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 BX 9075 .A3 C488 1886 
 The Church and the people 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES 
 
 THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 NATIONAL RELIGION IN THEORY AND FACT 
 
 FREE-WILL OFFERINGS, TITHES, &c. 
 
 THE PAROCHIAL SYSTEM 
 
 SECESSIONS FROM THE CHURCH, AND VOLUNTARYISM 
 
 RELIGIOUS EQUALITY 
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT 
 
 PRESBYTERIAN UNION 
 
 LB 
 
 RARY OF PRINCETON 
 
 1 
 
 SEP 2 3 2003 
 
 
 THL 
 
 0' • SEMlNi 
 
 \RY 
 
 EDINBURGH 
 MACNIVEN & WALLACE 
 
 MDCCCLXXXVI 
 
Edinburgh : 
 Printed by W. & R. Chambers. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following Lectures, which form the Sixth Series of the 
 St Giles' Lectures, were delivered in St Giles' Cathedral, 
 Edinburgh, in 1885-86. In consequence of illness, the 
 lecturer who had agreed to deliver the sixth Lecture was 
 compelled to abandon his intention, but the Rev. Andrew 
 Gray of Dalkeith, kindly consented, at short notice, to 
 undertake the duty. The Lectures are published in the 
 hope that they may prove useful both to those who heard 
 and to those who did not hear them. In dealing with 
 subjects to some extent necessarily of a controversial 
 nature, it is right to say that each lecturer is only 
 responsible for the opinions expressed in his own 
 Lecture. 
 
 While these pages were passing through the press, one 
 of the lecturers, the Very Reverend Principal Tulloch 
 of St Andrews, has been called to his rest To the 
 readers of the previous series of the St Giles' Lectures his 
 name is familiar. In the present series, although in fail- 
 ing health, he undertook a Lecture, the course being one 
 in which he felt the deepest interest. This Lecture, the 
 second in the volume, was finished under great difficulties. 
 When the time for its delivery in St Giles' arrived. Prin- 
 cipal Tulloch was unable to discharge that duty, and Dr 
 MacGregor of St Cuthbert's kindly read it for him. The 
 Lecture, as it appears in these pages, is the last literary 
 work of its author, and was written during a time of great 
 bodily weakness in support of the Church he had served 
 so faithfully and loved so well. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 As the subject of these Lectures is one which excited deep interest in 
 the country, it was suggested to the St Giles' Lecture Committee, that 
 were the Lectures read in other parishes besides that of St Giles, it 
 would have the effect of diffusing useful information on the subject of 
 the position and work of the Church of Scotland as a national church. 
 This idea was favourably entertained by many of the ministers and 
 kirk-sessions of the Church ; and the following took the Lectures for 
 the purpose of reading them to their congregations : 
 
 Robert Adam, Esq., Session-clerk, Kirkintilloch. 
 
 Rev. Arthur Allan, M.A., Fairlie. 
 
 Rev. William Anderson, Fettercairn. 
 
 Rev. Douglas G. Barron, M.A., Dunnottar. 
 
 Rev. Bruce B. Begg, M.A., Abbotshall. 
 
 Rev. Duncan Black, Kilmorie. 
 
 Rev. Peter Cameron Black, Old Monkland. 
 
 Rev. John Blair, B.A., Straiton. 
 
 Rev, Robert Blair, M.A., Cambuslang. 
 
 Rev. John Boyd, M.A., Kirriemuir. 
 
 Rev. William Brebner, M.A., Gilcomston, Aberdeen. 
 
 Rev. David Brewster, Kilmany. 
 
 Rev. Archibald G. Brown, South Church, Girvan. 
 
 Rev. John Brownlee, Rutherglen, W. 
 
 Rev. Donald C. Bryce, Moffat. 
 
 Rev. James A. Burdon, Lasswade. 
 
 Rev. James Burns, Nairn. 
 
 Rev. James Jolly Calder, M.A., Rhynie, 
 
 Rev. John Calder, M.A., Crimond. 
 
 Rev. John Cameron, M.A., Tobermory. 
 
 Rev. Colin Campbell, B.D., Dundee. 
 
 Rev. John C. Carrick, B.D., Newbattle. 
 
 Rev. George Carruthcrs, B.D., Johnstone. 
 
 Rev. Andrew Christie, M.A., Kildrunniiy. 
 
Note. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Clark, M.A., Wick. 
 
 Rev. Walter W. Coats, B.D., Girthon. 
 
 Rev. John Colvin, Kirkmabreck. 
 
 Rev. George Cook, D.D., Borgue. 
 
 Rev. William Corson, Girvan. 
 
 Rev. John Cunningham, D.D., Crieff. 
 
 Rev. William Davidson, Chryston. 
 
 Rev. James Dewar, M.A., Arrochar. 
 
 Rev. Peter Dewar, M.A., North Bute. 
 
 Rev. John Dick, M.A., Tweedsmuir. 
 
 Rev. Robert B. Dickson, Holytown. 
 
 Rev. William Dobie, Ladykirk. 
 
 Rev. Gordon Irving Donald, M.A., Rathven. 
 
 Rev. R. G. Dunbar, M.A., Weem. 
 
 Rev. Robert Duncan, Montrose. 
 
 Rev. William Grant Duncan, B.D., Biggar. 
 
 Rev. William Dunnett, M.A., Laigh Kirk, Kilmarnock. 
 
 Rev. Charles Durward, B.D., Scoonie. 
 
 Rev. Biot Edmonston, Kincardine. 
 
 Rev. William Ewen, B.D., Kinning Park. 
 
 Rev. James Farquharson, M.A., Selkirk. 
 
 Rev. Robert Fisher, St Boswells. 
 
 Rev. George Laurie Fogo, Torthorwald. 
 
 Rev. James Forrest, M.A., Lonmay. 
 
 Rev. Matthew Gardner, Mid-Calder. 
 
 Rev. Andrew M. Gibson, Portsoy. 
 
 Rev. John Gibson, M.A., Avoch. 
 
 Rev. ^neas G. Gordon, M.A,, Kettle. 
 
 Rev. Arthur Gordon, M.A., Greenlaw. 
 
 Rev. William Gordon, M.A., Braemar. 
 
 Rev. William Gordon, M.A., Glenbervie. 
 
 Rev. James Grant, M.A., Fordyce. 
 
 Rev. George H. Grassick, M.A., Leochel and Cusbnie. 
 
 Rev. Andrew Gray, M.A., Dalkeith. 
 
 Rev. William Henry Gray, D.D., Liberton. 
 
 Rev. Charles K. Greenhill, Roberton. 
 
 Rev. George Gibson Gunn, M.A., St George's, Glasgow. 
 
 Rev. Christopher Halliday, B.A., Ferry-port-on-Craig. 
 
 Rev. Henry M. Hamilton, Hamilton. 
 
 Rev. James Hay, D.D., Inverkeilor. 
 
 Rev. William Hendry, B.D,, Patna. 
 
 Rev. J. C. Herdman, D.D., Melrose. 
 
 Vll 
 
Vlll 
 
 Note, 
 
 Rev. James C. Iliggins, B.D., Tarbolton. 
 
 Rev. James N. Hill, Prinlaws. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Hislop, Bridgeton, Glasgow. 
 
 Rev. John A. Honey, jun., Inchture. 
 
 Rev. James Hutcheson, East Kirk, Greenock. 
 
 Rev. George Hutchison, D.D., Banchory- Ternan. 
 
 Rev. James M'Donald Inghs, M.A., Penninghame. 
 
 Rev. John A. Ireland, Whitburn. 
 
 George Ironside, Esq., Session-clerk, Pitsligo. 
 
 Rev. Gilbert Johnston, Shettleston. 
 
 Rev. John Johnston, Port of Menteith. 
 
 Rev. William Johnston, B.D., Ormiston. 
 
 Rev. David Johnstone, St Columba's, Paisley. 
 
 Rev. James Kelly, Dalmarnock, Glasgow, 
 
 Rev. John Kerr, M.A., Dirleton. 
 
 Rev. Gavin Lang, Second Charge, Inverness. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Legge, St Andrew's, Dundee. 
 
 Rev. Andrew Leiper, B.D., Gorbals. 
 
 Rev. George Logan, B.D., Inverbrothock. 
 
 Rev. Donald Macaulay, Reay. 
 
 Rev. John M 'Cowan, Duncansburgh. 
 
 Rev. Malcolm MacGregor, Newton. 
 
 Rev. Alexander C. Macintyre, Kilbrandon. 
 
 Rev. John Walker Macintyre, Kilmodan. 
 
 Rev. James Mackay, M.A., Brechin. 
 
 Rev. James Mackenzie, M.A., Aboyne. 
 
 Rev. Kenneth A. Mackenzie, M.A., Kingussie. 
 
 Rev. Peter Mackenzie, D.D., Ferintosh. 
 
 Rev. Robert W. Mackersy, Craiglockhart. 
 
 Rev. John Mackintosh, B.D., Uddingston. 
 
 Rev. Peter M'Laren, Fraserburgh. 
 
 Rev. Donald Macleod, D.D., The Park, Glasgow. 
 
 Rev. Neil M'Michael, Craignish. 
 
 Rev. Alexander J. Macquarrie, M.A., Kilmorack. 
 
 Rev. William Mair, D.D., Earlston. 
 
 Rev. Thomas S. Marjoribanks, B.D., Prestonkirk. 
 
 Rev, Gavin Mason, Sandbank, 
 
 Rev. Andrew Meldrum, M.A., Logierait, 
 
 Rev. James R, Middleton, M.A., Glenmuick. 
 
 Rev. David Millar, B.D,, LL.B,, South Queensferry. 
 
 Rev. Daniel J. Miller, Jamestown. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Milne, Gourock. 
 
Note. ix 
 
 Rev. Andrew J. Milne, LL.D., Fyvie. 
 
 Rev. George G. Milne, M.A., Cortachy. 
 
 Rev. Walker Milne, B.D., Lugar. 
 
 Rev. James Mitchell, D.D., South Leith. 
 
 Rev. James Gordon Mitchell, Norriston. 
 
 Rev. John Moodie, M.A., Kippen. 
 
 Rev. Emanuel Morgan, M.A., Riccarton. 
 
 Rev. James Munro, M.A., Glenmoriston. 
 
 Rev. John Murray, Calton, Glasgow. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Myles, Aberlemno. 
 
 Rev. Robert Paisley, M.A., East Church, Brechin. 
 
 Rev. James Park, St John's, Leith. 
 
 Rev. D. H. Paterson, Airdrie. 
 
 Rev. James Peter, M.A., Old Deer. 
 
 Rev. Thomas M. Pirie, M.A., Knockando. 
 
 Rev. George Porter, D.D., Maybole. 
 
 Rev. William Proudfoot, M.A., St Margaret's, Arbroath. 
 
 Rev. Hugh Ramsay, Baillieston. 
 
 Rev. Robert R. Rannie, M.A., Shapinshay. 
 
 Rev. William Reid, B.D., St David's, Kirkintilloch. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Ritchie, Oathlavv. 
 
 Rev. David Rae Robertson, B.D., Clepington, Dundee. 
 
 Rev. Philip Rodger, M.A., Pollockshaws. 
 
 Rev. John Rutherford, B.D., Kirkwall. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Rutherford, M. A., Dunkeld and Dowally. 
 
 Rev. Alexander R. Saunders, M.A., Lerwick. 
 
 Rev. Alexander T. Scott, Bargeddie. 
 
 Rev. David Scott, B.D., Dalziel. 
 
 Rev. Robert Scott, M.A., Craig. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Seton, M.A., Friockheim. 
 
 Rev. John Sharpe, Heatherlie. 
 
 Rev. Charles Short, Auchterarder. 
 
 Rev. James S. Simpson, Stobhill. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Slessor, Balfron. 
 
 Rev. Henry Wallis Smith, D.D,, Kirknewton. 
 
 Rev. James Smith, B.D., Newhills. 
 
 Rev. James Smith, B.D., St George's in the West, Aberdeen. 
 
 Rev. James M 'Gavin Smith, Millbrex. 
 
 Rev. John Smith, B.D., North Church, Stirling. 
 
 Rev. Robert Somers, B.D., Gartsherrie. 
 
 Rev. Charles F. Stevenson, Barry. 
 
 Rev. W. F. Stevenson, M.A., Rutherglen. 
 
X Note. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Stewart, Loanhead. 
 
 Rev. A. M. Stewart, Inverchaolain. 
 
 Rev. J. Douglas Stewart, Crossmichael. 
 
 Rev. Donald Stuart, M.A., Kilmuir-Easter. 
 
 Rev. William C. Taylor, M.A., St Columba's, Oban. 
 
 Rev. G. Miles Thomson, B.A., Grangemouth. 
 
 Rev. James Thomson, M.A., Arbroath. 
 
 Rev. Peter Thomson, B.D., Dunning. 
 
 Rev. James J. Tindal, M.A., Kinnellar. 
 
 Rev. William W. Tulloch, B.D., Maxwell Church, Glasgow. 
 
 Rev. George Turnbull, M.A., Dailly. 
 
 Rev. William Vassie, B.D., Castleton. 
 
 J. M. Waddell, Esq., Mount Vernon. 
 
 Rev. George Walker, B.D., Castle-Douglas. 
 
 Rev. Edward Walters, Macleod Church, Glasgow. 
 
 Rev. David Wark, Auchencaim. 
 
 Rev. Robert S. Warren, St David's, Dundee. 
 
 Rev. John Watt, M.A., Fetteresso. 
 
 Rev. John Watt, Glenprosen. 
 
 Rev. John Webster, D.D., Cramond. 
 
 Rev. James A. WiUiamson, B.D., Alva. 
 
 Rev. James Wilson, St Leonard's, Perth. 
 
 Rev. Henry William Wright, Ferryhill, Aberdeen. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Young, B.D., Ellon. 
 
 Rev. Alexander Youngson, M.A., Newmill. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 I. Introductory — Historical Account of the Union 
 between Church and State ; England and 
 Scotland i 
 
 By the Rev. Malcolm C. Taylor, D.D., Professor 
 of Ecclesiastical History in the University of 
 Edinburgh, and one of Her Majesty's Chaplains 
 for Scotland. 
 
 II. National Religion in Theory and Fact 41 
 
 By the Very Rev. John Tulloch, D.D., LL.D., 
 Principal of the University of St Andrews ; Dean 
 of the Order of the Thistle ; and one of Her 
 Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. 
 
 III. Free-will Offerings, Tithes, and other means of 
 supporting Religious Services, historically 
 considered 73 
 
 By the Rev. John Cunningham, D.D,, Minister 
 of the parish of Crieff. 
 
 IV. The Parochial System 109 
 
 By the Rev. Donald Macleod, D.D., Minister 
 of the Park Parish, Glasgow, and one of Her 
 Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. 
 
 V. Secessions from the Church of Scotland ; Rise and 
 
 Progress of Voluntaryism 157 
 
 By the Rev. James Mitchell, D.D., Minister of 
 the Parish of South Leith. 
 
 VI. The Church of Scotland and Religious Equahty.... 205 
 By the Rev. Andrew Gray, M.A., Minister of the 
 Parish of Dalkeith. 
 
xii Contents. 
 
 LECTURE PAGE 
 
 VII. Disestablishment and Disendowment; their Effects 
 
 upon the People 245 
 
 By the Rev. James MacGregor, D.D., Senior 
 Minister of the Parish of St Cuthbert's, Edinburgh. 
 
 VIII. Union of Scottish Presbyterians — is it not still 
 possible and desirable on the old historic 
 
 lines? 293 
 
 By the Right Rev. Alexander F. Mitchell, 
 D.D., Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the 
 University of St Andrews, and Moderator of the 
 General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 LECTURE i; 
 
 INTRODUCTORY— HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE 
 'UNION BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE ; 
 ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND. 
 
 By Malcolm Campbell Taylor, D.D,, Professor of Ecclesi- 
 astical History in the University of Edinburgh ; and one of 
 Her Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. 
 
 ISSENT from the religion of the State 
 was long prohibited throughout the Roman 
 world. But as Rome extended its conquests, 
 a policy of expediency intervened to tolerate the 
 religions of the vanquished. In course of time, the 
 law recognised a multitude of religions as practically 
 religions of the State, while it tolerated others from 
 which it withheld formal recognition. Hence, during 
 the Augustan period, and the first and second 
 centuries of the Christian era, the sacred rites of 
 many races were openly solemnised in the imperial 
 city. 
 
 The Christian benefited by the toleration which 
 
2 The Union of CJiurcJi and State. 
 
 had been extended to Judaism, so long as he was 
 regarded as a variety of Jew, just as he also suffered 
 from the odium with which, at times, that race 
 was visited. But as Christianity drew apart from 
 Judaism, and acquired in public view an identity 
 of its own, the protection which had been ceded to 
 the Jew ceased to profit the Christian. With the 
 admission of ever-increasing numbers, and of varieties 
 of nationality, the Church gradually moved into a 
 distinct position. Simultaneously, the conditions of 
 its existence were materially altered. Not yet, and 
 no longer passing for, a national religion, it existed 
 on sufferance ; for it was not till the reign of Gal- 
 lienus (260-8), and then only for a short time, that 
 it was formally tolerated by the State. Toleration, 
 indeed, in the modern sense, of the word, was 
 unknown. The religion of the stranger was allowed 
 to the stranger, to whom it properly belonged, but 
 in the eye of the law no man was free to choose his 
 own religion. Practice, however, did not always 
 coincide. The law frequently winked at observances 
 which were contrary to its spirit and expression. 
 Many Romans of the period affected a certain 
 liberality of sentiment regarding religion, and com- 
 bined the worship of ancestral gods with that of 
 foreign deities. As a rule, the fashion was left to 
 pursue its course, but, occasion calling for it, was 
 suppressed. The principle of intolerance underlay 
 the Roman practice of toleration. 
 
 At the same time, the sufferance accorded to 
 Christianity was guarded, to some extent, by the 
 multiplicity of religious rites which were winked at 
 or permitted, the decay of religious earnestness, 
 
The Union of Church and State. 3 
 
 the imperial form of government, and the character 
 of the emperors. The reHgions of the Roman world 
 were in number such that Christianity frequently 
 went on its way unnoticed. It was lost in the 
 crowd. The educated classes affected philosophy, 
 rather than the popular religion, and their influence 
 tended to abate fanaticism. Sceptics in so far as 
 the popular religions were concerned, they helped to 
 draw off the pressure of suspicion from the Chris- 
 tians, who in this respect were sceptics 'like them- 
 selves. Even the imperial form of government was 
 in their favour. It was less exclusively Roman ; it 
 dealt with a wider area of national interests, and was 
 more tolerant, partly of choice and partly of neces- 
 sity, than the republic by which it had been pre- 
 ceded. The general policy of the emperors of the 
 first and second centuries was, on the whole, 
 favourable to the diffusion of Christian thought 
 and practice. With rare exceptions, it was 
 only when popular clamour demanded it, and 
 because there was a supposed political necessity for 
 it, that they interfered to the detriment of the Chris- 
 tians. These safeguards, however, were of no avail 
 against popular fury in times of excitement. A 
 pestilence, or a famine, or a lengthened drought, an 
 inundation, or an incursion of the barbarians, or any 
 transient, unusual, physical phenomenon which sug- 
 gested to the superstitious multitude that the gods 
 were angry, also reminded them of the atheists in 
 their midst, for such in popular estimation were all 
 Christians. They neither repaired to the temples 
 nor sacrificed. They made no oblations. They did 
 not pay the customary reverence to the statues of 
 
4 The Union of CinircJi and State. 
 
 the gods, as they passed along the streets. In the 
 earher" period of their history they had neither 
 temples nor churches, nor lares or lararium in their 
 houses, to witness to their piety and their reverence 
 for the usages of social and domestic life. They 
 also considered themselves bound to abstain from 
 almost every public amusement, and to absent 
 themselves from festivities which, in the eyes of ,all 
 others, were not only joyous and innocent but 
 sacred. When a neighbour's child received its 
 name, or when his boy first put on raiment that 
 betokened manhood, or when his daughter was 
 given in marriage, the Christian hesitated to join 
 the circle of friends, because on these occasions there 
 were religious solemnities from which he recoiled. 
 Or if he overcame his scruples and were present, he 
 was an awkward, ill-omened guest who could not 
 pledge the gods. Even the annual festivals, with 
 their crowds, excitement, and religious and patriotic 
 observances, drew attention to a class who were per- 
 sistently absent. On the ground of their supposed 
 atheism, other and more odious charges were 
 founded. And, as prudence dictated the avoidance 
 of publicity in the celebration of the mysteries of 
 their faith, they were regarded as men who loved 
 concealment, and had at heart some hateful purpose. 
 They were suspected and dreaded as a secret 
 society that conspired against the most cherished 
 religious customs, perhaps against the State. In 
 popular estimation they had thrown to the winds 
 every sacred obligation, and were dead to every 
 feeling of humanity. They were morose, unsocial, 
 and unpatriotic ; the deluded but obstinate adherents 
 
TJie Union of Church and State. 5 
 
 of a depraved superstition, and as such, at the mercy 
 of the informer who might be tempted by avarice 
 or dislike. 
 
 Such, in the main, was the condition of the 
 Church for nearly three hundred years ; the third 
 century closing for the Christian cause in darkness, 
 if not despair, amid the prolonged agonies of the 
 Diocletian persecution (303-11). The essential vig- 
 our which enabled Christianity to outlive the fiercest 
 of all the storms that had tried its stability, also 
 secured for it that notable and unexpected political 
 victory with which the name of Constantine the Great 
 must always be associated. The wounds of eight 
 years of more than heroic endurance were scarce 
 healed, when, in the drift of the times. Paganism 
 and Christianity found themselves at last face to 
 face, not wholly disproportionate forces, with each 
 of them a fit leader and representative for the 
 impending struggle. The contest between Licinius 
 and Constantine, with its vast political considera- 
 tions, was also the mortal duel between Paganism 
 and Christianity. In the fall of Licinius the old 
 faith went down before the new, and the triumph 
 of Constantine^ became the turning-point in the 
 history of the Church. 
 
 The revolution, although unforeseen, had been 
 inevitable ; and the Church entered at once, with 
 alacrity and a good conscience, on the inheritance 
 of security, property, and influence, from which, 
 after innumerable conflicts, Paganism had been 
 expelled. The course of events is clear. Prior to 
 the outbreak of hostilities with his rival, important 
 
 1 The crowning victory of Chrysopolis was won in September 323. 
 
6 TJie Union of Chiwch and State. 
 
 concessions to Christianity had been made by 
 Constantine. Religious cults of whatever name 
 had been permitted, conversion to Christianity 
 sanctioned, Christian communities empowered to 
 receive legacies, and the clergy exempted from 
 military service. The ecclesiastical edifices that 
 still survived the ravages of the persecution, 
 tog-ether with the confiscated estates of the 
 Christians, had been restored ; and with the 
 termination of the great duel, the burden of 
 oppression was everywhere removed. The offer- 
 ings of the first-fruits and tithes, which had 
 probably been customary in all the churches of 
 Jewish origin, became general. When these or 
 similar oblations did not exist, or were insufficient, 
 the incomes of the ministers of religion were supple- 
 mented, or provided, from the municipal and imperial 
 treasuries ; and as Paganism decayed, its temporal 
 possessions were made over, in whole or in part, 
 to the Church. And when, finally, the jurisdiction 
 that had long been exercised in the Church by its 
 own officials now received legal sanction, so that in 
 spiritual matters no appeal could be raised in the 
 civil tribunals, the position of the Church was one 
 in which, in its own judgment, it could use its gifts 
 and powers among its own membership, and employ 
 its great trust, to the entire satisfaction of its 
 principles. Its members, in common with all other 
 subjects of the State, enjoyed legal protection. It 
 had the countenance and succour of the temporal 
 power. It was free to exercise its authority over 
 all its adherents, and its claims in respect of 
 doctrine, worship, and discipline had been allowed. 
 
TJie Union of Chinxh and State. 7 
 
 But the ecclesiastical upheaval necessarily affected 
 the Roman world as a whole. The change of belief 
 and sentiment among the people themselves, 
 whether Pagan or Christian, naturally transferred 
 the right of asylum, for instance, from the dis- 
 credited fanes and altars of the gods to Christian 
 churches. These now became the natural refuge 
 for such as fled from violence and intolerable 
 oppression_, for now neither the avenger of blood 
 nor the spoiler of the innocent dared violate their 
 sanctity. The transference of this right from the 
 one sanctuary to the other was gradual, and existed 
 as a fact long before it obtained imperial sanction in 
 the following century.^ Nearly related to it was the 
 right of episcopal intercession, in virtue of which 
 a prerogative of mercy, or of merciful mediation, 
 was tacitly assigned to the Church, on behalf of 
 prisoners and criminals. It bore fruit on notable 
 occasions, as when Flavian of Antioch set out from 
 his distant see to intercede with Theodosius the 
 Great on behalf of its seditious citizens ; and it 
 issued (529) in an obligation being laid on the 
 clergy to visit the public prisons twice in the 
 week, on Wednesdays and Fridays. Of yet wider 
 range and incidence was the legal sanction of 
 Sunday. In keeping with the growth of Christian 
 feeling in the western division of the empire over 
 which he ruled, and prior to his rupture with 
 Licinius, Constantine had interdicted the sittings of 
 the courts on Sundays, and the performance of 
 secular labour in towns (321). Agriculture was not 
 included in the prohibition, but his successors 
 
 ^ In 431, under Theodosius II. 
 
8 TJie Union of ChurcJi and State. 
 
 extended it to the collection of revenue, and with 
 indifferent success to theatrical entertainments. 
 As Christian ideas and the principles of Christian 
 morality thus found acceptance with the people and 
 their rulers, they necessarily told on legislation, and 
 gained for themselves increasing expression in the 
 imperial decrees. The effect which they produced in 
 the course of the next and subsequent century may 
 yet be read in that great compendium of Roman 
 law, the Corpus Juris Civilis ; it is still experi- 
 enced by all European nations, and constitutes the 
 basis of their law. Compilation as it is of imperial 
 decrees from the time of Hadrian to that of Justinian,^ 
 with a substratum that dates from the pre-Christian 
 period, it bears on its front the name of our Lord,* 
 as if to indicate the patronage to which the entire 
 edifice of Roman law, the world's masterpiece of 
 constructive ethics, had at length been dedicated. 
 Constantine had already shown his desire to bring 
 the public law into line with Christian sentiment, 
 by abolishing the punishment of crucifixion and the 
 branding of criminals on the forehead, and similar 
 enactments ; and he had sought to cleanse the 
 sources of its administration, by a law directed 
 against the venality and extortion of advocates and 
 judges. Some of the provisions which he initiated 
 waited long for their necessary sequel. The gladia- 
 torial exhibitions maintained themselves with a 
 tenacity that frustrated the desires of enlightened 
 lawgivers, and defied the thunderbolts of divine 
 
 * The Institutions, Pandects or Digest, and the Code were issued by 
 533. The Novels followed later in 565, the year of Justinian's death. 
 - ' In nomine Domini Nostri Jesu Christi.' 
 
The Unio7t of Church and State. 9 
 
 wrath which were hurled against them by the great 
 preachers of the Church. Yet what the wearers of the 
 purple despaired of accomplishing, the self-sacrificing 
 impulse of a monk is said to have effected. He had 
 come from the far East to Rome, when one of these 
 shows was being held. As he looked down from the 
 amphitheatre on the contests below, unlike those 
 vestals whose privilege it was to urge on the 
 combatants, and to award or withhold the fatal 
 stroke, and who rarely failed to catch the sanguinary 
 spirit of the spectators, or to burn at the sight of 
 blood with the brutal passions of the arena, he was 
 moved to fling himself between the combatants, and 
 stayed the cruel sport.^ He paid with his life for a 
 noble impulse, but the deed made an indelible 
 impression and ranged the wounded feeling of 
 Christendom on the side of imperial authority, to 
 the total abolition of an inhuman pastime by which 
 the majesty of Rome had been disgraced. The 
 secular, moral sentiment, however, was not in 
 all points behind the Christian. The institution of 
 slavery, for instance, was regarded by all parties as 
 wholly consonant with the highest forms of morality 
 and social order. It had the sanction of the Mosaic 
 law ; it had preserved myriads of vanquished from a 
 violent and untimely death,^ and was frequently 
 relieved by mutual kindness and fidelity. Yet even 
 with regard to it and other social problems, there 
 had been introduced an inward preparation and 
 tone of feeling that made for the safety and more 
 
 1 Theodoret. Eccl. Hist. v. 26. About 404. 
 
 ^ The single victory of Stilicho over Rhadagaisus, 406, is said to 
 have thrown 200,000 captives_ on the slave-markets. 
 
10 The Union of Church and State. 
 
 considerate treatment of the weak, as well as for the 
 future liberation of the slave. Social and domestic 
 life throughout the empire felt the influence of the 
 new leaven. Sudden change was not the rule, but 
 instead a gradual and, for the most part, imper- 
 ceptible adaptation of the old ways and institutions 
 to the new ideas and sentiments. The Christian 
 conscience, which the Paganism of three centuries 
 had oppressed, had been liberated ; and once free, it 
 presumed to influence or direct the helm that 
 controlled the State. The new force necessarily 
 produced kindred changes over the entire surface 
 of society, with a tendency to redress wrong and 
 befriend the helpless. The position of women was 
 elevated ; ' the dignity of marriage was restored by 
 the Christians,'^ while the needy of both sexes were 
 ultimately regarded as, in the eye of the law, the 
 peculiar charge of the Church. 
 
 But none of the changes thus briefly outlined was 
 thrust by an imperious, secular power on the Church. 
 Each and all were concessions to its spirit and grow- 
 ing authority, and were made gradually, and in part 
 before a position of ascendency had been secured. 
 Its complaint was that the imperial legislation 
 lagged behind in the reformation of abuses, and its 
 constant effort, to urge it forward, animated by 
 its own ideal, to its own goal. And as, under God, 
 it owed its altered position in the world to its own 
 inherent vitality and vigour, it now entered on it as a 
 rightful inheritance, and sought in the formative and 
 constructive spirit which had characterised it from 
 the first to mould the outward circumstances, and 
 
 ^ Gibbon, Rom. Emp. ch. xliv. (vol. v. 296, Smith's Ed.). 
 
TJie Union of CJiiirch and State. 1 1 
 
 reeenerate the inward condition of mankind, so 
 as that the kingdom of Christ might have the 
 fullest possible realisation. Union with the State, 
 in the first instance, and on the largest scale, for 
 the power with which it coalesced was the civilised 
 world, was thus on the side of the Church, a 
 genuine offshoot from its own roots. Neither 
 inveiglement nor bribe, nor yet coercion, can reason- 
 ably be put forward as a partial cause. It was at 
 once a natural and providential growth. Conse- 
 quently it is impossible to fix the precise date at 
 which it took effect, or to refer to a deed or compact, 
 in which, as high contracting parties, they declared 
 or ratified their intentions. They grew up side by 
 side, drew together, and ultimately consorted in 
 a union in which, without losing its identity, each 
 was the true complement of the other. Their origin 
 was of God, their interests were interlaced by time. 
 
 We have still to trace the methods, and where 
 possible the steps by which a similar union came to 
 pass on a more limited, but to us not less interest- 
 ing field. It is now impossible to determine when 
 Christianity first gained a foothold in Britain. An 
 expression used by one of the early fathers of the 
 Church gave rise to the belief, that this island had 
 been visited by St Paul.^ A quaint and beautiful 
 legend, not wanting in boldness of conception, brings 
 Joseph of Arimathaea to Glastonbury, the ancient 
 Avalon or Ynys-vitryn,^ memorable for the holy 
 Thorn into which the staff of the saintly pilgrim 
 grew. The more trustworthy narrative of the 
 historian, Bede, tells how about A.D. 177 a British 
 
 1 Clem. Ep. ad Cor. 5. ^ pi^ce of apples— Isle of glass. • 
 
12 The Union of Church and State. 
 
 king prevailed with the Bishop of Rome to 
 receive him into his fold, and how the Britons 
 remained thereafter in undisturbed possession of 
 the faith until the time of the emperor, Diocletian,^ 
 Although in this account he cannot be implicitly- 
 followed, there is reason to believe that Christianity- 
 had a certain hold on the Roman portion of the 
 island about the middle of the second century, pro- 
 bably, for the most part, among the foreign settlers, 
 their clients and dependents. The pathetic story of 
 St Alban's martyrdom,^ which is assigned to the 
 beginning of the fourth century and the persecuting 
 times of Diocletian, may be accepted,' in spite of 
 certain difficulties, as resting on a historical founda- 
 tion. 
 
 Self-offered victim, for his friend he died, 
 
 And for the faith. 
 
 Of the existence of a British Church from this date, 
 and for some time before it, to the close of the 
 Roman domination, there is no doubt ; but neither 
 the evidence that has been gathered from coins and 
 tablets of the Roman period, nor the documentary 
 witnesses, point to the conclusion that it had filled 
 the land. In the course of the fourth century it had 
 attracted the notice of the emperor and eastern 
 bishops. Constantine and Athanasius,^ both sur- 
 named the Great, refer to it. The chronicler, Sul- 
 picius Severus, in his account of an ecclesiastical 
 synod held at Rimini,'* notices the poverty of certain 
 British bishops who were unable to travel at their 
 own charges so far as Italy, and in consequence 
 
 ' Bede, i. 4. 2 ^q^q^ \ 7 
 
 *Eus. Vii. Con. iii. 19 ; Athan. Apol. c. Art. i. ; Hist. Ari. 28. •* 359. 
 
The Union of CJutrcJi and State. 13 
 
 accepted an allowance from the imperial treasury, 
 'thinking it more righteous to burden the treasury 
 than individuals.' ^ When the effect of rhetorical 
 exaggeration has been discounted, the language of 
 Chrysostom implies that towards the close of this 
 century, the native British as well as their Roman 
 masters constituted a well-appointed church of con- 
 siderable strength, which the rage for pilgrimages to 
 Palestine, then prevalent elsewhere, appears to have 
 infected.^ We hear also as belonging to the same 
 time of a certain Roman official who dwelt at Nem- 
 thur, identified with Dumbarton, and who emerges 
 from the obscurity of the period, as the father of 
 the apostle of Ireland, St Patrick. Calpurnius, the 
 ofhcial referred to, whose father had been a pres- 
 byter, was himself a deacon. 
 
 When the legionaries of Rome were finally with- 
 drawn, Christianity had already been allied to the 
 empire for about a century. Their withdrawal has 
 left us almost without further record of the Church 
 in Southern Britain for a lengthened interval, during 
 which its strength seems to have been impaired by 
 doctrinal declension, and then paralysed under the 
 repeated shocks of Pictish and Scottish invasion. 
 But as the light fails us in that quarter, it rises to 
 the north, in the first instance fitfully, in the district 
 partly Pictish but chiefly British, which lay beyond 
 the Solway and embraced Strathclyde ; and then 
 
 1 Chron. ii. 41, Gibbon estimates that the British Church might be 
 composed at this time of thirty or forty bishops, with an adequate 
 proportion of inferior clergy. Vol. 4, 134, ch. xxxi. 
 
 ^ Chrys. quod Chr. sit Deus, 12 ; in princip. Act iii. i ; and Jerome, 
 Ep. Iviii. 3. 
 
14 TJie Union of CJinrch and State. 
 
 comparatively clear and steady among the Scots and 
 northern Picts. It is in what is now modern Scot- 
 land that the first approaches may be traced, towards 
 an ecclesiastical settlement in this island. While 
 Southern Britain was still under Roman protection, 
 Ninian, a Briton by birth, who had been trained at 
 Rome, was erecting at Whithern, on the western 
 shore of Wigtown Bay, a * stately church' of stone 
 after the Roman manner (c. 397), from which 
 he and his disciples acted on the Britons of 
 Strathclyde, the mixed race that occupied the 
 Lothians, and the southern Picts of Caledonia 
 beyond the Forth. Candida Casa, or the great 
 monastery of Whithern, became one of the main 
 channels through which the Christian faith passed 
 to Ireland, whence it returned to illumine the 
 west and north of Scotland, in the persons of St 
 Columba and his companions (563). It may also 
 be credited with having given indirectly its famous 
 saint, St Kentigern, or as he is also called, St Mungo, 
 their contemporary, to Strathclyde. Between and 
 the arrival in Kent of the Romish monk, Augus- 
 tine (597), a full generation was yet to intervene. 
 All these great missionaries were monks. The 
 passion for a monastic life had spread by this time 
 to the extreme West, and the institution embodied 
 the better part of the enthusiasm of Christendom. 
 Their mode of procedure in effecting a settlement 
 having many points in common, that which prevailed 
 in the Columban Church, which was destined to be 
 the national church of the Scots and Picts in Scot- 
 land for a hundred and fifty years, may be con- 
 sidered typical. As introducing a mode of life 
 
The Union of CJinrch and State. 15 
 
 rather than a creed, their first necessity was a home 
 or fixed abode, where their particular manner of 
 hfe might be followed with some prospect of security 
 and freedom from interference. Their preference 
 for islands, as at lona and Lindisfarne, or for a 
 piece of land partially surrounded by a river or 
 the sea, as at old Melrose and Coldingham, and in 
 innumerable other instances, was therefore natural. 
 For similar reasons, inland strengths or fortified 
 places offered great attractions. Requisite grants 
 of territory were obtained on various considerations, 
 from the great men of the district or tribe, and in 
 return spiritual services were looked for, or specially 
 imposed. In some instances they were purchased 
 for money ; in others they were thrust on a reluctant 
 brotherhood by the pious zeal of the donor. As a 
 rule, they were exempted from military service and 
 other dues. Conversion to Christianity, recovery 
 from sickness, vows in anticipation of battle or 
 thanksgivings for victory, and the assumption of 
 the monastic habit, were among the occasions on 
 which pecuniary gifts were made, and grants of land 
 tendered 'wherein earthly warfare should cease.' 
 These donations were regarded both by giver and 
 receiver as having been immolated or solemnly 
 offered as a sacrifice to God. lona was thus made 
 over to Columba. On the conversion of the Pictish 
 king, additional cessions of territory followed^ and 
 became Columban foundations. Happily there is 
 extant an account, in Gaelic, of the earliest of these 
 grants on record, those which were made to the 
 church and monastery of Deer in Buchan, some if 
 not all of which are in so many words exempted 
 
1 6 The Union of Church and State. 
 
 from all burdens or exactions, and are immolated to 
 God and the patron saint from beginning to end, in 
 freedom from mormaer and toisech, the chief men 
 of the district and tribe, 'to the day of judgment.'* 
 In the Columban Church, however, these possessions 
 were in no sense alienated from the tribe by whose 
 rulers or representatives they had been disponed, 
 when the saint or cleric to whom they were gifted 
 for religious uses, was himself a member of the tribe. 
 In that case they continued as a possession in the 
 tribe, as well as for its benefit ; and his successor • 
 was elected from among its members. When, on 
 the other hand, the saint was of another tribe, both 
 the right and obligation to supply a successor 
 belonged to it, and the appointment was made, if 
 possible, from its own members. Hence the head or 
 abbot of one of those old Columban monasteries 
 stood towards it in the twofold relation of spiritual 
 
 1 The earliest of these notices is as follows : * Columcille and 
 Drostan, son of Cosgrach, his pupil, came from I (lona) as God had 
 shown to them unto Abbordoboir ( Aberdour) and Bede, the Pict was 
 Mormaer of Buchan before them, and it was he that gave them that 
 town in freedom for ever from Mormaer and Tosech. They came 
 after that to the other town, and it was pleasing to Columcille, because 
 it was full of God's grace, and he asked of the Mormaer, to wit Bede, 
 that he should give it to him ; and he did not give it ; and a certain 
 son of his took an illness after (or in consequence of) refusing the 
 clerics, and he was nearly dead ( lit. he was dead but if it were a little ). 
 After this the Mormaer went to entreat the clerics that they should 
 make prayer for the son that health should come to him, and he gave 
 in offering to them from Cloch in tiprat to Cloch pette mic Garnait.' 
 — Book of Deer, edited by John Stuart, LL.D., for the Spalding 
 Club, p. 91. Compare * Cloch pette mic Garnait,' the stone of the 
 portion of the son of Garnait, in the above extract M'ith Joshua, xviii. 
 17:* and it ( the boundary ) went down to the stone of Bohan, the son 
 of Reuben.' 
 
The Union of Church and State. ly 
 
 chief and secular trustee. As a natural conse- 
 quence, he became in course of time and for the 
 most part a secular governor, who discharged by- 
 proxy the sacred functions which had originally 
 imparted status and influence to his office. When 
 once a monastic establishment had been formed, 
 the claims which were put forward by the church 
 were such as had long since been conceded 
 elsewhere ; the right, namely, to exact tithes, first- 
 fruits, and the observance of Sunday, that time as 
 well as property might render its due tribute to 
 religion. Its duty, in return, was to render the 
 ministrations of the Christian faith ; amone others, 
 the recital of the Holy Scriptures, to all who would 
 hear and obey the truth. It bore to a large extent 
 the character of a Christian settlement peculiarly 
 devoted to religion, and practically exemplifying the 
 perfect life in the midst of a pagan population.^ 
 Besides the appeal which it made to the higher 
 motives, it recruited its ranks by means of 
 the more tangible attractions of peaceful avoca- 
 tions with security of life and goods, the hope 
 of freedom for the slave and the culture of letters 
 for such as aspired to learning, all which might be 
 found within its precincts. So far were these institu- 
 tions from being mere churches, that they presented 
 in miniature the life of a well-ordered community, 
 with an exhibition of the working of its various 
 departments reduced to practice. The brethren 
 were fishermen, mechanics, farmers, schoolmasters, 
 and ministers of religion ; but the halo of a spiritual 
 
 1 For a detailed account of these institutions, see Skene's Celiic 
 Scotland, vol. ii. 63 ff. 
 
 B 
 
1 8 The Union of CInircJi and State. 
 
 calling rested on all these avocations of theirs, and, 
 supported by the regularity of life and moral 
 earnestness of the workers, conferred a character of 
 supernatural sanctity on a monastic community. 
 The influence of these monastic families appears to 
 have spread, both among the Anglo-Saxons and 
 the Scots and Picts, with astounding rapidity. As 
 seminaries counting their scores and hundreds of 
 pupils, they soon had emissaries, well-wishers or 
 defenders in every household. Their beneficence 
 drew to them the hopes and sympathy of the 
 oppressed. Nor were they slow to exercise 'the 
 authority that becomes a priest in reproving the 
 haughty and powerful' To this must be added the 
 universal belief, with the origin of which we are not 
 now concerned, that miraculous powers had signally 
 attested the divine mission of the principal founders 
 and patron saints. Superstition entailed the same 
 awful authority on their relics and shrines, and 
 added to the sanctity with which Christian churches, 
 in common with other sanctuaries, had been in- 
 vested. They were holy places which had not yet 
 developed abuses under which criminals rather than 
 the innocent were sheltered ; and the tendency was 
 to extend the privileged area, till it reached far 
 beyond the Church walls and inclosures.^ The 
 reputed sanctity of the clergy, their learning — 
 in which, like their kindred and ecclesiastical 
 brethren in Ireland, they excelled — and the potency 
 with which they were believed to wield the powers 
 
 1 That at Applecross is said to have had a radius of six miles on 
 every side of the famous church of St Maelrubhe. Robertson's Stat. 
 Eccl. Scot. ii. 262. 
 
The Union of Church and State. 19 
 
 of the only true religion, established their influence 
 among all ranks ; the weak looked to them for 
 redress, and the powerful solicited their counsels. 
 Its weight and extent can only be inferred. But 
 the monks, who raised their rude cells on the storm- 
 swept isles of the West, or among the rock-bound 
 fastnesses of Central and Northern Scotland, who 
 lived on the coarsest fare, and passed to their 
 nightly rest with the bare ground as their couch, 
 and a stone for a pillow, were, many of them, of 
 noble and kingly race. It touched, indeed, the 
 essence of their office that their mediation should 
 be employed on critical occasions. Columba's own 
 mission to Albyn may have been partly political. 
 He is credited with having secured the recognition 
 by the Picts and Irish of the small Dalriadic, 
 Scottish kingdom, at that time hard bestead. 
 Adamnan, his biographer and a successor in the 
 abbacy, is also credited with political action, and 
 is reported to have been the author of a measure 
 which, for the first time, exempted Scottish women, 
 whether of Erin or of Albyn, from military service. 
 It was in the character of one who had a hand in 
 founding the kingdom, as well as of a minister 
 of religion, that Columba ' instituted or ordained 
 Aidan to be king (574), and blessed, with hand 
 solemnly laid upon his head. The so-called corona- 
 tion of Aidan — there is no mention of a crown — is 
 one of the earliest on record in Western Europe ; 
 marks the point at which the Church had laid its 
 hand, together with its sanction, on the tribal and 
 national life north of the Forth and Clyde ; and 
 fitly symbolises the union of the spiritual and 
 
20 The Union of ChnrcJi and State. 
 
 temporal power among a primitive people. No 
 similar record refers to England for a century later ; 
 but thenceforward these ideas were still further 
 elaborated, in the administration of unction to the 
 kings of Anglo-Saxon race. When its founder 
 died, the Columban Church had largely taken in 
 hand the spiritual guidance of the Picts and Scots, 
 and, in the following century, of the Northumbrians 
 (634-64), under the auspices of their sovereign 
 Oswald and its own St Aidan. 
 
 The expulsion from Pictish Caledonia of the 
 Columban clergy (717) marks the beginning of the 
 decay and downfall of their Church. It had parted 
 early, in the old days of the Roman occupation of 
 Britain, from the main stream of ecclesiastical 
 development in the West, and when Rome sent 
 out her spiritual soldiers to recover the ground 
 which the legions had evacuated, they introduced 
 a system with which it was at variance. The day 
 on which Easter ought to be observed, and the 
 style of the clerical tonsure, were among the chief 
 points of disagreement ; biit these had acquired an 
 importance, which a people that knows nothing of 
 the one, and does not observe the other, must find 
 it difficult to appreciate. In the collision that 
 ensued, the Columban clergy defended their tradi- 
 tional usages with a tenacity which brought on 
 them from the highest ecclesiastical quarters the 
 taunt, ' not to think their small number, placed on 
 the utmost border of the earth, wiser than all the 
 ancient and modern churches of Christ throughout 
 the world ; ' but they were overwhelmed. The 
 Pictish king, having thrown in his lot with Rome^ 
 
The Union of CJinrch and State. 21 
 
 expelled them from his dominions, having first 
 taken the precaution of placing his kingdom under 
 the patronage of St Peter^ who afterwards made way 
 for St Andrew. A change of clergy over all Pict- 
 land opened a way for the more direct interference 
 of the bishop of Rome, to whom and whose system 
 their successors were affiliated. This has been 
 represented in transmission as the result of an 
 intelligent conversion to orthodoxy, but may be 
 traced partly to political considerations. The 
 legends that surround the early history of St 
 Andrews point to large donations by later Pictish 
 kings ; a tenth part of the royal inheritance, and 
 even a third of the kingdom, being considered 
 appropriate gifts, on its promotion to the primacy 
 among Pictish churches, which had been tempo- 
 rarily held by Dunkeld, and for founding abbacies 
 throughout the kingdom. Grants of land ranging 
 over a wide tract of territory, 'from Largo to 
 Castleton of Braemar, are also specified, while 
 a vast parish or parochial district is described 
 as having been attached to it. Whatever faith 
 may be due to these traditions, it is more certain 
 that the secularisation of church lands, to which 
 the Columban system offered strong temptations, 
 now went on apace. There were, however, two 
 simultaneous processes, the seizure of the old 
 Columban endowments by abbots who had ceased 
 to be abbots except in name, and the bestowal of 
 fresh gifts on the reorganised Church — the ' Scottish 
 Church,' as it shortly afterwards became, on the 
 accession of the race of Kenneth Macalpin to the 
 Pictish throne. Powerful families originated in the 
 
22 TJie Union of Church and State. 
 
 lay abbots, who now appropriated the gifts which 
 the piety of former generations had laid on the altar 
 for the maintenance of a national religion. The 
 titular head of the abbey of Glendochart ranked 
 by-and-by as a great lord, whose jurisdiction pene- 
 trated into Argyll ; the successor of Maelrubhe at 
 Applecross developed into the Earl of Ross ; while 
 the presbyter-abbot of Dunkeld became progenitor 
 of the royal line that began with Malcolm Canmore. 
 A distribution among lay lords of a part of the 
 jurisdiction, patronage, and other privileges of the 
 Church accompanied this usurpation, and contrib- 
 uted to the process by which the Scottish Church 
 was fully assimilated to the Roman Catholic system 
 of the middle ages, from the time of St Margaret 
 (1069) to the Reformation. 
 
 During this period a territorial Church, with its 
 parishes, parochial clergy, and episcopal super- 
 vision, entirely supplanted the old arrangements, by 
 which religious services were provided from monastic 
 centres. The various religious orders of the Conti- 
 nent were introduced, and as the great monasteries 
 of the period were founded on the continental and 
 English model, the Culdees, the last relics of the 
 ancient system, were absorbed. The three bishoprics 
 which were in existence when David I. began his 
 reign (1124-53), had increased to nine at his 
 death. The munificent gifts of the period were 
 now ratified by the pope — a sign of the complete 
 unification of the Scottish Church, which now 
 extended to the Tweed, with the system of which 
 Rome was the acknowledged head. Whereas gifts 
 of books, vestments, and sacred vessels for the 
 
TJie Union of CJitircJi and State. 23 
 
 altar were among the earliest proofs of his interest 
 in the ecclesiastical affairs of Britain, his relation to 
 the Church, both in England and Scotland, had 
 now become one of judicial authority. The Church 
 of the whole West, in the plenitude of its power, 
 necessarily added to the credit of its component 
 parts. From the time when Turgot of Durham was 
 appointed to the see of St Andrews, the Scottish 
 bishops were cosmopolitan ; and the head to which 
 they owed supreme allegiance was neither at St 
 Andrews nor York, but at Rome. The reduction 
 of the Church in Britain, north and south of the 
 Tweed, to a uniform system, had sown the seeds 
 of quarrel between the Scottish Church and the see. 
 of York, which had exercised jurisdiction in Gallo- 
 way, and sought to establish itself in the primacy 
 of the whole of Scotland ; but the papal bull of 
 Pope Clement III. addressed to William the Lion 
 (1188) confirmed the independence of the Church 
 of Scotland, and declared it to be ' by special grace 
 the daughter of Rome.' At this time education 
 was entirely in its hands ; the administration of law 
 was largely the business of its courts. The privacy 
 of domestic life confided its secrets to its ear. It 
 gave its sanction to the most solemn engagements 
 and relationships, or withheld it on its own terms. 
 In virtue of its enormous wealth, it overshadowed 
 the temporal estates, and aided by substantial sub- 
 sidies the policy which it recommended. Its digni- 
 taries were, at times, powerful ministers of the crown, 
 and dictated its policy. In England, strenuous 
 efforts had been made since the time of Edward I., 
 to restrain the encroachments of the papacy, which 
 
24 The Union of Church and State. 
 
 had gained a technical hold over it, through its 
 claim to a suzerainty founded on the homage of 
 King John. But it is significant that, in spite of 
 the strong limitary statutes of the fourteenth and 
 fifteenth centuries, and the determination of king and 
 parliament to stay the growing absorption of the 
 soil of England by the Church, the following cen- 
 tury saw a cardinal installed in a height of power 
 and influence, to which few of the most trusted 
 ministers of the English crown had attained. Nor 
 was it otherwise in Scotland, where another cardinal, 
 Beaton, whose fate was still more tragic than that 
 of Wolsey, exercised an unrivalled influence. The 
 Church in both countries had at length attained 
 to a position in which it discharged numerous and 
 important functions that properly belonged to the 
 State. But it would be a feeble and one-sided 
 rendering of historical facts, that traced this to the 
 ambition and intrigues of a sacerdotal caste who 
 played on the fears of the superstitious multitude ; 
 or to a league between the temporal and spiritual 
 power, to uphold despotic rule. Pre-eminent services 
 alone confer a long-continued ascendency over the 
 intelligence and conscience of mankind. Had the 
 mediaeval Church not been, on great occasions, the 
 exponent of the conscience of Christendom, and the ' 
 sole power that dared to champion purity and 
 righteousness, before the licentious and brutal 
 tyranny of the strong, it never had attained to a 
 position in which it, in its turn, oppressed the con- 
 science, fettered the legitimate action of the State, 
 and, tempted by lust of power, confounded spheres 
 of jurisdiction which are in the main distinct. 
 
The Union of CJmrch and State. 25 
 
 With the Reformation came the next great 
 readjustment of their relations. Far-reaching as 
 were the changes which it introduced, the practical 
 organisation and beliefs which had been inherited 
 from the past were recast in accordance with the 
 ideas and altered conditions of the times, rather than 
 exchanged for entirely new principles and methods. 
 Much of the ancient spirit outlived the destruction 
 of the old institutions, to be re-embodied in the new. 
 A prominent feature in the endeavour to remodel 
 the ecclesiastical constitution was the exclusion, by 
 statute, of the papal authority from all legal status, 
 influence, and possibility of interference in the realm, 
 with corollary penal clauses directed against the 
 Roman Catholics. This extraneous element having 
 been got rid of, and the disposal of the patrimony 
 of the Church having been reduced to the dimen- 
 sions of a purely Scottish question, the nation or its 
 rulers proceeded to arrange for the continuance of a 
 national church and recognition of religion. No 
 other alternative had yet been heard of. There was 
 the possibility, and it was hoped by many, that 
 when all prior interests should have been fairly met, 
 there might be a redistribution of the ample revenues 
 to be dealt with, on certain public and patriotic lines 
 that contemplated an adequate provision for the 
 future ministers of religion, the encouragement of 
 the higher learning, the endowment of schools, and 
 the maintenance of the poor. But the magnificent 
 projects that floated before the imagination of 
 enthusiastic reformers and the unselfish of all 
 classes, vanished like a dream. How to dispose 
 of the church lands and revenues was, at best, a 
 
26 The Union of CJnirch and State. 
 
 problem to tax all the resources of statesmanship, 
 sustained by the full strength of a disinterested 
 public opinion. It was not clear what the final 
 settlement of the religious question might be, and 
 the number of the ministers for whom immediate 
 provision must be made was comparatively small. 
 Taken together, the public claimants were numerous, 
 but there was a still larger body of expectants who 
 had destined themselves to be the chief beneficiaries, 
 in the House with which the decision lay. Beyond 
 a severance of the ecclesiastical endowments from 
 the papal authority, which had hitherto enjoyed the 
 lion's share in their disposal, parliament at first 
 declined to go. It drew the limit of its action with 
 a skill and caution that cast a dubious light on its 
 views regarding the ultimate destination of a heri- 
 tage so vast, and so full of seductive possibilities. 
 It does not conflict with this statement, that the 
 proposal which was adopted allowed the clergy of 
 the old regime to retain for life, two- thirds of their 
 revenues ; for it was manifestly desirable to post- 
 pone the final settlement. It being thought good to 
 subject the remaining third to further subdivision, 
 two-thirds of it were set apart towards a restoration of 
 the dilapidated resources of the crown, while one-third 
 (;^24,23i Scots, or ;^2,oi9, 5s. sterling), or a ninth part 
 of the whole — in fact less, for the returns had been 
 under value — was devoted to the re-endowment of 
 a national church. Many of the temporal lands of 
 the great abbeys and other religious houses had 
 already, in the confusion of the times, found their 
 way, by devious courses, and devices, into the hands 
 of impoverished nobles. The remainder, nominally 
 
The Union of Church and State. 27 
 
 reverting to the crown, were afterwards squandered 
 on commendators or lay occupants of benefices, the 
 so-called Lords of Erection, or on court favourites 
 and pensionaries, or filched away under the disguise 
 of long leases, feus and sales, of merely nominal 
 valuations, such as the ingenuity of the conveyancers 
 of the day could contrive ; and some were forcibly 
 seized. There continued, however, in the crown the 
 reversion of the lands and revenues which the old 
 clergy had been allowed to retain. In 1617, in view 
 of "the fact that many parishes were without 
 ministers, and that many of the latter were 
 miserably poor, the precarious provision derived 
 from the common fund of the ' thirds,' which was 
 often irregularly paid, and sometimes not at all, 
 was constituted a burden on the teinds or tithes of 
 each separate parish. Some years later, Charles I. 
 meditated a reduction of the grants which had 
 been made by his father, out of the ecclesiastical 
 domains, but succeeded only in arranging a 
 compromise. 'Decreets arbitral,' pronounced by 
 the king, provided that the teinds should be 
 valued and sold to such proprietors of the soil as 
 were not in possession of them, and who might 
 wish to purchase. So far, the object was to avoid 
 the conflict of rights which arose when one man 
 was proprietor of the tithes of the harvest, and 
 another was proprietor of the harvest itself. It 
 was an instance of compulsory sale for the public 
 good, the price being regulated by a fixed standard. 
 On this footing, with the right to claim from the 
 Court of Teinds a review of the adequacy of the 
 stipend every twenty years, the provision made 
 
28 TJie Union of Church and State, 
 
 for the clergy of the ecclesiastical establishment in 
 Scotland substantially remains. It had in some 
 parishes fallen so low that, in 1810, the Exchequer 
 was empowered to pay an annual sum, afterwards 
 increased to ;^i 2,000, towards an augmentation of 
 these livings, in order to bring them up to ;^I50 
 a year. Still later Acts erected certain churches 
 in the Highlands and Islands, and endowed them 
 with a meagre stipend ; the total annual grant 
 from the Consolidated Fund amounting to about 
 ;£"i7,ooo, for both of these objects. And as is well 
 known, between three hundred and forty, and three 
 hundred and fifty, parishes have since then been 
 erected and endowed by the liberality of friends and 
 members of the Church ; it is true, with an annual 
 income in most cases of only ;^I20. To retrace 
 our steps somewhat, in 1647 the Westminster 
 Confession, which had been substituted by the 
 Church for the old Scottish Confession of Knox 
 and of 1560, under the pressure of a desire for 
 uniformity with the Puritans, became, and has 
 since continued to be, the doctrinal standard of 
 the National Church. By this symbol it is bound, 
 but itself has imposed the formula by which office- 
 bearers accept it on their entrance to office ; and 
 were it desirable, the same authority might modify 
 or remove it. Its parochial and judicial machinery, 
 early set in motion, • has outlived the struggles 
 and changes of three centuries, is secured in 
 its independence by statute, and has. proved its 
 adaptability to the wants of a more modern age. 
 The harsh and rigid discipline which was at one 
 time meted out to all classes is to be explained by 
 
TJie Union of Church and State. 29 
 
 the circumstances ; and although there have been 
 occasional interferences with matters extraneous 
 to its proper sphere, the Church of the Reformation 
 can hardly be charged with having grasped at 
 political power, or sought to discharge secular 
 functions. It is a remarkable proof of the fore- 
 sight of its early leaders, that almost the only con- 
 siderable exercise of public duty which it had long 
 discharged, but of which it has been deprived, has 
 been the supervision of education. On the other 
 hand, it has obtained from the Legislature the resti- 
 tution of an ancient privilege, in the abolition 
 of patronage, the main cause and fertile source 
 of Presbyterian division. The regulation of its 
 forms of worship, and of the celebration of divine 
 ordinances, is acknowledged to be within its 
 own competency. Its procedure In admitting to 
 office, and in the exercise of discipline, has settled 
 down into forms which the civil law fully sustains. 
 Within its sphere, it performs legislative as well as 
 judicial functions, with a right as indefeasible as 
 can be shown to belong to any other lawful tribunal. 
 While its right to meet in General Assembly has 
 never been lost sight of, it has always had respect 
 to ancient usage and example, and reserved a 
 place of honour for the sovereign, or the repre- 
 sentative of the crown in its councils. Throughout 
 its history, it has sought for a middle term between 
 license and absolutism, anarchy and a hierarchy ; 
 between a total abstention from political movement, 
 or the currents of national life, on the one hand, 
 and on the other, that immersion in the political 
 caldron, which would seem to be an intermittent 
 
30 The Union of CJiuvch and State. 
 
 necessity of denominational existence. The slender 
 patrimony which it has inherited secures the inde- 
 pendence of its ministers, while the terms of service 
 on which it can be enjoyed ought to exclude envy. 
 There are grounds, no doubt, on which its present 
 position has been challenged, but where these 
 do not affect the characteristic principle of a 
 State Church, they have not been reduced to 
 that definiteness of statement which might render 
 them a basis of legislation. It is an institution 
 whose position is the result of a long and troubled, 
 but not inglorious, history ; which has contributed, 
 by its deeds and sufferings, much of tbe colour 
 and glow of feeling that pervade the national 
 record ; and in which the aspirations of many of 
 the noblest minds of Scottish origin have been 
 realised. With all its imperfections, it has long 
 had a strong and loving hold on the national 
 heart and conscience ; it has impressed its spirit 
 on the national character, and transmitted its like- 
 ness to those of its own offspring who refrain from 
 using its ministrations. 
 
 Few subjects of great moment, yet of lively 
 interest, have the advantage of so long and continu- 
 ous a series of records for their elucidation. An 
 interval of a thousand years separates the Refor- 
 mation from the missionary enterprise of Columba — 
 a vast stretch of time, even in the history of nations. 
 During the greater portion, the main features and 
 general position of the subject stand boldly out. 
 All on the hither side is within the narrative of 
 comparatively modern history. What lies beyond, 
 far distant, is still discernible. Foremost among 
 
The Union of Chiuxh and State. 31 
 
 facts which the shortest survey must disclose, is 
 the survival, nay, steadfast growth of the Church for 
 nearly three hundred years, in spite of neglect, dis- 
 couragement, and the energetic, and sometimes 
 furious hostility of the secular power. From that 
 fact, all who are not of opinion that religion has no 
 future as a great factor in determining the course 
 of human affairs, may draw, as from the final, 
 positive conclusion of a great world-debate, the 
 spirit by which they ought to be animated. The 
 religion and life that outlived social ostracism, 
 the demands of Christian discipline, and the per- 
 secutions of Nero, Decius, and Diocletian, is not 
 now in imminent peril from causes extraneous to 
 itself. The unconscious exaggerations of party 
 feeling or strong conviction, can alone involve the 
 subject in a phraseology that predicts, in certain 
 eventualities, either the destruction of religion or 
 its signal triumph. Grave issues are, in truth, 
 before us ; nor may it be easy for the most disin- 
 terested and capable, even when the desire is 
 present, to see in the same light, and be of one 
 mind. The question of the relation of the Church 
 to the State is far-reaching and momentous ; civil 
 liberty, as well as religion, may profit by its 
 discussion ; but it is not a question of the existence 
 or continuance of religion in the land. In view of 
 that fact, granting that there be sincerity of pur- 
 pose, there can be no ground, and no excuse, for 
 indulging in intemperate methods of controversy, or 
 raising issues larger than are at stake ; and when 
 there is a presumption that the question is not free 
 from difficulty, there is a plain obligation to attribute 
 
32 The Union of CJiurcJi and State. 
 
 no motives other than are wholly disinterested and 
 honourable. 
 
 The fact, which no other subject brings more im- 
 pressively to view, that toleration is of comparatively 
 recent growth, ought of itself to enforce this duty. 
 History does not support the contention, that intoler- 
 ance and persecution are exclusively, or necessarily, 
 the progeny of a union between religion and the 
 State. The early Christians, it is true, demanded 
 justice merely, from the government, but a change 
 of circumstances led to an altered disposition, 
 even before they enjoyed the right to call on the 
 executive to enforce their creed. The persecution of 
 heretics could hardly have originated, till theology 
 had assumed the dogmatic forms of the fourth 
 century ; nor till then, did the great church doctors 
 justify the compulsory reclamation of heretics, with 
 its dark and ominous alternative. The first of 
 them to suffer death as victims of orthodoxy, 
 were, no doubt, got at through the Church's 
 alliance with the State, but a direct alliance 
 is not the only channel, through which govern- 
 ments are influenced by powerful interests and 
 corporations ; and the worst times of all were 
 those when, in certain countries, the Church had 
 arrogated to itself the functions of the temporal 
 and spiritual jurisdictions, and there was virtually 
 no State, and no restraining, moderating force such 
 as it has frequently exerted. What the facts point 
 to is, that toleration is a spirit, rather than a set 
 of principles ; a broad, humane disposition, the 
 growth of secular and religious tendencies in com- 
 bination ; which flourishes most, when men's 
 
TJie Union of Church and State. 33 
 
 interests are large and various, and regarded with, 
 some sense of perspective and proportion ; and 
 least, when thought and feeling are concentrated 
 on a single point, with which there is nothing to 
 measure or compare. 
 
 Dispassionate authors who are opposed to a 
 formal union between religion and the State, frankly 
 admit that there is nothing intrinsically wrong, in 
 Christianity allying itself with secular government, 
 more than with art, or education, or anything else 
 that is secular and at the same time good. Nor, 
 indeed, is it possible for it to exist, without some 
 kind and degree of connection with the civil 
 authority ; even the definition of the Church as 
 an invisible body leaves to it a visible and corporal 
 existence. If there be modes of religion as remote 
 from national life as a metaphysical problem, 
 Christianity is not one of them. The vast interests 
 of mankind are the material in which it works. As 
 a vital and regenerating force in humanity, it was 
 impossible for it to be for ever content with its 
 primitive position of servitude and neglect. Seed 
 and leaven, similitudes employed by its Author, 
 point to a growth and expansion commensurate 
 with its nature ; nor, short of that, is there any 
 limit at which it can consistently, and with justice 
 to its own pretertsions, cease to influence human 
 thought, morality, and legislation. There is one 
 conclusion that covers the whole era, that Chris- 
 tianity owes its diffusion among nations, and its 
 elevation to the rank of a great moral and social 
 force among them, to its own essential and native 
 vigour. Nurtured in silence and darkness, amid 
 
 c 
 
34 TJic Union of CJuircJi and State. 
 
 the cold and biting winds of neglect, and the 
 storms and tempests of persecution, it sent abroad 
 its roots with a strong hold on the deeper, 
 inner life of humanity, as it shot upwards into 
 recognition and power. Whether craving protec- 
 tion from the State, or allying itself with it, or 
 endeavouring to control it, its firm belief was, from 
 first to last, that it was legitimately promoting 
 its high destiny. A conviction that pervades the 
 whole history of the Church, and is rooted in 
 the nature of Christianity itself, cannot fairly be put 
 in the category of mere arbitrary compacts. There 
 are on the face of that history concordats without 
 number, with reference to matters both of principle 
 and detail, but they arise out of mutual relations, 
 that, as a whole, were not the result of contract, 
 but of natural or providential growth. If due 
 weight be given to this consideration, what may be 
 described as the preponderating, lay verdict may 
 continue to be what it has been in the past, that 
 after all, it comes to be a question of a modus 
 vivendi, which means, in its lowest form, how the 
 secular authority and the religious are to get along 
 together, with least friction — but which ought to 
 mean, how they are best to sustain each other in 
 spheres that are practically distinct, and fairly 
 separable ; to work to each other's hands, in a 
 noble emulation, and with the high aim of securing 
 its full strength and happiness to national life. 
 The only other alternatives may be left to take 
 care of each other ; they who anticipate that 
 religion may become a department of secular 
 government, are not more than a counterpoise to 
 
The Union of Cluirch and State. 35 
 
 those who are still more eager to see the State 
 reduced to a department of the Church. 
 
 Certain vague charges against a union between 
 them may be dismissed with a bare enumeration: 
 that the Church, if it thereby gain in numbers 
 and become the church of the masses, becomes the 
 church of the world ; that Christianity becomes a 
 fashion, and that consequently hypocrisy is in- 
 creased, and moral discipline relaxed. Might the 
 same accusations not be made with an amount of 
 truth, on which all parties may reflect with pain, 
 against any form of Christianity that has become 
 the dominant religion in any land } Candour will 
 admit that these evils are rife in countries where a 
 State-church cannot be brought forward in explana- 
 tion ; and that even religion has its parasites. When 
 stripped, of technicalities such as 'spiritual independ- 
 ence,' * crown and covenant rights,' and similar 
 phraseology, the practical outcome of the belief that 
 underlies these and all similar accusations probably 
 is, that a union between religion and the State natu- 
 rally leads to the Church being secularised ; to its 
 being worldly-minded, and much mixed up with 
 political and other worldly matters. This, as a belief 
 of considerable currency, merits serious attention. 
 The general consideration may come, however, here 
 into view, and it would seem to be self-evident, that 
 if some other institution or body does not relieve the 
 Church, in whole or in part, of the worldly business 
 which is necessary to its existence, it must do it 
 for itself There need be nothing wrong in that ; 
 the practical question is, whether it be, on the whole, 
 the better way to preserve a sacred institution from 
 
"^6 The Union of Church and State. 
 
 being secularised ; and it is not self-evident, that the 
 most efficient mode of preventing that result is to 
 forbid another party to take on itself the main 
 portion of the work, and to load the Church itself, 
 as a corporation, with every conceivable worldly 
 transaction and concern. There was a time, no 
 doubt, when the Church was obliged to do its 
 own farming and banking, and when it transacted 
 all the business that its ever-increasing staff and 
 growing numbers rendered necessary; even when 
 the law did not allow it to act in a corporate 
 capacity. There was a still earlier period, when 
 there was a community of goods, but then the 
 fact at once emerged, that to have all things in 
 common meant the corporate management by the 
 Church of worldly possessions, and, so far its seculari- 
 sation. The natural remedy in the circumstances, the 
 conversion of most of these possessions into money, 
 Avas adopted ; but even that did not prevent the 
 very apostles from being burdened with semi-secular 
 business, until relieved of it on their ov»^n protest ; 
 nor is there reason to suppose that the experiment 
 of a community of goods was abandoned on any 
 other ground, than that it was practically a failure. 
 
 In the brief 'survey in which we have been 
 engaged, three distinct periods, with their character- 
 istic features, have been passed in review. There 
 is the Columban period, with its groups of mon- 
 astic institutions, whose spiritual chiefs united in 
 their own persons large temporal authority with 
 spiritual supremacy. A main object of the system 
 was, to be as far removed from the secular arm as 
 possible, free from military service or taxation 
 
The Union of Church and State. 37 
 
 generally ; and to manage its own affairs, as a group 
 of independent communities. There were weak 
 points and strong in the arrangement, but we have 
 seen how, as a general result, it led deeper and 
 deeper into every kind of secular undertaking and 
 employment, until the principal abbots became for 
 the most part lay rulers, and ultimately set up as 
 great, lay lords of the soil, abstracting for their own 
 use the major part of the ecclesiastical heritage. 
 That period was followed by another, of great 
 obscurity till it clearly worked up to the mediaeval 
 Church, which had by that time been drawn into the 
 closest connection with the whole organisation of 
 secular government, and was fostered by it with 
 considerate and loving care. In this, there was at 
 first neither real nor apparent danger. But there 
 were new conditions. The religious system of Scot- 
 land was now a branch of the great international 
 organisation of the West, with its central, governing 
 intelligence and will. There arose what proved to 
 be the irresistible temptation to exchange legitimate 
 influence for supremacy, and the virtual appropria- 
 tion of almost every department of State. By an 
 opposite course to that pursued by the Columban 
 abbots, the great dignitaries of the mediaeval 
 Church came, in their turn, to be engrossed with 
 temporal affairs. 
 
 These last, no doubt, were results that had been 
 arrived at, under a system of intimate union between 
 religion and the State. But, it was against these 
 enormities, whether in Scotland, England, or on the 
 Continent, that the Protestantism of Europe roused 
 itself to undertake a hazardous and arduous conflict. 
 
38 TJie Union of CJnircJi and State. 
 
 The expulsion of the papal authority from English 
 soil assumed, more than in Scotland, the character 
 of a struggle between a home and a foreign power, 
 for if the monarchy was stronger than in Scotland, 
 it was exposed to greater danger ; and the Church 
 of England still shows how deeply this character 
 was impressed on it, in the assertion of the ecclesi- 
 astical supremacy of the sovereign. The policy of 
 the Scottish Reformers, on the other hand, was 
 more strongly inspired than elsewhere by the desire 
 to reduce the activity of the Church to its true 
 proportions, and, if possible, to indicate by broad 
 and clear lines of demarcation the spheres of both 
 Church and State. At the same time, worthier 
 ideas were abroad, than had long prevailed regarding 
 the province and duties of the State, just as men's 
 minds were also being directed to the possibilities 
 of large and exciting enterprise, by the startling dis- 
 coveries of science and geography. Whether our 
 forefathers entirely succeeded with their theory of 
 a co-ordinate jurisdiction, is not the point, but that 
 they strove to solve the question, in the belief that 
 it must be solved on the principle of mutual co-oper- 
 ation, rather than of mutual exclusion. Independ- 
 ence without tyranny on either side, and interde- 
 pendence without absorption, was the middle course 
 which they strove to realise, as being most in har- 
 mony with the divine law, and most conducive to 
 the welfare of the kingdom ; and for this, the only 
 footing on which, as they believed, the freedom and 
 integrity of civil government and the security of 
 religion could be permanently maintained, they 
 contended stoutly, and at times fiercely, to the 
 
TJie Union of Church and State. 39 
 
 sacrifice in its defence of both life and goods. What 
 may fairiy be called the national, Scottish view, that 
 which governed the action of all the greatest names 
 among Scottish churchmen, from Knox to Chalmers 
 and Macleod, was that the co-operation of the State 
 in reality secured the de-secularisation of the 
 Church ; that it left the ministers of religion greater 
 freedom to wait on their proper duties, and greater 
 independence in discharging them ; and that definite 
 positions having been taken up on either side with 
 their respective obligations, the current of national 
 life ought to move with greater strength, smoothness, 
 and purity. This may or may not be an instance 
 of that common-sense with which Scotland is at 
 once credited as an excellent gift, and twitted as 
 the average or mediocrity beyond which it is unable 
 to rise ; but it has been a characteristically Scottish 
 way of regarding a complicated and difficult ques- 
 tion. It was come to by men whose lot was cast 
 in times and circumstances that pressed for its 
 practical solution, and who were singularly able 
 to grasp with firmness the higher religious aspect 
 of the question, that a nation is as much a divine 
 organism as an individual, as absolutely under 
 divine law and discipline, and therefore bound to 
 acknowledge, and appeal to, the Supreme Power 
 and Judge ; and history so far supports this view, 
 inasmuch as nations have in the past regarded 
 religion as one of their weightiest concerns, while such 
 communities as in modern times would rid them of 
 all religious obligations have not succeeded. Ques- 
 tions of the kind, in the long-run, settle themselves, 
 but not till they have been exhausted on every side, 
 
40 TJie Union of CJuircJi and State. 
 
 when, indeed, they may become as dead as those 
 Easter controversies that at one time agitated 
 Christendom to its depths, and are now forgotten. 
 But neither the condition of stable equihbrium 
 nor of indifference has yet been reached on this 
 subject ; it does not advance the argument to 
 appeal to countries whose experience offers scarce 
 one parallel to ours ; nor is it possible to say 
 what further developments may be in store for 
 those younger nations, whose greatness already 
 looms on the horizon in gigantic outlines. There 
 are possible dangers on either side ; it is as un- 
 desirable that the State should meddle overmuch 
 in religion as in social and private life ; but the 
 question has been worked out and tested in 
 Scotland as in i^v^ other countries, in the course of 
 its own chequered history and experience. It is a 
 national question, and the people of Scotland 
 understand it. They know that it touches their 
 civil liberty, and the independence of their clergy, 
 and that the interests of their children's children 
 are deeply concerned in it. They cannot con- 
 strue any attempt to snatch from them an oppor- 
 tunity of determining whether the relation between 
 religion and State shall continue on the old lines, 
 and whether there shall be as in the past a national 
 recognition of religion, but as a sign of want of 
 confidence in the wisdom and righteousness of a 
 cause, and of mistrust of the capacity and judg- 
 ment of the people. It is their right calmly and 
 deliberately to decide it, and if they do not belie 
 the best traditions of their history, they will deal 
 with it in a practical and temperate spirit. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE, 
 
 LECTURE 11. 
 
 NATIONAL RELIGION IN THEORY AND FACT. 
 
 By the Very Rev. John Tulloch, D.D., LL.D., Principal of the 
 University of St Andrews, Dean of the Order of the Thistle, and 
 one of Her Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. 
 
 N the first lecture of this course, the ancient 
 relation of Church and State has been 
 traced in its origin and history. It has 
 been shown how the relation sprang up naturally by 
 essential affinity between the spiritual and civil 
 orders. The higher ideas introduced by the Gospel 
 gradually supplanted the pagan ideas of law and 
 government, first in the Roman Empire, and then in 
 the new nationalities which rose upon its ruins. 
 The Church incorporated itself with the State every- 
 where, not by any formal agreement, but as its 
 formative life and main power. So far from being 
 instituted by Government, it would be more true 
 in many cases to say that the civil order was largely 
 
 As 
 
 D 
 
 the creation of religious faith and enthusiasm 
 
42 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 the European kingdoms became more and more 
 under the influence of Christian principles, they 
 embodied them more completely, and were more 
 fashioned according to their type. National 
 churches were, in short, everywhere natural growths. 
 The connection of Church and State, so far from 
 being an artificial connection appointed by kings 
 or parliaments — the mere product of statute — is a 
 connection arising out of the nature of things, and 
 spontaneously evolved with the advance of European, 
 civilisation. 
 
 It may be true, as in the case of our own Church 
 of Scotland, that the ancient connection between 
 Church and State became the subject of special 
 statute ; that the national religion, in passing from 
 one form to another, was defined and guaranteed 
 by positive enactment ; but this does not affect our 
 general statement. For in such a case, not only 
 was there a long previous growth of church 
 life, but the change to a reformed type of that 
 life came primarily from within, and not from 
 without the national development. No history can 
 illustrate more strongly than our own how utterly 
 futile it is to attempt artificially to impose upon a 
 people a form of national religion alien to their feel- 
 ings. The Church of Scotland, as it now exists, is 
 no doubt, in its civil rights and privileges, a parlia- 
 mentary institution. The act of the first Scottish 
 parliament of William and Mary, in the spring of 
 1690 (April 25), established the Presbyterian creed, 
 church government, and discipline. In other words, 
 it established and ratified, in its present form, the 
 Church of Scotland. But not only was the reformed 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 43 
 
 church already in existence as the rehgion of the 
 people, but the reformed church itself was only a 
 new outcome of Scottish religious faith, which, from 
 the beginning, had been one of the most powerful 
 elements of the national civihsation. At no period of 
 Scottish history, many as are its transformations, can 
 religion be said to have been formally adopted by 
 the government and set up for its own purposes. The 
 conception of the State choosing one religion from 
 among others, and endowing it to the injury of others, 
 is a purely modern conception. It has no ground in 
 history or in fact. Nations in the past have grown 
 strong in virtue of their religious life and organisa- 
 tion ; and churches have grown wise and great, not 
 merely because they were religious, but national 
 institutions, at once endowed with spiritual life, and 
 regulated by common national law and usage. 
 
 To every well-informed mind, therefore, the 
 alliance between Church and State, whatever may 
 be now said about it, is a natural alliance. They 
 have united according to the nature of each, the 
 State deriving strength and stability from the 
 Church, which is merely the organisation of its 
 higher life, and the church receiving support, 
 control, and direction from the State. They have 
 been reared together with the course of civilisa- 
 tion, the twin expressions of its highest ideas. 
 So far, this alliance must always justify itself to 
 the historical student. He inclines to believe that 
 what history has thus joined together should not 
 be rashly put asunder. National religion is to 
 him a reality, not merely because it seems logically 
 to follow that the religious principle must extend 
 
44 Natio7ial Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 from the individual to the family, and from the 
 family to the State, which is the aggregate of the 
 social life of a people, but because he finds 
 national churches among all Christian peoples who 
 have a history beyond modern times. 
 
 It will be said that modern nationalities, such as 
 America and our British colonies, present a different 
 picture. They do so ; and the fact deserves, 
 if not all the importance attached to it, to 
 be carefully weighed. The United States of 
 America is no doubt a great nationality without 
 any national church or national religion in the 
 historical sense. That the people of the United 
 States are, notwithstanding, a religious people, with 
 churches multiplied throughout their bounds, and a 
 spirit of religious earnestness pervading them, may 
 be frankly conceded. We need not dwell upon 
 what can yet be amply established, that in the 
 older colonial states there are still survivals of 
 an earlier condition of things, when religion was 
 recognised and endowed as in the old country ; 
 nor need we dwell upon the very unequal distribu- 
 tion of religious ordinances where all is left to 
 the casual action of voluntary liberality. Let 
 the fullest admission be given to whatever can 
 be said in favour of religion in America. It does 
 not in the least follow, because the American 
 people, and the people of our colonies, thrive 
 religiously as well as otherwise without a national 
 church, that other civilisations will thrive equally if 
 their national churches are taken away. Because 
 new types of civilisation have sprung up in new 
 circumstances, it by no means follows that the 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 45 
 
 older types are to be violently accommodated to 
 the new, or that they can be so without fatal 
 injury. To apply modern ideas to the violent 
 change or destruction of older forms of nation- 
 ality, implies a process of dislocation which may 
 disturb the older civilisation to its very roots. 
 Unhappily, the modern Democrat is seldom or 
 never an historical student — quite as little as 
 the old Tory was, who thought the Church 
 existed for his glory, and that the poor might 
 learn to touch their caps to him at its doors. 
 The existence of our national churches, as they 
 have grown with the growth of the country, or been 
 modified, as they have no doubt largely been, by 
 the progress of civil and religious liberty, is ignored 
 by both alike. And whereas in former days the 
 Church was looked upon in many cases as a mere 
 addendum to the squirearchy of the period, so in 
 these days it has come to be looked upon as merely 
 a favoured sect chosen by the Government, although, 
 in reality, the representative of its common religious 
 life. 
 
 II. This point is so important, and so commonly 
 ignored in discussion, that we must dwell upon it a 
 little further. The Church of England is historically 
 a part of the common national life — an estate of the 
 realm coeval with the realm itself. In early British 
 and Anglo-Saxon times she established herself by 
 her own divine strength and Christian activities in 
 the same manner as all the early Christian churches, 
 receiving only such protection from the State and 
 its laws as any other lawful institution of which the 
 
4.6 National Religioii in Theory and Fact. 
 
 State approved.^ There exists no act formally- 
 establishing her. It might be more truly stated, as 
 it has been stated, that the Church of England, 
 which is found fully organised long before Magna 
 Charta, and is recognised in that famous document 
 in all her rights and privileges, instead of being 
 established by the State, contributed to the estab- 
 lishing of the State. No doubt, in course of time, 
 the Church of England became the subject of 
 statute, as well as every other institution in the 
 realm ; but this did not make her the creature of the 
 State, nor did it constitute any act of selection on 
 the part of the State on her behalf, to the prejudice 
 of other religious interests. There was not, indeed, 
 till after the great constitutional struggle of the 
 seventeenth century, any other religious body in 
 England in comparison with which the Church of 
 England could have been preferred. 
 
 The case of our own Church, as we have seen, is 
 different. Presbytery may be said to have been pre- 
 ferred to Episcopacy at the Revolution. The modern 
 Church of Scotland rests on the Revolution Settle- 
 ment ; and it is open for any one to say that she 
 was then selected in preference to the Episcopal 
 Church of the Restoration. But, truly speaking, the 
 Church Settlement of 1690 was, as it professed to 
 
 1 We have no incorporating or endowing Statutes. The (Anglican ) 
 Church Establishment, whatever it means, dates from the infancy of 
 Christianity under the Heptarchy. It has grown with the monarchy 
 and the constitutions, of which it is the oldest element. Hence tlie 
 difficulty of defming the disestablishment of what was never definitely 
 established. Still, it is easy to enumerate the peculiar relations in 
 which the State stands to the Church, relations not existing with any 
 other religious institution. — Dr Trevor. 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 47 
 
 be, the work of the people of Scotland. There is no 
 doubt, says our Scottish historian, Dr Burton, than 
 whom it is impossible to conceive any one on that 
 subject more impartial, that 'the voice of the 
 people ' was decidedly for the Presbyterian system. 
 The northern counties were in favour of Episcopacy ; 
 and there was a considerable party in the western 
 shires that would tolerate nothing but the Covenant ; 
 a majority of the gentry were nominally Episco- 
 palian ; but the middle classes and the common 
 people throughout the southern counties determined 
 the result not only by their numbers, but by their 
 intelligence and earnestness. The Settlement, in 
 other words, came from the people, and was not 
 imposed upon the people. The Claim of Right was 
 a popular document ; and Prelacy was set aside and 
 Presbyterianism established on the basis of the 'incli- 
 nations of the people' of Scotland. In other words, 
 the Church of Scotland took its position in the country 
 
 not as representing a favoured sect, chosen from 
 
 among other sects which did not then exist— but as 
 representing the prevalent type of Scottish religion. 
 If there was any trace of injustice in the Settlement, 
 the injustice was one of which we now hear com- 
 paratively nothing. If there are reasons for dis- 
 turbing that Settlement, they come with the least 
 grace from those who have since made those reasons 
 for themselves. The Church of Scotland remains 
 as at the beginning, an historical institution, based 
 on popular support, which has accumulated, in 
 the course of its nearly two hundred years of 
 existence — notwithstanding violent conflicts within 
 and without — a preponderant measure both of 
 
48 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 popular regard and intelligent veneration. The 
 fact that rival Presbyterian churches have grown 
 up, having from various causes seceded from the 
 mother church, and taken a position of their own, 
 may be a good reason for considering the ground of 
 dissension between these churches, and revising, if 
 possible, the old relation of the Church and State ; 
 but it is no adequate reason for destroying the 
 mother church, out of which they have grown, 
 and to whose model they are adapted. The 
 primary secession of these churches may, or may 
 not, have been so far justifiable. But so long 
 as the people of Scotland remain preponder- 
 antly attached to the old church, and this church 
 upholds the old creed and form of church govern- 
 ment, to which the younger and rival churches no 
 less profess adherence, it can be no injustice to 
 maintain an institution so truly representative of the 
 religion of the country. The fact that sections of 
 the population have placed themselves by their own 
 convictions and act outside the ancient shelter, is 
 no reason why the thousands who remain inside the 
 church should be deprived of privileges which have 
 become a national inheritance. If there are those 
 who disclaim the inheritance, yet why should the 
 larger number who are content to share it be 
 deprived of it } 
 
 The result of all fair inquiry is to show that 
 national religion is. a natural historic growth. It 
 docs not come of statecraft, or the invention of 
 priests, or of mere political design. It comes of 
 historical necessity, and it can only, therefore, 
 be viewed rightly, or even intelligently, when 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 49 
 
 viewed historically. The case is quite unfairly put, 
 when it is put as a case of preference of sect over 
 sect by the State. Because, first of all, as we have 
 seen, it is not such a case. There was not in the 
 beginning, even in Scotland, any arbitrary selection 
 by Government of one sect over another. There 
 was no choice where there was, truly speaking, no 
 alternative, and the people themselves, rather than 
 any government, called the Church into being. But 
 secondly — and to keep ourselves to Scotland — 
 Government have ever since only acknowledged 
 the choice of the people. It has kept its share of 
 the compact, but nothing more. It has of late 
 years at least, so far from favouring the Church, 
 refused all demands for further means of meet- 
 ing the spiritual destitution of the country, and 
 left it of its own exertion to supplement and 
 largely increase these means, which it has done, 
 so as nearly to add one-third to its parishes. To 
 propose, in such circumstances, to take all its means 
 at once away, because others envy them or will not 
 share them — so far from asserting any principle of 
 religious equality — appears to involve one of the 
 grossest acts of both political and religious injustice 
 ever heard of. 
 
 III. As national religion is no mere dogma, 
 but a concrete historical fact, so its full meaning is 
 only realised in the historic sense. It is religion 
 incorporated with and sanctioned by the State. 
 The phrase, National religion, may be used other- 
 wise, as meaning the general religious life of a 
 community, expressed through various churches and 
 
50 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 channels. I need not say whether it is properly- 
 used in this sense or not, or whether national 
 religion, in any true sense, can exist where there is 
 no alliance with the State. Certainly, it has always 
 been held to imply such an alliance — nothing less 
 than the organisation of the religious side of the 
 nation ; its spiritual aspirations and activities, 
 legally embodied, and witnessing, in virtue of this 
 embodiment, to the great thought that religion 
 is not merely a private but a public concern — that 
 it behoves the nation, no less than the individual 
 and the family, to acknowledge God and Christ as 
 the great King and Governor of men in all their 
 relations. It is the recognition and constitutional 
 expression of this principle alone that invests 
 religion with national sanction. It is this which 
 discriminates a national church from a sect, or in 
 other words, any church which has cut itself from 
 the trunk of the national religious sentiment. The 
 sectarian idea often intensifies, but always individ- 
 ualises and narrows religion, and the real secret of 
 the present movement against national churches will 
 be found largely in an intensification of the spirit of 
 religious individualism. Whereas the old idea of 
 religion was eminently 'common,' the modern idea 
 has become eminently ' private,' and religion is held 
 to be a question for the individual conscience, with 
 which our neighbour citizen has nothing to do. 
 Public life and legislative action are kept aloof 
 from it. Its essential quality is supposed to be a 
 freedom which retreats from all political or legal 
 interference, and which can only be injured by such 
 interference. 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact, 51 
 
 This modern reaction has arisen from many causes, 
 which deserve explanation and analysis. We can 
 only in this way understand the mixed character of 
 the movement that is going on around us, and which, 
 by a great authority, is said to be affecting the whole 
 civilised world. Let it be freely granted that there 
 are certain elem.ents of good in this movement. 
 If we interpret Voluntaryism in a purely Christian 
 sense, it is seen to lie at the heart of all religion. 
 There can be no religious conviction which is not 
 the fruit of our own wills drawn by purely 
 spiritual influence to the service of God and 
 of Christ. This is a truism which no Christian 
 would deny. The origin and the power of Chris- 
 tianity come of the divine influence stirring the 
 hearts of men, and leading them individually to God. 
 But it is not more true that the original creative 
 power of religion is voluntary, than it is true that 
 its abiding effects are institutional. The Church 
 everywhere springs up on the foundation of the 
 heart, or rather of many hearts moved by a common 
 inspiration ; and as religion cannot live without the 
 voluntary spring out of which it starts, so neither 
 could it live, or be perpetuated, without embodying 
 itself in collective social and national forms. It 
 blends itself inevitably with law and government and 
 social manners, and can no more help doing so, than 
 it can help being the vital and formative power it is, 
 wherever it exists in freshness and force. To sup- 
 pose, therefore, that this blending of religion and law 
 — of Church and State — necessarily destroys the 
 freedom of religion, or the voluntary pith which 
 originally lies in it, is to convert its very power into a 
 
52 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 source of weakness and decay. It makes its triumph, 
 its fall. Abuses no doubt spring up around churches 
 as all other institutions ; and national churches may 
 become corrupt in the very pride of their strength, 
 and outlive their utility. That is another question 
 altogether. But to suppose that because religion is 
 primarily individual and voluntary, it cannot enter 
 into connection with the State without losing its 
 essential character, is to contradict not only the 
 facts of history, but the law of historical develop- 
 ment, which has united them. Institutions which 
 have sprung up spontaneously with the growth of 
 civilised nations, have only done so because they 
 expressed some real want, and satisfied some true 
 aspiration of the human mind. 
 
 There is not only no necessary abridgment of 
 vital piety within the borders of a national religion, 
 but there is a continual quickening and enlarge- 
 ment of the spirit of faith and the ministration of 
 Christlike duty. We shall make no invidious 
 comparisons, nor appeal to any sectarian feelings. 
 We simply state, what every impartial observer, with 
 eyes to see and knowledge to form a judgment, will 
 allow, that the Christian activities of the national 
 churches of England and Scotland will bear com- 
 parison with those of any of the churches surround- 
 ing them. Nay, so little is there a deadening 
 influence in connection with the State, that State 
 influence, especially in the matter of parochial 
 division, has given an impetus to the spread of 
 religion, where it is most needed, in a manner which 
 no dissenting churches have been able to accom- 
 plish. The Gospel has been in this generation 
 
Natio7ial Religion in Theory mtd Fact. 53 
 
 * preached to the poor ' within the national churches 
 as nowhere else. While prosperous Dissent in our 
 large towns has been gradually removing its 
 centres of worship and of Christian work from 
 the poor and crowded localities to be found in 
 all these towns, these churches have stepped in 
 and taken its place, and prosecuted Christian 
 agencies in a manner which the merely voluntary 
 churches have hardly anywhere attempted.^ We 
 say this in no spirit of boasting. God knows 
 the national churches of our country should 
 have awakened far earlier than they did to this 
 most urgent work, and done still more than 
 they have done ; while our dissenting churches 
 have had a share in the labours of love, and care 
 for the poor, which has happily inspired modern 
 Christianity. But nowhere has the modern spirit of 
 philanthropy — a bright foil to many spots of dark- 
 ness in our social atmosphere — been realised more 
 vividly or worked out with more intelligent and 
 solid results, than within the two national churches. 
 In no churches do we see a larger vitality or 
 freedom of movement. There have been times, no 
 doubt, when the Christian conscience had sunk 
 low in the country, and Christian activity was 
 comparatively dormant ; but there is no reason 
 whatever, but the very contrary, to believe that 
 national churches are peculiarly exposed to stag- 
 nation and feebleness. Rather they have a recuper- 
 ative strength in virtue of their very nationality, and 
 new forces of Christian thought and energy are 
 being constantly set free within them, on a far 
 
 ^ See particularly Bishop of Rochester's Charge. 
 
54 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 richer and more powerful scale than within minor 
 and exclusive sects. 
 
 Even in so far, therefore, as the modern move- 
 ment against national churches proceeds from 
 Christian motives — as in religious Nonconformity 
 it no doubt largely does — it is by no means an 
 intelligent movement. It rests, like so many modern 
 political ideas, on a half-truth which, emphasising 
 one side of religion, ignores an equally important 
 side. Exalting the individual in religion, it de- 
 presses the Church, and intensifying zeal in narrow 
 forms, it leaves little or no room for the comely 
 growths of spiritual ancestry or the common glory 
 of inspiring tradition. 
 
 But the modern current, while so far well motived, 
 is also largely irreligious. It comes in a large 
 degree of pure negativism or agnosticism ; and 
 nothing can be more remarkable than the manner 
 in which its two sides — one intensely religious and 
 the other intensely negative — are seen blending in 
 our day. The one course of the current is certainly 
 quite as strong as the other, and there is no one 
 more likely to be observant of this fact, as there 
 is no one more capable of analysing it, than the 
 great statesman who now again signalises it. Nearly 
 fifty years ago, or in 1838, when he published his 
 volume on The State iji its Relations with the Chnrch, 
 he had noticed the same mixed character of move- 
 ment against National Churches. He saw that it was 
 then impelled not merely by the force of Noncon- 
 formity, but by ' all the enemies of law, both human 
 and divine' (these words are Mr Gladstone's own). 
 And certainly, if men have learned to look upon 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 55 
 
 religion nowadays as an illegitimate influence 
 on public affairs, on the ground of its personal 
 sacredness, and as if any contact with the 
 State tended to degrade it rather than elevate 
 the State, there are multitudes of others by 
 whom all definite religion is in itself abhorred, as 
 alien from the functions of common life and work. 
 Theories which exclude the divine from human 
 thought, necessarily cut off religion from government 
 in all its relations. The State is regarded as 
 entirely secular in its constitution and origin, and to 
 be worked without any religious reference whatever. 
 So prevalent is this idea that it has become a 
 commonplace even with many religious people — a 
 commonplace used for political ends, without any 
 clear understanding of the essential principle which 
 lies involved in it, and how far it cuts into the heart 
 of national life. As yet, the principle is only seen 
 in its full development in France, where public or 
 national religion is not only ignored, but contemptu- 
 ously rejected. It really comes to this, that the 
 State is not only not religious ; it is atheistic. Polit- 
 ical freedom in its full rangre cannot consort with 
 any authority, and least of all with any religious 
 authority. It is essentially anarchic ; the assertion 
 of every man to do what is right in his own eyes, 
 and to share equally with all others in the common 
 goods of the race. This is the logical result of 
 secularism — the natural and inevitable outcome of 
 the absolute divorce between religion and life — 
 religion and the State. 
 
 It is strange how largely the secularist principle 
 has worked itself into modern society, and how 
 
56 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 far it is embraced by those who yet shrink from 
 its general appHcation. In a time Hke ours, 
 general principles, whether good or evil, spread 
 with a wonderful rapidity, and acquire by their 
 mere spread a prestige which gathers as it 
 grows. Of all contemporary features of thought, 
 none is more significant than this contagion of 
 opinion. The old sobriety of temper, the old 
 patience and coolness of analysis, which detected a 
 kind of falsehood rather than of truth in the very 
 generality with which a notion may seize on the 
 popular mind, have given way to a crude enthusiasm 
 which gapes at platitudes and concentrates itself upon 
 popular leaders, hardly more wise than, some of 
 them hardly as wise as, the multitude itself There 
 is little or no searching of the heart over the most 
 difficult problems of government and religion. All 
 has been neatly packed away in aphorisms which 
 pass current from mouth to mouth. * Religion is too 
 sacred for politics ; ' * the school is to teach secular, 
 and the churches religious instruction;' * no public 
 funds must go to the teaching of religion in any form ;' 
 'theology, instead of being, as in the old times, the 
 queen of the sciences, is, strictly speaking, not 
 knowledge at all, but only a sort of shadow or 
 imagination of knowledge' — are the sort of sayings 
 one hears everywhere. They mark the rise of that 
 current of Secularism which is inundating the 
 civilised world. Still more significantly than in 
 Mr Gladstone's youth, they come not only from the 
 side of Nonconformity, but from those who are 
 waging war against all religion whatever.^ 
 
 ^ Church Principles, p. 15. 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 57 
 
 It is well to ponder what the sequel of all this will 
 be — a social state without any public acknowledg- 
 ment of religion, and a type of civilisation radically 
 different from all that has hitherto bred the noblest 
 qualities of our national character. The new forces 
 may develop new elements of national life, and these 
 may have excellences of their kind ; but they will 
 not be like the old. Religion cannot be separated 
 from the fibre of our national existence, and placed 
 on one side of it as something essentially apart 
 from it, without injury — it may prove fatal injury 
 — to our old power and greatness. No words 
 can better express this than Mr Gladstone's own in 
 that early work of his from which we have already 
 quoted. Describing our past national welfare, he 
 speaks of the State as having derived its best energies 
 from religion, and looking forward to the dangers 
 which menace it, he adds : ' We may tremble at 
 the very thought of the degradation she would 
 undergo, should she, in an evil hour, repudiate her 
 ancient strength, the principle of iiational religion! 
 
 In the light of these remarks, it is seen that 
 national religion, as hitherto understood, has sprung 
 out of well-defined ideas about religion as a matter 
 of national duty as well as personal concern. It has 
 come from the acknowledgment of God in the 
 family and national conscience no less than in the 
 individual heart. It has been supposed to pervade 
 every phase of life and every act of government. 
 Religion has been felt as a great truth lying at the 
 public heart, which compelled recognition, and made 
 a national church not only a possibility but a 
 necessity. Of necessity, the statesman as a public 
 
58 National Religion in Theory arid Fact 
 
 man was understood to be religious, and engaged 
 in public and representative acts for the people.^ 
 The current which has set in against national 
 churches, comes largely from a denial of these 
 old beliefs. There is doubtless much zeal for 
 religion among those who on one side are striving 
 to brine our national churches to an end. But 
 the real impetus to the movement is now, as half 
 a century ago, on the side of irreligion, operating 
 with tremendous effect throughout the civilised 
 world. 
 
 We have thus tried to show you what national 
 religion really is — no mere accident or form.al insti- 
 tution, which we can manipulate at will, and leave 
 our national life otherwise untouched. It is really a 
 part of that life. It has entered into its growth, and 
 grown with it. It has come from the recognition of 
 common principles about religion as no mere private 
 matter, but a great public concern lying at the root 
 of all society, and alone sustaining and consecrating 
 it. The modern movement against it springs from 
 the decay of these old principles ; and while 
 quickened by a certain infusion of religious zeal of 
 a narrow type, is yet mainly enforced by the wave 
 of irreligion which is passing over the modern world. 
 The phenomenon is one, therefore, eminently 
 deserving the attention of statesmen, as of all 
 
 ^ ' The statesman,' says Mr Gladstone, must be a worshipping man. 
 His acts are public ; the powers and instruments with which he works 
 are public ; and ' because public and wholly out of the range of mere 
 individual agency, they must be sanctified not only by the private 
 personal prayer and piety of those who fill public situations, but also 
 in public acts of the men composing the public body.' — The State 
 in its Relations with the Churchy c. ii. 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 59 
 
 thinkers. It is far more important than a mere 
 temporary question of poHtics. It goes to the roots 
 of national well-being, and may well stimulate all 
 the anxieties of national patriotism. 
 
 IV. An historical fact so prominent as national 
 religion has, of course, been the subject of various 
 theories. What precisely is the Church, and what 
 the State, and what is the principle of their alliance } 
 It is an advantage of the manner in which we have 
 approached the subject, that we have seen it, as it is, 
 before inquiring after any theory about it. Nothing 
 can be less useful than the attempt to theorise 
 about any phenomenon, before bringing ourselves 
 abreast of its full meaning. We have seen that the 
 connection of Church and State is in no degree a 
 mere conventional or artificial arrangement formu- 
 lated on one side and accepted on the other. It is 
 everywhere a natural historic growth, out of the 
 circumstances in which the Christian nationalities 
 of Europe have risen. Religion has not been 
 formally instituted by the State. The State has 
 more frequently been formed and organised, or 
 at least influenced, by religion. In our past civil- 
 isation they have, to say the least, been com- 
 posite, growing from the same root, and largely 
 conserving the same ends. This is the view of 
 the relation as a fact. Yet strangely, the most 
 extended and popular theory of the relation may 
 be said to rest on a different conception. It pre- 
 supposes the Church and State as separate powers, 
 that have, so to speak, made a contract with one 
 another, the one laying down conditions, the other 
 
6o National Religion in Theory a?id Fact. 
 
 accepting these conditions. This may be called 
 the eighteenth-century theory of the connection of 
 Church and State, analogous to the theory of govern- 
 ment prevalent in the same century, which supposed 
 a compact between rulers and people. In neither 
 case is the theory any explanation of the fact. It 
 does not answer or account for the actual pheno- 
 menon. A compact between rulers and people is a 
 pure fiction constructed for legal convenience, and 
 possibly useful as a mode of viewing the relations of 
 the governor and the governed. But there never 
 was in human history any such compact. The very 
 idea of it supposes government already in existence. 
 The same thing is true, if not to the same extent, 
 in regard to the theory of Church and State, as an 
 alliance of independent powers, bound together by 
 contract. Long before such contract can be formed, 
 the Church is already alongside the State, and 
 virtually associated with it, as its companion — it 
 may be as its master, rather than its servant. In 
 England we have already seen how the Church grew 
 along with the State, and in advance of it rather than 
 dependent upon it ; in Scotland, the Church, during 
 the end of the sixteenth and a considerable part of 
 the seventeenth century, was really more powerful 
 than the State. Theories of alliance, in short, 
 between Church and State, like theories of contract 
 as the basis of government, , are after-growths 
 upon historical facts. They do not constitute or 
 explain the facts. They have a certain foundation, 
 no doubt. In the growth of the spiritual along with 
 the civil order, it becomes necessary to adjust their 
 relations to one another ; the Church, in the very 
 
Natiorial Religion in Theory and Fact. 6i 
 
 fact of its existence as a distinct order, acquires 
 rights and privileges and jurisdiction, which must be 
 defined and limited and marked off from the 
 functions of the State. This process of adjustment 
 and definition can only be done by statutory enact- 
 ment, and there has grown up consequently a 
 body of law regulating the relations of Church 
 and State, and constituting, so to speak, the con- 
 ditions of establishment. But this is very different 
 from any statutory dependence upon the State. 
 There can be nothing less true to the facts of 
 the case or evidence of history, than to suppose 
 that what is called the ' State Church ' in either 
 country has been called into being merely by 
 State legislation, and endowed by State funds, 
 and that it is equally competent for the State 
 to withdraw what is called its support as it was 
 originally to bestow it. What was never bestowed 
 may, no doubt, be withdrawn by legislative power, 
 because this power is in a certain sense omnipotent 
 in relation to all privilege and property ; but 
 certainly there is no ordinary sense in which it can 
 be said that the revenues of the Church were 
 created and allocated by the State. They were the 
 gifts of individuals, for the spiritual benefit of the 
 people, and in a true sense, therefore, the property 
 of the Church so long as used consistently with their 
 original gift. Any wanton interference with the 
 property of the Church is as unjustifiable, therefore, 
 as interference with any other species of property. 
 The idea of separate powers and funds lying between 
 them for arbitrary disposal is a convenient fiction 
 for the radical spoiler ; but it is nothing more. The 
 
62 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 revenues really belong to the parishes in which they 
 are gathered, for a definite purpose, and they can 
 only be alienated by repudiating, not merely ancient 
 law and usage, but considerations of moral equity 
 and government. 
 
 The theory of Church and State as two distinct 
 powers in formal alliance naturally lends itself to the 
 voluntary theory on the negative side. It is in fact 
 implied in all Voluntaryism — which ignores ideas of 
 historical growth in its very conception — and looks 
 upon Church and State as absolutely distinct factors, 
 which can be manipulated at will by legislative 
 action. According to this theory, the State is not 
 only not the Church, but it stands apart from it ; 
 and any alliance formed between them is the result 
 not merely of compact, but of compact under the 
 more or less base motive of corrupting the Church, 
 and destroying its spirituality. Church-and-State 
 from Constantine downwards have been not a natural 
 and beneficent result of historical progress, but a bad 
 accident in the course of events, from which the 
 Church has suffered, and the advance of civil govern- 
 ment no less suffered. To such thinkers, if they 
 can be called thinkers at all, historical facts are 
 mere accidents, good or bad. They are not parts of a 
 development, but mere items in a series. Institu- 
 tions, in other words, have no special value to 
 them as institutions ; they are conceivably as much 
 the product of craft and fraud as of social and 
 natural necessities. They look upon the past with 
 no special veneration and respect. History is judged 
 in the light of theory, and the underlying theory or 
 conception in their mind is, that the spiritual power 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact, 63 
 
 is not only something essentially distinct from the 
 State, but rightfully distinct from it. The one is 
 secular, the other is spiritual. The one has no 
 religious meaning or character, the other has no 
 coercive or legal character. Here, as so often in 
 theories, extremes meet ; and the High Churchman 
 who makes so much of the Church and its authority, 
 shakes hands with the Secularist or Voluntary, who 
 would keep the State independent of all ecclesi- 
 astical contact or influence. There is something 
 to be said for both points of view. Spiritual 
 authority, rightly understood, is of course entirely 
 distinct from any external authority whatever. 
 State organisation is, so far, rightfully independent 
 of ecclesiastical interference. The High Church- 
 man, in isolating spiritual authority, and making 
 it supreme, is only claiming for such authority, 
 when truly understood, its true character. The 
 Secularist^ in isolating State authority, and keeping 
 it distinct from ecclesiastical, is separating things 
 which in idea are quite distinct. But then, in 
 trying to carry out their respective theories, both 
 ignore the facts of life and history. We cannot, 
 in point of fact, as we have seen, disjoin the 
 spiritual and the natural, the sacred and the civil. 
 It is only in idea we can keep them absolutely 
 distinct. The one is spirit, the other body ; but the 
 spirit is only known to us through some bodily 
 environment. We cannot lay hold of it in itself. If 
 we try, for example, to analyse what all churches 
 speak of as spiritual jurisdiction, and of which no 
 church in its past history has made more than our 
 own, what a figment does it appear. It stands 
 
64 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 before us, it may not be under the same guise, but 
 constituted after the same manner as any civil or 
 legal authority. It is the action of a court guided by 
 the same principles of law and order as profess to 
 guide all jurisdiction. It has no different quality 
 from any other jurisdiction, save that it professes to 
 be the act of spiritual persons. But spiritual persons 
 have not, and cannot have, unless inspired, any special 
 right or law on their side. Their decision, save in 
 so far based upon special knowledge, can have no 
 special validity. And so any machinery with which 
 the freest church works, is nothing else and nothing 
 better in its texture — whatever it may be in its 
 knowledge — than that with which any State church 
 works. An ecclesiastical synod or assembly may 
 be more competent to deal with ecclesiastical, or 
 what are called spiritual questions, than a House of 
 Commons ; but not certainly because it has any 
 higher organism for dealing with such questions. 
 The very same men may compose both. The 
 mere fact that they were acting in the one case in 
 the capacity of church officers, in the other case 
 as men of business, cannot possibly affect the 
 quality of their decisions. On no question has 
 greater delusion prevailed, or, it may be said, still 
 prevails, than on this — that a result is secularised 
 as it proceeds from an assembly bearing no 
 spiritual name ; or again, acquires spiritual authority 
 as professing to proceed from such an assembly. 
 The truth is, that nowhere can the spiritual be 
 isolated and caught by itself It mixes itself 
 necessarily in all higher human affairs ; and all 
 these higher affairs, again, are only what they are 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. 65 
 
 because allied with it. The Church is distinct from 
 the world in idea, but never in fact. It is not a 
 separate entity, but a divine spirit penetrating the 
 world, giving it life, strength, virtue, comeliness. 
 In so far as it has visibility at all, or is a church, 
 it is mixed with the world. Christ no doubt said, 
 and Voluntaries have unintelligently quoted his 
 saying in their favour : * My kingdom is not of 
 this world.' But the saying has no relation to the 
 Church as a church, or corporate embodiment of 
 the Spirit, but only to the Spirit itself. The king- 
 dom spoken of is internal, and not external. It 
 has no tangibility ; it is not meat nor drink in any 
 form, * but righteousness and peace, and joy in the 
 Holy Spirit' And in this spiritual region alone is 
 it possible to have an absolute separation between 
 the sacred and the civil. Whenever you touch 
 earth at all, the two become inextricably mixed up, 
 and notwithstanding all the commonplaces uttered 
 on this subject, it may be said that the idea of 
 churches entirely free from all state connection, or 
 from intermixture of worldly usage and govern- 
 ment, is purely chimerical. The only real question 
 is as to the character of the environment, or as to 
 whether the flesh and blood which, it may be said, 
 clothe the spiritual life of all churches, be of a more 
 public and national, or of a more private and sectarian 
 order. To suppose a church to be more spiritual 
 because it has clothed itself, so to speak, with a 
 body of its own, instead of having fitted itself to 
 the national organisation and order, is simply an 
 imagination without any true meaning when 
 analysed. 
 
66 National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 The Voluntary theory, therefore, or the theory of 
 a radical divorce in the nature of things between 
 Church and State, is not only unhistorical, but 
 essentially unveracious. There can be no such 
 divorce. Every church, by its mere existence, 
 entwines itself more or less with the State, and 
 incurs legal relations and obligations. The higher 
 attributes of the State — all which makes it a pro- 
 gressive and educational, a beneficent as well as a 
 police power — imply the working of Christian prin- 
 ciples within it, or in other words, an incorporate 
 religious life ; and again, the Church, by its simple 
 activities, by the fact that it is a body and constitu- 
 tion, as well as a soul, touches the State, with its 
 complex machinery of law and order, at every point. 
 Instead of being separate, or tending to separate, 
 they tend to merge at every point, and to run up 
 into the same magnificent ideal. 
 
 Is this ideal, then — the identity of Church and 
 State — the true theory of the relation of the two 1 
 This theory, as we know, was maintained by Hooker, 
 by Dr Arnold, after a manner by Coleridge. It 
 answers more to the actual facts — to the manner in 
 which Church and State have grown in unison, than 
 any theory of independent powers now coalescing, 
 now separating. The Church and State are seen 
 intervolved from the first ; the civil order of a com- 
 munity constantly borrowing from its spiritual order, 
 and the latter strengthening and organising itself in 
 legal forms. The State is, as it were, the outside 
 structure of the national life, the Church the inside 
 structure of it, and as they fit into one another, and 
 
Natio7tal Religion in Theory and Fact. 6'j 
 
 mutually adapt themselves to the common end of 
 intensifying such life, each reaches its true ideal, and 
 helps to build up the fabric of national prosperity. 
 Of course it is not meant, in such a theory, that the 
 functions of the Church and the State are identical, 
 or that the officers of the one are necessarily the 
 officers of the other. That is not the idea under- 
 lying the theory. The activities of the Church are 
 in themselves distinct from the special activities of 
 the State. They relate to different spheres. They 
 bring into play different faculties. They promote 
 separate, if related ends. But both the one and 
 the other are required to make a true national life.. 
 To cut off the civil from the spiritual order, and to 
 make the former merely contributory to physical 
 ends, is to debase it. To cut off the spiritual from 
 the civil, is not merely to divorce what God has 
 joined, but to convert the spiritual into the ritual, 
 and in separating it from the common circle of 
 humanity — under the plea of its sacredness — 
 really to degrade it, and to prepare the way for 
 turning religion into a superstition, and the Church 
 into a priesthood. The marriage of the spiritual 
 and the civil is not only eternal in God's order, but 
 the divine means of bracing the one and elevating 
 the other. Let them sink apart, and injury comes 
 to both. The State loses in permanent dignity, 
 in enduring virtue ; the Church, in reasonableness, 
 breadth, and intelligence. To this extent they 
 are identical, that their ideals are the same. They 
 contemplate alike the highest welfare of man, and 
 merge into one another, not indeed as activities — so 
 
6S National Religioji in Theory and Fact. 
 
 far they will always remain distinct — but as ends. 
 Borrowing from one another mutual help, they both 
 labour, not only to rear, but to crown the edifice of 
 a higher humanity. 
 
 This is the lesson of history. National churches 
 have been among the most potent factors of 
 human progress. To aver the contrary, is simply to 
 misread history, and mistake the true elements of 
 civilisation. If, as it has been said, the current is 
 now strongly running against such churches, it 
 by no means follows that it is running in a 
 higher or better direction. The age, unhappily, 
 is no longer an age of faith, but of scepticism — ■ 
 no longer of positive spiritual aspiration, but 
 of negation and despair of the old wholesome 
 virtues. Individualism in life — agnosticism in philo- 
 sophy — have replaced the old ideals. Sectarian- 
 ism instead of nationalism in religion is part 
 of the same movement. It ministers to the same 
 narrowness of feeling, the same mediocrity of 
 ideal, the same self-centred worship which is 
 eating into the heart of humanity, and instead of 
 carrying it to a higher future, urging it toward 
 peculiar abuses of pride and self-indulgence. 
 
 V. And if the modern types of religion come 
 short of the old in theoretic completeness, and tend 
 to divide or separate themselves into isolated 
 sections of truth, inferior in intellectual dignity 
 and power, no less do they come short in prac- 
 tical effect. They do not touch us with the same 
 sense of spiritual beauty as the ancient did. They 
 
National Religion i7i Theory and Fact. 69 
 
 may be really as pervasive. There are probably 
 aspects in which they ought to impress us more. 
 The religion of Nonconformity, of the modern 
 Tabernacle with all its hundred agencies of 
 good — or of modern Ritualisni with its countless 
 devices for stimulating the devotional, and strength- 
 ening the philanthropic impulses — is, and ought to 
 be, deeply interesting to every pious heart. They 
 are adapted to new circumstances, they meet new 
 requirements and difficulties. But what picture of 
 modern religious work will ever touch the heart 
 like that of the parish priest living among his people, 
 their companion and friend in all circumstances, the 
 instructor of their youth, the guide of their middle 
 life, the ministrant of their declining years ; God's 
 own servant everywhere. And where have such 
 pictures ever been found save in national churches } 
 The very idea of the parish, which lies so much at the 
 root of all * common ' religion, is national. It is the 
 product of State churches, unknown — save in a wholly 
 different sense — in America and the colonies. No 
 element of modern civilisation can ever take its 
 place, or is ever likely to be so potent for good. If 
 our national churches had done nothing else for the 
 country than plant into the national heart the idea 
 of the parish, with all its sanctified and benign 
 activities, they would have done for us some- 
 thing more than all dissenting churches together. 
 And it may be questioned if any access of spiritual 
 force, supposing such an access possibly to follow 
 Disestablishment, would compensate for the breaking 
 up of this idea and all its associations. Look upon 
 
•JO National Religion in Theory and Fact. 
 
 the parish church as it is known by thousands in 
 Eneland and Scotland, the sweetness of its seques- 
 tered site, the glory of its old associations, with its 
 simple spire or tower pointing heavenwards, giving a 
 moral as well as scenic effect to the village or hamlet 
 clustered about it. Think of the charities as well as 
 benedictions which radiate from it as a centre — bless- 
 ing for the babe entering upon life, and for the 
 sire closing it ; the kindly visitation for the sick-bed, 
 the help for the weak, the counsel for the strong ; 
 and all this from generation to generation linked 
 each to each by natural piety. There never were 
 sources of well-being — of Christian light and lead- 
 ing — comparable to the parish churches of our 
 country. There never were more beautiful types of 
 manly or tender feeling, of ministration blessed at 
 once to giver and receiver, than have grown around 
 such centres. This is national religion in its practical 
 form, and no picture of religion that the world has 
 ever seen rivals it for a moment. And shall we 
 sacrifice all this to the demands of an unfeasible 
 religious equality. Shall we displace the parish min- 
 ister, living in his own modest manse, and dispensing 
 his modest bounties, temporal and spiritual, for the 
 clamant hedge preacher, or the Nonconformist zealot, 
 living by the favour of some rich town congregation 
 or patron, with a gospel of zeal rather than of peace 
 — of dogma rather than of charity. Let us hope not. 
 If wc do, we shall never be able to replace the old 
 picture. Our country parishes may not sink into 
 spiritual darkness, but they will never be as they 
 have been, the homes of an ancient piety, which 
 
National Religion in Theory and Fact. yi 
 
 has grown beautiful during years of quiet, and which 
 is all the more fruitful and true because it does not 
 cry, nor lift up its voice in the streets. 
 
 We may seem to some to be painting a picture, 
 rather than describing a reality. There is, it will be 
 said, another side to the picture — parishes neglected, 
 ministers careless, and even examples of evil rather 
 than of good to their flock. No doubt such things are ; 
 and it is of the nature of national churches to make 
 it more difficult to remove evils of this kind, than in 
 mere voluntary churches. This is not to be denied. 
 And no Christian patriot, while he deprecates the 
 overthrow of an ancient system, will not earnestly 
 desire the reform of all abuses that may attach to 
 the system. In maintaining the principle of national 
 religion, and all the good which has flowed from it, 
 it is by no means necessary to maintain any of the 
 evils which have grown around it. Let these evils, 
 on the contrary, be swept away. Renew the old, 
 but do not destroy it. It is strange how much more 
 naturally the idea of destruction than of reform 
 comes to the modern mind. But the idea is a poor 
 one, and may seriously imperil, while it cannot 
 advance, our national well-being. For, as one says 
 who has addressed many wise remonstrances to 
 the modern spirit : ' It is the law of progressive 
 human life, that we shall not build in the air, 
 but in the already high-storied temple of the 
 thoughts of our ancestors ; in the crannies 
 and under the eaves we are meant for the most 
 part to nest ourselves, like swallows : though the 
 stronger of us sometimes may bring, for increase 
 
72 National Religion i7i Theory and Fact. 
 
 of height, some small white stone, and on the 
 stone a new name written, which is indeed done 
 by those ordered to such masonry, but never with- 
 out modest submission to the Eternal Wisdom, nor 
 ever in any great degree, except by persons trained 
 reverently to some large portion of the wisdom of the 
 past! ^ 
 
 1 Ruskin's Bibliotheca Pasto7'wn, pp. x. xi. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 FREE-WILL OFFERINGS, TITHES, AND OTHER 
 MEANS OF SUPPORTING RELIGIOUS SER- 
 VICES, HISTORICALLY CONSIDERED. 
 
 By the Rev. John Cunningham, D.D., Minister of the 
 Pai-ish of Crieff. 
 
 ELIGION in its first forms did not require 
 any pecuniary support. It was purely a 
 personal matter. Arising from those feel- 
 ings of hope and fear, of awe and reverence, in that 
 recognition of the divine and the diabolical, which 
 we denominate the religious instincts, it found vent 
 in such acts as were supposed to win the favour of 
 some good being, or avert the anger of some evil 
 one. There are such religions still in the world. 
 They have existed from the time when man rose 
 above the brutes. The oldest histories refer to 
 them. Cain and Abel each offered his own sacrifice. 
 Wherever Abraham pitched his tent, there also he 
 erected his altar, and did his praying and sacrificing 
 
74 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 without the help of a paid priest. In the first period 
 every man was his own priest ; in the second period, 
 he was priest in his own household. 
 
 But in all stages of society there are some persons 
 who are supposed to have more power with god or 
 devil than their neighbours. Such are the rain- 
 makers of modern Africa ; such were the Druids of 
 ancient Europe. These are the priest in his crude 
 state. The vulgar naturally employ these to do 
 their religion for them, and employing them, they 
 must pay them. Moreover, men very generally 
 desire to do their religion by proxy ; and when the 
 religion of a household becomes the religion of a 
 tribe, and tribal sacrifices are offered, it becomes 
 absolutely necessary that there should be a class of 
 men to do the sacrificial work. Hence the priestly 
 caste, often hereditary. 
 
 No doubt, from the earliest times, these holy 
 persons received special rewards for special services. 
 But their first systematic remuneration came from 
 their appropriating to themselves certain portions, 
 generally the choicest portions, of the animals 
 offered in sacrifice. The animals were offered to 
 the gods, and very naturally the priests, as the 
 friends and favourites, and representatives of the 
 gods, ate what the gods did not eat themselves. 
 The more useless parts, such as the entrails and their 
 fat, were sent up to heaven in clouds of smoke. It 
 was a very ancient maxim, that they who serve the 
 altar should live by the altar. 
 
 People sometimes imagine there must have been 
 great waste connected with the ancient sacrifices, 
 as the gods never visibly accepted the offerings that 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 75 
 
 were made to them. But there was really little or 
 no waste at all ; the most solemn holocausts were 
 ordered with a due regard to economy. The priests 
 claimed their share, and got it. The sacrifice was 
 generally followed by a feast, in which all joined. 
 When our Scandinavian ancestors had slain their 
 victims, in what we would call the chancel of their 
 church, they passed to the nave, and there roasted 
 and devoured the flesh of them, amid boisterous 
 rejoicings. As we know from the writings of St 
 Paul, and many other authorities, ' meat offered to 
 idols ' was regularly sold in the butchers' shops of 
 those days. These were the perquisites of the 
 priests. 
 
 The Mosaic code was very specific as to the por- 
 tions of the priests, and at the same time very 
 liberal. They receive all the flesh of sin and trespass 
 offerings, part of the meal offering,^ and the skin of 
 the burnt offering. Of the thank offering they get 
 the breast and the right thigh.' These offerings 
 partly depended on the free-will of the people, but 
 if they were made, the priest must have his share. 
 In addition to these, they had the firstHngs of the 
 flock and the first-fruits of the harvest. 
 
 But the priests and Levites were not allowed to 
 depend solely on their share of the animals offered 
 in sacrifice. They had the tithes, and these seem 
 to have formed their main support. 
 
 Tithes go back to prehistoric times, and their 
 origin cannot be traced. Ten appears to have been 
 a sacred number, from the time man was able to 
 
 1 Leviticus ii. I, and elsewhere. Revised version. 
 
 2 Leviticus vii. 32, and elsewhere. Revised version. 
 
76 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 count ten upon his fingers ; and among almost all 
 ancient nations it was customary to devote a tenth 
 to the gods or to the priests. This custom was 
 known not only among the Jews, but among the 
 Chaldeans, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Latins, 
 and the Arabians, v. in the hazy period of the patri- 
 archs, we read of Abraham dedicating the tenth 
 part of his spoils taken in war to the priest Mel- 
 chisedek. In the clearer light of Grecian history, 
 we learn how the Greeks, after driving the Persians 
 out of their country, presented a golden tripod to 
 Apollo out of the tenths of the spoils taken from the 
 invaders. But it was not only the spoils of war 
 which were thus tithed. The produce of the field, 
 the increase of the flock, the outcome of the mine, 
 goods which had been confiscated, were subjected 
 to this sacred tax. In some instances we read of 
 the tenth being devoted, not to the god, but to the 
 king or other ruler. By a prescription which goes 
 back beyond all history, the tenth was esteemed the 
 true proportion of a man's income to set apart for 
 both sacred and civil purposes. 
 
 When, therefore, the Levitical tithe system was 
 instituted it was no new thing. It was merely the 
 legalising of a custom already well known, and almost 
 everywhere acted on. It proceeded on the assump- 
 tion that a tenth of all increase rightfully belonged to 
 God, from whom all increase comes, and as divine 
 property it was appropriated by the priest. 'AH 
 the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the 
 land, or of the fruit of the trees, is the Lord's ; ' so it 
 is written in the Book of Leviticus.^ ' And unto the 
 
 ^ xxvii. 30. 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. jj 
 
 children of Levi, behold, I have given all the tithe 
 in Israel for an inheritance, in return for their service 
 which they serve, even the service of the tent of 
 meeting. And henceforward the children of Israel 
 shall not come nigh the tent- of meeting, lest they 
 bear sin and die,' so it is written in the Book of 
 Numbers.^ And the meaning of it is this, that 
 Jehovah being the rightful owner of the tithes, 
 consigns them to the priests who serve in His 
 tabernacle, and the Israelites, who had hitherto 
 come and sacrificed and worshipped for themselves, 
 are now forbidden to enter the court of sacrifice. 
 By another ordinance, the tithe of the tithe 
 gathered by the Levites is assigned to the priests, 
 who were fewer in number, though higher in grade. 
 And in later times, at least, the tithe extended not 
 only to the fruits of the field, the corn and the wine, 
 and the oil ; but to the increase of the flocks and 
 herds. 
 
 This tithe system, as we know, continued down to 
 the time of Christ ; and when He was in the habit 
 of going up to the temple, it was in full operation. 
 In the parable of the Pharisee and the publican, the 
 Pharisee boasted that ' he gave tithes of all that he 
 possessed.' And elsewhere mention is made of men 
 who scrupulously gave a tithe of the paltriest herbs 
 which grew in their garden, 'mint and anise and 
 cummin.' It was regarded by every Jew as having 
 a divine sanction. 
 
 It is held by many people still that tithes are 
 of divine origin, and therefore of perpetual obliga- 
 tion. Milton said something against that view, but 
 
 ■^ xviii. 21, 22. Revised version. 
 
78 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 a good deal can be said for it. Without going so 
 far, may it not be asked if what was religiously- 
 right in Old Testament times, can be religiously 
 wrong in New Testament times ? Most people in 
 Scotland believe that the Levitical law was divine, 
 and therefore they must hold that levying tithes 
 upon the farmers and flockmasters of those days, 
 however oppressive, must have been the best possible 
 way of supporting religion ; and that seems to 
 indicate that there may be circumstances in which 
 a tithe-supported church is not only justifiable, 
 but the best that can be devised. It may be argued 
 that what is expedient in one set of circumstances 
 may be inexpedient in different circumstances ; but 
 that may be granted without touching the principle 
 at stake. If, in any circumstances, it is right that 
 there should be a tithe-supported church, the 
 principle of an established church is conceded. It 
 is then merely a question as to the circumstances in 
 which such a church is warranted. And seeine a 
 tithe-supported church existed under the Levitical 
 economy, and with a divine sanction, it must now be 
 shown in what respect the circumstances are so 
 changed, that what was right then is wrong now. 
 Ministers must be fed and clothed and housed, as 
 well as priests, and the religious feelings have 
 lost rather than gained in force during the last 
 three thousand years, so that, if free-will offerings 
 were not divinely deemed enough then, they are not 
 likely to be sufficient now. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth worshipped in a state-supported 
 temple, and ate, at his last supper, a Paschal lamb 
 which had been slain by a tithe-supported priest, and 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 79 
 
 yet there are people now who make it a matter of 
 conscience not to enter a state-supported church, just 
 because it is state-supported, and would not for 
 worlds eat the Lord's Supper, as administered by a 
 tithe-supported minister, and that just because he 
 is so supported. Are they better than Jesus ? 
 
 Jesus frequently denounced the sins of his time ; 
 but He never hinted that the national recognition of 
 religion was a sin. He frequently foreshadowed the 
 religion of the future, but He never declared that it 
 must be divorced from all state interference, and 
 left to struggle for existence without any outside 
 help. So far as his utterances go, it is left an open 
 question ; so that in some circumstances a state- 
 supported church may be the best, and in other 
 circumstances a church supported by the free-will 
 offerings of the people. Neither is prescribed, nor 
 proscribed. 
 
 In addition to the tithes, the Jew, when he went 
 up to the temple to worship, had to submit to the 
 impost of half a shekel for maintaining the temple 
 services, and besides, he might put any coin he 
 pleased in the temple treasury, from the mite of the 
 widow upwards. Thus, it may be said that in the 
 Hebrew Church there was a happy combination of 
 free-will and legal compulsion, of Voluntaryism and 
 State aid. 
 
 The first Christians were dissenters from the state 
 church, but unwillingly so, and it is certain that 
 even the apostles did not at first contemplate 
 separation. They continued to haunt the temple, 
 and even take part in its services ; they regularly 
 frequented the synagogue, and endeavoured to per- 
 
8o Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 suade their countrymen that Jesus was the Christ. 
 Their idea was that Christianity might be grafted on 
 the old Jewish stock, and the Jewish Church con- 
 tinued, with the one new article added to its creed, 
 that the Messiah had come. Happily, circumstances 
 proved stronger than the apostles ; it was proved 
 that the old bottles would not hold the new and still 
 fermenting wine ; and the Christians reluctantly 
 found themselves a sect of nonconformists, outcasts 
 from the synagogues and the temples, both Hebrew 
 and heathen. Accordingly they were left to shift 
 for themselves, as they best could. 
 
 No money was required to support the office- 
 bearers of the new church, because at first, and for 
 a considerable time there were no office-bearers 
 requiring support. The apostles appear to have 
 supported themselves by their trades, with occasional 
 gifts from generous converts. The deacons of the 
 Jerusalem Church were chosen to give rather than 
 to get. The Pauline Churches seem to have had 
 no officials at all, and every man just gave such 
 help as he could. But there were multitudes of 
 poor people in the Christian community ; the Church 
 very early became the asylum to which the 
 pauperised and oppressed fled from the terrible 
 tyrannies of the time ; and money was needed for 
 them^ and it was given in abundance, and perhaps 
 all the more abundantly because it was universally 
 believed that the end of all things was at hand. 
 A voluntary communism was introduced, and con- 
 tinued in the Church (or at least in portions of it), 
 in one form or another, for two hundred years. 
 The bishops had become the treasurers of the Church 
 
Free-will Offermgs and Tithes. 8i 
 
 (perhaps it would be more correct to say that the 
 treasurers of the Church had become it-s bishops), 
 and dispensed its charity, and naturally retained a 
 portion for themselves and for their presbyters and 
 deacons. 
 
 It is customary with some people to speak of the 
 apostolic and sub-apostolic period as the heyday of 
 the Church, and as the exemplar for all future times. 
 The clergy, it is said, were then dependent on the 
 free-will offerings of the people, and so should they 
 now and always. Are the people who reason thus 
 prepared to re-introduce the whole church system 
 as it then existed } Are they prepared for commun- 
 ism t Are the Nonconformist millionaires ready 
 'to sell their possessions' so that they and their 
 fellow-Christians may have * all things in common t * 
 And are they prepared for an uneducated ministry ? 
 willing to have set over them serious-thinking men 
 who will work at their trade during the week — 
 bakers, weavers, carpenters, shepherds — and preach 
 to them on Sunday } Such men as we now see 
 preaching at the corners of the streets ? such men 
 as officiate in some Methodist meeting-houses } If 
 any one is anxious to have the apostolic and sub- 
 apostolic time brought back, he must be prepared 
 for all this, and much more. Easy to support a 
 ministry which required no support ! easy to get 
 money when there was a communistic law ! 
 
 Is there any reason to believe that the apostles 
 and-- their successors preferred being left to struggle 
 for themselves } All the presumption is the opposite 
 way. They clung as long as they could to the old 
 Church. They continued to speak with veneration 
 
82 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 of the Mosaic economy. The idea of a personal 
 religion apart from a national religion had scarcely yet 
 entered into the mind of man. It was therefore the 
 first Christians were persecuted — persecuted not so 
 much for their religious beliefs, as because they were 
 members of a secret society, which it was thought 
 might be dangerous to the State. Rome could not 
 tolerate people who had set themselves up against 
 their country's faith and their country's gods. Such 
 people were unworthy to live. There was no help, 
 therefore, for the Christians, and no choice. They 
 were a proscribed people. They could no longer 
 conform to the national religion, and they must 
 pay the penalty. It must be told, they paid it 
 without complaining ; they even gloried in their 
 sufferings ; and in the apologies which they laid 
 before the emperors they vindicated their position, 
 but never whimpered because of their hard lot. 
 
 For centuries the Christians were too glad only 
 to be let alone. For them, endowments and State 
 recognition were out of the question. Exile, im- 
 prisonment, and death, being thrown to the lions, 
 being smeared with pitch and burned in the gardens 
 of Nero, was more likely to be their fate. To say, 
 then, that because they had no endowments we 
 should have none, is the rankest unreason. As 
 well say because they had no churches then, we 
 should have none now ; because they had no 
 canonical collection of the gospels and epistles then, 
 we should have none now ; because they were per- 
 secuted then, we should court persecution still. 
 They had to fight their battle against paganism, 
 and they fought it without flinching or fear, and 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 83 
 
 when they were victors, they got the spoils of 
 victory. When they had driven out, not only the 
 false gods, but the foulness and falsehoods which 
 had been fostered by them ; when they proved that 
 their faith was fitted to benefit and elevate mankind, 
 to purify society, to strengthen states, then they 
 received imperial recognition and support. And 
 the moment they were ofi"ered it, they gratefully 
 received it. 
 
 It is true the Church had thriven wonderfully 
 even when left to depend on the communism which 
 existed in some quarters, and on the free-will 
 offerings which were poured into her lap in others. 
 But it must be remembered that the Christian 
 enthusiasm was then at its highest pitch. The 
 Church had but to ask to receive. And the clergy 
 proved themselves then, as they have always done, 
 sturdy beggars, and, what is worse, keen legacy- 
 hunters. The Roman clergy grew rich upon the 
 gifts of Roman matrons. Laws required to be made 
 to prevent bishops and monks taking advantage of 
 the superstitious fears of the dying, and securing 
 their wealth by deathbed bequests. Jerome com- 
 plains that while play-actors, and harlots, and pagan 
 priests could receive legacies, the Christian clergy 
 could not ; but, at the same time, he honestly 
 confesses that there was more shame in the facts 
 which had led to the law than in the law itself. 
 The bulk of the Church's wealth, even after it was 
 established, came not from the imperial exemptions 
 and revenues it had secured, but from the gifts 
 and legacies it had accumulated. Voluntaryism, 
 originating in superstition, and stimulated by 
 
84 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 unscrupulous clerical greed, lies at the bottom 
 of the Church's endowments. In the fifth century, 
 it was already enormously wealthy ; but it was not 
 yet in possession of any State revenues worth 
 mentioning. 
 
 But almost from the very first the presbyters 
 and bishops aimed at the possession of such fixed 
 revenues as the Jewish priesthood possessed. St 
 Paul seems to encourage the idea, when he wrote 
 to the Corinthians : ' Know ye not that they which 
 minister about sacred things eat of the things of 
 the temple, and they which wait upon the altar, 
 have their portion with the altar.-* Even so did 
 the Lord ordain that they which proclaim the gospel 
 should live of the gospel.' ^ Had St Paul thought 
 that the Christian ministers should be supported in a 
 different way from the Jewish priests, he would have 
 said so here ; but, contrariwise, he puts both on the 
 same basis, and would have both maintained in the 
 same way.^ 
 
 Tithes had formed the staple of the income of 
 the priests and Levites, and from the second century 
 downwards, we find the Christian bishops arguing 
 that men were still bound to devote the tenth of 
 their property to God ; and, in fact, aiming at the 
 reintroduction of the tithe system. Irenaeus ^ points 
 out with pardonable pride that while the Jews 
 devoted a tenth of their goods to God, the Christians 
 devoted their all. Origen speaks in like manner of 
 
 ^ I Cor. ix. 13, 14. Revised version. 
 
 2 The author of the Apostolic Constitutions argues from this 
 passage that tithes were due to the Christian ministry. See Book II. 
 25. 
 
 3 Her. iv. 18, 2. 
 
Free-will Offer i7tgs and Tithes. 85 
 
 the tithes as a limitation which the Christians should 
 exceed. Cyprian, it would appear, had not found 
 the generosity of the Carthaginian Christians quite 
 so great, for contrasting the liberality of apostolic 
 times with his own, he says, * Then they used to 
 give for sale houses and estates, but now we do 
 not give even the tenths of our patrimony. Thus 
 has the vigour of faith dwindled away among us ; 
 thus has the strength of believers grown weak' ^ The 
 Apostolic Constitutions probably belong, in the 
 main, to the close of the second century, though 
 they contain interpolations of the third or even 
 fourth. They speak of tithes as already recognised 
 in the Church, and argue as if the Levitical law as to 
 tithing were still binding. ' Let the bishop,' it is 
 written, ' use those tithes and first-fruits which are 
 given according to the command of God, as a man 
 of God.' 'Oblations and tithes belong to Christ, 
 our high-priest, and to those who minister to him.' 2 
 ' Let all the first-fruits be brought to the bishop, 
 and to the presbyters, and to the deacons, for their 
 maintenance; but let all the tithes be for the 
 maintenance of the rest of the clergy, and of the 
 virgins and widows, and of those under the trial of 
 poverty.'^ 
 
 Coming down to the fourth century, we find the 
 great writers of that period inculcating the giving of 
 tithes as a Christian duty. * God,' says St Ambrose, 
 *has reserved the tenth part to himself, and it is 
 not lawful for a man to retain what God has re- 
 served.'^ ' If people,' says St Jerome reproachfully, 
 
 1 De Unitate, 26. 2 ;Book ii. 25. 
 
 3 Book viii. 30. 4 Sermo xxxiv. 
 
86 Free-will Ojferings mid Tithes. 
 
 *be not willing to sell all they have and give to 
 the poor, they should at least give a tithe — other- 
 wise they cheat God/^ ' The Pharisee/ cried Augus- 
 tine, * whose righteousness you are bound to exceed, 
 gave tithes ; you do not give even a thousandth 
 part:'^ and elsewhere he warns the tillers of the 
 soil not to defraud the Church of its tithes.^ Chrys- 
 ostom, in one of his homilies, exclaims, 'The Jews 
 paid two tithes, but a man now remarks to me with 
 astonishment, " So-and-so gives tithes." Is not 
 this shameful ! If under the law it was dangerous 
 to neglect tithes, how much more dangerous now.'* 
 
 In the light of these statements we can easily trace 
 the manner in which tithes were introduced in the 
 Christian community. In the second century the 
 boast was that the Christians exceeded the Jews 
 in their liberality, and gave more than a tithe. By 
 the third century their first enthusiasm had abated, 
 their offerings to the Church became smaller, and 
 the preachers and writers now cried out that they 
 were bound to give at least a tithe, as the Jews 
 had done, according to divine commandment. The 
 tendency, in fact, had now fairly set in to make the 
 Christian Church a copy of the Jewish, with its 
 priests and Levites, its altars and sacrifices, and 
 tithes. By the fourth century some niggardly 
 Christians did not give more than a hundredth or a 
 thousandth part of their income to the Church ; and 
 those who gave a tenth were regarded as marvels of 
 generosity. Augustine, Chrysostom, and others 
 denounced these niggards ; and urged that a tithe 
 
 1 In Malachi iii. 8. " In Psalm cxlvi. 
 
 3 Sermo xlviii. * Horn. iv. in Ephes. ii. 
 
Free-will Offer mgs and Tithes. Zy 
 
 was binding on every one — binding on the Christian 
 as it was on the Jew. Under this teaching, the 
 beHef gradually grew up that tithes were the 
 divinely appointed provision for the clergy and 
 the poor, and though the payment of them was 
 still nominally voluntary, it became really com- 
 pulsory, in some branches of the Church at least. 
 If a man claimed to be a Christian, he must pay 
 his tithes, as a man nowadays, who claims to be 
 a Free Churchman, or a United Presbyterian, must 
 pay his contributions to the church funds, or leave 
 the 'body.' 
 
 There was as yet no law, ciyil or ecclesiastical, 
 ordaining the payment of tithes, but when the usage 
 was established, the law followed. In the year 585, 
 the council of Macon declared that the divine laws 
 granted to priests and ministers the tenth of all pos- 
 sessions ; that the bulk of the Christians for a long 
 time had observed these laws, but that of late they 
 had been showing a disposition to evade them, and 
 that therefore they were obliged to ordain that the 
 faithful revive this ancient custom, and give the tithe 
 to the ministers of the altar, to be employed for 
 relieving the poor or for redeeming captives. It 
 may be said that this canon, instead of proving the 
 general payment of tithes, rather proves that the 
 custom of paying them was falling into desuetude ; 
 and so it does in regard to France at least ; but it 
 also proves that the custom had existed in the 
 Church from ancient times, and that this council 
 was now resolved to enforce it. It may further be 
 said that the tithes were to be employed, not for 
 the support of the clergy, but for the relief of the 
 
88 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 poor, and the ransom of captives : and so it was ; 
 but they were to be paid to the bishops, as the 
 treasurers of the Church, and we know that while 
 the bishops did not neglect the poor, neither did 
 they forget themselves. There was an understood 
 proportion for the one and the other. 
 
 This ecclesiastical law had as yet no civil sanction, 
 but it scarcely required it, for the canon of a council 
 had as much force in those days as an act of parlia- 
 ment. Charlemagne was the first prince who gave 
 to tithes the sanction of his great name and wide 
 authority. He made the payment of them impera- 
 tive throughout his dominions. * Let every man,' 
 says the seventh Capitulary, * give a tenth, and let 
 it be dispensed at the hands of the bishop.' This 
 was about 778 A.D. It had taken upwards of three 
 hundred years to establish the usage ; two hundred 
 years more to transmute the usage into an ecclesi- 
 astical law ; and another two hundred years to get 
 a civil sanction to the ecclesiastical rule. No doubt 
 it had been an uphill struggle all along. But it 
 shows what can be accomplished by persistency, and 
 how usages tend to harden into laws. 
 
 Dr Hatch, in the Contemporary Review for 
 September 1883, maintains that modern tithes have 
 no connection whatever with the old Mosaic impost, 
 and that they arose from civil enactments, founded 
 on the transition through which land rights and 
 social usages were passing in the eighth century. 
 He seems to say, though he does not say it directly, 
 that the Church then possessed the greater part of 
 the land throughout the Prankish dominions. It 
 became necessary that this land should be occupied 
 
Free-will Offerings and TitJies. 89 
 
 by laymen who would cultivate it, and supply the 
 Prankish armies with soldiers. Charles Martel and 
 Charles the Great therefore 'overrode the nominal 
 ownership, and granted perpetual leases of the 
 Church lands, subject to the payment of a rent to 
 the several churches to which they belonged/ That 
 rent was the tithe, and it was so fixed because ' a 
 tenth of the produce was the ordinary tributimi 
 soli in the Roman provinces/ It is almost a 
 presumptuous sin to differ on such a point of 
 ecclesiastical law and history from one whose 
 authority is so high as that of Dr Hatch. But it 
 seems to me impossible to disconnect modern from 
 ancient tithes. The references to tithes may not 
 be so numerous as w^e might expect during the first 
 seven centuries, but I have quoted some, and these 
 could easily be quadrupled. The Church was 
 certainly a great landowner in the eighth century, 
 but there is no evidence that its possessions were 
 so vast as Dr Hatch supposes. And if only the 
 church lands leased to laymen paid the tithe as 
 rent, how came it that within so short a period a 
 tithe was levied upon all lands whatever ; and that 
 Alcuin was obliged to remonstrate with Charlemagne 
 against tithing the lands of the newly converted 
 Saxons. 
 
 However this may be, from the eighth century 
 downward, the payment of tithes became universal 
 over Christendom. Alfred in England imitated 
 the policy of Charlemagne on the Continent. 
 Malachi iii. 8, became a favourite text, and was 
 thought still more decisive of the matter than 
 the Capitularies of Charlemagne : ' Will a man rob 
 
go Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 God ? yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein 
 have we robbed thee ? In tithes and offerings/ 
 After that who could refuse to pay, more especi- 
 ally when the thunders of the Church and the 
 sword of the civil magistrate were ready to enforce 
 the argument of the prophet ? About 793 we 
 hear of Offa, king of the Mercians, paying tithes. 
 In the Saxon Chronicle we are told that Ethelwulf, 
 king of Wessex, in the year 855, 'chartered the 
 tenth part of his land, over all his kingdom, for the 
 glory of God and his own eternal salvation.' How 
 early the system was introduced into Scotland we 
 cannot say. There are no records to guide us. 
 The Culdees appear to have been great land- 
 holders, and to have lived upon their rents rather 
 than upon tithes. In most things they were behind 
 the march of events on continental Europe, and 
 probably in this too. During the reign of David L 
 we have the first mention of tithes, but they had 
 evidently existed before this, and thus go back 
 beyond the title to any property in the kingdom. 
 Mr Nenion Elliot, in his Teind Papers, remarks that 
 a great part of the soil of the country at that time 
 belonged to the crown, and hence that the tithes 
 never belonged to the subsequent proprietors, who 
 must have got their grants of land subject to this 
 burden.^ 
 
 ^ In the Chartulary of Glasgow there is a ^curious charter by 
 Malcolm IV. {circa 1160), in favour of the bishop, of the lands of 
 Conclud, granted to compensate him for the king's transgression 
 against the Church in having given a charter of certain lands in favour 
 of two of his nobles, without reserving the teinds belonging to the 
 Church, or, as it bears, without securhig the Church in its dues; — 
 Scottish Churchy Oct. 1885, p. 359. 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 91 
 
 From this time forward, teinds (the Scotch name 
 of the tithes or tenths) enter largely into the records 
 of the Church. They are specified in almost all 
 charters, the right to them is ratified in many acts 
 of parliament and Privy Council, they were dear to 
 the hearts of all churchmen, they are glorified in 
 the lives of the saints and the chronicles of the 
 bishoprics and religious houses. They were looked 
 upon as the very life-blood of the Church. 
 
 Tithes were originally paid to the bishop, and 
 by him dispensed to the clergy and poor who were 
 dependent on him. It is not very clear when they 
 were separated from the bishop's church and made 
 parochial. But from the date of the erection of 
 parishes in Scotland, the parish teinds were devoted 
 to the parish priest. A baron got a tract of land 
 from the king ; he built a church, and appointed 
 a priest, he teinded the land for his support, or 
 found the land already made subject to teind in 
 his grant, and thus his barony became a parish. 
 We see this process very clearly in the parish of 
 Ednam. Thor, apparently a nobleman of Scandi- 
 navian descent, got the grant of a piece of moor- 
 land from the "king ; he cultivated it, he built a 
 church from the foundations, as he proudly tells 
 us in his charter ; he gave a ploughgate of land to 
 the priest, as was usual in such cases, and afterwards 
 the tithes of his manor. Thus parishes and teinds 
 arose. There is not in the whole legislation of 
 Scotland any act establishing the teind system or 
 making it compulsory. It was founded entirely on 
 ideas borrowed from the Old Testament, and on 
 a usage which had grown up under the teaching 
 
92 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 of the clergy. The tithes were the proportion of 
 the produce of the soil dedicated to religion from 
 the time that land rights existed, and therefore 
 they were usually specified in charters, and levied 
 and paid as undoubtedly due. Many parliaments 
 guaranteed the Church in all its ancient rights 
 and possessions ; but no parliament created them. 
 
 Unfortunately, the patrons of the churches pos- 
 sessed the right of gifting away the tithes of their 
 parishes to any bishopric or religious house in which 
 they felt an interest. And very often they did feel 
 such an interest. For a younger brother or a son 
 might be the bishop or the abbot, and it was 
 natural they should wish to enrich him, when 
 they could do it so easily without impoverishing 
 themselves. Or perhaps a patron had a desire to 
 be buried in the chancel of the abbey church, and 
 to have masses said for his soul, or for the soul of 
 his wife, or for the soul of some lost child, and no 
 way was more convenient or more economical than 
 granting his parish to his favourite monastery. 
 Thus, by the time the Reformation came, no fewer 
 than six hundred and seventy-eight parishes had 
 been appropriated, as it was called. In these cases, 
 the bishop or the abbot drew the tithes of the 
 parish, and appointed some brother of the order, 
 or some starveling of a secular priest, who was 
 called a vicar, to discharge the duties. This led 
 to a division of the tithes into parsonage and 
 vicarage — the parsonage tithes extending to all 
 kinds of grain, and the vicarage only to such 
 small matters as fowls, eggs, milk, &c. 
 
 While the teinds constituted the ordinary revenues 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 93 
 
 ■of the parish priests, they did not constitute 
 the whole wealth of the Church. The bishops 
 and abbots were great landowners. Some of their 
 possessions go back beyond history. The Keltic 
 clergy appear to have held large tracts of land. 
 In 1 1 15, King David caused an inquest to be made 
 by the elders and wise men of Cumbria as to the 
 lands and churches which had formerly belonged to 
 the see of Glasgow, and had been lost sight of 
 during the wars and confusion of the preceding 
 centuries, and it resulted in the bishopric being 
 put in possession of many valuable manors and 
 ploughgates scattered over the south of Scotland 
 and Cumberland. The Bishop of Moray was lord 
 of eight baronies, one of these being Strathspey, 
 which is said to have included the whole valley 
 of the Spey, from Laggan to Rothes. Some of 
 the abbots were greater landowners than the 
 bishops. They had farms, sheep-runs, coal-mines, 
 rights of hunting, of fishing, of hawking, superi- 
 orities of towns, and almost every conceivable 
 privilege. The Abbey of Paisley owned about 
 two-thirds of the whole soil of the parish, with 
 acres and ploughgates in almost every district of 
 the west. The Stuarts, moreover, had given them 
 the tithe of the hunting, and the skins of all the 
 deer taken in the adjoining forests, pasture for their 
 cattle and their swine, a mill at Paisley, a salmon 
 net in the Clyde at Renfrew, a right of fishing 
 in the Cart and at Lochwinnoch^ the privilege of 
 quarrying both building-stones and limestones, of 
 •^^ggi^g coal for their granges, smithies, and 
 breweries, of cutting turf and greenwood for all 
 
94 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 their operations. The superiority of the town of 
 Paisley, moreover, belonged to them, and the abbot 
 nominated the magistrates. In addition to all this, 
 the abbey drew the teinds of thirty parishes, and 
 yet it was by no means the richest religious house 
 in Scotland. In Scotland, in England, and in 
 several other countries, the Church had accumu- 
 lated, in the course of a thousand years, by fair 
 means and by foul, about a half of the whole wealth 
 of the country. But it must be told that in most 
 cases it had got its lands when they were moss or 
 moorland, and by skilful cultivation had made them 
 the greenest spots on the landscape. 
 
 In addition to their rents and tithes, the clergy 
 had still other sources of revenue. They had their 
 fees for almost every religious office they performed 
 — baptismal fees, marriage fees, burial fees. They 
 had their corpse presents, which in Scotland were 
 felt to be particularly grievous. After a death, 
 the vicar carried off the best cow in the byre, and 
 the 'uppermost cloth' — whatever that might mean. 
 But it was from the saying of masses for the dead 
 that the parish priests derived the chief part of their 
 pay for work done. The devout Catholic would 
 deny himself the necessaries of life to have masses 
 said for the soul of a father, or mother, or wife, or 
 child, who, he was told, was tormented in purgatory; 
 just as the devout Catholic does still. The clergy 
 had also their offerings at the great festivals — their 
 Candlemas offerings, their Michaelmas offerings, their 
 Christmas offerings. There were yet other ways 
 of making money to which some of the clergy, 
 especially the friars, resorted. They hawked about 
 
Free-will Offermgs and Tithes. 95 
 
 the country relics and indulgences, and cajoled 
 simple-minded people to give them their hard-earned 
 money for a rotten bone or a piece of useless parch- 
 ment. Last of all, the begging friars, though in 
 possession of the finest churches and largest estates, 
 went about with their wallets begging an alms for 
 Jesus' sake. 
 
 Thus while the pre- Reformation Church had its 
 lands and tithes, originating in voluntary bequests, 
 it had also a considerable revenue derived from 
 free-will offerings, and fees paid for religious offices 
 performed. The main part of this enormous 
 wealth went to the bishops, and abbots, and 
 priors, and monks, who did nothing ; while the 
 parish priests, who did the work, were often very 
 poorly paid. 
 
 When the Church began to show signs of approach- 
 ing dissolution, the hungry eyes of the reforming 
 barons were fixed on its fair lands and tithes, as the 
 eyes of the carrion crow are fixed on the dying 
 sheep or deer. It was plain from the first, that if 
 there was to be a reformation of religion, it would 
 be followed by a scramble for the Church's wealth. 
 With noble disinterestedness, the reforming clergy 
 asked only for a decent maintenance for themselves, 
 and proposed that the remainder of the Church's 
 revenues should be devoted to the support of the 
 poor, and the education of the whole youthhead of 
 the country, the very purpose for which the tithes 
 and lands had originally been given. This patriotic 
 proposal was embodied in the petition which the 
 reforming ministers presented to the Estates in 
 1560; it was again embodied in the First Book of 
 
96 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 Discipline, and the plan worked out in detail ; and 
 if it had been adopted by a patriotic parliament, we 
 would have been saved at this day from three of our 
 heaviest taxes, our poor rates, our education rates, 
 and our church rates, of various kinds, voluntary 
 and otherwise. But there was not a spark either 
 of patriotism or piety in most of the reforming 
 barons and gentry. They were looking only to 
 their own personal or family aggrandisement, and 
 in the end they managed, by various processes, to 
 appropriate the bulk of the Church lands, and a 
 portion of the teinds. The throne was weak, law 
 was in abeyance, the country was torn by con- 
 tending factions, might became right ; and Knox 
 might protest against the sacrilege as he pleased, he 
 might denounce his late coadjutors as thieves and 
 robbers ; they did not much care, they had clutched 
 the Church's patrimony, and they were determined 
 to keep it, and they have kept it down to this 
 day. 
 
 But it was seen that some arrangement must be 
 made for the ministers of the reformed faith, which 
 had now become the national faith. Two-thirds 
 of the benefices were secured to the old clergy 
 for life ; and the remaining third was to be applied, 
 first as stipends to the new ministers, and after- 
 wards to replenish the queen's impoverished ex- 
 chequer. ' Here/ said Knox, * I see two parts freely 
 given to the devil, and the third part divided be- 
 tween God and the devil.' The 'thirds,' according 
 to the returns of the beneficed clergy, amounted to 
 ;^72,49i, and of this only ^^24,231 was assigned to. 
 the clergy — only ;6^24,ooo out of a revenue exceed- 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 97 
 
 ing ;^250,OOo!^ 'Who would have thought,' said 
 Knox, 'that when Joseph ruled Egypt, his brethren 
 should have travelled for victuals, and have 
 returned with empty sacks.' ' Oh happy servants 
 • of the devil, and miserable servants of Jesus Christ, 
 if after this life there were no heaven and no hell; 
 for to the servants of the devil, these dumb dogs 
 and horrid bishops, to one of these idle bellies ten 
 thousand was not enough, but to the servants of 
 Christ, that painfully preach the gospel, a hundred 
 will suffice/ The barons had their sneers while 
 Knox was indulging in his fierce invectives. *We 
 may now forget ourselves,' said Maitland of Leth- 
 ington, 'and bear the barrow to build the house of 
 •God.' 'If these preachers had their way, the queen 
 would not have enough to buy herself a pair of 
 shoes.' In the midst of all these troubles, it seems 
 never to have occurred to Knox that he had better 
 renounce the endowments of the church for ever, 
 and cast himself on the voluntary offerings of the 
 people. Poor, blind man ! 
 
 It is sometimes said that the State at the Reforma- 
 tion gave the teinds of the old church to the new 
 church. Such a remark is founded on misconcep- 
 tion. There was no new church ; there was only the 
 old church reformed. Neither did the State give 
 the teinds to the Church (they were not its to give), 
 it only acknowledged that they were still the 
 Church's patrimony, and enforced the payment of 
 . a portion of them ' to the clergy. Our educational 
 institutions are at present undergoing reform, and 
 
 ^This is Scots money, but the £\ Scots then was equal, in purchas- 
 ing power, to the £\ sterling now. 
 
 G 
 
98 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 the endowments of many of them are being applied 
 differently from what they previously had been ; 
 but no one says the State is giving these endow- 
 ments, or speaks of them as being national 
 property. They are educational endowments 
 still. 
 
 The ;^24,ooo might have been sufficient for the 
 maintenance of the Protestant ministers for a time, 
 for as yet there were not many of them, but their 
 stipends, such as they were, were irregularly paid, 
 and in every General Assembly there were loud 
 complaints because of this. In 1564, the Assembly 
 petitioned the queen that some sure provision should 
 be made for the ministers, and that to this end the 
 fruits of every parochial benefice should, on the 
 occurrence of a vacancy, be conveyed to the minister, 
 together with the manse and glebe. Nothing came 
 of this. In 1567, Moray, the friend of the Reformers, 
 was Regent, and much was hoped from him, for 
 much had been promised. There was partial dis- 
 appointment again, for the disestablishers were not 
 yet satiated with plunder. An act, however, was 
 passed, proceeding on the preamble that the 
 ministers had been long defrauded of their stipends, 
 and had been reduced to poverty, and could no 
 longer continue in their vocation unless some 
 remedy were provided. Surely a humiliating con- 
 fession for the barons to make ! Seven years ago 
 they were burning with a holy zeal for the pure 
 evangel, and now, by force or fraud, they were 
 grabbing the church lands and lifting their rents, 
 while the clergy were starving. The only remedy 
 provided was, that the stipends of the ministers were 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 99 
 
 made the first charge upon the ' thirds/ and it was 
 declared that the arrangement was to last only till 
 the kirk should come into the full possession of its 
 proper patrimony, the teinds. Thus the Scotch 
 parliament acknowledged that the teinds were the 
 proper patrimony of the kirk ; and that act has 
 never been repealed, so that in law, as well as in 
 moral right, the teinds are the inheritance of the 
 Church. Nevertheless it is true, and pity 'tis 'tis 
 true, the Church has never possessed them since the 
 Reformation. 
 
 It would be beyond my line of lecture, to describe 
 all the various processes by which the Church was 
 stripped of its property. An abbot now figured as 
 a Lord of Erection, and drew the revenues of the 
 abbey without discharging the duties. Lords and 
 lairds had influence enough at court to get grants 
 of bishops' lands which lay contiguous to their own. 
 The old ecclesiastics, while still in possession, gave 
 long leases of lands and tithes to their relatives, and 
 these relatives afterwards managed to get these 
 leases converted into perpetuities. While the church 
 property was thus in a state of flux, belonging 
 to nobody, but ever flowing more and more toward 
 the courtiers and their kin. King James at last 
 awoke to the fact, that something must be done if 
 anything was to be saved. Accordingly, in 1587, an 
 act was passed annexing the temporalities of all 
 benefices to the crown. This act did not apply to 
 the teinds, they were still sacred ; but it had the 
 effect of secularising all the ecclesiastical lands in 
 the kingdom. It was intended that the rental should 
 be applied to increase the revenues of the crown, but 
 
TOO Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 James's easy temper led him to give away thought- 
 lessly what he could not at once enjoy himself, and 
 he gave not only lands, but teinds which were not 
 his to give. 
 
 All the world knows how Charles was bent on 
 conforming the Church of Scotland to the Church 
 of England. He knew he could not do that without 
 money, for bishops, and deans, and prebendaries 
 require to be paid handsomely, and a choral service 
 cannot be maintained for nothing. He bitterly 
 regretted that his father had wrecked the church 
 revenues by his prodigality ; he knew his father had 
 long been talking of undoing what he had foolishly 
 done, and, accordingly, in the very first year of his 
 reign, he resolved to revoke his father's grants, so 
 far as that could be legally done ; and it would 
 appear the crown lawyers had advised him that it 
 might be done. This royal resolution caused a vio- 
 lent flutter among one half of the Scotch nobility and 
 gentry. They had got the church lands and teinds, 
 and they were determined to keep them. They sent 
 deputation after deputation up to London to remon- 
 strate with his majesty, but his majesty was resolute, 
 and let them know that if they did not submit he 
 would have the question tried at law, and it would 
 be worse for them in the end. When they found 
 there was no other way of it, they yielded, but with 
 a grudge — a terrible grudge. Some say this was 
 the true origin of the troubles which followed, and 
 it is certainly curious that while the nobles had, with 
 much suppleness of mind, become Episcopalians at 
 the bidding of James, they became flaming Presby- 
 terians again under Charles, when the church lands 
 
Free-will Offeri7igs and TitJies. lor 
 
 and telnds were needed to support the status of the 
 bishops. 
 
 The king had let all the holders of church pro- 
 perty understand that if they submitted the whole 
 matter to him, he would make arrangements which 
 would in many respects be to their advantage. 
 Under this pressure all interested gave in submis- 
 sions — the Lords of Erection and their tacksmen, 
 the bishops and clergy, and the commissioners 
 of burghs. The king thereupon issued four 
 decreets-arbitral, corresponding to the four sub- 
 missions, which were afterwards sanctioned by 
 parliament, and these form the basis on which 
 valuations of teinds were made which subsist down 
 to the present day. It were out of place for me to 
 enter into all the details and legal technicalities of 
 this settlement, but I may note the following leading 
 principles : 
 
 1. Every heritor was to be entitled to buy the 
 teinds of his lands from the titular who held them. 
 
 2. The fifth of the rent was to be regarded as 
 equivalent to the tenth or teind of the produce, and 
 nine years' purchase of the valued rent was to be the 
 price paid for the teinds.^ 
 
 3. All lands and teinds were to be valued, and 
 commissioners and sub-commissioners were ap- 
 pointed for this purpose, and the valuation then 
 made was to be the valuation for all time. 
 
 4. The right of the heritor to purchase was not 
 to apply to bishops' teinds which had become vested 
 
 ^ Under later legislation, teinds not heritably disponed were made 
 over to patrons who were obliged to sell at six years' purchase — an 
 act of injustice to the Church. 
 
102 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 in the crown, nor to teinds appropriated to colleges 
 or hospitals, or otherwise destined to pious uses. 
 
 5. All these provisions were subject to the con- 
 dition that the teinds, in every case, must, first of 
 all, be employed to provide a suitable stipend for 
 the minister of the parish. Under this burden they 
 were to be sold and bought.^ 
 
 In order to understand this arrangement, you 
 must know that in pre-Reformation times, the parson 
 or his tacksman was accustomed to draw his teind — 
 every tenth sheaf — as it stood on the harvest-field. 
 The farmer dared not remove the grain till it was 
 teinded, and an off-putting parson might cause great 
 loss in a rainy season by not lifting his sheaves in 
 good time. After the Reformation, the titular or 
 layman who had got a grant of the teinds, had the 
 same rights as the parson formerly had ; and all 
 accounts agree that he was more merciless in the 
 exercise of them. It was now arranged that every 
 landowner might buy his own teinds, and that thus 
 he and his tenants would be freed from all outside 
 interference at harvest-time. He must pay the 
 valuation price to the titular — whose right of pro- 
 perty, however unjustly acquired, was thus acknow- 
 ledged — but having paid the price, the teinds became 
 his. 
 
 In this arrangement the right of the parish 
 minister to the parish teinds was set aside. That 
 right was founded upon original gifts which had 
 never been disputed ; upon four hundred years' con- 
 tinuous possession; and upon the Act of 1567, which 
 
 ^ It was mainly on account of this burden the teinds were sold at 
 the low valuation of nine years' purchase. 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 103 
 
 acknowledged that the teinds were the proper patri- 
 mony of the Church. But this absolute right to the 
 teinds on the part of the clergy was now ignored. 
 They had been given away, though illegally, and 
 Charles did not feel himself strong enough to wrest 
 them out of the hands of the possessors, and restore 
 them to the proper owners. But though the teinds 
 were not restored to the parish minister, they were 
 burdened with a suitable stipend to the parish 
 minister. His claim upon them was put before all 
 others ; but it was merely the claim of a pensioner 
 to a portion of what was rightfully his own. Accord- 
 ing to the arrangement of 1629-33, the heritors of 
 Scotland, in so far as they became titulars, are now 
 the owners of the Church's teinds — they bought 
 them and paid for them — subject, as I have said, to 
 the burden of the parish minister's stipend. Accord- 
 ingly, in strict law, and if strict faith were kept with 
 the heritors, the disendowment of the Church would 
 simply amount to the relieving them of this burden. 
 If the stipend were exacted without * the benefit of 
 clergy ' being given in return, it would be a breach 
 of equity as well as of law. 
 
 As I have already said, commissioners were 
 appointed to value all the lands of the kingdom, or 
 rather to ascertain their rental, and the fifth of this 
 rental, as then ascertained, was to constitute the 
 teind in all time coming. Most of the landholders, 
 accordingly, got their lands valued and their teinds 
 fixed, but many others, especially of the smaller 
 proprietors, neglected to get this done, and the 
 result has been disastrous to them. A fifth of the 
 rental of land, two hundred and fifty years ago, was 
 
I04 Free-will Offerings and TitJies. 
 
 very different from what it is now — probably not the 
 tenth or the twentieth part of it. When one hears 
 of the fifth of the rental of all the lands of Scotland 
 being set apart as a fund, out of which the stipends 
 of the clergy were to be paid, one's natural conclu- 
 sion is, that here there is not only an ample but a 
 magnificent provision, to maintain the Presbyterian 
 ministers like princes. A fifth of the whole rental 
 of the country ! What more could clerical avarice 
 desire ? And yet true it is, that the whole fifth of 
 this rental is now absorbed in stipend in the majority 
 of the parishes of Scotland, and in many cases that 
 stipend does not amount to £\^o, in some cases not 
 to ;^ioo, in some not to £^o. There are properties 
 of five thousand acres which, in 1629, were declared 
 — truly or untruly, who shall now say ? — to have a 
 rental of only £ap, which have now a rental of up- 
 wards of ;^3000. The proprietor in that case p^ys- 
 only £Z a year as stipend to his minister ; while 
 probably his neighbour is a small proprietor of 
 twenty acres, which have been valued recently, and 
 the rental ascertained to be £60, and, accordingly, 
 he pays £\2. Why wonder there is grumbling at 
 such prodigious inequalities ? more especially when 
 it happens, as it very often does, that the great pro- 
 prietor — thanks to the foresight of his factor and his 
 agent two hundred and fifty years ago — escapes by 
 paying a mere trifle, while the small proprietor, 
 whose ancestor had no factor or agent to look after 
 his interests, is made to bear the main burden of the 
 minister's stipend.^ 
 
 1 The whole stipends drawn out of the teinds at present amount to- 
 about ;^200,ooo — their value having been lessened by the fall in the 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 105 
 
 The plain intention of the decreets-arbitral was 
 that all should pay equally according to the rental 
 of their lands. And why should not the inequalities 
 which time has made be now rectified ? Why 
 should not the present valuation roll be the rule 
 for all. The stipends of the clergy need not be 
 larger than they are at present, unless in some 
 exceptional cases ; but the burden of them should 
 be more equally distributed. As a compensation 
 for such a concession on the part of the heritors 
 who have old valuations, the clergy might concede 
 that a tenth or even a twentieth, instead of a fifth, 
 should hereafter constitute the teind. If such an 
 arrangement were made, and legislatively sanctioned, 
 no landowner would feel the burden of the minister's 
 stipend ; all would bear it equally, and therefore 
 without the bitterness which the present inequalities 
 sometimes create : the vexatious and expensive 
 litigations about valuations and localities which are 
 frequently ruinous to all parties concerned, would 
 cease ; and heritors and ministers, now frequently at 
 variance, would lie down together in peace, like the 
 prophetic lion and lamb. 
 
 The teinds of every parish are confined to itself, 
 and cannot be used for another parish — so have the 
 law courts ordained. Thus it happens that one 
 parish may have more than enough of teinds for 
 all its wants, and the neighbouring parish be sorely 
 in need of them. It was at one time held that 
 
 price of grain. The teinds not yet applied to the payment of stipends 
 (called unexhausted teinds), amount to about /"i30,ooo yearly, but in 
 many parishes it is a question whether the teinds are exhausted or not. 
 There are 880 parishes in Scotland, the stipends of which are drawn 
 mainly from teinds. 
 
io6 Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 
 
 when a stipend was once fixed, It could not after- 
 wards be augmented ; but the House of Lords, by a 
 most righteous decision, overturned that notion, and 
 now a clergyman, in whose parish there are unex- 
 hausted teinds, may apply to the Court of Teinds at 
 the end of every twenty years for an augmentation to 
 his stipend, and generally he gets it. He well may, 
 for it is a long time to wait for it. Up till 1808 it 
 was usual for the heritors to deliver their victual 
 stipend in kind, and in most manses there was a 
 granary (or girnel) for its reception, but accord- 
 ing to an act passed in that year victual stipend 
 is now converted into money, and paid according 
 to the highest prices of the county fiars, in other 
 words, according to the average price which good 
 grain has brought in the open market. Beyond all 
 question there is great convenience in this arrange- 
 ment ; but most parish ministers think there might 
 be improvement in the way in which the fiars are 
 struck, so as to give them a truer average value of 
 the price of grain over the whole year. Of course, 
 the recent enormous importations of grain, and the 
 consequent fall in grain prices, have lowered the 
 stipends of the Scottish clergy by about twenty-five 
 per cent, but they must be content to suffer, and 
 find what comfort they can from the thought that 
 others are rejoicing. 
 
 Within the last fifty years upwards of three 
 hundred and fifty new parishes have been endowed 
 in Scotland, mainly by contributions from the 
 members of the Church, and the process of forming 
 new parishes, and of endowing them, is still going 
 on ; and if the next half-century should do as 
 
Free-will Offerings and Tithes. 107 
 
 much as the last, the number of newly endowed 
 parishes will be nearly as numerous as the old. 
 As the endowment in these cases is almost always 
 small (generally £126), the congregation supplement 
 the minister's stipend according to their ability, the 
 stipends ranging from i^200 up to ;6I000. In many 
 of the old parishes also, where the teind stipend 
 is inadequate, the congregations are awakening to a 
 sense of their duty, and adding to the stipends 
 of their ministers. Thus, inside the Established 
 Church, there is a combination of endowments and 
 voluntary offerings. 
 
 In the Catholic Apostolic Church, it is an article 
 of faith that tithes are of divine origin and perpetual 
 obligation, and every member is expected to con- 
 tribute a tenth of his income toward providing 
 benefices for ministers. Though the payment is 
 regarded as morally obligatory, it is not compulsory. 
 There is no inquiry as to how much any one gives, far 
 less any scrutiny, but every Sunday the gift is made, 
 as a free-will offering to the Lord, and the system 
 is found to work well. Among the Methodists 
 there is a similar belief. In all the churches there 
 are individuals who hold the same opinion, and 
 annually give a tenth of their all to the church or 
 the poor. It is to be feared the number of these is 
 not great ; but strange to say, some are to be found 
 in anti-state churches ; and anti-state church ministers 
 have been known to preach the duty of paying tithes 
 — to them. 
 
 It is not necessary for me to explain the methods 
 which are employed in dissenting churches, for 
 raising money to support religious services ; as that 
 
io8 Free-will Offerings and Tithes, 
 
 will be done in a future lecture. Suffice it to say, 
 that every conceivable method is resorted to. Seat- 
 rents, monthly or quarterly contributions, and col- 
 lections made at the church door, are the most usual 
 methods in Protestant congregations. The Roman 
 Catholic priest charges fees for performing the 
 offices of his religion ; and the ill-paid Lutheran 
 clergy in Hamburg, and other parts of Germany, 
 do the same, often with the result that people dis- 
 pense with the offices of religion altogether. A 
 vestige of this exists in England, where some of the 
 curates (and even of the incumbents) are partly 
 paid by fees, which they do not ask, but which they 
 nevertheless expect. In many cases, where the 
 people are poor, the support of a minister and a 
 religious service becomes a very heavy tax upon 
 them, but it must be told that in general they bear 
 the burden bravely. We may think them mistaken 
 in their notions, but we cannot but admire their con- 
 scientious liberality, and believe that many inside 
 the Church might learn a useful lesson from them. 
 It used to be thought that 'the glorious principle 
 of an Established Church ' was that people did not 
 require to give ; but now it is being felt that this 
 is a very inglorious principle, the principle of the 
 mean and the miserly, and that churchmen as well as 
 dissenters are bound to do what they can, and give 
 what they can for the promotion of every good 
 cause. But, within the Established Church, ' to the 
 poor the gospel is preached,' 'without money and 
 without price.' 
 
ERRATA IN LECTURE IV. 
 
 Page 112, fourth line from bottom, y^r 'showed ' read ' shown.' 
 ir 144, eighth Hne from top, for ' made ' read ' paid.' 
 ti 153, fifteenth hne from top, y^r 'mass ' read ' masses.' 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE, 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 THE PAROCHIAL SYSTEM. 
 
 By Donald Macleod, D.D., Minister of the Park Parish, Glasgow ; 
 and one of Her Majesty's Chaplains for Scotland. 
 
 HEN viewed in reference to its fitness for 
 fulfilling the mission of the gospel among 
 the people, the feature which distinguishes 
 the Church of Scotland from the other ecclesiastical 
 agencies around it is its parochial system. It is 
 through this system it seeks to reach the entire 
 nation, and it claims for it a superiority over all 
 others. In this practical age, no matter can 
 appear more important than whether the instru- 
 ment employed is, or is not, the most suitable 
 for the special end in view. If it commends 
 itself as giving the most promise of efficiency ; 
 if its history corroborates that expectation ; and 
 if it can be shown that any failure which can 
 
 be pointed out has not arisen from the system 
 
 I 
 
no The Parochial System. 
 
 but from inattention to its essential conditions, then 
 a case shall have been made for its authority, which 
 cannot be endangered by any theories which rest on 
 less substantial bases. Whatever theories may be 
 advanced by Voluntary or High Churchman respect- 
 ing the constitution of the church as it existed in 
 primitive times, or between the competing claims of 
 various orders of the clergy, yet, the test which men 
 will really be swayed by is the experimental one. 
 
 Our own views as to the perfection of any ecclesi- 
 astical organisation are founded on the justness 
 of this test. We do not believe that Presbytery, 
 Episcopacy, or Congregationalism can claim any 
 exclusive divine authority. God has undoubtedly 
 appointed a government in his church whereby 
 everything shall be done 'decently and in order;' 
 but if it had been essential that any particular 
 order of clergy should remain permanent and have 
 divine appointment, or if divine grace had been 
 attached to the instrumentality of that order, so 
 that it alone can be recognised as the channel where- 
 by God promises to convey grace, then we would be 
 warranted to expect the clearest statements to that 
 effect in the Word of God. The conception of 
 blessing being meted out on such principles is so 
 arbitrary, that the evidence of its truth must be 
 indubitable ere it can become credible. We would 
 also be compelled, in harmony with such a belief, to 
 look for corresponding results in actual experience. 
 If we were told that rain fell only on certain fields, 
 we would expect to see those fields different from 
 all other fields ; and if divine grace is by covenant 
 bestowed only on those flocks which enjoy a certain 
 
The Parochial System. 1 1 1 
 
 ecclesiastical machinery, we would be equally 
 warranted to expect the fruits of such privileges in 
 actual life. But when we apply these tests to the 
 cases in hand, we discover that none of them can 
 bear the trial. So far from there being any express 
 statements in the Word of God, clear and unmistak- 
 able, we find that there is the greatest diversity of 
 opinion among the best scholars and the advocates 
 of various systems, in regard to what it is that 
 Scripture enjoins. Or if we turn to the test, ' By 
 their fruits ye shall know them,' and attempt to 
 judge by results, he would be a rash man who 
 would dare to say that there is any branch of the 
 Church of Christ which enjoys a monopoly of cove- 
 nanted grace.^ But the question of the Orders of the 
 clergy does not enter into the subject before us. 
 
 1 We are glad to notice this principle admitted by Bishop Words- 
 worth in his recent charge, and we acknowledge the faii-ness with 
 which he attempts to do justice to the Christian life and sanctity out- 
 side of the churches which retain the Three Orders. He fancies, how- 
 ever, that he discovers within the fold of the Episcopal Church a kind 
 of fruit which he asserts does not exist in those communions which 
 hold Presbyterian principles. That fruit is unity. There is unity, he 
 says, among Episcopalians, and schism and division among the 
 representatives of other forms of ecclesiastical government. But even 
 this test lamentably fails when it is applied to that system which he 
 advocates. He forgets that schism, as used by St Paul, did not i-efer 
 to dissent in the modern signification, but to the existence of party 
 spirit within the Church. That being so, it may be asked whether 
 there are no such ' schisms ' within the Church of England. Ritualist 
 and Evangelical, High Church and Broad Church, would, according to 
 St Paul, be typical ' schisms.' Again, what does he make of the separa- 
 tion of the Anglican, Roman, Greek, Coptic, Armenian, Maronite, and 
 other churches, which all enjoy the blessing of the Three Orders, and yet 
 excommunicate one another with as great keenness as ever disgraced 
 any sect in any land ? Does he forget also that while there has been 
 large dissent from the Anglican Church, yet those who left it have 
 
112 TJie Parochial System. 
 
 The parochial system is in operation over Europe ; 
 the comparisons we shall draw are, however, not 
 between different forms of parochial organisation, 
 but between that which has been adopted by the 
 Church of Scotland, and the non-parochial methods 
 advocated by the Voluntaries in our own land. It is 
 as a Scottish question that we intend to regard it ; 
 and the position which we are to maintain is — That 
 the endowed territorial system is the most efficient 
 which has hitherto been devised for securing the 
 greatest possible benefit to the people. 
 
 If we put out of view the important element, 
 vital to any system, which touches the character of 
 the persons who are to carry it out, there are two 
 general conditions which are essential to the due 
 efficiency of the parochial system, and without 
 which it cannot be fairly tested. 
 
 First, the parish must be of such a size in extent 
 and population as shall make it possible for the 
 minister to take personal cognisance of every family 
 in it, so as to bring all needful Christian influence to 
 bear upon them. 
 
 Secondly, the parish church and the services of 
 the parish minister must be at the free disposal of 
 the parishioners ; the accommodation provided in 
 the former, and the time and labour of the latter, 
 being devoted, not to the general community, or to a 
 congregation gathered from the general neighbour- 
 hood, but to a particular district and to the persons 
 
 seldom showed any loyalty to the system they had abandoned ; while, 
 on the contrary, those who have seceded from the Church of Scotland 
 have generally, with unshaken steadfastness, upheld Presbytery ? 
 Though separate, this bond of unity has never been broken. 
 
TJie Parochial System. 113 
 
 residing in it. In other words, the territory attached 
 must be of workable size, and the endowments pro- 
 vided must be adequate. These are the conditions 
 which it was the intention of the Reformers to 
 secure ; these are the principles which lie at the 
 foundation of the National Church. 
 
 History of the Parochial System. — The origin of 
 parishes is involved in considerable obscurity. The 
 word * parish ' is derived from the term ua.po,r.)K, applied 
 to those communities like the Jewish or Christian, 
 which were 'sojourning' in foreign cities.^ The 
 cities were the original centres of Christian influence. 
 The country districts and villages were the last to be 
 reached.^ 
 
 The city churches thus became mother-churches, 
 from which preachers and missionaries went forth to 
 evangelise the neighbourhood. This recognition of 
 outlying stations probably led to the attachment of 
 the word * parish ' to a particular territory, and from 
 such usage it gradually came to be applied in its 
 modern sense to all the districts embraced in the 
 larger province, which assumed the title of diocese. 
 Originally both words were synonymous, but the 
 course of events, and the development of ecclesi- 
 astical government, led to the distinction which 
 still prevails. Like many other growths which, in 
 ecclesiastical and social as well as in physical life, 
 follow the law of evolution, the establishment of 
 the diocese and the parish over Episcopal Europe 
 was determined by the requirements of the times,, 
 and was the product of practical statesmanship. 
 
 1 See Bampton Lecture by Dr Hatch. 
 
 2 Hence the name 'pagan' {paganus) or villager. 
 
114 The Parochial System. 
 
 The rise of the parochial system in Scotland can- 
 not be fixed with more than approximate accuracy. 
 It was in all probability after this fashion : — 
 
 The conversions which followed the preaching of 
 the early missionaries were tribal. Society was so 
 completely organised into tribe and clan, that no one 
 could reach the individual without gaining the atten- 
 tion of the tribe. Just as at the present day, it 
 would be impossible for a stranger to gain access 
 to a single Arab without being brought into court 
 before the whole tribe, so was it in Scotland. 
 When the chief embraced Christianity, he carried an 
 influence similar to what he exercised in secular 
 affairs. The tribe followed him in his faith, as they 
 did in war. When, therefore, any chief accepted 
 Christianity, the teachers to whom he looked for 
 religious instruction would naturally labour within 
 the territory over which he had authority. The 
 territory of the tribe would thus become practically 
 the parish assigned to the missionaries. Their 
 support also would naturally be defrayed by the 
 representatives of the land within which they 
 laboured. 
 
 Closely connected with this was the influence 
 exercised by the monasteries. The abbey with its 
 community was the earliest ecclesiastical system in 
 Scotland. The abbots came long before the bishops. 
 As, therefore, any monastery gained a special influence 
 over the tribes which had received spiritual benefit 
 from its preachers, it became enriched with delegated 
 authority, and with the gifts of various kinds which 
 gratitude assigned to them. A link thus grew up of 
 the closest nature between each monastery and the 
 
The Parochial System. 1 1 5 
 
 extensive tracts of land over which it had gained 
 influence. The monasteries, or the first churches 
 estabhshed by them, thus became mother-churches, 
 having a large number of charges dependent upon 
 them. These charges must have raised the question 
 of the district to be assigned to each, and through 
 this establishment of districts the way was prepared 
 for parishes. 
 
 When the feudal' system came into force in Scot- 
 land in the time of King David, a further stimulus 
 was given to the territorial principle. This was not 
 because King David gave commanding authority 
 to Romanism, and w^th it to the ecclesiastical 
 arrangements which prevailed in Italy and Gaul, 
 but that feudalism, wdth its clearly defined links 
 of connection between the superior and his vassals, 
 served to fix the relationships between certain 
 localities and their priesthood. As in England, 
 where the feudal system existed for a longer period 
 than in Scotland, the Manor was the ecclesiastical as 
 well as civil centre of authority, so when in Scot- 
 land the baron took the place of the old chief, he 
 naturally cared first for the interests of his vassals. 
 From the Manor, with its chapel and resident 
 priest, representing the will and influence of the 
 Church, there arose the desire to provide for the 
 spiritual necessities of the hamlets and townships 
 within the district which owned the authority of the 
 same superior. The effect of this was to crystallise 
 church organisation in certain localities, and to 
 create parishes. We can trace this process in some 
 parts of Scotland, and very markedly in the eastern 
 counties, where the tribal land changed into that of 
 
1 1 6 TJic Parochial System. 
 
 the thane, and afterwards came under feudalism. The 
 old mother-church of Celtic times went over to the 
 Thaneage, and these mother-churches again passed, 
 later on, to the Manor. When the feudal possessor 
 desired to supply the wants of a district, or to show 
 his reverence for a saint, he established here and 
 there chapels subsidiary to the ancient church 
 connected with his estate. In the course of time 
 the chapelries thus founded grew to be independent 
 parishes. *A striking illustration of this is to 
 be found in the extensive territory in Aberdeen- 
 shire v/hich formed the manorage of Kintore. 
 There we find first a mother-church, Kinkell {ceaitn 
 chille^ the head or chief church), with its dependent 
 chapels — Dyce, Kinnellar, Kintore, Kenmay, Min- 
 keigie, and Skene.* ^ With one exception, all of 
 these remain to the present day as parishes. These 
 instances, to which many similar could easily be 
 added, indicate how naturally the subdivision of 
 the country into parishes arose. They were not 
 created by king or parliament. The legal erection 
 of parishes was but the recognition of what previously 
 existed. Nor was the parochial system an importa- 
 tion from the Continent, when Romanism supplanted 
 the Celtic Church. The influence of the Roman 
 priesthood may have served to give shape to the 
 institution, but its origin was earlier, and its growth 
 was the natural product of a long antecedent history. 
 By the beginning of the thirteenth century, the 
 country appears to have been divided pretty 
 thoroughly into parishes. At that period the Celtic 
 Church had completely disappeared, and the Roman 
 
 1 We are indebted to Mr Skene for this illustration. 
 
TJie Parochial System. iiy 
 
 Church had acquired undisputed authority. A com- 
 plete pastoral supervision for the entire kingdom 
 had been organised. Everywhere arose church and 
 chapel. In lonely glens the sound of the bell 
 calling to prayer, and the presence of a Christian 
 priest, marked the advent of the greatest civilising 
 power of the timiC. For many a day the influence 
 of Romanism was beneficial ; and that influence was 
 rendered effective by the complete manner in which 
 the parochial system extended it to the most 
 remote glen and to the rudest tribe. The ruined 
 walls of little kirks, which can still be traced 
 on rocky islets and deserted straths in the far 
 Hebrides, witness to the thoroughness with which 
 Christian instruction, in the only form then known, 
 was disseminated. It was not a cluster of voluntary 
 adherents here and there which was attended to ; it 
 was the nation which was Christianised. The care 
 of the Church embraced the entire body of the 
 people, not according to their expressed desire, but 
 according as their spiritual necessities revealed the 
 need for Christian zeal. 
 
 At the time of the Reformation the country had 
 become almost overchurched, and a dangerous 
 preponderance of influence and wealth lay in the 
 hands of the clergy. The monasteries and bishop- 
 rics had become enormously enriched. It has been 
 computed that one-half of the entire wealth of 
 the kingdom belonged to the Church, and by 
 far the greater amount of this was attached 
 to the abbeys and cathedrals. We need not 
 enlarge here on the manner in which that great 
 wealth fell into the hands of grasping barons, 
 
Ii8 TJie Parochial System. 
 
 as that has been already described in previous 
 lectures. 
 
 John Knox at once recognised the importance 
 of the parochial system, which he found already 
 existing, and adopted it as essential for the due 
 organisation of the Reformed Church. He formu- 
 lated a policy which was as magnificent in its 
 statesmanship as it was noble in its patriotism. 
 Those were days when strong men were required to 
 mould the future of the country. It was the most 
 critical epoch in the history of Scotland ; and the 
 master spirit God then gave to the nation was that 
 of Knox. He was firmly convinced that the supreme 
 law for man in every condition of life was the Word 
 of God. The authority of that Word, according 
 to him, must dominate all spheres of life. To obey 
 the gospel was the duty of the nation, as well as 
 of the individual. He believed there could be no 
 security for the moral and spiritual health of the 
 people, except they were thoroughly enlightened 
 by education, and instructed in the Word of God. 
 Every means must therefore be used to make 
 intelligent religious conviction the basis of national 
 life. He accordingly drew up the First Book of 
 Discipline — using Discipline in its original significa- 
 tion of 'training' — as a scheme for the Christian 
 training of the entire populace. It was founded 
 on the parochial system. If every man, woman, 
 and child was to be reached, and the best instruc- 
 tion placed within their power, then the whole 
 land must be divided into workable parishes, and 
 the teaching by school and pulpit so distributed in 
 those parishes, that not a household should be 
 
The Parochial System. 119 
 
 left unsupplied. This territorial division was ready 
 at hand, although it required modification to suit 
 the exigencies of the time. 
 
 The territorial arrangement of parishes was not 
 the only condition necessary for the accomplishment 
 of the wise intentions of the Reformers. The 
 support of the ministry and of the schoolmasters 
 was quite as necessary. John Knox never dreamt 
 of intrusting the success of so vast an undertaking 
 to the voluntary offerings of the people ; nor was 
 there any cause for his doing so. The wealth of 
 the Church afforded the prospect of abundant 
 pecuniary resources. That wealth was of a two- 
 fold character. There were the lands and heritages 
 belonging to the monasteries and to the bishoprics, 
 and there were the teinds, which were the property 
 of each parish, and destined for the support of its 
 own ecclesiastical establishment. Knox proposed 
 that these funds should be devoted to the three 
 following objects : ( i ) The support of the ministry ; 
 (2) Education; and (3) The poor and sick. For 
 the ministry he asked no more than a decent 
 sustenance, sufficient to place the preaching of the 
 word, and the pastoral superintendence of the 
 clergy, at the free disposal of every family in the 
 country. Education was to be put on such a 
 footing as existed in no country in the world. A 
 parish school was to be erected beside every parish 
 church, so that elementary instruction might be 
 afforded to the whole youth of the land. There 
 were to be Secondary or Grammar Schools also set 
 up in suitable localities, to form centres for higher 
 instruction, and to make an easy bridge between 
 
120 The Parochial System. 
 
 the elementary school and the university. As the 
 crown of the edifice, the universities were to be 
 equipped as thoroughly as ample endowments 
 and a well-considered curriculum could command. 
 Bursaries were to be given for the aid of promising 
 scholars during their entire course from the 
 elementary schools upwards, so that the intelli- 
 gent son of the poorest cottar might have a 
 career opened for his ambition, and pass from the 
 humblest parish school, through the higher Grammar 
 or Secondary Education, to the University, with its 
 efficient staff of professors. The last object con- 
 nected with the parochial economy of Knox, to 
 which these funds were to be devoted, was the 
 support of the poor and sick. 
 
 This magnificent scheme for national religion, in 
 the widest sense, was inseparable from the parochial 
 system. It was by the careful allotment of the 
 whole country into such workable divisions that no 
 place could escape the beneficent influence of his 
 proposal, that Knox entertained any hope of success. 
 His grasp of the conditions necessary for the realisa- 
 tion of his patriotic views, was decided and strong. 
 He held firmly his belief of how noble the life of 
 the nation might be rendered, and he drew out in 
 detail the method for its accomplishment. The 
 causes of failure did not lie with the Reformer. 
 
 The number of parishes which existed at the time 
 of the Reformation can be ascertained with some 
 approximation to accuracy, and may be put down 
 as approaching to iioo. The king assumed the 
 responsibility of deciding the distribution of parishes 
 to meet the new requirements when it was advisable 
 
TJie Parochial System. 12 1 
 
 to unite one or two, or to divide them when an oppo- 
 site course appeared better.^ The evidence, how- 
 ever, goes to show that under the Romish Church the 
 parishes, with their 'pendicles/ were more numerous 
 than after the Reformation. This arose from the 
 force of circumstances. The number of clergy which 
 the Reformed Church originally embraced was very 
 small. At the first General Assembly there were but 
 six ministers, and although temporary expedients 
 were applied to meet the emergency by the employ- 
 ment of Readers, Exhorters, and Superintendents, 
 and by committing the oversight of several parishes 
 to one minister, yet the tendency with such a weak 
 staff must have been to reduce, rather than enlarge 
 the parochial equipment. Any one familiar with the 
 rural districts of Scotland must be aware of the 
 existence of ruined churches scattered over districts 
 where there is even now only one parish church. 
 The parish of Kilmally in Inverness-shire, for 
 example, now embraces what formerly had been five 
 parishes. As years went on, the increase of parishes 
 became greater ; yet so slow was the movement, 
 that it was not till 1772 that the island of Lewis, 
 which has now six parishes, ceased to be one.^ 
 
 1 From 1 56 1 to 1 617, it was the sovereign in council who divided 
 the parishes; from 161 7 till 1707, that power was placed in the 
 parliament, and its execution was fulfilled either by acts of parliament 
 or by parliamentary commissioners. Since 1707, this authority has 
 lain with the Court of Session, There is therefore no ground for the 
 claim, first put forward in 1833 by the General Assembly, to divide 
 and erect new parishes propria motii, and without interference by the 
 civil court. See Duncan's Parochial Law. 
 
 2 In 1567 there were 287 Ministers for 1080 churches, with 151 
 Exhorters and 455 Readers ; in 1581 the work of reduction of parishes 
 had brought the number down to 924, and even then the supply of 
 
122 The Parochial System. 
 
 During the eighteenth century little progress was 
 made. The period was one of great spiritual dead- 
 ness over Europe. It was the age of Voltaire abroad 
 and of the Deists at home. The church was natu- 
 rally affected by the prevalent tone, and the reign of 
 Moderatism, whose faults have been exposed to an 
 exaggeration, was the reflection of the age. The 
 coldness of the clergy and the secular tone of the 
 nation produced indifference regarding the religious 
 wants of the country. At the beginning of this 
 century, again, the people were so absorbed by 
 the interests of the great naval and military wars, 
 that all other considerations were laid aside. It 
 was not till peace was restored, and the commercial 
 prosperity of the country entered on an epoch 
 of progress, and when great industries attracted 
 masses of the population to the manufactur- 
 ing centres, that the inadequacy of the existing 
 parochial agencies became apparent. Coincident 
 with this increase of prosperity came the excite- 
 ment of the Reform Bill, which awoke the nation 
 to a new political life. It was also the time 
 of the great Evangelical Revival, and the Church 
 of Scotland abundantly shared its quickening 
 influence. It was impossible that, when thus 
 roused to a sense of its responsibilities, the country 
 could remain indifferent to the lamentable inade- 
 quacy of the existing parochial system to meet 
 the enormously increased population. Chalmers » 
 
 qualified ministers was so inadequate, that it was proposed to reduce the 
 total number of parishes to 600. This, however, was not done, for in 
 1596 we find that there were 970 churches, but of these no fewer than 
 400 were vacant. — Lning's Int^-odiiction to IVodrow^s Miscellany. 
 
TJie Parochial System. 123 
 
 became the apostle of the new era. Grasping, as 
 no one else had done since the Reformation, the 
 true idea of a National Church, and expounding 
 the advantages of the parochial economy with an 
 eloquence which stirred the enthusiasm of the 
 whole community, he at once set about the 
 restoration of a complete parochial equipment 
 for the country. Great cities had grown up 
 where at the time of Knox there were hamlets ; 
 populous towns were being thickly strewn around 
 the quickly increasing erections of commercial 
 enterprise ; mining villages were rising almost in 
 a night. The supply of ordinances for all these 
 masses was terribly deficient. While the population 
 of the country had trebled, few additions had been 
 made to its parochial system for three centuries. 
 Chalmers proved that there was at least a million 
 — more than a third of the people of Scotland 
 — for whom there was no church accommodation 
 whatever, even taking into account the existence 
 of dissenting chapels, and with trumpet voice he 
 called upon the Church to remove these evils. Not 
 yet had the belief been accepted that the State 
 has no interest in the religious welfare of the 
 people, nor was it then deemed vain to look to 
 government for help. The only task Chalmers 
 called on the Church and people by their voluntary 
 efforts to overtake was the increase of church 
 accommodation. Should that be effected by the 
 people, he held the State was bound to furnish the 
 necessary endowments. This last condition ^was 
 essential to the scheme ; for he never contemplated 
 an incomplete imitation of the ancient parochial 
 
124 The Parochial System. 
 
 system. The people of Scotland responded nobly 
 to the call of the great advocate of establishments. 
 Within a short time he was able to report the 
 completion of 222 churches. The time had therefore 
 come when, according to his design, the appeal 
 should be made to the State. But other movements 
 intervened which unhappily withdrew the energies 
 of the great churchman from his favourite work. 
 The Ten Years' Conflict then reached its lamentable 
 climax in the Disruption of 1843, and Chalmers, 
 under the compulsion of events, was obliged to lay 
 down the noble toil of many years in order to place 
 the new Church of the Secession on the best possible 
 basis. The blow, which the departure of so many 
 of its most earnest ministers and members inflicted 
 on the Church, seemed for a while overwhelming. 
 Not only had the work of church extension been 
 absolutely stayed, but the existing churches were, 
 in a sad number of instances, left empty, and their 
 parochial agencies, recently so active, were swept 
 away. But it was when things were little better 
 than at the darkest hour, that another son of the 
 Church arose, not unworthy to be ranked beside 
 Chalmers. Dr James Robertson summoned the 
 Church to gird herself anew, and to complete the 
 work of Chalmers by endowing the chapels that 
 had been built by his endeavours. Dr Robertson — 
 as great in Christian zeal as he was powerful in 
 intellect, and whose patriotism was more distinc- 
 tive than even his churchmanship — struck the note 
 which restored the energies of the despairing 
 phalanx who had clung to the national Zion in 
 its hour of danger. Imperial legislation assisted 
 
The Parochial System. 125 
 
 the movement by an Act which faciUtated the 
 erection of new parishes Quoad Sacra, That work, 
 so splendidly inaugurated by Dr Robertson, has 
 issued in the addition of more than 350 parishes to 
 the endowed territorial system of the Church. This 
 is a great gift to the nation, for the benefits thus 
 provided are for the people, and in a shape which 
 secures their perpetuity. Such is the story of the 
 development of the parochial system. 
 
 TJie Merits of the Parochial System. — We have 
 already defined the parochial system as that 
 whereby the preaching of the gospel and the 
 service of a gospel ministry shall be secured to 
 every household and family in the country, by 
 apportioning such a territory and population to a 
 particular church as can be worked by the minister 
 of that church ; and also by the assignment, out 
 of the teinds or from sources supplied by voluntary 
 gift, of such support to the minister as will enable 
 him to discharge the duties of his office with abso- 
 lute freedom. In so far as the parochial system 
 allots to the clergyman a particular district instead 
 of a congregation, it differs from the system of 
 the Voluntaries, which makes the congregation 
 which supports the minister the prime sphere 
 of his activity ; and in so far as it secures an 
 adequate endowment for maintaining the minister 
 within the parish, it is distinguishable from the 
 voluntary system, which makes the sustenance of 
 the minister an affair of arrangement between him 
 and the particular persons whom he may attract. 
 An endowment without territory is also unsatis- 
 factory. Chalmers illustrated this by the regium 
 
126 The Parochial System. 
 
 do7iii7n bestowed on Presbyterian ministers in the 
 north of Ireland, * who are helped in consequence 
 to congregate their hearers at lower seat-rents than 
 would otherwise have been possible, but without 
 any definite section of a territory being assigned 
 to them, within the limits of which they might 
 exert an ecclesiastical guardianship over one and 
 all of the families.' Still further, the fact that the 
 parochial system is established by law renders 
 another advantage, inasmuch as it enables every 
 citizen within the territory called a parish to 
 recognise his right in the minister of the parish, 
 and his claim to be considered in connection with 
 its ecclesiastical arrangements. The parish minister 
 and the parish church being placed there, not for 
 the use of a particular number of people termed 
 a congregation, but for the whole parishioners 
 as such, places them legally in a position in which 
 the advantages offered can be claimed by the 
 poorest as well as the richest inhabitant. Similar 
 blessings are secured to the State which possesses 
 an Established Church, covering with its organisa- 
 tion every corner of the land. For, if the reason 
 for State Education is the security afforded for the 
 well-being of the nation in consequence of every 
 citizen being taught the elements of knowledge, 
 it surely is not less advantageous for a nation which, 
 even in the most general sense, has a belief in God 
 and Jesus Christ, to possess some security for the 
 religious instruction and culture of the whole 
 community. We are far from saying that with- 
 out such a system religion could not exist. ' The 
 word of God is not bound ' to any system. Our 
 
The Parochial System. 127 
 
 argument is to the effect, that if the most efficient 
 instrumentahty be looked for whereby the blessings 
 of religion can be secured, with its accompanying 
 results on the national character, there is none which 
 can be preferred to the parochial system of the 
 National Church. 
 
 The advantages of the parochial system, when 
 thoroughly equipped, are many and obvious. We 
 shall specify some of them. 
 
 ( I ) ThoroiLghiiess. — By thoroughness we mean its 
 fitness for efficiently bringing the whole population 
 under the power of the gospel. If we imagine the 
 country mapped out into such workable districts, 
 that each minister shall have an area of population 
 which he can so overtake that every household can 
 be reached by him, their circumstances inquired 
 into, and his personal services and influence placed 
 at their disposal, we have a method represented 
 which common-sense must recognise as being 
 thorough. The object of the supervision is to 
 reach all. It may be that a large proportion of the 
 persons to whom the minister stands in parochial 
 relationship may not require him. They may be the 
 respected adherents of other churches, and enjoying 
 the full advantages of the Christian ministry of some 
 other denomination. In this case, his duty is clear. 
 He is not there to make proselytes, but, as the 
 representative of the National Church, bound to 
 consider the religious good of the nation, it is his 
 duty to strengthen and encourage the good work 
 done for the common religion by other faithful 
 Churches. The adherents of other Churches will 
 not mistake his attitude. They will recognise him 
 
128 The Parochial System. 
 
 as one who belongs, not to a special congregation, 
 but to the parish, and bound, as a public officer, to 
 take cognisance of and to be on a kindly footing 
 with all in it. That such is actually the feeling in 
 regard to this matter we can ourselves testify, in 
 common with every other parish minister who acts 
 in this spirit. But there is in most parishes a num- 
 ber, sadly great, who are without the fold of all 
 Churches. Sometimes extreme poverty, or, more 
 frequently, religious indifference, or the influence of 
 evil habits, has created a chasm between them and 
 public ordinances. Even in rural districts this is 
 the case. In towns and cities it is infinitely worse. 
 The population may be reckoned by hundreds of 
 thousands to whom it would make practically no 
 difference had Jesus Christ never been born, or had 
 no Christian Church ever been built. It is among 
 populations like this that an endowed territorial 
 system becomes of the highest importance. But it 
 must be efficient in its arrangements. If instead of 
 an area which can be thoroughly wrought, there 
 is attached to a parish church a crowd utterly 
 beyond the power of the minister to deal with ; if 
 instead of having the looo souls, which was the 
 number John Knox deemed sufficient, or the 2500 
 which has in more modern times been contem- 
 plated, he is charged with the oversight of from 
 8000 to 10,000, then the parochial system cannot 
 be held to have had a fair trial. Nor can it 
 be regarded as satisfactory, should the financial 
 arrangements be so like those of the Voluntaries, 
 that instead of the church and the services of the 
 minister being placed wholly at the disposal of the 
 
TJie Parochial System. 129 
 
 parishioners, both are practically the property of the 
 congregation which pays the seat-rents. We have 
 then a state of things which displays few of the 
 merits of the parochial system, and the outside world 
 may be entitled to question whether an established 
 church, worked on such principles, has any practical 
 advantage over the voluntary church in its neigh- 
 bourhood. And the people of these parishes have 
 also every right to complain. There may be a 
 parish church ; but they cannot enter it except on 
 sufferance, for the seats are filled with those who, 
 gathered from any quarter, have paid their money, 
 and acquired an exclusive title to occupancy. There 
 may be a parish minister ; but the demands of his 
 numerous congregation are such, that it is only at 
 odd times he can attempt door-to-door visitation. 
 Unless the church and the services of the minister 
 are strictly connected with a special territory, all the 
 inhabitants of which form the special objects of 
 pastoral care, and all of whom can claim accom- 
 modation in the house of God which has been 
 assigned by the nation for their use, we can 
 regard any possible failure of the Church to 
 overtake the religious requirements of the people 
 as attributable, not to the parochial system, but to 
 its absence. 
 
 There was one point on which Dr Chalmers 
 enlarged with immense power. He used to draw 
 an important distinction between the principle of 
 'attraction' and that of 'aggression.' By the 
 principle of 'attraction' he described the voluntary 
 system, whether existing within the Established 
 Church or not ; and by the system of ' aggression ' 
 
130 The Parochial System. 
 
 he characterised the advantages of the parochial 
 economy when properly observed. 
 
 It would be unjust, as well as uncharitable, to deny 
 the good which is accomplished by churches whose 
 principle is purely voluntary, and whose methods 
 are those of 'attraction.' A minister is appointed 
 to fill a voluntary pulpit. We may invest such a 
 minister with all possible merits. He is full of zeal, 
 learning, and eloquence. The fame of the preacher 
 brings together a large and influential flock, from 
 every part of the city or neighbourhood. His appeals 
 awaken the conscience, and constrain the heart of 
 those who attend. They show their appreciation of 
 his services by voting him a handsome stipend. 
 All the arrangements of worship are maintained with 
 something more than sufficiency. The effect of such 
 a ministry does not, perhaps, end with the congre- 
 gation. It may be that the people whom he has 
 collected represent the wealth and Christian worth of 
 the locality. They give largely to missionary efforts. 
 They perhaps maintain a ' mission hall,' and pay for 
 the services of a missionary and Bible-woman to 
 labour in some poor neighbourhood. Good is there- 
 by efl"ected ; souls are converted, and saints edified. 
 But there is nothing in such an arrangement to 
 prevent this flourishing congregation being sur- 
 rounded by lapsed masses, to whom the existence of 
 the building, into which Sunday after Sunday there 
 streams a crowd of eager worshippers, means some- 
 thing approaching indifference. The poor, huddled 
 away in the lanes and by-ways of the neighbourhood, 
 may perhaps be called upon to attend the * mission 
 hall ' which has been erected for their benefit. They 
 
The Parochial System. 131 
 
 may be the object of a persistent assault on the part 
 of good people, who, by means of tracts and other 
 well-intentioned endeavours, try to induce them to 
 come to the 'hall;' but the whole arrangement 
 partakes so much of the nature of a charity thrust 
 upon them, that intelligent artisans and the inde- 
 pendent sons of toil are too often disposed to resent 
 the importunity. The services thus supplied are 
 also not infrequently of an inferior nature. The 
 * missionary ' is perhaps a raw student, who is busy 
 at classes, and who, however sincere, accepts mission 
 work as a means of support ; or he is a * probationer ' 
 with small experience, and naturally on the lookout 
 for promotion. The people understand the meaning 
 of all this. They are not within the operations of a 
 regular ministry. The ' mission hall ' is not * their 
 own church.' The locality and population may 
 present problems calling for the wisest and most 
 zealous agencies, but the case is such that only the 
 services of the less efficient are secured; and the 
 result is, that while (thank God!) some are gathered 
 to the 'mission,' and while there is the pleasing 
 spectacle of children and youths being instructed in 
 the Bible and Catechism, yet as a whole the masses 
 do not go to such services. * The great unwashed ' 
 — the men who fill the foundries and workshops of 
 the city — will not have that sort of agency. Those of 
 them who, of their own conviction, desire ordinances, 
 prefer going to some church, though they must 
 pay for a seat, while the rest stand aloof and 
 refuse to be ' missionised.' We have drawn a favour- 
 able picture of the church which depends on the 
 power of ' attraction,' but it labours under the great 
 
132 The Parochial System. 
 
 disadvantage that the congregation absorbs the 
 attentions of its able minister, and he is powerless for 
 making any ' aggression ' on the wide domain of that 
 which has been harshly termed ' the home heathen- 
 dom of our land/ 
 
 In contrast with this, we would portray the 
 efficiency of the parochial systenl. Let us imagine 
 the same minister who has filled the voluntary 
 church to be labouring as the minister of a parish. 
 If he is true to his calling, he will regard his chief 
 duty not to attract a crowd from every corner of 
 the compass, but to devote his time and energy to 
 the locality that has been assigned to him. His 
 constant endeavour will be to fill his church out of 
 his parish, so that the parishioners will recognise 
 him as belonging to them, and his church as legally 
 theirs. Such a man endowed with the power which, 
 under another condition of things could attract 
 crowds to his ministry, cannot labour in vain when 
 he turns his whole strength to the social problems 
 which the locality, given him to labour in, presents 
 for his consideration. His energies will now be 
 turned from ' attraction ' to 'aggression.' When he 
 goes down to the most careless or abandoned, he is 
 entitled to expect a respectful admission. He does 
 so not on the ground that he has any rights over the 
 people, but because the people have rights over him ; 
 not because the parish belongs to him, but because 
 he belongs to the parish ; and if the parochial 
 arrangements were as we hold they ought always to 
 be, he should be able to point to the church as being 
 freely open to every parishioner — a church where 
 they have a legal right to a place. If it be other- 
 
The Parochial System. 133 
 
 wise, his labour cannot avoid assuming an appearance 
 of interested zeal. If, aback of his ministrations, 
 there is the consciousness that seat-letting, however 
 remote, is yet a possible object, then an element 
 comes in full of injurious influences. On the other 
 hand, the power of the parish minister is immense, 
 who, as he goes from house to house, may be 
 regarded by all and sundry as having no necessarily 
 pecuniary or sectarian end in view. Nothing can 
 be compared to it. Even the dullest and most 
 indifferent cannot but regard, as wholly unselfish, the 
 hours spent among them by one whose pecuniary 
 position cannot be affected, and the continuance of 
 Avhose church cannot be affected, whether he succeeds 
 or fails, or, indeed, whether he labours or stands 
 aloof And we believe that the work of such a man 
 cannot fail, if he goes from house to house and 
 makes the personal acquaintance of every individual 
 in his parish. By the friendly nature of his 
 inquiries, by the real interest he takes in all that 
 concerns the families, by his sympathetic attention 
 Avhen sickness or death has visited them, and by his 
 proffered counsel and personal assistance in times of 
 need, he will soon find how great is the influence he 
 acquires. And that influence will not stop there. 
 The instructions and exhortations of such a man 
 will, in the longrun, find entrance, and by the 
 blessing of God produce fruit. Never has the 
 experiment been tried without such results being 
 the consequence. 
 
 We express our belief that if the spiritual wants of 
 the population are ever to be overtaken, if the 
 terrible social problems which present themselves in 
 
134 ^^^^ Parochial System. 
 
 all our great cities, are to receive a solution at the 
 hands of the Christian Church, it can only be by the 
 revival of the efficient and thorough work which an 
 endowed territorial system is alone fitted to furnish. 
 It is of little consequence how the endowment is fur- 
 nished, if it is only adequate, and so attached to a 
 territory that the whole population within the limits 
 of that territory may know that the minister and 
 church are theirs. When we turn to the rural 
 parishes, where the ancient arrangements are pre- 
 served in full efficiency, we can judge more accurately 
 of their advantages. Through them the blessed result 
 is secured, that there is no district, however remote, no 
 glen, however solitary, which is not reached by the 
 ministry of the gospel of Christ. This wide dis- 
 tribution is not left to the precarious support of 
 funds depending on the varying zeal or ability of 
 any particular period or association. It is main- 
 tained from sources that have been conserved for 
 the purpose from old religious benefactions. Over 
 the whole land there are churches assigned thereby, 
 for the use of the population ; and beside the churches 
 rise the manses, in which dwell the pastors whose 
 labours are expressly secured for the benefit of every 
 household within a given territory. When the 
 minister goes from door to door and from hamlet to 
 hamlet, he can do so on a footing which lends the 
 greatest weight to his labours. He can, in the most 
 literal sense, preach the gospel 'without money and 
 without price,' and make himself the friend and 
 adviser of the people, in a manner thoroughly unam- 
 biguous. The picture of what this relationship 
 has done for centuries in our rural parishes is one on 
 
The Parochial System, 135 
 
 which the Christian philanthropist may delight to 
 lino-er. The tie which has bound the Scottish manses 
 to the people, has been rich in social as well as 
 religious benefit. A stream of kindly influence has 
 flowed from them over the land, and even now — 
 when there are many other agencies at work, and 
 numerous congregations, gathered on the principle 
 of attraction, in districts where, half a century ago, 
 the parish church was the only place of worship — 
 a work is being done by the ancient system which 
 is quite special in its character, and that could not 
 be removed without a serious blow being inflicted 
 on what is most beautiful in our national life. Nor 
 can we forget the testimony borne to the thorough- 
 ness of this old system, by the fact that there are 
 hundreds of parishes that, in spite of all the zeal 
 and munificence which has been the boast of 
 voluntary churches, are yet left wholly untouched by 
 any Christian agency except what is furnished by 
 the Establishment. 
 
 (2) Closely allied to the merit of thoroughness, 
 we claim for the parochial system that of afl"ord- 
 ing security for popular rights. It is no breach 
 of charity to deny that there is a similar 
 security in congregations and churches where the 
 question of pecuniary support, and the consequent 
 importance and influence of wealth, are naturally 
 connected. Where wealth is concentrated, the 
 highest bid is given for the services of the ablest 
 ministers. The poorer districts, if left to such a 
 system, must learn to content themselves with ' their 
 money's worth.' Again, a similar influence natur- 
 ally attaches itself to those members of voluntary 
 
I $6 The Parochial System. 
 
 congregations, on whom the rest chiefly depend for 
 the payment of expenses. The power of granting 
 or withholding the necessary funds is a very great 
 one, and where it is exercised by persons who have 
 strong wills and little consideration, it may, and 
 often does become a petty tyranny, which is none 
 the less irritating, because it may be latent rather 
 than avowed. The parochial system, on the other 
 hand, is democratic throughout. The livings 
 granted to the clergy have nothing to do with the 
 poverty or wealth of the locality. The poorest 
 district may be able to offer as large a stipend, and 
 secure the services of as able a minister as the 
 richest. And not only is justice thereby being done 
 to districts which would otherwise be at a disadvant- 
 age, but within the parish church there is an equal 
 indifference to the rank and wealth of its adherents. 
 The vote of the poorest carries as much weight in 
 the selection of the minister as that of the wealthiest. 
 No constraint can be brought to bear upon that 
 vote from consideration of pecuniary losses to the 
 congregation, should the richer members be offended. 
 Each person knows that his rights are secured, and 
 that the question is not what he can contribute, but 
 whether or not he is a parishioner or member, and in 
 virtue of such a qualification the poor man possesses 
 as complete privileges as the noblest in the land. 
 The Church thus bears the stamp which its history 
 has impressed upon it ; for the establishment of the 
 parochial system was essentially the work of the 
 Scotch people. It was not imposed by parliament 
 or by the crown, but was the demand of the nation ; 
 and although many years had to pass before that 
 
TJie Parochial System. 137 
 
 demand was fully granted and the law of patronage 
 abolished, yet, now that all popular requirements 
 have been conceded, the parishioners are as equal 
 in the sight of the law as they are in the sight of 
 God. 
 
 (3) The parochial system secures a healthy 
 independence for the minister. His position and 
 emoluments being guaranteed by law, he is free 
 from the financial cares and responsibilities so 
 frequently and painfully experienced by those whose 
 pecuniary resources are contingent on the good-will 
 of the people to whom they minister. He can make 
 himself the servant of all without distinction, and can 
 * speak, exhort, and rebuke with all authority.' We 
 would be sorry if, in affirming this as a merit of the 
 parochial system, we should even seem to suggest 
 that there cannot be a manly independence main- 
 tained by ministers of voluntary churches. We have 
 known too many whose attitude has been brave, 
 though exposed to the risk of pecuniary suffering, 
 not heartily to acknowledge the nobility of such lives ; 
 but we are also bound to confess, with equal honesty, 
 that we have known too many instances within the 
 Church of Scotland itself, where the full benefits of 
 the parochial system were not enjoyed, as well as 
 in other communities purely voluntary, to have any 
 doubt regarding the trials endured by high-souled 
 and sensitive men, whose lives have been a long 
 humiliation in consequence of their financial depend- 
 ence. Were the secret history to be v/ritten of the 
 experience of such pastors, it would form one of the 
 most pathetic pages in biography. Their lot has 
 perhaps connected them with what is termed * a 
 
138 TJie Parochial System. 
 
 struggling congregation/ it may be in a rural 
 district, where there are few persons of education ta 
 assist or sympathise with them ; or it may be in 
 a city where, in the competition of the sects, every 
 device in the way of novelty or advertisement has 
 to be resorted to in order to attract hearers ; and the 
 minister, goaded by the terror of failure, or, worse still, 
 by the indelicate urgency of office-bearers, is com- 
 pelled to sacrifice his self-respect in order to avoid the 
 disgrace, not of ministerial, but of financial failure. 
 A strong man or a prosperous man may never 
 know such pressure ; a coarse nature may never 
 feel its degradation ; but for the refined, whose 
 aims are high, the fact that commercial advantages 
 should in any sense be mixed with the exalted 
 purposes of the ministry, inflicts a trial which 
 no language can exaggerate. Now, the system 
 which can secure an immunity from these experi- 
 ences must surely be beneficial for the clergy 
 who enjoy its privileges. But the independence 
 which the parochial system thus bestows is tempered 
 by healthy checks. In the admirable economy of 
 the Presbyterian system, no minister can ever be 
 so independent that his self-will can dictate his 
 ministerial conduct. In the parochial system, with 
 its territorial endowments and its government under 
 regularly constituted courts, a measure of independ- 
 ence is afforded every minister of the gospel, 
 tempered by incumbent obligations, that is as 
 perfect as could well be devised. It is freedom 
 under law, and authority without license. 
 
 ( 4 ) Permanence is the next characteristic of the 
 endowed territorial system to which we would draw 
 
The Parochial System. 139 
 
 attention. The parish church and the services of 
 the minister are inalienably attached to a particular 
 locality, and cannot be taken away, except by a 
 process in law, which affords ample pledge for the 
 spiritual requirements of the people being safe- 
 guarded. It is only by an Act of parliament that 
 any parish church can be removed out of its original 
 parish, and the conditions under which such a change 
 ever takes place are not consequent on alterations 
 in the financial circumstances of the place, but 
 in those of the population. The poor have thus 
 a security for the continuance of the blessings 
 of religion, although the tide of wealth may have 
 flowed towards another district. Very different is 
 the history of voluntary congregations, depending 
 upon the presence of those who support ordinances. 
 The tendency of those churches, as might be 
 expected, is to follow the wealthy and to desert the 
 poor. The accusation we bring is one which can be 
 illustrated by facts which are as startling as they 
 are suggestive. Not being bound by any endow- 
 ment which confines their activity to a particular 
 locality, those churches are at the disposal of their 
 immediate supporters. There may in theory be a 
 certain check lodged in the superior courts of these 
 Churches, to which an appeal can be made by mem- 
 bers who feel themselves aggrieved ; but the question 
 of future maintenance being essential, it is difficult, if 
 not impossible, for any presbytery, not furnished with 
 pecuniary resources, to forbid, the action of those 
 who can give or withhold the means required for 
 the very existence of the church. The consequence 
 is, that there are few great cities, experiencing 
 
140 The Parochial System. 
 
 the fluctuations which determine the migration of 
 families from one part to another, which cannot 
 present numerous instances of the process we have 
 described having been actually accomplished. It is 
 now twenty-three years since a series of letters 
 appeared in the columns of the Standard, which 
 proved that in Liverpool, at that date, there 
 were 50 deserted sites where once had been 
 voluntary churches, and that 33 congregations had 
 occupied, during their history, no less than 130 
 different sites ! If we come nearer home, a 
 similar condition is discovered. We do not profess 
 to give a complete account of the movement of the 
 voluntary churches in Glasgow during the last forty 
 years, but it is sufficiently startling when we can 
 point to at least 37 cases in which churches 
 have been removed from districts which, in the 
 course of municipal growth, had become poor. 
 These churches — for we have purposely excluded 
 those which have been rebuilt in the old neigh- 
 bourhood or have become defunct — have followed 
 the migration of their adherents to richer and 
 more fashionable localities. The changes of popula- 
 tion have not been so marked in Edinburgh as in 
 Glasgow, yet that city likewise shows a similar 
 record of change. This is an assertion which carries 
 with it a most serious moral. It reveals not only 
 how slight are the ties which bind the voluntary 
 church to the locality in which it has been situated, 
 when it can be so lightly moved to suit the con- 
 venience of its own adherents, but it also proves 
 that its existence could never have been of much 
 consequence to the locality, except in so far as its 
 
The Parochial System, 141 
 
 membership may have resided there. It also shows 
 that the system is one which cannot be depended 
 upon for dealing with the masses, which require with 
 the greatest urgency * aggressive ' measures. We 
 feel, therefore, warranted in concluding that if there 
 should be no distinction in the Church of God 
 between rich and poor, and if the poor deserve to 
 have secured to them as efficient and fully equipped 
 a ministry as the rich, and if the security is to be so 
 permanent as not to be affected by fluctuations of 
 fashion and wealth, then the endowed territorial 
 system is the only one which fully meets the case. 
 A Sustentation Fund may be the best substitute, but 
 even that, if we are to judge of its character after 
 an experience of more than forty years in the Free 
 Church, is open to objections which tell heavily 
 against the poor, and against the minister whose 
 people are unable to contribute their due proportion 
 to its resources. 
 
 (5) Cheapness. — There are two ways in which 
 money can be utilised. It may be capitalised, and 
 the interest devoted to the purpose for which it has 
 been granted. This is in effect the nature of all 
 endowments. There is also the system of raising 
 annually what is required for annual expenditure, 
 which is the principle of Voluntaryism. In the 
 former case, the effort falls on one or more genera- 
 tions to provide for generations yet unborn. In the 
 latter, those who contribute have the satisfaction of 
 enjoying in their lifetime the entire fruits of their 
 beneficence. There is, however, always one depart- 
 ment in the history of churches in which there must 
 practically be endowment. Every building that is 
 
 K 
 
142 TJie Parochial System. 
 
 erected, and the site and cost of which have been 
 defrayed, represents so much capital stored for the 
 benefit of those who shall reap advantages to which 
 they have not contributed. However limited, the 
 principle of endowment is necessarily adopted in 
 such circumstances. But, without accentuating so 
 small a point, let us compare the cost to a nation of 
 ordinances supported on the system of endowment, 
 and on that of voluntaryism. The life of a nation 
 is not a question of any single generation ; it is 
 permanent ; and every wise man who feels that he 
 forms part of the national life, inheriting blessings 
 which have come to him from the past, will feel 
 bound to consider his duty as a citizen and a patriot 
 in contributing to a national life which will continue 
 when he has passed away. We must therefore 
 take a broad view of the question of economy. 
 We must not, like spendthrifts, consider what will 
 be * enough for our own day,' but look at the future, 
 and weigh well whether our expenditure is of a 
 nature which, viewed in the light of after-history, 
 will bear the test of having been intelligent and 
 unselfish. The principle of Voluntaryism, which 
 may be briefly stated as ' Pay your own way, and 
 leave it to others to pay for theirs,' has at all events 
 the merit of clearness. It is strongly marked with 
 the spirit of individualism, and has a commercial 
 completeness in its axioms. The principle of 
 endowment, on the other hand, makes a demand 
 which may appear exorbitant ; and were it neces- 
 sary to call on the society of the present day to 
 provide the entire endowments required for the 
 future parochial economy of the nation, we are 
 
The ParocJiial System. 143 
 
 aware of how preposterous such a proposal would 
 be. But we are not dealing with circumstances like 
 these. We have already benefactions, accumu- 
 lated in the shape of capital destined for religious 
 uses, and the comparison we institute is between the 
 results which can be attained by a sum of money so 
 utilised, and those which are gained by the annual 
 expenditure of annual offerings. The comparison 
 is one which happily admits of easy illustration, for 
 we have before us a striking example of the two 
 methods. There has, perhaps, never been a more 
 brilliant exhibition of the power of Voluntaryism 
 than that presented by the Free Church. The 
 ability with which its finance has been conducted 
 has been equalled only by the munificence of its 
 members. The attention to details, and the import- 
 ance attached to systematic organisation, which have 
 marked its progress, have shown the utmost skill. 
 During the first forty years of its existence, the 
 amount raised for the support of the ministry, includ- 
 ing the Congregational as well as the Sustentation 
 Fund, has been at the annual average of i^i68,io8, 
 or representing a capital of ;^4,202,7ii, at 25 years' 
 purchase. The number of ministers thereby em- 
 ployed has been on the average ZGj. Now the 
 total number of original parishes connected with 
 the Church of Scotland is 880, and the capital 
 represented by the teinds may be calculated at 
 ;^5, 000,000. The capital, therefore, represented by 
 both systems is approximately the same, but there is 
 this enormous difference, that whereas in less than 
 thirty years, a sum equal to the whole capital of 
 the Established Church has been spent by the Free 
 
144 T^^^^ Parochial System. 
 
 Church, and has wholly disappeared, the same 
 amount, when conserved in the shape of endow- 
 ments, has secured the services of a greater number 
 of ministers for three centuries, and still remains 
 to continue their services for ever. The two sys- 
 tems, when thus compared, show the enormous 
 advantages of endowment as being really the 
 cheapest, when regard is made, not to the lifetime 
 of a generation, but to that of a people. No course, 
 therefore, could be more extravagant than to throw 
 away accumulated resources which have remained, 
 and which ought to remain, as the permanent 
 source of spiritual benefit to the country. For in 
 whatever light the cost of the voluntary system may 
 be viewed, it is practically a cost to the nation. 
 Those who have to pay are constituent parts of the 
 nation, and to secularise funds which may be utilised 
 for purposes which must be national as long as the 
 nation is religious, can only be the transference of a 
 burden, not its extinction. 
 
 We have hitherto considered the advantages of 
 the endowed territorial system ; but truthfulness 
 compels us to confess the weakness of one class of 
 endowed parishes. We have already acknow- 
 ledged the patriotic work accomplished by Dr 
 Robertson and his successors, who have added 
 upwards of 350 quoad sacra parishes to the 
 ecclesiastical equipment of the Church of Scot- 
 land. We can scarcely imagine what the con- 
 dition of the Church would have been at this 
 hour, had not that movement been urged with 
 the enthusiasm and crowned with the success 
 
The Parochial System. 145 
 
 which has characterised its progress. There are 
 many directions in which we can recognise the 
 merits of the quoad sacra parishes. The endowment 
 of £\20 2. year, small though it be, has afforded no 
 little advantage to the clergy, by giving them a 
 certain freedom from that sense of complete financial 
 subjection which has proved so galling to many a 
 high-minded minister under voluntaryism. The 
 quoad sacra minister also shares in common with 
 the ministers in older parishes, the privilege of 
 being legally at the disposal of every family within 
 the territory assigned to him. He can act there, 
 not as the mere representative of a voluntary 
 association, but as one upon whose services the 
 people have a legal claim. Still further, the quoad 
 sacra parishes have the merit of putting the ecclesi- 
 astical position of the Church and congregation in a 
 better position. The responsibility thrown on the 
 minister and kirk-session of such congregations is 
 healthy. The nature of this responsibility is one of 
 the many wholesome characteristics of the parochial 
 system ; for when the minister finds himself placed 
 in charge of an enormous parish, whose population 
 has far outgrown the means of grace, he will feel 
 bound to take a wide view of his position, and exert 
 himself for the sake of the territory assigned to 
 him. But when all this, and much more which 
 might be stated, has been heartily acknowledged, 
 there remains to be confessed a series of weak points 
 connected with the new parishes, out of which have 
 arisen serious practical evils. These weak points 
 are unhappily not confined to the parishes purely 
 quoad sacra. They also belong to the churches in 
 
146 The Parochial System. 
 
 our great towns and cities that are attached to 
 Town Councils or Ecclesiastical Commissioners. 
 
 ( I ) The first weak point we would indicate is 
 that of seat-letting. Instead of the parish church 
 being absolutely connected with the parish, as 
 in the case of the older endowments, a parishioner 
 has no right to claim accommodation in the quoad 
 sacra church simply because he is a parishioner. 
 We are aware that a clause in the constitution 
 of these churches reserves a certain number of 
 free seats, and also a proportion of the pews at a 
 lower rent. But even these reservations are not 
 restricted to the parishioners. An unwholesome 
 distinction is, at the best, introduced between rich 
 and poor, which has no existence in the old parishes, 
 wherein locality, and not the power to pay seat rents, 
 gives title to accommodation. The very existence 
 of seat rents militates, in our opinion, against the 
 freedom with which the minister can work among 
 his parishioners. He cannot invite the families 
 which attend no church to make full use of 
 the parish church, for he knows that, however 
 small the sums may be that are charged for 
 seats — and they are sometimes not small — yet 
 money payment is the condition on which a 
 right can be acquired to accommodation, except 
 the person invited is willing to go to the pews 
 assigned for the poor — an alternative which able- 
 bodied Scotchmen and Scotchwomen would be slow 
 to adopt. The pleading of the minister cannot, 
 therefore, be urged with perfect freedom, because he 
 knows, and the people know, that the question. of 
 finance does enter into the matter. So far we 
 
The Parochial System. 147 
 
 cannot vindicate the quoad sacra church as that 
 of the poor. This evil is one which also belongs 
 to those charges which are more or less dependent 
 upon funds supplied by city and burgh corpora- 
 tions. In most cases these corporations have 
 received full equivalents from the church lands 
 that have been absorbed in 'The Common Good.' 
 In Glasgow, for example, any cost which the city 
 may have borne is not really a burden, but an 
 expenditure for which value has been received. And 
 yet so thoroughly are these churches looked upon 
 in a commercial light, that the standard by which 
 their usefulness is tested is the amount raised in the 
 shape of seat rents, and the proportionate outlay 
 which may consequently be spared to the corpora- 
 tion. The success of any city minister is accord- 
 ingly judged, not by what he may do for the poor, 
 the ignorant, or the indifferent, but by the number of 
 pews that have been let.^ 'Attraction' instead of 
 •aggression' becomes naturally the principle on 
 which he is expected to labour. 
 
 (2) The result of this system on the work of the 
 minister, is the next evil connected with our quoad 
 sacra parishes. His labour assumes the character, 
 inherent in all voluntary churches, of being in the 
 line of ' attraction ' rather than ' aggression.' If the 
 
 1 We cannot produce better evidence of the level to which the 
 public opinion referred to has actually sunk, than to refer to the letters 
 and speeches which frequently appear in Glasgow newspapers, recom- 
 mending the removal of this city church or that from the locality where 
 it does not pay, to some other where there would be a greater prospect of 
 the Town Council deriving a larger revenue. It was a similar spirit 
 which evoked the indignant remonstrance of Chalmers in his day, and 
 which made him appeal to the Christian patriotism of the people. 
 
14^ TJie Parochial System. 
 
 church belongs to the people who take seats and 
 not to the parish, it follows, as a consequence, that 
 the minister also becomes the minister of the con- 
 gregation which he has attracted, and not the 
 minister of the parish. There are many causes 
 which determine this tendency. He has no control 
 over the seats. He cannot use them for his 
 parishioners. They are in charge of the managers 
 of the church, on whom the serious business falls 
 of guiding its financial arrangements, and of fulfill- 
 ing the pecuniary obligations which rest upon them. 
 Their desire generally is to deal handsomely by the 
 minister. It is their interest as well as their pleasure 
 to do so, for if they are to enjoy the services of a 
 clergyman who will contribute to the success of the 
 church, they must be able to ofTer as high induce- 
 ments as possible. It is not in human nature that 
 managers should be indifferent to the pecuniary 
 prosperity of the trust committed to their care. 
 They are glad, therefore, when a large congregation 
 is brought together ; but whether the seat-holders 
 come from the parish or from places miles away 
 from the parish, makes little practical difference. 
 And the greater the congregational success, the 
 more must the minister be congregationally rather 
 than parochially occupied. It is impossible for him 
 to overlook the families who have placed themselves 
 under his charge. He must visit them at their 
 homes, attend them in sickness, and be at their 
 service on all occasions when he can be of any use 
 to them. With a charge like this, and a pulpit to 
 fill Sunday after Sunday, he will find more than 
 enough to employ his energies. But if, in addition, 
 
The Parochial System. 149 
 
 there also falls upon him a large share of public 
 duties incident to the general business of the church, 
 or to the charitable and other movements con- 
 nected with the town or city where his lot is 
 cast, what time can remain at his disposal for his 
 territorial charge, with its visitation from house 
 to house, and the many 'aggressive' measures 
 which he may be longing to undertake? He 
 soon discovers that it is only a maimed and 
 utterly inadequate representation of the parochial 
 system under which he now labours. He may 
 remember what it was to work under the older and 
 better arrangement, and experience pain at a contrast 
 that does not arise from any change for the worse 
 in his own social or pecuniary comfort, but from his 
 preference for strictly parochial duties, with all the 
 interest that attaches to free and untrammelled 
 work for the good of a district 
 
 The more boldly the fact is asserted the 
 better, that in most of otir large cities the par- 
 ochial system can scarcely be said to exist. The 
 Established Churches are worked practically on 
 voluntary principles, because they lack a liberty 
 which the old endowments secured for the old 
 parishes. Certain advantages they still have over 
 purely voluntary churches in their permanent con- 
 nection with a locality, and in the small measure of 
 independence which the endowments may bring. 
 But the endowments are so small that the poorer 
 districts cannot compete for the services of the 
 best clergy, nor do they leave the clergy free 
 to labour for the people as we find such services 
 secured in country neighbourhoods. The richer 
 
150 The Pm'ochial System. 
 
 neighbourhoods thrive ; the poorer, which require 
 the best clergy the church can afford, are starved, or 
 have to fight their hard battle, by every appliance 
 which the modern * bazaar/ ' sales of work,* and 
 ' subscription lists ' can suggest. It is because our 
 city populations have so little experience of the 
 benefit of the parochial system in its integrity, that 
 they have shown themselves too ready to yield to 
 the arguments of the Liberation Society. They 
 have not the evident proofs of the Christian advant- 
 ages of an endowed territorial economy which the 
 country parishes can present. The argument from 
 experience, so cogent in the counties, appeals with 
 comparative feebleness in the towns. 
 
 It were well, however, that there were no worse 
 consequences than those which have been indicated, 
 but when we think of the hundreds of thousands in 
 our great cities who are outside of all churches — the 
 dense mass of human beings with whose spiritual 
 and social condition scarcely an attempt is made 
 to grapple — the necessity that arises for an adequate 
 territorial system becomes one of the most pressing 
 which the Christian philanthropist can consider, and 
 the statement which we have ventured to make 
 regarding the defects of the quoad saera system, if 
 true, become fraught with the gravest significance. 
 Let us make every allowance for the agencies 
 already at work within and without the Church. 
 Do not let us detract from the good which may 
 be accomplished by city and other missionaries, 
 Bible-women, and visitors, many of whom are filled 
 with a true enthusiasm. Do not let us depreciate 
 the value of the volunteers, male and female, who 
 
TJie Parochial System. 151 
 
 go down to the poorest and to the worst with the 
 loving message of Christ, declared in many ways 
 besides that of dogma. We know how much the 
 community is indebted to them, and a thousand 
 other agencies, for daily ameliorations of the worst 
 conditions of society. But we would be untrue 
 to our deepest convictions, if we did not proclaim 
 our belief that, beneficial and numerous as these 
 operations are, they do little more than scratch 
 the surface of the great social problem. We are 
 willing to attribute every excellency to them so far 
 as they go, but they all labour under an inherent 
 want of thoroughness — such thoroughness as a 
 wise statesmanship would desiderate for overtaking 
 similar evils in other spheres of social economics. 
 In the case of education, the people are not left to 
 the haphazard of volunteer philanthropists. When- 
 ever the educational wants of our great cities were 
 taken up, absolute thoroughness was insisted on. 
 No distinction was admitted between rich and poor. 
 The best schools and the best teachers were furnished 
 for all classes of the community. The law brought 
 its presence to bear on every district. Education — 
 that best helpmate of true religion, as it is of civil- 
 isation — was placed on a foundation which secured 
 its benefits to all. It is a similar statesmanlike 
 thoroughness w^hich we desire for the spiritual 
 benefit of the people, and it is nowhere more required 
 than in our large towns. We know that it is hope- 
 less, in the present day, to call on the State to 
 accomplish such a scheme ; but we do call upon 
 every Christian man wisely to consider whether 
 any system can be devised which is better cal- 
 
152 The Parochial System. 
 
 culated to overtake the evils we deplore than the 
 endowed territorial system, by which the services 
 of the best clergy can be secured, and their ener- 
 gies fully devoted to a locality, into every moral 
 crevice of which they can bring the saving influ- 
 ence of the gospel to bear. We are not pleading 
 in the interests of any particular sect. Personally, 
 we would rejoice in seeing such a system embrace 
 as much of the Christian life of the country as it is 
 possible for it to embrace ; but we do plead for a 
 kind of work which we believe to be the only one 
 that gives promise of adequate results. It was this 
 large view of the requirements of a nation that was 
 taken by Knox, and by all the Reformers, and the 
 course of history bears testimony to the stream of 
 blessing which has flowed from the parochial system 
 they established, through the many generations that 
 have since been born. Scotland owes more to its 
 parochial system, and the character of Scotchmen 
 has been beneficially moulded more through it, than 
 any other influence which can be named. To the 
 parish church, with its open door and its simple 
 godly instruction, where landlord and tenant, peer 
 and peasant, meet on the same level before God ; and 
 to the manse from which the minister has gone forth 
 to carry to every household comfort and consolation 
 — catechising the young, too, in the knowledge of the 
 truth, as he always did before recent changes altered 
 the admirable custom — we must attribute much 
 that has been strongest as well as beautiful in the 
 nation. The tie which bound minister to people — as 
 disinterested on either side as it was sacred — and the 
 associations which have linked manse and church 
 
The Parochial System. 153 
 
 with quiet glens and lonely homesteads, have been 
 objects on which moralist and historian may linger 
 with justifiable satisfaction. 
 
 From scenes like these old Scotia's grandeur springs. 
 
 That similar results will be attained if the same 
 system, adequately represented, were applied to our 
 large towns, we can entertain no doubt. It never has 
 been fairly tried without proof being afforded of its 
 efficiency. Chalmers demonstrated, by practical 
 experiment, the truth of his eloquent vindication 
 of our parochial economy. It is not to the 
 failure of the parochial system, but to the absence 
 of the parochial system, that we attribute the 
 spectacle which now causes alarm to the Christian 
 philanthropist, as he contemplates the mass which 
 no church seems to be reaching, and no existing 
 organisation seems adequate to overtake. And we 
 cannot find words strong enough to express our 
 astonishment at the madness of the proposal to 
 destroy, and that too in the name of certain catch- 
 words which sound religious, the organisation which, 
 with all its defects, yet continues, in a thousand 
 places and directions, the time-honoured and well- 
 tried system which our fathers established. Who 
 dare say that it will lend efficiency to the ministry 
 if, instead of the system we have pictured, there 
 shall arise one which shall cast the vulgarising 
 element of finance, with its seat-letting and col- 
 lecting-books, into every quiet parish, where now 
 the pastor is labouring in peace for the good of the 
 very poorest.^ How sad will be the change when 
 he cannot enter the humble abode of shepherd or 
 
154 ^^^^ Parochial System. 
 
 ploughman — if indeed there shall be any minister 
 in such retired spots at all ! — without the conscious- 
 ness that these poor men must henceforth pay for 
 whatever pastoral duties he fulfils ! 
 
 Churches in great cities, and the clergy who 
 minister to the rich, may scarcely feel the change, 
 but the revolution which would be effected over 
 Scotland would be one under which the most 
 needy would be the greatest sufferers.^ What we 
 require, instead of the secularisation of our endow- 
 ments, is the supply of such resources as will 
 give the parishioners everywhere OPEN CHURCHES 
 and A GOSPEL PREACHED 'WITHOUT MONEY AND 
 WITHOUT PRICE.' 
 
 This is a subject in which every patriot has 
 an interest. The basis on which, as a nation, our 
 security rests, is not to be found in any adjustment 
 of our secular relationships, however beneficial, but 
 in the character of the people. The strong sense of 
 duty which makes a nation invulnerable, and the con- 
 victions which insure obedience to authority, must 
 have a deeper foundation than selfish utility or the 
 cold requirements of the social contract. If many of 
 the greatest crimes which ever disgraced humanity 
 have been perpetrated in the name of religion, it is 
 still truer that what has been most beautiful in our 
 
 1 America is often quoted in disproof of such Cassandra forebodings, 
 but America is yet a young country, and if we are to accept the 
 testimony borne over and over by competent witnesses, the contrast 
 which exists there between the city and the rural districts is as bad as 
 anything we have pictured. The churches of the popular preachers 
 are not only handsome, but luxurious ; while the sufferings of the 
 ministers in the outlying regions are, on the other hand, extreme. It 
 is also noteworthy that there is a widely extended movement in the 
 United States for the creation of a National Established Church. 
 
The Parochial System, 155 
 
 humanity, and the virtues which have lent a glory to 
 self-sacrificing patriotism, have sprung from religious 
 conviction. The egoism which recognises no law 
 higher than convenience must utterly disintegrate 
 a population, as well as debase the individual. It is 
 when each and all recognise responsibility to God 
 and their common brotherhood in Christ, that we 
 have the surest pledge of national greatness. In this 
 sense we can say with Chalmers, that the national 
 church which can inspire the loftiest convictions and 
 the holiest motives is ' the cheap defence of a 
 nation.' No Christian man will deny the importance 
 of such influences. The extremest Voluntary shares 
 as strongly as ourselves the belief that * righteous- 
 ness ' alone ' exalteth a nation,' and that the 'people 
 which honoureth not God shall utterly perish.' We 
 differ with him solely as to the methods by which 
 this desirable national character shall be formed and 
 maintained. We have experience of a past which 
 lends authority to our convictions regarding the 
 efficiency of the particular system we advocate, and 
 we have experience also of the consequences which 
 have followed its withdrawal or curtailment. We 
 are not prepared to cast to the winds the lessons 
 which are thus taught, and to launch out on a new 
 era, in the hope that some unknown, perhaps doubt- 
 ful, benefit may result. The future of our country is 
 too precious to be staked on a rash venture. Rather 
 would we see in this, as in other departments of our 
 history, what has been best in our past preserved, 
 and applied with such adequate and wise changes as 
 may make it most suitable for the future. If we 
 have to decide questions which may afl'ect genera- 
 
156 The Parochial System. 
 
 tions yet unborn, do not let us be carried away by 
 influences which come from passing interests and 
 ephemeral disputes. Rather, in the spirit of the great 
 men who three centuries ago looked beyond their pre- 
 sent time, and devised measures which might secure 
 blessings that would abide in the land they loved, 
 let us weigh well what we now do. The destructive 
 forces work rapidly, and it is easy to apply them. A 
 rash act, stimulated by fleeting passion, may hurl 
 into ruin the creation of greatest beauty and the fruit 
 of the most patient skill. Let no such passionate 
 rashness sway this generation in dealing with a 
 system whose greatest fault, in the eyes of not a few 
 of its assailants, has been its reviving efficiency and 
 success. Rather let us look well into the future as 
 into the past, and consider the inherent virtues of the 
 organisation which lies at our hand. The security 
 of this great empire is involved in the character of 
 its children. Let us do our part, that not in our 
 day alone, but that as the years roll on, 
 
 A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
 
 And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved Isle. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 LECT.qRE V. 
 
 SECESSIONS FROM THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND; 
 RISE AND PROGRESS OF VOLUNTARYISM. 
 
 By the Rev. James Mitchell, D.D., Minister of the Parish of 
 South Leith. 
 
 OT only is the word * Voluntaryism ' a new 
 word, having been coined by a minister still 
 living in Edinburgh, but the doctrine of 
 Voluntaryism among Presbyterians is in Scotland of 
 not much more ancient date ; and it is the object of 
 this lecture to show that so far from its being a 
 principle held by the first fathers of the different 
 Secession Churches, it was a principle which they 
 repudiated, and which therefore ought not to be held 
 by any who claim to be their legitimate descendants. 
 It must be borne in mind that although ' Voluntary- 
 ism ' and * voluntary liberality ' are generally spoken 
 of as synonymous terms, they are essentially dis- 
 tinct. * Voluntaryism ' is the denial of the lawful- 
 
 L 
 
158 Secessiotis from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 ncss of all union or connection between Church and 
 State, while * voluntary liberality ' is the giving for 
 religious objects, through the operation of moral 
 influences and religious motives alone. Voluntary 
 liberality has always been advocated by the Church 
 of Scotland as an important Christian duty ; but 
 Voluntaryism she has throughout her whole history 
 abjured. Voluntaryism in Scotland took its rise in 
 the different Secession Churches long after they had 
 seceded from the Church of Scotland, and at periods 
 in their respective histories when the principles 
 originally held began to affect their own position ; 
 while it made progress in each of these bodies, just 
 in proportion as the prospect of a reunion with the 
 Established Church, or of their ever becoming the 
 Established Church themselves, became gradually 
 fainter. I do not say that any of their ministers, 
 or any of their members, were consciously influenced 
 by these considerations ; but, as * the best of men are 
 but men at the best,' the coincidence suggests that 
 circumstances may have had an unconscious influ- 
 ence on the formation and development of their 
 opinions. Opinions which have to some extent 
 been shaped by expediency, are not immediately 
 to be designated by the name of ' principles.' 
 Neither are men entitled in the same breath to 
 serve themselves heirs to the historic Church of 
 Scotland and the fathers of the Secession, and to 
 proclaim that they are convinced of the sinfulness 
 of the union between Church and . State. True 
 conviction of sin, according to the Scriptures, has 
 two distinguishing features — the one is, that the 
 sinner is first convinced of his sin, and then he for- 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohtntaryisin. 159 
 
 sakes it ; and the other is, that he is convinced of 
 his own sin, and not merely of the sins of others. 
 Conviction of the sinfuhiess of the union between 
 Church and State differs from true conviction of sin 
 in both these particulars ; for as regards those bodies 
 who have seceded from the Church of Scotland, they 
 first forsook their sin, and then after a considerable 
 lapse of time became convinced of its sinfulness (for 
 none of them, as we shall see, left the Church in 
 consequence of their conviction of the sinfulness of 
 the union between Church and State) ; and what 
 they became convinced of, and profess to feel so 
 deeply, is not their own sin, but the sin of the mem- 
 bers of the Church of Scotland. I hope to be able 
 to prove, from authoritative documents, that those 
 who led the different Secessions from the Church ofl 
 Scotland, did so, not because they objected to 
 the principle of an Established Church, but because 
 they objected to some things in the practice of that 
 church which they believed to be wrong, and which 
 they hoped to be able to remove by their protest 
 and separation, that so they might return to it again. 
 If patronage were not in every case the sole cause, 
 yet it was in every case the occasion of the secessions. 
 
 There have been Three secessions from the 
 Church of Scotland, which I shall notice, both 
 separately and together. 
 
 The First Secession had Ebenezer Erskine as its 
 leader. When he, as moderator of the Synod of 
 Perth and Stirling, preached, in 1732, the sermon 
 which brought him into collision with the church 
 courts, he condemned not the union of Church and 
 State, but the system of patronage as worked by the 
 
 
i6o Secessions from the Chm^ch of Scotland. 
 
 majority of the Assembly, whom he denounced for 
 (^ their violation of the ordinary rules of Assembly 
 procedure in order to gain their ends, for their 
 refusal to allow dissents from their decisions to 
 be recorded, and for their general defection from 
 [^ sound doctrine and right government in the 
 Church. Fault having been found with several ex- 
 pressions which he had employed, he was asked by 
 successive committees of the synod to acknowledge 
 that he was wrong in uttering them, and to promise 
 that in future he would express himself more guard- 
 edly. He refused to do so, and appealed to the 
 Assembly, who appointed a committee to deal with 
 him ; but they made no progress, and asked the 
 Assembly to determine the cause themselves. The 
 Assembly found that the expressions used in his 
 synod sermon were offensive, and tended to disturb 
 the peace of the Church, and ordered him to be 
 rebuked and admonished ; but he immediately gave 
 in a protest declaring that he adhered to the testi- 
 mony which he had already borne against the Act of 
 Assembly in his synod sermon. In this protest he 
 was joined by three ministerial brethren. Their case 
 was remitted to the meeting of the Commission in 
 August, to suspend tHem from the exercise of their 
 ministry if they did not withdraw their protest ; 
 while the Commission in November was authorised 
 to proceed to a higher censure if they had not obeyed 
 the sentence of suspension. In August they refused 
 to withdraw their protest, and were suspended ; and 
 in November they declared that they had exercised 
 all the parts of their ministerial office, as if they 
 had been under no such censure. Instead of beincr 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohmtaryisin. i6i 
 
 deposed from the ministry immediately, a committee 
 was appointed to confer with them, who, after two 
 lengthened interviews, reported that all their efforts 
 were fruitless. On this the Commission loosed their 
 relations to their respective parishes, and declared 
 them no longer ministers of the Church. At the 
 same time, however, the Commission agreed that, 
 provided this sentence was obeyed, and application 
 made for restoration to the Commission in March, 
 they would report in their favour to the next General 
 Assembly. So far from this having any effect, when 
 this sentence was intimated to them, they protested 
 that notv/ithstanding this sentence, their pastoral 
 relation should be held firm and valid ; that they 
 adhered to the principles of the true covenanted 
 Church of Scotland ; and that, as the prevailing 
 party of the Established Church, who had now 
 cast them out from ministerial communion with 
 them, were carrying on a course of defection from 
 the reformed and covenanted principles, they could 
 have no ministerial communion with them till they 
 saw their sins and mistakes, and amended them ; 
 and they concluded their protest with these words : 
 * We hereby appeal unto the first, free, faithftd, afid 
 reforming General Assembly of the Church of Scot- 
 land! 
 
 Though the Church still left the door' open for 
 their return, the Secession was, so far as Erskine and 
 his followers were concerned, virtually completed 
 within three weeks after the meeting of the Com- 
 mission, for on 3d December 1733 the four brethren 
 met at Gairney Bridge, and there formed themselves 
 into * The Associate Presbytery.' Shortly after 
 
1 62 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 this, they published their First Testimony, as it 
 was afterwards called, being a testimony to the 
 doctrine, worship, and discipline of the Church of 
 Scotland. Throughout, its authors are careful to 
 let it be known that their secession is only from 
 * the prevailing party ' in the Church of Scotland 
 (the expression, * the prevailing party,' occurring 
 upwards of thirty times), who, they allege, are 
 carrying on with a high hand a course of defec- 
 tion from our Reformation and covenanted prin- 
 ciples.' 'Our secession is not from the Church of 
 Scotland ; we own her doctrine contained in her 
 Confession of Faith ; we adhere to her covenanted 
 Presbyterian Church government, discipline, and 
 worship ; neither is our secession from those who are 
 cleaving to our covenanted principles, and who are 
 affected with the grievances we complain of, and are 
 in their several spheres wrestling against the same ; 
 but it is from a party who have got the management 
 into their hands, and who have got the majority 
 on their side in the judicatories, particularly in our 
 Assemblies and Commissions, and who are carrying 
 on a course of defection from our reformed and 
 covenanted principles, and are suppressing ministerial 
 freedom and faithfulness in testifying against their 
 present backslidings, by inflicting censures upon her 
 ministers for witnessing by protestation and other- 
 wise against the same' (pp. 45, 46). Had tJiey 
 been 'the prevailing party,' they would never 
 have proposed to secede ; and indeed, theirs could 
 scarcely be called secession^ for they still retained 
 possession of their manses, glebes, churches, and 
 stipends, and got all the glory of martyrdom with- 
 
Rise and Progress of Voluntaryism. 163 
 
 out any of its penalties. There were many in the 
 Church as loyal to Evangelical principles as they, 
 and as anxious to vindicate popular rights ; and 
 the effect of their presence was seen in the 
 removal of many of the evils which they, as 
 well as Erskine, had complained of. Had Erskine 
 and his followers, instead of forming their Asso- 
 ciate Presbytery, remained, as Willison and others 
 did, actively co-operating against the abuses and 
 corruptions in the Church, the great probability 
 is, that the labours of the Evangelical party would 
 have been crowned with success — that patronage 
 would speedily have been got rid of, and future 
 secessions from the Church of Scotland have been 
 prevented. But by this time they had already a 
 large following, they were the leaders of a popular 
 movement ; and although the Church was willing to 
 receive them again, having authorised the synod to 
 remove the sentence which had been passed upon 
 them, these overtures on the part of the Church 
 were met only by the publication in 1736 of what 
 they called a ' Judicial Testimony,' in which they 
 laid at her door all the real and imaginary sins 
 and shortcomings of the country. It is worthy 
 of notice, however, that in their lengthy catalogue 
 of national sins, the union of Church and State 
 finds as yet no place. If the Church was ill 
 advised in taking any notice of Erskine's synod 
 sermon, she certainly showed great forbearance after- 
 wards towards those who had taken up so sullen and 
 stubborn an attitude towards her judicatories ; but 
 forbearance has its limits, and the publication of this 
 ' Judicial Testimony ' brought matters to a crisis, so 
 
164 Secessions from the CJmrch of Scotland. 
 
 that in 1738, the Assembly summoned the seceding 
 ministers to her bar. They appeared, but on this 
 occasion as ' the Associate Presbytery ; ' and having 
 declined the jurisdiction of an 'unfaithful church,' 
 they departed ; but not even then did they separate 
 themselves from the stipends or manses or churches 
 of the Establishment — this separation did not come 
 voluntarily, it was effected of necessity ; for after 
 they had retained these for two years longer, the 
 Assembly of 1740 solemnly deposed them from the 
 sacred office of the ministry ; and if they became 
 vohintaries in any sense, they became so in- 
 vohintarily. 
 
 In 1742, when the country was in a very 
 unsettled state, and when many, under shelter of 
 the Solemn League and Covenant, maintained 
 that they were not bound to obey any one as 
 king of these realms who had not the Scripture 
 qualifications required of kings, and who by his 
 coronation oath was not bound to maintain 
 and defend the true religion, and extirpate 
 popery, prelacy, and all false religions — the Asso- 
 ciate Presbytery, while they made preparations 
 for renewing the Solemn League and Covenant, 
 proposed that a clause should be inserted con- 
 demning ' the dangerous extreme into which many 
 had run of impugning the present civil authority 
 over these nations, and subjection thereunto in all 
 lawful demands, on account of the want of those 
 qualifications which magistrates ought to have by 
 the word of God and our covenants ; even although 
 they allow us in the free exercise of our religion, 
 and arc not manifestly unhinging the liberties of 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohuitaryisni. 165 
 
 the kingdom/ &c. From this clause Mr Nairn 
 of Kirkcaldy dissented for several reasons, and 
 also on the ground that * the civil part of the 
 covenant was altogether omitted, from a con- 
 sciousness that the acknowledgment of the present 
 civil government was inconsistent with the ancient 
 covenants/ In the following year he published an 
 account of his secession from the Associate Presby- 
 tery, with the grounds and reasons for his doing so. 
 In 1744 the Associate Presbytery published their 
 answers to his reasons of dissent, together with a 
 declaration and defence of their principles anent the 
 present civil government. In this declaration occur 
 the following words : * The public ground of out- 
 ward and common order in all reasonable society, 
 unto the glory of God, is the great and only end 
 which these invested with the magistracy can 
 propose, in a sole respect unto that office/ This 
 passage has frequently been quoted in recent years 
 as a proof that the Associate Presbytery at that 
 time intended to condemn the connection between 
 Church and State. But it must be obvious to 
 any one who reads the document through, that 
 they were not thinking of church establishments 
 at all. The whole tenor of the document is 
 against any such theory — they are speaking merely 
 of obedience to civil magistrates as such — and 
 they condemn the civil magistrate for laxity and 
 indifference in spiritual matters. At page 53 
 they say : ' Moreover, the law of God hath been 
 despised, and a toleration upon the matter given to 
 diabolical acts and practices, by the act repealing 
 the penal statutes against witches/ 
 
1 66 Secessions from the CJmrcJi of Scotland. 
 
 In 1745, the Associate Presbytery was con- 
 stituted into the 'Associate Synod/ but scarcely 
 had it been formed, when a controversy arose 
 regarding a clause in the burgess oath, which, 
 two years later, rent it in twain. The clause 
 was in the following terms, and was contained 
 in the oath imposed upon burgesses in the towns 
 of Edinburgh, Glasgow, and Perth : ' Here I 
 protest, before God and your lordships, that 
 I profess and allow with my heart the true religion 
 presently professed within this realm, and authorised 
 by the law thereof; I shall abide therein, and 
 defend the same to my life's end, renouncing the 
 human religion called papacy.' Two overtures had 
 brought the matter before the Associate Synod in 
 1745. The question, 'What is meant by the true 
 religion presently professed within this realm ?' gave 
 rise to a long and keen discussion. On one side it was 
 maintained that these words meant * the true religion 
 as presently professed and authorised, &c.," and 
 that, therefore, to take that oath involved a solemn 
 approbation of those corruptions which prevailed 
 in the Established Church, and against which the 
 Secession had publicly testified. On the other side, 
 it was maintained, that this clause of the oath bound 
 the individual who swore it, to approve of the true 
 religion itself 2,?, that which was settled and professed 
 in this realm, but did not bind him to approve of the 
 manner in which it might be settled and professed ; 
 and that, therefore, it did not require of him any 
 approbation of the prevailing corruptions in either 
 Church or State. The great difficulty experienced 
 was to avoid condemning themselves ; for if they 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohmtaryism. 167 
 
 expressed their satisfaction with the true rehgion 
 presently professed within this reahn, they might 
 imply that there was no warrant for professing it, 
 except in the communion of the Established Church. 
 It would be both painful and wearisome to relate 
 the almost innumerable discussions which took place 
 on this subject. Suffice it to say, that the Associate 
 Synod split into two parts, each assuming the same 
 title of the Associate Synod — those who condemned 
 the taking of the oath as sinful being designated 
 AntibiLrgJiers ; and those who opposed the Synod's 
 giving any decision on the question, and who 
 contended that it should be declared to be no term 
 of communion, being called Burghers ; and these 
 names became distinctive of the two synods. The 
 Antiburgher Synod afterwards libelled Ebenezer 
 Erskine, Ralph Erskine, James Fisher, and other 
 ministers ; found all the articles of the libel proven, 
 suspended them from the exercise of their ministry, 
 deposed them, and finally passed upon them the 
 sentence of the greater excommunication. 
 
 The Second Secession from the Church of Scotland ^ 
 took place in 1752, and was occasioned by the 
 deposition of the Rev. Thomas Gillespie, minister of 
 Carnock, who had declined to assent to the settle- 
 ment of an unacceptable presentee at Inverkeithing. 
 Gillespie was loyal to the Church, and was unjustly 
 compelled to become the founder of another sect, 
 which, however, indicated clearly its attitude towards 
 the Church of Scotland by taking to itself the name 
 of the i^(f//^ Church. His treatment was tyrannical 
 and unfair. He had merely declined to be present 
 at the meeting of presbytery on the day appointed 
 
1 68 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 for the presentee's settlement, and as there was 
 no quorum, the business could not be proceeded 
 with. The presbytery were summoned to the bar 
 of the Assembly, when six of their number gave 
 in a representation, in which they modestly 
 but firmly stated their defence. . They reminded 
 the house that 'ever since the Act restoring 
 patronages, in the end of Queen Anne's reign, there 
 has been a vehement opposition to all settlements 
 by presentations, where there was but small con- 
 currence ; and that the Assembly, so recently as 
 1736, had passed an act against the intrusion of 
 ministers, which called upon all presbyteries, as they 
 regarded the glory of God and the edification of the 
 body of Christ, to see that no minister be intruded. 
 They declared their solemn conviction that by 
 having an active hand in carrying that settlement 
 into execution, they should, as matters then stood, 
 have been the unhappy instrument of scattering 
 the flock of Christ ; and finally, they protested 
 that if, on this account, they should be judged 
 guilty of such criminal disobedience as to deserve 
 censures, they would suffer solely for adhering 
 to what they apprehended to be the will of 
 their great Lord and Master.' Unmoved by this 
 remonstrance, the Assembly resolved to make an 
 example. They resolved to select a victim by 
 vote, and the lot of deposition fell on Gillespie. 
 From that single seed sprung the second secession 
 — since known by the name of the Relief Synod, 
 Gillespie (contrary to the conduct of the first 
 seceders) immediately and voluntarily vacated 
 church and manse ; and after his deposition, he 
 
Rise and Progress of Voluntaryism. 169 
 
 continued for some months to preach in the fields, 
 and in the following winter and spring in a meeting- 
 house in Dunfermline, waiting patiently the result 
 of the Assembly of 1753, when two petitions for the 
 reopening of his case were presented and considered 
 — one from the parish of Carnock, the other from the 
 Presbytery of Dunfermline. The proposal to restore 
 him was lost by a majority of three. It was only 
 after this decision that Mr Gillespie constituted j 
 a session and congregation ; while it was not until 
 1769 that the Presbytery of Relief was formed 
 at Colinsburgh in Fife, on the occasion of the 
 admission of a minister to the charge of a con- 
 gregation which had been formed there, as the 
 result of an unacceptable settlement which had 
 driven the people from the parish church. When 
 an overture for taking off from Mr Gillespie the 
 sentence of deposition, came before the Assembly 
 in 1770, after the separate Relief Presbytery was 
 constituted, the proposal to Repone was negatived 
 by a large majority. Nevertheless, Mr Gillespie 
 gave the strongest proof of his attachment to the 
 Establishment, for on his deathbed he advised his 
 congregation to apply for restoration, to the com- 
 munion of the Church of Scotland, by having their 
 meeting-house declared a chapel of ease in connec- 
 tion with the Established Church. This they did, 
 immediately on Gillespie's death ; but a strong 
 opposition being made to their admission, by the 
 ministers of the Abbey Church in Dunfermline, 
 a number of years elapsed before they could accom- 
 plish their purpose, and they were not received 
 as members of the Church of Scotland till 1779. 
 
170 Secessions from the CJmrch of Scotland. 
 
 Owing to this vexatious delay, and their admission 
 being postponed from Assembly to Assembly, a 
 part of the congregation, in the meantime, built 
 another meeting-house and called a minister ; but 
 after some time he too applied to the Church of 
 Scotland to be taken into communion on the chapel- 
 of-ease system, and was received. 
 
 Thrust out though they were from the Estab- 
 lished Church, which had shut the door of com- 
 munion against them, their object from the first 
 was to make their meeting-houses merely chapels of 
 ease to parish churches, in the hope that in this way 
 they might be received and acknowledged by the 
 Church, even in their judicial capacities. In proof 
 of this we find, that when Mr Alexander Simson, 
 before being settled by the Relief Presbytery at 
 Bellshill, applied to the Presbytery of the Church of 
 Scotland, by which he had been licensed, for an 
 extract, the presbytery, so far from granting his 
 request, drew up a libel against him ; in answer to 
 which he stated that * neither he nor the Presbytery 
 of Relief taught any separating principles, and that 
 he was affording a temporary relief to a part of 
 the parish of Bothwell, who were desirous to remain 
 upon the Establishment, which he had done nothing 
 to prevent' The General Assembly, on 5th June 
 1764, declared him incapable of receiving a call, as 
 a licentiate of this Church, to any of the parishes 
 within the same. The Relief, true to its name, con- 
 tinued to afford relief to large numbers of persons 
 who suffered under the evils of patronage — whole 
 parishes, over which an unacceptable presentee had 
 been settled, in some cases going over to them. 
 
Rise and Progress of Voluntaryism. 171 
 
 Nevertheless, the Church pursued its suicidal policy. 
 It is true that in many cases admirable ministers 
 were objected to, merely because they had been 
 presented, and not from any unsuitability for the 
 charge ; but it is just as true that in many 
 cases patronage was exercised with a high hand, 
 and congregations could not do otherwise than seek 
 the relief which they found elsewhere. The Relief 
 Presbytery increased and multiplied — became a 
 Synod, and carried on useful work. For many years 
 the students for its ministry attended the theological 
 classes in the university, and were there trained 
 along with the students for the ministry of the 
 Church of Scotland ; and it was not until the 
 Church of Scotland, in 1834, proposed her scheme 
 for church extension with additional endowments 
 from the State, that the Relief Synod, almost in 
 self-defence, indicated, in the following parenthetic 
 sentence, their hostile attitude towards the Church 
 of Scotland : ' They disapprove indeed of her con- 
 nection with the State, and trace up to this source 
 the greater part of her shortcomings and corrup- 
 tions.' 
 
 We must now, however, return to the history of the 
 first secession. In 1752 a question was brought 
 before the Antiburgher Synod for judgment, by 
 a reference from the Seceders in Ireland, in which 
 they were joined by their brethren in England, 
 as to 'whether they were warranted in making 
 the usual payments for the support of the Estab- 
 lished Church by law established in these islands.' 
 On this subject they passed an act declaring 
 'that though the afore-mentioned payments are 
 
1/2 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 applied for the support of manifold corruptions and 
 superstitions in these Episcopal churches, which we 
 are essaying to testify against, and which all ranks 
 of people in these lands ought to be humbled for 
 before the Lord, as being deep causes of his wrath 
 against, and controversy with them ; yet the 
 Synod do not find a relevant ground for scruple 
 of conscience about submitting to civil authority in 
 the foresaid payments ; as if this would imply any 
 homologation of the foresaid corruptions and super- 
 stitions, or of what application is made of these pay- 
 ments unto the support thereof, while the payers 
 are openly engaged in a public testimony against 
 the same, and are not suppressed in the maintenance 
 of that testimony, but are protected in the exercise 
 of their civil and religious liberties ; and the said 
 payments are made only in compliance with the 
 common order of society.' 
 
 Contrast the views expressed in this act of the 
 Antiburghers with the advice which has been so 
 persistently given by those who claim to be their 
 descendants, and say whether, in this respect, they 
 are holding fast by the principles of their fore- 
 fathers. Over and over again, in elaborate treatises, 
 and by impassioned platform addresses, have the 
 members of the seceding congregations in Scotland 
 been appealed to by the memory of the great 
 founders of the Secession, to refuse to yield support 
 to ecclesiastical institutions of which they con- 
 scientiously disapprove. 
 
 In 1789, the French Revolution broke out, 
 freedom became the general watchword on the 
 part of the people — political atheism was openly 
 
Rise and Progress of Vobtntaryism. 173 
 
 avowed, and views and sentiments subversive of 
 existing institutions began to spread among all 
 classes. The effect of these sentiments was seen 
 in two overtures laid on the table of the General 
 Associate Synod in 1791, relating to the power 
 of the civil mao'istrate in matters of relio:ion. In 
 1793 a committee was appointed to prepare the 
 draft of an act on the subject, and after innumer- 
 able meetings of committee, and reports to succes- 
 sive meetings of the Synod, it was not until May 
 1804, that the Synod was in a position to pass an 
 act founded on the committee's draft. This they 
 did in such terms as to go much farther in the 
 direction of Voluntaryism than ever they had gone 
 before ; while the second question which had up to 
 this time been put to all probationers before receiv- 
 ing license, and to all ministers and elders before 
 being ordained — namely, ' Do you sincerely own and 
 believe the whole doctrine contained in the Confes- 
 sion of Faith, compiled by the Assembly of Divines 
 that met at Westminster, with commissioners from 
 the Church of Scotland?' — was altered to 'agreeably 
 to the declaration in the Narrative and Testimony 
 enacted by the General Associate Synod in 1804; 
 that is, only in so far as it agrees with that 
 Narrative and Testimony/ 
 
 It is to be observed, however, that not even as 
 yet did they say that the connection of Church 
 and State was either unscriptural or sinful ; they 
 merely defined the respective provinces of Church 
 and State in such a manner as left it to be inferred 
 that an Established Church must allow of the 
 interference of the civil magistrate in matters 
 
174 Secessions from the C/mrch of Scotland. 
 
 exclusively spiritual, which has never been admitted 
 by the Church. They testified ' against all such con- 
 junction of Church and State as subjects the State to 
 the Church in civil matters, and the Church to the 
 State in those that are religious.' Nevertheless, the 
 practical significance of the omission from the old 
 formula, and the interpretation given of the Con- 
 fession of Faith by the new Testimony, were 
 reckoned so suggestive, that four ministers of the 
 Synod, among whom was the celebrated Dr M'Crie, 
 the well-known biographer of Knox and Melville, 
 protested against the deed of the Synod as leading to 
 engagements different from, if not contrary to, those 
 they had already come under ; while they protested 
 further that they should not be considered as bound 
 to take part in the execution of the deed, or to 
 conform to the injunctions and directions which it 
 contained. The explanations given being unsatis- 
 factory, Dr M'Crie and the others, in August 1806, 
 constituted themselves into a presbytery, under the 
 designation of the * Constitutional Associate Presby- 
 tery.' They were accordingly deposed from the 
 office of the ministry by the General Associate 
 Synod. A similar occurrence took place in the 
 Burgher section of the breach, and those who were 
 thrown off from their communion, constituted them- 
 selves into the * Original Burgher Presbytery.' 
 These two subdivisions are better known popularly, 
 by the names of the ' Old Light Antiburghers,' and 
 the ' Old Light Burghers.' 
 
 \\\ 1820, both the Antiburghers and the Burghers 
 having so far altered their standards that the 
 burgess oath (the original cause of their separation) 
 
Rise and Progress of Volitntaryism. 175 
 
 could find no place, after seventy years' separation, 
 made common cause together, and were formally 
 reunited on the 8th of May, under the name of 
 the ' United Associate Synod of the Secession 
 Church/ 
 
 The second article of the basis of union is in these 
 words : * We retain the Westminster Confession of 
 Faith, with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, as 
 the confession of our faith, expressive of the sense 
 in which we understand the Holy Scriptures ; it 
 being always understood, however, that we do not 
 affirm or require an approbation of anything in those 
 books, or in any other, which teaches, or may be 
 thought to teach, compulsory or persecuting and 
 intolerant principles of religion.' This qualification 
 was one which was singularly in accordance with 
 the creed which the then position of the Seceders 
 required ; for had they professed to believe that 
 compulsion or persecution for religious opinions 
 was within the province of the civil magistrate, 
 they would have been, if not inviting persecution, 
 at least rendering themselves unable to protest 
 against it, if it came. It has been said by them- 
 selves that they were led forward in the good 
 providence of God, to clearer views of the real 
 relation between Church and State, by one step at 
 a time ; but it is somewhat remarkable that the 
 clearer views were vouchsafed at the very time 
 when the step which they were about to take, would 
 have been condemned by all their previous teaching, 
 had new light not been given. 
 
 But a new doctrine was very soon to be 
 advocated, in order to meet the exisfencies of the 
 
iy6 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 position of the Seceders. The Church of Scotland 
 had, up to this time, contented herself with planting 
 chapels of ease in several places, where the need 
 of them was most severely felt ; but, in consequence 
 of the want of accommodation in large towns, 
 manufacturing villages, and populous parishes, it 
 was felt that it was absolutely necessary to carry on, 
 upon a much larger scale, the work of church 
 extension, and in 1828 the Church Extension Com- 
 mittee was appointed ' to collect information, and 
 without delay to take the best means for bringing 
 the matter before the notice of His Majesty's 
 Government/ No sooner was this resolution arrived 
 at on the part of the Church, than the views of the 
 Seceders underwent a change. If a government 
 grant were given for the purpose of overtaking the 
 spiritual destitution of the country, the number of 
 places of worship which might be added to the 
 Church of Scotland, would seriously interfere with 
 the extension and even the support of the Secession 
 churches ; and accordingly the first real note of 
 change of view, and the first ray of clearer light on 
 the connection of Church and State, came in 1829, 
 when the Rev. Mr Marshall of Kirkintilloch preached 
 and published a sermon, in which he maintained 
 that religious establishments were unscriptural, 
 unjust, impolitic, secularising in their tendency, 
 inefficient, and unnecessary. The public mind was 
 then in a very excited condition ; the Catholic 
 Emancipation Act had just been passed, and Mr 
 Marshall, in the preface to his sermon, stated it 
 as probable that the Roman Catholics, having 
 obtained emancipation, might ere long become the 
 
Rise and Progress of Voluntaryism. 177 
 
 Established Church in Ireland, and that he did not 
 see how, on the principles of those who vindicate 
 establishments, such a claim could well be refused. 
 Pamphlet succeeded pamphlet, and the contro- 
 versy soon became general, and in 1832, im- 
 mediately on the passing of the Reform Bill, a 
 society was formed in Edinburgh, called * The 
 Voluntary Church Association,' of which the 
 following were the fundamental principles : * That 
 a compulsory support of religious institutions is 
 inconsistent with the nature of religion, the spirit 
 of the gospel, the express appointments of Jesus 
 Christ, and the civil rights of man ; that in every 
 case where the individual disapproves of the system 
 supported, or of the principle of its support, it is 
 an unwarrantable attack on the rights of property, 
 and a direct invasion of the rights of conscience.' 
 It was intended to include all those who were 
 friendly to the support of the gospel by voluntary 
 contributions ; and, indeed, included Independents 
 and others among its ranks. Nevertheless, it was 
 chiefly composed of ministers and members of the 
 Secession churches, one of whom moved the resolu- 
 tion quoted above, and many of whom were the 
 originators of similar voluntary church associa- 
 tions which were organised throughout the country. 
 The cool assumption by the association that the 
 support of the Established Church was compulsory, 
 and that voluntary contributions for the support 
 of the gospel were unknown there, enlisted a large 
 number of followers, who, newly enfranchised under 
 the Reform Bill, and panting after freedom, were 
 told that ecclesiastical establishments were incon- 
 
1/8 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 sistent with the civil rights of man. All were 
 welcomed, whatever their religious creed, or whether 
 they had any creed or not ; assistance was sought 
 from any quarter, and welcomed heartily, though it 
 were proffered by those who desired the destruc- 
 tion of all religion, if only they would unite for 
 the destruction of the establishment. The very 
 change of name which took place is significant. 
 Up to this time most of them had gloried in 
 the name of * Seceder,' and repudiated with indig- 
 nation the word * Dissenter,' because the sec.eder is 
 one who adheres to the professed principles of the 
 Church of Scotland, and who secedes, or withdraws 
 from her communion because of the persistent devia- 
 tions which her courts have made from her own stan- 
 dards, and who hopes that the evils which produced 
 the secession will be removed, and the great breach 
 healed. A dissenter, on the other hand, is one who 
 condemns her whole form of government and 
 national establishment, and will not therefore join 
 in her communion, however unexceptionable in doc- 
 trine and discipline. From this time forward, how- 
 ever, the word 'dissenter' was a title which they 
 often applied to themselves, and gloried in ; because 
 from the moment they became a voluntary church, 
 they were no longer seceders but dissenters. Hav- 
 ing associated themselves with those in every land 
 who had long been accustomed to denounce all 
 connection between the civil magistrate and religion, 
 and having invited them as auxiliaries to aid in the 
 destruction of the Church of Scotland as a national 
 establishment, they naturally were tainted by their 
 opinions, and from the time that they formed 
 
Rise and Progress of Voluntaryism. 179 
 
 an alliance with them, the language of their leaders 
 with reference to all national establishments became 
 more and more distinctly condemnatory, both of the 
 principle and the practice. This language became 
 more pronounced after they associated themselves 
 in their crusade against Church establishments, with 
 the English Nonconformists, who had much earlier 
 fallen away from the principles of their founders. 
 The most eminent of the early Nonconformists, 
 Dr John Owen, Cromwell's brother-in-law, who 
 was one of the leadins: men in the Lono; Parlia- 
 ment, where a motion on disestablishment was 
 brought forward, said, ' If it comes to this, and 
 you say that you have nothing to do with religion 
 as the rulers of the nation, God will very soon 
 have nothing to do with you as rulers of the 
 nation ; ' while at a much more recent period we 
 find the prince of commentators — one of the 
 greatest and ablest and best of all Nonconformists, 
 and almost of all Englishmen of his time — I mean 
 Matthew Henry, saying in his peerless com- 
 mentary : * It is the duty of rulers to take care of 
 religion, and to see that the duties of it be regularly 
 and carefully performed by those under their 
 charge. Let us give God praise for the national 
 establishment of our religion with that of our peace 
 and civil liberty,' and he adds, ' Christianity is 
 twisted in with the very constitution of our govern- 
 ment' 
 
 Though the appeal which Dr Chalmers and 
 others made to the Government, was unsuccessful ; 
 yet, within less than seven years, over ;^300,ooo was 
 contributed for the church extension scheme, and an 
 
i8o Secessions from the CJnirch of Scotland. 
 
 addition of 220 churches made to the places of 
 worship in connection with the Church of Scotland. 
 This involved the drying up of one of the sources 
 of the support of dissent in Scotland, for un- 
 questionably the want of accommodation in the 
 parish churches was the cause of many congrega- 
 tions being formed in connection with the Seces- 
 sion ; and the war was continued by the Seceders, 
 but now on the ground that all state endowments of 
 religion were unscriptural. This was universally re- 
 cognised as a distinctly new position for the Seceders 
 in Scotland to occupy, and the remarkable fact is 
 that the most valiant assailants of Voluntaryism, 
 and the most resolute and skilful defenders of the 
 principle of national establishments of religion, were 
 those ministers of the Church of Scotland who, a 
 few years afterwards, became the founders and 
 leaders of the Free Church of Scotland. In proof 
 of this, I need mention only the names of Dr 
 Chalmers, Dr Guthrie, Dr Candlish, Dr Begg, Dr 
 C. J. Brown, Principal Cunningham, and Dr 
 Buchanan. Dr Buchanan (afterwards Professor in the 
 Free Church College, Edinburgh) closes a prefatory 
 discourse in a volume of lectures on Civil Establish- 
 ments of Religion, with the following warning : 
 * What might be the aggregate or ultimate results 
 of such a change as would throw all the churches 
 on the voluntary principle, we know not ; but 
 looking merely to human means and probabilities, 
 we should say that one of its effects would 
 probably be the speedy ascendency of popery. 
 Even without any legal sanction (which, however, 
 it does not repudiate), it is the most likely to 
 
Rise ajid Progress of Voluntaryism. i8i 
 
 acquire the pre-eminence on the voluntary plan. It 
 is an old, firmly-rooted, and wealthy church ; its 
 resources are inexhaustible, and the greater in 
 proportion as its superstitions are gross. Hitherto 
 the Estabhshed Church has been the great bulwark 
 of Protestantism, against which popery has for 
 ages tried its strength in vain, and behind which the 
 various smaller bodies of Protestants have rested in 
 peace, as it were in so many little creeks and bays. 
 That bulwark has become somewhat dilapidated, or 
 has not been duly extended, and the surge is already 
 making head over it ; but, instead of reinforcing 
 and strengthening it, the dissenters are eagerly seek- 
 ing to remove or destroy that mighty breakwater 
 altogether.' Principal Cunningham, in a lecture on 
 the Lawfulness of Union between Church and State, 
 speaking of what he calls ' the monstrous Voluntary 
 principle,' which denies the lawfulness of all union 
 or connection between Church and State, and the 
 duty and right of civil rulers to do anything about 
 religion — 'a principle,' he adds, * to which such 
 fearful practical consequences attach, as must excite 
 the indignation of every right-thinking man' — 
 goes on to say, ' If this principle should be gener- 
 ally adopted, should gain the ascendency in our 
 national councils, and be followed out to its conse- 
 quences, then it would, of course, be established by 
 law that men, on becoming invested with civil 
 authority, must leave their religious views behind 
 them, renounce all right in that character and 
 capacity, to aim at the promotion of the glory 
 of God, and the honour of Christ ; and the effect 
 of this would be to exclude religious men from civil 
 
1 82 Secessions from the CJunxh of Scotland. 
 
 authority (for they would not accept it upon such 
 terms), and to leave it wholly in the hands of 
 atheists and infidels.' 
 
 The Third Secession — that of the Free Church — 
 is an event of such comparatively recent date, that 
 it is unnecessary to enter farther into its causes 
 than to say that it originated in the system of 
 patronage, which still existed in the Church, under 
 various modifications, but which was frequently very 
 arbitrarily exercised. At last, in 1834, the Evan- 
 gelical party, so called, were in a majority in the 
 General Assembly, and passed a Chapel Act, which 
 declared the ministers of quoad sacra chapels to 
 be constituent members of presbyteries and synods, 
 and eligible to sit in the General Assembly ; 
 and to enjoy every privilege as fully and freely, 
 and with equal powers with parish ministers of 
 the Church. It is worthy of notice that, in this 
 same Assembly of 1834 (the first year that the 
 party which afterwards formed the Free Church 
 had the ascendency), the question of Voluntaryism 
 was disposed of in a very summary manner. Mr 
 Hugh Craig, an elder of the church, had officiated 
 at a meeting in Kilmarnock, at which a petition 
 was adopted, praying for the separation of Church 
 and State. The Assembly instructed the pres- 
 bytery to call Mr Craig before them, and if they 
 found that he persisted in the sentiments which he 
 had expressed, to depose him ijistantcr from the 
 office of a ruling elder of this church. The presby- 
 tery accordingly deposed him ; the synod sum- 
 marily approved the judgment of the presbytery, 
 while the Assembly of the following year dismissed 
 
Rise and Pi'ogress of Vohmtaryism. 183 
 
 his appeal — the maintenance of the estabUshment 
 principle being regarded as obligatory on all the 
 office-bearers of the church. In 1835, the Evan- 
 gehcal party being further recruited, in many pres- 
 byteries, by the admission of these chapel ministers, 
 a very large majority of Evangelicals were returned 
 as members of Assembly, which in that year passed 
 the Veto Act, to prevent the intrusion of unaccept- 
 able presentees. By it the General Assembly de- 
 clared, enacted, and ordained, * that if at the moder- 
 ating of a call to a vacant pastoral charge, the 
 major part of the male heads of families, members 
 of the vacant congregation, and in full communion 
 with the church, shall disapprove of the person in 
 whose favour the call is proposed to be moderated 
 in — such disapproval shall be deemed sufficient 
 ground for the presbytery rejecting such person, 
 and he shall be rejected accordingly.' The Moderate, 
 or Constitutional party in the church regarded the 
 passing of both these acts as being beyond the 
 power of the Church without the concurrence of the 
 State, as both were a violation of the original agree- 
 ment entered into voluntarily with the State, and as 
 one party to an agreement ought not to be allowed 
 to alter its terms without consulting the other. Both 
 Acts involved civil rights, and those who considered 
 those rights encroached upon, summoned the Church 
 before the civil courts to have it settled whether 
 she had exceeded her powers or not ; and in both 
 cases they decided that the Church was in the 
 wrong. The questions at issue were not questions 
 Q>{ spiritual, but oi ecclesiastical md.^y^^VidiQVvcQ. They 
 were not questions between the law of God and the 
 
184 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 law of man, but between church law and statute law. 
 By passing the Veto Act, the Church altered her own 
 constitution : that constitution allowed her to reject 
 a presentee if she considered it proper ; but her own 
 Veto Act excluded her judgment, and compelled 
 presbyteries to reject a presentee, if objected to by 
 the majority of the male heads of families in full 
 communion with the church, even though they 
 gave no reason for their rejection of him. The 
 first case in which the legality of the Veto 
 Act was tried was that of Auchterarder. That 
 parish became vacant in 1834, and the Earl of 
 Kinnoull, as patron, presented the Rev. Robert 
 Young, a licentiate of the Church. Out of 330 
 heads of families on the communion roll, 289 
 objected to the presentee. Had the presbytery 
 acted in terms of the Church's agreement with the 
 State, by asking these objectors to state the grounds 
 of their objections, and had then taken Mr Young 
 on trial, to see how far these objections could be 
 sustained, there would have been no collision 
 between the Church and the State, even although 
 they had ultimately rejected him ; but acting under 
 their own Veto Act, they asked for no reasons for 
 the congregation's disapproval, but refused, in conse- 
 quence, to take the presentee on trial, and rejected 
 him as unsuitable. The patron and the presentee 
 immediately appealed to the Court of Session to 
 have it tried whether or not the Church had acted 
 legally in what she had done. The Church con- 
 tended that it was incompetent on the part of 
 the Court of Session to review her decisions, but 
 this objection was repelled ; and after a long 
 
Rise and Progress of Volit7itaryis7n. 185 
 
 trial before the whole thirteen judges, it was 
 decided by eight to five 'that the presbytery 
 of Auchterarder did refuse, and continued to 
 refuse, to take trial of the qualifications of the 
 said Robert Young, and have rejected him as 
 presentee to the said church and parish, on the sole 
 ground (as they admit in the record) that a majority 
 of the male heads of families, communicants in the 
 said parish, have dissented, without any reason 
 assigned, from his admission as minister : Find that 
 the said presbytery, in so doing, have acted to the 
 hurt and prejudice of the said pursuers, illegally, and 
 in violation of their duty, and contrary to the pro- 
 visions of certain statutes libelled on/ The presby- 
 tery appealed to the House of Lords, which, after a 
 full argument, confirmed the decision of the Court of 
 Session on 2d May 1839. It is needless to refer to 
 other cases of the same kind, in some of which the 
 Court of Session acted beyond their powers — but all 
 these would have been avoided had the illegal Veto 
 Act been rescinded. This, however, the Evangelical 
 party refused to do, although they declared that 
 if they had believed that it infringed on the rights 
 of patrons, they would not have passed it. The 
 Moderate party, as they were termed, were as 
 earnest as the other in asserting the spiritual 
 independence of the Church, and in claiming the 
 powers which it had received from its great Head, 
 but they had declared from the first that the Veto 
 Act was illegal ; and they were not an insignifi- 
 cant minority. The decisions of the civil courts 
 did not, from their point of view, interfere in the 
 least with their spiritual independence — in fact, 
 
1 86 Secessions from the Ch7irch of Scot/and. 
 
 they declared, in that same Assembly, that 'were 
 any power to attempt to wrest their sacred privi- 
 leges from them, they would march out together 
 to defend them, displaying the banner of their great 
 King, and determined, could they not gain the 
 victory, to perish in the warfare.' 
 
 From 1840 to 1843, negotiations were carried on 
 between the Church and the Government, but all fell 
 through, in consequence, to a large extent, of the 
 unreasonable demands made by the Evangelical 
 party. When the General Assembly met on the 
 1 8th of May 1843, in St Andrew's Church, Dr 
 Welsh, the retiring moderator, took the chair, 
 and, without nominating his successor, announced 
 that he and others, who had been returned as 
 members, meant to abandon the Establishment. 
 In explanation of the grounds for this step, he 
 read a full and clear protest, in which the follow- 
 ing words occur : * Firmly asserting the right 
 and duty of the civil magistrate to maintain and 
 support an establishment of religion in accord- 
 ance with God's word, and reserving to ourselves 
 and to our successors to strive, by all lawful means, 
 as opportunity shall in God's good providence be 
 afforded, to secure the performance of this duty 
 agreeably to the Scriptures, and implement of the 
 statutes of the kingdom of Scotland, and the obli- 
 gations of the Treaty of Union as understood by us 
 and our ancestors.' The same document also affirms 
 that the Claim, Declaration, and Protest of the 
 General Assembly which convened at Edinburgh 
 in May 1842, shall be held as setting forth the 
 true constitution of the said Church.' Now, what 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohmtaryism. 187 
 
 does this Claim, Declaration, and Protest say on 
 this subject ? The conclusion of it is as follows, and 
 nothing can be less ambiguous : ' They especially 
 invite all the office-bearers and members of this 
 Church, who are willing to suffer for their allegiance 
 to their adorable King and Head, to stand by the 
 Church and by each other, in defence of the doctrine 
 aforesaid, and of the liberties and privileges, whether 
 of office-bearers or people, which rest upon it ; and 
 to unite in supplication to Almighty God, that He 
 would be pleased to turn the hearts of the rulers of 
 this kingdom, to keep unbroken the faith pledged 
 to this Church in former days by statutes and solemn 
 treaty, and the obligations come under to God him- 
 self, to preserve and maintain the government and 
 discipline of this Church in accordance with the 
 word ; or otherwise, that He would give strength to 
 this Church — office-bearers and people — to endure 
 resignedly the loss of the temporal benefits of an 
 establishment, and the personal sufferings and sacri- 
 fices to which they may be called ; and would also 
 inspire them with zeal and energy to promote the 
 advancement of his Son's kingdom, in whatever 
 condition it may be his will to place them ; and 
 that, in his own good time. He would restore to 
 them these benefits, the fruits of the struggles and 
 sufferings of their fathers in times past in the same 
 cause, and thereafter give them grace to employ 
 them more effectually than hitherto they have done 
 for the manifestation of His glory/ 
 
 When those who had signed the protest withdrew, 
 they went to the large hall in the Canonmills, and 
 formed 'the Free Church of Scotland.' Dr Welsh 
 
1 88 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 proposed as his successor the Rev. Dr Chalmers, 
 who, in his address from the moderator's chair, said : 
 ' The voluntaries mistake us, if they conceive us to 
 be voluntaries. We hold by the duty of Government 
 to give of their resources and their means for the 
 maintenance of a Gospel ministry in the land ; and 
 we pray that their eyes may be opened, and that 
 they may learn how to acquit themselves as the 
 protectors of the Church, and not as its corrupters or 
 its tyrants.' In a word, we hold that every part and 
 every function of a commonwealth should be leavened 
 with Christianity, and that every functionary, from 
 the highest to the lowest, should, in their respective 
 spheres, do all that in them lies to countenance and 
 uphold it. That is to say, 'though we quit the 
 Establishment, we go out on the Establishment 
 principle ; we quit a vitiated Establishment, but 
 would rejoice to return to a pure one. To express 
 it otherwise, we are the advocates for a national 
 recognition and a national support of religion ; and 
 we are not Vohmtaries.' 
 
 For some time after the Disruption the leaders of 
 the Free Church were too much occupied with the 
 organisation of the new church to have time for any 
 special utterances on the subject of church establish- 
 ments ; but whenever opportunity presented itself, 
 they gave no uncertain sound. In the Catechism of 
 the Principles and Constitution of the Free Church of 
 Scotland, prepared by the Rev. Andrew Gray of 
 Perth, and published in 1844 ' by authority of the 
 Publication Committee of the General Assembly,' 
 it is said 'that rulers are bound to guard .the 
 liberties of the Church, to have respect to the 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohmtaryism. 189 
 
 interests thereof in the administration of their 
 affairs, and to employ their power and resources in 
 such a way as shall best contribute to its successful 
 progress within their territory and throughout the 
 world.' Of this catechism Principal Cunningham, in 
 1847, says, it is *now well known in this land, in 
 which I am sure every one will admit that the 
 great leading principles of our testimony are most 
 clearly, ably, and effectively set forth.' 
 
 In 1847, when some hints had been thrown out as 
 to the propriety of changing the general policy of 
 the Free Church in the direction of Voluntaryism, 
 Dr Chalmers, in the very year of his death, said : 
 * We rejoice in the testimony of the Free Church for 
 the principle of a national establishment, and most 
 sincerely do we hope that she will never fall away 
 from it. Sorely aggrieved as she has been by our 
 rulers, she will neither underrate the importance of 
 their friendship, nor yet the solemn obligation which 
 lies upon them to care for the religion of the people, 
 and to provide, within their sphere, for this best 
 and highest interest of the commonwealth.' Hugh 
 Miller, writing about the same time in condemnation 
 of the same proposal, said : * Whether right or wrong 
 in my conclusions, I am at least thoroughly con- 
 vinced that it would have the effect, if acted upon, 
 of placing the great Protestant front of the empire 
 in a fatally false position, and would besides be 
 peculiarly injurious to the Free Church. We have, 
 I think, direct evidence that though the war against 
 popery is, in its effects on those who prosecute it, an 
 eminently safe war, the war against establishments 
 is not. Never, at least, was the Church more 
 
 N 
 
1 90 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 spiritual than when she was warring against popery ; 
 never did any chnrch, in any controversy^ become 
 more secular than the voluntaries of Scotland when 
 warring against establishments. The war against 
 popery would be strictly constitutional ; the war 
 against establishments would not ; it would of 
 necessity endanger, with the assailed institutions, 
 not a few precious remnants of the Revolution 
 Settlement, in which no class have a larger stake 
 than we. And it is besides a grave question 
 whether the Free Church would not lose im- 
 mensely more, by forfeiting the esteem of all solid 
 men hostile to a position so revolutionary, than 
 she could possibly gain through any consequent 
 accession to the number of her allies from the 
 ranks of the reckless and the dissatisfied. Such 
 a war would justly lay our church open, if waged 
 ere the present generation has passed away, to a 
 charge of gross and suspicious inconsistency.' 
 
 In 185 1, the General Assembly of the Free 
 Church unanimously agreed to sanction the publi- 
 cation of a volume containing their 'subordin- 
 ate standards and the authoritative documents.' 
 An act and declaration of an historical nature 
 was adopted, and not only printed in the Acts 
 of Assembly, but given as a preface to this 
 volume of Free Church standards. This act 
 contains amongst other things a declaration, 
 *■ that this church has always strenuously advo- 
 cated the doctrine taught in Holy Scripture, 
 that nations and their rulers are bound to own 
 the truth of God and to advance the kingdom 
 of his Son. And, accordingly, with unfeigned 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohtntaryisrn. 191 
 
 thankfulness did she acknowledge the good hand 
 of the Lord when, after prolonged contests with 
 the enemies of the Reformation, a national recog- 
 nition and solemn sanction of her constitution, as 
 it had been settled by her own authority according 
 to the word, was at last obtained, first in the 
 act of parliament 1567, and again more com- 
 pletely in the act of parliament 1592, and since 
 regarded by her as the great constitutional charter 
 of her Presbyterian government and freedom.' 
 
 The act goes on to say : ' Holding firmly to the 
 last, as she holds still, and through God's grace 
 will ever hold, that it is the duty of civil rulers 
 to recognise the truth of God according to his 
 word, and to promote and support the kingdom 
 of Christ without assuming any jurisdiction in it, 
 or any power over it ; and deeply sensible, more- 
 over, of the advantages resulting to the community 
 at large, and especially to its more destitute 
 portions, from the public endowment of pastoral 
 charges among them,' &c. 
 
 In the Assembly of 1852, a majority of the 
 Synod of Original Seceders was admitted into the 
 Free Church, on the ground of a representation 
 and appeal, which is declared to be * in no respect 
 inconsistent with the standards of the Church, or 
 with the principles for which she has been known 
 to contend in the best and purest periods of her 
 history.' Part of the said representation is as 
 follows : ' We believe that nations in their national 
 capacity, and rulers as rulers, are subject to his 
 (that is, Christ's) authority, and bound, according 
 to the nature of the power bestowed upon them, 
 
192 Secessions from the CJmrch of Scotland. 
 
 to do what in them lies to promote his cause 
 and glory. We believe that the Church and the 
 State, being equally ordinances of God, equally 
 subject to Christ's authority, and equally bound 
 to advance his interests, ought, in accordance 
 with the respective powers conferred on them, to 
 support one another in promoting what is good, 
 and especially that they ought to co-operate 
 together for promoting the glory of God, and the 
 real welfare of man.' Dr Candlish, speaking on 
 that occasion, said : * To-night we stand out as 
 uniting upon the ground of opposition to Erastian- 
 ism on the one hand, and Voluntaryism on the 
 other. This is in substance — in short compass — 
 the ground and foundation of our present union. 
 We stand out as united together upon this common 
 opposition to Erastianism on the one hand, and 
 Voluntaryism on the other. If we had not been prac- 
 tically testifying against Erastianism, our brethren 
 would not have been prepared to join with us ; and 
 if they had not been practically testifying against 
 Voluntaryism, and that in circumstances of peculiar 
 difficulty and trial, I venture to say we would not 
 have been prepared to unite with them.' 
 
 In the Assembly of 1853, Dr Candlish further 
 said : * For my part, so far from having any inten- 
 tion to accommodate our principles and practice 
 to the principles and practice of other non-estab- 
 lished churches in Scotland, I confess, to my mind, 
 and I believe to the minds of many, the voluntary 
 principle, as it is called, has come out since the 
 Disruption as an infinitely worse thing than we 
 ever thought it looked before the Disruption. I 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohintaryism. 193 
 
 thoroughly feel that I have got more insight since 
 the Disruption, within the last few years, into the 
 falsehood in principle, and mischief in practice, of 
 the Voluntary doctrine than ever we had before.' 
 
 In 1854, as the Established Church had not only 
 maintained her ground, but was rapidly extending it, 
 numerous conferences were held between ministers 
 and elders of the Free and United Presbyterian 
 Churches for the promotion of union. Several Free 
 Churchmen declared that the dissenters had become 
 rank voluntaries, and that, according to Dr Merle 
 d'Aubigne, the foundation principle of Voluntaryism, 
 as held in Scotland, was that religion had nothing 
 to do with the civil magistrate, and that the civil 
 magistrate had nothing to do with religion, a species 
 of atheism which D'Aubigne was surprised should be 
 held by any Christian community. But they were 
 reminded that that statement was indignantly dis- 
 claimed at the time, and that even then it was regarded 
 as an insult which could not be easily forgotten — 
 while one of their number, in a plea for reunion with 
 the Free Church, after quoting the * godless dogma,' 
 thus expresses himself: *We should like to raise the 
 hue and cry after such an atheistic character ; and 
 therefore we propose a reward of one thousand 
 pounds for every dissenting minister or man, who 
 can be caught holding such an opinion, provided 
 he is still out of Bedlam.' Is there any man out of 
 Bedlam who would offer such a reward now } 
 
 In 1855, Dr Candlish, in his Manse Fund speech 
 in Glasgow, said : * We ought, as a church, to culti- 
 vate the closest and most intimate relations of 
 Christian brotherhood with the non-established 
 
194 Secessions from the CJmrcJi of Scotland. 
 
 churches in the land, and especially with our 
 Presbyterian brethren adhering to other bodies who 
 have left the Establishment; but with all our 
 friendly feelings towards them, and our anxiety to 
 co-operate in every good work, we can never forget 
 that, as regards them, the position we claim to 
 occupy is this, that we are the Church of Scotland, 
 from which they seceded, and to which, according 
 to the principles of their seceding fathers, they 
 might fairly be expected to return. I do not, of 
 course, expect our friends of the United Presby- 
 terian body, or other bodies not established, to 
 acknowledge and admit that claim to the full 
 extent to which we make it ; but, nevertheless, I 
 hold it to be of vast importance to the interests of 
 Presbyterianism in Scotland in the long-run, and 
 these I think are identified with those of the Church 
 of Christ, that we should maintain our position as 
 the Church of Scotland, from which the Erskines 
 and Fishers seceded, and to which their descendants 
 may be expected to return/ 
 
 In 1857 many leading laymen of both churches 
 subscribed a declaration, that in the event of a 
 union, the questions of the civil magistrate's 
 authority in religion, and of endowments, should 
 be matter of forbearance. But not only did the Free 
 Church ecclesiastical leaders refuse to sanction such 
 a union, but some of them were inclined to subject 
 the movers in this matter to formal ecclesiastical 
 censure. 
 
 In i860 the Free Church found herself unex- 
 pectedly confronted with the Cardross case, in 
 which the minister appealed to the civil court to 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohmtaryisin. 195 
 
 declare the sentence pronounced upon him by 
 the General Assembly to be null and void. The 
 Free Church pleaded that the sentences complained 
 of, being spiritual acts, done in the ordinary course 
 of discipline by a Christian church tolerated and 
 protected by law, it was not competent for the civil 
 court to reduce them, and that the actions should 
 therefore be dismissed. The Lord Ordinary repelled 
 this objection, and his judgment was unanimously 
 affirmed by the court. Want of means to prolong 
 the contest compelled the minister at last to with- 
 draw his action ; but, from the language of the 
 Lord Chancellor in a subsequent case, it is evident 
 that the civil courts claim the right to review, and, if 
 they think proper, to reverse the most sacred acts 
 of voluntary non-established ciiurch courts. 
 
 In 1863 the proposed union between the non- 
 established Presbyterians of Scotland was first 
 introduced into the General Assembly of the Free 
 Church, and it was then explicitly and prominently 
 declared that no attempt was to be made to com- 
 promise any of the essential principles maintained 
 in the Disruption conflict ; and, in appointing the 
 Union Committee, the Assembly instructed it to aim 
 at this, ' by all suitable means consistent with a due 
 regard to the principles of this church.' Some 
 doubts arose, however, in the course of the year 
 whether the very appointment of a committee did 
 not imply a willingness on the part of the Free 
 Church to compromise her distinctive principles; 
 and before the committee was reappointed in 
 1864, an assurance was given that the Assembly 
 was not to be held as admitting that they were 
 
196 Secessions from the Church of Scotlmtd. 
 
 prepared to make any modifications. In 1867, the 
 Union Committee gave in their report to the 
 Assembly, and a motion containing the following 
 words was carried by a majority of 346 to 120 : 'As 
 regards the first head of the programme, considered 
 in itself, there appears to be no bar to the union 
 contemplated/ A large number of members pro- 
 tested against this resolution on the following, among 
 other, grounds : ' Because the resolution as adopted 
 implies an abandonment and subversion of an 
 undoubtedly constitutional principle of the Free 
 Church of Scotland.' They held that this resolution 
 was to the effect that the Assembly saw no bar to 
 union with those who declare the principle of a 
 church establishment to be sinful, being, as is alleged 
 by them, opposed to an express 'ordinance of Christ.' 
 They maintained that this resolution, if confirmed, 
 would be an entire abandonment on the part of the 
 Free Church of one of the distinctive principles of 
 the ten years' conflict. That conflict might have 
 been avoided if the Free Church had been willing to 
 take that ground at first, whilst, by taking it then, 
 they would proclaim that they formerly convulsed 
 the kingdom unnecessarily, and were * martyrs by 
 mistake.' So strong was the feeling against this 
 union on the part of a large number, both of 
 ministers and members, that it is believed, on 
 good grounds, the Free Church would have been 
 broken up had not the scheme been abandoned. 
 The feeling was intensified by the publication 
 of a statement by the United Presbyterian Com- 
 mittee on disestablishment and disendowment, 
 in which, waxing bolder in consequence of the 
 
Rise and Progress of Volimtaryism, 197 
 
 disestablishment of the Irish Church, they de- 
 clared that they *owed it to the cause of truth 
 identified with their history, to hold forth, as well as 
 to hold fast, a distinctive testimony against civil 
 establishments of religion, as radically injurious to 
 the interests of religion, opposed to the genius of 
 its institutions, and fraught with political and social 
 injustice.' It also stated that ''the system is 
 unscriptural.' In the Assembly of the Free Church 
 in 1873, a disruption of the Free Church was 
 anticipated by many of her own members, and it 
 would assuredly have taken place had the attempt 
 to establish an absolute and unqualified mutual eligi- 
 bility of ministers between the United Presbyterian 
 and Free Churches been successful. The crisis, 
 however, was averted by a proposal made by Dr 
 Candlish, which embodied a clear admission of the 
 principles of the Free Church on the subject of 
 national religion — for ministers of other churches 
 were to be eligible for admission only on the express 
 condition that they should previously receive, in any 
 case of a proposed call, distinct information of the 
 peculiar principles of the Free Church, and should 
 clearly assent to those before their settlement. This 
 was all the outcome in the way of union of ten years' 
 protracted conferences. 
 
 In the following year — namely, in 1874 — patron- 
 age, under which the Church of Scotland had 
 groaned, and against which she had struggled and 
 petitioned for centuries, was abolished, and the Act 
 of Queen Anne repealed. Thus the occasion of all 
 the past secessions from the Church of Scotland 
 was removed, and the great outstanding grievance 
 
198 Secessions front the Church of Scotland. 
 
 and grudge, against which all her enemies had 
 pointed the finger of scorn, was swept away. So 
 far, however, from this conciliating the sects who 
 differed from her, it only alienated their leaders 
 more completely than before ; who declared that the 
 abolition of patronage was the first step towards 
 disestablishment, and who ever since have mani- 
 fested the bitterest hostility towards her, simply 
 because she is an Established Church. 
 
 Unless we have entirely failed to read aright the 
 ecclesiastical history of Scotland, the conclusion at 
 which we must arrive is this, that whether the 
 principles now advocated by dissenters be right or 
 wrong, they are not the principles of the leaders of 
 the different secessions, who would have seen in the 
 abolition of patronage and in the present condition 
 of the Church of Scotland the removal of all their 
 objections, both to her polity and doctrine, and 
 would have been more ready to return to her com- 
 munion than they were to forsake it. There is now 
 far less patronage in the Established Church than in 
 any of the non-established churches in the land ; for 
 in the Church of Scotland the voice of the poorest 
 member is as potential in the election of a minister, 
 as that of the richest. But there is a temptation in 
 non-established churches to defer to the opinion of 
 the richest man in the congregation, especially where 
 the great bulk of the members are poor, because, 
 by alienating him and electing a minister to whom 
 he is opposed, they may lead him to withhold his 
 large subscription, and find themselves thereby 
 unable to support the minister of their choice. 
 Over and over again have complaints been made by 
 
Rise and Progress of Vohmtaryism. 199 
 
 the members of dissenting churches, that such a one 
 always gets the minister of his choice appointed. 
 
 Whatever may be said of Voluntaryism, volun- 
 tary liberality is becoming gradually extinct. I 
 mean Christian liberality, free from compulsion of 
 any kind, whether legal or social — whether from 
 the fear of civil law, or of man's opinion. Volun- 
 tary giving is spontaneous giving — giving because 
 the cause is good, and because our conscience tells 
 us it has a claim upon our support — giving in pro- 
 portion to the goodness of the cause, and our 
 ability to contribute; not giving in proportion to 
 the pressure that is brought to bear upon us, and 
 the amount of publicity which is likely to be 
 given to the amount of our gifts — giving secretly 
 while we live, and not waiting till the world will 
 read the ostentatious publication of the amount of 
 our legacies after we are dead. I have no hesitation 
 in affirming that there is not a single church in 
 Christendom which would stake its existence for a 
 single year upon this pure voluntary principle. 
 
 I maintain that there is far more real volun- 
 tary liberality in the Church of Scotland than 
 in any dissenting communion ; and, certainly, there 
 is far less compulsoryism applied to the members of 
 the congregation in order to raise money either for 
 God's cause or for God's poor. It is unfortunately 
 true that the Church, having been refused the 
 assistance which she was entitled to expect from 
 the State in overtaking the spiritual destitution of 
 the country, has not trusted entirely to pure spon- 
 taneous giving, but has, in many instances, called in 
 the aid of an ostentatious publicity to raise the 
 
200 Secessions from the Church of Scotland. 
 
 sums which were required for that purpose ; but 
 nevertheless her members are left much more free 
 as to giving or not giving, and as to the amount 
 given, than in any other communion ; while her 
 purely voluntary contributions are certainly not 
 behind those which are given by the members of 
 so-called Voluntary churches, who have been the 
 chief corrupters of pure Christian liberality. 
 
 The sums raised are no indication of the power 
 
 of the voluntary principle ; the methods and the 
 
 motives must be taken into account ; and it 
 
 must be confessed that, provided the sums raised 
 
 be large, there is little attention paid to the 
 
 motives which may have actuated the givers ; 
 
 and it will, I think, be generally admitted that 
 
 there is a growing tendency to have recourse to 
 
 the arts of canvassing, and puffing, and advertising 
 
 in order to secure large sums. The end is held to 
 
 justify the means ; the test of a standing or falling 
 
 congregation has come to be the subscription sheet, 
 
 and instead of the left hand not knowing what the 
 
 right hand does, all means are adopted to keep it 
 
 thoroughly informed on the subject. Subscriptions 
 
 rise in amount, in proportion to the degree of 
 
 publicity which they are to receive. For an 
 
 ordinary collection, the plate at the church door 
 
 may be reckoned sufficient ; if twice that amount 
 
 be required, a bag is handed round the pews, where 
 
 each will at least see whether his neighbour gives 
 
 or not ; a still larger amount is got when, instead 
 
 of the bag, an open plate is employed, where each 
 
 can see the sum which his neighbour has contributed. 
 
 Larger results follow where the congregation is 
 
Rise and Progress of Voluntaryism. 201 
 
 individually canvassed, and the sums put down in 
 the subscription book ; while the intimation that the 
 names of contributors, with the sums opposite their 
 names, will be printed and circulated among the 
 congregation, raises the amount of voluntary con- 
 tributions to its maximum. Who does not see that 
 with the gradual increase of the amount in propor- 
 tion to the degree of publicity to be given to the 
 givers and their gifts, there is the presence of a com- 
 pulsoryism of the worst possible character, and that 
 the larger sums are given under the compulsion of 
 the basest motives of ostentation, vanity, and rivalry. 
 The motive of ostentation is worked in the interest 
 of religion on a system, and collectors and other 
 organisers of voluntary benevolence are regarded 
 as successful in their work in proportion as they 
 play skilfully on the infirmity of the benevolent, 
 and by bribing men into giving, swell the church's 
 funds. 
 
 Not only so, but voluntary congregations are 
 frequently assessed at so much per communicant ; 
 a certain sum must be raised by a congregation 
 of so many members ; the sum is fixed by those 
 who know not, and cannot know, what private 
 and family claims many of these members may 
 have to meet, and the threat is held out that 
 unless that sum be raised, the congregation will 
 be degraded to the position of a mere preaching- 
 station. Notwithstanding all these expedients, there 
 is an increasing complaint that the ministers are 
 inadequately supported, and that, instead of the 
 minimum stipend having been attained, it is being 
 farther and farther receded from. 
 
202 Secessions from the Church of Scotlajid. 
 
 Nor can the number of costly churches that 
 have been erected by dissenters be appealed to 
 as a proof of the success of the voluntary principle. 
 To say nothing of the fact that many of them were 
 built in direct opposition to the Established Church, 
 as is shown by the close proximity of many of them 
 to the ancient building, and were put up under the 
 stimulus of a rivalry which can scarcely be called 
 generous — it is a notorious fact that a very large 
 number of those which have been built in recent 
 years are heavily burdened with debt. This seems 
 to be the characteristic of voluntary churches every- 
 where. Dr Talmage, a man well qualified to speak 
 on the subject, said, on a recent visit to this country, 
 * three-fourths of the churches in America are in 
 debt' In the district with which I am most 
 familiar, almost all the dissenting churches are in 
 the same condition, and most of them^ within a very 
 recent period, have been attempting, by means of 
 bazaars, to extricate themselves from debts amount- 
 ing to thousands of pounds in some cases, and 
 to hundreds in others. And, indeed, the bazaars 
 which are now so universally resorted to, to extricate 
 churches from pecuniary embarrassments, and which 
 are justifiable only on the ground that it is impossible 
 to obtain the funds necessary, in any other way, are 
 a public confession of the failure of the voluntary 
 principle. The compulsion that is used to secure 
 workers ; the time that is wasted in the preparation 
 of articles for sale ; the artifices that are employed 
 to secure contributions of goods ; the blandishments 
 that are used to induce visitors to purchase ; the 
 extortionate prices that are frequently asked for 
 
Rise and Progress of Volimtaryism. 203 
 
 goods ; the dishonesty which is often practised, 
 on the ground that no change is given at this 
 stall ; the lotteries that have been publicly carried 
 on there until the strong hand of the law threatened 
 to suppress them, and which are still carried on 
 in secret under different disguises ; the jealousy 
 which is excited among the different stallholders ; 
 the utter worldliness and frivolity of the whole 
 scene and its surroundings — these are no small 
 evils to be connected with a sacred work ; and they 
 have done more to secularise the Church, and to 
 corrupt the true voluntary principle, than any other 
 influence within the last thirty years. To so large 
 an extent has public sentiment in the matter of 
 giving been perverted by these means, that it is 
 scarcely possible to obtain money for any work of 
 piety or mercy, without making a public excite- 
 ment of some kind ; and what is contributed under 
 this stimulus is merely the price paid for the excite- 
 ment — the bazaar, the banners, the music, the 
 speeches, the praise of men. What is so given is 
 not given in obedience to the law of Christ, and with 
 the love of Christ as the constraining motive. 
 
 It is said that we ought to have free-trade 
 in everything, and that religion ought to be left 
 to the law of supply and demand. To this I 
 answer that, however safe it may be to leave 
 the meat that perisheth — the food for the body 
 — to the law of supply and demand, there is no 
 such law in the spiritual world, and never has 
 been. There was no demand on the part of the 
 human race for spiritual food when Christ, the bread 
 of life, came down from heaven and gave his body 
 
204 Secessions fro}ji the Church of Scotland. 
 
 to be broken for us. Had our Heavenly Father 
 waited until the demand rose from a perishing 
 world, it would have perished everlastingly. Had 
 we waited until the heathen clamoured for the 
 living bread, the missionaries now labouring in 
 foreign lands would have been numbered by tens 
 instead of by thousands. And were we to leave 
 the provision for the spiritual hunger of those in 
 our own land to the operation of the same law, 
 there are large districts which would speedily 
 relapse into heathenism. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 LECTURE VI. 
 
 THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, AND RELIGIOUS 
 EQUALITY. 
 
 By Rev. Andrew Gray, M, A., Minister of the Parish of Dalkeith. 
 
 HE modern doctrine of equality is that 
 justice requires that all people should live 
 in society as equals ; that command and 
 obedience are but unfortunate necessities, that 
 human progress has been historically a progress 
 from a law of force to a condition in which equal 
 association becomes the general rule, and that 
 already, in this and one or two other countries, the 
 law of the strongest has been in many relations of 
 life entirely abandoned.^ 
 
 Is equality either an actual fact or a possible 
 advantage } If inequality necessarily exists, is it 
 unjust or inexpedient for human law to recognise 
 and profit by it } 
 
 1 Vide Stephen on Liberty, Eqiiality, and Eraternity, p. 208. 
 
 O 
 
2o6 The CJiiirch of Scotland^ 
 
 Equality is not the law of nature, and this not in 
 any merely trivial sense. It is possible that in- 
 equalities might be so minute in their nature, and 
 so insignificant in their worthy that the laws of a 
 prudent human government may ignore them with 
 impunity. If one who aspires to be a soldier is up 
 to the required standard in height, it is a matter of 
 no moment that he is a quarter of an inch higher or 
 lower than his nearest comrade in the regiment. 
 But there are certain ineradicable differences among 
 human beings that cannot be thus passed by as of 
 no practical significance. Foremost among these 
 are the differences of age and sex. A child is in a 
 state involving submission, dependency, obedience ; 
 a parent, or one in advancing years, has normally 
 accorded to him a position of authority and venera- 
 tion. A young person who is being taught, stands 
 on a different footing from his teacher. There is 
 the equally undeniable inequality of sex. Women 
 are on a different platform from men. There are 
 many qualities which they equally possess. They 
 have the same species of mental and moral endow- 
 ments, and spiritual aptitudes and aspirations. 
 There are duties the one may discharge as well as 
 the other. There are rights also which may be 
 claimed by the one as well as the other. But it 
 would be cruel for any individual or state to put 
 women unconditionally in the same position as men; 
 to exact from them, to the fullest extent, the service 
 which may, for patriotic ends, be exacted from men. 
 The very idea of compelling women to serve as 
 soldiers, even in a nation's sorest straits, hovyever 
 welcome any voluntary service they could render 
 
and Religious Equality. 207 
 
 would be, is abhorrent to all civilised governments. 
 A nation throttled by an assailing foe has, however, 
 a rieht to such service at the hands of its men. 
 There are other aspects of inequality between the 
 sexes, in respect of education and household admin- 
 istration. 
 
 There is, moreover, no such thing as natural 
 equality among the male members of a com- 
 munity. There are men more richly dowered 
 by nature, both in body and mind, than others. 
 They start with a good constitution and a lively 
 intelligence. Their heart is the throne of will ; their 
 quick and broad sympathies fit them to guide and 
 govern others. They are magnets drawing men 
 unto them. Wise to know, and bold to do and 
 dare, they become the centre of minor forces and 
 more sluggish instrumentalities. They believe in 
 themselves, in their power of work, in the massive- 
 ness of their own nature, in the victorious energy of 
 their own determination, in the law of cause and 
 effect operating in the world of mind as in the world 
 of matter, and in that law operating on their behalf. 
 These men, with their abundance of vital energy, go 
 forward in life to be the exponents of other men's 
 aims, the representatives of other men's wills, to be 
 leaders of thought, guides in action, inventors of 
 mechanical contrivances that anticipate the needs 
 of the coming age, investigators into the secrets of 
 nature, which are to constitute the basis of new and 
 vast industries, explorers of the peaks of mountains, 
 the depths of oceans, the ice-bound poles, and the 
 burning tropical deserts. Napoleon magnetised 
 thousands of the thieves of France, made them into 
 
2o8 TJie Church of Scotland, 
 
 obedient and devoted soldiers, true as steel to him, 
 and valorous unto death for their country. Wher- 
 ever there is fixedness of purpose, concentration of 
 energy, even in the case of ordinary men, there 
 must, in the long-run, be exhibited a might that is 
 victorious. Men of common gifts, devoted heart 
 and soul to some particular pursuit or line of thought^ 
 become possessed of a special insight. Continuity 
 of concentrated effort leads to some measure of 
 success in every rank of life. The immortal Newton 
 did what he did, not more by his great native 
 endowments, than, as he tells us, by ' always intend- 
 ing his mind.' A great Athenian administrator rose 
 to distinction by dividing his time between the 
 market-place and the council-house. And as con- 
 centration of energies and affections gives strength 
 to the nature, so does diligence give speed and cer- 
 tainty to that strength. Thus the original creative 
 endowments of men, the concentration of their 
 efforts and their diligence in the cultivation of their 
 powers, separate men from each other, raising up 
 some and casting down others, enlarging some and 
 narrowing others. The quality of the morality 
 involved in the process of exaltation or degradation, 
 does not prevent us from seeing that it does not 
 seem to be intended that men be equal in respect 
 of gifts and uses, that they stand massed together 
 in a dull monotony of uniform capabilities. The 
 rising or the falling to the world's judgment, may 
 be because the motive was generous, and the con- 
 science sensitive ; it may also be because the motive 
 was selfish, and the conscience dulled. The result 
 everywhere is palpable inequality among men, and 
 
and Religious Eqtiality. 209 
 
 that result is so distinct and continuous, that it 
 seems inevitable in the present constitution of things. 
 It inheres in the system of this world. It is not 
 wholly due to man's self-will and perversity ; it is 
 not simply man s disorder ; it fits in with divine 
 arrangements ; it is God's order. Do what men 
 may, they cannot, with the differences of capabilities 
 imparted to them at birth, attain to the same height, 
 and length, and depth, and breadth of character and 
 will. Accordingly it would seem to be just and 
 expedient for a nation to recognise the fact that 
 there are important inequalities among men, and to 
 adapt its legislation to that fact. 
 
 The Church of Scotland, while regarding religious 
 equality as unreasonable and unattainable, stands 
 by the principle of religious liberty. Every man 
 is free to work out his own capabilities in his 
 own way, to come to his own conclusions, and 
 to abide by them. There is to be the right of 
 private judgment, freedom of conscience, liberty of 
 opinion. No man is to be treated as a machine, a 
 -creature to be kept in a predetermined groove, not 
 merely of action, but of thought and faith. He is 
 not to be interfered with by an outside authority in 
 his endeavours, according to his light and gifts, to 
 think out, revere, and realise the ideal of his life. No 
 power has a right to intervene between the individual 
 human soul and God. 
 
 The claim put forth by a fellow-man, or by an 
 organised society of our fellow-men, to infallibility, 
 or to an arrogance and presumption little short of it, 
 empowering him or it, under pains and penalties, to 
 thrust a particular faith upon our reason and con- 
 
2IO The CJmrch of Scotland, 
 
 science, is one so extravagant that it defeats its own 
 end. Such a claim, to be listened to, requires to be 
 backed up by a chain of cumulative evidence of 
 abnormal strength. Coercion, under any circum- 
 stances, is a poor substitute for the manifestation of 
 truth. A particular type of character may be wrong 
 or sinful, and yet the worst remedy to apply may be 
 the repressive power of civil authority. Selfishness, 
 unthankfulness, and unkindness are universally con- 
 demned, yet no civil government could long abide, 
 that inflicted punishment for these offences. Let 
 both the tares and wheat grow together until the 
 harvest, lest in human fallibility, short-sightedness, 
 and partisanship, while we pluck up the tares, we 
 root out the wheat also. Those who truly grasp 
 the Christian faith are assuredly not warranted in 
 inflicting pains and penalties upon men, merely for 
 differences of opinion or profession in religion. 
 
 It may be that these differences may be embittered 
 into animosities. It was the case at first that our 
 Lord came not to send peace on earth, but a sword. 
 It did happen at Philippi that the preaching of the 
 gospel was the cause of popular commotion. It has 
 happened again and again that public tranquillity 
 has been broken by religious disputes. But whatever 
 may be said in favour of the civil authority taking 
 cognisance of acts of violence, repressing riots, and 
 punishing the lawless, just as the civil authority 
 might be summoned to discharge a similar duty in 
 the event of public disturbance on the occasion of 
 the introduction of new machinery in agriculture or 
 manufactures, a clear distinction exists between 
 punishing a man for an act of violence and punish- 
 
afid Religious Equality. 2ii 
 
 incf a man for a difference of faith. Law and order 
 must be maintained, if civil society is to exist. 
 Liberty of conscience ought not to shelter a social 
 wrong. Religion ought not to cloak with impunity 
 crimes pernicious to civil society. The immolation 
 of human victims to propitiate the idol Moloch, 
 would find no toleration in this country. The 
 frantic orgies of shameless degradation and open 
 licentiousness attendant on some religious observ- 
 ances, would not be sanctioned. But when we look 
 at more refined and subtle forms of what many 
 persons would denounce as injurious and wrong, it 
 is not so easy to draw the line between liberty of 
 thought and liberty of action, between the expres- 
 sion of a faith and the completion of it in a deed. 
 
 We may say generally, that the punishment of a 
 man for an opinion, has no tendency to rebut the 
 arguments in favour of that opinion, that it is its 
 apparent contrariety to reason and not to law that 
 has to be combated ; and that the interests of 
 society will be sufficiently safe in the hands of those 
 who can confront ignorance and error and falsehood 
 with truth. But when the question is raised more 
 definitely, what warrant has society to interfere with 
 an individual liberty, though that liberty leads to 
 personal vice and to constructive injury to a neigh- 
 bourhood — answers may vary. John Stuart Mill 
 says that the only warrant is self-protection ; that 
 there is freedom to unite for any purpose not involv- 
 ing harm to others ; that gambling ought to be 
 tolerated ; that personal vices should be left to take 
 their course. He says distinctly that legislative 
 interference for the removal of a traffic which is a 
 
212 Tlie C J lurch of Scotland , 
 
 social grievance to many, would be monstrous, and 
 far more dangerous than any single violation of 
 liberty. For the sake of the greater good of human 
 freedom, society can afford to bear the inconvenience 
 caused by constructive injury to society, through 
 conduct which neither violates any specific duty to 
 the public, nor occasions perceptible hurt to any 
 assignable individual. The reasons he urges are : 
 First, Because society has had absolute power over 
 all the early portion of men's existence — over their 
 childhood and nonage ; and if it has not trained 
 them to be capable of acting reasonably, society 
 has itself to blame ; and secondly, Because grown-up 
 persons, when commanded by society, will rebel, 
 and the odds are that society will interfere wrongly, 
 and in the wrong place. 
 
 This is undoubtedly an extreme view of liberty 
 of thought, expression, and action ; and the only 
 limitation of it by Justice Stephen, in criticising 
 Mill's position, is that, while it is admitted that 
 compulsory interference with unusual and offensive 
 experiments in living is delicate and may be 
 blundering, it does not follow that it should not 
 exist ; that, if a man ought to be punished for 
 vices when they do harm to assignable individuals, 
 there is no just reason why he should not be 
 punished when these vices do harm to an inde- 
 finable district inhabited by human beings ; that 
 there is such a thing as the moral coercion of 
 public opinion as well as legal coercion ; that pubhc 
 opinion ought to put a restraint upon vice, not to 
 such an extent merely as is necessary for definite 
 self-protection, but generally on the ground that 
 
mid Religions Equality. 213 
 
 vice is a bad thing, from which men ought, by- 
 appropriate means, to restrain each other. The 
 practically important matter in dealing with vicious 
 persons who, by their sayings and doings, offend the 
 public conscience in such a land as ours, is not 
 criminal law, but the restraints of public opinion — 
 social condemnation of the wrong-doing. Such are 
 the views of thoughtful men, shared in by many ; 
 thus highly is the liberty of the individual prized ; 
 thus carefully is it sought to be guarded. 
 
 Personal freedom is indeed limited and restrained ; 
 but only when and in so far as its exercise is clearly 
 hostile to the commonweal. There are, for example, 
 laws against blasphemy and obscene literature ; and 
 men can be punished for uttering blasphemy and 
 publishing and circulating obscenity, yet such is the 
 current of public opinion in favour of liberty, that 
 only in extreme cases, and occasionally, are these 
 laws put in operation. We see what occurs around 
 us now in the political world. Men may live in this 
 country who are devotedly attached to republican 
 sentiments on the one hand, or to imperial rule on 
 the other. Subjects of this kingdom may desire 
 the repeal of the Union, or the severance of Ireland 
 from the United Kingdom. Freedom is given to 
 them not only to hold these sentiments, but to 
 proclaim them and commend them to others. They 
 may reason calmly and dispassionately in favour of 
 this view or that view. If there is no incentive to a 
 disturbance of the peace, or acts of open disloyalty, 
 the State does not interfere. It is only when 
 freedom of discussion assumes an active hostility 
 to existing social order^ or a revolutionary aspect, 
 
214 TJie Church of Scotland, 
 
 that the State thinks it worth its while to deal in 
 restraints. Concerning matters of little moment, 
 the law does not care. In such a country as ours, 
 it recognises the worth of liberty, it knows its own 
 liability to err, and is guided by a practical 
 expediency. So in the religious world, freedom is 
 given to even the wildest speculations on every form 
 of religious creed. Atheism has been propounded 
 and discussed. Every form of Deism may have 
 its logical advocates and antagonists. No restriction 
 is placed upon the promulgation of philosophical 
 doubt or destructive, biblical criticism. It is only 
 when religious opinions enter, by enticing suggestion 
 or direct declaration, into a region of activity hostile 
 to social well-being, that a State such as ours has to 
 consider whether the time has not come for it to 
 deal penally with obscene teaching and notorious 
 blasphemy, as religious offences contravening the 
 public good. Not in every case will a wise State 
 intervene. It will trust in general to the power of 
 truth. But when the case is heinous, when the 
 language is unmeasured, and offensive ; when the 
 tendencies of the teaching are towards a kind of 
 conduct which is impoverishing or hurtful to the 
 State, then legal repression of these religious tenets 
 becomes a right pertaining to the State, as concerned 
 about the peace and good order of society, and the 
 well-being of its subjects. 
 
 Accordingly, it may be clearly seen that the 
 extent to which liberty in expressing and pro- 
 pagating one's religious opinions in a land like ours 
 is limited, cannot be a matter of regret to any well- 
 disposed subjects. To them, a law against vile 
 
and Religious Equality, 215 
 
 teaching is no more felt to be a limitation of liberty 
 than a law against nudity in the open street. 
 
 This recognition of religious freedom has un- 
 doubtedly been tardy. The lesson has been slowly 
 learned. The claim towards something like infalli- 
 bility has been put forth in turn by every dominant 
 school of Christian government, worship, and 
 thought. Christianity at the time of Constantine 
 was intolerant and persecuting. Circumstances had 
 changed, but the spirit of persecution survived. 
 Under the four edicts of Diocletian, issued at the 
 beginning of the fourth century, Christians had been 
 deprived of their civil privileges and books ; their 
 churches had been doomed to destruction ; their 
 ministers first imprisoned and then tortured ; and 
 all Christians racked with an ingenuity of hate to 
 compel them to renounce Christianity, and sacrifice 
 to the pagan gods. When Christianity was estab- 
 lished under Constantine, severity was turned from 
 the Christians to the pagans. Edicts were put forth 
 to destroy the heathen temples, and prevent the 
 offering of sacrifices. The books of the Arians 
 were to be committed to the flames. Concealment 
 of these heretical books was to be punished by 
 death. Other heretics, such as the Novatians, 
 Valentinians, and Marcionites, were deprived of the 
 liberty of worshipping either in public or private 
 places ; and all their places for prayer were confis- 
 cated. The practice of persecution for heresy 
 signalised the Romish Church more or less in every 
 land for many an age. So long as it had the power, 
 and wherever it could exercise the power with any 
 measure of success, it employed force to repress 
 
2i6 The Church of Scotland, 
 
 religious dissent, and in some cases, as in Spain and 
 Portugal, it used the most extreme measures to 
 extirpate any dissenting or protesting faith. The 
 Reformation did not get rid of the intolerant and 
 persecuting spirit. Though claiming the right of 
 private judgment for themselves, the Reformers 
 refused to concede it fully to others. Under the 
 discipline of Calvin four hundred and fourteen public 
 trials, it is said, took place before the Consistory 
 of Geneva in the years 1558 and 1559, and these 
 terminated not always in mere church censures, but 
 in civil punishments. Nor, however many excuses 
 we may find for his conduct, can we wholly free 
 from blame that great Reformer in the case of 
 Servetus. The Westminster Confession of Faith 
 has used language that might be easily construed 
 into a justification of the most active compulsion on 
 the occurrence of diversities of religious belief 
 * God hath armed the civil magistrate,' it says, * with 
 the power of the sword, for the defence and 
 encouragement of them that are good, and for the 
 punishment of evil-doers ; ' 'he hath authority, 
 and it is his duty to take order that unity and 
 peace be preserved in the Church, that the truth of 
 God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies 
 and heresies be suppressed.' 
 
 The English legislature determined, in the reign 
 of William III., that Roman Catholics were not 
 entitled to purchase estates or to inherit lands by 
 descent ; that popish priests were to be banished, 
 and if they returned to England they were to be 
 subjected to perpetual imprisonment ; and that one 
 hundred pounds were to be offered as a reward to 
 
and Religions Eqjiality. 217 
 
 any one who would give such information as would 
 convict a resident in England of being a popish 
 priest. In 1700 an Act still more stringent and 
 drastic was passed in Scotland. These extreme 
 measures, though called into active operation on 
 certain special occasions, could not be carried out to 
 the letter. They gradually fell into disuse, and in 
 1778 the positively penal clauses in King William's 
 Act were repealed. The negatively penal clauses 
 still continued. Roman Catholics could not enjoy 
 offices of trust ; they were prohibited from taking 
 any part in legislation ; they had no vote in electing 
 a member for parliament. They could not teach 
 schools unless they had been first licensed by the 
 ordinary, and subscribed a declaration of conformity 
 to the liturgy of the Church of England, and waited 
 on the public ordinances of religion in that church. 
 The saying of mass was punishable by a fine of two 
 hundred merks ; the hearing of mass, by a fine of 
 one hundred merks. They were not allowed to 
 keep arms in their houses, or to come within ten 
 miles of London, under a penalty of one hundred 
 pounds ; the same punishment was assigned to any 
 of them going to court to pay respect, with others in 
 their station, to the sovereign ; and if they travelled 
 beyond five miles from their own homes, the punish- 
 ment decreed was the forfeiture of all their worldly 
 goods. If any one left England to be educated in 
 the Romish faith abroad, if any one in England 
 sent such a person abroad for that purpose, or paid 
 in whole or part for his education and support, they, 
 each one, forfeited all legal standing, all right to 
 acquire legacies, all worldly goods and chattels, and 
 
2i8 TJie Church of Scotland, 
 
 their real estate for life. A Protestant who turned 
 Roman Catholic, or sought to proselytise others to 
 the Romish faith, was adjudged guilty of high 
 treason. In 1779 the General Assembly of the 
 Church of Scotland came to a unanimous resolution, 
 of which the following is a portion : * The General 
 Assembly of the Church of Scotland, having taken 
 into their serious consideration the public alarm 
 excited in this part of the United Kingdom from 
 the apprehension of an intention to repeal the laws 
 enacted to prevent the growth of popery, think it 
 their duty to make this public declaration of their 
 sentiments on a subject in which the interests of 
 religion and of their country are so deeply con- 
 cerned. . . . They declare their firm attachment to 
 the principles of civil and religious liberty, and their 
 earnest desire that universal toleration and liberty of 
 conscience may be extended to Protestants of every 
 denomination ; but they think it their duty also to 
 declare their firm persuasion that a repeal of the 
 penal laws now in force against papists would be 
 highly inexpedient ; dangerous and prejudicial to 
 the best interests of religion and civil society in this 
 part of the United Kingdom.' The spirit of the 
 times, however, was tending to the side of forbear- 
 ance and toleration, and the executive became 
 increasingly lenient in administering all penal 
 clauses. The public mind, nevertheless, had to be 
 agitated for half a century before any remedial 
 measures were adopted by the legislature in favour 
 of religious liberty and toleration. In 1828 the Test 
 and Corporation Acts, which required all those 
 appointed to offices in corporations in England to 
 
and Religions Equality. 219 
 
 take the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper according 
 to the rites of the Church of England, were repealed, 
 and the following year saw the passing of the 
 Catholic Emancipation Act. After a lengthened 
 discussion, the abolition of University Tests was 
 carried ; Jewish Disabilities were removed ; dis- 
 senters were allowed to perform marriages in their 
 own chapels. Kindred liberty and toleration, in so 
 far as these were needed, were bestowed on Scot- 
 land. Theological chairs in our universities are still 
 subjected to religious tests ; professors in non-theo- 
 logical chairs are free for twenty-three hours of the 
 day to say and do what they please ; in the one 
 hour they teach, they are prohibited from ' directly 
 or indirectly teaching or inculcating any opinions 
 opposed to the divine authority of the Holy 
 Scriptures, or to the Westminster Confession of 
 Faith,' and from exercising the functions of their 
 offices to the prejudice or subversion of the Church 
 of Scotland, as by law established, or the doctrines 
 and privileges thereof. Members of Parliament, on 
 taking their seats, have to say, in taking the oath — 
 unless they have conscientious objections to taking 
 an oath, in which case an affirmation is permitted to 
 them — * So help me God.' There is also, and above 
 all, the Act for securing the Protestant Religion and 
 Presbyterian Church Government, according to 
 which, among other matters, the successive sovereigns 
 of Great Britain * shall, in all time coming, at his or 
 her accession to the crown, swear and subscribe 
 that they shall inviolably maintain and preserve the 
 foresaid settlement of the true Protestant religion, 
 with the government, worship, discipline, rights, and 
 
220 TJie CJiiircJi of Scotland, 
 
 privileges of the Church, as estabhshed by the laws of 
 this kingdom, in prosecution of the Claim of Right' 
 With the exception of restrictions like these, there 
 is perfect liberty to men of all creeds or of no creed. 
 No reasonable man can complain that there is much 
 curtailment of liberty here ; many men will say the 
 curtailment is proper and wholesome ; but if still in 
 one or two particulars the sphere of liberty may be 
 widened without injury to the public good, there are 
 as true friends of freedom within the Church of 
 Scotland as anywhere else. With the exception of 
 one or two offices, all positions in the government 
 of the country and in the corporations of the United 
 Kingdom may be held in these days by Roman 
 Catholics as well as Protestants, by Nonconformists 
 as well as members of the Church of England, by 
 dissenters as well as members of the Church of 
 Scotland. The schools are open to all pupils ; the 
 universities are open to all students. The best 
 training the State can give may be bestowed on 
 those who believe in this religion or in that, or in no 
 religion whatever ; no trade or profession can be 
 monopolised ; the highest honours and positions are 
 within the reach of all. We approve of religious 
 liberty as one important social factor ; we will stand 
 by it to the last, and we will strive to bring about, 
 as completely as possible, the result that no man 
 suffer a civil wrong from his religious beliefs. 
 
 But what in that case becomes of equality } Is 
 this freedom, now so fully enjoyed, compatible with 
 equality } If Samson is free to develop his gigantic 
 powers of body until thousands of his fellow-men 
 quail before him ; and the doors of the gates of a 
 
 I 
 
and Religious Equality. 221 
 
 city be carried like staves upon his shoulder ; and 
 the pillars of his mighty prison-house bend under his 
 grasp, where is his equality with ordinary men ? If 
 Leibnitz has a mental massiveness that can compre- 
 hend all human knowledge of his period within 
 himself, and is at liberty to w^ork out his powers to 
 the extent of their capability, where is his equality 
 with the untaught multitude, or even the scholars of 
 his time? Suppose a certain piece of land was 
 divided equally between a certain number of farmers. 
 There is equality of possession of land to begin 
 with ; but if you allow individual liberty, the 
 equality v/ill not long exist. The farmers cannot 
 be all equally gifted ; they cannot have precisely 
 the same bodily strength, the same mental foresight, 
 the same worldly ambition. If liberty is accorded 
 to the one with the largest gifts to trade with his 
 talents, and to occupy with his might on his farm, 
 while the others are in comparison with him more or 
 less weaklings, short-sighted blunderers, lazily con- 
 tent with the least that life can be supported on ; 
 then the labour of the one is more wealth than the 
 labour of any of the others, and that inequality, once 
 begun, goes on in a geometrical ratio. The liberty 
 of acquiring property is at the very threshold of all 
 liberty, and with that liberty arise private property 
 and growing worldly inequality. The cry of liberty 
 and equality is self-contradictory. It is the embodi- 
 ment of the spite and hate of the dissatisfied and the 
 unsuccessful. It is the lazy saying to the indus- 
 trious, the reckless saying to the frugal, the vicious 
 saying to the well disposed : 'Cast in your lot among 
 us; let us all have one purse ; share and share ahke, 
 
 p 
 
222 The Church of Scotland^ 
 
 put all the fruit of your labours into a common; 
 stock — or you shall die the death/ Equality can be 
 maintained only by force being continually applied 
 by the lower upon the higher strata of society. 
 Experience in socialistic schemes has shown that 
 that kind of force cannot be long successfully 
 applied, and that consequently inequality is seen to 
 be a necessity of every earthly state and govern- 
 ment 
 
 Liberty and equality cannot exist in partnership. 
 Inequality is a natural necessity ; it is infixed inta 
 the constitution of things in this world. And as 
 the government of this world is a moral govern- 
 ment, evil being on the whole punished, good 
 being on the whole rewarded; as the constitution 
 of things in this world is so preponderatingly oa 
 the side of human good, inequality, emerging as 
 a natural necessity, as bound up in the constitu- 
 tion of things, comes before us with the claim of 
 being conducive to human profit and progress. 
 
 But it may be said : ' Let there be religious liberty 
 to the fullest extent compatible with social welfare, 
 and let there be perfect scope for the inevitable 
 inequalities of religious systems in influence and 
 acceptance ; but let there be no legal recognition 
 of a privileged inequality ; let there be a fair field tO' 
 all, but no favour.' 
 
 This view brings us face to face with the principle 
 of national religion, a subject already ably unfolded 
 in this course of lectures. Still, while resting on 
 what was then laid down, it is impossible not to give 
 some consideration to the matter here. If inequality 
 is a necessity of human life, should not a nation 
 
and Religious Equality. 223 
 
 own and be influenced by that fact ? If privileged 
 inequality is an undoubted national gain in other 
 spheres of human activity, in the senate, the camp, 
 and the school, why should it not be welcomed and 
 upheld in the moral and religious domain ? History, 
 and especially our own history, is in favour of this 
 position. There has been a natural growth and 
 development of recognised and privileged classes 
 among us. 
 
 In the growth of our natural life by historical 
 necessity, men have arisen, when the day demanded, 
 to be its sovereigns and dictators, to lead its 
 armies on the field of battle, to decide contested 
 questions between neighbours, and to instruct the 
 young and rising generation in the understanding 
 of the methods and activities of lives of future 
 usefulness ; and if, without any craft of Church or 
 State, men thus normally and necessarily arose to be 
 governors, commanders, judges, teachers ; and if the 
 origination of these privileged classes was on the 
 basis of national needs, and in response to national 
 desires ; and if the history of these privileged classes 
 has been a history in favour of law and order and 
 progress against chaos, anarchy, and decay ; is there 
 any reason hostile to a privileged class of religious 
 teachers } May there not be an equally rational 
 basis, on the ground of national need, desire and 
 usefulness, for them as for the others 1 Well- 
 informed students of history know that the Estab- 
 lished Churches of these lands, far from being 
 created by the State, contributed to create the 
 State. Established Churches are no artificial pre- 
 ferential adjuncts to the State, but the natural 
 
224 The Clmrch of Scotland, 
 
 expression of the religious sentiments of the people. 
 They sprang into existence, they grew in influence^ 
 they were supported and protected in their position 
 by law, because they supplied needs and fostered 
 ideals of national life. They were lifted out of the 
 common rut of life for the common good. They 
 were called unto a higher place to render greater 
 service. This call arose far more truly from the 
 people than from the crown. The spiritual interest 
 and Christian liberality of many, issued by-and-by 
 in a munificent provision for their support ; that 
 endowed position widened the area of their useful- 
 ness and extended their power, until as a becoming 
 resultant they were acknowledged, supported, and 
 protected as national institutions. In their gradual 
 ascent to this privileged position, the general agree- 
 ment of opinion was that they represented a higher 
 idea of life than was found in war, or the chase, or 
 ordinary activities, and that they were worthy of all 
 the homage and veneration and obedience that could 
 be tendered to them. The inequality involved in 
 their position of privileged superiority was generally 
 acknowledged as a public boon and a national gain. 
 Religious equality then would have meant national 
 ignorance, degradation, and irreligion. The recogni- 
 tion of a privileged class of religious teachers was a 
 wholesome national growth ; the form of the recogni- 
 tion was determined by the genius of the people. 
 At the Reformation the National Church of Scot- 
 land was continued, though on anti-Roman Catholic 
 lines and with diminished revenues. The people, as 
 a whole, wanted the change ; the making of the 
 change was not felt by any considerable section of 
 
and Religious Equality. 225 
 
 the people as a political or religious injustice. The 
 change in the religious sentiment was thus in a real 
 sense national, and the inequality implied in the 
 privileged position of the Church of the Reforma- 
 tion being established by law, was welcomed as con- 
 ducive to the public benefit. At the Revolution 
 Settlement, the inclinations of the people were 
 towards Presbyterianism, and these inclinations 
 were expressed and consolidated by statute. The 
 preference of Presbyterianism to Episcopacy may 
 have been regretted by a few, but no cry of political 
 or religious injustice was raised, because that form 
 of the Christian faith that was predominantly accept- 
 able to the Scottish people was recognised and 
 protected by law. The keenest zealots, then, would 
 have said : * Better that, than that the principle of 
 national religion be surrendered.' A different set 
 of circumstances has since arisen. The Roman 
 Catholics stood apart and worshipped by themselves, 
 when the Reformation took place. At the Revo- 
 lution Settlement, the Christians outside the pale 
 of the national Church were augmented by the 
 Episcopalians. But afterwards, in course of time, 
 these bodies of Christians, external to the national 
 Church, were added to, by new sects that sprung up 
 from within the Church itself The largest of these 
 are well known now under the names of the United 
 Presbyterian and Free Churches. From them — from 
 the former of these churches distinctly and articu- 
 lately, from the latter of them with qualifying 
 phrases — as well as from the intellectual movement 
 that has been influencing this land, as every land in 
 Christendom, with secularism and scepticism, has 
 
226 The Church of Scotland^ 
 
 originated the cry of political injustice against the 
 Established Church of Scotland. 
 
 Dr Heugh, one of the ablest and fairest of all 
 voluntary controversialists, in his Considerations on 
 Civil E stab lisJinients of Religion, thus formulates the 
 old voluntary position. ' Our pleading, whether just 
 or unjust, is not against the establishment of one 
 denomination of Christians, of one form of Chris- 
 tianity, but against the establishment of any 
 denomination, of any form of religion' (p. 13). 
 ' The legislative establishment of the Church implies 
 injustice. Justice requires that the State should 
 extend equal favour to all on whom it imposes equal 
 burdens, and from whom it exacts equal allegiance. 
 A departure from this principle, by demanding the 
 same allegiance from all classes of the community, 
 and imposing the same burdens on them, while 
 injury is inflicted on any one class or favour denied 
 to it_, is injustice. Civil establishments of religion 
 are chargeable with this injustice. They consist in 
 selecting one class of the community as the objects 
 of the favour of the State, in distinguishing that 
 class, not by its services to the State, not by the 
 measure of its allegiance, not by the amount of its 
 burdens, but solely by its opinions, and in extending 
 in a particular form the patronage of the State to 
 this class exclusively. To it, the State grants a 
 standing in law, as a recognised body or corporation, 
 which it denies to others ; it forms a connection with 
 it from which it excludes others ; it secures to it 
 emoluments which it does not secure to others ; it 
 compels by the force of law all other classes to con- 
 tribute their proportion of money, or other property, 
 
and Religions Equality. 22/ 
 
 to the support of this one, which on its part is 
 required to contribute nothing to the support of 
 others. All this is extending a species of favour 
 and support to one class, which is denied to others 
 equally faithful, equally submissive to the State. Is 
 not this essential, unqualified injustice ?' (p. 35 ). The 
 only remedy for this injustice, it is now urged, is 
 religious equality. 
 
 An examination of the grounds of this charge 
 of injustice is indispensable, and may be profitable. 
 It is alleged that the State has selected one class of 
 the community as the object of its favour, and 
 extended its patronage to that class alone, and 
 that all such preference is an insult and injury to 
 many others equally deserving. The answer to this 
 allegation, first of all, is that nothing can be more 
 historically incorrect than to say that the Estab- 
 lished Church of Scotland is the creation of state- 
 craft. It was the people's church from the first. 
 There was no rejection of others equally deserving 
 of state patronage and support. There were none 
 such then in existence. And ought not those who 
 make such a charge, to come into court with clean 
 hands .'' It is not for one moment maintained that 
 the Church herself has been faultless. With a 
 deeper spiritual life, and a more brotherly diplo- 
 macy, she might perhaps have avoided the Secession 
 of last century. With a truer spiritual perspective, 
 and a more appreciative sympathy, she might have 
 avoided the pain and shame of deposing from the 
 ministry some of her most gifted sons in the third 
 and fourth decades of this century. The State, in 
 the early years of Queen Victoria's reign, might, by 
 
228 The Church of Scotland, 
 
 wise conciliation, have undone the mischief which 
 was perpetrated in the reign of Queen Anne ; or the 
 clamant majority, not surrendering their principles, 
 but giving themselves to prayer and enlightenment, 
 and possessing their souls in patience for a few 
 years, might have prevented the lamentable Disrup- 
 tion. But though a measure of blame may cling to 
 the National Church in these and other respects, 
 much more blame must be laid on the shoulders of 
 those who now, in the name of justice and equality, 
 cry out against the mother that bore them. If they 
 did not of their own free-will leave the national 
 Church, they have of their own free will kept aloof 
 from her in these latter days, despite every entreaty 
 and every expression of desire for Presbyterian 
 peace and union. In 1870 the General Assembly 
 recorded 'their hearty willingness and desire to 
 take all possible steps, consistently with the 
 principles on which this Church is founded, to 
 promote the reunion of churches having a common 
 origin, adhering to the same Confession of Faith, 
 and the same system of government and worship.' 
 In 1878 the General Assembly authorised the Com- 
 mittee on union with other churches to approach 
 other churches with an assurance that 'while the 
 General Assembly maintain inviolate the principle 
 of the national recognition of the Christian religion 
 as contained in the Confession of Faith, and the 
 sacredness of the ancient religious endowments, and 
 steadfastly adhere to the doctrine of the Confession 
 of Faith, and the Presbyterian system of church 
 government and worship, they earnestly wish to 
 consider what other churches may state, in frank 
 
and Religions Equality. 229 
 
 and friendly conference, as to the causes which at 
 present prevent the other churches from sharing the 
 trust now reposed in this Church alone.' In the 
 answer that came from the Committee of the 
 General Assembly of the Free Church, there 
 occurred the following significant sentences : ' The 
 Committee feel it to be their duty frankly to call 
 the attention of their brethren of the Established 
 Church to the Claim of Right adopted in 1842, and 
 to the Protest laid on the table of the General 
 Assembly in 1843. It is obvious that the terms of 
 these documents prevent the Free Church from 
 supporting the maintenance of the existing estab- 
 lishment as at present constituted. For these terms 
 would manifestly require a legislative recognition, 
 on the one hand, of the view as to the Scriptural 
 foundation and original character of Scottish ecclesi- 
 astical arrangements exhibited in the Claim of 
 Right ; and, on the other hand, of the Free Church 
 as the true representative of the Church which 
 adopted it in 1842. The Committee represent 
 their conviction that in that Claim and that Protest 
 the principles are set forth on which alone the 
 divided sections of Presbyterianism can ever be 
 reunited.' ' A very large number of the ministers 
 and elders of the Free Church is persuaded that 
 in present circumstances a reunion of the churches 
 in connection with State endowments cannot be 
 accomplished in a satisfactory manner.' This reply 
 closed the door to further correspondence. The 
 Reformed Presbyterian Church and the Synod of 
 United Original Seceders were willing to welcome 
 Presbyterian union, provided all Presbyterians 
 
230 The ChircJi of Scotland, 
 
 accepted their peculiar convictions respecting the 
 descending obligation of the National Covenant of 
 Scotland, and of the Solemn League and Covenant. 
 Union on the basis of a political and social revolu- 
 tion in Church and State was not to be thought of. 
 The United Presbyterian Church frankly declared 
 that ' it is impossible for it to contemplate sharing 
 with the Established Church the trust reposed in 
 it by the State.' * It cannot make any advance 
 towards actual union, in view of the present rela- 
 tions of the Assembly to the State.' No declinature 
 could be plainer than that. 
 
 These Presbyterian bodies, then, have deliberately 
 taken their stand outside the National Church. They 
 have chosen and adhere to their own position. They 
 have preferred the verdict of their own approving 
 consciences to all the benefits the National Church 
 was willing to bestow upon them. They felt that it 
 was better for them to be without, not within her 
 pale. The Church does not keep them without. It 
 has an open door to every one of them who cares to 
 enter. Its parochial machinery is within reach, and 
 at the call of every parishioner. No man need feel 
 himself without a Christian minister, or debarred 
 from enjoying the offices of a Christian church. 
 He has a right to worship in the parish church, and 
 lay claim to the services of the parochial ministry ; 
 and nobly has the national Church within the last 
 forty years striven to make herself commensurate in 
 her ministering service to the wants of all the people. 
 But there are those who will not enter her door, or 
 profit by her agencies. They do this of set purpose, 
 for reasons satisfactory to themselves. On what 
 
and Religious Equality. 231 
 
 ground can it be said that they who act thus are 
 unjustly treated by those who avail themselves of 
 the provision made for national religion? They 
 glory in their separation from the mother-church ; 
 why should they complain? They themselves 
 maintain and perpetuate the causes on the basis of 
 which they cry out that they are unjustly treated, 
 that others have a favour which they do not possess. 
 The ChiLTcJi s privileged position can be vindicated. — 
 Equality may mean something very little or some- 
 thino- very great It may mean that two atoms are 
 equal to each other, or two oceans. It all depends 
 on what things are stated or desired to be equal to 
 each other. If I want to build a house, it will not 
 suffice to have any number of sand atoms on an 
 equality ; I want massive blocks of stone as well. 
 So in society we find that men with exceptional 
 gifts causatively occupy exceptionally elevated 
 positions. Rulers, seniors, fathers, teachers are in 
 a position of privileged superiority as compared 
 with subjects, juniors, children, scholars. Where the 
 privilege is not for selfish ease, but for the public 
 good, inequality is not only justified, but becomes a 
 necessity. Where it is for the purpose of giving a 
 wholesome elementary education to every child born 
 within the kingdom, or for quickening and enlarging 
 that scientific knowledge which, valuable in itself, 
 sooner or later becomes most valuable in its 
 industrial results, or for administering law with a 
 knowledge and independence that would give 
 permanent satisfaction to a community, it is just 
 and expedient that such inequality exist and be 
 operative. If the privilege is to enable a man to do 
 
232 The Church of Scotland, 
 
 the nation's work better than that work could be 
 done without the privilege, a wise and understanding 
 people will welcome such inequality. Such in- 
 equality is not injustice; it is wise expediency. Can 
 the privileged position of the ministry of the Church 
 of Scotland be thus vindicated ? They are recog- 
 nised and protected by law ; they have a moderate 
 independence from consecrated endowments. Have 
 they that position to gratify their own taste and 
 indulge their own inclinations } Is their office a 
 sinecure } Do they give no return for their social 
 elevation t Can it not be shown on a wide induc- 
 tion that they are as worthy of their privileged 
 position as the teachers in our state-aided schools, 
 the professors in our national universities, or the 
 judges in our courts of law } Buckle, certainly not 
 a partial witness, says of the Presbyterian clergy of 
 Scotland : ' One thing they achieved which should 
 make us honour their memory and repute them 
 benefactors of their species. At a most hazardous 
 moment, they kept alive the spirit of national liberty. 
 What the nobles and the crown had put in peril, that 
 did the clergy save. By their care the dying spark 
 was kindled into a blaze. When the light grew dim 
 and flickered on the altar, their hands trimmed the 
 lamp and fed the sacred flame. This is their real 
 glory, and on this they may well repose. They 
 were the guardians of Scotch freedom, and they 
 stood to their post. Where danger was, they were 
 foremost.' Wordsworth has written : * The sounder 
 part of the Scottish nation know what good their 
 ancestors derived from their Church, and feel how 
 deeply the living generation is indebted to it.' The 
 
and Religions Equality. 233 
 
 truth is, the history of Scotland is indissolubly 
 associated with the history of the Church of Scot- 
 land. The battles of the national life have been 
 largely fought on ecclesiastical waters. Round the 
 names of the great reformers, the heroes and martyrs 
 of the Solemn League and Covenant, and the 
 ecclesiastical leaders of every generation down to 
 the present time, have surged the fervours of the 
 nation's spirit. No mean names in literature rise 
 before us ; but perhaps the most signal characteristic 
 of the Church was, that through her inspiring spirit 
 and under her superintending care, a system of 
 education was maintained that reached the humblest 
 grade in social life, and was accessible almost literally 
 to the most secluded hamlet. Boys of pregnant 
 parts might pass from the school of a remote and 
 obscure parish to the national universities. Know- 
 ledge ran to and fro throughout the land, as the 
 ends of the earth have testified. With a pure faith ; 
 with a ritual, simple indeed, yet capable of being 
 expanded into effective fitness to meet the demands 
 of modern tastes and culture ; with but moderate 
 endowments, the Church of Scotland has exercised a 
 healthy influence on every corner of the land through 
 many generations back ; the advocate of order, 
 the favourer of progress ; annihilating to many, 
 in no mean degree, the disadvantages of distance 
 from the large cities ; encouraging learning, stimulat- 
 ing to honest industry, building the family life in 
 purity, unity, and sturdy independence ; blessing the 
 little ones by baptismal dedication, training the 
 young in a godly discipline, gathering unto herself 
 the energies and affections of the mature, soothing 
 
234 The Church of Scotland^ 
 
 the aged, and preparing the dying for their eternal 
 rest ; in all departments of existence, and for all 
 classes of the community, wielding divine powers 
 and conferring immortal blessings. In no previous 
 period of her history has she done such faithful 
 work to the nation as she has done during the last 
 forty years. She never was so filled with, knowledge, 
 so absorbed by zeal, so penetrated by a spirit of 
 holy concern for the great cause of the Head and 
 Master, as in these latter days. The proof of this 
 statement is to be seen in almost every one of her 
 parishes in growing numbers, augmented liberality, 
 and deepened spiritual life. During that period, 
 while carrying on manifold other good works, she 
 has bestowed and invested, for the religious teaching 
 of the people of Scotland, no less a sum than up- 
 wards of two millions of pounds. The people of 
 Scotland, enlightened, and not perplexed by dis- 
 turbing side-issues, may well be trusted to answer 
 the question, whether the privileged position of her 
 ministry is an inequality that must be swept away 
 as a political injustice, or whether it is an inequality 
 that wisely and expediently conduces to the profit 
 and progress of the nation. 
 
 Here it may be said, that supposing there were a 
 measure of truth in the claim that the privileged 
 position of the national Church is a national benefit, 
 is it just to maintain it at the expense of those who 
 feel aggrieved at the inequality } Is it just to 
 compel by force of law reluctant support from the 
 pockets of those who do not want an Established 
 Church.? In short, is it just to tax a landlord who is 
 a dissenter, and who has to support his own church, 
 
and Religions Equality, 235 
 
 for the maintenance of the EstabUshed Church ? 
 This question has been already dealt with in a 
 previous lecture, and it is enough now to say that 
 the endowments of the Church can be taken from 
 her by the State, just as any other kind of property 
 may be taken by the State for national life or well- 
 being ; but that the State has no special hold upon 
 the property of the Church ; that the patrimony of 
 the Church is in no special sense the property of the 
 nation ; that it was freely given by pious men for 
 religious teaching; that it is localised in the separate 
 parishes, and in each parish held by the Church for 
 the religious benefit of the people. What is needed 
 to support the Church in each separate parish is in 
 no sense a tax upon the community. That is recog- 
 nised by law, and from immemorial times, as owing 
 to the Church. It is not paid by the State. The 
 endowments of the Church are not assessments. 
 They are trust-funds for national religion. The 
 stipend is a mortgage on the lands of the parochial 
 heritors. The land came to them by succession 
 with this burden on it ; or they purchased the land 
 without paying for this mortgage. It never was 
 the heritors' private property ; it was always the 
 Church's portion. This was and is the case in all 
 rural parishes. In towns again, in many instances, 
 if not in all, there were teinds for the support of the 
 Church handed over to the municipal bodies as 
 ecclesiastical trustees ; and it is not by any means 
 clear that from first to last the burghs have lost by 
 their connection with the Church. It is true that a 
 sum of ;^i7,ooo is paid annually from the Exchequer 
 for the purpose of raising the stipends of certain 
 
236 TJie CJmrcJi of Scotland, 
 
 ministers; but in justification of that, it has to be 
 remembered that at the Reformation old ecclesias- 
 tical endowments were plentifully appropriated by 
 the State, including the bishops' rents, the property 
 of the Church, now a source of revenue to the State. 
 The Church, however, has no desire and no interest 
 in maintaining any pecuniary liability which can be 
 construed by reasonable and fair-minded men into 
 an injustice. She is not freed from the pecuniary 
 obligations of the world, or the ordinary laws that 
 regulate the same ; her ministers have to live and 
 to pay their way like other men ; and therefore the 
 Church is not ashamed to claim her own, the gift of 
 the pious dead, and to have that patrimony of her 
 own supplemented by the free-will offerings of her 
 worshipping people, in order that she may owe no 
 man in the land anything but love. She seeks to 
 be founded in righteousness, and to aim at those 
 things that make for peace ; and if there are any 
 assessments that press unfairly, and foster bitter 
 feelings in the minds of moderate men, she will, I 
 am sure, consent, as she has consented before, ta 
 their removal, and help, yet again, in the effort. 
 Likewise the Church will welcome and consider, 
 with a view to a rational and amicable solution, any 
 feasible proposal for a more effective use of her 
 endowments, especially in the Highland counties, 
 where so many, though favourable to the principle 
 of the national recognition of religion, are without 
 her pale. 
 
 What has thus been said may suffice to meet the 
 clamant cry of political injustice. We have now to 
 deal with the remedy of the Liberationists for this 
 
and Religious Equality. 237 
 
 ailment. The only remedy, we are told, is religious 
 equality. Favour to one creed or church above 
 others should be abolished, as an insult and injury 
 to all the rest. What does this mean .'* It may 
 mean, and probably does mean in the eyes of secu- 
 larists, agnostics, and atheists, that all religions are 
 on an equality in this respect, that they are all 
 equally false, or equally useless, or equally un- 
 worthy to be taken into account by men of intelli- 
 gence and thought. In the end of last century, 
 France passed through a fiery experience under the 
 sway of this principle ; at the present moment she 
 is treading the same vale of religious indifference. 
 The lessons of ninety years ago were the terror of 
 civilised Europe; the experience of the present gives 
 no hostages of security for a stable future. Stripped 
 of its fine words, it is seen to be rotten to the core ; 
 laid bare in its nakedness, it stands before us as vile 
 animalism. Religious indifference is not, with one 
 or two exceptions, so coarse or unashamed with us 
 as in France ; it does not openly enthrone lust. The 
 great majority of our sceptical writers are argumen- 
 tatively calm and serenely cold towards the uncom- 
 promising Christian faith, as if imbued with the 
 spirit of the poet's lines : 
 
 Leave then thy sister, when she prays. 
 Her early heaven, her happy views ; 
 Nor thou with shadowed hint confuse 
 
 A hfe that leads melodious days. 
 
 Her faith through form is pure as thine, 
 Her hands are quicker unto good ; 
 Oh, sacred be the flesh and blood 
 
 To which she links a truth divine. 
 Q 
 
238 The Church of Scotland, 
 
 But what security have we that the leaders will 
 continue as they are, or that they will be able to 
 control the masses ? There is always the danger of 
 a rapid downward descent. The people of this 
 country, with their eyes opeit, but ojily then, may be 
 safely trusted to reject with disdain the dogma that 
 all religions are equally false or useless. Our char- 
 acter is deeply religious. We have not begun to 
 traverse the road which says that hatred of God is 
 the beginning of wisdom. What Milton says of the 
 Englishman is true also of us : ' The Englishman,' 
 he says, ' of many other nations is least atheistical, 
 and has a natural disposition of much reverence and 
 awe towards the Deity.' National atheism, palat- 
 able to a few, will be abhorrent to the many. But 
 familiarity with an ugly fact, under the specious 
 name of religious equality, may make men first 
 endure, then pity, then embrace what they began 
 by hating. 
 
 It cannot be the meaning of the two great Pres- 
 byterian bodies in Scotland that are agitating for 
 religious equality — that all religions, Mohammedan, 
 Brahminical, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, are on an 
 equality. I will not insult their intelligence by 
 suggesting that Christianity is to be put by them 
 on an equality with other religions. They believe, 
 as well as we, that Christianity is the one absolute 
 religion. They, as well as we, accept the farewell 
 command of our Lord : ' Go ye into all the world, 
 and preach the gospel to every creature.' They 
 work, and give, and pray as well as we, for the 
 coming of the world-wide kingdom of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ. Nor will I insult their sincerity by 
 
and Religiotis Equality. 239 
 
 saying that their attachment to Presbyterianism is 
 fragile — that Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism, and 
 Congregationalism are equally well pleasing in their 
 sight. They, as well as we, desire Presbyterianism, 
 not any foreign manufacture, but our own religious 
 home-growth, rooted in the soil of our country, to 
 continue in its present exalted position, as best 
 calculated to promote the religious interests of our 
 nation. It may be said, likewise, of the minor 
 Christian sects in the country, that there is no 
 wavering as to the claims and mission of Christianity 
 as the one absolute religion, and that their attach- 
 ment to their own ecclesiastical views is distinct 
 and decided. They are not prepared to surrender 
 any of their convictions in order that all professing 
 Christians in this land may see eye to eye, and 
 stand on one platform of ecclesiastical government, 
 worship, and discipline. 
 
 What, then, is meant by this cry of religious 
 equality } It is, we are told, religious equality 
 anioiig all professing Christians in the eye of tJie 
 law. But in the eye of the law all men, not merely 
 all Christians, have already certain human rights 
 in which they are on an equality. Their life, liberty, 
 and property are preserved to all alike. No man 
 suffers in this land from law because he is not a 
 Christian. Our sovereign, indeed, as we have 
 already pointed out, must be a Protestant. There 
 are some mild Christian tests for certain offices in 
 the government and in the universities. Otherwise 
 there is no legal preference. No sect is ostracised. 
 Undoubtedly the Church of Scotland is in a position 
 of special legal strength. Her statutory courts 
 
240 The Church of Scotland, 
 
 have an independence that no other church courts 
 in Scotland possess. She is entitled to old ecclesi- 
 astical endowments. In this privileged position lies 
 the only inequality in the eye of law among pro- 
 fessing Christians. The practical result of the 
 acceptance of the principle involved in the ambitious 
 title of religious equality would be, not the equality 
 of all creeds or negations of creeds in the eye of the 
 law, but simply the humiliation of the national 
 Church to the level of contending sects. It would 
 not be the equality of all creeds or negations of 
 creeds in the eye of the law ; for below religious 
 equality among all prof essing CJiristians there exists 
 a stratum of society which, according to this 
 principle, is not to be on the same platform, in the 
 eye of the law, as professing Christians. There is a 
 mysterious something which professing Christians 
 will have, which the others will not have. All 
 non-professing Christians are excluded from the 
 platform. The irreducible minimum of faith re- 
 quired is what enables a man to say, from his own 
 point of view, ' I profess to be a Christian.' If a man 
 cannot say that, he would suffer as truly an injustice 
 from this privileged position of Christianity as 
 dissenters say they do now in view of the privileged 
 superiority of the national Church. The injustice 
 might be only negatively and by social stigma : still 
 if there be injustice now, the same kind of injustice 
 would continue then, though it be only against a 
 smaller number. Why is not every shred of so- 
 called injustice at once got rid of .-^ Why is not the 
 principle of religious equality carried out to its 
 fullest extent .'* Why is it not made plain that an 
 
and Religious Equality. 241 
 
 atheist may be on the throne, that the Bible must 
 be excluded from every government school, that 
 the Christian law of marriage is not binding on 
 non-Christians, and that the Christian Sabbath is 
 only for those who choose to observe it ? It is 
 because Liberationists who are Christians are better 
 than the principle by which at first they have been 
 vaguely misled ; because, in the interests of national 
 well-being, they desire to prevent the introduction 
 of heathen orgies and vile abominations on the one 
 hand, and to recognise the Bible, monogamy, and 
 the Christian Sabbath on the other, and they 
 cannot accomplish that object without limiting their 
 principle to religious equality among professing 
 Christians ; and because they know well that the 
 country is not prepared to say that any religion or 
 no religion will do as well for the stability and 
 progress of this nation as Christianity. As Dr 
 M'Crie says : 'The system which would equalise all 
 kinds of religion in the eye of the law, which pro- 
 claims universal right and liberty in such matters, 
 and deprives religion and its institutions of the 
 countenance and support of human laws, though it 
 has a specious and inviting appearance, contains in 
 its bowels, like the Trojan horse, a host of evils, 
 which issuing forth would spread devastation around, 
 and soon lay the bulwarks and palaces of Christi- 
 anity in the dust' 
 
 Accordingly the principle is limited. And there 
 can be no doubt that if all professing Christians in 
 this land, looking more at the great verities on 
 which the vast majority of them at all events are 
 agreed, and less at the differences more or less 
 
242 The Church of Scotland^ 
 
 important which divide them, each seeking to 
 sacrifice self the most, in order to honour and please 
 the Great Head of all, were to combine not for 
 selfish, partisan, or political purposes, but in normal 
 necessity out of love to Christ, and desire for the 
 nation's highest weal, they would constitute a com- 
 prehensive national Church, ennobling and purifying 
 this land in a measure heretofore unexperienced. 
 The Church of Scotland will welcome such a 
 reconstruction on the old national lines, with the 
 old national rights and privileges of the people's 
 church, by the Christian people of this land. But 
 if a scheme is put forth which must humiliate and 
 irritate the existing establishment, which fixes the 
 national level at those religious bodies that are 
 now demanding equality, which, if it unhappily 
 succeeded, would be accompanied by shouts of 
 victory from those bodies, soon to be followed by 
 the cry for the spoils of victory, in prestige and 
 influence, throughout the land ; then would ensue no 
 time of love and charity and brotherly kindness, no 
 time for the wise building up in peace and unity of 
 a comprehensive national church ; but a time of 
 strife and narrowing sectarian zeal, a time in which 
 churches would be managed as mercantile concerns, 
 and the weak and poor would be dependent and 
 pauperised, fed only by the crumbs that fall from 
 the tables of the rich. Then, indeed, would ensue a 
 time of grievous inequality, when the kingdom of 
 heaven would be administered here as the kingdoms 
 of this world, when class distinctions would be 
 deepened into dangerous rigidity, when to him that 
 hath of earth shall be given much of heaven, and 
 
and Religious Equality. 243 
 
 from him that hath not of earth shall be taken 
 away what he hath of heaven. 
 
 The basis of the present hostile movement is 
 founded on the plea of justice ! What if we carry 
 this war-cry into our opponents' territory ? Are 
 their proposals just to us? Justice is impartiality ; 
 it is rendering unto all their dues. I will not press 
 the question, ' Is Christianity, as a factor in the 
 government of this nation, to be put on an equality 
 with Mohammedanism, Judaism, Mormonism, Secu- 
 larism, Atheism ' — though a more explicit utterance 
 on this point in many quarters is much to be desired.-* 
 But is it just to Presbyterianism, preferred by four- 
 fifths of this nation, to be put on an equality with 
 Congregationalism, backed up by the merest frac- 
 tion } Is it just to dethrone the national Church 
 from its place, and to dispossess it of its property, 
 while it is doing its duty to the nation, never more 
 so than at the present moment } It interferes with 
 no rights of dissenters ; it leaves them at perfect 
 freedom ; it overshadows them with a benignant 
 influence which would be lost if it were swept 
 away ; it constitutes a standard which stimulates 
 to rivalry and prevents oppression. All that it 
 wants is to be let alone, to be allowed to follow its 
 avocation, and to be protected in its rights. Is it 
 just to molest and harass the Church in its holy 
 calling } What it wants is that others should do to 
 it as it is doing to them. It has been nobly true to 
 its position ; it has laboured to fulfil its obligations. 
 It has stretched out the hand of conciliation, and 
 invited those who have gone from it to become 
 again a portion of it. It has dealt tenderly 
 
244 The Chtirch of Scotland. 
 
 with scruples, and is still waiting to deal tenderly, 
 and the only answer is : '■ We will not accept 
 your gifts ; we will not share your patrimony ; 
 but we want you stripped and desolate.' There 
 is this extremity of harshness set before us, too. 
 We are not only to be cast down from our privi- 
 leged position as the Church of Scotland estab- 
 lished by law ; we are to be despoiled of all our 
 endowments. We are not only to be levelled to 
 their position as non-established ; but we are to be 
 placed below them. Their endowments are to 
 remain in the case of the Free Church, amounting 
 to a capital sum of ;{^7 16,000; in the case of the 
 United Presbyterian Church, to a capital sum of 
 ;^ 1 26,000. But our endowments, except perhaps 
 those gathered within the last generation, are to be 
 taken from us and secularised. They have their 
 churches and manses left ; our first duty, after our 
 downfall, would be to buy back church and manse 
 in every parish — to do this, not gradually as they 
 have done, but at once, without having undergone 
 any training or preparation, lest the highest bidder 
 forthwith snatch the chance away. It is difficult to 
 conceive any considerable body of reasonable men 
 lending themselves to such an unfair, unwise, and 
 oppressive form of dealing with the greatest of 
 Scottish institutions. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE. 
 
 LECTURE VI I. 
 
 DISESTABLISHMENT AND DISENDOWMENT ; 
 THEIR EFFECTS UPON THE PEOPLE. 
 
 By the Rev. James MacGregor, D.D., Senior Minister of 
 St Cuthbert's Parish, Edinburgh. 
 
 |S we look wearily out on the ecclesiastical 
 condition of things in Scotland, the cry 
 comes unbidden to our lips, * How long, O 
 Lord, how long!" That condition is one which 
 ought to fill us all with sorrow and shame. For fifty 
 years, with a passing lull from time to time^ this land 
 has been the theatre of religious war. There has been 
 no true peace within our borders. This unhappy 
 state of things has now reached an acute stage, 
 and the cry for union is in the air. The mind 
 of the nation is awakening to the melancholy 
 spectacle which our broken Presbyterianism pre- 
 sents, and which makes us the laughing-stock of the 
 Romanist on the one hand^ and of the infidel on the 
 other. The conscience of the nation is being 
 
 R 
 
246 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 aroused to the sinful nature and ruinous results 
 of our unhappy divisions. One in every essential 
 element of church life, one in creed, in discipline and 
 government, the three great Presbyterian bodies in 
 the land possess ' a uniformity which Rome might 
 have enjoined, and which Lambeth might envy.' It 
 may fairly be questioned if, in the whole history of 
 Christianity, there will be found another instance of 
 three great churches so absolutely at one on all 
 essential matters, which became separate and con- 
 tinued separate on grounds so small. It is no part 
 of my business to inquire into the causes which 
 have brought about this state of things, nor to appor- 
 tion to this church or to that church the blame, 
 which all alike must share. What I have to do is 
 to speak the truth as I see it and have long seen it, 
 and to say that it is a state of things which every 
 Christian must deplore, and pray earnestly to God, 
 in his good time and way, to bring to an end. It is 
 discreditable to us, in every sense of the term. We 
 have gentle and tender natures among us, tired of 
 our endless squabbles, seeking peace in Episcopacy 
 and even in Romanism ; we have strong-minded 
 and cultured natures, weary of the war of churches 
 and sects, seeing uncharitableness, bitterness, and 
 jealousy elevated into Christian virtues, seeking 
 rest in scepticism ; and between the two, the once 
 strong fabric of Scottish Presbyterianism, torn by 
 internal dissensions, seems to be losing, instead of 
 gaining strength. To say that this state of things 
 is incurable, is to insult our good sense and our 
 Christian feeling. 
 
 Recent events have turned the attention of the 
 
their Effects upon the People. 247 
 
 country, with peculiar intentness, to the ecclesias- 
 tical position, and there can be no doubt whatever 
 of the existence of a deep, wide-spread, and 
 ever-growing desire that our divided Presbyterian 
 Church should again be one. For some time past 
 this desire has been publicly expressed by 
 influential members of the three Presbyterian 
 Churches, and much attention has been given to a 
 draft-bill prepared by Mr Finlay, the member of 
 parliament for Inverness, which has been widely 
 regarded by the public, and by the principal organs 
 of the press, as in its general tenor at least a wise 
 and well-considered measure for the removal of 
 obstacles in the way of union. The proposals in 
 this direction have touched the public mind as 
 the cry for disestablishment never did. As a con- 
 sequence of these proposals, there was recently 
 held in Edinburgh a conference of above one 
 hundred influential Free Church clergymen.^ So far 
 as the voice of these ministers can speak the mind 
 of the church, the hope of a happier day for Scotland 
 is as far off as ever. To the call for union there 
 comes a strong and emphatic ' No !' For right across 
 the path they place the impassable bar of disestab- 
 lishment and disendowment, which will never be 
 willingly accepted by the Church of Scotland, and 
 can never be accomplished except through a process 
 of extreme violence which would preclude the 
 possibility of union for generations to come. But 
 
 ^ The report of that conference, held on i8th January, I read as I 
 sat down to begin this lecture ; and, although it could not be said to 
 be in the least degree unexpected, in common with tens of thousands 
 throughout the land, I read it with feelings of the greatest distress. 
 
248 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 we are not to despair of reunion because the 
 voice of so many Free Church ministers has 
 practically gone against it ; for we have been taught 
 by recent events that the voice of the ministers is 
 not the voice of the people. Nor are we to 
 despair of it, because the leaders of the United 
 Presbyterian Church have also made disestablish- 
 ment the first essential step to reunion, and 
 on that point seem, in the meantime, to be irre- 
 concilable and immovable. This is a question which 
 concerns the laity even more than the clergy ; 
 and it is for them to take the matter up, and with 
 the help of God to conduct it to a successful issue. 
 No such favourable opportunity for the peaceful 
 solution of this great question is likely to occur 
 again in the present generation. 
 
 The Church of Scotland, established and endowed 
 with its precious privileges and glorious traditions, 
 is the common and magnificent patrimony of the 
 Scottish people. It will be the purpose of the 
 following lecture to show what its disestablishment 
 and disendowment mean, and what their probable 
 effects upon the people of Scotland would be. 
 
 What, then, does disestablishment mean t In 
 endeavouring to answer that question, I shall try 
 as far as possible to minimise rather than to magnify 
 the differences of opinion which prevail regarding it, 
 on the part of those who are within and those who 
 are without the Established Church. The hottest 
 quarrels are unhappily quarrels between those who 
 are nearest of kin, and often about words to which 
 different meanings are attached. One would fain 
 hope that it is so here. When we are told by men 
 
their Effects upo?i the People. '2A(^ 
 
 of the highest authority, that * they desire to see a 
 reunion of true Scottish Presbyterians in one church, 
 national iJi its memories, its principles, . and its 
 influence' and who tell us in the same breath, that, 
 
 * as regards the way in which this great result is 
 to be brought about, it must include disestablish- 
 ment and disendowment ; * when we are told by 
 others that 'disestablishment does not involve the 
 cancelling of the present statutes that recognise and 
 support the Christian religion ; ' and by others still, 
 that establishment is a mere sentiment, a mere 
 
 * shadow ' — it is very difficult to believe that by these 
 words they and we understand the same thing. It 
 is quite necessary, therefore, to state plainly and 
 frankly what, in our view of them, these words 
 mean. They mean the destruction of the Church 
 of Scotland. There is no use shutting our eyes to 
 that plain and obvious fact. Were the Church dis- 
 established and disendowed to-morrow, we should 
 not cease to be Christians ; we should not cease to 
 be members of a church ; but we should no longer 
 be members of the ancient and historic Church of 
 Scotland. It would be gone, and gone for ever. 
 That which differentiates it from other Presbyterian 
 churches in this land, in the colonies, and in the 
 United States of America — its State connection, its 
 national character, and its ancient provision — would 
 cease to be. An essential element which the 
 Reformation preserved intact, and which has come 
 down from immemorial time, would be destroyed. 
 
 Disestablishment means the severance of the tie 
 which binds Church and State, and that again 
 means the denationalisation of both. 
 
250 Disestablishment and Disendozvme^it ; 
 
 That State connection goes back unbroken through 
 all the changes of nearly a thousand years. We 
 can point to no definite period of time when that 
 connection began. Long before any formal legisla- 
 tive act bound them together, the Church and the 
 nation grew up as two fair sisters, side by side. 
 The Church was simply the nation in its religious 
 aspect. It is a common assertion in these days 
 that the State selected a particular church as the 
 object of its special favour ; entered into a formal 
 alliance with it, and enriched it with endowments. 
 It is even asserted that ' an Established Church, so 
 far as its revenue is concerned, is a department 
 of State finance.' It has been abundantly shown in 
 previous lectures that that statement is false in 
 history and in fact. 
 
 The formal and legislative connection between 
 Church and State in Scotland, began at the 
 Reformation in 1560. But that formal connection, 
 strictly speaking, cannot be called ' establishment.' 
 That word, though popularly convenient, is historic- 
 ally and scientifically inaccurate. As regards the 
 change which then took place in the Church's creed 
 and constitution, all that the Scottish Parliament 
 had to do was simply to accept and ratify it. 
 The State connection was not the gift of Par- 
 liament ; it sprang simply and solely from the 
 people's will. To an extent which probably holds 
 true of no other, the Church of Scotland, all through 
 its chequered history, has been what it is to-day — 
 the Church of the people. Through its General 
 Assemblies, far more than through its parliament, 
 was the voice of the nation heard. The history of 
 
their Effects tipon the People. 251 
 
 the one has been the history of the other. It was 
 the people who, in 1560, reformed it from popery. 
 It was the people who, in 1592 and in 1690, 
 reformed it from prelacy. It was the people who 
 in times of danger defended its liberties with their 
 lives. It was, and is, the people who govern it, 
 and who have in their hands the management of its 
 affairs ; and it is in the hands of the people that its 
 destinies lie. 
 
 On these ancient constitutional statutes of 1560, 
 1592, and 1690, which are still in force, the existing 
 Church of Scotland rests ; and to erase them from 
 the statute-book would be to erase the most glorious 
 chapters in our national history. We value them as 
 the records of the people's splendid struggles, and 
 as the legislative expression of the people's victorious 
 will. 
 
 In 1560 the Confession of Faith drawn up by 
 John Knox and others, as representing the Reformed 
 Church, was ratified by the estates of parliament, 
 and in 1567 received the royal sanction, when the 
 Reformed Church was declared to be 'the only 
 true and holy Kirk of Jesus Christ within this 
 realm.' It was also statute and ordained that all 
 future sovereigns at their coronation 'shall make 
 promise by oath, in the presence of the eternal God, 
 that during the whole course of their lives, they 
 shall serve the same eternal God to the uttermost of 
 their power . . . and shall maintain the religion of 
 Christ Jesus, now received and preached within this 
 realm.' The great act of 1592, known as the 
 Church's Magna Charta, conferred nothing new, 
 as its very title plainly shows, * Ratification of the 
 
252 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 Liberty of the True Kirk.' In the same way the 
 great act of 1690 was entitled, 'Act ratifying t\\Q 
 Confession of Faith, and settling Presbyterian 
 government' It gave nothing new. It merely 
 ratified what already existed, and settled the Pres- 
 byterian Church on its present basis, as * being 
 agreeable to the word of God, and most conducive 
 to the advancement of true piety and godliness, and 
 establishing of peace and tranquillity within this 
 realm.' 
 
 The Act of Queen Anne, by which the union of 
 the kingdoms was effected, was preceded by an act 
 of the Scottish Parliament. In that act it is pro- 
 vided (1707, c. 6) that the commissioners appointed 
 to arrange the terms and articles of union * should 
 not treat of or concerning any alteration of the 
 worship, discipline, and government of the Church of 
 this kingdom as nozv by law established.^ It was 
 further enacted that the Church as thus settled was 
 * to continue without any alteration to the people of 
 this land in all succeeding generations,* and 'that 
 this act of parliament, with the establishment 
 therein contained, shall be held and observed in all 
 time coming, as a fundamental and essential condi- 
 tion of any Treaty of Union to be concluded 
 between the two kingdoms, without any alteration 
 thereof or derogation thereto, in any sort for ever.* 
 These solemn words may be said to be the last 
 uttered by Scotland as an independent nation. 
 As a further security, it was enacted that the first 
 oath the British sovereign should take on his acces- 
 sion, and prior to his coronation, should be an oath 
 to maintain *the government, worship, discipline, 
 
their Effects upon the People. 253 
 
 rights and privileges of the Church of Scotland.'^ 
 That act of the Scottish Parhament was 'for ever 
 ratified, approved, and confirmed' by the Imperial 
 Parliament ( 5 Anne, c. 8 ). The care bestowed on 
 the protection of the Church by that parliament, 
 composed of fifty Scotch and five hundred English 
 and Irish members, was extreme. It was to carry 
 out the negotiations securely that Principal Carstares 
 was twice successively elected moderator of the 
 General Assembly. The treaty, when it did come, 
 was made with Scotland as a foreign power, and 
 was then ratified by the Scottish Parliament as 
 such. These statutes are still in force, and these 
 are the statutes on which the Church of Scotland 
 rests. *■ These acts are not ordinary legal statutes, 
 but they touch matters of high and holy interest. 
 They are the homage which the kings of the earth 
 have paid to the King of kings, the deeds of nations 
 acknowledging the truth of the living God — of men 
 really bulwarks in the exercise of the authority 
 which God has given to princes to fortify and 
 protect the authority which He has committed, to 
 his Church.' In the General Assembly of 1842, 
 
 1 The following is the oath as taken by the Queen : ' I, Victoria, 
 Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender 
 of the Faith, do faithfully promise and swear that I shall inviolably 
 maintain and preserve the settlement of the true Protestant religion, 
 with the government, worship and discipline, rights and privileges of 
 the Church of Scotland, as established by the laws made there in pres- 
 ervation of the Claim of Rights, and particularly by an Act entituled 
 "An Act for securing the Protestant religion and Presbyterian church 
 government," and the Acts passed in the parliaments of both kingdoms 
 for union of the two kingdoms. So help me God. Victoria R.' 
 On the 20th June in the year of our Lord 1837, Her Majesty's court 
 at Kensington, Her Majesty in the first general Council. 
 
254 Disestablishment and Disendozvment ; 
 
 Mr Alexander Dunlop used these weighty words 
 regarding them. 
 
 These are the statutes in virtue of which the 
 Church of Scotland is to-day an * essential, funda- 
 mental, and unalterable ' part of the British constitu- 
 tion, its creed the law, and its courts, courts of the 
 realm. Only by an act of parliament, and with the 
 consent of the Scottish people, as a party to the 
 Treaty, can the Church of Scotland be severed from 
 the British State, and the Confession of Faith, and 
 the Presbyterian church government and discipline, 
 cease to be the law of the land. The act of parlia- 
 ment which accomplished that would ipso facto 
 repeal the great act of 1690 and those other acts of 
 1592 and 1560 on which it rests. These statutes 
 disestablishment would repeal, and repealing, would 
 erase all recognition of God and of religion through 
 the medium of a Christian Church, from the ancient 
 laws and constitution of Scotland, as effectually as 
 they are obliterated from the constitution of the 
 United States. Before a British constitution could 
 be made, or a British parliament could legislate, 
 or a British ruler sit upon the throne, the religious 
 rights and liberties which our reforming and 
 covenanting forefathers won at great cost of suffer- 
 ing and blood, had to be unalterably secured to 
 their descendants for ever. We entered upon 
 the union as a free and a foreign nation, with our 
 drums beating and our flags flying — a nation which, 
 through seven hundred years, England had tried hard 
 to conquer, and had tried in vain. To disestablish 
 the Church is to alter the British constitution, and. to 
 tear the treaty of union in pieces, for it is to repeal 
 
their Effects upon the People. 255 
 
 by far its most solemn and important article, the 
 article which above all others was specially safe- 
 guarded. That is a task which it is not competent 
 for the British parliament to accomplish, except on 
 the distinct and deliberate demand of the Scottish 
 people. They are the descendants and the repre- 
 sentatives of those who made that treaty ; they were 
 one of the high contracting parties, and it cannot 
 be broken without their consent. They can do it, 
 England as the other contracting party consenting 
 thereunto. But as a pious and patriotic people, 
 justly proud of what their fathers did, they will 
 think twice before they break so utterly with the 
 past, destroy the historical continuity of their 
 Church, rewrite the history of their country, and 
 * undo the work of three hundred years.' 
 
 Such a step would not only thoroughly denation- 
 alise their Church ; it would complete a process 
 which has been long going on, it would denationalise 
 their country. The late Dean Stanley somewhere 
 said that no church on earth holds its annual con- 
 vocation amid circumstances of greater pomp and 
 ceremonial than the Church of Scotland. I can 
 understand neither the head nor the heart of the 
 Scotchman, to whatever church he belongs, who 
 could wish that stately procession of the Queen's 
 representative, the Lord High Commissioner, from 
 Holyrood to St Giles at the annual opening of the 
 General Assembly, swept for ever away. It is the 
 one imposing spectacle which links the present to 
 the past, and which pictures to our eye the time 
 when we had a king and a kingdom of our own. 
 Much of the distinctiveness of our Scottish life is 
 
256 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 passing, and along with it, alas ! much of its pictur- 
 esqueness and charm. Our native Doric is fast 
 dying. Destroy the Church, our most ancient, our 
 most characteristic, and our stateliest institution, 
 which, more than all other forces put together, has 
 made our country what it is, and how very little 
 that is distinctively Scottish will remain ! 
 
 But disestablishment means much more, and much 
 worse than the denationalising of the Church and 
 State ; it means the dechristianising of the State. 
 It means the destruction of national religion, and 
 the dethronement of the Lord Jesus Christ as king 
 and head of this land. All this is involved, as 
 we have just seen, in the complete effacement from 
 the statute-book of those great statutes which for 
 three hundred years have declared the Scottish 
 nation to be a distinctly Christian and Protestant 
 nation. Every future sovereign of this realm would 
 be relieved from the oath by which, through all 
 these years, our rulers have been taken bound to 
 uphold the Protestant faith. It would therefore be 
 a gigantic act of national apostasy ; and its effects 
 upon the people would be such as, in the righteous 
 and unfailing retribution of God, must always follow 
 a great national sin. Our Voluntary brethren 
 have plainly spoken out their mind from their point 
 of view. We must do the same from ours. In 
 regard to this matter, I can speak only for myself, 
 but when I do so, I believe that I express the 
 convictions of the large majority of my countrymen, 
 Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic. 
 We hold it as a fundamental, essential, and 
 everlasting principle, that it is the right and duty 
 
their Effects upon the People. 257 
 
 of nations, in their national capacity, to honour 
 Almighty God and his Son Jesus Christ, and to 
 the utmost of their power to support, defend, 
 and further his cause and kingdom on the earth. 
 To break the connection between Church and State 
 is to destroy the nation's testimony to its faith in 
 God, and its homage to the Lord Jesus Christ. In 
 the words of the protest laid on the table of the 
 General Assembly by Dr Welsh in 1843, we 'firmly 
 assert the right and duty of the civil magistrate to 
 maintain and support an establishment of religion." 
 
 That is the great principle on which we take our 
 stand, and from which we cannot swerve. We should 
 hold it as firmly and proclaim it as fully as we now 
 do, if we were disestablished to-morrow ; and should 
 work and pray for the time when it would be reas- 
 serted in this land. It was a principle strongly, and 
 even passionately held by our great Reformers, and 
 has come down to us unchallenged until quite recent 
 years. 
 
 Voluntaryism is the denial of that principle. 
 It authoritatively asserts that ' the Church is 
 exclusively the institution of Christ . . . whereas 
 the State is specifically an ordinance of man.' * 
 It holds that *it is not competent to the civil 
 magistrate to give legislative sanction to any creed 
 in the way of setting up civil establishment of 
 religion ; and that it is not within his province to 
 provide for the expenses of the ministrations of the 
 Church out of the national resources.' ^ ' It protests 
 
 1 Manual of Distinctive Principles. 
 
 - Doctrine of United Presbyterian Church, as declared during 
 negotiations for union. 
 
258 DisestablisJnnent and Disendowmcnt ; 
 
 against all civil establishment, endowment, or 
 subsidy of religious bodies ; ' and in words which, 
 so far as I know, were never heard in this land till 
 about sixty years ago, it regards *the system as 
 unscriptural, impious, and unjust' But the system of 
 which this is said, is precisely the system which has 
 prevailed in this land since the Reformation, and for 
 ages before it ; and since that which is unscriptural 
 and unjust now, must have always been so, these 
 hard words are applicable to the Church which Knox 
 founded, which Melville reformed, which Carstares 
 restored, although happily these illustrious men did 
 not live to know it. 
 
 We have no fault whatever to find with Volun- 
 taries for holding these views. This is a free country, 
 and they have a perfect right to hold their opinions, 
 and to propagate them to the utmost of their 
 power by the only means which it is competent 
 for them to use — namely, persuasion and conviction. 
 But they must allow us, also, to hold ours. We 
 deny their right on their own principles to call in 
 the aid of the civil arm to prevent the majority 
 of the people of Scotland from carrying out their 
 most cherished convictions. As strongly as they 
 hold their views which they have elevated into 
 principles, and which they have endowed with 
 the promise of the future, we as strongly disown 
 them. We cannot forget, nor should they, that 
 it took the world a long time to discover that 
 establishments are 'unscriptural' and 'unlawful,' 
 and that not only our own Church, but the whole 
 Church of God throughout the world, was hopelessly 
 astray until the flames of the French revolution 
 
their Effects iipon the People. 259 
 
 threw a new and a lurid light upon the subject. 
 This entirely novel doctrine is no older than the 
 century. Previous to that time, it was never heard 
 of among the dissenters of England or Scotland. 
 On the other hand, men like Owen and Flavel and 
 Doddridge and Matthew Henry spoke strongly in 
 favour of establishments ; as did Chalmers and 
 Cunninghame and Buchanan and Begg among our- 
 selves. Dr Peddie in 1800 A.D., said, 'The Associate 
 Synod will admit that legal establishments are 
 lawful and warrantable.' In the testimony of the 
 United Secession Synod published in 1831, it is 
 stated that * religion, abstractly viewed, is essential 
 to the well-being of society, and to the efficient 
 exercise of civil government, and is therefore the 
 concern of legislators and civil rulers, as well as of 
 all others in their several situations.' It was stated 
 in a previous lecture that the very name 'Volun- 
 taryism ' is a new word, and was coined by a 
 minister still living in Edinburgh. If the statement 
 is true, as no doubt it is, it is one well w^orth 
 remembering. The doctrine of Voluntaryism, as 
 firmly held, and incisively expressed by more than 
 one able and excellent man in this land, might, with 
 advantage, behave itself in a less imperious manner 
 towards the older and more venerable doctrine of 
 establishment. For every hundred who have held 
 the one, there have been millions who have held the 
 other. But the young doctrine is bold ; and with 
 the elder it holds no truce, makes no concession, 
 offers no concihation, and holds out no hope of 
 living in peace under the shelter of the same kindly 
 roof As to it, its destiny is to shape the course 
 
26o Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 of future events. As to the other — Delenda est 
 Carthago. 
 
 On which side the ultimate victory will lie, time 
 alone will tell. What is certain is, that there are 
 few questions which more nearly and vitally affect 
 the well-being of the people. The voluntary prin- 
 ciple, as we see it, rests upon a fundamental and 
 a mischievous fallacy, which sooner or later must be 
 fatal to it. That fallacy is this, that the civil and 
 religious affairs of a nation can be sharply separated 
 from one another. It is a fallacy on the face of it. 
 You can no more divorce the spiritual and the civil 
 in human affairs, than you can separate a body and a 
 soul. They touch and cross each other at a thousand 
 points. In the Jewish theocracy Church and State 
 were one ; in the ideal Church of the future, as held 
 out to us in the New Testament, they will be one 
 again. The sharp distinction between Church and 
 State, which is the very essence of Voluntaryism, 
 finds no support in the Old Testament, and the 
 sharp distinction between the secular and the sacred 
 finds no support in the New. Is not the highest 
 of all possible dreams for our poor planet a con- 
 dition where there will be no secular and sacred, 
 but where priest and people shall be one } 
 
 Intimately allied with this is another funda- 
 mental fallacy as to the nature of the State. The 
 State is not a congeries of separate, unconnected 
 persons, like pebbles on the shore, with no 
 relation save that of proximity. It is not, any 
 more than the family, a fortuitous concourse of 
 men and women : it is a united and living whole ; 
 ' an organism with a unity of existence distinct from 
 
their Effects upon the People. 261 
 
 all others and from the individuals of which it is 
 composed.' It is a living thing ; it is born, 
 it acts, it enjoys, it suffers ; it is healthy, it is 
 diseased ; it grows, it decays ; it dies. As with 
 the living body, so with the living State ; if one 
 member suffers, all the members suffer with it. 
 The individuality of a separate life attaches to 
 it ; and each nation has an individuality, and 
 a character, and a life of its own. The German, 
 the French, the Italian, the Spanish nations, 
 the vast conglomerate of the United States, 
 each has its own individual life, its distinguishing 
 features and characteristics marking it sharply off 
 from all others. This organic life of the State is 
 not accidental ; it is essential. It is not merely a 
 human institution, it is a divine ordinance, that the 
 members of a nation, Hke the members of a house- 
 hold, shall have this corporate existence, the one as 
 a family, the other as a state ; and it is no more 
 possible to say that, while the individual members 
 of the State shall honour God, the State itself need 
 not do so, than it is to say that the members of 
 the family shall honour God, but the family itself 
 need not do so. Religion has just as much to do 
 with the functions of the State as with the functions 
 of the family. 
 
 In this organic and corporate life, which essen- 
 tially, and by God's ordinance, belongs to it, the 
 State has functions, duties, obligations, rights, and 
 responsibilities which it expresses and discharges 
 through the government and legislature. It forms 
 treaties, engages in war, enacts laws, represses crime. 
 It has to do with every element and with every 
 
262 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 force which is a factor in the national welfare, and 
 certainly not least with religion, which is the 
 mightiest force of all. It is not like a gigantic 
 school-board, or prison-board, or board of trade 
 having special features and phases of the national 
 life to deal with. It is the expression and the 
 exponent of the national life as a whole, and of all 
 the innumerable elements of which it is constituted. 
 In a sense different from that which applies to the 
 separate individuals who compose it, the State is the 
 subject of the providential government; it is account- 
 able to God ; it is by Him rewarded and punished. 
 They have an hereafter ; it has not. Whatever its 
 rewards and punishments, these are received and 
 exhausted here. When they come, they fall upon 
 the body corporate. They have no regard to 
 separate persons. They make no distinction be- 
 tween the good and the bad. It is the nation as a 
 nation that is dealt with. The evil share with the 
 good in the blessing, the good with the evil in the 
 curse. How large a portion of the Old Testament 
 is occupied with God's dealings with nations outside 
 the chosen people in the way of rewards and punish- 
 ments ! The whole history of the world bears 
 attestation to a moral order and to a moral governor 
 among nations, as distinguished from the individuals 
 who compose them. 
 
 But if God bears this relation to nations as such, 
 do not nations, as such, bear a corresponding rela- 
 tion to him .'* If He sends blessings upon nations 
 as such, are they not bound, in their national 
 capacity, to recognise and honour the source from 
 which their blessings flow .? Shall the individual 
 
their Effects upon the People. 263 
 
 living being be bound to pay acts of homage to this 
 bountiful benefactor, and shall not the corporate 
 living being be bound to do the same? The 
 inevitable conclusion is that expressed by Mr 
 Gladstone : * A nation then, having a personality, 
 lies under the obligation, like the individuals com- 
 posing its governing body, of sanctifying the acts 
 of that personality by the offices of religion, and 
 thus we have a new and imperative ground for 
 the existence of " State religion/' '^ 
 
 There is more to be said. It so happens that the 
 nation to which we belong, in its organic life, is 
 Christian. That is its very greatest element and 
 characteristic. An infidel or an atheist could not sit 
 upon its throne. Its structure is Christian. The 
 vast mass of its people are Christian. Its laws, its 
 customs, its institutions are Christian, The forces 
 which have shaped its history, and which have pro- 
 duced and perpetuated its prosperity, are Christian. 
 It is there that its strength and greatness lie. 
 
 As there may be sores on an otherwise healthy 
 body, so upon the body politic there may be such 
 gangrenes as infidelity and atheism. These, how- 
 ever, are not its strength, but its weakness. It is 
 strong and healthy, not because of them, but in 
 spite of them. If they were to obtain the mastery, 
 the organic life of the nation would be either 
 changed or die. It is not only the right, but 
 the bounden duty of a State so organically 
 constituted as ours, in its corporate and State 
 capacity, to acknowledge, reverence, and obey the 
 
 1 The State — its Relation with the Chtirch, by W. E. Gladstone, 
 M.P., 1839. 
 
264 Disestablishment and Disendozvment ; 
 
 Lord Jesus as its chosen and covenanted King and 
 Head. But if this be so, the unanswerable question 
 comes to be, as Dr Buchanan put it in 1835 : *Hovv 
 can a kingdom or nation, as such, serve the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, but by professing its allegiance to him 
 through the medium of its legislature and laws, 
 the only channel through which the minds of the 
 people in their collective capacity can be expressed ? ' 
 and how, we may add, can that allegiance be 
 expressed except through the legislative recognition 
 of the Christian religion and of a Christian Church ? 
 
 It is on this fundamental and central truth that 
 this nation, in its organic and corporate life, is 
 essentially a Christian nation, and, so far as Scot- 
 land is concerned, essentially a Presbyterian nation, 
 that the doctrine of a Presbyterian establishment 
 rests. It is one of the fundamental fallacies, and 
 one of the most mischievous errors of Voluntaryism, 
 that this great central truth is practically ignored or 
 denied. The false principle that ' the State, in its 
 State capacity, is a sceptic and has no creed,' has- 
 been pronounced to be ' the root and justification of 
 Voluntaryism, and the true meaning of it' 
 
 There is no via media, no resting-place between 
 the conception of the State as sceptic, and the 
 conception of the State as, in some form or other, 
 allied with religion and a church, which is simply 
 religion embodied and organised. However many 
 turns you may take, and however much ingenuity 
 you may expend, the Voluntary principle, carried to 
 its logical issue, leads straight up to this, that the 
 State as a state knows no God and no religion, has 
 no religious character and no religious responsibility. 
 
their Effects upon the People. 265 
 
 It has been held to be the very glory of the con- 
 stitution of the United States that the name of 
 God is never once mentioned in it, and that you 
 could not tell, after the most careful perusal, whether 
 it was drawn up for a Christian or a Mohammedan 
 people. It has been said that 'the relation of civil 
 government to Christianity in this country really 
 consists hi having no relation at all. This is the 
 American doctrine ; and if there be any departure 
 therefrom in specific instances, it is so by a plain 
 inconsistency with the doctrine itself, which time 
 will remove rather than confirm and perpetuate/ 
 That is the clear and consistent statement of the 
 principle of so-called * religious equality,' ' a fair field 
 and no favour,' and 'even-handed justice to all.' But 
 both there and here, men are better than their 
 principles, and shrink from carrying them clearly 
 and sternly to their logical issues. So great are the 
 evils involved in, and arising from, this sceptic con- 
 ception of the State, that an association numbering 
 some of the leading names in America, was formed 
 some years ago for the purpose of 'securing such 
 amendments to the constitution of the United States 
 as will suitably express our national recognition of 
 Almighty God, as the author of national existence, 
 and the source of all power and authority in civil 
 government, and of Jesus Christ as the ruler of 
 nations, and of the Bible as the fountainhead of 
 law, and the supreme rule for the conduct of 
 nations.' That is a noble aspiration, but it is a 
 manifest tampering with the principle that the State 
 is a sceptic ; and the principle is worthless which 
 you cannot carry through, and which, in order to 
 
266 Disestablishment and Disendoivment ; 
 
 meet difficulties, you are obliged to modify at every 
 turn. 
 
 Here, too, in this land the most uncompromising 
 advocates of Voluntaryism, men who could find no 
 room in a reconstructed church for those who differ 
 from them, are much better than their principles ; 
 for while declaring on the one hand that *the 
 magistrate has no right of control in the things of 
 religion, or within the domain of conscience,' they 
 declare on the other that he * ought to further the 
 interests of the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ 
 among his subjects in every way consistent with its 
 spirit and enactments, and that he ought to be ruled 
 by it in the making of laws, the administration of 
 justice, the swearing of oaths, and other matters of 
 civil jurisdiction.' These excellent principles, which 
 came out in the negotiations for union between the 
 Free and the United Presbyterian Church, are not 
 Voluntary principles, but manifest departures from 
 them, and were accordingly, we understand, repudi- 
 ated by the more thoroughgoing Voluntaries. While 
 we cannot but attach, and justly attach, great weight 
 to the interpretations which able and excellent men 
 have put upon their own principles, it is not with 
 their interpretations, but with the principles them- 
 selves, that we have to do. And what we contend 
 is, that the only legitimate and logical issue of 
 Voluntaryism, pure and simple, and as authorita- 
 tively defined, is not national religion, but national 
 scepticism. 
 
 The victory of Voluntaryism will be the over- 
 throw of establishment. It is our duty to indicate 
 what, from our point of view, the effect upon the 
 
their Effects tip on the People. 267 
 
 people will be. The direct and inevitable result 
 will be the expulsion of religion from our public 
 schools. The day that sees the Church and the 
 State divorced, will see religion and education 
 divorced. With happy and human inconsistency, 
 the most uncompromising opponents of a State- 
 paid religion to grown-up people in the national 
 Church have been the warmest defenders of State- 
 paid religion to their little children in the national 
 school. That is a position which cannot long be 
 maintained ; and already the cry to abandon it 
 has gone loudly forth. To its national Church 
 and its religions national schools, Scotland owes all 
 in it that is best. There the moral and intellectual 
 fibre of the people was formed. Through long ages 
 they have been her glory and strength : when she 
 throws away the one, she will have thrown away the 
 other ; and the effects upon the national character, 
 in the course of a few generations, of an education 
 given to our youth from which the religious element 
 has been, as far as possible, eliminated, will be 
 disastrous beyond all human measurement. It will 
 be a calamity whose ruinous and far-reaching results 
 future generations will bitterly deplore. At that 
 parting of the ways between the old and the new, 
 there may well be a signpost with the words : 
 * Here, in its system of godless schools, our country 
 entered on the road to ruin.' To those who are at 
 all acquainted with the formidable forces which in 
 this land, and in this day, are working for infidelity, 
 and to an extent far beyond what is generally 
 known, are poisoning the minds of our youth of both 
 sexes, the disestablishment of a national Church, 
 
268 Disestablishment and Disendowjnent ; 
 
 and the expulsion of religion from our public 
 schools, must seem little short of an act of national 
 insanity. This will be a long stride in the direction 
 of national scepticism.^ 
 
 And along with the expulsion of religion from 
 State-endowed schools, there will follow in due time, 
 unless we are happily inconsistent, its expulsion 
 from all State-paid institutions whatsoever. The 
 State will have no right to appoint chaplains to 
 the navy and the army, and to invite or compel our 
 sailors and soldiers to attend divine service. Reli- 
 gion, with its hallowed teaching and soothing offices, 
 must be denied to the dying in our State-supported 
 poorhouses and hospitals. Our marriage laws, and our 
 Lord's Day, must be deprived of all religious sanc- 
 tion. Oaths of office must be universally abolished. 
 Parliament must no longer be opened with prayer, 
 and the reverent invocation of the blessing of God 
 upon its members and their deliberations, must no 
 longer find a place in the speech from the throne. 
 When, in the discharge of that most solemn duty 
 which it falls to a human being to perform, the 
 judge puts on the black cap and pronounces the 
 awful sentence of death, there must be no intrusion 
 on the domain of his poor fellow-creature's con- 
 science, no entreaty to occupy his remaining time in 
 making his peace with God, and no prayer for God 
 
 ^ 'The present generation,' says Professor Flint in Anti-Theistic 
 Theories, 'and especially the generation which is growing up, will be 
 obviously very specially exposed to the dangers of materialism. As 
 much so, perhaps, as any generation in the history of the world. . . . 
 Atheistical materialism may at no distant date, unless earnestly and 
 wisely opposed, be strong enough to undertake to alter all our instittt* 
 tions, and to abolish those which it dislikes.' 
 
their Effects ttpon the People. 269 
 
 to have mercy on his soul. Let us hope and 
 believe that in this Christian land it will never come 
 to that ; but let us at the same time wisely abstain 
 from any measures which have even the remotest 
 semblance of pointing in that direction. 
 
 There are thoughtful men within the Free Church 
 itself, who * detect in the cry for disestablishment 
 that atheistic spirit which is at this day diffused as 
 a miasma all over Europe.' If we turn our eyes to 
 France, the land where a century ago Voluntaryism 
 was born, we find that 'the Revolution delights in 
 calling itself atheistic,' and that a desperate effort is 
 being made by the Republican government to 
 * sever the tie, not between the State and this or 
 that Christian church, but between the State and 
 Christianity.' It is Frenchmen themselves who tell 
 us that * the democracy has abolished God,* that 
 a perfidious war is being waged against religion 
 altogether, and that 'the name of God has been 
 proscribed from the school and from the hospital.' * 
 
 If the direct effect of the victory of Voluntaryism 
 will be the legislative divorce of religion from 
 national education, the indirect and only somewhat 
 less disastrous effect will be the divorce of relieion 
 from the nation's political life. A generation which 
 has been trained to believe that the State has 
 nothing to do with religion, will not be slow in 
 coming to believe that religion has nothing to do 
 with the State. We have got much too long a way 
 in that direction already. More and more religion 
 
 ^ ' Others,' says M. Paul Bert, * may occupy themselves, if they will, 
 in seeking a nostrum to destroy the phylloxera ; be it mine to find one 
 that shall destroy the Christian religion.' 
 
2'jo Disestablishtnent and Disendowment ; 
 
 is being relegated to the conscience and the closet. 
 It is passing into a maxim that a man's religion has 
 nothing to do with his politics. This, which to some 
 seems a self-evident truth, has only to be looked at 
 to be seen to be the hoUowest of all hollow sophis- 
 tries, a vile and venomous lie. You cannot separate 
 the beneficent forces of religion from the vv^ide realm 
 of politics without doing serious injury to both. 
 A false principle like that prevalent among a people, 
 is a fatal poison. We may well put to-day the 
 question of Augustine : ' Will any one in his right 
 wits say unto kings, It doth not concern you who 
 shall be religious, or who shall be sacrilegious 1 ' It 
 is taught in the United States that * Christianity 
 has as little to do with the law, and the law with 
 Christianity, as possible ; that electors have nothing 
 to do with men's religious sentiments . . . and that 
 religion is nothing at an election.' The result, in 
 the words of one of its greatest and wisest men, is 
 ' that portentous, ever-increasing political corruption 
 which already perplexes and appals the nation.' 
 Shall we, in any shape or form, foster among 
 ourselves principles which are followed by such 
 demoralising effects } To lower in any way, and to 
 any, even the smallest degree, that high standard of 
 political purity which has hitherto characterised 
 our public men, and which has formed a happy 
 contrast between our own public life and that of 
 some other nations, would be a colossal crime. It 
 would help to demoralise the nation, to undermine 
 the foundations of our empire, and to pollute the 
 fountains of our political and social life. To teach 
 a Christian people directly by word, or indirectly by 
 
their Effects upon the People. 271 
 
 a false system, that they have nothing to do with 
 the religious character and sentiments of the men 
 who represent them in parliament, who make the 
 laws which will govern them and their children, and 
 who hold in their hands the destinies of this great 
 empire, is to teach a pernicious error. 
 
 It is because we fear that a victorious Voluntaryism 
 fftight tend in this direction, that we so greatly 
 dread it. Kept in a subordinate place, it may be 
 useful to the community by giving prominence to 
 certain aspects of truth which are liable to be 
 forgotten ; but raised to supremacy in the Church of 
 this land, it would, we humbly fear, be an uncon- 
 scious and unintentional, but nevertheless a powerful 
 and perpetual propagator of the false and fatal 
 principle that religion and politics must be kept 
 apart. 
 
 Such is the light in which, at a grave crisis, we 
 look at this grave question. On what we conceive 
 to be the strong and sure ground of national 
 religion, and of a Christian State, by the help of 
 God, we take our stand. Our Bibles, as we read 
 them, and as our fathers read them before us, our 
 history, our principles, the memory of our mighty 
 dead, forbid us to consent to an act of disestab- 
 lishment. If the great and solemn trust which 
 has come down to us from our fathers, is to be 
 taken from us, it must be torn from us by violence. 
 For no consideration whatever, and from dread of 
 no consequences whatever, can we voluntarily con- 
 sent to give up a vital principle which we find 
 imbedded in the Word of God, which was passion- 
 ately held by our great Reformers, and through 
 
272 Disestablishi7ient and Disendownient ; 
 
 all the change and turmoil of our ecclesiastical 
 history has never been assailed until quite recent 
 years, and whose maintenance we conceive to be 
 essential to the highest and holiest interests of our 
 native land. 
 
 We now turn to the simpler and smaller question 
 of disendowment. 
 
 The ancient endowments of the Church from 
 all sources may be roughly stated as amounting 
 to three hundred thousand pounds a year.^ This 
 annual sum may be briefly called the patrimonial 
 property of the Church, held in trust for the 
 maintenance of religion, and for the free administra- 
 tion of religious ordinances throughout the land. In 
 dealing with this property, it is important to keep 
 certain elementary facts clearly in mind, (i) It is 
 but a small part of the much larger property which 
 belonged to the Church at the Reformation, and of 
 which it was despoiled by the great landowners, 
 (2) The teinds from which the endowments come 
 are in no sense whatever a tax upon the land. 
 ' They have always been a separate estate. . . . They 
 are a heritable property capable of being bought 
 and sold, but always under burden of the stipend of 
 
 ^ The total revenue from teinds in 1875 was ;(^235,759 ; Ex- 
 chequer grants — which are in reality partial payments out of the old 
 bishops' rents, and which were Church property taken possession of 
 by the Crown, ;!^i 6,300; burgh and other local funds arising from 
 appropriated Church lands, &c., ;!^23,502. These sums may be raised 
 to ^{^330,372, by including three other items — namely, communion 
 elements, /"5395 ; annual value of manses, ^^24,733, and annual value 
 of glebes, ;^24,68i. Unexhausted teinds amount to ;^I34,I43, which, 
 valued and commuted, might bring a capital sum of ^^20,000. The 
 annual voluntary income of the Church, for Church work in 1883, 
 was ^^377,723. — Handbook of Church of Scotland. 
 
their Effects upon the People. 273 
 
 the parish minister.' ^ (3) We can point back to 
 no definite period of time when these endowments 
 began. Without doubt they came to some, perhaps 
 to a large, extent from the Culdees, who resembled 
 Presbyterians more nearly than Roman Catholics. 
 There is no property in this land which is held by 
 so old and so sacred a title. (4) These endowments 
 are in no true sense the property of the State. 
 They were neither created nor conferred by Parlia- 
 ment. The Government has from time to time 
 recognised the change in the form of government 
 of the church which used them, but it has never 
 interfered with their application to religious uses. 
 They are not, therefore, strictly speaking natioiialy 
 except in the sense in which all property, and espe- 
 cially all ancient endowments, may be said to be 
 national. (5) They are more strictly speaking, /^r^- 
 chial, having been originally given, and subsequently 
 employed on the ancient principle, decivKB debentiir 
 parocJio. They were primarily and mainly the 
 voluntary contributions of private individuals for 
 the maintenance of religious ordinances, and for 
 pious purposes within the limits of a distinctly 
 defined parish, and to this day the 'teinds are 
 applied to a large extent to the stipends of the 
 parishes from which they are drawn.' In no respect, 
 therefore, except in the element of time, do they 
 differ from the endowments of the quoad sacra 
 parishes of the present day. Both were voluntary 
 gifts ; both were given for religious purposes ; 
 in both cases these purposes were to be secured 
 through a special church or religious organisation, 
 1 Nenion Elliot, S.S.C, Clerk to the Court of Teinds. 
 
274 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 and within the Hmits of a defined territory. Sup- 
 posing, therefore, we admit that these endow- 
 ments are national property, they are national 
 property y^r distinctly religions purposes. They are 
 precisely on the same footing as any other ancient 
 or modern endowments. The legislature may 
 step in and re-arrange them, as it recently did with 
 our great educational endowments ; but it would be 
 a distinct violation of the laws of right and wrong, 
 to divert them altogether from the design of their 
 original donors, unless they were useless or mis- 
 chievous in their operation. (6) For close on two 
 hundred years they have been the unbroken posses- 
 sion of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, which has 
 faithfully employed them for the purpose for which 
 they were given, and in so doing has promoted the 
 highest and the best interests of the land. Where 
 is the property in this land which is held by a more 
 valid title in law or in equity, or whose owner, past 
 or present, can give a cleaner account of service done 
 to the people and the state ? (7) These endow- 
 ments we regard as the common heritage or 
 patrimony of Scottish Presbyterians, both of those 
 who are in possession, and of those who have, we 
 trust, temporarily, precluded themselves from the 
 enjoyment of their benefits. It is a trust held by 
 its present owners, not for their own selfish ends, 
 but for the good of the people, and especially of the 
 poor of the land, and in the interests of posterity. 
 
 What are we to do with this Scottish Church 
 property of ;^300,ooo a year .? That at this moment 
 is a matter of high dispute. There are three answers 
 to that question : (i) The continuance of the present 
 
their Effects upon the People. 275 
 
 system. (2) Re-arrangement and more equitable 
 distribution among all Presbyterians through a 
 reunited church. (3) Disendowment with or with- 
 out the consent of the present owners. Of these 
 three plans let us pass by the first. The second, 
 redistribution over the whole area of Scottish Pres- 
 byterianism to all who will accept, will, we trust 
 and believe, approve itself to the people of this land 
 as by far the wisest and the best. It does not fall 
 within the province of this lecture to enter in any 
 detail into the precise method by which this may be 
 effected. But with regard to the plan itself, there is 
 this to be said, that there is no other possible way 
 in which these endowments can be employed more 
 in keeping with their immemorial usage and original 
 design, more for the benefit and less for the injury 
 of the nation, and more in conformity with the prin- 
 ciples of equity and justice, than in the maintenance 
 of religious ordinances in a great national Presby- 
 terian Church, embracing within its folds some 
 eighty-five per cent, of the entire population. It is 
 quite true that it does not take into account the 
 remaining fifteen per cent, including Episcopalians, 
 Independents, Roman Catholics, and others. If that 
 is a hardship, it is a hardship of the slightest 
 kind, for it is only leaving out those who for two 
 hundred years were never in. It must be remem- 
 bered, on the one hand, that imperfection attaches 
 to all human arrangements, and that, when dealing 
 with an actual and not an ideal state of things, we 
 must accept that arrangement which, on the whole, 
 is the best ; and it must be remembered, on the 
 other hand, that in the manifold benefits which 
 
2/6 DisestahlisJiment mid Disendowment ; 
 
 would accrue to the nation from a great national 
 Church, every citizen would be a participant, to 
 whatever denomination he belonged, or even if he 
 belonged to no denomination at all. 
 
 If there is any truth in the observations which 
 have just been made, it is difficult to see what and 
 where the insuperable obstacle can be to prevent a 
 voluntary from adopting such a plan, and from 
 becoming a member of a church in which such 
 endowments are so employed ; for these endow- 
 ments, as we have seen, were purely voluntary gifts. 
 Side by side with them there would, in a united 
 church, be the amplest scope for the great voluntary 
 principle that Christian churches are to regard pro- 
 vision for the support of their ministers as part of 
 their Christian duty. In Canada, where our three 
 churches at home had their exact counterpart, the 
 endowments of one of them formed no barrier to 
 union, although, as is not the case here, these endow- 
 ments came directly from the State. In regard to the 
 colonial clergy reserves, the two eminent leaders of 
 the United Presbyterian Church recently said : ' We 
 believe that they stood upon an entirely different 
 footing" from the national endowments of this 
 country. But we feel that on our own ground, even 
 had the case been parallel, the objections greatly 
 outweigh any such example, and it is our belief that 
 the mass of United Presbyterians would not only 
 decline such an arrangement, but, if it were earnestly 
 attempted, would oppose it.' ^ As to the first of 
 these statements, there can be no higher authority 
 than one of the ablest men in Canada, who took a 
 
 ^ Letter from Dr Cairns and Dr Ker, Scotsman^ Jan. 23, 1886. 
 
their Effects upon the People. 277 
 
 foremost part in effecting the union of the Canadian 
 churches, Principal Grant of Queen's College, King- 
 ston. This is what he says in a letter to the writer, 
 of date 3d February 1883 : 
 
 ' It seems to me that the union of the three great Presby- 
 terian churches in Canada proves that a similar union ought 
 to be effected in Scotland on the basis of each church con- 
 tributing to the united Church all the special privileges and 
 possessions that it now has. We had in Canada United Pres- 
 byterian ministers and people, and Free Church ministers and 
 people, who disliked the idea of a church having a university, 
 or having endowments, that had been originally given by the 
 State ; yet they never dreamed of saying to us : " You must give 
 up your university and your endowments before we can unite 
 with you." Not only so, but they were willing that, wherever 
 life interests were satisfied, the united Church should get the 
 benefit of these endowments, the only sorrow, I ain sure, being 
 that the total a77iou7tt was not greater. We had here all the 
 varieties of opinion that you have in Scotland, and though 
 your public endowments and recognition by the State are of a 
 different character, the principle of your public endowments 
 and ours is the same. We got ours because we were " in con- 
 nection with the Church of Scotland," and we got them in the 
 form of moneys that accrued to the State from public lands. 
 If it is wrong to share in these on one side of the Atlantic, 
 it must be equally wrong on the other. The advantages 
 outweighed with all but a few cranks on both sides, mere 
 prejudices and " fancy " objections.' 
 
 With regard to the second statement of the 
 voluntary leaders, I have only to say that where 
 there is so loud and so clear a call, in the providence 
 of God, as there is to-day for Scottish Presbyterians 
 to embrace, where interests of such enormous 
 magnitude are imperilled by our divisions, where 
 there is so little to sever and so much to unite, it 
 will be the saddest of all sad things to see the 
 
2/8 DisestahlisJwient and D is endowment ; 
 
 gladdening hope of a reconstructed Church wrecked 
 for ever, if that were possible, by the immovable 
 determination of a few excellent men, that what 
 was done on the one side of the Atlantic shall not 
 be done on the other, and that our ancient endow- 
 ments must be secularised. 
 
 That is what the third plan of dealing with the 
 endowments comes to. Disendowment means the 
 secularisation of the Church funds, their alienation 
 from religious uses, at a time and in circum- 
 stances in which they are more needed than they 
 ever were. It practically means the sweeping 
 away of the present parochial and territorial system, 
 the best ever devised for supplying the spiritual 
 wants of a country. It is the aim and object of that 
 system to map out the land, both in town and 
 country, into parishes of manageable extent, and to 
 provide these parishes with a fully-equipped ecclesi- 
 astical organisation. It aims not merely to supply 
 adequate church accommodation and religious ordin- 
 ances for the whole body of the people, but, what is 
 of still greater importance, to secure the pastoral 
 superintendence of every home. It is by the loving, 
 personal intercourse of soul with soul, by the regular 
 and kindly visitation of the haunts of poverty, 
 misery, and crime, by carrying the comforts and 
 hopes of religion to the homes of the weary and the 
 heavy-laden — it is by this method and by this alone 
 that the lapsed masses can be reclaimed, and empty 
 churches filled. We may cry for ever from the high 
 places of the field, and cry in vain. The most 
 powerful utterances of the pulpit are not loud 
 enough to penetrate the dingy slums where so 
 
their Effects tipon the People. 279 
 
 many of our deserving as well as our depraved 
 poor are housed. Nothing but the preaching of 
 kindly and loving intercourse will ever penetrate 
 there. This is a work of the most pressing kind 
 which the haphazard efforts of Voluntaryism can 
 never adequately accomplish. Although the terri- 
 torial system, mainly through our divisions, has in 
 our large towns been to a great extent a failure, it 
 is only by the more effective carrying out of that 
 system that the work can ever be done. Far short 
 though it may have come of it, the aim and ideal of 
 an Established Church are, through the division 
 and multiplication of its parishes, to secure that 
 there shall be no portion of the area of the soil of 
 Scotland, no matter how densely peopled, for the 
 spiritual welfare of whose inhabitants there shall 
 not be adequate provision. It has sought, and still 
 seeks, to provide a machinery whereby the benign 
 influences of the gospel, and God's great message of 
 mercy and love, shall be brought to every door 
 throughout the land ; to secure that in every parish 
 there shall be a church where the living shall be free 
 to worship, and a churchyard where the dead shall 
 be free to lie where their fathers were laid before 
 them, and where their children shall be gathered 
 beside them when their day's work is done ; to 
 provide an educated gentleman specially trained 
 and decently supported, without burdening his 
 people, whose one work in life shall be to conduct 
 the service of the sanctuary from week to week, and 
 to carry the ministrations of religion from door to 
 door, and to throw its hallowing influence over all 
 the events of humble life — to baptise, instruct, and 
 
28o Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 marry the young, to counsel the Hving, to comfort 
 the dying, to bury the dead, to insure that there 
 shall be no dying ear on which the accents of 
 mercy shall not fall, and no weary soul who 
 shall not hear of a heavenly rest — that is the 
 object which an endowed and established Church 
 seeks to accomplish, and a greater or more benefi- 
 cent object it is impossible for the mind of man to 
 conceive. That, no doubt, may be said to be 
 an ideal picture, and that, however beautiful in 
 theory, it has too often been but poorly realised 
 in fact That is true, just because it is true 
 that imperfection cleaves to all human things. 
 But it is still more true that there is no country 
 on the face of the earth where that picture has 
 been more fully and faithfully realised than in 
 our own. No more comely, no more saintly, and, 
 taking the mass of its ministers all through its 
 history, no more cultured church was ever given to 
 a people ; and no church has a better record to show 
 of good service done for God and country. Scot- 
 land has cause to be grateful for those endow- 
 ments which have made the parochial system 
 what it is, which have come down as a spiritual 
 patrimony, secured in the soil, and which, through 
 all the changes of centuries, have provided an open 
 church, and the free ministration of religion to the 
 people of this land. To this slender, but per- 
 manent provision for religious instruction and 
 worship, more perhaps than to any other cause, 
 do the Scottish people of to-day owe the character 
 they bear, and the place they hold among the 
 nations of the world. These endowments are, above 
 
their Effects -npon the People. 281 
 
 all, the patrimony of the poor ; of the poor of to-day 
 and of the years to come ; their spiritual provision 
 in the design of the original donors, their inalienable 
 birthright, their inheritance by the prescriptive right 
 of centuries. It is the only property in this land 
 which the poor may be said to possess. In virtue 
 of that patrimony, the ideal of an establishment is 
 realised to-day in many a broad parish in Scotland. 
 There, under the shelter of its aged trees, stands the 
 humble parish church, with its quiet graveyard, 
 where a parish church has been for many hundreds 
 of years, the sound of its Sabbath bell summoning 
 generation after generation to the house of prayer, 
 and coming back to many a Scotchman far away 
 like a faint and happy dream. There, round the old 
 walls, lies the village churchyard, where the holy 
 dead repose. There stands the humble manse, the 
 centre of Christian light and life, its occupant an 
 educated son of the people, his parishioners' pastor, 
 counsellor, and friend. From these abodes of 
 culture and piety there have gone forth some of 
 Scotland's very w^orthiest sons. Were there no such 
 thing as dissent among us, and the whole body 
 of the people belonged to the national Church, 
 there are hundreds of parishes where that Church, 
 by means of her ancient and her modern self-given 
 endowments, is perfectly capable of making adequate 
 provision for the spiritual wants of the people. 
 
 Disendowment would at one sweep efface, or 
 greatly alter, this state of things. It would close 
 the now free and open door of every parish church 
 in the land. It would rob ZjG parishes of an 
 average income of ;^270 a year. From 190 parishes 
 
282 Disestablishme7it and Disendowment ; 
 
 where the living is under £\^0, it would take the 
 annual exchequer grant of £^J. From 41 burgh 
 parishes it would take an average sum of ;^396. 
 Those hundreds of parishes now solely provided for 
 by the Established Church, would, on the death of 
 their present incumbents, be permanently deprived 
 of religious ordinances according to the Presbyterian 
 form, or have to tax themselves far beyond their 
 means, or become spiritual paupers, dependent upon 
 others for a provision of which they were most 
 unrighteously deprived. The bulk of the people 
 in these parishes are dependent on their daily 
 labour for their daily bread. Although they can 
 contribute little to the Church out of their slender 
 means, they can contribute largely to it by their 
 pious lives. There is much to justify the fears of 
 many thoughtful men, that the effects of disendow- 
 ment upon our hard-working industrious poor, and 
 especially the rural population, would be disastrous 
 in the extreme. Few men gave more thought to 
 this subject than Dr Chalmers. The conclusion to 
 which he came is one in which many will acquiesce : 
 * Never without the peculiar facilities and resources 
 of a church establishment, will there be a full supply 
 of Christian instruction in the land. A practical 
 heathenism will spread itself over the rural provinces, 
 and will accumulate more and more in our cities.' ^ 
 
 What is the system for which, as greatly superior, 
 we are asked to exchange the old, tested and 
 hallowed as it has been by the usage of ages ? It 
 is a visionary system of Voluntaryism, zvJiich has 
 never yet been fully tried in a country with a nditions 
 
 ^ Political Economy, p. 329. 
 
their Effects upon the People, 283 
 
 similar to our own^ and which, where it has been 
 tried, has not proved so splendid a success as to 
 warrant its supremacy among ourselves. We are 
 perpetually pointed to the religious condition of the 
 United States, as an illustration of the admir- 
 able working of Voluntaryism. The answer must 
 be that the condition of things in that country, 
 politically, socially, and religiously, is not one which 
 we in this land have any reason to envy or to 
 imitate. The Rev. Dr Hall of New York says : 
 * Side by side with our joy over ten millions of com- 
 municants is the pitiful tale of domestic distress and 
 pinching poverty in the homes of those who minister 
 to these millions.' Dr Talmage says : ' There are a 
 great many of the ministers of religion who are half- 
 starved to death. ... In the United States to-day 
 the salary of ministers averages less than six hundred 
 dollars {£120), and when you consider that some 
 of the salaries are very large, you, as business men, 
 will immediately see to what great straits many of 
 God's noblest servants are this day reduced.' In the 
 report on home missions read at the Pan-Presby- 
 terian Council held at Philadelphia, 1880, we find the 
 following : * Oh, if many of our men of means only 
 realised how inadequate the support of most of our 
 ministers is, producing all over the land, burning 
 brains, and aching hearts, and broken spirits, and 
 crushed energies, and frustrated powers, and physical 
 wrecks, and disqualifying men for the taxing, burden- 
 bearing life of their pastors, they would more cheer- 
 fully lay their means on the altar of the Lord, for 
 the use of his Levites.' Voluntaryism has not 
 been in the States a very decided success. But 
 
284 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 even were it otherwise, that would constitute no 
 argument for its introduction among ourselves. For 
 the conditions of the two countries are totally 
 different. There is no parallel whatever between 
 an old and settled country like this, whose institu- 
 tions have been the slow growth of ages, the out- 
 come of the gathered wisdom and experience of 
 the past, and those young and vigorous empires 
 which, under totally different conditions, are shaping 
 a civilisation, and creating institutions and a nation- 
 ality of their own. 
 
 There is one great and sad difference between 
 this country and the great English-speaking nation- 
 alities across the sea, which forms a most serious 
 element in the consideration of this question, and 
 which seems to us to intensify the unwisdom and 
 unpatriotic character of the movement for disendow- 
 ment. In these new countries, with their illimitable 
 soil and vast resources, pauperism and poverty, in 
 our sense of the term, can hardly be said to exist. 
 
 In Scotland, taking the census of 1881, there was 
 one pauper in every thirty-nine of the population, 
 and in England one in every thirty-two. Of the 
 6,600,000 houses in the United Kingdom, one in 
 every thirty-six was engaged in the sale of intoxi- 
 cating drinks. A very large proportion of our 
 criminals comes from the ranks of the wretched 
 poor. * Si Ton veut diminuer le nombre des 
 malfaiteurs — ce qui n'est pas impossible — il faut 
 rendre plus heureux, et par cela meilleurs, ceux qui 
 appartiennent aux classes inferieures de la socicte.'^ 
 Immediately overlying our enormous pauper popu- 
 
 ^ Vidocq. 
 
their Effects upon the People. 285 
 
 lation is another dense stratum always on the verge 
 of pauperism ; and above that another stratum still 
 of respectable working-men, who have a severe and 
 incessant struggle to make the two ends meet. And 
 not merely in the working-class, but among those 
 who have not to toil with their hands, there is 
 always a large number who, through causes over 
 which they had no control, have a hard fight to 
 maintain a respectable appearance, and to hide their 
 destitution from the world. None but those who 
 have charge of charities designed for the relief of 
 decayed gentlemen and gentlewomen, or whose 
 profession gives them access to the sacred privacy 
 of the home, can have any conception of the extent 
 to which genteel destitution prevails, and of the 
 poignancy of the -misery of which it is the prolific 
 cause. To ask such people, whose life is one long 
 privation, to give to the support of religion, would 
 be a cruel and heartless jest. 
 
 It would be difficult to form an accurate estimate 
 of the numbers in almost all classes of society who 
 must be reckoned as poor, but we have every reason 
 to know that it is far beyond what is generally 
 supposed. Nor is there much indication of any 
 considerable diminution in their numbers in the 
 years to come. There is one fact, however, which 
 speaks volumes on this point, and which, familiar to 
 the few, should be startling to all. It was shown by 
 the census of 1881 that. here in Scotland one family 
 in every four ' had only one room for its habitation, 
 and that sixty-five per cent, or nearly two-thirds, of 
 the families of Scotland lived either in one room or 
 two/ No words can describe the misery of which 
 
286 Disestablishment a?td Disendowment ; 
 
 that fact tells. The unhealthy physical, moral, and 
 spiritual conditions implied in such a state of things 
 are beyond verbal measurement. That one family 
 in every four within this land, which boasts so loudly 
 of its education and its religion, should, by or 
 without their own fault, be compelled or contented 
 to house themselves in hovels of one room — that a 
 fourth of all our children should come into the 
 world, grow up to manhood and womanhood, and 
 pass through life, and out of it, amid conditions like 
 these — is a deplorable and disgraceful fact, which 
 ought to strike the people of this country, and 
 especially the members of our warring churches, with 
 a startling shock of sorrow, surprise, and shame. 
 Is that a condition of things which wilP justify the 
 churches of this land in wasting their much-needed 
 energies in internecine feuds ? I deliberately say, 
 that that is a state of matters which has been greatly 
 aggravated by our religious divisions, and which 
 would be greatly mitigated if these divisions were 
 to come to an end. If it be said that the fact under 
 consideration is but a poor justification of an estab- 
 lishment, I answer that only by a great and united 
 national Church, on the basis of establishment and 
 endowment, can this national sore be in any measure 
 healed. For we have here a large and permanent 
 element in our population whom, above all others, 
 in their own interest and in that of the State, 
 it is of importance to bring under the influence of 
 religion, but who are the least desirous and the most 
 unable to provide themselves with the means of 
 grace. It is just in this class that the greatest 
 indifference to religion prevails. It is not only 
 
their Effects upon the People. 287 
 
 desirable that the door of the sanctuary should be 
 free and open to them, so that they can enter it 
 without any feeling of obligation to others, but it is 
 of the utmost importance, that if they do not seek 
 the ministries of religion, the ministers of religion 
 should seek them. For this is a case in which 
 manifestly the voluntary principle of supply and 
 demand will not apply, any more than it will apply 
 to the subject of education. Indifference to the 
 benefits of education prevails most widely among 
 those who are most in need of it ; and therefore legal 
 provision has been made for the instruction of the 
 poor, and the State has wisely insisted that in no 
 instance shall that provision be neglected. But 
 religion is as great a factor in the welfare of com- 
 munities as education, and if the one cannot be 
 safely left to the inclination, or caprice, or apathy of 
 the individual, just as little can the other. Private 
 enterprise is in both cases equally helpless ; public 
 and aggressive effort equally necessary. 
 
 There is another equally significant fact. The 
 very narrowest limits within which a family can be 
 brought up with decency, is a house of two rooms. 
 But two in every three of the families of Scotland 
 are restricted within these limits. It may be safe to 
 say that of the large proportion of those who, 
 whether in town or country, are thus accommodated, 
 their means are straitened, and the struggle for life 
 is hard. They are the sons and daughters of 
 manual toil ; agricultural labourers and cottars in 
 the country, and the humbler class of citizens both 
 in country and town. There are few who more 
 prize religious ordinances than members of this 
 
288 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 class. It would be sad if it were necessary, and 
 cruel if it were unnecessary, to lay a heavy tax on 
 them for the support of religion. The Scottish 
 artisan and labouring man has a high sense of self- 
 respect, and when he finds it impossible with a large 
 family and a small income to meet the heavy 
 demands which are made upon him in the matter of 
 seat rents and contributions, he will simply cease to 
 take what he cannot pay for, and gradually drift 
 into habits of non-church attendance.^ There is 
 yet another fact. In spite of all the advantages of 
 a national Church, and of all the efforts to multiply 
 parishes by voluntary endowment, in spite too of 
 the great work which the sister churches are accom- 
 plishing, the fact remains — and in face of the active 
 infidel propaganda which is at work in all our large 
 towns, and to a lamentable extent is poisoning the 
 minds of our working-men, it is a deplorable fact — 
 that the population of Scotland has largely out- 
 p-rown the means of grace. It is calculated that 
 one-sixth of the population of Scotland are outside 
 the Christian Church. These are the circumstances 
 in which it is coolly proposed to alienate from the 
 cause of religion in Scotland a sum of ;^300,ooo 
 a year. In view of the facts, a more unpatriotic 
 proposal was never laid before a nation. 
 
 Is the voluntary system fit to cope with the State 
 of things which has now been described .? We have 
 ample means at hand for answering that question. 
 We have two great non-established churches in this 
 
 1 The system of pew-letting which has been allowed to creep into 
 our city parish churches is probably illegal, and certainly pernicious, 
 and ought forthwith to be ended. 
 
their Effects tipon the People. 289 
 
 land. We have the Free Church, which has invented 
 and put in operation perhaps the most splendid 
 machinery for the support of ordinances on the 
 voluntary principle which was ever devised. We 
 have the United Presbyterian Church, also provided 
 with an admirable system of church finance. It 
 would be unpatriotic to utter a single disparaging 
 word of the magnificent work which the Free 
 Church has done for Scotland, and which has laid it 
 under an everlasting debt of gratitude. So far as 
 Scottish Presbyterianism is concerned, its victory 
 has been a victory all along the line. It has opened 
 the fountains of Christian liberality to an extent 
 which has perhaps never been surpassed in the 
 history of Christianity. But it has not been able to 
 accomplish an impossible task. 
 
 Our already exceeded limits prevent us from 
 entering on this important part of our subject into 
 any detail. The attention of the people cannot be 
 too frequently and earnestly called to the following 
 facts and figures: * There are 356 rural parishes (of 
 which 241 are old parishes), with an average popula- 
 tion of 1084, in which there is no Free Church. In 
 the remaining parishes, the ministers of 716 Free 
 Churches are not self-supporting. In the Gaelic 
 Highlands, where the Free Church has 201 con- 
 gregations, only 31 are self-supporting.' In 1883, 
 only 291 out of the 1064 congregations, or exactly 
 one-fourth, were self-supporting. There are 14 
 presbyteries with 124 charges, in which there is not 
 one single self-supporting congregation. The Sus- 
 tentation Fund has been justly called the sheet- 
 anchor of the Free Church, but it is an anchor 
 
290 Disestablishment and Disendowment ; 
 
 which does not seem to hold. The yearly con- 
 tributions of the people per head grow less and 
 less. The number of self-sustaining charges had 
 gone down from 320 in 1878 to 296 in 1885, a 
 decrease in 7 years of 7 per cent. 
 
 Turning for a moment to that other great body 
 which, by its good work, has won the gratitude of 
 the country, we find that there are 736 parishes in 
 which there is no United Presbyterian Church ; and 
 that, out of its total number of 559 congregations, 
 only 32S are self-supporting, leaving 231, or upwards 
 of 41 per cent, more or less dependent upon wealthier 
 congregations. The United Presbyterian is emphati- 
 cally the church of the large towns, its great centres 
 being Glasgow, Edinburgh, Paisley, and Greenock, 
 the presbyteries which bear these names comprising 
 as nearly as possible the half of its entire member- 
 ship. That it is not a system suited to country 
 districts is frankly admitted. It is not merely to 
 large towns, it is to the well-to-do population of 
 these towns, that its efforts are principally confined. 
 The membership of these churches is very largely 
 composed of the comfortable middle class. It is 
 no taunt to say that a purely voluntary church must 
 necessarily to a great extent be conducted on com- 
 mercial principles. As it aims to be self-supporting, 
 it is right that it should be planted where it will 
 pay, and, when necessary, transferred from a poor 
 paying to a good paying locality. Among com- 
 munities such as those of the colonies, where extreme 
 poverty is practically unknown, and where the great 
 bulk of the people have enough and to spare, such 
 a system may work well enough, but in a land like 
 
their Ejfects upon the People. 291 
 
 this, where two in every three of the population have 
 a struggle to supply themselves with the necessaries 
 of life, it is a system which should be resorted to 
 only in the last extremity. 
 
 When the circumstances are calmly considered, and 
 when it can be clearly shown that there is need for 
 all, and for more than all, that endowments and 
 voluntary effort combined can accomplish to over- 
 take the spiritual destitution of the land, the proposal 
 to disendow the Church of Scotland seems one of 
 the most astounding that was ever proposed for a 
 nation's acceptance by reasonable men, and if carried 
 into effect by the legislature, would be one of the 
 greatest acts of injustice ever perpetrated. To such 
 a proposal, therefore, as a way out of our present 
 troubles, we have no alternative but to offer the 
 most strenuous and determined opposition ; and in 
 doing so, we are not 'hugging special emoluments 
 and privileges and immunities merely on account 
 of religious opinions,' and *as a favoured class.' 
 That will be remembered as the utterance of one 
 who might well have spoken more justly and wisely. 
 These endowments, which came down from our 
 forefathers, we desire to conserve, not for our own 
 sakes, but for the sake of our children and our 
 children's children, and for the land we all love so 
 well. In doing so, we can use the words of 
 Chalmers : ' In contending for an Established 
 Church and for the integrity of its endowments, 
 we feel as if embarked on a struggle of pure and 
 high patriotism, believing, as we do, that the cause 
 of our venerable Establishment is pre-eminently the 
 cause of the common people.' To all solicitations 
 
292 Disestablishment and Disendoivrnent. 
 
 and appeals to do what we are assured would be 
 a noble, a generous, and a patriotic thing, by 
 letting the endowments go, we have one simple 
 answer : We dare not. They are not ours to will 
 away. Of this great property of which, in the 
 providence of God, we are the holders, we are but 
 the trustees for this generation and for those that 
 are to come. We dare not, as we shall answer to 
 God, consent to an act of spoliation which will 
 deprive every parish in this land of a substantial 
 and permanent provision for gospel ordinances, and 
 which will deprive the poor in every parish of 
 the one property which they possess — their imme- 
 morial right to a free participation of the bread of 
 life. We cannot consent to an act which, on the 
 face of it, is to make the poor of all our parishes, and 
 especially our rural population, spiritual paupers, 
 dependent upon the wealthy congregations in our 
 large towns for what is now, and for long ages has 
 been, their own. We cannot give up a solid fact for 
 what may prove a mere fiction, nor risk a certainty 
 for a vague peradventure. If our Scottish endow- 
 ments are to be confiscated and secularised, the 
 responsibility for the change must lie on other 
 shoulders than ours. 
 
ST GILES' LECTURES. 
 
 SIXTH SERIES— THE CHURCH AND THE PEOPLE, 
 
 LECTURE VII I. 
 
 UNION OF SCOTTISH PRESBYTERIANS — IS IT 
 NOT STILL POSSIBLE AND DESIRABLE ON 
 THE OLD HISTORIC LINES? 
 
 By the Right Rev. Alexander F. Mitchell, D.D., Professor of 
 Ecclesiastical History in the University of St Andrews ; and 
 Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. 
 
 T last General Assembly I endeavoured to 
 
 commend to my fellow-countrymen a nobler 
 
 policy than that of the disestablishment and 
 
 disendowment of their old Reformed Church. I felt 
 
 confident that they had only, calmly and impartially, 
 
 to reflect on the consequences which would ensue 
 
 from the hasty adoption of the harsh proposals of a 
 
 clamant minority, to make sure that these proposals 
 
 should be waived, and the more excellent way of 
 
 conciliation, and, if possible, of reunion, should be 
 
 earnestly canvassed and striven for as it has never 
 
 yet been. Is it presumption in me now to seek to 
 
 say a few words more in support of the policy 
 
 u 
 
294 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 I then advocated ? I humbly trust it will not be 
 deemed so. I begin by adverting to the past 
 policy of the Church of Scotland in this matter. 
 It is thus indicated in what may be termed her 
 earliest manifesto after the sad events of 1843 : 
 * Towards our brethren who have gone out from 
 us, it is our earnest desire to let brotherly love 
 continue. We cannot admit that the course which 
 they have followed is one to which they have 
 been impelled by an irresistible necessity ; but 
 such appears to be their deliberate conviction, and 
 we give them credit for their sincerity. . . . Instead 
 of indulging in unfavourable constructions of the 
 professions and practices of those who are absent, 
 we feel it to be incumbent on us to judge ourselves 
 without partiality, that we may put no stumbling- 
 block or occasion to fall in our brethren's way, and 
 that thus we may be the better prepared to follow 
 the things which make for peace, and wherewith one 
 may edify another.' Such were the words in which 
 the General Assembly, in its pastoral letter to the 
 people of Scotland then, invited our fathers to rally 
 round the old Church, and to lend their hearty aid 
 in repairing the breaches which had ■ been made 
 in her walls. Such was the policy of conciliation, 
 and of quiet but persistent constitutional improve- 
 ment, which they announced it was their determina- 
 tion to follow, and by the announcement and prose- 
 cution of which they persuaded many younger men 
 to enter the ranks, and bear their share in the heavy 
 task which the events of '43 had devolved on 
 them. Such, above all, was the spirit which ani- 
 mated and glowed in the breast of their great leader, 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 295 
 
 Dr James Robertson, one of the truest patriots and 
 most catholic-minded Christians in Scotland whom 
 it has been my lot to know. It was this which led 
 him, in 1853, to write: 'The Free Church must be 
 brought to feel that it is her interest as well as ours, 
 that reunion should take place.' ' The greatest diffi- 
 culty in the way would probably be in framing such 
 a preamble as would sufhce to save the honour of 
 those who left us. But I should be prepared on this 
 point to make great concessions, conceiving that in such 
 a case the truest honour woiUd accrne to those who 
 should show the most conciliatory spirit! Again, in 
 1859, he wrote to a distinguished member of the 
 Free Church, still alive, and still earnest for reunion 
 on the old lines : ' I can honestly say that for many 
 years past it has been one of the first wishes of my 
 heart to have our lamentable breaches healed, and 
 so healed, moreover, as to include in the healing 
 process the United Presbyterian as well as the 
 Established and the Free Church/ 
 
 It was because they had come to share his views 
 in this matter, and to feel his quickening influence, 
 that several of the younger ministers of that time 
 were led to welcome his declaration in the Assembly 
 of i860, that if the Church ever went to Parliament 
 for a new act regulating the settlement of ministers, 
 it should not be for an act legalising the veto, but 
 for one giving the congregations a direct voice in the 
 choice of their ministers. And when others, year 
 after year, urged the other method of relief from the 
 defects of Lord Aberdeen's act, it was our reverence 
 for him, and deep conviction of the soundness of the 
 views he had taught us, and of the desirableness of 
 
296 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 that reunion for which he longed, which led us to 
 embark in the movement for the abolition of patron- 
 age and of the act of 17 12. This movement, as you 
 know, was started in 1866, and after various fortunes 
 was brought to a successful issue in 1874. The 
 charge has again and again been made, that the 
 movement was to a large extent a strategic one, 
 mainly meant to defeat or Mish' our dissenting 
 brethren, instead of being one which we had come 
 to see was called for, both by the position and 
 necessities of our own congregations, and by our 
 desire to satisfy the reasonable wishes of those 
 without, and to open up the way for their honour- 
 able return to the Church of their fathers. Having 
 been with Dr Pirie the first joint-convener of the 
 Patronage Committee, and well acquainted with the 
 sentiments of its leading members, I deem myself 
 bound, indignantly, to repel that charge. We never 
 admitted, indeed, that our dissenting brethren held 
 the key of the position, or, as Dr Begg expressed it, 
 had acquired a vested interest in the continuance of 
 any corruptions or defects of the old Church; so that, 
 without their leave, we who had clung to her, and 
 sought in every way to make her still a blessing to 
 the land, were not fully entitled to take action to 
 bring under the notice of Parliament any matter 
 which we felt to be a grievance, interfering with her 
 usefulness, and deserving to be remedied. Political 
 men of all parties appeared at that time to frankly 
 concede this — the thirty-seven Scottish members 
 who accompanied Dr Macleod in his interview with 
 the prime minister ; the Duke of Argyll and other 
 friends of the Church in the House of Peers, and 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 297 
 
 Lord Advocate Young, the Scottish representative 
 of the Liberal ministry then in power.^ 
 
 I deem it my duty further to say this in our 
 vindication, that no sooner did we make up our 
 minds to move for the aboHtion of this long-stand- 
 ing grievance, than those of us who did so, strove as 
 far as we could to enlist in the cause of reform and 
 reunion, the sympathies of Free Church brethren 
 whom we knew, and to ascertain what, in addi- 
 tion to that which we sought, those who had left us 
 would desire to get, in order to open the way for 
 our being once more united in one Church. The 
 answer given to our private advances was not such 
 as to encourage more public overtures. For a time 
 the Committee was discharged, and when it was once 
 more reconstituted, the guidance of it passed into 
 other hands. The movement, however, continued 
 to gather strength, notably so during the year when 
 the distinguished man, whose sudden removal we 
 are at present so deeply deploring, took charge of 
 it, and got so many of the patrons to consent not to 
 oppose the repeal of the Act of Queen Anne. In 
 1870 the Assembly may be said to have finally 
 committed itself to the movement with the greatest 
 heartiness, and the speeches then made by Lord 
 Gordon, Dr Pirie, and others^ are proof more than 
 
 * In one of his speeches as a candidate for the representation of the 
 Wigtown Burghs, in the spring of 1874, he further denied that the 
 action of the government, in the matter of the Irish Church, indicated 
 hostility to establishment. ' They had,' he said, * the declaration of 
 all the leaders of the party at the time that measure was before 
 Parliament, that such was not their views — that they were dealing 
 with a purely exceptional case, there being nothing parallel in it to 
 the case of England or the case of Scotland.' 
 
298 Union of Scottish Presbyteriayis. 
 
 sufficient that the spirit which animated the leaders 
 of the Church in this new departure, was a spirit, 
 not of jealousy or hostility, but of conciliation 
 and brotherly love towards our brethren of other 
 Presbyterian Churches. On that occasion Lord 
 Gordon said : ' I look upon this question, not solely 
 with reference to the interests of our own church ; I 
 look upon it as a step which may lead, if not to 
 incorporation, at least to co-operation with other 
 Christian churches. Our friends of the Free Church, 
 when they left in 1843, expressly declared in their 
 formal protest that it was the right a7id duty of the 
 civil magistrate to maintain and SUPPORT a7t 
 establishment of religion in accordance with God's 
 Word' (thus recognising the two great principles 
 of establishment and endowment, for which my pre- 
 decessor has so eloquently contended), *and Dr 
 Chalmers and many others have since expressed 
 strong opinions as to the advantages of the terri- 
 torial arrangements arising from the constitution 
 of an Established Church.^ ... I, for one, should 
 
 1 In the same debate Dr Smith of North Leith said : ' In 1866, 
 when this movement took a broad and wide shape, the question came, 
 to be as to the possibility of providing, by the successful issue of it, 
 such a platform as would be a common meeting-ground for all the 
 scattered sections of the Church of Scotland. I would like much to 
 speak of that, but am prevented from a sense of generosity to other 
 bodies ; some of our friends have great difficulties to face in regard to 
 this matter, and this very week they must face them in very trying 
 circumstances, and I think we should not, by one word or reference, 
 increase their difficulties. Some of the other churches have made 
 great sacrifices, and are putting forth great efforts to advance Christ's 
 cause at home and abroad. Let us rejoice in their success and 
 emulate their endeavours, and we may meet in spirit with them, 
 although we may never meet in the same house as a united Assembly.' 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterimis. 299 
 
 rejoice exceedingly to see a comprehensive Presby- 
 terian Church in Scotland. It is of importance that 
 we should present a combined front of resistance 
 against various elements at present directing their 
 attacks against us.' Soon after the debate closed, 
 I sought to bring this noble-hearted Christian states- 
 man into contact with a friend who is a warm 
 defender of the policy of the majority of the Free 
 Church. I introduced them to each other in the 
 Parliament House, and started them to talk on the 
 subject of which Lord Gordon's heart was then so 
 full. But it was all in vain. My friend was so 
 wedded to the position of the majority of the Free 
 Church, and so jealous of what he thought its 
 honour required, that, so far as I can remember, 
 he gave us no encouragement, and promised us no 
 help towards the success of our movement. 
 
 It may be said, as it has been, that even though 
 we met with so little encouragement, we need not 
 have desisted so soon from our endeavours. But it 
 was felt by most of us that it would have been a 
 very delicate matter indeed for us to do mo/e, at a 
 time when they were occupied in negotiating another 
 union, in regard to which, difficulties had then just 
 begun to emerge. It might have exposed us to 
 misconstructions still more serious than those from 
 which we suffered, and far less honourable to us. 
 This is very fully brought out in the speeches of the 
 late Principal Campbell, Lord Polwarth, and Dr 
 Smith in the union debate which occurred in the 
 same Assembly, and was duly chronicled.^ 
 
 1 Patronage, Presbyterian Union, ^c, a Chronicle of the General 
 Assembly 0/ iS'jo, pages 342, &c. 
 
300 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 Our memorial on the subject of patronage, it will 
 be remembered, was prepared at the request, not 
 of a Conservative but of a Liberal prime minister, 
 and was pressed on his attention by Liberal as well 
 as Conservative members of both Houses of Parlia- 
 ment. Whatever may have been the private sur- 
 mises of some who were hostile to the movement, 
 no indication was given to us during the three 
 years he remained in office, after our memorial was 
 presented, that he thought our demand unreason- 
 able, or desired further explanation in regard to it. 
 Nay, it is an open secret that the Lord Advocate 
 Young was instructed to prepare, and actually did 
 prepare in 1873, a draft of a bill dealing, i?tter alia, 
 with this subject, as well as with the subject of 
 teinds, which probably might have been introduced 
 in the succeeding session of Parliament, had the 
 government remained in office. This is surely 
 sufficient to show that the government then thought 
 those within the Church were not precluded by 
 past events from urging that the matter should be 
 taken up, and that they had sufficient backing in 
 the country to warrant the government of the day 
 in doing so. With 1874, a Conservative government 
 took the place of the Liberal one, and with the 
 hearty co-operation of many leading Liberals in 
 both Houses of Parliament,^ passed that bill for the 
 abolition of the Act of Queen Anne, which had 
 been so earnestly desired by the Church, and was 
 
 ^ The Duke of Argyll, Earls Granville, Rosebery, &c., heartily 
 co-operated in the House of Peers, with the Dukes of Richmond 
 and Buccleuch ; Sir W. Harcourt, Sir Robert Anstruther, Mr Lowe, 
 &c., in the House of Commons, with Mr Disraeli and Lord Advocate 
 Gordon. 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 301 
 
 longed for by not a few outside her pale, as likely 
 to issue in the preparation of other measures tending 
 to bring us nearer to each other. If we did not at 
 that crisis do all we ought to have done to carry 
 out the noble intentions of the Duke of Argyll and 
 Lord Gordon, it was owing in part no doubt to 
 division among ourselves, but mainly to the way 
 in which the great concessions we felt we had made 
 to our brethren outside were ignored or miscon- 
 strued. Our course ever since has been on the 
 same lines as the action of our Union Committee, 
 and its communications with the sister churches 
 clearly show. Our desire has not been to tempt the 
 laity to break with their ministers, to whom they 
 had lovingly adhered, nor to filch away individual 
 ministers and congregations, but to do ail we could 
 to promote more friendly relations, whether those 
 of federation or organic union, with the churches 
 themselves. The best proof of this is the recent 
 action of our Church Interests' Committee, in regard 
 to Mr Finlay's bill, and the words that come to 
 us almost from the grave of the leader we have 
 just lost : ' There is no inconsistency between our 
 present attitude of defence, and the attitude of 
 conciliation which the Church has so long main- 
 tained towards our dissenting brethren. It is only 
 by showing how deeply we prize our own principles 
 that we can win their respect — if not disarm their 
 opposition — and possibly lead them even yet to 
 see that there is a more excellent way towards 
 religious peace in Scotland, than by destroying its 
 old historic Church, and trying to build again on 
 its ruins.' 
 
302 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 What this more excellent way is, has in part 
 been shown by my eloquent predecessor, and shall 
 in the sequel be attempted to be shown by me. 
 And may God himself touch my lips as with a live 
 coal from the altar, that I may speak earnestly, 
 lovingly, and faithfully, and that my feeble words 
 may reach the hearts of my fellow-countrymen, 
 whom I long to see once more gathered into the old 
 National Church. 
 
 I. Is not union between the Presbyterian Churches 
 still possible on the old historic lines t Even before 
 the movement for the abolition of patronage began, 
 I ventured to affirm that it was the duty of our 
 National Church *to do what she could to satisfy 
 our brethren without, that we were still a living 
 branch of the true vine — a true member of Christ's 
 mystical body holding the Head, as Dr Hanna in his 
 well-known sermon frankly admitted — and a great 
 power for good in the land, and so to endeavour to 
 draw them closer to us again, either into amicable 
 alliance, or into still more intimate union.' A some- 
 what similar course was advocated by my honoured 
 friend, Dr Crawford, from the moderator's chair, a 
 year or two later, and was defended by him after- 
 wards with great ability and kindliness, when it 
 was called in question, and pronounced to be 
 chimerical and impracticable. In my address to 
 last Assembly, I gave my reasons for holding that 
 union on the old lines was still possible, and that 
 it was not likely to be brought about on any other 
 lines, and was far more likely to be hindered and 
 retarded, than to be helped, by the scheme then 
 being advocated by numbers of our brethren in 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 303 
 
 the dissenting churches. Many things that have 
 occurred since have tended to confirm this view, 
 and to show that it is pretty widely entertained 
 without, as well as within the National Church. The 
 day after the close of the Assembly I received the 
 first rough outline of a plan which had even then 
 commended itself to a number of our brethren 
 outside, and which in the course of the summer 
 they matured and published. Ten days later, I 
 received from a beloved and honoured father, whose 
 praise is in all the churches, a note in which he 
 was so good as to say : * Allow me to thank you for 
 your closing address. I read it with the deepest 
 interest and satisfaction. . . . From the position 
 which you and your brethren have taken up, I trust 
 you will not go back. I was quite refreshed by 
 your statements and appeals.' A few weeks after, 
 an esteemed brother professor in America wrote 
 me : ' The sympathies of Americans are not 
 altogether on the side of disestablishment. I feel, 
 when I come into Great Britain, that there are very 
 excellent reasons why there should be National 
 Churches, which could not apply to a new country 
 such as the United States. I have also learned 
 that the separation of Church and State is not so 
 entire, even in America, as most think ; and that 
 the grave problem of national education is still 
 unsolved there. The separation of the Church from 
 the State carries with it in the end the separation 
 of the national schools from the Church, and in this 
 there are grave perils which stare us in the face in 
 America.' The magnificent paper of Dr Donald 
 Fraser, in the Contemporary for August, is a more 
 
304 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 significant indication still of the direction in which 
 the thoughts of independent, reflecting, and patriotic 
 Scotchmen are turning ; and to me it is particularly- 
 gratifying, as proving that among my corre- 
 spondents of 1866, one who is a host in himself, 
 is still ' faithful found ' to the opinions he then had 
 the courage to avow. The force of this tendency, 
 however, has been far more emphatically shown 
 by the recent series of enthusiastic meetings in 
 defence of the old Church, and by the resolutions 
 in favour of a policy of conciliation and union 
 adopted at almost all of them ; as well as by 
 the amazing number of earnest letters on the 
 subject which have since appeared in some of the 
 most esteemed of our daily newspapers, and by 
 the able articles of the editors, especially those of 
 the Scotsman and the Glasgozv Herald. Many have 
 advocated reunion, or reconstruction, of the Pres- 
 byterian Churches on the old lines, and some 
 have given valuable suggestions for making such 
 a reunion as generally as possible acceptable and 
 effectual. Are all these evidences of interest in the 
 proposal of a really united Presbyterian Church, at 
 once established and free, to be pronounced a vain 
 delusion ? Is it merely a devout imagination to 
 think of yet again realising in Scotland such a 
 church as Knox laboured to found, Melville strove 
 to build up, and Carstares to restore 1 Is this idea 
 to be contemptuously set aside because a few lead- 
 ing ecclesiastics have hastily pronounced their 7ion 
 possiimiiSy or because it conflicts with the arrange- 
 ments of certain wire-pullers and crotcheteers, who 
 have long been allowed far too much of their own 
 
Uyiion of Scottish Presbyterians. 305 
 
 way ? As if not sure of the result of calm delibe- 
 rate reflection, they have been doing their very 
 utmost to hurry on a decision of this question 
 before the country was ripe for it, and to snatch a 
 victory before the nation was roused to the real 
 import of the contest — a victory, it humbly appears 
 to us, sought more as a triumph for sectarian and 
 sectional purposes, than for the promotion of the 
 real and lasting interests of our common Presby- 
 terianism. But the laity must be called into our 
 counsels, and the deliberate opinion of the majority 
 of them, apart from political issues, be sought 
 and obtained ere a stone of the goodly fabric our 
 fathers reared is to be torn down. The voice of 
 the country, so far as it can be gathered from recent 
 demonstrations, certainly does not seem to be in 
 favour of a policy of hasty, wanton, and much less 
 of vengeful destruction. All things lead us to 
 cherish good hope that the idea of reunion on the 
 old historic lines is not yet to be abandoned by the 
 nation, that it is still accounted worthy of mature 
 consideration, and that, if men of all parties will 
 only act wisely, forbearingly, fearlessly, and in right 
 earnest, it may still be possible with God's help to 
 realise it. At any rate, there is a firm determination 
 on the part of many without, as of all within the 
 Church, that the hallowed structure shall not be 
 dismantled or demolished by ruthless hands, till 
 every effort has been made, by thoughtful action 
 and kindly conciliation, to endeavour to supply 
 aught that may be lacking, to rectify aught that is 
 wrong, and to preserve or improve all that is found 
 to be essential to the symmetry, grandeur, and 
 
3o6 Union of Scottish Presbyteria7ts. 
 
 stability of the holy and beautiful house under 
 which we and our fathers have found shelter, and 
 round which for centuries have gathered all the 
 highest aspirations and noblest traditions of the 
 people of this old Christian land. On these accounts 
 they cannot but welcome such a bill as that of Mr 
 Finlay, and own with Lord Moncreiff that it is *a 
 spirited and patriotic attempt to settle a distressing 
 controversy/ and substantially concedes all that 
 moderate Free Churchmen plead for. 
 
 II. Granting, then, that union is still possible, is 
 it not also desirable ? That, surely, is a question 
 which is susceptible only of one answer, and there 
 is need of no lengthened process of reasoning to 
 commend the answer to any one who bears in mind 
 the Master's affecting prayer on the eve of His last 
 sufferings, and the earnest exhortations to love and 
 unity which He so often addressed to his followers. 
 These, no doubt, point to something far higher and 
 better than mere outward unity — to a bond which 
 binds them to their Master, and to each other even 
 when the other is broken. But they will only 
 receive their complete fulfilment and realisation 
 when that deep inner unity strives to manifest itself 
 in some external way, whether it be by full union 
 and communion, or by friendly alliance or by federa- 
 tion, such as will enable them to live in harmony 
 and work in concert. The many sad misunder- 
 standings and irritations that arise from, and are 
 kept alive and growing by our alienation of heart 
 and open disunion, the lamentable waste of power 
 and money which our divisions entail on our 
 country, the increasing evils which spring from 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 307 
 
 them to those without, as well as to those within 
 reach of the means of grace and the pale of the 
 Christian church, all combine to proclaim, as with 
 trumpet tone, that a great change is needed among 
 us to fit us to do the Master's work rightly and 
 successfully. That bitterness, envy, uncharitable- 
 ness, and evil-speaking which still abound, that 
 feverish strife to overlap or outvie one another's 
 agencies, that weary contention for sectional triumph 
 and a foremost place which have unhappily been so 
 prevalent among us ever since the first Voluntary 
 controversy broke out, must be henceforth and for 
 ever banished, if our deep inner oneness is to be 
 more constantly kept in view, and the sense of it to 
 become more practically influential. I have no 
 desire to exaggerate the evils of our past and 
 present unhappy state. If that is so great a scandal 
 and an injustice as it has lately been proclaimed to 
 be, the scandal is mainly with those who exalt 
 points into principles, and instead of living at peace 
 with their neighbours, are continually * for war,' and 
 never weary of repeating, Delenda est Carthago. If 
 it be an injustice, that is so mainly because the 
 minority will not be content to let the majority 
 decide and rule in this matter, nor consent to live 
 in peace and quietness unless they are allowed to 
 have things all their own way. Neither have I any 
 desire to exaggerate the importance and advantages 
 of organic union, or to represent it as either the 
 necessary condition or the indispensable medium 
 towards arriving at a better state of things than 
 now exist in our land. Yet I hold it worthy to be 
 kept before us as the goal to which our efforts 
 
3o8 Ujizoji of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 should ultimately be directed, worthy to be striven 
 for even now in the midst of abounding indifference 
 and misrepresentation, and I honour those who 
 strive for it, even those of them who do not in all 
 things follow with us. I agree, indeed, with my 
 esteemed friend, Dr Schaff of New York, who has 
 so largely helped to form and extend the general 
 alliance of the Presbyterian Churches, when he says : 
 * Unity of outward organisation is not absolutely 
 necessary for the unity of the Church. This is 
 essentially spiritual. Our Saviour promised that 
 there will be one Jlock and one shepherd (as the 
 Greek original and revised version have it), but not 
 one /^/<^ and one shepherd (as the Latin Vulgate and 
 authorised version wrongly and mischievously render 
 the passage, John x. i6). There may be many 
 folds, and yet one and the same flock under Christ, 
 the great arch-shepherd of souls. Even in heaven 
 there will be **many mansions." Denominational- 
 ism or confessionalism has no doubt its evils and 
 dangers, and is apt to breed narrowness, bigotry, 
 and uncharitableness. It is not the best state of 
 the Church, but it is far better than a dead or 
 tyrannical and monotonous uniformity. It will 
 ultimately pass away in its present shape, and give 
 place to a better state when Christians shall no more 
 be divided by human designations and distinctions, 
 but be perfectly united in the great Head. The 
 Lord will in his own good time bring cosmos out 
 of chaos, and overrule the discord of Christendom 
 for the deeper concord.' Still, even he admits, and 
 I most thoroughly concur with him that there may 
 be sects, or sections of the common Christian army, 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 309 
 
 'which, after having accomplished their mission to 
 protest against a prevailing error, or to do some 
 specific work, ought to disband or unite with a 
 cognate organisation, and thus diminish the number 
 of schisms.' 
 
 Surely, if this holds true anywhere, it may be said 
 to do so in the case of the Presbyterians of Scotland, 
 whose differences appear to all but themselves so 
 microscopic as hardly to supply materials for the 
 existence of separate schools of thought, much less 
 for the existence of separate and competing churches. 
 I shall never forget what was said to me many years 
 ago by a learned Jewish convert, a respected minister 
 of the Free Church, when an attempt was being 
 made to persuade some of her leaders to start an 
 opposition to a Greek mission we had begun with 
 some prospect of success in Turkey. * I told our 
 chairman,' he said, 'that the differences between the 
 Free and the Established Churches were so subtle, 
 that even here in Scotland I had difficulty at times 
 in fully realising them ; but that out in Turkey, in 
 face of the foes with whom we must both contend, 
 they vanished altogether ; ' or, as Dr Hanna more 
 boldly put it in the sermon to which I have already 
 referred : ' The controversy between us and the 
 Establishment from which we have retired does not 
 touch the doctrine of Christ's headship as taught in 
 holy writ, so as to give any true ground for saying 
 that we uphold and that the Established Church 
 denies that headship.' It is only a matter relating 
 to the practical application of the doctrine or 
 principle, and surely, if there were only the will, it 
 might be possible to find a way by which former 
 
310 Uiiioii of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 misunderstandings on both sides might be explained, 
 and former sad mistakes might be remedied. ' If/ 
 as Dr Fraser has it, ' the abihty and ingenuity which 
 are now employed in justifying and pressing the 
 policy of demolition were turned to the devising of a 
 plan of reconstruction and comprehension, the result 
 would be more quickly and easily arrived at, and 
 much more worthy of a people with such historical 
 traditions and associations as the Scotch.' We may 
 not be able all at once to eradicate the wasting- 
 disease which has been allowed for so long to run its 
 course unchecked, to the lowering of our vitality and 
 weakening of our strength. But it is more than 
 time we had begun to employ every lenitive and 
 counteractive we can command to arrest its progress 
 and improve our general health. Perhaps we may 
 not be able so soon as some of the more saneuine 
 hope, to bring together in one external communion 
 all orthodox Presbyterians, much less all the true- 
 hearted Protestants in our native land. There are not 
 only many details, but various matters of importance, 
 that would require first to be maturely considered 
 and wisely arranged, ere those of us who are most 
 nearly one could entirely coalesce. Even in regard 
 to those Presbyterian churches which have a common 
 origin and common standards of doctrine and disci- 
 pline, there are grave practical questions awaiting 
 settlement ere we can merge into one organisation. 
 There is, for instance, the question whether the 
 national Assembly is to be, as ours has ever been, 
 a compact, manageable body of a comparatively 
 limited number, or is to embrace the much larger 
 number and larger proportion of ministers and elders 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 3 1 1 
 
 which the Free Church has sanctioned, or is to com- 
 prehend every minister and a representative of each 
 kirk-session as the other churches seem to desire. 
 We are persuaded that our own plan — the plan 
 substantially followed for nearly two hundred years 
 — has many obvious advantages ; and our brethren 
 of other churches, no doubt, also think that there 
 are advantages attendant on their plans, and these 
 differences must neither be simply brushed aside, 
 nor too hastily settled. But even if, by striving after 
 full and general organic union, all we were to 
 attain meantime should be a better understanding- 
 between the churches, a more generous and kindly 
 estimate of each other's labours and attainments, 
 more practical sympathy with each other under 
 difficulties and discouragements, less jealousy and 
 misconstruction, less strained relations than have 
 •subsisted for nearly half a century past, our labours 
 were not altogether in vain. It would be well 
 worth persistent striving and earnest persevering 
 prayer to gain even thus much. To attain it would 
 be to attain a great and lasting good which could 
 not fail, perhaps sooner than many expect, to lead 
 on to good greater and more lasting still, and to 
 hasten the happy consummation for which so many 
 who deeply love their country, and venerate the 
 Church of our fathers, are now more and more 
 yearning. 
 
 III. But, even granting that union is desirable, 
 might it not be purchased at too high a cost .? If we 
 are to derive from it the full benefit it is fitted to 
 yield — if it is to be a lasting and an unmixed good 
 to our native land ; if it is to be a development and 
 
312 Uiiion of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 growth out of the past, and not a wild revolution, 
 it must be sought only under wise and just con- 
 ditions. First among these I place, unhesitatingly, 
 the old securities for the union between Church and 
 State, provided by the fundamental statutes of the 
 Scottish Parliaments of 1592, 1690, and 1707, and 
 the retention, so far as it has come down to us, of 
 the old patrimony of the Kirk, for the religious 
 uses to which it has so long been appropriated. 
 The importance of this was brought out by my 
 predecessor, with such a wealth of eloquence and 
 Christian patriotism, as must have warmed the 
 coldest Scottish heart, and made the boldest 
 antagonist quail. It is said, indeed, there is a drift 
 the other way at present, a current setting in, which 
 it is vain for us to resist. But Christian men in 
 other lands are resisting it boldly, and so must we, 
 if we would not prove ourselves unworthy of our 
 fathers, and the inheritance they have transmitted 
 to us. Christian men in our own land, outside our 
 own Church, are resisting it manfully, notwithstand- 
 ing all the efforts made to stir them up to follow a 
 different course. And shall we prove faint-hearted, 
 or unconcerned, or unreasonable 1 No, surely we 
 will aid them to the utmost, and encourage our- 
 selves in the Lord our God, who hitherto hath been 
 to us ' a very present help in time of trouble,' and 
 when the wind was high, and the sea rough, and the 
 night dark and dismal, hath changed the storm into 
 a calm, and made even our enemies be at peace 
 with us. Dr MacGregor has quoted to you the 
 weighty utterances of Drs Chalmers and Buchanan . 
 as to the value of an Established Church, if Christian 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 313 
 
 influences are ever thoroughly to pervade all ranks, 
 and all corners of the land. Let me add to these, 
 the striking testimony of the great German publicist, 
 Gefifcken, which, though from a different point of 
 view, is hardly less noteworthy, and points to that 
 union of liberty and reciprocal activity which we 
 enjoy as the best relation between Church and State : 
 
 * An attitude of mutual indifference,' he says, ' between the 
 State and the rehgious community can never be desirable, 
 even supposing it to be possible, because both concur in the 
 most important points of contact in human society. Men 
 may try, for the sake of avoiding collision, to reduce to a 
 minimum these points of contact ; but the State can never 
 dispense with religion, for the moral education of its subjects, 
 since there is no true morality without religion. . . . History 
 proves beyond refutation the vanity of the attempt to supply, 
 by philosophy and abstract morality, the want of religion. 
 The civilisation of all states alike is based in the first instance 
 on religion ; and where the latter is obliterated, there 
 discipline and moral rectitude rapidly decline. The founda- 
 tions of the State itself become rotten, and give warnings of 
 impending ruin. A purely negative relation between Church 
 and State, such as would completely isolate the latter from 
 religion, would therefore be disastrous to the nation. On the 
 other hand, the Church cannot entirely renounce her influence 
 over the State, and withdraw herself to the sphere of the 
 mind, inasmuch as religious interests, from their very nature 
 are involved especially in the most important affairs of life. 
 As a matter of fact, then, a really perfect separation of the 
 State and the religious community, to say nothing of the 
 possibility of the experiment, has never yet been attempted, 
 not even in America (as will be shown by-and-by). . . . Every 
 consideration therefore points to a regulated union of both 
 powers, precisely because, within the spheres of each, lie the 
 common elements of social prosperity. Such a unio7i of 
 liberty and reciprocal activity is eminently suited to civilised 
 Christian States, since it affords scope for the greatest variety, 
 
314 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 according to circumstances, in the mutual relations of both 
 powers.'* 
 
 My predecessor has also shown you that any 
 scheme of union, to be successful and permanent, 
 must include the retention of the ancient endow- 
 ments, as well as of the ancient relations between 
 the Church and the State. The endowments, 
 as he told you, are in no true sense the 
 property of the State, have neither been created 
 nor conferred by it, and are not national, except 
 in the sense in which all property and old charitable 
 endowments are so. They were at least secured 
 to the Church by the solemn statutes of a Scottish 
 Parliament, elected under the widest franchise ; and 
 in the Act for the union of the kingdoms, these 
 statutes were ratified for ever, and their privileges 
 were guaranteed to the people of Scotland by the 
 most binding form of words which the negotiators 
 could devise. Nothing but the clearest proof that 
 the Church was not fulfilling the trust committed to 
 her under these statutes, or was not willing to be 
 advised how she might fulfil it more entirely, could 
 warrant the taking away of her endowments, were 
 this the sole title by which she held them. But 
 notwithstanding the persistence with which that has 
 of late been averred, and the charge of lamentable 
 ignorance brought against those who call it in 
 question, I venture once more to deny it, and to 
 hurl back the charge of ignorance on those who 
 have so recklessly made it. The honoured cham- 
 
 ^ Church and State, their Relations historieally develoJ)ed, 6t'c., by 
 Heinrich Geffcken. Translated by E. F. Taylor. 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians, 315 
 
 pion who has so recently been called from our head, 
 showed this very conclusively in that eloquent 
 appeal which he drew up in the autumn for the 
 Committee on Church Interests, and which has since 
 been so widely circulated, and so highly appreciated 
 over the length and breadth of the land. In that 
 remarkable paper from the pen of Professor Flint, 
 which appeared soon after in the Presbyterian 
 Review, our opponents are plainly told : * As to 
 endowment. Established Churchmen cannot reason- 
 ably be expected to consent to a simple alienation 
 of the teinds to secular purposes. Holding, as they 
 do, that the teinds represent a part of a patrimony 
 inherited by the Church, not from the liberality of 
 the State, but from the charity of the pious of 
 former generations, and designed for the mainten- 
 ance of religion especially among the poor, obviously 
 for them to concur in the appropriation of these 
 teinds, without commutation or equivalent, to a 
 secular use, must seem malversation of trust, injus- 
 tice to religion, and robbery of the poor.'-^ 
 
 The payment of tithes in Christian times arose 
 out of reverence for the arrangement God had pre- 
 scribed for the Church under the Old Testament, 
 and it was in the course of centuries confirmed by 
 the immemorial and universal custom of Christian 
 nations. The Second Book of Discipline, for which 
 our Free Church brethren were wont to cherish a 
 
 ^ With respect to establishment, Professor Flint says, in the same 
 paper : ' Establishment seems to us a most fitting application and 
 potent safeguard of a sacred principle, a real power for good, a favour 
 to one church which is no more an injustice to other churches than 
 a nobleman's title is a wrong to a commoner. ' 
 
3i6 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 special regard, affirms that such was the origin of 
 tithes or teinds (for these words are but two names 
 for one thing), and maintains that they are part of 
 the patrimony of the Church, which may not, with- 
 out sacrilege, be alienated from sacred uses. They 
 began to be paid in the Celtic churches of Ireland 
 and Scotland, before they came under the domination 
 of the Church of Rome. When parishes began to be 
 formed in Scotland, the churches were built, and the 
 tithes within the district were gifted to them of the 
 free-will and pleasure of the landed proprietors to 
 whom the district belonged. Several of the deeds 
 founding such parishes are still extant, and our con- 
 stitutional historians now hold it as beyond question 
 that these are but specimens of the way in which 
 the process of endowment was carried on, till the 
 payment of tithes became general in Scotland. No 
 one has stated this more clearly than the minister of 
 Pilrig Free Church, when he informs us :^ 
 
 * We can trace the general rise of parishes in Scotland. We 
 can show how the process went on. We can point to a land- 
 owner bringing a tract of waste land under cultivation, and 
 then building a church upon it, and endowing that church with 
 the tithes of the surrounding district, and with some acres of 
 land for a glebe. This foundation was quite in accordance 
 with what the Church would expect or claim from a dutiful 
 son, but then it was entirely the free gift of the founder. It 
 did not originate in the common law. And perhaps it is not 
 too much to say, that in all the registers of our religious 
 houses which have been hitherto published, there is not a 
 single example of any one being required by the common law 
 to erect a parish church, and to endow it with teinds, and 
 manse, and glebe. When churches were once erected and 
 endowed, the common law was ready to vindicate the rights, of 
 
 ^ Old Stones for a New Churchy by J. Calder Macphail. 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 317 
 
 those to whom they belonged. And as early as the time of 
 William the Lion, the royal authority is found enjoining the 
 payment of tithes in the province of Moray. But the pro- 
 bability is that the right to these was acquired by gift before 
 it was enforced by law.' 
 
 No doubt, as our opponents sometimes remind us, 
 a large part of these endowments was originally 
 given to a church which was in communion with the 
 see of Rome, but it was also the Church of Christ in 
 this land ; and when the nation resolved that the 
 Church of Christ in Scotland should be freed from 
 the yoke of Rome, and recognised it, when thus freed 
 and organised by certain ministers, ' whom God in 
 his mercy had raised up,' as the only true Church of 
 Christ in the land, they were bound, after making 
 due provision for life interests, to recognise it as the 
 true heir to the old endowments, and are bound so 
 to recognise it till they can find a better to take its 
 place, and to do the work assigned to it with greater 
 efficiency and success. When you have the Scottish 
 legislature itself designating the teinds as ' the proper 
 patrimony' of the kirk, and the Church claiming 
 them as such — when you have learned men like 
 Principal TuUoch and Professor Flint, and consti- 
 tutional historians like Cosmo Innes and Joseph 
 Robertson, confirming the same view — what can you 
 think of hard-pressed controversialists and pamph- 
 leteers, who offer only their own unsupported asser- 
 tion on the other side.? What but that they are 
 not exempt from the lamentable ignorance they so 
 confidently attribute to others, and that, if they 
 knew a little more, they would in all probability be 
 not a little less self-confident and dictatorial. 
 
3i8 Unio7t of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 To these two conditions we must resolutely 
 adhere as indispensable, if we are to be faithful to 
 our trust, faithful to our principles, and to the 
 highest interests of our native land. As the largest 
 of the Presbyterian Churches, we might claim for 
 these at the hands of our brethren a more respect- 
 ful regard, even were they unanimous in the objec- 
 tions they bring against them, but with so many of 
 their own ministers, elders, and people clinging to 
 them as fondly as we do ourselves, we cannot 
 consent to be driven from them by a minority of 
 our fellow-countrymen. The establishment and 
 endowment of the Church are not the main cause of 
 the divisions which, unhappily, prevail among 
 Scottish Christians, nor are disestablishment and 
 disendowment necessary preliminaries to any union 
 between the churches. Those who assert that they 
 are, seem to me to forget that none of the unfor- 
 tunate secessions which have taken place from the 
 national Church, arose from any doubt about the 
 propriety of a union between Church and State, or 
 the lawfulness of participating in the ancient endow- 
 ments. The leaders of all these secessions, with 
 perhaps the exception of the almost extinct sect of 
 the Glassites, maintained the principles of establish- 
 ment and endowment as strenuously as those who did 
 not secede. Erskine and his three comrades clung 
 to their manses and stipends during all the years 
 between their first deposition and their second. 
 The Free Church has never objected to her ministers 
 receiving State money as army and prison chaplains, 
 or secretaries of the Bible Board, nor to any aid 
 given to normal schools at home, or mission schools 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 319 
 
 abroad, and such a course can be vindicated only 
 on establishment principles. So far as either the 
 United Presbyterian or the Free Church have 
 fallen away from these two principles, they have 
 fallen away from the acknowledged principles of 
 their own fathers and founders, as well as from those 
 of the fathers and reformers of the National Church 
 — Knox and Melville, Henderson and Johnston of 
 Warristoun — who acted so much more cautiously in 
 regard to the grievance of patronage, than the 
 leaders of the Church before '43. Disendowment was 
 not insisted on as a condition preliminary to union 
 in the negotiations of the Presbyterian churches, 
 either in the Australian or the Canadian colonies, 
 nor in the negotiations for the union of the Synod 
 of Ulster and the Secession Synod in Ireland. Till 
 recently, there were ministers in all the dissenting 
 Presbyterian churches who held both these prin- 
 ciples, and in the Free Church especially there are 
 still a large number of prominent laymen, as well 
 as clergymen, who firmly maintain both principles. 
 Any attempt to remove from the statute-book of 
 Scotland the old legal securities for national religion 
 and a national Church, would be resolutely resisted 
 by them, and the confiscation of the Church's 
 endowments could not fail to stir up bitter feelings 
 without as well as within the Church, and to 
 increase greatly the alienation which already un- 
 happily exists. As Professor FHnt has forcibly put 
 it in the paper which I have already quoted : 
 * It is vain to expect Presbyterian union , as the 
 consequence of disestablishment. Disestablishment 
 gained through strife can only perpetuate, increase, 
 
320 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 and intensify disunion.' This has been unmistak- 
 ably manifested in Ireland, though the Protestant 
 churches there, Episcopalian and Presbyterian, were 
 treated with an amount of favour we are warned 
 that we must not expect on this side the Irish 
 Channel. There are no symptoms of improved 
 relations between these churches yet visible. Even' 
 those Primitive Methodists who previously ranked 
 themselves as members of the Established Church 
 have now drawn off. 'The increased alienation of 
 the Roman Catholics is notorious/ and * the Presby- 
 terians have to submit to the precedence of two 
 hierarchies instead of one.* 
 
 The case of America also is paraded as an example 
 of the good effects of disestablishment and disendow- 
 ment, and the ability of the Church to live and 
 thrive apart from union with the State ; but the 
 case of a new country of almost boundless extent 
 and unlimited capabilities, like the United States, is 
 not necessarily an example in point, for an old land 
 of so limited extent and resources as Scotland — 
 where the salaries of the dissenting ministers gener- 
 ally, before '43, were shamefully limited ; and where, 
 notwithstanding the noble services and inspiriting 
 example of the Free Church, they are still, save in 
 the large towns, far from what they ought to be. 
 Except in some of the eastern states of America, 
 there never was an established church, and in these 
 states disestablishment was not accompanied by 
 disendowment. The Presbyterian Churches ^ of that 
 
 * These are the large Presbyterian Churches of the North and of 
 the South, the United Presbyterian Church, two or three Reformed 
 Presbyterian Churches, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, and the 
 Welsh Presbyterians. 
 
Union of Scottish Presbytej-iajis. 321 
 
 great country, noble and estimable as they are, 
 share in the same divisions as ourselves at home, 
 and are even more tasked than we, to keep pace 
 with the rapidly increasing population that is 
 pouring into their cities from year to year. No one 
 can speak, save in terms of the highest respect, of 
 their leading ministers and earnest Christian laymen, 
 or doubt that they are doing noble service in the 
 cause of our common Master. Even Geffcken 
 admits that nowhere more than in America is 
 religion felt to be a vast social power, and that the 
 separation of Church and State is far from being 
 the absolute one which not a few doctrinaires on 
 this side desire. Everywhere the observance of the 
 Sabbath is protected by law ; religious fasts and 
 thanksgivings, objected to by some of the sterner 
 Voluntaries in Scotland, are appointed by law ; and 
 chaplains also, who open every sitting of Congress 
 with prayer. But he deems it necessary to subjoin 
 the following complementary picture, which is by no 
 means so flattering : 
 
 ' The Voluntary system as a whole has evidently its dark 
 sides. It makes the clergy absolutely dependent on the 
 members of the congregation who pay them ; they cannot 
 well oppose things the public disapproval of which would 
 make them unpopular, nay, might entail their dismissal. 
 Hardly a preacher in the South ever uttered a word against 
 slavery. And since they are bound to please the masses, they 
 easily address themselves to their weaknesses, and prefer the 
 sensational harangue to the simple proclamation of evangelical 
 truth. Politics, accordingly, are constantly brought into the 
 pulpit. Between 1865 and 1867, the chaplain of Congress 
 prayed daily that President Johnson might be humbled, and 
 his own party exalted with glory. Besides all this, the 
 Voluntary system leads to the greatest inequality in the 
 
322 Unio7i of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 position of the clergy. While popular preachers at New- 
 York and other great cities draw large salaries from their 
 admirers, others in small communities must live by the work 
 of their hands ; while, as regards the churches themselves, 
 their unlimited liberty tends to make them mutually exclusive.' 
 
 The number of churches in America to which no 
 minister is attached is very large (and it is the same 
 among the dissenters in England). ' In the report of 
 the American Tract Society, two years ago, it was 
 put down at twelve thousand, and in the same 
 report it was stated that from eight to ten millions 
 are unreached by the ordinary means of grace, while 
 not more than one-sixth even profess to be members 
 of any Christian church.' Mr Hughes, who supplies 
 this information, further assures us that, having 
 done his best to learn the opinions of the ablest and 
 most thoughtful Americans themselves, he can find 
 nothing in their half-century experiment of the 
 Voluntary system to make him wish that England 
 should follow it. Neither, surely, should Scotland. 
 We have been told with painful iteration that 
 disestablishment would put an end to all that 
 rivalry and strife to overlap each other's agency, of 
 which we had so much cause of late to complain. 
 But is Voluntary America in better case than our- 
 selves ? So far from it, that Dr Pentecost, a distin- 
 guished Congregational minister in Brooklyn, is 
 adduced by a recent reviewer,, as testifying that 
 *■ this rivalry and jealousy crop out Diost frequently 
 in any projected union movements for evangelistic 
 work.' 
 
 I have still to mention, as an indispensable neces- 
 sity to permanent union, that we learn to set greater 
 
U7tion of Scottish Presbyterians. 323 
 
 store by the principles as to which all the churches 
 are agreed, and less by the points as to which they 
 differ, and about which they have been divided. 
 Some are already formulating extended articles of 
 agreement for us, and others asking or taking for 
 granted our assent beforehand, to those articles 
 which were elaborated in the recent negotiations for 
 union between the non-established churches. The 
 result of this plan, in the case of these churches, was 
 not such as to encourage the repetition of that 
 course. Similar attempts in America had a similar 
 denouement, and it was found expedient in the end, 
 in the latest negotiations for union (between the old 
 and new school Presbyterians), that the churches 
 should unite on the old standards and the consti- 
 tution of the undivided church. 
 
 If we are ever to be one again, it humbly appears 
 to me that it must be in the same way, that is, on 
 the ground of what we hold in common, and what 
 our fathers held in common before their separation. 
 The word of command must be ' As you were again.' 
 The Church must be substantially the old Church, as 
 it was in happier days — in friendly alliance with the 
 State, and pervading the national life in every pos- 
 sible way, and in every possible nook of the land, 
 unfettered and untrammelled, with independent 
 jurisdiction in spiritual matters as fully secured as 
 human laws can secure it. Disestablishment and 
 disendowment will not give better, or even as good 
 security, as has been proved in the Cardross and 
 some other cases, and is acknowledged by Dr 
 Guthrie in his letter to the Duke of Argyll, recently 
 reprinted. Neither would they tend to allay the 
 
324 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 present alienation and embitterment. Their own 
 hard experience after '43, the exasperated feeling 
 then originated, and the sense of real or fancied 
 wrong long brooded over, which has built up such 
 a wall of separation between them and us, may be 
 to them some faint index of what our feelings might 
 be towards them, should the goodly fabric our 
 fathers reared be remorselessly overthrown, and the 
 religious patrimony of the humble and poor in our 
 rural parishes, and of the neglected outcasts in our 
 large cities, be alienated from the uses to which it 
 has been so long dedicated. It would not be for a 
 generation or two at anyrate, that such embitter- 
 ment would be allayed. It is more probable that it 
 never would be so, and that the last hope of the 
 reunion of the divided fragments of the Church of 
 our fathers would be abandoned in despair. The 
 interests of Presbyterianism would be seriously com- 
 promised in the land where it has so long held 
 sway. The words of the honoured champion whose 
 recent loss we mourn, will find an echo in many 
 hearts : ' If this old country is to be torn with 
 ecclesiastical contention once more, we shall have 
 the satisfaction at least of thinking that we have 
 done what we could to avoid it, and that, if we must 
 fight, whether we lose or win, we have been con- 
 tending for a good cause, and for principles which 
 are dearer to us than our own comfort or lives. It 
 can matter little in a personal sense — to some of us 
 very little — what the end may be ; but the issue is 
 a mighty one for the country, and I hope that our 
 younger churchmen, as well as older churchmen like 
 myself, with whom the fight in this, as in many 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 325 
 
 other matters, is nearly over, may realise this, and 
 bear themselves well for the Church which they love 
 and have sworn to defend.' He 'being dead yet 
 speaketh.' His words may be regarded as a last 
 solemn message to his brethren, and if it is 
 indeed laid to heart and resolutely acted on, 
 even this great sorrow shall not have been sent 
 to us in vain. 
 
 One of our keenest opponents, in a singularly 
 able and sympathetic analysis of the character of 
 Samuel Rutherfurd — the saint of the Covenant — 
 has said of him : ' It looks sometimes as if there 
 were two m.en in him. One was the man whom all 
 know in his letters — ardent, aspiring, and unworldly, 
 impatient of earth, intolerant of sin, rapt into the 
 continual contemplation of one unseen Face. . . . 
 The other was the intellectual gladiator, the rejoic- 
 ing and remorseless logician . . . the hater of 
 doubt and ambiguity, the scorner of compromise 
 and concession, the incessant and determined dis- 
 putant, the passionate admirer of sequence and 
 system and order in small things as in great — in 
 the corner of the corner of an argnment, as in the 
 mighty world outside, with its orbits of the Church 
 and of the State.' 
 
 In this he has limned not an individual merely, 
 but a class of men which had not a few representa- 
 tives in Scotland in the seventeenth century, and 
 is not altogether extinct yet. With all their noble 
 qualities and saintly lives, by their divisive courses, 
 their distrust of their brethren, and bitter party 
 spirit, they did grievous harm to the cause they 
 
 loved, and greatly contributed to the sad reverse it 
 
 w 
 
326 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 experienced at the Restoration. Is history once more 
 to repeat itself, and the cause of Presbytery again 
 to be fatally wounded in the house of its friends by 
 the men 'of the corner of the corner of an argu- 
 ment,' who, with changing facts confronting them, 
 that will not fit into their unchanging forms, seem 
 determined to learn nothing and forget nothing ? 
 
 There are no divisions in any part of the Christian 
 Church, the continuance of which seem, to all but 
 ourselves, so uncalled for or incapable of being 
 defended on the ground of vital principle, as those 
 which now subsist among the Presbyterians of Scot- 
 land. P'or these divisions of Reuben there may well 
 be * great searchings of heart' The difficulties in 
 the way of the union or federation of the Presby- 
 terian Churches may still be acknowledged. But 
 sure I am that few who can be persuaded calmly 
 and impartially to examine them, will venture to 
 pronounce them to be insurmountable, or to say 
 that, considering the blessed consequences which 
 would result to themselves and to the land they 
 love, there might not well, instead of internecine 
 war, be frank and honourable conference to ascertain 
 whether they could not be removed or reduced to 
 the vanishing point, and that the present time might 
 not well be embraced as a most favourable one for 
 such conference. By a singular concurrence of 
 circumstances, there is once more presented to our 
 view, and pressed on our notice, that ideal which 
 filled the mind of our great Reformer, and which, 
 when partially rejected by the men of his generation, 
 was solemnly commended by him to the generations 
 to come, and has been fondly cherished in the 
 
Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 327 
 
 minds of his leal-hearted countrymen ever since. 
 That ideal, the partial realisation of which has made 
 our native land what it is, and the full realisation 
 of which alone will enable us to make it what it 
 ought to be, is still within our reach. 
 
 Shall we who claim Knox as our spiritual father, 
 and contend with each other who of us follow him 
 most closely and love him best, finally thrust it 
 away from us, and in another sense than his crafty 
 antagonist, the Laird of Lethington, intended, pro- 
 nounce our Reformer's noble plans a ' devout imagin- 
 ation' never more to be striven for, never now to 
 be realised, or only to be so in some far-distant 
 millennium which we shall never live to see .^ Shall 
 we continue this painful internecine strife, and waste 
 our energies and resources against each other, 
 instead of uniting heart and hand to turn them to 
 the best advantage, and use them for the common 
 good, diffusing among the ignorant, the outcast 
 and erring, the light and life of Christianity, and 
 preserving for the religious training, both of the 
 young and the adult, the fragments of ecclesias- 
 tical property which the cupidity of our nobles has 
 spared to us.? Rather, surely, adopting the dying 
 words of the noble man who longed and laboured 
 for this blessed consummation, and expressed his 
 readiness to make great sacrifices of personal feeling 
 and sentiment to secure it, we should not hesitate 
 to say, ' there is needed but the spirit of the great 
 Reformer, mellowed but not enervated to unite all 
 hearts, and to make all hands co-operate in reviving, 
 with the aid of his grace, the work of God in the 
 midst of us, and enlightening and enlivening the 
 
328 Union of Scottish Presbyterians. 
 
 benighted and cheerless families of the land, with 
 the light and life of the everlasting Gospel/ 
 
 I end with words I used once before, and am not 
 ashamed to use again : ' We are loath to abandon the 
 conviction that a reconstruction of Scottish Presby- 
 terianism on the old national lines is not even yet to 
 be despaired of, provided men would only patiently, 
 and dispassionately, and resolutely set themselves 
 to the task. If our brethren, instead of giving 
 themselves to stir again the still glowing embers of 
 old and fierce controversies, which caused such aliena- 
 tions in the past, and are likely, if renewed, to occasion 
 more lasting alienations in the future, were to 'Met 
 the dead past bury its dead," and to concur with us 
 in proclaiming a truce of God till the approaching 
 bicentenary of the Revolution settlement had come 
 and gone, it might be that a nobler spirit would yet 
 be awakened, and the gathering storm be hushed 
 into a calm. It might be that under its glorious 
 memories of peace and reconciliation among brethren 
 long divided and oppressed, we might be drawn 
 together as we have not been for many a day, and 
 even if the way were not at once made plain for 
 incorporating union, more seemly relations, a more 
 loving and forbearing spirit, and more hearty 
 co-operation might be developed and permanently 
 secured. God grant it may be so ! Lord, rebuild 
 thy temple in our beloved land, in haste, in haste, in 
 our day speedily ! Amen and amen.' 
 
 Edinburgh : 
 Printed by W. & R. Chambers. 
 
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