beyond hope who could be present and not tremble
when the Moderator, standing in his place, with the Presbytery around,
and speaking in the name of the Head of the Church, deposed an unworthy
brother from the holy ministry. MacWheep was a "cratur," and much
given to twaddle, but when it was his duty once to rebuke a
fellow-minister for quarrelling with his people, he was delivered from
himself, and spake with such grave wisdom as he has never shown before
or since.

When the Presbytery assembled to receive a statement from Doctor
Saunderson "re error in doctrine by a brother Presbyter," even a
stranger might have noticed that its members were weighted with a sense
of responsibility, and although a discussion arose on the attempt of a
desultory member to introduce a deputy charged with the subject of the
lost Ten Tribes, yet it was promptly squelched by the clerk, who
intimated, with much gravity, that the court had met _in hunc
effectum_, viz. to hear Doctor Saunderson, and that the court could
not, in consistence with law, take up any other business, not
even--here Carmichael professed to detect a flicker of the clerkly
eyelids--the disappearance of the Ten Tribes.

It was the last time that the Rabbi ever spoke in public, and it is now
agreed that the deliverance was a fit memorial of the most learned
scholar that has been ever known in those parts. He began by showing
that Christian doctrine has taken various shapes, some more and some
less in accordance with the deposit of truth given by Christ and the
holy Apostles, and especially that the doctrine of Grace had been
differently conceived by two eminent theologians, Calvin and Arminius,
and his exposition was so lucid that the clerk gave it as his opinion
afterwards that the two systems were understood by certain members of
the court for the first time that day. Afterwards the Rabbi vindicated
and glorified Calvinism from the Scriptures of the Old and New
Testament, from the Fathers, from the Reformation Divines, from the
later creeds, till the brain of the Presbytery reeled through the
wealth of allusion and quotation, all in the tongues of the learned.
Then he dealt with the theology of Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, and showed
how it was undermining the very foundations of Calvinism; yet the Rabbi
spake so tenderly of our Scottish Maurice that the Presbytery knew not
whether it ought to condemn Erskine as a heretic or love him as a
saint. Having thus brought th