The Highland pastors, who seem to rule the Free Church
Assembly in Scotland, have succeeded in electing Dr. Begg to the Moderator's chair, a post hitherto always filled by-men of mode- ration and culture. His new position has improved Dr. Begg, or softened the innate vulgarity of his opinions. On Friday last he took occasion to give an address on the English Churches, declared that the Establishment displayed all the worst peculi- arities of Rome, and that as for Dissent, " I know a person who has had many opportunities of late- years' of being present at various kinds of Dissenting worship in England, but,, so far as he remembered, he has heard none of the old prayers for the downfall of Rome, the only references to the subject being made by one solitary Wesleyan minister." "Thou shalt love thyself and curse thy neighbour" is Dr. Begg's version of the Gospel. It is not to the credit of the Free Church that it has- permitted the least cultivated section of its clergy to raise this roaring, ecclesiastical demagogue to its head. He may have grace, but it must be of the kind called unconscious, and to charity he does not even pretend.
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