176 EDITOR. 



be quite impossible to set clown in black and white. 

 Members of the Anglican Church, or of the Episcopal 

 Church of Scotland, are hardly in a position to appreci- 

 ate the importance, as conceived by a member of the 

 Reformed Church, of positive acceptance by a congrega- 

 tion of its pastor. The Episcopal Church retains, in the 

 first place, the mediaeval doctrine of a peculiar sanctity 

 and power of blessing attached to episcopally ordained 

 clergymen. The Reformed Church in all her branches, 

 certainly not least in her Scottish branch, discards 

 the idea of a mystic power inherent in the priesthood, 

 and rests the value of the clergyman on his personal 

 qualities. The Anglican Church, in the second place, 

 has a Prayer Book, and the congregational devotion 

 does not depend on the clergyman. The pastors of the 

 Reformed Church of Scotland compose the prayers which 

 they offer up in the name of the congregation, and 

 though comprehensive, minute, and admirable directions 

 for congregational prayer are given them in the formu- 

 laries of the Church, it is inevitable that the character 

 of their prayers will be in large measure dependent on 

 their personal qualifications. But if we would get at 

 the very heart of that invincible objection to intruded 

 pastors which the communicants of Scotland have 

 shown in every age, we must call to mind the intense 

 personal religiousness of the Scotch. The religious Scot 

 is not, like the corresponding type in England, demon- 

 strative and emotional. He shrinks with sensitive dislike 

 from those effusive recitations of spiritual experience 

 which Wesley found congenial to large classes in England. 

 He rejects the notion, practically acted on by a proportion 

 of the English Congregationalists, and a still larger pro- 

 portion of the English Baptists, that presbytery or parson, 

 elder or deacon, has the right or the capacity to investi- 



