rty of which neither the practice nor
legislation of holy men of the past can deprive them, they rightly
refuse to surrender their liberty or to retire from their
responsibility.

In the best and truest sense the Presbyterian Church is Apostolic, and
her spiritual succession from the Apostles she cherishes with an
unfaltering confidence. While rejecting the ritual theory of the
Church, she has never been careless of the true succession of faith and
doctrine and practice from the time of the Apostles to the present day,
a succession to which she lays a not unworthy claim; and, claiming
loyalty to Apostolic doctrine, polity and practice, she has ever been
jealous in asserting her Divine right, as an Apostolic Church, to the
controlling presence and guiding wisdom of the Holy Spirit of God.
Under the guidance of that Spirit she has ever claimed, and still
claims, the right of administering the government and directing the
worship which, in their essential principles, are set forth in
Scripture, neither superciliously regarding herself in any age as
independent of those who have gone before, and so disregarding the
legislation and practice of the fathers, nor, on the other hand,
slavishly accepting such legislation and practice as binding upon the
Church for all time, and as excluding for ever any progress or change.
That spirit, at once of independence as regards man, and of dependence
as regards God, has characterized Presbyterianism in its most vigorous
and progressive periods; by that spirit must it still be characterized
if, in succeeding ages, the work allotted to it is to be faithfully and
well performed.

If then the Church of one age is so independent of those who in other
times have served her, it may be asked of what interest is her past
history to us of to-day, and of what benefit to us is a knowledge of
the legislation and practice of the Church in other periods of her
progress? Of much value in every way is such knowledge. Those periods
in particular, in which the Church has made notable progress, and in
which her life has evidently been characterized by much of the Holy
Spirit's presence and power, may well be studied, as times when those
in authority were, indeed, led to wise measures, and guided to those
methods of administration and practice, which by their success approved
themselves as enjoying the Divine favor; the lamp of experience is one
which wise men will never treat with indifference. In stu