It has oversight of all the congregations within its bounds; hears references from kirk-sessions or appeals from individual members; sanctions the formation of new congregations; superintends the education of students for the ministry; stimulates and guides pastoral and evangelistic work; and exercises discipline over all within its bounds, including the ministers.
The general assembly reviews all the work of the Church; settles controversies; makes administrative laws; directs and stimulates missionary and other spiritual work; appoints professors of theology; admits to the ministry applicants from other churches; hears and decides complaints, references and appeals which have come up through the inferior courts; and takes cognizance of all matters connected with the Church's interests or with the general welfare of the people.
The partial asphyxiation or suffocation stimulates the protoplasm to set up a new and perhaps supplementary series of decompositions, which result in the liberation of energy just as do those of the respiratory process.
The action of the sun's rays stimulates the cells of the skin to increase the pigment as a protection to the underlying tissues, e.g.
Lastly, the restriction to aniconic worship saved them from much superstition, for there is nothing which so much stimulates the growth of a mythology as the manufacture of idols.
