LORD BROUGHAM'S SPEECH. 177 



gate a man's religious state before God and to say 

 whether he is or is not converted. Not the less but the 

 more, however, for his thus deeming conversion an in- 

 scrutably sacred process transacted in the secret places 

 of a man's soul between himself and his Maker, does 

 the Scottish religionist of the historic type regard con- 

 version as infinitely important, and desire, as the one 

 essential thing, that his pastor shall be a man of God. 

 His judgment on the point may be narrow, uncharitable, 

 superstitious ; but it will depend mainly upon sympathies 

 of the soul's life which have never shaped themselves 

 even to himself in an articulate whisper, and which he 

 feels it to be utterly preposterous to attempt to express 

 under specified heads of objection to a presentee. Never, 

 therefore, for one moment were the congregations of 

 Scotland beguiled into the belief that the right of 

 objecting to pastors selected for them by patrons was 

 equivalent to being certified that no pastor should be 

 ' intruded ' upon them. 



It was Lord Brougham's adoption and enforcement 

 of the view that the right to specify objections to a 

 presentee was the sole concession made by law to the 

 congregations of the Church of Scotland, which roused 

 Hugh Miller from his domestic j-epose in the shadow of 

 the hill of Cromarty. The patron of the parish of 

 Auchterarder, Lord Kinnoul, had presented the Rev. Mr 

 Young to the charge. About forty of the parishioners 

 abstained from positively opposing him; nearly three 

 hundred expressly declined to have him as their pastor ; 

 and only three individuals, two of them not members of 

 the congregation, signed the call. Under these circum- 

 stances the Presbytery rejected Mr Young. His soli- 

 citor, not carrying the case to any of the higher courts 

 of the Church, turned at once to the Civil Authority. 



vox. ii. 12 



