* CANDLISH, ROBERT SMITH, D.D., one of the most influential ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, has been an active public man in the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs in Scotland for the last twenty years. He was educated for the ministry in the Established Church of Scotland, and, after receiving licence as a probationer, was for some time engaged as an assistant minister in one of the parishes of Glasgow. In 1834 he was settled in the parish of Sprouston, in the presbytery of Kelso, from which he was translated soon afterwarda to the parochial charge of St. George's, Edinburgh, one of the most wealthy and fashionable churches in the Scottish metropolis, the appointment to which lay in the then recently-reformed Town Couocil of Edinburgh. The agitation for church reform followed close upon the successful struggle for the extension of political privileges, and in the conduct of that agitation Dr. Candlish bore a leading part, in con junction with Drs. Chalmers, Cunningham, Gordon, Welsh, and a few earnest layman. That struggle issued, as is well known, in the great Disruption of 1843. We have bare no further concern with its history then to note the remarkable fact that the Free Church of Scotland, since its establishment in the year just named, has, for its various schemes of home and foreign missionary and educational effort, in all of which Dr. Candlish has taken a leading part, raised from the voluntary efforts of its members and supporters about three millioos sterling. Dr. Candlish has been uniformly returned by the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh as one of its representatives in the General Assembly of the body, although the usual rule of rotation would allow of his return only once in three or four years. Previous
to the Disruption, the adherents of the non-intrusion party belonging to St. Georgea Church, in anticipation of the result of the 'ten years conflict,' as the agitation has been designated, had resolved to erect a plain building as a kind of model for the new places of worship which were expected to be found necessary in all parts of the country. This building, situated on Castle-terrace, and now occupied by the Free Gaelic Congregation, was soon found too small and inconvenient for Dr. Candlish'e new congregation (Free St. George's), who accordingly erected, at a cost of about 15,0001., a commodious and handsome church in the Lothian Road. Dr. Candlish has been since offered the post of Professorif Divinity in the New College belonging to the Free Church ; and in 1855 he was invited to remove to Glasgow, to take the pastoral charge of a church in that city, but he declined both, and retains his position as pastor of Free St. GOorge's. He received his diploma of D.D. from an American university. He has published numerous pamphlets and single sermons, a treatise on the doctrine of the Atonement, ' Contributions to the Exposition of the Book of Genesis,' an 'Examination of Maurice's Theological Essays,' and a few other works on religious subjects.