e
of the pastoral duties. That loss--though not without signal
difficulty, from the abruptness of the summons--will be supplied. But
there is a greater evil which cannot be healed--the breach of unity in
the church. The scandal, the offence, the occasion of unhappy
constructions upon the doctrinal soundness of the church, which have
been thus ministered to the fickle amongst her own children--to the
malicious amongst her enemies, are such as centuries do not easily
furnish, and centuries do not remove. In all Christian churches alike,
the conscientiousness which is the earliest product of heartfelt
religion, has suggested this principle, that schism, for any cause, is
a perilous approach to sin; and that, unless in behalf of the
weightiest interests or of capital truths, it is inevitably criminal.
And in connexion with this consideration, there arise two scruples to
all intelligent men upon this crisis in the Scottish church, and they
are scruples which at this moment, we are satisfied, must harass the
minds of the best men amongst the seceders--viz. First, whether the
new points contended for, waiving all controversy upon their abstract
doctrinal truth, are really such, in _practical_ virtue, that it could
be worth purchasing them at the cost of schism? Secondly, supposing a
good man to have decided this question in the affirmative for a young
society of Christians, for a church in its infancy, which, as yet,
might not have much to lose in credit or authentic influence--whether
the same free license of rupture and final secession _could_ belong to
an ancient church, which had received eminent proofs of Divine favour
through a long course of spiritual prosperity almost unexampled?
Indeed, this last question might suggest another paramount to the
other two--viz. not whether the points at issue were weighty enough to
justify schism and hostile separation, but whether those points could
even be safe as mere speculative _credenda_, which, through so long a
period of trial, and by so memorable a harvest of national services,
had been shown to be unnecessary?

Very sure we are, that no eminent servant of the Scottish church could
abandon, without anguish of mind, the multitude of means and channels,
that great machinery for dispensing living truths, which the power and
piety of the Scottish nation have matured through three centuries of
pure Christianity militant. Solemn must have been the appeal, and
searching, which would