HIS PART IN THE DISRUPTION. 251 



demonstration the world ever saw of the power of a 

 Christian Church to maintain an educated ministry 

 throughout the entire extent of a country, and common 

 sense drives home the conviction that this is the obvious, 

 the natural, the expedient, and, from the statesman's 

 point of view, the economical way of managing the 

 business. There is not an institution of recent times 

 from which the world has learned so much as from the 

 Free Church of Scotland. 



It is on the lines of principle laid down by the Free 

 Church, that the remarkable union which has been pro- 

 ceeding for many years among the branches of the Re- 

 formed Communion throughout the world has taken 

 place. The Reformed Church of the sixteenth century, 



justly so-called because, in contradistinction to the 

 Lutheran and Anglican Churches, which contented them- 

 selves with washing the dirty clothes of Rome and put- 

 ting them on again, she went direct for her Constitution 

 to Christ and His apostles, has reunited her broken 

 ranks in Australia and in America, and there are, as we 

 have seen, none but circumstantial hindrances to her 

 reunion in Scotland. Disunion on Christian principles 



disunion at the bidding of conscience and duty is 

 the natural prelude to union on Christian principles. 



In how far Hugh Miller would have sympathized 

 with the recent movements for union in the Reformed 

 Church, I shall not pretend to say. At the time when 

 he wrote his articles extolling the Establishment prin- 

 ciple, his views were those of Dr Cunningham and of 

 others who subsequently shared in the impulse towards 

 union. Hugh Miller was a man of definite opinions, 

 and held them tenaciously ; but he was not devoid of 

 that capacity of growth, which is perhaps the ultimate 

 characteristic of great minds. Such an intellect as his 



