and they thought that a political and religious conscience were one and the same thing. But they were astounded at the spectacle of more than four hundred conscientious men fulfilling the pledge they had given, by sacraficing their all at the command of a religious duty. Political men gazed in silence at their solemn exodus, and knew not what to think it was not a riot but a revolution, and a revolution which their own miscalculations had precipitated. When the National Church was thus rent in twain, and a whole land divided, it might have been thought that those whose violence had hastened the crisis, would have been eager to undo their own pernicious work, or, at least, to soften its bitterness by a few acts of graceful and just concession, But from the fact that the obstinate hostility of our rulers, which left the seceders no choice but to retire, still continued to blunder on in the same track, we read the solemn conclusion that the work of the Disruption was of God, and designed for perpetuity. The breach was made; and now, instead of being filled up, it was to be widened. It was not enough that the fair edifices which the dissentients had built for worship, were to be wrested from their rightful occupants; the bereaved must be prevented, if possible, from building others. Let them not have a foot of land upon which to take root by erecting a tabernacle drive them to the moor or the mountain, the sea-shore or into the sea itself, rather than that a cause such as theirs should go on unchecked. In this way, the Disruption was to be counteracted, its clerical representatives baffled, and the erring flocks recalled into the maternal bosom of the Establishment. But when, since the days of Malcolm Canmore, have the Scottish people In what yielded to such coercion ? period of the history of their Church have privation and annoyance, or even tortures and death, induced them to abandon their cherished faith? this harshness and oppression only the more endeared to the people those high principles for which they suffered: they became more attached to the Free M m All Church than ever; and let the ele- These blunders, however, which would by no means have been tolerable from lords and lairds in their individual capacity, have became truly portentous when they are ramparted by woolsacks. When these magnates assemble in the senate, and, in their character of legislators, justify their impolitic proceedings, we feel as if the One meminfatuation were hopeless. "All who ber justifies his honourable friend in the House of Commons, because he knows him to be "perfectly incapable of doing anything unworthy of a Christian proprietor," and, therefore, he cannot have been guilty of injustice or persecution. Incapable of fault!-the implicit faith of this thorough apologist could scarcely have been matched among the followers of Thom of Canterbury. Another, in the same devout spirit, justifies the doings, and worships the infallibility of the Duke of Buccleuch. knew the noble duke," he said," were aware that persecution was altogether remote from any feeling which he entertained. A more generous man than the Duke of Buccleuch did not exist; and therefore, they had good right to assume, that there must have been great provocation, to have induced him to refuse to these parties sites for their A very simple syllogism, churches." which even sucklings might understand! The Duke was sure to be right; ergo, the Free Church must have been in the wrong. There is something heroical in the daring of men who can confront a senate with arguments like these. unfortunately they are imitators, and very feeble imitators too, of that stout tribune and triumvir, Mark Anthony. He was to pronounce Cæsar's funeral But oration under the very daggers of those who had dispatched him; and he had to discharge the ticklish task of proving, that the dictator was not ambitious, while the other party did quite right in slaying him for his ambition. Every one knows how he got out of this awkward fix. Upon the same principle, the site-refusing duke, the lords, and squires, are "all honourable men," and therefore, must have acted righteously : When that the poor have cried, the duke hath wept ; Did this, in bold Buccleuch, seem persecution ?— No more of this intolerable cant of the impossibility of honest, kindly-hearted men becoming persecutors! Why, the devout inquisitor imagines that by persecution he promotes the glory of God; the benevolent, that he thereby saves your soul; and what, he argues, compared with these, are the pricks and twinges of the outward man? And in this sublime and kind-hearted spirit they fold their erring brother in their arms, and lay him down in the heated caldron, or upon the glowing coals. Nay, more-some of the apologists have not been ashamed to bring forward before the honourable House a justification founded in the very spirit of the Inquisition itself. They are so anxious, forsooth! for the welfare of these misguided Free Churchmen, that they will compel them to recant. They find that, unfortunately, boots and thumbkins are among the things that are obsolete; but they are aware also that exposure to frost, rain, snow, and wind, upon the bleak waste and the sea-shore, can not only inflict much pain, but even produce disease and death. And hence these "most generous of all men"these members " perfectly incapable of doing anything unworthy of Christian proprietors," have arrived at a result worthy of the followers of Saint Dominic. Given the number of colds, rheumatisms, and consumptions produced by three winters out of doors-the product to be found in the parish church-and the church-yard. We can easily imagine how the ministers of the Established Church must have winced at the argument of these bold champions of Establishments-this argument of empty churches and tenant less pews, in which it was alleged the seceders might find room enough, if they pleased to go thither; and with what resentful astonishment and dismay they must have cried, "Call you this, backing of your friends?" To reveal the nakedness of the land, and therein, by implication, the hollowness of their cause-what worse could the Jesuits themselves have done? And to tell it in the House of Commons, too, that huge Dionysius ear, upon whose tympanum every whisper of the wide world reverberates, and from which it is sent back in thunder! What else than the following home-thrust from Lord John Russell could follow such a blundering trick of fence? "My honourable friend says, there is a church open; but he does not take into consideration what are the feelings, what are the doctrines, what are the opinions of these men who come before us as petitioners for this relief. like to know what my honourable friend would think in a Roman Catholic town or country, when he saw that there was no Protestant place, if he were told there was plenty of room in the Roman Catholic church-that there was no use having a place of worship for Protestants that there was no place to build on, but that they could go to the Roman Catholic place of worship, where they would be well received. So little can even the kindest and most benevolent people enter into the feelings of others upon this subject of religion." I should And now that a committee of enquiry has been granted, we trust that a sifting investigation will be instituted, and the vexatious question brought to a close, as to how far the rights of property are henceforth to be allowed to interfere with the rights of conscience. And we earnestly entreat the recusant landlords to look to it. For what have they hitherto gained by their opposition ?-nothing but sheer discomfiture; and what is generally felt to be worse-a large amount of public ridicule. Amidst all their opposition, the Free Church has built six hundred and thirty churches, with the prospect of adding weekly to their number; while her manses, schools, worse and normal institutions, with her admirable system of finance, indicate a popular as well as a permanently-rooted cause. And in the face of such a resistlessly-advancing ocean-tide, can it be that a few noble lords, and grave provident esquires, will stand upon the shore, in the undignified attitude of Dame Partington, endeavouring, with their mops, to chace back the waves, and dry up the inundation? Verily, we pity them, and would spare them such labour and such scorn. But we would entreat them to pause, if they would avoid something even than ridicule. The political horizon for years has been darkening. The wings of the fell demon which the French Revolution evoked are ever and anon heard to flap, at midnight, over our cities and villages; and now that a famine crisis is in the midst of us, the voice of discontent is asking, with tenfold bitterness, Wherefore should all things be engrossed by a privileged few? And unless a gracious Providence interpose with a preventive which we have not merited, what will be the end of all this? Is this a season in which the noble, the fardescended, and the wealthy, can afford to freeze affection and provoke opposition ?-to forego that rampart of devout prayers, and stalwart devoted arms which their fathers found to be their surest protection in the hour of difficulty and danger? Even yet we hope for better things from them, although they have persevered until the eleventh hour. During this month, a battle has been fought and a victory won in behalf of a cause which we trust will long continue to be endeared to the heart of Scotland-we mean the sanctity of the Sabbath. It augurs well, that in a question where pecuniary profits seemed so largely at stake, and where it was thought so much might have been won, by a mere act of relaxation, so noble a stand has been made, and that not by the few but the many. In contemplating the changes upon the map of Britain during these few years, we seem to have been watching a simple phenomenon which often takes place in a garden when the sunshine has succeeded a shower. A tremulous glittering thread floats slowly from a rose bush, and fastens upon some neighbouring twig; another and another parallel thread is thrown out; a weaving of thousands of crossing lines follows; and at length a reticulated web, almost invisible except in the sideglance of the sun's rays, appears. The film is so frail and delicate, that it seems next to nothingness; yet it is a sure connection between two bushes, on which myriads of living creatures, unfurnished with wings, may securely travel to and fro. The minute artizans have effected this union by an effort of surpassing labour and skill; but a mere union of distant objects was not their sole motive for exertion. On the contrary, the work was their only means of subsistence and aggrandizement, and such insects as come within the scope of these subtile meshes must, no matter how, refund the constructors for their labour. In this way, our island is a vast cob-web of railroads, by which localities the most remote are threaded together, and from which the industrious fabricators naturally and justly expect a profitable return. But, as is too often the case, this desire of emolument has, in many instances, overstepped the limits of what is just and righteous; and, in an age when all are rushing after riches, the proprietors of railways have endeavoured to make the most of this headlong desire to get forward. Men soon found that, although in their pursuit of light-heeled Mammon, they could get on at the rate of thirty miles an hour for six days in the week, yet it was a grievous sacrifice to stand still on the seventh. If not for business, yet, at least, for pleasure and recreation, might they not wing their way upon the seventh also? True, that day was the holy Sabbath, of which its Divine founder had said, "In it thou shal: do no manner of work ;"it is a day of rest unto the Lord." But the Sabbath travellers got over their difficulties; the railway stations harnessed their trains, and the asmosphere of an 66 English Sunday, hitherto soothed by the sweet chime of the rural churchbells, was now defiled with the smoke and startled by the reverberation of flying locomotives. We may see with what rapidity the practice grew, and how universal it threatens to become, from the statistics of Sabbath travelling in England. At present, there are 1418 trains that run every lawful day, and of these, 810 run upon Sundays. Upon the borders, the desecration is still worse; for, of twenty-two trains that are daily employed, nineteen run upon the Sabbath. The The innovation was of easy accomplishment in England, where the Sabbath has never at any period been observed with particular strictness, or regarded as a peculiar religious distinction. But this victory extended to the English border, and no farther. rest of the island, comprising nearly a half, was also intersected with its railways; but on these such a paralysis was laid, that on every first day of the week, not an engine could stir into action, not a wheel move. The conquest, to be complete, must sweep on ward from Beersheba to Dan; but here its career was stopped midway. The spirit of railway speculation looked grimly northward, pondered the very singular character of this Sabbatical Scotland, and sighed for the means of overcoming it. The people who occupied this part of Britain journeyed indeed on Sunday, but it was generally to the church, while they regarded with religious abhorrence the idea of purloining any portion of the sacred day for the purposes of profit or recreation; and this feeling was not the growth of a year, but a national distinctive badge, consolidated through a course of centuries. Great, of a truth, must that caution be with which the argument is brought forward to pose these stubborn out-standers-profound the cunning that can lure them from the church to the railway, or even persuade them to look on with acquiescence! The English speculators shook their heads, and considerately turned away. They would not trust even their strongest engines to the encounter of such a rock. They alleged that they neither were conversant with the Scottish law, nor sufficiently acquainted with the Scottish feeling upon Sabbath observance, and therefore they would leave the people of Scotland to settle it among themselves. And there were men in Scotland chivalrous enough to encounter the perilous task. These gallant patriots had long grieved and lamented over the Sabbatical bondage of their countrymen, and resolved to set them free. They would dulcify the morose echoes of glen and mountain with the shrill pibroch of their steam-whistle, and permeate their beloved country with the blessings of Sunday travelling, traffic, and recreation. They there As the discretion of these men, however, was equal to their valour, they resolved, like Dogberry, to go cunningly to work. It would have been a very blundering piece of valiancy indeed, to shout their war-cry and rush to the onset against such perilous odds. Being the weaker party, they could only hope to succeed by a guerilla warfare of ambush and skirmishing. fore commenced by hovering cautiously upon the outposts of the question, in list shoes and with silent bayonets. And first they endeavoured to relax the severity of a Scottish Sabbath, by proving that it required too much; and even Counsel learned in the law, laying aside their briefs, and money-making Magnificoes closing their ledgers, took up the Bible, and rummaged its pages in search of texts with which they might rivet their conclusions. Great indeed must have been the emergency that converted such men into theological casuists. And then they spoke of "works of necessity and mercy being lawful to be done on the Sabbathday; and with bowels that yearned for far-severed friends suffering and dying apart o' Sundays, they drew touching pictures of the miseries of separation, all which might be cured for ever by the application of a little steam. And then, too, the boon they demanded was so trifling-two trains-give them only a going and returning train! This commencement was as modest as that of Sir John Falstaff's bravado. He began with two men in buckram suits," and " as speedily ran them up into eleven rogues in buckram, not to speak of the "three misbegotten knaves in kendal green." They also raised the now popular shout of philanthropy, and talked of the right of the hard-wrought artisan to enjoy for one day in seven a deliverance from his grinding labour and smothering atmosphere, that he might roam, like innocent Adam in Paradise, among sunny fields, inhaling health and devotion at every breath. And when they had thus sufficiently lubricated, as they thought, the stubborn heart-strings of Scottish poverty, they endeavoured to get up petitions from the labouring-classes of Scotland in behalf of Sabbath travelling on the railways. Such were some of the wedges, varying in size and character, but all so delicately pointed, with which they hoped to insinuate an introduction, and rive asunder the gnarled sabbatarianism of their countrymen. Not a word all the while about the profits to be derived from the spec; not a whisper about pleasure jaunts and rural sports on Sundays, and lucrative trips in the way of business! But the people were not to be so hoodwinked. They saw in the carefully veiled perspective, a fearful and continually swelling amount of godlessness and desecration under which their beloved country, so long the cherished home of God's own day-that day which came down from the mercy-seat like a ministering angel-would be no longer a fitting abode for such a heavenly resident; and beholding in this, the deadliest of all national calalamities, they refused to be silenced or persuaded. Matters could not long remain in this condition, and the two parties mustered their forces for the open tug of war. A special general meeting was accordingly held in Glasgow, on the 5th instant, at which the great bulk of those connected with the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway were present in person, or by their proxies. It was upon this vast line of circulation-this great aorta of Scotland-that the experiment was to be commenced; and if the pulses of busy Sabbath stir and motion could be but communicated there, it was felt that the whole body of the land would soon throb responsively to its furthest and remotest extremities. And what a hideous, vampyre vitality! The balance-sheets which were laid before the meeting seemed to indicate what Dr Johnson would have called "the potentiality of getting rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice." The dividend for the first half-year of 1846 was announced at the rate of six per cent., and that for the next half at eight. What more could have been hoped or sought for in this generation of shrunken per centages? Here was a return satisfactory enough even for horse-leech greediness, and safe enough to be let alone without the daring experiment of investing the first day of the week on speculation along with the other six. But they would have quails to their manna; and, therefore, the anti-sabbatarians clamoured for the wager and assize of battle, and forthwith sounded to the onset. "If And that onset will not soon be forgotten; it will form an era in the history of the ancient city of St Mungo. When the attacking army is the smallest, it is an excellent point of generalship to make them believe that the adversaries are fewer still; and thus they march forward, blindly and bravely, into the very throat of danger. Such were the tactics of the gallant leader of the anti-sabbatarians. this system is to go on," he said, "if a small minority-for the real and genuine sabbatarians are but a small minority in the country-are to be allowed to control the great majority of the inhabitants of this country"here was an astounding intimation! Who, then, are these myriads who are mustering against us in the distance? "And Zebul said unto him, Thou seest the shadow of the mountains, as if they were men." As this plunge was so desperate, it must be persevered in, and therefore the speaker returned once more to the subject. Jews," he added, "I believe, are as numerous in Great Britain as are the sabbatarians ;" and he founded upon this, that the Jews might as justly prohibit us from the use of pork, as the anti-sabbatarians hinder us from "The |