cannot understand how I, as an honest man, could retain my temporalities on
other conditions than those on which they are offered me. A reverend gentleman in the house spoke of voluntarily abandoning the temporalities, and said
that to do so would be to act at a disadvantage. Now, I do not go out of the
Establishment voluntarily; I am forced to it by what is infinitely more terrible
to me than the soldier's sword or the constable's baton my own conscience. I
am persecuted into it. You may talk of maintaining the people's privileges;
I cannot maintain them at the expense of honesty. Some may think that the
attachment of the people to our cause would be much stronger if they saw our
ministers thrust out by violence, but that is not the sort of attachment we desire.
We wish the attachment of men conscientiously holding our views, for that is
the only kind of attachment which will stand the test to which our people may
be exposed. Any feeling towards a minister arising from indignation at personal violence offered to him would be of very short duration."
Day by day events went onward until the moment of trial arrived. And would a disruption in very deed take place at last, and five hundred clergymen be found so true to their promise, and so self-denying, as to lay down their comfortable state endowments at the demand of what so many considered a mere abstract principle? No, it is impossible: martyrdom is only for a rough cheer- less period of society, and not for the sleek comfortable days of this middle term of the nineteenth century in which our happy lot has been cast! So said statesmen; so said the well endowed dignitaries of the Church of England; so said the moderate party of the Church of Scotland, whose violence had precipitated matters to this dangerous point. But it was not among them alone that there was either scornful scepticism or sympathetic doubt ; for even among the most confirmed of the out goers there was a painful apprehension that, even at the last moment, there might be a wavering among their ranks, and a falling away of many. Upon this point even Dr. Gordon too had experienced moments of gloomy anticipation, in which he feared that the promised disruption would finally dwindle down into a trivial dissent, whose testimony would be unheard or unnoticed. But still, the fact that he did not flinch for an instant in his purpose, whether he might be accompanied by many or by few, only places his high conscientious disinterestedness in a stronger and fairer light. To him, also, the sacrifice was accompanied with peculiar aggravations. The clerical charge he held, besides being one of the highest in Scotland, enabled him, from its being a collegiate one, to devote a considerable portion of time to his favourite studies; and he held also the lucrative office of collector of the Widows' Fund, to which he had been appointed in 1836. But high office, leisure, and emolument, were to be foregone for the labour and precariousness of a missionary life, burdened in his case by the growing infirmities of age, and the maintenance of a very large family of young children, who looked wholly to him for support, and whose interests would be deeply compromised by the sacrifice. But he rendered it cheerfully, and went forth with the rest ; and perhaps, as his eye glanced backward at the long array of his brethren on their march to the new place of meeting at Tanfield, and contrasted their numbers with his previous doubts and misgivings, the devout joy of the triumph swallowed up all remembrance of the sacrifice. His speech at the new General Assembly of the Free Church gave full testimony to that effect; where, among other declarations, to which the assembled multitudes listened with breathless interest, he uttered these words:
"Thank God, I breathe in a better atmosphere than I have done for years
