highways, that lead everywhere. And if the
difference was one which could not be obviated by all the energy of a
superior and well-paid English teacher, how, we ask, is it to be
obviated by our Free Church L10 and L13 teachers? Surely our Church
would do well to ponder whether it can be either her interest or her
duty to urge on any scheme, in opposition to a national one, which
would have all too palpably the effect of degrading her poorer
membership, so far as they availed themselves of it, into the
Gibeonites of the community--its hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Never will Scotland possess an educational scheme truly national, and
either worthy of her ancient fame or adequate to the demands and
emergencies of an age like the present, until at least every parish
shall possess among its other teachers its one university-bred
schoolmaster, popularly chosen, and well paid, and suited to assist in
transplanting to the higher places of society those select and
vigorous scions that from time to time spring up from the stock of
the commonalty. The waking dream of running down the ignorance and
misery of a sinking country by an array of starveling teachers in the
train of any one denomination--itself, mayhap, sufficiently
attenuated by the demands of purely ecclesiastical objects--must be
likened to that other waking dream of the belated German peasant, who
sees from some deep glade of his native forests a spectral hunt
sweep through the clouds,--skeleton stags pursued by skeleton huntsmen,
mounted on skeleton horses, and surrounded by skeleton beagles; and who
hears, as the wild pageant recedes into the darkness, the hollow
tantivy and the spectral horns echoing loud and wildly through the
angry heavens.

It is of paramount importance that the Free Church should in the
present crisis take up her position wisely. We have heard of invaders
of desperate courage, who, on landing upon some shore on which they
had determined either to conquer or to perish, set fire to their
ships, and thus shut out the possibility of retreat. Now the Free
Church--whether she land herself into an agitation for a scheme of
Government grants rendered more liberal and flexible than now, and
dissociated from the religious certificate, or whether she plant her
foot on a scheme of national education based on a statutory
recognition of the pedagogical teaching of religion--is certainly in
no condition to burn her ships. Let her not rashly commit her