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FIRST PRINCIPLES, 262 AN UNSPOKEN SPEECH, 269 DISRUPTION PRINCIPLES, 280 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE CRIMEAN WAR, 293 THE POETS OF THE CHURCH, 302 THE ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, 315 A VISION OF THE RAILROAD, 327 THE TWO MR. CLARKS, 337 PULPIT DUTIES NOT SECONDARY, 358 DUGALD STEWART, 369 OUR TOWN COUNCILS, 378 SUTHERLAND AS IT WAS AND IS; OR, HOW A COUNTRY MAY BE RUINED, 388

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The following chapters on the Educational Question first appeared as a series of articles in the Witness newspaper. They present, in consequence, a certain amount of digression, and occasional re-statement and explanation, which, had they been published simultaneously, as parts of a whole, they would not have exhibited. The controversy was vital and active at every stage of their appearance. Statements made and principles laid down in the earlier articles had, from the circumstance that their truth had been questioned or their soundness challenged, to be re-asserted and maintained in those which followed; and hence some little derangement in the management of the question, for which, however, the interest which must always attach to a real conflict may be found to compensate. That portion of the controversy, however, which arose out of one of the articles of the series, and which some have deemed personal, has been struck out of the published edition of the pamphlet, and retained in but an inconsiderable number of copies, placed in the hands of a few friends. In omitting it where it has been omitted, the writer has acted on the advice of a gentleman for whose judgment he entertains the most 2 thorough respect, and from a desire that the general argument should not be prejudiced by a matter naturally, but not necessarily, connected with it. And in retaining it where it has been retained, he has done so in the full expectation of a time not very distant, when it will be decided that he has neither outraged the ordinary courtesies of controversy, nor taken up a false line of inference or statement; and when the importance of the subject discussed will be regarded as quite considerable enough to make any one earnest, without the necessity of supposing that he had been previously angry.

It is all-important, that on the general question of National Education, the Free Church should take up her position wisely. Majorities in her courts, however overwhelming, will little avail her, if their findings fail to recommend themselves to the good sense of her people, or are palpably unsuited to the emergencies of the time. A powerful writer of the present age employs, in one of his illustrations, the bold figure of a ship’s crew, that, with the difficulties of Cape Horn full before them, content themselves with instituting aboard their vessel a constitutional system of voting, and who find delight in contemplating the unanimity which prevails on matters in general, both above decks and below. ‘But your ship,’ says Carlyle, ‘cannot double Cape Horn by its excellent plans of voting: the ship, to get round Cape Horn, will find a set of conditions already voted for, and fixed with adamantine rigour, by the ancient Elemental Powers, who are entirely careless how you vote. If you can by voting, or without voting, ascertain these conditions, and valiantly conform to them, you will get round the Cape: if you cannot, the ruffian Winds will blow you ever back again; the inexorable Icebergs, dumb privy councillors from Chaos, will nudge you with most chaotic admonition; you will be flung half-frozen on the Patagonian cliffs, or jostled into shivers by your iceberg 3 councillors, and will never get round Cape Horn at all.’ Now there is much meaning couched in this quaint figure, and meaning which the Free Church would do well to ponder. There are many questions on which she could perhaps secure a majority, which yet that majority would utterly fail to carry. On the question of College Extension, for instance, she might be able to vote, if she but selected her elders with some little care, that there should be full staffs of theological professors at Glasgow and Aberdeen. But what would her votes succeed in achieving? Not, assuredly, the doubling of the Cape; but the certainty of shivering her all-important Educational Institute on three inexorable icebergs. In the first place, her magnificent metropolitan College, like that huge long boat, famous in story, which Robinson Crusoe was able to build, but