186 EDITOR. 



powers of the Church which it establishes and endows, 

 they rejected not without scorn, and the Established 

 Church of Scotland they pointed to as a visible de- 

 monstration that a State Church might be free. We 

 have found Hugh Miller declaring in his Letter to 

 Lord Brougham, that, if the Church of Scotland had 

 acquiesced in his lordship's decision in the Auchterarder 

 case, ' the leaf holds not more loosely by the tree when 

 the October wind blows highest,' than he would have 

 held to ' a Church so sunk and degraded/ He ulti- 

 mately made good his words ; but in his ' Whiggism of 

 the Old School/ a pamphlet by which the Letter to Lord 

 Brougham was immediately followed, he vehemently 

 maintains the Establishment principle against ' Volun- 

 taries/ and seems to say that, though the decision of the 

 Courts ' has practically determined the law,' the clergy 

 ought not to sever their connection with the State. ' The 

 duty of our ministers ' these are his words ' is not the 

 less clear. They owe it to themselves and to their peo- 

 ple, to their country and to their God, that they neither 

 obey this iniquitous law, nor yet quit the Establishment/ 

 The second pamphlet is an inferior performance to the 

 first. It is more ponderously controversial, and lacks 

 the racy vigour and stern imaginative glow of the famous 

 ' Letter/ 



Without question, Miller, now and subsequently, was 

 a decided maintainer of the State-Church theory. It was 

 with inexpressible reluctance that he brought himself 

 ultimately to admit that the Church of Scotland had no 

 alternative but to sever her connection with the civil 

 power. Nay, I have a distinct recollection that, in 

 earnest talk with me after the Disruption, he hinted 

 a wish that the leaders of the majority had been some- 

 what less imperious in their dealings with clergymen 



