cried Janet Geddes, the keeper of an herb-stall near the Tron Kirk, throwing at the dean's head the stool on which she sat. It was not in human nature not to dodge; whereupon, a storm of other stools," clasped Bibles, stones, sticks, cudgels, and whatever else was within the people's reach, were hurled against the dean, and some, coming nearer, tried to pull him from the pulpit. The church was cleared by the magistrates, and the service proceeded in dumb show, the noise and breaking of windows by the rioters outside creating such distraction that no attention could be given to the service. Though the book had been used without opposition in the Dioceses of Ross, Dunblane, and Brechin, since the preceding Easter, from that date its use was given up in Scotland; and with this defeat began the downfall of the reëstablished Episcopacy in the Church.

The disaffected preachers, headed by Alexander Henderson, began to accumulate signatures to petitions against the Liturgy, and to send them, in constantly increasing numbers, to the court. When meetings of petitioners were prohibited, it suggested another device. In the time of the Holy League of France, and under the agitation and excitement caused by the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the nation, from the sovereign down, had entered into a bond or covenant to continue in the true Protestant religion, and defend and support one another in it against their common enemies. It was now suggested to renew this covenant, which was done, throughout Scotland, with prayers and tears and uplifted hands, the roll making the round of the churches, and then being handed out into the churchyards, many opening a vein and subscribing their names in blood.

The king attempted to circulate an opposition covenant, but met with small success. The Covenanters, meanwhile, were organized under the government of certain committees, styled the Tables, established the preceding year,-one of four lords, one of four gentlemen, one of four ministers, one of four burgesses; a further delegation of one from each Table constituting the General Table of ultimate resort; and there were subordinate Tables of gentlemen organized for the different counties. These Tables, from the year 1637, were the really authoritative government both of Church and state in Scotland. Bit by bit the king gave way

before them. In 1638, he consented to the calling of a General Assembly on the old Presbyterian plan, instead of the Episcopal Synod, and issued instructions to the Marquis of Hamilton, his High Commissioner, revoking the Liturgy, the Canons, the High Commission Court, and the Perth Articles, which had enjoined the

keeping of the great festivals and kneeling at the Lord's Supper; and declaring that the "Episcopal government already established shall be limited to stand with the recognized laws of this Church and kingdom." The Assembly convened at Glasgow, and was met with protest on the part of the archbishop and bishops, and a declinature to acknowledge its jurisdiction. The Marquis of Hamilton attempted to dissolve the Assembly on the ground of certain informalities, but was met with a direct refusal to dissolve. The bishops, and numbers of the clergy who supported them, were declared deposed on various and often very frivolous grounds, one of Dr. Robert Hamilton's offences being that he was "an ordinary swearer, as we call it," because he used such expressions as "Before God; I protest to God; by my conscience; on my soul!" Two witnesses declared that they had seen Bishop Lindsay, of Edinburgh, "bow to the altar;" and two others that they saw him "dedicate a kirk after the Popish manner." "He was proven to have been a presser of all the late novations, an urger of the Liturgy, a refuser to admit any to the ministry who would not first take the order of a preaching deacon, a bower to the altar, a wearer of the rochet, a consecrator of churches, a domineerer of presbyteries, a licenser of marriages without banns, to the great hurt of sundry, a countenancer of corrupt doctrine preached at Edinburgh, an elevator at consecration, a defender of ubiquity in his book. We pronounce him to be deposed and excommunicated." After the sentences were pronounced, Henderson, the Moderator, is reported to have exclaimed, "We have now cast down the walls of Jericho; let him that rebuildeth them beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite." Two or three of the bishops were sunk so low as to make submission, and assume the position of Presbyterian parish ministers; but the rest, with large numbers of the clergy, especially of the North, remained faithful to their principles, in spite of great distress, and bitter persecution. In the next year, the king, attempting to put down the resistance to his authority in Church and state by arms, was met by the army of the Covenant, with blue banners inscribed with the motto, "For Christ's Crown and Covenant," above the arms of Scotland; but his heart failed him, or he suspected the fidelity of his troops, and he entered into negotiations with General Leslie. He acquiesced in the Acts of Parliament ratifying the proceedings of the Glasgow Assembly, and entered Holyrood under the banner of the Covenant.

It is needless to go into further details of a history so familiar as that of the "Great Rebellion." The proceedings of the Covenant

ers in their triumph over the Church of Scotland are of some interest, as well as the incidents that followed the revival of Episcopacy as an establishment at the Restoration, and its fall at the Revolution of 1688; but this article has already extended to a length that precludes their consideration at this time. Enough, however, has been written to show that no religious establishment, no matter how excellent in itself or vigorously supported by the state, can do its work for good upon the people, unless in some way they can be made to recognize in it an especial and peculiar Divine authority apart from that imparted to it by the state. Religious indifference is only one degree less fatal than religious hostility to it.

A Critical History of Free Thought in reference to the Christian Religion. Eight Lectures preached before the University of Oxford in the year MDCCCLXII., on the Foundation of the late Rev. John Bampton, M.A., Canon of Salisbury. By Adam, Storey Farrar, M.A., Michel Fellow of Queen's College, Oxford.

Religious Thought in Germany. Reprinted, by permission, from "The Times." London: Tinsley Brothers, 18 Catherine street, Strand. . 1870.

PROBABLY, no event in the history of the world has had

ROBABLY, no event in the history of the world has had more

influence on its destiny, for weal or woe, since the "great schism" between the Churches of the East and the West, than the religious revolution of the sixteenth century, which commenced in Germany, and is known to the world as the "Protestant Reformation." In England it failed to attain its full development. It encountered there a Church unwilling to divest itself of Catholic tradition and Episcopal authority, and a nation whose motto had long been, Nolumus leges Angliæ mutari; so that in Britain it became a wide-pervading influence, rather than an all-controlling power. If we would contemplate Protestantism, pure and undefiled, developing itself in its own way, unfettered by Church or state, we must go to Germany, where it had its birth, attained its full maturity, and is now in" the sere and yellow leaf" of its declining years. If we consult the friends and foes of the Protestant Reformation, we

shall find, of course, that the most contrary judgments have been formed touching that great event.

The majority of Christians, embracing under that term the Roman Catholic Churches, and some members of our own communion, have looked upon the event as a Divine scourge, sent upon the Church to chastise its faults, and try its faith; it has been called a "deluge of wrath," and its leaders, even within our own fold, have been described as guiltier men in the sight of God than those monsters of the French Revolution, Danton, Marat, and Robespierre. On the other hand, the adherents of Protestantisın, comprising all the non-Episcopal communions, and a large proportion of the members of our own Church, have been taught from their very childhood to regard it as the choicest of Divine blessings. It has been extolled as second only to the original Gospel tidings; as the beginning of a new era in the world of light and liberty and heaven-sent grace. It is but just to say that these views are equally erroneous. The Protestant Reformation was neither an unmixed blessing nor an unmitigated curse. Like many great movements, it began well, and it ended ill. It reformed many old abuses and superstitions, which had long disfigured the Church; and in their stead it introduced an atmosphere of doubt and unbelief, which hovers about it, becoming more miasmatic with the lapse of time. It tore down the mediæval scaffolding which had been erected around the Church, concealing its fair proportions from the world; and, at the same time, it managed to take down large portions of both nave and transept. To reverse the simile, it was like the thunder-storm which purifies the air from its pestilential vapors, while it destroys life and property with its lightning-bolts. If ever Protestantism had a fair field to labor in, it was in Northern and Central Germany, where it had its birth. It found there a people, intelligent and moral and religious, in the Catholic way; it broke down the ecclesiastical hierarchy which resisted its progress; it was fostered by the patronage of the state; it fought and bled for its principles in the thirty years' struggle with the Austro-Spanish Empire. If it has failed there, its failure is the more conspicuous because of the favorable circumstances by which it was surrounded on every side. Protestantism then started into life with "The Supremacy of the Bible" as its rallying cry. So far as this was a reassertion of the principles of the primitive Church, obscured by the darkness of the middle ages, the Reformation was productive of good. So far as this was set forth as a new doctrine, the Gospel of Luther was a snare and a delusion. No doctrine was more stanchly asserted and defended