ther in their embryotic state in
the Non-Intrusion party, or as embodied in the fully developed and
completely emancipated Free Protesting Church of Scotland. For this
service, in connection with which he would have best liked to be
remembered, as he best deserved it, he had unconsciously been
undergoing a course of preparation even when a boy. He himself has
told us with what eagerness he devoured, at that period of life,
the legendary histories of Wallace and Bruce; and the occupation
had its use. It gave him a capacity for admiring what was great
though perilous in exploit, and for truly and largely sympathizing
with what was patriotic and self-sacrificing in character; and so
it created a groundwork for his own future thinking and acting. The
admiration he then bore to these earliest of our "Scottish
Worthies," who vindicated on Bannockburn, and kindred fields,
Scotland's right to be an independent and free country, he
afterwards transferred to our later "Worthies," whom he revered as
greater still. Not that he ever lost his admiration of the former,
or ceased to value the incalculable services they rendered to the
Scottish nation; but that he regarded Knox and Melville as men
occupying a yet higher platform,--as gifted with a yet deeper
insight into their country's wants,--as, in short, carrying forward
and consummating the glorious task which Wallace and Bruce had but
begun. He saw that unless our reformers had come after our heroes,
planting schools, founding colleges, and, above all, imparting to
their countrymen a scriptural and rational faith, in vain had Bruce
unsheathed his sword,--in vain had Wallace laid down his life.
Wallace and Bruce had created an independent country; Knox and
Melville had created an independent people. They were the creators
of the Scottish nation,--the real enfranchisers of our people; and
it was this that taught Mr. Miller to venerate these men so
profoundly, and that made him in his inmost soul a devoted
follower, and to the utmost extent of his great faculties a
defender, of their cause. He was a soldier from love,--pure,
heroic, chivalrous devotion soaring infinitely above the partisan.
He saw that the Church of Scotland was the creator of the rights
and privileges of the people of Scotland,--that she was the