kindness I have personally experienced among you; and I pray that God may bless and support you all, that there may be a revival of religion in this district, and that the pleasure of our Great Master may prosper in your hands. The next subject introduced was, "The Presbyterian Missionary Society," in reference to which the Rev. R. Stewart said:

The Presbyterian Missionary Society is an institution with which I have at present no public official connexion, although in common with my brethren, I feel the liveliest interest in its operations. My friend and brother, Dr. Cooke, to whom you have very properly attributed, the instrumentality, under God, of effecting a great moral revolution in our church, was the first person who went for h as a Presbyterian Missionary to the South. I believe I was appointed to succeed him, and subsequently to these tours the first missionary society in connexion with the Synod was proposed and founded. But that society was of a mixed character, embracing men of every creed and shade of feeling, and consequently having no adhesive quality it fell asunder. It was then suggested by myself, that we ought in our individual capacity, to form a voluntary missionary association, composed only of persons holding those views of gospel doctrine which are denominated evangelical, and this was, I believe, the origin of that society which is now in a great measure incorporated with the body of the Synod. Its existence affords a very cheering indication of returning zeal and vigour in the church, for the history of all the sections of the true church of Christ abundantly demonstrates that the cause of godliness has been advanced and propagated, just in proportion as the truth itself has been received. I anticipate great things, Sir, from our missionary labours, for though we have many difficulties to encounter by reason of the prejudice and ignorance of our fellow..countrymen, yet, if our missionaries only go forth with the word of God in their hands and with his Spirit in their hearts, I am persuaded that, by his blessing on the work, they will effect a mighty renovation in the land, and thus achieve that silent and spiritual victory for which we pray, when every idol shall be utterly abolished and every abomination shall be overthrown.*

The Ballybay collection of the Synod's Mission, for this year, amounted, we are happy to say, to the sum of £17 7s. 6d..-EDIT.

The chairman then proposed, "Dr. Chalmers and the Church of Scotland," upon which Rev. D. G. Brown, in compliance with a general call, rose and said :—

In rising, Sir, to speak to the last sentiment which has issued from your chair, I beg it may be fully understood, that I accept this honour not from any fitness or capability in myself to do justice to the subject, but simply because it so happens that, with the exception of my friend Mr. Gibson, I am the only person in this room who has enjoyed the high privilege of waiting on the professional institutions of that distinguished individual whose name has been so appropriately attached to the venerable Kirk of Scotland.

Sir, there is often might and magic in a name; and our sympathies, whether of love or admiration, are never more intensely excited than when the great and the good are spoken of in connexion with a church which is the nursing mother of us all, and our father land so rich and glorious in the achievements of piety and patriotism. Sir, it must be well known to you, that the Presbyterian Church receives and recognizes no lords over God's heritage, and obeys no authority but the supremacy of the King who reigns in Zion; but Sir, she is ever ready to acknowledge and do reverence to the nobility of Christian worth and genius; and when the records of her history, dark, torn, and bloody at the beginning, but bright and triumphant at the close, shall be transferred to the annals of the church of the first-born in heaven; her cloud of witnesses for the truth, both in the days of her sore persecutions, when her persecuted sons fought manfully for Christ's crown and covenant, and in the days of her treacherous peace and security, when to sound an alarm on the holy mountain was stigmatized as enthusiasm or scouted as hypocrisy, shall then, for ever away from the coldness of earth and the calumny of its evil tongues, as kings and priests, worship Him who holdeth seven stars in his right hand, and walketh in the midst of seven golden candlesticks. To say that Dr. Chalmers holds a conspicuous place in the church, of which he is at once an ornament and a bulwark, would be faint and feeble praise indeed. For, Sir, he is the main-spring of that blessed reformation which is now carrying on so vigorously and successfully in the ecclesiastical courts of Scotland, and by which the mildew of patronage will speedily be dried up, and the affections of

the Scottish people again entwined around that old and honoured temple which their fathers and our own built at the expense of grievous toil and much precious blood.

The Zion of Scotland was built simple, yet magnificent in all its parts and proportions, for the sublimity of truth sat gracefully on its pinnacles, and holiness unto the Lord was engraven on its ornaments; but the watchmen fell asleep on their posts, for the cup of salvation was drugged in their hands with chilling indifference, and soon the enemy in darkness and in silence stealthily passed by those bulwarks of the faith which were found impregnable to fair and open attacks, and all the pleasant things of Jerusalem were laid waste. The outside machinery of a Gospel church still remained, but the dragwheels were increased in power and dimensions, until the efficiency of godly and wholesome discipline was impaired, and the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ virtually disowned. Then did many with gloomy forebodings leave a church which had wantonly forsaken her first love, by copying, not the graces, but the defects and evils of her sister establishment in England; and were it not that the Lord had reserved for himself a chosen remnant that never would bow the knee to any Baal of political expediency, and who mourned over the desolations of Israel as children grieving for the delinquencies of a beloved parent, and who prayed and laboured amidst great despondency for the restoration of the ancient glory, there might at this moment have been written with a pen of eternal obloquy on the walls and pillars of the temple, "Ichabod, the glory is departed." Sir, in the times of which we speak, an unfortunate association was entertained and sedulously cherished between great talents and ministerial lukewarmness and infidelity. And men whose names were echoed by the trumpet of literary fame, from one end of the world to the other, were often known only to their poor and simple parishioners, as the cold preachers of a still colder morality. The history of man, as a citizen of time, might be written with grace and impressiveness; but the moral history of the human heart, and of the mystery of iniquity in full and busy operation there, was seldom touched and never rightly delineated; and hence, the well-composed, classical orations of men, whose genius and whose trophies of literary acquirements we must all admire, fell as powerless upon their respective congregations as if it were an exhibition got up by infidels, to prove that the Gospel of free grace had lost all vitue to instruct the ignorant, or to convince the gainsayer, or to awaken the careless, or to confirm the saints.

Need we wonder, then, that the sons and daughters of a church who had imbibed the old-fashioned theology of the shorter catechism, which is the marrow of Scripture divinity, who were the sturdy and well-built disciples of John Knox, the apostle of Orthodox Presbyterianism, could neither live nor breathe contentedly in the Polar regions of moderatism. And though we cannot approve of the principles on which many have seceded, that of abandoning the ark of the holy covenant of the God of Israel when it was taken captive by the Philistines through deceit and treachery, but never in honourable combat ; whereas, all true and valiant soldiers of the cross of Christ should have stood up the more firmly in its defence, and sternly resisted every encroachment of the enemy; yet can we make due allowance for the fears and consternation of those who remembered not that the Lord might have a sore controversy with Zion, and yet in his own good time, when all her backslidings were chastised, work out triumphantly her purification and deliverance. These days of death-like torpor have passed away, when the honied breath of error blighted the loveliness of the Scottish Canaan. Truth has at length, and we hope for ever prevailed, and her doctrines, according to godliness, have gone abroad throughout the land like the balmy gales of spring, and the wilderness and the solitary place have become glad. But should the clouds which now lower in blackness over the venerable Kirk of Scotland, clouds, we fear, not raised by the march of the host of Israel to the help of the Lord against the mighty, but which are thickened by the heat and hurry of a political contention; should these dark and ominous clouds burst in fury on her head, we are confident that still the blue banner of the covenant shall wave in triumph far above the smoke and din of that ignoble warfare; and thus the tempest of revolution, as it sweeps resistlessly along, will only purify the atmosphere of truth, and impart new beauty and luxuriance to every plant of renown and tree of righteousness in the Lord's vineyard. Not many years ago, the names of a Moncrieff, a Thomson, and a Chalmers, were watchwords of thrilling import in the battles of the faith. These servants of God formed a tower of strength, against which the enemy might indeed rush, but it could be only in the madness of a frenzied desperation. Alas! two of the number have already fallen. One at a good old age, revered by his friends and respected even by his enemies; his white locks, a beauteous emblem of the crown of righteousness, he now wears in the general assembly of heaven. The other, need we say

every

Andrew Thomson, always in the front rank when any battle of the faith was to be fought or any victory of the cross to be won, fearless and free, the redoubted champion of his church, and the champion of the liberties of mankind. He fell in his armour, ungirded and untarnished, and was carried to the place where his body now rests in hope of a joyful resurrection, amidst the lamentations of every generous and godly spirit who could make allowance for the occasional asperities of a bold and fearless asserter of the truth.

One of this sacred, and if we look beyond time to the land of uprightness, one of this immortal band still remains, and to him has been committed by the Great Head of the church, the instruction and religious culture of many of the literary ministers of the Church of Scotland. As professor of theology in the University of Edinburgh, Doctor Chalmers holds the most responsible and important station perhaps in Christendom, if we look, not only to the shifting scenes of our earthly existence, but to the progress of that dispensation which shall usher in the kingdom that shall never be moved. He now stands at the fountain-head of that theology which was transplanted from the New Testament to Geneva, but which reached its stateliest growth in Scotland; for there the tears and the blood of holy martyrs fertilized the vine of God's right hand planting; and there men of vigorous minds and undaunted hearts combined successfully for the establishment of Zion, the city of our solemnities. If, Sir, there be any one situation which more than another is fitted to gratify the lawful ambition of a true Christian patriot, it is that of turning many to righteousness, by forming the characters and strengthening the faith of those young teachers of the Gospel who crowd to the prelections of Chalmers, as if some messenger from the bright abodes of truth had come down for a season to hold converse with mortals.

And if I may be allowed to characterize, in a few words, the morale of that course of moral and religious discipline which is at this moment practiced in the Divinity Hall of Edinburgh, I would say, that Doctor Chalmers has succeeded in combining the advantages of the English system of close and minute examination with the more comprehensive, and perhaps more intellectual and improving system of the Scottish lectureship. By following out this method of clear and logical deduction, his students are furnished not only with the facts and phenomena of Scripture, but also with the general bearings and applications of the science of theology. They