260 EDITOR. 



of her true bishops, the good and great men whom God 

 has given her. But even the jealousy which clung thus 

 to the dead letter of equality was, when confined within 

 due bounds, a thing not to be greatly regretted. Our 

 Church is very differently circumstanced now from what 

 it w r as when the frame-work of the Establishment 

 sheltered its ministers, and rendered them independent 

 in their secular affairs, each of all the others. The in- 

 stitution of the Sustentation Fund is an institution new 

 to a Presbyterian Church ; and there is the profoundest 

 prudence and discretion demanded, in order to accom- 

 modate it to the Presbyterian genius and character. 

 And, further, the Free Church has, what no Dissenters 

 ever had, the Highlands of Scotland, where there are not 

 a few parishes entirely with us which will too certainly 

 never be self-sustaining ones. There is thus a centre of 

 comparative wealth in the body, and a large circumfer- 

 ence of dependency. And to the influence of central 

 wealth there is, besides, added a centre of official manage- 

 ment, with a certain amount of patronage attached. 

 Wesleyism has also its centre of official management, and 

 its outer circumference of poor non-sustaining Churches. 

 But the Wesleyism of England an offshoot from Eng- 

 lish Episcopacy, and still, to a considerable extent, 

 marked by the Episcopal character is essentially 

 different in its genius from old Scottish Presbytery. 

 Even among the Wesleyans, however, a reaction on the 

 centralization system has produced the New Connexion. 

 A reaction on the analogous tendency in the Eree 

 Church would be a very different affair indeed. Among 

 the Wesleyans the reactionists are persons infected by 

 modern notions and feelings, and, in many cases, sin- 

 gularly unsound in their creed; while among us the re- 

 actionists would, on the contrary, be men of the long- 



