One of the many dangers to which the members of a disestablished Church just escaped from State control and the turmoil of an exciting struggle are liable, is the danger of getting just a little wild on minute semi-metaphysical points, and of either quarrelling regarding them with their neighbours, or of falling out among themselves. Great controversies, involving broad principles, have in the history of the Church not unfrequently broken into small controversies, involving narrow principles; just as in the history of the world mighty empires like that of Alexander the Great have broken up into petty provinces, headed by mere satraps and captains, when the master-mind that formed their uniting bond has been removed. Independently of that stability which the legalized framework of a rightly-constituted Establishment is almost sure to impart to its distinctive doctrines, the influence of its temporalities has in one special direction a sobering and wholesome effect. Men carefully weigh principles for the assertion of which they may be called on to sacrifice or to suffer, and are usually little in danger, in such circumstances, of becoming martyrs to a mere crotchet. The first beginnings of notions that, if suffered to grow in the mind, may at length tyrannize over it, and lead even the moral sense captive, are often exceedingly minute.

They start up in the form of, mayhap, solitary ideas, chance-derived from some unexpected association, or picked up in conversation or reading; the attention gradually 281 concentrates upon them; auxiliary ideas, in consequence, spring up around them; they assume a logical form––connect themselves, on the one hand, with certain revealed injunctions of wide meaning––lay hold, on the other, on a previously developed devotional spirit or well-trained conscientiousness; and, in the end, if the minds in which they have arisen be influential ones, they alter the aspects and names of religious bodies, and place in a state of insulation and schism churches and congregations.

Their rise somewhat resembles that of the waves, as described by Franklin in his paper on the effects of oil in inducing a calm, or in preserving one. ‘The first-raised waves,’ he says, ‘are mere wrinkles; but being continually acted upon by the wind, they are, though the gale does not increase in strength, continually increased in magnitude, rising higher, and extending their bases so as to include in each wave vast masses, and to act with great momentum. The wind, however,’ continues the philosopher, ‘blowing over water covered with oil, cannot catch upon it so as to raise the first or elementary wrinkles, but slides over it, and leaves it smooth as it finds it; and being thus prevented from producing these first elements of waves, it of course cannot produce the waves themselves.’ In applying the illustration just a little further, we would remark, that within a wholesomely-constituted religious Establishment, the influence of the temporalities acts in preventing the rise of new notions, like the smoothing oil. If it does not wholly prevent the formation of the first wrinkles of novel opinion, it at least prevents their heightening into wavelets or seas. If the billows rise within so as to disrupt the framework of the Establishment, and make wreck of its temporalities, it may be fairly premised that they have risen not from any impulsion of the light winds of uncertain doctrine, but, as in the Canton de Vaud and the Church of Scotland, in obedience to the strong ground-swell of sterling principle. 282

Now we deem it a mighty advantage, and one which should not be wilfully neutralized by any after act of the body, that the distinctive principles of the Free Church bear the stamp and pressure of sacrifice. The temporalities resigned for their sake do not adequately measure their value; but they at least demonstrate that, in the estimate of those who resigned them, the principles did of a certainty possess value up to the amount resigned. The Disruption forms a guarantee for the stamina of our Church’s peculiar tenets, and impresses upon them, in relation to the conscience of the Church, the stamp of reality and genuineness. And that influence of the temporalities to which we refer, and under which the controversy grew, had yet another wholesome influence. It prevented the wrinklings of new, untried notions from gathering momentum, and rising into waves. The great billows, influential in producing so much, were the result of ancient, well-tested realities: they had rolled downwards, fully formed, as a portion of the great ground-swell of the Reformation. The Headship of the adorable Redeemer––the spiritual independence of the Church––the rights of the Christian people: these were not crotchets based on foundations of bad metaphysics; they were vital, all-important principles, worthy of being maintained and asserted at any cost. It is indeed wonderful how entirely, immediately previous to the Disruption, the Church of Scotland assumed all the lineaments of her former self, as she existed in the days of Knox and his brethren. Once more, after the lapse of many years, she stood on broad anti-patronage ground. Once more, after having been swaddled up for an age in the narrow exclusiveness of the Act of 1799, that had placed her in a state of non-communion with the whole Christian world, she occupied, through its repeal, the truly liberal position with regard to the other evangelistic churches of her early fathers. Once more her discipline, awakened from its long slumber, 283 had become efficient, as in her best days, for every purpose of purity. She had become, on the eve of her disestablishment, after many an intervening metamorphosis, exactly, in character and lineament, the Church which had been established by the State nearly three centuries before. She went out as she had come in. There was a peculiar sobriety, too, in all her actings. Her sufferings and sacrifices were direct consequents of the invasion of her province by the civil magistrate.

But she did not on that account cease to recognise the magistrate in his own proper walk as the minister of God.

Her aggrieved members never once forgot that they were Scotchmen and Britons as certainly as Presbyterians, and that they had a country as certainly as a Church to which they owed service, and which it was unequivocally their duty to defend.

They retreated from the Establishment, and gave up all its advantages when the post had become so untenable that these could be no longer retained with honour––or we should perhaps rather say, retained compatibly with right principle; but they did not in wholesale desperation give up other posts which could still be conscientiously maintained.

The educational establishment of the country, for instance, was not abandoned, though the ecclesiastical one was.

The Principal of the United College of Saint Salvador and Saint Leonard’s signed the Deed of Demission in his capacity as an elder of the Church, but in his capacity of Principal he returned to his College, and in that post fought what was virtually the battle of his country, and fought it so bravely and well that he is Principal of the College still. And the parish schoolmasters who adhered to the Free Church fought an exactly similar battle, though unfortunately with a less happy issue; but that issue gives at least prominence to the fact that they did not resign 284 their charges, but were thrust from them. The other functionaries of the Assembly, uninfluenced by any wild Cameronian notion, held by their various secular offices, civil and military. Soldiers retained their commissions––magistrates their seats on the bench––members of Parliament their representative status. Nor did a single member of the Protesting Church possessed of the franchise resign, in consequence of the Disruption, a single political right or privilege. The entire transaction bore, we repeat, the stamp of perfect sobriety. It was in all its details the act of men in their right minds.

Now the principles held by the Church at the Disruption, and none other, whether Voluntary or Cameronian, are the principles of the Free Church. A powerful majority in a Presbyterian body, or in a country possessed of a representative government, are vested in at least the power of making whatever laws they will to make, for not only themselves, but for the minority also. But power is not right; and we would at once question the right of even a preponderating majority in a Church such as ours to introduce new principles into her framework, and to impose them on the minority. We question, on this principle, the right of that act of discipline which was exercised in the present century by a preponderating majority of the Antiburgher body in Scotland, when they deposed and excommunicated the late Dr. M’Crie for the ecclesiastical offence of holding in every particular by the original tenets of the fathers of the Secession.

The overt act in the case manifested their power, but the various attempts made to manifest their right we regard as mere abortions. They had no right to do what they did. The questions on which the majority differed from their fathers ought in justice, instead of being made a subject of legislation, to be left an open question. And we hold, on a similar principle, that whatever questions of conduct or 285 polity may arise in the Free Church, which, though new to it, yet come to be adopted by a majority, should be left open questions also. Of course, of novelties in doctrine we do not speak,––we trust that within the Free Church none such will ever arise; we refer rather to those semi-metaphysical points of casuistry, and nice questions of conduct, in which the differences that perplex non-established Churches are most liable to originate,––matters in which one man sees after one way, and another man after another,––and which, until heaped up into importance, wave-like, as if by the wind, pertain not to the province of solid demonstrable truth, but to the province of loose fluctuating opinion. And be it remarked, that non-established Churches are very apt to be disturbed by such questions.

They are in circumstances in which the ripple passes into the wavelet, and the wavelet into the billow. On this head, as on all others, there is great value in the teachings of history; and the Free Church might be worse employed than in occasionally conning the lesson. Each fifty years of the last century and half has been marked by its own special questions of the kind among the non-established Churches of Scotland.

The question of the last fifty years has been that Voluntary one which virtually led to the striking off the roll of the Antiburgher Secession Church, those protesting ministers who formed the nucleus of the Original Secession, and to the excommunication and deposition of Dr. M’Crie. The question of the preceding fifty years was that connected with the burghal oath, which had the effect of splitting into two antagonist sections the religious body of which the Burgher Secession formed but one of the fragments,––a body fast rising at the time into a position of importance, which the split prevented it from ever fully realizing. The question of the fifty years with which the period began was 286 that which fixed the Cameronian body, not merely in a condition of unsocial seclusion in its relation with all other churches, but even detached it from its allegiance to the State, and placed it in circumstances of positive rebellion. Perhaps the history of this latter body, as embodied in its older testimony, and the controversial writings of its Fairlys and Thorburns, is that from the study of which the Free Church might derive most profit at the present time. We live in so late an age of the world, that we have little chance of finding much which is positively new in the writings or speeches of our casuists. When we detect, in consequence, some of our ministers or office-bearers sporting principles that do not distinctively belong to the Church of the Disruption, we may be pretty sure, if we but search well, of discovering these principles existing as the distinctive tenets of some other Church; and the present tendency of a most small but most respectable minority in our body is decidedly Cameronian.

The passages of Scripture on which the Cameronians chiefly dwelt in their testimony and controversial writings, were those discussed by the Free Presbytery of Edinburgh on Wednesday last. As condemnatory of what is designated the great national sin of the Union, for instance, the testimony adduces, among other texts, Isa. viii. 12, ‘Say ye not, A confederacy, to all them to whom this people shall say, A confederacy;’ Hos. vii. 8, 9, ‘Ephraim hath mixed himself among the people; Ephraim is a cake not turned. Strangers have devoured his strength, and he knoweth it not; yea, grey hairs are here and there upon him, and he knoweth it not;’ and above all, 2 Cor. vi. 14, 15, ‘Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness, and what concord hath Christ with Belial, or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel?’ And let the reader mark how logically these 287 Scriptures are applied. ‘All associations and confederacies with the enemies of true religion and godliness,’ says the Testimony, ‘are thus expressly condemned in Scripture, and represented as dangerous to the true Israel of God. And if simple confederacies with malignants and enemies to the cause of Christ are condemned, much more is an incorporation with them, which is an embodying of two into one, and therefore a straiter conjunction. And, taking the definition of malignants given by the declarations of both kingdoms, joined in arms anno 1643, to be just, which says, “Such as would not take the Covenant were to be declared to be public enemies to religion and their country, and that they are to be censured and punished as professed adversaries and malignants,” it cannot be refused but that the prelatic party in England now joined with are such. Further, by this incorporating union this nation is obliged to support the idolatrous Church of England.’ And thus the argument runs on irrefragable in its logic, if we but grant the premises. But to what, we ask, did it lead, assisted, of course, by other arguments of a similar character, in the body with whom it originated? To their withdrawal, from the times of the Revolution till now, from every national movement in the cause of Christ and His gospel; nay, most consistently, we must add––for we have ever failed to see the sense or logic of acting a public and political part in our own or our neighbour’s behalf, and declining on principle to act it in behalf of Christianity or its institutions––not only have they withdrawn themselves from all political exertion in behalf of religion, but in behalf of their country also. A Cameronian holding firm by his principles of non-incorporation with idolaters, cannot be a magistrate nor a member of Parliament; he cannot vote in an election, nor serve in the army.

It is one of the grand evils of questions of casuistry of this kind, that men, instead of looking at things and estimating 288 them as they really exist, are contented to play games at logic––chopping with but the imperfect signs of things––mere verbal counters, twisted from their original meanings by the influence of delusive metaphors and false associations.

Let us just see, in reference not to mere words, but to things, what can be truly meant by the terms ‘apostate or apostatizing Government,’ as applied to the Government of Great Britain. The words can have of course no just application, in a personal bearing, to present members of Government, as distinguished from the members of previous Governments, seeing that the functionaries now in office are just as much, or rather as little religious, as any other functionaries in office since the times of the Revolution or before. In a personal sense, England’s last religious government was that of Cromwell. The term apostate, or apostatizing, can have only an official meaning. What, then, in its official meaning, does it in reality express? The government of the United Kingdom is representative; and it is one of the great blessings which we enjoy as citizens that it is so,––one of those blessings for which we may now, as when we were younger, express ourselves thankful in the words of honest Isaac Watts, ‘that we were born on British ground.’ At any rate, this fact of representation is a fact––a thing, not a mere word. There is another fact in the case equally solid and certain. This representation of the empire is based on a population of about twenty-six millions of people; twelve millions of whom are Episcopalian, eight millions Roman Catholic, three millions Presbyterian, and three millions more divided among the various other Protestant sects of the country. And this also is a fact––a thing, not a mere word.

In the good providence of God we were born the citizens of an empire thus representative in its government, and thus ecclesiastically constituted in its population.

And it would be a further fact consequent on the other 289 two, that the aggregate character of the Government would represent the aggregate moral and ecclesiastical character of the people, were every distinct portion into which the people are parcelled to exert itself in proportion to its share of political influence. But from the yet further fact, that the portions have not always exerted themselves in equal ratios, and from other causes, political and providential, the character of the Government has considerably fluctuated––now representing one portion more in proportion to its amount than its mere bulk warranted, anon another. Thus, in the days of the Commonwealth, what are now the six million Presbyterians and Independents, etc., had a British Government wholly representative of themselves; while what are now the twelve million Episcopalians and the eight million Papists had none.

England at the time produced one of those men, of a type surpassingly great, that the world fails to see once in centuries; and, like Brennus of old, he flung his sword into the lighter scale, and it straightway outweighed the other. There then ensued a period of twenty-eight years, in which Government represented only the Episcopalians and Papists: and then a period of a hundred and forty years more, in which it represented only the Episcopalians and Presbyterians. And now––for Popery, growing strong in the interval, had been using all appliances in its own behalf, and had not been met in the proper spiritual field––it represents Episcopacy, Roman Catholicism, and a minute, uninfluential portion of the Presbyterian and other evangelistic bodies. But how, it may be asked, has this result taken place?

How is it only a moiety of these bodies that is represented? Mainly, we unhesitatingly reply, through the influence exerted by certain crotchets entertained by the bodies themselves on their political standing. When Government at the Revolution, instead of being as formerly representative 290 of Episcopacy and Popery, became representative of Episcopacy and Presbytery, Cameronianism broke off, on the plea that the governing power ought to be representative of Presbytery only, and that it was apostate because it was not; and the political influence of the body has been ever since lost to the Protestant cause. Voluntaryism, on the other hand, neutralized its influence, by holding that, though quite at freedom to exert itself in the political walk in attaining secular objects, religious objects are in that walk unattainable, or at least not to be attained; and so it also has been virtually lost to the Protestant cause. And now a cloud like a man’s hand arises in our own Church, to threaten a further secession from the ranks of the remaining class, who strive to stamp upon the Government, through the operation of the representative principle, at least a modicum of the evangelistic character. And all this is taking place in an age in which the battle for the integrity of the Sabbath as a national institute, and other similar battles, shall soon have to be decided on political ground. If ‘apostate’ or ‘apostatizing’ be at all proper words in reference to the things which we have here described, what, we ask, save the want either of weight or of exertion on the part of the represented bodies who complain of it, can be properly regarded as the cause of that apostasy? A representative Government, if the represented be Episcopalian, will itself be officially Episcopalian; if the represented be Papist, it will itself be officially Papist; if the represented be Presbyterian, it will itself be officially Presbyterian; if composed of all three together, the Government will bear an aggregate average character; but if, on some crotchet, the Presbyterians withdraw from the political field, while the others exert themselves in that field to the utmost, it will be Popish and Episcopalian exclusively. But for a result so undesirable––a result which, if Presbytery had been formerly in the ascendant, might of course be called official 291 apostasy––it would be the Presbyterian constituency that would be to blame, not the Government.

It will be seen that this view of the real state of things was that of Knox and Chalmers, and that they acted in due accordance with it. We are told by the younger M’Crie, in his admirable Sketches of Scottish Church History, ‘that Knox and his brethren, perceiving that the whole ecclesiastical property of the kingdom bade fair to be soon swallowed up by the rapacity of the nobles, insisted that a considerable portion of it should be reserved for the support of the poor, the founding of universities and schools, and the maintenance of an efficient ministry throughout the country. At last,’ continues the historian, ‘after great difficulty, the Privy Council came to the determination that the ecclesiastical revenues should be divided into three parts,––that two of them should be given to the ejected prelates during their lives, which afterwards reverted to the nobility, and that the third part should be divided between the Court and the Protestant ministry.’

‘Well,’ exclaimed Knox on hearing of this arrangement, ‘if the end of this order be happy, my judgment fails me. I see two parts freely given to the devil, and the third must be divided between God and the devil.’ Strong words these. Here is a Government, according to Knox’s own statement of the case, giving five-sixths to the devil, and but a remaining sixth to God. But does Knox on that account refuse God’s moiety? Does he set himself to reason metaphysically regarding his degree of responsibility for either what the devil got, or what the Government gave the devil. Not he. He received God’s part, and in applying it wisely and honestly to God’s service, wished it more; but as for the rest, like a man of broad strong sense as he assuredly was, he left the devil and the Privy Council to divide the responsibility between them. And the large-minded Chalmers entertained exactly the same views,––views 292 which, if not in thorough harmony with the idle fictions which dialecticians employ when they treat of Governments, at least entirely accord with the real condition of things. The official character of a representative Legislature must, as we have shown, resemble that of the constituency which it represents. In order to alter it permanently for the better, it is essentially necessary, as a first step in the process, that the worse parts of the constituencies on which it rests be so altered.

Now, for altering constituencies for the better, schools and churches were the machinery of Knox and of Chalmers; and if the funds for the support of either came honestly to them, unclogged with conditions unworthy of the object, they at once received them as given on God’s behalf, however idolatrously the givers––whether individuals or Governments––might be employing money drawn from the same purse in other directions. ‘Ought I,’ said Chalmers in reference to the Educational question, ‘ought I not to use, on teetotal principles, the water of the public pump, because another man mixes it with his toddy?’ It was not because Popery was established in the colonies, or seemed in danger of being established in Ireland, that the Free Church resigned its hold of the temporalities of the Scottish Establishment. Such endowment, instead of forming an argument for resignation, would form, on the contrary, an argument for keeping faster hold, in behalf of Protestantism, of the fortalice of the Establishment; just as if an invading army had possessed itself of the Castle of Dumbarton, with the strongholds of Fort-Augustus and Fort-William, the argument would be all the stronger for the national forces defending with renewed determination the Castles of Stirling and of Edinburgh, and the magnificent defences of Fort-George.

February 9, 1848.