his equivocal position as a teacher, in which, without being
dishonest, he could not fulfil what he deemed his religious duty,
and become a minister; a character in which he would find Churches
within which he could affirm with impunity that Dr. Chalmers was, in
virtue of his Establishment views, little better than a Papist, or
that Robert Hall, seeing he was a Voluntary, must have been an
unconscious atheist at bottom.

Let us next consider what the influence of the ministers of our
Church would be under a national scheme such as that which we
desiderate, and what the probability that the national teaching would
be religious. The minister, as such, would possess, nominally at
least, but a single vote; and if he were what an ordained minister may
in some cases be--merely a suit of black clothes surmounted by a
white neckcloth--the vote, _nominally_ one, would be also _really_
but one; nor ought it, we at once say, to weigh in such cases an
iota more than it counted. Mere black coats and white neckcloths,
though called by congregations, and licensed and ordained by
presbyteries, never yet carried on the proper business of either
Church or school. But if the minister was no mere suit of clothes, but
a Christian man, ordained and called not merely by congregations and
presbyteries, but by God Himself, his one vote in the case would
outweigh hundreds, simply because it would represent the votes of
hundreds. Let us suppose that, with the national schools thrown
open, a vacancy had occurred in the parish school of Cromarty during
the incumbency of the lamented Mr. Stewart. The people of the town
and parish, possessing the educational franchise, would meet; their
committee would deliberate; there would be a teacher chosen,--in
all probability, the present excellent Free Church teacher of the
town; and every man would feel that he had exercised in the election
his own judgment on his own proper responsibility. And yet it would
assuredly be the teacher whom the minister had deemed on the whole
most eligible for the office, that would find himself settled, in
virtue of the transaction, in the parish school. How? Not, certainly,
through any exercise of clerical domination, nor through any
employment of what is still more hateful--clerical manoeuvre--but in
virtue of a widespread confidence reposed by the people in the wisdom
and the integrity of the minister sent them by God Himself to preach
to them the everlasting gospel. In a