of which we spoke were those which individual benevolence might furnish, and all candid readers of the passage must have seen it to be so. The delusion, it seems, was promoted by our reference to the operations of the Committee on the "Royal Bounty," although we think it was sufficiently plain, to intelligent persons, that we only referred to their rates of payment, and principles of distribution, which were very different from ours.

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The question, however, is really one of great importance, and we are not sorry to have thus an opportunity of reverting to it. No class of unendowed Christians in this country have as yet fully solved the problem-What shall be done with the poor and neglected districts of our country? The Free Church seems to be the only body that has faced it in anything like its national magnitude and done something, by means of its Sustentation Fund, towards its solution. Other bodies confine their attention almost exclusively to self-sustaining congregations. Anything that is done for the outfield Population, is done by mere city missionaries. Even these missionaries are upheld by "endowments," or sums contributed from without; and the only difference is, that such endowments are so small, scanty, and precarious, as to secure the services only of a comparatively feeble and uneducated class of men, in districts which would require the most vigorous, talented, and well-supported labourers in the Church. The masses of our large cities and some of the poor outfield districts are to a great extent utterly neglected by all the Churches, for want of funds to meet the case. This is the undoubted and melancholy fact, let us make of it what we please. Now, it has been a serious question in the Free Church-How should the case of such districts be met? Certain things are plain in regard to it; as, for example, that without a regular ministry with church and school, no good on an extensive and effective scale is to be expected—that such a ministry will not be secured in ordinary cases, unless means are obtained for its support that to throw many more of such districts on the Sustentation Fund will go far to swamp it, whilst in the cities the mere dividend would be insufficient for the support of a minister, even if it could be obtainedthat, therefore, only three alternatives remain, either

to halt and let the masses perish, or greatly to increase the Sustentation Fund, or endeavour to prevail upon individuals interested in special localities to set apart sums of money for the permanent maintenance of word and sacraments there. The first alternative, of course, will be rejected in theory, although it is, in fact, the one that is at present adopted by all our Churches in practice. Of the other two, a good deal may be said on both sides. There is, of course, a danger of breaking in upon the unity of the Sustentation Fund as a bond of connexion amongst all our congregations, by creating a class of Churches that would have little or no interest in it; there is the danger of lulling people asleep, and abating their own efforts by doing all for them. But, on the other hand, there is the certainty that many districts will never be anything else than heavy drags on the Sustentation Fund, unless some such plan is adopted-the hopelessness of raising the general fund to such an amount as will be necessary-the fact that individuals take an interest in particular districts, and would give sums of money for them, whilst they would not give an equal sum to the general fund; and, above all, the consideration that every such case, pensioned off by sinking £2,000 or £3,000 beside it, would set free a dividend for some other poor and neglected district. Miss Hunter's liberality, for example, in giving £1,600 to build, and £180 a-year to endow, St Paul's, Edinburgh, started a congregation where otherwise there would have been none, and enabled them, from the first, to get able ministers. Dr Chalmers' efforts and liberality secured the same result in the West Port; and we know no reason why it should not be seriously considered, whether the experiment should not be repeated, where practicable, in all the poorer districts of the kingdom. This is what we mean by "special endowments."

The question has often been asked, "Why do you not fund money as a capital in connexion with the Sustentation Fund itself?" The answer is plain. It would take a capital of £3,000,000 or £4,000,000 to yield the interest we require; and to lay up a smaller sum would only confuse the people, and lead them to slacken their efforts. The common people have not much arithmetic-they would think £100,000 or £200,000 inexhaustible, although it would only yield £5,000 or £6,000 a year, and would forthwith, as in the case of the Infirmary and other institutions, partially endowed, give up contributing. No such result, however, would flow from a donation confined to a particular locality, and the precise amount of which could be easily ascertained. In fact, this process has already commenced, and no evil, but great good, results from it. A worthy proprietor gives £50 a-year each to two of our ministers, and an excellent lady has sunk a capital sum which will yield £50 yearly to the minister of another district. We know not why some wealthy Highlanders or Orcadians should not do the same for their native districts, and why the example of Miss Hunter should not be copied by some of our wealthy citizens.

"RUSTICATION OF THE POOR."..

A SERIES of letters have lately appeared in the Witness newspaper, written chiefly by Dr Begg, in which certain important plans are propounded for the purpose of abating the growing pauperism and crime of Scotland, and finding a profitable outlet for the chil