We again saw Chalmers, and, in a corner apart from a social party, of which his kind and genial heart formed the attractive centre, we found he thoroughly agreed with us in holding that the time for the discussion of the educational question had fully come. It was a question, he said, on which he had not yet fully made up his mind: there was, however, one point on which he seemed clear--though, at this distance of time, we cannot definitively say whether the remark regarding it came spontaneously from himself, or was suggested by any query of ours--and that was the right and duty of a Government to _instruct_, and consequently of the governed to receive the instruction thus communicated, if in itself good. We remarked in turn, that there were various points on which we also had to 'grope our way' (a phrase to which the reader will find him referring in his note, which we subjoin); but that regarding the inherently secular character of the schoolmaster, and the right and duty of the Government to employ him in behalf of its people, we had no doubt whatever. And so, parting for the time, we commenced that series of articles which, as they were not wholly without influence in communicating juster views of the place and status of the schoolmaster than had formerly obtained in the Free Church, and as they had some little effect in leading the Church to take at least one step in averting the otherwise inevitable ruin which brooded over her educational scheme, the readers of the _Witness_ may perhaps remember. We were met in controversy on the question by a man, the honesty of whose purpose in this, as in every other matter, and the warmth of whose zeal for the Church which he loved, and for which he laboured, no one has ever questioned, and no one ever will. And if, though possessed of solid, though perhaps not brilliant talent, he failed on this occasion 'in finding his hands,' we are to seek an explanation of his failure simply in the circumstance that truths of principle--such as those which establish the right and duty of every Government to educate its people, or which demonstrate the schoolmaster to possess a purely secular, not an ecclesiastical standing--or yet truths of fact, such as that for many years the national teaching of Scotland has _not_ been religious, or that the better Scottish people will on no account or consideration sacrifice the secular education of their children to the dream of a spiritual pedagogy,--are truths which can neither be controverted nor set aside. He did on one occasion, during the course--what he no doubt afterwards regretted--raise against us the cry of infidelity,--a cry which, when employed respecting matters on which Christ or His apostles have not spoken, really means no more than that he who employs it, if truly a good man, is bilious, or has a bad stomach, or has lost the thread of his argument or the equanimity of his temper. Feeling somewhat annoyed, however, we wished to see