THE SPIRIT OF DISRUPTION.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR."] SIE,—In your issue of January 28th, you quote a story, told at Oxford by the Warden of Merton, of a Free Church minister who once offered up the prayer,—" 0 Lord! pour out upon us more abundantly the spirit of disruption." Substitute "the Dis- ruption" for "disruption," and I have heard the prayer a hundred times. It did not mean, however, what Mr. Brodrick imagines. The Disruption was a season of religious earnestness, and men were specially willing at that time to make sacrifices for their religious convictions. In the years which succeeded, and when the reaction was beginning to be felt, it was not unusual to hear ministers put up the petition that they and their flocks might receive anew the "spirit of the Disruption,"—viz., the spirit of zeal and self-sacrifice which prevailed during the
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