PAMPHLET. 259 



energies preserve, as in the body natural, the distant 

 extremities from torpor, gangrene, and death. And 

 whatever threatens to injure it from without, or to affect 

 it as with disease from within, is to be guarded against 

 with the most sedulous care. The central habitat of this 

 institution in Edinburgh must of necessity connect, in an 

 especial manner, with its management and control, the 

 Edinburgh Free Church leaders ; and the soundness of 

 its condition, and its consequent measure of prosperity, 

 must in the future very much depend on two classes of 

 circumstances, on the conduct of these men, and their 

 degree of independence of suspicious secular influence ; 

 and on the amount of confidence reposed in them, and 

 of cordiality entertained for them, by the ministers and 

 people that occupy the Church's great outer area, all of 

 Scotland that is not the capital. 



' There is one important respect in which the circum- 

 stances of the Eree Church differ most materially from 

 those in which the members and ministers that compose 

 it were placed previous to the Disruption. There has 

 ever existed in the true Church of Scotland, that 

 Church which has ceased to exist as an Establishment, 

 a sort of Presbyterian jealousy, not unwholesome when 

 under the influence of right principle, of what our 

 country clergy used to term the ' big wig ' influence, 

 ecclesiastical and lay. And how often has not the 

 perfect parity of Presbyterian ministers been insisted 

 upon by the rasher spirits, even in a sense in which 

 parity does not exist ! In the most important sense 

 possible Presbyterian ministers are not equal. Their 

 equality is merely an equality of the letter, appointed, it 

 would seem, in order that the true episcopacy, which is 

 of the spirit, may have room to develop itself, and that 

 the Church may be benefited by the graces and talents 



