THE REFORMED CHURCH. 169 



that vague sense of the general mind which seldom 

 errs, both as manifested in the Church of Rome and 

 beyond her pale, recognized the fact by signalizing the 

 Church of Geneva, the Church of the Huguenots, the 

 Church of Holland, the English Churches of the Puritans, 

 and the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, as branches, 

 not of the Protestant, but of the Reformed, Church. 



The Reformed Church claimed spiritual independ- 

 ence as a right bestowed on her in the Word of God; 

 but her congregations found in this no cause why they 

 should dread her ecclesiastical assumptions, since the 

 Church meant the body of the faithful, not a mystically 

 endowed sacerdotal order. Recognizing the sacred im- 

 portance of the congregation as an integral portion of 

 the Church, the Reformed communions naturally re- 

 spected congregational rights, and laid it doAvn as a 

 principle of practical administration that no pastor could 

 be appointed to minister to a congregation against their 

 will. 



All this was mother's milk to Hugh Miller. From 

 his earliest years his eye had flamed and his heart beat 

 quick at the names of Bruce and Wallace, and in the 

 Scottish Church he saw an institution which incarnated 

 more of the ancient spirit and freedom of his native land 

 than any other. Like all sane Scotchmen, he regarded 

 the union with England as a crown of blessing for Scot- 

 land ; but he felt that those political questions which de- 

 rived importance from their bearing on the interests of 

 the empire at large, had a comparatively remote and in- 

 direct connection with the welfare of Scottish towns and 

 villages, Scottish peasants arid artisans ; whereas the 

 preaching of the Gospel of Christ with purity and fer- 

 vour, and the influence of a trusted, loved, and genially 

 earnest pastorate, and the feeling of honest pride and 



