Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction upon which the Free church has laid the foundations of its own establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to an officer of a church, which is faces. And every examination of the case convinces us more and more that the Seceders took up the old papal distinction, as to acts spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion less or more, but under a simple necessity of finding some evasion or other which should meet and embody the whole rancour of the moment. But beyond any other evil consequence prepared by the Free Church, is the appalling spirit of Jacobinism which accompanies their whole conduct, and which latterly has avowed itself in their words. The case began Jacobinically, for it began in attacks upon the rights of property. But since the defeat of this faction by the law courts, language seems to fail them, for the expression of their hatred and affected scorn towards the leading nobility of Scotland. Yet why? The case lies in the narrowest compass. The Duke of Sutherland, and other great landholders, had refused sites for their new churches. Upon this occurred a strong fact, and strong in both directions; first, for the Seceders; secondly, upon better information, _against_ them. The _Record_ newspaper, a religious journal, ably and conscientiously conducted, took part with the Secession, and very energetically; for they denounced the noble duke's refusal of land as an act of "persecution;" and upon this principle--that, in a county where his grace was pretty nearly the sole landed proprietor, to refuse land (assuming that a fair price had been tendered for it) was in effect to show such intolerance as might easily tend to the suppression of truth. Intolerance, however, is not persecution; and, if it were, the casuistry of the question is open still to much discussion. But this is not necessary; for the ground is altogether shifted when the duke's reason for refusing the land comes to be stated: he had refused it, not unconditionally, not in the spirit of Non-intrusion courts' "_without reason shown_," but on this unanswerable argument--that the whole efforts of the new church were pointed (and professedly pointed) to the one object of destroying the establishment, and "sweeping it from the land." Could any guardian of public interests, under so wicked a threat, hesitate as to the line of his duty? By granting the land to parties uttering such menaces, the Duke of Sutherland would have made himself an accomplice in the unchristian conspiracy. Meantime, next after this fact, it is the strongest defence which we can offer for the duke--that in a day or two after this charge of "persecution," the _Record_ was forced to attack the Seceders in terms which indirectly defended the duke. And this, not in any spirit of levity, but under mere conscientious constraint. For no journal