eir position are very peculiar; and that should
they take a zealous part against what a preponderating majority of the
laity of their Church must of necessity come to regard as the cause of
their country, their opposition, though utterly uninfluential in the
general struggle, may prove thoroughly effectual in injuring
themselves. For virtually in the Free Church, as in the British
Constitution, it is the '_Commons_' who grant the supplies.

We subjoin the paper on the Educational Question, addressed by Dr.
Chalmers to the Hon. Mr. Fox Maule, as it first appeared in the
_Witness_. The reader will see that there is direct reference made to
it in the following pages, and will find it better suited to repay
careful study and frequent perusal than perhaps any other document on
the subject ever written:--

'It were the best state of things, that we had a Parliament
sufficiently theological to discriminate between the right and
the wrong in religion, and to encourage or endow accordingly.
But failing this, it seems to us the next best thing, that in
any public measure for helping on the education of the people,
Government were to abstain from introducing the element of
religion at all into their part of the scheme; and this not
because they held the matter to be insignificant,--the contrary
might be strongly expressed in the preamble of their Act,--but
on the ground that, in the present divided state of the
Christian world, they would take no cognizance of, just because
they would attempt no control over, the religion of applicants
for aid,--leaving this matter entire to the parties who had to
do with the erection and management of the schools which they
had been called upon to assist. A grant by the State upon this
footing might be regarded as being appropriately and exclusively
the expression of their value for a good secular education.

'The confinement for the time being of any Government measure
for schools to this object we hold to be an imputation, not so
much on the present state of our Legislature, as on the present
state of the Christian world, now broken up into sects and
parties innumerable, and seemingly incapable of any effort for
so healing these wretched divisions as to present the rulers of
our country with aught like such a clear and unequivocal
majority in favour of what is good and true, as might at once
determine them to fix upon and to espouse it.