the list. The total amount raised last year by the Free
College Church for all purposes was L2939, being higher than the
aggregate of any other church in Glasgow. It is not too much to say that
Dr. Buchanan's admirable financial talents have been greatly
instrumental in bringing the fiscal arrangements of the Free Church to
such a high point of perfection. His eminently methodical and far-seeing
mind set itself to work, immediately the necessity presented itself, to
devise ways and means of putting the ministers of the Church who were
all at once, without any preparation, and many of them under much
physical disadvantage, compelled to bid adieu to "the fleshpots of
Egypt." The ordeal was so terrible that it might well have appalled the
timid. Suffering for conscience sake, these noble-minded men chose to
leave behind them the _Lares_ and _Penates_ belonging to the
Establishment: but their adoption of Moses' choice, did not, after all,
entail much privation. Congregations and ministers alike resolved on
surrendering a position which they could not any longer, with a good
conscience, retain; and both proved equal to the emergency of dealing
with financial problems which all at once they were called upon to
solve. Casting herself promptly and entirely on the system of Free-Will
Offerings as the means of her future sustenance, the Free Church met
with a response so liberal and spontaneous that it is almost without
parallel in history. In all these arrangements Dr. Buchanan took an
active interest, and his sound practical advice was on all occasions of
financial embarrassment consulted by his colleagues. As to the manner in
which these difficulties were met Dr. Buchanan, himself, in a paper
read on the 15th March, 1870, before the Statistical Society of London,
stated that "The Free Church at once and unanimously adopted, as the
backbone of her financial system, the plan of a common fund, to the
support of which all her congregations should contribute, and in the
benefits of which all her ministers should share. With whom the central
idea of the scheme originated it is impossible to say. The very nature
of the case was such as almost inevitably to suggest it to any one who
was seriously and intelligently considering the subject. Of one thing,
however, there can be no doubt or question, that the authorship of the
system of finance, into which the idea now spoken of was gradually
developed, belonged to Thomas Chalmers. It had ta