rty or forty pounds additional, and of cutting down another to
the average dividend, and, for a time at least, the Presbyterian
independence is gone. But the reaction point once reached--and in the
Free Church the process would not be a very tedious one--the
discretionary authority would be swept away in the first instance, and
the Sustentation Fund not a little damaged in the second. It is of
paramount importance, therefore--a law on no account to be neglected
or traversed--that the distribution of the Fund be regulated by rules
so rigid and unbending, and of such general application, that the
manifestation of favour or the exercise of patronage on the part of
the board or committee authorized to watch over it may be wholly an
impossibility.

It is, in the next place, of importance carefully to scan the
sources whence the expected increase of the Fund is to come. The
givers in the Free Church at the present time seem to lie very
much in extremes. A considerable number, animated by the Disruption
spirit, contribute greatly more to ministerial support, in proportion
to their incomes, than the old Dissenters of the kingdom; but a
still larger number, reposing indolently on the exertions of these,
and in whom the habit has not been cultivated or formed, give
considerably less. It was stated by Mr. Melvin, in the meeting of
the United Presbyterian Synod held on Wednesday last, that, 'on an
average, the members of weak congregations in connection with their
body contributed to the support of their minister about 14s. 6d. per
annum, besides about 2s. 6d. for missionary purposes, while some
of them contributed even as high as 25s. to 26s.' Now, an average rate
of contribution liberal as this, among the members of country
congregations in the Free Church, would at once place the Fund in
flourishing circumstances, and render it, unless its management was
very unwise indeed, sufficient to maintain a ministry high above the
dreaded level of _fine-bodyism_. Nor do we see why, if we except
the crushed and poverty-stricken people of some of the poorer
Highland districts, Free Church congregations in the country
should not contribute as largely to church purposes as United
Presbyterian congregations in the same localities. The membership of
both belong generally to the same level of society, and, if equally
willing, are about equally able to contribute. Here, then, is a
field which still remains to be wrought. Something, too, may be