In sundry note-books and scraps of MS., there are jottings evidently designed to be wrought into the tissue of this web, but too fragmentary or disjointed to be quoted here. Dr. Slowman comes to no end; and probably much would have been added to his sayings and doings, but for the "ineluctabile fatum." In Dr. Lee's diary, of July, 1861, among other projected works, he specifies "Life of Dr. Slowman, and a System of Theology, by Same." Some of these projects he fulfilled, but this remains incomplete.

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CHAPTER X.

RESTORATION OF OLD GREYFRIARS' CHURCH-ANNUITY TAX-SERMON AT CRATHIE-UNIVERSITY CORRESPONDENCE-DIARY-TROUBLE AND SORROW.

"Who knew the seasons when to take

Occasion by the hand, and make

The bounds of freedom wider yet."

REFORM

TENNYSON, To the Queen, 1851.

AFTER much municipal delay, the Church of the Old Greyfriars' was restored. A large sum was added by the congregation to the legal funds, in order that the restoration might be effected in a style worthy of the historical renown of the Church. The outside could not be altered in any way; but the interior was repaired and fitted up, gracefully though simply, and all the windows were filled with painted glass-then a novelty in Scotch churches. The great east window was the gift of the congregation. Among the others, which were presented as memorials, were, one in memory of Principal Robertson-to which his nephew, Lord Brougham, contributed; one in memory of Dr. Inglis--the founder of the Scottish "India Mission "-given by his son, the present Lord President of the Court of Session; and one in memory of Dr. Erskine (Robertson's colleague), the joint gift of Dr. Lee's distinguished friend, Mr. Erskine, of Linlathen, and other members of the Erskine family.

"It was very sad," says Dr. Lee, "to leave the Assembly Hall, where we had been since Feb. 1845. Dear S--,* may God bless him abundantly. I have preached more than half of my ministry in this church, and I suppose far the most useful and important part of it.

The restored church was opened on June 14, 1857; Dr. Lee conducting the service in the forenoon, Dr. Barclay in the afternoon. At the close of his sermon, which was from the text, Hebrews vi. 1-3, Dr. Lee said:

"I have endeavoured, though in much ignorance and weakness, to set forth the Gospel in its more practical applications, to the persons who have hitherto attended my ministry, rather than to entangle them in metaphysical speculations, or to stun them with theological dogmatism; and instead of being frightened or disheartened by the opprobrium which this way of proceeding never fails to draw down, I desire, and by the grace of God I intend still, to pursue the same course, with, I hope, greater wisdom and energy and decidedness, and, may God grant, with increased success. Though I acknowledge, with thankfulness and humility, that I have not been left without the satisfaction of seeing some good fruit already; and I hope more may have been produced than I wot of now, but the day will declare it. Still, it is my purpose to look upon 'the colours of good and evil;' to study the religion of Christ in the spirit and character of Christ; so to consider His life that we may live with Him; His death, that we may die with Him; His resurrection, that we may rise with Him; His ascension and reign in heaven, that we may ascend to a loftier moral elevation, and

*Rev. Dr. Smith, minister of the Tolbooth parish, whose congregation met in the Hall.

reign in spiritual life, disenthralled from the bondage of the flesh and the world, both in earth and heaven; may so believe that we may work; and so work that we may receive the reward in that day when God shall bring every work into judgment, and we shall know how small a matter is the praise or blame, the admiration or the contempt, of our fellow-creatures."

Immediately afterwards he went up to London to oppose a bill concerning the "Annuity Tax," then before the House of Commons. He says in his diary, in reference to this, "Mem.: to keep out of turmoils and discussions as much as possible, for the future. The life of a salamander is not agreeable. As much as lieth in you live peaceably with all men,'-even with dishonest knaves like the members of the T. C."

This tax, which has long had an unhappy prominence in the civic and ecclesiastical annals of Edinburgh, was, at that time, a charge of six per cent. on the rental of shops and houses in the city, for the stipends of the clergy. The tax was first imposed in 1634, and the area of its incidence was extended as the city increased, -the last extension having taken place in 1809. The College of Justice, comprising all the members of the legal profession, was exempted from payment; an ancient privilege, designed as a bribe to induce the Courts of Law to settle themselves permanently in Edinburgh. The tax was levied from occupiers, not from owners; and this, as well as the exemption of the lawyers, fostered the popular dislike to it. As dissent grew, dislike ripened into hate, and hate into resistance. Although the clergy were most lenient in their collection of the impost, and voluntarily sanctioned many ex

emptions from it, the fact of their claiming it at all was eagerly used by local agitators (as an oppressive sample of clerical rapacity) to inflame the uninstructed public mind against Church Establishments in general, and the Establishment at Edinburgh in particular. Sundry efforts were made at different times, in Parliament, to adjust the "Annuity Tax" on a basis which should conciliate the opposition to it, without entirely forfeiting the rights of the clergy. None had succeeded. Indeed, the local demagogues found the tax too serviceable a stalking horse for their own ambitions and jobberies, to allow it to be quietly driven into the background. They would either have total and immediate abolition-which they knew they could not get-or nothing. So year after year passed, and the agitation continued; the clergy were exposed as the local demagogues desiredto the odium of collecting the tax from recusant payers; and persons of tender and delicate conscience were, on every needful occasion, to be found, who, rather than pay peaceably their legal share of it, suffered the spoiling of their goods by the sheriff's officer, and enjoyed the brief glory of a dubious martyrdom. In 1857 another Annuity Tax bill, introduced by Mr. Adam Black, then member for Edinburgh, was before the House of Commons; and its provisions were so entirely subversive of the position of the Church as an Established Church, that the Presbytery did all they could to secure its defeat. It was on this errand Dr. Lee went to London. He took a keen interest in the question; being anxious at once to secure adequate stipends for the clergy, and to remove every reasonable cause of grievance on the part of the taxpayer. But he had no tolerance for the tactics of