the only course, in fact, which, if they felt their consciences aggrieved, they could consistently pursue, supposing them Christians and honest men. But they have now changed their tone. They have found out that certain saints of the olden time, while they complained of patronage, submitted to it nevertheless, rather than resign their interest in its loaves and fishes; and this happy discovery has, it appears, proved a sovereign remedy for the pangs of remorse. What unhallowed pretenders to godliness! Is conscience to be regulated by human example or authority? And will the sins even of a patriarch, of a prophet, or of an apostle, justify us in committing what conscience tells to be an infringement of the Divine law?

But the great day of the Assembly -the day most memorable both for its words and deeds- was Friday the 28th of May. On that day seven clergymen, members of the Presbytery of Strathbogie, in the Synod of Moray, were summoned to the bar as delinquents. The crime charged was disobedience to the mandates of the Assembly, a heavy offence, no doubt, had not these same mandates been at variance with all reason and justice. The case of the accused may be briefly stated thus:-Under nonintrusion influence the General Assembly had passed what they called a law of the church, which was in direct opposition to the law of the land, inasmuch as it encroached upon the rights of patrons, secured to them by act of parliament, and violated the compact which the church, at the foundation of its establishment, had entered into with the state. The law in question conferred upon the people, or rather a particular class of the people, of any parish, the power of rejecting, by a veto of the majority, without reason assigned, any individual whom, on a vacancy occurring, the patron might present to the ecclesiastical benefice. Now, by act of parliament, it had long ago been provided that no such rejection by the people could take place, but upon reasons assigned, and declared to be valid, by the presbytery, or on its sentence being appealed from, by the General Assembly, or supreme ecclesiastical court. The new law was carried into effect, nevertheless,

the Presbytery of Strathbogie, as well as other presbyteries, recognising it; and it soon appeared that the people were inclined to take advantage of it in a manner that would make the right of patronage nugatory. Soon after it came into operation, several instances of presentees to churches being rejected by the irresponsible veto of the parishioners occurred; and in one of these the aggrieved parties had recourse to the Court of Session, the supreme court judicatory of Scotland, for redress. That Court found for the pursuers, declared the new law of the Assembly to be contrary to the law of the land, and enjoined the ecclesiastical authorities to proceed in the case upon which this judgment was pronounced in accordance to the ancient practice. Upon this the General Assembly directed an appeal to be made to the House of Lords, which was accordingly done, and the result was a confirmation of the decision of the Court of Session. As no doubt of the illegality of the Veto-act, as it was called, could now remain, a presentee to a parish within the bounds of the Presbytery of Strathbogie, who had been rejected under it, applied likewise to the Court of Session, and obtained from it an injunction to the said presbytery to proceed forthwith to take the steps which, in accordance with the law of the land, would, if he was found qualified, terminate in his admission into the benefice. The presbytery were now placed between Scylla and Charybdis in trying to escape from the one, it was impossible that they could avoid the other. If they disobeyed the Court of Session, they subjected themselves to heavy pains and penalties; a fine which might be ruinous, and imprisonment if they failed to pay. On the other hand, as the majority of the General Assembly, though they had appealed from the Court of Session to the House of Lords, and thereby fully acknowledged the authority of that tribunal to decide in the matter, resolved, on finding the decision against them, to adhere to their veto-law, notwithstanding the Presbytery of Strathbogie knew well that they would incur the displeasure of that majority, if they should obey the civil court. After mature and

anxious deliberation, however, they resolved-that is, a majority of seven of them resolved-to take the lastmentioned course, and proceed to the initiatory steps for the settlement of the presentee, whose application for redress to the Court of Session had brought upon them this crisis of difficulty and peril. No sooner was their determination known, than it brought down upon them a sentence of suspension of sacred functions from the commission of the General Assembly; which sentence, as being an act of open rebellion against the law of the land and the supreme courts, they very properly disregarded, and ordained and admitted in due form the presentee in question.

Such is a brief statement of their case, and such was the crime for which they were summoned to the bar of the last General Assembly. They disobeyed a domineering majority in the church, when that majority were resisting the law of the land; and they obeyed the law of the land when the majority in question could afford them no protection from the heavy punishment which the legal authorities had, in case of disobedience, the power to inflict. This was the amount of the crime they had committed-this was the "whole head and front of their offending" against the faction who rejoice in the name of Non-intrusionists, and style themselves the Church of Scotland.

Well, Friday the 28th of May arrives, the General Assembly is met, and the Strathbogie clergymen appear at its bar. One of their counsel makes a very eloquent appeal in their behalf; and having finished, "the man with the largest head in Europe," the "Demosthenes

of

the "Modern Athens," even the redoubted and redoubtable Dr. Chalmers, places himself upon his legs. And being upon his legs, what does the "Demosthenes" proceed to do? The "Demosthenes takes out his spectacles and places them on his nose, produces a portfolio containing a ready-made speech, looses the strings, opens it, and begins to read. He starts with some stuff about determinate and indeterminate equations, introduced for no other apparent pur

pose than to make his audience aware that to his other mighty accomplishments he adds a knowledge of algebra. Well, he arrives at the conclusion that the case of the Strathbogie ministers is a problem which admits but of one answer; and so is not a cubic, or even a quadratic, but a very easy equation of the first degree. Then he goes into a disquisition on the difference between principle and expediency, a very useless one, we should think, in addressing Non-intrusionists, who, if we may judge from their proceedings, seem about as capable of understanding what principle is, as a man born blind of comprehending the distinction between blue and yellow. Then he comes to shew that the guilt of the accused does not rest on the question whether the veto is a good or bad law-who ever said that it did?and introduces an illustration which would be an excellent good one, were it not that it has no more bearing upon the case of the Strathbogie ministers, than the case of the Strathbogie ministers upon the interruption of our trade with China. If France, he says, instigated persons in this country to resist any law passed by the British legislature, would it be regarded as any justification of the rebellion of these persons that the law was a bad one? Might not some Moderate have retorted the illustration thus? Ought it to be regarded as any justification of the Nons, that they resist the law of patronage on the ground of its being a bad one? But, in fact, the doctor was here merely indulging in a little twaddle, for ends best known to himself, as every one understood long ago that the guilt or innocence of the Strathbogie ministers hinged entirely upon the question whether or not the General Assembly had power to enact the veto-law, the disregarding of which is the only crime with which they are charged. Next, he tries to perplex the matter, by pretending to doubt whether the General Assembly had disobeyed the law or not? What, Dr. Chalmers! did not the highest court of judicature in Britain decide upon this point, and is there, or can there be, any other possible way of solving the problem?

"WE are told by the Father of History," says Mr. Mitchell, in his able introduction to the Acharnians, "that when Croesus, king of Lydia, was preparing to make war upon the mighty monarch of the East, and anxiously looking about for such assistance as might aid him in his perilous enterprise, he heard (it would seem for the first time) of two peoples on the opposite shore of Greece, the one of Doric, the other of Ionic race; the latter, with several minor states, submitting to a sort of supremacy on the part of the former." To this state, as supreme, the Lydian king condescended to be courteous, as to an equal; with it he condescended to conclude a treaty, and from it to receive such succours as might demonstrate rather the good wishes than the power of his foreign ally. Before, however, these succours could arrive, the Lydian had been defeated by his all-powerful opponent, hardly rescued from a frightful death, and reduced to the condition of an humble follower of his conqueror. The sway over the entire East had passed into the hands of one king, and he the bravest, the most politic of his age; whilst Greece, once more neglected and despised, was bid to look at home, and beware how she interfered, even in words, with the will of The King. Pass

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over but a few years, and how changed is the scene! Sparta, the former ally of the foreigner, holds herself aloof from the East, its temptations and its dangers; whilst Athens, by her hasty and ill-advised assistance of the Ionians in their revolt against the Persian, brings back on her own land all the horrors of an Eastern invasion, and involves the entire continent of Greece in the consequences of her indiscretion. And then with what rapidity do events hurry on! We pass from Sardis in flames, to the plains of Attica covered with the myriads of the East; from the well-foughten field of Marathon to the narrow pass of Thermopyla; from Athens, the fair, the beautiful, deserted and burnt, to the land-locked bay of Salamis, and the homeless Athenians commencing in that narrow sea the destruction of. that host, which the battles of Platæa and Mycale completed. What would have been the Lydian captive's astonishment, as he humbly followed the footsteps of Cyrus, had some magic mirror disclosed to him the events which a few succeeding years were to bring to pass! Would he have credited that those two nations, of whose existence he had hardly so much as heard, would so soon be found measuring their strength with the Lord

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