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countless inhabitants, and their respective adaptations to the purposes of their being and to the use of man, the same results will flow in yet larger measure from tracing the footmarks of the Most High in the seemingly bewildered paths of human history. Everywhere, before us, behind us, around us, above us, and beneath, we shall find the Power which

"Lives through all life, extends through all extent,

Spreads undivided, operates unspent."

And, together with the power, we shall find the goodness and the wisdom, of which that sublime power is but a minister. Nor can that wisdom and that goodness anywhere shine forth with purer splendour than when the Divine forethought, working from afar, in many places and through many generations, so adjusts beforehand the acts and the affairs of men, as to let them all converge upon a single point, upon that redemption of the world, by God made man, in which all the rays of his glory are concentrated, and from which they pour forth a flood of healing light even over the darkest and saddest places of creation. WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE.

DENOMINATIONS.

WHO regards not as sacred that conscience which forms the separating barrier between him and the lower animals, and the connecting link between him and the unseen Lawgiver, and considers it not, as far as himself is concerned, inviolable and indefeasible as his own existence? And who ought not to draw the conclusion from this primary intuition of his soul that it is the same with all other men-that they, too, possess each one his inviol

able moral sense, and that for him to interfere with its rights in others is to sanction every outrage which may be perpetrated by others on its rights in him? To this rule of equity, squared and settled by the hand of God himself, common sense has added its testimony, and old Experience, in the slow utterance of centuries, has stammered out, "Amen." Bloody page after page of persecution has gone.to prove it. Age after age has the cry of conscience gone up to Heaven, aggrieved, down-trodden, half-choked in blood; and from Heaven the truth has been gradually descending like a Jacob's ladder, that man is answerable not to man, but to God only for his belief. And as second to none of the demonstrations this great principle has received, do we count the war of the Covenant. The Covenanters did not, indeed, fight the battle of conscience upon that rule of Christ as on a field of "cloth of gold." They fought it on the ground of an iron necessity; it was rather liberty for their own conscience than for conscience generally that they strove after. But they got better than they asked; and in their success, the triumph of the particular became that of the general conscience of the country. There have been no great persecutions in Britain since. Little skirmishings, small rebellions, and reactions of arbitrary power there have been, but the memory of twenty-eight years' blood had too thoroughly sickened the land to permit a renewal of the same or of any similar complex and continuous tragedy. We cannot tell how many disastrous consequences have been saved the country by the doggedly determined, and, in fine, completely successful struggle of the Presbyterian party in Scotland. We see the power of suffering and adversity in developing character, strengthening enthusiasm, and discovering latent virtues. "Call no

man happy till he be dead!" Call no man little till he

be dead, and no cause little till it has been fully tried. Had the Covenanters submitted quietly to the enactments which followed the Restoration, or accepted the sops which were given them from time to time by the Government, the memory of their triumphs would ere this have well nigh perished. In this case, their recollection had been that of a torrent rapidly waxing, gaining an easy and a short triumph, and then as speedily subsiding. But the Covenant is now a feeble sound compared to the persecution for the Covenant, and what it did and developed. Not till the word Covenant was taken down from the triumphant banner, and written in blood upon the moorlands of Scotland, did it become a magic sound. The Covenanters had fought well indeed, but not so well as the Cavaliers under Montrose, or the Independents under Cromwell. But when the dark hour of their party arrived, it discovered a wealth of courage and constancy, of energy and zeal, which had been lying unsuspected as deep undiscovered mines. "Persecution dragged them into fame, and chased them up to heaven." Their sun in prosperity was rather sultry than bright, but in its evening decadence and decline it assumed hues of deep and melancholy grandeur, which fill the eyes with tears. Never can the age arrive when men shall not sympathise with that people of the rocks, dwelling alone, and not reckoned among the nations,—with their rugged virtues, their severe sufferings, and the late but decisive success which shone upon their struggle. Once more, what a contrast between the Scotland of 1692, when the massacre of Glencoe took place, and the Scotland of 1869-177 years ago! On the mere scenery there is little change. The Black Rock of Glencoe still overhangs its lake, and listens to the moan of its river. The heather, the canna, and the wild myrtle

grow there in as rank, uncultured luxuriance as when the MacDonalds dwelt in the bottom of the glen; and the Highlands generally are as wild and romantic as ever. But what a change in the manners of the people—what a change in their intelligence! Such a sept as the MacDonalds were, rude and sorning, though brave and hospitable, is found no more; and as impossible is it to conceive in our country such a massacre as that of Glencoe, or such a persecution as that of the Covenanters. Let us be thankful for this; but let us not imagine that we have travelled all the distance between their state and absolute perfection. We are still far behind. Scotland is still too much wedded to the past; it is too much priest-ridden and party-torn, and peradventure Dr Johnson was not far wrong when he spoke of Scotchmen sometimes loving Scotland better than truth, and, he might have added, Scotch formulas better than Christ's faith. The best way of destroying the power of ritualism is by borrowing a little from it, introducing certain elements of beauty and har mony and elegance which it has caricatured and spoiled by excess; and I add that the best way of destroying the power of rationalism also is by importing some of its thoughtful and liberal elements also into our too much creed-bound and hide-bound forms of belief. It has ever been the wisest policy to warn off revolution by a timely reform. REV. G. GILFILLAN.

SURPLUS LABOUR.

AND that aristocracy, those 30,000 men, enjoy a clear income of one hundred and fifty million pounds sterling every year! The health and strength of the country

shrink beneath their hands. Three times has the standard for the army been lowered, as the stature of the people dwarfs beneath misrule. The aristocracies of land and money live to 67; the poorer middle classes to 45 and 50; the working classes die at 25-in some large towns the average is under 20. Such is the aristocracy. It has divorced those whom God has united-Father Labour and our Mother Earth, those parents of our prosperity and wealth; it has made a very nation of paupers, and sent them to you, shopkeepers and artisans, to be maintained; its history is written in the tears of human kind; its gules are torn from the blooming cheeks of labour, leaving them blank and withered parchments for the seal of death. Such are the labourers of Britain,-attenuated Caryatides who bear the crushing friezes of your splendour. And then people talk to one of the laws of supply and demand! Where are they, I ask, in the agricultural districts? Those who hold all the means of work can set them at defiance. They or their farmers are banded together in a league. They say, "You won't work for us at those wages; but for whom else will you work, if we do not employ you? Ay, turn to the manufacturing districts! They are overstocked by those whom we have already banished. The alternative is, our will or death." And the starving victim shrinks beneath the power of monopoly -he submits or flies.

Whither do the agricultural labourers go? And whither goes this banished labour? Those thin long lines of ghostlike men and women set steadily towards the towns. They come hither, hither into your manufacturing hives. They come by myriads, in ever-growing numbers. For every acre that falls out of cultivation, a fresh stream of unemployed labour empties itself into these great reservoirs ;

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