d--laws not of man's passing, but which arise out of man's
nature and the true bearings and relations of things; and unless
these be studied and conformed to, the Parliament-imposed tax,
though backed by the constable and the jail, will realize but
little. And if the statesman must study these laws, well may the
Church do so, who has no constables in her pay, and to whom no
jail-keys have been entrusted. It ought, we think, to be regarded
as one fundamental law, that whatever has been gained by the seven
years' establishment of the Fund, should not be lightly perilled by
bold and untried innovations. True, there may, on the one hand, be
danger, if let too much alone, that its growth should be arrested,
and of its passing into a stunted and hide-bound condition, little
capable of increase; but the danger is at least as great, on the
other, that if subjected to fundamental changes, it might lose that
advantage of permanency which whatever is established possesses
in virtue of its being such; and which has its foundation in habit,
and in that vague sense of responsibility which leads men to give,
year after year, what they had been accustomed to give in the previous
years, just because they had given it. Let it not be forgotten,
that though much still remains to be done in connection with this
Fund, much has been done already--that a voluntary tax of about
eighty thousand pounds per annum, raised from about one-third, and
that by no means the wealthiest third, of the Scottish people, is
really not a small, but a great one--and that as great, and as
worthy of being desired and equalled, do the other non-endowed
Churches of the country regard it. No tampering, therefore, with its
principle should be attempted: he was an eminently wise man who
first devised and instituted it,--not once in an age do churches, or
even countries, get such men to guide their affairs,--and it ought
by all means to be permitted to _set_ and consolidate in the mould
which he formed for it. We would apply in this case the language of
a philosophic writer of the last age, when speaking of government in
general:--'An established order of things,' he said, 'has an infinite
advantage, by the very circumstance of its being established. To
tamper, therefore, to try experiments upon it, upon the credit of
supposed fitness and improvement, can never be the part of a wise man,
who will bear a reverence for what carries the marks of the
stability of age; and t