On returning to Edinburgh, he baptized McLean and six others, and formed a Baptist church. In 1769, Carmichael moved to Dundee, and McLean became minister of the newly-formed church. Other churches of immersed believers were soon planted in Glasgow, Dundee, Montrose and other places, and the sentiment in favor of returning to the scriptural act of baptizing grew among the people. The marked piety and noble disinterestedness of Archibald McLean stand out as worthy of all admiration. His labors were immense and given gratuitous, as he persisted in continuing in employment as overseer of a printing establishment. As Scotch Baptist churches multiplied there arose a disturbing element. McLean and others held the necessity of an ordained elders to the proper observance of the Lord’s Supper; consequently, notwithstanding that they taught the importance of observing the Lord’s Supper on the first day of every week, it had to be omitted when an ordained elder could not be present. But ere long others among them saw more light and insisted that elders were not essential to the being of a church, that the church existed before its eldership, and that where the church is the Lord’s table should be spread on the first day of every week, irrespective of the presence of an ordained elder. This led to contention, and, indeed, to separation. But truth will not down. We may go with it any distance we please, but when we say, “Thus far and no farther,” truth struggles to remove the hindrances thrown across its path, and in the end starts on afresh to complete the journey. As leaven will permeate so truth must influence more or less the mass into which it is cast. From Scotland the principles associated with the names of the Haldanes, Carmichael and McLean found receptive hearts in Wales. Even in Ireland, also, there was in men’s minds the struggling of truth and error, the partial expulsion of the false by the true, the consequent advance to apostolic faith and order, and falling short of a complete return thereto, notwithstanding progress calling for thankful recognition. THE SEPARATISTS