affirm that students in great institutions of private endowment are less subject to this atrophy of the spiritual nature than those in state universities of the same size.

Denominational control of state universities is not possible nor desirable, but they need the vitalizing touch of spiritual forces, which can be assured only by contact with the living church. At all great centres of learning there should be a concentration of spiritual light, a gathering of the forces that make for righteousness. Cant and timeserving ecclesiastical connections are not likely to be encouraged in the atmosphere of freedom and frankness in a state university, but no class of students anywhere are more open-hearted or more ready to respond to the quickening and uplifting influence of the highest moral and spiritual ideals.

The churches have a duty toward the state universities. It grows out of the general duty of the churches as guardians of the highest interests of society. Do not Christian people pay taxes? Even if it were granted that the state universities have an irreligious atmosphere, to whom should we look to change it? Should the churches approach the state universities in a spirit of criticism, or with a deep feeling of responsibility and a willingness to cooperate in the promotion of the supreme interests of youth? At the very least, it is reasonable to ask that the religious bodies see to it that men of marked spiritual and intellectual power be placed in the pulpits of uni

versity towns. But in more than one university town churches fail to keep their footing, not because of an unfavorable environment, but because the work is left in charge of men who are not equal to it.

The most vital interests of the churches are at stake in the state universities. These are strategic points. The greater part of their students come from the religious denominations. Is it expedient for a church to give attention to the spiritual welfare of those only who are affiliated with it in the denominational schools, and to neglect perhaps a far greater number of members and adherents in a state university? If students come from the churches to the great universities, and are there weaned from the things of the spirit, and through an unsymmetrical development permit the training of intellect to choke out the spiritual life, who shall justify the churches for their indifference and neglect? In the class-rooms of a state university sectarian instruction can have no place. Thomas Jefferson "thought that it was the duty of each sect," at the University of Virginia, " to provide its own theological teaching in a special school, to which students might go for special instruction as they did to their various denominational churches." 1 But this subject is too large to enter upon here. The first condition of a solution of the problem must lie in the willingness of the churches themselves to consider the matter. From the nature of the case the initiative must be taken by them.

Francis W. Kelsey.

VIII.

PART FIRST.

Two or three days ago we noted an unusual though subdued air of excitement at 22 Breadalbane Terrace, where for a week we have been the sole lodgers. Mrs. Mingess has returned to Kinyukkar; Miss Coburn-Sinkler has purchased her wedding outfit and gone back to Inverness; the Hebburn-Sheens will be leaving to-morrow; and the sound of the scrubbing-brush is heard in the land. In corners where all was clean and spotless before, Mrs. M'Collop is digging with the broom, and the maiden Boots is following her with a damp cloth. The stair carpets are hanging on lines in the back garden, and Susanna, with her cap rakishly on one side, is always to be seen polishing the stair rods. Whenever we traverse the halls we are obliged to leap over pails of suds, and Miss Diggity-Dalgety has given us two dinners which bore a curious resemblance to washing-day repasts in suburban America.

"Is it spring house-cleaning?" I ask the M'Collop.

IN TOWN.

Psalms float down the stairs from above. Their Graces the Lord High Commissioner and the Marchioness of Heatherdale will arrive to-day at Holyrood Palace, there to reside during the sittings of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, and to-morrow the Royal Standard will be hoisted at Edinburgh Castle from reveille to retreat. His Grace will hold a levee at eleven. Directly His Grace leaves the palace after the levee, the guard of honor will proceed by the Canongate to receive him on his arrival at St. Giles' Church, and will then proceed to Assembly Hall to receive him on his arrival there. The 6th Inniskilling Dragoons and the 1st Battalion Royal Scots will be in attendance, and there will be unicorns, carricks, pursuivants, heralds, mace-bearers, ushers, and pages, together with the Purse - Bearer and the Lyon King-of-Arms and the national anthem and the royal salute; for the palace has awakened and is "mimicking its past."

In such manner enters His Grace the Lord High Commissioner to open the

On the 19th of May we are a maiden castle no longer. Black coats and hats ring at the bell, and pass in and out of the different apartments. The hall table is sprinkled with letters, visiting-cards, and programmes which seem to have had the alphabet shaken out upon them, for they bear the names of professors, doctors, reverends, and very reverends, and fairly bristle with A. M.'s, M. A.'s, A. B.'s, D. D.'s, and LL. D.'s. The voice of prayer is lifted up from the dining-room floor, and paraphrases of the NO. 482. 53

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Scotland; and on the same day there arrives by the railway (but traveling first class) the Moderator of the Church of Scotland, Free, to convene its separate Supreme Courts in Edinburgh. He will have no Union Jacks, Royal Standards, Dragoons, bands, or pipers; he will bear his own purse and stay at a hotel; but when the final procession of all comes, he will probably march beside His Grace the Lord High Commissioner, and they will talk together, not of dead-and-gone kingdoms, but of the one at hand, where there are no more divisions in the ranks,

and where all the soldiers are simply "king's men," marching to victory under the inspiration of a common watchword. It is a matter of regret to us that the U. P.'s, the third branch of Scottish Presbyterianism, could not be holding an Assembly during this same week, so that we could the more easily decide in which flock we really belong. 22 Breadalbane Terrace now represents all shades of religious opinion within the bounds of Presbyterianism. We have an Elder, a Professor of Biblical Criticism, a Majesty's Chaplain, and even an ex-Moderator under our roof, and they are equally divided between the Free and the Established bodies.

Mrs. M'Collop herself is a pillar of the Free Kirk, but she has no prejudice in lodgers, and says so long as she "mak's her rent she doesna care aboot their releegious principles." Miss Diggity-Dalgety is the sole representative of United Presbyterianism in the household, and she is somewhat gloomy in Assembly time. To belong to a dissenting body, and yet to cook early and late for the purpose of fattening one's religious rivals, is doubtless trying to the temper; and then she asserts that "meenisters are aye toom [empty]."

"You must put away your Scottish ballads and histories now, Salemina, and keep your Concordance and your umbrella constantly at hand."

This I said as we stood on George IV. Bridge and saw the ministers glooming down from the Mound in a dense Assembly fog. As the presence of any considerable number of priests on an ocean steamer is supposed to bring rough weather, so the addition of a few hundred parsons to the population of Edinburgh is believed to induce rain, perhaps I should say, more rain.

or

"Our first duty, both to ourselves and to the community," I continued to Salemina, "is to learn how there can be three distinct kinds of proper Presbyte

rianism. Perhaps it would be a graceful act on our part if we should each espouse a different kind; then there would be no feeling among our Edinburgh friends. And again, what is the Union of which we hear murmurs? Is it religious or political? Is it an echo of the 1707 Union you explained to us last week, or is it a new one? What is Disestablishment? What is Disruption? Are they the same thing? What is the Sustentation Fund? What was the NonIntrusion Party? What was the Dundas Despotism? What is the argument at present going on about taking the Shorter Catechism out of the schools? What is the Shorter Catechism, anyway, — or at least, what have they left out of the Longer Catechism to make it shorter,and is the length of the Catechism one of the points of difference? Then when we have looked up Chalmers and Candlish, we can ask the ex-Moderator and the Professor of Biblical Criticism to tea; separately, of course, lest there should be ecclesiastical quarrels.”

Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established Church, I lean instinctively toward the Free; but that does not mean that we have any knowledge of the differences that separate them. Salemina is a conservative in all things; she loves law, order, historic associations, old customs; and so when there is a regularly established national church, - or for that matter, a regularly established anything, she gravitates to it by the law of her being. Francesca's religious convictions, when she is away from her own minister and native land, are inclined to be flexible. The church that enters Edinburgh with a marquis and a mar chioness representing the Crown, the church that opens its Assembly with splendid processions and dignified pageants, the church that dispenses generous hospitality from Holyrood Palace,

above all, the church that escorts its Lord High Commissioner from place to place with bands and pipers, that is

the church to which she pledges her constant presence and enthusiastic support.

As for me, I believe I am a born protestant, or "come-outer," as they used to call dissenters in the early days of New England. I have not yet had time to study the question, but as I lack all knowledge of the other two branches of Presbyterianism, I am enabled to say unhesitatingly that I belong to the Free Kirk. To begin with, the very word "free" has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun this morning by a certain gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness beneath the chin that lends such added spirituality to a spiritual face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church in the olden time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky whiteness; his smooth, fair hair, which in the light from the stained-glass window above the pulpit looked reddish gold; the Southern heat of passionate conviction that colored his slow Northern speech; the remoteness of his personality; the weariness of his deep-set eyes, that bespoke such fastings and vigils as he probably never practiced, all this led to our choice of the name.

As we walked toward St. Andrew's Church and Tanfield Hall, where he insisted on taking me to get the "proper historical background," he told me about the great Disruption movement. He was extremely eloquent, so eloquent that the image of Willie Beresford tottered continually on its throne, and I found not the slightest difficulty in giving an unswerving allegiance to the principles such an orator represents.

We went first to St. Andrew's, where the General Assembly met in 1843, and where the famous exodus of the Free Protesting Church took place, one of the most important events in the modern history of the United Kingdom.

The movement was mainly promoted by the great Dr. Chalmers to put an end to the connection of church and state; and as I am not accustomed to seeing them united, I could sympathize the more cordially with the tale of their disruption. The Friar took me into a particularly chilly historic corner, and, leaning against a damp stone pillar, painted the scene in St. Andrew's when the Assembly met in the presence of a great body of spectators, while a vast throng gathered without, breathlessly awaiting the result. No one believed that any large number of ministers would relinquish livings and stipends and cast their bread upon the waters for what many thought a "fantastic principle." Yet when the Moderator left his place, after reading a formal protest signed by one hundred and twenty ministers and seventy-two elders, he was followed first by Dr. Chalmers, and then by four hundred and seventy men, who marched in a body to Tanfield Hall, where they formed themselves into the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Free. When Lord Jeffrey was told of it an hour later, he exclaimed, "Thank God for Scotland! There is not another country on earth where such a deed could be done!" And the Friar reminded me proudly of Macaulay's saying that the Scots had made sacrifices for the sake of religious opinion for which there was no parallel in the annals of England. I said "Yea" most heartily, for the spirit of Jenny Geddes stirred within me that morning, and I positively gloried in the valiant achievements of the Free Church, under the spell of the Friar's kindling eye and eloquent voice. When he left me in Breadalbane Terrace, I was at heart a member of his parish in good (and irregular) standing, ready to teach in his Sunday-school, sing in his choir, visit his aged and sick poor, and especially to stand between him and a too admiring feminine constituency.

When I entered the drawing-room,

I found that Salemina had just enjoyed an hour's conversation with the ex-Moderator of the opposite church wing.

"Oh, my dear," she sighed, “you have missed such a treat! You have no conception of these Scottish ministers of the Establishment, such culture, such courtliness of manner, such scholarship, such spirituality, such wise benignity of opinion! I asked the doctor to explain the Disruption movement to me, and he was most interesting and lucid, and most affecting, too, when he described the misunderstandings and misconceptions that the Church suffered in those terrible days of 1843, when its very life-blood, as well as its integrity and unity, was threatened by the foes in its own household; when breaches of faith and trust occurred on all sides, and dissents and disloyalties shook it to its very foundation! You see, Penelope, I have never fully understood the disagreement about the matter of state control before, but here is the whole matter in a nut-sh

"My dear Salemina," I interposed, with dignity," you will pardon me, I am sure, when I tell you that any discussion on this point would be intensely painful to me, as I now belong to the Free Kirk." "Where have you been this morning?" she asked, with a piercing glance. "To St. Andrew's and Tanfield Hall." "With whom?" "With the Friar."

"I see! Happy the missionary to whom you incline your ear, first ! which I thought rather inconsistent of Salemina, as she had been converted by precisely the same methods and in precisely the same length of time as had I, the only difference being in the ages of our respective missionaries, one being about five and thirty, the other five and sixty.

IX.

Religion in Edinburgh is a theory, a convention, a fashion (both humble and

aristocratic), a sensation, an intellectual conviction, an emotion, a dissipation, a sweet habit of the blood; in fact, it is, it seems to me, every sort of thing it can be to the human spirit.

When we had finished our church toilettes, and came into the drawing-room, on the first Sunday morning, I remember that we found Francesca at the window.

"There is a battle, murder, or sudden death going on in the square below," she said. "I am going to ask Susanna to ask Mrs. M'Collop what it means. Never have I seen such a crowd moving peacefully, with no excitement or confusion, in one direction. Where can the people be going? Do you suppose it is a fire? Why, I believe . . it cannot be possible. . . yes, they certainly are disappearing in that big church on the corner; and millions, simply millions and trillions, are coming in the other direction, toward St. Knox's."

Impressive as was this morning churchgoing, a still greater surprise awaited us at seven o'clock in the evening, when the crowd blocked the streets on two sides of a church near Breadalbane Terrace; and though it was quite ten minutes before service when we entered, Salemina and I only secured the last two seats in the aisle, and Francesca was obliged to sit on the steps of the pulpit or seek a sermon elsewhere.

It amused me greatly to see Francesca sitting on pulpit steps, her Redfern gown and smart toque in close juxtaposition to the rusty bonnet and bombazine dress of a respectable elderly tradeswoman. The church officer entered first, bearing the great Bible and hymn-book, which he reverently placed on the pulpit cushions; and close behind him, to our entire astonishment, came the Reverend Ronald Macdonald, who was exchanging with the regular minister of the parish, whom we had come especially to ear. I pitied Francesca's confusion and embarrassment, but I was too far from her