Three Year Plan.—This is a device invented by ecclesiastics of the Church of Scotland to tide over difficulties arising in connection with local unions of congregations. In many cases where congregations will not unite a minister is placed over them for three years. Reports in the press indicate that there is not very much love lost between congregations that should be united in the big Church. A great deal was said by the men who engineered the Union of the disgrace of so many churches in sparsely populated districts and it was maintained that the Union would make an end of this. But we leave it with sensible men to say which is the more disgraceful—many churches or congregations which by profession are one, bickering in senseless quarrels and making sport to the unbelieving world. There are too many of these quarrels among a people who pride themselves on their broadmindedness and charity. The press though reporting many of them does not exhaust the list.
Manse Fellowship Dramatic Club.—The following advertisement appeared in one of the Glasgow weeklies: “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” is the title of a play to be produced by the Manse Fellowship Dramatic Club in the Royal Institute Hall, Glasgow, on Friday and Saturday, the 7th and 8th December. This club is composed of the sons and daughters of ministers, and divinity students, and the performance is in aid of their benevolent fund.” Things have come to a low state when such an advertisement is possible. What can one expect of divinity students who spend their spare time as actors. Satan has a firmer hold on the Scottish churches than one would like to believe.