d letter. But how entirely different
the circumstances of Scotland in the present time! The country has its
lapsed masses,--men in very much the circumstances, educationally, of
the great bulk of the population in the age of Knox; and we at once
grant that, unless the Churches of the country deal with these as Knox
dealt with the whole, there is but little chance of their ever being
restored to society or the humanizing influences of religion, let
Government make for them what provision it may.{18} But such is not
the condition of the membership of at least the evangelical Churches.
Such is palpably not the condition of the membership of the Free
Church, consisting as it does of parents taken solemnly bound, in
their baptismal engagements, to bring up their children in the
'nurture and admonition of the Lord,' and of the children for whom
they have been thus taken bound. Save in a few exceptional cases,
_their_ education is secure, let the Church exert herself as little as
she may. She is but exhausting herself in vain efforts to do what
would be done better without her. She has all along contemplated, we
are told, merely the education of her own members; and these form
exactly that portion of the people which--unless, indeed, the solemn
engagements which she has deliberately laid upon them mean as little
as excise affidavits or Bow Street oaths--may be safely left to a
broad national scheme, wisely based on a principle of parental
responsibility.

'If thou altogether holdest thy peace at this time,' said Mordecai to
Esther, 'then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the
Jews from another place, but thou and thy father's house shall be
destroyed.' Scotland will have ultimately her Educational Scheme
adequate to the demands of the age; but if the Free Church stand
aloof, and suffer the battle to be fought by others, her part or lot
in it may be a very small matter indeed. What, we ask, would be her
share, especially in the Highlands, in a scheme that rendered the
basis of the educational franchise merely co-extensive with the basis
of the political one? Nay, what, save perhaps in the northern burghs,
would be her share in such a scheme over Scotland generally? A mere
makeweight at best. But at least the lay membership of the Free Church
will, we are assured, not long stand aloof; and this great question of
national education being in no degree an ecclesiastical one, nor lying
within the jurisdiction of presb