curriculum prescribed by the Church imperfect, and the enactment of the Veto rule ought to have been accompanied by a corresponding change in the course of education required for the ministry. Admittedly, every man is exposed to the exercise of the Veto, however well qualified; and admittedly, also, the best qualified minister may be rejected from "factious or malicious motives." But, though there is no depth of learning, no soundness of doctrine, no purity of life and conversation, which can exempt a presentee from the danger of having his hopes blasted and his prospects sacrificed by the caprice of a mob—though years of laborious and expensive study, of anxious moral and intellectual discipline, may thus at once be thrown away, lest the "factious and malicious" among the people should lose an opportunity of giving vent to their spleen, or of avenging their quarrel with the patron—though qualifications and merit are comparatively worthless under the fundamental law, yet there is a school in which the probationer may be taught how to avoid the brand of unacceptableness; he will soon perceive by experience, without the help of any other teacher, that if he would ensure the favour of the mob—of those who, on all occasions, press forward the most eagerly to wield their newly acquired power, and to triumph in the destruction of its victim, he must have recourse to cunning sycophancy, to servile and unprincipled flattery—he must pander to the prejudices and vices of the mob—he must prefer the applause of man to the approval of God and his own conscience.
We shall be told, perhaps, that this picture is overdrawn, and that no evils of such magnitude can reasonably be apprehended as the result of the Veto Act. Would that it were so! But, granting this for the sake of argument, it is at least undeniable that the evil consequences of the Veto Act, as affecting the character of the clergy, are of the kind which we contemplate. A system of ecclesiastical polity which tends to foster worldly wisdom and ambition among the ministers of the Church—which seems altogether to disregard the unobtrusive but not less estimable virtues of the clerical character to neglect and disparage learning, whether sacred or profane, and to discourage or rudely to check firmness and independence of mind—such a system surely is, of all others, the most to be condemned, and yet such is the tendency at least of the fundamental law. Far different were the principles of that church government which produced and nurtured the pious and single-minded, the energetic and useful race of clergy who taught our fathers; the advantages and consolations of whose ministry we ourselves experienced, ere yet the church had been distracted by the present mischievous and unjustifiable agitation. In those happy days it was learning, and piety, and a spotless life, that secured to the pastor the respect and the love of his flock. His time and his talents were consecrated to their service, and to the service of his God; his thoughts unbroken by any dream of ambition, his heart uncorrupted by the imagination, or the practice of deceit.
"Unskilful he to fawn or seek for power,
By doctrines fashion'd to the varying hour;
Far other aims his heart had learn'd to prize,
More bent to raise the wretched than to rise.
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And as a bird each fond endearment tries,
To tempt its new-fledged offspring to the skies,
He tried each art, reproved each dull delay,
Allured to brighter worlds, and led the way."
As regards presbyteries, the Veto Act is not less objectionable. It involves a delegation of the duty committed to them by the Church, and by the statute law, to take trial of the qualifications of presentees, and, according to their own juddment of these qualifications, to admit or reject. There is superinduced on the former useful and intelligible system a power which overrules the presbytery—the exercise of which the presbytery can neither review nor control—which can command the rejection of a presentee contrary to the judgment of the presbytery, or which at least can authoritatively forbid the presbytery to take the necessary steps for forming an opinion on his qualifications.
There is, no doubt, one case in which the presbytery are still, as formerly, made the sole judges of qualification,
