om their hiding
places, a large group of the Indulged ministers who had gone home years
ago, a number of curates who had slipped into the vacancies, and a list
of bishops who had been in the service of the persecuting government.
Such being the blend, the aroma was anything but sweet. Alexander Peden
had prophesied of this Assembly years before. He said, "The Indulged,
and the lukewarm ministers, with some young things that know nothing,
will hive together in a General Assembly; the hands red with blood, and
the hands black with defection, will be clasped by our ministers; and
ye will not ken who has been the persecutor, and who the sufferer; and
your testimony will be cut off at the web's end." How true the
prediction!

Rev. Hugh Kennedy was chosen Moderator. The choice indicated the spirit
of the Assembly. This man had accepted the Indulgence, had given thanks
for the Toleration, and had debarred from Communion the Covenanters who
had fought at Bothwell Bridge. The liberals had the meeting. Moderation,
compromise, unionism, a nauseating agreeableness pervaded the Court,
like the miasma that broods over a stagnant pond.

The three Cameronians, Alexander Shields, Thomas Linning, and William
Boyd, had courage to represent the Covenanted Societies, by presenting
their petition for the restoration of the General Assembly on
Reformation grounds, according to the Covenant of 1638. The petition was
treated with contempt; it was not even read in the Assembly. The three
ministers winced, faltered, yielded. They fell beneath the popular wave,
to rise no more. These men, who had bravely faced persecution, were at
last overcome by blandishment. The Covenanted cause was at stake in that
Assembly, as truly as it ever had been in the presence of Claverhouse
and his dragoons; and here the leaders surrendered.

The Covenanted Societies refused to follow their faithless guides into
the General Assembly, to disappear there in the strange blending of
religious forces. These were men of conviction; they did not vary with
the weather; they thought for themselves. Some of them were aged and had
seen the Covenant Temple of 1638, with its strong foundation and
imposing structure. They had seen the Reformation in its glory--the
Covenanted Church of Christ, purified, strengthened, and exalted, under
the care of Henderson, Johnston, Guthrie, Argyle, and others whose
hearts God had touched; and now they saw this reconstruction. Ah, how
inferior