for the friendly countenance and repeated civilities of the City Mission from the very commencement on the West Port, allow me again to thank you for your present friendly allusion to it. I ever am, my dear sir, yours with great regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCXLIX-TO CHARLES SPENCE, ESQ.

MORNINGSIDE, 26th January, 1846.

MY DEAR SIR-My letter to you was prepared before I received your note requesting that I should address it to the lord provost. On this and on other grounds I greatly prefer addressing it to yourself. Of course the whole of it will be read, as I wish my testimony in favor of the Local System to be made as distinct and as public as my testimony in favor of the City Mission. It is well to have begun with the one, but I hope it will end with the other-yours being the

way in which you have nobly taken the lead, and ours being the ultimate landing-place. I am, my dear sir, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCL.-TO CHARLES SPENCE, ESQ.

MORNINGSIDE, 28th February, 1846. MY DEAR SIR-My experience hitherto of general bodies of superintendence makes me afraid of them, lest, in the first instance, they should be satisfied with a superficial instead of a thorough operation, which, I believe, can only be effected by distinct district agencies; and lest, in the second instance, they should, by a system of rules and forms, with the view of harmonizing all, lay an incubus upon each. I could not join in such a combination but on the principle that the poorest of the poor should be as much looked after, and be as fully provided with the means of Gospel instruction as the middle and upper classes in society. And therefore I hold that a system which would stop short and be satisfied with any provision beneath schools for all and churches for all, is but an apology for the thing, and not the thing itself.

At the same time, I am not insensible to the good of some sort of general surveillance, if it did not too much interfere with the independence and sovereignty that each district management should have over its own processes. For example, would they attempt only to aid and encourage, without aught like jurisdiction or control, I should think that great good might be effected by such an overseership as this. Suppose they were to collect a general fund for the purpose of aiding and supplementing the local funds raised in behalf of those districts whose management and whose objects they approved of, this would stimulate and extend the system of local cultivation without any of those hamperments and complications which I have hitherto so abundantly experienced as the fruit of my connection with general directorships. Were such a system adopted, I think we should all hand in the reports of our proceedings and progress to you, and if we needed money, should apply to you, which of course you would only give if you approved of our doings. I can imagine too, that in course of time we might thus feel our way to a greater harmony of action than we ought to attempt laying down at the outset by authoritative rules.

Be assured that I am utterly misunderstood, if these views are conceived to have in them the least of sectarianism. It is with me a pure question of what may be called spiritual tactics, or the most effectual method of pervading our plebeian families with the lessons and influences of the Gospel. So little of a sectarian am I, that I look on the distinction between Presbyterianism and Independency, or even between your adult and our pedobaptism, as a downright bagatelle when compared with the moral and Christian good of the population. My experimental feeling is, that it is impossible to act with any degree of comfort or efficacy when overborne by the restraints of a cumbrous and unwieldy committeeship. You mistake me if you think I do not want some such general supervision as I have now described, I fear, very imperfectly. I should rejoice if, under its canopy, but without being subject

to its control, all the evangelical denominations of Edinburgh could be brought out to this great and good work. I believe that nothing would tend more rapidly and surely to the formation of a real union among us than our being thus engaged in similar works, yet meeting together upon the occasion of your general meetings, and there provoking each other to love and to all that is good. I am, my dear sir, yours very truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.

No. CCCLI.-LETTER TO M. DESCOMBAZ, LAUSANNE. EDINBURGH, 28th February, 1846.

MY DEAR SIR-I can assure you it is from no want of sympathy in your great cause that I have not written sooner, but from extreme occupation-and occupation, let me add, greatly beyond my strength and time satisfactorily to overtake. Though I should not write much, then, or should not write often, I beg you will put the right interpretation upon it, and ascribe it to any thing rather than an indifference either to the magnitude of your wrongs or the nobleness of those pure and high principles by which you are actuated. The same reasons which have compelled me to retire from the public business of our own Church, have also made it,necessary for me greatly to limit the work of correspondence. Every thing, in fact, which involves in it additional effort, or the withdrawment of my mind from more immediate duties and cares, I must now devolve on abler and younger men.

But while I have thus to state, and I do it with extreme regret and reluctance, the utter impossibility of complying with your wishes for a regular or frequent correspondence, I can not, even within the limits of this necessarily brief communication, refrain from adverting to the difficult, as well as high and honorable distinction of the position in which you now stand; and it is my earnest prayer that, by grace and guidance from above, you might be enabled to maintain it. It were well if all Christians but knew how to combine the utmost dependence on God with the utmost diligence in the

busy use and employment of means, and so as to reconcile the wisdom of piety with the wisdom of experience. Otherwise, under the guise of trusting in God, there might be a tempting of God; and therefore let me urge with all earnestness upon your consideration the necessity of speedily adopting such methods as might best conduce, with the Divine blessing, to the stability and extension of your Free Church. You may have heard the saying of our missionary Elliot, who labored for years, and with such marvelous success, among the American Indians: He did not trust to prayer without performance, neither did he trust to performance without prayer he was super-eminent in both; and as the fruit of the experience of a whole lifetime, he left behind him the memorable lesson, that it was in the power of prayer and of pains, through faith in Christ Jesus, to do any thing. What I should regard, then, as the first and firmest guarantee for the prosperity and strength of your Free Church, were the growth and effusion of serious, spiritual religion and vital godliness among your ministers and congregations. This is the object which, of all others, is mightily to be labored and mightily to be prayed for. No organization, however skillfully devised, will supply the want of this. The best of all machinery requires to be worked; for the attainment of its end, to be rightly and well worked. Behold then the limits of human ingenuity and power. We can set up the framework and mechanism of a church, but we are wholly dependent on the Spirit of God for the men, and should therefore pray without ceasing to the Lord of the harvest, that He might send forth unto His harvest laborers, according to His own heart, who might feed his people with knowledge and spiritual understanding. But both are best. We must not neglect the rearing of a right terrestrial apparatus below; because without a celestial influence from above, it were the mere barren architecture of a church with none of that living spirit which should actuate, and which can alone give efficacy to all its services. It is most true that, except the

Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it; but this should not discharge the builders from their work-a work to which they should put forth their hands with all diligence while looking for the indispensable grace from on high, without which all the wisdom of man is but foolishness, and all the work of man is but as labor in the fire, and for very naught.

March 7th. I had got thus far when I was obliged to suspend this whole communication for a whole week by the pressure of other business, and that pressure still continues; nor have I any hope of being relieved from it for an indefinite time. I am unwilling, however, to delay any longer the answering of your letter, and can only now assure you of my readiness to obtain all the information which our experience might enable us to collect, and which might be of use for the support or extension of your Free Church. In particular, let any advice or opinion be required of us on the subject of church economics, let your wish be specifically stated, and I think I might help you to a specific answer in regard to it.

My earnest prayer is for the maintenance and spread of vital godliness among you-a spirituality unalloyed by any political or worldly ingredient-a real desire for the moral and Christian, good of the people under your charge; so that your interesting section of the great vineyard might, with the descent of the indispensable grace from on high, become like a well-watered garden, abounding with the fair and pleasant fruits of righteousness. I ever am, my very dear sir, yours with the greatest esteem and regard,

THOMAS CHALMERS.

[23 Bain's Place, Renfrew Street, Glasgow, 11th May, 1846.-— REVEREND AND DEAR SIR-I would take the liberty of shortly expressing to you my desire that you would use your influence in the ensuing General Assembly for the foundation of a Free-Church college in this city, which, I think, is immediately called for, in order to the advancement of the Free Church of Scotland in the west of Scotland. I am