Page:Sketches of the History of the Church of Scotland.djvu/42

 But it is the "day of small things" still. We are far away yet from the reconquest of Scotland to Evangelical Truth and Apostolic order, which is surely our mission, else we have no business here. Let us not be high-minded, but fear. Perhaps it may not be the will of Providence that our mission is to prosper and culminate under a State Establishment again; unless, if it should please God, by a corporate re-union with the existing Establishment, which, we have the strongest evidence for asserting, many on both sides are sighing for, and praying for, under conditions which are daily becoming more possible, more feasible, and more hopeful. The democratical tendencies of the times, and the antagonism to all institutions that are old and venerable, are, no doubt, to a large extent, against this consummation. The religious Establishment of Scotland is at present selected, from its supposed weakness compared with the Church of England, as the object of the combined attack of the dissenting bodies which at various times have forsaken its communion. Episcopalians, as we are called, let us say in passing, never having belonged to the Presbyterian Establishment, cannot properly be termed dissenters from it; and they never make common cause with dissenters against the present Establishment.

Although we do not forget that we were ourselves disestablished and disendowed with extreme rigour, we accept the situation (under the old historical protest), feel no resentment, and bear no malice. We are also willing witnesses to the fact of the general mildness and tolerance of the Establishment as it now exists, contrasted with the bitter intolerance and malignity which it long manifested towards the communion which it had supplanted, and therefore hated. We appreciate its willingness to live and let live. Socially, its office-bearers are on the best of terms with us; although in their corporate capacity, as might be expected from the nature and extent of our exclusive claims, symptoms may often be detected that, as a communion, they bear us no especial good will. But in the time of the troubles that threaten them, and possibly await them, it may be that they shall find that, while it is the fruit of their own loins, their own "kith and kin," that are their deadliest foes, the once hunted and harried Episcopalians are their fastest friends. The politico-religious dissenters seem aware of the hopelessness, as yet, of attacking the English Establishment, which continues firm in the affections of the great majority of the people, and whose roots are entwined with the social system of England, and the institutions of the realm. When the democratical upheaval is strong enough, if ever, to destroy it, it will probably perish along with the monarchy, as it did before in the Great Rebellion. Meanwhile the crusade against the northern Establishment is gathering its forces. It denounces what it calls "the unholy alliance of religion with the State;" forgetting, it would appear, that God did once establish His Church upon earth, and allied it with the State, and made it conterminous with the kingdom of His chosen people. Christians