ner of personal
considerations, and dare not propose what he has nearest his heart,
because the other has a larger family or a smaller stipend, or is older,
more venerable, and more conscientious than himself; and it is in view
of this that I have determined to profit by the freedom of an anonymous
writer, and give utterance to what many of you would have uttered
already, had they been (as I am) apart from the battle. It is easy to be
virtuous when one's own convenience is not affected; and it is no shame
to any man to follow the advice of an outsider who owns that, while he
sees which is the better part, he might not have the courage to profit
himself by this opinion.

[_Note for the Laity_]

The foregoing pages have been in type since the beginning of last
September. I have been advised to give them to the public; and it is
only necessary to add that nothing of all that has taken place since
they were written has made me modify an opinion or so much as change a
word. The question is not one that can be altered by circumstances.

I need not tell the laity that with them this matter ultimately rests.
Whether we regard it as a question of mere expense or as a question of
good feeling against ill feeling, the solution must come from the Church
members. The lay purse is the long one; and if the lay opinion does not
speak from so high a place, it speaks all the week through and with
innumerable voices. Trumpets and captains are all very well in their
way; but if the trumpets were ever so clear, and the captains as bold as
lions, it is still the army that must take the fort.

The laymen of the Church have here a question before them, on the
answering of which, as I still think, many others attend. If the
Established Church could throw off its lethargy, and give the Dissenters
some speaking token of its zeal for union, I still think that union, to
some extent, would be the result. There is a motion tabled (as I suppose
all know) for the next meeting of the General Assembly; but something
more than motions must be tabled, and something more must be given than
votes. It lies practically with the laymen, by a new endowment scheme,
to put the Church right with the world in two ways, so that those who
left it more than thirty years ago, and who may now be willing to
return, shall lose neither in money nor in ecclesiastical status. At the
outside, what will they have to do? They will have to do for (say) ten
years what the la