a similar fix. Though provided with the best Brechin French, he stood beside his luggage surrounded by a crowd of chattering and jabbering men and women, whom for the life of him he could not understand or communicate with, otherwise than by signs. Byand-bye, however, he learned to speak the language with great fluency. During his stay in Paris he kept a diary, which his sons have used freely in the memoir, and from which we might give many characteristic extracts, but we content ourselves with one sentence. He sums up his opinion of the Parisians thus: "I neither like French weather nor French ways, French men nor French manners," and though he lived to modify this judgment, yet the instability, infidelity, and inhumanity the Parisians have so often manifested during late years would keep any right-minded man from liking them. On returning to Brechin in 1827 the prospect of securing a living seemed as remote as ever. Some of his friends advised him to try the English bar, but he felt himself called to the work of the Church, and he might have replied― "One path is clear before me, it may lead O'er perilous rocks, cross sands without a well, He thought of spending the winter in Germany, but the death of an elder brother, who was banker, compelled him to relinquish the project, and take to banking. Guthrie's bank was the only one in Brechin at that time, and, consequently, did a considerable business. Here he spent two years, acquiring a knowledge of mercantile and agricultural affairs, securing a training in business habits, which was of great use to him in after time, and also gaining an insight into human nature in various moods, which aided him, when a minister, to touch aright the hearts and consciences of his hearers. He says in the bank he received not the least part of his training and education. It is necessary that some ministers should be accomplished scholars. Such are necessary for biblical criticism; but for those who are simply to be preachers, a knowledge of human nature, and of the world, is specially necessary. He was now 27 years of age, and for fifteen years he had been training for the ministry, and yet he had never earned more than five guineas by preaching. At length, on the 13th of May, 1830, he was ordained minister of the parish of Abirlot-a rural parish, on the north-east seaboard, close to Arbroath. Ready for the work for five years, and anxious as ready when the time came, he entered into it with all his heart 66 and strength. Everything in his parish suited him; the situation was good-from the manse he looked out, upon the one hand, on the great wide sea, and upon the other, on the green and fertile country. The people also pleased him. Physically, mentally, morally and religiously," he says, "my parishioners were a remarkably well-conditioned people." All that human earnestness and exertion could do was done by him to awaken in them desires after God and righteousness. He carefully prepared for his pulpit duties, visited his flock regularly, held prayer meetings and meetings for the religious instruction of the young. He established a circulating library, and a savings bank, and was in every good work more abundant, and, in consequence, he became greatly endeared to his people and was instrumental of much good. In Scotland ecclesiastical affairs excite far more general interest than in England, The action and divisions of the Church Courts are narrowly watched by the public. The newspapers report their proceedings, and their conclusions are canvassed in countinghouses, workshops, and at street corners. The consequence is, that if a minister distinguishes himself in any obscure presbytery in the country, his name is soon spread from John o' Groats to Berwickon-Tweed. Just about the time of Guthrie's ordination, the question of lay patronage was being keenly discussed. Lay patronage in the Church of Scotland, which had been abolished in the Second Reformation, in 1649, was restored by Queen Anne. From that time onward it had proved a root of bitterness; and, with the revival of religious life in the Church, an ardent desire for freedom in the choice of pastors took possession of the people. Guthrie had had a little experience of the evils of lay patronage; for five years he had been doomed to enforced idleness, and now that the country was wakening up to the matter, he entered upon the discussion with all his heart. Neither he nor his friends knew whither this matter was tending. "Oft fire is without smoke, And peril without show."-Spenser. But, in the end, they were to demonstrate to the world that evangelical religion and Christian freedom are incompatible with State patronage and control. The storm was brewing that was to wreck the Established Church in Scotland. Guthrie, like the Evangelicals in the English Establishment at the present time, loudly demanded reform. The Dissenters, however, told himas they now tell the Evangelicals-the true cure; but he was greatly offended, and vehemently resisted them. Dr. Ritchie attended a meeting at Arbroath, and Guthrie, in a telling manner, answered him. The answer pleased all the friends of the Establishment, and at once made him famous. The consequence was, that he was called to join the Rev. Mr. Sym, as one of the ministers of the Grey Friar's Kirk, Edinburgh; and, on the 16th of September, 1837, followed by the prayers and good wishes. of all his parishioners, he left Abirlot, where he had been minister for seven years, to enter upon the more onerous duties of a city pastorate, where, for the present, we must leave him.-RORY. ART. II.-SOME OF THE MORAL ASPECTS OF THE PRESENT AGE.* THE JUSTIFICATION BY FACT, NOT BY FAITH. HE sentence that stands at the head of this article is one of Professor Huxley's, slightly altered. His exact words are:"The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification." The same sentiment is repeated in different parts of the Professor's works, and in various forms. Let us give a few specimens:-" What are among the moral convictions most fondly held by barbarous and semi-barbarous people? They are the convictions that authority is the soundest basis of belief; that merit attaches to a readiness to believe; that the doubting disposition is a bad one, and scepticism a sin; that when good authority has pronounced what is to be believed, and faith has accepted it, reason has no further duty. There are many ex-cellent persons who yet hold by these principles, and it is not my present business or intention to discuss their views. All I wish to bring clearly before your minds is the unquestionable fact, that the improvement of natural knowledge is effected by methods which directly give the lie to all those convictions, and assume the exact reverse of each to be true. "The improver of natural knowledge absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority as such. For him scepticism is the highest of duties, blind faith the one unpardonable sin. And it cannot be otherwise; for every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority, the cherishing of the keenest scepticism, the annihilation of blind faith," &c. Again: "If a man asks me what the politics of the moon are, and I reply that I do not know, that neither I nor any one else have any means of knowing, and that under these circumstances I decline to trouble myself about the subject at all, I do not think that he has any * Readers of this paper may think that the "aspects" exhibited in it are rather scientifico-intellectual than moral. To justify the use of the term "moral," regard must be had to the results of the doctrines discussed in the article.-J. W. 66 right to call me a sceptic." The following sentence Mr. Huxley quotes, approvingly, from Descartes :-"The golden rule is—Give unqualified assent to no propositions but those the truth of which is so clear and distinct that they cannot be doubted." On this the Professor thus comments :-" The enunciation of this first great commandment of science, consecrated doubt. It removed Doubt from the seat of penance among the grievous sins to which it had been long condemned, and enthroned it in that high place among the primary duties which is assigned to it by the scientific conscience of these latter days." If the sentiments above recorded be those entertained by men of science in general, then modern science is, undoubtedly, the antagonist of faith. Were the denunciations of science flung against "blind faith" only, we should be acquiescing, if not consenting, parties to the act. But it is not so. It is faith as faith which evokes the scorn of modern physicists. Faith in the unseen, faith in testimony, however unimpeachable, provided it be borne to supernatural facts, is not worth, in the opinion of modern science, a moment's consideration. With equal earnestness, if not with equal contempt, the shafts of science are directed against the faith of Newton and Locke, and that of Paul Cullen and Edward Manning. We care nothing for any "authority" in matters of faith, save that of the Bible; but even this, as will be seen presently, is as really rejected as that of the "Church." Professor Huxley's Bible is Nature, the letter of which only he seems to understand; His Apostles-Harvey and Hutton, Descartes and Darwin; and the redemption that he preaches is not one from moral guilt, but from ignorance and social misery-to be effected by a knowledge of, and obedience to, the Gospel of Physical Science. Professor Huxley complains that his authoritative statements on matters of science have not been received in the same acquiescent spirit with those of the Bible. He is provoked by the gain-sayings of certain sinners against science, who do not take to the spoiling of their spiritual goods quite so calmly as, in the judgment of the Professor, they ought to do. Whereat the man of science waxes angry, and reveals, in the following sentences, his animus and his resolution : "The myths of Paganism are as dead as Osiris and Zeus, and the man who should attempt to revive them, in opposition to the knowledge of our time, would be justly laughed to scorn; but the coeval imaginations current among the rude inhabitants of Palestine, recorded by writers whose very name and age are admitted by every scholar to be unknown, have unfortunately not yet shared their fate, but even at this day, are regarded by nine-tenths of the civilized world as the authoritative standard of fact, and the criterion of the justice of scientific conclusions in all that relates to the origin of things, and among them of species. In this nineteenth century, as at the dawn of physical science, the cosmogony of the semi-barbarous Hebrew is the incubus of the philosopher and the opprobrium of the orthodox. Who shall number the patient, earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered, and their good name blasted, by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters? Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonize impossibilities—whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the strong party? It is true that if philosophers have suffered, their cause has been amply avenged. Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science, as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that when science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not, neither can it forget; and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of Genesis contains the beginning and the end of sound science, and to visit with such petty thunder-bolts as its half paralysed hands can hurl those who refuse to degrade Nature to the level of Primitive Judaism. "Philosophers, on the other hand, have no such aggressive tendencies. With eyes fixed on the goal to which, per aspera et ardua, they tend, they may now and then be stirred to momentary wrath by the unnecessary obstacles with which the ignorant or the malicious encumber, if they cannot bar, the difficult path; but why should their souls be deeply vexed? The majesty of fact is on their side, and the elemental forces of Nature are working for them. Not a star comes to the meridian at its calculated time but testifies to the justness of their methods—their beliefs are one with the 'falling rain and the growing corn.' By doubt they are established, and open enquiry is their bosom friend. Such men have no fear of traditions, however venerable, and no respect for them when they become mischievous and obstructive; but they have better than mere antiquarian business in hand, and if dogmas, which ought to be fossil but are not, are not forced upon their notice, they are too happy to treat them as non-existent." "Why," indeed, should the scientific souls of Professor Huxley and his friends be "vexed" by the resolute and persistent efforts of Believers in defence of their rights? Does it not seem natural that men should act in that way? Should it not be remembered that one of their duties is, "to contend earnestly for the faith |