aced. Let us not fall into the delusion of deeming the
mere array of our Free Church schools and teachers--their numbers and
formidable length of line--any matter of congratulation; nor
forget, in our future calculations, that if the Free Church now
realizes from L10,000 to L12,000 yearly for educational purposes,
she would require to realize some L5000 or L6000 more in order to
qualify her to meet her existing liabilities, estimated at the
very moderate rates laid down in the programme. The L5000 or L6000
additional, instead of enabling her to erect a single additional
school, would only enable her to pay in full her teachers' salaries.
And so it is obviously a delusion to hold that our Free Church
Educational Scheme supplies in reality two-thirds of our congregations
with teachers, seeing that these teachers are only two-thirds paid.
We are still some L5000 or L6000 short of supplying the two-thirds,
and some L6000 or L7000 more of supplying the whole. And even were
the whole of our own membership to be supplied, the grand query,
How is our country to be educated,--our parish schools to be
restored to usefulness and the Scotch people,--and Scotland herself
to resume and maintain her old place among the nations?--would come
back upon us as emphatically as now. Judging from what has been
already done, and this after every nerve has been strained in the
Sisyphisian work of rolling up-hill an ever-returning stone, it
seems wholly impossible that we should ever succeed in educating the
young of even our own congregations; and how, then, save on some great
national scheme, is a sinking nation to be educated?

-----

{8} The following portion of a motion on the educational
question, announced in the Edinburgh Presbytery of the Free
Church on the 6th of February last, is specially referred to in
this paragraph:--

'That the successful working of the present Government plan would
be greatly promoted by the following amendments:--

'1_st_, The entire omission in all cases (except, perhaps, the
case of the Established Church) of the certificate regarding
religious instruction, and the recognition of all bodies, whether
Churches or private parties and associations, as equally entitled
to receive aid.

'2_d_, The adoption of a rule in proportioning Government grants
to local efforts more flexible, and admitting of far more liberal
aid in destitute localities,