Ireland did not. We have here an example and a warning. If we plant a church and school, side by side, in every community in this country, we shall have a population equal to the best part of the population of Scotland; if we do not, they will be like the worst part of the population of Ireland. Difficulties are so rapidly clustering around the system of public schools generally adopted in this country, Romanists and infidels are so strenuously striving to banish the Bible and religion from all such institutions, that it surely becomes all evangelical churches to consider what is their duty in the premises. Wherever there is a church there may be a school; and the same people who organize the one should organize the other. If assistance is necessary to sustain the teacher, it may be afforded just as in hundreds of cases it is afforded by our missionary societies to sustain the pastor. The plan proposed in Scotland, is, to furnish from a central fund, a salary of seventy-five or a hundred dollars to every school-master, to be "supplemented" by the community in which he labours. Here is a field worthy of the highest talent and greatest energy of the church. If half the ability and time which are spent on unimportant or injurious contentions, were devoted to devising and executing a scheme by which a sessional school should be established in connexion with every presbyterian church in our country, future generations would rise up and call us blessed. Why should not our General Assembly appoint a board or committee for elementary schools? Would not such a board have as wide and as important a field of labour, as that which belongs to any institution of the church? Of all the incidental blessings which we anticipate to attend the mission of our Scottish brethren, it will be the greatest and most permanent, if they are the means of awakening the zeal of our evangelical churches to this important subject. In addition to building churches, sustaining the ministry, and providing the means of professional and elementary instruction, we stated that the Free Church assumed the responsibility of conducting all the benevolent operations, carried on before the disruption. They had to renounce their missionary funds and property, but they wrote to their missionaries, that they were willing to receive and sustain them all. And it is one of the highest testimonies to the goodness of their cause, and one of the clearest manifestations of the divine favour, that the whole corps of missionaries, as well those to the Jews as to the heathen, have left the Establishment and adhered to the Free Church. The mode by which these benevolent operations are carried on, is very similar to our own. The church has what are called the "Five Schemes:" 1. The scheme for the conversion of the Jews. 2. For education. 3. For foreign missions. 4. For domestic missions. 5. For Colonial churches. For each of these objects a large committee is appointed, and under it a smaller executive committee, with its convener or chairman, who has the principal management of its concerns. By delegation from these several committees, a joint committee called the general Board of Missions and Education is formed, "for attending to and regulating certain matters common to them all; such as organizing and keeping in operation a system for maintaining and increasing the contributions to the Schemes, publishing the Monthly Record, &c.' 米 The annual amount contributed by the whole church to these schemes was about 120,000 dollars. The year before the disruption it was 26,000 pounds. The contributions by the Free Church alone bid fair to equal if they do not exceed that sum. Last year, as stated by Mr. Dunlop to the Assembly, the contributions to the scheme for the conversion of the Jews, after deducting legacies, was £3,863, this year more than four thousand pounds have already been reported. The Indian mission embracing thirteen missionaries, was taken on hand when there was but £372 in the treasury," we have now to rejoice," says the Record, "in very little short of six thousand pounds contributed for the mission." All the other schemes seem to be equally well sustained. Most of the work committed to the Home Missionary committee having been transferred to the building and sustentation schemes, less will appear under that head, though immensely more has been done for the objects embraced under it. When we remember that two hundred ministers, who formerly voted and acted with the evangelical party, remain in the establishment, the fact that the seceding portion of the church has fully sustained the benevolent operations formerly resting on the united body, and that this has been done in the midst of unexampled demands for the * Proceedings of the General Assembly, May 1843. VOL. XVI.-NO. II. 35 building, school, and sustentation funds, it certainly exhibits extraordinary devotedness and zeal. We have written this article with two objects mainly in view. The first is a selfish one; we wish our own churches to know what the Free Church is and is doing; we wish them to understand their principles, and their modes of operation, because we have much to learn from them. The truths which the Free Church is now holding up to the world, for which she is bearing testimony by suffering, are truths essential to the vigour of spiritual life in the church and its members. They are truths which we all admit, but which we have let slip. We have not felt as we ought that Jesus Christ is our Lord; that he must reign in us and over us, as individuals and as a community; his priestly, more than his kingly office, has filled our minds and hearts. We should take both, and live by both; we must live by faith not only in his atonement and intercession, but also in his authority and protection. He is our master and we must have no other. Feeling personally our short-comings in this matter, we have thought it might be useful to call the attention of our readers to the truths which this Scottish movement has brought so prominently to view. The plans also adopted by the Free Church for the support of the ministry, and especially for the support of schools and the promotion of religious education, are worthy of the serious consideration of the churches in this country. We have a similar work, and on a larger scale to perform; and it is well to ask, whether we cannot learn something from them, as to the best way of doing it. Our second object was of course to minister what little we could to aid the cause of the Scottish delegation to this country. This, however, is a very subordinate matter. With such principles at work, and with such men engaged in her service, we have no doubt of the success of the Free Church. Her cause is the cause of Christ, and must succeed. Its success cannot be materially promoted or retarded, by the few thousand dollars more or less, which American Christians may see fit to give. But it is of immense importance how we feel on this subject. To be hostile or to be indifferent, would be a sore calamity. "We have heard," said the eloquent delegate from Wales to the Scottish Assembly, "that Christ is suffering in this country, and we have come to look upon the bush that burns and is not consumed." If Christ is there suffering in his church, we must all admit that it would be for us a grievous evil, not to believe it, and not to feel and manifest our sympathy. If we make a mistake on this subject, and through that mistake, remain indifferent, we shall suffer loss. We have only one thing more to say. The testimony of the Free Church "is not a Presbyterian, it is a Protestant testimony. The great Reformation was a recovery of the truth. The truth made men free. The believer stood in his essential dignity-having Christ for his master, and ownning and tolerating no other. He claimed the right of private judgment. He repudiated, as an invasion of his birthright, all lordship over the conscience. He insisted on dealing direct with God-no man coming between. He demanded that the conscience should depend on, and hold of the Lord alone. Church rulers are no keepers of the people's conscience. They have no warrant to lord it over the heritage. The people must be left free to obey Christ, and Christ alone. Thus the testimony borne now to the honour of Jesus, is the very testimony borne by Luther and Melancthon, and the other worthies of the great Reformation. The question lies deeper than the particular controversy which has raised it. It is at the root of all civil and religious liberty. It is let it be reiterated again and again, in the ears of all men—the question of PROTESTANTISM. It is the question of the right of private judgment; the right of each Christian man to depend on Christ alone, and therefore independent of all authority, civil or ecclesiastical, in the discharge of his duty to Christ."* The appeal then of the Scottish Church is made to Protestants and not to Presbyterians. It has been cordially responded to by Wesleyans and Independents. Of the hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars received from England, the greater portion was from the Wesleyans, and the work there is but just begun. In this country the appeal is not yet generally understood. When it comes to be apprehended, we cannot doubt that it will reach every heart that wishes Jesus Christ to reign. • We have gathered these sentences from the introduction to the proceedings of the Scottish Assembly held in May, 1843, as reported in the Edinburgh Presbyterian Review. ART. IV.-The Little Stone and the Great Image; or Lectures on the Prophecies Symbolized in Nebuchadnezzar's Vision of the Golden Headed Monster. By George Junkin, D. D. President of Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. 8vo. pp. 318. Philadelphia: 1844. THE public has certainly no reason to complain of a deficiency of labourers in this department. How far the multiplication of interpreters of prophecy deserves to be regarded as a matter of rejoicing, may be made a question. We are glad however, that among the many who feel bound to undertake this difficult and delicate employment, one occasionally comes forth, who is not "of imagination all compact," and who is not disqualified by exclusive devotion to a study which, above most others, calls for the corrective influence of varied knowledge and discursive habits, to prevent a zeal for truth from degenerating into monomania. On this ground, we are glad to find a man of Dr. Junkin's standing in the literary and religious world, and one who has been chiefly known in other walks of learning, and whose tendencies are rather to matters of fact than to those of visionary speculation, coming forward to take part in these discussions. Of his work, which comes commended to our notice, not only by the author's name, but also by the handsome style in which it is got up, we shall now proceed to lay a brief account before our readers. It is due to Dr. Junkin to observe, in the first place, that this is not an extemporaneous effusion, but a work deliberately constructed and repeatedly re-written. The lectures here published have been thrice delivered, once at La Fayette College, once to a more promiscuous audience at Easton, and once at Miami University. This fact, distinctly stated in the preface, precludes any charge of undue haste against the author, and, at the same time, any claim on his part to indulgence on the score of haste and want of time. The praise of diligence it is impossible for any one who reads the volume to withhold. The prophecies expounded, the illustrative parallels from scripture, and the historical analogies, have all been zealously and sedulously studied. As the author's labours have had reference in every case to oral delivery, the form of lectures has of course been retained. This is, in some respects, a favourable circumstance, in others, not. The personal address and the practical application of the subject at brief intervals, |