to wavelets or seas. If the billows rise within so as to
disrupt the framework of the Establishment, and make wreck of its
temporalities, it may be fairly premised that they have risen not from
any impulsion of the light winds of uncertain doctrine, but, as in the
Canton de Vaud and the Church of Scotland, in obedience to the strong
ground-swell of sterling principle.

Now we deem it a mighty advantage, and one which should not be
wilfully neutralized by any after act of the body, that the
distinctive principles of the Free Church bear the stamp and pressure
of sacrifice. The temporalities resigned for their sake do not
adequately measure their value; but they at least demonstrate that,
in the estimate of those who resigned them, the principles did of
a certainty possess value up to the amount resigned. The Disruption
forms a guarantee for the stamina of our Church's peculiar tenets,
and impresses upon them, in relation to the conscience of the Church,
the stamp of reality and genuineness. And that influence of the
temporalities to which we refer, and under which the controversy
grew, had yet another wholesome influence. It prevented the wrinklings
of new, untried notions from gathering momentum, and rising into
waves. The great billows, influential in producing so much, were
the result of ancient, well-tested realities: they had rolled
downwards, fully formed, as a portion of the great ground-swell of
the Reformation. The Headship of the adorable Redeemer--the spiritual
independence of the Church--the rights of the Christian people: these
were not crotchets based on foundations of bad metaphysics; they
were vital, all-important principles, worthy of being maintained and
asserted at any cost. It is indeed wonderful how entirely, immediately
previous to the Disruption, the Church of Scotland assumed all the
lineaments of her former self, as she existed in the days of Knox and
his brethren. Once more, after the lapse of many years, she stood on
broad anti-patronage ground. Once more, after having been swaddled up
for an age in the narrow exclusiveness of the Act of 1799, that had
placed her in a state of non-communion with the whole Christian
world, she occupied, through its repeal, the truly liberal position
with regard to the other evangelistic churches of her early fathers.
Once more her discipline, awakened from its long slumber, had become
efficient, as in her best days, for every purpose of purity. She
had become,