252 EDITOR. 



could not become a fossil, however exquisitely coloured 

 and definitely traced might be the markings on it. 

 As a man of science he kept the gates of his soul grandly 

 open, and as a churchman and theologian he would as- 

 suredly have seen ' what main currents draw the years ' 

 and permitted the wind of Providence to fill his sail. 

 More I cannot say. 



There are some who think that, in devoting himself 

 to the Free Church, Hugh Miller abandoned a higher 

 career, which might have awaited him if he had given his 

 undivided energies to science. To this view I cannot sub- 

 scribe. To take part in founding an important national 

 institution is a higher and more honourable service to 

 humanity than to make discoveries in science or to write 

 eloquent books. So long as the Free Church endures, 

 she will bear upon her the image and superscription of 

 Hugh Miller. She is his best monument, a sound 

 piece of building, creditable to the journeyman mason. 

 All things considered, there was no one of her founders 

 who played a more important part in rearing her than he. 

 It was at his voice that the people of Scotland awoke to 

 a perception of what they had to lose or gain in the Church 

 controversy. ' There does not/ he said, ' exist a tenderer 

 or more enduring tie among all the various relationships 

 which knit together the human family, than that which 

 binds the Gospel minister to his people.' No one pro- 

 claimed this during the conflict so powerfully as Hugh 

 Miller, and it was his proclamation of this, with accom- 

 panying exhibition of the fact that all the tenderness and 

 all the sacredness of the relation between pastor and 

 people were at stake in the conflict, which tended more 

 than aught else to fill the courts of the Free Church 

 with the acclaiming voices of the people of Scotland. 



