174 EDITOR. 



against them, and it is inconsistent with all we know of 

 human nature to suppose that they should have been en- 

 couraged by the plaudits of popular enthusiasm. But in 

 the struggle which issued in the disruption of the Church 

 of Scotland, the cause of the Church was the cause of the 

 people. The spiritual independence of the former was 

 a shield held forth to defend the congregational privi- 

 leges of the latter. The jurisdiction of the Church 

 would have been a poor rallying word even in Scotland, 

 if it had not been linked with the cause of non-intrusion. 

 The right of the people to have no pastor forced upon 

 them was that which the Church brought out all her 

 artillery of suspension and deposition to protect. It is 

 unquestionable that if the majority in the Church courts 

 could have been induced to betray the people, to make 

 common cause with the patrons, to put off congrega- 

 tions with some plausible make-believe, they might 

 have availed themselves of inviting opportunities to 

 secure their own predominance. But no artifice of 

 statesmen, no subtle influence of aristocratic favour, no 

 comfort of pleasant manses and fixed incomes, no pride 

 of State establishment, dear to the clerical bosom, could 

 tempt the Church to prove false to the ancient league, 

 or to abandon that guardianship of congregational rights 

 which had made her the darling of the Scottish com- 

 monalty from the days of Knox to the days of Chalmers.* 



* It is interesting to observe that Sir Walter Scott, who had a 

 marvellously exact comprehension of the Presbyterianism of Scotland, 

 represents David Deans as sensitively anxious on the subject of his son- 

 in-law's 'real harmonious call' to the parish of Knocktarlity and as 

 ready to maintain 'the right of the Christian congregation to be con- 

 sulted in the choice of their own pastor ' as ' one of the choicest and 

 most inalienable of their privileges.' David Deans is expressly drawn 

 by Scott as a patriarch of the Kirk, and Dr William Cunningham him- 

 self could not have defined with nicer exactness the Non-intrusion 

 claim of the Church, not that the people should choose their pastors, 

 but that they should be ' consulted in the choice ' of their pastors, than 

 old Davie. 



