{13} 'We are aware,' says a respected antagonist, 'that Mr.
Miller is no Deist; his argument, nevertheless, rests on a
deistical position,--a charge to which Dr. Chalmers' letter is
not liable to be exposed, in consequence of its first sentence,
and of what it recommends in a Government preamble.' If there be
such virtue in a preamble, say we, let us by all means have a
preamble--ten preambles if necessary--rather than a deistic
principle. We would fain imitate in this matter the tolerance of
Luther. 'A complaint comes that such and such a reformed preacher
will not preach without a cassock. "Well," answers Luther, "what
harm will a cassock do the man? Let him have a cassock to preach
in; let him have three cassocks, if he find benefit in them.'"
CHAPTER SIXTH.
Our previous Statement regarding the actual Condition of the
Free Church Educational Scheme absolutely necessary--Voluntary
Objections to a National Scheme, as stated by the Opponents of
the Voluntaries; not particularly solid--Examination of the
matter.
Our episode regarding the Free Church Educational Scheme now fairly
completed, let us return to the general question. The reader may,
however, do well to note the inevitable necessity which existed on our
part, that our wholesome, though mayhap unpalatable, statements
respecting it should have been submitted to the Church and the
country. The grand question which in the course of Providence had at
length arisen was, 'How is our sinking country to be educated?' We had
taken our stand, as a Scotchman, in behalf of the Scottish people; and
as the belief seemed widely to exist that our own Free Church scheme
was adequate, or at least nearly so, to the education of the children
of our own membership, and that our duty as Scotchmen could be
fulfilled, somehow, by concentrating all our exertions upon _it_, it
had become essentially necessary that the delusion should be
dispelled. And so we have showed, that while our scheme, in order
fully to supply the educational wants of even our own people, would
require to exist in the proportion of _nine_, it exists nominally in
but the proportion of _six_, and in reality in but the proportion of
_four_,--seeing that the _six, i.e_. our existing staff of teachers,
amounting to but two-thirds of the number required, are but two-thirds
paid;--in short, that our educational speculation is exactly in the
circumstances of a railway company who, having engaged to cut a line
ninety miles in length, have succeeded in cutting forty miles of it at
their own proper expense, and then having cut twenty miles more on
_preference_ shares, find their further progress arrested by a lack of
funds. And so it became necessary to show that the existence and
circumstances of our Free Church schools, instead of furnishing, as
had been urged in several of our presbyteries, any argument _against_