THE MODERATES. 187 



who obeyed the civil law rather than the law of the 

 Church, somewhat less fiery and impatient in urging 

 the matter to an issue. Hugh Miller had seen much of 

 infidel voluntaryism, and little of that power of religion 

 in a state of freedom which has in recent times fright- 

 ened the Pagan party into swift abjuration of the prin- 

 ciple of a free Church in a free State, and cordial sup- 

 port of civil establishments of religion. The conception 

 of a State Church as a bed on which Christianity, 

 ascertained by cultivated men to be moribund, may 

 die soft, had not dawned upon the intellect of Hugh 

 Miller. If convinced that the choice lay between dis- 

 establishment on the one hand, and a State Church 

 on the other, which was specially recommended by its 

 usefulness in controlling the might of free religious 

 principle, he would with passionate indignation have 

 declared for the former. He lived and died, however, 

 a believer in the soundness of the State-Church theory. 



Nor was this the only circumstance which might have 

 disposed him to look with indulgence upon the Moderate 

 party. His literary sympathies, his pride in the modern 

 literature of Scotland, must have pleaded strongly in 

 their behalf. If he could have granted, which he could 

 not, that the ministers of a Christian Church can claim 

 approval or applause on any ground save that of preach- 

 ing, in season and out of season, the Gospel of Christ, he 

 would have found it difficult to repress his enthusiasm 

 for that party which placed the Church of Scotland in 

 sympathetic harmony with all that was refined and 

 intellectually progressive in the literature, the science, the 

 art, of Scotland. One knows not where to look in ecclesi- 

 astical history for a party, of which the nucleus consisted 

 of clergymen, so loyal to the higher aims of the human 

 spirit, so ardent in its love of knowledge, so free from 



