prized by artists and authors in their respective walks--of being
able to look over the length and breadth of his subject with a
_fresh_ eye. And, in doing so, there was one special circumstance
in the survey suited to excite some alarm. We found that in all the
various schemes of the Free Church, with but one exception, its
extensively spread membership and its more active leaders were
thoroughly at one; but that in that exceptional scheme they were
not at all at one. They were at one in their views respecting the
ecclesiastical character of ministers, elders, and church courts,
and of the absolute necessity which exists that these, and these
only, should possess the spiritual key. Further, they were wholly at
one in recognising the command of our adorable Saviour to preach
the gospel to all nations, as of perpetual obligation on the
Churches. But regarding what we shall term, without taking an undue
liberty with the language, the pedagogical teaching of religion, they
differed _in toto_. Practically, and to all intents and purposes,
the schoolmaster, in the eye of the membership of our Church, and
of the other Scottish Churches, was simply a layman, the proper
business of whose profession was the communication of secular
learning. And as in choosing their tailors and shoemakers the
people selected for themselves the craftsmen who made the best and
handsomest shoes and clothes, so, in selecting a schoolmaster for
their children, they were sure always to select the teacher who was
found to turn out the best scholars.{2} All other things equal, they
would have preferred a serious, devout schoolmaster to one who was
not serious nor devout, just as, _coeteris paribus_, they would have
preferred a serious shoemaker or tailor to a non-religious maker of
shoes or clothes; but religious character was not permitted to stand
as a compensatory item for professional skill; nay, men who might be
almost content to put up with a botched coat or a botched pair of
shoes for the sake of the good man who spoiled them, were particularly
careful not to botch, on any account whatever, the education of
their children. In a country in which there was more importance
attached than in perhaps any other in the world to the religious
teaching of the minister, there was so little importance attached to
the religious teaching of the schoolmaster, that, when weighed
against even a slight modicum of secular qualification, it was
found to have no sen