ecessary to every self-governing society was rightly preserved. But
in its application it tended here, as in Geneva, to press too much upon
the detail of individual life. So, too, the prominence now given to
preaching, and the duty laid down of habitually waiting upon it, may
seem inconsistent with the primitive Protestant authority of the Word of
God alone. This, however, would have been modified, had the system of
'weekly prophesyings' (which provided for not one man only but for all
who are qualified communicating their views), taken root in Scotland, as
it has so largely done in Wales. And even as it was, this work of a
trained ministry, and especially the preaching, passed in those early
days like a ploughshare through the whole soil and substance of the
Scottish character, and left enduring and admirable results.

Had Knox been able to throw himself directly upon the people, all would
have been well. But the people were to be approached through hereditary
rulers, whose consent was necessary for funds with which the Church
might administer, not the department of religion and worship only, but
those also of national education and national charity. That the Church
should be administrator was not the difficulty. Whether, indeed, the
selection of one religion, to be by ordinance of Parliament the religion
of the subjects of the State, was justifiable, will always be gravely
questioned. But, rightly or wrongly, that had already been done; and it
was clearly fitting that the body which was thus in a sense made
co-extensive with the nation, should undertake national duties, of a
kind cognate with those properly its own. No one--except perhaps the
Catholics--doubted that the new Church, with both the new learning and
the new enthusiasm behind it, was better fitted to administer alike
education and charity than either the Estates or the Crown. And Knox's
great scheme proposed that the Church, in addition to administering its
own religion and worship, should in every parish provide--1. That those
not able to work should be supported; 2. that those who were able should
be compelled to work; 3. that every child should have a public school
provided for it; 4. that every youth of promise should have an open way
through a system of public schools on to the Universities. It was a
great plan, but a perfectly reasonable one. And there was abundance of
money for it. For the wealth of the Church now abolished, which the law
held to be,