In the Scotch Church the probationers may dispense with high connections, inasmuch as they could never be greatly helped by them so far as snug preferment is concerned. There are few great prizes in anybody's gift. But then, on the other hand, though the Scotch livings are poor, a man need never be forgotten or neglected for want of opportunities of distinguishing himself. If he has good gifts and ambition, he may always come to the front in the free interchange of pulpits on the periodical sacramental occasions. Toujours perdrix is felt to be insipid in the remotest country parishes as elsewhere, and the people on whom the discourses of their own pastor have staled, are predisposed to admire the men who relieve him. The country parson who preaches in the town, and whose praises are bruited abroad in the surrounding churches, may count upon a "call" sooner or later. Then there are the church courts, where, by shrewd sense and a knowledge of business, he has a chance of making his mark among his brethren. He speaks well and to the point, he shows that he has a clear head, he is a close reasoner, and is ready in reply. He is regarded as a tower of strength by his friends, he is held in respect by the men he has got the better of, he is sent up to the General Assembly, and some interest of the Presbytery or Synod is specially confided to his care. There he makes his speeches before all the world, and sees them reported at length. The name of Mr. So-and-so of So-and-so becomes as familiar in Edinburgh or Glasgow as in his parish. In former days a divine seldom did more than print some stray volume of sermons, which probably fell stillborn. Now, as we have said, there are Presbyterian clergymen who are eminently distinguished in elegant literature, accomplished scholars as well as theologians; who fill professorial chairs with great distinction, and can hold their own besides with the most accomplished man of the world. Even without rising to such eminence, a man may easily do enough to make a certain name, when he is stamped with the degree of doctor of divinity. He has a reputation for earnestness, eloquence, or piety; he is respected as one of the leaders of his party, he grows insensibly in honour as in years, and in due time he receives the blue ribbon of the Kirk, and is dignified as Moderator of the General Assembly.

It is to be hoped that by that time he has laid his own teaching to heart, and learned to value mere earthly honours at their true price. But we can imagine how dizzy a pinnacle of earthly grandeur the Moderatorship must appear to the boy who is being brought up by his parents with a view to the work of the ministry. The Moderator is exalted among his peers and fellows to a seat only lower in degree than the throne of the Lord High Commissioner. He presides over a venerable assemblage of all that is most venerated in the land. He figures as the second King of Brentford in magnificent processions of horses and chariots, with military escorts and purse-bearers, and equerries and pages, passing through densely-crowded streets picqueted with horse and foot. He has the place of honour at the State dinner of Her Majesty's re

presentative, and himself entertains all the world at a series of sumptuous breakfasts. It is not our purpose to dwell here on the good he does, or the good he may have done-works of which the Moderatorship is the recognition and recompense. But when he goes back to his rural parish, or to his charge in the country town, he may feel that it has been his privilege to have lived indeed, and to know that when he is gathered to his fathers, he will die in the fulness of fame. Nor have we any idea of dragging in that "disruption" movement, to which we have already repeatedly adverted, at the fag-end of an article. Those characteristics of clerical life which we have rapidly reviewed apply with trifling distinctions to the members of the rival churches. But it would be unjust to write of the Scotch ministers and their people without paying a passing tribute to the earnestness of those who originated the new communion which laymen have munificently endowed. All we have said of the natural ambition of young ministers to settle down into wellfeathered nests, of the parsimony of heritors in augmenting their incomes or contributing to the rebuilding or repair of their manses, is, as we are assured, absolutely true. Yet here, at the close of "the ten years' conflict," we had some hundreds of gentlemen agreeing for conscience' sake to give up the worldly advantages they had struggled for; to go forth penniless from their comfortable homes, trusting their future and that of their families to Providence; consenting to resign the social position in the ancient establishment, which to many of them had been as the breath of their nostrils. Judging by the previous experiences of not a few, their faith in lay liberality must have been but slender. Yet they "went out" on sheer speculation, having deliberately counted the cost; for none of them could have foreseen, except some of the most popular preachers in the cities, how liberally what they had lost would be made up to them.

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The Fear of Death.

WE add a strange bitterness to the last parting, inasmuch as upon so many of the subjects relating to it we doom ourselves to a sort of anticipated loneliness. Few of us have the courage to speak quietly and freely of our own prospects of mortality with those nearest and dearest to us. Tenderness and custom combine to seal our lips; and there grows up a habit of reserve which we scarcely wish to break through. Yet the veil of habitual silence which we throw over death, as concerning ourselves, adds to that sense of mystery and chillness which it were surely wiser as far as may be to dispel than to increase. Each of us must die alone; but we need not encounter the fear of death alone.

How far is it true to say that the fear of death is a natural and universal instinct? or rather to what extent does the instinctive fear of it prevail among ourselves? The very reserve of which I have spoken makes it impossible to answer with any confidence. If such reserve may be taken as an indication of shrinking from a painful subject, this shrinking would appear to be much less strong among the poor than the rich. Their outspokenness with respect to their own approaching death, or that of parents or children whom they may be nursing with the utmost tenderness, is very startling to unaccustomed ears, and might almost suggest indifference, had we not ample reason to know that it is compatible not only with tender affection but with deep and lasting sorrow for the very loss of which by anticipation they spoke so unhesitatingly. No doubt all habits of reserve imply more or less of the power of selfcontrol, which is so largely dependent upon education; but there would seem to be also a real difference of feeling between rich and poor about death. Perhaps their habitual plainness of speech about it may contribute towards lessening the fear of it among them. But there is an obvious and deeply pathetic explanation of their calmness in the prospect of it for themselves or for those dearest to them. The hardness and bareness of life lessens its hold upon them; sometimes even makes them feel it not an inheritance to be coveted for their children. The dull resignation with which they often say the little ones are "better off” when they die, tells a grievous story of the struggle for mere existence; while the simplicity of their faith in the unseen is equally striking in its cheerful beauty. Both habits of mind tend to diminish the fear of death itself, as well as the unwillingness to speak of it which belongs to more complicated states of feeling and more luxurious habits of life.

It is of course impossible fully to distinguish between the fear of death, and the fear of that which may come after death; and this is not

the place for fully considering the grounds of the latter fear. But our feeling about the great change is assuredly composed of many elements, and the nature of our expectation of another life is by no means the only thing which makes death more or less welcome. We do not probably at all fully realise how wide is the range of possible feeling about this life, making our anticipations of its ending as many-tinted almost as those with which we contemplate the hereafter. We tacitly agree in common conversation to avoid the subject as it concerns ourselves and our interlocutors, and in speaking of others we make it a point of good manners to refer to it as matter of regret; while religious books and sermons always assume that the King of Terrors can be encountered with calmness only by the aid of that faith which they preach. But is it really the case that apart from the terrors of religion and the courtesies of feeling, the end of life would always be unwelcome in its approach to ourselves and to others? Is there inherent in all of us a universal craving to prolong the term of this sublunary existence, and to prevent the loosening of any of its ties ?

We may be pretty sure that there is some foundation in reason for any strongly prevalent manipulation of feeling. It is easy to see how this particular practice has grown up; but it does seem to have passed the limit of sincerity, and therefore of wholesomeness. Even if we may not speak freely, it must be well to think truly in a matter of such deep and frequent concern; and it can surely be no true part of religion to deepen the natural opposition of feeling to the lot which is appointed to all.

One of the great distinctions which the voluntary assumption of mourning tends to obliterate is that between timely and untimely deaths. There is no doubt a sense in which to the eye of faith no death can be untimely, but this is as distinctly a matter of faith as the blessedness of pain. Faith may discern a rightness in the cutting short of the young life, as in all forms of suffering and affliction; but though faith may be able to surmount all obstacles, neither faith nor reason can profit by our ignoring the natural inequalities of the ground. Some deaths are not

in any true sense afflictions; and to say so need imply no disrespect, nay it may convey the very highest testimony, to the departed. We speak of survivors as mourners, till we forget that there are survivors who, in place of mourning, may for very love be filled with a solemn joy in the completed course to which added length of days could scarcely have added either beauty or dignity. When we allow ourselves to think of the reality rather than of the mere conventional description of the event, it seems wonderful that we should have only one word with which to speak of the completion and of the destruction of a human lifetime; only one word for the event which closes the long day's toil, and for that which crashes like a thunderbolt into the opening blossom of family life; for that which makes and that which ends widowhood; for the final fulfilment or reversal of all our temporal hopes; for bereaveVOL. XXXVIII.-NO. 227.

29.

ment and for reunion. It is true that in one sense it is " one event which befalls in all these cases, but the feelings belonging to it have as wide a range of colour as the sunset clouds. Need we wrap them all in the same thick veil of gloomy language and ceremonial?

At any rate, the feelings with which we contemplate the termination of our own earthly life must vary indefinitely in different individuals, and in the same individual at different times; and it would be a matter of deep interest to compare our respective experience if we could bring ourselves to do so.

It is sometimes said that no one can tell what his own feeling about death would be, until he has been brought face to face with it. This is no doubt true; but it is also true that the feelings with which we regard it from a distance vary as much as those with which we should meet its near approach, and that the former are more important to our welfare than the latter. To be "through fear of death all their lifetime subject to bondage," is a heavy burden, and I believe not an uncommon one. Generalising from the scanty materials gleaned by one ordinary observer, I believe that the purely instinctive fear is strongest in people of a very high degree of vitality; it is the shadow cast by intense love of life, and seems to depend in a great measure upon a certain kind of physical vigour. This may be one explanation of the strange and beautiful way in which the fear of death so often disappears as the event itself approaches; the weakened frame does not shrink from the final touch of that decay which has already insensibly loosened its hold upon life. Professional observers speak of cases in which the fear of dying is active to the last, as being extremely rare; it should probably be considered as a physical indication of vitality. For the same reason, perhaps, the fear of death is often comparatively slight in early youth, before the constitution has reached its full vigour, and before the habit of living has been very firmly established. At the same time, the very energy and buoy ancy of a perfectly vigorous physical organisation help to dispel or to neutralise painful impressions; so that although the idea of death may be more naturally abhorrent to the strong than to the weak, they may be less habitually oppressed by the thoughts of it.

There also seems to be a deep, though obscure, connection between the wish and the power to live. Physicians and nurses have strange stories to tell of cases in which a strong motive for living has seemed sufficient to recall patients from the very grasp of death. Sometimes the mere assurance, given with a confident manner but a doubting heart, that recovery is possible, seems to give strength to rally and may turn the scale in favour of life. For this reason, amongst others, medical men are generally extremely unwilling to tell patients that there is no hope. There are cases on record in which such an announcement, though voluntarily elicited and met with perfect apparent calmness, has seemed to sap the strength in a moment and cause a sudden and rapid sinking. It is perhaps some physical instinct of self-preservation, rather than any