Of all the dangers to which the Free Church is at present exposed, we deem the danger of fine-bodyism at once the least dreaded and the most imminent. And the evil is in itself no light one: it marks, better than any of the other isms––even the heresies themselves––the sinking of a Church that is never to rise again. Churches have been affected by dangerous heresies both of the hot and the cold kinds, and have yet shaken them off and recovered. The Presbyterians of Ireland, now so sound in their creed, were extensively affected, little more than half a century ago, by Arian error and the semi-infidelity of Socinus; and the Church that in 1843 had become vigorous enough to dare the Disruption, recorded in the year 1796 its vote against missions, and framed in the year 1798 its law against church extension. But we know of no Church that ever recovered from fine-bodyism when the disease had once fairly settled into its confirmed and chronic state. In at least this age and country it exists as the atrophy of a cureless decline. It were well, however, that we should say what it is we mean by fine-bodyism; and we find we cannot do better than quote our definition from the first speech ever delivered by Chalmers in the General Assembly. ‘It is quite ridiculous to say,’ remarked this most sagacious of men, ‘that the worth of the clergy will suffice to keep them up in the estimation of society. This worth must be combined with importance. Give both worth and importance to the same individual, and what are the terms employed 233 in describing him? “A distinguished member of society, the ornament of a most respectable profession, the virtuous companion of the great, and a generous consolation to all the sickness and poverty around him.” These, Moderator, appear to me to be the terms peculiarly descriptive of the appropriate character of a clergyman, and they serve to mark the place which he ought to occupy; but take away the importance and leave only the worth, and what do you make of him? What is the descriptive term applied to him now? Precisely the term which I often find applied to many of my brethren, and which galls me to the very bone every moment I hear it––“a fine body”––a being whom you may like, but whom I defy you to esteem––a mere object of endearment––a being whom the great may at times honour with the condescension of a dinner, but whom they will never admit as a respectable addition to their society. Now, all that I demand from the Court of Teinds is to be raised, and that as speedily as possible, above the imputation of being “a fine body;” that they would add importance to my worth, and give splendour and efficacy to those exertions which have for their object the most exalted interests of the species.’

The Free Church has for ever closed her connection with the Court of Teinds; but her danger from fine-bodyism is in consequence all the greater, not the less. The Sustentation Fund is her Court of Teinds now; and it is to it that she has in the first instance to look for protection from the all-potent but insidious and vastly under-estimated evil under which no Church ever throve. The outed ministers are comparatively safe. Unless prudence be altogether wanting, and the wolf comes to the door, not, as in the child’s story-book, in the disguise of a soft-voiced girl, but in that of a gruff sheriff’s officer, they will continue to bear through life the old status of the Establishment, heightened by the Éclat of the Disruption. But our younger men of 234 subsequent appointment stand on no such platform, nor will any of their contemporaries or successors step upon it as a matter of course when the heroes of the conflict have dropped away, and they come to occupy their vacant places. Their status will be found to depend on two circumstances, neither of them derived from the men of a former time––on their ability to maintain a respectable place among the middle classes, and on their scholastic acquirements and general manners. A half-paid, half-taught, half-bred minister of religion may be a very excellent man; we have seen such, both in England and our own country, among the non-Presbyterian Dissenters who laboured to do well, and were exceedingly in earnest; but no such type of minister will ever be found influential in Scotland, either in extending the limits of a Church, or in benefiting the more intelligent classes of the people. And the two circumstances of acquirement and remuneration will be found indissolubly connected. A Church of under-paid ministers, however fairly it may start, will, in the lapse of a generation, become a Church of under-taught and under-bred ministers also. Nor is there any chance that the evil, once begun, will ever cure itself, for the under-bred and the under-taught will be sure to continue the under-paid. That animating spirit of a Church, without which wealth and learning avail but little, money now, as of old, cannot buy; but the secular will be ever found to depend on the secular,––the general rate of secular acquirement on the general rate of secular remuneration; and unless both be pitched at a level very considerably above that of the labouring laity, which constitutes the great bulk of congregations, even the better ministers of a Church need not expect to escape fine-bodyism. And once infected with this fatal indisposition, they must be content to suffer, among other evils, the evil of being permitted to lay whatever claim to status they may choose, without challenge or contradiction. ‘Oh yes,’ it will be said, 235 should they assert that their Church is the Church of the nation, and that it is they themselves, and not the ministers of the Establishment, who are on the true constitutional ground,––‘Oh yes, Church of the nation, or, if ye will, Church of the whole world, or, in short, anything you please; for you are fine bodies.’ Chalmers exercised all his sagacity when he demanded of the Court of Teinds ‘to be raised, and that as speedily as possible, above the imputation of being a fine body.’ And what Chalmers demanded of the Court of Teinds, every minister of the Free Church ought to ask of the Sustentation Fund.

But how is the demand to be effectually made? It is well known to statesmen, who, when they once get a tax imposed by Parliament, can employ all the machinery of the police and the standing army––of fines, confiscations, and prisons––in exacting it, that yet, notwithstanding, in the arithmetic of finance two and two do not always make four. There are certain pre-existing laws to be studied––laws not of man’s passing, but which arise out of man’s nature and the true bearings and relations of things; and unless these be studied and conformed to, the Parliament-imposed tax, though backed by the constable and the jail, will realize but little. And if the statesman must study these laws, well may the Church do so, who has no constables in her pay, and to whom no jail-keys have been entrusted. It ought, we think, to be regarded as one fundamental law, that whatever has been gained by the seven years’ establishment of the Fund, should not be lightly perilled by bold and untried innovations. True, there may, on the one hand, be danger, if let too much alone, that its growth should be arrested, and of its passing into a stunted and hide-bound condition, little capable of increase; but the danger is at least as great, on the other, that if subjected to fundamental changes, it might lose that advantage of permanency which whatever is established 236 possesses in virtue of its being such; and which has its foundation in habit, and in that vague sense of responsibility which leads men to give, year after year, what they had been accustomed to give in the previous years, just because they had given it. Let it not be forgotten, that though much still remains to be done in connection with this Fund, much has been done already––that a voluntary tax of about eighty thousand pounds per annum, raised from about one-third, and that by no means the wealthiest third, of the Scottish people, is really not a small, but a great one––and that as great, and as worthy of being desired and equalled, do the other non-endowed Churches of the country regard it. No tampering, therefore, with its principle should be attempted: he was an eminently wise man who first devised and instituted it,––not once in an age do churches, or even countries, get such men to guide their affairs,––and it ought by all means to be permitted to set and consolidate in the mould which he formed for it. We would apply in this case the language of a philosophic writer of the last age, when speaking of government in general:––‘An established order of things,’ he said, ‘has an infinite advantage, by the very circumstance of its being established. To tamper, therefore, to try experiments upon it, upon the credit of supposed fitness and improvement, can never be the part of a wise man, who will bear a reverence for what carries the marks of the stability of age; and though he may attempt some improvements for the public good, yet will he adjust his innovations as much as possible to the ancient fabric, and preserve entire the chief pillars and supports of the institution.’

It ought, we hold, to be regarded as another law of the Fund, that the means taken to increase it should be means exclusively fitted to lead the givers to think of their duties, not of their rights. The Sustentation Fund is not the result of a tax properly so called, but an accumulation of freewill 237 offerings rendered to the Church by men who in this matter are responsible to God only. What the Church receives on these terms she can divide; but what the givers do not place at her disposal––what, on the contrary, they reserve for quite another purpose––she cannot lay hold of and distribute. It is not hers, but theirs; and the attempt to appropriate it might be very fatal. Hence the danger of the question regarding the appropriation for general purposes of supplements, which was mooted two years ago, but which was so promptly put down by the good sense of the Church. It would have led men to contend for their rights, and, in the struggle, to forget their duties; and the battle would have been a losing one for the Fund. We regard it as another law, that the distribution of the sustentation money entrusted to the Church should be a distribution, not discretionary, but fixed by definite enactment. A discretionary licence of distribution, extended to some central board or committee, even though under the general review of the Church, could not be other than imminently dangerous, because opposed in spirit to the very principle of Presbytery. And if Presbytery and the Sustentation Fund come into collision in the Free Church of Scotland, it is not difficult to say which of the two would go down. It has been shrewdly remarked by Hume, that in monarchies there is room for discretionary power––the laws under a great and wise prince may in some cases be softened, or partially suspended, and carried into full effect in others; but republics admit of no such discretionary authority––the laws in them must in every instance be thoroughly executed, or set aside altogether. Every act of discretionary authority is treason against the constitution. And so is it with Presbytery. Give to a central board or committee the power of sitting in judgment on the circumstances of ministers of their body, and of apportioning to one some thirty or forty 238 pounds additional, and of cutting down another to the average dividend, and, for a time at least, the Presbyterian independence is gone. But the reaction point once reached––and in the Free Church the process would not be a very tedious one––the discretionary authority would be swept away in the first instance, and the Sustentation Fund not a little damaged in the second. It is of paramount importance, therefore––a law on no account to be neglected or traversed––that the distribution of the Fund be regulated by rules so rigid and unbending, and of such general application, that the manifestation of favour or the exercise of patronage on the part of the board or committee authorized to watch over it may be wholly an impossibility.

It is, in the next place, of importance carefully to scan the sources whence the expected increase of the Fund is to come. The givers in the Free Church at the present time seem to lie very much in extremes. A considerable number, animated by the Disruption spirit, contribute greatly more to ministerial support, in proportion to their incomes, than the old Dissenters of the kingdom; but a still larger number, reposing indolently on the exertions of these, and in whom the habit has not been cultivated or formed, give considerably less. It was stated by Mr. Melvin, in the meeting of the United Presbyterian Synod held on Wednesday last, that, ‘on an average, the members of weak congregations in connection with their body contributed to the support of their minister about 14s. 6d. per annum, besides about 2s. 6d. for missionary purposes, while some of them contributed even as high as 25s. to 26s.’ Now, an average rate of contribution liberal as this, among the members of country congregations in the Free Church, would at once place the Fund in flourishing circumstances, and render it, unless its management was very unwise indeed, sufficient to maintain a ministry high above the dreaded level of fine-bodyism. Nor do we see why, if 239 we except the crushed and poverty-stricken people of some of the poorer Highland districts, Free Church congregations in the country should not contribute as largely to church purposes as United Presbyterian congregations in the same localities. The membership of both belong generally to the same level of society, and, if equally willing, are about equally able to contribute. Here, then, is a field which still remains to be wrought. Something, too, may be done at the present time, from the circumstance that the last instalment of the Manse Building Fund is just in the act of being paid, and those who have been subscribing for five years to this object, and formed a habit of periodic giving in relation to it, may be induced to transfer a portion of what they gave to the permanent fund, and so continue contributing. Ere, however, they can be expected to do so, they must be fairly assured that what they give is to be employed in strengthening and consolidating the Church, and in raising her ministers above the level of fine-bodyism, not in adding to her weakness by adding to her extent. Until a distinct pledge be given that there shall not be so much as a single new charge sanctioned until the yearly dividend amounts to at least a hundred and fifty pounds, we must despair of the Sustentation Fund. One may hopefully attempt the filling up of a tun, however vast its contents; but there can be no hope whatever in attempting the filling of a sieve. And if what is poured into the Sustentation Fund is to be permitted, instead of rising in the dividend, to dribble out incontinently in a feeble extension, it will be all too soon discovered that what we have to deal with is not the tun, but the sieve; and the laity, losing all heart, will cease their exertions, and permit their ministers to sink into poverty and fine-bodyism.

May 15, 1850.