force of his sovereign intellect, and it was proclaimed in thunder tones by the voice of John Milton. Still Calvin had compassion, if no compunctions, and he implored the authorities not to burn the heretic, but in mercy to despatch him at once by the sword.1 It should also be mentioned here that many who have adopted wholesale the Election creed of Calvin, have substituted for his high and liberal idea of the Christian Sunday a wholly Pharisaic conception of the Jewish Sabbath.

Turn we now to Scotland. For the last three hundred years Scotland has been nothing if not Presbyterian, and one may say she has been baptised in blood for her convictions. Her sons and daughters, peers and peasants alike, went psalmsinging to the gallows, the stake, and to death by flood for Christ's crown and covenant.' The memories of her martyred saints are to this day household talk in the glens and moors of all the south of Scotland. Devout shepherds uncover their heads as they pass the grey stone beneath which lie the remains, for instance, of such a youth as Andrew Hislop, of Eskdale Muir, who, when commanded

1 Cf. Bungener's Life of Calvin. I am quite aware that even by modern Calvinists themselves a very different estimate is enterained of Calvin's conduct in relation to Servetus.

by an officer of those dragoons by whom the Covenanters in the time of Charles II. were hunted like partridges in the mountains, to pull his cap over his eyes before the soldiers discharged at him their deadly volley, replied: 'What should I do that for? I have done naething to be ashamed o’.

Presbyterianism, in the person of John Knox, thwarted the astute and deeply-cherished policy of Queen Mary for reimposing the Papal yoke on the neck of Scotland; and this valiant and dauntless Reformer, who roused by his letters, which were writ as if in flame words, the lords of the Congregation, made Scotland a theocracy. If he had been able to carry out his masterly schemes, the Church lands, which had been appropriated by a rapacious nobility, would have been reconsecrated to the pious uses for which they were originally destined. He aimed at nothing less than combining a national intellectual culture with the spiritual edification of the whole population. But let us honour him for what he succeeded in at last effecting. He secured a stipend and a house not burdened with any dilapidations worries for every beneficed clergyman, and at the same time had a school with schoolmaster's residence, and salary chargeable on the land, established in every parish,

and, in consequence of his painful endeavouring and gallant life-battle, the population of his beloved native country, if poor, became God-fearing, intelligent, and provident.

In what other country in the world could such a picture be drawn from the life as has been painted for us by Robert Burns in his 'Cotter's Saturday Night'? And a beautiful confirmation of its truth has just been given to the world in that exquisite and most touching portraiture of his pious father, the stonemason, which Thomas Carlyle has left behind him.

Twice over the stubborn and fervid genius of Presbyterian Scotland flung off the shackles of the ecclesiastical bondage which James VI. and his ill-starred son Charles I. by kingcraft and priestcraft laid upon its shoulders; and when, after the Restoration in 1660, Episcopacy was again thrust upon the nation, the Scotch maintained an heroic struggle, of which the Boers remind us, for national liberty and the rights of conscience. They were hunted, as I have said before, like partridges in the mountains, and many a lonely glen witnessed a very Holy Communion indeed, when the white cloth was spread on the purple heather amid the gloom of the blackening storm. Pious peasants

were shot down at their own door in sight of their wives and children; tortures of all kinds were employed against the insurgents; men and women were hanged, or drowned, but still they fought their good fight, until at last the sight of the blue banner held aloft on the Scotch hills by worn and weary arms inspired the Prince of Orange to venture his descent upon England.1 Hence came the expulsion of the Stuarts, and the famous Revolution settlement, with issues yet to be developed.

Let us cherish the memory of those who fought and fell in that struggle for us and for our children they fought and fell—and at the same time give due honour to William Wordsworth, who, in a fine sonnet on those Scottish troubles, says that he

Who would force the soul tilts with a straw
Against a champion cased in adamant.

But, reverencing as I do the men who, in the words of Thomas Carlyle, cheerfully laid their bodies in the ditch that we might walk over them to Revolution settlements and triumphal songsreverencing as I do the intelligence and the piety of the Scottish peasantry-reverencing as I do

1 This circumstance was specially noted by Sir James Mackintosh.

the five hundred clergymen who in 1843 gave up houses and lands, yea all that they had, for what they believed to be the claims of history, conscience, and duty (and as Lord Jeffrey, the distinguished critic and judge, saw the procession passing from the church in which they had left their protest against the encroachments of the civil power, to hold their free assembly elsewhere, he shed tears of blended sorrow and thankfulness)—I do not forget, and will not shut my eyes to, the fact that there is another side of Presbyterianism. Rising up in righteous antagonism to the claim of infallibility, it claimed for itself nothing less than an infallibility equally authoritative, equally absolute, equally persecuting, for its own interpretations of certain passages of the New Testament. It would make the religion of Christ a religion of fretting rules, instead of its being, what it is, a revelation of eternal principles, in the carrying out of which good men may honestly and even widely differ. It was a great instrument in the hands of Providence for liberating the British Empire from the thraldom alike of priest and king; but, as Cromwell and Milton clearly saw, it would, if left to the freedom of its own will, have subjected us to a domination not less exacting, not less exorbitant,