The Rev. Dr. Edmond, who moved the principal resolution, is
reported as having reminded his hearers " of Saul when returning from smiting the Amalekites," and of his saying to Samuel, ' I have performed the commandment of the Lord.' The speaker, after a pause, followed this up by a significant reference to the
answer of the prophet, ' What meaneth, then, this bleating of sheep in mine ears?' and he said, amid cheers, he did not -wish to press the parallel, but it seemed to him that there was a bleating of shepherds here, and not of sheep." We do not quite catch Dr. Edmond's drift. He means, of course, to hint that the Established Church flinches from obedience to the Word of God through inability to sacrifice the good things of the -world. He probably did not mean to go further, and imply that 'the divine command to which they shirk obedience is a command simply to destroy the wealth they have conquered from that .aggressive Amalek, the world. Yet we confess that is precisely what Dr. Edmond's view,—that the Disestablishment and Disen- -dowment of the English National Church is the divine work of 'to-day,—seems to us to involve ; —it would be a work of as pare ,destruction as the hewing of Agag in pieces before the Lord in
with all his herds of sheep and oxen.
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