The announcement now publicly made that the Rev. Dr. Wallace,
Professor of Divinity and Church History in the Univer- sity of Edinburgh, and minister of Old Greyfriars' Church in that city, has resigned both church and chair, and become a lay- man, in order to take the place of the late Mr. Alexander Russel as conductor of the leading Liberal newspaper of Scot- land, is an event of considerable importance in the ecclesiastical history of that country. As pastor to a congregation containing the elite of the intellect, if not the wealth of Edinburgh, as pro- fessor, and consequently corning directly in contact with the future ministers of the Church of Scotland, as leader of the Broad- Church party in its Aasembl,y,—a party increasing yearly in courage, and even in numbers,—and as incomparably its first debater,if not also its soundest scholar, Dr. Wallace exercised great influence ; and that he should have given up such a position for the imperaonal and anonymous power with Which every journalist of honour and of good-sense is content, is a clear proof that his Church is not comprehensive enough, and is otherwise too weak to overtake the spiritual and, which is far more serious at the present time, the intellectual necessity of his country. A Church in which a Lee and a Macleod could scarcely breathe, and which a Wallace has to leave for a position of greater freedom, cannot be the Church of the Future,—certainly not of the Future-perfect.
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