sible weight. And with this great practical fact
some of our leading men seemed to be so little acquainted, that they
were going on with the machinery of their educational scheme, on a
scale at least co-extensive with the Free Church, as if, like that
Church--all-potent in her spiritual character--it had a moving power
in the affections of the people competent to speed it on. And it was
the great discrepancy with regard to this scheme which existed
between the feelings of the people and the anticipations of some of
our leading men, clerical and lay, that excited our alarm. Unless
that discrepancy be removed, we said--unless the anticipations of
the men engaged in the laying down of this scheme be sobered to the
level of the feelings of the lay membership of our Church, or,
_vice versa_, the feelings of the lay membership of our Church be
raised to the level of the anticipations of our leaders--bankruptcy
will be the infallible result. From the contributions of our
laymen can the scheme alone derive its support; and if our leaders
lay it down on a large scale, and our laymen contribute on a small
one, alas for its solvency! Such were our views, and such our
inferences, on this occasion; and to Thomas Chalmers, at once our
wisest and our humblest man--patient to hear, and sagacious to
see--we determined on communicating them.

He had kindly visited the writer, to congratulate him in his dwelling
on his return to comparative health and strength; and after a long and
serious conversation, in which he urged the importance of maintaining
the _Witness_ in honest independency, uninfluenced by cliques and
parties, whether secular or ecclesiastical, the prospects of the Free
Church educational scheme were briefly discussed. He was evidently
struck by the view which we communicated, and received it in far other
than that parliamentary style which can politely set aside, with some
soothing half-compliment, the suggestions that run counter to a
favourite course of policy already lined out and determined upon. In
the discrepancy which we pointed out to him he recognised a fact of
the practical kind, which rarely fail to influence the affairs upon
which they bear; and in accordance with his character--for no man
could be more thoroughly convinced that free discussion never hurts a
good cause, and that second thoughts are always wiser than first
ones--he expressed a wish to see the educational question brought at
once to the columns o