again in connexion with our territorial efforts, crowded and interested congregations of working people and their families will be gathered into the house of God-congregations which in their religious earnestness and missionary activity and liberality may furnish models for imitation to the whole Church. (Applause.)

But it is time that I should now address myself to a question which not unreasonably begins to awaken concern in the bosom of the best friends of the gospel cause. The question is, By what means is our expanded and expanding Church, with all her schemes and agencies, to find that ever-increasing support which her continual extension demands? No one, I think, can consider what is needed in order to our retaining the ground we have already gained on both the home and foreign fields, and, still more, in order that we may extend the triumphs of the Cross at home and abroad, without a conviction that the time has come when the question must be deliberately taken up by the Church, What can and ought to be done to establish on the part of our people generally a higher style of Christian liberality? The urgency of this question is being felt by other Churches as well as our own. "A revolution in Christian finance," says an esteemed minister of the United Presbyterian Church, "is needed in the present day; and it is fast coming. All classes of men are feeling its importance." When it does come," the greatest-nay, almost the only remaining obstacle to the spread and sup port of the gospel, all over the world, will be taken out of the way." I long to hasten on this much-needed revolution. I would rejoice that our Free Church should occupy the van in her efforts to promote it. She would thus render another invaluable service to the cause of the gospel. And if I devote to this subject a portion of this address, I do so in no querulous and unthankful spirit for the progress made of late years by our own and other Churches in the fulfilment of what we all hold to be "the essential and perpetual obligation which Christ has laid on all His people to support and extend His Church by free-will offerings." Since the severance of our connexion with the State, what marvels have we not seen in the way of Christian effort? We have seen repeated again and again the generous deed of the centurion of whom the Jews testified, "He loveth our nation, and hath built us a synagogue." In less than a quarter of a century we have seen nine hundred congregations supplied with suitable churches, and a large number of them with manses and schools, by means of private liberality. We have seen an annual revenue of £120,000 raised for the support of the ministry from the same source; three colleges erected and partially endowed; and, for the various objects of our Church, a total contribution reached of nearly £400,000 a year. (Applause.)

But nothing, perhaps, in recent times, affords a more remarkable illustration of the growth of a spirit of Christian liberality within our Church than the financial history of our Foreign Mission Scheme, to which, if the Assembly will indulge me for a few minutes, I shall briefly advert, for the sake of the lessons to be learnt from it. In 1825, the committee appointed by the General Assembly in the previous year to devise a plan for the establishment of a mission to the heathen, recommended that "there ought to be an extraordinary collection, without delay, in all the parishes of Scotland ;" and, as appears from the report of that year, a

quinquennial collection was the utmost aimed at, the idea of an annual collection not being thought reasonable or practicable! In 1827, three years after the resolution to send a mission to the heathen, Dr Inglis was ashamed to confess (in his report to the Assembly) that "the means thus employed had in a great measure failed of success." "Out of more than 900 parishes and 55 chapels of ease, the collection has hitherto been made in no more than 59 parish churches and 16 chapels." In 1829, five years after the resolution to establish a mission in India, the aggregate fund accumulated from special donations, annual subscriptions, and congregational collections, with interest, amounted to about £3700, while £1300 had been reported as contributed by friends at Calcutta and Bombay. With this fund, most of which was to be kept as a reserved fund, or capital, the Assembly of 1829 ventured to appoint their first missionary to India. Four years thereafter, (1833,) Dr Inglis in writing to Dr Duff, expressed the joyous hope that a third labourer might soon be sent out, since from all sources he thought he could now reckon on a revenue of £1200 a year. Dr Duff's reply was what all would have expected of him. Overwhelmingly impressed with what he had by that time seen and experienced of the magnitude of the field, he, in substance said, "Oh, do not fix on £1200 a year as your minimum! Put down £10,000 a year as your minimum; and from that rise up indefinitely, without fixing any maximum at all!" (Cheers.) It shows the miserably contracted notions of Christian duty and responsibility then entertained, that when the letter which contained this remark was circulated among the members of the home committee, one of the most respected of them was so astounded by it that on the margin he made the following entry with his pencil: "What is the man mad? Has the Indian sun turned his head ?" (Laughter.) But to draw this instructive history to a close, (the facts of which have been vouched to me by Dr Duff himself,) those of us who were privileged to be present will never forget the appeal which, on his first return from India, our devoted missionary made to the Church in the Assembly of 1835, and the effect of which was shortly after to raise the income of the Foreign Mission Scheme to about £5000. (Applause.) It continued at much the same rate to the time of the Disruption. But that memorable event gave it a fresh impulse. The very first year thereafter it rose to upwards of £6000, and the second year to £9957, very nearly Dr Duff's proposed minimum in 1833. (Applause.) Now, having these facts in view, my first feeling is, that it would be sinful to recall the past without the liveliest gratitude to the God of all grace; and my second is, that it would be no less sinful to distrust Him, or to distrust the liberality of our people, for the time to come. Let me here explain that the part of this address which follows, relating as it does to a subject that requires mature consideration, and that has much occupied my thoughts, was sketched before I left home. It turns out that I had fallen to some extent into the same line of statement and even of illustration which was pursued by Dr Buchanan, and especially by Dr Duff, in giving in their reports respectively on the Sustentation Fund and on Foreign Missions. But it appears to me that this, so far from diminishing, tends rather to augment any value which the statement of my views may possess as a third and independent, but harmonious, testimony on a subject of ever

increasing importance and anxiety to the Church. True also that Dr Duff was able on Friday evening to report a slight improvement in the Foreign Mission Fund, but so slight as in no appreciable degree to affect my representations of fact or the force of my argument. Need I say how happy I shall be if I am enabled in any measure to prepare the Church cordially to respond to the appeals about to be made in connexion with the new plan for the improvement of the Sustentation Fund, and the enlarged contributions imperatively required by the increasing success of our foreign missions. In a spirit, then, at once of thankfulness and of hopefulness, I would respectfully request the attention of the Assembly

and of the Church to these self-evident truths:

First, if our prayers are graciously answered, the work of our Church must grow. There must be a gradual extension of it at home and abroad. Who would wish it to be otherwise? Who would desire that our supplications for the advancement of the kingdom of Christ in the world should bring down no blessing from on High, and that, as the fruit of them, we should hear of no revivals of religion throughout the land, no new flocks of worshippers gathered in from our spiritually-destitute population, and no new openings abroad by which the Christian missionary may enter, armed with that mighty weapon by which God throws down the strongholds of sin and Satau? Again, if the work of our Church is conducted with the ability and energy which all desire to see devoted to the prosecution of it, it will and must grow. It will partake of the progressiveness of the spiritual life employed in the management of it. And we know how this is likened to "a grain of mustard seed, which grew, and waxed a great tree."

Whoever, then, values the fruit of prayer and pains will rejoice with his whole heart when he sees such fruit in the success of the Church's enterprises, in souls gathered to Christ through her instrumentality, and in a growing appreciation of the value of her services, and an increasing demand for them. But let every member of the Church reflect with all seriousness what this involves. If the work of the Church is to grow, the Church herself must grow in the grace of liberality. In proportion as God blesses her and makes her a blessing, He claims at the hand of her members more ample resources. Our income must keep pace with our needed expenditure, otherwise our work must be arrested or bankruptcy ensue. Our means remaining the same, the extension of our efforts and usefulness is impossible. And hence, if our Church and all her schemes are not to become stereotyped, she must forthwith aim at a higher degree of self-sacrificing devotedness, and a higher platform of Christian liberality.

This is not a mere imagination. Already it has begun to be realised. How painful was it to be told, in the course of last winter, that an emergency had arisen in connexion with the Foreign Mission Fund, in consequence of a deficiency of upwards of £2000. How distressing to learn that, for several years past, the regular income of the mission has made comparatively little progress, and that but for the precarious fruit of special appeals, donations, and legacies, it must have been curtailed instead of being extended. We rejoice to hear that all the English and American societies are progressive. But how ought the contrast to humble us, and provoke us to greater zeal, when told that our own has

been stationary, if not retrogressive? The same inadequacy of supplies, seeming to betoken a declining interest in the cause, distinguishes our home operations. Since last Assembly, the convener of the Church and Manse Building Fund published the complaint that, through lack of means to meet the claims made upon it, "the committee was put in a position in which it was impossible for them to take action, and had practically nothing to do." Nor is it creditable to us as a Church that the earnest and persevering efforts that have been made for twenty years by our most able, wise, and indefatigable convener to bring up the equal dividend from the Sustentation Fund to the moderate allowance of £150 per annum have hitherto proved unavailing; and that from the inadequacy of the fund, the claims of Church extension should have to come into competition with the claims of the existing ministry.

There are two ways of dealing with such financial crises as I have referred to, and which are so disheartening and paralysing to a committee and convener. The one is by a special effort to supply the deficiencya measure painful even when successful, and apt to cause some irritation to the select few appealed to. The other way is the one suggested by worldly-wise counsellors, who would introduce the principles of worldly economics into the management of the Christian Church, and who recommend us accordingly to curtail our operations, to reduce our establishments, to dismiss some of our agents-a course which we would adopt at our peril, so long as the Spirit of God is continuing to bless these operations for their designed end, so long as millions of our immortal fellowcreatures are living without Christ, and so long as the commission given to the Church continues in force, "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Retrench our expenditure! Confine our operations within narrower limits! Dwarf our schemes! No; the position which we have acquired has been reached through too many difficulties, and by too arduous and costly sacrifices, to be so easily resigned; and, if our people will enable us, we shall continue to "hold that fast which we have, that no man take our crown." We shall try whether they, professedly "the children of light," cannot be prevailed on to emulate "the children of this world" in the self-denial with which they forego pleasures, and in the spirit of enterprise which they discover in the prosecution of their worldly designs; whether they will not prove that the love of God and of souls is as potent a principle as the love of wealth, and can plan and execute as noble and expensive undertakings with a view to the moral and religious good of men, as the other is daily planning and executing with a view to merely material interests. (Applause.)

It is difficult to suggest what practical measures should be adopted with a view to that increased exercise of the grace of liberality which the ever-expanding efforts of our Church demand. Hence the importance of the early and full consideration of the subject by Presbyteries, that the results of the varied experience of individual ministers may be stated and compared. And inasmuch as in this matter, as in every other of religious practice, the Word of God must be our rule, yet not a few ministers of the Word habitually evade the subject from a false delicacy or a sickly sentimentality, it might be well for Presbyteries from time to time authoritatively to enjoin that it shall be preached upon, on a fixed

day, from all the pulpits within the bounds. Moreover, let the children of our families, and congregations, and Sabbath-schools, be trained to the early habit of giving to the cause of God, and let the habit be founded on scriptural views of duty. And when young people are admitted to the communion of the Church, let them be instructed that one of the duties which Christ has made incumbent on them, is to support and extend it in a generous proportion to their means. I have the happiness of a personal acquaintance with Christian men of business who, by an article in their deed of copartnery, bind themselves to give a certain proportion of their yearly profits to the cause of piety and charity; and they speak with the utmost satisfaction of the advantages of the arrangement. Would that so Christian a practice were more general. (Cheers.) It is of immense importance, too, in giving to the cause of God to do so systematically, and to fix a positive standard. Of course no minister who would have his people to contribute intelligently and cheerfully will overlook the value of the press, and will fail by the circulation of the Record and other similar means to keep them informed as to the progress of the Church's works. Let me add, as practically useful, though apparently trivial suggestions-multiply the channels by which the gifts of the people may reach the treasury of the Church; let the collection be made frequently-above all, punctually; and let our members and adherents be indoctrinated in the principle which our venerated father, Dr Chalmers, was wont to illustrate with such visible satisfaction, "the power of littles." This power is remarkably seen in the fact that, assuming the membership of the Free Church at 240,000, which leaves a large margin for those in straitened circumstances, one penny a day from each member would yield £365,000 a year for the Sustentation Fund; whereas the fund for 1865-66, as contributed by the associations, amounted to only £115,000 or £250,000 less. "How do you contrive to raise such immense sums for your foreign missions?" was once said to a humble follower of John Wesley. "Oh, sir," was the reply, "it is the five points that do it all." "And what are the five

points?" "The first is faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; second, repentance unto life; third, gospel holiness; and the fourth and the fifth are a penny in the week and a shilling in the quarter." (Laughter and applause.) I do trust that these details will not be thought unworthy of this occasion or of this place. My fathers and brethren will perceive from them that I have not a shred of sympathy with those men of a morbid and mistaken spirituality, who deem their lips defiled by any mention of money in connexion with the sacred affairs and interests of the Church. Money has no character of its own. It is simply a talent, and, according to the purpose to which the owner devotes it, may prove either an unmitigated evil or an unspeakable good to himself and the community. Hence the servant of Christ who neglects to inculcate on his hearers their solemn responsibility in connexion with the uses to which they apply it, fails in one of the first duties of his office. In particular, the financial details into which I have entered grow in magnitude and importance when we connect them with the urgent question how that glorious work is to be carried forward which brought the Son of God into our world, and the promotion of which He has committed to His Church, as that which is to engage all her sympathies and services, even