PREFACE.
To enter into the spirit of this book we must distinctly apprehend the conception formed by its author of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Throughout her entire history the Scottish Church has been distinguished by two leading characteristics, seldom found in combination.
First: She has assumed a high and commanding ecclesiastical position, claiming a jurisdiction in spiritual concerns independent of and coordinate with the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate. She has declared Christ the Head of the Church, not in any abstract and inconsequential sense, but to the clear practical effect of having given his Church upon earth a code of law,—the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament,—and of empowering and requiring her to regulate her affairs by that code alone.
Secondly: She has been eminently a Church of the people. What she claimed, she claimed not as a hierarchy, not as a clerical corporation, but as a congregation of Christians. The minister had his place; the member had his place. The
