lace, she would
infallibly secure that, some twenty years hence at furthest, every
theological professor of the Free Church should be a pluralist, and
able to give to his lectures merely those fag-ends of his time
which he could snatch from the duties of the pulpit and the care of
his flock. And such, in doubling the Cape Horn of the College
question, is all that unanimity of voting could secure to the
Church; unless, indeed, according to Carlyle, she voted in accordance
with the 'set of conditions already voted for and fixed by the
adamantine powers.'

Nor does the question of Denominational Education, now that there is a
national scheme in the field, furnish a more, but, on the contrary, a
much less, hopeful subject for mere voting in our church courts, than
the question of College Extension. It is _not_ to be carried by
ecclesiastical majorities. Some of the most important facts in the
'Ten Years' Conflict' have perhaps still to be recorded; and it is one
of these, that long after the Non-Intrusion party possessed majorities
in the General Assembly, the laity looked on with exceedingly little
interest, much possessed by the suspicion that the clergy were
battling, not on the popular behalf, but on their own. Even in 1839,
after the Auchterarder case had been decided in the House of Lords,
the apathy seemed little disturbed; and the writer of these chapters,
when engaged in doing his little all to dissipate it, could address a
friend in Edinburgh, to whom he forwarded the MS. of a pamphlet thrown
into the form of a letter to Lord Brougham, in the following
terms:--'The question which at present agitates the Church is a vital
one; and unless the people can be roused to take part in it (and they
seem strangely uninformed and wofully indifferent as yet), the worst
cause must inevitably prevail. They may perhaps listen to one of their
own body, who combines the principles of the old with the opinions of
the modern Whig, and who, though he feels strongly on the question,
has no secular interest involved in it.' It was about this time that
Dr. George Cook said--and, we have no doubt, said truly--that he could
scarce enter an inn or a stage-coach without finding respectable men
inveighing against the utter folly of the Non-Intrusionists, and the
worse than madness of the church courts. For the opponents of the
party were all active and awake at the time, and its incipient friends
still indifferent or mistrustful. The histor