In the best and truest sense the Presbyterian Church is Apostolic, and her spiritual succession from the Apostles she cherishes with an unfaltering confidence. While rejecting the ritual theory of the Church, she has never been careless of the true succession of faith and doctrine and practice from the time of the Apostles to the present day, a succession to which she lays a not unworthy claim; and, claiming loyalty to Apostolic doctrine, polity and practice, she has ever been jealous in asserting her Divine right, as an Apostolic Church, to the controlling presence and guiding wisdom of the Holy Spirit of God. Under the guidance of that Spirit she has ever claimed, and still claims, the right of administering the government and directing the worship which, in their essential principles, are set forth in Scripture, neither superciliously regarding herself in any age as independent of those who have gone before, and so disregarding the legislation and practice of the fathers, nor, on the other hand, slavishly accepting such legislation and practice as binding upon the Church for all time, and as excluding for ever any progress or change. That spirit, at once of independence as regards man, and of dependence as regards God, has characterized Presbyterianism in its most vigorous and progressive periods; by that spirit must it still be characterized if, in succeeding ages, the work allotted to it is to be faithfully and well performed. If then the Church of one age is so independent of those who in other times have served her, it may be asked of what interest is her past history to us of to-day, and of what benefit to us is a knowledge of the legislation and practice of the Church in other periods of her progress? Of much value in every way is such knowledge. Those periods in particular, in which the Church has made notable progress, and in which her life has evidently been characterized by much of the Holy Spirit's presence and power, may well be studied, as times when those in authority were, indeed, led to wise measures, and guided to those methods of administration and practice, which by their success approved themselves as enjoying the Divine favor; the lamp of experience is one which wise men will never treat with indifference. In studying the Reformation period, therefore, a period marked by special activity and progress within the Presbyterian Church, we do so, not so much to discover forms which we may adopt and imitate, as to discover the spirit which moved the leaders in the Church of that day, and the principles which governed them in formulating those regulations, and in adopting those practices, which proved suitable and successful in their own age. To emulate the spirit of brave and wise men of the past is the part of wisdom, to imitate their methods may be the extreme of folly.