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 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY Of 
 CAUfORMIA 
 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 .63 
 
 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 ~- K \
 
 PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBK, TANFIELD, 
 FOR 
 
 T. & T. CLAKK. EDINBURGH. 
 
 t/indon: simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, kf.nt, and co. limited. 
 
 new york : charles sckibner's sons. 
 
 toronto : the willard tilacj depository.
 
 THE 
 
 FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND 
 
 HER 
 
 ORIGIN, FOUNDERS 
 
 AND 
 
 TESTIMONY 
 
 By PETER BAYTJE, LL.D. 
 
 AtfTJieftOF 
 'THE CHRISTIAN LIFE" " THE LIFE OF HUGH MILLER " ETC. ETC 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 
 T. & T. CLARK, 38 GEORGE STREET 
 
 1894
 
 PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 TT has been to me a source of deeper satisfaction than 
 I can express, that surviving friends of the Disrup- 
 tion time, and not a few Free Churchmen of the highest 
 eminence and authority, have assured me that I had 
 in this volume struck a chord to which many hearts 
 in Scotland have vibrated. I rejoice without measure 
 that the emphasis with which I lay the accent on the 
 spiritual independence of the Church, under Christ her 
 Head, as the true doctrine of Christian Catholicity, 
 held by the Churches of the Reformation in protest 
 against the narrower theories of the Roman, Greek, 
 and Erastian Churches, and in antithesis to Catharist 
 pride and Donatist isolation, has met with some 
 enthusiasm of response in England as well as in Scot- 
 land. I am very much mistaken indeed if there is 
 not, among the evangelical communities of England, a 
 considerable poignancy of yearning towards that fellow- 
 ship, that unity, that sense of Christian sympathies and 
 a common Church life, which glows with divine warmth
 
 VI PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 and beauty in Paul's Letter to the Ephesians. What 
 is known as the Eitschlian school of theology, with 
 its fresh insistence on the Protestant doctrine of the 
 Kingdom of Christ, which has come so rapidly to the 
 front of late in Germany, is noteworthy as a sign of 
 the time, in connection with movements in Protestant 
 Britain towards a more distinct realisation, under many 
 forms, and with forest-like freedom, of Catholic concord. 
 
 The Free Church, while standing firm to the main 
 body of Catholic doctrine, has reawakened to the idea, 
 not unfamiliar to Knox and Calvin, that theological 
 formularies require perennial revision, and has not 
 scrupled to let a ray of nineteenth century light fall 
 upon the venerable standards of Westminster. In 
 preparing the first edition of the present volume, which 
 was done with great haste, I had no opportunity to 
 touch upon this phase of Free Church history, which, 
 in the course of half a century, has naturally become 
 important. It was, however, my happy fate to be 
 present, something less than twenty years after the 
 Disruption, on one of those occasions when the spirit 
 of the new and the spirit of the old first looked 
 upon each other in the General Assembly of the Free 
 Church. 
 
 An alarm had arisen in the West — always dis- 
 tinguished for vivacious unrest, combined with pious 
 aspiration — that heterodoxy, in singular metaphysical 
 forms, had shown itself among the students of the
 
 rREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. vii 
 
 Free Church College in Glasgow. Professor Gibson 
 was much puzzled and seriously terror-struck, and Dr. 
 Begg, whose ideas of pulpit practicality were strict, 
 and sympathy with metaphysical verdancy limited, 
 brought all the pith and power of his eloquence to 
 heighten the impression which Dr. Gibson had made 
 upon the Assembly. A sense of painfulness and 
 spectrality pervaded the atmosphere. Gloom sat upon 
 all faces, the grave anxiety being particularly marked on 
 that of the Earl of Dalhousie. At this moment a young 
 man, with light golden hair and general aspect of calm 
 brightness, like a figure out of a Daniel vision, appeared 
 in the midst, and drew upon himself all eyes. He 
 spoke with remarkable clearness, but with a minimum 
 of noise, and with no more excitement than goes 
 with a gentle wind in spring. As his words flowed 
 on, it was felt that, as in a transformation scene, 
 the whole situation changed. The respected Professor 
 Gibson and the sharply logical Dr. Begg, cased 
 in the panoply of their own mature orthodoxy, had 
 been unable, he gently suggested, to sympathise with 
 the eccentricities of growing minds. A more recent 
 student might recognise in these speculations of the 
 sprouting sages of Glasgow one more illustration of 
 that confident prowess, that genial puissancy, where- 
 with metaphysicians of a certain age commonly under- 
 take to conquer that unconquerable difficulty, the 
 origin of evil. The speaker was Mr. Eainy, who had
 
 viii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 suddenly become famous in the Church as the successor 
 of Dr. Gordon. 
 
 I have the most vivid recollection of the change, 
 visible as the illumination that follows in the wake 
 of a cloud-shadow moving across a landscape, which 
 accompanied his words. The darkness went. The light 
 came. The gloom rose from every brow. The face 
 of Dalhousie became actually radiant with acquiescence, 
 relief, admiration. The difficulty had vanished ; and 
 from that hour the young mind of the Church put its 
 trust in the new leader. The students of Glasgow, 
 whose posturings and puissant strokes and audacious 
 battle-cries in their conflict with the old Dragon of 
 Wantley, the old origin of evil, had shocked Gibson, 
 startled Begg, amazed Dalhousie, and driven many good 
 ladies almost into convulsions, became, in due time, 
 efficient ministers of the Free Church. 
 
 In this spirit, and for many a year under the same 
 
 leadership, may all the difficulties of the Free Church 
 
 be vanquished ! 
 
 P. B. 
 
 May 1894.
 
 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 PEOFESSOE GIBB and I have been friends since we 
 were schoolfellows in Aberdeen in 1843, and it is in 
 no small measure owing to his encouragement, and the 
 sympathy and furtherance of Professor Salmond, that this 
 volume sees the light. The authorities on which I rely 
 are sufficiently indicated as I proceed, special acknowledg- 
 ments being due to the standard work on the Conflict 
 by Dr. Eobert Buchanan. I studied theology in the 
 New College in Cunningham's time, but never applied 
 for licence, or was ordained. When Candlish was in 
 summer quarters with his family at Kilcreggan in 1856, 
 I became intimately acquainted with him. The book falls 
 far short of what I hoped it might be, but I offer it to my 
 brothers and sisters of the Free Church of Scotland as an 
 expression, sincere though inadequate, of the interest 
 taken by me in the Jubilee, and of the affection, pride, 
 and gratitude with which I look upon this branch of the 
 Eeformed Catholic Church. 
 
 Paul thought that he had been specially raised up to 
 do apostolic work in calling the Gentiles. Calvin thought 
 that he and Luther had been specially raised up to do 
 apostolic work in unveiling the Holy Catholic Church, 
 obscured by worldliness and superstition. We Free 
 Churchmen are justified in holding that the group of 
 extraordinary men, who led the Church out of Bondage in 
 1843, were similarly fitted and appointed to do apostolic 
 work. Let us not imagine that theirs was not a true 
 inspiration, or that we are not under sacred obligation to 
 have regard to it, because it was bounded by the limit of 
 Scripture. 
 
 They would have rejoiced exceedingly to see the
 
 X PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 Church of Scotland formally reconstructed, but they 
 held, one and all, that the condition on which alone 
 modern States and statesmen contemplate Establishment, 
 namely, the spiritual subordination of the Church to the 
 State, makes the acceptance of Establishment a sin. 
 Prior to 1843, the Church of Scotland was the only 
 State Church in Christendom which Cunningham and 
 Candlish recognised as placed upon a basis which Chris- 
 tians could scripturally defend. By an act of usurpation 
 on the part of the Court of Session, connived at by the 
 British Parliament, the supreme spiritual jurisdiction of 
 the Church of Scotland, bestowed upon her by Christ, 
 and recognised as hers in the Treaty of Union between 
 England and Scotland, was violated. When soft-hearted 
 people pleaded for mild measures with the schismatic 
 Presbyters of Strathbogie, and referred to the oath of 
 allegiance which had preceded their vows of ordination, 
 Cunningham pointed out that their oath of allegiance 
 was to a constitutional sovereign, and could not pledge 
 them to violate the constitution. The oath of allegiance 
 could not pledge any man to pay taxes not granted by 
 Parliament; and Queen Victoria, said Cunningham, had 
 no more constitutional right to exercise ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction north of the Tweed, than to raise money at 
 her will and pleasure. If Cunningham was wrong, then 
 cadit qucstio; the Free Church is a ludicrous mistake. 
 But it is absolutely indubitable that Cunningham was 
 right. There is at this hour no authority on the other 
 side. The Confession of Faith is embodied in the Treaty 
 of Union ; and the O'Connell is not born, and never will 
 be born, who can drive coach or curricle through the 
 memorable and glorious clause in which, mainly through 
 the influence of Scotsmen, the spiritual independence 
 of the Church stands enrolled in the Westminster Con- 
 fession of Faith. But the Treaty of Union has not been 
 formally repealed. You cannot ask Parliament to re- 
 enact it. You cannot well ask Parliament to pass a 
 law promising not to violate it in future. You want 
 no freedom or jurisdiction beyond those which Christ 
 has bestowed. The only course, therefore, that seems
 
 FREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. XI 
 
 at once rational and Christian for the Presbyterians of 
 Scotland, is to proceed with their movements towards 
 union on grounds pertaining to the Church and the 
 country, leaving- the State entirely out of consideration. 
 If any Presbyterians in Scotland or elsewhere hold that 
 it was the State that appointed the Lord Jesus Head of 
 the Church, and that therefore the officers of the Church 
 are at liherty to ordain and depose in the name and by 
 authority of the State, they are in schism, — that is all. 
 Let it be ascertained, then, to begin with, whether 
 Presbyterians of all branches in Scotland agree in 
 holding the doctrine of the Headship. 
 
 In 1856, Candlish said that the Established Church 
 of Scotland was thirteen years old, while the Free Church 
 dated from 15G0. This was, in an obvious sense, true. 
 But there is a sense in which the Free Church was born 
 in 1843, and it is a sense which ought to be kept in 
 mind at the Jubilee. It is no far-fetched or paradoxical 
 statement that, ere 1843, the Church of Scotland had 
 become too Scottish : too much, that is to say, a merely 
 local and national Church. In the sixteenth century, 
 under the influence of the cosmopolitan Knox and of 
 the colossal Calvin, whose word, teste Hooker, was law 
 through all the Eeformed Churches, she shook off the 
 errors of the old Eomish Kirk, and arose refreshed as 
 one of the sisterhood of Eeformed Churches. In the 
 seventeenth, eighteenth, and part of the nineteenth 
 centuries, though she never quite forgot her catholicity, 
 she had, without knowing it, dwindled into a narrower 
 Church than that of Knox and Henderson. In 1843 
 she was called once more to go forward, — to realise that 
 the world was her field, — to take note that the Church 
 of Scotland is not mentioned in the New Testament, nor 
 even the Church of Galilee, but that the Church of 
 Christ has marching orders until the planet be filled 
 with the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea. It 
 is for the Free Church of Scotland, bringing from her 
 treasuries things new as well as old, and old as well as 
 new, to recall the sympathies and sentiments of those 
 days when John Knox and the bishops of the Church of
 
 xii rREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 
 
 Edward VI. were engaged in one enterprise of Reform ; 
 and when English theologians, essentially Presbyterian, 
 were hewing out the Articles of the Church of England 
 from the Latin of Calvin. 
 
 The Evangelicals of the Church of England — and 
 there are millions of them — detest sacerdotalism, believe 
 in the Real Presence only in the sense of Christ in the 
 souls of His people, and are essentially Presbyterian. 
 But they have no voice. They are spirits in prison. 
 They make pitiful appeal to the Civil Law, and receive 
 their reward in decisions like the Lincoln judgment. 
 From time to time some Bible Christian finds that he 
 can bear it no longer, and writes to his bishop, as the 
 Rev. Charles Stirling, of New Maiden, wrote to the 
 Bishop of Rochester, last November, that he must resign 
 connection with an Established Church whose " com- 
 munion tables are turned into 'altars,' her ministers 
 into ' sacrificing priests,' her churches into ' mass-houses,' 
 and with auricular confession inculcated, practised, and 
 where possible enforced." Meanwhile the Free Church 
 of Ireland, Episcopalian but Reformed, finding that in 
 some church a cross had been placed, or was to be 
 placed, immediately behind the communion table, dis- 
 allowed and prohibited even so much of will-worship. 
 Now I have no manner of doubt that John Knox would 
 have been ardently in sympathy both with Mr. Stirling 
 and the Free Church of Ireland, and that, if sacer- 
 dotalism and Erastianism were away, he would have 
 entered cordially into communion with Episcopalian 
 Churches. 
 
 In my humble but earnest opinion, the part provi- 
 dentially assigned to the Free Church, in connection 
 with her Jubilee, is chiefly this — to initiate a Reformed 
 Catholic League, putting no questions about ecclesiastical 
 names, or limitary distinctions, open to Presbyterians, Con- 
 gregationalists, Episcopalians, Methodists, and stipulating 
 only that their law is the Bible, and that their Head is 
 Christ. p -g 
 
 May 1893.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAUE 
 
 The Challenge, 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 Glimpses of Origins, 6 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 The "Little Kingdom," 22 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 The Evangelical Revival— "Tamson's Men," . . .36 ^'- «*»*» v 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 Thomson in a Characteristic Attitude, . . . .42 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 A Sudden Change, 48 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 Non-Intrusion, 53 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 The Veto Act, ;"3
 
 XLV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PA OR 
 
 The Chapel Ministers, . 06 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 Chalmers at Work, 75 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 Chalmers at Plat, . . 88 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 The Resurgent Church — The Sudden Storm — Auchter- 
 
 arder, .......... 92 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 Preparing for the Fray, . . . . . . .109 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Lord Brougham in fine Form, . . . . . .116 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 The Church takes up her Position — A New Leader, . 120 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Agitation deepening — The "Witness," . . . 133 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 The Rise of Candlish, 143 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 The Dean of Faculty, 151 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 The Church or the Court of Session, . . . .158
 
 CONTENTS. XV 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 PACE 
 
 Law and Gospel — Tiie Lethendy Case, . . . .162 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 Law and Gospel — The Reel of Bogie, . . . .169 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 Law and Gospel — Marnocii, 178 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 The Assembly of 1S41 — Patronage, 184 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 The Moderates Strike their Flag, 1S8 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 The Scottish Hildebbrand, ....... 192 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Guthrie, 202 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 Candlish in Shoals and Quicksands, 216 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 LoPvD Melbourne again, ....... 224 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 The Claim of Rights, 229 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 FORECASTINGS OF TIIE CONVOCATION, . . . . .242 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 The Convocation, 250
 
 xvi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 PACK 
 
 The Court of Session's last Triumphs 266 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 The Debate in the Commons — An imaginary Speech by 
 
 Guthrie, ......... 273 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 Thank God ! they come, they come ! 297 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 The Queen's Letter, 305 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 The Free Church, 308 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 The Testimony, 313 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 The Sustentation Fund, . . . . . . .318 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 The Missionaries, 325 
 
 CHAPTER XL. 
 Royal Chalmers, 331 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 Cunningham, Scholar and Controversialist, . . . 334 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 Candlish and Union — James Hamilton, .... 339
 
 THE 
 
 FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 ZQe Cflaffenge. 
 
 THE greatest of the men who, with more or less of 
 arbitrariness, may be marked off as a group, and 
 named by pre-eminence the Founders of the Free Church 
 of Scotland, was Thomas Chalmers. A shining figure, 
 with a moral radiancy about him that conveyed to noble 
 natures, though not of enthusiastic temperament, as 
 notably to Jeffrey, a suggestion of majesty approaching 
 to inspiration. Strength and tenderness, decision and 
 sympathy, poetry and prose, were in him singularly if not 
 uniquely blended. He was an early lover of Keble's poetry, 
 — a fact which, if we think of it, will in his position mean 
 much. But, indeed, it was a part, magna pars, of his 
 originality to combine into living and harmonious unity 
 what one might call polar opposites. Aglow with spiritual 
 ardour, moving always in the light of a heavenly ideal, he 
 was yet passionately practical. He soared in spirit with 
 Keble round the whole circle of the Christian year, and
 
 2 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 he would have won Bailie Nicol Jarvie's heart by dis- 
 cussing methods and measurements, ways and means. 
 He believed in Churches as incarnations of Christ ; he 
 believed in Churches as stone walls and as State Estab- 
 lishments. His name summons up to the imagination 
 all that is best in the dream or in the reality of State 
 Churches : their dignity, their comparative repose of in- 
 tellect and feeling ; their order, their permanence ; their 
 division of the vineyard, the world, into separate parochial 
 portions, so that none may escape the labourer's eye, so 
 that to each and all of them may be brought down the 
 sunbeams and the dews of God. But if no man ever 
 appreciated more highly than he the commodiousness, 
 comeliness, and utility of an Established Church, no 
 man ever laid it down as a more imperious necessity that 
 the Church should be free and not in bondage, alive and 
 not dead. 
 
 In the spring of 1838 we find Chalmers delivering a 
 series of lectures in defence of State Establishments of 
 religion in the metropolis of England. The great world 
 was moved beyond what it is easy for the present genera- 
 tion to imagine. Hanover Square Rooms were thronged 
 with a glittering crowd, ■ — members of the House of 
 Commons, barons, earls, marquises, dukes, one of these 
 being of the Blood Royal. Chalmers had always been 
 chivalrously courteous in his references to the Church of 
 England, and nine Anglican prelates now hung upon his 
 lips. He counselled them to quit the plea of " exclusive 
 apostolical derivation," and, depending on the realities and 
 practicalities of Christian beneficence, to make themselves 
 standard-bearers in the sacred enterprise of diffusing
 
 THE CHALLENGE. 3 
 
 throughout the families of England " those waters of life 
 which can alone avail for the healing of the nation." The 
 words might have penetrated to John Henry Newman, as 
 he sat bodeful at Oxford, agonised with the suspicion 
 that his adored Church of England, instead of being an 
 integral part of the Holy Catholic Church, would turn 
 out after all to be a mere national and political institu- 
 tion. 
 
 But it was not the Church of England, much as he 
 agreed with its Bible party, highly as he honoured its 
 Shaftesburys, dearly as he prized its capabilities of secur- 
 ing for the poor the ministrations of the rich, that 
 Chalmers took as the type and model of those ecclesi- 
 astical establishments whieh he championed and loved. 
 It was a Church that had never sought to bask in the 
 glitter of baronial coronets, but which, whether in friendly 
 alliance with the State or hunted like David as a part- 
 ridge, had maintained her spiritual independence and 
 asserted her right to govern herself by the law of her 
 heavenly King. He claimed, indeed, on behalf of the 
 Church of Scotland, no exclusive derivation from the 
 apostles, no sacerdotal privilege, no superiority of a 
 clerical caste above the body of Christians; but he treated 
 it as indisputable that, in spiritual matters, she was as 
 autocratic as the State itself. 
 
 Chalmers did not seem to have the slightest shyness 
 or dubiety in laying this view of the Established Church 
 of Scotland before his audience. He treated it as some- 
 thing for which an intelligent English audience might 
 be held to be prepared ; a matter of acknowledged 
 fact, historically blazoned, and familiar to educated
 
 4 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 men. " We own," lie said, " no Head of the Church 
 but the Lord Jesus." " There is not one thing 
 which the State can do to our independent and inde- 
 structible Church but strip her of her temporalities." 
 " She was as much a Church in her clays of suffering as 
 in her days of outward security and triumph ; when a 
 wandering outcast, with nought but the mountain breezes 
 to play around her, and nought but the caves of the 
 earth to shelter her, as now, when admitted to the bowers 
 of an Establishment. The magistrate might withdraw his 
 protection, and she might cease to be an Establishment 
 any longer ; but in all the high matters of sacred and 
 spiritual jurisdiction, she would be the same as before. 
 With or without an Establishment, she, in these, is the 
 unfettered mistress of her doings. The king by himself, 
 or by his representative, might be the spectator of our 
 .proceedings ; but what Lord Chatham said of the poor 
 man's house is true in all its parts of the Church to 
 which I have the honour to belong — ' In England every 
 man's house is his castle : not that it is surrounded with 
 walls and battlements — it may be a straw-built shed : 
 every wind of heaven may whistle round it ; every 
 element of heaven may enter it ; but the king cannot — 
 the king dare not.' " 
 
 At this point Chalmers reached that climax of orator- 
 ical vehemence which recalled to learned observers what 
 they had read of Demosthenes, or what Cicero says of 
 the tempest-like, torrent-like power of supreme oratory. 
 Eye-witnesses have spoken of the almost convulsive 
 working of Chalmers's features on such occasions, the 
 eyes gleaming as with liquid fire. His magnificent
 
 THE CHALLENGE. 5 
 
 audience, as if moved by a spell, rose by a common im- 
 pulse and gazed upon him. Confident as he was of his 
 position and foothold, — ardent as was the assentieiit 
 sympathy of his aristocratic and hierarchical hearers, — 
 he had practically uttered a challenge to which the 
 answer was given at the Disruption.
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 (Bftmpses of btis%ns, 
 
 " ~WfE> own no head of the Church but the Lord Jesus." 
 ' " Did Chalmers, when he referred to this as a 
 differentiating mark and chief note of the Church of Scot- 
 land, indulge in one of those generalities of Christian 
 sentiment that are too vague to be available for purposes 
 of practical definition ? Assuredly not. Those who have 
 known Scotland and the Church of Scotland best have 
 been on this point of the same mind with Chalmers. 
 Knox, Henderson, Melville knew the character of their 
 Church, and Queen Elizabeth and the Stuarts made no 
 mistake about it. "When Thomas Carlyle pronounced the 
 white heat of enthusiasm into which his countrymen rose 
 in their fidelity to Christ's Crown and Covenant to have 
 been the main influence in forming the national character 
 of Scotland, he was not misled by a sonorous phrase or 
 a symbolic pageant. It will be indispensable for us to 
 look somewhat closely into this matter. 
 
 The Reformation, it is allowed on all hands, was in 
 Scotland a movement among the great body of the people. 
 The Bible in the vernacular tongue entered early from
 
 GLIMPSES OF ORIGINS. 7 
 
 England, and between all sections of what may be called 
 the Bible party in England and in Scotland there has 
 been, since the middle of the sixteenth century, beneath 
 superficial differences, a profound sympathy. As against 
 the Papacy, the statesmen Eeformers who sat about 
 the Council-board of Edward VI., and the preaching 
 Eeformers who cradled the Church of Scotland, were 
 cordially at one. Neither in England nor in Scotland 
 was there at that time a passionate preference for or a 
 passionate decision against Episcopacy. The sentiment was 
 then as good as universal, both in Great Britain and on 
 the Continent, among those on the side of the Befornia- 
 tion, that the sacerdotalism of Borne ought to be abjured, 
 and that Episcopacy, if retained at all in the Eeformed 
 Church, should be little or nothing more than a superin- 
 tendency among equals for purposes of order. 
 
 But on one point the Eeformers of Scotland set their 
 faces as flint against the statesmen Eeformers of England. 
 They had learned, either directly from the New Testament, 
 or from that apostle of the second stage of the Eeformation, 
 who was its Augustine and its Cyprian in one, that, in 
 rejecting the Papacy, they did not go beyond the pale of 
 the Holy Catholic Church, or pass out of allegiance to her 
 sole King; and Head. More and Fisher could not have 
 written in their blood a darker sentence upon Henry 
 VHP's sin of assuming the headship over Christ's Church 
 than Calvin supplied them in the word by which he 
 characterised it, " blasphemy." But for his fear to make 
 himself a partaker in that sin, John Knox might prob- 
 ably have accepted the bishopric which Edward pressed 
 upon him. Placed by the providence of God between
 
 8 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the discredited Catholicism of the Papacy on this hand 
 and the Erastianism of the English monarchs on that, 
 the Beformers of Scotland found it assigned to them 
 as a sacred duty to vindicate, exalt, bear witness to, the 
 Crown Eights of the Bedeemer, the privileges, powers, 
 duties of the Holy Catholic Church, the visible kingdom 
 of Christ upon earth. 
 
 Such was the august part which the Church of Scot- 
 land, " the Presbyterian Church, so proud and stubborn," 
 as Hallam calls her, undertook. She undertook it in 
 express remembrance and recognition, amid her own 
 troubles and while the dust of the great Preformation 
 earthquake was in the air, of the share of " all nations " 
 in the Catholic Church. She undertook it — this has 
 been fairly admitted even by her adversaries — in a spirit 
 of antique Christian superiority to the things of this 
 world, uninfluenced by the spectacle of the glittering 
 emoluments that reconciled the Church of England to 
 Erastian bondage. Christ and the Bible,— these were 
 the watchwords of the Church of Scotland. The Church 
 claimed no right to add to Scripture, nor did she profess 
 to transfer from the individual soul, by any infallibility 
 of her own, the responsibility of ascertaining the meaning 
 of Scripture. But in all spiritual matters the Bible was 
 her law, and in framing her own bye-laws in spiritual 
 matters, her appeal was to Scripture alone. " The Lord 
 Jesus Christ, as King and Head of His Church, hath 
 therein appointed a government in the hand of Church 
 officers distinct from the civil magistrate." The Head- 
 ship of Christ means, in one word, that Christ is to be 
 all in all to His Church, and that she, clad only in
 
 GLIMPSES OF ORIGINS. 9 
 
 spiritual armour, and bearing none but spiritual weapons, 
 is to conquer the planet in His name. 
 
 We cannot do anything more practical in regard to 
 this or any other Christian doctrine than ask what coun- 
 tenance does it derive from Christ. And it must be 
 granted that the doctrine of the Headship bears this test 
 well. From first to last, the Divine Personality, whose 
 presence is the greatest of New Testament miracles, 
 identifies His work with the foundation of a kingdom. 
 His gospel, as announced in what is now generally 
 regarded as the earliest of the evangelical records, that 
 of St. Mark, is the gospel of the kingdom. So much 
 was this a matter of course, that even Nathanael under- 
 stood it : " Thou art the King of Israel." It was the 
 Divine kingship that the Apostle Teter attested, on a 
 cardinal occasion, in response to Christ ; and it was upon 
 this truth, to wit, the truth of His kingship, that He 
 promised to plant His Church. In that truth — His 
 kingship — would lie the secret of her strength. While she 
 loved and exalted her King— while His Spirit irradiated 
 her tabernacles — while she continued to advance to ever 
 new conquests in His name — the gates of Hades should 
 not prevail against her. 
 
 That the kingdom thus announced was spiritual, and 
 not without mystery, cannot be denied. Peter, overjoyed 
 when he first caught the sunrise gleam of it in the words 
 of Christ, was perplexed and offended to learn that, after 
 all, it was bound up with suffering, with sorrow, with self- 
 sacrificing pain. Officious followers, who would take Christ 
 by force to make Him a king, received no encouragement. 
 An attempt to bring Him in as -a decider, in cases of dis-
 
 10 THE TREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 pute as to property, drew from Him a distinct disclaimer 
 of right or obligation to interfere with the ordinary course 
 of civil and criminal administration : " Who made me a 
 judge or a divider over you ? " Physical force was indis- 
 pensable for that. And when His amazed and no doubt 
 bitterly disappointed adherents found that He did not 
 dispose of the officers who came to arrest Him by calling 
 down fire on them from heaven, He told Peter to put up 
 his sword into its sheath, and calmly surrendered to His 
 captors. 
 
 Pilate would have learned, were it but from the 
 clamours of the crowd, that Jesus was accused of blas- 
 phemy in claiming to be the Son of God, and of treason 
 in claiming to be the king of Israel. Prom his first 
 questioning of the accused, he had probably arrived at a 
 confused notion that he had to deal with some singular 
 Jewish fanatic, and it seems impossible to doubt that the 
 personality of Christ had made an impression on him. 
 He therefore tried in an ineffectual way to turn the 
 crowd in His favour. But the renewed cries about the 
 kingship startled him, and returning to Christ's presence, 
 "Art thou then," he asked, "a king?" To this the 
 answer was explicit, " I am a King. To this end 
 was I born, and for this came I into the world." The 
 words immediately following, if we must take them with 
 rigorous literalism as they stand, refer to a general 
 witness - bearing, on Christ's part, to " the truth." But 
 nothing is more distinctive of the manner of Christ than 
 His sound logic, His avoidance of abstractions and 
 generalities, and His specification of concrete particulars. 
 Every rabbi and every philosopher professed to teach
 
 CUMrSES OF ORIGINS. 1 1 
 
 truth, but did not claim a kingdom. Jt appears to lie in 
 
 the highest degree probable, therefore, that His reference 
 was to " this truth," namely, the truth that Pilate had 
 expressed, i.e. the truth of the kingship. At all events, 
 we have the declaration before Pilate that the object 
 of His coming into the world was to establish a 
 kingdom. 
 
 It certainly need in no case surprise us that the truth 
 connected with Christ's kingship should have perplexed 
 Pilate, for spiritual kingship, resting on no visible power 
 or pageant, might well be a mystery to the servant of 
 Borne. Nineteen centuries, however, of Christian civil- 
 isation have taught mankind that spiritual force is no 
 vain imagination, no vapour of a heated brain. Where, 
 to-day, are all the kingdoms of the world, that stood 
 strong on that evening when Pilate broke impatiently 
 away from Jesus Christ, without waiting to hear what 
 kind of truth could be bound up with His crazy 
 kingdom? The spiritual power is the mightiest of 
 powers, whether in the individual breast or in the society 
 of men. And this at least is certain, that in the course 
 of nineteen centuries the spiritual kingship of Christ, 
 though it has turned into new channels the whole 
 current of civilisation, has but given earnest of its 
 potentiality, and promise of its ultimate conquests. 
 Having done so much, since He told Pilate He had been 
 born to be a King, the Church and the world may trust 
 Him to do more. And all that is wise and thought- 
 ful in the intelligence of our time, both religions and 
 scientific, agrees on one point with those Peformers 
 and Covenanters who rejoiced in Christ as their King,
 
 12 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 namely, that He was and is the epitome of Christianity, 
 and that the Church is likely to be of use to the 
 world in proportion to the sincerity, simplicity, and 
 efficiency with which she aims at realising His kingdom 
 upon earth. 
 
 Since, then, He by no means left the truth as to His 
 kingdom in the inchoate state which Pilate imagined, 
 it will be well to ask whether anything can be learned 
 from Him with precision upon the subject. 
 
 It is impossible to read the Gospels intelligently once 
 without perceiving, and if we read them fifty times we 
 shall be only the more firmly persuaded, that Jesus 
 Christ addressed Himself to man's spirit, working from 
 the spirit outward, and that He dealt with principles, 
 not with forms. Inflexible as adamant in matters of 
 principle, — " make the tree good," " sell all thou hast," 
 " ye cannot serve God and mammon," — He was flexile as 
 water in relation to methods, forms, non-essentials. His 
 words were spirit and life. " The flesh profiteth nothing." 
 Not institutions, but the spirit and life of institutions, 
 did He aim at renewing. Knowing human nature, 
 apprehending all the essential facts of human society, 
 He foresaw their possible modifications, and provided a 
 moral life, a spiritual truth, that might circulate through 
 them all. 
 
 Take this matter of His Church. Though not forget- 
 ful of the natural aptitude subsisting between new wine 
 and new bottles, He took, as if it were a matter of course, 
 the Hebrew synagogue as serving all essential purposes 
 required by Him in giving an object lesson on the 
 discipline of the Christian Ecclesia. Nothing could be
 
 GLIMPSES OF ORIGINS. 13 
 
 simpler than the whole matter as we have it traced, 
 with light but unerring touch, in the eighteenth chapter 
 of St. Matthew's Gospel. If Christian is offended with 
 Christian, — if the law of the brotherhood, the law of duty 
 and charity, seems to be broken, — the offended brother is, 
 first of all, to try personal remonstrance, obviously of as 
 quiet a kind as may be, with the offending brother. " If 
 he shall hear thee, thou hast gained thy brother." If he 
 turns a deaf ear, the method of informal remonstrance 
 is still to be persisted in ; but now the presence of two or 
 three more is invoked, so that kindly reason may soften 
 the obdurate one. If he still is perverse, then " tell it 
 unto the Church ; " and if he flouts the Church, " let him 
 be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican." 
 
 This is the utmost stretch of ecclesiastical discipline as 
 warranted by Christ. So long as the Christian brother- 
 hood, the Christian Church, is in this world, it is inevit- 
 able that the refusal of Christian fellowship, the treatment 
 of a man as a heathen or publican, will have indirect 
 effects. It is in the nature of the case impossible that 
 his social repute should remain unaffected. But, beyond 
 this necessary implication, the Church is not supplied 
 with an iota of force, whether her own or the State's, 
 wherewith to give effect to her withdrawal of spiritual 
 privileges. A heavenly sanction of the earthly decision 
 is promised, — that is all. Alas, how different would the 
 history of Christendom, Primitive, Popish, or Protest- 
 ant, have been had Christ's limits of discipline been 
 observed ! But though absolute renunciation of physical 
 force took place in the exercise of Christian discipline, 
 it was transacted directly under the Master's eye and
 
 14 THE FREE CHURCH Of SCOTLAND. 
 
 with intervention of none between Him and His Church. 
 " Verily I say unto yon, Whatsoever ye shall bind on 
 earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever ye 
 shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." To obey 
 Christ is the liberty of Christians. 
 
 Perfectly simple as Christ's sketch of discipline is, it 
 comprises by implication all that is essential to the 
 freedom and the autonomy of the Church. Is it not 
 obvious, even on grounds of common sense, that such a 
 society should be governed by a spiritual law of its own, 
 and not as a department of the political administration ? 
 The right to include or exclude members may be looked 
 upon as inherent in the very nature of free association. 
 We need not hesitate, then, to say— what has indeed 
 been generally held — that the opinion of Erastus, to the 
 effect that the Christian Church has no power of any 
 kind except what it derives from the State, is a mere 
 extravagance of flighty argumentation. It ought to be 
 distinctly realised that, even in the heyday of Moderate 
 ascendancy, the Church of Scotland always rejected, and 
 completely rejected, the flimsy speciosities of Erastianism. 
 Dr. George Hill, of St Andrews, one of the most illustrious 
 leaders of the party, and one who, by the candour of his 
 judgment and the comprehensiveness of his intellectual 
 glance, and his admirable lucidity and tolerance, would 
 have shed lustre upon any party, says of the Erastian 
 view, that " it seems impossible for any person whose 
 mind comprehends the whole subject, not to perceive 
 that the opinion is false." This golden candlestick of 
 Moderatism had no difficulty in realising the Church as 
 apart from and independent of the State. " As the
 
 GLIMPSES OP ORIGINS, 1 5 
 
 Church did exist before it was united with the State, it 
 may exist without any such union." " It will possess, in 
 this state of separation, when it can derive no aid from 
 civil regulations, all the authority which Christ meant to 
 convey through His apostles to their successors, and of 
 the exercise of which the apostles have left examples." 
 " When the Church receives the protection and counten- 
 ance of the Civil Power, she does not, by this alliance, 
 lose those rights and powers which are implied in Church 
 government as such." " If the Church, instead of deriv- 
 ing any benefit from the State, were opposed and 
 persecuted by the Civil Magistrate, it would be not only 
 proper, but necessary, to put forth of herself those powers 
 which, in more favourable circumstances, she chooses only 
 to exercise in conjunction with the State." In short, 
 " the power inherent in the nature of the Christian 
 society " is derived " from Divine institution and not 
 from civil regulation." No recognition of the independ- 
 ent spiritual jurisdiction of the Church could be more 
 unequivocal, nor is its validity in any measure im- 
 paired by the addition that, when arrangements as to 
 emolument are made between States and Churches, 
 the latter must take into consideration, in the exercise 
 of their jurisdiction, the views and requirements of the 
 former. 1 
 
 Among the principles which Christ enunciated as 
 absolutely binding on His followers — immutable amid the 
 wildest fantasies of superficial change — was that of their 
 equality among themselves. " All ye are brethren." 
 And since men will err in the application of principles, 
 1 Hill's Lectures, Book vi. cliap. iii.
 
 1G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 as well as from sheer ignorance of their existence, lie 
 explains His meaning still further : " Ye know that 
 they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles 
 exercise lordship over them ; and their great ones 
 exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be 
 among you ; but whosoever will be great among you, 
 shall be your minister : and whosoever of you will 
 be the chiefest, shall be servant of all." The Divine 
 wisdom of this appears first in its clear apprehension of 
 the indispensability of official subordination in all cases 
 of co-operative effort, in all forms of organised activity. 
 The man who cannot defer to, and take directions from, 
 his official superior, is an incurable, infra-human anarch. 
 
 But Christ not merely realises this necessity ; He 
 realises, in the second place, and provides against, the 
 tendency, which has manifested itself in all ages, of 
 official superintendence to pass into lordship. Hence 
 hereditary aristocracies and superstitiously reverenced 
 castes. It is impossible not to see in Christ's reference 
 to lordship amongst the Gentiles, a conclusive proof that 
 He had His eye upon these things. It is inconceivable 
 that one who was thus on His guard against the petri- 
 faction of officialism into caste and lordship, should 
 stamp Divine precedence upon one class of officials. As 
 the times altered, and the signs of the times, the grades 
 and forms and names of officialism might change, but 
 lordship was never to be allowed to emerge ; Christian 
 ecpaality was never, under whatever pretences of sanctity 
 or promises of advantage, to be compromised. 
 
 A Divine discernment of principles, a Divine oppor- 
 tunism — regard to circumstances of time, requirement, and
 
 GLIMPSES OF ORIGINS. 17 
 
 capability — in the application of principles ; such was the 
 method of Christ. Even upon His own extemporised 
 organisation of the Seventy He did not permit the mark 
 of perpetuity to rest. He dissolved and discarded it when 
 done with. The duty of oversight — call it episcopacy, 
 if any one likes — will remain as long as organised activity 
 remains. The gift of leadership is altogether invaluable 
 in action where large multitudes are engaged in common 
 operations, and the accompaniments of its exercise are 
 quickening and delightful ; but if, under stress of cir- 
 cumstance and by lapse of time, the true Christian 
 superintendency or episcopacy had become inextricably 
 involved, say, with the baronial lordship of feudalism, 
 might it not have been in closest accordance with the 
 spirit and method of Christ to divest it of its baronial 
 garnitures, and reduce it to the parity of Christian 
 brotherhood ? On this point the Church in which 
 Principal Hill was a leader, and of which Chalmers was 
 a defender, had been sensitively jealous, impressing 
 friends and foes alike with her insistence upon Presby- 
 terian parity. 
 
 And now we must touch, if but briefly, upon the 
 delicate and difficult question of the formation of the 
 pastoral tie between ministers and their flocks. Under 
 primitive, and what might be styled normal, conditions, 
 the act of constituting the pastoral relationship involves 
 harmonious co-operation between three parties, — the 
 congregation, the pastor, and the aggregate of congre- 
 gations. The pastor and the people must have mutual 
 suitability, and the sympathetic co-operation of the 
 aggregate of congregations, guaranteeing in so far as 
 
 2
 
 1 8 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 is practicable the quality of the pastor, comes in to 
 heighten the joy and to deepen the consecration. This 
 is simple, natural, and, as we should therefore have 
 expected, correspondent to the pattern shown in the 
 New Testament. The settlement having, on these 
 terms, taken place, the pastor remains to be an 
 " example to the flock," not a priest but a minister- 
 ing servant, the Christ in him responding to the Christ 
 in them. 
 
 But suppose now, that in course of time the beautiful 
 simplicity of the apostolic ideal has been marred, and 
 that the necessity of providing meat and raiment for 
 the pastor has gradually brought parish livings within 
 the circle of those things that rank as property. 
 This will produce modifications. The new elements, 
 hinted at by Principal Hill, introduced into the situation 
 by State connection and the system of patronage, will 
 tend to throw the spiritualities we have been speaking 
 of into the background, and to bring into view sundry 
 other things. Glancing into Lord Macaulay's biography, 
 one comes upon the following jotting from his journal 
 for May 5, 1859: "Glorious weather. A letter from 
 Lord John to say that he has given my brother John the 
 living of Aldingham, worth £1100 a year, in a fine 
 country, and amidst a fine population. Was there ever 
 such prosperity ? I wrote a few lines of warm thanks 
 to Lord John." Both Macaulay and Lord John Bussell 
 were professedly Christian if not exactly religious men, 
 and this is the approach they make to the New Testa- 
 ment ideal of the settlement of pastors. What a 
 transformation ! The Ecclesia, the spiritualities, tin 1
 
 GLIMPSES OF ORIGINS. 19 
 
 souls of the parishioners, seem to have vanished into 
 space, leaving as the sole reality £1100, to live on in 
 a glorious country, which the good Lord John takes out 
 of his waistcoat pocket and hands to his political sup- 
 porter. Principal Hill was eminently correct in believing 
 that the entrance of the mundane elements, money and 
 patron's property, would greatly complicate the settle- 
 ment of ministers. 
 
 But we, in closing this chapter, shall turn for a few 
 moments to John Knox, or rather to a distinguished 
 personal friend of John Knox's, to wit, John Calvin, who 
 — though, like every other great man of the Christian 
 centuries, he illustrated by his spots the spotlessness 
 of the heavenly Sun, and, while before his time in 
 indubitably remonstrating against the execution of 
 Servetus by fire, was only on a level with his time, far 
 below the level of Christ, in doing, as he did, his 
 very best to bring Servetus to death — possessed a rare 
 gift for wedding apostolic principle and precedent 
 to modern fact. The first and the essential require- 
 ment in a pastor, says Calvin, is the call of God. Of 
 this he ought himself to be conscious, but it is beyond 
 the scrutiny of the Church. On this last point, as 
 it is worth while to observe in passing, Calvin's views 
 have been misrepresented. " Calvinists," says Dr. New- 
 man, " make a sharp separation between the elect and 
 the world ; there is much in this that is cognate or 
 parallel to the Catholic doctrine ; but they go on to say, 
 as I understand them, very different from Catholicism, 
 — that the converted and the unconverted can be dis- 
 criminated by man." This betrays perfect ignorance of
 
 20 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Calvin and of the Keformed Catholic Church. Calvin 
 says in so many words that God keeps the secret of 
 those who are His to Himself. 1 One of the distinctly 
 blazoned notes of Churches of the Presbyterian order 
 is that they hold conversion to be a sacred mystery, 
 a secret between the individual breast and God, a 
 matter into which no human eye has a right to peer. 
 Accordingly, Calvin pronounces every Christian who has 
 not been proved guilty of open wickedness (aperta 
 nequitia) to be eligible for the office of presbyter or 
 bishop. 
 
 How, in the next place, was the pastor to be 
 appointed ? In rendering an answer, Calvin selects a 
 typical instance from the practice of the apostles. Paul 
 and Barnabas ordained presbyters in the Churches of 
 Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch. The general method 
 they adopted was that followed in the municipal pro- 
 ceedings of cities, Greek and Eoman, when officials were 
 elected. They presented the bishop or presbyter to the 
 Church, and the whole congregation testified their accept- 
 ance by uplifted hands : tola multitude, ut mos Grcecorum 
 in elcctionibus crat, manibus sublatis declarabat, quem habere 
 vellet. The Apostle Paul associated the people with 
 himself in the appointment of pastors ; and if he pre- 
 scribed this method to himself and Barnabas, we may, 
 thinks Calvin, be sure that he would not concede sole, 
 autocratic, or arbitrary power in the matter to Timothy, 
 Titus, or any one else. It is therefore according to God's 
 will that fit men should be appointed to charges " with 
 consent and approbation of the people," the election being 
 1 Insiitutio, Lib. iv. cap. i.
 
 GLIMPSES OF ORIGINS. 2 1 
 
 presided over by other pastors, who take care that 
 neither levity nor tumult nor anything unseemly should 
 dishonour the occasion, and who, by laying their hands 
 on the head of the pastor, perform the specific rite of 
 ordination. The imposition of hands is traced by Calvin 
 to the ancient Hebrew form of blessing, and to the 
 gesture of Christ in blessing little children. All reason- 
 able and brotherly, all home -like, heaven -like, and 
 beautiful. 1 
 
 1 Listilutio, Lib. iv. cap. iii.
 
 CHAPTEE III. 
 
 ZU "Zittte gtingfcom." 
 
 " rPHE little kingdom." This is Macatday's epithet for 
 -*- Scotland. There is in it perhaps some trace of 
 kindliness, but more of that cynical pungency, not to say 
 disdain, for their mother country, which Scotchmen of 
 the second generation are apt to acquire in England. 
 Magnitude and minitude, however, are not safe criteria 
 of importance to apply to lands or cities. Attica occu- 
 pied no great portion of the globe, and Judsea was a very 
 little kingdom. Scotland has played a part that wise 
 men will not overlook in the evolution of our most 
 modern civilisation. 
 
 But there is one thing above all others that makes it 
 difficult for Englishmen to understand Scotland, and for 
 Scotchmen to understand England. It is hardly too 
 much to say that the term " ecclesiasticism," or rather 
 the thing for which the word stands, is the centre of 
 entirely different associations and suggestions in England 
 from what it stands for in Scotland. From the days of 
 Wyclift'e's preachers at the latest, — from the day, we 
 might pretty confidently assert, if not earlier still, when
 
 THE " LITTLE KINGDOM." 23 
 
 Chaucer gave his astounding and now unmentionable 
 account of friars, — persons ecclesiastical have been, to 
 use a broad term, unpopular in England. The assertion 
 holds good impressively of the most popular and Radical 
 religionists of England to-day, for one of their foremost 
 representatives, the Rev. Guinness Eogers, prefers to 
 associate " the heroic age " of himself and those for 
 whom he speaks, with the keen, remonstrant opposition- 
 ism of the Donatists than with the acquiescence of the 
 Catholic Church. A national, vital, popular ecclesi- 
 asticism — an ecclesiasticism affording play to the nation's 
 brain and welling straight from its heart — is an idea 
 that never occurs to an Englishman. But this is what 
 has existed in Scotland, and given significance to the 
 history of Scotland. Buckle was an Englishman, Carlyle 
 was a Scot. Sitting cross-legged in his study, and noting 
 that ecclesiasticism was an extremely powerful thing 
 both in Scotland and in Spain, Buckle concluded without 
 hesitation that Scotchmen were, from cradle to grave, led 
 in the hand by ecclesiastics, and that paramount ecclesi- 
 asticism had in Scotland the same intellectually paralys- 
 ing effects as in Spain. Carlyle knew better. He 
 perceived that the ecclesiasticism of Scotland had been 
 a quickening leaven, a stimulating life, not a paralysing 
 virus. " Scotch literature and thought," said Carlyle, 
 " Scotch industry, James Watt, David Hume, Walter 
 Scott, Eobert Burns : I find Knox and the Reformation 
 acting in the heart's core of every one of these persons 
 and phenomena." These words of Carlyle may be said 
 to solve the riddle of Scotch history. " It did not strike 
 Buckle," says another writer, " that mummy-wheat might
 
 24 THE FREE' CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 be very good wheat, — ■ that a nation might develop 
 healthfully and strenuously, although the forms in which 
 it developed were, to a great extent, ecclesiastical." 
 It was in the second half of the sixteenth century, 
 which may in so much be figured to the imagina- 
 tion as the watershed of modern history, that the 
 ecclesiastics of Scotland became somewhat suddenly 
 transformed into tribunes of the people, and contributed 
 a great deal to start that river of political and general 
 progress which has continued to now in Scotland until 
 this day. 
 
 If there is one word which has for Englishmen a 
 sound as consonant to liberty — as suggestive of all that 
 is popular — as ecclesiasticism is the reverse, it is the 
 word " Parliament." In English history Parliament and 
 Church may be looked upon as, on the whole, conflict- 
 ing powers. And the Parliament has, for the immense 
 majority of Englishmen, been the more trusted of the 
 two. But the old Scottish Parliament was autocratic, 
 and had little connection with the body of the people. 
 And Buckle seems to have had no idea — nor does it 
 appear to have struck Carlyle, whose own idiosyncrasy 
 made him blind to that side of the matter — that one, 
 and a chief reason why the ecclesiasticism of Scotland 
 was popular and vitalising, lay in the fact that the Church 
 furnished Scotland with what was, to all intents and 
 purposes, a Parliament, and practically a most effective 
 Parliament. How true is that remark of Disraeli's, 
 occurring in the bright novel of his early manhood which 
 captivated Goethe, " With words we govern men." Call 
 a Parliament a "General Assemblv," and the cleverest
 
 THE "LITTLE KINGDOM." 25 
 
 Buckle, if a bit of a pedant, fails to detect what it 
 really is. 
 
 In the course of that curious and complicated his- 
 torical drama which worked itself out in Scotland in the 
 latter end of the sixteenth and the early part of the 
 seventeenth century, the General Assembly of the Church 
 gradually arose and grew into strength in Scotland, and 
 became, not in name but in fact, a Parliament of the 
 people. The people loved it for the simple reason 
 that it was their own. Every darling of the nation, 
 be he peer, be he peasant, could find his way into it. 
 It became the representative body of a spiritual democ- 
 racy, a republic none the less real that it was formally 
 ecclesiastical. The Scottish farmer and cottager might 
 there sit side by side with the foremost divines, and 
 with a sprinkling of the ablest noblemen and the 
 most acute and experienced lawyers of Scotland. From 
 the first it was popular, and at every critical junc- 
 ture in the subsequent history of the nation the feelings 
 and opinions of the great body of the Scottish people 
 could be better ascertained by consulting the General 
 Assembly than by consulting Parliament. It was, in 
 fact, a Parliament whose edicts had only an indirect 
 political significance, but which sent its roots into every 
 parish in Scotland, and touched all the most personal 
 concerns of the population, moral, social, and domestic. 
 It was by a highly remarkable series of coincidences 
 that the Church of Scotland came into a position 
 to play the memorable part in virtue of which, at 
 one and the same time, she secured her own spiritual 
 independence, and contributed, in a degree which
 
 26 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 it is hardly possible to over-estimate, to train the 
 people of Scotland in habits of civil and political 
 freedom. 
 
 The most cursory glance into the history of Scotland 
 discloses that, though under ordinary circumstances one 
 marked attribute of the people is gravity, yet, at intervals 
 at least, they are capable of intense paroxysms of enthusi- 
 asm. Such was that which, on the occasion before us, 
 originated in the preaching of a few earnest men, the 
 deaths of a few martyrs, and most of all the eager 
 drinking of undiluted Christianity from the wells, pre- 
 viously forbidden, of the New Testament. Like the 
 fabric of a vision, the old Eoman Catholic Kirk of Scot- 
 land vanished, and in its place we behold the Congrega- 
 tion. The clergy and the people outran their rulers, and 
 instead of waiting for a constitution from the Civil Power, 
 framed, in its essentials, the Constitution of the Church, 
 according to the principles of Christ applied to the pro- 
 vidential conditions of the time. The ardent " other 
 worldliness " — the pure spiritual passion — of the body of 
 Eeformers really facilitated the operations of the aristo- 
 cracy in robbing the Church. Proudly bold in asserting 
 their sole spiritual allegiance to Christ, the preachers 
 made no desperate clutch at the ample endowments of 
 the old Church, and presented no effectual resistance to 
 the dismantling of those baronial bishoprics, which, what- 
 ever pretences and veneers might be made use of, did 
 really introduce an alien influence and element into that 
 equality of the Christian brotherhood which had been 
 laid down as a principle by Christ. Poor as were the 
 preachers in worldly goods, their power began to be felt
 
 THE " LITTLE KINGDOM." 27 
 
 so soon as they made it practically known how they 
 interpreted the liberty which they claimed for the 
 Church, the visible Congregation, in Christ's name. They 
 demanded freedom for the pulpit, and they exercised 
 that freedom in rebuking King James and his nobles. 
 For words spoken in the pulpit, — spoken in capacity of 
 minister of Christ, whether in pulpit, Presbytery, or 
 General Assembly, — every Scottish pastor refused to give 
 account to king, council, or any court of civil or criminal 
 justice, until he had been first tried by the Church. 
 
 Who can fail to understand that, under these cir- 
 cumstances, an immense force of a popular nature — 
 an epoch-making organ of public opinion — would spring 
 into existence ? Scotland w T as then, from circumstances 
 that have been alluded to, drawn more prominently than 
 ever before or since into the evolution of world-history. 
 All the parties that were leading on the stage of Western 
 Europe had their representatives among the Scottish 
 hills. There the Guises held the threads of intrigue in 
 the interests of France. There the dark genius of Spain 
 plotted and devised and laid the train of its conspir- 
 acies. A strong and influential party took their clue 
 from England, a party in close connection with Queen 
 Elizabeth. And there was a plurality of Scottish parties, 
 each with a nuance of its own, — the party of the king, the 
 party of the nation, the party of the aristocracy, the 
 party of the Church. All these might be said to be in 
 some sense the party of the General Assembly. 
 
 James was no perfect king, though very far indeed 
 from the preposterous caricature of Macaulay. Casaubon, 
 as we may learn from Pattison's masterly biography,
 
 28 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 passed over from the court of Henry IV., in France, to 
 that of James, in England, to bear witness that he, the 
 finest Greek scholar in Europe, had passed from a mon- 
 arch who was an illiterate barbarian to one who was a 
 friendly and gentlemanly scholar. But James was none 
 the less likely for his scholarship to be irritated, at 
 the time preceding his accession to the English throne, 
 by the liberty with which, as he said, every Dick, 
 Tom, and Harry criticised his affairs in the pulpit. 
 Ministers of a republican Church, the preachers were 
 likely to be somewhat bold in their strictures upon 
 monarchy, and we need not be much surprised that 
 James should have suspected a flavour of treason in the 
 Iiev. Mr. Black's assertion from the pulpit that " kings 
 were devils' bairns." In point of fact, however, these 
 assertors of the liberty of the pulpit in the sixteenth 
 century were the pioneers of Milton in demanding the 
 liberty of the press in the seventeenth, and of the 
 editors and telegraphists of our own time. Neither the 
 liberty of the pulpit nor the liberty of the press has 
 been exercised in all instances without abuse. And it 
 is well to remember that, allowing for occasional ex- 
 travagances, the pulpit criticism which sometimes charmed 
 and sometimes infuriated James was in the main sound 
 and seasonable. Queen Elizabeth, the best judge then 
 living, was on the side of the preachers, and against the 
 voluble and veering king. Queen Elizabeth knew that 
 it was not possible to be on both sides in the quarrel 
 between papal and Protestant Christendom. The re- 
 pelling of the Armada was a practical business ; the 
 resistance of Spain involved decisive measures against
 
 THE "LITTLE KINGDOM." 29 
 
 those Popish lords and their followers who might make 
 things inviting for a landing by the Spaniard in Scot- 
 land. James, like his son, lacked backbone; and 
 Elizabeth, as well as the Scottish preachers, knew the 
 fact. Literally, however, and to very serious purpose, 
 the Presbyterians and their General Assembly formed, 
 in those days, part of the garrison of the island against 
 the Armada, and furnished for Scotland no ineffective 
 substitutes, both for a free press and a popular Parlia- 
 ment. We may now begin to appreciate the reasons 
 why the Church has been more of a people's institution 
 in Scotland than in England. 
 
 Another of those reasons was that the fervour of the 
 Reformation had burnt, one might say, out of the mind and 
 memory of the people of Scotland the old Romish con- 
 ception of the Church as constituted by the clergy. An 
 Englishman would as soon think of Parliament as super- 
 seding or extinguishing the nation, — putting itself for 
 the nation, — as a Scotchman would of the clerical class 
 styling itself a priesthood, and superseding the people. 
 In Scotland, from the days of Knox, a Church, 
 republican in form, combining congregational complete- 
 ness and parochial autonomy with synodical order, in 
 which all members, lay and clerical, are spiritually equal, 
 and the clergy are but the ministering servants of the 
 flock, has been the object of trust and affection. Seces- 
 sions have taken place because the Church has not 
 seemed to be true enough to her own original ideal. 
 In proportion to the fervency of faith and of re- 
 ligious enthusiasm among the people of Scotland, has 
 been, at any particular period, the warmth of their
 
 30 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 devotion to the Church, and their zeal for her spiritual 
 independence. 
 
 It has greatly contributed to intensify and idealise 
 the affection of the Scottish people for their Church, 
 that the humiliation of the Church has always gone pari 
 passu with the wounding of the national feeling, and that 
 the Presbyterian clergy have always proved themselves 
 true interpreters of the patriotic sentiment of the people. 
 We have seen that the preachers of Scotland, in Eliza- 
 beth's time, supported the sturdy Protestantism of that 
 straight - hitting Deborah against their own wavering 
 Solomon. In this the body of the people went heartily 
 along with the preachers. When James mounted the 
 throne of England, he departed more and more widely from 
 the robust and simple policy of Elizabeth, and both he and 
 his son Charles bestirred themselves to break the proud 
 neck of the Scottish Church. But the nation, strange 
 as it may seem, appears to have been actually made 
 more sensitively jealous of its political independence 
 from having furnished England with a sovereign, and to 
 have for this as well as for higher causes, responded 
 with extraordinary enthusiasm to the Church's efforts to 
 maintain her independence in spiritual matters. Crom- 
 well trampled down both Church and State in Scotland, 
 as he had previously done in England, thus inflicting 
 a bitter sense of humiliation upon the Scottish people. 
 He expressed, in the most emphatic manner at his com- 
 mand, the estimate he had formed of the importance of 
 the General Assembly as an organ and focus of the 
 national feeling by forcibly dissolving it. He was care- 
 ful, however, to avoid touching the spiritual liberties
 
 THE "LITTLE KINGDOM" 31 
 
 of Presbyteries and congregations, contenting himself, 
 when a pastor proved refractory, with sweeping away the 
 temporalities of the parish. The Governments of Charles 
 II., which restored Episcopacy, and James II., which 
 plotted to restore Popery, were largely obnoxious to the 
 patriotic sentiment as well as to the religious convictions 
 of Scotchmen. The Presbyterian Church and the body 
 of the people had thus been knit together in all changes 
 of government, and the final establishment of Presby- 
 terianism at the revolution of 1688 was a triumph for 
 the nation as well as for the Church. Burns, a good 
 judge, names the Covenanters as serving freedom's cause. 
 He must be deaf indeed to the intimations, blind to the 
 symbolic blazons of history, who does not perceive that 
 the Church of Scotland has been pledged by her whole 
 career to maintain her spiritual independence, — an inde- 
 pendence including the right to proclaim Christ's truth 
 to kings, to guard the privileges of the members of the 
 Church in the formation of the pastoral tie, and to 
 exercise discipline within her borders. 
 
 At the Union between England and Scotland, special 
 care was taken that the Presbyterian Church of Scotland 
 should retain her spiritual independence, and should not 
 be subjected to the supremacy exercised by the Crown 
 over the Episcopalian Church of England. A few years 
 subsequently, through the machinations of the political 
 party that was bent upon reinstating the Stuarts, an 
 Act was passed in the British Parliament by which it 
 became possible for Presbyteries, if they so desired, 
 to neutralise or evade, in the interest of patrons to 
 livings, the call by which congregations signified their
 
 32 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 assent to the settlement of ministers among them. It 
 was felt at the time that this Act, commonly known as 
 Queen Anne's, practically establishing patronage, was 
 intensely at variance with that spirit of Christian 
 democracy which had always characterised the Church 
 of Scotland. But the great religious excitement, which 
 for two centuries had been the main factor of history in 
 Western Europe, had now been succeeded by comparative 
 quiescence, nay, even by the beginnings of reaction. The 
 eighteenth century brought with it indifference and 
 scepticism in religious matters. The full-flooded rivers 
 of controversy that, from the days of Luther to the clays 
 of Sancroft, had rolled impetuously along, had now 
 dwindled down to laggard streamlets, gradually losing 
 themselves in sand. 
 
 It was natural, in these circumstances, that the party 
 of intrepid and uncompromising Presbyters who, from the 
 days of Knox, had taken the lead in the Church of Scot- 
 land, should find themselves superseded by a less fervid, 
 more accommodating, less democratic, and less inde- 
 pendent set of leaders, whom the fiery progeny of the 
 Covenanters named Moderates. It is unwise to sneer 
 vaguely at the eighteenth century, or at these Moderate 
 divines, who formed one of its most characteristic products. 
 The life of man — the life of the race — cannot be all 
 excitement, all enthusiasm. Periods must intervene 
 when activity is partially suspended ; periods when human 
 nature has recourse to the sweet restorer, sleep ; autumnal 
 and wintry periods, when the mind lies fallow in prepara- 
 tion for new springs of quickened consciousness and 
 keen spiritual aspiration. The eighteenth century was
 
 THE "LITTLE KINGDOM." 33 
 
 one of those fallow periods. The Eeformation century, 
 the Puritan century, had been times of spiritual revolution. 
 They were followed by a century of rest. Moderatism 
 was one of many symptoms of a spiritually languid age. 
 It was not a dead age. Far from that. It produced 
 Butler and Eeid. It produced Hume and Kant. But 
 it was, comparatively speaking, cold, and its coldness 
 was felt mostly in regions where one naturally looks 
 for heat, as in the religious province. 
 
 The representative figure of Moderatism, as a party in 
 the Church of Scotland during the eighteenth century, 
 was Bobertson. A memorable man ; not of the highest 
 order, either intellectually or morally, but of a high 
 order. To him, as to the greater and nobler Scott, 
 Carlyle did injustice ; and it is one of the melancholy 
 facts of life, that no lesson is more readily learnt by a 
 new generation from its fashionable teachers than to 
 sneer at the teachers who preceded them. But the 
 Scottish preacher who promptly achieved a European 
 reputation as an historian, whose works were among 
 the treasured literature of Voltaire at Ferney, and were 
 referred to with reverent admiration by Gibbon, was 
 no ordinary man. Robertson's Charles the Fifth is a 
 masterpiece of broad historical delineation, showing all 
 the prominent figures as they moved in successive groups 
 in the pageant and procession of the greatest of modern 
 centuries. In breadth, in the arrangement of masses of 
 light and shade, in the discernment of cardinal facts, 
 — qualities which after all may be more informing than 
 the mastery of picturesque detail by more popular 
 historians, — it would be difficult to name a superior to 
 3
 
 34 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Eobertson. It is time for intelligent Scotchmen of all 
 parties to do justice to this illustrious man, and to 
 acknowledge that his career and reputation go far to 
 prove that moderation, even in the Moderate party, had 
 not quite ceased to be the reconciling, ennobling, refining, 
 and exalting virtue that all philosophic schools, and con- 
 spicuously the New Testament, unite in pronouncing it. 
 The serene intellectual poise of Eobertson, in the century 
 after that of the Puritan battles, and when toleration was 
 still practically regarded by many devout persons as a sin, 
 can hardly be over-praised. He did justice to Cardinal 
 Ximenes. He did justice to Martin Luther. As a master 
 of grouping and of historical perspective, neither Froude 
 nor Macaulay can stand comparison with him, and beside 
 him Banke is but a rambling annalist. 
 
 But Eobertson was an historian first, a Presbyterian 
 Churchman second ; and though it were unpardonable to 
 doubt the sincerity of his personal religion, he was 
 courtly, rationalistic, and absolutely out of touch with 
 that fervent enthusiasm and that burning zeal which 
 had always been notes of the religion of his countrymen. 
 His religion was a philosophy, an ethical theory, at best 
 a law, rather than burning enthusiasm of devotion to a 
 Master, and awestruck adoration of a God. And profoundly 
 mysterious, immeasurably suggestive as is the fact, it is 
 indubitable that, when philosophy essays to supersede 
 and to play the part of religion, learning to look down 
 with disdain upon religious persons, upon the common 
 sorts and conditions of men, it fails to touch the hearts 
 of nations, or to realise the effects produced by vital 
 religion. In proportion as the spirit of philosophic
 
 THE "LITTLE KINGDOM." 35 
 
 moralising, giving a polite go-by to all the mysteries 
 of the inner life and the celestial outlook, gained the 
 ascendant in the Church of Scotland, in like proportion 
 did the people become dissatisfied with her ministrations, 
 congregation after congregation, sometimes in single 
 instances, sometimes in groups of two, or three, or five, 
 receding from her communion, and coming gradually 
 together again, not to set up a new form of creed or 
 constitution, but to realise for themselves a Presbyterian 
 Church more loyal, as they believed, to the original ideal, 
 as portrayed in the New Testament and restored in the 
 sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. With these seceders 
 a party in the Established Church continued to cherish 
 the warmest sympathy ; but they considered it their own 
 duty to maintain the conflict with the Moderates within 
 the Church, standing by the fundamental principles of 
 her Constitution, and, like the Republican party of 
 America in its long struggle with the slaveholders 
 antecedent to the great Civil War, looking forward to 
 the day when they, rising into the ascendant, might 
 cause the face of the Church again to shine as in the 
 glories of her dawn. This party was nicknamed by its 
 opponents The Highflyers, and adopted as its own badge 
 the term Evangelical. Mr. Taylor Innes, in his learned 
 work on Creech in Scotland, gives it the appropriate 
 name of the High Presbyterian party.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 Z$e (gtjcmgeficaf (Remuaf— " ^ameon's QUem' 
 
 IN the early part of the present century, the Evan- 
 gelical Ptevival was still among those things which 
 had on them the dew and the promise of dawn, — the 
 dew to symbolise the tears for the failures of the night 
 and its distresses, the light to symbolise the hope of 
 future achievement and of promised reward. It had 
 begun in England, in the Established Church, in those 
 University rooms and halls where the Wesleys and 
 Whitfield brought with them airs from the heaven of 
 Christian homes. But it quickly caught on among the 
 people, and the Church of the baronial bishops soon 
 proved too narrow to hold it, although it found response 
 in many a simple, childlike, honest soul, many a Grim- 
 shaw, Romaine, Toplady, within the Anglican pale. Once 
 more it turned out that the broad stratum of the English 
 population was prone to religion ; and once more, as in 
 the days of Wycliffe, and in the days of Cranmer, and in 
 the days of Bunyan, it held good that the religion taken 
 to its heart by the great body of the English people was 
 the religion, not of priests, nor of philosophers, nor of 
 
 30
 
 THE E VANGELICAL RE VIVAL — " TAMSOWS MEN." 37 
 
 professors, but the religion boldly inscribed, and dis- 
 cernible at the first honest glance, upon the Bible. 
 
 In our own day we have been impressively told by 
 Matthew Arnold, how much nobler the simple Bible is 
 than the Bible commented on, the Bible touched up, or 
 watered down, by the typical German professor. In 
 " the Protestant faculties of theology " in Germany, " a 
 body of specialists," says Matthew Arnold, " is at work, 
 who take as the business of their lives a class of 
 inquiries like the question about the Canon of the 
 Gospels. They are eternally reading its literature, 
 reading the theories of their colleagues about it ; their 
 personal reputation is made by emitting, on the much- 
 canvassed subject, a new theory of their own. The 
 want of variety and of balance in their life and occupa- 
 tions, impairs the balance of their judgment in general." 
 " If you choose to obey your Bibles," says Mr. Euskin 
 with happy shrewdness, " you will never care who 
 attacks them." Specialism has its uses. " Of Biblical 
 learning," Arnold justly adds, " we have not enough." 
 But it is not criticism that reveals to us the glow and 
 grandeur of the Homeric poems, or opens our ear to 
 the glorious and wonderful hum in them of the glad 
 fightings and busy industries of the early world. It is 
 not criticism that lays bare to us the true mystery and 
 magic of Hamlet. And it is, to quote again from 
 Matthew Arnold, " a truth never to be lost sight of, that 
 in the domain of religion, as in the domain of poetry, 
 the whole apparatus of learning is but secondary, and 
 that we always go wrong with our learning when we 
 suffer ourselves to forget this."
 
 38 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 We should convey a misleading impression if we said 
 that Matthew Arnold entertained the same idea of the 
 Bible as has been entertained, first and last, by the great 
 Bible party of England and Scotland. But the Evan- 
 gelicals, whatever else they held, have seen in the Bible 
 a revelation of the God of righteousness ; and Matthew 
 Arnold gives his weighty opinion that, " reading the Bible 
 with this idea to govern us, we have here the elements 
 for a religion more serious, potent, awe - inspiring, and 
 profound, than any which the world has yet seen." 1 
 The work that has been done by the Evangelical party, 
 both in its beautiful and melodious dawn under the 
 Wesleys and Toplady, — for in both of these, spite 
 of their cobweb differences of dogma, there was the 
 note of a true inspiration of sacred song, — and in its 
 more recent manifestations, attests the truth of these 
 words. 
 
 The Evangelical party had never died out in Scotland, 
 and when the wave of the new gospel tide came flowing 
 into the inlets of the Scottish coast, it met with no 
 organised obstruction. The old mills, shall we say, — 
 venturing on an audaciously modern figure, — proved to 
 be workable by the new electricity. Wilberforce, whose 
 slave-trade reputation was preceded by his Evangelical 
 fame, recognised in the minority of the General 
 Assembly his true brethren in religious sentiments, and 
 avowed himself piously scandalised to behold Bobertson, 
 a leader in the Church, standing on terms of amicable 
 relation with Gibbon. We shall hope that it is no 
 treason to the later developments of Evangelicalism to 
 
 1 God and the Bible.
 
 THE E V ANGELICAL RE VIVAL " TA M SON'S MEN. " 39 
 
 be less severe upon Eobertson for being so audaciously 
 tolerant. 
 
 It was, however, in the nineteenth century, in its first 
 quarter, so full of all kinds of thrilling excitement, in 
 war, in politics, in poetry, that the Evangelical party in 
 the Church of Scotland, now thoroughly awake, began to 
 come decisively to the front. In the brilliant Edinburgh 
 of those years, the Edinburgh which still attracted to its 
 University such future statesmen as Talmerston and 
 Lord John Russell the Edinburgh of Scott, of Wilson, of 
 Jeffrey, of young Carlyle, the Evangelicals of the Church 
 of Scotland began to play a part of more importance, a 
 part more keenly influencing and agitating the Scottish 
 people, than they had enacted for upwards of a hundred 
 years. 
 
 They were led by a man whose name represents 
 more perhaps than any other, to all who are really 
 acquainted with the history of Scotland during those 
 years, the beginnings of Evangelical ascendancy in the 
 Church after the long reign of Moderatism. Andrew 
 Thomson's life has not been written, but his name and 
 memory are indelibly inscribed on the mind of his 
 countrymen. He was exactly the man to take away 
 the reproach from what had been called the narrow, the 
 pietistic, the fanatical party. As minister of St. George's, 
 the principal charge in Edinburgh, he preached clear, 
 well-reasoned, tersely-written discourses, strongly Evan- 
 gelical, which might fail to convince every one, but could 
 be despised by none. In society, assisted by a fine 
 person, a voice remarkable for compass and harmony, a 
 quick and vigorous intellect, a social talent aided by a
 
 40 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 skill in music, and a manner in which dignity was 
 combined with animation, he carried everything before 
 him. But the sphere in which he shone to most advan- 
 tage was the General Assembly, where he faced the 
 lordly Moderates, and gathered and formed into an 
 invincible phalanx the scattered remnant of the old 
 Presbyterian following. He was an acknowledged prince 
 among debaters. Brougham, the greatest Parliamentary 
 orator of his time, had said that there lived but one man 
 whom he feared to meet in debate, and he was Andrew 
 Thomson. 
 
 He had caught the mantle of the Erskines and Mon- 
 creiffs, and recalled the " watchwords of primitive order 
 and popular rights." Wherever a congregation found 
 itself in danger of having a minister forced upon it by 
 a worldly patron and the Moderate majority, Andrew 
 Thomson " lifted up his intrepid voice " and pleaded its 
 cause. Intimately associated, both in personal friend- 
 ship and ecclesiastical sympathy, with Dr. Thomas M'Crie, 
 the biographer of Knox and Melville, and the greatest 
 living authority upon the Church of Scotland, he took 
 delight in appealing to the heroic age of Presbytery, and. 
 made conscience of keeping always unfurled the banner of 
 the Church's contention for the Crown Eights of her Lord. 
 He was the type of a successful party leader, glowing 
 with an ardour that attracted the young men, ever 
 willing to marshal his squadrons for the charge. Presby- 
 terian Scotland, from hundreds of manses and thousands 
 of cottages, watched the course of Thomson and the 
 progress of the new party with ecstasies of approbation. 
 Sir George Sinclair told the present writer that once, in
 
 THE EVANGELICAL REVIVAL " TAMSOWS MEN." 4 1 
 
 the south of Scotland, in those times, he entered into 
 conversation with a fellow-traveller in a coach, and got 
 upon the subject of the Church and the Assembly and 
 the prominent ministers. For his companion Andrew 
 Thomson, or, as he called him, " Tamson," was all the 
 law and all the prophets. If Sir George mentioned 
 any minister who was not in Thomson's brigade, he was 
 not thought worth speaking of. But if Sir George was 
 happy enough to know and name one of the other 
 kind, then his companion brightened up in a moment, 
 and he said, with flashing eyes, "Aye, he's ane o' 
 Tamson's men ! "
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 £0om6on in a Characteristic qfrtfifube. 
 
 BUT we cannot do better, with a view to understand- 
 ing the situation, than glance into the Assembly of 
 1820, and observe what was going forward. The old king 
 had died in January of that year, and his son, George the 
 Fourth, had succeeded him. In February an Order was 
 issued by the Privy Council, and was transmitted in due 
 form to the Assembly at its meeting in May, on the 
 subject of prayers for the Eoyal Family " in that part 
 of Great Britain called Scotland." After citation of 
 one or two Acts of Parliament, " it is ordered," proceeds 
 the document, " by His Majesty in Council, that hence- 
 forth every minister and preacher shall, in his respective 
 church, congregation, or Assembly, pray ' For his most 
 sacred Majesty King George, and all the Eoyal Family ; ' 
 of which all persons concerned are hereby required to 
 take notice and govern themselves accordingly." 
 
 To this Andrew Thomson demurred. The spiritual 
 independence of the Church was imperilled. No power 
 on earth, he affirmed, was entitled to dictate the terms 
 in which she was to pray to God. Thomson moved as 
 
 42
 
 THOMSON IN A CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDE. 43 
 
 follows : " That it be declared by the General Assembly 
 that no civil authority can constitutionally prescribe 
 either forms or heads of prayer to the ministers or 
 preachers of this Church, and that the Orders in Council 
 which have been issued from time to time respecting 
 prayers for the Eoyal Family are inconsistent with the 
 rights and privileges secured by law to our ecclesiastical 
 Establishment ; but that, as these Orders appear to have 
 originated in mistake or inadvertency, and not in any 
 intention to interfere with our modes of worship, the 
 General Assembly do not consider it to be necessary to 
 proceed further in this matter at present." A conven- 
 tional expression of loyalty followed, and a profession 
 of entire willingness to address supplications to God in 
 behalf of a Eoyal House by which He had shed bless- 
 ings on the nation ; but the distinct assertion of the 
 spiritual independence of the Church qame first. 
 
 In his opening speech Thomson laid stress upon the 
 " incontrovertible principle of the Church of Scotland, 
 that it had no spiritual head on earth, and that conse- 
 quently the King in Council had no right to interfere in 
 its worship." As for the Acts of Parliament on which 
 the Order was rested, he argued either that they were 
 irrelevant, or that they had always been repudiated, in 
 their spirit and purpose, by the truly constitutional 
 party in the Church. 
 
 The Moderate leaders opposed the motion ; but mark 
 the reason. Not one of them challenged the soundness 
 of Thomson's main contention, that the Church was, by 
 her Constitution, spiritually independent. Dr. Cook, of 
 Laurencekirk, — a name destined to become well known
 
 44 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 before 1843, — avowed himself prepared to maintain, as 
 well as the Evangelical chief, that no civil authority could 
 constitutionally prescribe heads of prayer to the Church ; 
 but he denied that there had been any infringement of 
 her liberties in the present instance. The Lord Justice- 
 Clerk Boyle took the same line, referring to the gracious 
 manner in which the King had recently declared his 
 resolution to support the Constitution of the Church of 
 Scotland, and boasting of his own descent from one who 
 had borne a distinguished part in the ancient struggles 
 of the Church in defence of her independence. He 
 moved, therefore, that " AVhereas the independence of 
 the Church of Scotland in all matters of faith, worship, 
 and discipline is fully established by law, the General 
 Assembly finds it unnecessary and inexpedient to adopt 
 any declaration with regard to the late, or any former, 
 Order in Council relative to prayers for His Majesty and 
 the Eoyal Family." 
 
 The original motion was seconded by Mr. James Well- 
 wood Moncreiff ; and Andrew Thomson, in concluding a 
 spirited and eloquent debate, reiterated his conviction that 
 the Order was an encroachment on the Church's independ- 
 ence, adding the pathetic and almost prophetic words : 
 " I trust that the breath of official authority will never 
 be allowed to wither one leaf of that Plant of Renown 
 which our fathers watered with their blood, and of which 
 we have been permitted by a kind Providence to eat the 
 pleasant fruits." The motion of the Justice-Clerk was 
 carried by 126 votes against 53. 1 
 
 And did not all this, the reader may ask, arise simply 
 
 1 Safe's Memorabilia.
 
 THOMSON IN A CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDE. 4o 
 
 out of an exhibition, on the part of Andrew Thomson, of 
 the practice, dear to clerical and oratorical vanity, of 
 making much ado about little or nothing ? The true- 
 blue followers of the old banner throughout the manses 
 and homes of Scotland did not think so. But be the 
 question answered, for argument's sake, in the affirm- 
 ative. Could any illustration bring out more vividly 
 than is done by this debate, the keen and conscientious 
 vigilance with which Andrew Thomson and his party 
 guarded the soleness of that allegiance which the Church 
 owed to her heavenly King ? And could the Moderate 
 party, Dr. Cook and the Lord of Session, Boyle, and the 
 rest of them, have more convincingly shown their own 
 belief in the reality and the justice of the Church's 
 claim to exercise independence in all spiritual matters 
 than by the course they took in arguing against 
 Thomson ? Is it not impossible to observe the posi- 
 tion assumed by the dominant party, without recognis- 
 ing that it never occurred to them to dispute that the 
 Scottish Church occupied an entirely different position, 
 in relation to the State, from that occupied by the 
 Church of England ? True, there might arise difference 
 of opinion as to whether, in any particular instance, the 
 State had made some slight encroachment on the sphere 
 of the Church, or the Church some slight encroachment 
 on the sphere of the State ; but this debate sets it forth, 
 as with the writing of meridian sunlight, that not a 
 speaker even on the Moderate side imagined the rights 
 and powers of the Church to have emanated from the 
 State, or that the State could, without tyrannical 
 usurpation, treat her spiritual jurisdiction as non-
 
 4G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 existent. It was obviously no secondary matter on 
 which, on such an occasion, — the recent accession of a 
 sovereign, — 'Andrew Thomson could have ventured to 
 make such a stand. It was because the Church had 
 in her best days guarded her spiritual independence 
 as the apple of her eye that he spoke out ; and the 
 strongest of the arguments by which the Moderate 
 party obtained a decisive majority against him was, 
 that the principle which he sought to vindicate had 
 been called in question by no one, and needed no 
 vindication. . 
 
 In the General Assembly of 1820, Thomson had risen 
 to repel the intrusive foot of Eoyalty — or what seemed 
 to be such — from the sanctuary of the Church's inde- 
 pendence. In the General Assembly of 1825, he 
 proved himself true to her genius and history, by 
 vigilant assertion of the rights of the Christian people. 
 A presentation had been issued by the Crown to the 
 living of Little Dunkeld in favour of an individual who 
 was totally unacquainted with the Gaelic language. The 
 congregation had always enjoyed a Gaelic ministry, and 
 the Presbytery had therefore refused to sustain the pre- 
 sentation. Their decision had been confirmed by the 
 Synod of Perth and Stirling, and was carried for final 
 settlement to the Assembly. Thomson moved that the 
 decision of the Presbytery and Synod should be ratified, 
 and the Crown be respectfully requested to bring forward 
 a presentee who could address the Highlanders in their 
 own tongue. He was supported by another leader 
 of the Evangelicals who had not been a member 
 of the Assembly of 1820, but who, though not so
 
 THOMSON IN A CHARACTERISTIC ATTITUDE. 47 
 
 well equipped as Andrew Thomson with the tactical 
 qualifications of a party leader, was still more bril- 
 liant in his intellectual attributes than he. Thomson's 
 motion was seconded by Chalmers ! The combina- 
 tion was irresistible. The motion was carried by 107 
 to 89.
 
 CHAPTEll VI. 
 
 ($. JJubben Change. 
 
 ON the 9th of February 1831, Andrew Thomson, then 
 about fifty years of age, took part in the proceed- 
 ings of the Presbytery of Edinburgh, displaying the full 
 vigour of his mental and physical energies. He walked 
 home with a friend, engaging, as was his wont, in cordial 
 talk. At his own door, in turning round for a parting 
 word, he fell dead. 
 
 Seldom has all that human wisdom could have wished 
 for or prescribed, with reference to a not far distant 
 future, been more mysteriously baffled than by the 
 death, at that moment, of Andrew Thomson. He 
 would have shone so grandly in the Ten Years' Con- 
 flict ! He was the realised ideal of a party leader, — ■ 
 for the dazzlement of genius, as has been abundantly 
 attested both in the ecclesiastical and the civil history 
 of Britain, has something in it at variance with con- 
 summate excellence of party management. Scotchmen 
 were proud of Chalmers, but they placed their more 
 sober trust in Andrew Thomson. Holding, through 
 M'Crie, as has been said, with the past of Scottish 
 
 48
 
 A SUDDEN CHANGE. 49 
 
 Church history, he was intensely modern in his aggress- 
 ive assaults upon the slave-trade and the whole system 
 of slavery, in his opposition to the Test and Corporation 
 Acts, in his sympathy with the great liberal current in 
 the movement of his time. Early in the century he 
 had founded The Christian Instructor, the pioneer of a 
 thousand such periodicals ; had drawn into it, with wise 
 comprehensiveness, the flower of religious literary talent 
 both within and without the pale of the Church ; and 
 had made it an instrumentality, prized and treasured in 
 ten thousand Scottish families, for keeping himself in touch 
 with the conscience and heart of Scotland. He flung 
 from him as a foolish prejudice that jealousy of culture 
 in association with devoutness, and of comeliness and 
 joyfulness in the worship of God, which has been vaguely 
 supposed to be an attribute of Presbyterianism. Pos- 
 sessing great taste and capacity in music, himself a 
 musical composer, he led the way in that reform of 
 Church music which has since been so beneficently 
 developed. 
 
 Seldom has Carlyle, even in those clouded years when 
 the reader is frequently reminded of the saying, " Son of 
 thunder, but thou hast become marvellously weak in 
 thine old age," missed the mark so completely as in his 
 reference to Andrew Thomson in the Reminiscences. 
 " Once," says Carlyle, " I recollect transiently seeing 
 the famed Andrew; and what a lean -minded, iracund, 
 ignorant kind of man Andrew seemed to me." But 
 Carlyle's own statement in connection with the forma- 
 tion of the tie between Chalmers and Irving appears to 
 be inconsistent with the idea that there was anything 
 4
 
 50 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of the pinched and frigid zealot in Thomson. Irving, 
 Carlyle tells us, gave offence, in the very dawn of his 
 pulpit powers, to a certain " hidebound public " both in 
 Kirkcaldy and in Edinburgh. In the manner and still 
 more in the matter of Irving there was a " novelty " 
 that was " sufficiently surprising," an importunate 
 demand, in particular, that actual practice should be 
 squared with speech and theory — "If this thing is 
 true, why not do it ? " — that gave " astonishment and 
 deep offence " to " hidebound mankind." " Both in Fife 
 and over in Edinburgh," says Carlyle, " I have known 
 the offence very rampant." But it was Andrew 
 Thomson who directed the attention of Chalmers to 
 Irving ; it was Andrew Thomson who induced Chalmers 
 to come incognito and hear Irving in Thomson's own 
 pulpit, and whose word, presumably in opposition to the 
 verdict of the narrowly orthodox, was in favour of 
 Chalmers's choice of Irving as his assistant. If Carlyle's 
 imagination did not, as seems most probable, falsify in 
 this instance the original record of his memory, his im- 
 pression must have been due to his own jaundiced eye- 
 sight, rendered untrustworthy by the setting in of his 
 dyspepsia and by other experiences of what he describes 
 as " four or five most miserable, dark, sick, and heavy- 
 laden years." Carlyle's eye -glimpse of Thomson con- 
 tradicts all the contemporary accounts we have of the 
 man. These concur in laying stress upon his radiant 
 geniality, his frank and cordial bearing. 
 
 Chalmers was overpowered with a passion of tears 
 when he heard of Thomson's death. His hand, he said, 
 had no steadiness to draw the lineaments of one who,
 
 A SUDDEN CHANGE. 5 1 
 
 though dead, seemed still to look upon him with the 
 vividness of life. In his funeral sermon he brought out 
 forcibly the importance of the fallen leader as a figure 
 in the Edinburgh and in the Scotland of the time. " It 
 is as if death," he said, " had wanted to make the highest 
 demonstration of his sovereignty, and for this purpose had 
 selected as his mark him who stood the foremost and the 
 most conspicuous in the view of his eountrymen. I speak 
 not at present of any of the relations in which he stood 
 to the living society immediately around him, — to the 
 thousands in church whom his well-known voice reached 
 upon the Sabbath, — to the tens of thousands in the city 
 whom, through the week, in the varied rounds and 
 meetings of Christian philanthropy, he either guided by 
 Iris counsel or stimulated by his eloquenca You know, 
 over and above, how far the wide, and the wakeful, and 
 the untired benevolence of his nature carried him ; and 
 that, in the labours and the locomotions connected with 
 these, he may be said to have become the personal 
 acquaintance of the people of Scotland, insomuch that 
 there is not a village of the land where the tidings of 
 Iris death have not conveyed the intimation that a master 
 in Israel has fallen ; and I may also add, that such was 
 the charm of his companionship, such the cordiality 
 lighted up by his presence in every household, that, 
 connected with this death, there is, at this moment, an 
 oppressive sadness in the hearts of many thousands, even 
 of our most distant Scottish families." The death of 
 Thomson was a u national loss." He had " but gambolled 
 with the difficulties that would have depressed and over- 
 borne other men." Of the blending of softer elements
 
 52 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 with Thomson's strength Chalmers spoke as lending a 
 peculiar charm to his character, analogous to that of 
 delicate beauty among Alpine crags. From the ground- 
 work of masculine firmness, from " the substratum of 
 moral strength and grandeur," there " effloresced " in 
 tenfold beauty the " gentler charities of the heart." " To 
 myself," said the preacher, " he was at all times a joyous, 
 hearty, gallant, honourable, and out-and-out most trust- 
 worthy friend." Such a testimony was at the same time 
 a testimony to the heart that gave it.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 (Nonintrusion. 
 
 "IT7"E saw that one of the main objects kept in view by 
 ^ ' Dr. Andrew Thomson in the Assembly leadership 
 of the High Presbyterian party, was the guardianship of 
 the liberties of the Christian people in the settlement of 
 pastors. Not only did he exert himself to the utmost 
 to bring the administrative enginery of the Church to 
 prevent presentees from being forced upon unwilling 
 flocks, but he set on foot a society with a view to buying 
 up patronages, and thus giving free course to the popular 
 choice. 
 
 His death took place at that critical moment when the 
 agitation for parliamentary reform was approaching its 
 climax, and the epoch-making Eeform Bill of 1832 was 
 beginning to loom in the distance. The public mind 
 throughout Scotland was vehemently excited ; the spirit 
 of democratic aspiration, like a quickening, thrilling fire- 
 mist, was in the social atmosphere ; and, as had from time 
 immemorial been the case, the democratic aspiration in 
 the State showed itself with conspicuous fervency in the 
 Church. A disposition was manifested in the ranks of 
 
 53
 
 54 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the Evangelicals not to wait for the slow operation of 
 a system of purchase, but to assail patronage compre- 
 hensively and at once. When the parliamentary Eeform 
 Bill was passed, the Anti-Patronage Society declared for 
 the total abolition of patronage. 
 
 In the Assembly of 1832, Chalmers occupied the 
 Moderator's chair. It is the place of highest honour 
 attainable by any member, and Chalmers's Moderator- 
 ship attests not only his own lofty position in the Church, 
 but the rise in importance and influence of the party of 
 which he was now the acknowledged leader. A little 
 more than fifty summers had passed over him, and 
 years had brought to him not a breath of decay, but 
 only the full maturity and mellow strength of his powers. 
 Few men could enter with more faithful sympathy than 
 his into all that was refined and elevating in Moderatism. 
 But to every argument in its favour he had one un- 
 answerable reply. He had been a Moderate ! He hnciu 
 that it had lost Christ's miracle-gift, and could cast out 
 no devils. He had tried its sweetest songs, its most 
 eloquent enchantments, on the devils of rustic Kilmany, 
 and not a devil of them would budge. He had paid fine 
 compliments to Christ, and painted up the beauty of 
 virtue, and no one had minded Christ or cared for virtue. 
 He began preaching Christ as Paul, and Luther, and 
 Bunyan, and Erskine had preached Him, and the devils 
 began at once to scamper and the virtue to come in. He 
 had been a Moderate ; he could never be a Moderate 
 again. 
 
 The subject of patronage was brought up by applica- 
 tions, technically styled overtures, from eleven Presbyteries
 
 NON- INTRUSION. 55 
 
 and three Synods. These prayed the Assembly to take 
 steps to secure to the call of the congregation its ancient 
 and salutary force, and to prevent its being turned into 
 an empty form by usurpation of all rights by patrons. 
 
 Dr. Eobert Brown, of Aberdeen, speaking for the Evan- 
 gelicals, proposed that a committee should be appointed to 
 consider the overtures and report to the next Assembly. 
 Principal Macfarlane, a leading Moderate, moved that 
 the overtures should be dismissed as " unnecessary and 
 inexpedient." He was supported in an elaborate speech 
 by the Eight Hon. Justice-Clerk Boyle, the same whom 
 we found so jauntily pooh-poohing Andrew Thomson's 
 protest against State encroachment on the independence 
 of the Church. He spoke with the vehemence natural 
 to a high legal and Conservative functionary, who 
 shuddered at that evil and perilous thing, the will of the 
 people. The question was in his eyes of " gigantic im- 
 portance." The drift of the overtures, he insisted, was 
 to destroy the rights of patrons, and to introduce popular 
 election with all its flood of evils. Universal confusion 
 would cover the land, and there would be an end of the 
 peace and harmony that had hitherto reigned. If this 
 were indeed desired, the Assembly ought to go manfully 
 to Parliament and ask for an alteration in the law. 
 
 To reply to this imposing display of aristocratic and 
 forensic eloquence there arose, amid the questioning 
 amazement of the Assembly, an exceedingly young man, 
 with keen, bright, imperturbably self-confident face, 
 whom the few who knew him named to their whispering 
 neighbours as the Eev. James Begg, of Paisley. That 
 a man of twenty-three, on his first appearance in the
 
 56 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Assembly, should take a prominent part in a leading 
 debate, and should enter the lists against giants like 
 Boyle and Macfarlane, was a thing unheard of. Ex- 
 perienced beholders anticipated doubtless that the bold 
 speaker would blunder into self-effacement. But in this 
 cause James Begg might claim to be a predestined 
 champion. He first drew breath in the parish of New 
 Monkland, on the banks of the Clyde, where the very 
 breezes, as they swept over copse, and corn, and heather, 
 might sing of Covenant wars and Presbyterian contend- 
 ings. A band from the parish had marched to Both well 
 Bridge, and the boy Begg had often looked with reverent 
 admiration on the silken banner, emblazoned with Bible, 
 crown, and thistle in gold, round which his fellow- 
 parishioners had fought and fallen. It was perhaps 
 not so surprising, therefore, that he should have been 
 audaciously eager for the fray when one of the essential 
 principles of his ancestral Presbyterianism was at stake. 
 Nor did he stammer or betray any tendency to nervous 
 discomposure. Logic and lucidity, precision and a trace 
 of sarcastic pungency, characterised his remarks, rather 
 than festoons of flowery eloquence or exuberance of 
 youthful sentiment. The prickly sharpness of some 
 of his observations on the Moderate big -wigs won 
 him the hearts of the students in the gallery, and 
 Moderator Chalmers, who dearly loved a joke, forgot the 
 awful solemnity of his seat, and actually clapped his 
 hands and laughed. 
 
 But the most notable thing in James Begg's speech 
 was the nice exactness with which he signalised the 
 object to be aimed at by the Church as essential in
 
 NON-INTR US ION. 5 7 
 
 the matter of patronage. Total abolition, he admitted, 
 could not be effected by the Church without inter- 
 vention of Parliament. The indispensable point was 
 that no pastor should be forced into a church 
 against the will of the people. This, he maintained, 
 had, since the Reformation, been a principle of the 
 Church of Scotland, and she possessed power, dormant 
 but sufficient, to give effect to it. What they wanted 
 was Non - intrusion. " I have no fear," he said, " of 
 civil interference. Indeed, if such interference were 
 attempted, it would then become a question for every 
 honest man to determine how long he could consistently 
 remain a member of a Church thus rendered unable to 
 enforce her most salutary laws." 
 
 Begg rose unknown, and sat down famous. The 
 fledgling orator who had put the Lord Justice-Clerk 
 Boyle and Dr. Macfarlane to their mettle, whose fine 
 hitting and cheery bumptiousness, and born Scottish 
 sagacity, had made Chalmers forget his dignity in a 
 boyish burst of sympathetic laughter, was henceforward 
 a public man and leader of the people in Scotland. The 
 Moderates carried their point by a majority of forty-two. 
 But from Begg's lip had fallen the word that became 
 a watchword in the ranks of the party, and a chief 
 popular blazon on its banner — Non-Intuusion !
 
 CHAPTEE VIII. 
 £0e (Pefo ®cf. 
 
 IN the Assembly of 1833, Dr. Chalmers was not in the 
 chair, but was all the more able, on that account, to 
 influence the deliberations of the Court. The eleven 
 inferior courts that had overtured the Assembly of 1832 on 
 patronage were now in number forty-two. In the interval 
 he had fully considered the question, and his views on the 
 whole subject were provisionally made up. His prefer- 
 ence was decisive for the plan of concurrent legislation on 
 the part of the Church and the State, as compared with 
 that of disposing of the difficulty by legislation on the 
 part of the Church alone. On this point, however, he 
 allowed himself to be overruled by Lord Moncreiff of the 
 Court of Session, whose eminence as a lawyer and devoted 
 loyalty to the Church of Scotland seemed to accredit him 
 as practically infallible in pointing out a way by which 
 the possibility of collision might be avoided. Lord 
 Moncreiff was firmly convinced that the Church was 
 constitutionally possessed of the power to deal conclusively 
 with patronage, and thought she ought to do so at once. 
 Ho, as well as Dr. Chalmers, was strenuously opposed to
 
 THE VETO ACT. 59 
 
 the total abolition of patronage, but he bad no doubt that 
 the Church possessed jurisdiction sufficient to enable her 
 to frame such a measure as should shred away the evils 
 with which it had become associated. 
 
 Chalmers was not, in politics, ardently democratic. 
 The ordinary man, the arithmetical unit of the popula- 
 tion, did not impress him as particularly sublime. He 
 had an unaffected horror of the electioneering charlatan, 
 the patriotism made to sell, the village demagogy, the 
 pothouse palaver, the sordid inspirations that with fatal 
 facility transmute the masses into the worst, the most 
 ravenous, the most bloodthirsty of classes. He had 
 been, therefore, upon what good judges now generally 
 esteem the wrong as well as the beaten side in the 
 struggle for parliamentary reform. 
 
 But no one had a higher appreciation of man idealised 
 on the model of Christ than he. No one cherished 
 a firmer faith in the power of the most unlettered 
 member of the Christian brotherhood to discern in another 
 the lineaments of the King. He had a tragic feeling of 
 the cruelty of inflicting a godless or uncongenial minister 
 on godly parishioners. He thought with reverent admira- 
 tion of the zeal of the old Church of Scotland in guard- 
 ing the Christian people from having such forced upon 
 them. " The great complaint of our more ancient 
 Assemblies," he told the Assembly of 1833, " the great 
 burden of Scottish indignation, the practical grievance 
 which, of all others, has been hitherto felt the most 
 intolerable and galling to the hearts of a free and 
 religious people, is the violent intrusion of ministers 
 upon parishes."
 
 GO THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 He traced in vivid outline the history of the Church's 
 doings in the matter. First of all, at the very fountain- 
 head of Scottish Presbyterianism, in 1560, the method 
 had been that of election pure and simple. But in 
 1578, after eighteen years of experience and experi- 
 ment, a twofold, or perhaps rather a threefold system was 
 matured, and embodied in the Second Book of Discipline. 
 The eldership in the congregation nominated the pre- 
 sentee, with or without conjunction of a patron ; and if 
 the people gave their consent, the induction took place. 
 The rule is laid down " that no one be intruded contrary 
 to the will of the congregation or without the voice of the 
 eldership." In 1649, when the Westminster Standards 
 were finally domiciled in Scotland, and in 1690, when 
 the Church arose, at the Eevolution Settlement, after the 
 long persecution of the later Stuarts, the same principle 
 of the interdict or veto of the people was recognised and 
 ratified. 
 
 The practical operation of the system had been benefi- 
 cent and pacific. The " popular will," skilfully inserted 
 in its proper place, served as an equipoise rather than 
 as an element of strife. " It was when a high-handed 
 patronage reigned uncontrolled and without a rival, that 
 discord and dissent multiplied in our parishes." The 
 question then arose whether the people, in entering their 
 interdict, in uttering their veto, should or should not 
 specify, explain, and vindicate the reasons why they 
 objected to the presentee. This proved to be a most 
 difficult, delicate, and important question. Chalmers held 
 that the essential thing was the fad of non-consent, the 
 will of the people, and that exposition or argumentation in
 
 THE VETO ACT. 61 
 
 support of their decision was unnecessary. The peasant 
 Christian, " while fully competent to discern the truth, 
 may he as incompetent as a child " to show it in argu- 
 ment. " When required to give the reasons of his objec- 
 tion to a minister at the bar of his Presbytery, all the 
 poor man can say for himself might be, that he does not 
 preach the gospel, or that in his sermon there is no food 
 for his soul." " In very proportion to my sympathy and 
 my depth of veneration for the Christian appetency 
 of such cottage patriarchs, would be the painfullness," said 
 Chalmers, " I should feel when the cross-questionings of 
 a court of review were brought to bear upon them." 
 " To overbear such men is the highway to put an 
 extinguisher on the Christianity of our land, — the Chris- 
 tianity of our ploughmen, our artisans, our men of handi- 
 craft and of hard labour ; yet not the Christianity theirs 
 of deceitful imagination, or of implicit deference to 
 authority, but the Christianity of deep, I will add, of 
 rational belief, firmly and profoundly seated in the 
 principles of our moral nature, and nobly accredited 
 by the virtues of our well-conditioned peasantry. In the 
 older time of Presbytery, — that time of scriptural Chris- 
 tianity in our pulpits and of psalmody in all our cottages, 
 ■ — these men grew and multiplied in the land ; and 
 though derided in the heartless literature, and discoun- 
 tenanced or disowned in the heartless politics of other 
 days, it is their remnant which acts as a preserving salt 
 among our people, and which constitutes the real strength 
 and glory of the Scottish nation." 
 
 But the Moderates were resolute, and felt it doubtless 
 pleasant to thwart the Evangelical leader who outshone
 
 G3 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 them all. Chalmers's motion, therefore, to give constant 
 and imperative effect to the congregational veto, was 
 defeated in the Assembly of 1833 by twelve votes. 
 
 Another year went past Chalmers was no longer a 
 member of the Assembly. But the tide had been flowing 
 vehemently in favour of the popular party. The motion 
 which he had brought forward was, in substantial, re- 
 introduced by Lord Monereiff, and carried by a majority 
 of forty-six. This was the famed Veto Act of 1834. 
 It decreed that, when a congregation reclaimed against 
 the presentee nominated by a patron, their rejection 
 should take effect 
 
 As it was not a voluminous piece of legislation, and as 
 an accurate acquaintance with it is the simplest and 
 surest guarantee of a just and lucid apprehension of all 
 that followed, the intelligent reader will perhaps like 
 to have before him 
 
 The Veto Act. 
 
 " The General Assembly declare, that it is a fundamental 
 of their Church, that no pastor shall be intruded on any 
 congregation contrary to the will of the people; and in 
 order that this principle may be carried into full effect, 
 the General Assembly, with the consent of a majority of 
 the ^Presbyteries of this Church, do declare, enact, and 
 ordain, That it shall be an instruction to Presbyteries, 
 that if, at the moderating in a call to a vacant pastoral 
 charge, the major part of the male heads of families, 
 members of the vacant congregation, and in full com- 
 munion with the Church, shall disapprove of the person 
 in whose favour the call is proposed to be moderated in,
 
 THE VETO ACT. 63 
 
 such disapproval shall he deemed sufficient ground Eor 
 the Presbytery rejecting such person, and that he shall 
 be rejected accordingly, and due notice thereof forthwith 
 given to all concerned ; but that, if the major part of the 
 said heads of families shall not disapprove of such person 
 to be their pastor, the Presbytery shall proceed with the 
 settlement according to the rules of the Church : 
 
 " And further declare, That no person shall be held to 
 be entitled to disapprove as aforesaid, who shall refuse, if 
 required, solemnly to declare in presence of the Presby- 
 tery, that he is actuated by no factious or malicious 
 motive, but solely by a conscientious regard to the 
 spiritual interests of himself or the congregation." 
 
 Such, in its length and its breadth, is the celebrated 
 Veto Act, which thousands who never looked at it 
 denounced as the manifesto of a rebellious Church, but 
 which has reason and righteousness shining on its face, 
 and commended itself to what instincts there were of 
 justice and generous courage even in the prejudiced heart 
 of Peel, and which was the Pharos light that guided the 
 true-hearted, patriotic, and indomitable Argylls, the dis- 
 tinguished father and the more distinguished son, in their 
 long and at last victorious battle with Church patronage in 
 Scotland. "Well considered, and viewed in the light of 
 the infinite disputation that subsequently arose, it will be 
 seen to be a masterly bit of legislative work. It would 
 puzzle an expert to add a bettering touch to the nice 
 felicity of its denning words. To fling open the door 
 to free election would have been easy ; but it is of the 
 very essence of Christianity that the one, whether the 
 individual or the congregation, shall have the benefit
 
 64 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of union and communion with the many, and that the 
 many shall retain vital and vivid connection with the 
 one ; therefore it is by the will and consent both of 
 the parochial flock and of the aggregate flock and fold, 
 that the settlement shall take place. And how accur- 
 ately do such words as " consent," " will," " intrusion," 
 " disapproval," steer clear of those absolutely interminable 
 sophistications and debatings that arise when, in such 
 cases, you ask people to state in words the reasons 
 why they disapprove ! 
 
 On one point these wise and vigilant guardians of 
 the electoral rights of congregations take care that there 
 shall be no mistake. If there is any suspicion of a 
 non-spiritual motive, if there is any reason to fear the 
 direct or indirect action of political boycott, or malice, 
 or bribery, then a solemn inquiry is to be instituted into 
 the matter. The whole affair is to be bond fide spiritual ; 
 and if the State suspects a trick, it will have the best 
 aid of the machinery of the Act in helping to expose it. 
 
 Never, surely, did democracy wear a less revolutionary 
 aspect, or come in a less questionable or alarming shape, 
 than when it appeared in the persons of the male heads 
 of families in full communion with the Church earnestly 
 deprecating the appointment of unedifying men to 
 minister to them in sacred things. It was a presump- 
 tion too potent to be gainsaid, — a presumption warranted 
 by all that has given Scotchmen their good name among 
 the nations of the world, — that these heads of families, 
 communicants, should have in them the living light of 
 Christianity. They might therefore have the clearest 
 conviction that a presentee, even though his doctrine
 
 THE VETO ACT. 65 
 
 were orthodox, his learning sufficient, his life moral, was 
 nevertheless spiritually lifeless, or at all events unedifying 
 to the congregation. The Veto Act did not lay a finger 
 on the temporal benefits of the incumbency; and, of 
 course, the patron, finding one presentee unacceptable, 
 might present another until a suitable one was found.
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 £0e C0apef Qtttntsfers. 
 
 T)Y the Veto Act the great body of the people were 
 -■-' restored to their true place in the Church. This 
 was the most conspicuous achievement hitherto realised 
 by the party of Reform. It was marvellously adapted 
 to quicken the interest of the people in the Church, 
 and to warm the attachment with which they re- 
 garded their pastors. But another and correspondent 
 change, by which the pastorate itself should be brought 
 into accordance with the original model, from which it 
 had largely fallen, was necessary to the complete restora- 
 tion aimed at by the movement party. 
 
 The pastor, it need hardly be said, is an eminently 
 important figure in the Catholic Church, reformed on 
 the Presbyterian pattern. The real presence of Christ 
 is His presence in the breast of every Christian, and 
 the ideal pastor is the man in a parish who glows 
 most visibly with the presence of Christ, and in whom 
 his flock can see a present Christ. He has a variety of 
 duties, and perhaps it would not be easy to convey a 
 more lucid or more comprehensive idea of these than
 
 THE CHAPEL MINISTERS. 07 
 
 Andrew Melville, New Testament in hand, furnishes us 
 with, in a passage that has doubtless been often quoted 
 but will bear quoting again. Melville adopts the view 
 that the variety of names applied in Scripture to pastors 
 is an index to their varieties of duty. " Sometimes," he 
 says, " they are called pastors, because they feed the 
 congregation ; sometimes cpiscopi or bishops, because they 
 watch over their flock ; sometimes ministers, by reason 
 of their service and office ; and sometimes also presbyters 
 or seniors, for the gravity in manners which they ought 
 to have in taking care of the spiritual government 
 which ought to be most dear unto them." 
 
 This was the ideal of the parish minister, which 
 Andrew Melville believed himself able to draw from 
 Scripture. It speaks well for the practical sense, as 
 well as for the sound Christianity, of Melville, that so 
 little is said in his summary about pulpit fluency and 
 oratorical effulgence. Neither the philosopher explain- 
 ing abstract truth to an illuminated coterie, nor the 
 pulpit rhetorician moving a polite audience to delicious 
 tears of sentiment, or playing upon them in sunny 
 ripples of hope and joy, seems to have entered largely 
 into Melville's conception of that representative of 
 Christ and of the Church in a parish, who was to share 
 in the whole life of his congregation, to execute discipline 
 as well as preach, to be, in doing as well as in speaking, 
 the brother-servant and leader-friend of his flock. What- 
 ever might be the varieties of the pastoral name, it was 
 in vehement opposition to the genius of Presbyterianism, 
 as found by Melville in the New Testament, that the 
 pastor of one parish should not be in a position of equal
 
 G8 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and perfect brotherhood with the pastors of other 
 parishes. To deny him his share in any business or 
 concern of Church-session, Presbytery, Synod, or General 
 Assembly, was to outrage the fundamental principles of 
 Christian brotherhood. 
 
 During the Moderate ascendancy, however, — in the 
 century of religious indifference and spiritual somnolence, 
 ■ — this life-principle had been violated, and a dangerous 
 and schismatical deviation had taken place from the parity 
 of the pastorate. Circumstances had favoured the rise 
 within the pale of the Establishment of what may be 
 called an alien and accidental Congregationalism, retaining 
 the Presbyterian name though really nondescript. It was 
 due mainly to hindrances and complications arising from 
 the State-connection. That connection had in its incipi- 
 ency been friendly and loyal on both sides. The Church 
 had recognised the authority of the State ; the State, 
 often demurring, had on the whole respected the spiritual 
 independence of the Church, co-operating with her in 
 the work of benefiting the nation. A visible Church, 
 exactly as a visible human spirit, must have food and 
 raiment ; and the regulating principle of the arrangement 
 between Church and State in Scotland — the regulating 
 principle, observe, which might or might not be adhered 
 to with mathematical accuracy in detail — was that the 
 State should supply the food and raiment, the Church the 
 animating spirit. The alliance between Church and 
 State was based on the mutual recognition of co-ordinate 
 jurisdiction. 
 
 The Church was not required to sell her spiritual 
 birthright for a mess of pottage ; but it must be admitted
 
 THE CHAPEL MINISTERS. G9 
 
 that, whatever they did or did not sell for it, the mess 
 of pottage allotted to the pastors of the Eeformed Church 
 in Scotland was a pitifully small one. Very different 
 from the butter, in a lordly dish, which the Church of 
 England, less sensitive as to her birthright of spiritual 
 jurisdiction, managed to carry off! The Scottish barons, 
 turbulent and rapacious, had kept their sovereign on 
 starvation wages ; and they were the last of men to take 
 due care, when they divided among themselves the 
 splendid properties of the ancient Church, that, in addition 
 to the wretched provision for the then existing clergy of 
 the Eeformed Church, there should be adequate or 
 approximately adequate means provided to supply the 
 spiritual wants of the population as it gradually in- 
 creased. 
 
 The matter was not, however, absolutely overlooked. 
 Not to cumber ourselves with detail, we find that, 
 by the arrangement ultimately decided on, when the 
 population of any parish had outgrown the supply 
 of Church ordinances, the Church and the Court of 
 Session, co-operating with each other, were empowered 
 to erect and endow a new charge. But the action, 
 both of the Presbytery and of the Court of Session, 
 was made conditional upon the preliminary consent of 
 landowners " possessing at least three -fourths of the 
 valued rent of the parish." He must take a highly 
 rose-coloured view of the spiritual qualities of land- 
 owners, who does not see that this would prove to be 
 a retarding stipulation. Can we fail to realise that, 
 when heritors and clerical gentlemen, lapped in the 
 sweet somnolence of Moderatism, solaced each other
 
 70 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 over their claret, they might feel it to be in many ways 
 objectionable to multiply charges and to make provision 
 for new ministers ? The population increased. The 
 people wanted more means of spiritual instruction than 
 the drowsy lairds and listless parsons supplied. Chapels 
 of ease, as they were called, sprang up. But there were 
 far fewer of them than the increase of the population 
 required, and, such as they were, they by no means 
 reached the standard of normal Presbyterian charges. 
 The Moderate clergy did not like them. As in England, so 
 in Scotland, during the philosophical century, it was Bible 
 religion, that is to say, the religion which your peasant 
 Latimers, your plain Bunyans, Wesleys, and Spurgeons, 
 see flashing on them from the Scripture page, that the 
 people wanted when they asked for more ministers. 
 The people found it also a great advantage that, in the 
 case of the chapels of ease, there were no patrons. But 
 all this was poison to the Moderate clergy and their 
 friends the lairds. The chapel ministers were practic- 
 ally treated as an inferior order, allowed indeed to 
 preach, but excluded from all the courts of the Church. 
 
 But the party of the Bible and of the people was now 
 in the ascendant. The Church had shaken off her wintry 
 slumbers, and was putting on her strength. After a 
 spirited debate, the General Assembly of 1834 swept 
 away by a large majority the invidious distinctions 
 which had been permitted to accumulate between 
 the chapel ministers and their more fully - endowed 
 brethren. Fixing her attention upon her own duty, 
 without waiting for the laggard action of the civil 
 power to provide endowments, — placing spiritual things
 
 THE CHAPEL MINISTERS. 71 
 
 first and material things second, instead of letting 
 the soul wait upon the body, — the Church accepted, 
 as in all senses the equals of their brethren, those 
 ministers who had found themselves charges, often with- 
 out her help, by the grace of God and the freewill 
 offerings of the people of Scotland. She bestowed upon 
 them all the dignities and powers belonging to the 
 Presbyterian office-bearer. 
 
 The most prominent part in this debate was taken by 
 Mr. Murray Punlop. He was a lawyer of great learning, 
 gifted with the luminous faculty of good lawyers in its 
 noblest form. A man of great general capacity, he 
 was subsequently considered the ablest of the Scottish 
 members of Parliament ; but politics were for him the 
 second, not the first. Devoted to his Church with a 
 glowing and beautiful fervency, he entertained for her a 
 sentiment that was religion, heroism, and poetry all in 
 one. The inspiration of a glorious present, the vision of a 
 glorious future, the Church of Scotland arose before him, 
 shaking off the apathy of a hundred years, restoring 
 to the people their liberties and rights, extending to 
 the chapel ministers their privileges, and satisfying all 
 Seceders that the Church of Scotland they had so long 
 loved and waited for, was again willing and worthy to 
 receive them and to gather her whole flock within the 
 ancient fold. " Our anxious people," Mr. Dunlop now 
 said, " from the door of every tent intensely watch the 
 holy banner. Already, blessed be God, they have seen 
 it slightly unfurl in the rising breeze, and lift itself in 
 part from the staff, and the solemn stir of preparation 
 is heard throughout the camp ; and at this very hour,
 
 72 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 with prayer, uplifted hands, and eager eyes, they watch 
 the moment when they shall see it once more broadly 
 unfold itself to the glorious sun, and hail it with one 
 long loud hosannah that shall resound from shore to 
 shore." 
 
 Not all, however, in the Assembly were so full of 
 faith and hope as Mr. Dunlop. The prudent, plausible, 
 peace-loving Dr. Cook, always aiming at reasonableness 
 of speech, sincerely averse to quarrelling with the Evan- 
 gelical reformers, but more averse still to quarrelling 
 with the terrible Court of Session, pointed out that in 
 some instances Presbyteries were actually empowered to 
 deal with questions connected with the temporalities, 
 and expressed a strong apprehension that difficulties 
 might arise with the Civil Power if the chapel ministers 
 were introduced into courts thus constituted. A corre- 
 sponding fear and reverence in relation to property had 
 been manifested by Dr. Cook in the discussions on the 
 proposal to make good the rights of congregations against 
 patrons. Eights of the Christian people, vindication of 
 Presbyterian parity, Church extension to every corner 
 of Scotland, these were no doubt brave notions, but what 
 might the other party to the State and Church alliance 
 say ? What if the pace of the Church, in carrying out 
 her own spiritual mission, should prove too rapid for the 
 State ? 
 
 This constant trepidation as to what the Civil Power 
 might say, called forth a remonstrance from one who 
 had marched with firm step among " Tamson's men," 
 and on whom their leader's eye had often glanced with 
 kindling recognition and exultant sympathy. Very tall,
 
 THE CHAPEL MINISTERS. 73 
 
 somewhat ungainly, with a huge shock of curling hair and 
 a powerful but not melodious voice, this friend and 
 follower of Andrew Thomson was no courtly orator ; 
 but he swayed every audience he addressed, and the 
 more cultivated and capable the audience, the more 
 completely did it own his sway. We shall know him 
 better before we have done, — his name was William 
 Cunningham. Not in the slightest degree disloyal to 
 the connection between Church and State was he. No 
 foreboding of a conflict between the two had distressed 
 him. He was sincerely disposed to defer to and to 
 honour the State in the exercise of all the powers 
 and privileges annexed to the civil jurisdiction. But 
 he was not prepared to admit that the Church should 
 do good only by permission of the State, — that the 
 Church should ask the State, with bated breath and 
 whispered humbleness, to allow her to be true to Scot- 
 land and to Christ. This was in his view mere moral 
 cowardice and spiritual paralysis. " The principle," he 
 said, " upon which this House has too often acted seems 
 to have been something like this, — that in conse- 
 quence of our connection with the State, we have 
 no power to do anything, however closely connected 
 with the interests of religion, which the State has 
 not expressly warranted and authorised ; whereas, the 
 true principle by which we ought to be guided — ■ 
 true alike in doctrine and in fact — is this, that not- 
 withstanding our connection with the State, we can 
 and ought to do everything fitted to promote the \ 
 interests of religion which the State has not expressly 
 prohibited."
 
 t 4 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 This might seem at first glance no great difference, 
 but for Cunningham it meant much. In his view the 
 State was answerable to Christ as well as the Church, 
 and therefore it would be a virtual accusation of unfaith- 
 fulness on the part of the State to suppose that it 
 prohibited anything in the spiritual province which 
 Christ's officers in that province found prescribed for 
 them in Christ's law. And Cunningham had deliberately 
 and with all possible publicity committed himself to the 
 statement that, if the Church could not promote the 
 spiritual kingdom of her Lord as well in connection with 
 the State as apart from the State, it was her duty to 
 part. " It is willingly conceded," he had said, " that 
 Christ's Church or kingdom is not of this world, but is 
 purely spiritual, and that, if it can be proved that union 
 or connection between Church and State, of any kind or 
 in any degree, necessarily implies the headship over the 
 Church of any other than Jesus Christ Himself, — the 
 subtraction of any of the privileges conferred by Christ 
 on the office-bearers or members of His Church, or the 
 imposition of any restraint upon them in the discharge 
 of any of their duties, — all such union or connection is 
 unlawful? Such, to the Voluntaries on this hand, and 
 to Erastians of every tint and of every name on that, 
 was Cunningham's declaration on the eve of the conflict.
 
 CHAPTEE X. 
 CQafmetB at TEorfl. 
 
 "117 HO in those days was a more hopeful, happy man 
 ' ' than Chalmers ? When we think of him, the 
 solemn gladness of those psalms, in which either the 
 Shepherd-minstrel himself, or the nameless Beethovens 
 and Haydns of the old Hebrew Church, expressed the 
 music of their walk with God, recurs to us. He rejoiced 
 like a strong man to run his race, treading like the sun 
 as it mounts the sky, and feeling the pleasure of the 
 Lord prospering in his hand. The Church — the Estab- 
 lished Church — had set herself right. The flock 
 was delivered from hireling shepherds, and the true 
 brothers of the Presbyterian pastorate, who had been 
 sent to the tents of Kedar— the ecclesiastical Coventry 
 ■ — of chapel ministration, were raised to the seats of 
 honour, — no mere street preachers, but fully equipped 
 elders to judge the twelve tribes of Israel. 
 
 Can we wonder that Chalmers should believe, say in 
 1835, when the resurgent Church had passed those 
 measures of legislative reform, that he was in a fair way 
 to wipe the last stain of infidel or dissident reproach
 
 70 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 from the brow of the Scottish Establishment, and that 
 he felt confidence in the willingness of the State to 
 co-operate with the Church in what he viewed as their 
 joint work of benefiting the people of Scotland ? It is most 
 instructive, and it is, we must add, profoundly pathetic, 
 to behold this strong Churchman straining his energies 
 to the utmost to demonstrate, by the final testimony 
 of experience, that a rejuvenescent Church could find 
 favour in the eyes of British statesmen. If ever man 
 believed in the theoretic and practical feasibility of the 
 express association of religious institutions and political 
 institutions in promoting the health and wealth of 
 nations, it was he. 
 
 The problem he now grappled with was Church Ex- 
 tension. In urging it forward, he appealed not only to 
 Christian principles, but to the evidence of his eyes. His 
 idiosyncrasy, •be it remembered, was the combination, 
 perhaps unique, of an impetuosity of spiritual ardour com- 
 parable to that of St. Paul, with a utilitarianism as cool, 
 circumspect, and thorough - going as that of Jeremy 
 Bentham. He once expressed to a bosom friend grave 
 and depressing doubts as to the real use and benefit of 
 those splendid exhibitions of pulpit eloquence which were 
 filling the world with his fame ; but he exulted in the 
 confidence that he was making a right and fruitful use 
 of his faculties when he trod the slums of Glasgow, the 
 auxiliary of the policeman, bringing celestial fire to 
 irradiate their darkness, and superseding both policeman 
 and relieving officer by the unbought ministrations of 
 Christian charity, quickening into development every germ 
 of self-help, every dormant energy of family affection.
 
 CHALMERS AT WORK. 77 
 
 Apply, then, lie now in many accents impatiently 
 cried, this experience to the State. Was it not 
 palpable that the people so operated on were like to 
 be better subjects, more law-abiding, less turbulent, less 
 criminal, less pauperised, than if left in heathenish 
 irreligion ? Could any man deny that " a depraved 
 commonalty is the teeming source of all moral and 
 political disorder " ? This he expected statesmen to 
 admit, when he appealed to them to promote Church 
 extension. 
 
 He proposed that over -peopled parishes should be 
 subdivided into manageable districts ; that in each of 
 these districts there should be erected " an economical 
 church," so economical that the sittings, if rented at all, 
 might be let cheaply enough to admit attendance by the 
 humblest classes. The Church was ready with " talented 
 and well-disposed licentiates, alive to the great moral 
 necessities of our land, and resolved to enter with the 
 full consecration of their powers and opportunities on 
 that high walk of philanthropy, whose object is to re- 
 claim those degenerate outcasts who have so multiplied 
 in thousands and tens of thousands beyond the means of 
 Christian instruction." 
 
 What of endowment ? That was a matter that re- 
 quired to be thought of. With characteristic regard to 
 their own interests, the heritors, who by ancient arrange- 
 ment ought to have borne at least part of the charge, 
 had applied to Parliament for protection to their pockets. 
 Statesmen had been willing enough to listen to them. 
 " A recent Act " had screened them from liability in 
 connection with the new territorial churches. There
 
 78 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 remained " the liberality of the patriotic and the good," 
 in short, the voluntary system without the big V, 
 to fall back upon, and these made generous response to 
 the appeal of Chalmers. But he did not forget that he 
 was working for the poor. They little know this man 
 who imagine that, if he had obtained money enough to 
 decorate the towns and enliven the parishes of Scotland 
 with handsome churches, filled with rich and fashionable 
 congregations, he would have attained his object or reaped 
 his reward. High steeples, advertising crack preachers 
 to attract hearers from miles or leagues around, on the 
 system which has since been so brilliantly developed 
 in London and elsewhere, would have been looked on by 
 him with small enthusiasm. Valuing at all times and in 
 all places the preaching of the gospel, he was not bent 
 only on preaching. " In this way," he wrote, " there 
 would be no increase in the amount of Christian instruc- 
 tion in the country, but only a transference of hearers 
 from one place to another, — a building up of new at the 
 expense of old congregations. It would but make a new 
 distribution of hearers among people who already hear 
 somewhere." It was not as a thing of ornament, but as 
 a thing of use, that this man contemplated the parochial 
 system. " The great thing wanted is, that the thousands 
 now living in practical heathenism, and who at present 
 hear nowhere, shall be reclaimed to the decencies of a 
 Christian land ; and this can only be done by planting 
 churches with low seat-rents in the midst of these people, 
 uiving them a preference above all others to the sittings 
 in their own local churches, and making it the distinct 
 business of the newly-endowed ministers, each to culti-
 
 CHALMERS AT WORK. 70 
 
 vate, and as much as possible confine himself to, the 
 households of his own assigned locality. In this way 
 altogether new ground will be entered upon ; a real 
 movement in advance will be made among a heretofore 
 neglected population. Christian instruction will be let 
 down to the poorest of our families ; and our Establish- 
 ment, if extended in this way, will become, and at a very 
 cheap rate, an effective home-mission in favour of those 
 whose thorough moral and Christian education, both 
 piety and the public good so loudly demand." 
 
 The authority of the State in measuring out areas for 
 the territorial churches, and an extremely limited grant 
 of money in each case, say £100, just sufficient to secure 
 that there should be sittings accessible to the poorest 
 self-sustaining parishioners, — such was the modest request 
 of Chalmers and the awakening Church to that State 
 which was supposed to bestow upon her inestimable 
 advantage in their joint labour of promoting Christian 
 instruction in Scotland. What was the reply ? 
 
 At first there had been some encouraging symptoms 
 on the part of the Government, The Melbourne Cabinet 
 had given a courteous hearing to a deputation from Edin- 
 burgh, that came to London to plead for the scheme in 
 1834. The Whig phalanx, that seemed unassailable 
 after the passing of the great Reform Bill, had even then 
 begun to waver under the skilful attacks of Peel, and was 
 driven from office in that year. But it was against his 
 own judgment as a parliamentary tactician that Sir Robert 
 had pressed his advantage so far, and the consequent rally 
 of his opponents and partial reattainment of popularity 
 placed them more firmly in their seats than before.
 
 SO THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Meanwhile Chalmers had been at work. Engaged at 
 one and the same time in fiercest battle with controversial 
 foes, and in pushing on the Church's part of the Exten- 
 sion Scheme, he had issued four pamphlets in one month 
 as successive blows to strike down the hydra-heads of 
 opposition, and had splendidly succeeded in the construct- 
 ive part of his enterprise. In the General Assembly of 
 1835 he announced what had been done. Sixty-four 
 new churches had in one year been added to the Estab- 
 lishment, " about as many as the whole preceding century 
 had given birth to," and upwards of sixty-five thousand 
 pounds had been contributed in cash. 
 
 The session of Assembly ended, Chalmers himself, 
 heading a deputation, proceeded to London. Whether 
 it was that Lord Melbourne and Lord John Eussell were 
 now more stably seated in office, or whether the hy dra- 
 in mi Is of opposition, smitten in Edinburgh by four 
 pamphlets in one month, had reappeared and been 
 potently at work in London, a change had come to 
 pass. Lord Melbourne was oppressively apathetic. 
 Lord John Eussell was sententious, guarded, prepared 
 to maintain State Establishments of religion, but ex- 
 tremely calm on the subject of Church Extension. The 
 Government, they were told, had resolved to issue a 
 Eoyal Commission of Inquiry to investigate the subject. 
 That was all. For the fiery champion of State Churches 
 it was a bath of snow-water. Where was that loyalty 
 to the Church's primary duty of bringing Christ's gospel 
 to the poor, which he had looked for from states- 
 men ? In his disenchantment he turned with his depu- 
 tation, if not for help, at least for solace, to the Tories.
 
 CHALMERS AT WORK'. 81 
 
 " Gentlemen," said the Duke of Wellington, "you will 
 get nothing. That is my opinion. I am sorry for it, 
 but so you will find it." 
 
 The supercilious apathy of Melbourne and the placid 
 languor of Lord John, followed by the issue of a highly- 
 unsatisfactory Commission of Inquiry, stirred the spirit 
 of Chalmers, and drew from him a letter to the Whig 
 Prime Minister, marked by all his ardour in the sacred 
 cause of the poor, and evincing the penetrating power 
 of his logic to pierce through shams into the heart of 
 things. He told Melbourne that the indifference of the 
 Administration to the extension of Christian instruction 
 among unprovided populations betrayed a lurking belief 
 that the instruction, where provided, was not worth 
 much, and that " little or no evil would result on the 
 departure of Christianity and all its services from the 
 land." Such a sentiment, he indignantly exclaims 
 " stamps a nullity on the gospel, and an utter insigni- 
 ficance on the vocation of its ministers." Thus wrote 
 Chalmers more than fifty years ago. As we read the 
 words to-day, is there not something tragic in their 
 sound ? How palpably — with ever-accelerating speed — 
 has the current of opinion in Cabinets and Parliaments 
 since then been towards depreciation of the value of 
 " Christianity and all its services " ! Herein lies, in 
 fact, the essential difficulty, always making the friction 
 greater, that has emerged in the practical carrying on 
 of the alliance between Church and State. The State 
 of old valued the Church for the sake of the Church's 
 work. The governing classes in Lord Melbourne's days 
 had begun to be profoundly indifferent to the Church's 
 6
 
 82 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 duties as such, and scepticism was stealing upon their 
 minds as to whether even the indirect and educa- 
 tional uses of the Church were worth taking trouble 
 about. 
 
 In the constitution of the Koyal Commission of In- 
 quiry issued by the Melbourne Government, Chalmers 
 proceeded to point out, there did not appear the smallest 
 consideration of what was due to the Church as an 
 independent spiritual power, co-operating with the State 
 on terms of mutual loyalty for a common object. The 
 names of such men, in the next place, as were familiar 
 with the want of religious teaching in the crowded 
 towns of Scotland, and in whom the Church could 
 trust, Monteith, Spiers, Dunlop, were absent. The 
 selected Commissioners, deficient in all requisite quali- 
 fications, had been put in "at the instigation of their 
 patrons or political friends." The Scottish Church 
 was a fellow - worker with the State in the cause of 
 Christ and the people, not on slavish and humiliat- 
 ing, but on honourable and equal conditions ; and the 
 terms in which this Commission was drafted evinced 
 ignorance, said Chalmers, " of the fundamental principle 
 of our Presbyterian Establishment," or else a " purpose 
 to offer it violence." Had the Commissioners been of 
 the right land, the Church might have felt no alarm as 
 to " transgression being made on the line of demarcation 
 between the civil and the ecclesiastical ; " but, the Com- 
 missioners being hostile, and their instructions "loose 
 and unguarded," the Churchmen of Scotland might well 
 apprehend that their " most sacred principles " would 
 be slighted. And then, for the benefit and illumination
 
 CHALMERS AT WORK. 83 
 
 of all those Melbournes, Russells, and reels who might 
 henceforward have any special dealings with the Church, 
 he went into a statement of what had always been, 
 and would always be, an inexorable condition of his 
 championship of State-Churchism. " We do not acknow- 
 ledge," he exclaimed, " the King to be the head of 
 the Church ; and this independence of the ecclesiastical 
 upon the civil was conceded to us at the Revolution, 
 after we had sustained many and grievous persecutions 
 in defence of it, and since guaranteed at the period of 
 the Union between the two kingdoms. "VVe do not 
 admit the subordination of the Church to the State in 
 things which are strictly and properly ecclesiastical ; or 
 that we are responsible to any tribunal on earth for 
 the discharge and exercise of our spiritual functions." 
 Spiritual independence he signalised as " the dei 
 and most hallowed of our principles," and prophesied 
 that, if encroachment were made upon it, many thousands 
 of those Scotchmen who were " still attached to the 
 tabernacles of their fathers " would make known their 
 resentment. 
 
 Does the reader now expect to be told that Chalmers 
 flung the Commission of Inquiry in Lord Melbourne's 
 face, and called upon the clergy and people of Scotland 
 to submit to no examination as to the religious state of 
 parishes by emissaries of the Civil Power ? There seem 
 to have been not a few in Scotland who were prepared 
 for this course. The agitation w r as deeply felt throughout 
 the country. A special meeting of the Commission of 
 the General Assembly was called to consider the question 
 of how the privileges of the Church might be guarded.
 
 84 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 One particularly excited gentleman deserves special 
 notice. Mr. John Hope, Dean of Faculty, apparently 
 outstripping Dunlop himself in Presbyterian zeal, wrote 
 to Chalmers entreating him to raise his voice, " as our 
 firm and well-tried Presbyterian champion," against " this 
 most flagrant outrage." Mr. Hope pronounced the 
 Government inquiry " destructive of the principle and 
 independence of Presbytery," and described the occasion 
 as " the commencement of the final fight for our Church." 
 But Chalmers combined the wisdom and self-command 
 of Ulysses with the moral passion and the voice 
 of Achilles. He was to be moved from the stability 
 of his intellectual judgment neither by the whirlblast 
 of popular enthusiasm nor by the seductive flatteries 
 of the Presbyterian lawyer. Calmly studying the 
 terms of the Commission, he perceived that, however 
 " loose " they might be, they did not necessarily 
 carry the tyrannical sense fixed upon them by the 
 Dean. Lord John Eussell wrote also a timeous letter 
 to Lord Minto, which served, says Dr. Hanna, " entirely 
 to remove " the misapprehension caused by the language 
 of the Commission. And, let us add, — as perhaps the 
 most important element in the business, — Chalmers's own 
 practical instinct reminded him, on second thoughts, that 
 if two co-ordinate powers, Church and State, were to 
 work harmoniously together, it was, by the nature of the 
 case, requisite and reasonable that they should give full 
 explanation, information, and general furtherance to each 
 other. Having protested, therefore, against both the 
 wording and the manning of the Whig Commission, he 
 nevertheless advised the Church, throughout all her
 
 CHALMERS AT WORK. 85 
 
 parishes, to welcome the Commissioners, and show them 
 that the poor were hungering for a more liberal supply 
 of the bread of life. " I will submit to any affront," he 
 said, " rather than that the cause should suffer from any 
 want of willing co-operation which I can possibly render 
 to it. I look for many disagreeables in consecpuence of 
 these appointments ; but I will brook anything rather 
 than give up the object of a Christian education for the 
 common people." There is in all this a chivalrous fidelity 
 to honour, an intrepid acceptance of light up to the 
 measure of its dawning, a truth to one's self and one's 
 God, that amounts to a sterling consistency, better than 
 the nicest fitting of cog to tooth and tooth to cog, round 
 the whole commonplace wheel of life. 
 
 May we not say that some strange fatality, some 
 singular infatuation, some curious maladjustment of 
 circumstances or malignity of human spite, could alone 
 bring it about that such a man should, within a few 
 years, have come to believe himself absolutely bound 
 by his duty to Christ to bid the Church of Scotland 
 separate from the State ? 
 
 One thing above all others it is well for us to observe 
 in connection with this letter of Dean of Faculty Hope's 
 to Chalmers, that it was the lawyer, not the divine, who 
 exhibited a sensitive jealousy as to the right of the 
 clergy not to be inspected in the discharge of their 
 teaching and preaching functions. Chalmers had no in- 
 superable qualms about the sacrosanct character of the 
 clergy. He may feel his Presbyterian principles more 
 keenly roused when it is the rights of the people that 
 are menaced !
 
 86 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Meanwhile, be it accurately understood why and for 
 what causes this impassioned advocate valued Church 
 Establishments. It was not because he supposed the 
 Almighty to hold Himself more honoured by having His 
 name blazoned on political institutions than on the hearts 
 of nations. The national recognition of God by atheistic 
 Governments he would have pronounced a blasphemous 
 sham. It was not because he wished to cripple the 
 operation, in proper circumstances, of Nonconformist 
 preachers, or to bar their attracting audiences from all 
 parts of the compass, or from any extent of area. The 
 more he saw of pulpit power, exerted in the name of 
 Christ, the more cordially was he gratified. The traditions 
 of the Scottish Evangelical party — the Andrew Thomson 
 party— were entirely in favour of generous appreciation 
 of Nonconformist Christianity, and the recognition by the 
 Establishment of the yeoman service rendered by such 
 outfield workers as Wardlaw and M'Crie. 
 
 Chalmers valued Establishment because he held that, 
 in order to bring Christian ministrations to the bedside 
 of the poor in congested districts, and to enable the 
 poorest of them to attend the public ordinances of 
 religion, it was necessary to divide large areas into 
 limited districts, to assign a minister to each, and to 
 secure that sittings in territorial churches should be 
 practically free. His own Church Extension Scheme fur- 
 nished a magnificent attestation of his faith in voluntary 
 effort. It was based mainly upon voluntary effort. 
 Only the stretching out of the little finger of the State 
 did he ask for, to supplement the free-will offerings of 
 the Christian people, and to supplement them in the
 
 CHALMERS AT WORK. 87 
 
 interest of the poor. And when the people, like all 
 peoples, ancient and modern, really in earnest about 
 religion, made generous response to his appeal, the State 
 treated his adored Church as an Indian village treats 
 the old used-up cow that yields milk no longer, and 
 which, though they do not lay a hand on it, they turn 
 out to die in the meadow, indifferent whether the 
 vultures tear it or no ! The day of the vultures is 
 certainly not yet ; but can the most imaginative of 
 readers fancy that our lynx-eyed Presbyterian Dean will 
 turn out to be at the head of them ? 
 
 The Commissioners visited the parishes, pocketed their 
 wages, and went their way. And nothing came of it. 
 The Duke of Wellington was a true prophet : " Gentle- 
 men, you will get nothing."
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 CfyaimexB at $fap. 
 
 IN the same summer in which he dealt so manfully, 
 so magnanimously, and so hopelessly with Lord 
 Melbourne, Dr. Chalmers visited Oxford. It was a 
 change, for a few halcyon days, from solemn work to not 
 ignoble play. Always ardently scientific, well informed 
 in geology, and intrepid in his conviction that no evil 
 could come to the truth or to the Church from a recog- 
 nition of facts ascertained by research, he had been 
 elected a Fellow and Vice-President of the Eoyal 
 Society of Edinburgh, and was also, by election, a 
 Corresponding Member of the Royal Institute of France. 
 He now, in 1835, received an intimation from Oxford, 
 that at the approaching Annual Commemoration the 
 University intended to confer upon him the degree of 
 Doctor of Laws. With the simplicity of a guileless 
 nature, too great to disguise its honest pride, he owned 
 his surprise and delight. " I have long," he wrote in 
 reply, " had the utmost affection and reverence for the 
 University of Oxford, but I never once dreamed of the 
 possibility of in any manner being admitted within its 
 
 88
 
 CHALMERS A T PL A Y. 89 
 
 pale." Iii the presence of a brilliant throng lie was in- 
 vested with the honour conferred upon him, and addressed 
 in sonorous Latin as a paragon of benignity, learning, 
 and eloquence, a strenuous and compassionate advocate 
 of the poor, and ccclcsicc Scoticce acerrimus propugnator, 
 ccclesice Anglicance guogue, idque dubiis et formidolosis 
 temporibas, gravissimus vindex, — the keenest champion of 
 the Church of Scotland, and also, and that in doubtful 
 and alarming times, a most powerful defender of the 
 Church of England. Three times in the course of the 
 Latin panegyric did the assembled gownsmen of Oxford 
 University make the roof ring with their acclamations. 
 
 " The most interesting introduction which I have had 
 in Oxford," wrote Chalmers to his friend, Lady Stuart, 
 " is to Keble the poet, author of the Christian Year, a 
 work of exquisite beauty, and most worthy of your per- 
 sonal, nay, of your daily companionship, if you have not 
 yet admitted it into your cabinet." In that year there 
 were not many in England, to say nothing of Presbyterian 
 Scotland, who could speak of daily companionship with 
 Keble's poetry. And it was of this man that Carlyle, 
 in the latest stage of his decadence, spoiling by the 
 ugly sting at the end what would otherwise have been 
 a fine and cordial eulogium on Chalmers, could speak as 
 "ill read" and "ignorant of all that lay beyond the 
 horizon in place or in time." 
 
 In this Oxford visit there was one cloud that cast 
 momentarily its shadow on Chalmers. " The only ex- 
 pression of regret," wrote a friend who was much with 
 him in Oxford, "which fell from him in my hearing 
 during the course of his visit, had reference to the
 
 90 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 reserve which characterised, as he thought, the manner 
 of some eminent men connected with a certain theo- 
 logical party to whom he was introduced, and which 
 prevented him from touching, in conversation with them, 
 upon topics of the highest import, with the frank and 
 genial earnestness which was natural to him." The 
 reference obviously is to that famed party whose history, 
 from that year until now, has been the history of High 
 Church life and thought, and, to no inconsiderable extent, 
 of theological and humanitarian literature, in England. 
 Mind and heart linger on the juxtaposition, at Oxford, 
 of Chalmers and Newman. Of how much were they 
 the antithetically contrasted and antagonist types ! 
 Simple Chalmers, the kindly, unsophisticated Scot, who 
 saw through a medium of illusion everything called Chris- 
 tian, and sang the praises of the Anglican Establishment 
 as a bulwark of Protestantism. Newman would hardly 
 have granted him the Christian name. But Chalmers was 
 right in thinking that there were mighty elements in 
 the Church of England that sympathised with him, — far 
 mightier than those represented by Newman. Chalmers 
 stood for the religion of men ; Newman, for that of priests. 
 The one represented the universal Christian priesthood ; 
 the other, a mystically endowed sacerdotal caste. It may 
 seem a startling statement, but the historical evidence 
 of its truth is absolutely overwhelming, that, probably 
 from a time prior to the Eeformation, and certainly from 
 the clays of Queen Elizabeth until Chalmers and 
 Newman were in Oxford together in 1835, the religion of 
 the great body of Englishmen has been the religion of 
 Chalmers, not of Newman. There is much religion in
 
 CHALMERS A T FLA Y. 91 
 
 Shakespeare; there is no sacerdotalism. Wycliffe, Milton, 
 Bunyan, Whitfield, Wesley, Wilberforce, Shaftesbury, 
 Spurgeon, stand one and all on the religion of Chalmers, 
 as against the religion of Newman. Young men of re- 
 ligious susceptibility, young women of cloistral tempera- 
 ment, adored Newman. But the people of England knew 
 him not. It was very doubtful then, and it is perhaps 
 doubtful now, whether, if we look to essentials and not 
 circumstantials, there is not more of Presbyterianism 
 than of Newmanism in the Church of England. Had 
 Newman been in touch with the Bible Christianity 
 of the English people, as Chalmers was in touch with 
 the Bible religion of the Scottish people, how different 
 the issue might have been ! The English people fear to see 
 their Church free and self-governing, because they have 
 an invincible suspicion that the Church means the clergy, 
 and that the clergy aspire to be a priestly caste. The 
 Anglican clergy have never been leaders of the people. 
 But Chalmers would have assented, with a fervency 
 that few Anglican clergymen or Anglican laymen can 
 realise, to Newman's solemn conviction, implied in his 
 celebrated utterance as he passed beyond the threshold 
 of the Church of England, that the Chinch of Christ is 
 no mere national or political institution. The Church of 
 the people in Scotland took over, in the sixteenth century, 
 from the Church of Eome, all the genuine rights, liberties, 
 and powers of the Church of Christ ; and since then, in 
 proportion to their zeal for Christ, have the clergy been 
 Scottish patriots and tribunes of the common people.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 £0e (Resurgent C0urc0— Z$e J&utoen §tovm— 
 $uc0ferar$er. 
 
 nniMES were changed in Scotland. The Church had 
 -*- been dead and was alive again. The moral atmo- 
 sphere was no longer one of slumbrous indifference. 
 That wave of Evangelical religion, sneered at considerably 
 by philosophic personages for other- worldliness, but privi- 
 leged by virtue of its zeal against slavery, its opposition 
 to the Test and Corporation Acts, its war against the 
 cruelties of the old criminal jurisprudence, its victorious 
 attacks upon tyrannic covetousness in mine and factory, 
 to do a grand spell of God's work for this world, had 
 come streaming into the Church of Scotland. The 
 Scottish people, quickly responsive as they had been at 
 all periods of their history to any thrill of new spiritual 
 life, any breath of returning inspiration in their Church, 
 beheld with admiring sympathy the advance of the re- 
 forming impulse. They rejoiced to see their Church 
 exercising those rights of expansion, those rights of 
 adjustment to changing circumstances, those rights of 
 bringing into action principles that had fallen into abey-
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH — THE SUDDEN STORM. 93 
 
 ancc, which were all included in the right to life, received 
 from Christ, and implied, as no one yet appeared to dis- 
 pute, in the union between Church and State in Scotland. 
 If Whigs were arid to Chalmers, and if Tories gave him 
 cold comfort, the Scottish people backed him bravely in 
 his Church Extension Scheme. We spoke of the first 
 ingathering of the goodwill offerings of the faithful. 
 But contributions to the extent of £305,747, and two 
 hundred and twenty - two churches planted throughout 
 Scotland where need was greatest, gradually proved to this 
 champion of Establishments that something might be done, 
 after all, by the voluntary principle. The just reproach 
 against a Presbyterian Church, that it had let the funda- 
 mental principle of parity among the ministerial brother- 
 hood be violated wholesale, was removed by admission of 
 the chapel ministers to complete Presbyterian equality. 
 The right to have no pastor forced upon them against 
 their w T ill, a right inexpressibly dear to the pious farmers 
 and cottagers of Scotland, was secured by the Veto Act. 
 The exclusive spirit of the previous century had decreed, 
 "by an Act of Assembly passed in 1799," that no 
 minister of any other Church should occupy a pulpit of 
 the Establishment. This decree was now swept away. 
 The Presbyterians of England and of Ireland were 
 welcomed to full communion. A body of seceders re- 
 entered the Church. 
 
 Vitalised at home, the Church put forth new energy 
 in the task of preaching Christ abroad. Dr. Duff had 
 appeared in the Assembly, and in brilliantly eloquent 
 language, amid the passionate sympathy of his audience, 
 called upon his brethren to aid him in conquering India
 
 94 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 for Christ. A new scheme was devised for bringing 
 Christ's Hebrew brethren according to the flesh to join 
 the Christian Israel. In one word, the Church— clergy 
 and laity alike — was tingling with the keen activities of 
 rejuvenescence, glowing with the ardours and enthusiasms 
 of reinforced vitality, from shore to shore of Scotland. 
 Taking, in compliment to a mechanical age, the rude 
 standards of coined money and stone walls, we find the 
 progress of the reforming movement, during the few 
 years of Evangelical ascendancy, registered in an increase, 
 fourteen/old, of the Church's freewill offerings in the 
 service of her Lord. 
 
 Can it, as a matter of common sense, apart from any 
 question of special Divine right, be pretended that this 
 renascence of the Church of Scotland exceeded the 
 natural, normal play of that freedom which, for all 
 organised societies, is a condition of life ? Might not 
 any professional association — the medical, for example — 
 complain of tyrannical oppression if not allowed to 
 regulate its membership on principles believed by it to 
 be essential to the art of healing ? Surely we can 
 return but one answer to these questions ; and yet the 
 time was at hand when the impassioned energy of the 
 Church of Scotland, in aiming at the realisation of her 
 heavenly ideal, was to bring upon her rebuke and tribu- 
 lation, and when the rays of her resurrection glory were 
 to be scornfully disowned and shred away. 
 
 Soon after the passing of the Veto Act, the Earl of 
 Kinnoull bestowed the presentation to the vacant parish 
 of Auchterarder in Perthshire upon Mr. Eobert Young. 
 When the day came for " moderating in a call," or in-
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH — THE SUDDEN STORM. 95 
 
 vitation by the congregation to the man thus designated 
 for their pastor, it appeared that, out of three hundred 
 and thirty male heads of families in full communion, 
 just two signed the call to Mr. Young. Clearly, there- 
 fore, the parishioners did not want him for their minister. 
 But they might conceivably be neutral. They might be 
 willing, by silence, to acquiesce in the appointment. An 
 opportunity, therefore, was afforded them of stating 
 whether the appointment was regarded by them with 
 positive disfavour. Nearly three hundred now came 
 forward, and, in exercise of those rights to repel intrusion 
 which the Church had conferred upon them, vetoed 
 Mr. Young. Doing all things leisurely, the Presbytery 
 gave the parishioners a fortnight to consider their de- 
 cision. They remained of the same mind. The presentee 
 therefore was rejected. Mr. Young demurred, and the 
 Earl of Kinnoul, though understood to take no serious 
 interest in the matter personally, associated himself with 
 Mr. Young in turning to the Court of Session. 
 
 The legal adviser into whose hands Mr. Young put 
 himself, and by whom was determined the manner in 
 which the Court of Session should be asked to coerce 
 the Church into intruding Mr. Young into the parish of 
 Auchterarder, was none other, our readers will be in- 
 terested to learn, than Mr. Hope, Dean of Faculty, whose 
 naming zeal impelled him to appeal to Dr. Chalmers 
 when a Whig Commission threatened to do violence to 
 the spiritual independence of the Church. 
 
 The Church of Scotland could not have selected a 
 more favourable position in which to fight her battle. 
 Not to vindicate any towering ecclesiastical pretension
 
 9G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 — not in defence of any scheme of theological meta- 
 physics — not to extort new power, or privilege, or 
 dignity, or endowment for the clergy — but to secure, 
 for poor country people, for those rustic patriarchs, 
 and simple, prayerful shepherds of whom Burns sang 
 in the Cottars Saturday Night, and whom Scott and 
 Carlyle revered, the right to have no man forced upon 
 them as their minister, was the Church of Scotland 
 now called to contend. Round the sanctuary of the 
 peasant Christian did the Church range her enginery 
 of defence, and bare her bosom to the blow. Wound 
 him, she said, and you strike a deadly blow at me ; 
 deprive him of that right of signifying consent to the 
 appointment of his minister which Paul and Barnabas 
 sanctioned, and which Calvin recognised, and you break 
 the time-honoured league between Church and State in 
 Scotland. 
 
 The Court of Session, the supreme tribunal in Scot- 
 land in civil affairs, is, of course, guardian of all property, 
 and it was, indirectly, by a question of property that 
 the Court of Session was brought to try conclusions 
 with the resurgent Church. For all true-hearted lawyers, 
 property is a sacred word ; and if the dominant lawyers 
 of Scotland were led in this matter into injustice, 
 it is charitable to suppose it was their sensitive 
 regard to property that led them astray. Since the 
 day when a settled ministry first came into existence, 
 long before the time of Constantine, nay, before the 
 rise of the Church of Borne, delicate and difficult 
 problems must have arisen for solution in connection 
 with arrangements arising out of Church property. The
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH — THE SUDDEN STORM. 97 
 
 lawsuits of a thousand years have been largely occupied 
 with adjudication of property dedicated to spiritual uses. 
 Property originally devised for the benefit of souls has 
 come to be mis-applied to countless purposes : the 
 providing of soldiers and revenues for kings, the furnish- 
 ing of nobles with estates, the enrichment of scoundrel 
 courtiers, the payment of royal mistresses, the procure- 
 ment of luxuries, race-horses, diamonds, gold plate, for 
 the offscouring of the earth. 
 
 As usual, the sure way out of the difficulty, to which 
 recourse has almost never been had, is to follow the 
 Divine glance of Christ into the heart of the matter, 
 and to put the spirit and the life in the first place, 
 and the meat and the raiment in the second. This rule 
 seems really, for a wonder, to have been that which, with 
 creditable and exceptional approximation to exactness, 
 was followed by the Church of Scotland. Nursed among 
 storms, a child of the hill and the moorland, she saw 
 greedy nobles divide among them the splendid posses- 
 sions of the old Eomish Kirk. No magnificence of 
 baronial bishoprics — like the £15,000 a year, £10,000, 
 £5000, which make the Church of England so impos- 
 ing in the eyes of statesmen — did she set her hearl 
 upon. But, in direct allegiance to her Head, she made 
 provision that the spirit and the life, the preaching of 
 the word and the service of the ministry, should be 
 secured in her parishes. She accepted, as mere meat 
 and raiment for these, utterly subordinate to these, the 
 wretched pittance of endowment which was all the 
 niggard State allowed her. The pittance, such as it 
 was, could not, under the circumstances of the time, be 
 7
 
 98 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 dispensed with ; nor had any Protestant religionists, at 
 the period when the Scottish Presbyterian Church arose, 
 conceived an objection to friendly union and co-operation 
 between Church and State. The endowment, therefore, 
 as in the theory of all Protestant State Churches, re- 
 mained, strictly speaking, the State's, or at least under 
 the guardianship of the State, for the spiritual lenefit 
 of the people. The patron could not touch a penny 
 of the benefice. All he could in any case lose was the 
 satisfaction of seeing some one man of his choice re- 
 jected ; and he had his remedy by naming another, and, 
 if necessary, another and another, until the right man 
 was found. The rejected presentee, for his part, sup- 
 posing him to acquiesce in his rejection, could lose no 
 more than his presentation to this parish, — all the 
 vacant parishes of the Church remained accessible to 
 him. But if the parishioners were once forced to receive 
 a man who brought no spiritual life and healing to their 
 souls, they might be doomed to suffer as long as their 
 or his mortal life endured. This, beyond all cavil or 
 mystification, was the one poignant and transcendent 
 injustice that could occur in the appointment of ministers ; 
 and it was for enacting that this injustice should be made 
 impossible, that the Church of Scotland was called to 
 account by the Court of Session. 
 
 It were idle to detail the hitherings and thitherings, 
 the preliminaries, preparations, and manifold circum- 
 locutions, that preceded the opening, on the 21st of 
 November 1837, of this momentous trial. In con- 
 sideration of its importance, order was made that 
 it should take place before the whole Court. Lord
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH — THE SUDDEN STORM. ( J ( J 
 
 President Hope and twelve judges, Lords Gillies, Boyle, 
 Meadowbank, Mackenzie, Medwyn, Corebouse, Cunning- 
 ham, Fullerton, Moncreiff, Glenlee, Jeffrey, and Cockburn , 
 occupied the Bench. The leading counsel, for the pur- 
 suers or plan tiffs was Mr. Hope, Dean of Faculty ; the 
 leading counsel for the defence, Mr. Eutherford, Solicitor- 
 General, — men of acknowledged eminence in parts, acquire- 
 ments, and eloquence. From the 21st ofi November to 
 the 12th of December the pleadings continued. On the 
 27th of February the judges began to deliver their 
 opinions. On the 8 th of March sentence was pronounced. 
 The report of what was argued by counsel and decided 
 by the judges occupies volumes, but it may prove possible, 
 if only we can direct our glance to essentials, to bring 
 these within a narrow compass. 
 
 The Dean of Faculty, whether it was that research 
 had opened his eyes, or whether it was that, being now 
 an advocate, he felt himself permitted,, by his professional 
 conscience, to consider solely the interests of his clients, 
 took up a position relatively to the Church of Scotland 
 and the claims of Presbytery wide as the poles asunder 
 from that which he occupied when he called upon 
 Chalmers to show fight against the Whig Commission. 
 He declared, with a sweeping comprehensiveness and 
 a peremptory dogmatism, which could have been sur- 
 passed by no parliamentary lawyer of England assert- 
 ing the axiomatic subordination of Church to State in 
 the land of Henry, Elizabeth, and Oliver Cromwell, that 
 the Church of Scotland owed her very existence to the 
 State. The Establishment, in fact, was the Church. The 
 Government had put down the lioniish Church, and
 
 100 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 " for some time no Establishment whatever existed 
 in its room." But the State could create as well as 
 destroy. " A new and vigorous, a young and untried 
 fabric, full of energy and power, was created by the 
 State in the room of that which the State overturned 
 and abolished. I say created, for it was devised, formed, 
 moulded, instituted, and created wholly and of new by 
 the State." 
 
 If this is substantially true, if the Dean is practically 
 in the right, then the whole conception formed by 
 historians of the Church of Scotland has been a mistake, 
 and the differentia, the contrast, deeply marked in the 
 history of three centuries, between the Church of Scot- 
 land and the Church of England has been a dream. 
 That he meant to go the whole length of the Erastian 
 theory, denying all separate jurisdiction in spiritual 
 tilings, and reducing the Church of Scotland to a depart- 
 ment of the State, is proved by his deliberately pro- 
 nouncing her claims to powers derived from " her great 
 spiritual head" to be " the most pernicious error by which 
 the blessed truths of Christianity can be perverted." 
 The sensitively Presbyterian exhorter of Chalmers 
 can now, by the deft insertion of an adjective, hurl 
 against his Presbyterian mother Church the accusation, 
 dear to confused and weak-headed persons, of being 
 Popish. Hers is the " error which arms fallible man 
 with the belief that he possesses the power and authority 
 of the Divine Teacher whom he worships." Every one 
 who has any real acquaintance with the subject knows 
 that the Presbyterian Church has always jealously 
 abjured pretension to infallibility, and that her claim
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH — THE SUDDEN S'l ORM. 101 
 
 to legislate or regulate in the name of Christ has meant 
 simply that she is directly responsible to Him. The 
 infallibility claimed by the Church goes as far as the 
 infallibility claimed by conscience, — not a step farther. 
 To summon up spectral possibilities of mischief and 
 of absurdity, as arising out of the claim of the Church 
 to obey God rather than man, and that in no wildly 
 mystical or madly fanatical sense, but as limited by, and 
 in strictest accordance with, Old Testament law and New 
 Testament gospel, which is the whole length and breadth 
 and depth and height of the Presbyterian claim to free- 
 dom and self-government, — this constituted surely an 
 extravagant flight of forensic audacity. 
 
 It was not difficult for Mr. Rutherford to rebut an 
 argument based upon principles so inconsistent with 
 truth as those of the Dean. Admitting that the Court 
 of Session had full power and jurisdiction in respect 
 of the temporal fruits of the benefice, he had but to 
 refer to explicit statements of the Confession of Faith 
 to make it plain that, in so strictly spiritual a matter as 
 ordination, the Court of Session could possess no juris- 
 diction over the Church. The sheer intensity of the 
 mistake or misrepresentation contended against forced 
 his argument when at its strongest — historically un- 
 answerable and logically a knitting together of links of 
 iron — to take an exclamatory form. " Enforcing," he 
 cried, " by your Lordships' decrees, the spiritual induction 
 of a pastor ! Compelling, under pain of horning and 
 imprisonment, the Church to confer the spiritual gift 
 of the ministry ! Have the pursuers reflected for a 
 moment upon the nature of the proposition they main-
 
 102 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 tain? It is simony — a grave ecclesiastical offence, a 
 crime even ©f deep die, in the eye of the Church, and 
 not considered lightly by the law — to procure presenta- 
 tion for good office and reward ; or, in the case of a call, 
 to procure concurrence to the call by similar means. 
 Then what shall it be if the Civil Power compel, by 
 imprisonment, by the dread of punishment, — by brute 
 force, for it comes to that, — the imposition of hands, and 
 that gift of the Spirit which is presumed to pass by the 
 ceremony of ordination ■? " 
 
 As two tea-spoonfuls will tell the taste of two wells, 
 these minute samples reveal the drift and character of 
 the respective pleadings of the Dean of Faculty and the 
 ►Solicitor-General. We turn, therefore, to the opinions 
 of the judges. The Lord President took the same view 
 of the origin and jurisdiction of the Church as was taken 
 by the Dean. " That our Saviour ," he said, with the 
 pungency of scorn, " is the temporal head of the Kirk of 
 Scotland in any temporal, or legislative, or judicial sense, 
 is a position which I can dignify by no other name than 
 absurdity. The Parliament is the temporal head of the 
 Church, from whose acts, and from whose acts alone, it 
 exists as the national Church, and from which alone it 
 derives all its powers." The arrogant sweep of general- 
 isation in this would-be philosophical, but, in fact, merely 
 rhetorical deliverance, blurs and defaces, where it ought 
 to have discriminated and elucidated, the lines of his- 
 torical testimony and accurate thought. It is safe to 
 conclude that men who characterise all the powers of the 
 Church as temporal, will ignore, with a completeness 
 naturally proceeding from total inability to perceive, the
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH — THE SUDDEN STORM. 103 
 
 spiritual powers of the Church. The Lord President, 
 therefore, had no difficulty in dismissing, as an illegality, 
 a triviality, not instituted in the sixteenth century, and 
 abolished or turned into an empty form by the Patronage 
 Act of Queen Anne, that call, or expression of consent by 
 the congregation, which the Church now affirmed to be 
 of vital importance. 
 
 Lord Gillies followed the President in treating the 
 will of the people, compared with the wish of the 
 patron, as of no consequence. " If the question is put," 
 said Lord Gillies, " whether the call is to be rendered 
 or continued a mockery, or whether patronage is to be 
 rendered a mockery, I have no hesitation in thinking that 
 the call must yield to the presentation." The power, 
 that is to say, of one man, respecting whom there is no 
 guarantee that he is even professedly a religious man, 
 to fix another man, who though externally irreproachable 
 may also be spiritually dead, as the pastor of, say, a 
 thousand devout parishioners for fifty years, is of more 
 importance in the eye of the law than the will of the 
 parishioners to stay his appointment ; and if, under those 
 circumstances, the Church comes to the rescue of the 
 parishioners, she must simply be taught by the Court of 
 Session to do her duty of intrusion. Lord Medwyn was 
 an Episcopalian, and could hardly be expected to under- 
 stand the genius of Presbytery. He also pronounced 
 the right of the patron unassailable. Eight out of the 
 thirteen judges were of this mind. 
 
 Law is law, a blind goddess, and no rational enthusiast 
 for law will expect her to execute in all instances the 
 office of the most open-eyed of the Olympian powers,
 
 104 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the office of justice. To take care that justice or injustice 
 shall flow in the channel legislatively prescribed for it, — to 
 make sure that injustice, even though raised thereby to its 
 terrible maximum, as contemplated in Holy Writ, shall be 
 injustice decreed by law, — this is the ideal of perfection for 
 all Courts constituted like the Court of Session. It would 
 be unreasonable, therefore, to indulge in anything like 
 vituperation of the eight judges who virtually held that 
 the call, drawn by the Church as a rampart round the 
 dearest liberties of congregations, had been but a rope of 
 sand to bind the waves of an advancing tide, and that the 
 boasted jurisdiction of the Church of Scotland in things 
 spiritual was either an absurdity or an attempt to resume 
 the abolished jurisdiction of the Papacy. But it is well 
 to remember that, even on a question of law, a majority 
 of judges of the Court of Session are not infallible, and 
 that the opinion of a minority of the judges, if they 
 are more favourably circumstanced for a consideration 
 of all the evidence, may be of very high importance 
 indeed, if we wish to know, not exclusively the technical 
 and professional value of the decision, but the degree in 
 which it accords with the beneficial working of institu- 
 tions and the deepest claims of justice. 
 
 The minority, to begin with, was formidable in number 
 — five against eight. If we believe — as we certainly 
 may — that an Episcopalian was more or less disqualified 
 to decide upon a thoroughly Presbyterian question, and if 
 we dismiss, as inapplicable to the Church of Scotland, the 
 undisguised Erastianism of another of the judges, we shall 
 reduce the majority to six against five. Of the majority 
 of three, which the Court of Session had found to make
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH THE SUDDEN STORM. L05 
 
 its now Thermopylae against the invasive Church of Scot- 
 land, there thus remains but one. To play the part of 
 this Leonidas, we may eleet Lord Mackenzie, who held 
 that the Church in her attempts, persisted in for upwards 
 of a century, even under Moderate domination, to main- 
 tain the call after the passing of the Queen Anne's 
 Act, had perpetrated " a piece of resistance to tho 
 Legislature." Or we may prefer Lord Corehouse, who 
 told the Court that Pope Gelasius, so long ago as a.d. 
 493, had settled the matter on the side of intrusion, 
 though his Lordship's quotation from Gelasius seems to 
 tell rather the other way, for it recognises the fact of 
 opposition to the settlement of a minister being made 
 by the people, and gives no hint of power on the 
 part of a patron to overrule them, but only of the 
 duty of the clergy to " compel " them " by assiduous 
 admonitions," that is to say, by moral suasion, " to give 
 their consent." Or we can content ourselves with Lord 
 Cunningham, the youngest of the judges, who may be 
 supposed to have been partly influenced by the novelty 
 of his position in concurring with the majority. At all 
 events, if either of these is excluded, we have reduced 
 the majority to a numerical equality with the minority. 
 And this we may expect all candid persons to admit,— 
 that, if the views and sentiments of the three were 
 fairly representative of those of the majority in general, 
 then these judges of the Court of Session, in adjudicating 
 on the Church of Scotland as an Establishment, evinced 
 signal indifference to any aims, objects, ambitions she 
 might entertain, any characteristics she might possess, or 
 any uses she might subserve, as a Christian Church.
 
 106 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 The five Lords of Session who repudiated the 
 judgment of the majority were men who knew the history 
 of Scotland, and the part which the Church had played 
 in that history. If the State had created the Church, or 
 even the Establishment, they did not forget that there 
 had been a purpose in the creation, and that this purpose 
 had not been to promote the dignity or influence of 
 patrons, but to bring home the gospel of Christ to 
 parishioners. Had they been deciding a case in connec- 
 tion with the medical profession, they would have con- 
 sidered it germane to the business to keep in view the 
 healing of bodies ; and in deciding on a case connected 
 with a Church, they held it right to recollect that a 
 Church is an institute for the healing of souls. Some of 
 these judges of the minority have shed unfading lustre 
 on their country, and are honourably known wherever 
 Scotch common sense and clear-headedness have made 
 themselves a name. 
 
 Such were Jeffrey and Cockburn. Until the Bio- 
 graphy of Macaulay and the Eeminiscences of Carlyle 
 appeared, the world did not know what cordial humour, 
 dramatic versatility, and treasures of true-hearted friend- 
 ship dwelt in Jeffrey. In his passionate hatred of 
 mawkishness and tea-drinking goody-goody-ism, and of 
 every form of affectation, he was too arid to Wordsworth ; 
 but all the world now agrees with him that there is in 
 Wordsworth, with all his merit, a tea-drinking didacticism 
 that "will never do." It was not of the Prelude, be 
 it remembered, which has in it the crimsons of Words- 
 worth's beaming sunrise, but of the Excursion, which 
 has in it the pearl -blue and somewhat slumbrous
 
 THE RESURGENT CHURCH — THE SUDDEN STORM. 107 
 
 azure of his afternoon, that Jeffrey uttered those famous 
 words. If, however, Jeffrey lacked the melodiousness 
 that goes to the making of a supreme critic, he was 
 pre-eminently fitted by his combination of practical 
 sense with intellectual clearness to be a good lawyer 
 and a sagacious judge. He put aside by a few precise 
 words, carrying with them their own evidence, the vague 
 and grandiose pretensions put forward as to the all- 
 comprehending jurisdiction of the Court of Session. 
 " It has no proper jurisdiction," he said, " except in 
 eivilibus. With a few exceptions, not affecting the 
 principle, it has no jurisdiction in crimes, and with no 
 exceptions at all, it has no jurisdiction whatever in 
 matters properly ecclesiastical ; and especially none as 
 to the examination, ordination, or admission of ministers, 
 which are not only in their own proper nature ecclesiast- 
 ical proceedings, but are expressly declared by the Acts 
 of 1567 and 1592 to be exclusively for the Church judi- 
 catures." Too well acquainted with the history of his 
 Church to be liable to any mystification as to her having 
 been from the beginning a Church of the people, he 
 treated the view, that the call had been paralysed by the 
 touch of law into a hollow form, as absolutely untenable. 
 Along with Lord Moncreiff and Lord Fullerton, he main- 
 tained that even Queen Anne's Act, though it transferred 
 the presentation from the elders and heritors to the 
 patron, did not destroy the ancient right of the people 
 to have no minister settled against their consent. 
 
 Lord Cockburn, another man who thoroughly under- 
 stood the character both of the Church and the people of 
 Scotland, also exclaimed against the idea that the call had
 
 108 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 been legally turned into a mockery. " I could not have 
 been more surprised," he said, " on being told that Pres- 
 bytery was not the Church of this country, than I have 
 been by learning that calls, except as forms, are no part 
 of our Presbytery ; they seem to me to be absolutely 
 imbedded in the constitution and in the practice of the 
 Church." 
 
 The Court decided that the Presbytery of Auchter- 
 arder, in rejecting Mr. Young because " a majority of the 
 male heads of families, communicants in the said parish, 
 have dissented, without any reason assigned, from his 
 admission as minister," had acted " illegally and in viola- 
 tion of their duty." This judgment was signed on the 
 10th of March 1838, and the least imaginative reader 
 will feel that this lent a greatly enhanced interest to 
 the proceedings of the General Assembly which met in 
 Edinburgh in the following May. In the bare words of 
 the Court of Session's judgment, viewed negatively, it 
 was possible enough that no fateful import should lie. 
 But if it were taken to imply that the Court required 
 and commanded the Presbytery to ordain a man whom 
 the Church, by her law, pronounced it sinful to ordain, 
 then the inference became irresistible that the spiritual 
 freedom of the Church was called in question. Ordina- 
 tion is a spiritual act, if there is such an act in existence.
 
 CHAPTEE XIII. 
 ^preparing for f0e Srap* 
 
 THE General Assembly of May 1838 followed quick 
 upon the signing of the judgment in the Auchterarder 
 ease in March. The interest of the occasion, for thinking 
 persons and students of history, is great, for it places before 
 us the two traditional parties taking up their respective 
 positions, in view of the sombre and perilous future. 
 The subject-matter requires nice attention and careful 
 discrimination, but does not lend itself to dramatic effects 
 or yield harvest of sensational incidents. 
 
 Chalmers was not a member of this Assembly, although, 
 as it is hardly necessary to say, the action of the Ke- 
 forming party was exactly conformed to his sentiments. 
 The position taken up by the Evangelicals was de- 
 fined by Mr. Eobert Buchanan in that lucid, expressive, 
 and dignified language which befits so well his own 
 authoritative and noble work on the Conflict. The 
 case tried by the Court of Session had, he explained, 
 risen out of the Veto Act. " The object of that 
 Act was to give full force and effect to the funda- 
 mental law of the Church, ' that no pastor be intruded 
 
 100
 
 110 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 on any congregation contrary to the will of the people.' " 
 He summed up with masterly brevity the evidence that 
 this principle was indeed fundamental in the Church of 
 Scotland. " We meet with it in the very infancy of the 
 Church in her First Book of Discipline ; in the Second 
 Book ib is pointedly repeated ; again at the restora- 
 tion of Presbytery in 1638; in the directory of the 
 Assembly of 1649; and long after, in 1736, four and 
 twenty years after patronage, in its present form, had 
 been restored, it is declared by the Assembly in the 
 most solemn terms." Such were the lines of circumval- 
 lation by which, and now finally and conspicuously by the 
 Veto Act, the Church had guarded the rights of the people. 
 The Court of Session had told the Church that, in 
 erecting those walls of circumvallation, and giving power 
 to the people's will, she had broken the law of the land. 
 Did she then possess spiritual independence, or did her 
 Standards lapse into meaningless platitude, when they 
 spoke of the Church as " hearing the voice of Christ, 
 the only spiritual King, and being ruled by His laws." 
 That was the question the Church was now called to 
 face. Mr. Buchanan concluded by moving that the 
 Church should resolve to maintain at all hazards, 
 as the Presbyterians of Scotland had done, " even to 
 the death," her testimony " for Christ's kingdom and 
 crown." 
 
 At this critical moment, when the Court of Session had 
 spoken, and the House of Lords was to be asked to speak 
 with still higher authority, what was the attitude assumed 
 by the party of Eobertson and of Hill ? Dr. Cook, the 
 vigilant, quick-seeing, active debater and skilful tactician,
 
 PREPARING FOR THE ERA V. Hi 
 
 was the working leader. For one thing, — and the point is 
 of great importance, — he was entirely of opinion that the 
 Court of Session's judgment ought to be carried by 
 appeal to the House of Lords. It had not occurred to 
 him that the Church could be asked to accept the de- 
 cision of the Court of Session simpliciter, and thus to 
 acknowledge that, in keeping up the form of the call 
 for three or four generations, the Moderate party had 
 been merely going through a piece of child's play. But 
 Dr. Cook went farther than was implied in agreement as 
 to this particular case. He accepted with emphasis the 
 general principle of spiritual independence. Alluding 
 to his "reverend and respected friend," Mr. Buchanan, 
 " there is no language," cried the Moderate leader, " which 
 he could use stronger than I would be inclined to adopt 
 to assert the spiritual independence of the Church, and 
 to vindicate the power which we have received from its 
 great Head." 
 
 The thorough -paced Erastianism of the majority of 
 the Court of Session — the position that the State had 
 created the Church as it might create a corporation of 
 cordwainers — sent some twinge of honest pain, some 
 touch of true angina pectoris, to the Presbyterian heart 
 of Dr. Cook. " I entirely agree with my reverend friend 
 that our Church, the Church of Christ, is not the creature 
 of the State. We had our doctrines, our views and 
 principles, before we were connected with the State ; and 
 we would have them to-morrow if we were to sever that 
 connection." Nay, he professed, for himself and his 
 party, a positive enthusiasm for the distinctive principle 
 of Presbyterianism, a readiness to " display the banner
 
 112 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of our great King and Head, and if necessary," under it 
 to " perish.'' 
 
 Apart from all that followed, — apart even from the 
 logical consistency of Dr. Cook's present speech and the 
 moral courage or cowardice of him and his party, — these 
 statements ought to be remembered. They link the Pres- 
 byterianism of to-day with the Presbyterianism of Andrew 
 Thomson. They prove that, after all the contendings 
 and heart-burnings of the intervening time, the divisions 
 of the Church of Scotland have not theoretically touched 
 any principle accepted by the one party and rejected by 
 the other. The Moderates never in words repudiated the 
 doctrine of the Headship of Christ, never denied that 
 it involved the spiritual independence of the Church, 
 never adopted the creed of Erastian statesmen and 
 perverse or contemptuous lawyers. Throughout their 
 long period of ascendancy, they never abandoned the 
 call, never forgot the watchwords of their Church, never 
 confessed that they were not (at heart) as staunch main- 
 tainers of the spiritual independence as Andrew Thomson 
 himself. But it had always been averred by the 
 Evangelicals that the Moderate homage to the principle 
 was homage of the lip. When the question came of 
 sacrificing the rights of the people or of bending to 
 the Civil Power, they had fawned on the power and 
 deserted the people. The Church of Scotland, in her 
 days of martyr heroism, had turned her own cheek to 
 the smiter ; the Moderate party turned Christ's cheek, in 
 the person of the poor parishioner, to the blows of Caesar. 
 And so, in the Assembly of 1838, while declaring his 
 readiness to perish for the Headship of Christ, Dr. Cook
 
 PREPARING FOR THE ERA Y. 113 
 
 assumed with his party a demeanour of awestruck and 
 overpowered expectancy as to what the authorities ntiight 
 ultimately determine in relation to Auchterarder. If 
 the State should prove to be on the Church's side, then 
 he would shout, and wave the old banner. He did not 
 object — far from it — to appealing from the Court of 
 Session to the House of Lords to have the law ascer- 
 tained. But if it appeared that the exercise of the 
 spiritual jurisdiction of the Church really affected the 
 property rights of patrons, then the Church, instead of 
 guarding the spiritual will of the people as a sacred 
 thing, should consider herself bound to ask the State to 
 draw anew the line of demarcation between the spiritual 
 jurisdiction belonging to the Church and the civil juris- 
 diction belonging to the State. The Court of Session 
 declared that, in the present instance, the Church had 
 overstepped the frontiers of her province by barring the 
 way to patrons in intruding ministers upon congregations. 
 If this should indeed be the law, as the House of Lords 
 would determine, then, said Dr. Cook in effect, the 
 Church must conform. When a difference of opinion 
 arises, it is for the State to decide. 
 
 In the last resort, and when the question is as to 
 whether the Establishment shall continue to exist or 
 shall not, this is true. The State has the physical force. 
 The Church cannot resist the civil sword. By the 
 unanimous admission of all Presbyterians who know r the 
 alphabet of their constitutional principles, the Church 
 not only possesses no vestige of physical force, but claims 
 not an iota of jurisdiction over property. If the State 
 says, therefore, I lay down such and such a condition of
 
 114 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Establishment ; and the Church says, I will not or cannot 
 accept it : then the Church cannot be, or continue, Estab- 
 lished. This was what eventually happened. This was 
 the consummation devoutly deprecated by the impassioned 
 champions of Establishment who passed the Veto Act. 
 But the fundamental principle on which the Scottish 
 Church had accepted Establishment was that her spiritual 
 freedom should, in the outset, be conceded. Until this con- 
 cession was retracted, she had a right, even as an Estab- 
 lishment, to be governed, under Christ, by her own 
 officers, and to make and apply her own spiritual laws. 
 Since Dr. Cook admitted that, in giving effect to the 
 people's will at Auchterarder, the Church had done no 
 more than exercise her spiritual jurisdiction, he obviously 
 could not, without surrendering that independence, display 
 readiness to accept the State's decision as to whether that 
 independence belonged to her or did not. 
 
 In order to understand how it was that the knife of 
 the Court of Session struck the Church in this matter 
 of spiritual jurisdiction under the fifth rib, we ought to 
 conceive distinctly that it was the rite of ordination that 
 the Court interfered with. In effect, the Court of Session 
 said to the Church, Thou shalt ordain this man pastor of 
 the parish. Let an Englishman image to himself how 
 an exclusive club would feel if a Court of law said, Thou 
 shalt admit this man to membership ; or how the medical 
 profession would feel if a Court of law said, Thou shalt 
 inscribe this man on the Medical Eegister. These are, 
 ■mutatis mutandis, nearly analogous cases to that of the 
 Church of Scotland being ordered by the Court of Session 
 to ordain ministers against reclaiming congregations. But
 
 PREPARING FOR THE ERA Y. 115 
 
 the case of the Church, since conscience was obviously 
 and inevitably engaged, was more manifestly unjust and 
 cruel than would be the supposed case of a club or a 
 profession. 
 
 The simple and intrepid course of standing to what 
 the Church, in solemn performance of her religious duty, 
 had done, was proposed by Mr. Buchanan. A more 
 equivocal course, asserting the possession of spiritual 
 independence in the abstract, but virtually asking the 
 State to say what spiritual independence meant, was pro- 
 posed by Dr. Cook. The Assembly decided by 183 
 voices to 142 in favour of the former.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 £or& QSroug^am in fine §ornn 
 
 THERE was no difference of view between the Reform- 
 ing and the Moderate parties in the General 
 Assembly of 1838 as to whether the judgment of the 
 Court of Session in the Auchterarder case should be 
 carried by appeal to the House of Lords. It came up 
 for final decision on the 2nd of May 1839, and on that 
 day Lord Cottenham and Lord Brougham delivered their 
 judicial opinions upon the subject. 
 
 It was perhaps a matter of course that Lord Cotten- 
 ham, an Englishman, should take it for granted that, in 
 a case of discrepancy between lawyers and parsons in 
 Scotland, the parsons should be wrong and the lawyers 
 right. But it sent a shock of surprise, as well as of 
 pain, to many in Scotland, to find that Henry Brougham 
 had so little heart-knowledge of his native land. It is 
 curiously suggestive that one who played a part so 
 memorable, so brilliant, so illustrious, as that of Lord 
 Brougham, in the arena of Parliamentary Reform, should, 
 in adjudicating upon the Constitution of the Church of 
 
 Scotland, have put scornfully aside, as not worth serious 
 
 ne
 
 LORD BROUGHAM IN FINE FORM. 117 
 
 consideration, the popular call of congregations to their 
 ministers. With the vehemence characteristic of fiery 
 temperaments when they are particularly in the wrong, 
 he emphasised the point that the call could not possibly 
 entitle the people to more than to have the presentee 
 tested by the Presbytery as to his possession of certain 
 specified qualifications. Fancy this as a method for 
 securing that parliamentary constituencies should not 
 have members intruded upon them ! Fancy the look 
 of the free and independent, if they were required to 
 accept Mr. So-and-so, the nominee of Lord This-or-that, 
 to represent them, unless they could prove him exception- 
 able in a few particular respects ! And is it easier for a 
 constituency to discern who are the men fitted to rule the 
 Empire, than for parishioners to discern who is the man 
 that will visit them in their cottages with glimpses of 
 heavenly consolation, and edify them from the pulpit in 
 the name of Christ ? 
 
 Macaulay says that Hume so strongly disliked the 
 religion of the Puritans, that he was incapable of doing 
 justice to their services to liberty. Men of affairs are apt 
 to treat religion as if it were really and truly nothing 
 at all. So dark was Brougham on the religious side, that 
 it seems to have never flashed upon him that there could 
 be any analogy between the election of a member by a 
 parliamentary constituency, and the choice of a minister 
 by a congregation. Sympathetic in the highest degree 
 with the aspirations of freemen to send representatives 
 to Parliament, he had no intelligent sympathy whatever 
 with the wish of devout parishioners to have a voice in 
 the election of their ministers. " Surely," said Hugh
 
 118 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Miller, in a Letter to Lord Brougham to which we shall 
 have further occasion to refer, " the people of Scotland are 
 not so changed but that they know at least as much of 
 the doctrines of the New Testament as of the principles 
 of civil government, and of the requisites of a gospel 
 minister as of the qualifications of a member of Parlia- 
 ment." He reminds Lord Brougham of a fact which his 
 Lordship might have learned from Burns, or Carlyle, or 
 Scott, that freedom's sword and religion's Bible have been 
 associate powers in the history of Scotland, the religion 
 having generally been in the van of the freedom. " Is it at 
 all possible that you, my Lord, a native of Scotland, and 
 possessed of more general information than perhaps any 
 other man living, can have yet to learn that we have 
 thought long and deeply of our religion, whereas our 
 political speculations began but yesterday, — that our 
 popular struggles have been struggles for the right of 
 worshipping God according to the dictates of our con- 
 science, and under the guidance of ministers of our own 
 choice, — and that, when anxiously employed in finding 
 arguments by which rights so dear to us might be 
 rationally defended, our discovery of the principles of 
 civil liberty was merely a sort of chance -consequence 
 of the search ? " 
 
 Hugh Miller's Letter was suggested by Lord Brougham's 
 opinion on the Court of Session's judgment; but had it 
 preceded that opinion, it would most probably have had 
 no influence upon his Lordship. Was not property in- 
 volved ? Was not the shadow of property more import- 
 ant than the substance of religion ? Brougham talked 
 grandiosely about the patrimonial property of the patron,
 
 LORD BROUGHAM IN FINE FORM. 119 
 
 and took it for granted, as a tiling beyond all question, 
 that property, called into existence wholly and solely 
 for the spiritual nourishment of the parishioners, was 
 of more moment than what it subserved. The call, said 
 this great orator, — who loved a joke, — was as mere 
 a ceremony as the wagging of the tail of the people's 
 champion's horse in a coronation pageant. Property, 
 property, property, — the patron's property, — if the rights 
 of the people interfered with that, let the people hold 
 their tongues. This peremptory conclusion of Lord 
 Brougham's forms surely the finest historical exempli- 
 fication discoverable of the verdict returned in that delect- 
 able cause cilebrc, versified by Cowper, between Nose and 
 Eyes. To which of these litigants did the spectacles 
 belong ? Clearly to the nose. The spectacles sat upon 
 the nose. The spectacles dignified the nose. The eyes 
 were merely a part of the pageant. The Court decided 
 therefore in favour of the nose, and decreed that, when- 
 ever the nose put his spectacles on, by daylight or candle- 
 light, eyes should be shut. Exactly. The only thing 
 required for the perfect legal vindication of the pro- 
 perty of the patron in the settlement of ministers, was 
 the formal abolition of the call, the shutting of the 
 parishioners' eyes. 
 
 The House of Lords dismissed the appeal of the Church, 
 and confirmed the judgment of the Court of Session.
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 £0e €0urc0 faftes up 0er (position— 
 (ft Qtem £eaoer. 
 
 TT was the 2nd of May 1839 when the Lords gave 
 -*- their decision. Within the month the General 
 Assembly was to meet. In the interval, the ground- 
 swell of a profound and solemn agitation passed through- 
 out the parishes of Scotland. Not the noisy excitement 
 of politics, not the feverish eagerness of some great 
 expansion in trade, not the angry hum of a nation 
 gathering to defend its frontiers with the sword. It was 
 the fervid exaltation, the solemn interest, with which 
 a grave and earnest people, such as Macaulay, no flatter- 
 ing witness, declares the Scotch to be, regarded the peril 
 of that ancient Church which, more than any other of 
 their institutions, had made them what they were. " A 
 people " — the words are Macaulay 's — " whose education 
 and habits are such that, in every quarter of the world, 
 they rise above the mass of those with whom they mix, 
 as surely as oil rises to the top of water, — a people of such 
 temper and self-government that the wildest popular 
 
 excesses recorded in their history partake of the gravity 
 
 120
 
 THE CHURCH TAKES UP HER TQSITIOH. 121 
 
 of judicial proceedings, and of the solemnity of religious 
 rites, — a people whose national pride and mutual attach- 
 ment have passed into a proverb, — a people whose high 
 and fierce spirit, so forcibly described in the haughty 
 motto which encircles their thistle, preserved their in- 
 dependence, during a struggle of centuries, from the 
 encroachments of wealthier and more powerful neigh- 
 bours" — was moved by a greater wave of feeling than had 
 rolled over it since the last long billow of the Covenant- 
 ing enthusiasm ebbed away. In city streets, men who 
 had known each other from childhood paused to speak, 
 with eager sympathy, upon the subject. In remote country 
 manses, by the farmer's ingle, round the peasant's fireside, 
 Scotland's great concern was the theme of conversation ; 
 and above all, when men presented themselves before 
 their Creator for social prayer, it lay upon their spirits 
 and rose to their lips. 
 
 The Assembly met on the lGth of May 1839. 
 Chalmers, who in his heart of hearts detested strife, and 
 loved to work in the shade, had been recently much 
 engaged in pushing on his Church Extension enterprises 
 and his mission to the poor. Pledged to the theory of 
 ecclesiastical Establishments, he refused to be persuaded 
 that the State could be so infatuated as to strangle the 
 Church for showing herself alive, and putting forth the 
 energies of growth. We saw how, only in the spring of 
 1838, he had boasted of the inviolable freedom of his 
 Church, and her pre-eminence as the pattern State 
 Church in Christendom, before nine prelates of the 
 Church of England and a Prince of the Blood. And 
 already, as with the sudden blackness of eclipse, her
 
 122 THE RREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 glory of peace and prosperity seemed to be exchanged 
 fur that of tragedy and storm. He felt that the things 
 at stake were essential to the very life of the Church, 
 and again he descended into the arena. 
 
 Three motions were made in the Assembly : that of the 
 Moderates, promptly put forward by Dr. Cook ; that of 
 the Evangelicals, proposed by Chalmers ; and that of the 
 trimmers and compromisers, by Dr. Mnir. 
 
 Dr. Cook was frankly for surrender. The Veto Act 
 had been pronounced by the civil tribunal to " infringe 
 on civil and patrimonial rights." It was therefore to be 
 deemed non-existent. Presbyteries should be instructed 
 by the Assembly to ignore it, and " proceed henceforth in 
 the settlement of parishes according to the practice which 
 prevailed previously to the passing of that Act." Such 
 was the Moderate attitude. Twelve months previously, 
 Dr. Cook had cautiously seen to it that the Moderates 
 should present an unbroken line with the Evangelicals 
 in addressing the Civil Power. But now that Lord Gillies 
 had coldly remarked, " The call must yield to the pre- 
 sentation," and that Lord Brougham had declared the 
 will of the congregation to have no more legal force than 
 the wagging of the champion's horse's tail at a coronation, 
 the Church must be left by the Moderates to do her 
 fighting alone. Not even in ashiwj that the Legis- 
 lature, supreme over both the Court of Session and 
 the House of Lords, should interfere on behalf of 
 the Church, and encourage instead of obstructing her 
 in the performance of her duty to the flock, would 
 Dr. Cook dare to associate himself and his section 
 with the majority. And this craven and crouching
 
 THE CHURCH TAKES UP HER POSITION. 123 
 
 demeanour was to be that of the Church of Knox, the 
 boldest, beyond all debate, of the Churches of Reformed 
 Christendom. 
 
 Dr. Chalmers did not lose his perfect self-posscssinn 
 at this critical moment. He refused to hurry to the 
 conclusion that the State-Church experiment had broken 
 down. Lawyers might be hampered by the letter of 
 statutes, but he could not yet accept it as a possibility 
 that the State really meant one inexorable condition of 
 Establishment to be paralysis of the Church in her dis- 
 tinctive and essential powers. He would first, therefore, 
 make it unmistakably clear what it was that the Church 
 could and would at once give up to the State as non- 
 essential ; secondly, explain what it was that she could 
 not under any conceivable compulsion yield ; and thirdly, 
 propose that the State should be asked, in terms of loyal 
 respectfulness, to declare by a distinct parliamentary 
 utterance that the Civil Power was of one mind with the 
 Church as to the line of demarcation between them. The 
 Court of Session said that the Church's procedure in the 
 Auchterarder settlement made inroad upon temporalities. 
 Let the temporalities of the parish, then, remain where 
 the Court placed them, in Lord Kinnoull's hands, or Mr. 
 Eobert Young's, or where their Lordships chose. This dis- 
 posed of his first point. The Church, in the second place, 
 had from time immemorial affirmed that the intrusion of 
 ministers upon unwilling congregations was at variance 
 with her fundamental principles. If the State insisted 
 upon it that she should violate this fundamental prin- 
 ciple, then the State would be requiring her to admit sin, 
 and, of course, break up the Establishment. But, since
 
 124 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the possibility of this could not be taken for granted, 
 let, in the third place, a Committee be appointed from 
 all sections of the Assembly, to remove, by friendly con- 
 ference, any misunderstanding between the Church and 
 the State. Such was Chalmers's motion. 
 
 Could any statesman, or any Cabinet or conclave of 
 statesmen, have framed a more luminously reasonable, 
 a more courteously deferential, a more manifestly just 
 proposal than this ? 
 
 All the genius and all the heart of Chalmers glowed 
 and throbbed in his speech on the occasion. It occupied 
 three and a half hours, — we need not take from it more 
 than a few sentences. He laid down what he held to be 
 " the true theory of the connection between the Church 
 and the State." The Church " may have subsisted for 
 many ages as a Christian Church, with all its tenets and 
 its usages, not as prescribed by human authority, but as 
 founded either on the word of God or on their own 
 independent views of Christian expediency, — meaning by 
 this their own views of what is best for the good of 
 imperishable souls. None of these things were given 
 up to the State at the time when the Church entered 
 into an alliance with it ; but one and all of them 
 remained as intact and inviolable after this alliance 
 as before it. I hold it to be quite an axiom, a first and 
 elementary truth, that we are never in any instance 
 to depart from the obligations which lie upon us as a 
 Christian Church, for the sake either of obtaining or 
 perpetuating the privileges which belong to us as an 
 Established Church. 
 
 " But though, on the one hand, we cannot either
 
 THE CHURCH TAKES UP HER POSITION. 125 
 
 rescind or refrain from enacting what we hold to be 
 vital, ere we make a voluntary withdrawment of our- 
 selves from the State, we should make every attempt to 
 obtain its concurrence, and that in order to avert the 
 calamity of a disruption betwixt us ; and this, too, in the 
 face of every ungenerous misinterpretation, to which our 
 desire of preserving the connection between the parties 
 with all its advantages is liable. There is nothing of the 
 sycophantish, nothing of the sordid, in the most strenuous 
 attempts which principle will suffer us to make, to main- 
 tain unbroken the alliance between Church and State. 
 But let me give some idea to the Assembly of the extent 
 of that degradation and helplessness, which, if we do 
 submit to this decision of the House of Lords, have been 
 actually and already inflicted upon us, — a degradation to 
 which the Church of England, professing the King to be 
 their Head, never would submit ; and to which the 
 Church of Scotland, professing the Lord Jesus to be their 
 Head, never can. Ask any English ecclesiastic whether 
 the bishop would receive an order from any Civil Court 
 whatever on the matter of ordination, and the instant, 
 the universal reply is, that he would not." 
 
 The speaker here quoted a letter sent by Lord Mel- 
 bourne to one who had appealed to the King to command 
 the Archbishop of Canterbury to give him ordination. The 
 letter announced that Lord Melbourne " cannot advise the 
 King to give any command for controlling the judgment 
 of a bishop on the subject of ordination to holy orders." 
 
 " To what position, then," Chalmers went on, " are we 
 brought if we give in to the opposite motion, and proceed 
 in consequence to the ordination of Mr. Young ? To
 
 12G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 such a position as the bishops of England, with all the 
 Erastianism which has been charged, and to a great degree 
 I think falsely charged, upon that Establishment, never, 
 never would consent to occupy. Many of them would go 
 to the prison and the death rather than submit to such 
 an invasion on the functions of the sacred office. Should 
 the emancipation of our Church require it, there is the 
 same strength of high and holy determination in this 
 our land." 
 
 Chalmers's motion was the modestly but manfully 
 resolute intimation by the Church to the State that, if 
 established it all, she must be established as a Church, 
 having for primary, professional, inexorable duty, obedi- 
 ence to Christ. Dr. Cook's motion was the frankly 
 submissive, undisguisedly craven, confession that the 
 Church was not competent to draw the line marking 
 off her own professional province of soul - healing, and 
 that the measures which had embodied her reforming 
 ardour must be ignored as nonentities. 
 
 Between Dr. Cook and Dr. Chalmers, tenderly tread- 
 ing as one who balanced himself on a ridge between two 
 precipices, came Dr. Muir. The State speaks, and the State 
 cannot be in the wrong; but the Church also may be con- 
 siderably in the right : and if we are justly compliant in 
 the performance of our own duties, and truly obsequious 
 with reference to the duties of the State, then all may be 
 well. One could not exactly disagree with Dr. Muir's 
 motion, — it was too innocently platitudinarian for that ; 
 but one instinctively felt that it w T ould be no brave man's 
 part to take refuge in its evasive phrases. 
 
 In this gathering of impassioned champions of Estab-
 
 THE CHURCH TAKES UT HER T0SIT10N. 127 
 
 lishment, however, there were not a few who would have 
 dearly prized any presentable excuse by which they might 
 escape giving a decisive verdict on either side. Accord- 
 ingly the battle of debate protracted itself on Dr. Muir's 
 motion, and, as the hours of evening rolled on into the 
 night, the Assembly began to grow weary and call for the 
 vote. It was then that, in a part of the Assembly 
 far from the Moderator's chair, dimly seen below the 
 gallery, a member was observed to rise and claim audience. 
 There was considerable reluctance to hear him ; calls for 
 the division were audible ; and it was only when several, 
 who seemed to know him and expect something from him, 
 " shouted to give him a hearing," that the opposition 
 became silent. 
 
 He came forward in the direction of the Moderator's 
 (•hair, " passing his hand through his hair, as was his 
 wont when he became excited," and showing a phenomen- 
 ally large development of brain. Who was this ? Few 
 could tell. Whispers went round that he was the 
 preacher appointed not long since to what Andrew 
 Thomson had made the first of Edinburgh pulpits, St. 
 George's. A superlative preacher, — that was notorious, 
 and his friends said he was intellectually a giant, but he 
 was absolutely untried in the Courts of the Church, — 
 Candlish they called him. So ran the whispers, but they 
 would sink into breathless expectation when the new 
 speaker looked the Assembly in the face. 
 
 A very short man, but with a frame suggestive of great 
 strength, arms long as Eob Roy's, hair shaggy and unkempt 
 The facial expression sad and lowering, the features almost 
 ugly, the mouth large with sensitive lips, something in them
 
 1 28 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAN'). 
 
 of the sensitive child or the pouting woman. The whole 
 face redeemed into nobleness by the towering forehead and 
 the dominant expressions of elevation and intellectuality. 
 Not a good-looking man by any means, but as if bathed 
 in a light of spiritual beauty. He is in the very prime 
 of physical and mental strength, thirty-three years of age ; 
 having taken long to ripen, more ambitious to excel than 
 to shine ; an observer, a thinker, a student, a superlative 
 preacher, he now comes to the front because his Church 
 and his country call him, and because the few who have 
 the secret of his Herculean powers tell him that his hour 
 has come. This is Eobert Smith Candlish, the Newman 
 of the Scottish Church movement ; the man who, more 
 expressly than any other, took the torch from the hand of 
 Chalmers when the old leader fell; the most sincerely 
 loved, the most intensely hated, the most conspicuous, 
 and the most representative of the Founders of the Free 
 Church. 
 
 He began by putting aside, by mere lucidity of word 
 and accuracy of description, some of the less important 
 mystifications and confusions of Dr. Muir's illusive 
 motion. But presently he moved into the heart of the 
 question, bringing into glare of foreground light some 
 essential matters which had been cautiously stowed away 
 by Dr. Muir among masses of woolly phrase. " I have 
 a still graver objection to the motion of my respected 
 Father. I have looked, and I do not find, from the 
 beginning to the end of his resolutions, one single word 
 recognising the privileges of the Christian people. The 
 reverend Doctor has pleaded for the power of the Church, 
 — in its Courts, composed of its rulers and office-bearers,
 
 THE CHURCH TAKES UP HER POSITION. 129 
 
 — but without securing and carrying out, along with 
 that power, the rights of the Christian people. And 
 this, to my mind, is substantial Popery. It is a position 
 which must go far to establish a system of spiritual 
 despotism. In truth, it is only when the rights of the 
 people in the Church of Christ are secured that the power 
 of the ruling Courts can be safely pleaded ; and it is then, 
 also, that that power can be pleaded to its highest point. 
 . . . For it is undoubtedly the right and duty of the 
 rulers in the Church to moderate and control, with a 
 high scriptural authority, the movements of all the other 
 parties who act together in this matter." 
 
 Here is the case of Presbyterian ism in a nutshell, 
 as against the Eoman and Anglican system on the one 
 hand, and the systems which deny all jurisdiction to the 
 aggregate of congregations on the other. To separate 
 the people from the Church, or the Church from the 
 people, is to misconceive the very nature of the Church. 
 " Inasmuch as ye did it not unto the least of these, 
 ye did it not unto Me." In every Christian there is 
 a living Christ. This, we must always repeat, is the real 
 presence. It was his realisation of this that made Luther's 
 religion at once so Divine and so human. Hence, though 
 opposing the insurgent peasants, he acknowledged the 
 soundness of their claim, that the congregation (Gemeinde) 
 should choose its own minister. The instincts of the 
 spiritual life — the cravings of the indwelling Christ — 
 cannot be scheduled in any documentary form for general 
 inspection. If the flock declares the ministrations of the 
 patron's nominee to be unedifying, that is enough. He 
 shall not be intruded on them. On the other hand, 
 9
 
 130 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 according to the Presbyterian theory, the flock is to have 
 all the advantage which the wisdom and experience of 
 the Church as a whole can afford them. As a free State 
 is not a State without order, without law, without dis- 
 cipline, so a free Church is not an anarchic multitude 
 of congregations, but an aggregate of congregations in 
 fellowship with each other, under a common jurisdiction, 
 benefited by the Christian wisdom of the whole. The 
 Church can have no interest apart from the spiritual 
 interests of the people. Presbyteries, Synods, Assembly, 
 exercise their office for the people. 
 
 " We have simply," said Candlish, drawing his speech 
 to a conclusion, " to submit to our people this plain and 
 palpable alternative : Will you have us submit without 
 a struggle and without an effort to a system of patronage 
 the most arbitrary and unrestricted, — to a system of 
 patronage which, but for the milder temper of the days 
 in which we live, might bring back those melancholy 
 times when, not ministers in their robes, but bands of 
 armed men, introduced the pastor to his people ? Will 
 you submit, or will you have us to submit, to that iron 
 yoke which your fathers were unable to bear, — or will 
 you give us your sympathies and your prayers while we 
 stand up for the rightful power of the Church of Christ, 
 and assert at once and together our prerogatives as the 
 rulers, and your liberties as the people ; while we go 
 respectfully but manfully to the other party in the con- 
 tract by which we are established, to the State, — to the 
 authorities of the nation, — testifying to them what is 
 their duty, and soliciting them to the performance of it ? 
 I have no doubt whatever that, when the question is thus
 
 THE CHURCH TAKES UP HER POSITION. 1 o 1 
 
 put, it will be fully and cordially and unanimously 
 answered throughout all our parishes. But if the 
 trumpet give an uncertain sound, — if we merely assert 
 the rights of the rulers in the Church, while we sacrifice 
 or hold in abeyance the people's liberties, — it will be no 
 wonder if we have not — we shall not deserve to have — 
 with us the heart or the prayers of one single man who 
 is worthy of the name of Scotsman. I rejoice, then, 
 Moderator, amid all our difficulties, in the prominency 
 which must now be given to this great element in our 
 question, the standing which the Christian people have 
 in the settlement of their pastors. We shall rally our 
 countrymen once more, now that the old banner is again 
 broadly displayed — the banner which we find fully and 
 clearly inscribed — Caesar's crown indeed, but along with 
 it and not less clearly or less fully, underneath Christ's 
 crown, and shielded by it — the purchased liberties of His 
 redeemed people." 
 
 It was a solemn hour when the speech of which these 
 few sentences may convey some idea rang out in its clear- 
 ness, its earnestness, its threefold elevation of thought, 
 feeling, and language, upon the Assembly. This was 
 no mere ambitious young cleric, like our bluff friend 
 Begg at twenty-three, giving a taste of his quality to the 
 men of established reputation. The ablest men in the 
 Assembly, Cunningham, Guthrie, Begg himself, as they 
 looked with admiration on this new speaker, felt that 
 he was of the transcendent sort, a leader among leaders. 
 As the tones of Candlish penetrated, with metallic clang, 
 to the remotest corners of the Assembly, it was felt that 
 a new act was opening in the drama, that a new and
 
 132 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 mighty actor had stepped upon the stage. But Candlish 
 was as modest as he was great, and sought no higher 
 honour than to be the loyal lieutenant of Chalmers. 
 
 The motions of Dr. Cook and of Dr. Muir were swept 
 away. That of Dr. Chalmers was carried. The Church 
 had taken up her position, and with studious respectful- 
 ness to the State, had defined it. The endowments 
 might be confiscated, and yet the Establishment might 
 stand. But the Church could not be false to her Divine 
 ideal. She could not fail in duty to Christ her King. 
 She could not cease to guard the liberties of Christ's 
 people. Would the State, by trying to force her to do 
 these, compel her to leave the Establishment ?
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 £0e $gifafton tteepzninQ— Z$e " OEifnese." 
 
 THE heroic age is always with us if we only have the 
 glow of heroes; and in 1839, hoth before and still 
 more after that midnight meeting of Assembly at which 
 Candlish, like a new star, suddenly cleft the gloom, the 
 old heroic fire was making its presence felt in Scotland. 
 Not once or twice in her eventful history has " glory " 
 lit her path. Her struggle for independence against 
 overwhelming odds in the beginning of the fourteenth 
 century drew on her the eyes of Europe, and the spear- 
 men of Bannockburn were enrolled with the men of 
 Marathon and the men of Morgarten among those in 
 whose praise mothers sing ditties to their boys. Again, 
 in the sixteenth century, she had the rare honour be- 
 stowed upon her by God of standing out before the 
 nations, and solemnly uprearing the standard of the 
 Holy Catholic Church, as distinguished from that of the 
 Eoman Catholic, then terrible with the strength of 
 youthful Jesuitism, and that of the Tudor-Catholic raised 
 by Henry, and resolutely held by Elizabeth. A revolu- 
 tion, occupying two centuries, was then being unrolled,
 
 134 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and there were confusions and minglings and tumults 
 innumerable, It could not fail that the work most 
 appropriate to statesmen should sometimes be effected 
 by Churchmen, and that the work strictly belong- 
 ing to the State should sometimes, in practice if not 
 in theory, be done by the Church. But the main fact 
 stands out impregnable, that it was at the call of her 
 local Church, speaking as part of the Church of all 
 nations, that Scotland rose into heroic mood, and that 
 the watchwords of her witnessing to Christ's crown 
 mingled with the march-music of mankind, the hum and 
 movement of the great westward -going procession of 
 civilisation. 
 
 He who was a Scottish boy in that summer of 
 1839 and the summers immediately succeeding, will 
 remember how the old inspiration thrilled the land. No 
 agitation so intense in its serenity, so noble in its eleva- 
 tion, so devout in its spirit, has since occurred. The 
 spectacle of the old Church, making herself visible through 
 the resplendency of the indwelling Christ, smitten sorely 
 by the archers only because of the burning of the spirit and 
 the life within her, set the chords of sympathy vibrating 
 in ten thousand bosoms. 
 
 In remote Cromarty, Hugh Miller found sleep fly his 
 pillow, while his thoughts, wildly at work, traced as in 
 zigzags of lightning the outlines of that memorable 
 Letter which he addressed to Lord Brougham. In " broad 
 Scotland" there was no man who knew his country 
 better, no man more patriotically and intelligently proud 
 of Scotland, or of whom Scotland had juster cause to 
 be proud, than the Cromarty stone - cutter. Unique
 
 THE AGITATION DEEPENING — THE " WITNESS." 135 
 
 among self-educated workmen in the breadth, the calm- 
 ness, the moral purity, and the philosophical balance of 
 his ideas, was Hugh Miller ; one of the few Scotchmen 
 who have written an English style that Addison himself 
 might have pronounced classical ; a masterly observer in 
 science, and a scientific describer whose powers were 
 looked upon by Sir Eoderick Murchison with admiring 
 despair. 
 
 He was the man of all others to appreciate at its 
 true worth and importance the stress laid by Candlish 
 on the right of congregations to have no pastor forced 
 upon them. " There does not exist " — the words are 
 Hugh Miller's — " a tenderer or more enduring tie among 
 all the various relationships which knit together the 
 human family, than that which binds the gospel minister 
 to his people." From his sleepless couch he rose to 
 fling upon paper, in passionate splendour of language, 
 his Letter to Lord Brougham, finishing it in one week. 
 He told his Lordship how he felt on the subject of his 
 Church. " To no man do I yield in the love and respect 
 which I bear to the Church of Scotland. I never signed 
 the Confession of her Faith, but I do more, — I believe 
 it ; and I deem her scheme of government at once the 
 simplest and most practically beneficial that has been 
 established since the time of the apostles. But it is 
 the vital spirit, not the dead body, to which I am 
 attached ; it is to the free popular Church, established by 
 our Eeformers, not to an unsubstantial form or an empty 
 name, — a mere creature of expediency and the State ; 
 and had she so far fallen below my feeling of her dignity 
 and excellence as to have acquiesced in your Lordship's
 
 136 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 decision, the leaf holds not more loosely by the tree 
 when the October wind blows highest, than I would have 
 held by a Church so sunk and degraded." 
 
 The Letter containing these words, and others of a 
 like purport, was forwarded in manuscript by Miller to 
 Mr. Eobert Paul, an Edinburgh banker, who happened 
 also to be a friend and a sympathetic fellow-Churchman 
 of our new lieutenant of Chalmers who electrified the 
 Assembly at midnight. It had occurred to Candlish and 
 other discerning persons, that the Church, amid her 
 tribulation from Erastian lawyers and godless journalists, 
 might derive advantage from a reasonable, judiciously- 
 conducted, well -written newspaper, which should state 
 her case fairly and fully. The difficulty was to find an 
 editor. Mr. Paul, meeting Candlish on the street, asked 
 him to read the manuscript which Miller had sent him. 
 In his study, in a fagged and listless hour, Candlish 
 1 )8gan to glance over it. " I began to read it " — the 
 story comes best from his own pen — " in a thoroughly 
 indifferent mood. I never can forget the rapture — for 
 it was nothing short of that — into which the first pages 
 threw me. I finished the reading in a state of great 
 excitement ; so much so, that, though it was late, I could 
 not rest till I had hastened with the manuscript to Mr. 
 Dunlop, beseeching him to read it that very night. The 
 following day Mr. Dunlop and I met with Mr. Paul and 
 a few friends, and either then, or within a day or two 
 thereafter, it was agreed to ask Mr. Miller to become 
 editor of the Witness newspaper, then about to be started." 
 
 Within a few weeks, accordingly, of this meeting, 
 the first number of the newspaper appeared. The
 
 THE AGITATION DEEPENING J HE " WITNESS:' 137 
 
 Witness at once assumed a place of influence and dis- 
 tinction among the organs of public opinion in Scotland. 
 Hugh Miller's powers had ripened late, but they were 
 now in perfect maturity as well as perfectly fresh and 
 unexhausted. No man loved Scotland more fervently 
 than he, no man knew her history with more intelligent 
 and sympathetic apprehension, no mind was so opulently 
 stored as his with the imagery of her shores and hill- 
 ranges, or with the noblest traditions of her people. 
 But if we will realise the full and peculiar greatness of 
 Hugh Miller, we must understand that, while one of the 
 shrewdest and most circumspect of practical thinkers, he 
 saw, in the characteristic claim of the Church of Scot- 
 land to exercise self-government in the name of Christ, 
 no vague theological dogma, no visionary fancy sub- 
 versive of civil government, no Popery, no sacerdotalism, 
 but the simple and sole method of applying Christ's. 
 New Testament law to the management, in spiritual con- 
 cerns, of Christ's Church. He was the man to laugh to 
 scorn the stupid charges of usurpation and tyranny, 
 which flippant and superficial persons always bring 
 against an energetic, living, growing, self - reforming 
 Church. He was the man to make the people w illin g 
 in the day of the Church's power. His name soon rang 
 through the households of Scotland ; and his paper 
 carried enthusiasm for the struggling Church to the 
 ends of the earth. 
 
 It was among the chief advantages for Hugh Miller, 
 in beginning to edit the Witness, that he was thoroughly 
 acquainted with the character of the leading minds 
 among the clergy of Scotland, and perfectly knew and
 
 138 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 could sympathetically respond to the thoughts and feel- 
 ings of the best religious society. The two men of whom 
 lie spoke as having done most to form his own character 
 were Chalmers and Stewart of Cromarty. The latter 
 was an exception to Scottish preachers in general, from 
 the quietness of his manner, and had something in him 
 of the nature of a recluse, not without indolence and 
 almost averse to fame. But in religion he was utterly 
 in earnest ; and, being in earnest, and possessed of a subtly 
 inventive intellect and vivid imagination, he could not 
 possibly handle Bible themes without betraying his 
 originality. Put the Bible into a man's hand, and bid 
 him preach you a sermon, and you will find him out. 
 If he is a Bunyan, or a Spurgeon, or a Stewart, he 
 cannot preach from the Bible and continue unknown. 
 From remote Cromarty, Stewart's fame pervaded Scotland. 
 Next to Chalmers and Candlish, he was known to be the 
 most remarkable preacher in the Church. Miller knew 
 him in close colloquy, and thus had the full advantage 
 of his influence. But his shy and retiring nature kept 
 Stewart, so long as his sense of duty was at rest, in 
 the secluded freedom of Cromarty, out of the afflictive 
 dazzlements of a city pulpit. Years hence, when many 
 changes had taken place, and Candlish was wanted for 
 other than pulpit work, and Scotland was searched for one 
 to take his place, all eyes gradually turned to Cromarty. 
 Stewart was called to become pastor of what, under Andrew 
 Thomson and Candlish, had become one of the noblest 
 congregations in Christendom. Such a call seemed 
 providential, and the tenderly conscientious Stewart 
 feared to disobey it. But he said that the thought of
 
 THE AGITATION DEEPENING THE " WITNESS." 139 
 
 Edinburgh pressed on him like a gravestone, and, shortly 
 before he was to have left Cromarty, he was found dead 
 in his bed. 
 
 We may look upon it as one of the most splendid 
 services of Candlish to the cause, that he so promptly 
 enlisted Miller into the vanguard of the Church's host. 
 It was the first proof — or at least the first that made 
 itself conspicuous to all the world — rendered by Candlish 
 of his superb quality as a party leader. Chalmers was 
 by genius and character the kind of man who does 
 not succeed in generalship, and, in the present instance, 
 he was not without a certain feeling of distrust in 
 relation to the popular aspects of the conflict. He held, 
 and held justly, that mere election by the people, without 
 patron or Presbytery, was no ideal method of settling 
 ministers. He had no tincture in his composition of 
 enthusiasm for the natural man, though profoundly 
 reverent of Christian democracy. " I am sickened to 
 despair," was his cry, when he feared that the Church was 
 to bring out the big drum to call the rabble to her aid. 
 
 While, therefore, there was no one who could appre-. 
 ciate Hugh Miller better than Chalmers, no one who could 
 do him more ample justice, whether as a literary artist 
 or as a man of massive sense and of sincere religion, no 
 one who could value the Witness more when he saw it at 
 work, yet there was a nuance of difference, in respect of 
 liberalism, between Chalmers and the two extraordinary 
 men who now joined hands to assist him in the fray. 
 The emergence of Candlish into a commanding position 
 in the Assembly, the advent of Miller as an influential 
 journalist in Edinburgh, signalised the accession oi
 
 140 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 powerful elements of a popular nature to the moving 
 forces on the side of the Church. It was almost with bated 
 breath that Dr. Chalmers, the world-renowned champion of 
 Church Establishments, had referred to patronage. The 
 stone - mason, in his Letter to Lord Brougham, spoke 
 plainly enough on this point. " With many thousands of 
 my countrymen, I have been accustomed to ask, Where 
 is the place which patronage occupies in this Church of 
 the people and of Christ ? I read in the First Book of 
 Discipline (as drawn up by Knox and his brethren), that 
 ' no man should enter the ministry without a lawful 
 vocation ; and that a lawful, vocation standeth in the 
 election of the people, examination of the ministry, and 
 admission of them both.' " Our readers, if they recall 
 the glimpse we took into the Institutiooi Calvin, will not 
 be at a loss to perceive where Calvin's esteemed friend 
 and fellow-worker Knox found, the suggestion of this 
 arrangement. 
 
 Miller is careful to make it clear that what the people 
 demand is no mere right to. schedule objections, and 
 to have their relevancy or irrelevancy adjudicated on 
 by lawyers or ministers, but to express, in so far 
 as rejection goes, their will. On this point he shuts 
 out by italics the possibility, of mistake. " We chal- 
 lenge, as our right, liberty of rejection: without statement 
 of reasons' A minister is loved and trusted for positive 
 qualities, and if these are not present, though no shadow 
 of accusation may attach to their absence, the congre- 
 gation reject him. " We look in him for qualities which 
 we can love, powers which we can respect, graces which 
 we can revere. It matters not that we should have no
 
 THE AGITATION DEEPENING THE " WITNESS." 141 
 
 grounds on which to condemn : we are justified in our 
 rejection if we cannot approve." 
 
 The Letter, whether it influenced or failed to influence 
 Lord Brougham, was read not only by thousands in Scot- 
 land, but by not a few open-minded, forward-looking 
 persons in England, one of these being Mr. Gladstone. 
 It is known that he was profoundly impressed by the 
 men who were then conspicuous as defenders of the 
 Church of Scotland. But he lay under the spell of 
 Newman, and he had a long way to traverse — may it be 
 hoped that he has traversed it now ? — before attaining 
 to the point in Christian evolution which had been 
 reached, in 1839, by Miller and by Candlish. 
 
 At the time when the publication of the Witness 
 began, there were sixty-three newspapers issued in Scot- 
 land, and all except eight were hostile to the Reforming 
 party in the Church. Miller had done a good deal pre- 
 viously in pamphleteering, and his letters on the Herring 
 Fishery had enabled Carruthers, the biographer of Pope 
 and felicitous editor of the Inverness Courier, to perceive 
 that a prose writer of great power had arisen. His 
 literary skill charmed the Edinburgh people, and won 
 golden plaudits from Jeffrey, while his hard hits and 
 knack of getting " the laughers " on his side recalled 
 his triumphs as a pamphleteer. " Bival editors," says 
 one who worked with him in those days, " he tomahawked 
 and scalped." He carried the fastidiousness of the 
 stylist into newspaper composition, making laborious 
 corrections, " speaking out to himself as he wrote, and 
 trying every sentence upon his ear, as a money-changer 
 weighs a piece of gold on his practised finger-tip." So
 
 142 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 severe was his labour, — so passionate was his absorp- 
 tion in his great enterprise, — that " I can never," 
 lie used to say, " remember the names of my fossils on 
 publication days till about tea-time, when they begin to 
 come back to me, reappearing to memory like letters 
 written in invisible ink when you hold the paper to 
 the fire." 
 
 Among the laymen of Scotland, no one contributed 
 so much to the advocacy of the Church's cause as Hugh 
 Miller. Words from his pen, telling epithets, expressive 
 similitudes, forceful and lucid arguments, would obviously, 
 as has been well remarked, be caught up by speakers 
 at public meetings, and echo from platform to platform 
 throughout Scotland. The paper, says Mr. Landreth, 
 was " a peacock's tail, for supplying party-plumes and 
 ornaments." Never, probably, in the history of journal- 
 ism, has a party been better served by an organ of 
 public opinion than was that which took the lead in the 
 Church of Scotland during her conflict with the State by 
 the Witness under the editorship of Hugh Miller.
 
 CHAPTEE XVII. 
 ZQe (Rise of Canoft60 + 
 
 WE return to Candlish. That speech in the Assembly 
 of 1839 was a revelation to many ; but there were 
 a few who had marked him from afar as one who was 
 sure, when his time came, to be the observed of all 
 observers. An Edinburgh man by birth, he had an intel- 
 lectual affinity for that Athenian place, and during his 
 whole career shone as a distinctively Edinburghian 
 celebrity. All the same, he was bred and educated in 
 Glasgow, and his blood allied him to Galloway and 
 Ayrshire. 
 
 His father, James Candlish, between whom and himself 
 there were points of peculiar physiological resemblance, 
 was a man of great brain power, ardent in his patriotic 
 sentiments, and devoted to the minstrelsy of Scotland. 
 Burns addressed him as " my ever dear old acquaintance." 
 Too speculative theologically for the Church, he chose 
 another vocation, and became a consummate teacher of 
 medicine. One day, when forty-six years of age, he was 
 making a speech to the Eoyal Medical Society, and felt 
 a queer sensation " as if his head would have burst," or
 
 144 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 as if the brain had been " too big for the skull." He 
 went home, and before midnight was dead. Five weeks 
 afterwards his son Robert Smith Candlish was born. The 
 " Smith " came from the mother's side, who belonged 
 to Ayrshire. Among the immortal belles of Mauchline 
 she is distinguished as the Miss Smith who had " wit ; " 
 and one who knew her informs us that the first glance 
 at her " firm mouth, and eyes which seemed to see one 
 through and through," proved convincingly that the 
 characterisation in this instance carried with it the 
 accuracy and suggestiveness common to those of Burns. 
 With the gentleness and loving-kindness of a devoted 
 mother, she combined the qualities which are of most 
 price in fathers, an admirably methodic habit, and " an 
 authority which, in the quietest conceivable way, was 
 absolute, decisive, and indisputable." She was the object 
 of her son's most tender affection and loyal and reveren- 
 tial trust. If his father gave him his towering brain, it 
 may have been still more to his mother that he owed his 
 diamond-like lucency of expression, and that incomparable 
 faculty for business, which seems to have amazed some 
 good judges even more than his gifts of speech. 
 
 Mrs. Candlish, greatly straitened in circumstances after 
 her husband's death, opened a school for girls in Glasgow, 
 and a lady who was one of her pupils has put on record 
 her memories of our Candlish when a boy of eight. He 
 was a peculiar, not to say queer-looking child, with large 
 forehead and small body, delicate fair complexion, and 
 very long eyelashes. Interesting, doubtless, but evidently 
 impressing some people with a sense of oddness, for un- 
 complimentary remarks were made, and one day a lady
 
 THE RISE OF CANDLISH. 145 
 
 rather wounded the little man's pride by giving him a 
 penny, — as if he had been a poor little hydrocephalous 
 object, or, as he himself inquiringly suggested to his 
 mother, a beggar. His mother and a brother and sister 
 were his educators, until he went, at thirteen, to Glasgow 
 University. 
 
 Despite his boyish years, he distinguished himself 
 greatly, taking an ample share of honours during five 
 successive sessions. He was high in favour with his 
 professors, and ardently admired and looked upon as a 
 leader by his fellow-students, as well as almost reverenced 
 for " purity of thought and unconscious sanctity of 
 character." His reading ranged beyond his College 
 course, and he delighted in Shakespeare. " In dis- 
 position he was impatient, yet persevering; versatile, 
 yet persistent; sensitive, and sometimes irritable; but 
 always kind, manly, generous." No period can be fixed 
 upon to date the beginning of his religious life ; but one 
 who may be trusted expresses the belief that it com- 
 menced in " very early years," and says that during his 
 undergraduate career he was characterised by a " spiritu- 
 ality " so " dominant and habitual," as to suggest its 
 having grown up with him and become to him " as the 
 breath of life." So early in the century as 1826, when 
 in his twentieth year, we find him, from sheer force of 
 mother wit, anticipating what, after infinite disputation, 
 has now become the judgment of all sensible men on 
 Mosaic geology. The very words, "Mosaic geology," 
 he disallows. " Is there," he asks, " any geology at all in 
 Moses ? or are his works intended to teach us matters 
 of science? Nothing seems to me more absurd and 
 10
 
 146 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 dangerous than to implicate revelation at all in disputes 
 on subjects not in the least connected with religion, and 
 on subjects, moreover, when speaking on which the 
 Scriptures must have accommodated themselves to the 
 opinions and language of the day, and on which, in fact, 
 they can scarcely with any propriety be said to have 
 advocated any theory at all." 
 
 In this same year, a request being addressed to some 
 of the Glasgow professors for " the most able young man 
 they could recommend," to act as tutor at Eton to Sir 
 Hugh Hume Campbell of Marchmont, the offer was made 
 to Candlish and accepted. In his twenty-first year 
 accordingly he is installed at Eton, and makes his observa- 
 tions upon the new world thus opened to him. He is 
 one of about thirty tutors, " some Fellows of Cambridge, 
 and many of them clergymen." He thinks them " in 
 general, very pleasant men," but feels the want of a 
 "friend" accentuating that lack of sympathy which a 
 kindly Scot is likely to experience amid the cold cour- 
 tesies of English acquaintance. He pronounces in favour 
 of the Scottish system of blending, in education, the 
 home influence and the school influence, as against the 
 English system of herding men with men — through pre- 
 paratory school, public school, College, Parliament, and club 
 — from cradle to grave. " Upon the whole, I cannot avoid 
 preferring that mixture of public instruction and domestic 
 superintendence which forms the system of our Univer- 
 sities. A boy is much more likely to do good when he 
 spends his evenings with his friends, or with those whom 
 his friends have appointed, than when he is exposed to 
 the temptations of idle companions." He has an eye for
 
 THE RISE OE CANDLISH. 1 47 
 
 the sweet spring scenery of southern England, but never 
 lapses into the view-hunting flowery vein. " If I had 
 room I would expatiate upon the beauties of the country 
 here. The hawthorn is just budding." 
 
 He takes a keen interest in public matters, and his 
 voice is clear for freedom, sympathy, and toleration. 
 Hopes the Church of Scotland, in petitioning against the 
 Test Act, will demand relief not merely for " Presby- 
 terian Dissenters," but for all. Wishes the Church would 
 petition also for Catholic Emancipation. " Why will 
 Churchmen always be behind their fellow-citizens in 
 learning to advocate the cause of religious freedom ? " 
 A true note of Scottish as distinguished from English 
 ecclesiastieism ! Once the question of Church patronage 
 turns up. " The law, as it is now (1827) administered, 
 undoubtedly requires revision." He hesitates as to the 
 total abolition of patronage, but would render the sale of 
 livings illegal, fixing the charge upon the land. " If 
 possible," — he says, with pathetic interest for us who 
 read his history by the light of the intervening years, — 
 " I should like to see some more effectual cheek than there 
 is at present on the part of the people upon its abuse." 
 He did not know where to insert the italics in this 
 sentence ; we do. 
 
 There was little in the outset of his ministerial life 
 to forecast his future. Of the commonplace badges of 
 evangelical sanctity he had absolutely none, and his fine 
 culture and generous tolerance, aided, perhaps, by his 
 fondness for the works of Barrow and appreciation of the 
 Anglican Service, and coinciding with his early connection 
 us assistant with one or two Moderates, contributed to
 
 148 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 put about a whisper, entirely fallacious, that he was him- 
 self inclined to that side in the Church. At one 
 moment it seemed that he might take flight for Canada, 
 and he made a narrow miss of Regent's Square Church 
 in London. At first the huge -headed, short -bodied, 
 broad-shouldered young preacher, who, child and man, 
 had always something about him to suggest that nature 
 had struck him off in a humorous mood as a magnificent 
 grotesque, did not appear to be at home in the pulpit. 
 " He had an awkward way of habitually shrugging up 
 one shoulder, which gave him almost a deformed look." 
 His voice was not yet tuned to public speaking, and in 
 his bursts of passionate climax it would become a " scream 
 or even screech." Then his " gesticulation" was inchoate. 
 There were what a lady suggestively called " such nervous 
 varieties." Twitchings of face, to wit, clutchings and 
 pullings about of pulpit habiliments. " If I were his 
 wife," adds the aforesaid lady, " I would make his waist- 
 coat and his gown fit better ; they were never doing 
 their duty to his satisfaction." Was it a pulpit Apollo 
 that the audience saw before them, or was it a Dominie 
 Samson ? 
 
 Never fear, said the knowing ones, he will come right. 
 Gradually the harshness left the voice, the jerkiness of 
 its transitions gave way to a noble modulation, and ere 
 long it rang forth with the clearness of a clarion peal, or 
 rolled like the thunder of the breakers on a storm-beat 
 shore. The twitchings of feature subsided. And as for 
 the matter of the preaching, you found, when you listened 
 well, that there had been nothing like it in Scotland 
 since Chalmers was young. It was Puritan, yet Puritan-
 
 THE RISE OF CANDLISH. 149 
 
 ism spiritualised, transformed, transfigured. " Very soon," 
 says one who listened to Candlish in those years, — " very 
 soon I felt with everybody else that a great preacher had 
 appeared, and that a new era was coming in for the 
 Scottish pulpit." 
 
 Accordingly, in that time of distress and dismay, 
 when every face you met on Edinburgh streets looked 
 sad, and Chalmers, coming into his class-room as usual, 
 " broke down in the first sentence of his lecture, and 
 rushed out bathed in tears," because Andrew Thomson 
 had fallen, it was none other than Candlish who, after 
 the too short ministry of Mr. Martin, was chosen 
 for his successor in the pulpit of St. George's. The 
 parish was very large, but under Andrew Thomson it 
 had been energetically managed, and under Candlish, 
 helped by one or two ministerial assistants, and by a 
 rare company of volunteers of the angelic order, male 
 and female, from the congregation itself, it became — we 
 need not scruple to say so— a model for Christendom ; 
 exemplary in all respects in which a parish can be 
 exemplary, in education of the young, in consideration for 
 the poor, in the preaching of salvation through Christ. 
 And one of its specialties was that the high intellectual 
 character of its preaching drew to it the flower of the 
 intellectuality of the modern Athens. Of barristers and 
 law lords, of University professors and promising students, 
 of eminent doctors and surgeons, and authors and 
 scientific celebrities, of thinkers who w T ere Christian and 
 of Christians who could think, no pulpit in Edinburgh 
 attracted so great a concurrence as that of Candlish. 
 Had it been Herod whose nod commanded Andrew
 
 150 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Thomson to death, he would have said that Andrew had 
 risen from the dead. That reconciliation between intel- 
 lect and evangelism, between culture of the modern 
 Athens and theology of the Wisharts and Knoxes, the 
 Gillespies and Hendersons and Eutherfords, the cove^ 
 nanted, sword -girt saints of Airsmoss and Drumclog, 
 which had been effected by Andrew Thomson, was repre- 
 sented in finer, more intellectual, more spiritual mani- 
 festation by Candlish. 
 
 And now, in the evolution of this great providential 
 drama, Chalmers who had so illustriously co-operated 
 with Thomson, and Candlish who had succeeded Thomson 
 as the first of Edinburgh preachers, stood side by side, 
 in unity of purpose but individuality of character, to do 
 battle on behalf of the Church and people of Scotland. 
 In majesty Chalmers was unapproached. In impetuosity, 
 in forward-looking glance and moving impulse, in eager 
 acceptance of the spirit and ideas of a new time, Candlish 
 was potently felt and conspicuously seen. He had 
 always chafed against a calculating, guarded, prudential 
 virtue. " Men's minds," he had written to a confidential 
 friend, " are not open to large and liberal views, — a 
 certain low and feeble and miserably short-sighted policy 
 rather suits them. Everything like high principle and 
 honest zeal seems out of place. All is cold and calculat- 
 ing prudence." He had now found a field in which the 
 instincts and cravings of a puissant heroism were likely 
 to have satisfaction.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 £$e <S)can of Sacuffp. 
 
 THE position of the Church at that moment, when, 
 putting aside the surrender motion of Dr. Cook 
 and the evasive motion of Dr. Muir, she adopted the 
 motion made by Chalmers and spoken to by Candlish, 
 looked simple and imposing, but it involved complica- 
 tions. It was simple from the point of view of a Pres- 
 byterian Churchman. It became complicated when the 
 Presbyterian Church was viewed as established and 
 endowed by the State. 
 
 Dual government is always difficult. Is it denied 
 that the Church of Scotland, as conceived by Chalmers 
 and those for whom he spoke, was indeed a dual govern- 
 ment? As an abstract question the point may be 
 open to debate, but practically it was impossible that 
 the association of the two powers, spiritual and secular, 
 in her constitution, should not involve some of the 
 natural consequences of dual government. Regard- 
 ing the jurisdiction of the Church as independent, and 
 the jurisdiction of the State as independent, each co- 
 ordinate to each, we must still admit the necessity of an
 
 152 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 understanding between the two. Loyal in his heart of 
 hearts both to Church and to State, — believing both to 
 be divinely ordained, — Chalmers had taken it for granted, 
 his whole life long, that there was no cause for appre- 
 hension that the jurisdictions would clash. Eecurring 
 to the old Platonic similitude, we may say that Church 
 and State, as viewed by him, were immortal steeds, one 
 white as snow, one raven -black, driven in the same 
 chariot by one invisible Christ. It had been the sup- 
 porting faith, the exultant assertion, of Chalmers, in his 
 championship of Church Establishments, that there is no 
 insuperable, no depressingly formidable difficulty in the 
 way of friendly, efficient, reciprocally loyal co-operation 
 between these powers, each exercising an independent 
 jurisdiction, both possessing a right Divine. He had 
 proceeded on the conviction that, if the Church held 
 strictly to her spiritual province, the State could not 
 and would not prove hostile to her. He would not now 
 bate one jot or one tittle of the Church's claim to that 
 liberty, that autonomy, that expansive power, which the 
 State had not given and which the State could not take 
 away. But with religious earnestness and sincerity he 
 recognised also the State's right to decide every question 
 arising within the secular province, or around the spiritual 
 province {circa sacra) ; and he respectfully asked the 
 supreme civil authority, the Queen's Government, to 
 remove what he deemed the misunderstanding that had 
 obscured the line of demarcation between the provinces. 
 
 It is a sound rule, eminently promotive of complete- 
 ness in the statement of facts and of equity in judging 
 them, and pleasant both in the conduct of controversies
 
 THE DEAN OF FACUL TY. 1 5 3 
 
 and their historical recital, to take it for granted that 
 people are honest all round, and that changes, inconsist- 
 encies, nay even contradictions, do not necessarily convict 
 men of conscious falsehood. In the heat of debate, in 
 the warmth of sympathetic narrative, sharp words will 
 be spoken, that seem utterly to violate this rule, but an 
 effort ought to be made to repress such aberrations. In 
 the conflict of which we treat, motives were frankly 
 imputed, and it is, in sooth, difficult for one to whom it 
 seems sun-clear that Chalmers, Candlish, and Cunning- 
 ham were in the right, to resist the suspicion that some 
 element of perversity, some ethically, not to say Chris- 
 tianly objectionable motive, influenced one at least of the 
 legal opponents of the Church. 
 
 All would have gone differently — this is beyond dis- 
 pute — had it not been for the part played, against the 
 Eeforming party, by John Hope, Dean of Faculty, the 
 same man whom we found schooling Chalmers in the 
 principles of Presbyterianism, and appealing to him to 
 resent and resist the least encroachment upon the 
 liberties of the Church. Let us try to suppose that he 
 believed himself to have been visited by new light, and 
 that he was equally sincere in rebuking the Whigs 
 when they proposed to institute a religious inspection 
 of parishes, and in weaving schemes with the Tories 
 for laying the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church at 
 the feet of the Court of Session. Dr. Buchanan, who 
 entered into the fray against him, cannot be expected to 
 detect much of moral splendour in his motives, but no 
 evidence could be more cogent than Dr. Buchanan's as 
 to the immense effect of his hostility. As an elder
 
 154 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 counselling the Moderate leaders in the General Assembly, 
 as a pamphleteer riding full tilt against the Evangelical 
 controversialists, and — deadliest of all — as confidential 
 friend and adviser, earwigging statesmen, whom he could 
 approach in their hours of retirement or prepossess by 
 his private and confidential letters, he was the soul of 
 the party whose object was to shackle the aspiring 
 Church, and to force her to take orders, in her most 
 sacred operations, from the Court of Session. 
 
 The Dean, consistent or inconsistent, malignant or high- 
 principled, was, without question, a man who could think 
 for himself. He had from the first been an unswerving 
 opponent of the Veto Law. But though he thus made 
 it plain that he called in question the right of the 
 Church, even when acting with the sanction of Her 
 Majesty's Law Officers for Scotland, and at the instance 
 of a distinguished member of the Court of Session, Lord 
 Moncreiff, to make a law regulating the exercise of 
 patronage without consulting Parliament, he did not at 
 that time proceed to the inference that, until she retraced 
 this step, her jurisdiction was suspended, her independ- 
 ence forfeited. It was after the passing of the Veto 
 Law that he adjured Chalmers to bristle up at an alleged 
 violation of the spiritual independence of the Church. 
 
 Plainly, also, at the time when he first took in hand 
 the case of Mr. Young and the Earl of Kinnoull, presentee 
 and patron of the parish of Auchterarder, he had not 
 made up his mind to touch the spiritual jurisdiction. 
 The action was laid by him in a shape which admitted 
 of its consequences being confined to the temporalities 
 of the parish. This was in 1835. But in 1837 he
 
 THE DEAN OF FACULTY. 1 5 5 
 
 ehanged his plan of campaign, and made it his request, 
 on the part of Mr. Young to the Court of Session, that 
 the Church should be required, by orclainU<j Mm lathe 
 cure of souls, to open his way to the temporal goods of 
 the parish. 
 
 This was a change indeed. The Church had no con- 
 scientious difficulty in dealing with temporalities. She 
 did, no doubt, say that she had a duty in relation to 
 these. She did not deny that there was a sense, and an 
 important sense, in which it was her part to defend them 
 against aggression. She was bound to tell the Court of 
 Session that they had been set apart for a particular 
 purpose, — the maintenance of a gospel ministry in the 
 parishes of Scotland. Pittance as they were, compared 
 with the glittering heaps that had sunk into the capacious 
 maw of the Scottish aristocracy, they were something, — 
 and the Church's duty was to shield them and make the 
 best use of them, in the interest of the parishioners. 
 But the Church, as she had only a spiritual jurisdiction, 
 had only spiritual arms, and could be under no con- 
 scientious call to resist the State, if it, by physical force, 
 applied the property of the people in a way she dis- 
 approved. All the Church could do was to wash her 
 hands of the temporalities, by bearing the most effective 
 testimony in her power as to how they ought to be 
 bestowed. 
 
 But the face of the matter was changed when 
 the Court of Session, in response to the application of 
 Mr. Young and the pleading of the Dean, required the 
 Church to proceed with Mr. Young's ordination. The 
 face of the matter was changed when the Presbytery of
 
 156 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Lethendy, having obeyed the Church as to ordination 
 rather than the Court of Session, was summoned by the 
 Court to its bar, and publicly reprimanded. It was a 
 very different matter when the Presbytery of Strath- 
 bogie, choosing to obey the Court of Session instead of 
 the Church, ordained the patron's presentee in despite of 
 the all but unanimous remonstrance of the parishioners 
 of Marnoch. No one had ever disputed that, if there 
 exists such a thing as spiritual jurisdiction, ordination 
 falls within its province. The Dean, who had shouted 
 to Chalmers to guard the independence of the Church, 
 now called upon the Court of Session to command her to 
 perform, or not to perform, the right of ordination. 
 
 Our readers have probably ceased to have much diffi- 
 culty in understanding how a position so simple as that 
 taken up by the Church of Scotland in the memorable 
 Assembly of 1839 should involve complications. The 
 dual government of the Church of Scotland, if pro- 
 blematical in theory, became a grimly-featured fact under 
 the conjuring of the Dean. The Church had been as 
 careful as was consistent with fortitude. The Assembly 
 had resolved, in so far as was practicable, to stay pro- 
 ceedings in disputed settlements until progress once 
 more became safe and easy. Chalmers, who had fondly 
 dreamed of the seventh decade of his life as to be spent 
 in Sabbatic rest, happy in the contemplation of past 
 labours and the prospect of a heavenly reward, could 
 not in his heart of hearts believe that, now his sixtieth 
 year was past, the crowning glory of his endeavours, the 
 paragon of religious Establishments, the resurgent and 
 grandly efficient Church of Scotland was to be humiliated,
 
 THE DEAN OF FA CUL TV. 157 
 
 disowned, dismantled by lawyers and statesmen for the 
 crime of wakening up to her duty. But lie was an 
 honest man, and death itself would have been better for 
 him than to feel that his championship of Church Estab- 
 lishments had been based on false pretences. Was the 
 Headship of Christ after all a mere flag, a rhetorical 
 flourish, a thing for histrionic strutting and bombastic 
 effusion, or was it a sacred reality ? Chalmers had 
 again and again, with all the vividness and vehemence of 
 which he was capable, affirmed that a negative answer to 
 this last question would, if unmistakably given, amount 
 to a dissolution of the league between Church and State 
 in Scotland.
 
 CHAPTEE XIX. 
 £0e C0urc0 or f0e Court of J^eseton* 
 
 IF the reader wishes to keep the essentials of this 
 quarrel distinctly before his mind's eye, he is 
 counselled to retain a vivid recollection of the Veto Act 
 and the Chapel Act. All the assumption of the Church 
 lay there. She considered it within her province to 
 decree that the rights of patrons should be so exercised 
 as not to force ministers on congregations, and that her 
 clergy should form one equal brotherhood, not a superior 
 and inferior caste. If any leading statesman had been 
 able to discern that no possible calamity could ensue 
 although Chalmers and his party were treated in a spirit 
 of generous trust, and such adjustments made in the 
 letter of the law as were requisite to prevent friction 
 between the Church and the Court of Session, all might 
 have been well. 
 
 But promptitude would have been indispensable ; for, 
 although the Church might be most anxious to make no 
 encroachment whatever on the province of the State, she 
 could not allow her own ministers to cast to the winds 
 her ordinances of government, and laugh her discipline to
 
 THE CHURCH OR THE COURT OF SESSION. 159 
 
 scorn. The Church could not allow ministers to violate 
 their ordination vows, and they had certainly promised, 
 at ordination, to obey her in spiritual things. If her 
 ministers, when commanded by the Church not to ordain 
 a particular man, and ordered by the Court of Session 
 to ordain him, did perform the rite by order of the 
 Court, then, if the Church inflicted no censure on them, 
 the very " weans " and herd laddies on the Scottish braes 
 would have treated her jurisdiction with the laughing 
 unconcern with winch, as Death complained to Burns, 
 Dr. Hornbook had taught them to regard his awful dart. 
 And just this question of obeying the Church, or obeying 
 the Court of Session, was that with which the terrible 
 Dean confronted the ministers of Scotland. Hence a 
 complication, a tragic and lamentable complication. 
 
 A certain number of the clergy, finding that they 
 could not possibly obey both the Church and the Court 
 of Session, — that there was no third course between 
 exposing themselves to the risk of spiritual punishment 
 from the Church, involving no necessary risk to glebe or 
 stipend, and exposing themselves to temporal punish- 
 ment, in shape of fine or imprisonment, from the Court 
 of Session, — elected to disobey the Church and to obey 
 the Civil Magistrate. They were ecclesiastical rebels, 
 and sober-minded persons do not sympathise with rebel- 
 lion for the sole cause that it is ecclesiastical. But these 
 rebels were ministers of that composite thing, a State 
 Church. Hence they had, it must be admitted, something 
 plausible — not more — to say for themselves, something 
 which heroic men, or clear-headed men, might not have 
 said, but which average men would be likely in most
 
 1G0 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 places and times to say. They had been taught to 
 reverence Establishments. They had been taught that 
 the elementary logic of Presbyterianism, as contrasted 
 with Popery on this hand and Erastianism on that, 
 pronounced the jurisdiction of the State to be co-ordinate 
 with the jurisdiction of the Church. Was it a sin to 
 obey one rather than the other of two co-ordinate powers, 
 both sacred ? They had seen Chalmers, and one who, in 
 the fierceness of his opposition to patronage far outdid 
 Chalmers, namely, Cunningham, smiting the Voluntaries 
 hip and thigh, and seeming, at moments, to fall into the 
 habit, all but universal south of Tweed, of referring to 
 free Churches as sects, and to Established Churches as 
 if they were alone entitled to the name of Church. 
 Cunningham, no doubt, had thundered in the Assembly 
 against the notion that the Church could do no particular 
 act in her own spiritual sphere without going cap in 
 hand to the State to ask permission ; but he had 
 admitted there and then that she could not do what the 
 State expressly prohibited. A country minister might 
 have some shadow of excuse for mistaking the Court of 
 Session, when it talked very big, for the State. The Dean 
 had pointedly affirmed at the time of the passing of the 
 Veto Act, and the Court of Session now backed him up 
 in his assertion, that the State had prohibited the Church 
 from restoring to the parishioners rights which had been 
 transferred to the patron. The statute on which the 
 Court of Session relied might be an abominable statute. 
 The Court only asked whether it was law. It might be 
 a violation of the Treaty of Union between England and 
 Scotland. The Court of Session did not mind that. It
 
 THE CHURCH OR THE COURT OF SESSION. 1 G 1 
 
 might be unchristian, inhuman, in its dealing with 
 parishioners, — no matter ; the only question the Court of 
 Session could entertain was whether it was law. If it was, 
 the Court would interpret it, issue decrees in accordance 
 with it, severely punish for disobeying it, and place all 
 the power of the State at command of the proper officers 
 to give it effect. 
 
 We may under these circumstances despise and con- 
 demn the ministers who, defying the Church and tramp- 
 ling on the people, consented to do the bidding of the 
 Court of Session, but we cannot be blind to the mysti- 
 fications of their position. They could not be electrified, 
 on a sudden, into the spiritual heroism which made a 
 Chalmers, a Candlish, a M'Cheyne ready to sacrifice all 
 things rather than ordain ministers over parishioners who 
 solemnly declared that they could derive no edification 
 from them. They had vowed to obey the Church, and 
 they knew that the Bible was the Church's law, and, 
 under it, the Confession of Faith. But they might 
 vaguely imagine, or may at least be charitably supposed 
 to have imagined, that all these were included for them, 
 as State-Churchmen, in the law of the land. Let us not 
 be surprised if thousands, and among them influential 
 statesmen, thought that the discipline under which the 
 Church placed these rebels was severe.
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 £atx> <xnl) (ftospef— tfye £ef0en&£ Case. 
 
 THE Dean was a man of resolute purpose, not to be 
 frightened by complications, not to be turned by 
 any difficulty from the even tenor of his way. He had 
 made up his mind that the Court of Session should in 
 all causes have the last word in Scotland. He played 
 the part, mutatis mutandis, of Henry VIII. , and made 
 every man tremble who dared to obey the Church and to 
 disobey the Civil Power. We shall take two illustrative 
 samples of his administration. 
 
 The Presbytery of Dunkeld had been instructed by 
 the Commission of Assembly in 1838 to induct Mr. 
 Kessen into the pastoral charge of the parish of 
 Lethendy, with special injunction to refrain from any 
 interference with the temporalities of the parish. The 
 motion to this effect had been made in the Commission 
 of Assembly by Mr. Dunlop, and it was carried by an 
 almost unanimous vote, — fifty -two against six, — the 
 Evangelicals being joined on the occasion by leading- 
 Moderates. Dr. Brunton, a prominent Moderate, had 
 described the act of the Presbytery " as purely spiritual,"
 
 LAW AND GOSPEL — THE LET LIEN DY CASE. 1G.°» 
 
 adding that " he knew his own province, and on that 
 province he would stand or fall." The Presbytery met, 
 with a view to obeying the Chnrch. 
 
 The Dean, armed with an interdict of the Court of 
 Session, forbade the Presbytery to proceed with the 
 settlement. The Eev. Michael Stirling, of Cargill, the 
 senior member, pointed out to his brethren the alternat- 
 ives between which they had to choose. If they obeyed 
 the Court of Session, they would be. secured in their 
 manses and stipends ; if they obeyed the Church, they 
 would be guilty of contempt of the Civil Court, a grave 
 offence, punishable with fine and imprisonment. To do 
 the bidding of the Lords of Session would be, in effect, 
 to force into the parish of Lethendy a man whom the 
 people refused to receive as their pastor, and to keep 
 out a man whom the people accepted and the Church 
 approved. Delay was not to be thought of, for the 
 parish had for nearly two years been deprived of 
 pastoral superintendence. Mr. Stirling was a country 
 minister, of unobtrusive character, who had taken little 
 part in public discussions, but he had not a shadow of 
 doubt that, in proceeding with his fellow-Presbyters to 
 ordain Mr. Kessen, he and they were true to the funda- 
 mental principles of the Church of Scotland. The 
 ordination, therefore, took place, in defiance of the Civil 
 Magistrate. 
 
 The Presbyters were cited to the bar of the Court of 
 Session to answer for their conduct. The judges, twelve 
 in number, wearing their robes of office, occupied the 
 bench. At the bar stood the Presbytery, eight parish 
 ministers, to answer for contempt. As they stood, one
 
 164 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 or two of the ministers of Edinburgh entered the court 
 and placed themselves at their side. At last the uni- 
 versally honoured Dr. Gordon entered and quietly took 
 his station with them at the bar. This brought a scowl 
 across the brows of their Lordships. " No sooner was 
 the noble and venerable head seen emerging from the 
 crowd at the end of the bar, than a proposal burst from 
 the Bench to turn out those clergymen from the bar ; 
 but an indignant and solemn remonstrance from Lord 
 Moncreiff checked this attempt." 
 
 The ministers were asked what they had to say for 
 themselves. Mr. Stirling made a brief and dignified 
 statement, professing for himself and his brethren the 
 intention to treat the judges with all the reverence that 
 was their due, but making no apology for what had been 
 done. " In ordaining to the office of the holy ministry, 
 and in admitting to the pastoral charge, to which in the 
 proceedings complained of we strictly limited ourselves, 
 we acted in obedience to the superior Church judica- 
 tories, — to which, in matters spiritual, we are subordin- 
 ate, — and to which, at ordination, we vowed obedience." 
 
 They were dismissed for the time, and the Court took 
 four days to consider how they should be punished. " It 
 is commonly understood," says Dr. Buchanan, " that five 
 of the judges voted in favour of a sentence of imprison- 
 ment, and six for the more lenient measure of a rebuke ; 
 and that the Lord President did not vote at all." On 
 the day fixed they were publicly reprimanded, and 
 warned that, in case of a similar offence, they should 
 be imprisoned. 
 
 It will be difficult for any man born and bred in
 
 LA IV AND COSrEL — THE LE THEND Y CASE. 165 
 
 England to enter sympathetically into the feelings of 
 the Scottish people in contemplating this exhibition. If 
 it requires a surgical operation to get a joke into the 
 heads of the countrymen of Scott, Burns, Professor 
 Wilson, and Carlyle, it requires an operation of tenfold 
 difficulty to cut a way into the skull of an ordinary 
 Englishman for the conception of a clergyman of an 
 Established Church who is not a priest, and who is a 
 cordial friend of the people. But every intelligent man 
 and woman in Scotland was capable of seeing in those 
 clergymen, who were called from their parishes and 
 reprimanded by the Court of Session, sufferers in the 
 cause of the people, representatives of that ancient league 
 in which the Church and people of Scotland had stood 
 side by side in defence of religion and of liberty. That 
 those clergymen, in obeying conscience and Christ, had 
 disobeyed the law as interpreted by the Court of Session, 
 admits of no dispute. But if modern Englishmen could 
 find leisure to cast back a glance upon their own history 
 three hundred years ago, they would see that law has 
 been gloriously defied in England in the name of justice, 
 freedom, and God. 
 
 It is, as we remarked before, only by having recourse 
 to analogy that one has a chance of getting an honest, 
 average John Bull, who, idolising law, hates injustice, 
 to see how, by the action of the Court of Session, 
 wrong was done in the Lethendy case. Suppose the 
 Court of Queen's Bench were to forbid the College of 
 Physicians to appoint to a district a medical practitioner 
 whom they believed to be capable, from his being accept- 
 able to the inhabitants, of doing them a maximum of
 
 166 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 good, and to command them to appoint instead a practi- 
 tioner who, from the aversion to him of the inhabitants, 
 could do them only a minimum of good, and might do 
 them positive harm ; and suppose the College of Physi- 
 cians, proving refractory, were fined, reprimanded, and 
 threatened with imprisonment for their conduct, — then 
 the situation would closely correspond to that presented 
 in Scotland by the Lethendy case. In England, under 
 these circumstances, there would be an outburst of public 
 surprise, a storm in the newspapers ; a conspicuous dis- 
 regard, it might be, of theories upon the subject, but 
 a unanimous cry of amazement and protest at the 
 pedantic spectacle of lawyers ordering and instructing 
 physicians to do their professional duty. The peculiar 
 element that intensified to painfullness the interest with 
 which onlookers in Scotland contemplated the treatment 
 of Mr. Stirling and his brethren, lay in the fact that 
 they were wounded, not merely in their professional 
 point of honour, but in conscience, for they had vowed 
 to obey, in all spiritual concerns, not the Court of 
 Session, but the Church. 
 
 It was one of the minor complications of this Lethendy 
 case, that the Crown, as represented by the Government 
 of the day, actually stood on the same side with the 
 Church and the people against the Court of Session 
 armed with the omnipotent letter of a statute. Mr. Clark, 
 the presentee whom the people had rejected, and whom 
 therefore the Church put aside, owed his presentation 
 to the Crown. But the Government had made it a 
 point, in the exercise of the Crown patronage, to defer 
 to the Church, and to proceed upon the assumption
 
 LA W AND GOSrEL — THE LETIIEND Y CASE. 107 
 
 that the Veto Act was legal. Accordingly, Mr. Clark, 
 the presentee in question, found himself dropped by the 
 Government. Crown, Church, and people united in 
 support of Mr. Kessen. This was the position of affairs, 
 until the Dean of Faculty may be presumed to have 
 favoured Mr. Clark with a hint that the legality of 
 the Veto Act had been denied, and that therefore all 
 the proceedings by which his presentation had been 
 cancelled were null and void. At all events, it was 
 under the auspices of the Dean that Mr. Clark brought 
 his action, and to the Dean that he owed his victory. 
 By the incantations of this wizard such curious confu- 
 sion was wrought, that the Crown appeared in the case 
 on both sides, as patron of Mr. Clark by grace of the 
 Dean, as patron of Mr. Kessen by grace of the Church 
 and the people. Unquestionably supreme in the civil 
 province, the Crown was in effect reprimanded by its 
 own Court of Session for being an accomplice with the 
 Established Church in the ordination of a pastor in the 
 parish of Lethendy. 
 
 One word more, and we need linger no longer on the 
 illustrative aspects of the Lethendy case. Mr. Stirling 
 and his brethren were cast in expenses to the amount 
 of £346, — a virtual fine. But this was not enough for 
 Mr. Clark and his counsel. The former brought a new 
 action, on the ground of the pecuniary loss occasioned 
 to him by the obstruction placed in the way to his 
 entering upon the living, and " obtained a decree i'i ir 
 damages to the extent of several thousand pounds." And 
 when at last obstruction vanished from the path of the 
 man whom the people had rejected and the Dean had
 
 168 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 backed up, — when the obsequious Establishment hart 
 hurried the Veto Act into oblivion — when the triumphant 
 Dean had thrust Chalmers, Cunningham, and Candlish into 
 the wilderness, and he and Mr. Clark could congratulate 
 each other on the Disruption, — what then was the result 
 as affecting the personal merits and character of the 
 Court of Session's minister ? Alas ! that his Presbytery 
 were compelled to libel him for drunkenness, and, in 
 legal phrase, strike his name from the roll ! The instinct 
 of the people had been right. He was not the man to 
 be the shepherd and bishop of their souls. And it was 
 for barring his intrusion upon them that a company of 
 quiet country pastors, not rich in worldly goods, but 
 exemplary in simple graces and virtues, and having it 
 as their life-work to make the light of Christ shine in 
 their parishes, " were threatened with the terrors of im- 
 prisonment, and harassed with fines heavy enough, had 
 not the burden been borne by the Church at large, to 
 have consigned some at least of its members, and their 
 families along with them, to beggary and ruin." 
 
 Such were the results of the attempt of the Dean to 
 absorb the jurisdiction of the Church into that of the 
 Court of Session, in an instance in which the clergy 
 elected to obey the Church rather than the Court. But, 
 as we have seen, it was a possible, nay a probable event 
 that some of the clergy, having been taught to plume them- 
 selves on their State connection, having thought it a kind 
 of duty to fling scorn into the eyes of unattached Presby- 
 terians, and being possessed with a vague sense of the 
 awfulness of resisting the law of the land, should prefer 
 to obey the Court of Session rather than the Church.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 £att) ano (SoBpef— Z$e (Keef of t§o$ie 4 
 
 THE probability became a fact when Mr. Edwards, pre- 
 sented in 1837 by the patron to the pastoral charge 
 of Marnoch, was vetoed by an overwhelming majority of 
 the congregation. The Church ordered the local Presby- 
 tery, to wit, Strathbogie, to reject him. The majority 
 of the Presbyters are understood to have done so with 
 the utmost reluctance, but they obeyed. Things- then 
 took their usual course. Mr. Edwards applied to the 
 Court of Session, and the Court of Session granted him 
 a virtual command to the Presbytery of Strathbogie to 
 ordain him pastor of Marnoch. The Court of Session 
 said, Ordain. The Church by its Commission of 
 Assembly said, Reject. Which was to be obeyed ? 
 
 The Presbytery of Strathbogie consisted of twelve 
 ministers. Seven were Moderates, five were Evan- 
 gelicals. But one of these last, an able man, zealous on 
 the side of Church and people, happened to be Moderator 
 of the Presbytery. The seven Moderates had hitherto 
 obeyed the Church in so far as they could do so without 
 offending the Civil Court, and when they found that Mr.
 
 170 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Edwards returned upon them armed with an injunction 
 from the Court of Session, they exerted themselves to 
 the utmost to yield obedience to the Court without 
 technically disobeying the Church. No more than a few 
 weeks had elapsed since the Commission had forbidden 
 them to proceed with the ordination of Mr. Edwards. 
 It was only at their regular meeting of Presbytery, some 
 considerable time ahead, that they would be officially 
 informed of this prohibition. They did their best, there- 
 fore, to get up in hot haste a meeting of Presbytery, 
 with a view to ordaining Mr. Edwards out of hand, and 
 thus obeying the Court of Session in substance without 
 disobeying the Church in form. 
 
 One cannot help feeling something like a touch of 
 pity for these sorely bested Presbyters in their artless 
 doubling between Church and State. How happy could 
 they have been with either ! They were not a bad 
 kind of men, those Strathbogie Moderates, but they 
 were not of heroic temper, nor in the least ambitious to 
 play a morally heroic part. The Aberdeenshire doctors 
 had not shone in the Covenanting annals of Scotland. 
 From the time when Huntly and the other Popish lords 
 had troubled King James, and cast glances of dubious 
 sympathy towards Spain, there had been a decided 
 absence of Presbyterian enthusiasm in those districts 
 where Bogie runs seaward, through its strath on the 
 bordering shires of Banff and Aberdeen. Associations 
 with the reel of Bogie, and all that it typifies of dancing, 
 mirth, and wild lyric sportfulness in the character of 
 Scots, w T ere more characteristic of Strathbogie than the 
 austere piety of the Covenanters.
 
 LAW AND GOSPEL THE REEL OF BOGIE. 171 
 
 The Presbytery of Strathbogie were now perfectly 
 determined to obey the Court of Session, but they did their 
 best to avoid formal disobedience of their ecclesiastical 
 superiors, and attempted a smart trot to the avenue for 
 that purpose. Their Evangelical Moderator, however, 
 showed himself their match in foresight and promptitude, 
 and completely baffled their project of ordaining Mr. 
 Edwards at an extraordinary meeting of Presbytery. 
 The result was, that at the meeting of the Commission 
 of Assembly in June 1839, the Commission had no 
 graver business before it than to decide upon the 
 measures to be taken in the case of a Presbytery of the 
 Church which had given unmistakable evidence of its 
 determination to ordain a minister in direct defiance of 
 the Church, and in express obedience to the Court of 
 Session. 
 
 The Church chose its best men to be its mouthpieces 
 on this occasion. Candlish made the motion in which 
 the seven were rebuked, and placed, in so far as at the 
 present stage of the business seemed practicable, in a 
 position in which further offence might be avoided. Had 
 the Presbytery of Strathbogie manifested contrition, or 
 displayed any disposition to return to their allegiance, 
 the past would have been too gladly forgiven ; but, since 
 they notoriously persisted in their determination to pro- 
 ceed to the ordination of Mr. Edwards, it seemed to be 
 kindness, on the part of the Church, to prevent them, by 
 suspending their powers as ministers, from committing 
 an offence so grave as to entail a sentence of deposition. 
 
 Candlish haying stated wherein the Presbytery had 
 offended, dwelt earnestly on the desire of the Church
 
 172 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 to proceed with gentleness and forbearance. If the 
 brethren, he said, would give the Commission then and 
 there a pledge of loyalty, " an assurance that till the 
 meeting of the Assembly they will take no further steps 
 in the matter," he would joyfully refer the whole question 
 to the next Assembly. It was only when the Church 
 bad been " bearded and defied " by her own licentiates, 
 it was only when her ordained ministers had committed 
 " intolerable offence against her authority," that she had 
 been " driven to the wall " and forced to have recourse 
 to penal measures. In vain she had studiously refrained 
 from avoidable collision with the Court of Session ; in 
 vain she had endeavoured, pending any appeal to the 
 Legislature, to place the relation between herself and 
 her adversaries on the footing of an armistice. The 
 refractory Presbytery now declined to give any sign of 
 relenting. 
 
 He moved, therefore, that the majority should be 
 suspended from the office of the ministry. But the 
 sharpness of the sentence was qualified in two ways. In 
 the first place, it was put within the option of the 
 suspended ministers to be replaced in their office on 
 merely subscribing an assurance of willingness to obey 
 the Church. In the second place, a committee was 
 named to deal with them in the way of friendly con- 
 ference, with a view to their restoration to the office of 
 Fresbyters. The object was to deter them from consum- 
 mating their rebellion by proceeding to the ordination 
 of Mr. Edwards, — " to prevent them from doing what, if 
 left alone, they might feel themselves bound to do ; but 
 what surely, if they are prevented by the interposition of
 
 LA IV AND GOSPEL THE REEL OF BOGIE. 173 
 
 our authority, they cannot reasonably take blame to 
 themselves for leaving undone." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers, supporting Candlish, laid stress upon 
 the imperious necessity under which the Church lay, if 
 anarchy was not to prevail, to require obedience from 
 her clergy. " The Presbytery had committed," he said, 
 " an open breach on that authority, under which all 
 statutory enactments, and all judicial sentences, were 
 carried into execution. It was disobedience, not against 
 a rule, but against the power which originated and en- 
 forced all rules and ordinances. If it were allowed, 
 there would be an end to all law and all government." 
 He had at first felt that there was no course but to pro- 
 ceed at once to the supreme penalty of deposition ; but 
 he rejoiced that a milder expedient had been devised. 
 He avowed his suspicion that the ministers had been the 
 prey of malevolent influences beyond control by the 
 Church. He appealed to his brethren, "in the name 
 of all that is dear in principle, and all that is dear in 
 patriotism," to defend their beloved Church from anarchy 
 within and tyranny without. " Heaven forbid," he cried, 
 " that in the wild delirium of conflict we should forget 
 principles which are equally dear to both parties, or 
 suffer the Church of Scotland to fall by the hands of her 
 own children ! " 
 
 The decision arrived at by the Commission was practi- 
 cally unanimous. Not only was Candlish's motion carried 
 by 121 votes against 14, but Dr. Bryce, one of the 
 most prominent representatives of Moderatism, " withdrew 
 from his motion the clause which contained an approval 
 of the Presbytery's conduct." It was not with the
 
 174 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 principles of the Chalmers party that the Moderates had 
 any quarrel, it was with the life-or-death earnestness with 
 which the Evangelicals maintained them. The freedom 
 of the Church, the Headship of Christ, the rights of the 
 people, — these were fine phrases ; but reprimands by 
 the Court of Session, menaces of imprisonment, heavy 
 costs, prospective possibilities in the shape of loss of 
 manse and stipend, were deplorable drawbacks to the 
 sentimental romance of Churchmanship. 
 
 The Presbytery of Strathbogie, having made up its 
 mind, showed no disposition to flinch. The seven refused 
 even to meet a deputation of the Conciliatory Committee 
 appointed by the Church. As the Commission of 
 Assembly had taken steps for the maintenance of public 
 worship and pastoral ministration in the parishes during 
 their suspension, they had recourse to the Court of Session 
 for additional protection. They asked, in effect, that the 
 Court should empower them to treat the decree of 
 suspension as a nullity, and to continue in the exercise 
 of their presbyterial and pastoral functions as before, and 
 should forbid ministers, who might be enjoined by the 
 Church to perform their office for them during suspen- 
 sion, to execute the Church's commands. The Court of 
 Session met them, to begin with, half-way, giving them 
 a decree excluding all ministers unsanctioned by them 
 from the parochial churches, churchyards, and school- 
 houses. The Church had, of course, no conscientious 
 objection to submit to this exclusion. Church buildings 
 are property, and so are school -houses, and even the 
 grass over the bones of the dead may be relinquished to 
 the secular jurisdiction.
 
 LAW AND GOSPEL — THE KEEL OF BOG IE. 1 75 
 
 The Church might most sincerely thank the Court 
 of Session for launching at her this decree. The world- 
 ling and the atheist seldom scruple to violate all courtesy 
 in applying the terms "false" and "hypocritical" to 
 religious men and to ecclesiastical bodies, and mean 
 persons were sure to suspect that the Church, with 
 all her spiritual professions, was really aiming at 
 the temporalities. The Court of Session now enabled 
 her to shut the mouth of every scoffer by leaving the 
 churches of the rebel seven unentered, and sending men 
 to preach on hillsides and highways, and in barns and 
 upper rooms. It was over the souls of the parishioners 
 of Strathbogie that the Church claimed to exercise 
 jurisdiction. Men appointed by her to minister to the 
 edification of " the body of Christ," the Church made 
 visible in the persons of the parishioners, poured into 
 Strathbogie. Any meadow, any open space by the high- 
 way, afforded such scope for preaching as had never 
 been complained of as incommodious by Christ Himself. 
 Every wimpling burn could serve for baptism. 
 
 The Church, we may be sure, would send efficient 
 men to represent her in Strathbogie, men of contagious 
 faith and burning w T ord, whom the people would be glad 
 to listen to, and who, by the mere echo of their voices 
 in exhortation and in prayer, would make the cliffs and 
 stony dells of Bogie cry out against the hireling pastors 
 that were bent on forcing an alien shepherd on the 
 flock. For the farmers and peasants of the district, 
 who entered with the keenest interest into the dis- 
 pute, and were probably more capable of appreciating 
 such an intellectual entertainment than any peasantry
 
 176 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 in Europe, the excitement must have been pungently 
 delightful. 
 
 But this was obviously not what the seven meant 
 when they asked the Court of Session to save them from 
 molestation. Once more, therefore, they applied to the 
 law Lords who had assumed the government of the Church 
 of Scotland, to serve interdicts upon those ministers whom 
 she had sent to preach and dispense the sacraments in 
 the parishes of the suspended Presbytery. The undaunted 
 Dean was ready. The petition was granted. Interdicts 
 were served upon the preachers, forbidding them to 
 preach in Strathbogie. 
 
 The Church now deliberately defied the Court. No 
 power on earth had a right to forbid her to guard the 
 spiritual interests of the flocks committed to her care. 
 Nor were her loyal sons afraid to do her bidding and to 
 encounter the foe. " Ministers hastened to Strathbogie 
 at the call of the Church." They were duly served with 
 interdicts. But the Dean, or some other power not 
 unveiled, considered it discreet to shrink from enforcing 
 the interdicts by actual arrests. It would indeed have 
 been a piquant complication of the business if ministers 
 of the Established Church had been imprisoned for 
 preaching in Strathbogie, while all other sorts and con- 
 ditions of preaching men and women, including infidels 
 and followers of Joanna Southcote, might on mere 
 principles of toleration hold forth in it to their hearts' 
 content. Arrests did not take place, but the risk was 
 boldly encountered. All the leaders were ready to go, 
 and many of the foremost men did go. Candlish went, 
 and Begg went, and Guthrie went, and the haughs and
 
 LAW AND GOSPEL THE REEL OF BOGIE. Ill 
 
 holms of Bogie rang with such eloquence us they had 
 never heard since they emerged from the primeval sea. 
 Eeminiscences or imaginations linger prohably in not a 
 few heads of secularist caricatures of the period, in which 
 the intruding Non-intrusionists, short Candlish and long 
 shaggy - headed Cunningham, brisk Begg and apostolic 
 Gordon, were seen kicking up their heels, and flourishing 
 their interdicts and snapping their fingers at the Court of 
 Session, in this newest variation of the Eeel of Bogie. 
 
 12
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 THE end, however, had not yet come. Mr. Edwards 
 was not installed in the manse of Marnoch, and his 
 object was to be so without delay. The seven Presby- 
 ters who had stood by him hitherto were not disposed to 
 desert him now, but they were anxious to proceed as little 
 as possible on their own initiative, or without feeling 
 themselves safeguarded by the law of the land. Turning 
 to the Court of Session, Mr. Edwards obtained what was 
 in effect a positive injunction to the Presbytery to proceed 
 with his settlement. 
 
 The suspended seven obeyed. In the dead of winter, 
 — January 1841, — when the land lay shrouded in snow, 
 the parishioners of Marnoch, and with them a multitude 
 of neighbours from all parts of the district, assembled 
 round their parish church to witness the attempt to 
 thrust Mr. Edwards into the charge. When the doors 
 were opened, the whole of the body of the church was 
 occupied by the parishioners, the galleries being filled 
 to overflowing by strangers. The meeting having been 
 constituted, a parishioner of the name of Murray rose up ? 
 and, describing himself as a member of the Church of
 
 LAW AND GOSPEL MARNOCII. 179 
 
 Scotland, and an elder of the parish of Marnoch, asked 
 the Moderator, the suspended minister of Keith, whether 
 lie carne there by authority of the General Assembly. 
 Answer was declined, except on condition that Mr. 
 Murray and his fellow-parishioners should recognise the 
 suspended ministers as a Presbytery, which they per- 
 emptorily refused to do. Mr. Duncan, agent for the 
 elders and communicants, pressed the claim of Mr. 
 Murray to an answer. "As an elder of the parish, 
 Mr. Murray asks a question. He believes that you 
 have no right here at all." Thus pressed, the Moderator 
 said, " We are here as the Presbytery of Strathbogie, — 
 a part of the National Church assembled in the name 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ." At this there was a great 
 manifestation of feeling in the audience, for these 
 Scottish peasants do not identify the Court of Session 
 with the Church of their fathers. In two successive 
 attempts, Mr. Duncan tried to bring the Moderator to 
 an explicit repudiation of the authority of the General 
 Assembly, but in vain. " We are here met," said the 
 Moderator, " as the Presbytery of Strathbogie, and under 
 the protection of the law of the land." 
 
 In the name of the congregation, Mr. Duncan now 
 read a protest against the induction, bearing the signatures 
 of the elders and 450 communicants. It expressed the 
 " extreme pain and disappointment " with which the 
 parishioners looked upon the so - called Presbyters " as 
 suspended ministers of the Church of Scotland." Before 
 a competent Church Court, they were fully prepared to 
 substantiate their objections to Mr. Edwards, which, they 
 said, were not frivolous, but grave enough to warrant de-
 
 180 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 position. They earnestly begged the suspended ministers 
 " to avoid the desecration of the ordinance of ordination," 
 and " solemnly, and as in the presence of the great and 
 only Head of the Church," averred that, should the 
 desecration be accomplished, they would repudiate and 
 disown it, and refuse to regard Mr. Edwards as minister 
 of Marnoch. The proceedings of the pretended Presby- 
 tery involved, in their view, " the most heinous guilt and 
 fearful responsibility," dishonour to religion and " cruel 
 injury to the spiritual interests of a united Christian 
 congregation." So said the spokesman of the parishioners. 
 On finishing this document, Mr. Duncan announced 
 that the parishioners of Marnoch could take no further 
 part in these unconstitutional proceedings, or remain to 
 witness the forcing of a minister on the people. Without 
 tumult or outcry, in silent strength of resolution, the 
 tension of their lips and the hot tears oozing from their 
 eyes alone indicating the depth of their feelings, the 
 people gathered up their Bibles and moved out of the 
 church. Does it not again remind us of Macaulay's 
 words about that people whose " wildest popular excesses " 
 bear trace of " the gravity of judicial proceedings and of 
 the solemnity of religious rites " ? Thoughtful onlookers 
 felt that they had never seen before and would never see 
 again a spectacle so full of moral beauty. " No word of 
 disrespect or reproach escaped them." " There were 
 grey-headed men among them," wrote Hugh Miller, 
 " who had worshipped " within these walls " for more 
 than half a century, — men, too, in the vigorous prime of 
 manhood, — others just entering on the stage of active 
 life. All rose and all went away, — many of them in
 
 LA W AND GOSPEL — MARNOCR. 181 
 
 tears. It was the church in wliich, Sabbath after 
 Sabbath, their fathers bad met to worship; it bad formed 
 the centre of many a solemn association, many a sacred 
 attraction ; and they were now quitting it for ever." 
 
 The whole area of the church became vacant. The 
 people passed out into the cold wintry air, and, proceeding 
 to a snow - clad hollow below the knoll on which the 
 church was built, grouped themselves together for a few 
 minutes, and resolved to retire straightway to their 
 homes. Dignity, solemnity, loyalty to all that is morally 
 beautiful in human nature, characterised their conduct 
 from first to last. 
 
 Sad as it was for these parishioners to quit the walls 
 in which they had worshipped since childhood, they well 
 knew that the Church of Scotland did not forsake them. 
 The husk of endowment had been snatched away, the 
 kernel of spiritual Christianity was well cared for by 
 the Church. When the people vetoed Mr. Edwards, the 
 patron, as was in a great majority of instances the case, 
 had shown no objection to co-operate with the Church 
 and the congregation in settling another man, and had 
 issued a second presentation in favour of Mr. 1). Henry. 
 It is a significant fact that, both in relation to Crown 
 patronage and private patronage, the Church might never 
 have got into difficulty had it not been for the officious- 
 ness of lawyers. Mr. Henry, acceptable to the people, 
 was in due course ordained minister of the parish. 
 He had as yet no church, no stipend. But the heart 
 of Scotland had been touched by the spectacle of 
 the Court of Session settlement in Marnoch, and there 
 was no insuperable difficulty either in building him a
 
 182 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 church or in providing him with a living. A largo 
 church, with a church -tower and "a handsome and 
 commodious parsonage " immediately adjoining, arose in 
 the outskirts of the village of Marnoch. " The parish 
 church still stands on the hill, hut the parish families 
 have ceased to go up to it ever since that wintry day when 
 it ceased to be occupied by a minister of the Church of 
 Scotland, and passed into the hands of a ministry pro- 
 vided for it by the Court of Session. The National 
 Church, whose principles and whose honour they so nobly 
 upheld in 1841, was in 1843 disestablished like them- 
 selves, — and they and their minister have, since the 
 Disruption, formed part and parcel of the Free Church 
 of Scotland." 
 
 It is necessary to take a glance — a brief and cursory 
 dance will be enough — within the walls from which the 
 Hock had retired, in order to see how the work of ordina- 
 tion was proceeded with by that Presbytery which, sub- 
 mitting to act as part of the official machinery whereby 
 the Court of Session had superseded the Courts of the 
 Church, still affirmed itself to be part of the National 
 Church and obedient to the law of the land. 
 
 No sooner was the area laid bare by the departure of 
 the parishioners, than the mixed multitude that filled the 
 galleries rushed, with tumult and Hinging of snowballs, 
 into the vacant space. " The unhappy intrusionist 
 ministers were pelted with snowballs and other disagree- 
 able though not very deadly missiles, while shouts and 
 groans and hisses assailed them." There were menacing 
 symptoms of a riot ; but a magistrate, of firm nerve and 
 known to be in sympathy with the cause of Church and
 
 LAW AND GOSrEL MARNOCII. 183 
 
 people, having been promptly sent for, had little difficulty 
 in restoring tranquillity. The ordination then took place 
 with the usual formalities, one of these being that the 
 Dean's minister professed his belief in " the whole 
 doctrine contained in the Confession of Faith." One 
 part of that doctrine is, that the government of the 
 Church is divinely placed in the hands of Church officers, 
 " distinct from the Civil Magistrate.
 
 CHAPTER XXIIL 
 Z$e (ftssemfifp of 1841— $afronage + 
 
 TT was out of patronage that all the troubles of the 
 -L Church had arisen. From the sixteenth century 
 she had been engaged intermittently in conflict with the 
 system, never quite conquering it, always feeling it to be 
 at variance with Christian freedom. Even the Moderates 
 had never adopted it so openly as to try to abolish the 
 congregational call ; and the High Presbyterian party, 
 looking upon its reintroduction by the Act of Queen 
 Anne, after temporary expulsion, as a violation of the 
 Union, had constantly and keenly made war upon it. 
 
 Andrew Thomson had organised an association for 
 gradually buying up patrons' rights, and giving full effect 
 to the call. One of Thomson's most ardent coadjutors in 
 this movement had been Cunningham ; but in Thomson's 
 lifetime Cunningham had not proposed that the Church 
 should, either by legislation of her own or by appeal 
 to Parliament, make a complete end of patronage. 
 Acquainted as he was with every nook and by-way of 
 Scottish Church history, he was aware that, in 1642, 
 when the Church was in great power, she had not con-
 
 THE ASSEMBL Y OF i S 4 1 — PA TRONA GE. 185 
 
 sidered it her duty to sweep patronage wholly away, but 
 had arranged a method by which its bad effects were 
 minimised. He would have been content to see patron- 
 age and parochial liberty reconciled, as they were by the 
 Veto Act, that felicitous measure which, when patrons 
 were devout and noble-minded, and, like the Crown, 
 magnanimously fair both to the Church and to the people, 
 worked with smoothness and beneficence. But when the 
 Church was pertinaciously attacked for having attempted 
 to combine the exercise of patronage with the edifica- 
 tion of parishioners, and when great legal authorities 
 attempted to make her jurisdiction in things spiritual 
 a mere ceremonial accompaniment of the Court of 
 Session's jurisdiction in things temporal, then Cunning- 
 ham looked with fiercer glance upon patronage than he 
 had ever done before, and threw his heart into an 
 agitation for the extirpation of the system, root and 
 branch. His plan was to go frankly to Parliament, and, 
 representing that patronage brought the Church and the 
 Court of Session into strangling complications, to petition 
 for its abolition. 
 
 In the Assembly of 1841 he advocated this course, 
 branding patronage as a plant which God had not 
 planted, and showing that it neither received counten- 
 ance from Scripture nor had ever been heartily con- 
 curred in by the Church. 
 
 Chalmers had never been an impetuous opponent of 
 patronage. He had clung to the idea that, as one 
 element in settlements, it might have no malignant effect. 
 But he was beginning to feel it to be, in its results, 
 intolerable. Candlish kept pace with Cunningham. A
 
 186 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 close friendship sprang up between these two. Among 
 the laymen, perhaps the most vehement opponent of 
 patronage was Mr. Maitland Macgill Crichton. Guthrie 
 beat down the plausibilities of its defenders with his 
 great flail of common sense. 
 
 The very name of Macgill Crichton seems to sound 
 familiar to those versed in Presbyterian history, and 
 Huo-h Miller has remarked how naturally one would 
 have looked for him among the vanquishers of Claver- 
 house at Drumclog. He was of Herculean build, and had 
 outstripped a mail-coach in a twenty mile race. From 
 spinal cord to finger tips he thrilled with the devout 
 patriotism of old Scotland. His qualities as a platform 
 speaker were excellent, his thinking forcible, his words 
 brief and strong, winged with enthusiasm for his principles 
 and his friends, and prickly with sarcasm for his adver- 
 saries. Crichton saw the extreme folly of elaborately 
 setting up an Establishment, and then binding it to con- 
 ditions that defeated its primary purpose. " While liberty 
 of conscience," he said, " should be preserved inviolate, and 
 all left free to conform or to dissent as they thought fit, 
 the National Church ought to be restricted and crippled 
 by no conditions calculated to repel the people from her 
 communion." " Is it," he asked, " consistent with the 
 purity of the Church, or with the spiritual liberty of 
 Christ's people, that the sacred trust of electing pastors 
 should not only be taken from the members of the 
 Church, but so disposed as common worldly property, 
 that all its holders may be — and, in fact, the great 
 majority are — either alien or hostile to her communion?" 
 With a warmth recalling that of Hugh Miller on the
 
 THE ASSEMBL Y OF 1S41 — PA TRONAGE. 187 
 
 same subject, he denounced the calumny that Scottish 
 congregations were less capable than patrons of electing 
 their ministers. " Can it for an instant be admitted that 
 the voice of the congregation, speaking by the majority 
 of its communicants, in a matter of such dear and sacred 
 interest to themselves and to their children, is entitled 
 to no more weight than the voice of my lord or squire, 
 himself an alien to our Church, who may dictate to the 
 people their 1 future pastor ? I proclaim such a statement 
 to be a libel upon my countrymen, the Christian people 
 of Scotland." 
 
 But the body of the Evangelicals were not yet able, 
 to keep up with Cunningham, Candlish, and Macgill 
 Crichton. It was almost a drawn battle between these 
 and the phalanx of the Moderates, reinforced by not a 
 few of the weaker-kneed members of the opposite party. 
 Dr. Cook had 138 votes, Cunningham 135, in the all 
 but drawn battle, in the Assembly of 1841, on the 
 Abolition of Patronage.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 Zfye Qttofcerafee §tvifte tfyeit $fag + 
 
 BY no means so nearly balanced were the parties on 
 the crucial question, also discussed in the Assembly 
 of 1841, of the attitude which the Church ought now 
 to assume toward the Legislature. The Earl of Aberdeen 
 had already made his well-meant but feeble and ill- 
 starred attempt to pass such a measure as might restore 
 peace between the Church and the Court of Session. 
 His proposal was to give the people power to reject for 
 specified reasons. It bred an infinitude of wrangling 
 and heartburning, — nothing else. The Duke of Argyll 
 had now prepared a Bill which, being substantially at 
 one with the Veto Act, would have removed the 
 cause of contention. The Evangelicals most earnestly 
 desired, therefore, that the Moderate party should 
 combine with them in presenting a united front to 
 the Legislature in support of the Duke's measure. 
 Dubious as it might be whether the House of Lords 
 would in any case lend a favourable consideration 
 to the Bill, they were certainly more likely to do 
 so if it came with the unanimous approval of the
 
 THE MODERATES STRIKE THEIR FLAG. 189 
 
 Assembly than if it were opposed by the Moderate 
 party. 
 
 A resolution, therefore, was moved by Candlish, pledging 
 the Assembly to offer no opposition to " a measure fitted 
 to put an end to the collision." He appealed to the 
 minority, in a speech of which the feeble echo that 
 remains is evidently inadequate to convey to us any just 
 idea of its pathos or its power ; but to judge from what 
 has been said of it, and by its effect at the time, it must 
 have been a rare masterpiece. Its main leverage as an 
 appeal to the Moderates w r as derived from the terrible 
 position of the majority as shut up by conscience to 
 rend the Establishment in twain if the Bill were 
 rejected, whereas the minority could not allege that 
 they were bound in principle to obstruct it. They 
 had no conscientious objection to Non-intrusion. They 
 had never ceased to affirm that they held the Church 
 to have no King but Christ. Would they not, for 
 their brethren's sakes, for the sake of the Church in 
 whose courts the two parties had so long dwelt to- 
 gether, make a public statement to this effect ? More 
 was not asked of them. " By such a statement," cried 
 Candlish, " they will prove themselves the most generous, 
 the most disinterested, the most seasonable benefactors 
 the Church ever saw." So deeply did the Assembly 
 seem to be moved, that he believed himself to have 
 prevailed. " I rejoice," he said, " that I have been 
 the humble instrument under God of bringing the 
 House to its present state of mind." " I am speaking 
 under a weight; of responsibility deeper than I ever felt 
 before, I am speaking under an apprehension of the
 
 190 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 impending calamities with which our beloved Church is 
 threatened." 
 
 But he was mistaken. The tokens of emotion had 
 been superficial and misleading. The Moderates praised 
 the speaker, were liberal of polite expressions, but were 
 at heart unmoved. They would not expose themselves 
 to the slightest risk of offending the civil authorities, 
 and held doggedly to the policy of accepting, with bated 
 breath and whispering humbleness, whatever course the 
 legal tribunals chose to mark out. They struck their 
 flacr. The State was for them henceforward the Church. 
 They had not the courage even of Oliver Twist, and 
 did not dare to ash the Government to pass a healing 
 measure, without first going through the humiliation of 
 hauling down the Veto Act, and thus acknowledging that 
 the independence of the Church, of which they had so 
 often talked, did not enable her to decline to be made 
 an instrument in forcing pastors upon parishioners. The 
 body of the Moderates voted against Candlish's resolution. 
 The Duke of Argyll could tell the House of Lords that 
 his measure was supported by 230 against 125, — a 
 majority of nearly two to one, — but he could not say that 
 the Church was unanimous in desiring its enactment. 
 
 One would like to be able to yield something more 
 than a cold theoretic assent — to yield an assent imply- 
 ing some slight sympathetic warmth — to the sincere 
 conscientiousness of the noblest of the Moderates, to 
 Robertson, of Ellon, for example, on this occasion. But 
 it is really difficult to get footing on so thin a razor- 
 edge of conscientious principle as Robertson defined for 
 himself and his brethren. What he objected to was the
 
 THE MODERATES STRIKE THEIR EL AG. 191 
 
 prevalence allowed to Christian will, apart from specified 
 .reasons. " I am not," said Robertson, " without a ground- 
 work of principle for what I state in this House. The 
 Scriptures of truth assert that Christian men, in dealing 
 with one another, when they have a charge to make, 
 should have reasons for the charge ; and surely, when 
 Christian men have a charge against the person appointed 
 to be their pastor, they should have reasons to give for it, 
 openly and fairly, that all the world may judge of it." x 
 
 It is not easy to understand how, except in the heat of 
 debate, Robertson could have imagined that there was 
 any analogy between bringing a charge against a man 
 and declining to have him as a pastor. Does one make 
 a charge against a parliamentary candidate when he 
 refuses him as his representative ? Does a woman make 
 a charge against a man when she declines him as a 
 husband ? A minister might be a perfect crampfish in 
 all spiritual respects, and yet challenge accusation in any 
 Court in the world. It was a curiously constituted con- 
 science that could resist Candlish's appeal rather than 
 allow Scottish communicants to escape heckling as to their 
 spiritual reasons for disapproving of a presentee. And, 
 alas ! the fact remains — closing on Moderate brotherli- 
 ness and intrepidity like a coffin-lid — that, until the 
 Court of Session cast menacing glances at glebe and 
 stipend, the Moderates, now so jealous of disapproval 
 without reasons, had acquiesced smilingly in the Veto 
 Act! 
 
 1 Life of Robertson, by Charteris.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 tfye §cottiB$ |E)ift>e6ran$. 
 
 THE work of this memorable Assembly of 1841 was 
 not yet done. The seven ministers forming the 
 majority of the Presbytery of Strathbogie had flagrantly 
 broken the law of the Church. The principal business 
 before the Assembly was to put discipline in force 
 against the rebels. They had disregarded the sentence 
 of suspension. They had profaned the rites of ordination. 
 Would the Church proceed to their deposition ? In the 
 sixteenth century, in breaking from the Papacy, she had 
 professed to carry over with her every power and privilege 
 rightly claimed by the Universal Church. "Would she 
 now dare, in the blaze of nineteenth century enlighten- 
 ment, to apply to the Strathbogie ministers and their 
 district the same discipline, in all spiritual respects, 
 under which, in the Middle Ages, pastors and districts 
 had been laid by the Church of Rome ? 
 
 She did not hesitate. Chalmers himself made the 
 motion that the seven ministers of Strathbogie, who had 
 disobeyed the Church and broken their ordination vows, 
 should be deposed from their office, and forbidden to
 
 THE SCO TTISH HILDEBRAND. 193 
 
 preach or administer the sacraments. Never had he 
 occupied so agitating a position. Never had there been 
 more painful conflict in his breast between the claims of 
 the Establishment and the claims of the Church. But 
 the victory had been complete ; and now, though earnest 
 and sad, he was collected, firm, and calm. The Church, 
 if established at all, must be established as a living 
 organism, not as a dead machine. Acknowledging that 
 the Church was not infallible, declining to conjecture 
 the pleas to which the Strathbogie ministers might have 
 recourse in the inner court of conscience, he took his 
 stand on the palpable fact that, if their rebellion was 
 passed over, the whole fabric of discipline would come to 
 the ground. " The Church would be left without a. 
 government." If the Legislature, on being finally appealed 
 to, should lay this down as the condition of Establishment, 
 then the Church must be prepared " to abjure her 
 connection with the State." 
 
 In terms of touching pathos, he expressed his amaze- 
 ment at the spectacle of the rude interference of the 
 Courts of law with the Church, exactly at the time when 
 she was doing with conspicuous success what, by the 
 nature of the case, the State must be supposed to wish 
 her to do. " This is a truly mysterious visitation 
 which has come on the Church of Scotland." Her area 
 had been enlarging, her usefulness had been increasing, 
 her beneficent influence had crossed the threshold of 
 families, and, going out into the streets and alleys, had 
 penetrated " to the lowest depths of the people, giving 
 thereby solidity and strength to the basis of the com- 
 monwealth." She had been achieving not only " the 
 13
 
 194 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 primary end of Christianity — the salvation of souls," 
 but " the secondary blessings of education, and regularity, 
 and improved habits, both economical and moral." And 
 just then it was, " when so much could have been done 
 by a conjunction between the piety of the Church and 
 the patriotism of the State," that the Civil Court strikes 
 in, and " a cruel arrest is laid on all this prosperity, and 
 the vision of our fondest hopes is scattered into frag- 
 ments." The Church could not, for the bribe of peace, 
 make a sacrifice of principle, and therefore he moved 
 that the rebel Presbyters of Strathbogie should be 
 deposed from the office of the holy ministry. 
 
 The Moderates now gave fresh proof that they had 
 deserted the cause of the Church. Dr. Cook had made 
 up his mind to run no risks, and adopted the position 
 which every State-Churchman, who feels that the State 
 element and nut the Church element is the essential 
 matter in the connection, will naturally adopt. He 
 held by the State. The Church, he averred, had ex- 
 ceeded her powers in the Veto Act. The Court of 
 Session, supported by the House of Lords, authoritat- 
 ively declared this to be a fact. " Consequently, the 
 determination of the seven Strathbogie ministers not 
 to be guided by that Act, but by the injunctions of the 
 supreme civil tribunals of the country, was in perfect 
 conformity with their duty, and ought not to have sub- 
 jected them to censure, far less should have occasioned 
 their being served with a libel, for the purpose of their 
 being deposed should the libel be proved, or the charges 
 which it contains be admitted." He moved that the 
 ministers should be let alone, remaining in all respects
 
 THE SCOTTISH H1LDEBR. 1A r D. 195 
 
 as if no proceedings had been taken against them. A 
 nobleman of no personal weight having seconded Dr. 
 Cook's motion, there rose to reply the Rev. William 
 ( Junningham. 
 
 It was evident that he was in his most earnest mood, 
 his whole intellectual nature, his whole moral nature, 
 stirred to their depths. Having put aside certain irrele- 
 vancies and generalities with which the case had been 
 cumbered, " he would first," he said, "venture to assert, 
 on the facts judicially admitted by these men, that there 
 was abundant ground for maintaining that they had 
 broken the laws of the Church ; secondly, that they had 
 violated their ordination vows : and thirdly, that they 
 had been guilty of a sin against the Lord Jesus Christ." 
 A buzz of startled and angry remonstrance ran through 
 the Moderate ranks at the word " sin." That kind of 
 alarmed surprise among his hearers at the sweep of his 
 logic, or the audacity of his statement, or the impetuous 
 vehemence of his manner, always acted finely upon 
 Cunningham, making him as calmly self-possessed and 
 proudly defiant as the thunder of artillery and the smoke 
 of battle have made some great generals. He paused ; 
 gave every one time to reflect ; and then went on. " Ho 
 never, so long as he was a member of a Christian Church, 
 would give his consent to the deposition of any man from 
 the holy ministry, unless he could conclusively prove that 
 the man had been guilty of a sin against the Lord Jesus 
 Christ." " But if they were prepared both to aver and 
 conclusively to prove it, then he believed that the sentence 
 of deposition they were called this evening to pronounce, 
 was a sentence that would be ratified in heaven."
 
 196 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 As he proceeded with his argument, it could not but 
 he felt that its links were of hammered iron. In no age 
 of the Church of Scotland had her ministers been per- 
 mitted to disown her jurisdiction and defy her commands 
 without incurring the supreme penalty. In 1648, when 
 the Westminster Standards had been accepted, and the 
 Church had not yet been subjected to Cromwell's physical 
 force, she had expressly decreed, " if any suspended 
 minister, during suspension, shall exercise any part of the 
 ministerial calling, he shall be deposed." Glancing back 
 to the early Christian centuries, Cunningham showed 
 that the Church of the West had always inflicted supreme 
 punishment upon pastors who defied the restraints of 
 discipline. The ordination vows of the libelled ministers 
 were, in the next place, explicit. " They solemnly pro- 
 mised to be subject to the judicatories of this Church, 
 to maintain the unity of this Church against error and 
 schism, notwithstanding of whatever trouble or persecu- 
 tion may arise." And yet, by their own admission, they 
 had applied to the Court of Session to overrule and 
 cancel the discipline of the Church. 
 
 Viewing the matter for a moment in the light of common 
 sense and the general usage of civilised life, he argued 
 that such conduct as that of the libelled ministers was at 
 variance with justice. In entering the ministry, they had 
 accepted the spiritual government of the Church, and 
 practically divested themselves of the right to apply to 
 the Civil Tower against the Church. They had " applied 
 for admission into a certain society, which imposed certain 
 restrictions upon that admission. Such is the case even 
 in many corporations, which, with perfect justice and
 
 THE SCOTTISH HILDEBRAND. 197 
 
 equity, bind tlicir members not to use any privil 
 they may receive by becoming members, as against the 
 society into which they had been admitted." If there 
 was any one restriction to which a man entering volun- 
 tarily upon the ministry of the Church of Scotland might 
 be supposed to subject himself, with clear consciousness 
 that he was doing so, it was the restriction of his right or 
 power to bring the Church as a culprit to the bar of the 
 Court of Session. 
 
 Eeference had been made to the oath of allegiance 
 taken by the Strathbogie ministers. Cunningham 
 declared that the oath of allegiance bound all subjects 
 to loyalty to Queen Victoria, but " by the Consti- 
 tution of Great Britain " she had no spiritual juris- 
 diction in Scotland. " As an ecclesiastical Court, they 
 were perfectly independent of all interference in eccle- 
 siastical matters, even under the oath of the sovereign, 
 who has no more authority (in Scotland) to regulate 
 these matters than to levy taxes without the consent 
 of Parliament." Since the Revolution Settlement, in 
 1688, "down to the age in which we live, no such 
 claim as this had ever been put forth, nor any such 
 power or prerogative been enjoyed, with respect to Scot- 
 land, by sovereigns of Great Britain, or any officer holding 
 his powers from the sovereign." 
 
 There remained the sin, in its strictest sense, against 
 Christ, which the speaker had imputed to the ministers. 
 By their own statement they had applied to the Court 
 of Session to suspend the sentence of the Church. " Now 
 this latter step," said Cunningham, " was plainly a 
 renunciation of the allegiance they owed to the Lord Jesus
 
 198 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Christ as the only King and Head of His Church ; it 
 was plainly a denial of His sole Headship and supremacy, 
 and of the truth contained in the Confession of Faith, 
 and ratified by the law of the land, that Jesus Christ is 
 King and Head of His Church. It plainly involved a 
 denial of the position that to His office-bearers, and to 
 them alone, is committed the power of the keys. Would 
 any one venture to deny that the Court of Session had 
 assumed the power of the keys, and had thereby broken 
 both the law of God and the law of the land, and been 
 guilty of great sin ? And of all this sin these men were 
 the authors and originators." The offence, therefore, of 
 the ministers was " neither more nor less than high 
 treason against Jesus Christ, since it was a blow aimed 
 at the very existence of the Church as a distinct society, 
 exercising functions and enjoying privileges derived from 
 Him, and to be regulated by His word." 
 
 Thus did the Hildebrand of the Reformed Catholic 
 Church in Scotland assert the inalienable right and duty 
 of the Church to give effect to the law of Christ in His 
 visible kingdom upon earth. It was not permitted to 
 the Church to transfer to the State that guardianship 
 of the liberties and rights of the visible body of Christ 
 which He had committed to herself. Cunningham did 
 not condescend even to argue with those who traced the 
 spiritual independence of the Church to the concession 
 of the State. The State could not confer what it was a 
 sin on the part of the State to usurp. It was an aggra- 
 vation of the sin of the ministers that they had consented 
 to act as accomplices and tools of the Civil Power in its 
 encroachments on the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church.
 
 THE SCOTTISH H1LDEBRAND. 199 
 
 In the impetuosity of his assault upon the ('lunch's lues, 
 Cunningham seemed, in fact, to proceed on the principle 
 of cutting the Church clear of the State and its tem- 
 poralities together, leaving it to dispose of the wreck 
 of Establishment as it thought fit, and looking only 
 heavenward for guidance and support. 
 
 If the Presbyterian doctrine of the Headship is un- 
 reservedly accepted, — if the Church cannot, without 
 disloyalty to Christ, abdicate self-government in matters 
 spiritual, — the main contention of Cunningham's speech 
 on the deposition of the Strathbogie ministers is un- 
 answerable. The Moderate party, determined to main- 
 tain at all hazards the connection with the State, put 
 forward its ablest man to endeavour to show that the 
 violation of principle was not so clear, the crisis not 
 so grave, as Cunningham averred. Mr. Robertson, of 
 Ellon, respected by both sections of the Assembly, a 
 man of devout character and solid though not shining 
 parts, argued with dexterity on the difficulties involved 
 in the position of the Strathbogie ministers, urging 
 that, as a matter of fact, they had been perplexed 
 between the Courts of the Church and the Courts of 
 the State, and that it was hard to inflict on them 
 the tremendous punishment of deposition for getting 
 mystified between the two. " It was true that these 
 gentlemen had come under the ordination vows ; and he 
 had no doubt that they took these vows honestly, and 
 firmly determined to adhere to them in the spirit in 
 which they were taken. But he must also advert to the 
 fact that these gentlemen had previously taken the oath 
 of allegiance to the Constitution of the country, and were
 
 200 THE FREE CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 
 
 bound to adhere to that Constitution as explained by the 
 Civil Courts of the country." 
 
 He tried also, with ingenious amiability, to have it 
 taken for granted that they had really, in the silence 
 of their consciences, appealed to the Head of the Church 
 against the sentence of suspension before disregarding it. 
 But the keen eye of Mr. Dunlop discovered in their own 
 statement an awkward comment on this view of their 
 position. " After being suspended," they had themselves 
 avowed, " they discharged no duties till after the decision 
 of the Civil Court " cancelling the sentence of their eccle- 
 siastical superiors. Fear of the Civil Power, and not a 
 conviction that the Church was breaking Christ's law, 
 had been their motive. In short, they had obeyed the 
 State, in direct contravention of the commands of the 
 Church ; that was a palpable fact ; and if the Crown 
 Eights of the Eedeemer had any meaning in the creed 
 of the Church of Scotland, this was to set those Crown 
 Eights at nought. The Assembly voted with Chalmers 
 and Cunningham, against Cook and Eobertson, by 222 
 against 125. That same night the sentence of deposition 
 upon the seven Strathbogie ministers was solemnly 
 pronounced by Dr. Chalmers. 
 
 " Eatified in heaven " was most assuredly the comment 
 upon all this, which, if not by word of lip, then by 
 swelling of breast and tears of solemn joy, passed from 
 group to group of patriot Presbyterians throughout Scot- 
 land. But the austerity of the Church added immensely 
 to her difficulties. Easy-going, good-natured statesmen 
 were offended and vaguely alarmed. Soft-hearted people 
 wavered. There is a logic of the feelings as well as of
 
 THE SCOTTISH HILDEBRAND. 201 
 
 the intellect that influences events. The Strathbogie 
 seven might be utterly indefensible, but they had been 
 weak rather than wicked. They would have acted as 
 heroes if they could, and to many it seemed hard to 
 depose them from the ministry and put the brand of 
 sin upon them for not deciding heroically between Church 
 and State. 
 
 Dr. Buchanan mentions, somewhat curtly, that the Rev. 
 Mr. Clark, of Inverness, supported by Mr. Brodie, of Moni- 
 mail, came forward at the last moment, before the motion 
 for deposition was made by Chalmers, and urged that the 
 sentence should be suspension for an indefinite time. Mr. 
 Clark had been an Evangelical of unsullied record, and 
 was distinguished in private life by sympathy, gentleness, 
 and kindness. No one could better represent than he 
 the logic of the heart. By adopting his suggestion, 
 which was not listened to, a golden bridge might have 
 been left for the return of the banished, and the Moder- 
 ates and their allies in Parliament might have felt that 
 the Church was in a placable mood. But who could 
 now wish that half -measures had been adopted ?
 
 OHAPTEE XXVI. 
 <15uf0rte. 
 
 AMONG the supporters of Cunningham in his direct 
 assault upon patronage, and in his terrible argu- 
 ment against the mutineers of Strathbogie, was Thomas 
 Guthrie. A very noticeable figure, he, among the fathers 
 and founders of the Free Church. In the bloom of early 
 manhood, six feet three in height, eager for battle as the 
 war-horse in Job, but inspired only by the ambitions of 
 the army of Christ, lie had lately been discovered in a 
 country parish and almost dragged to Edinburgh and 
 fame. Less completely cased in the panoply of theo- 
 logical system than Cunningham, less brilliant and 
 dazzlingly quick in his intellectual action than Candlish, 
 and therefore less powerful than they in dealing with 
 cultured and critical audiences, he could sway a common 
 crowd more absolutely than either. If theirs was more 
 close, formal, invulnerable logic, he had more of varying 
 colour and of fascinating pleasantness. And as we look 
 backward across the intervening years, we perceive that 
 neither of those two rose subsequently so conspicuously 
 
 above his Disruption renown as Guthrie, or had, at the 
 
 202
 
 GUTHRIE. 203 
 
 time of his death, so unmistakably the whole English- 
 speaking race fur admirers and onlookers. Even Dr. Dull' 
 
 lived to see that Guthrie's fame had fdled the world, — 
 that no Scotchman's, and "assuredly no Free Churchman's, 
 since the death of Dr. Chalmers, bulked so largely as his." 
 The eloquence that had charmed the simple parishioners 
 of Arbirlot proved potent to move great audiences in 
 Manchester and London. Florid as a " careless ordered 
 garden," or a picturesque forest avenue, festooned with 
 tendrils and loosely hung with draperies of eglantine and 
 the mountain rose, — exhaustless hi anecdote, rich in 
 broad innocent fun, and with pathos welling up straight 
 from the heart, — the oratory of Guthrie was separated 
 by a hair's-breadth from turgid and tawdry bombast, but 
 yet was so absolutely sincere, so racy, so much in keeping 
 with the aspect and enunciation of the man, that it was 
 always and magnificently successful. 
 
 It would be wrong to infer that the perfect sincerity 
 of the orator implied in every case that his anecdotes and 
 illustrations were literal transcripts of fact. Or rather, we 
 may say that, except in cases of arithmetical statement, 
 his imaginative genius, perhaps without his knowing it, cast 
 a light, a colour, an indefinable addition upon the naked 
 fact. The eye sees what it brings with it the faculty 
 to see, and the imaginative artist always obeys Turner's 
 rule of painting his impressions. He gives the truth, 
 but he has a way of putting it which is his own. The 
 glance of Guthrie's eye made a thing more piquant than 
 it found it. An illustration of our meaning, trivial in 
 itself, occurs in one of his own illustrations, derived from 
 his recollections of a stroll through London. We have all
 
 204 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 seen those collections of naturally hostile animals, forced to 
 live in one cage, and suspend their natural instincts, whose 
 listless and torpid repose belies too sadly their description 
 as a " happy family." Guthrie saw one such family, and 
 this is his account of it : "I saw the mavis asleep under 
 the wing of a hawk ; and an old, grave, reverend owl 
 looking down most complacently on a little mouse ; and, 
 with the restless activity of his species, I saw the monkey 
 sitting on a perch, scratching his head for an idea, I 
 presume, and then reach down his long arm to seize a big 
 rat by the tail, and, lifting it to his breast, dandle it like 
 a baby ! " The hawk, the mavis, the owl, the mouse, the 
 monkey, the rat, were doubtless all there. Guthrie 
 stated with veracity the impression they made upon him. 
 But it is scarcely conceivable that their attitudes and 
 avocations should have been so hyper - idyllic as he 
 depicts them. Thus, however, it was that the flash of 
 his genius, so full of humour and quaint feeling, lit up 
 with a comicality, a pathos, a graphic vividness, circum- 
 stances which, to a common observer, might have been 
 merely commonplace. 
 
 At other times, however, we are reminded, by a self- 
 evidencing literalness of detail, that no rule can be laid 
 down for the operations of descriptive genius. An 
 indubitable literalness pertains to Guthrie's description 
 of the proceedings of his large Scotch dog, Bob, which 
 had been sent fifteen miles away in disgrace for worrying 
 cats, and had come back of his own accord. " On going 
 to the manse," says Guthrie, " I found Bob outside the gate, 
 as flat, prostrate, and motionless as if he had been stone 
 dead. It was plain he knew as well as I did that he
 
 GUTHRIE. 205 
 
 had been banished, and had returned without leave, and 
 was liable to be hanged, drowned, shot, or otherwise 
 punished at will. I went up to him, and stood over him 
 for a while in ominous silence. No wagging of his tail, 
 or movement in any limb ; but there he lay as if he had 
 been killed and flattened by a heavy roller, only that, 
 with his large, beautiful eyes half-shut, he kept winking 
 and looking up in my face with a most pitiful and 
 penitent and pleading expression in his own. There was 
 no resisting the dumb but eloquent appeal. I gave way, 
 and exclaimed in cheerful tones, ' Is this you, Bob ? ' In 
 an instant, knowing that he was forgiven and restored, 
 he rose at one mighty bound into the air, circling round 
 and round me, and ever and anon, in the power and ful- 
 ness of his joy, nearly leaping over my head." That is 
 a photograph. 
 
 A word of apology may be due to the reader for 
 beguiling him even momentarily into the trivialities of 
 literary criticism, when our main subject is identified 
 with the dearest and most sacred interests of nations ; 
 but Guthrie made conscience even of his methods of 
 literary composition ; and if we would know the man, and 
 get close up to him, — to hear, so to speak, the beating 
 of his heart, — we shall do well to realise how vividly 
 awake he was to everything of which his observational 
 faculty could take account, from dogs and monkeys up 
 to street boys and State Churches. Interested in all 
 things, he made all things interesting. " I have a dis- 
 tinct recollection," said one who knew him in his country 
 charge, " of admiring the vivacioasness which he imparted 
 to the sacred narrative ; " and another, speaking also of
 
 206 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 what he had seen at Arbirlot, tells us how " the dull eye 
 of the cow-boy and of the servant girl, who had been 
 toiling all the week among the horses and cows, im- 
 mediately brightened up" when Guthrie addressed them. 
 
 He got much from nature, little from books. No man 
 could have been more characteristically Scotch, and no 
 one can understand him and do him justice without 
 understanding and doing justice to what there is of 
 sterling worth and sound capacity in the noble type of 
 Scotchmen. The blood of the Covenanting Guthries ran 
 in his veins though he could not produce documentary 
 proof of the fact, and his consciousness of this was among 
 the influences that had strengthened and elevated him, 
 and prepared him " to contend, and suffer if need be, for 
 the rights of Christ's crown and the liberties of His 
 Church." 
 
 His grandmother was notably Scotch. Fasting and 
 praying one whole day every week, she showed that those 
 who derived their faith from the Covenanters might 
 practise the religious exercise of fasting as well as Anglo- 
 Catholics. But she could " set to the mark," as his 
 country neighbours said of Oliver Cromwell, — she could 
 discern the essential thing and do it, — in other matters 
 besides fasting and prayer. One of her sons, for example, 
 was pining for a farmer's daughter whom he was too 
 bashful to ask in marriage. What could be done ? She 
 " orders her sheepish lad to saddle a horse." He in the 
 saddle, she on a pillion behind him, " she directs him to 
 ride straight to the house of his sweetheart ; and on 
 arriving there, before he, the lout, has got the horse well 
 stabled, she has done the work of a plenipotentiary, and
 
 GUTHRIE. 207 
 
 got the affair all settled with the lass and her parents." 
 Guthrie's habit of striking to the heart of things, and not 
 going about them and about them in irrelevant gyrations, 
 was quite in the style of this prevailing parent. 
 
 In his father's house he witnessed perfect honour in 
 all transactions, and an unaffectedly sincere and not un- 
 genial although constant and somewhat rigorous exercise 
 of religion. It does not appear that he passed through 
 any of those mental struggles and agonies which have 
 frequently preceded the life-long devotion of themselves, 
 by great preachers and missionaries, to the service of 
 Christ ; but on this point we cannot be quite sure, for 
 though Guthrie was, generally speaking, as emotional and 
 communicative as a child, the typical Scot is prone to 
 silence as to the personal dealings of his soul with God. 
 He said of himself with expressive truthfulness, that he 
 had a " healthy constitution," and, so far as is known, 
 this gradually developed, amid the kindly influences of a 
 Christian household and a Christian country, into a 
 healthy Christian manhood. As a boy he was frank, 
 brave, adventurous, passionately fond of fighting, but with 
 as chivalrous an absence of hatred or spite in his conduits 
 as ever a Bayard or a Cceur de Lion. Neither at school 
 nor at college did he read much, and his education con- 
 sisted mainly in drinking in from the atmosphere, during 
 eight or ten years of life in Brechin and Edinburgh, the 
 ideas of his time. 
 
 One might have expected him to be smitten in those 
 years with the metaphysical enthusiasm that haunted 
 Scotland's metropolitan University; but, boy and man, 
 his grip was always on the concrete, and for abstractions
 
 208 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 he had no interest or care. So far as he was a student 
 at all, it was science that charmed him ; and he was so 
 fond of medical subjects and medical treatises, that he 
 would have made no bad shift as locum tenens for a general 
 practitioner. If not bookish, he was constantly educat- 
 ing himself by the exercise of his observational and 
 receptive faculties, and by judging among the questions 
 of his day. A massive sense of what was right and true 
 and simple, as contrasted with wire-drawn refinements 
 and fantasticalities and affectations and posturings, — a 
 mind decisively of the gravitative, not of the magnetic 
 order, — rendered him marvellously trustworthy as an 
 adviser in practical emergencies. Extremely valuable, 
 therefore, to all who wish to ascertain the very truth in 
 the matter, are his utterances and decisions in connection 
 with the Church conflict. 
 
 As was natural for a pious and noble-hearted Scottish 
 boy, he aspired to shine in the pulpit and beckon his 
 fellow-men on the way to heaven. He had a profound 
 enthusiasm for his profession. " As an ambassador for 
 Christ," he said, " I regard a preacher of the gospel as 
 filling the most responsible office any mortal can occupy. 
 His pulpit is, in my eyes, loftier than a throne ; and of 
 all professions, learned or unlearned, his, though usually 
 in point of wealth the poorest, I esteem the most 
 honourable. That office is one angels might covet." 
 
 He was early enlisted in the anti-Moderate party, and 
 in a manner creditable to him and little creditable to 
 Moderatism. The son of an influential local politician, 
 he found himself, before he had been half a year in the 
 ministry, in a position to decline or accept presentation to
 
 GUTHRIE. 209 
 
 one of the best livings in Scotland. If lie would declare 
 his adherence to the Moderate party, the living was his. 
 Dr. Nicoll, of St. Andrews, was at the head of the party, 
 and the faintest of assentient whispers in Dr. Mcoll's ear 
 would secure the preferment. Dr. Nicoll " would ask 
 no questions," said Guthrie's advisers, " nor attempt to 
 bind " him by express paction. " But," says Guthrie, 
 " regarding the waiting on him as, though a silent, a 
 distinct pledge that he and the Moderate party would 
 have my vote in the Church Courts, I refused to go." 
 A sure proof of constitutional soundness of character ! 
 The case was evidently one in which a young man with 
 any super-sublety in him, any lurking selfishness, any 
 sneakish trick of self-deception, might have sophisticated 
 himself into accepting the benefice. 
 
 He was from the first an Evangelical, but always more 
 or less of a free-lance. Thus, while supporting Chalmers 
 in his enterprise of Church Extension, and always ready 
 for the guadia certaminis in a platform tournament with 
 Dr. Eitchie and the Voluntaries, he was prepared to share 
 the benefits of Establishment with Dissenters to an extent 
 which his brethren of the State Church hardly approved. 
 " The Dissenters," he says in his Autobiography, " had 
 preserved religion, and made up for her (the Church's) 
 lack of service for many years in many parts of the 
 country ; and I would have had these services practically 
 acknowledged by our asking the Government, when we 
 sought the endowments for the purpose of extending 
 the Church, to endow any and every party who, though 
 seceders from the Church of Scotland, adhered to her 
 standards." A most generous idea ! He agreed, however, 
 14
 
 210 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 cordially with Chalmers, that the kindling of eloquent 
 pulpit torches at intervals in great towns, to attract 
 butterfly congregations from all points of the compass, is a 
 matter of small importance as compared with the preaching 
 of the gospel to the poor within limited parochial areas, 
 where they can be visited, one by one, hi their own dwell- 
 ings. Many years afterwards, he avowed his conviction 
 that the excitement of the Voluntary controversy had 
 led the antagonists on each side to go further in the vehe- 
 ment assertion of their respective principles than truth 
 required. In furious renunciation of State-Churchism, 
 the Dissenting extremists would have " landed the 
 country in practical Atheism," while " we " of the Estab- 
 lishment " perhaps erred as far and as much, in repre- 
 senting the Church of Christ as dependent almost for its 
 very existence, certainly for its efficiency, on State 
 countenance and support." 
 
 In few men have the nobly combative and the nobly 
 social or aggregative instincts been so illustriously com- 
 bined as in Guthrie. John Bright was equally combative, 
 but his inability to work in harness made him a con- 
 spicuous failure as a Cabinet Minister. Of Guthrie's 
 combative propensities the annals of the Voluntary Con- 
 troversy and the Disruption Conflict are a succession of 
 illustrative pictures ; but before the Disruption he would 
 have magnanimously offered the advantages of Establish- 
 ment to any Presbyterian willing to accept them, and, after 
 the Disruption, none welcomed more ardently than he the 
 signs of union, none yearned more intensely than he for 
 the day when the Reformed Church of Scotland, with its 
 three main branches, should be again visibly one tree.
 
 GUTHRIE. 211 
 
 In point of fact, he governed himself by broad 
 principles of sagacity and shrewdness, discerning when 
 union was a hindrance and a folly, and when it was 
 strength and beauty. On one occasion he illustrated, from 
 his own experience, the occasional advantage, or indeed 
 the necessity, of division. On his glebe he had a field of 
 corn, and he hired a company of reapers, or " shearers," 
 to cut it for him. They were Scotch rustics, theological 
 and argumentative beyond their class in any land under 
 the sun. They began to discuss the Voluntary Contro- 
 versy, reaping - hook against reaping - hook, not only 
 making it plain that his corn would never be reaped, 
 but that they were in danger of actually plunging their 
 weapons into each other's breasts. So he insisted 
 upon it that the advocates of Establishment should 
 go to one end of the field and the Voluntaries to 
 the other. He once told this incident on a public 
 platform with such humour, that an old man actually 
 rose and implored him to stop lest he should die of 
 laughter. 
 
 Loyal to Chalmers, and doing yeoman's service to his 
 Church and party in Strathbogie and elsewhere, Guthrie 
 nevertheless thought that a wiser course might have been 
 adopted than that of passing the Veto Act. He believed 
 that the desire of Chalmers and Lord Moncreiff to pre- 
 serve patronage led them to take, fatally, the wrong turn 
 in seeking to neutralise the evils of patronage by the 
 Veto, and to retain what they considered its usefulness 
 as a buffer to popular election of ministers. He would 
 have had them apply to Parliament for its abolition. 
 Liberal in his political sentiments, trusting more than
 
 212 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Chalmers in Democracy, even without the epithet 
 " Christian " prefixed to it, he gloried in the parlia- 
 mentary Reform Bill, and thought that, if he and his 
 brethren had first made Scotland " from Cape Wrath 
 to the Border" ring with agitation against patronage, and 
 had then gone to the Legislature to have it " utterly 
 abolished," they would have been successful. Who can 
 tell? 
 
 Chalmers, at all events, took what seemed at the time 
 to be the safer as well as the wiser and more moderate 
 course ; and with him agreed, not only Lord Moncreiff, 
 but the law officers of the Crown. And Guthrie 
 having seen the Church put her hand to the plough, 
 would not have had her look back. That she held 
 from Christ the right to reform herself, and to vindicate 
 the spiritual liberties of her people, whether Parliament 
 sanctioned her or not, he had not a shadow of doubt. 
 He never, therefore, advocated the repeal of the Veto 
 law. Nor could he fail to appreciate the beneficence of 
 the Veto in its practical working. It was indeed most 
 nicely fitted, thus attesting the statesmanlike genius of 
 Chalmers, to exemplify the distinctive Presbyterian merit 
 of securing and wedding together diverse advantages. 
 Its method was neither popular election nor Church 
 election, and yet it was both. Very important also is it 
 to observe that the Veto was practically a success. In 
 an overwhelming majority of instances, it satisfied not 
 only the Church and the parishioners, but the patron. 
 Sensible men, desirous to promote religion in the exercise 
 of their Church patronage, did not consider that their 
 rights were confiscated although one presentee was vetoed
 
 GUTHRIE. 2 1 3 
 
 by the people, since they were themselves empowered 
 to present another. It was, no doubt, natural for pre- 
 sentees to cling to what, for them, was real property, 
 if they believed that they had a legal title to it ; but 
 they could have entered on their incumbencies only as 
 intruded by sheer force on the congregations ; and they 
 might be expected to know that, from the earliest times 
 of the Eeformed Church in Scotland, intrusion had been 
 against her genius and traditions. 
 
 While voting, therefore, with Cunningham against 
 patronage, Guthrie went step for step with Chalmers 
 and the general Evangelical phalanx, as Cunningham also 
 did, in maintaining the Veto. Like Dr. Buchanan, he 
 believed that the tap-root of the Church's trouble lay 
 in the professional jealousy or perversity of lawyers. 
 He was convinced that, as a general fact, " lawyers have 
 always shown a strong bias to curtail the liberties of 
 the Church of Christ, and, with legal bonds, to bind her 
 neck and heel to the State." Like Dr. Buchanan, he 
 signalised Dean of Faculty Hope as the man who, more 
 than any other, by his machinations and manipulations in 
 Edinburgh, — where the trimming, compromising "middle- 
 man," Dr. Muir, played clay to the Dean's potter, — and 
 by his earwiggings of Premiers and Cabinet Ministers 
 in London, brought about the catastrophe. The high 
 powers " sitting away in London knew little or nothing 
 of Presbyterianism ; ignorant almost to an incredible 
 degree, as Episcopalians in England are, of the characters 
 and constitutions of other Churches than their own. In 
 a quarrel between the Civil Courts, which were their 
 creatures, and the Church of Christ, that claimed inde-
 
 214 7 HE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 pendence for herself, — owning no other authority but 
 that of Christ, and no statute-book hut the word of God, 
 — naturally, the Houses of Parliament decided against us, 
 and in favour of the Civil Courts : the contest being one 
 whose merits they did not comprehend, and, familiar 
 as they were with the slavish subjection of the Church of 
 England to the State, did not seem able to comprehend." 
 Thus did Guthrie, great in common sense, advocate 
 the cause of the Church without bitterness but without 
 compromise, — without shilly-shallying, saccharine com- 
 plaisance, or maudlin mixing up of essentials and non- 
 essentials. Baptised into the science of the nineteenth 
 century, he held no principle superstitiously, and was 
 not fanatical in his State Churchism. He saw that, in 
 subjection to the Court of Session, the Church of Scot- 
 land would have been reduced to a far more pitiful 
 officialism even than that of the parliamentary Church of 
 England. In Hooker himself he might have found 
 recognition of the right of the Church to live and to 
 grow, and this forms an adequate logical basis for the 
 contention of the Church of Scotland. " All things 
 natural," says Hooker, " have in them naturally more or 
 less the power of providing for their own safety ; and as 
 each particular man hath this power, so every politic 
 society of men must needs have the same, that thereby 
 the whole may provide for the good of all parts therein. 
 For other benefit we have not by sorting ourselves into 
 politic societies, saving only that by this mean each part 
 hath that relief which the virtue of the whole is able to 
 yield it. The Church, therefore, being a politic society 
 or body, cannot possibly want the power of providing for
 
 GUTHRIE. 215 
 
 itself ; and the chiefest part of that power consisteth in 
 the authority of making laws." * 
 
 The Church of Hooker has from first to last been the 
 Church of aristocrats. One of the express grounds on 
 which he pleads her claims is that she makes religion 
 acceptable to the rulers of this world, the mighty men 
 of wealth and title. Yet he asserts her authority 
 to make laws. The Church of Scotland, as Guthrie 
 saw her in the past, had been a Church of the people ; 
 the Veto law was made by her for the restoration and 
 safeguarding of the sacred rights of the people ; and he 
 would rather have gone to prison or to death than beheld 
 the Veto rescinded, the call reduced avowedly to a 
 mockery, and Christ's crown and covenant confessed to be 
 no more than theatrical properties, or mere rhetorical 
 phrases, with which turbulent, ignorant, and vulgar 
 preachers had set off their ecclesiastical histrionism. 
 1 Hooker, Book vii. chap. xiv.
 
 CHAPTEE XXVII. 
 Canfcftsf) in Jl^oafs ant> (QutcfteanSs. 
 
 "Y\7"E have been viewing the conflict mainly in the 
 * " Assembly ; but all Scotland was now a battle- 
 field between the parties. And the man who was 
 signalled out by the popular instinct as the Achilles of 
 the fray was Candlish. Cunningham was more learned, 
 Guthrie more pictorial and emotional, but no one seemed 
 to appreciate with such piercing lucency as Candlish the 
 interlacing of the people's cause with the Church's cause, 
 the specialty of an Established Church guarding with the 
 spiritual sword of Christ's Kingship the liberties of rustic 
 parishioners. 
 
 Much of the enthusiasm with which he was regarded 
 arose, we cannot doubt, from the fact of his glance 
 being on the future. At a great public meeting, held 
 in one of the largest churches in Edinburgh, in the 
 August of 1841, when the Erastian schism of Strath- 
 bogie had fairly begun, he boldly contemplated, while 
 earnestly deprecating, Disestablishment. He still hoped 
 that the rulers of the nation would not commit " the 
 great sin of which they would be guilty if they thrust 
 
 210
 
 C AND LIS II IN SHOALS AND QUICKSANDS. 217 
 
 out of the Establishment those who had committed 
 no crime, unless it be a crime to sustain the honour of 
 the great King and Head of the Church." But, if the 
 worst came to the worst, if the inexorable alternative 
 were an Erastian Establishment or none, he would 
 relinquish Establishment and face Disruption. " I am 
 not a worshipper of the principle of an Establishment." 
 He repels the base idea that Establishment alone can 
 lend cohesiveness to the Church, or prevent it from 
 splitting up into sects. "As if that which united us 
 together were our stipends, our manses, and our glebes ! " 
 He will not so " dishonour the Church of Christ, which in 
 the beginning had no countenance from the State, and 
 which needs none, and which can go on against the 
 State." Valuing the principle of Establishment when, 
 as in the history and constitution of the Church of Scot- 
 land, the freedom of the Church was deemed to be 
 inviolable, he positively disapproved of, and was pre- 
 pared to denounce, a Church enslaved by the State. 
 " I hold an Erastian Establishment to be worse than 
 none at all." " It is our bounden duty to bear this 
 testimony, that the Church ought to be established 
 on the principles which we are contending for, or 
 that there should be no Establishment in the land 
 at all." 
 
 A memorable saying. Perhaps if Candlish were still 
 on earth, and surveyed the history of the Established 
 Church and of the Free Church of Scotland in the 
 light of fifty years, he might recall it, and express 
 satisfaction at his not having addressed himself, as he 
 certainly did not, in the years of his activity as a Free
 
 218 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Church minister, to the subversion of the Establish- 
 ment. The vision that rose before him, when he spoke 
 those words, was that of a Church of Scotland completely 
 Erastianised, — reduced to an official machinery for en- 
 abling the Court of Session to thrust pastors upon 
 unwilling parishes. It was not possible that he should 
 realise that one part of the effect of the heroic exertions 
 of himself and his associates was to be the sweeping 
 away of all restrictions on the will of the people in 
 choosing their own ministers in the Scottish Establishment, 
 and that this was to be accompanied by ostentatious 
 obsequiousness towards the Church by the conciliated 
 Court of Session. We may, however, be quite sure that, 
 with whatever comment on his original saying Candlish 
 might have contemplated the result, he would not have 
 regretted the stand he made for the principle of Christ's 
 Headship over the Church, or his impassioned ardour in 
 affirming that this principle is bound up with the rights of 
 the Christian people. Equally confident may we be in 
 affirming that he would not have been conscientiously 
 content with spiritual independence by mere sufferance 
 of the Court of Session, out of regard, not for the Church, 
 but the Establishment. 
 
 As a platform speaker, Candlish probably never was 
 surpassed for the precision and lucidity with which he 
 distinguished between things constantly mixed up by 
 confused and stupid persons. To the vague charge of 
 refusing to let the Court of Session draw the line 
 between things civil and things spiritual, he replies, " Do 
 we ask them to take our definition of what is civil ? 
 Do we say, as the Church of Eome says, We pronounce
 
 CANDLISH IN SHOALS AND QUICKSANDS. 219 
 
 a case of murder by an ecclesiastical person to be a 
 spiritual matter, and we prohibit you from meddling with 
 it ? Do we exempt our persons or properties from their 
 jurisdiction ? No, we allow them the same liberty which 
 we claim for ourselves. We do not presume to prescribe 
 to them what is the law, or to describe what is civil ; 
 neither do we allow them to prescribe to us, and decide 
 what is ecclesiastical." If the Civil Court gave force to 
 its sentences in temporal effects, in assigning stipends, 
 glebes, and church buildings, and if the Church were 
 allowed to give force to her sentences in spiritual effects, 
 deciding who should minister in the word and the 
 sacraments, who should ordain and be ordained, there 
 would be no collision. If, on the other hand, the Court 
 of Session, directly or indirectly, commanded Presby- 
 teries to ordain ministers, although the Church had 
 commanded them not to do so, then the Court of 
 Session was taking the place of the Church, and the 
 Presbyteries obeying it and defying the Church were 
 rebellious. If the Legislature sanctioned the Court 
 of Session, then an Erastian schism would obviously 
 proceed within the Church, and, in order to preserve 
 her Divine life and liberty, she would be compelled 
 to relinquish Establishment. Candlish's speeches wrote 
 these distinctions in lightning for the pious intelligence 
 of Scotland. 
 
 The spectacle of conflict in the headquarters of Pres- 
 byterianism attracted attention throughout the whole 
 Christian world, and was viewed with keenest interest 
 by the Presbyterian community in Great Britain and 
 America. Among the champions of the Church, Candlish
 
 220 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 was recognised as the most conspicuous. Princeton 
 College, New Jersey, unanimously conferred upon him 
 the title of Doctor in Divinity. Intimation of the 
 honour was made to him in a letter couched in terms 
 of warmest admiration. The Church of Scotland is 
 in it named with enthusiasm as " our mother Church," 
 and glowing sympathy is professed with her in her 
 contending. " Our whole Church," says the writer, " is 
 awake to the importance of your conflict ; nor do I 
 know of a minister, elder, or layman in the length and 
 hreadth of this land who does not entirely sympathise 
 with you and the beloved brethren who are so ready to 
 hazard all, that the Lord Jesus Christ may rule as King 
 in His own Church." " With one voice your Moderate 
 Erastian party, led on by Dr. Cook, are condemned as 
 the betrayers of Samson, and as delivering him over to 
 the Philistines. If the unanimous approval of our whole 
 Church can cheer you to continue the conflict, let what- 
 ever consequences ensue, be assured that you and your 
 brethren have it." " Your name is as familiar to us as 
 if you resided among us, and were a pastor of one of our 
 churches." 
 
 Such sympathy was much required by Dr. Candlish at 
 that point of time, for he was involved in what were for 
 him the most painful and trying experiences of the 
 entire conflict. Spread over many months, fatiguing for 
 the student who now seeks to master them, and inexpress- 
 ibly tantalising and irritating for those who w r ere then 
 tossed hither and thither in their distracting whirl of 
 hopes and fears, an interminable interchange of negotia- 
 tions took place. The very least that the Church
 
 CANDLISH IN SHOALS AND QUICKSANDS. 221 
 
 could conscientiously accept from the State was non- 
 intrusion in parishes, and unchallenged liberty to exercise 
 her own spiritual jurisdiction. Statesmen, in the outset 
 at least of the discussion, may be credited with a wisli 
 to preserve the Church as an Establishment, and 
 with a sincere purpose to deprive her of no power 
 or authority which she had previously enjoyed. As 
 Chalmers and the eminent lawyers who acted with him 
 in the Church, and the Law Officers of the Crown whom 
 these consulted, had at first believed the Veto Act to 
 be within the legal competence of the Church ; so it 
 had, as we know, been loyally accepted by the British 
 Government, and given effect to, year after year, in the 
 settlement of ministers. When the difficulty occurred, 
 well-meaning politicians concluded that the dissension 
 arose out of a mere misunderstanding, and the Earl 
 of Aberdeen, Sir George Sinclair, and other more 
 or less competent persons, came forward to solve the 
 problem. 
 
 With Candlish it was " the very stuff of the con- 
 science " that there should be no settlement of a minister 
 without the consent of the people ; and consent, he main- 
 tained, was a matter simply of will. To this Lord 
 Aberdeen seems really to have believed himself prepared 
 to yield a substantial agreement. But he insisted that 
 the parishioners should be required to make a statement 
 of their reasons for exercising their veto ; and it proved 
 to be impossible for him to define in a satisfactory 
 manner the way in which they were to state those 
 reasons. Since Cromwell's Parliament spent three 
 months in the vain attempt to define an incumbrance,
 
 222 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 it has been familiarly known how difficult it is for men 
 to agree in the chiselling of phrases, and in the distribu- 
 tion of lights and shades of meaning. For a long time 
 Dr. Candiish applied all the powers of his keenly ana- 
 lytical mind to the production of such a measure as might, 
 without the express abolition of patronage, exclude the 
 possibility of intrusion. Chafing and fretting, he still 
 resolutely endeavoured to make his way through the 
 " shoals and quicksands of doubtful negotiations, depend- 
 ing on doubtful constructions and interpretations of 
 doubtful clauses." But he bitterly felt the worry and 
 the precariousness of such work. Never had he been 
 so painfully exercised. What was mere matter of 
 expediency with statesmen, was the life of his soul for 
 him. " If we should consent to, or act under, such a 
 measure," he cried, " which should come short by a hair's- 
 breadth of a full non-intrusion measure, we should tempt 
 Providence — we should offend God." 
 
 Impatient in proportion to the clearness and quick- 
 ness of his intellectual glance, and of fiery temper though 
 his heart was a well of tenderness, Candiish did at one 
 moment almost, or altogether, lose his self-command in 
 connection with the Lord Aberdeen " negotiations." It 
 was at that crisis when, one impracticable solution after 
 another having been tried, he had schooled himself to 
 fronting all danger rather than recommence the windy 
 war. Just at that moment he was startled by a new 
 movement, initiated by a small but smooth-tongued and 
 busy section in the Church, for beginning once more the 
 dreary round of disputation. He gave way, and uttered 
 his mind. " I have no doubt," he said, " that it will all
 
 CANDLISH IN SHOALS AND QUICKSANDS. 223 
 
 turn out to be, if not a trick, at least an entire mis- 
 understanding ; a new edition of the old game at cross 
 purposes. . . . But I must keep my temper. . . ." 
 When a man comes to this point, he has evidently no 
 longer his temper to keep.
 
 CHAPTEE XXVIII. 
 &orfc (Jtteffiourne again, 
 
 A ND if the prospect was thus clouded in the matter 
 -*--*- of non-intrusion, was it not still darker in respect 
 of the spiritual jurisdiction of the Church ? Was it not 
 too clear that the principle of the Headship of Christ, 
 for which he was prepared to shed his blood, was in the 
 eyes of statesmen little more than a jest ? We saw how 
 little deference to this sacred principle was displayed by 
 Lord Melbourne at an earlier stage in the conflict. On 
 a later occasion, his Lordship was, by his own express 
 appointment, waited upon on the subject by a deputation 
 from Edinburgh. His demeanour was so rudely frivolous, 
 that we can explain it only by supposing him to have 
 been annoyed by the conduct of an Evangelical leader 
 at a recent Perthshire election, and to have resolved to 
 indemnify himself by making fun of the deputation. 
 
 " Who are you ? " he began, " and whence do you 
 come ? " Reminded that they had been honoured by 
 his own offer of an interview, he consented to hear a 
 few words about the object of their visit. " The law is 
 against you," was his prompt reply.
 
 LORD MELBOURNE AGALiY. 225 
 
 They ventured to recall to him that the Court of 
 Queen's Bench was actually in collision as to a point of 
 law with the House of Commons at the time. 
 
 " Yes, I see," said his Lordship, " the cases are 
 similar, — questions of jurisdiction." 
 
 " It would really appear," he went on, " as if all re- 
 ligious bodies now-a-days were determined to he above 
 the law. Why, there is Dr. M'Hale in Ireland. We 
 made a law, saying, ' You shan't call yourself Archbishop 
 of Tuam.' ' But I shall, though,' he replies ; ' you had 
 no right to make such a law.' And there is the 
 Bishop of Exeter. We brought in a Church Discipline 
 Bill into the House of Lords, — and immediately the 
 Bishop starts up and tells us, ' You are interfering with 
 the Divine rights of the episcopal office, — you are 
 presuming to legislate on matters above the reach of 
 Parliament, and if you do I won't obey your law.' 
 And now here comes your Church of Scotland. You 
 stand upon your spiritual jurisdiction, and wont allow 
 civil authority to touch it. Eh ! isn't that it — Eh ? " 
 
 And Dr. Buchanan, who was present, tells us that his 
 Lordship laughed heartily at his own joke. 
 
 It was indeed a joke to Lord Melbourne. Spiritual 
 jurisdiction is either a jest, or a Popish assumption, or 
 an enigma, for a multitude of persons. But in the sense 
 of Church government by Christ's officers and Christ's 
 law, it is the natural, obvious, and scriptural principle 
 of unity for the Church Universal. It has been the 
 glory of the Church of Scotland to unfold this banner 
 of Christian unity. It is broad enough, when its folds 
 are spread wide by the winds of God, to embrace all 
 *5
 
 22G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 National Churches, all forms of ecclesiastical administra- 
 tion, in so far as these are subservient to the enforce- 
 ment and dissemination of Christ's principles. TJbl 
 homines sunt modi sunt ; wherever men congregate, there 
 will be varieties of religious methods and institutions ; 
 and each and all of these, in so far as they can be 
 breathed into by the Spirit of Christ, in so far as they 
 guard and develop the life of the Christian organism, 
 admit of being comprehended in the true catholicity of 
 the Christ - governed kingdom of God. Between the 
 scoffing, laughing Melbourne and the fervent Candlish, 
 there could on this subject be no true harmony, no 
 secure arrangement. And though Sir Robert Peel might 
 be grave where Lord Melbourne was gay, they were in 
 substantial at one on the matter. 
 
 Never, perhaps, has the office of the Civil Magistrate 
 been more intelligently magnified, than was done by 
 Candlish in a speech delivered in the heat of this con- 
 liict. " In a well - ordered Church Establishment" he 
 said, " we hold the independence of the Civil Magistrate 
 as strongly as we hold the independence of the Church ; 
 and the independence of the Civil Magistrate in all he 
 is entitled to do circa sacra, as well as the independence 
 of the Church in all she is entitled to do in sacris. It 
 is of the utmost importance to understand this. The 
 Church is not entitled to control or to resist him in the 
 exercise of his duty. He is equally independent in all 
 he does circa sacra, as the Church is independent in all 
 she does in sacris. We hold that the Civil Magistrate 
 is not only entitled generally to control all temporal 
 matters, but that he has certain duties to discharge in
 
 LORD MELBOURNE AGAIN. 227 
 
 reference to things spiritual; and we hold him to be 
 entirely independent of the Church, both in his general 
 control of civil matters and in all questions he has to 
 determine and settle circa sacra. For example, we are 
 not entitled to compel the Magistrate to establish a 
 Church according to our views ; it rests with the Magis- 
 trate to say whether he will establish the Church or not, 
 and on what terms he will establish and endow it. In 
 all he does to protect and favour the Church,. he acts 
 independently and on his own responsibility. In all 
 his dealings with the Church he is not bound to take 
 the will of the Church as his guide; he is bound to 
 take the word of God in his hand and to act on his 
 own responsibility to God alone. But then he is not 
 entitled to assume the power of the keys; he is not 
 entitled to set himself up in the Church as its governor. 
 The Magistrate may only dispose of the temporalities 
 which the Church enjoys, and do what he thinks fit in 
 regard to all that he has himself given to the Church ; 
 that is an exercise of jurisdiction competent to him, 
 which we may not resist." 
 
 Could the clearest-headed jurist that ever wrote upon 
 the principles of universal law have treated the subject 
 more temperately or more wisely ? 
 
 From the officious busybodies who hurried uselessly 
 forward with their nostrums, — their exquisitely poised 
 phrases, by which non-intrusion of pastors was to be 
 combined with non - exclusion of patrons, and harness 
 provided wherein the Court of Session and the Courts of 
 the Church could pull together, — Dr. Candlislv pointedly 
 excepted the father and son of the House of Argyll.
 
 228 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 The Church, lie acknowledged, lay under a debt of obliga- 
 tion to the Duke of Argyll, and not to the Duke alone, 
 but to " a scion of that House, who, yet scarcely at the 
 years of maturity, has put forth one of the best vindica- 
 tions of the Church in our day." This last allusion is to 
 a nobleman who, in the serene and golden evening of an 
 illustrious career, still survives, an object of proud and 
 affectionate trust to all parties among his countrymen, 
 to lend his counsel and guidance to the three branches 
 of the Church of Scotland. His illustrious father aimed 
 at inducing the House of Lords to accept, in substance, 
 the unimprovable Veto Act. This was the best of all 
 the suggested plans ; but even this was hopeless.
 
 CHATTER XXIX. 
 £0e Cfaim of (gigflfe. 
 
 WHEN the time came for the Assembly of 1842, 
 the majority felt that the issue of the struggle 
 could not now be long deferred. The Moderates, under 
 the cautious and skilful guidance of Dr. Cook and 
 the hooded Dean, were in a state of schismatic revolt 
 within the pale of the Establishment. The simplicity 
 of the Veto Law, and its unassailable righteousness in 
 safeguarding the spiritual interests, and those only, of 
 parishioners, had not availed the Church. The attempts 
 to improve upon the Veto by the ingenuity of fussy 
 phrase-makers had proved futile, and the Court of Session 
 continued, like a great boa-constrictor, to throw fold after 
 fold of its strangling apparatus over the body of the 
 Church. Under these circumstances the view was more 
 and more passionately held by Cunningham, that peace 
 could never be permanently secured until patronage, by 
 means of which the Court of Session might always contrive 
 to entangle the Church, was abolished. Candlish and 
 Guthrie concurred with him, and Chalmers at length threw 
 the whole force of his influence into the movement of
 
 230 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Cunningham. In the Assembly of 1841, Cunningham 
 was, we saw, defeated by three votes ; in the Assembly 
 of 1842 he carried his point by a majority of sixty- 
 nine. 
 
 At first glance this course might seem to evince 
 new and fierce aggressiveness on the part of the 
 Eeformers. But this was far from being the intention 
 of Chalmers, Candlish, or Cunningham. The refusal of 
 the State to repeal the Patronage Act, on being directly 
 petitioned to do so, would let the Church know how- 
 she stood. Patronage, if irremovable, might be checked 
 and qualified, as it had once before been in the history 
 of the Church, without sacrificing the rights of the 
 people or compromising the spiritual jurisdiction, which 
 the Court of Session was now trampling into the dust. 
 It seemed right and proper, under these circumstances, 
 that the Government should be made aware, by a distinct 
 expression of the conviction of the majority of the 
 Assembly, that no effectual, permanent, and harmonious 
 arrangement could, in their opinion, be made without 
 repeal of that fount and origin of the Church's woes, the 
 Patronage Act. 
 
 But the petition against patronage was a thing 
 separate and apart from the general scheme or proposal 
 for a settlement, which, under the title of Claim of 
 flights, the Church, at this Assembly, decided to present 
 to the Government. This celebrated document, the 
 most authoritative of all in respect to the origin of the 
 Free Church, had been drawn up by Mr. Alexander 
 Murray Dunlop. He has already been named in this 
 narrative, and in the roll of Disruption worthies none
 
 THE CLAIM OF RIGHTS. 231 
 
 holds a more tenderly cherished, a more affectionately 
 honoured place than his. Macaulay says of Chatham, 
 that " he loved England as an Athenian loved the City 
 of the Violet Crown, as a Roman loved the City of 
 the Seven Hills ; " and with like fervour did Dunlop 
 love the Church of his fathers. " The eldership of the 
 Church in Edinburgh and its immediate neighbourhood," 
 says Guthrie, " who supported the Evangelical or Non- 
 intrusion party, was not less remarkable at that time than 
 the Evangelical party among the clergy. At their head, 
 facile prificeps, was Alexander Dunlop. He was my most 
 intimate friend. I loved him as a brother, and esteemed 
 him almost above all men. He was so disinterested, so 
 unselfish, so tender - hearted ; a man of such delicate 
 honour, so incapable by nature as w T ell as grace of any- 
 thing low or mean, and withal a devout, humble Christian ! 
 He had a grand head and a large heart, and wanted but 
 a voice to have swayed popular assemblies at his will. 
 He sacrificed his interests at the Bar, his prospects of a 
 seat on the Bench, and many things else, to his attach- 
 ment to the rights and liberties of the Church of 
 Scotland." 
 
 Dunlop had been in the conflict from its beginnings, 
 and all its particulars were imprinted in luminous order 
 upon his memory. Never in the history of human 
 character has there been record of a mind in which the 
 innocent guilelessness, the simple transparency, of a child 
 has been so signally combined with the acuteness and 
 the discernment of a consummate lawyer. In stating 
 the grievances of the Church, — in pointing out how her 
 spiritual activities had been impeded, her power to de-
 
 232 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 limit her own membership overborne, her profoundest 
 
 principles put aside as histrionic phrases or egregious 
 usurpations, — he uttered nothing but what was simply- 
 true and entirely unanswerable. 
 
 Dr. Buchanan, who prints the Claim of Eights in his 
 Appendix, thus justly describes it : " Its style grave and 
 perspicuous, — its tone calm and solemn, — its facts well 
 chosen, accurately stated, and lucidly arranged, — its 
 argument direct and powerful, — its conclusion clear and 
 resolute, — it must ever be regarded, by all intelligent 
 and candid readers, as every way worthy of the great 
 occasion on which it was to be employed, and of the re- 
 markable event with which it is destined to be inseparably 
 associated in the ecclesiastical history of Scotland." 
 
 It opens with a declaration that the Lords of Session, 
 who ought to have protected the Church in the enjoyment 
 of her constitutional liberties, had become her assailants, 
 and proceeds to prove in detail that they have invaded 
 her jurisdiction, subverted her government, coerced her 
 Courts in the exercise of their purely spiritual functions, 
 ordination to the office of the ministry, Church censures, 
 the preaching of the word, and the administration of the 
 sacraments. It concludes with a solemn appeal to " the 
 Christian people of this kingdom, and all the Churches of 
 the Reformation throughout the world who hold the great 
 doctrine of the sole Headship of the Lord Jesus over His 
 Church, to witness that it is for their adherence to that 
 doctrine, as set forth in the Confession of Faith and 
 ratified by the laws of the kingdom, and for the main- 
 tenance by them of the jurisdiction of the office-bearers, 
 and the freedom and privileges of the members, of the
 
 THE CLAIM OF RIGHTS. 233 
 
 Church, from that doctrine flowing, that this Church is 
 
 subjected to hardship, and that the rights so sacredly 
 pledged and secured to her are put in peril." 
 
 Mr. Dunlop, it has been said, was the author of the Claim 
 of Eights. But, in drawing it up, he had been in close 
 correspondence with Chalmers, who at this crisis towered 
 into a pre-eminence worthy of himself. Never had he 
 been raised, by the united force of genius, religion, and 
 patriotism, to a serener or more intense exaltation of 
 spirit. Dr. Gordon, glowing with sympathetic ardour as 
 he thought of him, wrote : " Let us follow the course 
 so plainly and powerfully laid out for us by our vener- 
 able and beloved father. I trust that his setting 
 sun will exhibit him to Christendom in a brighter 
 blaze than in all his other works, — leading his brethren 
 in one of the noblest testimonies that have ever 
 been borne to the glorious Headship of our adorable 
 Eedeemer." 
 
 It w r as through the influence of Chalmers, or mainly 
 so, that the subject of patronage was kept apart from, 
 and in fact all but directly and by implication out of, 
 the Claim of Eights. He shared, no doubt, in the dis- 
 like to patronage. He voted with Cunningham for the 
 petition against it. But he held that, as compared with 
 the sacred principle of Christ's immediate rule in His 
 Church, anti-patronage was a Scottish peculiarity. The 
 central truth of the Headship was common to " the 
 whole of Eeformed Christendom," being an assertion of 
 " the great generic and comprehensive privilege which is 
 inherent with every true Church of deciding this " (the 
 formation of the pastoral tie) "and all other purely
 
 234 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 ecclesiastical questions for themselves." Mr. Dunlop 
 agreed with him as to the propriety of putting the 
 question of jurisdiction " in the forefront of the battle, 
 — or, indeed, making it the battle ; " but he more 
 than doubted whether Chalmers was right in supposing 
 that statesmen would have less objection to that than 
 to Non-intrusion. " So far," said Dunlop, " as I have 
 been able to judge of the sentiments and feelings of 
 statesmen, I think their hostility to the Church's in- 
 dependence is far more intense and inveterate than their 
 hostility to the people having a voice." Sir Robert Peel, 
 he remarks, had said, " we might get more power to the 
 'people, but we would never again get so much to the 
 Church." 
 
 In moving, therefore, the adoption of the Claim of 
 Rights, Chalmers laid stress upon the encroachments of 
 the Court of Session, and solemnly avowed that it was not 
 possible for the Church to submit to them. Reluctantly 
 but resolutely, " at the expense of every suffering and of 
 every trial," he and his brethren would stand or fall with 
 the " inherent " and not less the " constitutional " liberties 
 of the Church of Scotland. They now sought a clear 
 and final response from the ruling powers. " If the 
 Government be satisfied with the conduct of their own 
 servants, let them consummate the deed which them- 
 selves approve of, and let the act of our deprivation 
 appear in its true character, not as the spontaneous doing 
 of so many simpletons among ourselves, but as a great 
 national act of injustice, a flagrant breach of all national 
 honour and good faith." 
 
 It was a pathetic sight to behold this old champion of
 
 THE CLAIM OF RIGHTS. 235 
 
 Church Establishments calling upon his fellows to see the 
 Establishment which he loved so well dismantled rather 
 than degraded. As has often been characteristic of men 
 of senilis, there was a vein in his nature of childlike 
 satisfaction in civic pomp, and the form and circumstance 
 befitting great occasions and august institutions. He had 
 been impressed with the ceremonial inauguration of the 
 present Assembly by the Lord High Commissioner. An 
 unusually brilliant circle had attended the representative 
 of the Queen, and glittering carriages, lines of cavalry, 
 martial music, had graced the procession from Holyrood. 
 The contrast between all this and the humiliation of the 
 Church, in being defied by her own ministers and con- 
 temptuously trampled on by the Court of Session, had 
 struck him keenly. " It would truly," he had said, " be 
 an egregious travesty, it would make a farce of the pro- 
 ceedings of our General Assembly, a complete laughing- 
 stock of our Church, were there left her no authority to 
 enforce obedience from her own sons. It would present 
 a strange contrast between the impotence of our doings 
 and the pageantry of our forms, — between the absolute 
 nothingness of the Assembly and the mighty notes of 
 preparation, — the imposing cavalcade which accompanied 
 us, — the pealing of the clarionets with which we were 
 conducted into the House on the present occasion. I 
 must say, there is not a heart that beats with more 
 gratification, or feels more elevation, than my own, at the 
 countenance given to our venerable Church at present 
 by the high and honourable of the land ; but ours will be 
 the fault, if, untrue to ourselves, if, untrue to our privi- 
 leges, we shall allow our Church to become a sounding
 
 23G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 brass and a tinkling cymbal, a hissing and an astonishment 
 to all passers-by." 
 
 The motion for the adoption of the Claim of Rights 
 was seconded by Dr. Gordon. It is a name that has not 
 for the first time come up in this history. Gordon 
 was now in his wane, and he had never been of the 
 meteoric kind, or much of a leader in Church Courts ; but 
 no man had shone with steadier, mellower, saintlier light 
 in the pulpit or in private life than he. Intrepid and 
 true-hearted, he had placed himself side by side with his 
 country brethren when . the Lords of Session had called 
 them from their quiet manses to be scowled upon and 
 reprimanded for having obeyed Christ. He had always 
 been dearly loved and deeply honoured, and had stood on 
 many a platform with Andrew Thomson. " Beautiful," 
 writes one who spoke of what his eyes had seen, " was 
 the repose of his (Gordon's) lofty brow, dark eye, and 
 aspect of soft and melancholy meaning. It was a face 
 from which every evil and earthly passion seemed purged. 
 A deep gravity lay upon his countenance, which had the 
 solemnity, without the sternness, of one of our old 
 Eeformers. You could almost fancy a halo completing 
 its apostolic character." 
 
 Dr. Gordon now spoke without passion, but no voice 
 could have expressed with deeper earnestness the deter- 
 mination of himself and his brethren, in the event of 
 their claim being disallowed by the Estates of the Eealm, 
 to go forward in the path of duty. " We are bound as 
 honest men and as Christian ministers, with all calmness 
 and with all respect, but with all firmness and determina- 
 tion, to tell them that we cannot carry on the affairs of
 
 THE CLAIM OF RIGHTS. 237 
 
 Christ's house under the coercion of the Civil Courts ; 
 and, however deeply we may deplore the loss of those 
 advantages which we derive from our connection with 
 the State, if ultimately the Legislature determine that 
 they will not listen to our claim, then those advantages 
 we must relinquish, because we could not hold them 
 with a good conscience." 
 
 The Court of Session party in the Church, with Dr. 
 Cook as their wary Palinurus, and Mr. Eobertson, of Ellon, 
 as their most solidly able man and guiding mind, main- 
 tained their self-possession on this testing occasion. By 
 way of explicitly declaring that they were on the Court 
 of Session's side, they hung out from their mast-head the 
 ilag of surrender on the Veto question. The Veto Act, 
 they submitted, had been referred to as an aggression upon 
 civil rights, and until this aggression ceased the Court of 
 Session proclaimed it to be its duty, in defending the 
 property of patrons and enforcing the Patronage Act, 
 to paralyse the whole jurisdiction of the Church. The 
 Moderates, therefore, in formulating their policy, proposed, 
 first, that the Veto Act should be rescinded. They 
 proposed, secondly, that the principle of the Headship 
 of Christ over the Church should be recognised as so 
 abstract and theological that " conscientious diversity of 
 opinion " might be allowed in its interpretation. " Much," 
 said Dr. Cook, " as w r e have of late heard of spiritual 
 independence, and much as has been spoken and written 
 about it, it is still of moment to define it, or to endeavour 
 to form clear notions of what is really included under it. 
 
 Meekly and with bated breath as the Moderates talked 
 of the Court of Session, they were not prepared to
 
 238 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 endorse all the proceedings of the Court in its practical 
 enslavement of the Church. Mr. Robertson, for example, 
 admitted that one of the interdicts issued in the Strath- 
 bogie case could not be colourably alleged to restrict itself 
 to the civil province. In this very Assembly an interdict 
 of the Court of Session had been pleaded by a clergyman 
 who had been deposed by his Presbytery for theft, and 
 Dr. Cook and Mr. Robertson made no sign of remon- 
 strance against the unanimous decision of the Church to 
 disregard the interdict and ratify the sentence of the 
 Presbytery. 
 
 But all the confusion, the seeming inconsistency, the 
 civil and ecclesiastical chaos, which might be shown to 
 exist in Scotland, arose, the Moderates averred, from the 
 abnormal situation in which the Court of Session found 
 itself placed. Let the Church repent, submit, surrender, 
 and all would be well. And Mr. Robertson, of Ellon, 
 laid great stress on what he maintained to be the un- 
 warrantable severity of the discipline exercised by the 
 Church upon those ministers who had appealed to 
 the Court of Session and obeyed its commands. Dr. 
 Cook and Mr. Robertson were now perfectly aware that, if 
 the Claim of Rights were conceded without reservation, 
 there would be a sombre outlook, not for the Strath bogie 
 ministers alone, but for all except the undistinguished 
 rank and file, if even for them, of the Moderate party. 
 The day was past when hope could be entertained of a 
 bloodless victory for the Church, with general amnesty, 
 and obliteration of the old party distinctions. 
 
 Mr. Dunlop, whose name is immortalised and reputation 
 imperishably established by the Claim of Rights, spoke
 
 THE CLAIM OF RIGHTS. 239 
 
 very nobly on this the crowning day of his life. " Our 
 forefathers," he said, signalising the illustrious part played 
 by the Church of Scotland in history, " secured, in this 
 corner of Christendom, the recognition, by the State, of 
 the spiritual independence of the Church, showing how 
 the Church, acknowledging the implicit obedience due to 
 the temporal power in matters temporal, may yet, while 
 supported and aided by the State, conduct her own 
 government and advance the cause of religion in spiritual 
 freedom and independence, with mutual harmony and 
 peace. They thus obtained for the Church of Scotland 
 a position among the governments of the nations which 
 she has ever since retained." But a change had taken 
 place. The powers of the world had endeavoured to 
 enslave the Church. " From the very walls erected 
 for our security they have assailed us, and the guards set 
 to protect us have used the weapons entrusted to them 
 for our defence to conquer and enslave us." The Court 
 of Session had encroached, the land had rung with 
 conflict. " But the din of the contest has recalled the 
 multitudes, who had almost forgotten our existence, 
 to a sense of the importance of the post which we 
 occupy." The people of Scotland have seen that their 
 Church is alive once more, and throughout the world a 
 vivid interest is manifested by Christians in the task 
 wherein they are engaged. " The sympathies of Christians 
 in every part of the world are turning toward us ; in this 
 Assembly, from England, from Ireland, from America, 
 from Switzerland, from Prussia, we have encouragement 
 by letter, or by personal presence of ministers of the 
 gospel, all deeply sympathising with us in our struggle
 
 240 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 for the rights of the Church of God in connection with 
 the kingdoms of the earth. Defending the citadel which, 
 as a Protestant Establishment, we possess, we afford a 
 rallying point to the Christian world, and through it the 
 Churches of Christ may yet establish themselves in the 
 fortress of the world's power, and obtain universally a 
 national recognition of the free and rightful dominion of 
 our great Head and King." 
 
 The motion of Dr. Chalmers was adopted, and that of 
 Dr. Cook rejected, by a majority of 241 to 110. 
 
 Apart from all question either as to the Christian 
 tenderness or the worldly discretion of the majority in 
 their dealings with the minority, the position taken up 
 by the Church in the Claim of Eights was impregnably 
 strong. As Dunlop simply and calmly said, the Church 
 of Scotland had always claimed to be constitutionally 
 established and yet free. If any man disputes this, he 
 cannot be admitted into the arena of conference or 
 debate upon the subject. She had based her claim 
 to Establishment on her being a true, i.e. a free and 
 spiritually independent, Church, always putting Establish- 
 ment in the second place, not the first. Her distinctive 
 doctrine had from time immemorial been the Headship of 
 Christ over His Church, implying her right to exercise, 
 in Christ's name, all the powers necessary to her life, 
 growth, efficiency, prosperity. On this all authorities, 
 from Oliver Cromwell and Walter Scott to Principal 
 Hill, Dr. M'Crie, Andrew Thomson, Thomas Chalmers, 
 and William Cunningham, are at one. 
 
 When had the Church of Scotland relinquished her 
 right and power to make laws for herself, in accord-
 
 THE CLAIM OF RIGHTS. 241 
 
 ance with the law of Christ, as contained in Scripture, 
 and with the principles and traditions of the Church ? 
 When had she scrupled to declare herself a free Church, 
 enjoying, in connection with the State, all the im- 
 munities and advantages of freedom ? Had she not, 
 from a hundred platforms, hurled back to Voluntaries 
 who questioned her liberty the reply, " I am as free 
 as you " ? Could it be alleged of any non-established 
 Presbyterian Church in Scotland or elsewhere that she 
 was impotent to forbid Presbyteries to force ministers 
 upon reclaiming congregations ? Could it be alleged of 
 the smallest community of non-established Christians 
 in England or America, — Congregationalists, Baptists 
 Wesleyans, — that they were not free to declare their 
 ministers equal to each other in power and honour ? If 
 it really was no lie, but the simple, unadorned truth 
 that the Church of Scotland had not bartered her freedom 
 for Establishment, how could it be pretended that she 
 had overstepped her powers in passing the Veto Act and 
 the Chapel Ministers Act ? Be it remembered, that in 
 neither of these did the Church ask a shilling of property. 
 Could she have hauled down the Veto Act and the Chapels 
 Act at the bidding of the Civil Power, without acknow- 
 ledging before God and man that she had blotted out the 
 traditions in which she gloried, and that, from bearing 
 aloft the banner of Catholie and Christian unity in the 
 van of the Eeformed Churches, she had slunk into the 
 rear, and come to heel to the Court of Session, the most 
 crouching and craven of them all ? 
 
 16
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Sorecasftngs of tfye Contjocaftom 
 
 ECCLESIASTICAL chaos reigned in Scotland. The 
 Court of Session, confident of support from the 
 Government, and tacitly but resolutely guided by the 
 Dean of Faculty, shrank from no extreme in the 
 assertion of its power to coerce the Evangelical majority. 
 The country was convulsed by the dissension between 
 those who put the State first and the Church second, 
 and those who put the Church first and the State 
 second. 
 
 We saw how, while the wintry wind moaned over a 
 waste of snow, the parishioners of Marnoch had left 
 their beloved church rather than see a pastor sacri- 
 legiously forced on them by the tools of the Court of 
 Session. At Culsalmond the parishioners had reclaimed 
 almost as strongly as at Marnoch, and when the attempt 
 was made by the Court of Session's ministers to thrust 
 in a minister against their will, they had themselves 
 abstained from violence as had the men of Marnoch ; but 
 the general democratic feeling of the country had been 
 roused, and a noisy crowd from the adjacent districts,
 
 FORECASTINGS OF THE CONVOCATION. 243 
 
 rushing into the church, interrupted the proceedings, 
 shouted, mocked, and, in fact, compelled the enslavers of 
 the people to beat a retreat to the manse and accomplish 
 their purpose in secret. Lamentable this was, no doubt, 
 but the surgings of sympathetic mobs have been among 
 the accompaniments and indirect effects of many noble 
 revolutions, and Scotchmen who are not ashamed of the 
 doings of Jenny Geddes and her friends in the seven- 
 teenth century will not be oppressed with shame for the 
 riotous interruption, in the nineteenth, of the forced 
 settlement of Culsalmond. 
 
 In the August following the Assembly of 1842 the 
 House of Lords pronounced judgment in what is known 
 as the second Auchterarder case. The patron and presentee 
 obtained a verdict in their favour, requiring the Presby- 
 tery to proceed to the ordination of the presentee, and 
 awarding damages, which the pursuers estimated at 
 £10,000. The actual amount levied might be altered 
 by assessment before a jury, but it was now plain that 
 Presbyters could be heavily fined for declining to obey 
 the Court of Session, and for persisting in obeying the 
 Church, in the settlement of ministers. Imprisonment 
 had been threatened. Pines were imposed. The atmo- 
 sphere of Scotland, becoming electric, vibrated with an 
 excitement stronger than any she had known since the 
 Union with England. 
 
 The dual system of the Church of Scotland, vaunted 
 to be an example to the universe, had broken down. 
 What was to be clone ? " Is one violent settlement after 
 another," asks Dr. Candlish, " to be perpetrated in spite 
 of the authority of the Church ? Are men to rebel
 
 244 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 and set the Church at defiance ? Is this to go on year 
 after year ? " With that penetrating keenness of intel- 
 lectual glance which the simple have called prophecy 
 and second sight, he has now discerned that the claims 
 of the Church will not be conceded. We saw with 
 what luminous precision he defined the power of the 
 Civil Magistrate, not only in temporal things, but, circa 
 sacra, in the external and mechanical matters connected 
 with things spiritual He was ready to yield anything 
 that did not touch the life. He declared himself, how- 
 ever, no idolater of Establishment. Even in the mind of 
 Chalmers there seemed to be at moments something like 
 a superstitious horror as to what was called the "Volun- 
 tary system. The vague notion appears to have been that 
 this was some dogmatic and determinate scheme, tyranni- 
 cally requiring Christians to pronounce it sinful in the 
 Church to receive any aid from the State, and in the 
 State to receive any aid from the Church. Candlish 
 dismissed these spectral fancies. A Voluntary Church 
 he saw to be merely a Church conducted, in relation to 
 the maintenance of pastors, on the principles prevalent 
 in the apostolic age, and indisputably sanctioned by 
 Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. It might or 
 it might not be that, when circumstances altered, those 
 who preached the gospel should " live of the gospel," as 
 they did in Corinth and Galatia in Paul's time; but 
 Presbyterians of all people, with their habit of insistence 
 on the letter of biblical prescription, ought to have been 
 the last to be shocked at the survival or revival of Paul's 
 Church economics. 
 
 So early, also, as the autumn of 1841, Dr. Candlish
 
 FORECASTINGS OF THE CONVOCATION. 245 
 
 had anticipated Chalmers in the practical announcement 
 of a Sustentation Fund. Referring to the " apostolic, 
 rule that all things in this matter should be in common," 
 he expressed his conviction that, in the event of a 
 catastrophe, the Church would adopt it. " There are 
 some of us favourably situated," he said, " in the larger 
 towns of the country, and in possession of youth and 
 vigorous health, who might find little difficulty ir retain- 
 ing congregations who would devote their means wholly 
 to the maintaining of the minister among them. But 
 would this be reasonable to our lathers who have spent 
 their days in lonely valleys of our land, to our brethren 
 who have borne the heat and burden of the day, and 
 that in districts where, willing as the people might be 
 to support their beloved pastors, they are straitened 
 from the want of means ? There can be no doubt, I 
 should think, that if God gave the ministers of this 
 Church grace to be so faithful to our principles as to 
 consent to the loss of their benefices rather than sur- 
 render this principle for which she is contending, — I 
 cannot doubt, I say, that He will give us the further 
 wisdom to provide in some such way as this that the 
 ministry throughout the land should share in common 
 from the freewill offerings of the whole people." This 
 was spoken by the greatest preacher that had appeared 
 in Scotland since the rise of Chalmers, the darling pastor 
 of the richest congregation in the Church. To read it is 
 like bathing in a well filled with the very dews of God. 
 
 The Marquis of Bute had transmitted the Claim of 
 Bights and the petition against patronage to Sir James 
 Graham to 'be submitted to the Queen. On the 20th
 
 246 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of June 1842, Sir James Graham addressed a letter- 
 to Lord Bute, who passed it to the Moderator of the 
 Assembly. If presentation of the document to Her 
 Majesty " implied in the least degree the adoption of 
 their contents," Sir James would not, he said, have pre- 
 sented these ; but as their tone was respectful, and they 
 purported to be " a statement of grievances from the 
 supreme ecclesiastical authority in Scotland," he pro- 
 mised to do so. In this there was no glimpse of hope 
 nor did the Government stretch out its little finger to 
 stay the chariot in which the Court of Session was riding 
 rouo-h-shod over the liberties of the Church. Well was 
 it for Scotland in those circumstances that her clergy, 
 disseminated through the length and breadth of the 
 country, were no mere disjecta membra of a vague, semi- 
 organic whole, like the Church of England, but were 
 pervaded with a sense of national and ecclesiastical 
 unity, accustomed to act together, and possessed of 
 leaders capable of confronting and dealing with the most 
 difficult emergency. 
 
 It appears to have been with Hanna, the clear-minded, 
 cruietly eloquent, finely gifted biographer of Chalmers, 
 that the idea of calling together a Convocation of the 
 faithful among the clergy originated. Chalmers mentions 
 the suggestion in a letter of 19th September 1842, 
 and in his energetic hands it soon took practical effect. 
 In a circular, initiated by him and signed by thirty- 
 two clergymen, eminent and of reverend age, the Evan- 
 gelical ministers of the Establishment were invited to 
 assemble in Edinburgh, with a view to arriving at a 
 perfect mutual understanding, demonstrating to the
 
 FORECASTINGS OP THE CONVOCATION. 247 
 
 Government and the nation that they were not a flock 
 scattered on the mountains to be hunted down apart, 
 but a host inspired with the inflexible determination of 
 maintaining the spiritual independence of the Church 
 or casting off the fetters of Establishment. 
 
 Candlish eagerly hailed the proposal. Of all forms 
 of anguish for his impetuous spirit, that of teasing 
 suspense and wordy disputation was the most painful. 
 But both for him and for Cunningham, respecting whom, 
 in Moderate circles in Scotland and in the ears of Con- 
 servative ministers in London, there were whispers of 
 cunning detraction as to the mischief-making wizards who 
 had brought Chalmers himself under their spell, it was 
 wise to keep rather in the background. There was a 
 breath of jealousy even among the country Evangelicals 
 respecting the excessive influence of Edinburgh ; and the 
 Edinburgh influence centred in the great " twin brethren," 
 Cunningham and Candlish. Perfectly agreed in their 
 opinions, heroically pure and elevated in their motives, 
 knit together in the tender brotherhood of Christian 
 friendship, these were content to do their work without 
 putting themselves forward. 
 
 Guthrie sketched beforehand with consummate accuracy 
 the alternative courses of action which would be discussed 
 at the Convocation, and which respective sections among 
 the ministers were expected to favour. He was himself 
 heart and soul with Candlish and Cunningham, resolute 
 to go forward in the straight path. " Some of us," he 
 wrote in a letter of the deepest confidence to his friend 
 MacCosh, " entertain very decided opinions about the 
 unlawfulness of the Church continuins in connection
 
 248 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 with a State which insists on Erastian conditions, and 
 draws the sword of persecution against the reclaiming 
 Church* Our idea of the Church's duty is this :— That 
 on many accounts she should not rashly proceed to dis- 
 solve the connection, but should go to the Government of 
 the land, explain how the terms on which she was united 
 to the State have been altered to all practical purposes 
 by the late decisions, how the compact had been therein 
 violated, and how she cannot continue to administer the 
 affairs of the Establishment unless she is to be freed from 
 invasion and protected against persecution ; that there- 
 fore unless the Government and Legislature shall, within 
 a given and specified time, redress the wrongs we com- 
 plain of, we shall dissolve the union, and leave all the 
 sins and consequences at the door of an Erastian and 
 oppressive State." 
 
 But there were others, prominent among them Mr. Begg, 
 who took a different line. " Their idea," proceeds Guthrie, 
 " is to remain in the Establishment till driven out, doing 
 all the duties that belong to them. Well, our manifest 
 duty, under the idea of remaining, is to purify the Church 
 of Erastianism, and preserve it from it. So they agree 
 that at this Convocation the ministers should resolve to 
 admit no Erastian into the Church, to license no Erastian 
 student, to translate no Erastian, and to thrust out of the 
 Church without any mercy every man and mother's son 
 that avails himself of these Erastian decisions, acknow- 
 ledges them as binding the Church, or would in any way 
 apply them in the face of our own laws." Guthrie admits 
 that his section would have no conscientious objection 
 to thus standing on the defensive and the offensive, and
 
 FORECAST/NGS OF THE CONVOCATION. 249 
 
 sketches, in a few masterly strokes, the circumstances 
 that would arise under the proposed course and the pro- 
 bable issue. " We must cast out of the Church all that 
 preach for, or in any way by overt acts countenance, the 
 deposed of Strathbogie. We must cast out of the Church 
 the Moderate majority of the late Synod of Aberdeen, and 
 in less than two years we have all the Moderates declared 
 to be no longer ministers of the Church of Scotland. 
 They constitute themselves into law Presbyteries, expose 
 our clergy within their bounds, declare their parishes 
 vacant, ordain ministers of their own on the presentation 
 of patrons, and then claim the stipends, and they are 
 given them ; and so, without the glance of a bayonet or 
 ring of a musket, — the appearance even of a law func- 
 tionary, — we are quietly dispossessed and put down." 
 The Church would thus be transformed in the wrong 
 way, and man after man the ministers would seem to be 
 " struggling for a stipend," and no intelligible testimony 
 would be borne to truth and principle. On the other 
 hand, if, on calmly demanding their rights, and on being 
 denied them, they in a body dissolved connection with 
 the State, their deed " would fill the brightest page in 
 Church history."
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 £0e Convocation* 
 
 IN response to Chalmers's invitation, the clergy flocked 
 together from all parts of Scotland. One of the 
 members of the Convocation noted that, on his way up 
 to Edinburgh, he had met the minister of Maidenkirk, 
 and that, having arrived, he found himself in the same 
 lodgings with a minister from John o' Groats. There 
 were four hundred and sixty of them by tale, and their 
 quality was still more remarkable than their numbers. 
 " This band," said Lord Cockburn, " contains the whole 
 chivalry of the Church." 
 
 The Convocation opened in St. George's Church, Edin- 
 burgh, on the 17th of November 1842. Chalmers 
 preached, choosing for his text the Scripture words, 
 " Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness." 
 More solemnly beautiful watchword for men contemplat- 
 ing an enterprise of great pith and moment could not 
 be furnished by the literature of the world. A glance of 
 courage, hope, and exultation flashed from eye to eye 
 when the words were uttered. " The great lesson of this 
 text," said Chalmers, " is the connection which obtains
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 251 
 
 between integrity of purpose and clearness of discernment, 
 insomuch that a duteous conformity to what is right is 
 generally followed up by a ready and luminous discern- 
 ment of what is true." " My venerable fathers and 
 brethren of the Established Church of Scotland, I will 
 not speak of it as a certainty that, if you persevere in 
 the high walk of uprightness on which you have entered, 
 the secularities of that Establishment will be wrested 
 from your hands. It would not be venturing far, how- 
 ever, to speak of it as a probability and a hazard, and 
 surely, at the very least, not to speak of it as a possibility 
 were downright affectation. I rejoice to believe that, 
 whatever be the shades or diversities of sentiment upon 
 lesser questions, the tie of that great and common principle 
 which hitherto has bound us together remains unbroken, 
 — that I speak in the hearing of men firmly resolved 
 as ever to lose all and to suffer all rather than surrender 
 the birthright of those prerogatives which we inherit 
 from our fathers, or compromise the sacred liberty 
 wherewith Christ has made us free, — of men whose 
 paramount question is, What is duty ? that best step- 
 ping-stone to the solution of the other question, What 
 is wisdom ? " 
 
 The sermon was characterised by one who heard 
 it as "solemn, tender, scriptural, faithful, full of tact 
 and of power, much fitted to confirm the weak and 
 embolden the fearful, and to animate us in an upright 
 way." The temper of the assemblage was that of high- 
 wrought spiritual enthusiasm. The proceedings were 
 constantly interrupted by reading of the Scriptures, 
 prayer, and praise. " send Thy light forth and Thy
 
 252 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 truth." Unless we enter into their pervading senti- 
 ment of heroic faith and fervour, — if we permit any 
 breath of worldly cynicism to blind us to the spiritual 
 elevation of these men, — we absolutely fail to realise 
 the situation. 
 
 " Dark-hrow'd sophist, come not a-near, 
 All the place is holy ground." 
 
 And the principle of intellectual action, as cleared 
 rather than clouded in the serene elevation of moral 
 purpose, did not belie itself in the practical operations of 
 the Convocation. Candlish had developed a capacity 
 for business, a fineness and firmness of touch in managing 
 men, which worked in marvellous harmony with his 
 genius as an orator. To the seeing eye it become 
 plain, as we glance along the notes of the sessions of the 
 Convocation, preserved to us by Dr. James Henderson 
 and. published in the biography of Candlish, that it was 
 in his creative brain that the masterly arrangements for 
 disencumbering the discussion of non-essentials, minimis- 
 ing talk, procuring complete expression of opinion, and 
 conducting the whole to a definite, clear, wise, and right 
 conclusion, took shape. 
 
 On the first day there was much speaking, evidently 
 a good deal of noise, of self-assertion, with traces of dis- 
 trust, jealousy, discord. " On the whole, I," Dr. Hender- 
 son, " feel uncomfortable and anxious for results." But 
 a Committee to arrange the order of business was got 
 appointed, and Candlish was in it. Next day, at the 
 morning diet, it appeared that the Committee, with 
 Candlish in it, had not lost time in superfluous slumber. 
 " Candlish," the other Committee men would probably
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 253 
 
 have said, " hath murdered sleep." At all events he 
 was ready with the report. It was a model of brevity 
 and sagacity in the laying down of rules, and a master- 
 piece of comprehensiveness, lucidity, accuracy, in stating 
 the subjects of discussion. Throughout the assemblage 
 there was not a whisper of dissent, not a suggestion of 
 improvement. 
 
 Dr. Henderson begins to feel much less uncomfort- 
 able. " On this matter of business," he notes, " perfect 
 unanimity, — a great blessing, and a token for good." It 
 gradually becomes clear that there will be considerable 
 difference of view on the subject of patronage as related to 
 spiritual independence. Dr. Chalmers, we saw, had voted 
 with Cunningham and Candlish in the Assembly in favour 
 of a petition for the abolition of patronage ; but neither 
 he nor, indeed, Cunningham and Candlish had held that 
 it was impossible to secure Non-intrusion without absolute 
 destruction of patronage ; and therefore he opposed an 
 " extreme anti-patronage proposal " tabled by Begg. The 
 point was a fine one. Candlish, who combined Puritan 
 fervour with a faculty for distinguishing and analysing 
 equal to that of Aquinas, made it clear, in a speech " very 
 clever and very fine," that Begg himself did not consider 
 abolition of patronage indispensable to Non-intrusion ; and 
 the effect of his exquisitely lucid reasoning was summed 
 up in the practical observation : " Certainly our existence 
 under it hitherto shows that we may exist still (as an 
 Establishment) though it should remain." But he was 
 convinced that, in order to reconcile patronage with Non- 
 intrusion, i.e. with consent of the people, such an elaborate, 
 complicated, and delicate tissue of phrases was necessary,
 
 254 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 that the result of an attempt to provide such must be 
 misunderstanding and disaster. 
 
 Cunningham agreed with Candlish. Too much of a 
 Presbyterian to confound between Non - intrusion and 
 popular election, too much of a Church historian to forget 
 that even the Church of Scotland had not uniformly 
 made abolition of patronage a sine qua non of connection 
 with the State, he did not say that the Church's spiritual 
 jurisdiction must be sacrificed if patronage were permitted, 
 in any form or to any extent, to remain. But he re- 
 membered that the prowlers of the Court of Session, if 
 attracted by patronage, were sure to come for prey into 
 perilous proximity to the sheepfolds of the Church, and 
 "cautioned us most adroitly," says Henderson, "against 
 our extreme present danger, — a Non-intrusion measure 
 which does not rid us of the invasion of the Civil Courts." 
 The essential thing was felt by all to be spiritual 
 independence, involving Non-intrusion. But Candlish held 
 that it was fair to Begg and his friends to put on record 
 their strong view against patronage. Chalmers admitted 
 that this was " only keeping faith with Mr. Begg," but 
 strongly urged him and his friends to forego the privilege. 
 Candlish carried his point. We are unanimous, there^ 
 fore. All, without ripple of difference, hold that it is a 
 matter of life and death to guard the spiritual freedom of 
 the Church, and a large number think that the best way 
 to do this is to abolish patronage. 
 
 But the real difficulty had still to be encountered. 
 What attitude was the Church to take up ? Were the 
 fathers and brethren in any case to stay in and show 
 fight* or were they, in the event of being denied redress,
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 2oo 
 
 to quit the Establishment ? Ay, there's the rub. Some 
 begin to be conscious of a certain qualminess in the 
 region of the heart. Here, for example, is Dr. Dewar, 
 of Aberdeen, a gentle, well - meaning, dignified person, 
 truly Evangelical, liberal of his sermons on charitable 
 occasions, the very pink of clerical respectability. " Dr. 
 Dewar rose with deep solemnity ; came up with the 
 impression that it was too soon to contemplate a removal, 
 or take any resolution regarding it ; — don't outrun Pro- 
 vidence." Let us judge no man. Sometimes one may 
 conscientiously show the white feather. Mr. Broclie, of 
 Monimail, the same who stood by Mr. Clark, of Inver- 
 ness, in counselling tenderness in the matter of the 
 Strathbogie rebels, now speaks out bravely. " If I am 
 in doubt as to the course of duty when danger comes, 
 I will cast in my lot with the losing party." Dr. Dewar 
 did not come out. 
 
 Chalmers throws in his royal word to define the 
 action of the Church in the event of a Disruption. There 
 was no question, he said, of going out of the Church ; 
 " not we, but the endowments, were going out." On 
 another occasion he adverted to " the cry of schism." It 
 was a cry, he said, by which corrupt Churches disguised 
 their faithlessness to truth. According to the principles 
 on which these condemn schism, " there never could have 
 been separation from the Church of Borne." In the pre- 
 sent instance, as abiding by the Church's principles, from 
 which others are departing, " ice are the Church minus 
 the endowments." It admits not of a moment's dispute, 
 that the men who, expressly disobeying the Church, put 
 themselves into subjection to the Court of Session, did
 
 25G THE FREE CHURCH OR SCOTLAND. 
 
 really separate from the Church and commit schism. If 
 an Italian Presbytery of Strathbogie were to defy their 
 ecclesiastical superiors, and place themselves under the 
 tribunals of united Italy, all the world would acknowledge 
 that they, and not the Roman Church, were in schism. 
 When we consider that Chalmers had been for thirty 
 years the most splendid ornament of an Established 
 Church, and that he had by common consent been 
 recognised and crowned as the greatest living defender 
 of Established Churches, we must grant that it was in 
 him a fine illustration of combined moral and mental 
 power to discern so clearly wherein lay the life, and 
 wherein lay only the meat and raiment, of Established 
 Churches. 
 
 The old argument that the Church ought to repeal the 
 Veto Act came up, but the conclusive answer to it was 
 ready on iihe lip of Candlish. The Church, he reminded 
 his brethren, had always proclaimed herself willing to 
 shelve the Veto, if only the principle of Non-intrusion, 
 the sacred right of the people embodied in the ancient 
 call, were conceded. But of this no promise or pledge 
 had been given. 
 
 What is to be done ? The highest mounted minds in 
 the Convocation — happy Convocation, to have such a 
 cluster of minds to lead it ! — were unanimous. Looking 
 into the "sacred morning" of the future, solemnly, not 
 without awe, but yet calmly trusting in God, they saw 
 that it was the duty of the Church to go forward. 
 Chalmers, Candlish, Cunningham, Guthrie, Gordon, 
 liobert Buchanan, saw, as with one flash of intuition, 
 that if the Legislature gave no redress, it would be the
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 257 
 
 part of the Church not to engage in an ignominious 
 wrestle with the Court of Session, but to leave the 
 Establishment. A great body of superior men, less 
 distinguished than these, and a large proportion of the 
 rank and file, were prepared to follow them. 
 
 But it soon appeared that there was a minority, not 
 insignificant in numbers, and formidable from the ability 
 of its chiefs, which was strongly bent on protracting the 
 conflict, and staving off, for an indefinite period, separa- 
 tion from the State. By far the most remarkable man 
 in this party was Mr. Begg. Still in the very prime 
 of manhood, firm of fibre in body and in soul, there 
 were few Non-intrusionists in Scotland better known, 
 or better deserving to be known, than Begg of Liberton. 
 He had won his spurs, as we saw, by audaciously facing 
 an eminent Moderate orator in debate, and since that 
 day he had never fallen into the background. He had 
 defended the Church against the Voluntaries, on the 
 ground that, though established, she was free. No one 
 saw more clearly than he that if the Court of Session 
 triumphed, this argument must vanish. " If," he had 
 said in the Assembly of 1840, "they allowed the Court 
 of Session to interpret the limit of their power, they gave 
 to Voluntaries a weapon with which they would beat 
 down any Establishment upon earth." 
 
 In that Assembly, two years before things had reached 
 the present extremity of disorder and oppression, when 
 the Church was being invited to accept the Aberdeen 
 compromise, none had spoken out more clearly than 
 Begg, or with more of the clarion note in his voice. 
 " He saw nothing," he said, " for the Church but either 
 *7
 
 258 THE FREE CHURCH Of SCOTLAND. 
 
 a glorious dissolution from the State, retaining all her 
 principles entire, or the abandonment of her principles, — 
 the prostration of herself at the feet of the State, and 
 her utter extinction piece-meal, from the desertion of the 
 best of her people. It appeared to him that, although 
 the Church of Scotland was a poor Church (and her 
 poverty was principally owing to the faithful contending 
 for her present principles), yet, being free, she was a 
 noble Church. When they looked to all the Churches 
 of the Eeformation fettered and prostrated before the 
 Civil Tower, and thought of their own Church, free and 
 independent though supported by the Civil Power, he felt 
 that she was a noble specimen of the Church of Christ." 
 
 His next words might have been spoken, and 
 most appropriately spoken, in his place as a member of 
 the Convocation. " The question was now tried with 
 regard to her, whether it was possible to have a 
 Church Establishment and at the same time maintain 
 her ecclesiastical freedom as a Church of Christ, and the 
 rights and privileges of a Christian people, If by their 
 vote they give the slightest countenance to any individual 
 in determining that question so as to peril the existence 
 of our spiritual independence, — so as to peril or endanger 
 the rights of the people, — he saw nothing for it but dis- 
 solution to the Church. But if they stood true and 
 united within, lie had no fear of their enemies from with- 
 out. Truth was great, — it had prevailed in times past 
 over far mightier difficulties, — and he trusted that by the 
 aid of the great Head of the Church, whose prerogatives 
 they were endeavouring to defend, the Church would 
 again be rescued from danger and perplexity; they would
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 259 
 
 not fear, God Himself would defend and protect her, and 
 that right early." 
 
 There are some who may be tempted to exclaim, that 
 it had been well for Begg and for Scotland if he hud 
 died after uttering these noble words. Then would the 
 garland of his fame have shone for ever on his brow, with 
 the dews of dawn upon it. The difference, the disputa- 
 tion, that now emerged in the Convocation was the 
 prognostic of a divisive influence, destined to tell with 
 pathetic effect in the future history of the Church. That 
 galaxy of glorious leaders, — that choir of morning stars 
 that sang together at the birth of the Free Church, — how 
 well had it been if they had remained, or if their in- 
 spiration had sufficiently remained, to keep the Church 
 on the lines they indicated ! 
 
 But we have perhaps no right to anticipate, and it 
 must be clearly remembered that, while the galaxy of 
 great ones continued to shine, nay even after Chalmers 
 had set, and so long as Candlish, Cunningham, Guthrie, 
 and Buchanan remained above the horizon, Begg did ever, 
 as on the present occasion, with what mixture there 
 might be of idiosyncrasy and self-assertion, yield finally 
 to the celestial voices. His intense instincts of disputa- 
 tion and destruction were quelled by the mightier 
 instincts of construction, of order, of expansion, of union. 
 
 Chalmers was now in his most exalted mood. " If 
 free, the Church of Scotland might," he said, " be the 
 rallying point for evangelical truths throughout the 
 world." And as for the trouble, the danger, the apparent 
 loss, involved in freedom, he feared them not. He 
 launched into a description of the Divine enthusiasm, the
 
 260 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 spiritual passion, the sweet communion and fellowship, 
 enjoyed by Christian brethren in times of persecution and 
 excitement. "He was himself," says our reporter, " the 
 most striking impersonation of the passion which he so 
 eloquently and vividly depicted. I cannot recall it — 
 it burst like electricity upon us — not less brilliant and 
 effective than the most brilliant and striking of all the 
 productions of his mind. The effect was astonishing." 
 Truly a notable fact. It reminds one of the pathetically 
 earnest and beautiful declaration by Jeffrey, that a quite 
 peculiar influence, of a sacredly elevating nature, had 
 been exerted upon him by this man. The visible glow 
 of moral elevation in Chalmers — the Mosaic brightness 
 of the face of one that had been on the Mount — has, 
 when weighed in the severest scales of science, a real 
 value, as casting light upon some difficult and mysterious 
 but quite practical problems connected with genius and 
 inspiration. Tennyson meant more than to say a merely 
 pretty thing when he spoke of seeing, at moments of 
 special elevation, " the God within him light the face " 
 of his friend Arthur Hallam. And if the glow on one 
 God-revealing face has been strong enough to light with 
 spiritual radiance a vista of two thousand years, shall we 
 hesitate to say that, whatever there may have been of 
 myth or of miracle, there was, to begin with, an inde- 
 structible kernel of historical fad in the transfiguration 
 of Jesus Christ ? 
 
 Once more, however, we have to observe that 
 Chalmers, though the most spiritually exalted man in 
 that assemblage, was perhaps also the most practical. 
 It was not strange, considering his fame as a political
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 20 1 
 
 economist, that he should cheer the hearts of the brethren 
 
 with calculations as to the probable provision to ha 
 made by a thoroughly roused and grateful people for 
 a Church that had, for the people's sake, parted from 
 the State. One might have fancied, from his sanguine 
 trust in the generosity of the devout rich, and in his 
 still fonder trust in the power of the unnumbered 
 littles of Christ's poor, that he had been a Voluntary 
 platformist all his days. So warmly did he paint the 
 lifeboat, that some one cried out that he made it look 
 better than the ship, — a pathetic jest which evoked one 
 of the few laughs of the Convocation. 
 
 To go forward, then, following the glow upon the face 
 of Chalmers, was the prevailing sentiment of the Con- 
 vocation ; but we are bound to take some note, were it 
 only for the sake of historical fidelity, of the resolute 
 effort of Begg and his section to perpetuate the struggle 
 indefinitely within the Establishment. Begg admitted 
 that, if the Civil Power had formally imposed Erastianism 
 on the Church, then the hour would have struck for 
 departure. But he refused to take the law of the 
 Court of Session, or even of the Government, as final. 
 He would take it only from the Estates of the Realm. 
 Nay, he seemed at moments to fall back still further, 
 and maintain what was theoretically true, that the rights 
 of the Church were bound up with the Treaty of Union 
 and the Constitution of the United Kingdom, and that 
 not even Parliament could alienate them. 
 
 He proposed to confront law with the fulminations of 
 Church discipline. The whole Synod of Aberdeen, he 
 was reminded, sympathised with the schismatic Presbyters :
 
 262 . THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 would he depose a whole Synod? "Undoubtedly," said the 
 dauntless Begg. " U ur ancestors in 1638 deposed by one 
 stroke all the bishops of Scotland, and the result of this 
 bold measure was that their cause triumphed, and in a 
 little time the storm was past and gone." A most admir- 
 able debating hit. But in 1638 the bishops were a 
 handful of individuals, and the Church had behind her the 
 force of Scotland, ecclesiastical and civil ; for at that time 
 Montrose was still among the Church leaders. In 1662, 
 when the Church really had the alternative placed before 
 her of surrendering her principles or turning out on the 
 hillsides, she made no attempt to struggle on against the 
 ' Government. She quitted the Establishment ; she chose 
 poverty and worldly degradation ; she saw her saintly 
 peasants shot at their cottage doors, and her holy virgins 
 drowned on her tidal sands ; but she had her reward : 
 she raised such a testimony to her distinctive principle 
 that all men understood it and honoured her ; she won 
 the love and trust of the Scottish people for ever ; and 
 she now, in this autumn of 1842, had such men to 
 guide her as Chalmers, Cunningham, Candlish, Guthrie, 
 and Begg. Clearly, though a clever allusion to history 
 might tell for a moment, in debate, Begg was not likely 
 to convince a Convocation containing Cunningham, that 
 the Church ought to remain at all hazards within the 
 Establishment. 
 
 The constitutional argument, potent to mystify, and 
 seducingly sweet in its suggestion that separation from 
 the dignity and emoluments of an Establishment could 
 never be a duty, was effectually disposed of by Chalmers as 
 " a discovery, fetched from the depths of a metaphysical
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 2G."> 
 
 jurisprudence," which " left us independent of all decisions 
 of Civil Courts free, or bound to keep our places." 
 Evangelicals of the Church of England, hear these words ! 
 
 Begg was too solidly able, too firmly based on common 
 honesty and common sense, to make much of the con- 
 stitutional argument, but he found it hard to reconcile 
 himself to a surrender of the practical advantages of 
 Establishment. What would they not lose ! " We are 
 driven from universities, from parish schools ; we leave 
 many parishes without the gospel, where not a spot of 
 ground can be got to build a church upon. Let all this 
 come if there was necessity for it ; but he could see no 
 necessity." It was no mean craving for the emoluments 
 of Establishment that animated Begg. What sent a 
 pang to his heart was to see that vision of spiritual 
 possibilities vanish like a fading sunset. 
 
 One of the points on which he dwelt was that, in 
 their rude haste to sweep aside the jurisdiction of the 
 Church, the Civil Courts had made her answerable for 
 the indirect and practically inevitable effects of Church 
 discipline. In so doing, the Courts really declared 
 war against the liberties of all Nonconformist Churches. 
 Why go out, if the law will track you and persecute you 
 as before ? The answer was — or rather might have 
 been, for it was not, to our knowledge, expressly given 
 at the Convocation — that, whatever may be said or 
 done by wrong-headed lawyers, the non- established 
 Churches are really more free than Erastian Establish- 
 ments. The Church of Scotland, the moment she 
 stepped beyond the State pale, would be under the 
 expanse of toleration. The liberty enjoyed by all the
 
 2G4 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 free Churches of England and of Scotland would be 
 hers. The self-supporting Churches are guarded by the 
 nation's sense of justice. In England or in Scotland a 
 stupid judge may give trouble by ignorantly misunder- 
 standing or maliciously misapplying the privilege of self- 
 government exercised by the free Churches, but Britons 
 love fair play, and their liberty and self-government are 
 beyond general or serious attack. Their purely spiritual 
 jurisdiction, — their strictly Church discipline, — which 
 alone is a matter between them and Christ, requires no 
 backing from the secular arm ; and none of them — 
 Wesleyans, Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Papists — 
 have in their monetary arrangements found the opera- 
 tion of the common law unsatisfactory. 
 
 On this matter it was not possible either for Begg or 
 any of the consummately able men who led the Convoca- 
 tion to see beyond the immediate future. Again and 
 again it was declared by Candlish that the reckless 
 aggressions of the Court of Session might bring into 
 jeopardy that spiritual freedom on which the Voluntaries 
 had plumed themselves. They actually did so in the 
 Cardross case. Chalmers saw persecution looming as a 
 clear possibility at a very measurable distance. But 
 persecution has never been an insuperable difficulty for 
 " holy and humble men of heart," whose allegiance to 
 Christ was an affair of conscience. And the first attempt 
 of the Court of Session to enslave a tolerated, self-main- 
 tained Church proved to be futile and the last. 
 
 No shadow of difference arose between Begg and his 
 brethren on the point of standing by their guns in the 
 sense of standing by their principles. The difference was
 
 THE CONVOCATION. 265 
 
 that Begg clung with all the desperate tenacity of his 
 nature to the idea that the guns of Establishment might 
 possibly be used, if not permanently, at least for some time 
 longer, in defence of the principles. 
 
 Chalmers, Candlish, Cunningham, Guthrie, Gordon, and 
 Buchanan saw that this could not be, — that the Church 
 possessed no arm of flesh to oppose to encroaching Courts 
 or Legislatures, — that her spiritual freedom was now 
 being trampled down, — and that, therefore, if relief did 
 not come, and come promptly, she must go forth. 
 
 Let us be just to Begg. He was no traitor, no 
 trimmer. He secured that the whole compass of alter- 
 native courses should be boxed, that the kaleidoscope of 
 possible opinion on the situation should come full circle 
 round. And, above all, be it distinctly admitted and 
 realised that he did not hold out against the general 
 sentiment. His biographer says justly that he acquiesced 
 in the resolutions. Nor will all readers agree with Dr. 
 Thomas Smith that Dr. Henderson's inestimable notes 
 of the Convocation convey " an impression that Dr. 
 Be^cr was less zealous than his brethren, or more cautious 
 as to committing himself." No. The notes produce the 
 impression that he would stick to the Establishment like 
 limpet to the rock, so long as he thought the spiritual 
 independence of the Church could in that way be pre- 
 served. But he formally withdrew his objections to the 
 view taken -by the brethren in general, and, when this 
 was done, no man spoke out more clearly than he. The 
 storm he had conjured up in the Convocation passed 
 over, and he had the magnanimity to be swayed by wiser 
 and greater men than himself.
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 t$e Court of Jkeeton'a fast triumphs. 
 
 THE Convocation ended in harmony among the 
 brethren, and fortitude and clear determination 
 with reference to the future. As autumn deepened into 
 winter, the ministers carried into every corner of Scot- 
 land the quickening power of the inspiration they had 
 received. Among the causes of satisfaction with which 
 all who have regard for the honour of human nature 
 may be expected to view the results of the meeting, this, 
 surely, is greatest, that no evasion was attempted, no 
 theological phrase of disputable significance devised, under 
 cover of which the Church might secure the sweet emolu- 
 ments, and sweeter dignities and peaceful routine and 
 comfort, of Establishment, and yet make pretence of 
 retaining her freedom. No betrayal of Christ with a 
 kiss, in the form of some verbal, visionary, and abstract 
 recognition of His Headship ! We came to you a free 
 Church, we can part with you a free Church ; we must, 
 in any case, stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ 
 hath made us free. Such, in effect, was the message 
 of the Convocation to the State. 
 
 260
 
 THE COURT OF SESSION'S LAST TRIUMPHS. 207 
 
 The Church declined to continue an ignominious and 
 anarchical struggle with the law Lords and their vassal 
 clergy in Scotland. In the Memorial drawn up by the 
 Convocation to be presented to the Legislature, it was 
 declared that such a contest could not fail to be attended 
 with pernicious consequences, " affecting both the majesty 
 of law and the highest interests of religion." The ques- 
 tion now was, whether the State would or would not 
 commit " the heinous national offence of not only break- 
 ing the national faith, but disowning the authority of 
 Christ in His own House, and refusing to recognise His 
 Church as a free spiritual society, instituted by Him, and 
 governed by His laws alone." 
 
 Scotland rang with agitation, the whole atmosphere 
 quivering with an excitement so characteristic of Scot- 
 land, so strange to other lands. In hall and in cottage, 
 in mansion and farm, in street and at market, men spoke 
 of the grand struggle going on. Guthrie's biographers 
 tell us that seven hundred and eighty -two distinct 
 pamphlets might be noted among the phenomena of the 
 time. The wrestle between the Churchmen, who were 
 also the people's men, and the Court of Session's tools, 
 was raging wildly. In most places the feeling of the 
 pastors and of the population was ardently expressed 
 in favour of the Church, but throughout the Synod of 
 Aberdeen the influence of Moderatism prevailed. The 
 Court of Session, encouraged no doubt by the approbation 
 and acquiescence of a party in the Church, carried 
 matters with a high hand, and scrupled not to make 
 fresh inroads upon the spiritual jurisdiction. 
 
 Occurring with pathetic seasonableness as an illustra-
 
 2G8 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 tion of the completeness with which the Court of Session 
 was divesting the Scottish Establishment of all legis- 
 lative power in the spiritual province, there was delivered, 
 on the 20th of January 1843, the judgment of the Court 
 in the Stewarton case. Its salient point was that, as 
 the Auchterarder judgments had cancelled the Church's 
 legislation combining the action of patronage with the will 
 and consent of the people in the settlement of ministers, 
 so the Stewarton judgment nullified the legislation of 
 the Church giving effect to her principle of parity 
 among ministers. In their dealings with the parish of 
 Auchterarder, the law Lords had struck down the Church's 
 barrier against intrusion ; they now, by their Stewarton 
 decision, struck down the Church's Chapel Act. Thus 
 had they scornfully smitten into ruins the whole edifice 
 of Church reform as it had arisen under the impulse 
 of Chalmers. 
 
 The Dean of Faculty, now Lord Justice-Clerk, had done 
 his work. If the Legislature did not restore what the 
 Court of Session had taken away, and if the Church of 
 Scotland acquiesced, then did the Church possess no 
 jurisdiction. The respondents for the Church in the 
 Stewarton case distinctly informed the Lords of Session 
 that they would not obey them. " Whatever judgment 
 your Lordships may pronounce, the respondents freely 
 and at once avow that in regard to the matters here in 
 question, they will continue to give obedience to the 
 injunctions of the ecclesiastical judicatories to which they 
 are subordinate." 
 
 During those clays Candlish's whole nature burned 
 with the intensity of his spiritual passion. The vague
 
 THE COURT OF SESSION'S LAST TRIUMPHS. 2G9 
 
 hopes, the busy weaving of cobweb compromises and 
 gossamer explanations, that deceived feebler men, were 
 shrivelled into dust by the impetuous lightnings of his 
 mind. He knew that separation was inevitable. He 
 frankly avowed that, were he a Congregationalist, were 
 he not one of a company of Presbyterian brethren, he 
 would go out at once. The May month and the 
 Assembly were drawing near, and he panted for the 
 decisive moment. Moving about from place to place, 
 now in London, now in Edinburgh, now in the West of 
 Scotland, wherever statesmen were to be interrogated, 
 wherever great meetings were to be addressed, there 
 was he ; and wherever he came, he brought illumina- 
 tion. Never, however, was that superb intellect shaken 
 from its calmness of vision, from its poised and perfect 
 apprehension of the position, or from lucid moderation of 
 speech. The jurisdiction he claimed for the Church was 
 neither Popish, including infallibility, nor revolutionary, 
 overleaping bounds, but liberty " to regulate the concerns 
 of Christ on the principles of a Church of Christ, not by 
 the determination of civil rulers in ecclesiastical matters, 
 but by the word of Christ alone, interpreted by the 
 prayerful study of our minds and hearts." 
 
 No arrangement which refused the spiritual jurisdiction, 
 and left patronage in the way, — no arrangement which 
 disallowed the original claim of the Church of Scotland 
 to negotiate with the State on the footing of a jurisdic- 
 tion derived, not from the State, but from Christ, — no 
 mere independence by sufferance, — could he consider 
 adequate or safe. " Unquestionably Parliament might 
 lay down a form of proceeding which would enable the
 
 270 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Church to give effect to the Non-intrusion principle, and 
 might say that if the Church adheres to that form of 
 proceeding, her sentences shall not be reviewed by the 
 Civil Courts. But still the Civil Courts will be entitled 
 to come forward and say, You, the Church Courts, have 
 transgressed that form which it is for us to interpret, 
 and therefore we will subject you to actions of damages, 
 and compel you to act on our view of the law. Here is 
 the essence of the cpuestion. The slave may have his 
 chain lengthened, the captive may have the range of his 
 walk enlarged ; but if the chain be round him still, he is 
 not the less a slave ; if the walls still enclose him on 
 every side, he is not the less a captive." 
 
 They must take their stand, therefore, on first principles, 
 and recur to the watchword of their Covenanting fore- 
 fathers : " The Crown rights of the Bedeemer." It may be 
 that persecution will follow them out of the Establishment, 
 but all the same, " Oh," cries Candlish, " let us be 
 resolved and determined that we shall maintain the rights 
 of Christ the King, whether in or out of the Establishment, 
 under persecution, if need be." And solemnly, as the 
 hour approaches when he must go one way, and those of his 
 brethren who have disobeyed the Church and bowed their 
 necks to the Court of Session another, he touches on the 
 question of schism. " Very extraordinary words have 
 been employed, not in random speeches, but in documents 
 of Church Courts, imputing to us the sin of introducing 
 a schism into the Church of Scotland. I won't venture 
 to say that the sin of schism has not been committed ; 
 but let it be ever borne in mind that, in deciding on 
 whose side the guilt lies, it is essential to discuss the
 
 THE COURT OP SESSION'S LAST TRIUMPHS. 271 
 
 question on which we have separated. They may be 
 the schismatics who have consented to remain behind. 
 Let it be remembered that the guilt of the schism is not 
 to he determined by the question which party began, or 
 which party have been most active ; but simply and 
 solely by the question, Which is the party who, on the 
 point at issue, have acted in accordance with the word of 
 God, — which party, I say, not in the manner of maintain- 
 ing it only, but which party in the thing maintained, have 
 upheld the testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ ? " 
 
 On the 4th of January 1843, a letter was received in 
 Edinburgh from Sir James Graham, who had the manage- 
 ment of the Scottish Church question in Sir Eobert 
 Peel's Government. It held out no prospect that the 
 Claim of Eights and the petition against patronage would 
 be favourably considered. On the 31st of January the 
 Commission of Assembly met. Dr. "Welsh, the Moderator, 
 having explained the circumstances of its meeting in view 
 of Sir -lames Graham's letter, Dr. Cook, the ever vigilant 
 and adroit leader of the Court of Session clergy, rose and 
 called attention to the Stewarton decision as bearing on 
 the constitution of the Commission. It was in virtue of 
 powers conferred by the Church, and now cancelled by 
 the Court of Session, that certain of the brethren hail 
 been enrolled as members of the Commission. Dr. Cook 
 declared himself bound to require that these should Ik; 
 excluded. Mr. Dunlop pointed out, in reply, that the 
 time legally available for appeal against the Stewarton 
 decision had not expired. But the shadow cast before by 
 the Court of Session sufficed for Dr. Cook. He pressed 
 his motion, and 23 out of the 138 members of the Com-
 
 272 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 mission gave him their votes. Having read a protest, 
 affirming the Commission to be illegally constituted, he 
 and the minority withdrew. 
 
 Ecclesiastically this was an explicit act of schism. 
 Tactically, however, the manoeuvre was fine. The leader 
 of the Erastian section had for his object to blazon it 
 throughout the Church that the Court of Session had 
 virtually decreed that there should be two castes in the 
 clergy. The decree of the Court would add greatly to 
 the force of Dr. Cook's party as a voting power in 
 Presbyteries, Synods, and the General Assembly. The 
 chapel ministers, emancipated by the Evangelicals, were 
 naturally their allies ; and now Dr. Cook would, of course, 
 be prepared to challenge the right of any chapel minister 
 to sit in the General Assembly. His withdrawal from 
 the Commission with his followers may be justly described 
 as a formal act of schism. " We," he virtually said, " are 
 the Church constituted by the State." " And we," the 
 others virtually replied, " are the Church constituted by 
 Christ." 
 
 All the more smoothly, on account of the secession of 
 the Moderates, did the Commission mature arrangements 
 for making the final appeal of the Church to the Estates 
 of the Eealm during the approaching session.
 
 CHAPTER XXXIIL 
 
 £0e <©e6afe in f0e Commons— $n imaginary 
 g&peecfy ftp <0uf0rie. 
 
 ON the 7th of March 1843, the case of the Church 
 was brought before the House of Commons by Mr. 
 Fox Maule. It was a memorable, a solemn occasion, — 
 unique, perhaps, in the history of Parliaments, and 
 deserving mention in the annals of the Universal Church. 
 At the Reformation the Church in Scotland had assumed, 
 as inalienably hers from Christ, that spiritual jurisdiction 
 which Henry VIII. had usurped in England. At the 
 Revolution Settlement this spiritual jurisdiction had 
 formed an essential condition of Establishment. It 
 was explicitly embodied, as clearly stated in the Con- 
 fession of Faith, in the Constitution of the United 
 Kingdom. There was no other instance in Europe in 
 which the arrangements between Church and State, at 
 the end of the Reformation period, had attained to such 
 a consummation. The question now was, whether the 
 experiment of a free, living, growing Church, exercising 
 spiritual jurisdiction in friendly connection with the 
 State, had or had not broken down. The Courts of law 
 18
 
 274 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCO! LAND. 
 
 in Scotland had come into collision with the Church. 
 The state of things was admittedly intolerable. The 
 Church had announced her intention, if it must continue, 
 of relinquishing Establishment. Would the House of 
 Commons do aught to avert the catastrophe ? 
 
 Parliament evinced no particular interest in the 
 matter. There was not half a House. But too much 
 stress must not be laid upon this circumstance. The 
 attendance was larger than could have been looked fur 
 on the night of an Indian budget or an important 
 Colonial debate. From 270 to 300 members were 
 present. The leading men in all sections put in an 
 appearance. 
 
 Sir Eobert Peel had evidently taken pains to acquaint 
 himself with the subject, and had mastered some of its 
 superficial aspects; but he fell short in that practical 
 sagacity, he lacked that penetrating glance, by which the 
 inner truth, however veiled it may be in speciosities 
 and superficialities, is reached. 
 
 Lord John Eussell — the well-meaning, unimpassioned, 
 superior but never superlative little John, who was born 
 to come always so near greatness as to make his miss 
 of it conspicuous — expatiated in generalities, dwelt on 
 the difficulties of the situation, was so sorry that the 
 excellent Church of Scotland was in trouble, would have 
 been happy to help her if he could, but couldn't. The 
 diminutive Lord John, however, was a gentleman. He 
 had no part in the vileness of those churls who called 
 the Scotch Churchmen hypocrites or tricksters. " Of 
 this I am convinced," he said, " that there are many of 
 the ablest, best, and most pious ministers of the Church,
 
 THE DEBATE IN THE COMMONS. 275 
 
 who, if you should shut the door to reconcilement com- 
 pletely, would think it their conscientious duty to leave 
 the Church. I have said many able and pious ministers. 
 There are two of them whom I have heard in the pulpit, 
 though I am neither a Scotchman nor a member of the 
 Scotch Church, — I mean Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Candlish 
 — men in their separate ways as well fitted to expound 
 the word of God, to enforce the obligations of morality, 
 and to lead the people in the ways of the gospel, as 
 any men belonging to any Church in an}- part of the 
 world." Is it not pathetic that he should not have 
 dared to say at once that these men could not be ani- 
 mated by any nefarious purpose in seeking to render 
 their Church spiritually efficient ? 
 
 Gladstone and Palmerston were present, but took 
 no part in the debate. Charles Villiers and Cobden 
 — clarum ct vencrabile nomen ! — voted in favour of the 
 Church. So did Macaulay, but his vote was silently 
 given. He did not toll the House, as he might have 
 done, that his friend Hallam, in his standard work on 
 the Constitution, had declared the spiritual jurisdiction of 
 the Church of Scotland to have been embodied in the 
 Treaty of Union between England and Scotland. Nor 
 did he anticipate his own denunciation of the Patronage 
 Act, uttered in the House a couple of years later, as a 
 " breach of the Treaty of Union." Charles Buller voted 
 as became a friend of Carlyle. Sir George Grey spoke 
 at some length on behalf of the Church. The debate 
 occupied two nights, and fills thirty or forty of the 
 doubled-columned pages of Hansard. 
 
 The speakers against the Church's claim, while using
 
 276 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 courteous words, seemed one and all to be oppressed by 
 a sense of some enormous absurdity, some extravagance 
 of tyrannical usurpation, which the Scottish clergy were 
 bent on perpetrating. Sir William Follett, an English 
 lawyer of the highest reputation, professed himself un- 
 able to believe that the law of Scotland could possibly 
 embrace the theory of concurrent and co-ordinate juris- 
 dictions, each supreme in its own province, as put forward 
 by the advocates of the Church. On such a theory he 
 pronounced it absolutely incredible that the Civil Courts 
 and the Ecclesiastical Courts could act harmoniously. 
 He was willing to acknowledge the supremacy of the 
 Church in spiritual things, but he started as at an 
 adder in his way when the Church insisted upon drawing 
 for herself the line of demarcation between spiritual and 
 civil. What Sir William Follett said was so lucid and 
 looked so reasonable, that his speech was eminently 
 iitted to deepen, in the minds of simple, straightforward 
 Englishmen, the suspicion that these Scotch parsons 
 were either very bad or very mad, and that the House 
 ought to make short work of their nonsense. 
 
 Sir Robert Peel's speech, elaborately plausible, its 
 sophisms lying, for the most part, well hid under its 
 generalities, would have passed off finely as an oration 
 by some leading Moderate in the General Assembly. 
 He praised the Church with honest cordiality. He had 
 enjoyed, he said, " an opportunity of observing the worth 
 of the ministers of that Church." He had marked in 
 them a combination of solid learning and theological 
 acquirement, of sterling worth and great energy in the 
 work of their parishes, which made a deep impression on
 
 THE DEBATE IN THE COMMONS. '11*1 
 
 him. That impression, he said, "had not been effaced 
 by what had since occurred." Coming to closer quarters, 
 " There is no disposition," he made bold to affirm, " on 
 the part of the House of Commons to deprive it (the 
 Church) of any privilege which is essentially necessary 
 to its efficiency as an Establishment." He did not 
 scruple to admit the spiritual independence of the 
 Church. "We all admit that to the Church belongs 
 the exclusive jurisdiction in ecclesiastical matters." Is 
 it not astounding to come upon a declaration like this 
 by the Prime Minister of Great Britain, made a couple 
 of months before the Disruption ? On the Veto Law he 
 pronounced slight censure or none. Practically he might 
 be said to have sanctioned its working. The Government 
 patronage had, as we know, been exercised in Scotland 
 for years after its enactment in harmonious accordance 
 with its provisions. But by persisting in it after its 
 legal character had been denied by the highest authority, 
 the Church, he held, had put herself in the wrong. The 
 law had been declared ; and need it be said that, to Sir 
 Eobert Peel, the law was a spectre at whose approach all 
 resistance ought to give way ? 
 
 It was when he took up the question of the discipline 
 practised by the Church that Sir Eobert's tone sharpened 
 into severity, and he used terms of angry condemnation. 
 He referred to the " violent and tyrannical act by which 
 the Church deposed those ministers who, having taken 
 the oath of allegiance, considered it to be their duty to 
 obey the laws of their country." Again and again he 
 repeated his denunciation of this infliction of the severest 
 punishment upon clergymen for yielding " obedience to
 
 •di 8 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the law of the land." He maintained that they were 
 " deprived of their civil rights." He would not hear 
 of severing spiritual things in parishes from things 
 temporal. The obvious meaning and purport of the 
 Patronage Act was, he insisted, that the minister of 
 the parish should both perform the parochial duties and 
 enjoy the living. " "What becomes of the stipend ? " Was 
 one man to receive it from the patron, while the Church 
 declared that he was no minister at all ? And was 
 another man, ordained pastor of the parish by the Church, 
 to receive none of the money ? It could never have 
 been rationally contemplated that two men should thus 
 struggle against each other in one parish. Such a state 
 of things would be anarchy. 
 
 But, apart from all question as to the stipend, there 
 were other effects of deposition, said Sir Eobert, to be 
 considered. The stipend, in fact, is " not the most 
 important." There were things dearer to a man than 
 stipend. " It is the degradation of character to which these 
 men are subjected that most affects me." In short, Sir 
 Eobert Peel distinctly and indignantly included within 
 the civil jurisdiction those indirect effects of spiritual 
 sentences which the Church always admitted to be 
 inevitable. Warming as he spoke, he accused the Church 
 of outdoing Eome herself in domineering pretensions. 
 " I do maintain that, even in tunes that preceded the 
 Eeformation, the Church of Eome never laid claim to 
 a greater power than that involved in the claims now 
 set up." 
 
 The idea of some monstrous solecism and incredibility 
 having been blundered into by the clergy manifestly
 
 THE DEBATE IN THE COMMONS. 279 
 
 haunted him as it did Sir William FoLLett. As the clear- 
 headed English lawyer refused to regard the existence of 
 two independent jurisdictions in Scotland as credible, so 
 Sir Robert refused to believe it possible that the House 
 of Lords had sanctioned any real encroachment by the 
 Court of Session on the spiritual jurisdiction of the 
 Church. " I will venture to say, if the civil tribunals 
 attempted to control the Church in a matter purely 
 spiritual, there would at once be an intervention on the 
 part of Parliament to control the tribunals." 
 
 Towards the end of the speech lie came upon delicate 
 ground. " Take," he said, "the case of the Roman Catholics, 
 or any of the Protestant Dissenters in this country, who 
 are not connected with the State by way of Establish- 
 ments. Their right, so far as voluntary jurisdiction is 
 concerned, is quite supreme, and we do not attempt to 
 interfere with it." But these were not established ; and 
 that made all the difference. He evaded, or overlooked, 
 the question, in this instance, of indirect effects. 
 
 The presentation of the Church's case was creditable to 
 the speakers, but not original, not masterly, not adequate 
 to the requirements of an unprecedented and most 
 difficult occasion. Fox Maule, afterwards Earl of 
 Dalhousie, a nobly patriotic, devout, and capable man, 
 beautiful in person and character, intrepidly loyal to his 
 native land and his ancestral Church, deserved the immor- 
 tality of fame which his speech and his conduct of the 
 debate secured him, He shirked no labour, spoke for 
 hours, but did not convince his audience. Rutherfurd was 
 a lawyer of recognised ability, a lucid and effective pleader, 
 not a commanding, statesmanlike mind, to lift the debate
 
 280 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 out of commonplace ruts and suggest an original solution 
 of an original and perplexing problem. Speech after 
 speech was spirited, argument after argument was telling 
 and seemed conclusive, and yet the gloom and oppressive- 
 ness, as of some dark mystery, continued to pervade the 
 atmosphere of the House. In vain did the advocates 
 of the Church quote Scotch statutes from the tune of 
 John Knox downward. In vain was the historical and 
 notorious claim of the Church of Scotland to an inde- 
 pendent spiritual jurisdiction again and again appealed to. 
 You could not say that the speakers were at any point 
 wrong, and yet the clouds would not lift, the general 
 nebulous haze continued to float around, the vessel was 
 drifting full upon the rocks. 
 
 Consider the situation. It is perfectly certain that, if 
 the leaders of the Church had been certified that the 
 spiritual jurisdiction was safe, and that unedifying 
 ministers would not be forced upon congregations, they 
 would have joyfully remained in the Establishment. It 
 is perfectly certain also, that in this debate the Prime 
 Minister and the first Law Officer of the Crown expressly 
 declared that they recognised the spiritual jurisdiction of 
 the Church. Sir Eobert assuredly did not wish to break 
 up the Establishment in order to force unedifying pre- 
 sentees on parishes. Since Job cried in his anguish for 
 a daysman to come between God and him and enable 
 them to understand each other, there had never been an 
 instance in which a mediator was so much wanted to 
 remove the misunderstandings, the suspicions, the hallu- 
 cinations which lay like a malignant spell upon both 
 parties.
 
 THE DEBATE IN THE COMMONS. 28 1 
 
 A Scotchman thinks of Sir "Walter's words, when 
 Scotland's chance at Flodden was flung away, — 
 
 " Oh for one hour of Wallace wight, 
 Or well-skilled Bruce to rule the fight ! " 
 
 There were in the Convocation nearly half a dozen men 
 who could have handled the Church's business with the 
 House more effectually than any of the speakers. 
 Imagination pictures the impression that might have 
 been made by a few words from royal Chalmers. What, 
 he might have asked, had they taken him for ? Had he 
 ever, in all those years when he had defended the Church 
 of Scotland as the paragon of ecclesiastical Establishments, 
 omitted to say that it was as a living, a spiritually inde- 
 pendent Church that he praised her ? Had he been an 
 impudent impostor, or a wily trickster, or a theatrical 
 histrio, or a mere rhapsodising fool, when, in the presence 
 of nine English bishops and a Prince of the Blood, he 
 declared, four years before, in London, that the King could 
 not put his foot across the threshold of the Church of 
 Scotland ? The Church now claimed, as essential to 
 Establishment,, — for she did not now demand the total 
 abolition of patronage, — only what she had always in 
 essentials claimed ; and she had never asked an iota 
 more than that she should be allowed to serve Christ 
 as strenuously in connection with the State as she could 
 serve Him if she were not in connection with the State. 
 In the whole course of her history she had never been 
 more efficient in teaching the poor, never more efficient 
 in preaching the gospel to all classes, than during the 
 last ten years ; and for this she was to be disestablished. 
 Candlish, w T hose unparalleled skill, both strategical and
 
 282 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 tactical, in the management of large bodies of men, had 
 been illustrated in the Convocation, was probably the 
 likeliest man (for Candlish at his best could work 
 miracles) to have presented the claim of the Church to 
 the House of Commons so convincingly, and at the same 
 time to have indicated a method of restoring tranquillity 
 so practicable, that the Disruption might, even at this the 
 eleventh hour, have been averted. Not only could Cand- 
 lish, with his Aquinas - like power of drawing accurate 
 distinctions and stating them with exquisite precision, 
 have cleared up misunderstandings and solved enigmas, 
 but he might, with his marvellous faculty for framing 
 schemes of action and his unexampled velocity in out- 
 lining them in resolutions, have suggested to Government 
 a plan of campaign. 
 
 This, in the pass things had now reached, was a matter 
 of paramount importance. Peel's references to the 
 deposed ministers touched the crux of the difficulty. 
 Scotland was the battlefield of two sets of clergymen. 
 One set obeyed the Church, the other set obeyed the 
 Civil law. The Government might regret having to 
 choose between the two, but the continuance of their 
 battle was clearly out of the question. Of the two, the 
 Government, if forced to make a choice, would be shut 
 up to stand by the party that obeyed the Civil law. All 
 that the Strathbogie mutineers and those who sympathised 
 with them had suffered was on account of their having, 
 as the first of all necessities, obeyed the State. Sir 
 Robert Peel might pardonably decide that it was better 
 to let the Evangelicals leave the Church, than to see the 
 whole Moderate party, or even a large proportion of that
 
 AN IMA GINAR Y SFEE CI1 BY G VI IIRIE. 2 8 3 
 
 party, not only thrust out of the Church, but thrust out 
 iu a state, of professional degradation and disqualification. 
 
 Candlish, however, was the man who could have shown 
 the Government how to solve the problem presented by 
 the divided Church. He had publicly said that he did 
 not wish to see the Moderates excluded. Had he obtained 
 a patient hearing from the House, and had he stated the 
 case of the Church, and made his practical suggestions, 
 in that Demosthenic language of his which needed no 
 other ornamentation than the running glance of its 
 electric fire along the keen unerring lines of its logical 
 distinctions, a change might have passed over the 
 situation. 
 
 One is tempted, since the audacity of even in imagina- 
 tion trying to put words into the mouth of Candlish is 
 out of the question, to fall back upon Guthrie as the 
 dramatically extemporised spokesman of the Church 
 before the House of Commons. Not Guthrie the florid 
 pulpit orator, but Guthrie the sound strong head that 
 always instinctively, putting aside irrelevancies, trivial- 
 ities, and obscurations, went to the core of a matter ; 
 Guthrie of Arbirlot, Guthrie the sympathetic friend and 
 familiar of all sorts and conditions of men, Guthrie 
 whose enchanting simplicity and cordial humour disarmed 
 suspicion, inspired confidence, and never on one of a 
 thousand platforms failed to appreciate and win his 
 audience. 
 
 Guthrie is suitosed to Speak. 
 
 It is naturally gratifying to me to have heard the 
 high - flown praises bestowed by successive speakers
 
 284 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 upon the Church of Scotland. Quite a garland of 
 flowery compliments has been vouchsafed her ; but I 
 cannot help remembering that in ancient times, creatures 
 richly adorned with garlands have been led to sacrifice ; 
 and I must say that, when the eloquent gentlemen 
 passed from general eulogies on the Church to a par- 
 ticular consideration of her claim, they changed their 
 tone. Incredibility, absurdity, tyranny beyond that of 
 the Papacy before the Reformation, are, in their view, 
 the proper terms in which to describe the position she 
 takes up. Now I have no doubt that the gentlemen of 
 this House cherish no wish to inflict wrong either upon 
 the Church or the people of Scotland ; I have the firmest 
 persuasion that the Church makes no demand which is 
 not both just and simple ; and I regard it therefore as 
 indubitable that, in some way or other, a fog, a haze of 
 misunderstanding, is the source of all the mischief. 
 Pardon an illustration from the annals of the sea. Two 
 noble vessels have made many a voyage prosperously and 
 pleasantly together. Many ports have " exulted at the 
 gleam of their masts," and at the wholesome merchandise 
 they brought. But a fog crept over the deep. The 
 treacherous dusk, worse than night's honest blackness, 
 distorted the appearance they presented to each other, 
 caused them to mistake each other for enemies, to 
 misinterpret each other's signals, to run out their 
 guns against each other. Gentlemen, we are in the 
 fog. It is light that is wanted, in order that Church 
 and State in Scotland may resume their harmonious 
 and happy co - operation in the service of God and 
 man.
 
 AN IMA GINAR Y SPEE CII D V GUTHRIE. 285 
 
 The head of Her Majesty's Government, Sir James 
 Graham, Sir William Follett, and every English gentle- 
 man in this House, must be held to know that the 
 Confession of Faith is part of the constitutional law 
 of the Church of Scotland. No man disputes that state- 
 ment. The words of the Confession are these: "The 
 Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head of His Church, 
 hath therein appointed a government in the hand 
 or Church officers distinct from the Civil Magistrate." 
 Are these words challenged by the House ? If so, 
 there is an end of the question. But if the British 
 Parliament is unchallengeably bound to maintain the 
 Confession of Faith, then we can understand each other. 
 The Premier has told us that it is foreign to the inten- 
 tions of Her Majesty's Government to cancel any essential 
 condition of the hitherto existing alliance between 
 Church and State in Scotland. Well, then, there are 
 no words in the language that could more exactly define 
 the essential condition of that alliance than those of 
 the Confession of Faith. The alliance is based upon the 
 recognition by the State of a Church government, which 
 is characterised, first, as " therein " or within the Church ; 
 secondly, as " in the hand of Church officers;" and thirdly, 
 as " distinct from the Civil Magistrate." I now ask, Is 
 the Court of Session a Civil Court ? It is. Can the 
 Court of Session, then, be distinct from the Court of 
 Session ? If not, it cannot be the government of the 
 Church of Scotland. I might ask also whether the 
 Lords of Session are " Church officers." If not, they 
 cannot be the persons to have the government of the 
 Church in their hands. Once more, — to leave no hole
 
 286 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 of evasion unstopped, — I ask, would any straightforward 
 man look upon the epithet " distinct," applied to the 
 o-overnment in the hand of " Church officers," as satisfied 
 and fulfilled by the stipulation that the Civil Court 
 might, by enslaving the Church, thus convert the Church 
 officers into Court of Session officers ? 
 
 I submit that, by reasoning as simple, as clear, and as 
 cogent as that of any proposition in Euclid, I have 
 proved that the Court of Session can have no governing 
 power over the Church of Scotland. And I will thank 
 the House to observe particularly that the Confession of 
 Faith is part of the law of the land for Scotland, — 
 embodied in the Treaty of Union, and implied in the 
 oath of allegiance. 
 
 I am anxious not to deviate from the straight road 
 of a simple honest argument, but I take leave to inter- 
 pose the remark that the enormity and solecism of our 
 position, if we are indeed a parcel of cunning hypocrites, 
 bent on establishing a spiritual despotism, are greatly 
 enhanced by the pretensions we have always, as ad- 
 vocates of the Church of Scotland, made to be the 
 all-round upholders of law. In our championship of 
 Establishments, we have scouted the notion that there 
 is any conflict between the moral, social, political law 
 of nations and the spiritual law of the Church. In- 
 credibility for incredibility, it is surely more incredible 
 that hundreds of men should turn their life and character 
 into a contradiction and a lie, than that two or three 
 lawyers should have taken the wrong turn, and, having 
 taken it, should refuse to go back. A crotchet, a 
 prejudice, a wire-drawn metaphysical idea may ensconce
 
 AN IMA GINAR Y srEECH B Y GUTHRIE. 287 
 
 itself in the brain, and step forth robed in all the in- 
 fallibility of law. A small numerical majority gives 
 the cue to the profession, and thus the world of polities 
 and the press is influenced, " the whole ear of Denmark 
 is abused," and the conclusion is lightly arrived at, that 
 the clerical fellows are, as usual, in the wrong. It may 
 be less credible that three lawyers have made a mis- 
 take than that some twice three hundred clergymen, one 
 of them being such an one as Dr. Chalmers, have turned 
 their whole existence into a falsehood. 
 
 Eesuming the main course of my observations, I 
 call the attention of the House to the circumstances 
 under which the Court of Session took, as I say, the 
 wrong turn. The patron, Lord Kinnoull, presented Mr. 
 Young to the parish of Auchterarder. The congrega- 
 tion, by an all but unanimous majority, testified their 
 unwillingness to receive him as their pastor. He was 
 therefore rejected by the Presbytery. A suit was 
 brought into the Court of Session with a view to putting 
 the Patronage Act in force in Mr. Young's favour, and 
 the Court of Session decided that he was legally entitled 
 to be minister of the parish. Up to this point, having 
 it as my object to discriminate and deal with none but 
 essentials, I assume that the Court of Session was in 
 the right. Property had been applied for ; whatever 
 else was craved, property was claimed ; and the jurisdiction 
 of the Court to hear all claims touching property is 
 beyond dispute. But it appeared that, in order that 
 Mr. Young might be put in possession of his property 
 in the regular way, he required to be ordained pastor 
 of the parish. And what I call the wrong turn was
 
 288 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 taken by the Court when it proceeded to command and 
 coerce the Church to ordain Mr. Young. 
 
 Let us not fall back into mist. We are in no danger 
 if we keep our eyes open. Every member of this 
 House, every educated man, is aware that ordination to 
 the office of the ministry is one of those things which 
 in all ages and in all Churches has ranked as spiritual. 
 The Premier knows perfectly that ordination is a spiritual 
 matter, and that it must be included in that government 
 which is denned in the Confession of Faith as " distinct 
 from the Civil Magistrate." Reminding him, then, of 
 his statement as to the desire of the Government to 
 preserve all the essentials of the alliance between 
 Church and State in Scotland, I call upon him to admit 
 that the Lords of Session, when they reached this point, 
 ought to have paused and said, " We cannot govern the 
 Church, for we are not ' therein,' we are not ' Church 
 officers,' and we are not ' distinct from the Civil Magis- 
 trate.'" Now the Court of Session, instead of having 
 respect to a government "distinct" from its own, usurped 
 the right to coerce or absorb that government, and to treat 
 the " Church officers," who alone could exercise it, as if 
 they were its own servants. By so doing it has violated 
 the Union. Its conduct has resulted in a comprehensive 
 interruption of the government of the Church. 
 
 The method of the Court of Session has been the most 
 contemptuous that could have been adopted. Their Lord- 
 ships have simply ignored the existence of a " distinct " 
 ecclesiastical government, and proceeded on the tacit 
 assumption that it was sheer affectation, or farce, or 
 hypocrisy, on the part of the " Church officers," to object,
 
 AN IMA GIN A R Y SPEE CH B Y G UTHR1E. 289 
 
 on spiritual or conscientious grounds, to ordain, depose, 
 or admit to full ministerial brotherhood, as the Court of 
 Session pleased to command. Let no one delude himself 
 for a moment by supposing that the Lords of Session debate 
 with us as to the line of demarcation between spirituals 
 and temporals. They do not say what is spiritual, if 
 ordination and deposition are not. They simply ignore 
 any government " distinct from the Civil Magistrate ; " and 
 if the officers of that government come between their 
 decrees and temporals, and refuse to be coerced, they 
 inflict severe punishment. That is all. If the House 
 look into our Claim of Eights, they will find that, along 
 the whole line of Church government, the authority of the 
 Church is struck down. It is taken out of the hands of 
 " Church officers " in the sense of officers obeying the 
 Church, and put into the hand of officers disobeying the 
 Church and obeying the Court of Session. The direction 
 of the Confession of Faith is reversed. 
 
 Is this what the honourable Baronet calls preserving 
 the essentials of the alliance between Church and State 
 in Scotland ? The statute of patronage is not alleged to 
 have repealed the Confession of Faith. The Civil Court 
 could not legally take the place of a government, or even 
 instruct and correct a government, defined in a funda- 
 mental muniment of the constitution verbatim ct literatim 
 as " distinct " from its own. The most gifted man, and 
 perhaps the shrewdest practical lawyer, among the law 
 Lords told them that they were utterly without jurisdic- 
 tion in ecclesiastical matters ; and the fact was illustrated 
 by their attempting to press Church officers into their 
 service and punish them for refusing to be enslaved. 
 19
 
 290 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Vainly did the Church offer to let the Court dispose of 
 the property. The Lords might fairly allege that the 
 Patronage Act, interpreted by common sense, meant the 
 stipend and the duties to he assigned to one and the same 
 man. We do not deny that. By leaving the parish 
 duties to he regulated by the Church and the people, 
 and giving the money to the patron's man, division and 
 dissension would be fostered in parishes. The Church 
 never contemplated this as a feasible, permanent arrange- 
 ment. But she would submit to such an arrangement 
 rather than dissolve the alliance with the State. She 
 would not go out, though stripped of her endowments. 
 But since she scrupulously respected the Court of 
 Session in its own sphere, it was conspicuously blame- 
 worthy in the Court of Session to vault completely out 
 of its own sphere and begin a course of disdainful 
 domineering in the spiritual province, — the sphere ex- 
 pressly marked off* for the " Church officers." Eepeating, 
 then, that the essential, all - comprehending grievance 
 complained of by the Church of Scotland is, that the 
 Court of Session has transferred to itself the govern- 
 ment declared by the Confession of Faith to be distinctive 
 of the Church, I proceed to ask what is that wrong — 
 surely a monstrous one — in redressing which the Court 
 of Session thrusts itself into a sphere from which " the 
 Civil Magistrate " is peremptorily excluded. 
 
 Church patronage, no one hearing me will dispute, 
 possesses the nature of a trust. The property involved 
 is held in trust for the spiritual benefit of parishioners. 
 The Church of Scotland has always professed a supreme 
 regard for the spiritual interests of parishioners, and,
 
 I.\ IMAGINAR Y SPEECH B V GUTHRIE. 291 
 
 nearly ten years ago, embodied, in the Veto Act, the 
 principle that no one should be ordained pastor of a 
 parish if a majority of the male heads of families, heing 
 communicants, disapproved of him on spiritual grounds. 
 The Church thus associated the parishioners with herself 
 in the guardianship of their spiritual interests. She 
 secured that the men who ministered to them spirit- 
 ually, who lived among them as soul-healers, friends, 
 counsellors, should not be ordained as their pastors against 
 their will. The will of the people had been anciently 
 expressed in the " call." This had been allowed to fall 
 too much into abeyance, and for a long period it had 
 been overborne, but it had never been abolished ; and 
 that party in the Church which, after long struggling 
 as a minority, has in the present century become the 
 majority, always contended that the call was consti- 
 tutionally Presbyterian, and that patronage was tin; 
 foreign and questionable element. By the Veto Act 
 the Church reinforced the call. To whatever extent 
 she may have fallen short in the past, she thus intimated 
 to all the world that it was with her a vital principle 
 to ordain no minister to a parish against the will and 
 consent of the parishioners. If the Premier considers 
 this determination incompatible with the essential con- 
 ditions of the alliance between Church and State in 
 Scotland, then we must quit the Establishment. If the 
 call remains, as Lord Brougham said, as completely 
 a nonentity as the wagging of the champion's horse's 
 tail at a coronation, the Establishment must be broken 
 up. Through many a dark day the people of Scotland 
 have stood by the Church, and the Church will now
 
 292 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 stand by the people. But let the House recollect that 
 the Veto Act did not abolish patronage, that in the 
 great majority of cases the patrons were satisfied with 
 the Act, and that the Crown patronage was worked 
 smoothly in connection with it. The Church went rather 
 further than a majority of three Lords of Session held 
 she was legally entitled to go in securing the spiritual 
 interests of parishioners, and for this the Court of 
 Session, regardless of the Confession of Faith, has un- 
 hinged her whole system of government. At this 
 moment the Church cannot, except under severe penalties, 
 depose ministers guilty of theft ; proceed against ministers 
 accused of fraud and swindling ; send ministers into 
 particular districts to preach. 
 
 I need scarcely remark that, if the paralysis to 
 which the Church is at present condemned must con- 
 tinue, we could never, should we remain in the Establish- 
 ment, look the Dissenters of Scotland again in the face. 
 We always told them that, unless we could serve our 
 Lord Christ as well in the Establishment as out of it, we 
 should not be in it ; and if the " distinct " government 
 in the Church " in the hand of Church officers " is at 
 an end, we must tell them that the State Church in 
 Scotland has proved a failure. The right honourable 
 Baronet has reflected in most vehement terms on the 
 severity of discipline with which the Church has visited 
 those of her clergy who, directly disobeying her, have 
 made themselves the instruments and officers of the 
 Court of Session. He carefully points out that he dis- 
 allows the indirect effects of the discipline. " It is," 
 he says, " the degradation of character to which these
 
 AN 1MAGINAR Y SPEECH B V GUTHRIE. 2 3 
 
 men are subjected that most affects me." He looks 
 with friendlier trust upon non - established denomina- 
 tions. Of Roman Catholics, Wesleyans, Congrega- 
 tionalists, he says, "Their right, so far as voluntary 
 jurisdiction is concerned, is quite supreme, and we do 
 not attempt to interfere with it." But a Roman Catholic 
 priest, when deposed, is affected by the " degradation of 
 character" as inevitably as a Presbyterian clergyman. 
 The honourable Baronet must think very meanly of us, 
 and believe us to think very meanly of ourselves, if 
 he expects us to ordain and depose at the bidding of 
 the Court of Session, when the Voluntaries ordain and 
 depose in the exercise of their own discipline. 
 
 No doubt the Premier may insist that the men we 
 have put under discipline declare that they have obeyed 
 the law of the land. But for every minister of the 
 Church of Scotland, the Confession of Faith is indisput- 
 ably the law of the land. By their ordination vows 
 our ministers have expressly accepted and sworn to that 
 ordinance by which the government of the Church of 
 Scotland is declared in the Confession of Faith to be 
 " distinct " from the Civil Magistrate. Is it not really 
 an insult to the human understanding that men who had 
 vowed to obey a government in the Church, " distinct " 
 from that of the Civil Magistrate, should excuse them- 
 selves by simply' reiterating that they had obeyed the 
 Civil Magistrate, — that is to say, by confessing and recon- 
 fessing their fault. 
 
 But the Premier need not be haunted by a spectral 
 apprehension of being compelled, in case of reconciliation 
 with the Church, to witness the expulsion from her
 
 294 THE fiREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 borders of the Strathbogie ministers and all who have 
 sympathised with them. The actually deposed ministers 
 are but a handful. If they express contrition, — if they 
 manifest a sincere desire to return to the arms of the 
 Church, — then it is, to say the least, highly probable 
 that they will be restored. Dr. Candlish, expressing the 
 general sentiment, has publicly declared that he has no 
 wish to see the party opposed to us — the Moderates — 
 driven out of the Church. It is, moreover, a fact that 
 the Moderates have never repudiated the spiritual juris- 
 diction. They profess merely to be in a difficulty as to 
 its application. And it has at all times been a principle 
 and rule of our Presbyterian discipline to judge overt 
 acts and uttered words, not to pry into motives, or to 
 pretend to see what is visible to the eye of God alone. 
 
 I suggest that a provisional arrangement should be 
 formed on the basis of resolutions of the House to the 
 following effect : — 1. That there is not any intention to 
 invade the independent spiritual jurisdiction of the Church 
 of Scotland as defined in the Confession of Faith. 2. That 
 immediate legislation is contemplated with a view to 
 obviate any detriment or disadvantage in temporals, to 
 clergymen of the Church, on account of their recognising, 
 submitting to, and giving full effect to, the spiritual 
 jurisdiction. 3. That legislation will be undertaken 
 with a view to securing, in the settlement of pastors, 
 that the property placed in trust of patrons in Scotland 
 for the spiritual benefit of the people, shall be assigned 
 to no minister against the will, expressed for purposes 
 of edification, of the parishioners. Grant this, and 
 separation will be averted.
 
 AN IMA G1NAR J ' SPEECH B Y GUI UK IE. '1 9 5 
 
 And now, to close all, I shall make two short appeals. 
 In the first place, I entreat honourable gentlemen not to 
 allow themselves to be influenced by the earwig whispers, 
 the stabs in the dark, of those who say that only a handful 
 of head-strong, hare-brained men — interested demagogues 
 wanting to pose as martyrs — will in any case leave the 
 Establishment. It were better to make a noble mistake, 
 — to trust too generously, too bravely, too magnanim- 
 ously — than to estimate human nature so vilely. To 
 approach a member of your honourable House with 
 these insinuations and suspicions is to insult him. 
 
 In the second place, addressing myself specially to the 
 English members of the House, I ask them not to treat 
 this question with impatient indifference as a mere alien 
 and Scotch affair. It is their duty — they will not in 
 terms deny it — to extend to Scotland, which at the 
 Union became one with England, the same care and 
 consideration which are due to England. Scotland 
 maintained her national independence against England 
 for ages. She entered the Union, on the faith of 
 England, as a free and independent nation. The hostile 
 feeling of the earlier time has given place to a senti- 
 ment of the warmest loyalty to our common realm. 
 There was a day when the voice of Scotchmen attracted 
 the notice of Europe, by proclaiming that, while a 
 hundred Scotchmen remained alive, and there was a 
 Scottish hill on which to plant their feet, they would not 
 be reigned over by a King of England. It is now 
 nearer the truth to say that, while a hundred Scotchmen 
 remain alive, the imperial flag will not be rent asunder or 
 the head of England brought low. Never, then, let it be
 
 29 G THE FREE CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 
 
 alleged that, on this most intensely Scottish of all Scotch 
 questions, in which petitions presented to your House 
 prove hundreds of thousands of the worthiest people in 
 Scotland to be supremely interested, the English members 
 of Parliament, overruling the judgment of the Scottish 
 members, and refusing to pause and consider, precipitated 
 the break-up of the Scottish Establishment. 
 
 Alas ! there was no Guthrie present in the House of 
 Commons, — no Chalmers, no Candlish, no Cunningham, 
 no Buchanan, no Hugh Miller, — to plead the cause of 
 Scotland and her Church. In the dusk of suspicion, 
 misunderstanding, vague apprehension, a great wrong was 
 done. Out of 287 members, only 75 voted with Mr. 
 Fox Maule. In the minority voted 25 Scotchmen, in 
 the majority 12, — two to one true to Church and 
 country. Never did the arrogant and icy indifference, 
 so narrow, so ungenial, so unjust, so insular, that shows 
 Englishmen at then very worst, more signally display 
 itself. In the records of the British Parliament it might 
 be difficult to find a more discreditable exhibition.
 
 CHAPTEE XXXIV 
 Qfyanft <E>oo ! f0eg come, f0ep come ! 
 
 THE Claim of Eights had heen presented, the House 
 of Commons had been appealed to, the Government 
 had been as inexorable as a marble Jove. And yet the 
 Church made no sign. Over the face of society, like the 
 moan of a malarious wind, crept the vile hope, the mean 
 suspicion, that the Presbyterian party would play false. 
 " They are not out yet ! Good, sympathetic people, who 
 had floods of tears ready to shed on the occasion, may 
 bottle them up, not forgetting to cork them well, for they 
 must stand long before they be needed." — Thus wrote one 
 who ought to have known his countrymen better. Sooth 
 to say, cause had been given, though never by the Church 
 of Scotland, for questioning the fibre of the clerical con- 
 science. The ghastliest of all the spectacles of the French 
 Eevolution was that of troop after troop of clergymen 
 appearing before the Convention to announce that their 
 profession of religion had been a sham. The uneasy 
 sceptic, the man who knows in his heart that he is not at 
 peace with God, is comforted beyond expression by what 
 strengthens his conviction that all conscience is a lie, a 
 
 297
 
 298 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 nonentity, an echo from no Divine Voice, a thing not to 
 be taken account of among the realities of the world. 
 And so, during the weeks preceding the meeting of the 
 General Assembly, — on the 18th of May 1843, — the 
 whole Satanic school of treasonous theology, and atheistic 
 philosophy, and mere cynical worldliness, continued to 
 mock and moan. 
 
 But the great heart of Scotland knew better. Scott's 
 romantic town, Wordsworth's peerless Edinburgh 
 throned on crags, knew that a day to be remembered 
 was about to rise upon her guardian hills and clustered 
 dwellings. The excitement was intense, and from earliest 
 morning there was a stir in the streets. Never had the 
 gathering at Holyrood to meet the Queen's Commissioner, 
 who again was the Marquis of Bute, been larger or more 
 distinguished. It was remarked, as a pathetically 
 felicitous coincidence, that the portrait of William of 
 Orange, which had hung in the reception room, and 
 opposite to which Lord Bute took up his position, fell 
 from the wall. It was in no small measure due to the 
 common sense and honest firmness of William that no 
 attempt had been made, at the time of his accession, to 
 foist some ecclesiastical compromise, or at least to impose 
 some shadow of Anglican Erastianism, upon the people 
 of Scotland, instead of giving them their own genuine 
 Church. It was appropriately, therefore, that a voice 
 cried out, " There goes the Eevolution Settlement." 
 
 With extraordinary pomp, through crowded streets, 
 the procession moved to St. Giles's Church. There, for 
 the last time, the lineal descendants of those who rose 
 in the rear of Jenny Geddes's stool to begin a revolution
 
 THANK GOD! THEY COME, THEY COME! 299 
 
 that changed the course of Britain's history, met around 
 Dr. Welsh, the retiring Moderator, one of their own most 
 resolute leaders, to hear him preach. He told them that 
 the eyes of Christendom were upon them, but that this 
 was a small matter compared with that of getting their 
 feet upon the adamant of conscience, and feeling them- 
 selves in the presence of their Divine Head. 
 
 It was between two and three in the afternoon when 
 Dr. Welsh took the chair as Moderator of Assembly 
 in St. Andrew's Church. A few minutes later, Her 
 Majesty's Commissioner entered. The great church 
 was filled from floor to ceiling. Never perhaps in its 
 history had the heart of Edinburgh been more deeply 
 touched, its brain more keenly stirred. The cause had 
 always been in some peculiar sense the cause of Edin- 
 burgh, a town whose fine intellectuality, nurtured on 
 learning, law, literature, science, and theology, elicited 
 the keen admiration of Charles Dickens. The intel- 
 lectuality of Edinburgh was now raised to highest temper 
 by glow of religious emotion ; and the vast audience, in 
 the church and in the street, knowing that, in logic as 
 well as religion, the ministers of Christ had on this 
 occasion the advantage of the lawyers, vexed with no 
 faithless fear lest the Scottish clergy might fail in moral 
 heroism, expected breathlessly but exultantly the decisive 
 moment. 
 
 Having opened the meeting with prayer, the Moderator, 
 whose manner we may realise as an impressive combina- 
 tion of solemnity and intrepidity, made the announcement 
 that, in consequence of an infringement on the liberties 
 of the Church, they could not constitute the General
 
 300 THE FREE CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. 
 
 Assembly, and he would read a protest embodying 
 reasons for declining further proceedings. The document 
 in question was signed by 203 ministers and elders, 
 members of the House. It consisted of a brief but 
 substantial summary of the Claim of Eights, with the 
 all-important addition that the Legislature, by refusing to 
 concede the Claim, or even to take it into full and fair 
 consideration, had " recognised and fixed " conditions of 
 Establishment which were subversive of the spiritual 
 jurisdiction of the Church. Having made good, by a 
 sufficient number of irrefragable facts, this position, the 
 protesters declare it to be their duty to separate, in a 
 way of peace and order, from the Establishment, which 
 in its constitutional verity they love and prize, carrying 
 with them the Standards of the Church, ceasing in no 
 whit to be the Church, but " enforced " to rupture of the 
 State connection by " interference with conscience, the 
 dishonour done to Christ's crown, and the rejection of His 
 sole and supreme authority as King in His Church." 
 
 The reading ended, Dr. Welsh laid the protest on the 
 table of the Assembly, turned to Her Majesty's Commis- 
 sioner, " who rose in evident and deep emotion," and 
 bowed. It was a courteous but resolute farewell. The 
 Church of Scotland, in the person of her Moderator, 
 handed back to the State that property which she could 
 no longer retain with due regard to her duties to those 
 Scottish parishioners for whose spiritual benefit it had 
 been confided to her, and without surrendering that 
 spiritual jurisdiction which, as part of the Holy Catholic 
 Church, she possessed from Christ her Head. He moved 
 calmly towards the door.
 
 THANK GOD ! THEY COME, THEY COME ! 301 
 
 Chalmers had been standing immediately on Welsh's 
 left. A thousand eyes had been on him as the protest 
 was being read, and it was observed that there was about 
 him a look of dreaminess and abstraction. Was he, in 
 that supreme hour, thinking of the picturescp:ie manses 
 and manse-gardens of Scotland, or of the nine prelates 
 and the Prmce of the Blood that had welcomed him in 
 London, so lately, as a defender of Church Establish- 
 ments ? Suddenly, when Welsh began to move, he awoke 
 to the present, and followed him with the air of one 
 impatient to be gone. Dr. Gordon, Dr. Macdonald, of 
 Ferintosh, rose and went after Chalmers. Another, and 
 another, and gradually whole benches, moved away. 
 Intense interest pervaded the vast audience. Many, 
 both men and women, were weeping ; but the tears were 
 of pride, of exultation, of inexpressible joy. When the 
 head of the column reached the open air, when the crowd 
 recognised the familiar but loved and honoured figures of 
 Chalmers, Gordon, Cunningham, Guthrie, Candlish, — these 
 and so many others, — then a shout, " They come, they 
 come ! Thank God, they come !" rang through the air. 
 
 Dividing spontaneously to receive the column of Pres- 
 byters as they advanced, the great multitude escorted 
 them down the long slope of the hill, looking across 
 the Firth of Forth to Fife and the Highlands, toward 
 Tanfield Hall, Canonmills, which had been prepared for 
 their reception. About four hundred clergymen had 
 withdrawn from St. Andrew's Church, and in the course 
 of the next day the number of those who relinquished 
 the dignities and endowment of Establishment had risen 
 to nearly five hundred. "We did not," said Guthrie,
 
 .°>02 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 " come out a small and scattered band ; but, on the day 
 of the Disruption, burst out of St. Andrew's Church as a 
 river bursts from a glacier, — a river at its birth. In 
 numbers, in position, in wealth, as well as in piety, our 
 Church, I may say, was full grown on the day it was 
 born. Above all, and next to the prayers that sanctified 
 our cause, we were followed by a host of countrymen, 
 whose enthusiasm had been kindled at the ashes of 
 martyrs, and who saw in our movement but another 
 phase of the grand old days that won Scotland her fame, 
 and made her a name and a praise in the whole earth." 
 
 So the mockers and the moaners, the cynics, the 
 sceptics, and the whole Satanic school of critics, — those 
 true sinners against the Holy Ghost, who blaspheme 
 the Divine gleam of moral heroism when it appears 
 among men, — were in the wrong. It is roughly estimated 
 that in annual income the ministers of the Free Church 
 surrendered £100,000. But it will be readily admitted 
 that, even when the large addition that falls to be made to 
 this on account of glebes and manses has been reckoned, 
 the most difficult part of the sacrifice, as involving the 
 rupture of dear and tender associations, and the forfeiture 
 of cherished dignity, will remain to be counted. The act 
 has been recognised by all generous and candid observers 
 as a piece of honest adherence to principle, the simple 
 heroism of truth and worth, the matching of profession 
 with performance. On this ground it was looked upon 
 with proud sympathy by Jeffrey, whose true-hearted 
 patriotism led him both to do justice to his native 
 Church at every stage in the conflict, and to affirm, as 
 he witnessed the Disruption, that such a spectacle could
 
 THANK GOD ! THEY COME, THEY COME I 303 
 
 have been seen only in his native land. Carlyle, in 
 those melancholy years when his visionary optimism was 
 darkening into despair, may have let some sneers escape 
 him about the Free Church, but within ten years of the 
 Disruption he signalised it as the best bit of moral 
 performance that had been transacted in his time. Mr. 
 Justin MacCarthy has generously honoured it in his 
 eloquent and admirable history of the Victorian Epoch. 
 
 And Macaulay, no prejudiced, and surely a well- 
 informed witness, pronounced in these words his judg- 
 ment as to which of the Assemblies, the departing or 
 the remaining, represented the true Church of Scotland. 
 " Suppose that we could call up Carstairs ; that we could 
 call up Boston, the author of the Fourfold State ; that we 
 could relate to them the history of the ecclesiastical 
 revolutions which have, since their time, taken place in 
 Scotland ; and that we could then ask them, ' Is the 
 Established Church, or is the Free Church, identical with 
 the Church which existed at the time of the Union ? ' 
 Is it not quite certain what their answer would be ? 
 They would say, ' Our Church, the Church which you 
 promised to maintain unalterable, was not the Church 
 which you (the legislators of Great Britain) protect, but 
 the Church which you oppress. Our Church was the 
 Church of Chalmers and Brewster, not the Church of 
 Bryce and Muir.'" 
 
 It is related that when the movement to follow Welsh 
 and Chalmers began in St. Andrew's Church, Kobertson, 
 of Ellon, the ablest and at the same time the most 
 respected and earnest among the Moderates, rose from 
 his place, took his station near the door, and watched
 
 304 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 with anxious face what was taking place. When lie 
 saw that the great body of those men who had been the 
 light of the Church were actually departing, the blood, it 
 is said, left his face and he became pale with sorrow. It 
 was a nobler demeanour than if he had looked with cynical 
 pride or harsh resentment upon his retreating antagonists. 
 It was a tacit but eloquent acknowledgment that the men 
 who were going had been no ignoble opponents, and that 
 their departure was a deep loss to the Establishment. 
 Let the figure of Eobertson, as he at that hour appeared, 
 stand for a symbol of the willingness of all that is best 
 in the Established Church of Scotland to greet the day 
 when the flimsy partitions that still stand between the 
 sections of the whole Presbyterian Church of the land 
 shall be removed. If not in theory, then in practice, all 
 that the fathers and founders of the Free Church asked 
 on behalf of the Establishment has, through their con- 
 tendings, through sacrifices that were, for them, the very 
 cracking of the heartstrings, been granted. They want 
 no thanks from their successors. They seek no compli- 
 ments, no detailed endorsement of their proceedings ; but, 
 even as they stand with their King around the throne of 
 God, they ask to see, as the result and reward of their 
 sacred passion, all branches of the Church of Scotland 
 ranged under one banner, and that banner inscribed with 
 the Crown Eights of the Eedeemer.
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 Zfyt Queen's &etier. 
 
 BEFORE following Chalmers and his column into the 
 hall at Canonmills, we may cast one glance on the 
 truly miserable attempt, or pretext at an attempt, made 
 by Sir James Graham and the Government, when the 
 eleventh hour had struck, to avert the separation. 
 
 The Queen's letter to the Assembly was found, on 
 being opened, to contain the following sentences : " The 
 Church of Scotland, occupying its true position in friendly 
 alliance with the State, is justly entitled to expect the 
 aid of Parliament in removing any doubts which may 
 have arisen with respect to the right construction of the 
 statutes relating to the admission of ministers. You may 
 safely confide in the wisdom of Parliament ; and we shall 
 readily give our assent to any measure which the Legis- 
 lature may pass for the purpose of securing to the people 
 the full privilege of objection, and to the Church judica- 
 tories the exclusive right of judgment." 
 
 Had this declaration and this promise been made in 
 good time and in good faith, and with a candid desire to 
 respect the spiritual independence of the Church, some
 
 306 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 good result might have ensued. But it seems impossible 
 for any one who has sufficiently followed the conflict to 
 know its catchwords, its pitfalls, its openings for that 
 interminable hair-splitting which almost drove Candlish 
 frantic, to read these words — the mature fruits of Sir 
 James Graham's genius — without feeling that, brought 
 forward at this time, they were cruelly frivolous. There 
 was not an ordinarily clever and patriotic schoolboy 
 in Edinburgh — the statement is made with the utmost 
 deliberation — who, upon coming to the word " objection," 
 might not have cried, " Objection, — privilege of objection, 
 ■ — why, that brings back the old question, Is the objection 
 reasonable or unreasonable? and you may split hairs 
 about that for ever." 
 
 More subtle is the comment, and yet not trivial or 
 captious, that the last words of our quotation, which 
 constitute, in fact, the offer of a bribe to the clergy, in 
 form of power over the people, if only they will accept 
 them, as parochial serfs, from the State, are pitiful. Not 
 possessing the gift of prophecy, the ministers could not 
 tell but their successors might tyrannise over the people, 
 as their predecessors, the Moderates, had tyrannised. They 
 would not accept unlimited right of judgment, while the 
 people could only formulate objections. They demanded 
 that the spiritual will of the people should be sacred 
 from enforcement, either by Church officers or by State 
 officers. 
 
 If anything could lend a tragic dignity to this letter, 
 it would have been its formal association with the 
 sovereign. That kind, good lady, whose heart and the 
 heart of Scotland found each other out so soon, and have
 
 THE Q UEEN'S LE TTER. 307 
 
 remained faithful to each other so long, knows and values 
 all the branches of the Church in Scotland. Her Majesty, 
 with her revered Consort, sent to Scotland, at the time 
 of the Disruption, the distinguished and able Sydow, who 
 drew up a luminous, nobly-toned, and conclusive vindica- 
 tion of the Free Church. Had it been constitutionally 
 Queen Victoria's part to deal proprio motu with the Church 
 business, it would never have been so ignorantly and 
 negligently mismanaged.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 TITHEN the column had entered the hall, and the 
 ** ministers had taken their place in the centre, 
 all other parts of the immense building being densely 
 crowded, the first breath of the new-born Church went 
 up, from the lips of its retiring Moderator, in a prayer 
 of such " thrilling pathos" and " overpowering solemnity," 
 as befitted this appeal from earth to heaven. 
 
 The first business was to appoint a new Moderator. 
 So soon as Dr. Welsh uttered the name of Chalmers, 
 a burst of acclamation ascended from the audience, and 
 they rose to their feet as one man. In a few well- 
 chosen words Dr. Welsh alluded to his fame, his genius, 
 his crowning glory in being among those who, " having 
 turned many to righteousness, shall shine as the stars 
 for ever and ever." Chalmers rose, briefly acknow- 
 ledged the honour, and gave out the forty-third Psalm, — 
 
 "Oscnd Thy light forth and Thy truth, 
 Let them he guides to me, 
 And lead me to Thy holy hill, 
 Even where Thy dwellings be." 
 
 30S
 
 THE FREE CHURCH. 309 
 
 The voice of the vast audience rose with such a volume 
 of sound, that it seemed, said Dr. James Hamilton, who 
 was present, " as if the swell of vehement melody would 
 lift the roof from off the walls." Just at that moment 
 the sun, which a heavy thunderstorm had thrown into 
 almost complete eclipse, pierced the clouds and brilliantly 
 lighted the place. 
 
 The address of Chalmers was in all respects worthy 
 of himself and of this great historical occasion. He 
 began by stating simply and calmly that the Legislature 
 had declined to concede the claim of the Church, and 
 had thus made subjection to the Civil Power in spiritual 
 tilings a condition of Establishment. With as serene a 
 sense of consistency, therefore, as he had ever felt in 
 defending State Establishments of religion, he now 
 announced that he and his brethren had dissolved their 
 alliance with the State. "We are compelled," — these 
 were his w r ords, — " though with great reluctance and 
 deep sorrow of heart, to quit the advantages of the 
 British Establishment, because she has fallen from her 
 original principles, in the hope that we shall be suffered 
 to prosecute our labours in peace on the ground of 
 toleration." 
 
 Clear, comprehensive, conclusive ! If any fact admits 
 of historical verification, it is historically true that, in the 
 period preceding 1843, the Court of Session had assumed 
 complete jurisdiction over the Church of Scotland. The 
 sole and supreme Headship of Christ, as explicitly affirmed 
 in the Confession of Faith to involve a government " in 
 the hands of Church officers distinct from the Civil 
 Magistrate," had been superseded.
 
 310 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Constitutionally and in Christian peacefulncss the 
 Church sought refuge in toleration. A thousand times 
 have feeble or half-honest rhetoricians woven webs of 
 sophistication to confuse persons weaker than themselves, 
 under the notion that toleration offers no sounder guarantee 
 of spiritual independence than the weighed and measured 
 specifications of Erastian Establishment. But whatever 
 allowance must be made for the occasional perversity or 
 extravagance of lawyers, it remains certain that, under 
 the blue vault of toleration, the free Churches of Great 
 Britain enjoy every essential of spiritual freedom. Could 
 Queen or Parliament command Dr. Dale, of Birmingham, 
 to ordain a man pastor to a reclaiming congregation ? 
 If the person in question told the Court of Queen's Bench 
 that ten thousand pounds of property depended for him 
 upon Dr. Dale's being commanded to ordain him, would 
 the Court fine, or reprimand, or threaten to imprison Dr. 
 Dale for declining to do so ? The justice of a strong, 
 free, and noble nation is a mighty guarantee, and so 
 long as British freedom endures, and Congregationalists, 
 Bomanists, and Presbyterians pay their own way and 
 break no civil law, they will enjoy spiritual freedom and 
 self-government under the open sky of toleration. 
 
 Chalmers then alluded in seemly and modest terms to 
 the sacrifices made by the brethren. " It is well that you 
 should have been strengthened by your Master in heaven 
 to make the surrender you have dune of everything that 
 is dear to nature, casting aside all your earthly depend- 
 ence rather than offend conscience, incur the guilt of 
 sinful compliance by thwarting your own sense of duty, and 
 run counter to the Bible, our great Church Directory and
 
 THE FREE CHURCH. 311 
 
 statute-book." And from this he passed on to expatiate 
 on one of his favourite ideas. " We read," he said, " in 
 the Scriptures, and I believe it will be found true in the 
 history and experience of God's people, that there is a 
 certain light and joyfulness and elevation of spirit 
 consequent upon a moral achievement such as this. 
 Apart from Christianity altogether, there has been 
 realised a joyfulness of heart, a proud swelling of con- 
 scious integrity, when a conquest has been effected by 
 the higher over the inferior powers of our nature ; and 
 so among Christians there is a legitimate glorying, as 
 when the disciples of old gloried in the midst of their 
 tribulations when the spirit of glory and of God rested 
 on them, when they were made partakers of the Divine 
 nature, and escaped the corruption that is in the world ; 
 or as when the Apostle Paul rejoiced in the testimony 
 of his conscience. But let us not forget in the midst of 
 this rejoicing the deep humility that pervaded their songs 
 of exultation." 
 
 Thus was inaugurated the Free Church of Scotland. 
 The State Church experiment, conducted under circum- 
 stances of peculiar advantage, had broken down. Dr. 
 George Hill, the glory of the Moderates, had told his 
 students, of whom the most illustrious headed this 
 exodus, that "as the Church did exist before it was 
 united with the State, it may exist without any such 
 union;" and Chalmers now obeyed his teacher, and led 
 the Church into freedom. What did we hear Hill saying 
 at the outset ? " If the Church, instead of deriving any 
 benefit from the State, were opposed and persecuted by 
 the Civil Magistrate, it would be not only proper, but
 
 312 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 necessary, to put forth of herself those powers which, 
 in more favourable circumstances, she chooses only to 
 exercise in conjunction with the State." When we read 
 the unanswered and unanswerable Claim of Eight, and 
 realise how completely, how contemptuously, the Court 
 of Session had in those years scoffed aside as a mere 
 nonentity — a fantastic hi visibility interposed between 
 property and the Civil Power — the spiritual jurisdiction 
 of the Church, we may indeed wonder how Dr. Cook 
 and his associates could believe themselves true, in act 
 as well as in word, to the noblest traditions even of the 
 Moderate party. The State Churches that arose in the 
 wake of the Eeformation deserve that respect which 
 pertains to all institutions that have been used by 
 Providence, and have done good in their time. The best 
 and bravest of them now broke first into freedom, — 
 appropriately so, as the strongest bud is first in bloom, 
 and the strongest eaglet is the first to leave the shelter- 
 ing eyrie on the crag.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 £0e ^eefimong* 
 
 IT will be in place to devote a few sentences to 
 knitting up historically the event just witnessed, 
 and estimating its bearing upon the testimony of the 
 Church of Scotland to the grand principle of Christian 
 catholicity, the Headship of our Lord. 
 
 It was under favouring providential conditions that 
 the Church entered, in the sixteenth century, on the 
 particular path of witness-bearing that lay before her. 
 Knox and her reformers in general were thoroughly 
 cosmopolitan, having been at home in England, in Frank- 
 fort, in Geneva, wherever the foremost ideas of the 
 time were most visibly in front. A weak monarch in 
 Scotland presented opportunities which the hard, able, 
 and tyrannical Tudors denied to the Reforming party 
 in England. In her early history the Church laid her 
 hold upon the affections of the people, and possessed 
 in her Assembly, to use the words of Professor Charteris, 
 " a free and popular Parliament when the Crown was 
 despotic and when the nobles were in anarchy." It was 
 hardly perhaps so much in the way of expressly formulat-
 
 314 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 ing a dogma, though this was by implication effected, as 
 by practical exercise of the natural rights of life and of 
 growth, that the Church came to realise her sole spiritual 
 allegiance to her Head. The spirit in which she recog- 
 nised herself, not as the Church of Christ in any exclusive 
 sense, but as one section of the Church of many nations, 
 was in strictest harmony with this view. 
 
 In the seventeenth century, though it is difficult to 
 repel the idea that the Church of Scotland was in some 
 respects decadent, for there was a narrowing Catharism 
 in the seventeenth century alien to the larger spirit of 
 the sixteenth, she did not forget her catholicity, and she 
 inscribed for ever in the annals of the world her devotion 
 to the Headship of Christ. The Solemn League and 
 Covenant, as she intended it, was to be a token of amity 
 and Catholic union throughout Eeformed Christendom. 
 She placed upon the portals of the Shorter Catechism, as 
 the beginning and end of education for every Christian 
 child, the glorious words, closely akin in sound and sense 
 to some of the sublimest ever uttered by Plato, " Man's 
 chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy Him for ever." 
 And it may be claimed as due to her influence, that 
 her great principle of the Headship of Christ was 
 lucidly, exactly, indelibly inscribed on those West- 
 minster Standards which have been accepted by the 
 Eeformed Church throughout the English-speaking race. 
 
 But distinguished as her seventeenth century record 
 had been, it was shadowed by serious drawbacks. If it 
 could not be said that the Church did ever, as such, 
 avail herself of material weapons, it could not be denied 
 that, in the plenitude of her power, she was perilously
 
 THE TESTIMONY. 315 
 
 free in making the Civil Magistrate indirectly her minister, 
 and even the sword indirectly her weapon. And beyond 
 question she had not, in the seventeenth century, attained 
 to the grace of tolerance. This great attainment hud 
 been facilitated for all Churches, long before the Dis- 
 ruption, by the century of suspended enthusiasm and 
 vivacious reason, of waxing science and waning supersti- 
 tion, the much maligned but not unprofitable eighteenth 
 century. The last vestige of a disposition to encroach 
 upon temporals, the last trace of intolerance and 
 superstition, had departed from the Church of Scot- 
 land before 1843 ; and the Church of Chalmers, Welsh, 
 and Gordon, of Candlish, Cunningham, and Guthrie, bore, 
 it may be candidly maintained, the most precisely correct 
 and the most impressively eloquent testimony to the 
 sole and supreme Kingship of Christ over the Church 
 that has been uttered since the Reformation. 
 
 A few points bearing directly on the edification and 
 the efficiency of the Church, hi relation to this doctrine, 
 deserve to be briefly noted. 
 
 It fixes the gaze of the Christian army upon its King, 
 the Divine Personality, Christ Jesus, whom all wise men 
 discern to be the epitome of the revelation of God. 
 
 It reminds Christians of their privilege and duty to 
 carry with them, as emanating from Christ, a certain 
 kingliness of spiritual authority, a call to speak in the 
 accent of conscience, the tone of the moral imperative, 
 commanding morally sick men in His name to be well, 
 and morally dead men to arise, and all men to repent. 
 
 It broadens out into the blue expanse of catholicity 
 the little tent of sectarian peculiarity, and tempers with
 
 316 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 a loving spirit the arid intellectnalism and negativism 
 that beset Protestants. Thus is smitten down and 
 refuted, in the way which is at once most conclusive 
 and most conspicuous, the cruel and wicked lie against 
 the Eeformers that they were founders of sects, preachers 
 of dogmatic specialties, instead of restorers of the truth 
 and unveilers of the Church. No words ever came from 
 the heart of Luther of more impassioned earnestness than 
 those in which he expressed the wish that every syllable 
 he had ever written should perish rather than that his 
 comments should be put in the place of Holy Writ. 
 Such was the spirit of all the great Eeformers, who 
 with one voice virtually adjured Christians, as Paul did, 
 in tones of piercing, poignant entreaty, not to put them 
 in the place of Christ. 
 
 It throws upon the proper shoulders, to wit her own, 
 a sense of responsibility for the order of the Church and 
 the defence of the truth, not permitting Christians to 
 trust for the purity of then- doctrines to civil lawyers ; 
 or to political assemblies, in which atheism and infidelity 
 may prevail, for their worship, discipline, or the settlement 
 of their ministers. 
 
 It pours a consecrating ray, direct from heaven, upon 
 all those operations, missionary, philanthropic, educa- 
 tional, in which Christians work together for the pro- 
 motion and extension of Christ's cause. When we 
 observe the clumsy, haphazard, anarchical machinery 
 of societies, unions, associations, talking-clubs, extempor- 
 ised conferences, congresses, committees, by which Chris- 
 tian undertakings and Church work are generally carried 
 on in England, are we not tempted to ask whether some
 
 THE TESTIMONY. 317 
 
 men imagine that Christ has positively forbidden His 
 Church to manage her concerns in His name, on the 
 principles laid down in His law, on methods found to be 
 expedient, and in the spirit of His disciples ? Let the 
 sacred right and duty of spiritual self-government be 
 but duly apprehended by the Christian communities of 
 Europe and America, and the chaos of denominationalism 
 will beam gradually into a world of order, light, and 
 beauty. 
 
 The Headship of Christ is the principle of catholicity ; 
 and the day it is made light of, the day it is put aside as 
 obsolete, will be a day of perishing for the Church. 
 Better were it for her that she should once more betake 
 herself to the hill and the moor, that her membership 
 should dwindle to two Christians and Christ on Scottish 
 ground, than that her life-principle should be compro- 
 mised and the Headship foresworn. But while the living 
 Christ is her Head, there can be no risk of narrowness, 
 no mistake about catholicity. The Vine with the surface 
 of the world for its vineyard, — the Good Seed with the 
 area of the world for its field, — the Leaven with the 
 atmosphere of the world for its medium,— these are our 
 Master's own symbols of the catholicity of His Church.
 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 £0e JJusfenfafion §unfc. 
 
 CONVOCATION had been the spiritual birth -hour 
 ^ of the Free Church. All who felt themselves 
 embraced within the fellowship of its brotherhood, and 
 linked together in the inspiration of its sacred purpose, 
 were henceforth free ; and it was as a Free Churchman 
 that M'Cheyne, who did not live to join the procession 
 to Canonmills, rose, on the wings of his long-remembered 
 Convocation prayer, to heaven. Assembled in their hall, 
 under those same leaders who had helped them to realise 
 Christ's presence in the Convocation, the brethren and 
 their adherents felt that a great step had been taken, 
 that it was well with them, that there was a sound of 
 timbrels and of dances in the air, and that the Eed Sea 
 and the land of bondage lay behind. 
 
 Need it be said that the foremost leader shone in the 
 practical part of the enterprise ? The name of Chalmers 
 is not more closely connected with the Church's spiritual 
 independence, and the proclamation of the monarchy of 
 Christ upon earth, than with those principles and methods 
 of Church finance which are suggested by the mention
 
 THE SUSTENTA TION FUND. 319 
 
 of the Sustentation Fund. The point to be realised is, 
 that those principles and methods, while intensely 
 practical, partake of the ideal character of the Christian 
 Church. As a political economist, Chalmers had the 
 healthiest sympathy with commerce ; but he would not 
 have admitted that Christian pastors were competitive 
 tradesmen, or even had a right to look upon their calling, 
 as lawyers and physicians are allowed to do, with an eye 
 to social and pecuniary success. They were bound to 
 merge the personal motive in the sympathetic glow of 
 pastoral brotherhood, the sacred esprit cle corps of ministers 
 of Christ, and to teach their flocks to rise above congre- 
 gational selfishness into regard for the interests of the 
 Church. Not competition but Christian communism 
 was the principle adopted, and no door was left open for 
 that fortune-making which has so grievously tarnished 
 the spiritual glory of the Christian pulpit hi London and 
 New York. 
 
 The principle of a Sustentation Fund, equality of 
 distribution, and this alone, can obviate the extremes 
 of luxurious affluence on the one hand, and of strangling 
 poverty on the other. Not that rigid rules can be laid 
 down. It is out of the question that absolute uniformity 
 of income should be prescribed, or that the attempt should 
 be made to prevent congregations from making any 
 special additions to the amounts received by their pastors 
 from the common fund. But the benefits of the system, 
 in securing a fair average, have been abundantly proved, 
 and are incalculable. 
 
 Chalmers had been strenuously engaged for many 
 weeks before the Disruption in making his financial
 
 320 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 preparations. Six hundred and eighty-seven associations 
 had been organised, and two hundred and thirty-nine of 
 these were in actual operation. Had all the pastors who 
 adhered to the Free Church been thrown for maintenance 
 upon the members of their own congregations who came 
 out with them, then, in upwards of two hundred instances, 
 the charges must have been abandoned. In any other 
 country except Scotland, — and not even for Scotland can 
 the exception be pleaded save in this instance, — it would 
 have been thought sufficiently generous on the part of 
 wealthy congregations and their pastors, after providing 
 for their own requirements, to start a society in aid of 
 those crippled congregations, — a society that should 
 institute inquiries, make condescending suggestions, and 
 at the end of that humiliating process, with which poor 
 pastors in England are agonisingly familiar, hand out 
 doles. The Free Church received all those brethren and 
 their congregations into her arms, providing endowment 
 for almost the whole of the Highlands. This involved 
 a self-denying ordinance on the part botli of the popular 
 Free Church ministers and the well-to-do Free Church 
 congregations, as deeply imbued with celestial fire, as 
 instinct with moral nobleness, as anything in the entire 
 transaction. 
 
 Candlish, of whom Dr. Gordon said that he was 
 " essentially an unselfish man," and whom we saw antici- 
 pating the principle of the Sustentation Fund in 1841, 
 was at the time of the Disruption loved beyond measure 
 by one of the richest congregations in Edinburgh. In 
 the first year of freedom, that congregation subscribed 
 about £10,000 to the purposes of the Church. By
 
 7 TIE SU STENT A TION FUND. 321 
 
 merely being silent, by simply letting his friends enjoy 
 what would have been for them the luxurious delight of 
 showering gold upon him, Candlish might have been far 
 richer than before. What he did receive from his con- 
 gregation was £200, having refused to accept of more. 
 And of this £200 he returned £50, besides declining to 
 take his share from the Sustentation Fund. There is a 
 chord in every human heart that vibrates to Christianity 
 like this ! 
 
 It was part of Chalmers's idea that the duty and 
 privilege of supporting the service of the Master should 
 be shared in by all members of the Church, artisans 
 and day -labourers and domestic servants, as well as 
 by marchionesses and millionaires. It is beautiful to 
 observe how giving became, under these Christian cir- 
 cumstances, more blessed than receiving. It was not 
 on the thousands handed in by the rich that Chalmers 
 dwelt with fondest satisfaction, but on the pence of the 
 poor. " The liberalities," he said, " which have been 
 poured forth on our great enterprise, even by the 
 humblest of our artisans and labourers, and the grateful 
 responses which these have called back again, — the words 
 of kindness and encouragement which have been sent 
 from all places of the land, to bear us up on the field 
 of conflict, and our thankful sense of the friendship which 
 prompted them, — the amalgamating power of a common 
 object and a common feeling, to cement and knit together 
 the hearts of men, — the very emulation to love and to 
 good works, which has given birth to so many associa- 
 tions, each striving to outrun the other in their generous 
 contributions for the support of what is deemed by all
 
 322 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 to be a noble cause, — even the working of these associa- 
 tions, in which the rich and the poor are often made to 
 change places, the former visiting the houses of the latter, 
 and receiving the offerings of Christian benevolence at 
 their hands, — the multiplied occasions of intercourse thus 
 opened up between those parties in the commonwealth 
 which before stood at the greatest distance, and were 
 wont to look with the indifference, if not the coldness, 
 of aliens to each other, — these are so many sweetening 
 and exalting influences which serve to foster the sympathy 
 of a felt brotherhood among thousands and tens of 
 thousands of our countrymen, and will mightily tend, 
 we are persuaded, to elevate and humanise the society 
 of Scotland." 
 
 It is beautiful to see how the experiences of Free 
 Church finance charm the ingenuous soul of Chalmers, 
 who seems never to have once bethought him of the 
 hard things he used to think, if not to say, of the 
 Voluntary system. It must, however, be confessed that 
 Voluntaryism never appeared in so fine a form as that 
 it assumed under the auspices of this champion of 
 Establishment. Nor ought it to be disguised that, un- 
 exampled as was the success of Voluntaryism in the 
 Church of Chalmers, it nevertheless failed to reach the 
 height of his ideal. Never did he see congregational 
 selfishness so completely smitten down as he could have 
 wished, — never did he see the cause of the poor, relatively 
 to that of the rich, in country or in town, so well cared 
 for as he demanded, — never did the liberality of Christians, 
 splendid as Free Church liberality was, appear to him 
 liberal enough.
 
 THE SUSTENTATION FUND. 323 
 
 But in truth Free Church finance was, and has con- 
 tinued to be during these fifty years, a notable success, 
 a cause of thankful, honourable pride to Scotland and to 
 Christendom. Though in the first year there were cases 
 not a few of painful privation, of suffering to the death, 
 — though the tremendous effort in the outset to build 
 churches, procure dwellings, and provide incomes, told 
 with great severity both upon pastors and people, — yet 
 the position of the Free Church clergy has, in economical 
 respects, been one of many advantages. Eelations of 
 warm friendliness have subsisted between them and their 
 flocks ; and if their money income has not been large, it 
 has been the delight of their people to make them par- 
 takers in all the bounties of the season — fruit, fish, game 
 — as they came round. Owing to the beneficent mechan- 
 ism of the Sustentation Fund, they have been spared 
 the perils and the pains of dependence upon one, two, half 
 a dozen opulent or well-to-do persons in their congrega- 
 tions, and have been under no necessity to wait the 
 convenience of heritors or factors. " For the twenty 
 years consecutively," said Mr. Sage, of Resolis, " in which 
 I was a minister of the Established Church, I did not 
 receive a farthing of my stipend without a grudge, or 
 even without the curse of my heritors along with it." 
 Their delays, their litigious disputes, their desperate 
 niggardliness, vexed and impoverished him. " How 
 different," he exclaims, " was all this from, and how 
 contrary to, the treatment which I have uniformly 
 received since I joined our beloved and truly noble- 
 minded Free Church of Scotland ! Its managers, in- 
 stead of opposing me or adding to my expenses, more
 
 324 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 than half-way meet my wants, and even anticipate them. 
 After shaking myself free of the Establishment and its 
 annoying, unhallowed appendages, in joining the Free 
 Church I may truly say that I exchanged debt and 
 poverty for peace of mind and a competency, enabling 
 me to supply my everyday wants and to pay all debts."
 
 CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 £0e (ttlteetonartee. 
 
 THOSE were not days of cablegrams, when responses 
 from India, Australia, Canada, Chicago could have 
 reached Canonmills in an hour. It was only in faith 
 and hope that the Free Churchmen could in any measure 
 realise the extent to which they commanded the 
 sympathies of Christendom. 
 
 At the very first, indeed, the leal and gallant Presby- 
 terians of Ulster held out to them the right hand of 
 fellowship, and the Presbyterians of England greeted 
 them with acclamation. In due course the envoy sent 
 to report upon them by Queen Victoria and Prince 
 Albert pronounced their argument invulnerable ; and 
 Hase, in his masterly epitome of Church history, ranked 
 their exodus among the sacred episodes of Christian 
 progress. A large proportion of the probationers of the 
 Church — the ministers who had not yet obtained charges 
 —cast in their lot with them, and almost in a body the 
 students of theology joined them. Dr. Eabbi Duncan, 
 and all who, with him, were inspired with ardent zeal for 
 the conversion of the Jews, saw in the Free Church the
 
 32G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 most accurate realisation achieved, since the days of 
 Paul, of the Christian Israel. As weeks and months 
 went by, Dr. Chalmers received ahout a score of con- 
 gratulatory letters or addresses from the same number 
 of distinct Christian communities, representing the vast 
 and various ramification of the great tree of Eeformed 
 Christianity. 
 
 So soon as it was possible to hear from India and 
 other outlying portions of the Mission Field, it became 
 known that, without a single exception, the whole of the 
 missionaries, with Dr. Duff at their head, adhered to the 
 Free Church. No testimony in her favour can be con- 
 ceived more weighty and impressive than this. The 
 missionaries felt themselves spiritually in touch with 
 the Free Church ; nor can it be doubted that the larger 
 part of their material support had reached them from 
 men who were now Free Churchmen. And we cannot 
 wonder at this, for it is first and foremost of the Church 
 of all Christian missionaries that Christ is King and 
 Head. It is of a Church in motion rather than of a 
 Church at rest that we have a description in the New 
 Testament. It is marching orders, rather than directions 
 for the pitching of tents or for the employment of time 
 in camp, that the Master has left us. And it is in 
 connection with the mission enterprises of the last half 
 century that the Church in all its sections has most 
 conspicuously blessed the world, and that blessing has 
 most manifestly been reflected back upon the home 
 congregations. The missionary has approved himself the 
 most efficient minister of civilisation, the man who 
 enables the untutored child of nature to realise that
 
 THE MISSIONARIES. 327 
 
 civilisation has a heart and a conscience, and is not 
 necessarily an invasion of fraud and cruelty. 
 
 In India, in Africa, in the islands of the Pacific, the 
 missionaries of the Free Church have done noble work, 
 and have been honoured by the Universal Church. When 
 they have gone out into the great wilderness of pagan 
 humanity, the difference between a social atmosphere 
 impregnated with Christian elements and one where 
 the name of Christ is unknown, has been felt by them 
 and all missionaries to be so great, that the things 
 on which Christians disagree have seemed to dwindle, 
 and the things on which they agree to rise into supreme 
 importance. It is seen that there are but two religions 
 in the world, — the religions which, having served their 
 providential ends, are dying of decrepitude, perishing in 
 the dawn ; and the religion whose God cannot be eclipsed 
 by civilisation until civilisation reveals something purer 
 than Light and better than Love. Duff, Moffat, Living- 
 stone are household words, not in the Free Church alone, 
 but in all Christian circles. " The lights begin to 
 twinkle from the rocks." There are points of Christian 
 illumination gleaming out here and there in the dusk, 
 which seem to announce a vast extension of Christian 
 influence in the councils of the world. On international 
 peace, on commercial righteousness, on all philanthropic 
 questions, on the mercy and tenderness due from man to 
 the animal tribes, the voice of the Church's Head, speak- 
 ing through the many voices, in great part missionary 
 voices, of His Church, is making itself heard. 
 
 Eemembering that liberty to obey Christ, though 
 infinitely different from anarchy, is the most expansive
 
 :>28 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 form of freedom ever bestowed upon men, do we not find 
 it pleasant to realise that, in sending forth ever new 
 waves of missionary zeal, the Free Church may quicken 
 in the future, as she has done in the past, the energies of 
 her own home life, and realise with fresh vividness her 
 sympathy with other branches of the Church ? Such 
 mission journeys as those of Dr. Norman Macleod and 
 Dr. A. N. Somerville have been rich in benefit both at 
 home and in the outlying field. Why should they not 
 be taken boldly into precedent, and a circulating system 
 be established, the blood pulsing out warm towards the 
 extremities and returning in healthful current to the 
 heart ? Why should not mission-pilgrimages visit India, 
 making the simple native Christians by Ganges feel that 
 they are brothers and sisters of the Christ and the 
 Christians of Britain ? And if India is visited, may 
 not even China be reached, where one of the smallest 
 but not the least loving of the sister Churches of the 
 Free Church, the Presbyterian Church in England, has 
 long had a nourishing mission ? 
 
 Nor can a word of reference be omitted to that 
 missionary enterprise which arose under the influence 
 of that remarkable man who was referred to as Eabbi 
 Duncan. Mr. Taylor Innes, an enthusiastic admirer of 
 the Eabbi, tells us that, in his youth, he had been so far 
 off the Evangelical lines, that the strong hand of Dr. 
 Mearns w T as required to bring him back from atheism. 
 In his w T ild days, teste one of his college friends, he 
 fell, like Burns and many another gifted Scot, into 
 intemperance ; but in his most eccentric moments 
 the fire of public spirit never died within him ; and
 
 THE MISSIONARIES. 329 
 
 one night, when his boon companions were bearing 
 him homewards on a shutter, and there arose an alarm 
 of fire, he shouted lustily from his elevation, " Water for 
 the fire, citizens, — water for the fire!" John Duncan 
 did nothing by halves. He was a highly successful 
 student. A period of struggle and of crisis in his 
 spiritual life issued in what he definitely named his con- 
 version ; and no sooner was he converted than he became 
 an importunate preacher of his new faith to his com- 
 panions. Addressing himself with his usual ardour to 
 the study of Hebrew, he became one of the first Hebraists 
 in Europe, and, as head of the Christian mission of Buda 
 Pesth, opened up a sympathetic connection between the 
 best type of devout minds among the Jews and such as, 
 being brothers of Christ, claim to be children of Abraham. 
 Through his means the Saphir family, distinguished for 
 talent and fine moral qualities, passed from Judaism to 
 Christ. 
 
 Acquaintance with the best Hebrew scholarship — 
 Gesenius, Hengstenberg, Ewald, and the like — tended 
 doubtless to temper and expand the somewhat rigid dog- 
 matism of Dr. Duncan's first earnest belief ; and innate 
 intrepidity and honesty kept his ear open to the moral 
 voices of his time, so that, as Professor Knight has taught 
 us, he could take a hint from Carlyle, and detect the 
 true accent of Christian song in the hymn of a Roman 
 Cardinal. He gave the New College, Edinburgh, its 
 reputation as a seat of Hebrew scholarship, — a reputation 
 it has splendidly sustained under his favourite student 
 and successor, Dr. A. B. Davidson. And now, when some 
 one-eyed personages ask whether Christianity is not dying
 
 330 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 off the earth, we behold, under various forms, a develop- 
 ment of that sympathy between the best Hebrews and 
 the best Christians, which Rabbi Duncan initiated at 
 Buda Festh, and which may presage much in the evolu- 
 tion of spiritual civilisation. Are not men puzzled in the 
 classification of a Montefiore, — is he Jew or is he Chris- 
 tian ? Are not heavy-laden Jewish populations in the east 
 of Europe beginning to ask wistfully whether Jesus was 
 not their brother, and why the Gentiles have had all the 
 joy of Him ? Has not an Adler, leader of the Hebrew 
 community in London, told his brethren to take note 
 that the deepest spiritual consciousness of mankind has 
 been embodied in the sayings of Christ ?
 
 CHAPTER XT, 
 (Ropaf €0afmers + 
 
 HIS part in the founding of the Free Church was the 
 last grand public enterprise in the life of Chalmers. 
 Never did a film of doubt cross his mind as to the Tight- 
 ness of what he had done ; and in 1847, in giving evidence 
 before a Committee of the House of Commons, he dis- 
 tinctly avowed his belief that the schismatic conduct of 
 the clergy who forsook the Church to place themselves 
 under the Court of Session, deserved an extreme exercise 
 of discipline. But though the brief period of life that 
 remained to him was beautiful in its serenity and spiritual 
 elevation, there was a quietude in it, an absence of jubil- 
 ancy, which might have been different if duty had not 
 compelled him to part with so many friends of his youth, 
 and if the end of all his hoping and promising, in relation 
 to the Established Church of Scotland, had not been so 
 different from what he had expected. 
 
 The peace of Christ, however, left him not for a 
 moment. Perfectly sincere religion approved itself to be 
 in his case, as in that of millions, a well of living water 
 in the soul, and he needed no further mechanism than
 
 332 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 that of his pocket Bible to quicken its healing virtue. 
 He delighted beyond expression in the society of those 
 Christian friends, of whom even he could count but few, 
 who really loved to engage with him in sympathetic 
 interchange of thought upon the incorruptible riches and 
 the immortal life. " We have a warrant in the Bible," 
 lie wrote to a lady friend, " for loving much : — ' Love one 
 another with a pure heart fervently.' It may be 
 fervently, if it be first with a pure heart." He rejoices 
 in the universality of the gospel offer. The Bible " does 
 not bear your name and address, but it says, ' whosoever ' 
 — that takes you in ; it says ' all ' — that takes you in ; 
 it says, 'if any' — that takes you in. What can be 
 surer than that ? " 
 
 Having passed beyond the pale of ecclesiastical estab- 
 lishment, he soon began to perceive and to welcome the 
 growth of a sentiment towards union among free Churches. 
 Were there but cordial fealty to the Head, he set small 
 store by forms of administration, and was careful that 
 the liberty of any one body of Christians should not be 
 made a restraint for any other. He too, although he did 
 not live to see the express initiation of movements in 
 that direction, may be enrolled among the Apostles of 
 Union. " Co-operation now," he said, " and this with the 
 view, as soon as may be, to incorporation afterwards." 
 In May 1847, silently and painlessly, he passed away. 
 " He sat there, half-erect, his head reclining gently on 
 the pillow ; the expression of his countenance that of 
 fixed and majestic repose." 
 
 The Christian gentleman ! So stainless, so lofty, in 
 all his moods and habitudes of soul. " Chalmers," said
 
 ROYAL CHALMERS. 333 
 
 Robertson, of Ellon, " understands little of the ways of 
 men." What a compliment ! Meanness was incom- 
 prehensible to him, — he had no organ, no sense, by 
 which it could be evinced to his perceptions, or rendered 
 intelligible to his mind. This is the greatest man of the 
 whole Evangelical movement. He preached philosophical 
 virtue, and left his weighty testimony to its practical in- 
 effectiveness, and to the practical effectiveness of another 
 kind of preaching. " To preach Christ is the only 
 effective way of preaching morality in all its branches." 
 He drew out in theory, and exemplified in practice, 
 exhausting both, the Christian method, which is also the 
 sole right method, of dealing with the poor. If you 
 meet with any true word on this subject, however new it 
 may look, or any sound suggestion, however original it 
 may appear, put forward by slum-worker or oracle of 
 Toynbee Hall, be you quite certain that Chalmers has 
 anticipated it. And as a piece of unanswerable reason- 
 ing, sound in theology, sound in science, sound in common 
 sense, his Astronomical Discourses — an antidote to morbid 
 humility on the one hand and to spiritual pride on the 
 other — cannot be bettered. His ideal of Christ's king- 
 dom on earth could not be realised in connection with 
 the State ; and great is the honour, but great also is the 
 responsibility, of the Free Church, in having received 
 from him that ideal, to be realised under God's blue sky.
 
 CHAPTEK XLL 
 Cunningham, J|c0ofar ant) Confrotjerstafief* 
 
 CUNNINGHAM had not the brilliant ideality of 
 Chalmers, nor the lightness and velocity of 
 Candlish ; there was beyond question an element of 
 ponderousness about him, and there was little magic in 
 his pen ; but he conveyed to a vast multitude of minds 
 the idea of being substantially an abler, stabler man than 
 either. The prevailing sentiment among Free Church 
 students and Free Church ministers has always been, 
 that the authority of Cunningham on any theological or 
 ecclesiastical subject was the highest that could be 
 quoted. 
 
 He was a born controversialist in the best sense of 
 the term, — endowed, that is to say, with a transcendent 
 capacity for discerning and recollecting the essential 
 points of difference between opposing systems of thought, 
 weighing them against each other, and striking with 
 exact precision the balance between them. His specialty 
 was that, with this faculty in transcendent development, 
 he was not intellectually a trimmer, but a man of decisive 
 belief, and energetic, or even impetuous action. It was
 
 CUNNINGHAM, SCHOLAR AND CONTROVERSIALIST. 335 
 
 truth he sought. In rhetoric, he had no skill. Seeking 
 truth, he ended in conviction ; and to end in conviction 
 was to reach the beginning of action. Conscientious in 
 the quest for truth, conscientious in the examination of 
 all the evidence, he could not without insufferable pain 
 behold his conclusions overlaid by the cobwebs of clerical 
 mediocrity, or obscured and misrepresented by the 
 quibbles of professional law pleaders. His trains of 
 reasoning, accordingly, were apt to terminate in the rise 
 and thunderous roll of his moral indignation. 
 
 Cunningham was exactly the man to be at the head 
 of a great institute for training candidates for the 
 Christian ministry. Acquainted with all the great 
 systems of thought, philosophical as well as theological, 
 he combined with his dogmatic firmness a very large 
 capacity of intellectual toleration. His students learned 
 from him that the difficulties which come up in theology, 
 have come up before in philosophy ; that a man may, 
 as a philosopher, intelligently enough hold any one of 
 the great contrasted systems, idealist or materialist, and 
 yet be a Christian ; that for wise men all systems lead 
 up, by various ways, to mystery and reverent silence ; 
 and that a sure mark of the sciolist and of the 
 vulgar, voluble, flippant coxcomb, is readiness to solve 
 insoluble problems. He knew infidelity too well to 
 think it would conquer. " No school of infidelity," he 
 said, " had exercised influence over more than a genera- 
 tion." The trepidation and the exultation raised by each 
 new chameleonic variation of infidelity south of the 
 Tweed, he accounted for in a way not highly compli- 
 mentary to England, or to the theological colleges of
 
 336 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 England : " There is so little in the English mind ; there 
 is a want of clear, definite, theological views, they are at 
 the mercy of every wind of doctrine." 
 
 His Calvinism was for him what it was for Paul and 
 Calvin, a taking of refuge from the agonies alike of 
 philosophy, and of theology, and of nature, in the bosom 
 of God. " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do 
 right ? " Faith in His sovereignty is surely more reason- 
 able than make-believe in any optimistic trifling with 
 the mystery of things. Cunningham liked to expatiate 
 on the innumerable multitude of the redeemed. He 
 looked upon the Articles of the Church of England as 
 fulfilling all the requirements of Calvinistic orthodoxy. 
 Under his auspices at the New College, speculative 
 thought among the students was bold and free, but he 
 never displayed the slightest jealousy on the subject. 
 
 He reflected with humility but gratitude on the cir- 
 cumstance that it was he who, in a motion made in the 
 Presbytery of Edinburgh, initiated the movement that 
 issued in the Disruption. The principles contended for 
 had, he held, been " the peculiar deposit of the Church 
 of Scotland in every age ; " and he viewed it as a 
 " marvellous token " of Divine kindness to the Church, 
 that she had been again honoured to contend, " as before, 
 for the sole Headship, and for the sole and exclusive 
 right of Christ to reign in His own kingdom." In the 
 first and by far the greatest period of the Preformation, 
 the general system adopted in outline by all the Eeformers, 
 not through invention or excogitation, but by simple re- 
 discovery in the newly-opened Bible, and specially in the 
 New Testament, had, he held, been substantially that
 
 Cunningham; scholar and controversialist. 337 
 
 of Presbyterianism. So it was throughout the vast 
 ramification of the Reformed Catholic Church, in the 
 national Churches of Switzerland, Holland, France, 
 England, and Scotland. It was in England, and there 
 not so much through fault of the people of England, or 
 even of the Church of England, as of the Erastiau 
 monarchs of England, that what Milton calls " a schism 
 from all the Reformation, and a sore scandal to them," 
 took place. Cunningham thought, however, that the 
 Reformers had themselves heen greatly to hlame, having 
 become involved in " contentions and divisions which, 
 in the course of a single generation, arrested the whole 
 course of the Reformation." 
 
 During the years of life that remained to him after 
 the Disruption, he was the steadfast friend of union 
 among Christians, wherever it was based on essentials, 
 and recognised the Head. But although he was cheered 
 by tidings of harmony and concord from Canada and 
 from Australia, he found that proposals for home union 
 were strangely, lamentably productive of wrangling. 
 This vexed him deeply ; and in his last illness, when 
 his mind wandered hi the near approach of death, he 
 twice repeated Melanchthon's prayer, " From the rage of 
 theologians, good Lord, deliver us." He died in perfect 
 peace, saying he was going home. 
 
 It was December 1861. A year before, his great 
 antagonist in the Church's battle, Robertson, of Ellon, had 
 died. " It deepens our solemnity," Professor Charteris 
 touchingly says, "to remember that, when a year had 
 shed its showers and snows on the grave of James 
 Robertson, bleak December, which had carried him away,
 
 •°>38 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 bore from his brethren William Cunningham. They were 
 set face to face in many a light, and now they rest together. 
 They cherished mutual respect throughout the hard en- 
 counters : and ere their labours <mi earth were closed, when 
 one had retired from public life to study the theology of 
 past ages, and the other had sacrificed learned leisure to 
 the great cause of the evangelisation of Scotland, they 
 spoke of each other as was to be expected of true men 
 drinking at a purer source than the muddy waters of 
 controversy. But now, when they see eye to eye, and 
 dwell in the light of God's eternal love, how unworthy 
 must seem to those saints every feeling that erewhile 
 marred the fulness of their Christian brotherhood!" 
 Yes, every feeling that did injustice to each other, but 
 no feeling that was only the glow of impetuous ardour in 
 the service of their Lord.
 
 CHAPTEE XLTL 
 Canofisfl ano (Union— ^amee ^amtffon. 
 
 TTUtKED from tlie cerements of Establishment, Candlish 
 -■- realised, with his own peculiar lucency of appre- 
 hension, the position held by the Church in relation to 
 sister Churches. " It was as maintaining great prin- 
 ciples, and suffering for them, that the Church of Scot- 
 land became a rallying point of union to all the Churches 
 of the Reformation ; and God has brought us into this 
 position again." He struck out a wider principle of 
 unity in variety than had been discovered by Presby- 
 terians in earlier ages, but one that is of vital and price- 
 less importance to the Eeformed Catholic Church in our 
 time. " We have now got hold of a principle of which 
 the Westminster Divines did not seem to be aware, — at 
 least the practical application of it was not before their 
 minds, — I mean that of Christian Churches coming ever 
 nearer and nearer to one another in point of doctrine and 
 discipline, yet still deeming it right to keep up their 
 different forms of Church government," while sympathis- 
 ing ^n their efforts for God's glory and man's good, and, 
 of course, owning the supreme Headship of their Lord.
 
 340 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 There was a beautiful consistency, a precise and 
 peremptory logic, in the historical account he gave, from 
 the distance of 185G, of the Established and Free 
 Churches. " The date of the existence of the present 
 Established Church of Scotland is 1843 ; the date of our 
 existence is 15 GO. We can trace our unbroken pedigree 
 through many vicissitudes, trials, and persecutions, from 
 that eventful year when first the General Assembly met 
 in Scotland; by all the historical signs and marks which 
 can possibly identify a national Church, we can certainly 
 trace our descent, far more clearly than any bishop can 
 trace back his to the apostles. That being our position, 
 we are not, in the exercise of any false and spurious 
 charity, to be found for a moment admitting that the 
 Established Church, as it now exists, is a Church of older 
 date than the last thirteen years." 
 
 Very soon after the Disruption, he asked the question 
 whether, since the States and kingdoms of the world 
 refused to establish Churches without extinguishing their 
 spirituality and freedom, Churches were bound, or were 
 permitted, to put off their union with each other from 
 abstract considerations as to the duty of States and king- 
 doms in the matter of Establishment. " Is the division 
 and schism of the Christian Church to be kept up by a 
 question as to the duty of another party over whom 
 we have no control ? " His brain and conscience 
 answered, No. 
 
 It may fearlessly be affirmed that each and all of the 
 galaxy of Free Church leaders who secured unanimity in 
 the Convocation were prepared to give the same answer 
 to this question. Chalmers, Cunningham, Guthrie,
 
 CANDL1SH AND UNION— JAMES HAMILTON. 341 
 
 Buchanan, would have seen the reasonableness of leaving 
 the State to answer for itself, and proceeding with the 
 positive duty of gathering, so far as was practicable, under 
 the Church's wing, those chickens which the Establish- 
 ment had driven into the waste. Candlish, Buchanan, 
 and Guthrie entered with high spiritual enthusiasm into 
 this new movement, and round these the young men of 
 forward-looking mind, with Dr. Eainy at their head, were 
 prompt to range themselves. Union was, in the view of 
 these men, and first of all union with the United Presby- 
 terians, the normal, constitutional, catholic path for the 
 Free Church to take. In heartfelt accordance with them, 
 Dr. Cairns and the great body of United Presbyterian 
 clergymen and laymen hailed the prospect of union. 
 The great Union party in both Churches forged no new 
 fetters for their brethren, added no iota to what it 
 was already permitted them to believe or disbelieve, but 
 merely asked that the belief entertained as to the duty 
 of a third party should not be an insuperable bar to 
 union among brethren. Again, again, and yet again did 
 the remaining Titans of the Disruption, with one excep- 
 tion, and the foremost Free Churchmen of the newer 
 generation, vote by overwhelming majorities that the gates 
 of the Free Church should be thrown open, and the free 
 Presbyterians of Scotland invited to enter. 
 
 Not a little was accomplished. The principle of mutual 
 eligibility was adopted. Four hundred ministers and 
 elders of the Free Church signed a most important 
 manifesto, setting forth the beneficial results of the con- 
 ferences, and inscribing Union, not as " a matter of dis- 
 cretion, to be ultroneously undertaken or abandoned at
 
 342 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 the Church's pleasure, but a duty of deep .and abiding 
 obligation," on the banner of the Free Church. But Dr. 
 Beo'o- whom the heavenly influences at the Convocation, 
 
 tit?' i/ 
 
 after his frank and honest speech, had constrained into 
 still nobler silence of assent and acquiescence, headed 
 an irreconcilable minority. Union could not have taken 
 place without a rending of the Free Church. Strange to 
 say, — and even if one does not quite agree with him, one 
 cannot help loving him the better for it, — Guthrie, the 
 genial, kindly Guthrie, who, as boy and man, so dearly 
 loved an honest, stand-up fight, was so deeply imbued 
 with the sacred passion for union, that "he would," says his 
 biographers, " even at the risk of a partial secession from 
 his own Church," have carried out the hallowed enterprise. 
 " It clouds the evening of my days," he said, " to think 
 that we cannot, while retaining our differences, agree to 
 bury our quarrels in a grave where no mourner stands 
 
 by, a grave above which I can fancy angels pausing on 
 
 the wing, and uniting in this blessed song, ' Behold how 
 good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together 
 in unity.' " But Candlish, Buchanan, Moncreiff, Rainy, 
 and with them Cairns and Ker and their brethren, felt 
 that it was more in the spirit of Christ — more consistent 
 with Christian magnanimity — to postpone formal union. 
 And this, we may reverently believe, was most of all in 
 harmony with the Master's will. 
 
 There was a perfect absence of affectation in all that 
 Candlish said or did, and his boyish naturalness, com- 
 bined with what may be called the fiery honesty that 
 was his habitual mood of mind, caused him to convey 
 to superficial observers some idea of harshness. As a
 
 CANDLISH AND UNION — JAMES HAMILTON. 343 
 
 disciplinarian he certainly was stern. But this arose 
 exclusively from his sense of duty. At heart he was 
 one of the tenderest of men, and no one could thoroughly 
 know him who had not rowed with him in a boat, or 
 seen him among his children. 
 
 His estrangement from Cunningham, which almost 
 broke tico of the noblest hearts, showed that both were 
 forgiving men. Cunningham spoke bitterly of Candlish, 
 his choler for the moment fairly getting the better of 
 his reason. But the provocation was severe. Cunning- 
 ham justly felt that his services to the Free Church 
 had been great, and, knowing his unrivalled learning, 
 and being Principal of the College, he could not but feel 
 that much was due to his opinion on questions of theo- 
 logical education. He was convinced of the importance 
 of erecting one great seminary of theological education 
 in Edinburgh, to be a Pharos of spiritualised intellectual 
 light for the whole Reformed Church. Candlish held 
 that there ought to be Colleges in the neighbourhood of 
 the Universities of Glasgow and Aberdeen. The Church 
 took the view of Candlish. The Principal saw himself 
 eclipsed. He felt it bitterly. All friendly relations 
 were suspended between the men. Cunningham's health 
 gave way, and it reached Candlish's ear that a journey 
 abroad, with medical attendance too expensive for his 
 means, was desirable. In careful secrecy, with studious 
 delicacy, Candlish initiated a movement for procuring 
 the necessary funds, and the suggestion was so energetic- 
 ally taken up that a testimonial of upwards of £7000 
 was presented to Cunningham. We need not inquire 
 whether the latter ever knew where the movement
 
 344 THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 originated, but the friendship of the men was renewed, 
 and Candlish was relieved from what, while it lasted, 
 had been one of the greatest sorrows of his life. 
 
 And how beautiful does he appear in his relations 
 with Dr. James Hamilton ! . The men were of contrasted 
 types, Candlish having a strong trace of the Dantesqife 
 austerity, the Miltonic Puritanism, "ever in the great 
 Taskmaster's eye ; " Hamilton being an incarnation of 
 sympathy, gentle as a woman, melodious in all his moods 
 of mind. You could not be long in a room with James 
 Hamilton without believing in the real presence of 
 Christ. He and Candlish found each other out. Candlish 
 said of Hamilton after his death, that " under the spell 
 of his benign and blessed temper, always giving thanks, 
 converse was sure to cease from being mere earthly and 
 idle talk, and to become serenely, happily, and even 
 joyously, fellowship of a more heavenly sort." It had 
 been, doubt it not, in the ardency of their love for their 
 Master, that they became known to each other as brother 
 friends. They used to exchange pulpits, and were per- 
 fectly at home in each other's houses. " I write home," 
 says Candlish to Hamilton, in a note from London, " to say 
 that they may expect the pleasure of your staying with 
 them from Thursday till the beginning of the following 
 week. Don't steal the hearts of my children as you did 
 before ! You may help James in his lessons, but don't 
 captivate my namesake Bo." No one who had seen him 
 pulling about Bo in romping games, enlivening the fun with 
 jokes, quite on a level with Bo's understanding, about the 
 Goose-dubs of Glasgow, would have had much apprehen- 
 sion as to the security of his hold upon Bo's affections.
 
 CANDL1SH AND UNION — JAMES HAMILTON. 345 
 
 And what beauty of tenderness could excel this, in a 
 letter to his daughter, Mrs. Archibald Henderson, who 
 had lost an infant son ? " Your nice letter greatly 
 pleased me. I thank the Lord from the bottom of my 
 heart for the grace granted to you and Archie. I 
 cannot say or write much to comfort you. But you are 
 seldom long out of my thoughts, and I inwardly mourn 
 and weep with you. I feel it is a knock-down blow 
 to myself when I look back on the delight and joy 
 of having you here, so bright and radiant, witli so darling 
 a boy. But, like you, I try to be grateful for these few 
 weeks, and would not for worlds part with the dear 
 recollection of them. It is good for you, and a blessed 
 reflection, to have had a little one in your arms whom 
 Jesus has now taken into His own." 
 
 And think of this, — the time now being very near 
 his death : " That forenoon he saw little Mary and John, 
 his eldest daughter's children. They were lifted up on 
 his bed, and sang ' Bock of Ages.' He kissed them, and 
 said, ' Love Jesus, and meet me in heaven.' After they 
 left he was very much overcome, and said, ' How these 
 monkeys get round one's heart. I would like to have 
 seen them up a bit.' " 
 
 His last effort of consciousness was a warm pressure 
 of the hand when his son-in-law, Mr. Henderson, repeated 
 these words of Isaiah : " The mountains shall depart, and 
 the little hills be removed ; but my kindness shall not 
 depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my 
 peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on 
 thee."
 
 34G THE FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Of Buchanan, the candid, eloquent, and convincing 
 historian of the conflict, and of so many others, time now 
 fails us to speak. A chapter, and a long one, might be 
 devoted to the eminent men, Hugh Miller, Fleming, Sir 
 David Brewster, who pledged the Free Church to a con- 
 scientiously bold and resolute acceptance of the truth 
 of science as the truth of God. Much might be said 
 also of the contributions of the Church to education, to 
 temperance, and all good social causes. Illustrious among 
 the labours of Free Churchmen, lay and clerical, have 
 been the various literary efforts and issues by which the 
 fountains of theology have been continuously replenished, 
 and the devout learning and reverent speculation both of 
 Christian antiquity, and of Christian Germany, France, 
 Switzerland, and America, communicated to the religious 
 world of Great Britain. Under the auspices largely of 
 the Free Church, with the assistance of many eminent 
 authors and publishers, the reproach of being unlearned 
 has been effectually removed from the Reformed Catholic 
 Church. 
 
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