It is the season of cub-hunting in England, and of
heresy- hunting in Scotland. The Free Church is off on a new trail after Professor Robertson Smith, one of the most orthodox as well as one of the ablest of her theologians ; and a party in the Esta- blished Church, in order not to be outdone, is raising a hue-and- cry against Mr. McFarlane, the author of two of the sermons in a book recently reviewed in these columns, called "Scotch Sermons." The leaders of the General Assembly of the Este.- blished Church having-discouraged the attack on this volume, the Presbytery of Glasgow has, nevertheless, taken the subject up, and passed last week, by a majority of four (25 to 21), a motion of Dr. Jamieson's, directing the Presbytery "to remit the matter to a committee, with instructions to confer with Mr. McFarlane on the subject, and to report at an early date." The more violent condemnatory resolutions seem to have found little support, and the editor of Good Words, Dr. Donald McLeod, said, in his speech on the subject, that very little would have been heard of the book, had not a member of the Free Church called attention to it, in the hope of setting the Established Church by the ears ; for this was, in that gentleman's estimation, the best means he could devise "of setting the heather on fire on the other side of the hill." The heresy imputed to Mr. McFarlane is, as usual, his disbelief in the strict infallibility of the Bible, and his doubt whether there is adequate evidence that every word attributed to our Lord in the Gospels was really spoken by him. We wonder how it is proposed even to set about showing that Mr. McFarlane's doubts are wholly faithless and irrational ?
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