{2} This passage has been referred to in several Free Church presbyteries, as if the writer had affirmed that the schoolmaster stands on no higher level than the shoemaker or tailor. We need scarce say, however, that the passage conveys no such meaning. By affirming that in matters of chimney-sweeping men choose for themselves the best chimney-sweeps, and in matters of indisposition or disease the best physicians, we do not at all level the physician with the chimney-sweep: we merely intimate that there is a _best_ in both professions, and that men select that best, as preferable to what is inferior or worse, on every occasion they can. {3} We have learned that what was actually intended at this time was, not to _ordain_, but only to _induct_ our schoolmasters. And their _induction_ would have made, we doubt not, what Foigard in the play calls a 'very pretty sheremony.' But no mere ceremony, however imposing, can communicate to a secular profession a spiritual status or character. {4} A fac-simile of this letter was reproduced in the columns of the _Witness_.--ED. {5} See Introduction. CHAPTER SECOND. Right and Duty of the Civil Magistrate to educate the People--Founded on two distinct Principles, the one economic, the other judicial--Right and Duty of the Parent--Natural, not Ecclesiastical--Examination of the purely Ecclesiastical Claim--The real Rights in the case those of the State, the Parent, and the Ratepayer--The terms Parent and Ratepayer convertible into the one term Householder. Wherever mind is employed, thought will be evolved; and in all questions of a practical character, truth, when honestly sought, is ultimately found. And so we deem it a happy circumstance, that there should be more minds honestly engaged at the present time on the educational problem than at perhaps any former period. To the upright light will arise. The question cannot be too profoundly pondered, nor too carefully discussed; and at the urgent request of not a few of our better readers, we purpose examining it anew in a course of occasional articles, convinced that its crisis has at length come, just as the crisis of the Church question had in reality come when the late Dr. M'Crie published his extraordinary pamphlet;{6} and that it must depend on the part now taken by the Free Church in this matter, whether some ten years hence she is to posses any share, even the slightest, in the education of the country. We ask our readers severely to test all our statements, whether of principle or of fact, and to suffer nothing in the least to influence them which is not rational, or which is not true.