MM mm MMMM»HPMWM«i ■•Mi MMW Miumi l iiau i iiumi i Wfflyi " THE HEADSHIP OF CHRIST, RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE. THE HEADSHIP OE CHRIST AND THE RIGHTS OF THE CHRISTIAN PEOPLE. BY HUGH MILLER, AUTHOR OF 'THE OLD RED SANDSTONE,' ' MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS, 'THE TESTIMONY OF THE ROCKS,' ETC WITH A PREFACE BY PETER BAYNE. A.M. EIGHTH EDITION. WILLIAM P. NIMMO: LONDON : 14 KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND ; AND EDINBURGH. 1875. Hift of the Estate of Mrs. Alary E. Wilde **AY 1 2 1914 EDINBURGH : PRINTED BY M'FARLANE AND EKPKINE (late Schenck &* M'Farlane), — V STJAMl.s" SQUARE. CONTENTS. Letter to Lord Brougham .... The Whiggism of the Old School . The Literary Character of Knox Dr Thomas M'Crie . The Debate on Missions .... The Two Parties in the Church of Scctlanp The Twin Presbyteries of Strathbogie The Two Students ..... The Presentation to Daviot The Communicants of the North Country Spiritual Independence the Distinctive Privilege of the Church of Scotland .... The " Grasping Ambition " of the Non-Intrusionists Popular Estimate of the Two Parties The Earl of Aberdeen's Bill The Scotch People and the Presbyterian Church Moderatism Popular, Where and Why The Earl of Aberdeen v. the People of Scotland Debate in the Edinburgh Presbytery on Lord Aberdeen's Bill ...... Pagk 1 23 65 77 330 187 192 196 203 208 216 219 224 230 237 240 246 253 VI. CONTENTS. Eevtval in Alness ..... Conservatism on Revivals .... The Outrage at Marnoch .... Supplementary Notes of the Settlement at Marnoch Sketches of the General Assembly of 1841 Scottish Lawyers : their Two Classes The New Policy : Evangelical Moderates moderatism : some of its better classes Prayer : the True and the Counterfeit Mr Isaac Taylor on the Independence of the Church Defence Associations foreshadowtngs Translations into Fact The Two Conflicts . Tendencies . Mb Forsyth's " Remarks" State-Carpentry The Disruption The Close Union and its Principles Page 260 269 275 282 289 327 331 340 345 349 352 357 361 386 397 452 462 472 480 4S6 Appendix— Speech by Dr Candlish on the Cardross Cask 4iJ9 PREFACE. To enter into the spirit of this book, we must distinctly apprehend the conception formed by its author, of the Pres- byterian Church of Scotland. Throughout her entire history, the Scottish Church has been distinguished by two leading characteristics, seldom found in combination. 1st, She has assumed a high and commanding ecclesiastical position, claiming a jurisdiction in spiritual concerns inde- pendent of, and co-ordinate with, the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate. She has declared Christ the Head of the Church, not in any abstract and inconsequential sense, but to the clear practical effect of having given his Church upon earth a code of law, — the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- ment, — and of empowering and requiring her to regulate her affairs by that code alone. 2dly, She has been eminently a Church of the people. What she claimed, she claimed not as a hierarchy, not as a clerical corporation, but as a congregation of Christians. The minister had his place : the member had his place. The powers and rights of each were held equally from Christ the King. VIIL PREFACE. By both these characteristics the Church of Scotland has been distinguished from the Church of England. The southern Establishment was the work of kings and statesmen. The constitution of the Church grew gradually into shape and form as part of the civil constitution of the realm. Slight share in its construction was taken by divines ; — no share at all by the people. It was Henry, it was Burleigh, it was Elizabeth, who were the nursing fathers and nursing mothers of the Church of England. Ecclesias- tical personages aspired to nothing higher than being their recognised and rewarded functionaries. From their position as divines they derived no commanding or regulating autho- rity. The mechanism of the Church of Rome occupied the land, and they complacently lent their aid while it was adapted to the circumstances of a civil popedom. The ques- tion of the original constitution of the Christian Church was not forced upon them by circumstances, and they were well content to evade it. The result was, that independent spiri- tual jurisdiction was conclusively withheld from the Church of England. The Act of Supremacy bound her to the State. The part played by the people in the construction of the Church of England was still more insignificant than that played by divines. The Tudor sovereigns, — able, energetic, imperious, proud by nature, proud in virtue of their prero- gative, — thought little of the feelings of the commonalty in promulgating their haughty decrees. The English, — the most peaceable, long-suffering, and loyal of European nations, — had not yet dreamed of asserting their dignity and rights against the majesty of monarchs. They did, indeed, at last awaken. When the sceptre was held by a race intellectually and PREFACE. IX. morally inferior to the Tudors, — when loyalty and reverence had been sapped by contempt, — when nearly half a century of treacherous oppression had roused to irresistible fury the tremendous instincts of religion and natural justice, — the people of England showed themselves. The Puritans en- gaged in a struggle for two objects : civil libertv, and the reformation of religion. The civil constitution of England they vindicated in its ancient principles, and placed impreg- nably on its modern basis. But when the long and event- ful conflict was at an end, the constitution of the Church of England remained essentially unchanged, and the Chris- tian people were not recognised as one of its integral parts. The history of Scotland presents an entirely different ecclesiastical prospect. The vehement and impetuous nation north of the Tweed embraced the Reformation with a deci- sion and enthusiasm which brooked no half-measures. The Church of Rome was first of all overthrown from base to turret, and a platform found for a new construction. In rearing the new edifice, divines bore a chief, and states- men a subordinate part. Those were divines who magni- fied their office ! They had learned in the school of Calvin to see the glitter of earthly crowns pale in the light of the sanctuary, to exalt the Church as the city of God upon earth, to set small store by human authority against the voice which they believed they heard speaking direct from heaven. They invoked their Divine King to lay the foun- dation of His House. Ten centuries of prescription were less to them than one promise of Christ. They have been accused of narrowness, of fanaticism, of violence ; but all the world has recognised them as men of intrepid courage, of X. PREFACE. iron will, of high devotion, who quailed not in the presence of kings. Knox, Melville, Henderson, were very different personages from those politic and temporizing prelates who showed a courtier-like subservience to Henry, or trembled lest Elizabeth should unfrock them. As churchmen, they would have no king but Christ. They practically vindicated the doctrine of Christ's Headship, by securing that no Act of Supremacy was inscribed in the statute-book of Scotland. And they had a nation at their back, — an earnestly, ardently believing nation, — " a nation," says Carlyle, " of heroes." The circumstances of their position were such that they could not, and their character and the doctrines of their Church were such that, under any circumstances, they as- suredly would not, have overlooked the people. The con- sent of the congregation, — laid down by Calvin in the In- stitutes as an essential element in the appointment of minis- ters, — was given effect to in the ecclesiastical constitution by means of the CalL And thus the Church of Scotland became known to history and to fame as having reconciled the seem- ing contradictions of an intensely ecclesiastical and a broadly popular character. Under these auspices, the General Assembly of the Kirk came into existence. Implicitly confided in by the people, and representing even the laity to a far larger extent than the Scottish Parliament, it exercised throughout the seven- teenth century a commanding influence in all the affairs of the kingdom. The objects for which it contended were the same as those of the early English Puritans, but its victory was more complete than theirs. At the Revolution settle- ment, it appeared that both the civil and religious liberties PREFACE. XI. of Scotland were vindicated. In the Treaty of Union, which speedily followed, the constitution of the Church of Scotland was carefully guarded. The Act of Supremacy was confined to the southern part of the island, and no provision was made for the introduction of patronage into Scotland. In possession of a spiritual independence never claimed by the sister Establishment, and with the rights of the Christian people intact, the Kirk of Knox and Melville, the Kirk of the "Westminster Confession and the Solemn League and Covenant, — the old, indomitable Kirk of Scotland, — rested from her labours. All this was to Hugh Miller a faith deliberately ratified by his intellect, and enshrined with dearest and most exalt- ing associations in his heart of hearts. Patriotism and affectionate reverence, — the feeling with which an English- man regards the Long Parliament, and the feeling with which a Jew of old regarded the Temple on Mount Moriah, — were combined in the emotions with which he contemplated his Church. To stand in spirit by the side of her great men, — to follow her with compassionate or exulting sympa- thy from reverse to reverse, from triumph to triumph, — to draw his breath deep in unutterable execration at thought of the apostate Lauderdale or the bloodhound Claverhouse, — to know her for his country's Church, when her canopy was the mist of the hill, and the trampling of the troopers broke in upon the lifted psalm, as well and as proudly as when she bearded monarchs, and set her foot on the necks of her enemies, — this seemed involved in the fact of his being a Scotchman. That a fundamental principle of her constitu- tion, such as the right of the Christian people to have no XII. PREFACE. minister intruded upon them, aftei oeing preserved through the storms and treacheries of a century, should be set aside by a Patronage Act smuggled by Tories through the British Parliament in contravention of the Treaty of Union, was to him an absurd idea. He looked upon the Patronage Act as a galling fetter, which her creed and her history pledged the Church to cast off. He sympathized with the Seceders of the last century in their refusal to wear it. He assented to the petition against it sent up year by year to Parliament from the General Assembly, until Moderate ascendancy culminated under Robertson, and the Church, for the first time in her history, winked at her own humiliation. In the Evangelical minority of the eighteenth century, headed by Erskine, he re- cognised his beloved Church as cordially and as confidently as in the homeless hill-men who clung to Peden and to Came- ron in the seventeenth. When that minority swelled into a majority, — when the ancestial principles of the Church of Scotland shone out once more broad and clear, — there was no man better fitted to understand the position of the Estab- lishment, — no man more ready to support and defend her, — than Hugh Miller. The struggle between the Church of Scotland and the civil authority, which ended in the Disruption, was inaugurated by the passing of the Yeto Act by the Church. The con- flict took shape and character throughout from that cele- brated enactment. In daring to put into the hands of the people a veto on any minister presented to a charge, but not accepted by the congregation, the Church vindicated both her ancient and distinctive principles. She proclaimed that the rights of the Christian people were inalienably secured to PREFACE. XIII. them ; and she asserted her power, in face of an existent act of Parliament, to give those rights effect. Non-intrusion and spiritual independence were thus linked together throughout the Ten Years' Conflict. That Hugh Miller viewed the contest in this manner, we know from his own words. " The contendings of the Se- cession in the last century," he wrote, shortly before the Dis- ruption, " involved mainly the Non-intrusion principle. The contendings of our Presbyterian fathers in the century pre- vious involved mainly the great doctrine that Christ is the only Head of the Church, and that, in the things which per- tain to his kingdom, she owns no other Lord but Him. And in our present struggle, "both these twin principles of strength are united" The present volume consists of two celebrated pamphlets written by Hugh Miller in defence of the contending Church, and of a gleaning — a scanty and desultory gleaning — from his articles in the Witness newspaper on the Church question. These will assuredly convey no adequate idea of his part in the Disruption controversy. It was only here and there that an article could be selected. To have taken all that dis- played high excellence, — all that were noble in eloquence, keen and brilliant in satire, powerful in invective, or masterly in argument, — would have been to fill many volumes. It is likely that articles which created a particularly wide and deep sensation at the time, and are still vividly remembered, will be missed. To revive the interest which made them effec- tive, — to call from oblivion somi speech, pamphlet, or party manoeuvre, agitating all minds at the time, and now ever- lastingly forgotten, — was impossible. It has been carefully XIV. PREFACE. endeavoured, also, to avoid inflicting pain upon any still alive who were engaged in the conflict, or upon the surviving relatives of those who have died. Controversy is controversy ; and Hugh Miller fought for his Church with the earnest- ness and vehemence of his covenanting fathers at Marston Moor or Drumclog. But when the dust of the fight is laid, and its din is over, — when the grave has closed over so many of the combatants, — it would be useless, and it would be unsrracious, to re-awaken its animosities. Of the influence exerted upon the public mind of Scot- land by Hugh Miller's articles in the Witness on the Church question, there are thousands still living who can speak. A year or two before the Disruption, I passed a winter in a Highland manse. I was too young to form a distinct idea of the merits of the dispute. But there was a sound then in the air which I could not help hearing. It seems as if it were in my ears still. Never have I witnessed so steady, intense, enthralling an excitement. And I have no difficulty, even at this distance, in discriminating the name which rung loudest through the agitated land. It was that of Hugh Miller, — the people's friend, champion, hero ! There are men, there are family circles, to whom certain of these articles will suggest pathetic recollections. A sentence, a word, will recall the olden time, with its hallowed, its tender, its stirring associations : the fireside of the manse, round which member after member of the family grew up; the garden, with its old fruit-trees and familiar walks ; the broad, bright, placid landscape, stretching from the manse-door ; the unadorned Church close at hand, with the household graves around it ; — and then the eye will see to read no more. PREFACE. XV. With all its defects, this volume will illustrate with some comprehensiveness the manner in which Hugh Miller took part in the Disruption Controversy. It will show to what a marvellous point of perfection he was equipped for the work he had to do, — how familiar to him was the whole range of Scottish history, ecclesiastical and literary, — how accurately he had appreciated Presbyterianism as an influence in all provinces of Scottish life, — how perfectly he understood the relations of parties in the Church and kingdom of Scotland, at every stage of the national history. He is seen assailing patronage from every point, — exposing its unconstitutional introduction, its disgraceful history, its pernicious practical effects. The volume contains also his deliberate and em- phatic testimony to the doctrine of the Headship of Christ Though dead, he may still be heard speaking to the people of Scotland on that sacred and momentous theme. The following sentences, in which he described the impression made upon certain persons by attempts practically to insist upon the doctrine in question, read in the light of present occurrences and prevailing frames of mind, may seem almost prophetic : — " As a practical rule of conduct, that sets itself in opposition to secular interests, judicial interdicts, and the decisions of magistrates, they cannot and will not tolerate it. Their merely nominal belief in Christianity, — held as so respectable and so praiseworthy at other times, — always puts, on, in such circumstances, its true character as simply no belief at all. Christ becomes to them a mere phantom King, unreal and invisible; and his kingly authority appears but as a mischievous and repulsive fiction, subversive of the prin- ciples of good government." XVI. PREFACE. And are these questions of spiritual independence and of non-intrusion, after all, but lingering phantoms, paling gra- dually, and sure to pass away in the light of progress 1 Many think so, — many able, and not a few devout men. I think they err. That, in face of all the coercion which can pos- sibly be brought to bear upon the subject, the genuine Pres- byterians of Scotland will maintain both, need not be doubted. But may not England awake to a new interest in the rights of the Christian people, and in the independence of the Church 1 May not the liberal and thinking part of the com- munity, scandalized and distressed by such scenes as have recently occurred in a London Church, ask whether the just and rational remedy for such a state of things is not to give congregations a voice in choosing their own ministers ? And may not those in the Church of England who hold most closely by the principles of the Puritans bethink themselves whether they have not unwisely lost sight of one doctrine pro- fessed by Cartwright in England, and by all the Reformers in the northern part of the island, — the doctrine that Christ is King and Head of his Church, and that it is in the prince's province " to exercise no spiritual jurisdiction V PETER BAYNE. December 1S60. LETTER TO LOSD BEOUGHAM. [A volume consisting of the principal contributions made by Hugh Miller to the literature of the Ten Years' Conflict, cannot be more ap- propriately introduced than with the celebrated pamphlet in which he first stepped forward to take that lead in the lay and popular champion- ship of the Church which he thenceforth continued to hold. Having, as he informs us in the "Schools and Schoolmasters," been deeply moved by the decision, adverse to the claims of the evangelical majority, delivered by the Court of Session in March 1838, and by that of the House of Lords in 1839, he experienced an ardent aspiration to offer some aid to his Church in her hour of peril. The speech of Lord Brougham in thf Upper House furnished the occasion required. " I tossed wakefully,' says Mr Miller, "throughout a long night, in which I formed my plan of taking up the purely popular side of the question ; and in the morning I sat down to state my views to the people, in the form of a letter ad- dressed to Lord Brougham." He was at the time occupied with the duties of a bank office, but in the fulness of his heart the words flowed apace : in about a week the composition was finished. Being transmitted to Edinburgh, and brought by Mr Robert Paul under the notice of Dr Candlish and other evangelical leaders, its immediate result was the ap- pointment of Mr Miller to the editorship of the then contemplated ' ' Witness " newspaper. On being published, it ran rapidly through four editions, and was referred to in terms of high encomium by Mr O'Connell on the one hand, and by Mr Gladstone on the other. It is beyond doubt one of the most masterly performances of its illustrious author. The eloquence, at once impassioned in its earnestness and majestic in its calmness, and the comprehensiveness and clear depth, worthy of the A 2 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. statesman or the philosophic historian, by which it is characterized, im- part to it an interest superior to all local or temporary circumstances. It is an essay, and one of high and permanent value, upon a question in- extricably associated with what is noblest and most instructive in the history of Scotland.] My Lord, — I am a plain working man, in rather humble cir- cumstances, a native of the north of Scotland, and a member of the Established Church. I am acquainted with no other language than the one in which I address your Lordship ; and the veiy limited knowledge which I possess has been won slowly and painfully from observation and reflection, with now and then the assistance of a stray volume, in the intervals of a laborious life. I am not too uninformed, how- ever, to appreciate your Lordship's extraordinary powers and acquirements ; and as the cause of freedom is peculiarly the cause of the class to which I belong, and as my acquaint- ance with the evils of ignorance has been by much too close and too tangible to leave me indifferent to the blessings of education, I have been no careless or uninterested spectator of your Lordship's public career. No, my Lord, I have felt my heart swell as I pronounced the name of Henry Brougham. With many thousands of my countrymen, I have waited in deep anxiety for your Lordship's opinion on the Auchter- arder case. Aware that what may seem clear as a matter of right may be yet exceedingly doubtful as a question of la^v, — aw T are, too, that your Lordship had to decide in this matter, not as a legislator, but as a judge, — I was afraid that, though, you yourself might be our friend, you might yet have to pronounce the law our enemy. And yet, the bare majo- rity by which the case had been carried against us in the Court of Session, — the consideration, too, that the judges who had declared in our favour rank among the ablest law- yers and most accomplished men that our country has ever produced, — had inclined me to hope that the statute-book, as LETTER TO LOUD BROUGHAM. «* interpreted by your Lordship, might not be found very de- cidedly against us. But of you yourself, my Lord, I could entertain no doubt. You had exerted all your energies in sweeping away the Old Sarums and East Retfords of the constitution. Could I once harbour the suspicion that you had become tolerant of the Old Sarums and East Retfords of the Church ? You had declared, whether wisely or other- wise, that men possessed of no property qualification, and as humble and as little taught as the individual who now ad- dresses you, should be admitted, on the strength of their moral and intellectual qualities alone, to exercise a voice in the Legislature of the country. Could I suppose for a mo- ment, that you deemed that portion of these very men which falls to the share of Scotland unfitted to exercise a voice in the election of a parish minister? or rather,— for I under- state the case,— that you held them unworthy of being eman- cipated from the thraldom of a degrading law, the remnant of a barbarous code, which conveys them over by thousands and miles square to the charge of patronage-courting clergy- men, practically unacquainted with the religion they profess to teach 1 Surely the people of Scotland are not so changed but that they knew at least as much of the doctrines of the New Testament as cf the principles of civil government, and of the requisites of a gospel minister, as of the qualifications of a Member of Parliament ! You have decided against us, my Lord. You have even said that we had better rest contented with the existing statutes, as interpreted by your Lordship, than involve our- selves in the dangers and difficulties of a new enactment. Nay, more wonderful still, all your sympathies on the occa- sion seem to have been reserved for the times and the me- mory of men who first imparted its practical efficiency to a law under which we and our fathers have groaned, and which we have ever regarded as not only subversive of our 4 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. natural rights as men, but of our wellbeing as Christians. Highly as your Lordship estimates our political wisdom, you have no opinion whatever of our religious taste and know- ledge. Is it at all possible that you, my Lord, a native of Scotland, and possessed of more general information than perhaps any other man living, can have yet to learn that we have thought long and deeply of our religion, whereas our political speculations began but yesterday, — that our popular struggles have been struggles for the right of worshipping God according to the dictates of our conscience, and under the guidance of ministers of our own choice, — and that, when anxiously employed in finding arguments by which rights so dear to us might be rationally defended, our discovery of the principles of civil liberty was merely a sort of chance-conse- quence of the search 1 Examine yourself, my Lord. Is your mind free from all bias in this matter 1 Are you quite as- sured that your admiration of an illustrious relative, at a period when your judgment was comparatively uninformed, has not had the effect of rendering his opinions your preju- dices 1 Principal Robertson was unquestionably a great man ; but consider in what way : great as a leader, — not as a " Father in the Church," — it is not to ministers such as the Principal that the excellent among my countrymen look up for spiritual guidance amid the temptations and difficulties of life, or for comfort at its close : great in literature, — not, like Timothy of old, great in his knowledge of the Scriptures, — aged men who sat under his ministry have assured me that, in hurrying over the New Testament, he had missed the doc- trine of the atonement : great as an author and a man of genius, — great in his enduring labours as a historian, — great in the sense in which Hume, and Gibbon, and Voltaire were great.* But who can regard the greatness of such men as * Is the writer's estimate of Dr Robertson's religious character too low? Take, then, the estimate of William Wilberforce,— a name to which even the high eulc LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 5 a sufficient guarantee for the soundness of the opinions which they have held, or the justice or wisdom of the measures which they have recommended ? The law of patronage is in no degree the less cruel or absurd from its having owed its re-enactment to so great a statesman and so ingenious a writer as Bolingbroke ; nor yet from its having received its full and practical efficiency from so masterly a historian and so thorough a judge of human affairs as Robertson ; nor yet, my Lord, from the new vigour which it has received from the decision of so profound a philosopher and so accom- plished an orator as Brougham. I am a plain untaught man ; but the opinions which T hold regarding the law of patronage are those entertained by the great bulk of my countrymen, and entitled on that ac- count to some little respect. I shall state them as clearly and as simply as I can. You are doubtless acquainted with that beautiful little piece of antique simplicity, drawn up by Knox, on the election of elders and deacons. It forms an interesting record, by an eye-witness, of the earliest begin- nings of reformation in Scotland. At first, pious indivi- duals, "brought, through the wonderful grace of God, to a knowledge of the truth, began to exercise themselves by read- giums of Lord Brougham can add nothing. In the "Practical View," chapter vL, there occurs the following passage : — "It has also been a melancholy prognostic of the state to which we are progres- sive, that many of the most eminent literati of modern times have been professed unbelievers ; and that others of them have discovered such lukewarmness in the cause of Christ as to treat with especial good will, and attention, and respect, those men who, by their avowed publications, were openly assailing, or insidiously un- dermining, the very foundations of the Christian hope ; considering themselves as more closely united to them by literature, than severed from them by the widest religious differences. It is with pain that the author finds himself compelled to place so great a writer as Dr Robertson in this class. But, to say nothing of his phlegmatic account of the Reformation (a subject which we should have thought likely to excite in any one who united the character of a Christian divine with that of a historian, some warmth of pious gratitude for the good providence of God), — to pass over also the ambiguity in which he leaves his readers as to his opinion of the authenticity of the Mosaic chronology, in his Disquisitions on the Trade of India, — his letters to Mr Gibbon, lately published, cannot but excite emotions of regret and shame in every sincere Christian." — (Page 304, fifth edition.) 6 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. ing of the Scriptures secretly," and to call the members of their own households around them to join with them in prayer. In the next stage a few neighbouring families of this character learned to assemble themselves together to pray and to exhort, sometimes under the cloud of night in houses, sometimes in lone and sequestered hollows in the fields. Their numbers gradually increased, and that diversity of talent so characteristic of the human family, and so nicely adapted to man's social nature, began to manifest itself in this first germ of the Reformed Church in Scotland. To assign to individuals among them by the general voice that place for which nature and the Holy Spirit had peculiarly fitted them, was but a giving of effect, through the agency of man, to the will of God, and essentially necessary for the maintenance of decency and good order. " And so began that small flock," says the Reformer, " to put themselves in such order as if Christ Jesus had plainly triumphed in the midst of them by the power of the Evangel ; and they did elect some to occupy the supreme place of exhortation and reading, and some to be elders and helpers to these for the oversight of the flock, and some to be deacons for the col- lection of alms to be distributed to the poor of their own body. And of this small beginning is that order that now God, of his mercy, hath given unto us publicly within this realm." One stage more, and the history is complete. The devo- tions of the closet had passed into the family ; the members of Christianized families had formed themselves into a Church. But this process of germination and growth had not been confined to a single locality. The long winter was over ; the vital principle was heaving under the clods of separate fields and widely distant valleys ; the deep sleep of ages had been broken ; the day-star had arisen ; the Spirit of God had moved upon the face of the waters ; many families had LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 7 been enlightened, — many Churches had been formed. How was "the bond of unity" to be best preserved, and wise and equal laws established for the good of the whole 1 " Wis- dom," saith the Saviour, " is justified of her children." The Churches instructed their best and wisest to deliberate in council, — their learned and strong-minded, their tried and venerable men, whom they had chosen to be their guides and leaders, because God had chosen them first ; and these met in assembly, each recognising in each an equal and a brother, and in Christ the Head and Governor of the whole. The Scriptures were opened, that the " mind of God" might be known ; they sought advice of the Reformed Churches abroad ; conferred with princes and magistrates at home ; enacted wise laws ; drew up books of order and of discipline ; framed Catechisms and Confessions of Faith : the God in whom they trusted breathed a spirit of wisdom into their counsels ; and the inestimable blessings of a pure and Scrip- tural religion were thus secured to our land Is the picture faithfully drawn 1 Look at it, my Lord. The Presbyte- rians of Scotland deem it a picture of their Church in her best estate ; and believe that the one great object of her saints and martyrs in all their struggles with kings and pa- trons, priests and curates, leaders in the General Assembly, and dragoons on the hill-side, has been to restore what of the original likeness had been lost, or to preserve what had been retained. Now, with many thousands of my countrymen, I have been accustomed to ask, Where is the place which patronage occupies in this Church of the people and of Christ 1 I read in the First Book of Discipline (as drawn up by Knox and his brethren), that " no man should enter the ministry with- out a lawful vocation ; and that a lawful vocation standeth in the election of the people, examination of the ministry, and admission by then) both." I find in the Second Book, as 8 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. sanctioned by our earlier Assemblies, and sworn to in our National Covenant, that as this liberty of election was ob- served and respected so long as the primitive Church main- tained its purity, it should be also observed and respected by the Reformed Church of Scotland ; and that neither by the kino- himself, nor by any inferior person, should ministers be intruded on congregations, contrary to the will of the peo- ple. I find patronage mentioned in this Second Book for the first time, and mentioned only to be denounced as "an abuse flowing from the Pope and the corruption of the canon law," and as contrary to the liberty of election, the light of reformation, the Word of God. Where is the flaw in our locric when we infer that the members of our Church consti- tute our Church, and that it is the part and right of these members in their collective capacity to elect their ministers ? I, my Lord, am an integral part of the Church of Scotland, and of such integral parts, and of nothing else, is the body of this Church composed ; nor do we look to the high places of the earth when we address ourselves to its adorable Head. The Earl of Kinnoull is not the Church, nor any of the other patrons of Scotland. Why, then, are these men suffered to exercise, and that so exclusively, one of the Church's most sacred privileges 1 You tell us of " existing institutions, vested rights, positive interests." Do we not know that the slaveholders, who have so long and so stubbornly withstood your Lordship's truly noble appeals in behalf of the African bondsmen, have been employing an exactly similar language for the last fifty years ; and that the onward progress of man to the high place which God has willed him to occupy has been impeded at every step by " existing institutions, vested rights, positive interests ?" My grandfather was a grown man at a period when the neighbouring proprietor could have dragged him from his cottage, and hung him up on the gal- lows-hill of the barony. It is not yet a century since the L3TTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 9 colliers of our southern districts were serfs bound to the soil. The mischievous and intolerant lav/ of patronage still presses its dead weight on our consciences. But what of all that, my Lord 1 Is it not in accordance with the high destiny of the species that the fit and the right should triumph over the established 1 It is impossible your Lordship can hold, with men of a lower order, that there is any necessary connection between the law of patronage and our existence as an Establishment. The public money can only be legitimately employed in fur- thering the public good ; and we recognise the improvement and conservation of the morals of the people as the sole con- dition on which our ministers receive the support of the State. Where is the inevitable connection between rights of patron- age (which, as the law now exists, may be exercised by fools, debauchees, infidels) and principles such as these 1 Nay, what is there subversive of such principles in a Christian liberty of election as complete as that enjoyed of old by the first fathers of the Reformation, or exercised in the present day by our Protestant Dissenters % I may surely add, that what is good for the Dissenters in this matter cannot be very bad for us ; that I can find none of the much-dreaded evils of popular election, — the divisions, the heart-burnings, the endless law-suits, the dominancy of the fanatical spirit, — ex- emplified in them ; and that there can surely be little to cen- sure in a principle which could have secured to them the labours of such ministers as Baxter and Bunyan, Watts and Doddridge, Robert Hall, and Thomas M'Crie. Even you yourself, my Lord, will hardly venture to assert that our Scottish patrons could have provided them with better or more useful clergymen than they have been enabled to choose for themselves. But on these points we are not at issue with your Lord- ship. You tell us, however, that we are protected against 1 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. the abuses of patronage by the provision that patrons can present only qualified persons, — clergymen whose literature the Church has pronounced sufficient, and their morals not bad. And when, under the suspension of our higher pri- vileges, we challenge for ourselves the right of rejecting mi- nisters thus selected without assigning our reasons, you un- generously insinuate, that we are perhaps anxious to employ this liberty in the rejection of good men, too strict in morals, and too diligent in duty, to please our vitiated tastes. " Have a care, my Lord." You are a philosopher of the inductive school. Look well to your facts. Put our lives to the ques- tion. Ascertain whether we are immoral in the proportion in which we are zealous for this privilege ; determine whether our clergymen are lax and time-serving in the degree in which they are popular \ and see, I beseech your Lordship, that the scrutiny be strict. We challenge, as our right, liberty of rejection ivithout statement of reasons. What is there so ab- surd in this as to provoke ridicule 1 or what so unfair as to justify the imputation of sinister design 1 It is positive, not negative, character we expect in a clergyman. We are sus- picious of the " not proven ,*" we are dissatisfied with even the "not guilty :" we look in him for qualities which we can love, powers which, we can respect, graces which we can revere. It matters not that we should have no grounds on which to condemn ; — we are justified in our rejection if we cannot approve. But we are aware, my Lord, that there is a noiseless though powerful under-current of objection, which bears more heavily against us in this matter than all the thousand lesser tides that froth and bubble on the surface. We are opposed by the prejudices of a powerful party, who see an inevitable con- nection between the exercise of the popular voice and what I shall venture to define for them as a fanaticism according to the Standards of our Church. We have but one Bible and LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 1 1 one Confession of Faith in our Scottish Establishment ; but we have two religions in it ; and these, though they bear ex- actly the same name, and speak nearly the same language, are yet fundamentally and vitally different. They belong, in fact, to the two very opposite classes into which all religions naturally divide. The one is popular, and has ever contended for the infusion of the popular principle into the Church as a necessary element ; the other is exclusive, and has as de- terminedly struggled against it. The Logans, Homes, Blairs, B-obertsons, of the last age, may be regarded as constituting the fit representatives of the latter class. The other recog- nises its master spirits, — its beloved and much honoured lead- ers, — in our Thomsons and Chalmerses, our Knoxes and Mel- villes, the fathers of the Secession, and the champions of the Covenant. The infusion of the popular principle, while it would mightily strengthen the one class, would assuredly di- minish, if not altogether annihilate, the other ; and while the thousands which form the one reckon on it as their friend, the hundreds which compose the other hate and oppose it as their enemy. Now. there are important, though perhaps somewhat occult, principles couched in this circumstance, regarding which your Lordship's opinion, as a philosopher, would be of great value, had you not already foreclosed the question in a very differ- ent character indeed. It will be found that all the false reli- gions of past or of present times, which have abused the credulity or nattered the judgments of men, may be divided into two grand classes, — the natural and the artificial. The natural religions are wild and extravagant ; and the enlight- ened reason, when unbiassed by the influence of early pre- judice, rejects them as monstrous and profane. But they have unquestionably a strong, hold on human nature, and exert a powerful control over its hopes and its fears. They are, like the oak or the chestnut, the slow growth of centuries ; their 1 2 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. first beginnings are lost in the uncertainty of the fabulous ages, and every addition they receive is fitted to the credulity of the popular mind ere it can assimilate itself to the mass. The grand cause of their popularity, however, seems to con- sist in the human character of their gods ; for is it not ac- cording to the nature of man as a religious creature, that he meet with an answering nature in Deity 1 The artificial religions, on the other hand, are exclusively the work of the human reason, and the God with which they profess to acquaint us is a mere abstract idea, — an incompre- hensible essence of goodness, power, and wisdom. The un- derstanding cannot conceive of Him except as a first great cause, — as the mysterious source and originator of all things; and it is surely according to reason that he should be thus re- moved from that lower sphere of conception which even finite intelligences can occupy to the full. But in thus rendering him intangible to the understanding, he is rendered intangible to the affections also. Who ever loved an abstract idea, or what sympathy can exist between human minds and an in- telligent essence infinitely diffused? And hence the cold and barren inefficiency of artificial religions. They want the vi- tality of life. They want the grand principle of motive; for they can lay no hold on those affections to which this prime mover in all human affairs can alone address itself. They may look well in a discourse or an essay ; for, like all human inventions, they may be easily understood and plausibly de- fended ; but they are totally unsuited to the nature and the wants of man. Now, is it not according to reason and analogy, that the true religion should be formed, if I may so express myself, on a popular principle 1 Is it not indispensable that the re- ligion which God reveals should be suited to the human na- ture which God has made ? Artificial religions, with all their minute rationalities, are not suited to it a' - , all, and therefore LETTER TO LORD BEOUGHAM. 1 3 take no hold on the popular mind : natural religions, with all their immense popularity, are not suited to improve it. It is Christianity alone which unites the popularity of the one class with the rationality and more than the purity of the other, — that gives to Deity, as the man Christ Jesus, his stron^ hold on the human affections, and restores to Him, in his abstract character as Father of all, the homage of the under- standing. Question the principle as you please, but look, I beseech you, to the fact. Who was that most popular of all preachers whom the immense multitudes of Judea followed into waste and solitary places, and of whom it is so expressly told, that the " common people heard him gladly ?" And what the re- ligion taught by the twelve unlettered men, whose labours revolutionized the morals of the world 1 Christianity in its primitive integrity is essentially a popular religion ; and what we complain of in the Churchmen opposed to the popular voice is, that they have divested it of this vital principle. What God has done in the framing of it they undo in the preaching of it ; they impart to it all the cold inefficacy of an artificial religion ; they tell us well-nigh as much of the beauty of virtue as Plato could have done ; of the incarna- tion or the atonement they tell us well-nigh as little, or tell as if they told it not ; and what wonder if they should be left to exhibit their minute and feeble rationalities to bare walls and empty benches, and to dread in the popular prin- ciple the enemy which is eventually to cast them out of the Church? We are acquainted with our New Testaments ; and demand that our ministers give that prominence and space to the peculiar doctrines of Christianity which we find assigned to them in the Epistles of Paul and of Peter, of James and of John. I have striven, my Lord, to acquaint myself with the history of my Church. I have met with a few old books, and have 14 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. found time to read them ; and, as the histories of Knox, Cal- derwood, and Wodrow have been among the number, I do not find myself much at the mercy of any man on questions connected with our ecclesiastical institutions, or the spirit which animated them. Some of the institutions themselves are marked by the character of the age in which they were produced ; for we must not forget that the principles of to- leration are as much the discovery of a later time as those principles on which we construct our steam-engines. But the spirit which lived and breathed in them was essentially that " spirit with which Christ maketh his people free.' 1 Nay, the very intolerance of our Church was of a kind which de- lighted to arm its vassals with a power before which all tyranny, civil or ecclesiastical, must eventually be overthrown. It compelled them to quit the lower levels of our nature for the higher. It demanded of them that they should be no longer immoral or illiterate. It was the Reformed Church of Scotland that gave the first example of providing that the children of the poor should be educated at the expense of the State. Not Henry Brougham himself could have been more zealous in sending the schoolmaster abroad. But ignorance, superstition, immorality, above all, an intolerance of an en- tirely opposite character, jealous of the knowledge and in- different to the good of its vassals, were by much too strong for it ; and there were times when the Church could do little more than testify against the grinding tyranny which op- pressed her, and to the truth and justice of her own prin- ciples ; and not even this with impunity. I have perused, by the light of the evening fire, whole volumes filled with the death-testimonies of her martyrs. Point me out any one abuse, my Lord, against which she has testified oftener or more strongly than that of patronage, or any one privilege for which she has contended with a more enduring zeal than that for which our General Assembly is contending at this day. LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 15 Moulding her claims according to the form and pressure of the opposition from without, — casting them at one time into a positive, at another into a negative form, — asserting at one time a free election, at another a non-intrusion principle, — we find her, on this great question, perseveringly firm and invariably consistent ; and we regard the abolition of pa- tronage, and the recognition of the popular right, as entirely a consequence of that dominancy of just and generous prin- ciple which was in part a cause and in part an effect of the Revolution, as we do any of the other great liberties which the Revolution has secured to us ; nor does the very opposite opinion expressed by your Lordship weigh more with us in this matter than if it had proceeded from the puniest sophist that ever opposed himself to the spread of education or the emancipation of the slave. Twenty-one years passed, during which the Church, in the undisputed possession of her hard-earned privileges, was slowly recovering from the state of weakness and exhaustion induced by her sufferings in the previous period. And well and wisely were these privileges employed. Differences inevitably occur wherever man enjoys the blessings of liberty, civil or eccle- siastical ; but during these twenty-one years there were few heats or divisions, and no schisms, in the Scottish Church. Such, at least, is the view of the matter given us in that life of Wodrow affixed to the late edition of his history ; and sure I am, that it tenders its information in a better spirit than that of any of the acts of Parliament which disgraced the latter years of Queen Anne. But a time had arrived in which no privilege was to be respected for its justice, or spared for its popularity, and in which our governors were to pur- sue other and far different objects than the good of the people or the peace of the Church. The Union had sunk the Pres- byterian representation of Scotland into a feeble and singu- larly inefficient minority. Toryism, in its worst form, ac- [ 6 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. qiiii ed an overpowering ascendancy in the councils of the na- tion ; Bolingbroke engaged in his deep-laid conspiracy against the Protestant succession and our popular liberties ; and the law of patronage was again established. But why established 1 On this important point your Lordship's great historical know- ledge seems to have deserted you at once : there was a total lapse of memory ; and all that remained for your Lordship, in the peculiar circumstances of the case, was just to take the law's own word for the goodness of the law's own cha- racter. "Was it not sufficiently fortunate in its historians % Smollett, ere he composed his English History, had abandoned his "Whig principles ; Burnet was an Episcopalian, and a Bishop \ Sir Walter Scott a staunch Tory, and full of the predilections and antipathies of his party. But all the three, my Lord, were honest and honourable men. Smollett would have told your Lordship of the peculiarly sinister spirit which animated the last Parliament 01 Anne ; of feelings adverse to the cause of freedom which prevailed among the people when it was chosen ; and that the act which re-established patronage was but one of a series, all bearing on an object which the honest Scotch Member, who signified his willing- ness to acquiesce in one of these, on condition that it should be designated by its right name, — An Act for the Encourage- ment of Immorality and Jacobitism in Scotland, — seems to have discovered. The worthy Bishop is still more decided. Instead of triumphing on the occasion, he solemnly assures us that the thing was done merely " to spite the Presbyte- rians, who, from the beginning, had set it up as a principle that parishes had, from warrants in Scripture, a right to choose their ministers," and " who saw, with great alarm, the suc- cess of a motion made on design to weaken and undermine their Establishment;" and the good Sir Walter, notwithstand- ing all his Tory prejudices, is quite as candid. He tells us, that Jacobitism prevailed in Scotland more among the upper LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 17 than the lower classes ) and that " the act which restored to patrons the right of presenting clergymen to vacant churches was designed to render the Churchmen more dependent on the aristocracy, and to separate them in some degree from their congregations, who could not be supposed to be equally attached to or influenced by a minister who held his living by the gift of a great man, as by one who was chosen by their own free voice." You see your Lordship might have learned a little, even from writers such as these. Historical evidence is often of a vague and indeterminate character ; there are disputed questions of fact which divide the probabilities' in directions diametrically opposite ; but on the question before us it is comparatively easy to decide. The law which re- established patronage in Scotland, — which has rendered Chris- tianity inefficient in well-nigh half her parishes, — which has separated some of her better clergymen from her Church, and many of her better people from her clergymen, — the law through which Robertson ruled in the General Assembly, and which Brougham has eulogized in the House of Lords, — that identical law formed, in its first enactment, no unes- sential .portion of a deep and dangerous conspiracy against the liberties of our country. There is, my Lord, a statesman of the present day, quite as eminent as Bolingbroke, who is acting, it is said, a some- what similar part. It is whispered, that not only can he de- cide according to an unpopular and unjust law, which he se- cretly condemns, but that he can also praise it as gocd and wise, and stir up its friends (men of a much narrower range of vision than himself), to give it full force and efficacy ; and all this with the direct view of destroying a venerable insti- tution on which this law acts. Now, I cannot credit the in- sinuation, for I believe that the very able statesman alluded to is an honest man ; but I think I can see how he might net such a part, and act it with very great effect. At no B 18 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. previous period were the popular energies so powerfully de- veloped as in the present ; at no former time was it so es- sentially necessary that institutions which desire to live should open themselves to the infusion of the popular principle. Shut them up in their old chrysalis state from this new atmosphere of life, and they inevitably perish. And these, my Lord, are truths which I can more than see ; — I can also feel them. I am one of the people, full of the popular sympathies, — it may be, of the popular prejudices. To no man do I yield in the love and respect which I bear to the Church of Scotland. .1 never signed the Confession of her Faith, but I do more, — I believe it ; and I deem her scheme of government at once the simplest and most practically beneficial that has been established since the time of the Apostles. But it is the vital spirit, not the dead body, to which I am attached : it is to the free popular Church, established by our Reformers, — not to an unsubstantial form or an empty name, — a mere creature of expediency and the State : and had she so far fallen below my estimate of her dignity and excellence as to have acquiesced in your Lordship's decision, the leaf holds not more loosely by the tree when the October wind blows highest, than I would have held by a Church so sunk and degraded. And these, my Lord, are the feelings, not merely of a single individual, but of a class, which, though less learned, and, may be, less wise, than the classes above them, are beyond comparison more numerous, and promise, now that they are learning to think, to become immensely more powerful. Drive our better clergymen to extremities on this question, — let but three hundred of them throw up their liv- ings, as the Puritans of England and the Presbyterians of our own country did in the times of Charles II., — and the Scottish Establishment inevitably falls. Your Lordship is a sagacious and far-seeing man. How long, think you, would the English Establishment survive her humbler sister 1 ? and LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 19 how long would the monarchy exist after the extinction of both 1 You have entertained a too favourable opinion of the Scot- tish Church, and she has disappointed your expectations. Scot] and is up in rebellion ! The General Assembly refuse to settle Mr Young. Take your seat, my Lord, and try the members of this refractory Court for their new and unheard- of offence. They believe " that the principle of non-intru- sion is coeval with the existence of the Church, and forms an integral part of its constitution." Their consciences, too, are awakened on the subject : they see that forced settlements have done very little good, and a great deal of harm ; and that intruded ministers have been the means of converting few souls to Christ, and have, it is feared, in a great many instances, been unconverted themselves. They have, besides, come to believe, with their fathers of old, that God himself is not indifferent in the matter ; and are fearful lest " haply they should be found fighting against Him." And in this Assembly, my Lord, there are wise and large-minded men, — men admired for their genius, and revered for their piety, wherever the light of learning or religion has yet found its way. Now, a certain law of the country, which was passed rather more than a hundred and twenty years ago, through the influence of very bad men, and for a very bad purpose, has demanded that this Assembly proceed forthwith to im- pose on a resisting people a singularly unpopular clergy- man. And the Assembly have refused, — courteously and humbly, 'tis true, but still most firmly. Give to this unpo- pular clergyman, they say, all the emoluments of the office We lay no claim to these, — we have no right to them what- ever ; nay, we hold even our own livings by sufferance, and you have the power to take them from us whenever you please. But we must not force this unpopular clergyman on the people : our consciences will not suffer us to do it ; and 20 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. as the laws which control our consciences cannot be altered, whereas those which govern the country are in a state of con- tinual change, suffer us, we beseech you, to confer with the makers of those changing laws, that this bad law may be made so much better as to agree with the fixed law of our consciences. Now, such, my Lord, is the heinous offence committed by these men. You could not believe they were so wicked ; you could imagine the crime itself, but not in connection with them : you said it was indecorous, prepos- terous, monstrous, to believe that they could be so wicked. But you did ill to speak of Christ on the occasion. It is against Bolingbroke's law, not the law of Christ, that these men have offended. Nay, my Lord, you should have known the Church of Scot- land better. Consult her history, and see whether she has not «s determinedly opposed herself to wicked laws as to wicked men. The very act which first indicated her exist- ence as a Church was her opposition to the law. And fear- fully did she suffer for it ! The law persecuted her children to death, — her Patrick Hamiltons, her George "Wisliarts, her Walter Mills, — and scattered their ashes to the winds. But there was a law to which she was not opposed, — a fixed and immutable law; and God fought for her, and she waxed mighty in the midst of her great suffering ; and at length, when her fierce and cruel persecutors had gone to their place, the unjust and intolerant law against which she had so long struggled in sorrow and great weakness was expunged from the statute-book. History tells me, that in all her after con- flicts, it was not the Church that yielded to the law, but the law that yielded to the Church. Need I remind your Lord- ship of her struggles in the days of Mary, of James, of Charles 1 Need I say that, subsequent to the Restoration, she opposed herself to the law for twenty-eight years together ; and that the graves which lie solitary among our hills, and LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. 21 the tombs which occupy the malefactors' corner in our pub- lic burying-grounds, remain to testify of the heavy penalty which she paid 1 But the curse denounced against Cain of old fell on the unrighteous shedders of innocent blood : the descendants of our ancient monarchs became fugitive and va- gabond on the face of the earth. The law to which our Church would not yield, yielded to her ; and that better law which your Lordship so pointedly condemns as unworthv of the Revolution, but which thousands among the wise and good of my countrymen, and many, many thousands of humble individuals like myself, have been accustomed to regard as so entirely in its purest spirit, was made to occupy their place. We do not think the worse of our Church, my Lord, for her many contests with the law, — not a whit the better of her opposers for their having had the law on their side. The pub- lic prosecutor in the time of Charles II. was perhaps as able a lawyer as even your Lordship, but we have been accustomed to execrate his memory as "the bloody Mackenzie." The Church has offended many of her noblest and wealth- iest, it is said, and they are flying from her in crowds. "Well, what matters it 1 — let the chaff fly ! We care not though she shake off, in her wholesome exercise, some of the indo- lent humours which have hung about her so long. The vital principle will act with all the more vigour when they are gone. She may yet have to pour forth her life's blood through some incurable and deadly wound ; for do we not know that though the Church be eternal, Churches are born and die ? But the blow will be dealt in a different quarrel, and on other and lower ground, — not when her ministers, for the sake of the spiritual, lessen their hold of the secular, not when, convinced of the justice of the old quarrel, they take up their position on the well-trodden battle-field of her saints and her martyrs, — not when they stand side by side with her people, to contend for their common rights, in accordance with the 22 LETTER TO LORD BROUGHAM. dictates of their consciences, and agreeably to the law of their God. The reforming spirit is vigorous within her, and her hour is not yet come. I am, my Lord, with profound respect, Your Lordship's most humble, Most obedient servant, Hugh Miller. Cromarty, June 188ft. THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL, 4o. ["So filled was my mind with our ecclesiastical controversy, that while yet unacquainted with the fate of my first brochure, I was busily engaged with a second." In these words Mr Miller has sufficiently in dicated the relation of the following Essay to that which precedes it. It is essentially a continuation of the same discussion, the question of pa- tronage, in its historical, philosophical, and religious aspect, being probed in a manner equally searching, and perhaps more deliberate and com- prehensive. The absence of a personal opponent may detract somewhat from the vivacity of the composition ; but the place occupied by Lord Brougham on the previous occasion is here partially held by the Presi- dent of the Court of Session. The opinion pronounced by his Lordship against the claims of the Church in the Lethendy case had exposed him to the particular animadversion of Mr Miller.] One of the most important views of the Christian religion, in its political effects, which I have anywhere met with, is to be found in Voltaire. Tt occurs in his " Age of Louis XIV.," in the chapter devoted to Calvinism, and serves admi- rably to show, that though infidelity owes much to a false philosophy, it has nothing to hope from the true. The his- torian tells us, after descanting, in his usual style, on "the furious zeal unknown to paganism," which first gave rise to religious wars, that he had often endeavoured to find out why the dogmatical spirit, so harmless in the schools of antiquity, 24 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. should be productive of so many disorders among us. Fana- ticism could not be the cause, — men quite as fanatical as Christians did harm to none but themselves. The origin of this " new pest," he says, is rather to be found " in the re- publican spirit which animated the first Churches. Those secret assemblies which, from their caves and recesses, braved the authority of the Roman emperors, formed by degrees a state within a state, — a concealed republic within the empire." But after Constantine had drawn this stubborn religion from its retreat under ground, to place it on a level with the throne, there was a gradual softening of its character. Prosperity imparted a new nature to it. " The authority attached to the great sees ran counter to the popular spirit ;" and in the end, so unlike itself did it become, that the powers which it had at first so determinedly opposed found in it eventually one of their surest and most efficient supports. But in lay- ing down its primitive character, it had also relinquished its original opinions ; and no sooner, says the historian, were these revived by Luther, Zuinglius, and Calvin, than the an- cient spirit also awoke. The identical principle which had opposed itself so determinedly to the tyranny of ancient Rome arose from under the enormous mass which the guilt and su- perstition of ages had accumulated over it, to do battle with the despotisms of modern Europe. It opposed itself, though miserably oppressed and overborne, to the iron sway of Mary of England, — took up arms in our own country against Mary of Guise, — contended in France with the ghostly authority of kings and cardinals, — and set limits in Germany to the en- croachments of the emperors. It may be remarked in the passing, however, that what Voltaire has termed the republican spirit of Christianity is by no means exclusively republican ; for, though it has an inevitable tendency to limit the power of kings, it has none whatever to abrogate their office. On the contrary, the just THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 25 restrictions which it imposes on their authority do not serve more as barriers to confine than as ramparts to protect them. And nothing surely can be more simple than the mode in which it acts, or more in accordance with the moral and in- tellectual dignity of man. Homer tells us that the day which makes man a slave robs him of half his worth : Christianity more than doubles it. He who becomes a Christian becomes of necessity subject to an immutable and paramount code, to which every other code must be subordinate ; his obedience to kings and magistrates becomes, in consequence, a condi- tional obedience, — his prince a limited prince ; he finds his subjection to every merely human law restricted by the sim- ple but unanswerable argument of Peter and John ; nor must his oath of allegiance interfere with the more sacred oath which, according to Pliny, binds him that he commit no evil. What are the persecutions, whether those of our own or of other countries, but just so many illustrations of this prin- ciple in its necessary attitude, — opposed alike to domination in the priest and to despotism in the ruler, — and of that deadly and exterminating hatred with which the antagonist principles, tyranny, bigotry, and the secular spirit, have ever regarded it 1 The entire history of the Church is corrobora- tive of the view so unwittingly given us by Voltaire ; and in none of its various sections is the evidence more complete than in the history of our own. There is a little tract by John Knox, — his " Admonition to his Dearly Beloved Breth- ren, the Commonality of Scotland," — which is of itself suffi- cient to establish the point. It was first published in the year 1558 (only two months after Walter Miln had been cruelly put to death by the Archbishop of St Andrews), and exhibits in a truly admirable light the large heart and mas- culine understanding of its extraordinary author. The truths which it embodies have since become common ; not so, how- ever, the power with which these are enforced ; and with 2Q THE WHIGGISM OF THE 01 J) SCHOOL. how deep and startling an effect must they have fallen for the first time on the ears of the serf and the vassal, sunk al- most below the level of our nature by a hereditary course of servitude, that wears out the very mind, and with well-nigh all their natural rights as men absorbed in the exclusive and long-established privileges of their masters !* * " Neither would I," says the Reformer, in his address to the common people, "that ye should esteem the Reformation and care of religion less to appertain to you than to the rulers and judges set over you in authority. Beloved brethren, ye are God's ci-eatures, — created and formed to his own image and similitude, — for whose redemption was shed the most precious blood of the only beloved Son of God, — to whom He hath commended his gospel and glad tidings to be preached, and for whom He hath prepared the heavenly inheritance, — if so that you do not obstinately refuse and disdainfully contemn the means which He hath appointed to obtain the same, — namely, his blessed gospel, which He now offereth unto you, to the end that ye may be saved. For the gospel and glad tidings of the kingdom, truly preached, is the power of God to the salvation of every true believer. Which to credit and receive, you, the commonality, are no less addebted than are your rulers and princes ; for albeit God hath ordained distinction and difference in the administration of civil policies betwixt kings and subjects, rulers and common people, yet in the hope of the life to come He hath made all equal. For as in Christ Jesus the Jew hath no greater prerogative than hath the Gentile ; the man than hath the woman ; the learned than the unlearned ; the lord than the servant ; but all are one in Him ; so is there but one way and means to attain to the participa- tion of his benefits and spiritual grace, which is a lively faith working by charity. . . . . Surely, then, it behoveth you to be careful and diligent in this so weighty a matter, lest that ye, contemning the occasion which God now offereth, find not the like again, even although that ye seek after it with sighings and tears. And that ye be not ignorant of what occasion I mean, in few words I shall ex- press it. " Not only I, but with me also divers godly and learned men, offer unto you our labour, faithfully to instruct you in the ways of the Eternal, our God, and in the sincerity of Christ's gospel, which this day, by the pestilent generation of Anti- christ, are almost hid from the eyes of men. We offer to jeopard our lives for the satvation of your souls, and by manifest Scriptures to prove that religion that amongst you is maintained by fire and sword, to be false, vain, and diabolical. We require nothing of you, but that patiently ye will hear our doctrine, which is not ours, but the doctrine of salvation revealed to the world by the only Son of God, and that ye will examine our reasons by which we offer to prove the Papistical reli- gion to be abominable before God ; and lastly, we require that by your power the tyranny of these cruel priests and friars may be bridled, till we have uttered our minds in all matters this day debateable in religion. If these things, in the fear of God, ye grant unto us, I am assured that of God ye shall be blessed, whatsoever Satan shall devise against you. But if ye contemn or refuse God, who thus lovingly offereth unto you salvation and life, ye shall neither escape plagues temporal, which shortly shall apprehend you, neither yet the torment prepared for the devil and his angels." The quotation is not too long. To use the scarcely more powerful language of Milton, — "It was Knox himself, the Reformer of a kingdom, that spake it; and THE WH1GGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 27 There is another important principle involved in what has been termed the republican spirit of the first Churches. The spread of political power as necessarily accompanies the spread of intelligence as the heat of the sun accompanies its light ; and it is quite as idle to affirm that the case should be other- wise as to challenge the law of gravitation, or any of the other great laws which regulate the government of the uni- verse. If the progress of mind cannot be arrested, it is quite as impossible to arrest the growth of the power which neces- sarily accompanies it. Now, Christianity is essentially an intellectual religion, which, by increasing the popular intel- ligence, adds necessarily to the popular power. It is a sys- tem not of rites and ceremonies, but of morals and doctrines, of morals that exercise those useful faculties which find fit employment in regulating the human conduct. — and of doc- though his sentence seemeth of a ventrous edge, uttered in the height of zeal, and perchance not suited to every low decrepit humour of the time ; yet who knoweth whether it might not have proceeded from the dictat of a Divine Spirit ?" The whole passage is pregnant with what may be termed the political influences of Christianity, as recognised by our Saviour himself, when he declared that he had come not to send peace on the earth, but a sword. The concluding portion of this interesting little tract is conceived in the very vein in which Paid addressed himself to Felix, and rouses like the blast of a trumpet. The Eeformer speaks of perilous times,— of blood spilt for the testimony of Christ by unjust princes and rulers who had set their faces against the truth,— of proud and cruel Churchmen, embruted in their lusts. " Their lives," he says, " infect the air. The idolatry which openly they commit defileth the whole land. The inno- cent blood which they shed crieth for vengeance in the ears of our God ; and none among you do unfeignedly seek after any redress for such foul enormities. Will God in this behalf hold you as innocent ? Be not deceived, dear brethren. God hath punished not only proud tyrants and cruel murderers, but also such as with them did draw the yoke of iniquity, whether by flattering their offences, obeying their unjust commandments, or winking at their manifold and most grievous oppres- sions,— all such, I say, God once punished with the chief offenders. Be assured, brethren, that as he is immutable of nature, so will he not pardon you in that which he hath punished in others ; and now the less because he hath plainly admonished you of the danger to come, and offered you his mercy before that he pour forth his wrath and displeasure on the gainsayer and the disobedient." The writer concludes with an emphatic prayer that his " dearly beloved countrymen" might "be par- takers of the glorious inheritance prepared for such as refuse themselves, and fight under the banner of Christ Jesus in the day of this his hot battle ; and that, in deep consideration of the same, they might learn to prefer the invisible and eternal joys to the vain pleasures that are present."— For these quotations see Oliver & Boyd'a edition of Knox, 1816, vol. ii., pp. 259, 275, and 278. 28 THE WHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. trines that, in their unexaggerated magnitude, fill, and more than fill, the widest grasp of the human understanding. There is scarce a question in the philosophy of mind of which at least the germ is not to be found in the Bible j and instead of leaving these to be discussed at pleasure by a few intellec- tual natures, it renders the study of them in some degree imperative on all. The same revealed truths which, as ru- diments of thought, serve to awaken the faculties, constitute that identical " mind of God," which it is the essential duty of all men to know. And hence it is that conversion, in so many instances, is scarcely less marked in its intellectual than in its moral effects, and that wherever the Christian religion is established in the integrity of its first promulgation, men in even the humblest condition learn to reason and to ob- serve. "VVe find it stated by Locke, that among the Hugue- nots of France the common people were better instructed in their religion than even the higher classes in most of the other countries in Europe. We are told by Sir James Macin- tosh, that " the uniform effect of Calvinism, in disposing its adherents to metaphysical speculation (which survives at times even the beliefs in which it originates), cannot be doubted to have influenced the mind of Butler." Christianity formed the sole learning of Bunyan. It constituted, in its reflex in- fluences, the sole education of Burns. But by no class of writers, or no series of facts, is this second principle better illustrated than by the history of the Reformed Church in Scotland. The Reformation found the great bulk of our people par- celled out, through the influence of the feudal system, into detached masses, — possessed, like so many machines, of a merely physical power, and ready to be employed, whether for good or evil, as the caprice of a few ill-regulated minds chanced to direct. Pageants and ceremonies, with a mul- titude of vague, ill-defined beliefs, to which there attached THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 29 no discipline of purity, and the tendency of which was to deaden, not to stimulate the intellect, constituted the en- tire religion of the country. But the " revival of the an- cient opinions" led to a very different state of things, — partly, doubtless, through the more covert workings of the principle described, and partly through the educational institutions established for the direct purpose. The religion of the Re- formers was a religion which sought the light, and which, in calling upon the masses to reason and to judge, laid it down as a first principle, that "for the soul to be without knowledge is not good." The scheme of education drawn up by Knox and his brethren was at once the most liberal and comprehensive which the world had yet seen ; and bears reference in all its provisions to. that spiritual nature, the common inheritance of the species, on whose high level all men meet and are equal. It provided that even the humblest of our craftsmen and peasants should be furnished with the data necessary to just thinking, and brought acquainted with the rules which regulate the reasoning faculties. Almost all the knowledge which books could supply was locked up in the learned languages. It was appointed therefore, "that young men who purposed to travel in some handicraft, or other profitable exercise, for the good of the commonwealth, should (after devoting a certain time to reading and the Ca- techism), devote a certain time to grammar and the Latin tongue j and then a certain time further to the study of the other tongues, and to the arts of philosophy."* It must have been surely a strange fanaticism that could have formed a system such as this. Despite the utmost efforts of the Re- formers, however, the system was only partially established, for its enemies were numerous and powerful. But the pure and intellectual religion in which it originated had freer course; and such were the effects of the latter, that in little * " First Book of Discipline," chap, vii., part i. clause 6. 30 THE WHIGGISH OF THE OLD SCHOOL. more than half a century it had filled even the humblest cot- tages of our country with thinking men, who had learned to read and to pray over their Bibles. The fact is happily il- lustrated by the two great persecutions to which our Church has been subjected, — that which preceded the first establish- ment of the Reformed religion, and that of the reign of Charles II. The martyrs of the one were mostly men of rank and learning. Hamilton was the scion of a noble fa- mily, Wishart a gentleman and deeply learned, Miln a priest, Straiton well born and a person of erudition. The victims of the other, on the contrary, were taken, in most instances, from among our common people, — our farmers, mechanics, and shopkeepers. The testimony of Bishop Burnet to the intelligence of this class, as adduced by the Rev. Andrew Gray, in his masterly pamphlet, is very conclusive. Burnet was one of six Episcopal divines employed by Leighton in the year 1670 to go among the people and combat their Pres- byterian prejudices ; but the mission proved, it would seem, of little effect. " We were indeed amazed," he states, " to see a poor community so capable of arguing on points of go- vernment, and on the bounds to be set to the power of princes in matters of religion. Upon all these topics they had texts of Scripture at hand, and were ready with their answers to anything which was said to them. And this measure of knowledge was spread among the very meanest of them, even their cottagers and their servants." We find evidence equally direct, though of a somewhat different character, in the "death testimonies" preserved in such works as " Naphtali" and the " Cloud of Witnesses." Many of these were written by yeo- men and mechanics, — by Glasgow shopkeepers, shoemakers from Edinburgh, and weavers from the Stewartry of Kirk- cudbright ; and yet, though sufficiently humble, regarded merely as compositions, there are none of them so imperfect as not to embody the thoughts and give expression to the THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 31 feelings of their respective authors. Be it remembered, too, that they are the productions of a period when it was no un- common matter, in at least the northern parts of the king- dom, to find persons in the grade of gentlemen unable to sign their names. The defects and errors of the Scottish Church in the ear- lier and better part of her history it is no difficult task to point out. We do not live among greater or better men than the Knoxes and Melvilles of the sixteenth century, or the Hendersons and Eutherfords of the seventeenth ; but we live in an age considerably in advance of theirs. Let us re- member, however, that the knowledge of truths which per- chance we could never have discovered for ourselves does not entitle us to look down with any very marked contempt on the vigorous-minded worthies who flourished before their pro- mulgation ; and that we would do well to enjoy with mode- ration the chance eminence which raises our dapper little persons over the giants who stand on a lower level. The age of Knox and of Craig was essentially a despotic age. The Church in which they had spent that earlier portion of their lives in which habits of thought and feeling are most readily formed was inevitably and constitutionally a despotic Church. The principles of toleration were altogether the discovery of a later time. It is undeniable, too, that some of the better members of the Church, in her seasons of suffering, were goaded into blameable excesses by that exasperating spirit of persecution which, according to Solomon, maketh even wise men mad. It is equally undeniable, that she must have included within her pale, in her times of triumph, a considerable amount of the volatile rascality which ever de- lights to attach itself to a dominant party. Do we not know that the bloodthirsty Lauderdale and the crafty and cruel Sharpe were at one period of their lives zealous and influen- tial Covenanters ? Let us not confound, however, the ex- 32 THE WHIGGISM. OF THE OLD SCHOOL. cesses of either her true or her renegade members with her own proper acts, or the grosser spirit which sometimes in- fluenced her from without with the infinitely purer principle which dwelt within. Nor yet let us forget that the great bulk of our countrymen in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- turies had not attained to that full moral and intellectual stature which is incompatible with a state of tutelage and subserviency. "We treat children after one fashion, and men after another, in even the freest States, and under the most equal laws. And in deciding regarding the spirit of the Scottish Church, there can be nothing more illiberal than to mix up into one heterogeneous idea two such opposite prin- ciples as the absolute rule of a schoolmaster, whose very vo- cation it is to forward the progress of the human mind, and the iron despotism of a tyrant, who, to accomplish his own base purposes, would plunge the millions into barbarism. Let our Church be tried as we try the characters of our fellow- men, — by the main scope of her conduct, and the intrinsic value and ascertained effects of her grand principles. Let us try her enemies and antagonists by the same rule, sepa- rating their general conduct from all such accidental circum- stances as the beauty and fascinating elegance of Mary, the dignity under suffering of Charles I., or the military genius of Montrose and Dundee. It will be found that the Church has much to hope and nothing to dread from such a trial, — that ignorance, tyranny, cruelty, superstition, the ignoble selfishness that would sacrifice the welfare of the many to the little interests of the few, and criminally repress the moral and intellectual growth of the species, have ever formed the chief characteristics of her opponents, — that a regard for the souls of men, a zeal for the spread of knowledge, a love of liberty and of morals, an all-pervading reverence for the law of God, — in short, the "antient opinions," joined to the ori- ginal spirit of Christianity, — have ever constituted her own. THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 33 The gist of the argument lies in least compass when we regard it simply as a question of history. The inevitable hos- tility of Christianity in its purer forms to irresponsible au- thority, however strengthened by ancient prejudice or unjust laws, arises, as has been shown, from two grand principles, — the recognition of a paramount code, to which every other code must yield, and an intellectual discipline, through which men are raised to a freedom and dignity of thought incom- patible with a state of political servitude. And what wonder that principles so formidable should have found bitter enemies in absolute kings and tyrannical nobles, — men whose widely extended privileges were encroachments on the unalienable rights of the species ? Prerogative urged its claims on the one side, — men asserted their rights on the other. But though such formed the actual merits of the controversy, they were otherwise stated and understood. The Reformers contended that to Caesar should be rendered the things which were Cesar's, and nothing more ; and that they should be permit- ted to render directly unto God himself the things which pertained to God. Csesar contended, on the other hand, that he should be put in possession of the whole, — one part, ot course, in his own proper right, the other in an assumed ca- pacity of steward or middleman. The Reformers maintained that their religion was a pure and Scriptural religion, and that they could not in conscience receive any other. Ccesar in- sisted on taking this Scriptural religion from them, and set- ting what he deemed a better in its place, — a religion whose laws he had made to agree with his own. In all history there are not three characters better or more generally understood than those of James and the two Charleses. We are as in- timately acquainted with not only the general scope of their conduct, but even their little individual peculiarities, as if our knowledge of them had been the result of personal ob- servation. Who will venture to affirm that any cne of the c 34 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL three, even the alleged author of the Icon Basllike himself, was actuated for a single day by that pure missionary spirit which can unhesitatingly sacrifice the lower regards of self to the glory of God or the general good of men ; or that they pre- ferred the Episcopacy they were so zealous to establish, to the Presbyterianism they would so fain have annihilated, merely because they deemed it more purely Scriptural, or better suited to advance the true interests of their subjects? James, whose very considerable shrewdness was balanced by a singularly great amount of folly and weakness, and who was by much too vain to enjoy his wisdom in secret, divulged the principle on which both himself and his successors acted, in one of those " short speeches" which, according to Bacon, have the double quality of indicating men's real designs, and of flying about like arrows. " No bishop, no king." The Episcopacy which these princes laboured to introduce was vir- tually a modified Christianity, which, to use the language of Voltaire, " ran counter to the popular spirit," necessarily as- sociated with the " antient opinions," — now happily " re- vived." The institution of bishops was a piece of mere po- litical machinery on which to rest the ghostly authority of the king. And the character of the men best suited for the office throws light, like that of the princes by whose autho- rity they were appointed to it, on the secular nature of the purposes which they were intended to serve. We have been lately instructed by an eminent judge, on the strength of a Greek etymology, that this order of Churchmen and the Pres- byterian superintendents of our " First Book of Discipline" were in reality identical. Perhaps, however, a slight ac- quaintance with history might have stood his Lordship in better stead on the occasion than even the nicest knowledge of Greek. The Scotchman knows very little of his Church who does not know that the more fitted a minister was to be a superintendent, the less fitted was he to be a bishop. The THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 35 superintendent was a faithful and able clergyman, " a man endowed with singular graces," chosen by the people and his brethren to be, like the Apostle of the Gentiles, " more abundant in labours" than men of ordinary gifts, — to be a journeyer from place to place in districts where ministers were few, — to " preach at' least thrice every week," — to take note of crimes and defections, — to " admonish where admonition was needed," — to give good counsel where it was required, — to consider how the " poor were to be provided for," — the " youth instructed," — to watch over the " manners of the people," the lives of ministers, the order of churches.* The men best fitted to be bishops, on the contrary, were the Mont- gomeries, Adamsons, Sharpes, — Judas Iscariots of the Church. It was essential that the Scotch superintendent should have much religion ; it was necessary that the Scotch bishop should have none. Leighton was a truly good man ; and, after giv- ing the office a fair trial, he found himself entirely unfitted for it. It may be remarked, however, that though the Reformed Church of Scotland has always been opposed to bishops in the king's sense of the term, she has ever loved and cherished them in the true apostolical sense ; and that the republican level on which she has placed her ministers has proved the most direct means of securing to her the services of real bishops, and of guarding her against the intrusion of coun- terfeits. It has secured to her that the John ISTewtons, Thomas Scotts, and Richard Cecils of the corporation should not remain in inferior, uninfluential offices, when right reve- rend infidels, high in spiritual authority, should be lending the full weight of their influence to degrade to the merelv human level the adorable and sole Redeemer. The bishops of our Presbyterian Church have been men of larger minds and greater moral force than their brethren ; and their widely- * First Book of Discipline, chap. vi. part ii. 36 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. extended dioceses have been the hearts and understandings of the people of Scotland. Knox, Craig, Melville, Bruce, Rutherford, Henderson, "Witherspoon, Erskine, MoncreifT, Thomson, — all these, and many others, were eminent Pres- byterian bishops of the first rank ; and, though their claims may seem more than a little doubtful when tried by the Puseyite argument, we have no unwillingness whatever to subject them to the test of reason and of Scripture. Such is the true and rational Episcopacy of the Church of Scotland, — an Episcopacy founded on principles which secure, agreeably to the spirit of the Apostolical Church, that the best and wisest men shall exercise the greatest authority, and which the counterfeit Episcopacy of James and the Charleses laboured so zealously to subvert. But there is a principle whose hostility to the Church's true interest is even less de- fensible, because more unequivocally secular, than that of the nominal religion by which the Church in the earlier portion of her history was so long and so grievously oppressed. It is not difficult to conceive how, through a little perverted in- genuity, the identical arguments which support the better Episcopacy may be converted into sophisms to defend the worse. Nothing easier than to prove the immense value of such master spirits as our Knoxes and Hendersons ; and it is only necessary to confound the distinctions conferred on Churchmen by kings and laws, with the distinctions created among them by grace and nature, in order to arrogate an equal importance to the hierarchy appointed by men as to the hierarchy instituted by God. Or the argument may be dif- ferently grounded. It may be asserted that a nominal Epis- copacy in the Church is a mere recognition of its real Epis- copacy, — a mere system of sanctions extended by human law to the natural and divinely-instituted authority of great and good men. And to give the assertion weight and plausibility in its bearing on the Scottish Church, we have merely to set THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 87 aside our histories, and to forget that it was the Montgo- meries, Adamsons, and Sharpes, to whose authority the law extended its sanction, while our untitled, though surely most venerable and divinely-instituted bishops, were compelled to flee for their lives to the hill-side. But the other great ex- pedient for secularizing the Church, — the patronage principle, — even sophistry itself has scarcely ingenuity enough to de- fend. It is one of those legalized enormities which disdain to assume even the colour of good, and which base their claims to the respect and obedience of the masses whom they oppress, not on their being just and rational, but on their being law. Episcopacy, notwithstanding its grovelling and earthly spirit, was ostensibly a form of religion as truly as Presbyterianism itself; and the controversy assumed, in consequence, a theo- logical aspect. The patronage principle, on the contrary, is avowedly secular. It interferes with spiritual concerns with no spiritual character to assert, and intermeddles with mat- ters of conscience with no conscientious motives to urge. True it is, however, that the difference is rather apparent than real. It will be found that it is virtually the same mo- difying power in its attempts to render the Church a merely secular institution, subservient to merely secular purposes, which assumed an Episcopal form in the earlier portion of her history, and embodied itself into a patronage principle in the latter. It will be found, too, that identically the same class of men who were so ready to lay down their lives in resisting the encroachments of the one, have been ever the stanchest and most uncompromising opponents of the other ; that though the assaulting principle from without has al- tered its form and mode of attack, it has not altered its na- ture; and that the resisting principle within, still more tho- roughly consistent, has retained both its form and its nature too. The two conflicts (at once dissimilar and alike) have agitated the Church during two nearly equal periods of her 38 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. history, — the one from early in the reign of James VI. until the Revolution, — the other from the latter years of Anne until the present day. Patronage existed during the earlier period ; and broadly was it denounced, and the " free elec- tion" principle asserted, by even the first fathers of the Re- formation ; but the field was occupied by questions embody- ing the same antagonist principles in a different form, and the a"buse on the one hand, and the popular right on the other, were assigned subordinate places in the controversy. It is perhaps not unworthy of remark, that the truly liberal edu- cational scheme of the Reformers, shared (also in a subordi- nate form) in exactly the same prosperity and the same re- verses with the non-intrusion principle, — that the cause of ignorance and of patronage on the part of the Court, — of the popular right and of popular instruction on the part of the Church, — triumphed and suffered together. During the earlier part of the seventeenth century, the educational scheme, with only its true excellence to recommend it, retained its first unauthorized and unsanctioned character. No sooner, how- ever, did the Church become dominant at the close of the reign of Charles I., than it passed into a law, — " a law," says Currie, the elegant biographer of Burns, " which may chal- lenge comparison with any act of legislation to be found in the records of history, whether we consider the wisdom of the ends in view, the simplicity of the means employed, or the provisions made to render these means effectual to their purpose." * The Church sank on the Restoration, and the educational law sank with it, together with all the other laws unsanctioned by the royal assent. It slept during the reigns of Charles and James ; but on the Revolution the Church again became dominant, and this wise and good law was again enacted in identically the original terms. I need hardly re- mind the reader that it had for its meet companion an anti- • Dr Currie' s Prefatory Remarks, Life of Burns. THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 39 patronage law, which was established, abolished, and re-enacted at precisely the same periods, and through exactly the same influences. The origin of the singularly metaphysical right of patron- age has been variously accounted for. It has been asserted that it may be traced simply to the circumstance that, in the earlier periods of our ecclesiastical history, churches were sometimes built and endowed by private individuals, who re- tained to themselves and their successors the right of nomi- nating the ecclesiastics by whom the duties attached to these erections were to be performed, and the revenues enjoyed ; and that this merely civil right escaped the general confisca- tion of church property which took place at the Reforma- tion, and has come down, with a few interruptions, to our own times. It will be found, however, that this, though a sufficiently clear, is but a partial statement of the case. In whom, I ask, were the rights of patronage vested in 1560, on the first documentary recognition of Protestantism by the Lords of the Congregation ? — Not certainly in the Argyles, Glencairns, Lindsays, Boyds, Hays, Loch invars, Marshals, Drumlanrigs, of Scottish story. I find the names of these noblemen, with those of many others, attached to the First Book of Discipline, in which the free election principle is so broadly and uncompromisingly laid down. I find, too, that in pledging themselves to support the various important prin- ciples which the book embodies, as altogether " good and con- form to God's Word," they could stipulate as a condition, that the Churchmen of the exploded faith should be permitted to enjoy their benefices during the course of their lives. But there is no stipulation regarding the " free election" principle, — no mention made of a right vested in either themselves or others, which it threatened to subvert; in short, nothing what- ever to show that they deemed the claims of patronage more Protestant in principle, or less entirely abrogated by the tri- 40 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. umph of the " antient opinions," than even the worship of saints and images, or the doctrine of transubstantiation it- self. The Reformation interposed at this period a wide gulf between the abuses of the old system and the usages of the new, and not a single right of patronage had as yet strided across the chasm. The revival of these rights was evidently an after-thought, — one of the many expedients of the time for secularizing the Church. We read its true character in that of the party in whom it originated, — in the appointment of the iulchan bi- shops, — in the violence of Morton and his associates in 1571, — in the Black Acts of 1584, — in short, in the entire history of James, and in that of his son. Nor can we well conceive a greater contrast than that which existed between the spirit in which these rights of patronage were asserted by the Court party on the one side, and the modified and well restricted sense in which they were recognised by the Church on the other. The highest civil authority was of course that of the king ; nor was his power yet compressed within its true limits by the just rights of the people ; for though a few enlightened minds of the Knox and Buchanan calibre could mark out the separating boundary with a skill and precision not surpassed in any after period, there existed no tidal influences of opinion powerful enough to raise and propel the masses to the proper line. Liberty had almost all its battles yet to fight, and pre- rogative almost all' ils defeats yet to sustain. The king was the first magistrate of the country ; but he was also a great deal more ; and the national property held by him for the public good was too often confounded with a thing so entirely different as the personal property held by him for his own benefit. But though the Church shared, in some degree, in this confusion of ideas, her high principles assisted materially in clearing her views ; and she could assert in her Book of Discipline, that not even by the king himself should minis- THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 4 1 ters be obtruded on congregations contrary to the will of the people. In his connection with her patrimony, however, — a connection which, now that such matters are better under- stood, resolves itself into merely the care of the magistracy extended to public property employed for the public advan- tage, — she recognised his rights of patronage. Nor is it at all difficult to conceive how, in her view of the matter, these rights, and even a free-election principle, should be perfectly compatible with each other. She had but one code of laws and one rule of duty for all men, with no peculiar license for kings ; and, deeming the monarch as certainly an accountable creature as any of his subjects, and recognising but one way in which his privileges could be employed, she held that his right of patronage was a sacred trust, which he could only properly exercise by extending to the people, as the occasion offered, a liberty of choice ; and that the intrusion upon them of an unpopular minister was a gross and criminal abuse of power, which, as being contrary to justice, no law could sanc- tion. There are, fortunately, Scottish patrons of the present day who view the privilege as vested in themselves in a light exactly similar to that in which the Church regarded it in its connection with the king, and who find no disagreement between its wise and conscientious exercise and a scrupulous regard to the welfare and wishes of the people ; nor is the right a merely nominal one, when thus exercised by these men, if the gratitude and good- will of thousands, and the approval of their own conscience, be matters of any value. Even we of the present time have no other objection to pa- tronage in such hands than the one which a Roman of the empire might have urged against the despotism of an Anto- nine or an Aurelian ; — it is merely the irresponsible power, and the Neros and Domitians, that we dread. But James VI., the true son of Mary and of Darnley, and, if we except his ancestor James III., the most contemptible 42 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. of all our Scottisli kings, was a patron of a veiy different stamp from either Sir George Sinclair or the Marquis of Bute. At once timid and unscrupulous, grasping and profuse, facile and ungenerous, childishly attached to a few, though indif- ferent to the good of the many, ever eager to extend his power beyond the just limits, and yet ever subject to some petty tyranny of his own creating, with almost vanity and folly enough to neutralize his cunning, and nearly weakness enough to balance his wickedness, — there was scarce an op- portunity of good or of advantage which he did not misim- prove, scarce a privilege which he did not abuse, scarce a duty in which he did not fail. Nay, such was the nature of the man, that he was hardly more faithful to his own selfish aims than to the just rights of his subjects. Robertson shows vis with how careless a hand he portioned out, among his flatterers and favourites, the Church lands annexed by Parlia- ment to the Crown, and which, if retained, would have so mightily strengthened the power he was so anxious to estab- lish. And Calderwood relates that he dealt after exactly the same manner with the rights of patronage, which he had for the purpose created, contrary to law, when they had ceased to exist, — scattering them as thoughtlessly and pro- fusely among his courtiers and minions as he could have done the counters which he used in play, when the game was over.* The Church seriously remonstrated against an abuse of the kingly power so weak in itself, and so pregnant with evil ; and urged, somewhat in the spirit of the last General Assembly, that gifts of such ill omen should be instantly re- called, and that commissioners and Presbyteries should not be " processed and horned" for not giving admission to " per- sons presented by the new patrons." But supplications and remonstrances with only justice and reason to recommend * Calderwood, p. 227. (Sir George M'Kenzie, Observ. Act 1G92, c. 121, observes, —"There can be nothing so unjust and illegal as these patronages were.") THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 43 them proved of little avail ; and the king's gifts, in all their portentous absurdity, were confirmed, not recalled. Cer- tainly the origin of patronage in the Reformed Church of Scotland had not been such as to entitle it to much reve- rence. It has been truly remarked, that the cause of justice and of truth stands in need of no pedigree to ennoble it ; but the reverse is not equally true ; and it is well to know of an antagonist cause, that the meanness of its descent cor- responds with the flagitiousness of its principles. It does not in any degree tend to increase our respect for the rights of patronage, — rights so continually associated with wrong, — to find that they should have originated in the grasping rapacity of a selfish aristocracy, who, to accomplish their sordid purposes of personal or family aggrandizement, could have sacrificed the spiritual welfare of a whole country, — in the mistaken notions of a comparatively uninformed age, only partially won from slavery and barbarism, — and in the criminal usurpation and weak profusion of a silly and un- principled king. To the re-enactment of patronage by the last Parliament of Anne it is unnecessary to allude. All the more honour- able friends of the principle which the law embodies freely admit that the measure, whatever it was in itself, was dis- gracefully carried, and that the accomplishment of its main object would have proved the ruin of the country. There is no one reckless or unprincipled enough to justify it in its first character as a conspiracy. Brougham himself does no more than shut his eyes on the history of the time, and ob- serve a profound silence regarding the facts. The apologists of the law ground their defence on an entirely different basis. They remark, with Paley, that there are measures which have presented, on their first establishment, an apparently doubt- ful or indifferent character, which are found eventually to involve principles little dreamed of by either their friends or 44 THE WHIGG1SM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. their enemies, and to serve other and more important pur- poses than those for which they were originally designed, and that the law of patronage is one of these. They are in- genuous enough, in most instances, to confess, with the ho- nourable Sir Walter, that the law was badly conceived and ill-intended : they only assert that it has wrought well. Now, most broadly and pointedly do we deny the fact. It has not wrought well. It has wrought ill, — decidedly, un- equivocally, emphatically ill. It has ever breathed in its influences the spirit of its first enactment ; its character has ever corresponded with the baseness of its origin ; it has done more to imchristianize the people of Scotland than all the learned and ingenious infidelity of the eighteenth cen- tury ; it has inflicted a severer injury on the Church than all the long-protracted and bloody persecutions of the seven- teenth. The subject is one of great multiplicity ; but nothing can well be simpler or more obvious than the principles which it involves; and the light of reason and of history exhibit it in exactly the same point of view. No one can assert, with- out either a strange abuse of words or a scarcely conceivable confusion of ideas, that a law works for the benefit of any institution, if it be the direct and palpable tendency of that law to overturn and destroy it. And it is not less ob- vious, that if the institution be good, and positively useful, the law which tends to its overthrow must be bad, and posi- tively mischievous. It is a poison introduced into the sys- tem, — a " law which kills." Now it is an undisputed fact, that little more than a century has passed since a Commis- sion of the General Assembly " loosened the pastoral rela- tion" of four of our worthiest clergymen " to their respective charges," and declared them to be " no longer ministers of the Church ;" and this for no other crime than that of dar- ing openly to avow the same detestation of the intrusive THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 45 principle which, during the two preceding centuries, all the better Presbyterians of the country had been openly avow- ing before them. It is not less a fact, that in the Edinburgh Almanak for the present year there are no fewer than twelve closely printed pages of names of Scottish clergymen located within the country, each of these holding by the same Cate- chism and Confession of Faith with the Church itself, — each and all of them deriving their distinctive designation from the four ejected ministers, and their separate existence, either directly or indirectly, from the abuse of patronage, — each furnished with an attached congregation, who, but for the tyranny of the deprecated law, would have been at this mo- ment within the pale of the Establishment, constituting its strength, — and that, in the proportion of about seven-eighths to the entire amount, this numerous and influential body, both ministers and people, are zealously labouring to over- turn this very Establishment, and want only a little more of that power which has been accumulating among them in so formidable a ratio during the last fifty years, fully to accom- plish their purpose. Nay, that they do not already possess this power, and that the Church is not already overthrown, is owing solely to the fact, that the patrons of Scotland have been in many instances a great deal less wicked than the law of patronage, and have waived the exclusive rights which it conferred upon them in favour of the people. And not only can it be shown that the law of patronage has a direct tendency to destroy the Church, but that it has also a tendency equally direct to render it worthy of being destroyed. The entire people of Scotland are judges in this matter, — there is no need of framing arguments to convince them, — it is only necessary to refer to well-known facts. When, and through what influence, I ask, was it that the Church of Scotland, long the most popular and influential of all establishments, ceased to so great an extent to impress 46 THE WHIGGIS5I OF THE OLD SCHOOL. its own character on that of the country, and, from being a guide and leader of the people, sunk in so marked a degree into a follower and dependent on the Government and the aristocracy ? When and through what influence was it that the children learned to look with coldness and suspicion on an order of men to whom their fathers had turned in every time of trouble for assistance and counsel, — whose sayings they delighted to treasure up, — the stories of whose lives and sufferings constituted their choicest literature, — whose very names they employed as watchwords whenever there was a right to be asserted or a wrong to be redressed, — whom thev unhesitatingly followed to the hill-side and the battle-field, into exile and captivity, to tortures and to death ] When and through what influence was it that the old evangelical party sunk into a feeble and persecuted minority, — that party who subscribed the Confession of our Faith, believing it in their hearts, — who, fearing the curse denounced by John, delivered the whole truth of God, taking nothing therefrom, and adding nothing thereto, — who first asserted for them- selves and their countrymen the high rights of the species, and dared to think and to act with the freedom of men en- nobled by " the liberty with which Christ maketh his people free," — who so zealously strove, amid the darkness of ignorance and superstition, to extend to even the meanest vassal the blessings of religion and the light of learning, — and who were ever so ready in the good cause to give their temporalities to the winds, and to hold their lives as nothing 1 When and through what influence was it that more than one-half the clergy of our Church, powerless for every good purpose, were made to stand on exactly the same ground which had been occupied by the curates and bishops of half a century before, and through which the pike and the musket came to be employed, as in the worst days of Charles II., to secure the settlement of ministers misnamed Presbyterian 1 Through THE WI1IGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 47 what influence was it that, the more secular-minded the clergyman, the more certain was he of retaining his office in the Church, and through which men such as Fisher and the Erskines came to be regarded as the very pests and trai- tors of the institution, and the godly and inoffensive Gilles- pie, whose sole crime it was that he would neither offend against his own sense of duty nor yet outrage the conscience of others, — came to be contemptuously thrust out % Through what influence was it that the clerical farmers and corn-fac- tors of forty years ago were brought into the Church, — the men who were so ready, in what has been termed the natu- ral course of society, to quit the pastoral for the agricultural life, and who, in years of scarcity, when the price of grain rose beyond all precedent, were either thriving on the mise- ries of the people, and accumulating to themselves, in the least popular of all characters, the bitter contempt and un- mingled detestation of a whole country,* or, as the unho- noured martyrs of unlucky speculation, were studying in jails, or under hiding, the restrictions and technicalities of the bankrupt statutes % Who of all the men of our country has not marked the difference which obtains between the faith- ful minister of Jesus Christ, alike equal in rank to the high- est and to the lowest who have souls to be lost or saved, — between the zealous preacher of the truth, appointed by God himself to wrestle with men for their souls, and the mere clerical, half-fashionable gentleman of "limited means," so little respected by the people, and so coldly regarded by the aristocracy, — the mere reader of sermons for a piece of bread, whose sole " vocation" consists in the perhaps purchased fa- vour of some unprincipled courtier or ungodly patron ? Truly the people of Scotland must forget a great deal before they can learn to love patronage even a very little ; and the man * It is a fact which stands in need of no comment, that the person in the north Of Scotland who first raised the price of oatmeal to three pounds per boll was a toinister of the Established Church. 48 THE WHIGG1SM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. mast be wofully ignorant of both the facts of the question and the national character, or strangely confident in his own powers of persuasion, who hopes to convince us, in the face of ten thousand hostile recollections, that the secularizing, soul-destroying law of the infidel Bolingbroke has wrought well. I heard sermon only a few weeks ago in the church of a country parish in the north of Scotland, where almost the entire people are separated from the clergyman. I had pre- viously seen much of the evils of patronage. In the prose- cution of a humble but honest calling, of which I am not mean enough to be ashamed, I had travelled over a consi- derable part of Scotland. I had been located for months together, at one period of my life, among the parishes of its southern districts, at another in those of the north ; — I had seen both the Highlands and the Low country ; and if the powers of observation were not wanting, the opportunities were certainly very great. But the almost entire desertion of a pastor by his people was a thing I had not yet witnessed, and I was desirous to see and judge for myself. There are associations of a high and peculiar character connected with this northern parish. For more than a thousand years it lias formed part of the patrimony of a truly noble family, celebrated by Philip Doddridge for its great moral worth, and by Sir "Walter Scott for its high military genius, and through whose influence the light of the Reformation had been introduced into this remote corner, at a period when all the neighbouring districts were enveloped in the original dark- ness. In a late age it had been honoured by the fines and proscriptions of Charles II. ; and its minister, — one of those men of God whose names still live in the memory of the country, and whose biography occupies no small space in the recorded history of her " worthies," — had rendered himself so obnoxious to the tyranny and irreligion of the time, that he THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 49 was ejected from his charge more than a year before any of the other non-conforming clergymen of the Church. I ap- proached the parish from the east. The day was warm and pleasant ; the scenery through which I passed, some of the finest in Scotland. The mountains rose on the right in huge Titanic masses, that seemed to soften their purple and blue in the clear sunshine, to the delicate tone of the deep sky beyond ; and I could see the yet unwasted snows of summer glittering in little detached masses along their summits ; the hills of the middle region were feathered with wood ; a forest of mingled oaks and larches, which still blended the tender softness of spring with the full foliage of summer, swept down to the path ; the wide undulating plain below was laid out into fields, mottled with cottages, and waving with the yet unshot corn ; and a noble arm of the sea winded along the lower edge for nearly twenty miles, losing itself to the west among blue hills and jutting headlands, and opening in the east to the main ocean through a magnificent gateway of rock. But the little groupes which I encountered at every turning of the path, as they journeyed, with all the sober, well-marked decency of a Scottish Sabbath morning, towards the church of a neighbouring parish, interested me more than even the scenery. The clan which inhabited this part of the country had borne a well-marked character in Scottish story. Bu- chanan has described it as one of the most fearless and war- like in the north. It served under the Bruce at Bannock- burn ; it was the first to rise in arms to protect Queen Mary, on her visit to Inverness, from the intended violence of Huntly ; it fought the battles of Protestantism in Germany under Gustavus Adolphus;* it covered the retreat of the English at Fontenoy, and presented an unbroken front to * It is an interesting fact, and illustrates happily the high respect with which the clansmen must have regarded their general, that, even in the present day, the name Gustavus is scarcely more common in Sweden itself than in this part of the country. D 50 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. the enemy after all the other allied troops had quitted the field. And it was the descendants of these very men who were now passing me on the road. The rugged, robust form, half-bone, half-muscle, — the springy firmness of the tread, — the grave, manly countenance, — all gave indication that the ori- ginal characteristics survived in their full strength ; and it was a strength that inspired confidence, not fear. There were gray-haired, patriarchal-looking men among the groupes, whose very air seemed impressed by a sense of the duties of the day ; nor was there auglit that did not agree with the object of the journey in the appearance of even the youngest and least thoughtful. As I proceeded, I came up with a few people who were travelling in a contrary direction. A Secession meeting- house has lately sprung up in the parish, and these formed part of the congregation. A path nearly obscured by grass and weeds leads from the main road to the parish church. It was with difficulty I could trace it, and there were none to direct me, for I was now walking alone. The parish bury- ing-ground, thickly sprinkled with graves and tombstones, surrounds the church. It is a quiet solitary spot of great beauty, lying beside the sea-shore ; and as service had not yet commenced, I whiled away half an hour in sauntering among the stones, and deciphering the inscriptions. I could trace in the rude monuments of this retired little spot a brief but impressive history of the district. The older tablets, gray and shaggy with the mosses and lichens of three centu- ries, bear, in their uncouth semblances of the unwieldy battle- axe and double-handed sword of ancient warfare, the meet and appropriate symbols of the earlier time. But the more modern testify to the introduction of a humanizing influence. They speak of a life after death in the " holy texts" described by the poet; or certify, in a quiet humility of style which al- most vouches for their truth, that the sleepers below were THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 51 "honest men, of blameless character, and who feared God." There is one tombstone, however, more remarkable than all the others. It lies beside the church-door, and testifies, in an antique inscription, that it covers the remains of the " great. MAN. OF. GOD. AND. FAITHFVL. MINISTER. OF. IESVS. CHRIST," who had endured persecution for the truth in the dark days of Charles and his brother. He had outlived the tyranny of the Stuarts, and, though worn by years and sufferings, had returned to his parish on the Revolution, to end his course as it had begun. He saw, ere his death, the law of patron- age abolished, and the popular right virtually secured ; and fearing lest his people might be led to abuse the important privilege conferred on them, and calculating aright on the abiding influence of his own character among them, he gave charge on his deathbed to dig his grave in the threshold of the church, that they might regard him as a sentinel placed at the door, and that his tombstone might speak to them as they passed out and in. The inscription, which, after the lapse of nearly a century and a half, is still perfectly legible, concludes with the following remarkable words : — " This. STONE. SHALL. BEAR. WITNESS. AGAINST. THE. PARISHIONERS. OF. . . IF.THEY.BRING.ANE.UNGODLY.MINISTER.IN.HERE." Could the imagination of a poet have originated a more striking con- ception in connection with a church deserted by all its better people, and whose minister fattens on his hire, useless and contented ] I entered the church, for the clergyman had just gone in. There were from eight to ten persons scattered over the pews below, and seven in the galleries above ; and these, as there were no more " John Clerks" and " Michael Tods r '* in the parish, composed the entire congregation. I wrapped my- * " Peter Clark and Michael Tod were the only individuals who, in a population of three thousand souls, attached their signatures to the call of the obnoxious presentee, Mr Young, in the famous Auchterarder case "—Note appended to " My Schools and Schoolmasters." 52 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. self up in my plaid and sat down, and the service went on in the usual course ; but it sounded in my ears like a miser- able mockery. The precentor sung almost alone ; and, ere the clergyman had reached the middle of his discourse, which he read in an unimpassioned, monotonous tone, nearly one- half his skeleton congregation had fallen asleep ; and the drowsy, listless expression of the others showed that, for every good purpose, they might have been asleep too. And Sab- bath after Sabbath has this unfortunate man gone the same tiresome round, and with exactly the same effects, for the last twenty-three years, — at no time regarded by the better clergy- men of the district as really their brother, — on no occasion recognised by the parish as virtually its minister, — with a dreary vacancy and a few indifferent hearts inside his church, and the stone of the Covenanter at the door ! Against whom does the inscription testify % — for the people have escaped. Against the patron, the intruder, and the law of Bolingbroke, — the Dr Robertsons of the last age, and the Dr Cooks of the present. It is well to learn from this hapless parish, the exact sense in which, in a different state of matters, the Rev. Mr Young would have been constituted minister of Auch- terarder. It is well too to learn, that there may be vacancies in the Church where no blank appears in the Almanack. It is scarce necessary to remark, that the present position of the Church is a position which she has often occupied, or that the agitated question is one which she has agitated a thousand times before. There is comfort in the fact that we need only refer to her history, to show that all her better names have been invariably on the one side ; and that the highest praise to which her opponents can pretend is, that some of them have been fortunate enough to have attained to a negative character, and that some of them have had the merit of being equivocaL There is comfort, too, in the re- flection that what is morally wrong cannot be logically right; THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 53 and that not only the worthier men, but also the sounder ar- guments, are to be found on the better side. It is indeed no easy matter to prove that our clergymen should not re- ceive the people's money for the people's good, unless they first recognise an uncontrollable right of misapplication in the patron, — that Bolingbroke's Act and the Reform Bill should alike remain the law of the land, to blend more than the civil liberty of the freest States of antiquity with well-nigh the ghostly despotism of Turkey or of Rome ; or that men, through a sense of the high duty which they owe to God, should obey an unjust law, through which God's own laws are to be nullified, his Gospel repressed, and the consciences of his peo])le wronged and offended. And yet such are the difficulties of at least our more extreme opposers. The Lord President of the Court of Session is unquestionably an able and respectable lawyer ; but it is an over-task for even the Lord President himself to be correct and rational when in the wrong ; and his address in the Lethendy case is perhaps not less valuable as an illustration of the kind of facts and ar- guments of which our opponents can alone avail themselves, than even his Lordship's ablest and most impressive addresses in their direct and proper character. We are shown by Locke, in his wonderful Essay, that " confusions making it a difficulty to separate two things that should be separated, concern always two ideas, and those most which most approach one another." His Lordship, however, confounds ideas the most distinct, — things which do not be- long to even the same category. He mistakes a duty en- joined for a power conferred ; and finds a mystery which he confesses himself unable to comprehend, in the absurdity into which the mistake necessarily leads. The article in our Con- fession quoted by his Lordship instructs the civil magistrate " to take order that unity and peace be preserved in the Church \ that the truth of God be kept pure and entire } that 5i THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. blasphemies and heresies be suppressed ; corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed ;" and it empowers him, the better to fulfil the enjoined duty, to call Synods, regarding which he is instructed " to provide that whatever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God." Now, what, I ask, can well be simpler than this, especially the concluding portion of the passage, which seems intended to guard against the very possibility of misconcep- tion, and throws so clear a light on what goes before % The mind of God is the pure and perfect code embodied in God's Word, — the sublime doctrines which God reveals, — the high duties which He enjoins, — the pure morality which He in- culcates ; and the magistrate, as the responsible subject of this absolute and immutable code, is commanded to take order that he not only conform to it himself, but that the Church conform to it too. Strange, however, as it may seem, this explanatory and restricting clause, — this clause, which lowers the delegated trust into a strictly defined duty, — his Lord- ship confesses himself totally unable to understand.* He had explored the passage with so engrossing and definite a conception of the meaning he had expected to find in it, as to have no eyes for the meaning which it actually conveys. The determining and defining clause, which asserts the supre- macy of the Divine law, appeared to him somehow as merely a splendid obscurity, which sanctioned the exercise of a great though mysterious and undefinable power. I doubt not that * " What is the precise meaning of that passage I am sure I don't know, or what is the jurisdiction it gives to the civil magistrate ; but it must allude to something which is not temporal. The mind of God is a spiritual concern ; and they [magis- trates] are to take care that the things transacted in Synods be according to the mind of God. Surely this does not exclude the civil magistrate from interfering in ecclesiastical concerns. If words be capable of conveying a meaning, it certainly gives to the civil authority more power than they have ever exercised, or than, I believe, it was ever meant they should exercise ; but it must allude to more than mere temporal concerns. In short, I hope that, on sober reflection, the Church will see that they cannot remain in the position of an Established Church, and yet resist the law which has made them an Established Church." — Lord President's Ad- dress, Report, Scot. Guard., \§th June 1839. THE WIIIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 55 the ministers at the bar understood the passage a little better, and accepted it as a sign that they were not standing on un- safe or dishonourable ground. It proved perfectly imprac- ticable on this occasion for every purpose of the Court. It passed no censure on the minister of Lethendy \ denounced no threat against the Presbytery of Dunkeld ; and if it em- powers Lords of Session and their Presidents to enter our Church courts, it gives them at least .no encouragement to vote on the secular side. The passage was introduced into our Confession, in its present form, rather more than a hun- dred and ninety years ago ; and there has it remained ever since, as unchanged to suit the profligacy of Charles II., or the prostitution and subserviency of his courts of law, as when the good President Forbes employed his whole Sabbaths in studying the " mind of God," and the rest of the week in advancing the weal of his country, and in the conscientious discharge of the high duties of his office. It extended to the magistracy exactly the same power which it does now, and breathed exactly the same spirit, when Middleton intro- duced the unhappy act which overturned Presbyterianism in Scotland, — when the apostate Lauderdale renounced the Co- venant, to become the remorseless persecutor of his brethren, — when the criminals of our courts were the martyrs of our Church, — when the heroic Mackail stood before the Lords of Council with his leg fixed in the boot, and the executioner struck the wedge till the bone was splintered, and the blood and marrow spurted in their faces. Some of his Lordship's other mistakes and misconceptions are scarcely less striking than the one just exposed. Error and mis-statement creep into his very facts, — error, too, of so important a nature as entirely to alter their illustrative scope and character. It is unnecessary to allude a second time to his Lordship's Episcopal argument, so well backed by Greek, and so ill supported by history. In his allusion 56 THE WHIGGISM OP THE OLD SCHOOL. to the eminent Father of the Secession he is still more palp- ably unfortunate. He tells our better clergymen that they have but one alternative in the matter, — that an implicit sub- mission to the law of patronage is one of the express condi- tions on which they receive the support of the State, — and that they must either unresistingly subject themselves to this conditional law, or, like the good Ebenezer Erskine, throw up their livings, and quit the Establishment ; for this ex- cellent and eminent man, finding, as his Lordship states the case, that he could neither remain in the Establishment with- out submitting to the law, nor yet submit to the law with- out offending against his conscience, judiciously and honestly settled the point by withdrawing from the Church and found- ing the Secession. "What obscure and nameless historian could have so entirely misled his Lordship ? The statement is totally untrue. Erskine did not withdraw from the Estab- lishment : he was thrust out, and thrust out for this, — that he broadly and pointedly condemned the Church for doing what the Court now requires of it to do, and for not doing what, in direct opposition to the Court, it has now done. He took his stand, with his three brethren, on the broad consti- tutional ground which had been occupied by all the better men of the Church from the Reformation downwards ; and, outnumbered and overborne in an inferior ecclesiastical court, he appealed to the highest. And there too he was outnum- bered and overborne ; but, strong in the goodness of his cause and the approval of his conscience, he would neither recognise its censures as just, nor succumb to its authority. And the Court, by a commission of its members, proceeded to cast him out as a disturber of its peace. It "loosened his pastoral relation to his charge," declared his " parish va- cant," pronounced him " no longer a minister of the Church of Scotland," and prohibited all the acknowledged ministers of the Church from " employing him in any ministerial func- THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 57 tion." Against this unjust sentence Erskine protested and appealed ; and the document is recorded, not in the journals of the Assembly, but in the heart and mind of the country. He "protested that his pastoral relation to his people should still be held firm and valid f that he should " still hold com- munion with all and every one who adhered to the principles of the true Presbyterian Church of Scotland ;" that it should " still be held lawful for him to exercise the keys of doctrine, discipline, and government, according to the Word of God, the Confession of Faith, and the constitution" of this, the " Covenanted Church," by which he so tenaciously held ; and finally, in the hope of a better spirit in the future, he " ap- pealed to the first free, faithful, and reforming General As- sembly of the Church of Scotland/ 7 * nor are there many of our worthier ministers who do not recognise the full justice of the appeaL Such are the facts of the case as sanctioned by authentic history, in opposition to those adduced by his Lordship. But in passing from the illustration to the prin- ciple illustrated, it cannot be improper to ask, what sort of estimate has this shrewd and able magistrate formed of the strength and importance of the party which he so coolly re- commends either to submit to the law of patronage, or to re- tire from the Church 1 Has he not mistaken the staff, on this occasion, for the main army, — the representatives of the million for the million itself % Or is it really the tens and hundreds of thousands, — the preponderating majority and strength of the country, with all their hereditary hatred and acquired dislike of the iniquitous and deprecated law, to whom he submits the alternative 1 Retire from the Church ! The Church cannot exist without us. We are the thews and sinews, the blood and nerves, of the Church. Our support is essentially necessary to secure their temporalities to even • For an impartial and well-written account of the origin of the Secession, see " Chambers"s Lives of Eminent Scotsmen ;" " Life of Erskine," vol. ii. p. 280, &c. 58 THE WHIGGISM. OF THE OLD SCHOOL. the clergymen who value us least ; and the secession of our party would be the inevitable ruin of our opponents. The misfortune of the Lord President's address consisted simply in this, — it was a great deal too clear. His Lordship had to defend what was in itself radically wrong ; and, in- stead of entrenching himself behind acts of Parliament happy in their ambiguities, and precedents of the Court which may in some instances be but recorded mistakes, he came imprudently out into the open field of reason and of Scripture. Arguments drawn from the mere law of the case could have been combated by few ; but in drawing them from the Bible, — a book at once the most decided on questions of morals, and the most extensively known, and from reason, the common gift and distinguishing characteristic of the spe- cies, he addressed himself to the understandings of the entire community. And hence, obviously enough, the people have been enabled to change places with his Lordship. It is alike contrary to the whole scope of reason and of Scripture that obedience be rendered to an unjust law ; nor can there be anythiug more exquisitely absurd than to confound such an obedience with the mere recognition of the power and au- thority of the magistrate. " Our Saviour," says his Lord- ship, " pleaded no exemption from the jurisdiction of the Sanhedrim." True ; but our Saviour never obeyed an unjust law. " Paul pleaded before Felix," Festus, " and Agrippa, and," as the edicts against the Christians were not yet framed, " he appealed to Csesar." Undisputably ; but Paul did not obey an unjust law. Nor are we left to mere infer- ence in the matter : Peter and John, when brought before a council of rulers and Sadducee elders, assigned good and suf- ficient reasons why they should not submit themselves to the will or authority of men, if opposed to that of God ; and the argument still survives to urge on our consciences, that we yield not obedience to an unjust law. Nay, it is only ne THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 59 cessary, in deciding tlie question, to inquire why the Churches have been persecuted and the martyrs slain. His Lordship's law does not lie so much within reach as his Lordship's facts and arguments. It is exceedingly natural, however, to judge of it from the company which it keeps, and to bear in mind that very eminent lawyers have arrived at very opposite con- clusions on the point, and entertain very different opinions. The independence of the Church seems as decidedly recog- nised by statute as the rights of the patron ; and, besides, are we not assured, " That the law and the opinion of the judge are not always convertible terms, or one and the same thing, since it sometimes may happen that the judge may mis- take the law V Now, this must surely be good sense, for it is according to reason and experience ; and it must neces- sarily be good law, for it occurs in Blackstone. It is fully admitted, however, that the decision of our Courts has practically determined the law, and that the Church is at this moment as entirely at the mercy of the patron as if her liberties had never been asserted, nor her independence recognised. The Court of Session has means at command far more convincing than argument, to compel the admission ; and the readiness to employ these is fully equal to the ability. We have already seen one of the Presbyteries of our Church honoured by a public rebuke, and fines and imprisonment hang over another. But the duty of our ministers is not the less clear. They owe it to themselves and to their people, to their country and to their God, that they neither obey this iniquitous law, nor yet quit the Establishment. Either al- ternative involves the ruin of the Church of Scotland ; and who is there that has studied our country's history in the true spirit, or has acquainted himself with the temper of the pre- sent time, and the depth and force of the national character, who can believe that the Church of Scotland is destined to fall alone 1 There is more at stake in the agitated question 60 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. than either rights of patronage or the temporalities of the Church ; and our Earls of Kinnoull, who have wealth, and lands, and titles, as well as patronages, to lose, and our Lord Chancellors and Lord Presidents, who, like our clergy, derive their support from an establishment, would do well to beware that in this season of tempests and tornadoes they unsettle not the ballast of the State. There are elements of tremen- dous power slumbering, and but partially slumbering, among the masses ; and woe to the people, — a double woe to the aristocracy of the land, — if these once awaken in the fierce and untameable fury of their nature, to bid defiance to every law, and to trample on every privilege. God, to avert the calamity, and in his great and wonted care for our country, is awakening the old spirit of the Church, — that free and noble spirit which, alike opposed to despotism in the ruler and to license in the people, can brook neither the grinding tyranny of the few, nor yet the fiercer and more savage in- tolerance of the many ; and if his design of mercy be thwarted through a selfish and short-sighted policy, the judgment shall assuredly fall heaviest on the classes which offend most. In the event of a popular convulsion, all must necessarily suffer, and suffer to no good end. It is an immutable law of Deity, that the blessings of freedom can be enjoyed by only wise and virtuous men, and that the uncultured and the vicious, in their vain attempts to secure to themselves an ideal liberty, for which they are unfitted, shall struggle fruitlessly in a miserable and delusive cycle of crime and sorrow, that ever returns into itself All would necessarily suffer. But it could not be by the common people that the infliction would be felt most severely ; nor, were the hour already come, would the writer of these pages exchange his humble lot, with its various adjuncts, necessary or peculiar, for perhaps even the highest. He has but little to lose or to provoke envy; he has been accustomed to hardship and fatigue ; he is in the THE WIIIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 61 full vigour of manhood ; lie could fight as a common soldier in the ranks ; and, if he survived the struggle, he might find himself occupying a not lower level at its close than at its commencement. But the aged judges, the wealthy patrons, the delicately-nurtured aristocracy of Scotland, the men who have so much to lose, which in a popular convulsion could not fail to be lost, nay, even the more eloquent orators and more vigorous thinkers of the age, who have yet to give their first proof of military talent, — what fate do they augur to themselves 1 Have they secured the position which they are to occupy in the struggle, or ascertained the exact rank which they are to bear among the new aristocracy, or under the second Cromwell 1 They think miserably amiss if they think the people could not find leaders without employing them ; nor do they well if, instead of calculating upon the formi- dable depth and momentum of the yet unbroken waters, they merely look (with, I grant, the natural and proper contempt) on the froth and spume which idly bubbles on the surface, — on the shallow and futile talent of demagogues and declaim- ers, so noisy and obtrusive now, but which, with the first breach in the barrier, would be for ever engulphed in the torrent. It is an unchallenged truth, that it is not from reason we derive our highest degree of knowledge, and that we lower the certainty of the intuitive if we but equal it with the merely inferrible. It is according to the nature of the human mind that an ascertained fact should weigh more than even the most ingenious argument ; and it is on this principle that the experience of fourteen years, spent in the workshed and the barrack, in almost every district of the country, and among almost every class of the common people, has had infinitely more to do in influencing my opinion regarding the high im- portance of the present struggle, and the imminent danger of the community, than all that even the more rational waiters 62 THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. foi' a merely intellectual millennium have urged on the one hand, or all that ever the abler and better Voluntaries have argued on the other. I have not yet discovered the elements of the coming happiness among the immense masses broken loose from religion. And though I can believe, with even Voltaire, that great prosperity has proved prejudicial to the Church, I cannot see that it is from prosperity the Church of Scotland has most to dread at present ; nor have I found much satisfaction in balancing matters between the ascetics of Upper Egypt, or the more than hatf-infidel gnostics of the East, and the corrupt and tyrannical Churchmen established by Constantine. Arguments drawn from so remote and misty a period have but the effect of rendering the discussion long and the inference uncertain. I have been enabled to arrive at co nclusions much more satisfactory to at least my o wn j udgment, than what I have found anions the Voluntaries themselves. I am not ignorant that the party has its truly excellent lay adherents, — its good and faithful ministers. I have asso- ciated for months together with pious Voluntaries from whom I differed wonderfully little; and Sabbath after Sabbath have I accompanied them to the meeting-house, to listen with, I trust, more than pleasure, to some of their better divines ; and this in districts — and there are still too many such — where the gospel is not preached in the Establishment. It has not escaped me, however, that the religious men of the party are comparatively few ; that, save for purely political purposes, they act but feebly on the mass to which they are attached, and not at all for good on the formidable masses beyond ; that, in short, they form merely the " silver lining of the cloud," and that there is enough of the smoke and stench of infidelity in its obscurer recesses to render a Voluntary tri- umph the bane of the country. The conscientious motives of Dr Wardlaw and his better friends operate but feebly and inefficiently on the thousands who, holding ostensibly by the THE WHIGGISM OF THE OLD SCHOOL. 63 same opinions, make common cause with these good but mis- taken men, for accomplishing the same object. I have met with other than pious Voluntaries, — and this, too, in im- mensely greater numbers, — with unsatisfied and restless spi- rits, who, had not the controversy been agitated in its pre- sent form, would have opposed themselves, not to the Estab- lishment, but to Christianity itself; and, with no secular interest involved in the quarrel, save in its remoter conse- quences, I have deliberately taken my stand on the side of the Church of Scotland, not more influenced by a cherished Pecollection of her past services in the cause of God and hu- manity, or by a well-grounded confidence in those pregnant elements of good which she still so largely retains in her con- stitution, than from an assured conviction that the animat- ing spirit of her opponents is less an inspiration than a pos- session. It is not this spirit of modern Voluntaryism, so uniike that of the missionary, which is to re-establish the old character of our country, — to substitute a pure Chris- tianity for the semi-barbarous and unreasoning infidelity 01 our larger towns,— to fill our hamlets with such men as tne cottar described by the poet, — to sanction the testimony of some second Kirkton, or to justify the eulogium of some fu- ture Whitefield. It is easy to distinguish between a disor- ganizing influence and a reforming principle, — between the " revived opinions" of the sixteenth century and the new opinions of the nineteenth, — between a Scotch Parliament suppressing a corrupt Establishment because it was Popish, and a French convention annihilating a similar institution because it was Christian. It is reformation, not change, — Christianity, not Voluntaryism, — that can alone save our country. There is a palpable confusion of idea in the main argu- ment of the party. It confounds things essentially difFerent, — the provided temporalities with the secular spirit. It re- 64 THE WBXQGraH T THE OLD SCHOOL. _-.-.; Is a merely accidental connection as a necessary and in- ble consequence ; and conld the absurdity occur in any other than a semi-theological contrc" e might hear the incompeienc; - . e or Burgoyne attributed to the Parlia- mentary grant :*rthe pay of the army, and the brutality and gross injustice of Jefferies to the establishment of the court over which he presided. "We are content to trace the well- mark _:>n in both the past hisi and present po- o. of the Church of Scotland : and are in no danger what- ever of confounding the vantage-groand which her r ministers have occupied to such good purpose, from the days : Ivnox until now, with that secular spirit which has op- ressed and persecuted her in both the earlier and later periods of her ex.- . ■-. — in the one as at. E il rorru, — in the other as a Patronage prine. THE LITEEAEY CHAEAC1EE OF KNOX. It is one of the main distinetions of works produced by the master minds, whether in literature or the fine arts, that they contain a large amount of thought. There are books of no great bulk winch it seems scarce possible to exhaust, and pic- tures which, after one has looked at them for hours toother appear just as fresh and new as at first when one comes to ett W ^ ^^ W ° rkS ° f H °S arth are «* % 1-s emarkable for y lg0 ur and condensation of thought than the works of Shakspeare ; nor is Sir David Wilkie a less fascinat, mg author than Sir Walter Scott, or a less masterly diet tor of character. Both these great artists,_the hying and the dead one,-Hogarth and Sir David,-have shown how po SS1 ble d ;* for men of genius to think vigorously upon can- vaa; and that a clear, readable, condensed style may be at- tained m painting as certainly as in writing. One neyer tires of heir productions. They tell admirable stories in so admirable a manner, that the oftener we peruse them the bet- ter we are pleased; and almost eyeiy story has its mora, .there is, howeyer, one of the most readable of Sir David's pictures which contains what we have been inclined to think a gross historical error, and belies the character of a very great man His "Knox Preaching before the Lords of the Con- gregation is unquestionably a splendid composition —full of 66 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. thought and sentiment, but the main figure is defective. It represents not the powerful and persuasive orator, whose unmatched eloquence led captive the great minds of the country, but the mere fanatical leader of an unthinking rabble. It reminds us of the narrow-minded heresiarch de- scribed by Hume and Gilbert Stuart, — not of the vigorous- thoughted worthy apostrophized by the noble Milton as " Knox, the Reformer of a kingdom," — " a great man, ani- mated by the Spirit of God." * The labours of the late Dr M'Crie have done much to disabuse the public mind regarding the true character of Knox, moral and intellectual. Never before did an honest * Mr Carlyle, in his letter to David Laing, Esq., of the Signet Library, Edin- burgh, on the project of a National Exhibition of Scottish Portraits, refers to this work of Wilkie's in the following terms : — " No picture that I ever saw by a man of genius can well be, in regard to all earnest purposes, a more perfect failure. Can anything, in fact, be more entirely useless for earnest purposes, more unlike what ever could have been the reality, than that gross Energumen, more like a boxing-butcher, whom he has set into a pulpit surrounded with draperies, with fat-shouldered women, and play-actor men in mail, and labelled Knox?" With all deference to authority so high and emphasis so great, it may be permitted us to doubt whether Mr Miller and Mr Carlyle have done full justice to Wilkie's picture. It was legitimate for the artist to paint Knox as a preacher, and in this character his representation is certainly not unlike what the reality would have been. Knox in the pulpit was one of the fieriest incarnations of the perfej-viclum ingenium of his countrymen ; more fiery even, were that possible, than Chalmers. James Melville heard him preach in 1571, the year before his death. Such was his weakness, that he went leaning on a staff, his neck wrapped in furs, and supported by Richard Ballenden. It was necessary to lift him to the pulpit, and on first en- tering it he had to lean for a time to draw breath ; " bot," says James in his old dialect, " er he haid done with his sermone, he was sa active and vigorous, that he was lyk to ding the pulpit in blads, and flie out of it." Wilkie had probably this passage in view when he designed his picture, and the gestures of his Knox cor- respond as closely as possible to Melville's last words. The question whether Wil- kie's choice of a moment for representing Knox was just and felicitous, — whether it is thus we ought to realize to ourselves the Reformer of Scotland, — resolves itself into this other, how far the character and work of Knox were revealed or typified in his pulpit appearances. Restrained by the conditions of his art, Wilkie was forced to choose between the Knox of the council-chamber, or of the General Assembly, or of the study, and the Knox of the pulpit. Perhaps he ought to have painted him in some one of the former characters rather than in the latter. But the Refor- mation was much the work of preaching, and the painter's eye of Wilkie was correct in discerning how Knox preached. It may be suggested that, before the Lords of the Congregation he would have subdued his fire. It is not likely. In the pulpit ..east of all would he fear or respect the face of man. The " fat-shouldered women and play-actor men in mail," are of course conventional and absurd. —Ed. THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 67 and able man turn the stream of truth through such an Augean stable of calumny and falsehood as this admirable writer in elucidating the history of the Reformation. He accomplished such a revolution in public opinion regarding the characters and events of the period, as the well chosen hero of his first biography accomplished in its religion. The reign of the dissolute and totally unprincipled Charles II. affected more than the mode and framework of English literature, — it affected its spirit also. It substituted for that indigenous school to which Shakspeare and Milton belong, and which, in a later time, has been restored by Cowper and Wordsworth, the feeble elegancies of French literature in the reign of Louis XIY. It substituted also for the native spirit of liberty and the zeal of truth, the servilities of French flattery and French falsehood. It was in this reign of de- gradation, — the reign in which the glorious "Paradise Lost" was described by a servile versifier as a "poem remarkable for only its length," that Knox came to be represented, like the blind poet who so honoured and cherished his memory, as a rude and unmannerly fanatic. He had taught kings that the divine right is not on the side of irresponsible power, but on the side of a well-regulated popular liberty. He had shown with irresistible effect, that whatever God has commanded, men have a " divine right" to obey ; and that in such matters kings and law-makers have no right whatever to interfere. And the hereditary despots could neither overturn his logic nor forgive him the lesson. But they could revile and calumniate, and the creatures whom they half-fed, half-starved, fixed the calumny in the literature of the time. There was a decided improvement in the fol- lowing age ; but the tone of its theology, in at least the sister kingdom, was unfavourable to the character of Knox. It was a time of spiritual death in the English Church ; and the cry of fanaticism raised against the Reformer, chiefly on 68 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. a civil plea, in the reign of Charles II., was prolonged in the reign of Anne and the earlier Georges, on a purely religious one. Naturally enough, his beliefs were deemed absurd and irrational by the defamers and depredators of Whitefield ; and there was no M'Crie to tell the Bundles and Atterburys of the time, that the zealot whom they contemned and un- dervalued had been a fellow-labourer in the English Church with its Latimers and Cranmers, and had lent his assistance in framing the code of belief which they themselves had professed to receive, but for which in reality they cared so little. The tone of our Scottish literature in the last century was borrowed in part from our English neighbours, and in part from the French. Hume, with less liveliness but greater original powers than Voltaire, condescended, in a consider- able degree, to imitate the historical style of that volatile and accomplished writer, and evinced a hostility equally bitter to whatever had the sacredness of religion to recom- mend it. Robertson, Smollett, Kaimes, Adam Smith, Gil- bert Stuart, Tytler, and Moore, had all caught the English mode and the English spirit, and were, in at least as marked a degree as any of their English contemporaries, tinctured with infidelity. Hence, in part, the disrespect shown by almost all these writers to the memory of Knox. Many of them, too, had imagination enough to evince a sympathy for the misfortunes of Mary, which a sense of her crimes and infamies seems to have checked in the friends and followers who would not fight for her at Carberry Hill, and who struck only a half-blow in her quarrel at Langside ; and the man who could attach more importance to the religion of a country than to the smiles of so fine a woman, was characterized as rude and brutal. Robertson s hostility to Knox is well known. Even Hume, — who was by much too cool and too sagacious a man to share in the general admiration of Mary, THE LITERARY CHABACTER OF KNOX. 69 could urge with him, as an argument of weight, that, if he only gave him up the Princess, "he would have the compen- satory satisfaction of seeing the Reformer made sufficiently ridiculous." We are in possession of a volume of the " Edin- burgh Magazine," of the time when that periodical was edited by Gilbert Stuart, and when the Moderate clergy of the south of Scotland were the chief contributors. The articles are temperate throughout, except on two subjects, — the Seces- sion and John Knox; but when these are introduced, we find that the writers seem to have lost all command of tem- per, or to have regarded as legitimate the foulest epithets of opprobrium and reproach. There is, in particular, one article on Knox, written apparently by the editor, in which our venerable Reformer is described as mean, illiterate, nar- row-minded, cruel, and libidinous ; and so completely does the engraver for the work appear to have entered into the writer's spirit, that the figure in an accompanying print wants only horns and a tail to render it complete. But whatever Gilbert Stuart might have thought of the literature of John Knox, it is certain the contemporaries of the Reformer, both friends and enemies, estimated it very high. Nor in the present time are we without data on which to de- cide. The art of writing history in the vernacular tongue was not an art of the age. Even the great Bacon failed utterly in this department, nearly an age after, and produced, in his History of Henry VII., a work which has been quoted liberally by both Lord Kaimes and Sir Richard Steele, to show how very badly history may be written. Knox's " Histoiy of the Reformation" is immensely superior to the history of Bacon. It displays more freedom and more power. There is a dra- matic effect in some of the dialogues altogether fascinating and there are touches of such simple pathos in the narrative, that they affect even to tears. We would instance the closing scene in the life of the martyr Wishart, as described in the 70 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. first volume. No one can glance over the passage without being convinced that the heart of the writer was a heart ten- der and compassionate in the first degree. We doubt not that it was written with wet eyes and a swelling heart. He relates with almost New Testament simplicity, how the " said Mr George Wishart, departing from the town of Hadding- ton" under a presentiment of death, "took good night for ever of all his acquaintances," and "how John Knox pressing hard to go with him," the devoted man said, " Nay, return to your children, God's people, and God bless you ; — one is sufficient for a sacrifice." And how "the said John Knox unwillingly obeyed." He relates, farther, after narrating the apprehension and trial of the martyr, " that the fire was made ready, and the stake, at the west port of the Castle of St Andrews, near to the Priory ; and that, directly over against the place, the Castle windows were hung with rich hangings, and velvet cushions laid for the Cardinal and the prelates, who came to feast their eyes with the torments of this innocent man ;" how that, " dreading lest he should be rescued by his friends, the Cardinal had commanded that all the ordnance of the Castle should be bent right against the place of execution, and had ordered the gunners to be ready standing beside their guns, until such time as his victim was burnt to ashes ;" how, " all this being done, they bound Mr George's hands behind his back, and with sound of trumpet led him forth with the soldiers from the Castle to the place of their cruel and wicked execution ;" how, " as he came forth of the Castle gate, there met him, certain beggars asking of him alms, for GooVs sake, to whom he answered, i I want my hands ivherewith I ivas wont to give you alms ; but the merciful Lord, of his benignity and abundant grace, that feedeth all men, vouch- safe to give you necessaries, both unto your body and souls / " how, " after this, he was led to the fire with a rope about his aeck and a chain of iron about his middle ; and how, kneel- THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 71 ing down beside the faggots, lie rose again, and tlirice said these words, ' thou Sovereign of the world, have mercy upon me ; Father of Heaven, I commend my spirit into thy holy hands f " how, " when he had made this prayer, he turned unto the people and said, ' I beseech you, Christian brethren and sisters, that ye be not offended at the Word of God, for the affliction and torment which ye see ready pre- pared for me ; but I exhort you that you love the Word of God, and suffer patiently, and with a comfortable heart, for the Word's sake, which is your undoubted salvation and ever- lasting comfort ;' " how that "many more faithful words he spake unto them, taking no heed or care of the cruel tortures prepared for him ;" and how, " by and by, the trumpet sound- ing, he was tied to the stake, and the fire kindled ;" how " the captain of the Castle, for the love he bore to Mr Wishart, drew so near to the fire that the flame thereof did him harm, and urged him to be of good courage, and to beg from God the forgiveness of his sins /' and how the martyr answered him thus from the flames, " 'The fire torments my body, but no ways abates my spirit ;' " how "then Mr Wishart, look- ing steadfastly towards the Cardinal, said, ' He who in such state from that high place feedeth his eyes with my torments, within few days shall be hanged out at the same window, to be seen with asmuch ignominyas he nowleaneth there in pride ;" and how, finally, " in short space thereafter, the fire being very great, he was consumed to powder." We can believe that the man who wrote this affecting narrative, — the "ruffian Knox," — the " barbarian who made Mary weep," — told his Queen the very truth when he assured her that "he de- lighted not in the weeping of any of God's creatures, — yea, that he could scarce abide the tears of his own boys when his own hands corrected them." Love and pity were assuredly no unwonted emotions in the large heart of him who " never feared the face of man." 72 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. It is not as a historian, however, that the literary charac- ter of Knox can be rated highest. His history, unlike Bacon's, which is rather overlaboured than the reverse, seems, so far as regards composition, to have been carelessly written, — in the midst, doubtless, of the ceaseless round of harassing em- ployments in which the latter portion of his life was spent. It is in his shorter compositions that his great ability as a writer is best shown ; and with some of these before us, we speak advisedly when we assert that he was decidedly the first man of either kingdom who wrote what would be deemed a good English style, tested by the present standard. There is a mellifluous flow and thorough ease in his sentences alto- gether astonishing, when we take into account the stiff in- flexibility of the English language at that period, as shown in the prose writings of even his abler contemporaries. Whole colonies of half-naturalized Greek and Latin words had been just brought into the language ; and, as if unsuited to its ge- nius, they performed their work clumsily and heavily in even the hands of superior men. We instance the earlier homi- lies of the English Church. Almost every member of every sentence in these compositions is broken into two parts, the last of which generally repeats in Saxon English the idea which in the first is expressed in Latinized English. And hence their stiff and peculiar verbosity of style. In the more carefully written compositions of Knox there is none of this. Johnson has remarked of Milton, that the "heat of his ge- nius sublimed his learning," and threw off merely the finer and more subtle parts into his poetry. In the same way, the genius of the great Reformer seems to have fused into one pliant and homogeneous mass the language which, when em- ployed by men of a lower order, was so heterogeneous and untractable. He seemed as if bom to anticipate the improve- ments and refinements of an age yet distant, and this not merely in his knowledge of things, but in his command of THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 73 words. Sir Walter Raleigh lias been described by some of our higher critics as the first good prose writer of England ; we beg to submit to the reader the following prayer, written by Knox during the reign of Mary of Guise, nearly an age, be it remarked, before Sir Walter produced the great work on which his fame as a writer chiefly rests. We know not in the compass of our literature a more interesting composi- tion. It was written at a time when the ashes of Walter Mill still blackened the public square of St Andrews, and gives us no inadequate idea of the power of that eloquence chosen by Deity as his honoured instrument for the reformation of a kingdom. We adopt the punctuation and spelling of the oldest edition we have yet seen, — that of the year 1600. A Complaint of the Tyrannie used against the Saincts of God, containing a Confession of our Sinnes, and a Prayer for the Deliverance and Preservation of the Church, and Confusion of the Enemies. Eternall and everlasting God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hast commanded us to pray, and promised to hear us, even when we doe call from the pit of desperation, the miseries of these our most wicked dayes compel us to poure forth before thee the complaintes of our wretched hearts, oppressed with sorrow. Our eyes doe behold, and our eares doe heare, the calamities and oppression which no tongue can expresse, neither yet, alas, doe our dull hearts rightlie consider the same ; for the heathen are entred into thine inheritance, they have pol- luted thy sanctuarie, prophaned and abolished thy blessed institutions, moste cruellie murthered, and daylie doe murther thy deare children ; thou hast exalted the arm and force of our enemies, thou hast exposed us a prey to ignominie and shame, before such as persecute thy trueth ; their wayes doe prosper, they glorie in mischiefe, and speake proudlie against the honour of thy name ; thou goest not forth as captaine before our hostes ; the edge of our sworde, which sometimes was most sharpe, is now blunte, and doeth returne without victorie in battell. It appeareth to our enemies, O Lord, that thou hast broken tbat league which of thy mercie and goodnesse thou hast made with thy Church : For the libertie which they have to kill thy children like sheep, and to shed their blood, no man resisting, doeth so blind and puffe them up with pride, that they ashame not to affirme, that thou regardest not our intreating. Thy long suffering and patience maketh them bold from 74 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. crueltie to proceed to the blasphemie of thy name. And in the mean season, alas, we do not consider the heavenesse of our sinnes, which long have deserved at thy hands not onlie these temporal! plagues, but also the torments prepared for the inobedient ; for we knowing thy blessed will, have not applyed our diligence to obey the same, but have followed, for the most part, the vaine conversation of the blinde world : and there- fore in verie justice hast thou visited our unthankfulnesse. But, Lord, if thou shalt observe and keep in mind for ever the iniquities of thy chil- dren, then shall no flesh abide nor be saved in thy presence. And therefore we, convicted in our own conscience, that most justlie we suffer, as punished by thy hand, doe nevertheless call for mercie, accord- ing to thy promise : And first we desire to be corrected with the rodde of thy children, by the which we may be brought to a perfect hatred of sinne, and of ourselves ; and therefore, that it would please thee, for Christ Jesus thy Sonne's sake, to shew us, and to thy whole Church universally persecuted, the same favour and grace that sometimes thou diddest, when the chief members of the same for anguish and fear were compelled to crie, Why have the nations raged ? Why have the people made uproares? Any why have princes and kings conjured against thine anointed Christ Jesus ? Then diddest thou wonderfullie assist and preserve thy small and dispersed flock ; then diddest thou burst the barres and gates of yron ; then diddest thou shake the foundations of strong prisons, then diddest thou plague the cruell persecutors ; and then gavest thou tranquilitie and rest, after those raging stormes and cruell afflictions. O Lord, thou remainest one for ever ; we have offended, and are un- worthie of anie deliverance ; but worthie art thou to be a true and con- stant God, and worthie is thy deare Sonne, Christ Jesus, that thou shoiddest glorifie his name, and revenge the blasphemie spoken against the trueth of his gospel, which is by our adversaries damned as a doctrine deceaveable and false. Yea, the blood of thy Sonne is trodden under feet, in that the blood of his members is shed for witnessing of thy trueth ; and therefore, Lord, behold not the unworthinesse of us that call for the redresse of these enormities, neither let our imperfections stop thy mercies from us ; but heboid the face of thine anointed Christ Jesus, and let the equitie of our cause prevaile in thy presence ; let the blood of thy saincts which is shed be openlie revenged in the eyes of thy Church, that mortall men may know the vanitie of their counsells, and that thy children may have a taste of thine eternal goodnesse. And Beeing that from that man of sinne, that Romane Antichrist, the chiefe adversarie to thy deare Sonne, doth all iniquitie spring, and mischiefe proceede, let it please thy Fatherlie mercie, more and more to reveale his deceit and tyrannie to the world : open the eyes of princes and magis- THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF KNOX. 75 trates, that clearly they may see how shamefullie they have bene abused by his deceaveable wayes ; how by hirn they are compelled most cruellie to shed the blood of thy saincts, and by violence refuse thy new and eternal Testament ; that they in deep consideration of these grivous offences, may unfainedlie lament their horrible defection from Christ Jesus thy Sonne ; from henceforth studying to promote his glorie in the dominions committed to their charges, that so yet once again the glorie of thy gospell may appeare to the world. And seeing also that the chief strength of that odious beast consisteth in the dissension of princes, let it please thee, Father, which hast claimed to thyself to be called the God of Peace, to unite and knitte in perfect love the hearts of all those that look for the life everlasting. Let no craft of Sathan move them to warre one against another, neither yet to maintaine by their force and strength that kingdome of darknesse ; but rather that godlie they may conspire (illuminated by thy Word), to root out from among them all superstition with the maintainers of the same. These, thy graces, Lord, we unfainedlie desire to be poured forth upon all realms and nations ; but principallie, according to that duetie which thou requirest of us, we most earnestlie desire that the heartes of the inhabitants of England and Scotland, whom the malice and craft of Sathan, and of his supportes, of manie yeers have dissevered, may con- tinue in that godlie unitie which now, of late, it hath pleased thee to give them, being knitte together in the unitie of thy Word : Open their eyes that clearlie they may behold the bondage and miserie which is purposed against them both ; and give unto them wisdome to avoide the same, in such sort that, in their godlie Concorde, thy name may be glorified, and thy dispersed flock comforted and relieved. The commonwealthes, Lord, where thy gospell is trulie preached, and harbour granted to the afflicted members of Christ's bodie, we com- mend to thy protection and mercie ; be thou unto them a defence and buckler. Be thou a watchman to their walles, and a perpetuall safeguard to their cities, that the crafty assaults of their enemies, repulsed by thj power, thy gospell may have free passage from one nation to another ; and let all preachers and ministers of the same have the gifts of thy Holie Spirit in such aboundance as thy godlie wisdome shall know to be expedient for the perfect instruction of that flock which thou hast re- deemed with the precious blood of thine onlie and well-beloved Sonne Jesus Christ. Purge their hearts from all kind of superstition, from ambition, and vaine glorie, by which Sathan continuallie laboureth to stirre up ungodlie contention, and let them so consent in the unitie of thy trueth, that neither the estimation which they have of men, neither the vaine opinions which they have conceived by their writinges, prevaile in them against the cleare understanding of thy blessed Word. 76 THE LITERARY CHARACTER OE KNOX. And now, last, Lord, we moste humblie beseech thee, according to that prayer of thy deare Sonne our Lord Jesus, so to sanctifie and con- firme us in thine eternal veritie, that neither the love of life temporal, nor yet the feare of torments and corporall death, cause us to denie the same when the confession of our faith shall be required of us ; but so assist us, with the power of thy Spirit, that not onlie boldlie we may confess Thee, O Father of mercies, to be the true God alone, and whom thou hast sent, our Lord Jesus, to be the only Saviour of the world, but also, that con- stantlie we may withstand all doctrine repugning to thy eternall trueth, revealed to us in thy most blessed Word. Eemove from our hearts the blind love of ourselves ; and so rule thou all the actions of our life, that in us thy godlie name may be glorified, thy Church edified, and Sathan finally confounded by the power and means of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with Thee and the Holy Spirit, be all praise and glory, before thy congregation now and ever. Arise, Lord, and let thine enemies be ashamed, let them flee from thy presence that hate thy godly name ; let the grones of thy prisoners enter in before thee, and preserve by thy power such as be appointed to death ; let not thine enemies thus triumph to the end, but let them un- derstand, that against thee they fight : preserve and defend the vine which thy right hand hath planted, and let all nations see che glory of thine Anointed. Hasten, Lord, and tarrie not. —March 4. 1840. DR THOMAS M'CEIE. ARTICLE FIRST. [These articles upon Dr Thomas M'Crie have no direct bearing upon the Disruption controversy. They illustrate, however, in a way eminently clear and pertinent, the precise manner in which the principles then at stake were apprehended by Mr Miller, and constitute a masterly sketch of the beginnings of the contest in connection with the ecclesiastical history of Scotland in the present century. For these reasons, and on account of their intrinsic value, as embracing a powerful and vivid delineation of one of the greatest Presbyterian divines, it has been deemed proper to give them a place in the volume.] It is now sixteen years since we first saw the late Dr M'Crie. We had learned to love and respect him at even an earlier period, not merely as an honest and truly able man, but also as a genuine type and representative of the Christian patriots of Scotland, — those worthies of other days, whose names we had been taught to pronounce in our childhood as at once the wisest and warmest friends of the people. All our sympa- thies, national, Presbyterian, and literary, had taken part together in our admiration of the historian of Knox. There was an air of positive romance about his history as a man of letters, which, by exciting our imagination, endeared him to us the more. Waller has remarked of the poet Denham, "That he broke out like the Irish Eebellion, threescore thousand strong, when nobody was aware or in the least sus- pected it." But with how much more force does the remark 78 DR THOMAS Al'CRIE. apply to Dr M'Oie 1 Half the literary power of the country had been employed for more than a hundred years in black- ening the memory of our noble-hearted Reformers. Hume, at once the shrewdest infidel that ever opposed the truth, and the ablest historian that ever perverted it, had done his worst. Gilbert Stuart, no mean writer, had done his worst too, and in even a bitterer spirit. Tytler, Whitaker, and a whole host of others, including some of our most popular poets, had followed in their track ; and the pictures of the more wary but not less insidious Robertson, — pictures illus- trative of the remark of Pope, that what men are taught to pity they soon learn to love, — had prejudiced the public mind even more powerfully against the opponents of Mary than the attacks of more open assailants. The memory of Knox and his coadjutors was pilloried in the literature of the country ; every witling, as he passed by, flung his handful of filth ; and that portion of our Presbyterian people who, looking into the past through the religious medium, and be- lieving that our Reformers, as men awakened to a sense of the truth, were far different from what our literati repre- sented them, could only retain for themselves the juster esti- mate of their fathers regarding them, without influencing in the least the opinions of their contemporaries. Such was the state of things when a nameless champion entered the lists, and threw down his gauntlet in the cause of Knox and the Reformers. Who or what was he 1 A. person who had been engaged a few years before in some obscure squabble, which he had seemed to think of vast importance, forsooth, but which had interested no one but himself and the opponents who, with the aid of the Court of Session, had put him down, and which really no one had thought worth while trying to understand. Well, but what was the result on this occasion ] The literature of a whole century went down before him, — Hume, Stuart, Tytler, Whitaker, Robertson, and the poets, DR THOMAS M ( CRIE. 79 — all the great names among the dead ; and the living, — men of a lower stature, -r-he foiled with scarce half an effort. All went down who opposed him, and the rest stood warily aloof. The far known " Chaldee manuscript," so much more witty than reverent, is happy in its description of this redoubtable champion ; for, with all its mixture of the grotesque, it has at once the merit of being poetical and true. " And the Griffin," says the Manuscript, " came with a roll of the names of those whose blood had been shed, between his teeth ; and I saw him standing over the body of one that had been buried long in the grave, defending it from all men ; and, behold, there were none which durst come near him." We had just passed our first week in this part of the country, a little out of town, early in 1824, and had walked into Edinburgh on the Sabbath morning to see the Doctor and hear him preach. Only two evenings before, we had been sauntering, after the labours of the day, along one of the green lanes of Liberton, and had met with a gentleman whose appearance had struck us as being as much the reverse of commonplace as any we had ever seen. He was an erect, spare, tall man, — rather above, we should have supposed, than under six feet, though perhaps his carriage, which had much quiet dignity in it, and a good deal of the military air, might have led to an over-estimate. The countenance was pale, we would have said almost sallow, and the cast of ex- pression somewhat melancholy ; but there was a wakeful penetration in the dark eyes, and an air of sedate power and reflection so legibly stamped on every feature, that we were irresistibly impressed with the idea he could be no ordinary man. We stood looking after him. He wore a brown great-coat over a suit of black, the neck a good deal whitened by powder ; and the rim of the hat behind, which was slightly turned up, bore a similar stain. Who can that possibly be ) we thought. Shall we impart to the reader the recollection 80 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. which flashed into our mind, — from an association awakened, doubtless, by what we deemed the half-military, half-clerical air of the stranger, — it was that of Sir Richard Steele's story of the devout old military chaplain, who, on being insulted by a foul-mouthed blasphemous young officer, challenged him, fought arid disarmed him, and then, ere he took him to mercy, made him kneel down and ask pardon, not of him, but of the Being whom he had blasphemed. On the Sunday morning we contrived to find our way to the Doctors chapel about half an hour ere divine service began, and planted ourselves in one of the empty pews (for the congregation had not yet assembled), in front of the pulpit. The people began to gather ; — we thought, but it might not be so, that more than the usual proportion were elderly ; a respectable looking, well-dressed man, accompanied by his wife and family, en- tered the pew which we had so unceremoniously appropri- ated, and we rose to leave it for the passage, a good deal abashed at feeling, for the first time, that we were an in- truder, for we had thought previously of only the Doctor. The man, however, politely insisted that we should keep our seat ; on sitting down again, we found that the Doctor had meanwhile entered the pulpit, and we at once recognised in the historian of Knox and Melville the military chaplain whom we had met in the green lane. We were first struck by the great simplicity of his man- ner. It reminded us of a remark of Robertson's on his re- f turn from his visit to London, immediately after the publi- cation of his History of Scotland. The extraordinary merit of the work had introduced him to all the more eminent literati of the time ; and he was asked, on coming back, by a friend in Edinburgh, whether he thought the celebrated men, his new acquaintances, varied as they were in genius and acquirement, had any one trait in common. "Yes," replied the historian, " one trait at least, and a very striking one ; DR THOMAS ll'CRlE. 81 — all the truly great among them are marked by a child-like simplicity of manner." The service went on. There was a solemn impressiveness about the Doctor's prayers, which were, in the best sense of the term, extempore, that was well suited to lead our thoughts from himself to the Being whom he addressed. There was little exertion of voice, and no striking combinations of set phrases, fine, doubtless, when they are new, but on which it is possible to ring the changes until they become commonplace and lose their meaning ; but there was what was much better, — a continuous stream of thought, sobered by a feeling of devout reverence, which found ready entrance into the mind, and subdued it into seriousness. He entered upon his discourse. We were again struck by the great simplicity of his manner and style, and listened, rather soothed and pleased by his lucid statements of im- portant truths, grounded, if we may so express ourselves, on a deep substratum of serious feeling, than surprised by any marked originality of view. By and by, however, when the first obvious principles were laid down, the Doctor began to draw inferences. Ah ! thought we, as we sat up erect in the pew, there now is something we never heard before. The discourse, simple and quiet at its commencement, had assumed a new character. The unquestioned but common truths were but the foundations of the edifice ; the edifice itself was such a one as the historian of Knox and Melville could alone have erected. There were remarks on human nature, that, from their graphic shrewdness, reminded us of Crabbe, and yet the mode was entirely different ; there were gleams of fancy that, falling for a moment on some of the remoter recesses of the subject, lighted them up into sudden bright- ness, and, when fully shown, the gleam disappeared ; there were strokes of eloquence, condensed at times into a single sentence, that found their way direct to the heart ; and far conclusions attained by a few steps through vistas of thought F 82 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. unopened before. "We would perhaps not have termed the discourse a philosophic one at the time we were listening to it : men are misled by the mere conventionalities of thought, — the set terms and phrases in which thought is usually em- bodied; and according to the pattern of these are they apt to judge and classify the thoughts themselves. But the reverse process is surely the true one : it is the man, not the dress, to which we are to look, — the soul, not the body ; and, tried by this process, the Doctor's discourse was philosophic in the best and highest sense of the term ; for what is philosophy but good sense, on an extended scale, employed in discover- ing the remote causes of things, or in anticipating their distant effects 1 His plain, simple style reminded us of Swift's definition, — " Proper words in their proper places." There was nothing very striking in the general groundwork, only it would be found no easy matter to alter any one of his words for a better. Even his occasional Scoticisms had invariably more point and a larger meaning than the nearly synonymous English phrases which a fastidious critic might have substituted for them. But style, and even thought, were but subordinate matters in the pulpit ministrations of Dr M'Crie. Never have we listened to a preacher — and from that day until we quitted the district he was almost our only minister — on whose judgment and integrity we could more thoroughly depend. Scotchmen, especially the Pres- byterian Scotch, are naturally sticklers for the right of private judgment, and less disposed than almost any other people to yield themselves up implicitly to their religious teachers ; and hence it is, that though Moderatism has been encamped in the Church for more than a century, it has acquired no popular basis. To the Doctor, however, we soon learned to give ourselves up entirely. Not that he saved us the trouble of thought ; — his discourses were by much too intellectual for that, and his remarks had a germinative qua- DR THOMAS M C CRIE. 83 lity, suited to fill the mind which received them in their un- broken vitality : but if he did not save us the trouble of thought, he at least saved us the trouble of suspicion. We could lean ourselves unsuspectingly on his judgment : nature had formed him for a leader ; and his capacious understand- ing and almost instinctive sagacity were heightened and strengthened by other and even more valuable qualities, — the depth of his devotional feelings, and the high-toned rec- titude of the moral sense. The Sunday on which we first heard Dr M'Crie was, as we have said, early in the season. There had been a sudden change of weather a few days before, and there was a great deal of coughing in the chapel. We were annoyed by find- ing some of the pithiest remarks in the discourse broken in upon by some remorseless cougher, and mutilated, so far at least as the listeners were concerned ; and the Doctor seemed somewhat annoyed too. He knew better, however, than we did, in what degree even coughing lies under the restraint of the will; he knew, too, whai we did not, that when people are very much surprised they cease to cough. Sud- denly the Doctor stopped short in the middle of his argu- ment ; every face in the chapel was turned to the pulpit, and for a full minute so dead was the stillness, that a pin might be heard to drop. " I see, my friends," he said, with a suppressed smile, " you can all be quiet enough when I am quiet." It would be difficult to imagine a better humoured rebuke, but certainly never was there a more effectual one. A suppressed cough might occasionally be heard during the rest of the service, but not even the tithe of what had dis- turbed it before. Simple as the incident may seem, we remember being much struck by it, as illustrative of the peculiar shrewdness of the character. We have but just risen from the perusal of the Life of Dr M'Crie by his son, — the bulkiest volume we ever ran over 84 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. at a sitting, and certainly one of the most interesting we have ever read. We had thought that the subject of the memoir could not have risen in our esteem, and, now that we have communicated our sentiments and recollections of him to the reader, others might perhaps have thought so too ; but we have been mistaken ; — our respect for his me- mory is higher now than it ever was before. The whole character lies open before us, — magnanimous, wise, sincere, humble, affectionate, invincibly honest, consistently devout ; and the more thoroughly we study it, the more do we find to love and admire. It forms a mirror by which to dress the heart, — it furnishes a rule by which to regulate the un- derstanding. We contemplate with a feeling of awe the far-sighted character of his intellect, — to use the language of Cowper, " the terrible sagacity that informed his heart" in anticipating coming events. We have alluded to his first controversy. It commenced just thirty-seven years ago, and involved him in great difficulty and distress ; many of his friends and his people forsook him ; he was dispossessed of his chapel by the strong arm of the law ; he was deposed and excommunicated by his brethren. Yes, the greatest and ablest, and certainly one of the best and most devout Dissent- ers Scotland ever produced, was deposed and excommuni- cated : for what 1 — simply for contumacy and disobedience to the Synod of which he was a member ; but disobedience in what 1 That could not be understood : it involved some metaphysical point about the civil magistrate, and the duty of nations as such in their religious character. Lawyers and judges could see nothing in it ; and they decided the case merely as one of contumacy. The press and the pulpit were alike silent. The matter was one of no interest or import- ance whatever, except to the sufferer for conscience' sake; and he published a "Statement" on the subject which no one read, and asserted that the principles which he opposed were DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 85 soon to shake the whole country, and subvert all its religious institutions. " But we will not live to see that day," said one of his humbler friends. " I don't know that," was the reply : I feel persuaded you will see the fruits of these prin- ciples in a quarter of a century." Men know something better about them now. It was the great Voluntary contest which this remarkable man saw so clearly at this early pe- riod ; and his " Statement" has since been eagerly sought after and reprinted, as the ablest defence of religious estab- lishments which has yet appeared. To employ his own striking figure, he had seen " in the cloud like the man's hand, the tempest which was soon to darken the heavens, the earth, and the sea." Contrast with this wonderful power, the benevolence and humility of the character. " People of less reach of mind," says one of his friends, " never can ap- preciate aright the disinterested patience with which he would hear out a long story from some prosy person, or walk far to see some poor body, or even, as I have known him do, go six miles out of town, that he might communicate by word of mouth, and with the greatest delicacy, some painful news to a servant maid." — May 6, 1840. ARTICLE SECOND. Thomas M'Crie was born in the year 1772, at Dunse, in Berwickshire, — a town which has been the birthplace of at least two other distinguished men, — Duns Scotus, the famous scholastic doctor of the fourteenth century, and Thomas Boston, the well-known author of the " Fourfold State." His parents, persons of great worth, belonged to that middle class among the people which may be regarded as forming the staple of our population, and on whose general character that of the country always depends. His father, whose name 86 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. was also Thomas, a strictly religious man, of strong good sense and much general intelligence, was a manufacturer and mer- chant. His mother, Mary Hood, a tender-hearted and affec- tionate woman, of singular piety and devotedness, was the daughter of a respectable farmer. Thomas, their first-born, seemed to share in the character of both. He was a manly little fellow, rational beyond his years, fond of robust ex- ercises, skilled in athletic games, and a fearless rider ; but there were other and gentler elements in his nature, — a ten- derness and sensibility of heart almost feminine, and a warmth and strength of affection not often equalled. Never, in any instance, were mother and son more thoroughly attached. She was long in delicate health; and the hours wasted by his companions in play were spent by Thomas in watching beside his mother's sick-bed, and in performing for her all the little acts of kindness which her situation required. And well was his tenderness repaid : in after life he has frequently been heard to trace to her example, her instructions, and her prayers, his first serious impressions of religion. " Common birds fly in crowds," says the romantic Sir Philip Sydney, "but the eagle goes forth alone." It was soon found that the little boy, the manufacturer's son, dif- fered from all his fellows. He had an insatiable appetite for knowledge, that, the more it was fed, strengthened the more. He was sedate, too, and studious ; and often when he wan- dered out alone into the fields to pore over his books, food and play and his companions were all alike forgotten, and the live-long day passed happily in the solitude. His father rather discouraged the prosecution of his studies : " he would not," he said, " make one of his sons a gentleman at the ex- pense of the rest;" but the hopes of the affectionate mother had been awakened in the behalf of her favourite son; and, through the kind interference of the boy's maternal grand- father, he was permitted to pursue what he so ardently in- DR THOMAS M C CRIE. 87 clined. Had the decision been otherwise, the world would probably have heard of him, not as the deeply-learned histo- rian of Knox and Melville, but as a self-taught writer of powerful genius ; for unquestionably the development of the larger minds is but little dependent on circumstances, and the mind of M'Crie belonged to the larger order. And yet we have little doubt, when we consider how much the world has owed to his unequalled powers of research, that his use- fulness, if not his celebrity, depended materially on the de- cision. In his sixteenth year he set out for the first time to attend the classes at the University of Edinburgh, and his pious and attached mother, whom he lost in about a twelve- month after, but whom he never forgot, accompanied him part of the way, and parted from him on Coldingham Moor. Before bidding him farewell, she led him behind a rock, a little way off the road; and there, kneeling down with him, she affectionately and solemnly devoted him to the service of God, and earnestly commended him to his fatherly care. The grave closed over her ; nearly half a century passed by ; the time had well nigh arrived when the son whom she had blessed, and for whom she had prayed, was to rest from his labours ; and then she appeared to him in a dream, as he had seen her behind the rock upon the moor, and beckoned upon him to follow her, which he promised to do. Dr M'Crie was no weak or superstitious man, but he did not on this occa- sion slight the solemn warning, and the result showed that he only regarded it in the proper light. He passed through college with little show, but with great profit : knowledge was his daily food, and he could not exist without it. The languages, moral and political science, his- tory, philology, eloquence, and in some degree poetry, were his favourite studies. His every-day companions among the classics were Tacitus, Livy, and Cicero ; and he sedulously kept up his Latin reading to the close of his life. He excelled, 68 DR THOMAS M C CRIE. too, in his knowledge of Greek. The English authors he most valued were the masculine thinkers of our literature, — the Lockes, Smiths, Butlers, Reids, and Humes. He was a tho- rough admirer of the character and the writings of one who, at an after period, expressed an equally high admiration of him and of his productions, — his Professor, Dugald Stewart. We need hardly add, that he was not content with being merely a reader of books; — he cultivated a close acquaint- ance with his humbler countrymen ; and the future historian might often be found in some back shop, ensconced among the members of a reading club, listening to the news of the day, and the accompanying remarks. He had thrown him- self at an early period on his own resources : he had taught successively two country schools in the neighbourhood of Dunse, before completing his fifteenth year ; and had con- trived — a task of some difficulty, one should think — both to control his pupils when under his charge in school, and to play with them when they got out. In his eighteenth year he removed to Brechin, where he continued to teach a school for three years longer, and of which he may be regarded as the founder; for he began with only three pupils, and ere he quitted it he had well nigh filled the house. It still con- tinues to exist. His character at this early period of his life, including the space between his eighteenth and his twenty-first year, is well described by one of his old pupils, the Bev. Mr Gray of Brechin, as a happy mixture of play- fulness and sobriety. Exemplary in conduct, a frequenter of fellowship meetings, attached to the company and converse of unlettered Christians, strict in his observance of the Sab- bath, and much in religious duty, a great consumer, withal, of the midnight oil, he was yet one of the most playful, ready-witted, buoyant-spirited, happy young men in the coun- try side. No one could be readier for an adventure, or fonder of innocent amusement ; and in exercises of skill or peril he DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 89 distanced competition. It could not be anticipated at this stage of his life that he was to write the Lives of Knox and Melville ; " but those who best knew him," says Mr Gray, " had already set him down as a very likely person, did the occasion offer, for accomplishing some of their boldest deeds." We were not mistaken, it seems, in our first impression of the Doctor, or in recognising in his quiet and yet dignified air a mixture of the clerical and the military. He was as fitted by nature to lead a battalion to the charge, as quali- fied by grace to direct the devotions of a congregation. The native weight of his character began to be felt. He was licensed to be a preacher of the gospel by the Associate Synod of Kelso in 1795, and received, only a month after, a unanimous call to become minister of an Associate concrre- gation in Edinburgh, which anticipated and frustrated the call of another respectable congregation of the same body, who were likewise solicitous to secure him as their pastor. The people do sometimes discern merit, and make amends for their rejection of Youngs and Edwardses* by their anxiety to secure the services of M'Cries. It is an interesting fact, that he had a strong presentiment, long ere his appointment, of being settled as a minister in Edinburgh, — the only field, be it remembered, in which his truly important historical la- bours could be profitably pursued. Shortly after his settle- ment he was united in marriage to a lady to whom he had been long and ardently attached, a person of great sweetness of disposition, exemplary prudence and affection, and with whom he enjoyed much happiness. He was assiduous in his ministerial labours ; — our readers already know the character of his pulpit ministrations : his week-day services were not less valuable ; and there was a frankness and kindness of dis- position about him that recommended him powerfully to the * Mr Young and Mr Edwards were the rejected presentees to Auchterarder and Strathbogie. 90 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. affections of his people. Tlie Doctor was one of those rare individuals who always think of the interests of others in the first place, and of their own last. His congregation rapidly- increased ; but it was composed mostly of the humbler classes of society; and his income, which had not been growing in proportion, was inadequate to support his station in a large city, and provide for the wants of an increasing family. Years of scarcity, and the revolutionary war, bore lisavily upon all classes ; and the price of provisions about the year 1799 rose to a height unequalled at any previous period. His people felt that duty demanded an effort, and they met among them- selves to propose an addition to his stipend. No sooner, how- ever, had the intention reached their minister's ears than he clapped his veto upon it at once. The times, to be sure, might bear somewhat hardly upon him, but then they could not bear less hardly upon his people. The expense of living, he remarked, in a letter which he addressed to them on the sub- ject, and which they gratefully inscribed among the congre- gational minutes, had, indeed, been increasing for some time past, but the income of tradespeople had not increased in pro- portion ; and as the greater part of the body were of that de- scription, he could not permit the sacrifice which their feel- ings had so kindly suggested. "Worse times soon followed; and in the long-remembered year 1800, when our fields, ac- cording to "Wordsworth, " were left with half a harvest," and a general scarcity of employment immensely heightened the evil, he came unhesitatingly forward, and proposed in form to give up a portion of his already too scanty income. His people, however, were not to be thus overcome by their dis- interested and generous pastor, and the proposal, therefore, was gratefully but firmly declined. It would be no difficult matter to find striking foils to these instances of high-toned and unselfish feeling among some of the most noisy advocates of Voluntaryism. DR THOMAS Al'CRIE. 91 He was now on the eve of entering his first great contro- versy. At the period of his license the Synod were contem- plating certain changes in the profession of their body, af- fecting, among other things, the old received opinion regard- ing the power of the civil magistrate in religious matters. Young, fearless, and ardent, the frank and open-hearted pro- bationer had adopted all the more liberal opinions of the age. He had been smit with the opening glories of the French Eevolution, so soon to be quenched in blood ; his views of ecclesiastical polity had been taken through a some- what similar medium, and the contemplated changes accorded well with his hastily formed conclusions. He objected, therefore, against taking the formula as it then stood, with- out some qualification corresponding with the anticipated change; and the objection was more than sustained, — it was highly approved of, and made the groundwork of a general declaration. Bitterly did he afterwards regret this rash step, and the result to which it had led. His mind was not one of the superficial and ordinary class, that are content merely to flutter over the surfaces of things. He deeply revolved the subject, — applied the principle which it embodied to the events of the past, — followed it, with that far-seeing sagacity in which he excelled all his contemporaries, into its remote consequences, — and, convinced that he had erred egregious- ly, he joined with five of his brethren, all men of the highest character, in remonstrating with the Synod against the pro- posed change of the formula. He felt the mortifying awk- wardness of his position; but principle demanded, not that he should appear consistent, but that he should do what he had ascertained to be right; and feeling, therefore, was sacri- ficed to duty. The great bulk of his brethren deemed the matter one of little consequence ; — he had come to know bet- ter : that principle could not be one of slight importance which, if it had been generally operative in the past, would 92 DR TH03IAS M'CRIE. have effectually prevented the Protestant Reformation, and which, if carried out to its legitimate effects, would shake the whole country, and overturn all its religious institutions. And such was the gloomy result which he at this period omi- nously anticipated. He petitioned the Synod, and, refer- ring to his former ill-weighed scruples, expressed his deep regret for the rash step to which they had led, and the great distress in which he had been plunged by the reflection that he might have been thus instrumental in unhinging the prin- ciples of others. There is no portion of his biography in which we find the moral sense more nobly predominant than during this period of distress. The intensity of his feelings visibly affected his health. " What would I give," he says, in a let- ter to one of his friends at this period, " to have some of my years blotted out ! I think my situation worse than that of the other brethren, and need to be taught the lesson of the apostle, * There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to men.' " His history at this period, with that of the few friends who made common cause with him, closely resembles the history of the first founders of the Secession. They alike stood upon the old ground, a small and despised minority, accused of sectarian narrowness and a want of cha- rity, — protesting and remonstrating against what they deemed dangerous and unconstitutional innovations, but protesting and remonstrating in vain. Matters soon reached their crisis. The Synod enacted their new Narrative and Testi- mony into a term of communion. The protesters stood firm ; and though the innovators were liberal enough to propose re- ceiving them into their body, it was only on condition that, whatever they might think of the new principles themselves, they should neither impugn nor oppose them from the pulpit or the press. Moderatism would have received Fisher and the Erskines on exactly the same terms ; and neither the Doctor nor his coadjutors were unworthy of the first fathers DR THOMAS M'CRIE. ,/S of the Secession, nor disposed to act a part which involved a dereliction of principle so gross. The protesters, therefore, as they were termed, now reduced to four, — for death had recently been thinning their numbers, — formed themselves into a Presbytery, and drew up a deed of constitution, in which they declared that, finding themselves virtually se- cluded from ministerial and Christian communion, and unable, with a good conscience, and consistently with their vows, to comply with the new terms, they were reluctantly driven in this state of seclusion to constitute themselves an independent body, adhering to the true constitution of the Reformed Church of Scotland and the original Testimony. The Synod meanwhile, unconscious of what was passing, was employed in deposing one of the refractory four, — a person who had ren- dered himself particularly obnoxious to some of the leading members, as " disorderly and a schismatic ;" they were still sitting when the intelligence reached them of the act of in- dependence ; and, with a haste which was at least indecent, they proceeded, without the formalities of a legal process, to pass sentence of deposition and excommunication on a still more obnoxious and formidable member of the body — Thomas M'Crie. He was deposed and excommunicated therefore — thrust out of the synagogue for conscience' sake — on the 2d September 1806. A time of great suffering ensued. Very brave men may bear very tender hearts, and the subject of our brief memoir, though there never lived a more determined asserter of a good cause, was no hard unfeeling stoic. The sentence of his deposition was intimated by one of the estranged brethren of the majority, from his own pulpit ; many of his old friends forsook him, and more than half his people. There was an action raised against him in the Court of Session, which ter- minated in wresting from him his chapei. He saw his breth- ren involved in the same general calamity, — interdicts, sheriff 94 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. officers, legal prosecutions, and even military force, called into action against them, and employed, strange to say, in carry- ing into effect sentences grounded expressly on ecclesiastical censures, and at the instance of enemies to all magisterial in- terference in things sacred. But error is ever inconsistent. Nor is the sum of his sufferings on this occasion yet com- plete. He heard the jibes of his brethren in the Church re- echoed by the wits of the bar and the judges on the bench ; he found himself isolated in the midst of society, — shunned even by all the evangelical ministers of Edinburgh as a nar- row-minded and obstinate bigot, — a man who could bring his wife and family to poverty and contempt rather than abate one jot of his antiquated and metaphysical scruples. What supported him meanwhile 1 A firm reliance on Divine guid- ance and support, and a thorough conviction of the goodness of his cause. " What am I," he has exclaimed, " that I should be counted worthy to suffer shame for His name f He knew well upon what ground he had planted his foot. If he was in the wrong, then were our ancestors in the wrong in legalizing the profession of the true religion ; they were in the wrong in passing laws in its favour ; they were in the wrong in protecting the Sabbath ; they were in the wrong in repressing gross violations of the first table of the law , they were in the wrong in all their solemn contracts, — in the covenants by which the Reformation, at both its periods, was confirmed ; they were in the wrong in recog- nising religion in the education of youth, in the administra- tion of oaths, and in the admission to all places of power and trust. A question involving points of such mighty import- ance might seem merely metaphysical to others, but not so to him. He contended for what he deemed a great prac- tical principle, which was in all time to affect the destinies of the British empire. He held, too, that the principle to which it was opposed, — that of the Voluntary, — was in- DR THOMAS M : CRIE. 95 capable of defence, except on grounds inconsistent with a belief in Divine revelation ; that indirectly but infallibly it led to infidelity ; and, looking far into the future, he could discern through the gloom, impenetrable to other eyes, the field of the coming warfare thronged with dim shapes of terror, — with the threatening faces and fiery arms of the yet unawaken- ed, perhaps unborn, combatants. Nor were there more melan- choly mordents wanting when he saw amid the darkness the fall of age-hallowed institutions, and the short-lived, but for the time complete, eclipse of religion itself. In referring in after years to this period of suffering and trial, he ever spoke of his opponents in a subdued and placid spirit. " Well," said he one morning to a friend, " there's a man dead who took the trouble of coming eighty miles to depose me from the ministry. T am sure I have had no resentment towards him. No doubt he did what he considered it his duty to do. Yet it was hard with a wife and family to be thrown upon the world."— May 13, 1S40. ARTICLE THIRD The Court of Session decided that Thomas M'Crie, and the portion of his congregation which continued to hold by him, had forfeited all right to their chapel. There could not be a clearer case. They were found guilty of adherence to the old standards ; they had obstinately refused to alter the Con- fession of Faith ; they had continued to cling to the original Testimony ; they had even gone so far as to assert that ma- gistrates, as such, have religious duties to perform ; and it was but strict justice, therefore, that they should lose their chapel. The case was decided against them in March 1809, and the decision has no doubt been carefully registered among the archives of the Court as a valuable precedent. The poor 96 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. people who suffered by it were not numerous, and we use the right phrase when we say that they were poor ; and so, in providing their deposed and excommunicated minister with another chapel, they had just to content themselves with an obscure building, that lay hid among old and blackened tene- ments at the foot of Carrubber's Close. Rarely has there been a preacher or congregation less generally known. " There now," said the late Dr Andrew Thomson to a friend, after listening, at a subsequent period, to one of Dr M'Crie's dis- courses, — " There now is something far beyond the compass of any minister in our Establishment." What would have been thought of the man who would have said as much in the year 1810 of the deposed minister who preached in Car- rubber's Close? During this period of obscurity he was silently employed on his first great work, — the " Life of Knox." He had been engaged in storing up materials of thought from even his ear- liest boyhood ; and for at least the last seven years he had been contributing largely to the " Christian Magazine," a reli- gious periodical edited by one of his friends. But " can any good come out of Galilee ?" No one looked for powerful writing and profound research in the humble pages of a Se- cession Magazine ; nor was it discovered by more than a few friends, as obscure as himself, that his " Sketches of the Re- formation in Spain," or his biographies of French and Scotch ministers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, were fraught with interesting information, pleasingly conveyed, and which no other writer of the age could communicate. "It is pleasing," says Johnson, "to see great works in their seminal state, pregnant with latent possibilities of excellence." In some of these earlier pieces may be found the unexpanded germ of the " Life of Knox ;" and as early as the year 1803 he had struck out his plan, — never, alas! fully completed, — of writing the history of the Church of Scotland in a series of DR THOMAS M ( CR1E. y* biographies. But the more immediate cause of his under taking was unquestionably his recent controversy. The pi] lar of history is sagaciously placed by Bunyan in the imme- diate neighbourhood of the den of Giant Pope ; and fain, he tells us, would the giant deface its inscriptions, were it not carefully guarded. The historian felt how necessary it was to erect a similar pillar among the people of Scotland, — a pil- lar which none of the enemies of the Church, whether they sheltered under a pretended liberalism, like the men who had cast him out of their communion, or accomplished similar ends by opposite means, and under a different profession, would be able to obliterate or pull down. He had thorough- ly satisfied himself that the system of doctrine and discipline introduced by our first " Reformers and Confessors," was not more consonant to the oracles of truth than conducive to the best interests, temporal and spiritual, of the nation. He had set himself, therefore, minutely to study their history; — to use his own striking language, " then the fire began to burn :" nor could he forbear imparting to others what he himself had felt so strongly. But his feeling of admiration was not for the men, — they were all deceased, and had rendered in their ac- counts, — but for the grace and gifts with which God had en- dowed them, and for the fabric which they had been honoured to rear. Late in the year 1811 his "Life of Knox" was sub- mitted to the public. There is much interest in marking the first reception of works of great genius, destined powerfully to influence public opinion, and to become the heir-looms of civilized man in all after ages ; — to see them at times painfully struggling with neglect, — at times well nigh borne down by the malignancy of envious opposition, — now contending with some blind pre- judice, now with some selfish interest, — awhile repressed by the severity of vulgar and undiscerning criticism, awhile by the conventionalities of some artificial, but, for the time es- G 98 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. tablished mode ; and then to mark them rising variously, but invariably, to their proper place, — in some instances by a slow and gradual process, — in others suddenly and at once, through the influence of happy accidents. Cowper was told by one of his first reviewers that he might be a very honest man, but most assuredly he was no poet ; and poor Kirke White was represented as a beggar, who had made a worthless book a pretence for gathering money. The "Life of Knox" was destined to no long probation, for it soon fell under the notice of very superior men. Shortly after its publication, the author's old favourite Professor, Dugald Stewart, — certainly the most eloquent, if not the most profound, of all our Scot- tish metaphysicians, — was confined one Sunday to the house by a slight indisposition. All the family were at church ex- cept his man-servant, an old and faithful attendant ; and the Professor, on some occasion which required his services, sum- moned him by the bell. To his surprise, however, the care- ful domestic did not appear, and the bell was rung again and again, but with no better effect. The Professor then stepped down stairs to see what could have possibly befallen John, and threw open the door of the old man's apartment. And there, sure enough, was John, leaning over a little table, and engrossed heart and soul in the perusal of a book, as uncon- scious of the presence of his master as he had been an instant before of the ringing of the belL The Professor's curiosity was aroused ; — literature was rather a new pursuit to John ; i — and, shaking him by the shoulder, he inquired what book it was that had so wonderfully captivated his fancy. " Why, Sir," said John, "it's a book that my minister has written, and really it's a grand ane." The Professor brought it with him to his room, to try what he could make of John's minis- ter's book ; and, when once fairly engaged, found it as im- possible to withdraw himself from it as John himself had done. He finished it at a sitting, and waited next day on tho DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 9P author, to express the admiration he entertained for his per^ formance. The Doctor bowed to the praises of his old Pro- fessor with the modesty of real genius, and replied in one of those happy compliments which show the elegant and delicate mind, " Pulchruin est laudari a laudato" — " It is delightful to be praised by one who has himself gained the applauses of mankind." The " Edinburgh Review," — at this period beyond com- parison the most powerful periodical in Europe, — took up the biography of Knox in the same spirit with Dugald Stewart. An air of surprise and admiration so thoroughly pervades the able article in which thv work is reviewed, that it seems to constitute a part of its very style, and certainly a very refreshing part of it. M'Kenzie has been praised for the shrewdness he evinced in at once placing Burns among the great masters of undying song, at a period when at least nine- tenths of his contemporaries thought of him as merely a clever ploughman, who made very passable verses, considering that he was but an untaught man. Lord Jeffrey was equally happy in marking out the proper place of M'Crie. He at once characterized his work as one which united opposite qualities of excellence, and as by far the best piece of history which had appeared since the commencement of the re- viewer's critical career, — as accurate, learned, and concise, and yet not the less full of spirit and animation, — as a rare union of patient research and sober judgment, with boldness of thinking and force of imagination. Nothing had he ever read on the subject, he said, which had afforded him so much amusement and so much instruction; and yet this noble production was the work of an author of whose veiy exist- ence, though residing in the same city with himself, he had never heard before. The Quarterly Reviewers, in spite of their Episcopacy, said well nigh as much. With them, as with their contempora^;, "Dr M'Crie was really a great 100 DR THOMAS Jl'CRIE. biographer." Compact, precise, discriminating, simple, vigo- rous, profound in his researches, and candid in his statements, he told the story of a hero as a hero would wish to have it told. ^Neither Luther nor Calvin, they said, had found a biographer like the present ; and yet, true it was that his principles were bad. He held by the Reformers in all their extremes ; and had he been born in the sixteenth century, " less," they were persuaded, " would have been heard of Rowe or "Willox as auxiliaries of Knox than of M'Crie." We believe they were perfectly in the right, and yet think none the worse of the Doctor. He rose at once into eminence. The University of Edin- burgh honoured itself by conferring upon him his degree, — the first ever extended in Scotland to a dissenting clergyman. His work was translated into the French, Dutch, and Ger- man languages, and spread extensively over the Continent. History assumed a new tone when it spoke of the deeds and the character of Knox ; monuments were erected and clubs instituted to his memory ; candid and honourable men of all persuasions tilled the periodicals of the time with their recan- tations of the error into which they had fallen regarding his character ; and the powerful and manly reasonings and well- attested facts of his biographer were only met by the con- temptible puerilities and garbled mis-statements of a few embryo Puseyites, and at an after period by the denunciations of the Court of Rome. In the list of those peculiarly dan- gerous writings, among which the Bible stands pre-eminent, the infallible Church has placed at least one of the produc- tions of Dr M'Crie, — by far the highest compliment which he has yet received. But the effect of a personal nature re- sulting from his sudden celebrity, which the Doctor himself probably valued most, was the degree of friendship and es- teem which it secured to him from kindred spirits. Dr An- drew Thomson, — whose star, of, alas ! brief but matchless bril- DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 101 liancy, had at that time just risen above the horizon, — found him out ; and a friendship, based on mutual admiration and respect, was formed between these two great and good men, whose duration, it is probable, is not to be measured by pe- riods of time. Except on one unhappy occasion, they stood side by side in all their after controversies, employing somewhat dissimilar weapons, but fighting under the same shield. Was the historian assailed by the Episcopalian critics of our own country or of the south 1 — a discharge of merciless ridicule and resistless argument from his friend the Churchman pro- strated the assailants. Did his friend the Churchman refuse opening St George's at the bidding of the State, just because he held that the Church of Scotland was not an Erastian Church 1 — out stepped the historian in his defence, and op- position sunk overawed. They were often together, and the happy temper of both, added to the rich humour of Dr Thomson, threw an air of peculiar cheerfulness over their intercourse. There is a sunshiny freshness in the few notes which have been preserved of the many that passed between them ; and when at any time the frequent and hearty laugh was heard proceeding from the historian's study, all the house- hold at once concluded that Dr Andrew Thomson was there. The Doctor was more than half a phrenologist, and used at times to try whether he could not accommodate the cranial development of his friend the historian to the well-known powers of his mind. In some respects he was singularly un- lucky, and his blunders seem to have furnished large occasion of mirth. The Doctor flattered himself on one occasion that he had discovered a large development of the organ of music on the corners of his friend's forehead, and when he had fully assured himself of the fact, his friend quietly informed him that the accompanying musical ear was, notwithstanding, par- ticularly dull, and that one of the most arduous tasks which he had ever seen accomplished was the task undertaken by 102 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. one of his acquaintances, an old weaver, who had set himself to beat into his head the familiar tune of St Paul's. We find humorous allusions to the new science in some of Dr M'Crie's notes referring to contributions for the " Christian Instructor." " You are prodigiously moderate," he says, " in your expectations, when you look for two reviews from me in one month. You imagine, I suppose, that my brain is as large and as fertile as your own, — a mistake which you might have avoided without the assistance of Dr Spurzheim." The two champions stood, as we have said, side by side, the un- flinching opponents of slavery in the colonies and of patronage in the Church, — of the superstition that would debase reli- gion, and of the infidelity that would overturn it, — of the hirelings of Moderatism, the wild visionaries of Roweism, and the incendiaries of Voluntaryism, — till the younger champion dropped, and died, we may well say, in his harness, cut down in his mid career of usefulness, " when best employed and wanted most." Deeply was the survivor affected ; and many of those who on the succeeding Sabbath heard him give vent to his feelings in a sudden and impassioned burst, have not yet forgotten what the passage conveyed, and never wilL " Brethren, pray for us, and let your first and last petition be humility. Once, yea twice, has a voice cried to the mi- nisters of this city, and again, since we last met, it hath cried with the sound of a trumpet, ' All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field !' The time has not come at which ceremony permits the dead to be spoken of in public. But I hasten to say the little which I have to say, especially as it is not in the way of eulogy. Others will praise him : as for me, I can only deplore him. And my deploration shall not turn on the splendid talents with which his Master adorned him, — the vigour of his un- derstanding, the grasp of his intellect, or the unrivalled force of his masculine eloquence ; but on his honest, firm. DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 103 unflinching, fearless independence of mind, — a quality emi- nently required in the present time, in which, I may say, he was single among his fellows, and which claimed for him re- spect as well as forbearance, even when it betrayed its pos- sessor into excess." We are reminded strongly by this truly eloquent passage, of a passage which has been long regarded as one of the most powerful in English literature, — the con- cluding part of the last chapter of Sir Walter Raleigh's " His- tory of the World :" — " earth, earth, earth ! thou art the true proprietor and lord paramount of all that is here below. Thou givest forth nothing but what thou receivest again, and thou receivest thine own with usury. Grass, herbs, trees, plants, houses, metals base and precious, and man him- self, who hath rifled thee of all these, and who tears thy bosom and digs into thy bowels, and, measuring thy length and thy breadth, proudly walks over thee as if he were more than dust, — all shall return to thee, and And a grave in the womb from which they sprang." — May 16, 1840. FOURTH ARTICLE. Dr Johnson has occupied a whole paper of the " Idler" in showing that the biographies of authors may be as rich in in- terest as the biographies of any class of persons whatever. No lives, he remarks, more abound in sudden vicissitudes of for- tune, and over no class of men do hope and fear, expectation and disappointment, grief and joy, exercise a larger influence. Goldsmith, in his Life of Parnell, has recorded an opposite opi- nion ; but Goldsmith did not sufficiently attend to his own his- tory, — a history quite as striking in its details as any piece of fiction, not excepting even his own exquisite " Yicar of Wake- field." The obscure surgeon-assistant, whom the faculty were afraid to employ because his brogue was so strong and his ap- 104 DR THOMAS Ji'CRrE. pearance so uncouth, — the imprudent and ruined surety, who, forsaking his obscure little shop in a provincial town, fled from his creditors to avoid a jail, — the poor scholar and itinerant musician, who wandered on foot over France, Belgium, and Italy, purchasing a supper and a bed with his tunes from the peasantry, and disputing on some philosophical question for the same meed and a piece of money additional, with the learned of Ferrara and Padua, — was the elegant and accom- plished author whose poetry a few years after was to be rated higher than that of Pope, and his prose superior to that of Addison. Dr Johnson was so much in the right, that, to establish the point, one has but to appeal from the opinion of his opponent to his opponent's biography. We have al- ready passed, in our rapid sketch, over that part of the life of Dr M'Crie most marked by vicissitude. The novelist or the poet takes but a portion of individual or national history for his subject ; — the curtain falls, or the tale closes, when the hero of the piece has passed from one extreme of fortune to another ; even the boy hears no more of Whittington after he has become Lord Mayor of London, or of Pepin after he has become King of France. On the same principle, what may be termed the romance of the Doctor's life closes when the obscure and persecuted preacher of Carrubbers Close, known only, beyond the narrow circle of his friends, when known at all, as a narrow-minded and illiberal sectarian, takes his undisputed place among the literati of his country as be- yond comparison the first historian of his age, — as a great master of public opinion, — as successful above all his contem- poraries in removing long-cherished prejudice and misconcep- tion, — and as singularly sagacious in seizing the events of the remote future, in the imperfect and embryo rudiments of pre- sent occurrences, or in partially developed modes of feeling and thought. But in the portion of his history which re- mains, though little chequered by incident, there is interest DR THOMAS M C CRIE. 105 of a different kind. It is something to know the part taken by such a man in the controversies of the time, — controver- sies many of which still survive ; for there were few judg- ments less liable to mistake, and no honest man ever ques- tioned his integrity. Dr M'Crie was very much of the opinion of Cowley. Good men, says the prince of metaphysical poets, should pray not less frequently for the conversion of literature than for the Jews. No one better knew the importance of literature, or was more earnestly solicitous for its conversion, than the Doctor. He saw every species of power among men, whether for good or evil, founded in opinion ; and recognised in the press an all-potent lever, through which the public mind may be either heightened or depressed. He was aware, too, that it is not always the grave or more elaborate works which pro- duce the deepest impressions. Songs have hastened national revolutions, and a single romance has powerfully affected the character of a country ; and in the first series of the " Tales of my Landlord," with its marvellously unfair representation of the Covenanters, he recognised a work of the most influen- tial character, and influential chiefly for evil. Rarely, says the poet, has Spain had heroes since Cervantes laughed away the chivalry of his country ; and it was a class beyond com- parison nobler and better than the chivalry of Spain that tb ; novelist had set himself to laugh down. Dr M'Crie's review of the "Tales" appeared in the "Christian Instructor" for 1 8 1 7, and produced a powerful impression. Sir "Walter, secure in his strength, had felt for years before that he could well afford being indifferent to criticism : he had a firmer hold of the public mind than any of his reviewers : the occasional cri- tique either re-echoed his praises in tones caught from th« general voice, and then sank unheeded, or dared to dispute the justice of the almost universal decision in his favour, and sank all the sooner in consequence. So far was he from 106 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. deeming the strictures of a hostile reviewer worthy of reply, that he had ceased to deem them worthy of perusal. On this occasion, however, he found he had to deal with no ordi- nary critic ; the stream of public opinion had been turned fairly against him ; and, after recording his determination not even to read the Doctor's article, he eventually found it necessary not only to read, but also to attempt answering it, which he did in the " Quarterly," in the form of a critique on his own work. Hogg has informed us how invariably favourable Sir Walter as a critic was to Sir Walter as an author. He of course decided that his " Tales" were very excellent tales, and that the Covenanters were in no degree better than he had described them ; referring for proof to a few insulated facts as valuable in proving general proposi- tions, as if it were to be inferred from the history of the Rev. Titus Oates that all the clergy of England were perjured miscreants, or from that of the Rev. Dr Dodd, that they were all malefactors, and deserved to be hung. His article had its weight with a few High Churchmen, zealously prepared to believe on the side of Claverhouse without the trouble of thought or scrutiny; but in the estimate of the less prejudiced classes, both in England and our own country, victory re- mained as unequivocally on the side of Dr M'Crie and the Covenanters as if the reply had never been written. The " Life of Andrew Melville" appeared about two years after, in 1819. It may be regarded as a continuation of the history of the Scottish Church, so auspiciously begun in the " Life of Knox; " and displays the same power and discri- mination exhibited in that work, with even more than the same amazing profundity of research. It was remarked, it is said, b} r the present Lord Jeffrey, that one would require several years' additional reading to qualify one's self for the task of reviewing it. The Doctor had got into a walk of in- formation, the intricacies of which were known to only him- DR THOMAS M C CIIIE. 107 self; and critics of the highest class were content to set their craft aside, and, taking the place of ordinary readers under him, were fain, instead of leading others, to be followers them- selves. Regarded simply as a piece of narrative, it has been found to possess less interest than the " Life of Knox." The writer has not performed his part less ably ; but the subject of his memoir, if not less a hero than his great predecessor the Reformer, had lived a life of less stormy interest, and had found feebler, if not less insidious spirits, with which to contend. But the history of Melville will ever continue, notwithstanding, to be regarded as emphatically the history of the Scottish Church for the stirring and eventful period which it embraces. The High Churchmen of the " British Critic" were less candid and less knowing than the editor of the " Edinburgh Review f and, making their own ignorance the measure of their censure, they were of course very se- vere. Authorities of which they knew nothing might be garbled and misquoted, they said, without their being aware of the fact ; and it could not be held therefore that the " bold rebellious fanatics who figured prominently in the early days of the Scottish Reformation" could be in reality the good honest men which the Presbyterian historian had proved them to be. The argument seems unanswerable ; and as ignorance in one set of men is quite as good as ignorance in any other set, there can be no faith in history so long as the Churchmen of the " British Critic," or any other sort of people, remain unacquainted with the data on which the historians have founded. The Doctor rarely took any part in public meetings. Though an eloquent and impressive speaker, and at once qua- lified to delight by the manner, and instruct by the matter, of his addresses, his native modesty led him to rate his capa- bilities for the platform lower than every one else rated them. He felt, too, that he was not neglecting his duty so long as 108 DR THOMAS M CRIE. he was engaged in his own peculiar walk, — the walk in which he excelled all his contemporaries, — and so long as he saw every public measure in which he felt an interest furnished with its zealous and appropriate champions. His friend Andrew Thomson was the powerful assailant of the Apocry- pha and the slave-trade ; and the cause of tht Scottish poor might well be entrusted to Dr Chalmers. Thei€ were ques- tions and causes, however, for which he could deem it a duty to mount the platform. Many of our readers will remem- ber the apathy with which a large proportion of the British public regarded the long protracted and bloody struggle of the Greeks with their cruel and tyrannical taskmasters. The countiy had grown too mercantile to be generous ; the inte- rests of some of our trading bodies were compromised ; it had become imprudent to be sympathetic. The Greeks had grown too base and degraded, it was affirmed, to be either deserving of freedom or capable of enjoying it ; and so they were left to fight more than half the battle of liberty, not only without assistance, but without sympathy. But the Doctor indulged in other feelings, and reasoned on other principles. He could sympathize with the oppressed Greeks, not only as a scholar, richly imbued with the spirit of the ancient literature of their country, but also as a Christian, deeply interested in their welfare as men ; nor had he learned, in the prosecution of his studies, to deem the struggles of even a semi-barbarous people as of little importance. The accident which befalls an individual in his immature child- hood frequently influences his destiny for life ; and it is so also with countries. The Irish were not a civilized people when conquered by the English under Strongbow, nor yet the Scotch when they baffled and defeated the same enemy under Cressingham and Edward II. ; iuit who can doubt that the present state of Scotland and Ireland depends materially upon the very opposite results of their respective struggles 1 DR THOMAS m'cME. 109 At the first meeting held in behalf of the Greeks in Scot- land W e believe in Britain, — Dr M'Oie took the lead, and delivered an address of great eloquence and power, which had much the effect of exciting the public interest, and which united what is not often conjoined, — a manner singularly popular and pleasing, with much profundity of thought, and information drawn from the less accessible sources. At an after period, when the struggle had terminated in the freedom of Greece, the ladies of Edinburgh exerted themselves in raisin^ funds, through which it was proposed to extend the advantages of education to the long-neglected females of that country. The Doctor gave the scheme his warmest support ; he preached in its behalf the sermon so highly eulogized by Andrew Thomson as something beyond the reach of his contemporary ministers of the Establishment, — conducted the correspondence of the Association originated to carry it on, and at a public meeting appealed to the country in its fa- vour. Some of the ladies, his coadjutors in the scheme, had conceived of the Doctor merely as a person of one talent,— one of the most common conceptions imaginable ; they had no idea that the man who excelled all his contemporaries in research could excel most of them in eloquence also. They knew that no one could surpass him in argument or narra- tive, and therefore for argument and narrative they looked to him j but to delight the meeting with the poetry of the sub- ject, — to recall the old classic associations, — to appeal power- fully to the feelings, — to do all that they supposed the Doctor was not capable of doing, — they secured the services of the late Sir James Mackintosh. One of them even went so far as to tell the Doctor of their arrangement, in which he readily acquiesced, When the meeting came, however, they were all convincingly shown that he could do more than argue and narrate. " His address," says a writer in an English periodical, "distin- guished th^oi-ghout by the most thorough acquaintance with 110 DR THOMAS M'CRIE, *he politics, philosophy, mythology, and poetry of ancient Greece, commingled with the happiest allusions to these so fervid a contrast of her ancient glory with her modern de- gradation, that, new and foreign as such topics were thought to be to the habits of the good Doctor, his speech reminded many of his hearers of the finest speeches of Burke." The year 1827 was what we would have termed a year of triumph to Dr M'Crie, had the conscientious stand for what he deemed a great principle, which had subjected him to so much persecution rather more than twenty years before, borne any reference to the opinion or the approval of men. He had stood with his few brethren on the ground occupied by the fathers of the Secession and the first Reformers of the Church, and had seen well nigh the entire body to whom he had been united, but who had cast him off, carried away on a new and untried course of peril and defection, which would terminate, he augured, in the wreck of all those principles for which their fathers had so zealously contended. The body, however, had contained many excellent men who, less sagacious than the Doctor, were yet not less attached to the original principles of the Secession, and who had been led from off the ground occupied by the first Reformers, merely in the hope of reforming a little further. But the expe- rience of twenty years had sufficed to teach them that their liberalism had led them astray. About seven years before, on the union of the Burgher and Antiburgher Synods, a con- siderable body of this class, thoroughly convinced that the Secession was drifting from its original moorings, had formed themselves into a separate Synod ; and now in this year, find- ing that they were contending for the same grand truths with the Doctor and his brethren, they again entered, through mutual agreement, into communion with them, and were re- united, as of old, into one body. They virtually confessed that the excommunicated and deposed minority had occupied DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 1 1 1 all along the true position, — a position to which they them- selves now deemed it necessary to return. Such are some of the honours reserved for the men who, through good and evil report, steadily adhere to the truth. With a magnanimity, however, natural to his character, Dr M'Crie " steadily re- fused," says his biographer, " either to exact or receive from his former associates any acknowledgment of the illegality or severity of the sentences passed by the General Synod against himself or his brethren. The honour of the truth was all that he cared to vindicate ; his own he left in the hands of his Divine Master." — June 17, 1840. ARTICLE FIFTH. Two of the later literary works of Dr M'Crie bear in history such a relation to his two earlier productions, the Lives of Melville and Knox, as, in the drama, tragedy bears to co- medy. A cloud of disaster darkened the closing scene of the life of Melville, but the existence of the Scottish Church in the present day shows that he did not dare and suffer in vain. The cloud was a temporary one. The seed which he had sown lay dormant for a while, but it ultimately sprang up and bore fruit abundantly. The biographies of Melville and Knox constitute, therefore, the history of a successful Reformation ; his later works, — the Sketches of the Reformation in Spain and Italy, — form the histories of unsuccessful ones. The bea- con-light was kindled but to be extinguished ; the seed was sown but to die. Both works read an important lesson, and both are probably destined to produce important effects, in the future, in the countries to which they relate. The " His- tory of the Reformation in Italy" has been translated into the Dutch, French, and German languages ; and in the fear, doubtless, of its being translated into the Italian also, the 112 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. Court of Rome has done it the honour of inserting it in tne " Index Expurgatorius," as a work peculiarly obnoxious. The "History of the Reformation in Spain" has lately been translated into German. Both works are acquiring a Conti- nental celebrity ; and when the time shall come, — and it may not now be very distant, — when, according to Milton, the " blood and ashes" sown over the fields "where still doth sway the triple tyrant," shall begin to bear fruit, the faithful re- cord of the fierce and relentless hatred of the persecutor, and of the sufferings unflinchingly endured and the deaths joy fully welcomed for the truth's sake by his oppressed victims) may exert no little influence in hastening the fall of the one? and leading to an imitation of the other. The Doctor was employed in pursuing his researches, add- ing instance to instance of the cruelty and perfidy of Popery, and accumulating proof upon proof that its atrocities have not been restricted to one country or confined to one age, when the bill for admitting Roman Catholics into places of power and trust was introduced by the Government. In the preceding year he had taken an active interest in petitioning for the abolition of the Test and Corporation Acts. He was too shrewd not to recognise the measure as merely a prepa- ratory one, and which could not fail to terminate in Catholic emancipation. But he was not one of the class who can withhold from doing what is right in itself because something not so right may follow. He believed, with Cowper, that these acts involved a gross profanation of things sacred; that they converted the symbols of "redeeming grace" into mere " picklocks," through which th.3 unscrupulous entered into office, but by which the conscientious were excluded ; and hence the zeal with which he urged their abolition. He now took as active a part, and on quite the same principle, in op- posing the emancipation of the Catholics. He advocated the preliminary measure because he deemed it essentially DR THOMAS M'CRIE. lib right, and denounced and opposed the measure to which it had led as radically wrong, — as a measure, too, to be dreaded and deprecated in its effects as one of the most ruinous ot modern legislation. He was convinced, he said, that tli6 Ministry of the day would succeed in carrying their object ; such seemed to be the intention of Providence in permitting the union of parties hitherto opposed, and in suffering even " our prophets" to be carried away by a spirit of delusion ; but he felt it necessary to do all he could in the matter, by way of personal exoneration, — he felt opposition, however fruitless, to be his duty. " We have been told," he said, " from a high quarter, to avoid such subjects, unless we wish to rekindle the flames of Smithfield, now long forgotten. Long forgotten ! where forgotten 1 In heaven 1 No. In Britain ? God forbid. They may be forgotten at St Stephen's or Westminster Abbey, but they are not forgotten in Bri- tain. And if ever such a day arrives, the hours of Britain's prosperity have been numbered." A petition to the Legis- lature against the Catholic claims, which, whatever might be thought of its object, could not be regarded as other than a document of extraordinary ability, was drawn up by Dr M'Crie, and received the signatures of rather more than thir- teen thousand persons. We are ill qualified to decide on the part taken on this occasion by the Doctor. Theie were very excellent and very sagacious men, — men little moved by the arguments of mere expediency, — who exerted themselves on the opposite side ; nor was it easy to see what other course remained for our legislators, in the peculiar circumstances of the country, than the course which they adopted. The Ca- tholics seemed prepared for a civil war, and at least nine- tenths of our Protestants were determined not to fight in such a quarrel. We would not have signed Dr M'Crie's petition at the time ; — had an opportunity occurred, we would have readily appended our signature to the list which contained H 114 DR THOMAS M C CRJE. the names of Thomson and of Chalmers. Eleven years, how- ever, have since passed : the government of Ireland is well nigh as great a problem now as it was then ; the struggle between Protestantism and Popery still continues, with this difference, that the advantage is now more on the side of the enemy, without his being in any degree less bitter in his en- mity ; the power of the priest is nothing lessened ; the suc- cess of the missionary or the triumph of the Bible is nothing increased. We are afraid, in short, that the part taken by the Doctor did not run so counter to his profound sagacity in such matters, as at one time we might possibly have thought ; nay, more, — we are somewhat afraid that events are in the course of showing it did not run counter to it at all. As little, however, can we avoid feeling that, should the worst come to the worst, Protestantism on its present ground would have at least a clearer, if not a better quarrel than on its former post of advantage ; and that if Popery, unlike an ancient wrestler, could not have contended with most success when beneath its opponent, it would at least have to contend with an opposition less hearty, and encouraged by a sympathy deeper and more general. Three years after, Dr M'Crie again deemed it his duty to iome publicly forward, and record his conscientious disap- proval of another political measure, — the Irish Educational scheme, with its carefully culled Scriptural lesson-book. His estimate of the statesmanship of the present day was far from high ; but it was not an estimate that any one party would choose to quote with the view of bettering their own cha- racter at the expense of that of the party opposed to them. Nor was it much more favourable to the people than to the people's rulers ; for though the Doctor loved, he could not flatter them. " It has been my opinion fixedly for some time," he remarks, in a letter to a friend, " that any Admi- nistration to be formed at present, Whig or Tory, would DR THOMAS m'cME. 115 sacrifice religion on the shrine of political expediency ; and ' my people,' provided their temporary and worldly views were gratified, would ' love to have it so.' This is my political creed." He held that the scheme which he opposed involved a principle on which the very foundations of Protestantism rested ; and that it was taking a view of the subject radically false to regard the book of selected extracts in the same light with collections of passages drawn up for purposes of mere economy ; seeing that these extracts were confessedly made to conciliate the prejudices of a class who deny the right of the laity to the use of the whole Bible. We are not un- acquainted with the arguments which have been urged on the opposite side, and they are at least plausible. We have little doubt, however, that ultimately it will be found that the Doctor was in the right ; and we are inclined to think, besides, that by placing the question, through a slight altera- tion of the terms, more in a secular light, the soundness of his views would be more generally recognised. Suppose the entire Scriptures consisted of the decalogue alone, — that a sound criticism had proved, as it has proved, the integrity of every one of the ten commandments which compose it, — and that all Protestants were thoroughly convinced of their Di- vine origin ; suppose that Popery treated four of the ten in exactly the way in which it sometimes treats one of the ten, — that it had not only struck out the Divine prohibition of idolatry, but the prohibition also against theft, murder, and adultery • — would any Government, five-sixths of which were Protestants, so much as dream of forming an educational scheme for both Protestants and Papists, through which, out of respect to the prejudices of the latter, only six of the com- mandments — the permitted six — would be taught 1 And yet, either the Bible, as a whole, is no revelation, addressed as it is to the people as a body, not to any particular dass of functionaries, or the same rule must apply to it too. Or, 116 DK THOMAS M'CRIE. again, suppose that Popery, instead of forbidding the perusal of the whole Scriptures, forbade the acquirement of the art of reading altogether, leaving the other branches of educa- tion open, — such as arithmetic, drawing, and the mathema- tics ; — would a liberal Government once think of closing with it on such, terms, or exclude reading from its schools, in de- ference to a prejudice so illiberal 1 And if a prejudice against secular knowledge is to be overborne and denounced, why respect a prejudice against religious knowledge 1 But our limits, and the character of our sketch, forbid an examina- tion of the question ; and we refer the reader to the power- ful and eloquent speech of the Doctor on the subject, appended to his biography. He w r as no way appalled at finding him- self standing in a slender minority ; he had been in the minority, he said, all his life long ; and the truth has often shared the same fate with Dr M'Crie. On an attempt being made to disturb the meeting, of that low and disreputable character so often resorted to on similar occasions, and in which brute noise is brought to bear against argument, — the mere animal against the moral and rational agent, — the Doctor stepped forward, and told the disturbers, with much emphasis, to "recollect that they had to do with men, and with men who were not accustomed to be browbeat." His spirit rose with opposition, and kindled at every show of oppression and injustice ; and though the shouts and bellowings of a score or two of Liberals, determined to tolerate only the principles of their own party, might drown his voice, just as the kettle-drums of Dalyell and Claverhouse drowned the voices of the Covenanters in their scaffold addresses, no one could better exert the influence of that moral force before which all such brute violence must ultimately quaiL The Voluntary controversy, in which he had entered so early, had become what he had predicted, — an all-important conflict, recognised by every one as of the first importance. DR, THOMAS m'CRIE. 117 Men of some religion and men of none had made common cause, though with a different object, — the one against church establishments, the other against Christianity itself; and the Doctor could now look forward to a time when the better materials of the combination would be reduced to well nish the level of the worst, and the religious degradation of the men from whom he had parted company more than twenty years before would be rendered apparent to all. It was one of his first principles, " that society is a corporate body, and has rights and duties of the same kind as those of the indi- vidual ;" nor could he believe, therefore, in his thorough con- viction of the importance of religion, that religion would hold other than the first place among national concerns. Still his anticipations were gloomy when he thought of the Establish- ment. Though persuaded, as we have already said, that " the Voluntary principle was not only untenable, but in- capable of defence except on grounds inconsistent with a be- lief in Divine revelation, and directly but infallibly leading to infidelity," no man could see better how much of abuse and corruption had crept into our national Church, and how stre- nuously every measure of reform would be resisted through the blind and suicidal selfishness of her professed but hollow friends, and the hostility of her clearer-sighted enemies. He often anticipated, therefore, a disastrous result of the contro- versy, and a season of general suffering and perturbation, in which all classes would be fearfully taught the value of re- ligion through the want of it. At times, however, his views would brighten ; and we find him, in one of his happier moods, thus addressing a correspondent : — "Is it yet time for me to commence a canvass for John Kncx's Church ? I have heard that Adam Gib, to a considerably late period in his life, expressed the hope that he would preach in St Giles's. You know the practical inference. Yet we do in- jury to more than our own happiness by dealing harshly 118 DR THOMAS M C CRIE. with kind hope, repressing her ardour, and chiding her for those lamb-like friskings in which she indulges to please us." And he did bestir himself in the behalf " of John Knox's Church," but it was not by striking at her enemies, but by str ivin g at one of the main abuses which had entered into her system, — the abuse of patronage. And the blow was dealt by no feeble or unpractised hand. The cause was of importance enough to bring him to the platform. He at- tended, in the beginning of 1833, a meeting of the Anti-Pa- tronage Society, and delivered a powerful and impressive .speech, in which he advocated the total abolition of patron- age, as the sole means of saving the Establishment. And perhaps on no occasion was the magnanimity of the man more strikingly shown than in the concluding portion of this ad- dress, or brought out in broader contrast with the no doubt widely opposite, but equally selfish feelings of the class who, rather than relinquish their miserable powers of patronage, would stand and see the Church overwhelmed amid the surges of popular anarchy, or the class — anxious to fill their meeting-houses — who, like the wreckers of Cornwall, exert themselves with a view to her destruction, in the hope of profiting by the wreck. " If you succeed in your object," said the Doctor, " you will do me much harm, — you will thin, much thin, my congregation. For I must say that, though patronage were abolished to-morrow, I could not forthwith enter into the Establishment, But I am not so blind or so ignorant of the dispositions of the people as to suppose they would act in that manner. Your cause will soon come into honour ; the restoration of long-lost rights will convert popu- lar apathy into popular favour ; and in their enthusiasm the people will forget that there are such things as erroneous teachers and neglect of discipline. Do I therefore dread your success, or stand aloof from you, on the ground mentioned \ Assuredly not. The truth is, that I think I may be of more DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 1 1 service to you by declining to be in your council. I have only to say, therefore, Go on and prosper : though your be- ginnings have been but small, may your latter end greatly in- crease. You have my best wishes and prayers." These surely are the sentiments of a man who, to employ the strik- ing figure of Burns, held a patent of nobility direct from Deity himself, and who had trained and cultivated his heart as sedulously and successfully as his head. He published, in the May of the same year, his now well known, but at the time neglected pamphlet " What ought the General Assembly to do at the present Crisis 1" It had one great defect, — it wanted the author's name ; and told, in consequence, with less power on the bocty for whose benefit it was chiefly intended. But in none of all the Doctor's writings is his wonderful sagacity more clearly and unequi- vocally shown, and there are none of them on which subse- quent events have read a more striking comment. His ad- vice to the Assembly forms an emphatic reply to the query in the title : — " Without delay petition the Legislature for the abolition of patronage." But he neither did an- ticipate, nor could have anticipated, the present position of the Church ; for to have done so would have required not simply human sagacity, but a superhuman prescience. " No meaning," says Pope, " puzzles more than wit :" " it is al- most impossible," says Robertson, " to form any satisfactory conjecture concerning the motives which influence capricious and irregular minds." No one could have presaged more justly than Dr M'Crie the manner in which the Court of Session would have decided any ecclesiastical case according to law ; but it was not in the nature of things that he could have presaged the manner in which the Court was to decide ecclesiastical cases contrary to law. There was no clue to surmise, — no guide to conjecture. One of the first principles laid down in his profound and masterly pamphlet, — a prin- 120 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. ciple from which he deduces the necessity of a popular check in the appointment of ministers, — must have as effectually prevented him from premising the possibility of such inter- dicts as have been granted to the suspended functionaries of Strathbogie or the rejected licentiate of Lethendy, as it ought to have stood in the way of the Court itself in rendering them possible. " According to law," says the Doctor, " there lies no appeal from the decisions of a Church court to any civil tribunal, not to the Parliament itself, in any case properly ec- clesiastical. Everything of this kind is finally settled by the decision of the General Assembly, which, in addition to its judicial and executive power, claims a legislative authority, or at least a power of making authoritative acts, and, with the concurrence of a majority of Presbyteries, of enacting standing laws which are binding on all the members of the Church, laity as well as clergy." The decision of the historian of Knox and Melville in a question of this kind bears a very different sort of value from that of the Dean of Faculty or the Earl of Aberdeen. Mark, too, the shrewdness of his conclusion regarding the more thoroughgoing Voluntaries : — "You will not find one of them taking part in a society for promoting Church reform ; you will not see one of their names at a petition for abolishing patronage. They affect to laugh at such attempts to reform minor abuses, although, in fact, they dread them more than the most able and elaborate vindication of ecclesiastical establishments." — June 24, 1840. CONCLUDING ARTICLE. We passed a Sabbath in Edinburgh early in 1835, — the first after a lapse of nearly ten years, — and sought out the well- known chapel of our favourite preacher. There was no change there; — the same people seemed to occupy the same pews ; DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 121 but so marked was the change in the appearance of the Doc- tor, that at first we scarce recognised him. " Can it be thought," says a living writer, " that the human soul, so nobly impressed by the hand of Deity, is but the creature of a passing day, when a brick of Thebes or of Luxor retains undefaced its original stamp for thousands and thousands of years V The intervening decade had borne heavily on the Doctor. He had lost his elasticity of tread, and his erect and semi-military bearing; and the complexion, darker and less pale than formerly, bore, after slight exertion, an apo- plectic flush, that indicated some perilous derangement in the springs of life. But the too apparent decay affected only the earthy and material frame : the mind retained all its original vigour. We have never listened to the Doctor with deeper interest, or a more thorough admiration of his sound and powerful judgment, than on that Sabbath ; and we fancied, but it might not be so, that his manner was more impres- sively earnest even than usual, — impressive and earnest as it always was, — and that he was " labouring with all his might," in the belief that the long night was fast closing over him, in which " he could no longer work." "We stood beside the chapel-door as the congregation slowly dismissed, and took our last look of the Doctor, believing it to be such, as he entered a hackney coach, assisted by a friend. The assistance did not seem necessary, but it was sedulously rendered. His death took place in the following autumn. Melanc- thon, in his latter days, evinced a weariness of the world : the folly and villany of mankind, the littleness of their aims, and the base and ungenerous spirit in which they so often pursued them, sickened and disgusted him, and he longed earnestly to be " away from them, and at rest." Cowper's wish was of a similar character. The ever-swelling rumour of outrage and wrong, of oppression, cruelty, and deceit, dis- turbed and pained his gentle spirit, and he longed for a 122 DR THOMAS M C CRIE. " lodge in some vast wilderness," where he might never hear it more. There were seasons towards the close of his life in which Dr M'Crie experienced a weariness such as that of Melancthon, — a feeling such as that of Cowper. " His heart," says his biographer, " was greatly alienated from the world, and tired of the troubled scenes of its politics, civil and ecclesiastical." There was an impression, too, borne in upon his mind that he was soon to be called away, and that his death, like that of his friend Andrew Thomson, was to be sudden. He felt his little remaining strength fast sinking, and the remarkable dream to which we adverted in an early article mingled its warning with his waking presentiments, like the morning dreams described by Michael Bruce in his Elegy. He had seen the hand beckoning him away, which, nearly half a century before, had so solemnly devoted him to the service of God. Not the less, however, did he continue to urge his labours, — to walk his round of professional duty, — to ply his literary occupations — for he had now engaged in a life of Calvin, — and to meet the unceasing demands made upon him for counsel and assistance. He was too little se- dulous, perhaps, to " keep life's flame from wasting by re- pose ;" an accumulation of toil was suffered to press on his health and spirits ; but in the benignity of his disposition he could not find heart to refuse an application, and so he toiled on. " Some people," he said, with reference to a task to which he had just submitted, and which was to engage him for a whole week, — " some people seem born to be beasts of bur- den." Nor did the presentiment of his approaching disso- lution lessen his interest in the fortunes of the Church of Scotland. Nothing so delighted him as any indication among her ministers of a " disposition to return to the good old way of their fathers." The Assembly of May 1835 appointed a day of general fasting, — " an assertion," says the Doctor's bio- grapher, " of the intrinsic power of the Church which he did DR THOMAS M C CRIE. 123 not anticipate, and which, reminding him of her better days, appeared a token for good." " Will they venture," he said, unacquainted with what the Assembly had intended, " to ap- point a fast on their own authority V and he received the in- telligence with hardly less surprise than pleasure, that what he had been scarce sanguine enough to anticipate from them they had actually done. The "Doctor had never held public worship on a King s fast, but readily and willingly on this occasion did he join with the Church. His resentments, how- ever, were all over ; and he anticipated, more in sorrow than in anger, and anticipated justly, that the Dissenters, as a body, '' would keep their shops open and their churches shut." " They did not use to do that," he said, " on days of Eoyal appointment." But if no man could evince a deeper interest in the wel- fare of the Church of Scotland, there was no man, on the other hand, who could feel more painfully for what he deemed the imprudence of her ministers, or for any general act on the part of her friends, which compromised, as he believed, either her safety or her usefulness. The following remark in a letter to a friend, — a remark full of shrewd meaning, and on which recent events have been reading a comment of tre- mendous emphasis, — belongs to the closing year of his life, and craves careful study : — " What fools our Church folks are, to identify their cause with Toryism at the present day, — to alienate the Whigs, and oblige them to league with Ra- dicals, — to give them an excuse for deserting the defence of the Church whenever they shall find it safe or politically wise to do so ! Don't you think that our times bear a great re- semblance to those of 1640 in England, with the difference (great indeed), that there is not the same religious spirit in Parliament and in the public which existed at that period 1 How a collision between the aristocracy and the commons (not to speak of the monarchy) is to be avoided, I do not see. The 124 DR THOMAS M'CRIE. public mind is much more extensively enlightened as to poli- tics than it was in 1793; and it has got a power — a lever — which it did not then possess. I have no doubt I have got a great portion of the incredulity of my namesake, and would wish to say with respect to public prospects, ' Lord, I be- lieve ; help thou my unbelief.' " He had held, as we have said, the Assembly's fast ; and never, it was remarked, had he addressed his people with more solemn effect than on that occasion. On the Sabbath after, he preached twice from the striking text in Matthew, " Whose fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into the garner ; but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire." At the close of the service he seated himself at the door of the vestry, con- trary to his usual practice, " and watched the people while they were retiring, until they had all gone out." On the afternoon of the Tuesday following, after spending the early part of the day in visiting some of his congregation, he was seized, immediately on his return home, with a severe pain in the bowels ; and, after experiencing an interval of partial relief, fell into a slumber, out of which he never awoke. He continued to breathe until the middle of the next day ; and then, surrounded by his friends, and by many of his be- loved flock, who had collected to witness his last moments, he passed to his reward without a groan or a struggle. He had entered the sixty-third year of his age, and the fortieth of his ministry. His funeral was attended by nearly fifteen hundred per- sons, including the magistracy of Edinburgh, its ministers of all persuasions, the preachers and students attending the halls of the Establishment and the United Secession, and by a deputation from the Assembly's Commission, headed by the Clerk and the Moderator. Nor could his remains have found a more appropriate resting-place than the ancient DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 125 cemetery to which they were conveyed, — the burial-ground of the Greyfriars. It contains the dust of Alexander Hen- derson, the great leader of the Church during the troubles of the First Charles ; it contains also, in its malefactors' cor- ner, the remains and the monument of the martyrs who, in the cause of Christ and of Presbytery, laid down their lives in Edinburgh during the dissolute and bloody reign of Charles the Second; and for an entire twelvemonth its open area was the prison in which the captive Covenanters of Both- well Bridge were exposed to every inclemency of the seasons, and to the mockeries and revilings of their fierce and cruel jailors. Nor is there any lack of the kindred dust once ani- mated by genius. There occur on the surrounding tombs the names of Colin M'Laren, of Allan Bamsay, of Hugh Blair, and of William Bobertson. But the talents which the Task- Master entrusts to his servants, — whether the sum total con- sist of one or of ten, — are of but little value, compared with the use to which they have been devoted, and the effects which the possessors have accomplished through their means. We have stood beside the Doctor's grave, and felt, amid the deep silence of the place where knowledge and device fail- eth, and where there is no work and no wisdom, how well and honestly he had " occupied" his. His important labours are over ; — the work set him to do has been faithfully per- formed. Though during his life he stood apart from the Church which he loved, it was only as a watchman on some outer tower, or like a sentinel of the times of the persecu- tion, stationed on some eminence of the waste, to warn the assembled congregation of coming danger ; and the imperish- able monuments which he has reared stand forth to shed on the present the light of the past, and as beacons which, how- ever times may darken, will continue to mark out the course which churches and nations will ultimately find it their in- terest as well as their duty to pursue. A massy and taste- 126 DR THOMAS m'cRIE. fal monument of white stone, erected by his sorrowing nock, as a memorial of " his worth and of their gratitude," marks out his final resting-place, and bears an inscription whose rare merit it is to be at once highly eulogistic and strictly true. Our sketch has been miserably imperfect indeed if the reader has not been enabled to form from it some estimate, correct though not adequate, of the character of Dr M'Crie. His whole life was a powerful illustration of how much a superior mind can be improved and ennobled by Christian principle. It shows also how necessary integrity is to the development of a high order of intellect. Had the Doctor been less honest, he would have been less sagacious also. His mind, like a fine instrument, took the measure and tenden- cies of passing events ; and there were no disturbing influ- ences of selfishness to throw their mixture of uncertainty and error into the process. His wisdom, in part at least, was a consequence of his magnanimity. It may seem a mere fancy to couple such men as Dr M'Crie and the Duke of Welling- ton, — the statesman and general with the historian and di- vine ; but resembling minds may be placed in very opposite circumstances ; and for sobriety of feeling, far-seeing sagacity, great firmness of purpose, an impregnable native honesty, uninfluenced by the small motives of party, — in short, for all that constitutes the safe and great leader, — the standing of both men, each in his own sphere, refers to a level to which very few attain. Plutarch has parallelisms that lie less paral- lel. We shall just refer, ere we close, to one or two detached points in the intellectual and literary character of Dr M'Crie. It was well remarked by Lord Jeffrey, in his admirable re- view, that the Life of Knox " exhibited a rare union of the patient research and sober judgment which characterize the more laborious class of historians, with the boldness of think- ing and force of imagination which are sometimes substituted in their place." The remark strikingly illustrates a peculiar DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 127 excellence of the Doctor's intellect. He could not rest on the surface of a subject, even if he had wished it. It was his nature to search to the very bottom, at whatever cost of la- bour, — to pursue some obscure fact through a hundred dif- ferent authorities, until he had at length fixed it down be- fore him as one of the unimpeachable certainties of history. The privileged friends whom he at times received in his study used to be utterly appalled by the huge masses of books and manuscripts which always lay piled up before him for con- stant reference ; and so severely and conscientiously was his judgment exercised in every instance, that on not so much as one of his statements have even his abler antagonists suc- ceeded in casting a shadow of doubt. Robertson was much his inferior in research. Hume, whose defects in patient in- vestigation are now pretty generally known, was immeasur- ably so. In tracing the history of opinion and doctrine, where of necessity the evidence must be more shadowy and intan- gible than in whatever relates to conduct or action, the de- gree of certainty at which he invariably succeeded in arriving was truly wonderful. The whole bearing of bygone contro- versies, — their after effects on doctrine and belief, — the de- gree in which they had led the parties they had divided to modify, retract, restate, — the influence on society of parti- cular minds and peculiar modes of thought, — all seemed to open before him as he advanced, alone and unassisted, on his solitary and laborious course. His style and manner fitted him no less for his task than his unwearied perseverance. To employ one of Johnson's figures, the heat of his genius sublimed his learning. It is related by Gibbon, that after he had formed his determina- tion of devoting himself to literature, he perused the then recently published histories of Robertson and Hume. The measured and stately periods of Robertson delighted him ; and vet he cou VI hope, that with much pains and great study J 28 TiH THOMAS M'CRIE. he might at length succeed in writing such a style. But he read Hume and despaired. Art might enable him to rival the exquisite art of the one, but art could not enable him to equal the still more exquisite nature of the other. Hume is one of the most readable of historians : he is invariably unaffected, invariably clear. Robertson palls : we admire his pages, but his volumes tire. Now, Dr M'Crie in this respect resembles Hume. His pages are not so elegant as those of .Robertson, but they are more attractive, and the reader turns over more of them at a sitting. We merely peruse the his- tory of Scotland ; — we devour the biography of Knox. The number of editions which have appeared within the last few months, since the copyright has expired, evinces the degree of popularity which the latter work is destined to enjoy in the future. The last we saw formed a two-shilling volume ; its price and appearance showed that it was intended for the common people ; and we paid our respects to it, at once recog- nising in it a formidable opponent of the Earl of Dalhousie's arguments, the Court of Session's encroachments, and the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. We refer, ere we close our remarks, to but one other trait in the literary character of Dr M'Crie. There is an occasional quaintness in some of his finer passages, that, to men deeply read in the theology of the Church's better days, constitutes an additional charm. His eloquence is that of the divines of the Commonwealth, rendered classical through native taste and the study of the better models. We submit, as an ex- ample, the following exquisite passage : — " Who would be a slave ! is the exclamation of those who are themselves free, and sometimes of those who, provided they enjoy freedom themselves, care not though the whole world were in bond- age. But there is a sentiment still more noble than that Who would be a slave-dealer, a patron, an advocate for sla- very ! To be a slave has been the hard, but not dishonour- DR THOMAS M'CRIE. 129 able, lot of many a good man and noble spirit. But to be a tyrant, — that is disgrace ! To trample on the rights of his fellow-creature, — to treat him, whether it be with cruelty or kindness, as a dog, — to hold him in chains, when he has per- petrated or threatens no violence, — to carry him with a rope about his neck, not to the scaffold, but to the market^ — to sell him whom God made after his own image, and whom Christ redeemed, not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, and, by the act of transference, to tear him from his own bowels, — that is disgraceful ! I protest before you, that I would a thousand times rather have my brow branded with the name of Slave, than have written on the palm of my hand or the sole of my foot the initial letter of the word Tyrant /"— June 27, 1840. THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. PART FIRST. IT was forty-five years last May [1 840] since the famous debate on missions took place in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. A race unborn at the time have now reached the term of middle life ; and of those who either joined in the discussion, or recorded their votes at its close, very few survive. There are many important facts connected with the history of this memorable debate, which still read their lesson to the country ; and during the present pause in the political world, our readers may deem themselves not ill employed in glancing over some of its more striking details. It furnishes a better illustration of the true character of Moderatism than they will be able to find for themselves almost anywhere else ; and it were surely well they should all thoroughly know what sort of a religion it is which has so lately challenged for itself an exclusive right to be recognised as the State re- ligion of Scotland. Our materials are fortunately very ample. The art of the reporter was but in its infancy at the time, especially in Scotland ; the contemporary debates of even the English Parliament appear but as mere skeleton sketches, that rather resemble lists of contents than series of speeches ; and yet by a rare chance there exists a report of this singular debate, THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 131 as ample and complete as any of the present day. Moderat- lsm had its likeness taken at the time at full length, and in one of its worst attitudes ; and, as if to prevent all suspicion regarding the truth of the picture, taken apparently not by an enemy. The unfortunate Bobert Heron, the familiar friend of Burns, and whose melancholy history has been so touchingly recorded by D'Israeli in his " Calamities of Au- thors," lived at this period exclusively by his exertions as an " author of all work ;" he sat in the Assembly during the debate as an elder for his native burgh of New Galloway; he even took a prominent part in it; and to his singularly ready and masterly pen can we alone attribute a report so unlike, in its fullness and general literary tone, almost all the other reports of the age. It may be well, too, to mention that, though extensively circulated at the time in the form of a pamphlet, its faithfulness has never once been questioned. It has been remarked by Carlyle, that " the history of whatever man has accomplished is at bottom only the his- tory of great men, leaders of their brethren, who have been the modellers, and, in a wide sense, the creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men have contrived to do." Certainly, in the religious, as in the political world, we find all the more remarkable events, and all the more influential codes of belief, clustered, if we may so express ourselves, round a few great names. The history of Knox is the his- tory of the Beformation in Scotland : the very name of Calvin expresses the religious code of half the Churches of Protestantism. Apparently on a similar principle, we find the cause of general missionary exertion in this country con- nected in an especial manner with one great name. The reader of one of the most amusing novels of Scott — Guy Mannering — must remember that, on Colonel Mannering's visit to Edinburgh, the lawyer Pleydell brings him to the Grey friars to hear Principal Bobertson preach, and that, in- 132 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. stead of the historian, he hears but the historian's colleague. Sir Walter had too often sat in the Greyfriars not to know that the pulpit ministrations of Robertson could have formed no proper subject of favourable or striking description. They were marked but by the dead inanity inseparable from an utter lack of earnestness and an ignorance of the gospel. And so he described, and in his happiest vein, a preacher of a very opposite stamp. A man of a remarkable though somewhat ungainly appearance entered the pulpit. His pale, fair complexion contrasted strangely with a black wig without a grain of powder. " A narrow chest and a stoop- ing posture, no gown, not even that of Geneva, a tumbled band, and a gesture that seemed scarce voluntary, were the first circumstances that struck a stranger." They were all forgotten, however, as the preacher proceeded in his dis- course, — a discourse " in which the Calvinism of the Kirk of Scotland was ably supported, yet made the basis of a sound system of practical morals, which should neither shelter the sinner under the cloak of speculative faith or of peculiarity of opinion, nor yet leave him loose to the waves of unbelief and schism." " Something there was of an antiquated turn of argument and metaphor," continues Scott, " but it only served to give zest and peculiarity to the style of elocution. The sermon was not read ; the enunciation, which at first seemed imperfect and embarrassed, became, as the preacher warmed in his progress, animated and distinct ; and although the discourse could not be quoted as a correct specimen of pulpit eloquence, yet Mannering had seldom heard so much learning, metaphysical acuteness, and energy of argument, brought into the service of Christianity. ' Such,' he said, going out of the church, ' must have been the preachers to whose unfearing minds, and acute though sometimes rudely exercised talents, we owe the Reformation."' He must have been assuredly no common man that could have thus THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 133 mollified the anti-evangelical prejudices of Scott. The preacher described was Dr John Erskine of Edinburgh, for many years the revered leader of the Evangelical party in the Church of Scotland. It was the fate of Dr Erskine, as of many a good man besides, to contend on the losing side all his life long ; but he fought on in hope, ever animated by the belief, in the midst of present defeat and disaster, that God himself was pledged to the principles which he maintained, and that their ultimate triumph was secure. He was the first man in Scot- land to raise his voice against the war with the American colonies, as alike impolitic and unjust, — as opposed in prin- ciple to the sacred oracles, and as pregnant with disaster to the country. His little tract, " Shall I go to War with my American Brethren?" takes its place among the most powerful of his productions. But the warning voice was unheeded; and so, after much blood had been shed, and much treasure wasted, the colonies were lost to Britain. He was among the first Scotchmen, too, that took an active interest in the abolition of slavery; and when twitted with the fact, in his old age, by the Edinburgh lawyer who now sits on the bench, he rose, with all the spirit of his most vigorous days, "to acknowledge, and glory in the acknowledgment !" — we employ his own words, — "that" he was "a member of the Slave Abolition Society. For why 1 " he added : " I wished to see justice done to cruelly oppressed fellow-creatures, dragged reluctantly from one quarter of the globe to another to satisfy the rapacity of our countrymen, — men who can boast proudly enough of their own freedom ; I wished, too, to see a stain the blackest that can be conceived wiped away from the national character of Britain ; — this I wished, this is still my wish ; nor will all that the gentlemen oppo- site can say prevent me from effecting it, so far as God has given me the power." Dr Erskine was long remarkable for 134 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. the extent and expansiveness of his views in connection with the general interests of Christianity. They were not confined to one kingdom, nor even one quarter of the globe. When yet a young man, his attention had been strongly excited by the remarkable revival of religion which had taken place in North America, chiefly in connection with the labours of that truly eminent Christian and profound thinker, the meta- physician of the new world, President Edwards ; and in order to obtain the earliest and most extensive religious intelligence from this quarter, in the hope of awakening a similar spirit at home, he had entered into an extensive correspondence with the distinguished President himself, and several of his fellow-labourers. With a similar purpose he also opened up a correspondence with many of the more eminent divines of the Continent, which he maintained during the course of his long life. And, thus standing, like a prophet of old, on a hill top, scarce a cloud could arise on the horizon of the religious world, or a gleam of sunshine break out in even its more soli- tary recesses, that escaped his notice. As he advanced in years, his interest in the survey increased : he saw some great convulsion at hand, which was perhaps to agitate all Europe ; and so intense was his anxiety, that, at a period of life when the few who survive so long deem their time of exertion over, he set himself sedulously to the study of the German language, as a new medium of knowledge, and actu- ally mastered its difficulties in a very few weeks. We may mention, as a proof of the unwearied zeal of the man, that even at his death, which took place in his eighty-second year, he was found to have collected materials for the current num- ber of his periodical pamphlet, " Religious Intelligence from Abroad." The storm which he had foreseen in "a cloud like a man's hand," at length burst out in all the horrors of the first French Revolution. A whole nation recognised the tenets of athe- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 135 ism as the moral and religious code of its people, and pro- nounced death to be an eternal sleep. "No inconsiderable portion of the people of the other countries of Europe seemed fast treading in their footsteps. In the centre of the great moral earthquake which ensued, the gilded pinnacles of society were thrown down and broken in pieces; blood flowed in torrents ; the whole face of things was fearfully changed ; men who had had no previous quarrel with scepticism, — who, like Gibbon, rather had spent years of toilsome nights and laborious days in securing its spread, — were struck aghast to see it resolve itself into its occult elements, convulsion and murder ; men who had held by a mere semblance of the truth, — the Moderates of all Churches, — feared that the last days of the Christian religion had at length come, and that the general gloom betokened its setting. The Popish hier- archy had fled in terror of their lives from France, routed by the Encyclopaedists and the populace. Paine and his asso- ciates in our own country, backed by the previous labours of the bosom friends and honoured correspondents of Robert- son and Blair, had commenced their ferocious attack on the religion of the Bible. Even to some not unacquainted with the vital energies of that Christianity which God himself has sworn to maintain, the time seemed a time of defeat and disaster, in which it behoved the cause of religion to yield, at least for a season, and take shelter till the fury of the as- sault might have spent itself in its own mad exertions. Very different indeed was the estimate of the aged and venerable leader of Evangelism in Scotland. The time might seem to others a time of inevitable retreat : he, on the contrary, deemed it a proper time for advance. For nearly sixty years had he now looked forth upon the long-protracted battle, ir, which the principles of good and evil contended for the mas- tery ; and it was this dark hour, of all others, that he deemed Attest for the charge. He corresponded with his friends; — ■ 136 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. he encouraged them to action in the missionary field. It was no time for them, he urged, to rest idly on their arms. Nearly a century previous, a Society had been instituted in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge, but its funds had been at no time sufficient to enable it to carry its exertions beyond the limits of the kingdom, or even adequately to supply the destitution of our Highlands and Islands, its more especial field. At a middle period in the century, the Moravians of Denmark had originated those arduous but singularly successful schemes for the spread of the gospel, through which the glad tidings of salvation had been carried to Greenland, the West Indies, and many parts of Africa and America. A very few years previous, some worthv Baptist ministers in Northampton and Leicestershire bad set the missionary example to England, by originating a Society for the Diffusion of the Gospel ; the London Society had been established the year previous ; and now, in the spring of 1796, the first meeting of the Edinburgh Missionary So- ciety was held in this city, — the truly venerable Dr John Erskine, the father of the institution, then in his seventy-fifth year, in the chair. One of the first acts of the society was to address a circular to all the ministers of religion in the coun- try, and to as many private individuals besides as were deemed able and willing to assist in forwarding its objects. All the ministers of the Church of Scotland were included in the list, as a matter of course ; the society urged their co- operation, and entreated their prayers ; considerable interest was excited over the country ; the matter was discussed in Synods and Presbyteries ; and the immediate result at this stage, in connection with the Church, was the transmission of two overtures to the General Assembly of the current year, recommendatory of a favourable consideration of the mission- ary scheme, — one from the Synod of Moray, the other from the Synod of Fife. The General Assembly met, and in ar- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 137 ranging the order of business, the 27th day of May was fixed for its deliberations on the overtures on missions. The generally recognised leaders of the two parties had been returned members of the Assembly, — Dr John Erskine, now, as we have said, in his seventy-sixth year, and Dr George Hill of St Andrews, a man then in the prime of life. To the character of the first we have already introduced our readers, — an introduction unnecessary, we have little doubt, in the case of by far the greater number of them : that of the latter is also pretty generally known, but certainly much more variously estimated. " The boy," says "Wordsworth, " is father to the man." "We find the embryo Moderate leader, when yet a lad of eighteen, and at a time when Chesterfield was deemed a profound moralist, writing thus to his mother from London : — " I am sure I am pliable enough, — more than I think sometimes quite right. I can laugh or be grave, talk nonsense on politics or philosophy, just as it suits ray company, and can submit to any mortification to please those with whom I converse. I cannot flatter ; but I can listen with attention, and seem pleased with everything that anybody says. By arts like these, which have perhaps a little meanness in them, but are so convenient that one does not choose to lay them aside, I have had the good luck to be a favourite in most places." " In the general scramble for the good things of this world," says one of the Doctors bio- graphers, " had such a man failed, who could ever hope to succeed?" George Hill did not fail. He was unlucky in one instance, in one of his patrons, through whose influence he might have risen high in the English Church; but ere he had made up his mind to enter into orders in the more aris- tocratic Establishment, with a prospect of preferment superior to anything which Presbyterianism can offer, — a course much urged on him by his friends, — his patron unluckily died. Still, however, Presbytery has its good things also ; at least, half 138 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. a dozen of its tolerably good things make a very good thing ■when united; and both in practice and theory Hill was a plu- ralist. He made speeches in the Speculative Club in praise of the aristocracy, by which he acquired very considerable eclat. To favour a political friend, he became the holder of a paper vote in Nairnshire, which, under the dread of being possibly subjected to a prosecution for perjury, he again re- linquished, after having once exercised the privilege which it conferred. In his twenty-second year he became Professor of Greek in the University of St Andrews ; he had been offered by the Earl of Haddington of those days the parish of Coldstream ; but with prospects such as his, a country parish seemed a somewhat inconsiderable matter ; and the result justified his prudence, for ere his thirtieth year he had united to his Greek professorship the second parochial charge of St Andrews. A few years after, he became Professor of Di- vinity, and, in addition, Principal of the University. He was next nominated one of his Majesty's chaplains for Scot- land, next one of the deans of the Chapel Royal; and to all these profitable offices was superadded the merely honorary office of dean to the Order of the Thistle. If an aggrega- tion of offices lead to an aggregated amount of character, never surely had Church party a more honourable leader than the opponent of Dr Erskine. One of the ministers of St An- drews, its Professor of Theology, the Principal of its Uni- versity, one of his Majesty's chaplains for Scotland, one of the deans of the Chapel Poyal, and, finally, the dean of the Order of the Thistle, all walked into the General Assembly in the person of Dr Hill. Of the character of his measures as a public man it is not difficult at this time of day to form a correct estimate. They are now matters of history ; and the experience of half a century has read its comment on the miserable narrowness of the policy by which they were dictated. " Frederick of Prus- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 139 via," says Byron, " ran away from both the first and the last of his fields." Nearly the 'same thing may be said of Dr Hill. He broke down as a leader in both his earlier and his concluding attempts. Though much superior as a theologian to Dr Robertson, and apparently much more sincere in his beliefs, he was by many degrees a less prudent man. If the historian succeeded in prostrating the spirit of Presbytery, he deemed the achievement sufficient : its skeleton forms he suffered to remain. It was enough for him that he enveloped these in an atmosphere of death : there were risks connected with their removal which he was too wary and too far-seeing to run. He strenuously resisted, for instance, every attempt to set aside the Confession of Faith, he permitted the Call to survive in all its original integrity of form, deeming it sufficient that in practice he had reduced it to a dead letter ; and during the whole of his reign, — the most absolute, per- haps, of any ecclesiastical leader, — he allowed the Assembly, without challenge, to raise every year its appeal to the Legis- lature against patronage. Dr Hill, as we have said, was less prudent. Almost his first legislative attempt was an attempt to abolish the Call. The measure, however, though stre- nuously defended by Dr Cook, in his biography, was regarded as too extreme by some of the more wary, and with these also by not a few, we may trust, of the better disposed Mo- derates. By the union of these with the Evangelical mino- rity the design was defeated, and the Church was thus spared the signal disgrace of destroying by her own act one of the most important, and surely not the least sacred, of her liber ties. He was again defeated still more signally at a much later period, in his defence of the imposition of the miserably profane Test Act on members of the Established Church of Scotland. He deemed it no hardship, he said, for Presbyte- rians of liberal and enlightened minds to partake of the Lord's Supper according to the mode sanctioned by the sister Church. 140 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. He did not add that, regarded as a prelude to office, it could scarce be deemed other than a very agreeable ceremony in- deed. But the majority of the Church thought differently, and so Dr Hill was defeated. Unfortunately, however, for the character of his party, there were measures in which he was entirely successful. It was on a motion made by Dr Hill, in the General Assembly of 1 7 84, that the appeal against patronage to the Government of the country, which, year after year, from the times of Lord President Dundas, had been raised by the Church, was suffered to drop. He had the satisfac- tion too, — though we doubt whether even his biographer, Dr Cook, will now envy him the triumph, — of defeating, on the question of missions, the venerable Dr Erskine and his party, and of thus branding Moderatism, though surely all unwit- tingly, full in the view of the religious world, as a principle essentially anti-Christian. It is but justice, however, to the character of Dr Hill to add one trait more. Yery rarely is the thorough Moderate, though able and accomplished, a pro- found theologian. His lack of belief in the fundamental doc- trines of theology, — a lack of belief similar to that which obtains in the present age regarding the peculiar dogmas of the Schoolmen, and which prevents any very thorough study of their writings, — has the effect of inducing superficiality. Why spend much time in acquainting one's self with doubt- ful complexities, that lead to no practical result 1 Such, how- ever, was not the conclusion of Dr Hill. His system of theology is not without its defects. His exposures of dan- gerous heresy and his exhibitions of Divine truth are alike characterized by a freezing chill of sentiment. But superfi- ciality is not his fault : his work is that of a masterly theo- logian, who at least saw clearly, though he could not feel strongly. "We know not whether we are to seek an expla- nation of the fact in a peculiarity of character adverted to by himself in one of his earlier letters. " I am, and perhaps THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 141 all my life shall continue," lie says, "a close student; but I hate learning." — September 25, 1841. PART SECOND. The debate on missions opened with one of those disingenu- ous stratagems on the part of the Moderate leader which, consorting thoroughly with the character and principles ol the party, have ever constituted the staple of its policy, and in the management of which few men ever excelled Dr HilL Trick and finesse are the proper weapons of a false or un- faithful Church in a civilized age, whether she have to defend herself against the assaults of infidels and sceptics, whose doctrines, however congenial to her actual beliefs, would lead to the alienation of her temporalities, or to oppose herself a thousand times more thoroughly in earnest to the exertions of a very different class, animated by a desire of heightening her character and correcting her errors. There were, as we have said, two overtures recommenda- tory of the missionary scheme before the Assembly, — one from the Synod of Moray, the other from the Synod of Fife. The Fife overture was of a general, though at the same time sufficiently definite character : it merely urged on the Assembly the consideration of the most effectual methods by which the Church of Scotland might be made to contribute to the dif- fusion of the gospel over the world. The Moray overture was more particular in what it recommended. Taking it somewhat too readily for granted that the course advised by the other overture the Assembly was already prepared to pursue, it went a step farther, and earnestly urged the pass- ing of an act recommendatory of a general collection in aid of the missionary scheme throughout the various parishes of Scotland. Both the leaders of the Assembly were shrewd 142 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. and far-seeing men, and both intimately acquainted with the nature of the materials on which they had to operate. They alike saw that the Fife overture, if considered alone, and on its own merits, might very possibly pass into a law, which, however inoperative, would at least recognise the excellence of missionary exertion ; they alike saw that the prevailing Moderatism of the Assembly would be at once roused to oppose the Moray overture, and that there was no chance whatever of its passing. The great object of Dr Hill was to defeat both, and so get rid of the troublesome subject of missions altogether. The great object of Dr Erskine was to get all passed in their favour that could possibly pass. Dr Hill urged, therefore, that the overtures should be considered conjunctly. If he but succeeded in getting what he already deemed the dead tied about the neck of the living, he was secure, as he too justly augured, of soon seeing them both equally dead. Dr Erskine contended, on the contrary, that they should be considered separately. The one, he argued, was " of a general, the other of a specific nature ; and gene- ral propositions often command united assent, though men may differ widely regarding the time and manner of apply- ing them to practice." But in deliberative assemblies, argu- ments fail when they have to contend with votes ; and it was carried, on the motion of Dr Hill, that the overtures should be considered, not separately, as became their character, but conjunctly, as consorted best with his own invidious policy. The preliminary motion virtually decided the fate of the whole discussion ; but Evangelism fought on. One of the first speakers in the debate was the Rev. Mr M'Bean of Alves, — a worthy north country clergyman, uncle, we believe, of the present excellent minister of Forres. The good man had come from a remote rural district, in which he had been studying his Bible, and sedulously walk- ing, in conformity with its injunctions, his useful round of THE DEBATE CN MISSIONS. 143 o,jt,y ; and in rising to support the Moray overture, it does not seem to have once entered his mind that there were two courses of conduct open regarding it. " The propagation of the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ !" Had they not all been praying for it all their lives long ? and was it not their duty to work as well as to pray,— their duty, and not the less surely their high privilege and honour, that in this matter they could be fellow-workers with God ? " Thy kingdom come." What Christian man could look forth without com- passion on that vast portion of the earth which was still a region of thick darkness and horrid cruelty, and in which poor perishing fellow-creatures, born to immortality, enjoyed no opportunity of embracing the blessed gospel ? And then, how great was their encouragement ! Did not prophecy point their faith to a period when the knowledge of the Lord would be everywhere, — all around and over this wide world, like the waters of a shoreless ocean ? and should not they,' strengthened by a hope so certain, be now up and doing,— using their every endeavour to hasten the happy time, working as well as praying, that the kingdom of grace might be advanced, and the kingdom of glory hastened ? The good man sat down, and was succeeded by another speaker on the same side, — the truly venerable Dr Johnston of North Leith. It is scarce necessary that we advert to the character of. this man. "We stood not long ago in a humble domicile in Leith before a rudely framed print of Dr Johnston : it had been taken in his extreme age. The strongly marked and somewhat harsh features bore evidence to the ravages of time ; but the course of years had worn into them the ex- pression of his habitual mood, in characters which it was im- possible to misinterpret, and the effect was something more powerful than beauty. Never have we seen thoughtful seri- ousness united to habitual benevolence more legibly impressed. " O, Sir," said the inmate of the humble domicile, an aged 144 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. woman, as she pointed to the print, — " 0, Sir, there were few like him. For many, many a year have I heard the precious gospel from those earnest, blessed lips." Dr Johnston was one of the truly excellent of the earth. He rose on this oc- casion to signify his hearty approval of the two overtures on the table, but with evidently less confidence of success than was entertained by the north country minister ; for he knew better than he the character of the party ranged on the op- posite benches. In running over nearly the same line of argument, his fears were ever and anon breaking out. "Sure- ly," he said, " however much they might differ from one ano- ther in matters of civil or ecclesiastical polity, they could not be other than united in whatever tended to promote the king- dom of their blessed Lord and Master !" What if He, in whose presence and in whose name they sat, and to whom one day they would have all to render their final account, was now waiting among them for some marked expression of their sincerity in His cause ! "Was the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland to declare against both Him and it, by thwarting the means of promoting it 1 Means must be used ; they are the instruments by which God works : the advance of His kingdom among the heathen was the subject of their daily prayers, but it would not do to say, " Be ye warmed and clothed, — be ye enlightened, reformed, and saved," — without doing something more. They were called on to act as well as pray. Thousands, boimd by only their common Christianity, were stepping forward to promote the missionary cause : their heathen brethren lay in their blood ; would they, the Church of Scotland, pass by, like the Levite, on the other side 1 Paul reckoned himself " a debtor to the Greek and the barbarian." Did Scotland lie under no snch debt ? The fact that they themselves had been called from heathen darkness by missionary exertion in the remote past, had given a direct claim upon them to the perishing heathen THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 145 of all time. Dr Johnson ceased, and there rose a speaker ou the Moderate side. He was a tall, handsome man, in the prime of early man- hood, fashionably dressed, and evidently a layman. Strange to relate, he rose, not to oppose, but strenuously to advocate the Missionary cause. It is recorded in the biography of the Rev. Thomas Scott, that, when a thoughtless young man, he was severely reprimanded for some piece of wickedness by his master, — a person of no religion, and who pretended to none, — and that from this very circumstance the reprimand struck him moi'e deeply than any that had ever been dealt him. Moderatism on the present occasion received a similar rebuke. Robert Heron, a name introduced into one of the minor poems of Burns,* in a manner that too effectually precludes all idea of his having been a man of serious religion, was one of the many who seem born to illustrate the important truth, that without prudence and conduct there is no real value in talent or learning, and no virtue in genius. He was the son of a poor weaver ; and in studying for the Church, — for he had unluckily seen no other mode of rising from his miser- ably depressed level, — he had struggled hard with all the difficulties and hardships incidental to extreme poverty and an utter lack 01 friends. At the early age of eleven, he had both to support and educate himself, by mingling with his studies the labours of teaching. He fought his onward way bravely. In addition to his other acquirements, he com- pletely mastered in his leisure hours the French language, — attained to a thorough command of English, — acquainted himself with general literature, — wrote verses and essays ; and, on removing to Edinburgh to attend the classes at Col- lege, he found means of introducing himself to the booksellers of the place, and of so impressing them with ideas of the * Epistle to Dr BlacklocK. K 1-iG THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. force and versatility of his talents, that they furnished him with instant employment. He wrote translations by the score, — produced original works, critical, historical, topogra- phical, which, though now forgotten, were favourably received in their day. He delivered lectures on the law of nature and of nations, — on subjects of taste and questions of science; and in the keen thirst of literary fame, and possessed of an iron constitution, which his sixteen hours a-clay employment failed for years sensibly to affect, he gave up his first-cherished hopes of a competency in connection with the Church, and devoted himself to literature exclusively. Rarely is the life of the literary aspirant a happy one ; — very rarely, except in the few cases in which religion exerts its influence over the whole conduct, is it even a comparatively innocent one. The literary man of the last century, too, was almost always an eccentric, unsettled being, ill-hafted in society, and licensed beyond his contemporaries by well nigh general consent. Heron too soon acquired the character of his class : periods of intense study were succeeded by occasional fits of dissipa- tion. He was ambitious, too, of being deemed rather a gen- tleman than a man of literature, — no uncommon weakness among literary men; and affected a fashionable style of living, which, joined to his unsettled habits, had soon the effect of placing him in great difficulties and distress. It is a melan- choly fact, that no inconsiderable portion of his History of Scotland was written in jail. And yet, in the midst of his sore straits and signal imprudence, this unfortunate man of genius continued to cherish warm affections, and a conscience tenderly alive, even with reference to the religious standard, to the true nature of his own aberrations. AYe find him on one occasion thus writing to his poor parents : — " I hope, by living more piously and carefully, by managing my income frugally, and appropriating a part of it to the service of you and my sisters, to reconcile your affections more entirely to THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 147 me, and give you more comfort than I have yet done. O, forget and forgive my follies ; look on me as a son who will anxiously strive to comfort and please you, and, after all your misfortunes, to render the evening of your days as happy as possible." In another letter we find him thus speaking of his sisters : — " We must endeavour to settle our dear Grace comfortably in life, and to educate our dear little Betty and Mary aright." He brought a younger brother, a lad of pro- mising talents, with him to Edinburgh, and supported him at college; but he saw him sink into an early grave, a victim to consumption. He then brought a favourite sister to live with him. The seeds of the same insidious disease were fixed in her constitution also, and she too sank into the grave. For a considerable period his mind seemed almost unhinged by this latter shock : he quitted Edinburgh, and forgot his griefs for a time m a round of unceasing literary occupation in London. For several years he employed his pen in the service of the English publishers, and this much more profit- ably than he had ever been able to do in Scotland ; but his unsettled habits still clung by him, and kept him poor ; his originally excellent constitution at length broke suddenly down, undermined by his arduous and long-protracted la- bours, ill relieved by life-wearing fits of dissipation ; and he again became the inmate of a jail. And here, in the midst of squalor and distress, enfeebled in body, and with a mind bowed down by want and despair, he coidd yet derive a glimmering of comfort from the fact that he had never em- ployed his pen against religion. He was now on the con- fines of the eternal world, for he quitted his place of confine- ment only to die in an hospital. Who that is " himself a sinner" shall venture to say that the mercy which found the penitent publican and the penitent thief did not visit his neglected deathbed, on which, alas ! there was not a human friend to look 1 Be that as it may, it is at least justice to 148 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. record, that in the memorable debate on missions, Robert Heron originated the motion which Dr John Erskine was well content to second. His speech was characterized by clear good sense, with no assumption — for in his case the assumption could not have been other than offensive — of the devotional tone. It was a demonstrable truth, he said, that Christianity had a happy influence on society, — that it contributed to the temporal prosperity of States no less than to the spiritual welfare of individuals. They had seen it gradually ameliorating the condition of the lower orders of society : it had extirpated, for instance, the domestic slavery of Europe, and taken its place in the very van of civilization, — as the pioneer of im- provement, whether intellectual or moral. If a spirit for its diffusion had now gone abroad, regulated by moderation and prudence, and if there existed at the same time circumstances more favourable for giving that spirit effect than at any for- mer period, — and he was prepared to show that that spirit had gone abroad, and that these circumstances did exist, — he really did not see that in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland there could be any ground for difference of opinion on the subject. As for favourable circumstances, the extensive commerce of the country, and the consequent vastness of its naval resources, might be rationally regarded as just the proper wings of missionary exertion. The country stood, too, on a high table-land of science and general know- ledge, which could surely be made available in favourably impressing, for the best of purposes, the ignorant natives of barbarous or semi-barbarous lands. As for the missionary spirit which had been awakened, could there possibly be a more gratifying or joyful circumstance to men who had been long complaining of the progress of infidelity, and the conse- ntient alarming decay of religion and good morals 1 It was a direct test of the vigour of religious feeling among them, THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 149 and an evidence that infidelity was not destined to prevail. It was surely a good spirit. If Christianity be an excellent thing in itself, it is an excellent thing also to spread it widely. Prophecy points to a time in which, from the rising to the setting sun, the Gentile nations shall become will- ing subjects of the Redeemer's kingdom. He doubted not that the diffusion of a very general missionary spirit would be one of the means through which so desirable a result was to be produced ; and who knew whether they might not, at that very time, be witnessing its first awakenings ? At all events, he said, he could not avoid thinking that such a spirit should be encouraged, awake when it might, and that the only way for directing it well was just for men of cha- racter and abilities to take an active part in the exertions to which it led. The Church of Scotland had been compli- mented by a late distinguished philosopher, David Hume, as more favourable to the cause of Deism than any other reli- gious establishment. How was the time for them to prove to the world that the compliment was undeserved, by zealously countenancing and assisting the honest endeavours of their fellow-Christians throughout the country. Otherwise he did not see how the clergy could expatiate with a good grace on the general indifference about religion, if they themselves set so palpable an example of that very indifferency. He con- cluded, however, by moving, not that they should immedi- ately adopt either of the overtures, but that they should ap- point a Committee for taking the subject of them into serious consideration, and on whose report the Assembly might after- wards act. A matter that promised so lair was at least worthy of examination : justice demanded that they should deal with it according to its merits ; and it was imperatively their duty to ascertain what these merits were. As he sat down, Dr Erskine and the Rev. Mr Hamilton of Gladsmuir rose together. The venerable Doctor yielded to 150 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. his opponent, at that time a young man ; merely remarking, that for the present at least he had risen but to second the motion of the " gentleman opposite," Mr Heron. The Rev. Mr Hamilton then proceeded with his speech, — one of the most carefully written, apparently, of any delivered during the course of the debate, — one of the most extraordinary ever delivered anywhere. — September 29, 1841. PART THIRD. k ' The bruit goeth," said De Bracy shrewdly to his companion in arms, the Templar, " that the most holy order of the Temple of Zion nurseth not a few infidels within its bosom." David Hume, intending on one occasion to be very compli- mentary, said nearly the same thing of the Church of Scot- land. "Was the compliment deserved 1 and if so, what pe- culiar aspect did the infidelity of our Scottish clergy assume 1 Was it gentlemanly and philosophic, like that of Hume him- self? or highly seasoned with wit, like that of Voltaire 1 ? or dignified and pompous, like that of Gibbon 1 or romantic and chivalrous, like that of Lord Herbert of Cherbury 1 or steeped in ruffianism and vulgarity, like that of Paine ? or redolent of nonsense, like that of Robert Owen 1 Or was it not rather of mark enough to have a character of its own 1 — an infidel- ity that purported to be anti-Christian on Bible authority, — that at least, while it robed itself in the proper habiliments of unbelief, took the Liberty of lacing them with Scripture edgings 1 May we crave the attention of the reader, in- stead of directly answering any of these queries, to the facts and reasonings employed by the Rev. Mr Hamilton of Glads- rnuir, in opposing the motion of poor Robert Heron. Mi- Hamilton was one of the most respectable Moderates of his time. His party shortly afterwards honoured him with the THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 151 title of Doctor of Divinity ; and when searching out among their soundest men for a Moderator of the General Assembly, they made choice of him. For the sake of brevity, we have taken very considerable liberties with the speakers whose more striking or more characteristic ideas we have already submitted to the reader ; we have given the meaning, bnt not the words, of the first two, and only a few sentences of the last, in the language which he himself employed. But we shall take no such liberties with the speech of Mr Ha- milton. We cannot give the Avhole of it, for it occupies ten rather closely printed pages ; but our extracts will be all true to the original text. We could scarce translate the senti- ments expressed in it into our own language, however fairly, without subjecting ourselves to a charge of exaggeration and injustice. " I should blush, Moderator," said the reverend gentleman, " to rise in this venerable Assembly for the purpose of opposing a plan so bene- ficent in its first aspect as the present, did not mature reflection f ully convince me that its principles are not really good, but merely specious ; that no such honour could accrue to us from supporting and promoting it, as its friends among us have fondly anticipated ; and because no such benefits could in all probability result from the execution of it to man- kind as they have no less fondly imagined and described. Such being my decided sentiments on the subject, I feel no reluctance to rise and state them fully. I feel this declaration, indeed, incumbent on me ; nor do I hesitate to say that, entertaining these sentiments, it is as much my duty to ivish that the house may be firm and unanimous in their opposition to these overtures, as it appeared the duty of those who were of a very different opinion to be actuated by a very different desire. To diffuse among mankind the knowledge of a religion which we profess to believe and revere, is doubtless a good and important work ; as to pray for its diffu- sion and to expect it is taught us in the sacred volume of Scripture. But as even the best things are liable to abuse, and as things the most excel- lent are most liable to abuse, so in the present case it happens, that 1 cannot otherwise consider the enthusiasm on this subject than as the effect of sanguine and illusive vieivs, the more dangerous because the object is plausible." The reader will observe that the Rev Mr Hamilton oi 152 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. Giadsmuir was animated in his course by a strong sense of duty, and that he was not at all ashamed to boast, we make no doubt very honestly, and with all due modesty, of the sensitive tenderness of his conscience. He next proceeded to unfold the very occult principles on wl ich his views of duty were based. " To spread abroad the knowledge of the gospel among barbarous and heathen nations," he remarked, " seems to me highly preposterous, in as far as it anticipates, nay, as it even reverses, the order of nature. Men must be polished and refined in their manners before they can be properly enlightened in religious truths. Philosophy and learning must in the nature of things take the precedence. Indeed, it should seem hardly less absurd to make revelation precede civilization in the order of time, than to pretend to unfold to a child the Principia of Newton, ere he is made at all acquainted w T ith the letters in the alphabet. These ideas seem to me alike founded in error, and therefore I must consider them both as equally romantic and visionary." Mr Hamilton next deduced very fairly from these first principles, that not only are there many millions of men who have no opportunities of embracing the gospel, but who as certainly, as he himself very pointedly said, " ought to have none.'''' The question of their responsibility naturally sug- gested itself to him ; and his benevolent mind found in so- lution the following singularly comfortable, but not the less somewhat extraordinary doctrine : — "To this question Scripture furnishes us with an answer, plain, na- tural, and just. We are in it told that 'a man is to be judged accord- ing to what he hath, not according to what he hath not ;' we are, more- over, told by Paul to the same purpose, ' that the Gentiles which have not the law are a law unto themselves ;' and that ' they who are with- out law shall be judged without law.' So that the gracious declaration of Scripture ought to liberate from groundless anxiety the minds of those who stated in such moving language the condition of the heathen.' 1 '' He next proceeded to show how very excellent a condi- tion that of the heathen may be, and caught, as he warmed in his description, the very spirit of Rousseau. " Every state of society, 1 ' he said, "has vices and virtues peculiar to THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 153 itself, which balance each other, and are not incompatible with a large share of happiness. The untutored Indian or Otaheitan, whose daily toils produce his daily food, and who, when that is procured, basks with his family in the sun with little reflection or care, is not without his simple virtues. His breast can beat high with the feelings of friendship, his heart can burn with the ardour of patriotism ; and although his miud have not comprehension enough to grasp the idea of general philanthropy, yet the houseless stranger finds a sure shelter under his hospitable though humble roof, and experiences that, though ignorant of the general prin- ciple, his soul is attuned to the feelings on which its practice must gene- rally depend. But go, — engraft on his simple manners the customs, refinements, and, may I not add, some of the vices of civilized society, and the influence of that religion which you give as a compensation for the disadvantages attending such communications will not refine his morals nor ensure his happiness. Of the change of manners, the effect produced shall prove a heterogeneous and disagreeable combination ; and of the change of opinion, the effects shall be a tormenting uncertainty respect- ing some things, a great misapprehension of others, and a misapplication perhaps of all." It was surely no wonder that the Rev. Mr Hamilton should have exerted himself, out of a high sense of duty, to shield from the contamination of the gospel the virtues of so happy a state. He then proceeded, with all the mingled zeal and knowledge of the philosopher and " qualified minister," to show how very mischievous and dangerous a thing this same gospel is, and how very terribly it would tend to brutalize savages. " When they shall be told, he said, " that a man is saved not by good works, but by faith, what will be the consequence % We have too much experience of the difficulty of guarding our own people against the most deplorable misapplication of this principle ; though here the people are instructed by stated and regular pastors, though their minds have been early embued with a pious and virtuous education, and though they are daily warned of the folly and danger of immorality under this pretext, we have too much experience of this fatal tendency at home, I say, with all our refinement, to entertain a rational doubt that the wild inhabitants of uncivilized regions would use it as a handle for the most flagrant vio- lation of justice and morality.'''' Mr Hamilton, early in his speech, had admitted that, could Christian missionaries be possibly found of the right stamp, 154 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. — men of mildly tempered zeal, — and that could a heathen country blessed with civilization, and thus fitted for receiv- ing them, be also found, — though evidently, according to his estimate, it required no small amount of civilization to neu- tralize the evils of but a very small amount of Christianity, — still he would have no very serious objection against send- ing the mildly tempered missionaries to the highly civilized land. On thinking over the matter, however, he deemed the admission rather too great, and he thus proceeded to qualify it : — " I formerly observed, that if missionaries were to be sent anywhere, it ought to be to that country whose state of civil society should appear to be fitted to receive it and improve by revelation. But even supposing such a nation could be found, I should still have weighty objections against sending missionaries thither. Why should we scatter our forces and spend our strength in foreign service, when our utmost vigilance is required at home ?" The concluding stroke in the following passage will scarce fail in provoking the smile of the reader. Most involun- tarily, evidently, did the admission which it conveys fall from the speaker. It was a grace beyond the reach of art, — one at least which only our master dramatists could have equal- led :— " "What general," said Mr Hamilton, " would desire to achieve distant conquests, and scatter for this purpose his troops over a distant and strange land, when the enemy's forces were already pouring into his own country, estranging the citizens from his interests, and directing the whole force of his artillery against the walls of his capital. / cannot but reflect with surprise, that the very men who in their sermons, by their speeches, by their publications, — in short, by everything but their own lives, are anxious to show to the world the growing profligacy of the times at home, — / cannot but reflect with surprise that these are the very men most zealous in pro- moting this expedition abroad.'''' We can give, as we have said, only a part of this speech ; but the whole is infinitely curious. We add just two sen- tences more. — the concluding ones : — " Upon the whole, while we pray for the propagation of the gospel, and THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 155 patiently aivait its period, let us unite in resolutely rejecting these over- tures. For my own part at least, I am obliged heartily to oppose the motion for a Committee, and to substitute as a motion in its place, That the overtures from the Synods of Fife and Moray be immediately dis- missed." Mr Hamilton ceased speaking, and sat down. On the table of the General Assembly there always lies a Bible. It lay there in even the darkest days of Moderate ascendancy, and neither Hill nor Robertson had dared to recommend its removal. The venerable leader of Evangelism rose, and point- ed to the table. " Moderator," he said, — and the brief and emphatic sentence that followed was one of those which men never forget, — " Moderator, Rax me that Bible." The Church of Scotland has her appropriate Scripture motto, borne in reference to the burning bush seen by the prophet in the wilderness. Were she not so well provided, — were the label still to inscribe, — we could imagine many worse suggestions than that it should be occupied by the laconic though quaintly-expressed request of Erskine, — Rax me that Bible. The Rev. Mr Hamilton of Gladsmuir, in the very spirit of some of our contemporaries of the press, who lie, in the pre- sent controversy, out of sheer policy, and supply " a plentiful lack" of argument by a no less marked fertility of fabrica- tion, had accused his opponents of dishonesty. Like a re- verend gentleman of the present day, he had, no doubt, felt it to be his duty to make the charge. The harvest of the pre- ceding year had been scanty and inadequate. There obtained, in consequence, among the poorer people, a very considerable amount of distress, which a collection — and, to the honour of British liberality, it had been a very ample one — had re- cently been made to relieve ; and, though the money was not yet expended, many and urgent, he stated, were the demands upon it. " Sorry, therefore, was he to say, that in such cir- cumstances of calamity some of his brethren, without con- 156 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. suiting any ecclesiastical court, had not only joined mission- ary societies, but had also set apart to their use the money collected for the poor. For such improper conduct," he added, " censure was by much too small a mark of disapprobation : it would, he doubted not, be a legal subject of penal prose- cution." Dr Erskine, old as he was, was not quite the man to suffer such a charge to pass unquestioned, and he now per- emptorily demanded an explanation. The offence, he said, if really perpetrated, was a criminal offence, and ought to be dealt with as such ; but it would not do thus to wound the character of innocent men by vague insinuations regarding it. He was entitled, he said, to urge that the cases of mis- appropriation should be specified, and the guilty individuals named ; and to urge further, that, should the accusation prove an unfounded calumny, it should meet with the merited con- tempt. He paused for a reply ; and the pause was a long, and, to Mr Hamilton, a singularly embarrassing one. But he at length stammered out an explanation. When he had said that money collected for the poor had been set apart for the use of missionary societies, he had not at all meant that money professedly collected for the poor had been set apart to their use. He had only meant that money collected at church-doors for missionary societies had been thus appropri- ated to missionary purposes ; and that all money collected at church-doors seemed to him to belong to the poor. An offence for which censure was too small a mark of disappro- bation, — which ought rather to be made a subject of penal prosecution, — resolved itself simply into the fact, that Dr Erskine, and several other ministers besides, had made church- door collections for missionary objects, with the full consent of their several Sessions, with full and public intimation to their several congregations beforehand of the purposes to which the money was to be applied, and, withal, with fair deductions from the amount received of the average Sunday THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 157 collections for the poor. Moderatism in those days must sure- ly have had a very nice perception of crime. The minister of Gladsmuir was, it is said, a man of mild and insinuating manners, — very much a gentleman of the old school, — fluent and bland, and who ever deemed it a sole- cism in politeness to lose temper in company. We have been told, however, that there were four little words which he could never contrive to hear unmoved : they brought a singularly unpleasant scene to his recollection, and operated on him like the sight of the bodkin on Sir Percy Shafton. If an ac- quaintance wished to see him redden and get silent in even his gayest and most conversible moods, they had but to whis- per in his ear, Rax me that Bible. He had studied, when a very young man, what Dr Johnson has termed the art of " laboured gesticulation," in the belief, doubtless, that his facts and his arguments would be materially strengthened by the motions of his hands and his legs. He had had on this occasion much to prove; and therefore, to employ the lan- guage of the writer just named, he had " rolled his eyes, and puffed his cheeks, and spread abroad his arms, and stamped on the ground, and turned his eyes sometimes to the ceiling and sometimes to the floor." Dr Erskine regretted that he could treat the Assembly to no such display of oratory. In his young days, he said, the art had been very little studied in Scotland. He had passed through his curriculum at a time when there had been even no professor of rhetoric in any Scotch college ; his oratorical education had thus been sadly neglected ; but he fain hoped the House would bear with him notwithstanding. He knew, he trusted, a little of Church history, and a little of common sense ; and his arguments, if solid, might just be permitted to stand " for what they were worth, though unembellished by the flowers of imagery or the graces of style." He referred in terms of thorough approval to the senti 158 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. merits expressed by Mr Heron : they had left him nothing jO add, he said, regarding the civilizing influence of Chris- tianity, or in reference to the means possessed at that time by our country of spreading them abroad. He went on, therefore, to take a historical view of what had been already accomplished in the missionary field. He alluded to the mis- sions of the Romish Church, and decided shrewdly on their character. They had left no traces behind them, he said, but traces of desolation and miseiy. It was a significant fact, too, that the countries chosen as the scene of them were either rich in mines, or amply furnished, through a fertile soil and genial climate, with the conveniences and delicacies of life. The fields selected for their operations were fields in which power or wealth, or at least a state of luxurious indulgence, might be attained to by the missionary ; and their entire history, constituting, as it did, a record of rapine, cruelty, and secular aggrandisement, gave evidence of a false, not of a true Church. Still, however, when Papists, priding them- selves on their own exertions, turned to Protestant Churches, and asked in derision what they had done to spread abroad the faith which they professed to value, or whether their in- dilferency regarding its promulgation did not argue the weak- ness of their convictions of its truth, the question was by much too rational to be despised. And it was a question which could be answered only by deeds. Something had al- ready been done by Protestants ; — more, as if to show that it was will, not ability, which was wanting, by one of the poorest and least considerable powers of Europe (Denmark), than by all the other Protestant States put together. He referred to the signal labours of the Moravians, as recorded by Crantz and Latrobe. He ran over the history of missions in connection with Great Britain, — that of the London Mis- sionary Society, instituted by royal authority in the days of "William, which, for many years after its institution, had com- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 159 municated precious light to multitudes who would otherwise have remained in darkness. He referred to the society estab- lished early in the century in our own country. He alluded briefly to the more recently established societies of our seve- ral large towns, — societies differently constituted, he said, from each other, and composed of various materials, but of all of which he approved more or less, for of all, the great object was the same ; and, however diverse might be the sects en- gaged in them, he deemed all points of inferior moment lost in the importance of the general cause. He passed briefly to consider the arguments of Mr Hamilton. Was it really so absolutely necessary that learning and philosophy should precede the introduction of the gospel ? He had been ever accustomed to consider it the peculiar glory of Christianity, that it was adapted alike to the citizen and the savage, • that it not only enlightened spiritual darkness, but promoted also temporal civilization. The " testimony of the Lord maketh ivise the simple." Christ, in the days of the apostles, had been made "all in all" to barbarians and Scythians. Would it have been so if to barbarians and Scythians Christ had not been preached 1 Was it not the theme of prophecy, that the benign influences of the gospel should smooth down the shag of human nature in realms the most barbarous and uncivilized ? How else did they interpret the bold metaphors of Isaiah 1 — " The desert shall rejoice and blossom like the rose ; and instead of the briar, shall spring up the fir tree ; and instead of the thorn, the myrtle tree." What was the testimony of history on the point 1 Did not the Fathers of the second century boast that the Mauritanians, the Getulians, and other savage nations, had submitted to the government of Zion's King 1 What was the experience of their own times 1 Had they heard nothing of the labours of Elliot, Brainerd, and the two Mayhews, among the fierce Indians of North America 1 Or had civilization visited the bleak coasts i 60 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. of Greenland and Labrador ere the Urtitas Fratrum had preached the gospel there with such signal success 1 Some of his younger brethren opposite, no doubt, deemed him a fanatic, and might care little, therefore, for his ojrinions ; but the question was not one of opinion ; — he could assure them he was dealing in this matter with only solid and well au- thenticated facts. He alluded to the recent scarcity, and to Mr Hamilton's terror of injuring the poor and exhausting the rich by their missionary claims. What signs of scarcity, he asked, did the tables, equipage, or general economy of the opulent among them exhibit % Had public calamity lessened either the power or inclination to extravagance 1 "Was not rather the profusion in meats and drinks as marked, — were not the carriages in our streets as sumptuous, the attendants as numerous, — and were not theatres, assemblies, and card- tables, as much frequented as ever? "Besides," he added, " I early learned, and, though old, have not forgot the lesson, that the exercise of every habit naturally tends to strengthen and improve it ; and therefore am I inclined to think that a wish to benefit our fellow-creatures in distant regions, and an occasional donation in their behalf, instead of lessening, will serve to increase, the compassion of the givers for the needy at home, and thus widen, instead of contracting, the chan- nels of general benevolence." He concluded by giving ex- pression to his cordial approbation of the motion of Mr Heron, which he had already seconded. The Rev. Dr Erskine was suceeded by the Rev. Dr Alex- ander Carlyle, minister of Inveresk; and as the speech of this gentleman was a short and very extraordinary one, we shall give it entire. Dr Carlyle was, of all his party, the boldest and most uncompromising advocate of the theatre, — one of the truly liberal in the case of Home and his tragedy, ■ — in short, a man enlightened enough in his views of drama- tic representation to have almost wiped away the stain of THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 1 61 bigotry and narrowness from an entire Church. But there is, alas ! no perfection in whatever is human ; and there were matters in which even he, with all his general liberality, could be narrow and bigoted. He exhausted the charities of his nature in tolerating balls and the theatre ; and for the gospel of Christ and the cause of its extension he had no tolerance and no charity. " Moderator," he said, " my reverend brother, whose universal cha- rity is so well known to me, has just been giving a new and extraordi- nary instance of it ; — no less than proposing as a model for our imitation the zeal for propagating the Christian religion displayed by Roman Ca- tholics I "When we see the tide of infidelity and licentiousness so great, and so constantly increasing, in our own land, it would indeed he highly preposterous to carry our zeal to another and a far distant one. When our religion requires the most unremitted and strenuous defence against internal invasion, it would be highly absurd to think of maidng distant converts by external missionaries. This is indeed beginning where we should end. I have on various occasions, during a period of almost half a century, had the honour of being a member of the General Assembly. Yet this is the first time I remember to have ever heard such a proposal made, and I cannot help also thinking it the worst time. As clergymen, let us pray that Christ's kingdom may come, as we are assured it shall come in the course of Providence. Let us, as clergymen, also instruct our people in their duty ; and, both as clergymen and as Christians, let our light so shine before men, that, seeing our good works, they may be led to glorify our heavenly Father. This is the true mode of propagating the gospel ; this is far preferable to giving countenance to apian which has well been styled visionary. I therefore do heartily second the motion made some time ago by my young friend Mr Hamilton, that the over- tures be immediately dismissed." —October 2, 1841. PART FOURTH. The characters in the debate on missions stand out in bold relief. There is a dramatic force and picturesqueness about them. Evangelism had to contend against the current of L 162 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. the age : it was alike denounced by the worlds of literature and fashion. The politically powerful exerted themselves to crush it as mischievous ; the gay and dissipated denounced it as morose and intolerant ; the widely-spread scepticism of the period characterized it as irrational and absurd ; histo- rians had written whole volumes to traduce and vilify it ; and genius had striven to render it ridiculous in song. It behoved its more strenuous assertors, therefore, to be men of at least some force of character ; and force of character never exists without those accompanying peculiarities which in the drama of life constitute well-marked individuality. Mode- ratism, on the other hand, enjoyed singular advantages, though of an opposite nature, of developing itself in its true propor- tions. It had not, as now, tamely and timidly to conform to the influence of the pressure from without ; — there was scarce any pressure from without at the time : it could venture on being well-nigh whatever it wished to be. And hence strong- ly marked character on the part of Moderatism also. From diametrically opposite but equally efficient causes, specimens of both parties, singularly characteristic, were exhibited in this debate. Erskine, Hill, Heron, Hamilton, the simple- hearted clergyman of Alves, and the venerable minister of Leith, appear all before us like the well-drawn dramatis per- sonam of a masterly play. But of all the characters exhibited, perhaps none were better marked than that of the last speaker, Dr Carlyle. He was a Moderate on a larger scale than could be produced in the altered atmosphere of the present day. In digging him out, we feel as if we had fallen somehow on a fossil Moderate ; and are struck, in contemplating the mighty fragments, with the degeneracy of his comparatively dwarfish successors. Dr Bryce planted astride the shoulders of Dr Cook would fail to overtop a single Dr ■ Alexander Carlyle. " Both as clergymen and Christians let our light so shine THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 163 before men," said the reverend Doctor, " that, seeing our good works, they may be led to glorify our heavenly Father. This is the true mode of propagating the gospel ; this is far pre- ferable to giving countenance to a plan which has ivell been styled visionary." Now, it is surely natural to ask, after what particular fashion was the light of the Rev. Dr Carlyle made to shine before men 1 Or what was its character as light ? Or was it light at all 1 We have already alluded to his liberality of opinion respecting theatrical representation. Milton had his prejudices against playacting parsons, — " men who shamefully prostituted their ministry," he said, " by writhing and unboning their clergy limbs to all the antic and dishonest gestures of Trinculos, buffoons, and bawds." Not such, however, was the feeling of Dr Carlyle : he was more than tolerant of playacting parsons. He was a playacting parson himself. On one occasion at least, when a select batch of Moderate divines rehearsed the tragedy of Douglas in the house of an Edinburgh actress, the Doctor, a large, dig- nified-looking man, well known among the wags of the bar as Jupiter Tonans, performed to admiration the part of Old Norval. Dr Hugh Blair personified the Lady Anna. Car- lyle, from being an actor himself, proceeded next to be an in- structor of actors. The Edinburgh playhouse of those days, as the reader of Ferguson's " Burlesque Elegy" must needs remember, was in the Canongate. The manager was a Mr Digges, and one of the prettiest of his staff was a Mrs Ward, — an actress of considerable ability, but, as was common at the time to the profession, of equivocal character ; and poor Jupiter Tonans, in urging his instructions, " had made his light so shine" that the tongue of scandal became busy. The case, among other matters, was brought before the Presbytery of Edinburgh ; and the reverend Doctor, who seems to have been a man of infinite frankness, to save the Presbytery the trouble of leading proof, at once acknowledged that he had 164 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. been not only in taverns with the actors, but also occasionally in Mr Digges' house, hearing parts of the tragedy rehearsed by Mrs Ward and the others ; " but that on no occasion had he ever ate or drank with the lady, or conversed with her farther than in agreeing or disagreeing to what was said about the play." This was of course satisfactory, for who could know so well as the Doctor himself 1 ? "When the tragedy came at length to be acted, some of the clerical friends of the author were led, by the interest they felt in its success, to linger about the house, without actually appearing in the boxes. Hence the point of a stanza, the production of some Edinburgh wit of the period : — " Hid close in the green-room some clergymen lay, Good actors themselves, — their whole Ikes a play." Dr Carlyle, however, with a few others, had more courage. He appeared openly among the audience, armed with a blud- geon. In the course of the evening, two wild young fellows, reckless with intoxication, forced themselves into his box ; and the Doctor, though known, says one of his biographers, from " his repeated exertions in favour of the law of patron- age, and his strong dislike of fanatics, by the title of the pre- server of the Church from fanaticism" stood up at once in the character of a ISTon-Intrusionist. He was perfectly sober at the time, and of great muscular strength ; and succeeded, to the great delight of the lesser gods in the gallery, after a slight struggle, in ejecting both the intruders. Though a leading and influential man among his party, most of them seem to have regarded his character as somewhat too extreme. When appointed to preach before the Lord High Commissioner, in 1760, there was a solemn dissent entered on the part of some of his brethren, which still exists in the records of the Church ; " and the case," says Morren, " is the only one on record in which the preacher proposed by the Committee was objected to in the Assembly." Nearly thirty years afterwards, how- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 1 $$ ever, and but a short time before the debate on missions took place, he very nearly carried the principal clerkship in a strug- gle of unprecedented keenness. He shone as a wit ; and suc- ceeded at times in raising the laugh against evangelism, by his narratives of the opinions entertained on doctrine or Church policy by the fisher population of his parish. Some Janet Skatecreel, or Donald Mucklebacket, had come, he had found, to the same conclusion on a debated point with the Witherspoons and Erskines, his opponents; and he rarely failed in exciting the merriment of the brethren with whom he voted, by his ludicrous representations of the evangelic prejudices of Janet or Donald. There were cases, however, in which the laugh was turned very conclusively against him- self. He had been all his life-long a keen supporter of Tory- ism. In his exertions to support the policy of Pitt and Dun- das, he had, to employ the language of one of his brethren, who spoke both for the Doctor and himself, "risked even the friendship of his flock, and his own usefulness as a pastor among them." He had taken a deep interest in the bill pro- posed in 1793 for the augmentation of ministers' stipends ; it had been set aside, to his signal mortification, by his friends the Tories ; and the reverend Doctor, in the ensuing As- sembly, proved unable to conceal his disappointment and chagrin. He went the length even of charging the Minis- try with "ingratitude to their best friends," and in a style fully more lachrymose than pathetic ; and the complaint was ludicrously paraphrased, in reply, by the singularly able and accomplished Dr Bryce Johnstone, in the words of Balaam's ass, " Am I not thine ass, on whom thou hast ridden ever since I was thine until this day ?" Dr Johnstone followed up the allusion in a vein of the happiest ridicule, amid the irrepressible laughter of the house ; the hint was caught by the eccentric Kay; and in his caricature, " Faithful Service rewarded;' vol. ii. p. 1 18, the reader may see a neatly etched 1 66 THE DEBATE OX iUSSIONS. head of Jupiter Tonans attached to a long-bodied, crocodile- looking jack-ass, bestridden by the late Lord Mehille. In his latter days Dr Carlyle tired, it is said, not only of preach- ing sermons, but also of hearing them preached : he furnished himself with an assistant ; and, leaving him to his prayers, as Hume did La Roche, he might himself be seen almost every fine Sunday, during the time of divine service, sauntering along the Musselburgh racecourse. The light of the reve- rend Doctor seems to have been a beacon light ; it shone before men to show them, not the course which they ought to pursue, but the course which they were by all means to avoid. He spoke just two sentences more during the course of the debate on missions. Principal Hill had made a long speech, which occupies nearly twelve pages of the printed report, in which he at once strenuously laboured to defeat the missionary cause, and to deprecate, by a vein of general though singu- larly inconclusive concession in its favour, the odium which might, he feared, attach to such a course. Dr Carlyle had no such fears, and no respect, apparently, for the tone of timid conciliation which they inspired. Though complimented by the Principal, who quoted his observations as excellent, and referred to him as his revered father, the old man rose in evi- dent impatience as the younger concluded, and addressed the Moderator. "Moderator," he said, "a motion was some time ago made ' to dismiss the overtures,' and I insist the first thing to be done is to consider of this. We may then judge of the propriety of the recommendation and resolu- tions proposed by the reverend Principal ; but I desire that we may first proceed to dismiss the overtures" He micrlrt have been more tolerant of the concessions of O Principal Hill. They were not intended to do either him or his cause any harm. Is the reader acquainted with Vol- taire's story of the two Roman Catholic missionaries who quarrelled at Pekin 1 A Jansenist and Jesuit, both brim THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 167 full of zeal for Mother Church and the conversion of the Chi- nese, and both equally hostile, the one to the heresies of Jansenius, and the other to the policy of Loyola, had met in their rounds within the precincts of the Celestial Court. The Jesuit denounced the five propositions, and asserted the doctrines of Habert. The Jansenist a l so denounced the five propositions, and repeated the sarcasms of Pascal. They be- came angry and loud, and cuffed and scratched, and tore one another's beards, and the noise of the fray reached the ears of the Emperor. " Clap up these French Bonzes in prison," said the great grandchild of the sun — " clap them up instant- ly in prison : could they not have staid and quarrelled in their own country ?" " And how long, Sire, shall we keep them there V asked a mandarin in attendance. " Till they have fully agreed," said the Emperor. " Alas ! Sire," replied the mandarin, who knew the sort of persons with whom he had to deal, — "alas ! Sire, in that case you condemn them to prison for life, for they will never agree" Is the reader pre- pared to find the hinging point of the joke of Voltaire con- verted into a serious argument against missions by Principal Hill % Such, however, was the case. It had been stated by Dr Erskine, that there were various sects engaged in the Societies, in whose welfare, deeming all points of inferior moment lost in the importance of the general cause, he felt so warm an interest. It had been asserted further, on the same principle, in the Address of the Edinburgh Society, — a document characterized by the reverend Principal as breath- ing only " a spirit of conceit" and fitted merely to excite feelings of " compassion bordering on contempt" — that they sought not to " export the shibboleth of a party." The sec- tarian was to be sunk in the Christian. He had found, withal, in the Society's regulations, that " every missionary to be ordained, after being approved of by the Society, should be remitted for ordination to the particular religious connec- 168 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. tion to which he belonged." His reflections on these seve^ ral points we give in the words of the report : — " Alas !" he exclaimed, "is this the whole extent of the liberality so much professed 1 Is this the sense in which ' t he shibboleth of a party ' is disclaimed ? What can he more palpably plain than that this remission of the approved missionaries for ordination to the particular sect to which they belong (and we find that all sects are invited to join in the under- taking), is, in fact, sending out ' the shibboleth of a party ' in its strictest sense, is sending out men warm with the deep impression' of party, and is enlisting them in hostile bands against each other on the very eve of departure. How soon their polemical controversies may burst forth I know not ; but when they do burst forth, wretched must be the state of the half-converted heathen whose spiritual darkness shall only have given place to light rendered horrible by the shapeless phantoms of gloomy doubt and degrading superstition. On account of the missionaries themselves, too, when these controversies shall have appeared, the societies at home may too late be led to deplore their hazardous and rash attempts, — may too late discover, that besides sowing misery where they promised happi- ness, missionaries have gone to fight, not merely by argument, but even — THOUGHT FULL OF HORROR ! — TO FIGHT BY CUTTING ONE ANOTHER'S THROATS IN THE BATTLES OF RELIGION ON A FOREIGN SHORE ! If the Societies recoil with horror from such an anticipated, let them be careful in due time to prevent this realized, consequence." What, compared to this, was the ingenious fiction of Vol- taire ! The reverend Principal, as second minister of St An- drew's, was of course a member of the Synod of Fife, — one of the two Synods from which the overtures under discussion had been sent to the Assembly. Why omit, as it turned out he had done, opposing the transmission of the Fife overture in the Synod 1 Why not crush the snake in the egg 1 The reasons why, as stated by himself, are sufficiently character- istic. The overture, as originally drawn up, bore a preamble recommendatory of missionary societies. It stated, " that a desirable spirit had of late appeared to pervade a numerous body of our fellow- Christians in various parts of this island, for propagating the religion of Jesus Christ." We again re- turn to the report : — "Such, Sir," said the reverend Principal, "was originally the sub- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 1G9 stance of the preamble to this overture, and I declared, on hearing it, ■what I have already repeated, that should any such preamble have ap- peared in the overture, / should have strenuously opposed and divided the Synod upon it. As it pleased the gentleman who proposed it, however, to leave out this highly objectionable clause, I saw no reason for refusing my assent to it as it at present stands. The overture seemed to have a pious object in view ; and, if not promising to be useful, seemed at least to promise to be innocent, in its effects. In its present form the Assembly may take it up or not, just as they think proper. It is clothed in expres- sions so general and vague, — it kecommends an object so tkuly Chris- tian and warranted by Scripture prophecy, yet so great and comprehen- sive in its aspect, involving so many perplexing considerations, and promising such uncertain consequences, — that I AM inclined to think the Assembly are not called on to consider it, but might simply dismiss it at once, as wanting a specific object." Great truths are laid open at times by the merest acci- dents ; and one of these, stuck in, evidently all involuntarily, amid the tortuous syllogisms of the reverend Principal, we find in the passage just quoted. The Fife overture " recom- mended an object so truly Christian, that he was inclined to think the Assembly might dismiss it at once." If the one leader originated in this debate a saying which might well be adopted as the watchword of his party, we think the other was no less successful in behalf of his. But the reverend Principal was not equally open through- out. Too frequently are the deliberations of public bodies degraded by a mean spirit of trick. Wisdom and honesty to decide regarding the fair, the good, the prudent, are what the exigency demands ; but some influential leader rises, and substitutes cunning instead. His object is not to secure, but prevent, the adoption of the proper course ; and this object he pursues by means which, consorting entirely with the character of what he intends, are just and honourable in but the same degree as those employed by the gamester when he loads his dice. A complete list of the various stratagems re- sorted to in such cases would be a long one, — longer by far than Bacon's catalogue of the " wares of the cunning man." 170 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. Hints for half a volume could have been picked up at the last General Assembly from the speeches of some four or five Moderate elders alone. Nor, as we have already shown, did the debate on missions lack its quota of trick on the same side. One notable stratagem we have described as virtually deciding the fate of the two overtures, by binding them to- gether. Mr Hamilton resorted to another, when, in the hope of blackening the character of his opponents, and thus creat- ing a prejudice against both them and their cause, he charged them with dishonestly appropriating to the support of their missionary schemes money collected for the poor. Dr Hill was more ingenious ; not only, he asserted, were missionary societies not good, but even those who most strenuously de- fended them seemed fully aware of the fact. We again quote : — " My reverend father, Dr Erskine," he said, "has only touched their surface with delicacy and tenderness ; for his sagacity and discernment must have led him to perceive that they would not bear a more critical in- spection. Nay, he even has gone so far as to say that he approves of all the societies which have been formed, l more or less,'— a confession which seems equivalent to his owning that he does not approve entirely of any" The hit was only indifferently successful. Dr Erskine at once characterized the inference of the Principal as unwar- ranted : he had not veiled, he said, through feelings of deli- cacy or tenderness, as had been insinuated, any disapproval of the missionary societies of the country; for he did not disapprove of them, but very much the reverse. If he had spoken obscurely regarding them, it was unwittingly, not from design • and some portion of obscurity, in a speech wholly unstudied, might, he hoped, be excused. In a second stratagem of a still worse character Principal Hill was en- tirely successful. The war of the first French Revolution was raging at the period of the debate, and the democratic principles caught by the people of Britain, as if by infection from their volatile THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS 171 neighbours, were oow undergoing a course of gradual absorp- tion, o'erniastered by the intensely national spirit which both the reverses and triumphs of the conflict served to awaken. Still, however, the pest had not been altogether extirpated. " Our neighbour's house was in flames, and it was well," ac- cording to Burke, " that the engines should occasionally play on our own." Only two years had elapsed since the trials of Muir, Palmer, and Gerald had taken place; and Braxfield ha»3 not yet ceased reiterating his somewhat brutal joke, that our democrats " would a' be muckle the better o' being hanged." Even several years later, the present Lord Presi- dent of the Court of Session, then Lord Advocate, could officially intimate to the Sheriff of Banffshire, that a farmer of that county, who had dismissed his servant for neglecting his work in attending a volunteer review, should be " stig- matized and punished by the scorn and contempt of all re- spectable men ;" and to instruct further, " that on the first Frenchman landing in Scotland he [the farmer] should be immediately apprehended as a suspected person ;" and that in the event of his property being destroyed by either the enemy or the King's troops, "care should be taken to prevent his receiving any compensation for the loss." The temper of the time was one of fear and suspicion ; minds of fully the ordinary strength seemed unhinged by the terror of revolu- tion ; and, to excite their rage and hatred against any newly established popular society, it seemed but necessary to hint that there might possibly be something democratic in its character or tendencies. There were not a few of this con- spiracy-dreaded class present at the time in the Assembly, — mostly gentlemen of the law ; and the reverend Principal thus proceeded to enlist their fears full against the mission- ary cause. The stratagem had at least the merit of being consummately ingenious, and, as we have already said, and shall afterwards show, it was entirely successful. 172 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. '* Besides the considerations," he said, " which lead us to augur un- favourably of these societies from the circumstances I have enumerated, there is one argument, drawn from a consideration of a much more im- portant nature in itself, because threatening/ much more awful and extreme effects than even these, not, indeed, to the heathen or the missionaries, but to this country, — to society at large. The political aspect of the times, marked with the turbulent and seditious attempts of the evil designing or the deluded against our happy constitution, — against the order of everything we possess and hold dear to us, whether as citizens or as men, — renders it incumbent on me to state, that I observe with serious re- gret not only many of the striking outlines, but even many of the most obnoxious expressions, or expressions similar to those which have been held with affected triumph in the lately suppressed popular assemblies. " The Principal goes on to render the assertion as plausible as possible, by quotations from the regulations and prelimi- nary address of the society over which the venerable Dr Erskine presided. His art in twisting a meaning seems to have been very considerable indeed. " In the letter I have so often referred to," continued the Principal, "it is said, ' They [Christians] perceive that their strength has been im- paired by division ; that the most zealous exertions of particular deno- minations have only had a partial and temporary effect ; and that by ■anion alone one obvious cause of failure may be completely removed. They wish, therefore, to make a grand, unanimous effort ; to combine the wisdom, the prayers, the influence, and the wealth of all their breth- ren in all parts of the nation, and even to produce a general movement of the Church upon earth !' Again, ' While we rejoice in these associa- tions as proofs that the desire to propagate the gospel is at present very generally excited, we beg leave strongly to recommend united exertions ; and we submit to all such societies in Scotland, whether it will not be better to co-operate than to act alone. Let us join all our resources, and proceed with vigour. From harmonious beginnings at home we may perhaps be enabled to go on to an enlarged concurrence with similar so- cieties at a distance, and in our day to revive something of the liberal spirit of primitive times, when the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul.' And yet again, 'The society shall be willing to correspond with all societies and individuals who may have the same grand object in view, and shall either act by themselves or co- operate with others, as circumstances shall determine.' " When ever before were there more terrible proofs of con- spiracy adduced ! and was not Principal Hill quite justified THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 173 in alleging that these quotations were "fully sufficient, with- out any addition or much comment, to warrant" him "in calling those societies highly dangerous, in their tendency, to the good order of society at large ? " True, it seemed a rather unlucky circumstance for his case, that men such as Dr Erskine were their leading members. But then, with " new members," he said, " new views would be introduced ; nor was it unreasonable to dread that their common fund should be perverted from its original channel, and be made the means, along with the other obnoxious circumstances mentioned, of stirring up temporal strife, instead of promoting spiritual peace" — October 6, 1841. PART FIFTH. We are told by Plutarch, of the Bomans who besieged Syra- cuse, that after they had seen a few dozen of their galleys pitched into the air from the ends of huge beams, and a few hundreds of their legionaries crushed into the earth by im- mense rocks, they became so sadly afraid of the master ma- gician who defended the city, that if they only spied a small cord or piece of wood above the walls, they straightway took to their heels, crying out that " Archimedes was going to let fly some terrible engine at them." A somewhat similar ter- ror seems to have possessed the more strenuous supporters of the Pitt and Dundas policy in our own country, for a few years before and after the period of the debate on missions ; and it was to this feeling of fear and suspicion, as we have said, that Principal Hill deemed it wisdom to appeal. At the distance of nearly half a century, when men's minds have cooled down, it strikes one with astonishment to see how very minute the cord sometimes was, and how very slender the beam, that filled men of at least ordinary good sense with 174 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. dread and suspicion. Scarce an institution could be estab- lished, on however limited a scale, whether economic, educa- tional, or religious, that some one or other did not decry as a revolutionary engine. Some became mortally afraid of bene- fit societies, some of prayer-meetings, some of Sunday-schools. Masonic fraternities were deemed hotbeds of sedition every- where : even parish schools came to be suspected. A country magistrate of the period, naturally a benevolent man, but rabid in his dread of revolution, was presiding on one occa- sion, in one of our northern towns, on a trial of some score ragged urchins, who, in sacking a piece of planting of its rowans, had broken a few of the young trees. He had gone through the case with great good humour; — there was no- thing revolutionary in it. In proposing, however, that the parents of the culprits should become bound for their beha- viour in the future, he was seconded by a brother magistrate cf the town, who remarked, half in joke, that they had bet- ter also bind the young fellows themselves, so far as a pro- mise could bind them ; and who, aware of their literary quali- fications, actually wrote out for them a declaration of non- aggression for the time coming, which he asked them to sign. Glad of the opportunity of showing they could write, they came forward one by one, and adhibited their names, each succeeding boy in a style more clerkly than the boy that had gone before. The country magistrate stood aghast, for he saw conspiracy and sedition in the accomplishment. " What ! what ! what ! " he exclaimed, his temper giving way for the first time during the course of the trial, " all these ragamuf- fins able to write ! This must be put an instant stop to ! In a few years hence we shall see them all hung for high trea- son." One of the most extreme cases illustrative of the spirit of the time was perhaps that of the late Rev. Mr Lapslie of Campsie, — a gentleman who first introduced himself to terms THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. J7g of familiar intimacy with the unfortunate and not over pru- dent Muir of Huntshill, by the professed liberality of his political principles, and who, animated by his detestation of democracy, and his hope of a pension, volunteered afterwards his evidence against him, but whose testimony, from the ut- terly infamous nature of his conduct, could not be received The history of this man would exhibit Moderatism in its worst and most extreme phase. It may be deemed unfair, indeed to select the atrocities of one individual as the characteristics ot a party. If, however, that individual was followed bv his party,— if, m cases of acquittal for scandalous crimes, in wlrch no merely secular court of the period would or could have concurred, they suffered him to act as their leader,-if his worst peculiarities were but exaggerations of their own —if instead of branding his conduct and casting him out of 'their society, they were content to regard him as a useful and active partizan,— if, , n short> they homologated his actings by mak- ing them to no very limited extent their own,— they must be content that he should be regarded as at least an extreme specimen of their class. For several years after entering on his charge, Mr Lapslie bore the common Moderate character He was known to be no bigot. He appeared occasionally in he boxes of the Glasgow theatre; and had, it was said, a nappy knack of rendering himself agreeable at the tables of men in the upper ranks. On the determination of Govern- ment to crush the revolutionary spirit among the people by a series of State prosecutions, the incumbent of Campsie sprung up at once into notoriety, and volunteered, as we have said, his testimony against Muir. He had been over-zealous however for the full accomplishment of what he had pur- posed. He had attended the Sheriffs in their rounds col- lecting evidence. He had even hinted to some of the wit- nesses by way of refreshing their memories, that " berths might be provided for them under Government." When the 176 THE DEBATE OX MISSIONS. trial came on, his testimony was objected to, on the score that he was a party deeply interested in the case ; and, to his surprise and signal mortification, the objection was sustained by the public prosecutor. Muir, in addressing the jury em- pannelled to try him, solemnly pledged himself that, if ac- quitted, he, in turn, would become Mr Lapslie's prosecutor, and prove against him, by a cloud of witnesses, practices, — nay, crimes, — which he at that stage forbore to characterize. Though thus rejected as a witness, however, the minister was not altogether disappointed. His services, though not very honourable, had been at least very zealously tendered : they had attracted the notice of Pitt; and a pension was granted him almost immediately after the trial, which, considerably more than thirty years subsequent, his widow continued to enjoy. On the introduction of the militia act, — so unpopu- lar in Scotland, — Mr Lapslie exerted himself to give it effect in his own parish of Campsie with such hearty good will, that some of his parishioners, to show their gratitude and respect, set fire to his outhouses in the night-time, and burnt them to the ground. He distinguished himself above all his fellows by his active hostility to Sunday-schools and home and foreign missions, " believing them, in common with many other members of the Church," says a writer of the present day, who has sketched an outline of his biography, " to be deeply tainted with democracy." The accusers of our Sa- viour charged him with rebellion against Csesar : we question whether there were any of them more in earnest than Mr Lapslie. The latest notice of this singular divine which we have yet seen is to be found in " Peter's Letters to his Kins- folk." "We there find him drawn as a gray-headed old man, addressing the General Assembly in strains the most impas- sioned; " tearing his waistcoat open, baring his breast as if he had scars to show; bellowing, sobbing, weeping;" and finally sitting down, " trembling all to his finger-ends, like an ex- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 177 hausted Pythoness." What was it that had moved the old man, and why did he rave, and weep, and shake his gray locks? He had been engaged, soul, body, and spirit, in the defence of a Moderate clergyman accused of " illicit intercourse with his housekeeper," and who fared none the worse in conse- quence of having his case tried at a period when it was im- possible, in the General Assembly, to convict Moderate minis- ters of crime. We have been indulging in an episode ; but it is one which serves to illustrate the temper of the time, and enables us to add to our series of sketches an additional portrait. Mode- ratism has often pointed to its men of science and literature, — its poets, philosophers, and historians; — the memory of such long outlives that of their humbler contemporaries : but it is well to remember that it was not of literature and science that the staple of the party was composed. It is well to enter into an examination of its coarser ingredients, — to know somewhat not only of the gifted leaders who contended against the cause of missions and Sunday schools, but also of the humbler men-at-arms who fought under them with a zeal and heartiness in no respect inferior to their own. The deep cloud of moral and spiritual death which for a century brooded over our country, withering every blossom of hope and pro- mise, had its upper sunlit folds of purple and gold, to catch and charm the eye of the distant spectator ; but to know it in its true character, it was necessary to descend to where its lower volumes brooded over the blighted surface, and there to acquaint one's-self with its sulphureous stench, its mildew- dispensing damps, its chills, and its darkness. Some such introduction, too, is necessary to enable the reader either to enter fully into the character of Principal Hill's stratagem, or rightly to appreciate the spirit of the very singular political speech which it elicited. The speaker was a young advocate named David Boyle, ruling elder for the burgh M 178 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. of Irvine. We are inclined to hold that he could have been animated by no real zeal against missions, — that it was his head, not his heart, which was at fault. A bit of cord hung over the wall, — a piece of wood had appeared, — the wily Principal had called out, " A revolutionary engine ! a revo- lutionary engine !" There were certainly many playing off at tlifi time ; and the zealous advocate, infected by the general terror, had taken the representation too readily on trust. We insert his speech entire : — " I rise, Moderator, impressed with a sense of the alarming and dan- gerous tendency of the measures proposed in the overtures on your table, — overtures which I cannot too strongly, which the House cannot too strongly, oppose, and which, I trust, all the loyal and well-affected members will be unanimous in opposing. If, however, I should stand single with the two reverend Doctors and the gentleman who made the motion, I should this night go down to divide the House. Sir, numerous societies of people are at all times alarming ; but at this time particularly so, whatever be the professions on which they are formed, or the pretexts they hold out to the world. The general professed object of the present societies is, in- deed, good, and at a proper season would merit our countenance ; but there is nothing besides this general object at all good about them ; all the other circumstances respecting them are bad ; for I am free to assert, — and I will maintain it in the face of any member of this Assembly, — that all the societies ivhich have of late years existed in this country have been more or less connected with politics. Yes, Sir, I do say that the as- sociations of the people formed in various parts of the kingdom to peti- tion for the abolition of the slave-trade, however good their design, and whether or not immediately arising from politics, did, at any rate, lay the foundation of the political societies which have since disturbed the peace and tranquillity of the country, and have cost so much trouble and dif- ficulty to be suppressed. Still, however, the people meet under the pretext of spreading Christianity among the heathen. Observe, Sir, they are affiliated, they have a common object, they correspond with each other, they look for assistance from foreign countries, in the very language of many of the seditious societies. Above all, it is to be marked, they have a common fund. Where is the security that the money of this fund will not, as the reverend Principal said, be used for very different pur- poses from the professed ones ? If any man says that the societies have not this connection and tendency, he says the thing that is not. It now, therefore, becomes us as much as possible to discourage numerous societies, THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 179 for whatever purposes ; for, be the object what it may, they are all equally bad. And as for those missionary societies, I do aver, that since it is to be apprehended that their funds may be in time, nay, certainly will be, turned against the Constitution, so it is the bounden duty of this House to give the overtures recommending them our most serious disapprobation, and our immediate, most decisive opposition.'''' Very extraordinary, surely, regarded as the production of a man still living ! It lias so much of the true rust of anti- quity about it, that to associate it with the present age by a link so unequivocal as the continued working-day world ex- istence of the speaker, does violence in no small degree to the imagination. But it must have originated, as we have said, wholly in misconception and mistake, and should be re- garded rather as an effect of the disreputable stratagem of Principal Hill, operating on a mind blinded by its fears, and open to suspicion on only one side, than as the result of spon- taneous conviction. We are pretty sure that the speaker, — rendered wiser by the additional experience of forty-five years, would now be the very first to repudiate the sentiments which it expresses : he would deal by them as Knox and Luther dealt by the idolatrous tenets which in the days of their extreme youth they had deemed it their duty to hold. A remark, however, which seems naturally to grow out of the subject may not be deemed either irreverent or ill-timed ; and we shall introduce it by an anecdote. It is recorded of the celebrated Lord Monboddo, that, when the great Douglas case was brought for judgment before the Court of Session, he descended from the bench, and, taking his place beside the clerk, there delivered his opinion. "What could have moved him 1 for he assigned no reason for the step ; he simply rose from beside his brethren, and came down. Men of correct moral sentiment had but to consult their feelings in order to discover his Lordship's motives. It was remembered that, previous to his elevation, he had been counsel in the case for one of the parties ; it was known 1 80 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. that, in common with all engaged in it, he had felt an in- tense interest in the issue, of which he could not divest him- self, now that he was counsel no longer. And so it was at once inferred that, feeling himself rather a party than a judge, he had descended from the judge's seat, determined that, since he had now, in virtue of his office, to record judgment in the case, he should do so on the counsel's level, and, as it were, under protest of his own conscience. Believing his decision to be entirely just, he was yet sensible of an under-current of prejudice powerful enough to warp his better judgment. He took this mode of showing that he was sensible of it ; and though it might, doubtless, have been better for him to have declined giving an opinion in the case at all, it must be con- fessed that, since he did give it, it was well it should have been under circumstances so marked. Lord Monboddo carried his prejudices with him from the bar to the bench ; and he felt that he did. Are the majority of our Lords of Session in the present day men of stronger minds than Monboddo, or possessed of a more complete control over their predilections and their antipathies % If the question cannot be answered otherwise than in the nega- tive, is it possible to forget that in the present struggle not a few of our Lords of Session are as certainly parties in one character as they are judges in another 1 We do not refer to the controversy in its more obvious aspect, — as a collision between two courts. In that aspect the Lords of Session may indeed be described as parties, and their decisions as de- cisions in favour of their own court. But we refer to it in a more emphatic sense, — as a controversy between two great principles, Moderatism and Evangelism, and to the well-known fact, that the greater part of the men who now, in the cha- racter of judges, record their decisions against the latter prin- ciple, have zealously contended against it as partizans in the character of ruling elders. They have passed hot from their THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. 181 debates in the General Assembly to their seats in the Court of Session, and their findings in one character agree entirely with their votes in another. We are far from impugning their motives in either capacity : we doubt not they have been thoroughly conscientious, — as much so when contending on unequal terms with Andrew Thomson, and made to feel that he was not only an abler man, but also a better lawyer, than most of themselves, as when pronouncing judgment in the Auchterarder case, — as much so when opposing them- selves to the overtures on missions, as when granting inter- dicts against preaching the gospel and administering the sacra- ments at the instance of the clergymen of Strathbogie. We doubt not they have decided conscientiously : we doubt not that Monboddo decided conscientiously in the Douglas case ; but Monboddo could himself fear, that though he judged honestly, there were yet disturbing circumstances that might lead him to judge erroneously ; and we are convinced the public would think none the worse of the majority of the Lords of Session were they to manifest in some slight degree a cor- responding fear. The remarks of Mr Boyle called up Dr Erskine, unwilling as he was, he said, again to encroach on the time of the As- sembly. He could not understand why all associations of the people, however diverse the purposes for which they had been established, should be treated thus with equal severity ; or on what principle proper should be confounded with im- proper objects, from their merely possessing the common cir- cumstance of being pursued, with a view to their accomplish- ment, by bodies, — not individuals. What was there in the mere circumstance of union, of force enough to convert good into evil 1 He had yet to learn that societies formed in the cause of humanity tended to render the minds of men turbu- lent and seditious ; or that the quiet of the State could be in any degree endangered by deliberations on the best pos- 182 THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. sible means of Christianizing the heathen, or by discussions regarding the more promising fields of missionary exertion. Good government had nothing to dread from religion : irre- ligion, on the other hand, was the worst foe it had to combat He proceeded to say, in language which we have already quoted, that he acknowledged, and gloried in acknowledging, himself a member of the Slave Abolition Society; that in no degree, however, on that account, was lie the less attached to the constitution under which he lived : he believed he had given at least as many proofs of his regard for the peace of the land as the gentlemen opposite; and he was prepared, he trusted, in his humble sphere, to make as many and as great sacrifices to preserve it inviolate. He had no wish, he said, to see the people becoming disputatious politicians ; for he had seen their loose political speculations serving but to waste and dissipate their minds, and thus doing them harm without producing any counterbalance of good. Nor was he at all partial to the late democratic societies : some of them served only to show him how a few cunning men may lead multitudes astray. The pretended analogy, however, between these lately suppressed political associations and the lately established missionary societies was by much too far strained to be just. The one class had followed the other in the order of time ; but was there the slightest attempt to show that in this succession there was aught akin to the relation of cause and effect 1 Exactly the reverse was the case ; and, to con- vince themselves thoroughly that it was so, they had but to examine into the nature of the ingredients of which the asso- ciations and societies were respectively composed. He was very sure, for his own part, that he saw none of their vio- lent political reformers stepping forward to take part in the missionary cause. He was equally sure that those who ex- erted themselves in it most were men remarkable for their simplicity and purity of life, and from whom no good Go- THE DEBATE ON MISSIONS. ]g;; vernment could have any cause of alarm. Dr Erskine sat down, and did not again mingle in the debate. The event determined that he should take no peculiar interest in ml r S on aS th a t mmiSter °I tl>e C ' 1UrCh ° f Sc ° t,and > but »«* *e r of t ^Ttt ^ ' ab0Ur in their behalfas » Sta- ter of the Church of Christ; and his last work on earth as we have already intimated, was the preparation of a pamphlet, -one of asenes, sui ted to draw the attention of the country to the good winch they were the means of producing abroad H.s remark with regard to the fact, that he saw none of the more violent political reformers taking part in the mission y on ' " a TZ ^ ^ We h6ard Chartist ^rmons in sort Sod , W deS ° ribed the divin % ° f ^ Cass as a soit of Moderate* possessed,-as composed of the common- phiecs of a tame and inefficient morality, that never made any one more moral, shaken into uncouth activity by the eccentric energies of the revolutionary spirit One tf their p" we heard descant on missions. What particular view did he take of them | or what is the opinion formed regaxdiW them by the lay theologians of Chartism , Exactly X M^ derate view, as recorded in the debate of ] 796. The preacher t 6 ~b tt T *****-*! -V. —, heVeemed * Lttle better than a crime to waste the resources of the country «, benefiting foreigners, when there was so much to be done in our own country. "Charity, child charitvi" sa,d Mrs Tabitha Bramble, in entering her" rotel M. benevolent donation of her brother, honest Matthew^-" — and a very expressive vocabulary it is, for at least narrative, description, and sentiment : in the other case, the acquaintance is limited, among the great bulk of the people, to a narrow round of ordinary terms. If there be no fatal defect on the part of the preacher, a Highland congregation is invariably an attentive one ; and rarely have we seen High- landers more seriously attentive anywhere than in the church- yard of Daviot on this communion Sabbath. The minister of the parish (the late Mr M'Phail) preached inside the church to an English congregation of about two hundred. He was a devout and excellent man, — a man of very considerable wit, too. Mr MThail's discourse, like that of the Gaelic preacher outside, was a very impressive one, and the congregation were deeply attentive. We were struck,' however, accustomed as we were to the state of matters in the north, with the small proportion which the communicants of the parish bore to its general population : the number of females at the communion table considerably exceeded that of the males, as is commonly the case where communicants are not numerous, but the whole taken together were dispro- portionately few. And yet we could not avoid the conclu- sion, notwithstanding,— a conclusion which we have since had repeated opportunities of verifying,— that the people of Daviot are a serious and moral people, patient of religious instruc- tion, and warmly attached, like all the rest of their country- men, to the doctrines of the Evangelical school. They can understand and value the religion fitted by Deity to the wants and wishes of the human heart. The parish is under the patronage of the Crown. When the good Mr M'Phail was on his death-bed, the people came to understand that interest had been made in high quarters to pre-engage Lord John Russell, if possible, in favour of a certain young gentleman, who would have deemed two hun- dred a year and a free house a very comfortable settlement. 206 THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. It was not quite the time they could have chosen for them- selves for urging anything of a counteractive tendency with his Lordship ; but they had no choice, just as a Christian army, when attacked by an enemy on the Sabbath, can have none ; and so they united to petition Lord John that the ap- pointment might be left open. His Lordship cordially ac- quiesced : he went even further, and stated that any clergy- man whom they agreed in recommending would be given to the parish. Mr M'Phail died, and rather more than two- thirds of the adult male parishioners united in petitioning the Crown for the Rev. Mr Cook, one of the clergymen of Inver- ness, — a gentleman, be it remarked, already settled as a mi- nister in a town which, from its size and population, is known all over the country as the capital of the Highlands. The parish of Daviot is very extensive, — we believe, from eighteen to twenty miles in length ; and yet, in little more than twenty-four hours all the signatures were adhibited to the petition, — surely proof enough of itself that any charge of canvassing the parishioners, which might be preferred against Mr Cook or his friends, could not possibly be just. The people of a district twenty miles in extent, when exceedingly anxious to sign a petition, may contrive to do so in a very short time ; but to canvass such a parish, in order to render people willing who were not willing before, cannot be done quite so much in a hurry. It was one of the objections to Bayes, in the " Rehearsal," that, for the sake of probability, he should not have brought about his great changes so very suddenly. ISTow, on the allegation that the parishioners had been canvassed, — an allegation unsupported, of course, by any inquiry, for inquiry might have led to very inconvenient re- sults, — the prayer of the petition was refused. We attach no blame to Lord John Russell. He has been somewhat im- prudent in believing too rashly, and that is just all. A presentation to the parish was issued through his Lord- THE PRESENTATION TO DAVIOT. 2^7 ship, in behalf of a young man favoured by his friends, but ■whom rather more than two-thirds of the people have resolved not to receive or acknowledge as their minister. They could only reject him, however, through their representatives the communicants, seven of whom also declared against him, — as nearly as may be the same proportion of this class as of the other. The poor people were very much in earnest. The day approached on which the sf" T en were to exercise their privilege of the veto before the Presbytery. Their fellow- parishioners were anxiously solicitous that they might be able to give an independent and resolutive " No" on the occasion, both in their own behalf and in theirs, without the fear of laird or factor before them, and urged them, therefore, to say whether any of them were in arrears with their rent, that they might instantly, by joint contribution, discharge them from the obligation. The evening preceding the meeting of Presbytery arrived, and on that evening the seven communi- cants were interdicted by the Court of Session from exer- cising their right. It is unnecessary to comment on either the cruelty or the unprecedented nature of such a proceed- ing. We may instance, however, one of the dishonourable sophisms which our opponents employ in this case, as a pretty fair specimen of the whole. Instead of opposing in their statements the majority of the seven communicants to the minority of the three, and the majority of rather more than two-thirds of the parish to the minority of rather less than one-third of it, they oppose the majority of the one -third to the minority of the seven. The argument, it must be con- fessed, is worthy of the cause. We may state, too, a fact which illustrates the tone of feeling on the opposite side. The people of the parish of Daviot are far from wealthy. High- landers on small sterile farms rarely save money ; and there has been very little laid by by the people of this moorland district. In the true Presbyterian spirit, however, they have 208 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. declared their willingness to lay down their hardly-earned pounds by tens and twelves a-piece, rather than submit to the intrusion of a minister who, in their conscience, they believe unsuited to edify them. Such is the spirit which our Dr Bryces and our John Hopes would trample into the very dust ; but by Him who commended the poor widow and her humble. offering, it ma/ be very differently regarded. — Febru- ary 12, 1840. THE COMMUNI CANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. [In the preceding articles, the Disruption controversy is illustrated in its inimediate bearing on the rights of the Christian people, invaded by patronage. In that which follows, — the second point at issue, — the pos- session of an independent spiritual jurisdiction by the Christian Church comes into view. The majority of tbe Strathbogie Presbytery had been suspended by their ecclesiastical superiors ; the minority had been em- powered to exercise all Presbyterial functions ; and ministers had been appointed to conduct public worship in the parishes of the former. The majority applied to the Court of Session for. an interdict to arrest all action of the ecclesiastical authority in the matter ; and the decision of the Court was favourable to their claim. ] In the belief that the Church in her present straggle can have no better friend than the simple truth, we presented the reader in a recent number with an outline of the Daviot case, and a slight, but, we trust, faithful, sketch of the character of the parishioners. The poor Highlanders of Daviot are not un- worthy the protection of the Scottish Church, though the number among them in full communion with her are so dis- proportionately few. But why are not these more numerous, since the general morals of the people seem so good % "We crave the tolerance of tbe reader should we take what may seem a circuitous route in answering this question. Civilization did not travel through Scotland with railway THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 209 speed three centuries ago. There are still very considerable differences between different districts of the country : the same fastnesses which kept out the Romans and the English of old still keep out improvement and the arts ; and the Scotchman desirous to acquaint himself with the manners and usages which prevailed in the days of his great-grandfather, and curious to pass, as it were, from the present century to the middle of the century before the last, has but to transport himself to the Western Highlands of Ross-shire, or to some of the remoter islands which lie beyond. About the period of the Union even the Lowland districts of the north of Scot- land were fully a hundred years behind the Lowland districts of the south ; — they were inhabited by a wilder and more tur- bulent race ; and were, with the exception of a few insulated localities, Presbyterian only in name. The framework of the Scottish Church had been erected in them, but the spirit was wanting. Much, however, about the time rendered remarkable by the revival at Cambuslang and Kilsyth, a widely-extended dis- trict in the northern portion of the kingdom became the scene of a similar change. The popular mind suddenly awoke to the importance of religion ; the inhabitants of almost entire villages were converted ; prayer-meetings were established ; clergymen became deeply fervent and instant in duty ; and the morals of a considerable portion of the people rose at once, from the comparatively abject state which obtains in half-civilized communities, to the high Christian level. It is a fact well known to persons acquainted with the history of parties in the Church for the last eighty years, that no in- considerable portion of the Evangelical minority in our As- semblies was drawn from this northern district ; and that, at a period when Moderation was either extending its paralyzing influences over the people of the south, or wholly estranging them from the churches in which their fathers had worshipped, o 210 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. ministers of a very different theology, and of a very opposite character, were scattering the good seed liberally in this high- ly-favoured northern province, and that the blessing of God largely accompanied their labours. The effects of the change were all the more marked from the state of manners and morals prevalent at the time it took place. There is a mighty difference between civilization and barbarism ; and Christianity contrasts much more strongly with the one than with the other. There was indisputably an all-essential difference between an Ebenezer Erskine or a Thomas Bateman before and after their conversion, but by no means so cognizable a difference as between the New Zea- land warriors described by the missionary Williams, before and after the same important change had passed upon them. The Scottish divine and the English physician were both re- spectable members of society when practically unacquainted with the truth. But not even the miracle wrought by our Saviour on the wild man who lived solitary among the tombs was more marked in its effects than the conversion of the two New Zealand chiefs, as recorded by the missionary. Previous to the change which transformed them into gentle and sin- gularly compassionate-hearted men, the fierce and remorse- less murderers and cannibals had never spared sex nor age, — had never fought with an enemy whom they had not sub- dued, — nor had they ever subdued a poor wretch whom they had not destroyed. Now, the change in our northern dis- tricts was one of striking contrast, on the same principle. It took place among a rude people. There were cases tried at the time by the hereditary barons on the court hills ; the town of Tain executed a Strathcharan freebooter on the bo- rough gallows, several years after ; and cattle-lifting was com- mon in all the districts, in at least the more immediate neigh- bourhood of the Highlands. On one occasion the parish of Nigg, — a parish in the eastern district of Ross, and one ot THE COMMUNICANTS OP THE NORTH COUNTRY. 211 the centres of the revival, — was swept, in a single night, of all its cattle, by a band of caterans from the west. The clergy- man, Mr Balfour, a brave as well as a good and eminently useful man, immediately set himself at the head of his pa- rishioners, pursued after the freebooters, overtook them in a wild Highland glen, fought them, beat them, and brought back the cattle. "We have remarked that this northern district was a full century behind the Lowland districts of the south in general civilization. It is a rather striking fact, too, that the reli- gion of the revival of this period resembled, in some of its accidental accompaniments, the religion of the south in the previous century. Christianity is ever the same, but it acts at different times on vei f different materials ; and though the greater effects are invariably identical, its minor traits occasionally differ with the character of the people on whom it operates. There are anecdotes related of the Pedens, Ca- merons, and Cargills, of the days of Charles II., that one hesitates either to receive or to reject, in at least their full extent ; there are anecdotes of an almost identical character told of the later worthies of the northern districts. Stories are still preserved of a Donald Roy of Nigg, — one of the first elders of the parish after the re-establishment of Pres- bytery at the Revolution, — which, if inserted in the tracts of Peter "Walker, or the older editions of the " Scots "Worthies," would be found to amalgamate so entirely with the more cha- racteristic anecdotes of these works, that the nicest judgment could not distinguish betwixt them. And Donald was only one of a class. There were prayer-meetings, as we have said, established very generally over the district at this period. There were also meetings of a somewhat different character, and which resembled much more the meetings of an earlier age in the history of the Scottish Church, than the contemporary meet- 212 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. ings of the same period in the south. In the 12th chapter of the First Book of Discipline we find it laid down, that in every town where there were " schools and repaire of learned men, a certain day in every week should be appointed for the exercise of what St Paul calls prophesying." The chapter recommends that meetings be held for the edification of the Church, " by the interpretation of Scripture,"' and that at these meetings, not only should lay elders be invited to communicate their views of particular passages for the benefit of the whole, but also ordinary members of the Church, if qualified by grace and nature for the duty. Now, meet- ings of exactly this primitive character were established in the north at the time of the revival ; and in several districts of the country they still continue to be held. A text of Scripture is proposed as an exercise at the open- ing of the meeting ; and, in the manner prescribed in the First Bock of Discipline, the individuals who take part in it rise in succession, either to propound their views of the pas- sage, or to adduce from their own peculiar experience facts illustrative of its truth. We have listened with wonder to the extempore addresses delivered at some of these meetings by untaught men, — men from remote upland districts, who had derived their sole knowledge of religion from meditation and the Bible. Their simple truthfulness and earnest fer- vour, — their exhibition of the workings of the human heart under the opposing influences of good and evil, — their views of the effects of the renovating principle on the one hand, and the original depravity, acted upon by temptation, on the other, — their enumeration of the various stages through which the pilgrim has to pass, and the changes effected in his views and opinions, — all these, in at least the choicer passages, have powerfully reminded us of Bunyan, — the unapproachable Shakspeare of Christian literature. The individuals who take part in these meetings are emphatically termed " the men." THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 21 S Though generally elders of the Church, they are not inva- riably so. Death is fast wearing them out. We have seen in one parish church, in the north, the elders' pew filled with them from end to end, — all worthies of the right stamp, who would have joyfully betaken themselves to the hill-side in the present quarrel ; but their honoured heads are all low to-day. Now, there are three points to which we would recall the attention of the reader. The striking contrast between the manners and morals of the people in this district when Chris- tianity was first introduced among them with power and effect, and the very opposite state of manners and morals in- duced by its influence, is the first of these. It is a curious fact, that the striking nature of this contrast, though all that remains of it be now merely traditional, has still a very marked influence on the people. It affects till this day the popular estimate of the religious character. But, unluckily, the good Protestant recollection of it is associated with a somewhat Popish feeling ; and the high respect for the eminent Chris- tians of a century ago is perhaps not sufficiently tempered by a recollection of the only ground on which, eminent as they were, they could have stood in the presence of Deity. Not merely is the pious ancestor raised high on a pedestal over the descendant, but that very pedestal proves also a stum- bling-block to the descendant. We need only advert to the second point, as corresponding in character to the first. No- thing easier than to anticipate the effects on people so pre- disposed, of those sentiments of awe and veneration neces- sarily inspired by the belief that the more eminent Chris- tians of the district had received, in their close walk with God, like the Pedens and Cargills of a former age, gifts and powers of an extraordinary character, through which they were at times enabled to triumph signally over the invisible enemies of another world, and at times to discern afar ofF 214 THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. the form and colour of events while yet enveloped in the un- certain obscurity of the future. The peculiar character and constitution of what we may term the meetings of the men is the third point to which we would direct the attention of the reader. With much, doubt- less, that is excellent in them, they operate in the track of the traditional recollections adverted to. They raise, if we may so express ourselves, the standard of Christian qualifica- tion, by bringing before the great body of the people the pe- culiar experiences of singularly devoted and highly medita- tive natures as tests for trying men's spirits, and through which the believer is to judge whether he has in reality re- ceived of the Spirit of truth. Now, the great bulk of the population anywhere cannot form too lofty ideas of Christian morality or Christian privilege, nor is the estimate formed by the people of the north more than adequately high. But there is a mixture of error in it, inasmuch as it bears at least as direct reference to experiences of devout natures in an advanced stage of the Christian pilgrimage, to gifts very rarely bestowed, and to attainments not often made, as to the infinite merits of the full atonement and the free grace of that adorable Being through whom the believer can alone be ren- dered worthy. The effects on gloomy and melancholy na- tures, — the Little Faiths, the Feebles, and the B,eady-to- Halts, of the Church, — have been in some instances very sad. There have been men in these northern districts thoroughly awakened to a clear perception of the realities of the unseen world, and whose lives were " hid with Christ in God," who have yet walked in darkness all their days, anxious and doubt- ful, and who could never command the necessary confidence to approach the communion table. The great bulk of the people stand afar off, impressed with feelings like those which held back the Israelites of old from the Mount, — not, be it remarked, because they are indifferent, or deem lightly of the THE COMMUNICANTS OF THE NORTH COUNTRY. 215 privilege, but because they esteem themselves not worthy. And hence it is that communicants in this northern district are so few. We are acquainted with men who would lay down their lives for the Scottish Church, and who have ranged themselves, in the present conflict, on the old Pres- byterian side with all the earnest determination of her first fathers, who have not yet entered into full communion with her, and probably never will. Now, on the whole, this state of matters is much to be regretted. It is by no means so bad a state as prevails in some of the southern and midland parishes of Scotland, where the lax morality and imperfect theology of the Moderate school has thrown open the communion table to people of all characters, — to persons who live loosely, and believe they know not what, among the rest. Still, however, it is bad. It substitutes to a certain degree the standard of what we may term a traditional Christianity for the Christianity of the New Testament. It excludes serious and good men from sharing in a great privilege, ©f which they will never be able to ren- der themselves deserving, but which has been purchased for them notwithstanding. It renders the cause of the Church less strong in her present position, in the districts in which it obtains, much as she is loved and venerated among their people. Finally, it lays her open, in cases like that of Da- viot, to the plausible though unprincipled and unsolid ob- jections of designing enemies, who can neither be made to feel nor understand the vast difference which exists between cal- lous and dead consciences indifferent to the truth, and con- sciences scrupulously tender and anxiously awake, — between the practical infidel, who will not eat of the children's bread just because he has no appetite for it, and the timid Chris- tian, who, while he longs after it, is yet restrained by a sense of his own unworthiness, and lives on in unhappiness with- out partaking of it. — February 22, 1840. 216 SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE THE DISTINCTIVE SPIEITUAL INDEPENDENCE THE DISTINCTIVE PRIVILEGE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. We speak with all due respect when we say that, had our ancestors been content that our Church should have been based on the same foundation with the sister Establishment, they might have saved themselves many a harassing struggle, and many a severe and long-protracted pang. Three suc- ceeding generations of our countrymen might have lived and died in peace : there would have been no imperative call to the battle-field, — no need to brave the dungeon and the scaf- fold, — no necessity, when broken and discomfited in the con- test, to retire as, unsubdued in spirit as at first, into the wilder recesses of the country, and, in the midst of privation, suffer- ing, and death, to cherish the indomitable resolution of maintaining in unbroken integrity the spiritual independ- ence of the Church. We respect the English Establishment, with its long list of great and good men; but we are not to place on the same level the dearly-purchased privileges of our own. It is surely well, since the struggle threatens to be a pro- tracted one, to be preparing ourselves for it, — " to be marking our bulwarks, and looking well to our walls." There are strong grounds of hope, and great cause for thankfulness. It is in no new quarrel that the Church and the people of Scotland are now engaged ; the testimony of the past bears direct upon the present and the future ; and we not only know that it is a righteous quarrel, from the principles which it involves, and because it was so especially the cause of the righteous in former times, but because the same unchange- able One who so especially favoured it of old is in the same gracious manner especially favouring it now. We have evi- PRIVILEGE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 217 dence in our favour of the highest kind, and grounds of com- fort on which it is even a duty to build. Nor are the minor considerations to be overlooked. We have read the history of Scotland to very little purpose if we are mistaken in deem- ing firmness one of the main characteristics of the people. It is the history of a determined handful, maintaining their place and name among the nations more on the strength of this quality than on even that of their valour itself. It was their firmness which gave effect to their valour, and enabled them to reap the fruits of it. It was this quality which of old, when English enterprise was so successful in Ireland and France, imparted so different and so disastrous a character and issue to English enterprise in Scotland. "We see it para- mount in the protracted struggle of our ancestors in the thir- teenth century ; we catch a glimpse of it at even an earlier period, when the Dane and the Vikingr ravished our coasts ; we read it legibly inscribed in the remains of the first and second wall with which the Roman belied his proud vaunt of conquest ; we see it standing out in high relief, and en- circled with a halo of moral glory, in the troublous times of Knox and Wishart ; we see it fixed in one unaltered atti- tude during the. whole of the succeeding century, unmoved from its place by the utmost rigour of fierce and remorseless persecution ; we see it, though miserably misdirected and mistaken, in the one striking historical incident of the cen- tury that followed, — in the enterprise of the handful of half- disciplined men who fought their way into the centre of the sister kingdom, and bore down before them the best troops of England again and again. Nor has the character changed in the least ; nor is it forgotten to what country the soldiers belonged who, in one of the earlier battles of the last war, scattered in the charge the invincibles of Napoleon, and against whom, in its latest and bloodiest fight, the pride and strength of France was thrice disastrously broken, and 218 SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENCE THE DISTINCTIVE, ETC. which preserved entire to the last its own iron walL There is surely ground of hope that in this quarrel, so emphatically Scotch, so peculiarly popular, so hallowed by all the old as- sociations, so honoured in the testimonies of departed wor- thies, so thoroughly identified with spiritual religion, so emi- nently favoured with the countenance of Deity, — surely there is ground of hope, that in this quarrel the grand national characteristic will not fail. Our Church has already spoken, and spoken by her greatest man ; and not only did we feel the sense of sacredness and the high obligation of duty which the pledge involved, but we felt also, when the irrepressible plaudits arose around Chalmers, that it was a Scotchman who had spoken, and that it was Scotchmen who approved. We repeat his emphatic words : — " Be it known, then, to all men, that we will not retrace a single footstep. We will make no concession to the Court of Session ; and that not because of the disgrace, but because of the gross and grievous dere- liction, of principle which we would thereby incur. They may by force eject us out of our place, but they never will force us to surrender our principles ; and if the honourable Court should again so far mistake its functions as to repeat or renew its inroads, I trust they will again meet the recep- tion they have already gotten, — ' To whom we gave place by subjection, no, not for an hour, no, not by a hair-breadth.'" It was more than Chalmers who spoke in these sentences: they are instinct with the genius of the Scottish Church, — they embody the main characteristic of the Scottish people. —March 7, 1840. THE " GRASPING AMBITION" ETC. 219 THE "GRASPING AMBITION" OF THE NON-INTRUSIONISTS. We have just seen in a Liberal London newspaper, — favour- able to the cause of dissent in the degree in which dissent is political, and wholly indifferent to it in the degree in which it is religious, — a smart paragraph on the Church question. It reiterates the charge of clerical ambition and usurpation first preferred against the ministers of our Church, in the present struggle, by the Dean of Faculty, and then idly ban- died among his party, until caught up by the Voluntaries in the manner in which drowning men clutch at straws. But miserably unsuited does it seem to serve their purpose. Our London contemporary " has repeatedly stated," he says, " that the great object of the clerical non-intrusionists is to grasp the whole patronage of the Church of Scotland." He adds further, that " the usurpers will ultimately be defeated /' and then concludes, hardly two sentences after, by asserting that the balance in favour of the non-intrusionists (the ambitious and usurping clergymen, be it remembered) was secured " by the burgh elders elected to the General Assembly under the Municipal Reform Bill." Well has it been remarked, that error is ever inconsistent. It is not in the nature of things that good argument should favour a bad cause, or that what is true should militate against what is right. It is no very difficult matter to say how a man such as the Dean of Faculty should be led, through a confusion of ideas natural to his party on religious subjects, half to believe his own charge. He, of course, sees that the great principle for which the Church is contending cannot exist without mightily strengthening one of our two ecclesiastical parties, and ulti- mately wearing out the other. He sees that if the majority 220 THE " GRASPING AMBITION" carry their measure, they must become an immensely more preponderating majority. He sees, further, that they must of course possess some measure of power as such, — not quite the sort of power possessed by his friends of old, but still a species of power ; and seeing this, and reasoning in part from his own feelings, and in part from a pretty close acquaintance with the governing motives of his party, he concludes that this modicum of power is the main object of the struggle, and, in accordance perhaps with the professional license, de- scribes it as the only object. All this is easily understood. It is equally obvious that in every struggle which terminates decisively, the conquering party becomes the more powerful one. When Christianity rose over paganism, Christians be- came in consequence more powerful ; when Protestantism rose over Popery, Protestants became in consequence more powerful ; when Presbyterianism rose over Prelacy, Presby- terians became in consequence more powerful ; and there were no doubt respectable, gross-minded pagan, and popish, and prelatic gentlemen in those days, who, like the Dean of Pa- culty in our own times, would have looked to the inevitable power as the actual prize secured by those straggles, and as therefore the main object of the conquering parties. All this, we repeat, is easily understood ; and it may be understood at least equally easily from the instances adduced, that a mere consequence arising out of any measure may be an essen- tially different thing from the great end proposed by that measure. It was no thirst of power that Christianized the world; it was no thirst of power that reformed the Church. It is well to consider further the mode in which the non- intrusion principle can alone add to the power of the rising party, by adding, of course, to their number. It can add to their power only through the medium of the people They are popular, — the people love them, and they detest their opponents. The non-intrusion principle, if fairly established. OF THE NON-INTRUSIONISTS. 221 would be simply a power conferred on the people of rejecting the men whom they hate. The power of the popular party in the Church would be a mere consequence, therefore, of the exertion of this power on the part of the people. If the party ceased to be popular, they would inevitably cease to be powerful, just in the way that their unpopular opponents are ceasing to be powerful. And this, then, is the kind of usurpa- tion and grasping ambition with which they are charged ! They love the people, and the people love them ; they are striving to protect the people from the objects of their hate, by extending to them an ability of protecting themselves ; and they are therefore called ambitious, and usurpers. The Tyrant of the Cheronese Was freedom's best and dearest friend. But what is the particular kind of power which their popu- larly-acquired majorities is to secure to them 1 Power to get churches for their sons and nephews 1 No ! The people have been vetoing the sons and nephews of very worthy men, because, though they liked the worthy men themselves, they did not like their sons and nephews. What sort of power, then 1 ? Power of a far nobler and widely different character, — power to put down the men who used to force their sons and nephews into churches against the will and the interests of the people, — power to overrule the counsels of the hire- lings who partook of the people's patrimony, but who wrought not for the people's good, — power to labour more and more effectually for the benefit of the people, — power, through their hold of the affections of the people, to spread anew the bless- ings of Christianity among the masses broken loose from its sacred and humanizing influences, — power to stem, for the good of the people, the demoralizing flood of infidelity which is threatening to bear them down, as it has borne down the millions of other countries, — power adequately to extend to 222 THE " GRASPING AMBITION" the people, as of old, the blessings of religion and the light of learning. The popularity of the party now happily dominant in the Church constitutes more than their strength ; it is founded on a principle which renders it also their most powerful re- commendation. It was not by nattering the people that men such as Knox and Melville became the trusted and be- loved leaders of the people. They led them on the same high principle through which the discourses of our Saviour were so eminently popular, and through which crowds were at- tracted by the preaching of the Apostles, wherever they went, God, in his wisdom and goodness, has fitted the glad tidings of salvation which He reveals to the human nature which He has made ; the common people listen gladly to the gospel now, as of old, even when they close not with its offers; and the men who preach it in sincerity and truth partake of its popularity ; and hence their influence with the congregations whom they address. Nor has this body of men, — the Evan- gelical ministers of our country, the true representatives and descendants of our elder worthies, — ever deceived the people of Scotland. What was the object of their long-protracted struggles in the past 1 Solely and exclusively the glory of God and the good of the people. The history of Rome fur- nishes us with one example of a poor patriotic man quitting his plough to lead the armies of his country, and, after he had fought her battles and defeated her enemies, returning a poor man to his plough again. The history of the Scottish Church abounds in such examples; — the biographies of all her better ministers repeat the story of Fabricius. Who has not heard of the Herculean labours of Knox, and Melville, and Calderwood, and Bruce, and Henderson, and Guthrie, and those of their noble-minded coadjutors and associates, the other saints and martyrs of our Church 1 Where are the patrimonies which they bequeathed to their children, or OF THE NON-INTRUSIONISTS. 223 what the amount of the riches which they hoarded 1 "What was Knox's share of the forfeited Church lands 1 Just Fa- bricius's share of the spoils. Manfully did he struggle for these with a grasping and selfish aristocracy, but it was ex- clusively on the people's behalf. However great the oppor- tunities of accumulation possessed by these men, they all died poor, many of them in utter destitution ; but their wealth abideth notwithstanding, and an assembled world will hear of it at the last day. We have but to look, too, at the con- stitution which they framed for our Church, to be convinced that they nourished in their poverty and self-denial no priestly feeling of exclusiveness, — that their struggles were no Jesui- tical struggles for the advancement of their order, — that all which they did and suffered was truly and unequivocally for the cause of God and the people. "With a liberality unmatch- ed, save in the times of the Apostles, they provided that the layman and his minister should sit together in their ecclesias- tical courts armed with exactly the same authority, and gave to the people at large the power of choosing both. The Pres- byterians of Scotland knowing this, and knowing, too, that the kindred spirits who represent these worthies in the pre- sent day are influenced by no lower motives than those by which they were animated, and that they pursue objects not merely similar, but identical, are not to be deceived by the palpably unjust charges of either hireling pleaders or prosti- tute scribes, who, mean-spirited and selfish themselves, have no heart to appreciate virtues removed not only beyond their practice, but even beyond their conception. That body are surely worthy of all trust who were never yet found to de- ceive. — March 25, 1840. 224 POPULAR ESTIMATE POPULAR ESTIMATE OF THE TWO PARTIES. " Rejection -without reasons." How is it that the two great parties in the Church have come to differ so entirely on a point like this 1 — that the one party are so much disposed to trust to the people, and the other so determined to place no confidence in them, unless they cannot possibly help it ? The question is a very simple one, but the reply involves some rather important principles. It is a striking fact, but not the less a certain one, that the men most generally beloved and respected by the Presbyte- rians of Scotland, and the men most thoroughly disliked and despised by them, have been members of the same profession, and have belonged to the same body. The political field north of the Tweed has hitherto been singularly barren in patriotism. We have a few names which belong to our ear- lier struggles with England that are worth remembering, and that we are not at all likely soon to forget ; but the Scottish politicians of the after ages are of a very questionable charac- ter indeed. Contrast our history in this respect with that of England. Where are our Hampdens, our Seldens, our Russells, our Algernon Sidneys, — where even our gallant and generous spiiits, noble and disinterested on a basis of romance, — our Sir Philip Sidneys and Sir Walter Raleighs? Scotland reckons no such names among those of her states- men of the last three centuries. The soil has been unfa- vourable to patriotism ; the people, in consequence, down to a recent date, had no political existence. We have had great abundance of crafty politicians, — Mortons, and Maitlands, and Middletons, — men bent on the aggrandizement of themselves and their families, and as faithful to their masters as their na- tures allowed ; but we have had no patriots, if, indeed, we do not except Fletcher of Salton ; and so much was he a republi- OF THE TWO PARTIES. 225 can of the old school, that he would only have set free one-half the people, and made the other half slaves. Certain it is, however, that Scotland has her revered and honoured names notwithstanding, — names in no respect inferior to those of England, and now, after the lapse of centuries, much better known to the people. For every Englishman who knows anything of Hampden, w.-j will find at least twenty Scotchmen who love and venerate the memory of Knox. All the true patriots of our country, — the men who stood out disinterest- edly in the cause of the people^ and elevated them by their labours in the moral and intellectual scale, — have been either ministers of the Church, or persons who had caught from them the truly liberal spirit which genuine Christianity never fails to infuse. Who was it that first addressed his " beloved brethren," the "commonality," at a time when they were sunk in the slavery of vassalage and told them of a high spiritual level on which, as immortal creatures for whom Christ had died, they were no whit inferior to their masters? "Who was it that assured them that, "albeit God had ordained distinction and difference in the administration of civil policies betwixt kings and subjects, rulers and common people, yet in the hope of the life to come he had made all equal V Who but the greatest and the noblest of our patriots, — the man whose large-minded educational schemes are still half a century a- headof our age, — who shared his principles and maxims of poli- tical liberty with his friend, the elegant and masculine-minded Buchanan, — " principles and maxims," says Sir James Macin- tosh, "delivered with a precision and enforced with an energy which no former age has equalled, and no succeeding age has surpassed," and the liberality of whose ecclesiastical polity our better Churchmen are even now striving at a distance to approach. There is little wonder that the people of Scotland should continue to cherish and venerate the memory of Knox. Our great reformer is the true type and representative of p 226 POPULAR ESTIMATE the popular party, — the Christian patriots of Scotland It is no difficult or uninteresting matter to trace the line through our country's history, from the days of Mary downwards. There is, in truth, not much else on which the eye can rest with pleasure. Unquestionably the author of the " Scots Worthies" gave his book the right name : the men whose biographies he relates were emphatically the worthies of Scot- land ; and the popularity of the work shows how decidedly the great bulk of the population have acquiesced in the pro- priety of the title. Nor is the popularity of the party less shown by the history of our Church in the last century than by that of the century which went before. Who but the Erskines and their followers could have led away from the Es- tablished Church five hundred congregations of Scottish Pres- byterians warmly attached to the Church of their fathers 1 We have been much impressed by the abiding character of the memory and influence of ministers of the true stamp in our country districts. There are individuals of no other class so long remembered by the people of Scotland ; striking passages from their oral discourses, only once delivered, sometimes survive the men themselves for two whole generations. Even in our larger towns, where the population are more in a state of flux, half a century hardly succeeds in effacing the cherished recol- lection of an eminent minister. Dr Balfour of Glasgow is better remembered in that city than any other man connected with the place who died so many years ago ; and we ques- tion whether the recollection of Dr Andrew Thomson is not more deeply impressed on the mind of the Edinburgh people, members of the Church, than that of any other citizen whose career of eminence and usefulness terminated within the present century. There does not exist a tenderer or more enduring tie among all the various relationships which knit together the human family, than that which binds the gospe] minister to his people. OF THE TWO PARTIES. 227 It is not less certain, however, that there is a very con- siderable portion of our Scottish clergy less popular, and re- garded more generally with jealous dislike, than any other class in the country ; nor is it any hatred of the order through which they suffer, for it is identically the same portion of the people who most venerate their brethren, that most dis- like them. In nine cases out of ten the minister of a coun- try parish is either the man most loved and respected in it, or the man least cared for, and against whom the strongest prejudice is entertained. Half the witticisms of the country have been made at the expense of the cloth ; and it will in- variably be found, that the more secular-minded the clergy of a district become, the more readily will these be picked up and repeated. The mere fact of their existence shows nothing. Shimei cursed David ; the dragoons of the times of Charles II. were merry at the expense of the men whom they persecuted and murdered. Moderatism in Strathbogie has been profane in bad rhyme in attempting to be smart on some of the most revered ministers of our Church ; and an Edinburgh artist, who has humour enough to make capital caricatures, and wisdom enough not to publish his creed, has been following in the same track. But in all these, and in similar instances, the joke meets with no response in the public mind. "Very different is the case, however, when it affects a degraded and earthly-minded clergy. There is a disposition to receive and repeat. Dr Johnson, with all his high respect for the English Church, could yet solemnly assure Boswell, in one of his serious moods, that he had scarce ever met with a pious clergyman ; the time (that of the reign of Moderatism in our own country) was unquestion- ably a time of spiritual death in the sister Establishment ; and it is well to remember that this was also the time when clergymen were the subjects of ridicule among every class of the English people, high and low, and the butts of almost 228 POPULAK ESTIMATE every company. It was the atrocities of the French Revo- lution that first secured some little degree of respect for the cloth in the upper walks of society, by showing that even the husk of religion, the mere empty shell, could not be safely slighted. Christian clergymen cannot occupy with comfort a middle place, — they cannot rest in the mere mediocrity of their station as gentlemen of from three to four hundred a- year ; and we accept it as one of the many proofs of the excellence of religion, that such is the case. Even the men who do not profess to believe in Christianity at all, tacitly confess how highly they estimate its value, by the severity of their animadversions on unfaithful clergymen, and the high standard of morality and extensive usefulness by which they try them. IsTo one ever expects morals of a high tone, or usefulness of a signal character, from the priests of a false religion. Their duties are comprised in a miserable round of absurd rites and ceremonies ; and if they do no positive mischief, — if they be content with simply doing nothing, — we think they do well. But members of a Christian minis- try are tried by another standard. Hence one great cause of the unpopularity of the body now the minority in the Church. But there are other causes besides. The Moderate school is singularly unfavourable to the production of popular talent in the ministry. It has unquestionably produced some very able men. Robertson was only inferior to his friend and contemporary Hume ; and the sermons of Blair, though occasionally heavy, are nearly as finished pieces of composition as the Loungers and Mirrors of M'Kenzie. But though such men, when they exerted tliomselves, could no doubt be listened to from the pulpit with a good deal of intellectual gratification, the preachers of this school, regarded as a body, have been miserably tame and inefficient. In truth, Scotland does not produce talent enough, even were the whole of it engaged in the Church, OF THE TWO PARTIES. 229 to till her thousand pulpits with Moderate ministers of but middling interest as preachers ; and ordinary men are totally •insulted to make an impression. What is there within the reach of such % The commonplaces of morality dressed dp in the merest commonplaces of language, — the gum-flowers of false rhetoric all fashioned after one tame pattern, — the offensive pulings of a sickly sentimentality ; — really there is little to wonder at in finding the churches where such minis- ters preach deserted by more than half their people, and the rest fallen fast asleep. Are our readers acquainted, however, with the case of men of even this stamp awakened in the middle of their indifference to a pervading sense of the im- portance of the one thing needful? — of men of ordinary powers who preached inefficiently for years, and then became con- verts to the truth % We are acquainted with cases of this kind ; we are convinced, too, that there are few districts in Scotland in which our readers have not either known or heard of such, and have not been struck, like ourselves, by the de- gree of popular talent which the change seemed at once to communicate. No doubt a great deal must have depended, as it always does in such cases, on the new tone of earnest- ness imparted to the preacher. Men who wish to affect others must first be affected themselves. Much must have depended, too, on the whole mind being brought into play, — not the intellectual part merely, but the affections and the sentiments also. The grand difference, however, must have consisted in the newly-acquired anxiety to communicate the revealed truths of God, instead of the mere cogitations of the speaker. The change substituted the scheme of salvation in all its infinite wisdom, for the jejune reflections and tame inefficient moralizings of an ordinary man. Boston and Wil- lison were by no means superior men to Blair and Logan, and certainly far inferior writers : why are they in such high repute among the people of Scotland, and the others left to 230 THE EARL OF ABERDEEXS BILL. the admiration of Moderate ministers and their supporters I Simply from their being what the more fashionable divines were not, — faithful interpreters of the mind of God. Hence one of the most gratifying circumstances connected with the popularity of the dominant party. It is not a popu- larity unworthily acquired. It does not even result from the gratitude of the people for important services rendered to them in the past, though this, no doubt, has its influence. It arises chiefly from the nice adaptation which exists between the popular mind and the truths of revelation, and the natu- ral attachment which obtains between the faithful preacher and his flock. And hence, too, the importance of what we may term the Shibboleth of the party, "rejection without reasons," and the dreaded abhorrence with which the Moderate section regard it. They have translated the phrase aright in its bearing on themselves, and find that it embodies exactly the same meaning with the handwriting on the wall. — April 25, 1840. THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. The Earl of Aberdeen brought forward, on Tuesday last, his long expected bill on the Church question. Cowper tells us of men who "do nothing with a deal of skill." His Lord- ship has been doing nearly as much without the skill. He proposes to re-enact an already existing law, which has cer- tainly not been suffered to fall into desuetude, and to do for the Church what he confesses the Church, in even her pre- sent circumstances, can do for herself. In one important re- spect, however, the proposed measure is better than if it had not been so bad. It will, no doubt, satisfy Dr Cook and his THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 23] friends, for it does not contain a single clause which might not have emanated from the Doctor himself. Dr Muir would perhaps have framed a somewhat more liberal measure, though he, too, will soon be able to accommodate himself to its pe- culiarities, just as he learned to accommodate himself to the policy of Dr Cook. But no individual who voted with Dr Chalmers can consistently acquiesce in the bill introduced by the Earl of Aberdeen. It will satisfy all the friends of un- restricted patronage and the old system, but it will not have the effect of dividing the friends of a still older and immensely better system. It will satisfy the class who never yet satis- fied the people ; but the people and their friends it will not satisfy, nor will it have the effect, we trust, of breaking down the majorities of the latter. " The people have at present the right," says the Dean of Faculty, in his pamphlet, — "and that they should have it is most fitting, — of submitting every ground of objection, of whatever kind, which they may entertain against the indivi- dual, to the clergymen of the Presbytery. " The Earl of Aber- deen, in his outline of the proposed bill, says nearly the same thing, only he says it in more words. The patron presents to the vacant parish; and the licentiate, his choice, appears before the Presbytery, who appoint him to preach in the parish church to the people. The people then meet; and if the re- gular communicants have objections to urge of any kind, the Presbytery receive these, either in writing or otherwise. They next sit and decide upon them. If they are held to be in- sufficient, the settlement proceeds, and the presentee is in- truded upon the people ; but if the Presbytery deem them of sufficient force, he is set aside, and the patron presents another. And such are the main provisions of the bill in- troduced by the Earl of Aberdeen. What measure of pro- tection does it furnish which did not exist under the old system ? It adds, perhaps, in some slight degree, to the 232 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. power of our Church courts ; and yet that power was cer- tainly very considerable before. "We find it stated by the Dean of Faculty, that he is aware of no limit either to the nature of the inquiries, or to the strictness of the examina- tions, to which Presbyteries may subject licentiates. The Church may reject, he asserts, on any ground whatever : it has unlimited authority to set aside, — unlimited authority to choose. Now, if this view of the matter be correct, the Earl of Aberdeen, as we have said, is merely re-enacting an ex- isting law ; he is virtually doing nothing, and doing it at a considerable expense. But granting that it is not strictly correct, — granting that some little additional power is con- ferred on our Church courts, — what are the Presbyterian people of Scotland to gain in consequence 1 "What benefits did they derive from the power vested in our Church courts for the greater part of the last century, or in what degree would they have profited had that power been rendered a very little greater ? It was a power in almost every instance employed either against themselves or against the true types and representatives of the original Church, — the pious and devoted ministers whom they most loved and honoured. Po- pular privileges are essentially different things from powers conferred on Church courts ; and we would just request our readers to mark how ready the very men who are most for- ward in calumniating our better ministers, and in raising against them the cry of clerical ambition and clerical usurpa- tion, are to extend to them, notwithstanding, those very powers which they unjustly accuse them of coveting, and how sedu- lously they would withhold every shadow of popular privilege. They profess to dread the encroachments of the clergy, but it is only to conceal how bitterly they dislike all interference on the part of the people. It is scarce necessary to pass over the various statements of the Earl of Aberdeen. He quotes the First Book of Dis- THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 233 cipline after exactly the same fashion as Messrs Paul and Pirie, and proves, to the satisfaction of his Peers, that the scheme of planting vacant parishes laid down by Knox, — a scheme of free election, be it remembered, — was less popular than the one embodied in the veto act. The Upper House was, of course, no place in which his Lordship had any chance of being set right on the point. To the theology of the question there is no reference : the seven suspended minis- ters are respectable ; nor do legislators like his Lordship often look higher. Men who are too virtuous to be punished as immoral are quite suited to teach religious truth; and to urge that there is a very opposite doctrine iu the Bible would of course be fanatical. And yet it does seem but common sense to draw a distinction between negative and positive character ; nor does it appear very absurd to assert, that men amenable to no law may be totally devoid of religion. Let us suppose his Lordship's bill in its present form enacted into statute, and acquiesced in by a majority of the Church. What would be the probable, nay, the inevitable, conse- quences ? The Presbyterian people of the country have been thoroughly aroused on the agitated question, and aroused as a body. At no time were they indifferent to the principle which it involves, and very keenly could they feel, and very promptly could they act upon it. In what cases have the military been employed against the peasantry of Scotland since the rebellion of 1745, except in cases of forced settle- ments ? Or in what other cases have handfuls of poor labour- ing men extended their hours of labour, and lived still more hardly than before, that they might raise their fifties and hun- dreds of pounds, — at first, to contend hopelessly in our courts of law against the intrusion of ministers whom in their con- science they believed not suited to edify them ; and latterly, to build chapels for themselves, and support clergymen of their own choosing, to whose ministrations they could trust 1 234 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. >7ever did the} 7 " cease to feel on the subject; but hitherto they have been aroused to act or resist merely in detail, — aroused by parishes at a time : they are now aroused in a body ; and tremendous will be the revulsion of feeling if they find they have been deceived, and see the ministers in whom they trusted deserting them. We would say to our clergymen, therefore, only give up the true non-intrusion principles em- bodied in the veto act, and you will soon find how fatal an error it was ever to have agitated them. Had you contented yourselves with the provisions of the old system, and suffered Dr Cook or Dr Muir to direct your councils, you might pro- bably have continued to exist as an Establishment for thirty years : retreat from the advanced position which you have taken up, and you will be down in one third of the time. You will find in the supposed case the descent of a falling Church regulated by the laws which accelerate the descent of other falling bodies, and fearfully increasing its rapidity in the succeeding periods ; nor will the Earl of Aberdeen be able to protect or support you. He will be wholly unable to protect or support himself. Yield to his counsels, and timo- rously retreat, — give up the cause of the people, — and you will go down first, and he will follow you. Continue to occupy the Thermopylse in which you have taken up your position, and both may be saved. Your place is not a new one to the venerated ministers and elders of the much-loved Church of our fathers ; but never, perhaps, at any period did so much depend on their decision as now depends on yours. Supposing, however, that there should be no revulsion of feeling on the part of the people, — supposing that they should at once sit down under the disappointment as quietly and passively as if all their present excitement was merely simu- lated, — how would Lord Aberdeen's measure operate in their behalf? We all know the kind of acquirements which enabled the intrusionists of the last and the present century to pass THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. 235 through the sort of vestibule formed by Presbyteries, into the body of the Church : a little tolerable Latin, and a little somewhat less tolerable Greek ; the general smattering of learning which enables clever young men to write indifferent sense in middling bad English, and justifies their high opinion of themselves ; and, withal, that acquaintance with theology which implies a sort of half-knowledge of doctrines which they do not like, and which they cannot understand : add to all this a degree of character which no police court in the kingdom would be able to impugn, and we have before us the qualifications of an accomplished licentiate prepared for ordination, an ornament to his order, and fitted, according to the estimate of Moderate Presbyteries, to carry away the palm from Horsley. The people could neither love nor respect such a man, and by the more serious among them the less would he be loved and respected. "Who that truly believes in the New Testament can think without concern of such a clergyman in connection with a parishioner anxiously awak- ened to inquire, with the jailor, " What shall I do to be saved 1 " — or without horror of him, associated with terrors awakened on a death-bed, — terrors regarding a future state of being, of which he knows nothing, and for which he cares as little 1 He is presented, however, by the patron ; and these feelings on the part of the people, through which he is ren- dered unacceptable to them, are not permitted, by his Lord- ship's provision, to weigh as anything. There is not a more definite assertion in his whole speech than that the mere un- acceptableness of a presentee should be held no disqualifica- tion. The people must render their reasons. To affirm that in their consciences they believe the presentee unsuited to edify them, is not stating a reason, — it is merely expressing a belief, — merely emitting such a declaration as the one re- quired by the veto act. But, even permitting it to stand as a reason, what weight would the suspended ministers of Strath- 236 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN'S BILL. bogie attach to it if urged by the parishioners of Marnoch against Mr Edwards 1 or into what else would it resolve itself, if carried before the higher courts, than into mere unaccept- ableness 1 The " sheep know the voice of the good shepherd, and him they follow ;" but they will not follow a stranger. Why 1 Because, believing him to be a stranger, he is unac- ceptable to them. Even supposing our Church Courts dis- posed at the present time to receive as legitimate almost any objections, and to act upon them, what guarantee have the people that this spirit is to continue ? "Good is ever strongest at its beginning," says Bacon ; " evil ever strongest in con- tinuance." The one exists only through unceasing effort ; the other gathers strength and grows up of itself. We re- mark, farther, that we could not think very highly of even the honesty of men who, when deciding cases on unconfessed and disallowed grounds, could yet hypocritically urge that they decided them on grounds of an entirely different kind. If unacceptableness is not to be recognised as a legitimate cause of rejection, we would ill like to see it made an actual cause, and some unsolid and paltry shadow of objection employed to screen it, meanwhile, as a sort of stalking-horse. Let the Ohurch of Scotland walk in unsullied integrity, as becomes her character, — her motives and her actions alike open to the eye of day. No one could have anticipated, when she took up her pre- sent position, the length to which matters were to be earned against her. Doubts were perhaps entertained whether her hold of the secularities might not possibly be loosened by an enforcement of the principle of the veto ; but could even the shrewdest have imagined that she was to be inhibited from preaching the gospel 1 It was perhaps deemed possible that the civil power might attempt pouncing on her temporalities, but it was not deemed possible that the civil power would attempt jostling her aside from her own proper place among THE SCOTCH PEOPLE, ETC. 237 things spiritual. She has been exposed to unlooked-for trouble. The tempest has been unexpectedly severe ; and mariners are sometimes content in such circumstances to re- turn for shelter to the port which they have quitted. But what might be safety to them would be destruction to her. The heavily freighted and labouring vessel of the Church must not return. There is security in the haven to which she is bound. On the open sea, too, there is comparative safety, let the storm rage as it may ; but inevitable shipwreck awaits her if she turn her prow towards the shore which she has left.— May 9, 1840. THE SCOTCH PEOPLE AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. The people of Scotland have had many compliments paid them, — some on the score of intelligence, some on the score of conduct j and that portion of them on whom, according to Wordsworth, " the Church has laid the strong hand of her purity," has been ever held to comprise, in the true, not the aristocratic sense of the term, their " better classes." The numerous body of whom the Cottar of Burns and the Ped- lar of " The Excursion" may be regarded as samples and specimens, are invariably to be found in communion with either the Established Church, or some one or other of the several branches of Evangelical Dissenters which have sprung from her. "Who ever heard of an intelligent Scotch Papist rising from among the people 1 or where are even the Burnses and Tannahills that represent the Scottish peasants and arti- zans of Episcopacy 1 The national type is decidedly Pres- byterian in its intelligence, and still more decidedly so in its worth and its religion ; and if we but strike off the Presby- 238 THE SCOTCH PEOPLE terian catechumens and communicants of the country from the general mass, — the men either in full communion with the Church or her auxiliaries, or in the course of prepara- tion for such an union, — we leave behind merely a caput mortuum of inert ignorance and superstition, or of fierce and reckless, and, in most instances, quite as ignorant infidelity. The class to which the Church is at present struggling to extend those privileges w T hich so many of her saints and martyrs contended to secure to them includes, in at least the proportion of nineteen-twentieths, the worth, the religion, and the intelligence of the country. On an estimate such as this have the non-intrusionists of the Church founded the measure for the integrity of which they are now called to suffer and resist. Were the estimate different, the measure would also be different. Cases may easily be imagined in which the popular voice would be a very improper element in the choice or rejection of a Christian minister. An entire people may sink into infidelity, as was the case with the French people during the first Revolution ; or they may lie sunk in a state of gross and savage paganism, as is the case at present with the great bulk of the inhabi- tants of New Zealand. Consult the choice of the one class, — the more civilized one, — regarding religion or its teachers, and they trick out for themselves a painted prostitute in the spangled gauds of the opera-house, and, after dignifying her with the name of the Goddess of Reason, they prostrate them- selves before her in simulated worship ; or, more fantastic and more horrid still, they exhume the mouldering remains of the perished apostles of infidelity, and burn incense before the insensate and ghastly skulls. Consult the choice of the other class, and they seek out for themselves their native priests to assist them in their human sacrifices. In both these instances Christianity is compelled to act on a different principle, — the principle on which the Apostles acted, — not AND THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. 239 within the Church, but in their efforts to extend the Church The missionary principle is the only one which applies to the exigencies of such cases, and the people are not asked to choose their teachers, but entreated to listen to the teachers which have been sent to them. It is only when a Christian body have been formed into a Church, as was the case when Knox drew up his First Book of Discipline, that the prin- ciple now contended for can come into operation ; and it is in the well-founded belief that our parochial communicants form such a body,_that all of them are members of the Church of Scotland,-that very many of them are members of the Church of Christ,— that they have a deeper stake in the appointment of their ministers than ministers themselves can possibly possess in their collective character,— that it is a duty demanded of them individually to " try the spirits whether they be of God,»_that to this solemn injunction they are qualified to conform by Him who has laid it upon them,— it is, we assert, in this belief that our Church courts are now struggling to secure to the Chirstian people a direct- ing voice in the appointment of their pastors. If they but believed, on the contrary, that these very people were « a brute insensate herd," an « irresponsible, unreasonable " mob they would never once think of introducing among them such a principle. They contend for their privileges, as those of a Christian people in full communion with a Christian Church. ^ To the great bulk of our readers all this will seem suffi- ciently plain and obvious. They have all heard, and many of them have known from experience, of the general intelli- gence of the Presbyterian people of Scotland. Barely do very superior men rise from among very ignorant masses. It was a Scotch ploughman that described the " Cottar's Satur- day night;" it was a Scotch shepherd that produced the Queen's Wake;" it was a Scotch stone-cutter that wrote 240 MODERATISM rOPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. the " Lives of the British Painters, Sculptors, and Archi- tects ;"' it was a Scotch weaver that bequeathed to -America its " Ornithology ;" it was a Scotch mechanician who in- vented the steam-engine ; it was a Scotch herdboy who first explored the hitherto misunderstood phenomena of the phases of the moon ; it was a Scotch mason who planned the great Caledonian Canal, and threw the bridge over the Menai. Now, from no "brute-herd" could such men have arisen: the classes that look down upon the people as irrational have not yet produced better samples. Our readers are also aware of the religious character of our better Presbyterian people. They are aware, too, that though Milton rightly describes hypocrisy as the " vice which walks unseen," it is not the less true that there is a religious sympathy which draws the good together, and through whose revulsions and antipathies unconverted and secular-minded men are very soon discovered to be such. They are aware, in short, that pious laymen are as thoroughly qualified to choose out for themselves pious, religious teachers, or to detect those who are not so, as the general imperfection and infirmity of judgment which cling to our fallen nature, and which insinuate their mixture of error into all human affairs, allow us to predicate of qualifi- cation, in any case. — May 20, 1840. MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. There is a smart paragraph taking the round of our Scotch newspapers, descriptive of a recent settlement in a northern parish. A vacancy occurred through the death of the in- cumbent, and the parishioners were presented by the patron vrith a leet of four, two of whom were Moderates, and two of M0DERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 241 the opposite party. Means, it is stated, were taken by some of the friends of the latter to influence their choice : the Mo- derates were men of a genial temperament, and the people were told so. One of them, it was urged, was fond of fid- dling ; — "He will be the more useful at weddings," said the people. Nor has he any abhorrence, it was added, of whisky punch ; — " Nor we either," said the people ; "we will go all the oftener to see him." In short, Moderatism triumphed on the principle alluded to by the poet, that " laymen have leave to dance if parsons play." The " fiddling priest" was preferred by a sweeping majority; and the fact is adduced by our contemporaries, either to show that Evangelism is strug- gling to emancipate the people to its own hurt, or that, in some cases at least, parishes choose well. We take the story as we find it, with certainly no proof that it is true, but as certainly with no suspicion that it is false ; for we have seen quite enough of Scotland and its people to know that there are tracts of country in which incidents of the same nature might readily enough occur. "We are acquainted with at least one district in the far north in which it had become a popu- lar saying, at a time when smuggling was more common than it is at present, " Give us but a good-natured exciseman, and it matters little whether you give us a minister or no." One of the great evils of Moderatism is its tendency to ex- tirpate religion altogether. It is no doubt a bad state of matters when dissent is rendered inevitable in a religious parish by the tyranny of a forced settlement ; and it is surely grievous to see the better people of the Church forced reluc- tantly, by congregations at a time, beyond her pale. But there may be a much worse state of matters than this. It is better that there should be religion in a parish, however harshly or cruelly it may be dealt with, than that there should be none ; and there are parishes in Scotland, though the num- ber fortunately is not great, where, through the indifference 242 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. and the irreligion of the people, there can be no forced set- tlements and no dissent. We resided for some time in a parish of this character about sixteen years ago. It lies to the south of Edinburgh; and the parishioners, who were nu- merous at the time, were divided, by the accumulation of capital in the hands of a few, and the prevalence of the large farm system, into two extreme classes, — a class on the low level of the common labourer, which constituted the great bulk of the population ; and a lass, comprising some thirty or forty individuals and their families, who occupied a place in society rather higher than the middle one. Moderatism had been entrenched in the parish pulpit for well-nigh a cen- tury, and Moderatism in its most respectable form. It had neither lived grossly nor taught heresy. It had done no mischief, — it had merely done nothing ; and, instead of per- verting, it had only suppressed, the truth. The incumbent, at the period to which we refer, was an indolent, elderly, re- spectable man, rather dull than otherwise, who, having la- boured in his youth, had a sermon for every Sabbath in the year, and a few additional, and who very properly asserted in them all, and challenged scrutiny, that it was well to be virtuous, and not so well to be vicious, and that fanaticism was a sore evil. The upper class deemed him a sensible man, and heard his one sermon once a week ; the lower had ceased attending Church altogether ; and in scarce any other dis- trict of Scotland have we found a less intelligent or a more irreligious people. The respectable among them — for there are differences among all classes — passed the greater half of the Sabbath in their beds, rose to dinner, and, if the evening was fine, went sauntering about the fields ; with the less re- spectable, Sabbath was a day of drunkenness and dissipation. It was impossible that a forced settlement could have taken place in the parish : there was not religion enough in it to suggest objections or nourish dissent. The people would MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 243 have well-nigh as soon thought of challenging the right of one of* their proprietors to his lands as the right of a presentee to his glebe and stipend ; and had their choice been consulted in his nomination, a turn for fiddling and good fellowship would have been powerful recommendations. It affords us much pleasure to add, that a different state of matters is be- ginning to obtain in this forlorn parish from what obtained in it sixteen years ago ; there is less immorality and less ig- norance and apathy, and the poor people have learned to rise earlier on Sabbath, and to attend Church. The old and highly respectable Moderate, after drawling through his last discourse, was succeeded by a clergyman who preaches Jesus Christ and him crucified ; and the class to whom the gospel was preached of old have gone to hear him. There could be such a thing as a forced settlement in the parish now, and a Secession chapel as a consequence. The apathy and indifference to religion which obtain in only a few districts in Scotland are very extensively spread over the sister kingdom, and dissent, in consequence, does not very often originate in the Church from what we may term an internal principle. The hereditary Dissenter, fixed in one locality, withdraws occasionally a few individuals from out the inert mass, or, as in the days of Whitefield and Wesley, the itinerating Dissenter succeeds in founding, though rarely, a meeting-house among them on the missionary principle. We have been informed, however, by a person intimately acquainted with the subject, that the main, though, as we have said, a not very active cause of dissent in England (for there are at present no very active causes in operation) origi- nates within, not without, the pale of the Church, and in ex- actly the same way in which, as we have shown, it sometimes originates in Scotland. An evangelical Churchman of the Scott or Newton stamp is appointed to a charge ; the inert masses are aroused by those powerfully impressive doctrines 244 MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. of the gospel, fitted by Deity himself to agitate and awaken, and which, through the accompanying influence of the Spirit, render men wise unto salvation ; a church-going and religious people are trained up under his ministry; and, after perform - ino- his work of usefulness, he is summoned to his reward, and passes away. A stranger succeeds him, whose voice the sheep do not know, and whom therefore they will not follow, — perhaps, according to Cowper, "a cassocked huntsman and a fiddling priest," — at least a person who, like our old pastor in the southern parish, neither knows the gospel nor cares for it, and who tells his poor hearers that it is good to be good, and bad to be bad, and wise to eschew fanaticism. Dis- sent is the inevitable consequence of such an appointment in such a pariah ; but who does not see that the cause is a mixed one, and that the Evangelism of the one preacher has as cer- tainly led to it as the Moderatism of the other 1 Puseyism contends for what it terms the apostolic succession ; and, as the question is mixed up with religion, men of sense try to avoid smiling at its amazing absurdity, except when they are not seen ; but there is a real apostolic succession to which it is well to attend, and the neglect of which is injurious to the Church of England now, and has inflicted incalculable injury on the Church of Scotland in the past. The true apostolic succession was kept up when Thomas Scott succeeded John Newton ; but it would have been woefully broken had he been succeeded by the Rev. Titus Oates or the Rev. Dr Dodd ; nor would the imposition of the Bishop's hands have mended the matter in the least. Is our own Church in no danger of breaking the apostolic succession in a certain district, should the ministrations of the Commission's ministers come to be superseded there 1 The people two years ago might have chosen a minister for his skill in fiddling, but they would choose and reject on very different principles now. There is a sufficiently obvious inference which we draw MODERATISM POPULAR, WHERE AND WHY. 245 from the fact furnished us by our contemporaries. The best argument against slavery is deduced from the degradation of character which slavery induces. It brutalizes those whom it oppresses, and renders them unfit for liberty ; but, so far from seeking for its apology in the abuses of slavery, and so far from arguing that it should be tolerated or maintained because it is so execrable as to affect not only the physical, but also the mental condition of men, we contend that it is those very abuses, and those most mischievous effects, which render it so intolerable. Did it affect only the bodies of the unfor- tunates subjected to it, the abolitionist would be less the bene- factor of his species, and more on a level with the class whose benevolent exertions are restricted to the prevention of mere animal suffering. Now, it is with Moderatism as with slavery : the one first treats men as if they were unfit for liberty, and then renders them in reality unfit for it ; the other first treats them as if they were unfit to exercise any influence in the appointment of their spiritual teachers, and then renders them unfit for it, by weaning out the religious feeling from among them, and the knowledge of religious truth. But where, in either case, does the remedy lie 1 In destroying the power of the slave-holder, and emancipating the slave ; — in removing the prop on which Moderatism has leant, and without which it must ultimately fall. In the one case we emancipate a slave unfit for freedom : yes, but he will never be fitted for it in slavery : set him free, and, as happened to the king of Babylon of old, the beast's heart will leave him, and the heart of the man return. In the other case we ex- tend a privilege to people, some of whom are unfitted to exer- cise it aright. True, — we are reminded of that by the very men who rendered them unfit ; but the privilege is in very bad hands already. An unrestricted patronage gives ten in- efficient Moderates to the Church, to darken the popular mind and paralyze the popular judgment, for every one that the 246 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN people will give to it ; and though a few mistakes will be made in those hapless parishes in which Moderatism has been longest encamped, the truth will be gradually spreading around them ; nor is it likely that they can long continue to reverse the miracle in Goshen, by remaining insulated districts of darkness walled by light — June 6, 1840. THE EARL OF ABERDEEN versus THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. The Earl of Aberdeen has determined to press the second reading of his bill The Church of Scotland has had many enemies to contend with, — the priest, the prelate, and the dragoon, — Moderatism, Voluntaryism, the Court of Session, and the author of an unreadable pamphlet. And yet it is the Church of Scotland still. We trust it is also destined to survive his Lordship's measure. The reader has heard of an eagle "struck at and killed" by a "mousing owl," but such prodigies do not happen eveiy day ; and we can hope that that Church of Christ, and the people, which outlived a century and a half of fierce persecution and the bitter hosti- lity of five succeeding monarchs, — two of them at least skilful in playing on double meanings, and one of them remarkable for making long speeches and unreadable books, — may also outlive the assaults of a diplomatist skilful in concealing his intentions by carefully selecting his words, and of a special pleader, always more successful in making his addresses long than his meaning plain. It will be foul shame and dishonour to the people of Scotland if they suffer the Church of their fathers to sink beneath men of a lower grade than even the subsidiary tools of the enemies and persecutors who arrayed themselves against her of old. Our ancestors would have V. THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 247 little recked the enmity of Rothes and Mackenzie, had not the craft of the one and the sophistry of the other been backed by the malignant despotism of Charles. It were well that the Presbyterian people of Scotland should consider how deeply their interests are involved in the present struggle. We address ourselves to them as one of themselves, — simply as one of the humbler people, come out a single step in advance in this quarrel to speak for the rest. We say, therefore, both for them and ourselves, that we have no other stake of equal importance and value with our stake in the Church. Toryism in its first elements, and regarded simply as feeling, does not, and cannot, constitute the politics of the common people ; there are, alas ! few among them easy enough in their present position and cir- cumstances to have no desire of change ; and what can be more natural than that men in the lower walks of society should solace themselves, amid obscurity and toil, with the well-grounded belief, — a belief sanctioned alike by reason and revelation, — that they are in no degree an inferior race of creatures to the men set in authority above them ; that their minds, in many instances, are of no lower order, and that most certainly their immortal souls are of no lower value. And hence a natural Whiggism, which must ever exist in the lower levels, whether the name exists or no. We are not political in making the remark ; we speak with no reference to party ; we state merely a fact. In this W big- gish feeling the politics of the people have their origin. The labouring man snatches at every semblance of reform, for re- form promises to better his condition. But the experience of eight years has shown how little mere statesmanship can do for the masses. The men who laboured twelve hours per day before the Reform Bill passed, labour twelve hours still ; taxation does not press less heavily on the poor now than it did then ; nor are the sufferings of the country less, nor has 248 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN its crime diminished. Goldsmith, was quite in the right when he asserted that little of the misery endured by mankind can be cured by either kings or laws. "We would be unworthy of freedom were we to assert that there is no difference be- tween the slave and the freeman, however sunk in poverty the freeman may be. There is a wide difference. The free- man may, and he often does, toil harder, and he may, and he often does, endure more. We ourselves have toiled as hard as any slave in the colonies, and for well nigh as little, — food and raiment. But in the midst of toil and of poverty the mind of the freeman grows, the intellect ripens, and the sentiments expand; whereas the mind of the slave shrivels and decays. It is chiefly with reference to the better part of man that the poor mechanics and labourers of Scotland are more advantageously circumstanced in the present day than the vassals of Poland or the serfs of Russia. In ad- dressing ourselves to this class, — the " men of handicraft and hard labour," — we say it is incomparably of more ad- vantage that you should have a voice in the nomination of your parish minister, than of the men who represent in Par- liament the districts to which, you belong. Members of Parliament can do very little for you, and you are now be- ginning to discover that such is the case : ministers, if truly men of God, can do a great deal. "We speak to the experience of such of our humbler countrymen as believe in sincerity the truths which the Scriptures reveal. We say, freedom is valuable to you, not because you fare better in consequence of freedom, nor yet because you toil less : such is not the fact ; — you do not fare better, — you do not toil less : it is valuable to you from the independence of mind which it cherishes. Sla- very has meannesses and vices inseparable from it, from which vou are exempted ; and your circumstances, though narrow, need be accompanied by none of that narrowness of intellect almost associated with slavery. And if such be the case, — if V. THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 249 your advantages be chiefly advantages of mind, — shall we deem lightly of what relates to the better portion of the mind, and which involves its concerns for eternity ? You are not creatures of this world only : the God who, in his great mu- nificence, bestowed upon you immortal souls, has revealed unto you their priceless value, and the only way, through the blood of a Redeemer, in which your salvation can be se- cured. And one of the chief means which he has appointed for bringing you into that only way is the preaching of his Word. Of how much importance is it, then, that the Word be faith- fully preached to you ! Now, under the influence of the system espoused by the Earl of Aberdeen, and which his measure has been framed to re-establish, the people need not expect that the gospel will be faithfully preached to them. They have but to re- member the past, in order to enable them to judge, in this respect, of the future : they have but to look at the class of clergymen by whom his Lordship's measure is so zealously advocated, in order to conceive what sort of a Church the body would form of themselves. The ultimate fate of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill will decide whether the patrimony of the Church is in reality to constitute, as was originally intended, the patrimony of the people, or whether, for some- what less than half a generation, and ere it be thrown into the general fund, it is to be appropriated to the support of a corporation of time-serving clergymen, — a class of public stipendiaries of all others the most useless, and which the dictates of a wise economy would select first for suppression, in a course of financial reform. In what degree would Scot- land be the better of a thousand empty churches, in which men ignorant of the gospel would, with their lifeless minis- trations, desecrate the Sabbath for hire ? It is impossible, in the nature of things, that the ministers of any religious establishment can be merely a harmless race : they must 1150 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN rank anions: either the benefactors or the enemies of a coun- try ; — they must be as blessings or as curses to it. Our Saviour himself has declared, that there can be no neutrality where religion is concerned, and that those who are not for Him are against Him. Nor need we appeal to history to show that the mere priest, — the mere creature of patronage, the mere tool of power, — has been ever an enemy of the general welfare and of popular improvement. The Church of Scot- land must be either a great benefit or a great evil to the people ; it must be — what Knox and the first fathers of the Reformation intended — a dispenser of benefits, moral and intellectual, — a nurse of knowledge, of virtue, and religion ; or it must bear as a nightmare on the energies of the country, until at length the popular indignation gather strength and shake it off. It is well that the people of Scot- land should know that these alternatives are involved in the adoption or rejection of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill. The future history of the Church cannot resemble its history in the past century. It must inevitably either sink into a lower depth of inefficiency, or rise into a more general and extended usefulness ; and it is well that the people of Scotland should consider how necessary a result this must prove of the fate of his Lordship's bill. In the last century the two antagonist parties of the Church were spread over her parishes like the wheat and the tares in the one field. An inefficient and time-serving clergy were in many instances the near neighbours of ministers conscien- tiously faithful and eminently useful. The policy of our ecclesiastical courts was unequivocally bad, because our ma- jorities were so ; but in many a parish and in many a dis- trict were the true objects of the Church accomplished, and the true interests of the people pursued, through the influ- ence of a devout and diligent minority. But there are two causes which must effectually operate in preventing any re- V. THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND. 2f)l turn to such a state of things in the future. The old Pres- byterian party in the Church have taught the patrons and the patronage-asserters of Scotland — men such as the Earl of Aberdeen — a lesson which they will not soon forget. They have taught them that so essentially popular is Presbyterian- ism in its original integrity, that it is impossible for it to acquire power without directly militating against the abuse of unrestricted patronage ; and their influence, therefore, will be exercised in carefully excluding it. What more natural than that for the future the patron should present to the people's hurt, — not to his own 1 or that he should introduce exclusively into the Church, members of the party whose very existence is bound up in patronage, and who, with the in- stinct of self-preservation, would compass sea and land to pre- serve it in its unbroken malignity 1 But the second cause craves more serious thought, as it regards a more urgent dan- ger. What is to become of our present majority 1 England saw two thousand of her Presbyterian clergy ejected from their livings and their churches in one dav, and there were several hundreds of surely our best ministers ousted about the same time from the parishes of Scotland. Are our coun- trymen of the present age prepared for witnessing a similar exercise of power on the part of either the Court of Session or the House of Lords 1 Are they prepared to give up the men whose sole crime it is that they have stood up to assert in the people's behalf, agreeably to our original stand- ards, that no minister be " obtruded into any church con- trary to the will of the congregation ?" Are they prepared to give up the Church itself 1 For what is the Church, apart from its better ministers, but a piece of dead framework, of importance to the hirelings who derive from it a provision for themselves and their families, but of no value whatever to the people % Or do they think that our more devout and more excellent clergymen, in the face of their solemn profes- 252 THE EARL OF ABERDEEN, ETC. sions, will learn to accommodate their consciences to the pro- visions of Lord Aberdeen's bill, and proceed forthwith, in union with the Dr Cooks and Dr Bryces of the Church, to force the Youngs and Edwardses of Auchterarder and Mar- noch on the reclaiming people 1 Assuredly the poor man's main stake is involved in this quarrel. It would be the duty and the interest of the people of Scotland heartily to oppose his Lordship did he merely set himself to rescind the Re- form Bill. It has not done much for the poorer people ; legislation can neither lighten their toils, nor make them happier under them ; but at least some of the moral effects of the bill have been good. It has brought public opinion to bear against many abuses. It brought it to bear on the abo- lition of the slave-trade, and led to a great act of national justice in the final emancipation of the slave. But were the Earl of Aberdeen to blot the Reform Bill out of the statute- book, -he would inflict but a slight and trivial injury on the people of Scotland, compared with the injury which he now contemplates. That people possess a power in the present day which they did not possess in the days of Sir George Mackenzie, nor yet in the days of Bolingbroke. We are told that shortly after the Union, the Scotch representatives found themselves en- tirely lost among the Commons of England, who opposed them in every national question, in the proportion of nearly ten to one. But they soon discovered a remedy. The Eng- lish were divided into two great and nearly equally balanced parties ; and though the forty-five Scots formed a very poor minority of themselves, they found that whatever side they chose to range themselves upon became straightway the ma- jority. They discovered that they could adjust the scales, though they could not outweigh even the lightest of them; and they became influential in consequence. Parties in the present day are more equally balanced than they were in DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY, ETC. 253 the days of Queen Anne ; and it were well for Scotchmen to consider whether it be not their duty to give that prominence to the interests of their country now which their ancestors did a hundred and twenty years ago. Questions of the first magnitude should always have the first place assigned to them j and it is of immensely more importance to even the Conservative Presbyterians of Scotland that the Earl of Aber- deen's measure should be defeated, than that the Earl of Aberdeen should form the member of a new Cabinet. Our contemporary the Globe has a pertinent remark on the sub- ject : — " We have not a particle of doubt," says this able paper, " in affirming that the spiritual independence of the Scottish Church, and the efficiency of the will of the Scot- tish people, are things the fate of which politicians have not to determine, and which determine the fate of politicians." — ■ June 17, 1840. DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY ON LORD ABERDEEN'S BILL. [in the debate which Mr Miller described in the folio wing article, the bill by which Lord Aberdeen had assayed to terminate the agitation in the Church of Scotland fell under the logic and sarcasm of Dr Cunning- ham. His Lordship saw fit to withdraw his measure.] The present struggle threatens to be a protracted one. But there is no lack of symptoms on the part of both the friends and the opponents of the popular principle, which indicate the final result. Our readers will find a full report in our columns of the proceedings of the Edinburgh Presbytery at its meeting of Wednesday last. The chief business of the meeting arose out of the present position of the Church in 254 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY connection with the attempt of the Earl of Aberdeen to con- vert into law the mischievous absurdities of the Dean of Fa- culty [Hope] ; and the decision arrived at by the Presbytery, by an overpowering majority, and after a discussion of six hours, was to petition Parliament against his Lordship's bill, as di- rectly subversive of the spiritual independence of the Church, and wholly at variance with the genius of Presbytery. No report, however literal, can convey an adequate idea of a de- bate so animated and interesting as that which took place on this occasion. There is a vast difference between a series of speeches spread over a few closely-printed columns, and a spirit-stirring viva voce discussion ; but our report must be very defective indeed if it does not convey the impression of strength contending with weakness, and show that there was much feebleness and much timidity on the one side, and much courage and great power on the other. The cause, backed by the decision of our law courts, and by a considerable portion of the wealth and a large proportion of the aristo- cracy of the country, must ultimately go down, for there is no heart and no strength in it. "We fain wish we could give our readers at a distance some such idea of the late meeting of Presbytery as we ourselves have had an opportunity of forming. The Presbytery of Edinburgh is the most ancient in the kingdom. It may be regarded as the nucleus of the Scottish Church. According to Knox, " before that there was any public face of the true religion in this realm, it had pleased God to illuminate the hearts of many private persons, who, straightway quitting the idolatry of Papistry, began to assemble themselves together.'' They elected out of their number good and judicious men, such as " God by his grace" had best qualified for their elders and teachers ; and from this small beginning, principally within the town of Edinburgh, arose the Presbyterian Church of Scotland. There is nothing to mark the antiquity of the on lord Aberdeen's bill. 255 Presbytery in the hall in which they assemble. It is a mo- dern erection, lighted from above, with a few portraits sus- pended on the walls, and a bust or two placed on brackets. There is a gallery for strangers, of limits all too scanty on occasions such as that of Wednesday last, and the members oocupy the area below. From a front seat, which we were fortunate enough to secure, we could overlook the whole. The parties, instead of being ranged on opposite sides, were mixed up together, and apparently for a very excellent rea- son ; — the non-intrusionists were all too numerous, and their opponents too few. The original Presbyterians bid fair to fill all their own house, as at first ; and if Moderatism insists on retaining its own side, it must proceed forthwith, as in the days of Gillespie, to eject and expel. Some of the better known names in the Presbytery are borne by men of very striking appearance. Dr Muir is an eminently handsome man, thin, gentlemanly, dignified, taste- fully dressed, with a well-formed head of moderate size, such as a phrenologist would expect to find on the shoulders of a person rather of fine taste than of comprehensive genius. We would have deemed him quite in his proper place in the Upper House of Parliament, either as a lord spiritual or lay. Dr Gordon is also a strikingly handsome man, but with a much more remarkable development of head. It is a head of the Melancthon type, — high, erect, with an overpowering super- structure of sentiment on a narrow base of propensity, and a forehead rising, as in the case of Shakspeare and Sir Wal- ter Scott, to the top of the coronal region. Combe, in one of his phrenological works, gives a print of a similar head, and states that among the heads of many thousand criminals which he had examined, he had in no instance found a re- sembling development. If, however, the Earl of Aberdeen carry his measure, prisons will be quite the place to find them in, and the phrenologist will require to modify his statement 256 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY by a note. Among the figures of the younger members of the court, that of Mr Guthrie is one of the most striking. He is an erect, lathy, muscular man, of rather more than six feet two inches, who would evidently not have been idle at Drumclog, and who, if employed at all, could not be em- ployed other than formidably. Though apparently under forty, the hair is slightly touched with gray, and the features, though beyond comparison more handsome than those of his ancestor the martyr, bear decidedly a similar cast and ex- pression. The appearance and figure of Mr Cunningham is scarcely less striking than that of his friend Mr Guthrie. He is tall, but not so tall, though rather above than below six feet ; and powerfully built. His head is apparently of the largest size, — of the nemo me impune lacessit calibre ; and the temperament is of that firm bilious cast which gives to size its fullest effect. Mr Cunningham commenced the debate in a speech of tremendous power. The elements were various : — a clear logic, at once severely nice and popular; an unhesitating rea- diness of language, select and forcible, and well fitted to ex- press every minuter shade of meaning, but plain, and devoid of figure ; above all, an extent of erudition, and an acquaint- ance with Church history, that, in every instance in which the argument turned on a matter of fact, seemed to render opposition hopeless. But what gave peculiar emphasis to the whole was what we shall venture to term the propelling power of the mind, — that animal energy which seems to act the part of the moving power in the mechanism of intellect, — which gives force to action and depth to the tones of the voice, and impresses the hearer with an idea of immense mo- mentum. There were parts of Mr Cunningham's speech in which he reminded us of Andrew Melville when he put down Bishops Barlow and Bancraft, and shook the lawn sleeves of the latter ; and we could not help wishing that, by any pos- on lord Aberdeen's bill. 257 sibility, circumstances should be so ordered as to afford hin^ an opportunity of trying conclusions face to face with tlif> Earl of Aberdeen. His powers of sarcasm are great, and ^ a peculiar character. He first places some important fact 01 argument in so clear a light that there remains no possibility of arriving at more than one conclusion regarding it. He then sets in close juxtaposition to it the absurd inference or crooked mis-statement of an antagonist, and bestows upon his ignorance or his absurdity the plain and simple name. White is always white with Mr Cunningham, and black black, and he finds no shade of gray in either. His confidence in mat- ter of fact, based on an extent of erudition recognised by all, tells with a crippling effect on his opponents. He referred, during his speech, to the often-repeated sophism denying the non-intrusion of the early Reformers, — Knox, Calvin, and Beza, What, he asked, do the Earls of Aberdeen and Dalhousie know of the opinions of these men 1 This much, and no more. Lord Medwyn inserted in his speech on the Auchterarder case a few partial and garbled extracts from the writings of Calvin and Beza, which, in their broken and unconnected state, seemed to bear a meaning at variance with the principles which the men in reality held. Mr Robertson of Ellon quoted the passages at second-hand, not omitting even the errors of his Lordship's printer. The Earls of Dal- housie and Aberdeen quoted them at third-hand from Mr Robertson. And such is the entire extent of their Lordships' information on the subject, and such the amount of their au- thority. He then proceeded to show what the views of the Reformers on non-intrusion really were ; — that they all held, with the ancient fathers, the doctrine for which the Church is now contending. There is no member of this Presby- tery," he added, "who will question the fact." And he was quite in the right ; — no member did question it. He offered to prove, further, that Dr Muir, on the agitated question, R 258 DEBATE IN THE EDINBURGH PRESBYTERY holds exactly the principles of Cardinal Bellarmine ; and the Doctor took particular care not to demand the proo£ Mr Cunningham was followed by the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, — a gentleman who has been a reformer all his life long, and who evidently feels that, in the present struggle, he is occupying exactly hi« old ground. He was listened to with much respect. His remarks were characterized by a vein of sound good sense and much gentlemanly feeling. Dr Muir then rose to express his approbation of the Earl of Aberdeen's Bill. How, we asked, when listening to the powerful logic of Mr Cunningham, will Dr Muir contrive to find answers to argu- ments such as these 1 We might have spared ourselves the query. Dr Muir did not attempt finding answers to them. He spoke as if no one had spoken before him. He reiterated all his old assertions, and assured the meeting that he was thoroughly conscientious and quite in earnest. Pascal could mortify his senses by shutting his casement on a delightful prospect. Dr Muir restrains the reasoning faculty in the same way out of a sense of duty, and eschews argument as a gross temptation. When convicted of an absurdity, he talks of persecution, and clings to an exposed mis-statement with the devotedness of a faithful nature true to a friend in dis- tress. He carries on every occasion all his facts and all his opinions home with him : nothing adds to their number, — nothing diminishes them ; and when the day of battle comes, he brings them out with him again. His troops fight none the worse for being killed ; they rise all gory, like FalstafTs opponents, and fight by the hour ; his antagonists complain, with Macbeth, that his dead men come to "p>ush them from their stools." He was followed by Mr Penny, — a smart gentleman, who is tedious with very marked effect, — on the same side, and succeeds, when he is particularly pathetic, in making his on lord Aberdeen's bill. 2bd audience gay. He was liberal in tendering to the Presbytery the benefit of his law, and generously advised them to sub- mit to the Court of Session, without cherishing the remotest expectation of being paid for his advice. He excels, too, in divinity. His speech gradually rose into a sermon ; and when he came to the most serious part of it, the gallery laughed. He was succeeded, in reply, by the Rev. Mr Begg of Liberton. Of all the gentlemen whom the caricaturists have failed in rendering ridiculous, Mr Begg has escaped best. Some of the others are striking likenesses. There is no likeness in the case of Mr Begg. There is no exaggeration of feature or figure for the artist to catch, and so he has caught none. He is a young, good-looking man, rather above the middle size, with a well-developed forehead,— frank, vigorous, and energetic. His brief speech contained one or two pointed hits, which told with excellent effect, and a historical state- ment of much importance in its bearing on the Earl of Aber- deen's bill. He was succeeded by the Rev. Mr M'Farlane. We are admirers of the good sense and poetical feeling, but not of the style, of Harvey; whereas the Rev. Mr M'Farlane seems to admire only his style. He rounds his sentences after the same model, and leaves out only the poetry and the good sense. His flowers are all gum-flowers. Pliny speaks of an orator who used to set his periods to music : we are convinced that, if Mr M'Farlane were well watched, he would be found mo- dulating his periods by the full symphonies of the Jew's harp. All feel, however, that when delivered in public they want their necessary and original accompaniment ; and we think the reverend gentleman should benefit by the hint. A re- spectable and sensible man, a Seceder, sat beside us. "Ah," he exclaimed, with a groan, "a weak brother !" The Rev. Mr Bennie followed, in a sparkling, witty speech, that at once awakened the gallery, and cost the Moderator a considerable 260 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. amount of trouble. All was extempore : there was not one idea which did not bear reference to some previous remark from the opposite side, and yet eveiy sentence had the point of an epigram. The laboured dulnesses of an inane and feeble mind have rarely been more pointedly contrasted with the spontaneous felicities of a mind singularly ingenuous and fer- tile than on this occasion. Drs Clason and Gordon followed in addresses, brief, but of great moral weight, and conceived in an admirable spirit ; and the whole was wound up by Mr Cunningham. Nothing more tended to the spread of the Reformation than the public disputations between the Reformers and their opponents. There was breadth of principle and force f argument on the one side, united to generous feeling and conscious integrity ; and merely sophistry, meanness, mis- statement, and the disreputable shifts of a petty ingenuity, on the other. On every occasion on which they met, the better cause prevailed ; and the people saw and felt that it did. Good argument is always popular argument. If Dr Muir and his friends really wish well to the people of Scot- land, they could still hold by their peculiar opinions, and yet be of great service to them. All that is necessary is, to grant their opponents such opportunities of meeting with them in the various parishes of the country as they afforded them at the meeting of the Edinburgh Presbytery on Wed- nesday last. — July 4, 1840. REVIVAL IN ALNESS. [The Moderate and Evangelical parties, differing in their views of Church government, differed also, throughout the whole course of their history, in their cast of sentiment touching the religious life. The one, REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 261 pushing the supernatural element in Christianity gently into the back- ground, and seeking no more, by way of realizing the Christian charac- ter, than a general observance of moral precept, a polite tranquillity of feeling, and a cultured elegance and propriety, recoiled in timorous sus- picion from all religious emotion, sudden in occurrence and transcendent in degree. The other, throwing the supernatural element into command- ing prominence, explicitly declaring the exertion of Divine and creative energy indispensable in the formation of Christian character, regarded every agitation of the popular mind arising from a religious cause with that deep, reverent, and sympathizing interest which befitted a direct manifestation of Divine power. This, like every other distinction be- tween the parties, was vividly apprehended and profoundly understood by Mr Miller. It is brought out in the following article. " Dr Muir's Declaration," to which reference is made, can be easily imagined as a manifesto on the part of certain of the Moderate leaders.] We extract the following interesting notice of one of the recent Revivals in Ross-shire, from the Inverness Courier of "Wednesday last. It comes from the pen of a correspondent of that paper, — a person who seems to have witnessed what he describes in no light or irreverent spirit ; and we have been favoured with several private letters on the subject from the same part of the country, which corroborate his state- ments : — ■ " The great religious movements which are taking place in various quarters of this county are drawing a large share of attention ; and a short account of what has occurred in the parish of Alness may not be uninteresting to some of your readers. " The usual fast-day preparatory to the celebration of the Lord's Sup- per was held on Thursday the 30th ultimo, but nothing remarkable was observed on that day. The first symptoms of anything like an awaken- ing made their appearance on the Friday evening, when, under the mi- nistrations of that faithful and self-denying servant of God, the Rev. Mr Macdonald, Ferintosh, a considerable number were brought under concern, and made to cry out, beneath the stings of an awakened con- science, ' What must we do to be saved V During the sermon which completed the duties of the sacramental Sabbath, the movements in the congregation, which had been begun on the Friday evening, were in- creased to a much greater extent. Then, but more especially on the ser- vices of the following day (Monday), one could not cast his eyes around in any direction among the thousands collected on the occasion, without 262 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. witnessing in almost every half-dozen of hearers, one, if not more, deeply moved, — some sobbing audibly ; others, evidently by the greatest effort, restraining themselves from bursting out aloud ; while many, utterly unable to command their emotions, gave vent in loud screams to their agonized feelings. Nor was this confined to any age or sex. The young and the aged, the gray-headed man and the child of tender years, might everywhere be observed deeply affected ; and we conceive we are within the mark when we say, that on this occasion many hundreds were brought under serious impressions ; for there is scarcely a family in the district but has one, two, or more of its members under deep convictions. It was trulv a heart-stirrnug sight ; and we could wish that those who make a mock of such scenes could have looked upon it. Insensible to every good and holy feeling must he have been who could have beheld it with cold indifference. "When witnessing or hearing of such events, one is irresistibly led to ask, Is this the work of the Spirit of God ? Though time alone can give a perfectly satisfactory answer to this question, yet there are circum- stances attending this particular work which tend to show that it is in- deed genuine, and not spurious. This revival has followed the means which the Word of God teaches to employ. Prayer-meetings have for some time been established through the parish by the faithful and zeal- ous clergyman, Mr Flyter, who has now had the satisfaction of seeing his labours blessed and his supplications answered. There was nothing in the instrument which could lead us to attribute the result to him. He is well known to all who heard him ; and his style of preaching is as familiar to most of them as is that of their own clergymen ; and he ha3 been often known to proclaim the thunders of Sinai with as much, if not with greater force, on previous occasions. Indeed, the terrors of the law and the consolations of the gospel were, as they ever ought to be, blended together." We passed a few days during the summers of the last two years in the scene of the Revival. It is a semi-Highland dis- trict of considerable extent, bordered by the Frith of Cro- marty on the south, and ascending, towards the north, from a richly variegated and comparatively populous level, into a mountainous and thinly-inhabited tract of country. The whole forms a portion of what lias been termed the land of the Munroes, — a clan described by Buchanan as one of the most warlike in Scotland, and which, unlike most of our Highland clans, embraced, at an early period, t.he doctrines REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 263 of the Reformation. The name has since been widely spread : it gave to Gustavus Adolphus some of his bravest general officers, and to the United States of America one of their best Presidents. But though now considerably mixed with other names, through the breaking up of the feudal system, it still abounds in the district. The people in general are a simple, but not unintelligent race, and warmly attached, through the associations of nearly three centuries, to the Church of Scotland. There is a hollow still shown among the hills, where their ancestors used to meet for religious wor- ship during the persecution of Charles II. Their minister of that period had been amongst the faithful few who, in the northern portion of the kingdom, had chosen rather to quit their livings than outrage their consciences ; and, despite the utmost efforts of the Bishop of Ross, — as thorough an Eiastian as Dr Bryce himself, — he succeeded in finding protection among his people for nearly thirteen years after the term of his ejectment. In the year 1G75, says Wodrow, he celebrated the communion on the borders of his parish, amid an im- mense concourse ; and " so plentiful was the effusion of the Spirit, that the oldest Christians present never witnessed the like." Among many others, says the historian, one poor man, who had gone to hear him merely out of curiosity, was so affected, that when some of his neighbours Warned him for Ins temerity, and told him that the bishop would punish him for it by taking away his horse and cow, he assured them that in such a cause he was content to lose not merely all his worldly goods, but his head also. Eventually, however, the good minister fell into the hands of his enemies, and, after wearing out many years, amid squalor and wretchedness, in a dungeon of the Bass, he was released but to die, — a victim to the cruel hardships to which he had been subjected. The parish at a later period, under the ministry of the author of an admirable Treatise on Justification, well known to theo- 264 REVIVAL IX ALXESS. logians (Mr Fraser of Alness), was the scene of a second Re- vival. It took place some time about the middle of the last century ; nor had its effects wholly disappeared at the time of our last visit. The district had still its race of patriarchal worthies, though every year was lessening their number, for the greater part of them had reached the extreme verge of life. There was, besides, a hereditary respect and reverence among the people in general for the beliefs and the services of religion. They remembered their fathers, — the lives which they had lived, and the hope in which they had died ; and the recollection had its legitimate influence. It has been common with sceptics of a low order, — men who absurdly borrowed their analogies more from the principles of human jurisprudence than from the inevitable laws of nature, — to chal- lenge the great truth of revelation so often exemplified in the history of nations and of families, that the iniquities of the ancestors are visited on the descendants. And yet we see in a thousand instances that, from the very nature of things (another name for the will of Deity), the law must as certainly exist as the law of gravitation itself. The cor- responding truth embodied in the same commandment, that blessings and mercies are conferred on thousands among the posterity of the faithful and the devoted, has been less marked and seldomer challenged ; but it is, like the other, a truth often confirmed by experience, and in no cases more frequently than in cases of Revivals. Where the Divine fire has been kindled of old, it seems ever readiest, though often after long intervals, to ascend anew ; and the cause, so far as such things can be accounted for on understood principles, seems to be the one just hinted at in the case of the parishioners of Alness. There survive in such localities fond and re- spectful recollections of the worth of the departed, associated with what we may term a traditional belief in the excellence of Christianity ; and thus the mind is kept more open to re- REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 265 ceive as good what their ancestors proved and testified to be emphatically so. "We visited Alness, on the last occasion, early in the May of 1839, when the excellent clergyman of the parish was on the eve of setting out for the General Assembly. The Auch- terarder case had been just decided in the House of Lords, and the present difficulties of the Church were very generally anticipated by the graver parishioners. There was a deep interest excited in this remote district. Dr M'Crie, in writ- ing of the General Assembly seven years ago, laments the indifference with which its meetings had come to be regarded by the people, compared with the deep interest which their fathers had felt in them. " "Where," he asks, " is the gene- ral anxiety of the country, and where the fervent supplica- tions for the countenance and direction of heaven, in the de- liberations of the Assembly, which were wont to resound from the most distant glens and mountains of Scotland V We could have instanced at least one district. The " men'' of Alness, at the time of our visit, were holding their prayer- meetings in behalf of the Church ; and we need hardly say on which side their minister came to register his vote. Mode- ratism has disturbed the country with its forced settlements, but it never yet excited the spleen of a newspaper press by its Revivals, and it always flourishes most where there are no prayer-meetings to perplex its operations. We perceive the minister of an adjacent parish has affixed his name to Dr Muir's Declaration, — a circumstance which has enabled his parishioners fully to understand it. This gentleman has been now about four-and-twenty years in the enjoyment of the temporalities of the cure. When obtruded upon the parish, it contained no Dissenters. The people, like their neighbours, were marked by their church-going habits ; and the church, a roomy and commodious building, was filled every Sunday from gable to gable. About one per 206 REVIVAL IN ALNESS. cent, of the parishioners attend it now. Within the last few years a meeting-house has sprung up in its neighbourhood. Some of the younger people during the time of Divine ser- vice wander into the fields ; the rest, who have not quitted the Church, travel far to attend the ministrations of the clergymen of other parishes. The whole congregation did not comprise twenty persons when we heard sermon under the intrusionist about a twelvemonth ago, and of these, nearly one-half had fallen asleep ere the middle of the service. And such, as instanced in Alness and this unfortunate parish, are the comparative merits and comparative popularity of the two parties in the Church. "Would Sir Robert Peel and the Earl of Aberdeen deem it a stroke of profound statemanship to pass a measure which would have the effect of ejecting from their charges men such as the minister of Alness, and of setting men such as his neighbour in their place ? And yet there is scarce a Presbyterian in Scotland so ignorant as not to know that such would be the effect of the bill which the one so unwillingly relinquished, and which the other would have supported so readily. The Rev. Mr M'Donald of Ferintosb, whose labours have been so signally honoured in the recent Revivals in Ross- shire, has been long known and esteemed in that part of the country as one of the soundest and most zealous divines in the Church. How marvellously have times changed within the last twenty years ! Little more than that period has elapsed since this gentleman was summoned to the bar of the General Assembly for preaching, in the Strathbogie and Aber- deen districts, exactly the same doctrines which have been rendered so powerful to alarm and awaken within the last faw months in Tarbat, Tain, and Alness. He had been guilty of preaching the gospel where, in these days, the gos- pel was very rarely heard. DrMearnsof Aberdeen, another of Dr Muir's supporters, took the lead among his assailants; REVIVAL IN ALNESS. 267 but, notwithstanding all the energy and zeal of the party, the case unaccountably broke down, and Mr M'Donald was dis- charged unharmed. His assailants, however, contrived to legislate on the subject by way of prevention, and embodied their decision in the shape of a declaration, denouncing it as " irregular and unconstitutional for a minister of the Church to perform Divine service in the meeting-house of a Dis- senter, or, during his journeys from place to place, in the open air, in other parishes than his own." We find a masterly re- view of the whole case by Dr Andrew Thomson, in the "Christian Instructor" for 1819 ; and rarely has irreligion and intolerance, when masquerading under the forms of an ecclesiastical decision, been more powerfully exposed. The Doctor had to battle in the minority in these days, and to endure many a defeat ; but his labours were not in vain. He did not influence his opponents, for that would have required something more than argument, — something on their part as well as on his, — candour, perhaps, and Christian principle; but the country listened to him ; and so extensive and so marked has been the change, that the very individual whom he then defended against the wrath of the Presbytery of Strath bogie was empowered by the Church last spring to do in that dis- trict what he then narrowly escaped being thrust out of the Church for doing. Mr M'Donald of Ferintosh was one of the ministers lately deputed by the Commission to preach in Strathbogie. There is much comfort in the reflection, that in the time of the Church's difficulties her adorable Head should be thus manifesting Himself in her favour. It will matter little who may be among her enemies if He rank among her friends. The Book of Providence contains many difficult passages; but there are others of which the meaning seems compara- tively obvious; and of these, not a few refer to periods of Re- vival in the Church. The time of the second Reformation ( 2GS REVIVAL IN ALNESS. was one of these : the purpose of mercy at that peiiod extend- ed to more than individuals, — it embraced the entire Church. There was a season of severe and protracted trial at hand ; and the infusion of new vigour gave earnest that the "strength was to be according to the need," and that she was to survive the struggle, and ultimately to triumph in it. Had she been destined to extinction, her vigour would not have been in- creased. Another very remarkable period of Revival occurred in the west of Scotland shortly after the time of the Seces- sion. The Church had sunk into a state of miserable de- pression. Her strength seemed passing wholly from her, to the body of devout and venerable men whom the high-handed majorities that constituted at once her weakness and her shame had thrust beyond her pale ; her people were joining them in thousands; and it seemed as if the mere caput rtxor- luum that remained behind could not long continue to exist. The breath of public opinion in less than half an age would have acquired strength enough to sweep it away; for, though an Establishment has existed in Ireland without the people for centuries, it could not exist in Scotland without them for half a century. The characters of the two nations are essen- tially different. At this crisis, however, the separation to a considerable degree was staid. The Revival at Cambuslang, Kilsyth, Kirkintilloch, and Muthill, took place. There was thus proof vouchsafed that, though many of God's people had left the Church, God himself had not left it ; and, in conse- quence, thousands who would have otherwise gone over to the Secession remained in her communion. Chatham, as quoted by Junius, could speak of infusing a new portion of health into the constitution of the country, to enable it to bear its infirmities. There was thus a new portion of health infused into the Church, and she was enabled to bear the infirmities under which she would otherwise have sunk, until a day when, with invigorated powers, she has begun to shake CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. 269 tlieni off. The history of the future can alone read the legi- timate comment on the economy of Providence in the present Revivals ; but who can doubt that they are tokens of mercy? They read a lesson to religious Dissenters which they would do well to ponder in connection with the advice given by Gamaliel to the Jewish Council. If God be for us, assuredly they should not be against us. — September 2, 1840. CONSERVATISM ON REVIVALS. " My friend Smart," said Johnson, " used to show the dis- turbance of his mind by falling upon his knees and saying his prayers in the street. He was deemed mad, Sir ; anrts. It is marvellous how often single names 344 MODERATISM : SOME OF ITS BETTER CLASSES. are referred to, and how the character of one is made to serve for a hundred. "We have been reminded of the fact, we know not how often, by an old, and, we are afraid, not very pointed story, told us by an aged relative, some five-and-twenty years ago. At a time shortly after the old pious race of Scotch sailors described by Peter Walker had worn out, and long ere seamen's chapels and Methodism had done aught to raise a serious race in their stead, our sailors were a decidedly irre- ligious class. Honest old John Menzies of Aberdeen, how- ever, who lived at this time, was not only one of the bravest and most skilful seamen connected with the port, but also one of the most truly pious men of the city. Almost every one knew and respected John Menzies. A party of very decent women had met at Leith, and the conversation turned, among other things, on the irreligion of sailors. " Ah ! poor fel- lows," said one of the women, " we should not judge over rashly : there are surely good men among them. For my own part, I can say that one of the very best men I know is a sailor." " That, cummer, may well be," said another wo- man : " I also know a sailor who is the worthiest man alive." " And I too," said a third, " know a sailor who has very few equals." This, of course, looked remarkably well ; — three Christian sailors found on so slight a survey : it was hard to say how long the list might become. Unluckily, however, the women came to compare notes, and discovered, in conse- quence, that their three superexcellent sailors just resolved themselves into honest old John Menzies of Aberdeen. — September 22. 1841. PRAYER : THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. 345 PRAYER: THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. " It has been long held by the people of Scotland, that prayers laboriously polished in the study ere repeated by rote in the pulpit, — fine addresses to Deity smoothed up with the same small care which sonneteers bestow on odes to their mistresses' eyebrows, — are in reality very poor sort of things." "We said so a paper or two ago ; but the justice of the reflection has been challenged. We hold that it has its foundation, not in prejudice, but in truth. A Scotch Highlander, who served in the first disastrous war with the American colonies, was brought one evening before his commanding officer, charged with the capital offence of being in communication with the enemy. The charge could not well be preferred at a more dangerous time. Only a few weeks had passed since the execution of Major Andre ; and the indignation of the British, exasperated almost to madness by the event, had not yet cooled down. There was, how- ever, no direct proof against the Highlander. He had been seen in the gray of the twilight stealing from out a clump of underwood that bordered on one of the huge forests which at that period covered by much the greater part of the United Provinces, and wmich, in the immediate neighbourhood of the British, swarmed with the troops of Washington. All the rest was mere inference and conjecture. The poor man's de- fence was summed up in a few words : he had stolen away from his fellows, he said, to spend an hour in private prayer. " Have you been in the habit of spending hours in private prayer?" sternly asked the officer, himself a Scotchman and a Presbyterian. The Highlander replied in the affirmative. "Then," said the other, drawing out his watch, "never in all your life had you more need of prayer than now : kneel down, Sir ; and pray aloud, that we mav all hear you." The 34:6 PRAYER : THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. Highlander, in the expectation of instant death, knelt down. His prayer was that of one long acquainted with the appro- priate language in which the Christian addresses his God : it breathed of imminent peril, and earnestly implored the Di- vine interposition in the threatened danger, — the help of Him who, in times of extremity, is strong to deliver. It exhibited, in short, a man who, thoroughly conversant with, the scheme of redemption, and fully impressed with the necessity of a personal interest in the advantages which it secures, had made the business of salvation the work of many a solitary hour, and had, in consequence, acquired much fluency in express- ing all his various wants as they occurred, and his thoughts and wishes as they arose. " You may go, Sir," said the officer, as he concluded : " you have, I daresay, not been in correspondence with the enemy to-night. His statement," he continued, addressing himself to the other officers, " is, I doubt not, perfectly correct. No one could have prayed so without a long apprenticeship : the fellows who have never attended drill always get on ill at review." Now, we are of opinion that the commanding officer evinced very considerable shrewdness in this instance. "We learn to make our common every-day language a ready medium of communicating all our various thoughts and feelings, just be- cause it is our common every-day language, — just because, through constant habit, we come so intimately to associate the arbitrary signs with the ideas which they represent, that at length, ceasing to mark their distinct existence as signs, they become identical with the thoughts of which they were at first but the instruments. There is surely no fanaticism in arguing after this fashion ; nor was the Scotch officer in any degree a fanatic, though he carried the principle a little farther. He argued that the men with whom prayer is a habit acquire the language of prayer ; and it was on this prin- ciple that he tested the suspected Highlander. The mechanic PRAYER : THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. 347 aud the tradesman learn to wield their technicalities, — so stiff and unmanageable to all but themselves, — with as much ease as if they were the commonest vocables of the language. The vocabularies of chemistry and the mathematics, of geo- logy and botany, however difficult and repulsive to others, never encumber the chemist or the mathematician, the geo- logist or the botanist ; they serve, on the contrary, to impart clearness to their thinking and fluency to their reasonings. But no one ever mastered these vocabularies without much practice and study ; and, in like manner, the closet has its vocabulary, which it also requires practice and study to master. In the every-day communications which the Christian holds with his God, there are other thoughts conveyed, and other feelings expressed, than those which he employs in his every- day converse with his fellows. The recesses of the internal man are laid open ; the bias to evil, though manifested in but embryo imaginings and hidden moods, is confessed and deplored in language varied according to the character of the imagination or the complexion of the mood ; there are im- plorations for assistance against enemies felt, though invisi- ble, and the nature of whose ever-varying assaults is sugges- tive of the ever-varying petition. The circumstance, too, that it is God who is addressed, gives a peculiarity to the style. We walk erect in the presence of our fellows ; and as it is the privilege of our species to walk erect, shame to the low and mean natures that do otherwise ! But is there any one who can prostrate himself before his Maker in a humility too profound 1 All Revelation, too, with its vast breadth of meaning, — that breadth which, the more we ex- amine it, expands the more, — is composed of but the elements, the materials, of prayer ; and an intercourse with God for a thousand lifetimes united would not suffice to employ them all. Prayer is so mighty an instrument, that no one ever thoroughly mastered all its keys : they sweep along the infi- 348 PRAYER : THE TRUE AND THE COUNTERFEIT. nite scale of man's "wants and of God's goodness. But. com- paratively at least, this instrument has been mastered : — it is mastered to a considerable degree by every converted man. He acquires the vocabulary of the closet as the proper lan- guage of the state of which he has become a free denizen, and his fellow-citizens recognise it as their common tongue. The Scotch officer was not altogether ignorant of it; and to the positive existence of such a language the anecdote of his experiment on the Highlander owes its point. To the Christian possessed of the language of the closet we very decidedly oppose the mere Moderate, by whom that language has not been acquired. Nay, we go further. "We affirm that the ability of recognising this language through that sympathy which soul holds with soul, and that percep- tion through which experience recognises its kindred expe- rience, are elements, and no unimportant ones, of the present controversy. "We would deem a Christian people fully jus- tified in rejecting every clergyman in whose prayers they did not recognise this language. We know there are good men who write their prayers. We are aware that Knox wrote prayers for the rude and untaught people of Scotland, whom it was his high and honourable vocation to civilize and in- struct ; but the language in which they were written was the heart-stirring language of the closet. They were alto- gether different from the things we censure, — those pieces of laboured feebleness, whose polish is but the polish of bald- ness, — things that are not prayers, but the semblances of prayers, — not substance, but the reflections of substance, — the mere echoes of hearts that reverberate because they are hollow. And the difference can be well felt. It can be tried by the test of the Scotch officer. On grounds such as these we again repeat our remark, — we repeat, that " it has been long held by the people of Scotland," and held justly, " that prayers laboriously polished in the study ere repeated MR ISAAC TAYLOR, ETC. 349 by rote in the pulpit, — fine addresses to Deity smoothed up with the same small care which sonneteers bestow on odes to their mistresses' eyebrows, — are in reality very poor sort of things, — mere embodiments, in most instances, of an inef- ficient world-hunting Moderatism, that plays at sentence- making." — December 29, 1841. MR ISAAC TAYLOR ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH. Nothing proper to a Church and State system, says the cele- brated author of "Ancient Christianity," in his work on "Spiritual Despotism," published some years since, — "nothing proper to a Church and State system, demands the subserviency of the Church to the State." Such is the decisive declaration of one who, himself from principle an Episcopalian, yet la- ments with the greatest earnestness over the " fatal surren- der" which the Church of England has made to the State of her spiritual prerogative and independence, — a step which he regards as in a pre-eminent degree the source of those perilous circumstances by which she is surrounded. And in this we believe him to be not far from the truth. A Church may be subject to many corruptions, and may tolerate many abuses ; but until she divests herself, as the Church of England has in great measure done, of the powers of government and the reins of discipline, — of her spiritual independence and free- dom, — she possesses within herself that machinery, a due ex- srcise of which may accomplish her purification and revival. Deprived of these powers, however, the wellspring of her vitality is poisoned ; she floats a helmless, mastless hulk upon the waves, "at the merciment," to quote the words of Mr Taylor, " of her foes and of her friends." 350 MR ISAAC TAYLOR ON THE We are strongly of opinion, from the incidental expres- sions made use of by this deservedly esteemed writer in the work referred to, that, were his attention turned to the pre- sent contest of our Church with the civil despotism of the day, he would have no hesitation on which side to take his stand : he would hesitate not, — as he presumes, with refer- ence to the Church of England, that no "practical and im- partial" man would hesitate, — " to give his aid in restoring to the Established Church that independence and those vital functions which Christianity demands for her," and which the Scottish Reformers, in contradistinction to those of Eng- land, secured to us in a manner conformable to God's Word, and which, they fondly imagined, would preserve us from fur- ther molestation. Thus he speaks of the English Establish- ment : — " Too long she has consented to be mocked with the empty forms of independence ; and is now so placed, that she must assert and regain her lost prerogatives, or fall lower still. The assembling of Convocation effectively at her own discre- tion, and for the exercise of substantial functions, — the un- prompted election of her bishops, and the annulling of lay en- croachments upon ecclesiastical property [an evil that we also wish to see ' annulled'], — are obvious points of that Church reform which the course of events demands." How refresh- ing is it, in a Church which, with all her boasted emblazon- ries of rank and pretension, is yet trodden under foot by an iron despotism, to meet with one of such congenial sentiments with ourselves, who can proclaim aloud, with equal boldness and ability, her degraded and enslaved condition, and the means necessary to be adopted for reinstating her in that status which it behoves the Church of Christ to occupy ! Mr Taylor advocates an infusion of lay blood into the organic government of the Church, — the complete disenthralment from the bonds of State supremacy ; and looks forward to the accomplishment of these reforms, along with a correction of INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH. 351 the abuses of patronage, — such an amendment of the whole system " as would concede something to the people, and ab- solutely exclude the merchandise of souls," — as fitted to ac- quire for the Establishment, what she is not now possessed of, the submissive and cordial reverence and regard of her peo- ple. He does not, indeed, acknowledge the Scriptural right of the people to a direct voice in the appointment of their ministers. But the conclusion at which he arrives on this point from another source of evidence may have equal weight with those who make primitive practices and ancient fathers the " gods of their idolatry ;" and it is, so far as it goes, very satisfactory, as coming from one who has made the history of the pristine Churches a subject of deep and fruitful study, and whose predilections are all in favour of the hierarchical sys- tem of the Church of England. " In fact," he says, " though not to be traced in the canonic writings, the popular voice and suffrage in the election of the bishop unquestionably ob- tained a very early prevalence, and those who absolutely ex- cluded the will of the people in the choice of their pastors, although not reproveable by the letter of Scripture, yet oppose one of the most ancient and universal of ecclesiastical usages." In his summary of Scriptural proofs concerning the differ- ent forms of Church government, we scarcely think that Mr Taylor at all grapples with or meets the arguments and facts by which the system of Presbytery may be maintained from the Word of God. He no doubt expresses in an able manner the incoherent and destructive nature of Congregationalism ; but he seems chary of coming into too close collision with the advocates of Presbyterianism. We leave it, however, for our readers to judge how far he has in the following passage por- trayed the leading characteristics of the two Establishments of this country. " If a choice were to be made between two actual forms of Presbyterianism and Episcopacy, whereof the first admits the laity to a just and apostolic place in the ma- 352 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. nasrernent and administration of the Church, while the second absolutely rejects all such influence, and at the same time retains for its bishops the baronial dignities and the secular splendour usurped by the insolent hierarchs of the middle ages, then, indeed, the balance would be one of a different sort ; and, unless there were room to hope for a correction and reform of political prelacy, an honest and modest Chris tian mind would take refuge in the substantial benefits of Presbyterianism." We are inclined to believe that the writer has in these lines, perhaps altogether unwittingly, been try- ing his hand at portrait-painting ; and that the contrast be- tween the " counterfeit presentment of the two brothers " tells by no means against our northern Establishment — January 1, 1842. DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. [It was natural, as the crisis of the conflict approached, that the Evangelical party throughout the parishes of Scotland should adopt such an organization as might enable them most effectively to promote their principles and vindicate their position. Hence arose the Defence Associations which figure in the following article.] It was an important step, not for our country only, but for the whole human species, when our humbler countrymen of old, associating for mutual defence, surrounded a few mean villages with rude walls, and procured their Charters of Com- munity from monarchs jealous of the proud barons their oppressors. Our historians, especially the earlier ones, have dwelt almost exclusively on the hard-fought battles of our country, on the barbarous feuds of proud and haughty barons, the intrigues of courtiers, and the negotiations of statesmen. Our poets and romancers have revelled amid the uncouth DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 353 splendour of courts that were but conning their first lessons in politeness, and have exhausted their power of narrative and description on the barbaric pomp of tournaments, and the spirit-stirring scenes of war and the chase. Transactions and events of an immensely more important character have been passed over undescribed. In tracing to its earliest origin the liberty of our country, we would pass over kings, barons, and knights, — all that has been permitted hitherto most to occupy the memory and fill the imagination, — and, descend- ing from the castle and the palace, we would select, as the true benefactors of the present time, the denizen of a hum- bler sphere. We would pick out the rude mechanic plying his simple art in his humble cott&ge, behind the rampart of undressed stone which his own hands had assisted to rear, — his black jack of hammered iron, and his round head-piece suspended from the rafters above, — his sword crossed over his long bow, and his six-eln spear stretching athwart the wall. Burgher does not sound half so nobly as knight ; but it is to the burgher, not to the knight, that we owe the liberty of the subject, the manumission of the vassal, the eman- cipation of the slave, humanizing commerce, equal laws, the arts of social life, and the first asylums and baiting places of the Reformation. The association of the oppressed many against the grinding despotism of the powerful few has been peculiarly blessed in almost all the States of EurojDe and nowhere more emphatically blessed than in our own country. -Nay, had we to furnish appropriate emblems of the despotism over which, in tneir long struggle, the people ulti- mately triumphed, and of the liberty which they at length achieved, — if we could scarce find a fitter symbol of the one than some proud baronial castle, with its huge gray walls thinly sprinkled with iron-barred windows, its overhanging bartizans, its deep moat, its jealous drawbridge, its cruel dun- geon hid deep from the air and the sun, its court of summary z 354 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS trial, and its grave-besprinkled mound of execution, — we could scarce devise a more appropriate representative of the other than some humble town, rudely but strongly walled round, its hardy inhabitants trained to arms, and bound by the most solemn engagements reciprocally to defend each other, its straw-covered council-house rising in the midst of its one irregular street, its narrow and crowded dwellings clamorous with the sounds of mechanic labour, a few armed burghers watching at its gate, and the sweeping declivity below, thickly besprinkled with its minute and multitudinous patches of cul- tivation. Now that a crisis has arisen in which it is necessary for the people of Scotland again to unite, as of old, it is well to consider the kind of arms which it is most their safety and interest to wield, and the class of enemies against which they would do well first to direct them. Our ancestors com- menced operations by drawing closely together, and surround- ing their humble dwellings with a wall. They would scarce have succeeded in obtaining their charters of community had they applied for them in the character of defenceless serfs. Their descendants must also draw closely together, but wall- building will scarcely avail them. It must be their work rather to demolish walls erected already. Our Church Defence Associations may be made to subserve a very important purpose. We have had occasion to remark oftener than once, that in many of our rural districts political opinion is still a serf bound to the soil. It is not men, in most of these, to whom the Reform Bill has actually extended the franchise ; it is acres. It is not farmers, but groupes of fields, estimated in the laird's rent-book at fifty pounds per annum, that enjoy the privilege of returning representatives to Parliament. The tenant is but the mouth-piece of his farm, and the proprietor his prompter. Now, without being particularly political, we must just say that this is not at ?U DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. 355 what should be. Opinion should not be a serf bound to the soil. It is men, not acres, who should enjoy the franchise. It is not according to the British constitution, either as it was or is, that a proprietor should possess as many votes as he possesses farms ; and it is well to remember that, as for every privilege which man enjoys man shall have to give an account, the tenant, though he can transfer his vote to his landlord, cannot transfer to him his responsibility. It may be quite right, if he so will it, that he should vote with his landlord ; but it is at least equally right that he should vote with him only because he wills it, and is convinced in his own mind that his determination is a good one. In a point of singular advantage for observation, we have been often astonished to see how implicitly even a rackrented tenantry seemed to have taken it for granted that the vote was their proprietor's, not theirs. Regularly as term-day came round, the rent, to its last shilling, had to be produced ; and, had bank-agents been as unaccommodating as the laird, almost every Martinmas might have witnessed its roups of live stock and utensils ; and yet, notwithstanding, every dissolution of Parliament saw the votes of an oppressed tenantry thirled to the manor-house. Our Church Defence Associations are admirably suited to correct this evil There are many merely political opinions on which it is difficult for plain men to form an opinion, — many, too, in which there is so equal a balance of right and wrong, that one might hesitate to encounter a contingent evil, however slight its character, in deciding either for or against them. But no time Presbyterian in Scotland, however little skilled in politics, will experience any difficulty in making up his mind on the Church question, in its bear- ing on scenes such as that of Culsalmond and Marnoch. Directed and impelled by our Defence Associations, we trust to see it insinuate its wedge between the Intrusionist land- lord and the votes of his Non-Intrusionist tenants ; and we 356 DEFENCE ASSOCIATIONS. are of opinion the attention of onr friends cannot be too strongly directed to this point. The wealthy commoner who reckons fifty farms on his roll, and the farmer, his tenant, who rents, at fifty pounds per annum, one of the smallest of them, are placed politically on exactly the same level, and it is surely high time that both the proprietor and the farmer should begin to know it. All other Scottish parties have been already drawn out into the political arena ; they have been already tasked to their full strength, each against its antagonist party ; nor has there been a means left untried by which the power of any one of them might be increased. But the Presbyterianism of the Church of Scotland has not yet been drawn out in its character as such : it has been lost amid other and lower parties ; and, now that it is gathering to a head in its own proper form, it may be well conceived of as a new force marching into the heart of a lengthened fray. "We have re- ferred to a kind of political vis inertice. Mr John Dunlop, in his masterly work on association, tells us, in illustrating this principle, that in 1789, when the whole existing state of society in France seemed ready to explode, and when the assembling of the States -General was commenced, the great body of the common people remained such careless spectators of the universal commotion and struggle which was impend- ing, that few of them took the trouble of voting at the elec- tions, and that where a thousand were expected to come for- ward, not perhaps fifty made their appearance. There has been more of this vis inertice among the Presbyterians of the Church of Scotland than perhaps any other body in the king- dom ; but we have in the present controversy a force potent enough to overcome it; and it will, we trust, be a main object with our Church Defence Associations to bring this force to bear. The passive must be converted into the active through- out the country. The "grave livers" of Scotland have never FORESHADOWINGS. 357 been drawn ont in any purely secular quarrel; nor has tlip* country, in any of her popular struggles, presented a very imposing attitude without them. They have ever constituted her strength. The poet of Scotland who so truly described himself as " prompt to learn and wise to know," but whose wisdom and knowledge too little influenced his own unhappy career, could see clearly from what scenes the glory of his country arose, and in what class her strength mainly con- sisted. Too little serious himself, he could yet recognise in her humble men of devotion and prayer her " guard and or- nament," her best wealth in her times of peace, and her en- circling " wall of fire" in her day of trouble. We can trust that, with the Divine blessing, on which all must depend, our fast-forming Associations will show that he did not over- estimate their importance. — January 8, 1842. FOKESHADOWINGS. Whatever God in his wisdom may have designed as the termination of the existing troubles, it were well that for the present at least the Church and people of Scotland should be prepared for a time of extremity. Nor do we entertain any fear of inducing a timid feeling among the asserters of the present quarrel, by referring to the imminence of the dan- ger. Some of our readers will perhaps remember the remark of Burns on one of the criticisms of a friend, who suggested that he should strike out from his sublime address of the Bruce, the alternative of the " gory bed," as impolitic in the circumstances. It tended to make death frightful, said the critic, and presented a discouraging and disagreeable image, which the skilful general would scarce venture to suggest to 3 5 S FORESH ADOWINGS. his troops on the eve of a great battle. Burns knew better. "It was the battle of Bannockburn," said the poet, "which they were going to fight ; and the man who would have shrunk at the image of the { gory bed ' was no man fitted to fight there." It is imperatively necessary that the country be thorough- ly aroused. Its chance of escaping from the present immi- nent danger (if in such a matter we may speak of chance) will be in exact proportion to its sense of it. All must have re- marked how very difficult it is to realize extraordinary events as things of probable occurrence in one's own times. We acquaint ourselves with matters in their ordinary course, — with the common, every-day affairs of life, — and give to our anticipations of the future, from an inherent law of our na- ture, the complexion of what we may term our average ex- perience of the present. And hence the difficulty to which we refer. Occurrences similar to those more striking events of history which belong to experience in its extended sense, but not to our own individual experience, are almost never anticipated as probable, — nay, even their very possibility is held doubtful. A sort of instinctive, unreasoning scepticism declares against them. Many of our readers must remember with what feelings, some fifteen or twenty years ago, they were in the habit of regarding the narratives of those terrible visitations of the plague which, as late as the middle half of the seventeenth centuiy, used from time to time to thin the population of Britain. Yisitations of so frightful a character were viewed as belonging exclusively to the past, — so exclu- sively, that their return seemed scarce possible. It seemed well nigh as probable that the country should again see that John Milton who had to remove from his house in Bunhill- fields during the ravages of the pest, as the ravages of the pest itself ; and sad stories of dead bodies dragged on hurdles to the nearest hillock, and thrown inf/> hastily-scooped graves, FORESH ADO WINGS. 359 —of whole hamlets left desolate, — of strange barriers arrest- ing the progress of the disease in crowded cities, — barriers such as slender runnels of water or cross lanes, — of clouds of vapour standing up like erect walls over the infected districts, — of cottages burnt to the ground, for all their inmates had perished, and all within reeked with the rank steam of in- fection ; — these and many such narratives seemed merely dreams of tradition, — not sober realities, but a sort of misty extravagancies, which, however connected with the past, no one could associate with times so sober as the present. Southey, in one of his earlier prose writings, ventured to urge the probability of the return of such strange and terrible visitations, and the suggestion was regarded as wild and un- natural, — as the somewhat outre stroke of a bold writer strain- ing after effect. We have lived, however, to see cholera strike down a hundred millions of the human species ; we have seen it, regulated by its own eccentric and inexplicable laws, ravaging our cities and villages, as if its districts had been assigned to it by the rule and the measuring line. Clouds of murky vapour have stood up for days and weeks together over our towns, as if the destruction that was pressing upon them had taken to itself a visible form ; cottages have been again burnt to the ground for the same sad cause as of old; and, as the flames arose, we have seen their light flashing on the lonely graves of their perished inmates, — graves scooped out of wooded hillocks, far from churchyards and eveiy ac- customed place of sepulture, or on the skirts of mountain- streams, or the verge of solitary sea-shores. Events similar to those which we could scarce credit as possible in connec- tion with our own country and our own time some eighteen or twenty years ago, are now registered in our experience as portions of our country's recent history. And it is well to remark, that this sort of instinctive scepticism applies as cer- tainly to signal atrocities perpetrated by men, as to extraor- 360 FORESHADOWIXGS. dinary visitations in the providence of God. A repetition of the Irish massacre seems as impossible now as a visit from the pest appeared twenty years ago. Men are still slow to believe that our civil courts in the nineteenth century may be found as decidedly opposed to Christ, his cause and go- vernment, as they were in the seventeenth : the atrocities of forced settlements, though we see them occurring around us, still seem rather to belong to a former age than to the present time ; and the latest era of persecution for conscience sake continues to appear as if it had closed when "William III. landed in Torbay. It were well for the country to be thoroughly aroused from the indifferency which this natural, though not the less irrational, scepticism induces. The re- volutionary cycle seems fast revolving in Britain : in Scot- land at least, we now stand on the very brink of some of the more intolerable evils by which great convulsions are inva- riably preceded ; and in a very few months, if the Presby- terianism of the country bestir not itself all the more vigo- rously, it shall have to witness, as of old, the disestablish- ment of the national religion, and the ejection from their charges of all its better pastors. There are more than the controversies of the seventeenth century reviving. To the people in the present crisis we have but one ad- vice : they must arouse, associate, prepare themselves. Jf they but stand still, it will be to witness the infliction of one of the widest spread desolations that ever yet visited their Church or country. There were only two hundred pa- rish churches shut up on the first Sabbath of the winter of 16G2, through the policy of Commissioner Middleton, backed by the tyranny of Charles. The policy of our Hopes and Aberdeens, backed by Sir Robert Peel, threatens to shut up at least twice that number, and to render the others of as little value to the community as the churches occupied by the curates during the disastrous reign of Prelacy. There TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 361 can be no doubt that the people will be thoroughly roused; but it is all- important that they should be roused in time : it is all-important that they should be roused rather to pre- vent evil than to avenge it. They err egregiously who hold that one vigorous blow, through which the Evangelism of Scotland would be thrust beyond the pale of her Establish- ment, would restore quiet to the country : it would restore to it such quiet as the similar blow dealt to it by Middleton did, — a quiet, compared with which, all the popular ebulli- tions of either the present century or the last would be scarce worthy of being regarded as popular ebullitions at all. But it would be well surely for both the Church and her enemies that the experiment should not be made. The fight at pre- sent is on the breach. Better that it should be decided there than by blowing up the citadel at a later stage. — February 2, 1842. TEANSLATIONS INTO FACT. PART FIRST. An act of Parliament is confessedly a dry-looking document ; a collection of acts forms a dull, unreadable book. If we double the amount, the fatigue of perusal necessarily doubles ; the density increases in due proportion as the volumes spread over the shelves, and reaches its acme as they mul- tiply into a complete law library. A heavy atmosphere presses upon the dust that gathers over the folios of Themis, and its dense vapoury folds reflect a mirage of only slum- brous images. The tall weighty columns, each with its single broad margin patched over with notes, like a pond-edge studded with bogs ; — the sections and paragraphs doled out. J 62 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. by the tale, as if the framers had been fearful, seemingly not without cause, of repeating the same provision twice ; — here and there the blunder actually committed, notwithstanding the precaution ; — here and there the opposite mistake of a provision running counter to the rest, turned, as it were, thwartways in the passage, as logs sometimes do when floated down a stream ; — the long, loose, unmusical sentences, that forget themselves, and run into paragraphs ; — the thick, dense words, that seem selected with the express design of eclipsing the meaning, — that at least, in many instances, serve admirably to effect the apparent purpose ; — the glim- mering cross lights of idea that meet the student at every turning, with all the perplexing bewilderment, but none of the picturesqueness, of cross lights in an ancient building ; — the equable, slumbrous, Lethe-like rumble, rumble of the style ; — the general resemblance of eveiy one leaf to every other, — of page to page, of section to section, of act to act ; and then the enormous amount of the whole, — one fifty pages following another fifty pages, — the bookbinder interposing his fence of pasteboard and calf when we number the thou- sand, — then another thousand commencing, — then another, and another, and another, — and, after numbering the term of Methuselah's years twenty times told, the thousands as if still but beginning ; — truly it seems no way wonderful that so many lawyers should be so little acquainted with law, or that they should find it so much easier a matter to listen to the decisions of the dozen arbitrary legislators of the Court of Session, than to plod through the acts of the hereditary and representative legislators of the two Houses of Parlia- ment. It is easier to listen to decisions than to- plod through acts, — -just as it is obviously easier to pick up the smattering of information which passes current in the gossip of the day, than to ground one's-self thoroughly in the knowledge which is to be derived from books. " Gigantic geniuses, fit to TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 363 grapple with whole libraries," are not geniuses of every-day production ; but men qualified to collect news occur in crowds, go where we may ; and hundreds of the class write "solicitor," "advocate," or "W.S." on their door-plates, and attend the Parliament House. But if it be thus a heavy matter to read law as stored up in huge folios, it is far from being a heavy matter to read it as written on the face of a country. "We pass from the sign to that which the sign represents : all is cold and obscure abstraction in the one ; — all is breathing, animated existence in the other. Let us take, by way of example, but a single act, — the act through which Commissioner Middleton over- turned Presbyterianism in Scotland. It is merely a piece of bad, unideal prose in the statute-book ; but what a deeply interesting though fearful tragedy of many scenes does it not appear amid the hills and fields, and in the towns and vil- lages, of our native country ! Gibbets rise tall and black over assembled crowds ; and we see in the hands of the pub- lic executioner gray-haired men of God, content rather to die than deny their Master. The churches of the land are silent, or re-echo only the mutterings of a debasing superstition. The voice of psalms mingle on the hills with the patter of musketry. There is cold, and hunger, and violent death, amid yonder rocks and moors, and in those solitary dens and caves. Thousands die on fields of battle, or are forced into exile, immured in dungeons, borne away to be sold as slaves in the colonies, perish in tempests chained to the sinking wreck, or welter under flood-mark, as the tide rises, tied down amid the ware and tangle of the shore. There is blood everywhere, as in the land of Egypt when Moses called up the first plague. Blood in council-cham- bers, — blood on the boots and the thumbkins, — blood on the ermine of the judge, — blood on the lawn of the bishop, — blood on the scaffold and the headsman's axe, — blood in 3G4 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. the churchyard, where the debased criminal and the honoured martyr are huddled together in a common grave, — blood be- side the cottage-wall, where the lonely widow watches the corpse of her murdered husband : the rising sun is reflected on pools of blood, that thicken amid the hills beside new- made graves ; it sets upon blood freshly spilt on fields strewed with yet quivering carcases ; the Clyde flows sul- lenly along the arches of Both well, and the eddies are crim- soned with blood. There is blood everywhere ; and the cry of the land rises to heaven. How very terrible the reading of this iniquitous act, when we thus pass from the statute- books of the country to its history, — from the sign to the thin^ signified ! "We peruse the scene a little longer : an empty throne appears in the distance ; a bigot king wanders discrowned in pitiable exile ; and the last of his descendants perishes in scorn and beggary in a foreign land. Take, as another example, the scarce less iniquitous act of Queen Anne, and peruse it in a similar manner. A. dense fog of induTerency and practical error creeps over the grand reli- gious institution of the country ; and in district after district, its moral influence becomes more than neutraHzed ; for, in- stead of ministering to the religious feelings of the people, it but serves to shock and outrage them. Not a few of our churches become scenes of violence and perjury ; from not a few of our pulpits there are doctrines promulgated which souls cannot receive and live ; and the better men of the country, unable to eject those who buy and sell, — those whose traffic, darker than that of the money-changers of old, is a traffic in men's souls, — quit in sorrow the place so grossly desecrated. One humble chapel rises after another amid their hamlets, where they worship in the purity and freedom with which their fathers worshipped. But the comparatively indifferent sink into yet deeper indifference. No man cares for their souls ; for when did the hireling care for his flock ? The TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 365 evening and morning hymn is silenced in many a cottage. Im- morality and improvidence come in like a flood. The Sab- bath becomes a day of weariness, — fit preparation for its be- coming a day of toil. The old spirit of honest independence evaporates ; for, in a state of slavery to vice, the whole ab- ject feelings of the slave are induced ; the pauperism of the country multiplies a hundredfold, and, fierce in its dis- tress, threatens to play the footpad with our capitalists and proprietary. And when at length, after the lapse of a cen- tury, the spirit of a better time revives, it finds but a mu- tilated body to animate, — a body palsied in part, — shorn of not a few of its members, and bearing within, in, alas ! no small amount, the seeds of corruption. We peruse exactly the same statute, in an abridged form, in the settlements of Marnoch and Culsalmond ; and what honest man so dull as to miss its true meaning in digests so clear, pointed, and concise ! It is ever an important matter to be able thus to translate written laws, if we may so speak, into overt acts and their con- sequences. It is a higher ability in its perfection than that of the mere lawyer ; — it is the ability of the profound states- man and legislator. All men, however, possess it in some de- gree, — even men who cannot so much as read written law; and it is to the general diffusion and exercise of this faculty that the Church, in the present controversy, owes the support of so preponderating a majority of the people. If lawyer-like misinterpretation of statutes, or the calumnies of seven-eighths of the public press, could have misled them, they would have been all on the other side. Mr Robertson of Ellon would not have been plausible, nor the Earl of Aberdeen diplomatic, in vain ; nor would almost all have seen fallacies deplorably palp- able in the arguments of Dr Cook, and in the utter lack of solidity in the motion of Dr Muir. It was the general abi- lity of translating into the tangibilities of action the misinter- 366 TEANSLATIOXS INTO FACT. pretation and the calumnies, the plausibilities and the diplo- macy, the arguments and the motion, that rallied her support- ers round the Church. "We are told by the lawyers, for instance, that spiritual independence in connection with the Establish- ment means just no more than that degree of independence which the Court of Session now chooses to allow her. "We test the doctrine by the tangibilities of history, — action seen retrospectively ; and find that, if it be true, all the histories of our Church and country must be false. It must be entire- ly false that, in the long battle of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Church was ultimately victor ; it must be false that the Charter granted to her in 1592 is still unrepealed, — that there was a Revolution Settlement in her favour, — or that an act for securing the independence of her government formed a basis of the Treaty of Union. And accordingly we find that, by a strange enough fiction of law, the unreality of all this is actually taken for granted by the asserters of the doc- trine, and that, as if there had been no Charter, no Revolu- tion Settlement, no Treaty of Union, they argue that the Black Acts of 1584 are still in force, — acts which, according to even Principal Robertson, were repealed only eight years after their enactment. If this doctrine be true, these sta- tutes are still the law of the Church, and all the rest of her history is a lie. And to what do the calumnies of the press amount when translated into events ? "What sort of light do the outrages at Marnoch and Culsalmond thrown on the oft- repeated assertion, that it is clerical power, not popular right, for which the Church is contending 1 "What clerical party, on the meanest and most grossly palpable of subterfuges, were content to increase their own power at the expense of the people there 1 And in what party, on the other hand, did the people recognise their best and most devoted friends 1 A similar translation of the Earl of Aberdeen's bill at once fixes its character. If the bill be a desirable bill, then the TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 367 dilemma, in which ministers of the gospel could do only one of two things, — either outrage their own conscience by pro- nouncing reasons of objection to be good which, from the very nature of things, they could not know to be either good or otherwise, or of outraging the consciences of congregations by subjecting them to forced settlements, — this, we say, if the bill be desirable, would be, of consequence, a desirable dilem- ma. We have read somewhere of the Code Napoleon, that in at least one important respect it differs materially from the statute-book of our own country. The bearing of our statutes on special cases is fixed by decisions ; the laws of the Code, on the contrary, are illustrated by examples : special cases are imagined beforehand ; and it is the part of the magistrate to compare with these the cases which actually occur, and to decide accordingly. Examples conceived on a similar prin- ciple would be fatal accompaniments to the bill of Aberdeen. Nor are we quite sure that they would tell very decidedly in favour of the liberum arbitrium. There are cases at least in which even it would translate lamely enough into fact, — cases in which Presbyteries and Synods might be as free from the necessity of perpetrating forced settlements as Adam was free, ere the Fall, from all compulsion to sin, and in which their freedom might possibly be not better employed. At all events, in all human affairs the balance of justice wavers least when there are efficient checks to steady it. These, however, are but desultory remarks, and serve merely to in- troduce the subject which we sat down to illustrate. It is our purpose to attempt translating into fact one or two of the plausibilities of Mr Robertson of Ellon, one or two of the aron- ments of Dr Cook, and perhaps one or two of the assertions of Dr Muir ; and to show that it has been chiefly through a tacit process of translation of the kind we describe that thev have so utterly failed in impressing the religious portion of the community, or other than an inconsiderable portion of 368 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. the Scottish public in general, "We are told that Candid remarked with surprise, in the Court of El Dorado, that the bon mots of the king, even after they had been translated, still remained bon mots. The reverse of this will be found to be exactly the character of the principles which we intend translating into fact : they decompose, and become mephitic in the process, — " Woman to the waist and fair, But ending foul in many a scaly fold." —February 9, 1842. PART SECOND. Corporal Trim translated the fifth commandment into fact by settling on his aged parents the full half of his meagre pay as a soldier. Intrusion and non-intrusion, patronage and anti-patronage, are things equally capable of being translated into fact ; nor is the process too difficult a one to be mastered by men well nigh as humble as even the corporal himself. The tangibilities which these terms express bear upon all. The country may have its tens of thousands on whom a cler- gyman has never been intruded, and its hundreds of thou- sands who have never had an opportunity of exercising their choice in the selection of a clergyman for themselves ; but it does not contain a single individual to whom religion is any- thing, whether Churchman or Dissenter, who is not living in a certain felt relation to some one or other of the tangibi- lities of intrusion or non-intrusion, patronage or anti-patron- age. "We ourselves, for instance, have lived at different pe- riods of our life in relation to them all, — now subjected to the evils of an unmitigated patronage, — now participating in the limited privileges of a bare non-intrusion principle, — now enjoying all the many signal advantages of free, uncontrolled TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 3G9 choice. We have shared, in turn, in all that the Church is contending for, and in all she is contending against j and a piece of simple narrative, bearing on the circumstances of each case, may at once serve to illustrate our meaning, and to show not only how very important the principles of the present controversy are, but the secret also of the people's thorough understanding of them. There are parishes in Scotland which contain areas of about twelve hundred square miles, and whose parish churches were some twenty years ago removed from the parish churches in their nearest neighbourhood by a long day's journey. We resided in one of these for part of a twelvemonth, ere the Government had given its supplementary chapels to the Highlands ; and saw for the first time, at the bottom of a little sandy bay that opened into the boisterous Atlantic, a Scottish parish church between which and the nearer places of worship there stretched forty miles of wild sea-coast on the one hand, and fifty miles on the other. A stormy sea of barren hills occupied the interior ; and the eye, in passing from the serrated peaks and gray dizzy precipices of the higher grounds, encountered scarce anything more inviting on the lower than dark moors, and still darker morasses, — long narrow plains at the bottom of retiring bays, overblown by sand, — and rock-skirted promontories studded with stone. It was no favourable locality for illustrating the excellence of the Voluntary principle. All the more respectable sort of people who can treat themselves on Sabbaths to a joint and a decent suit of broad cloth contrive also to treat them- selves to a sermon ; but — alas for the utterly poor ! — nine- teen-twentieths of the simple inhabitants of this wild district could treat themselves to neither Sabbath joints nor broad cloth. For at least one-third part of every year they had no meal even, and scarce any potatoes ; — their chance of provi- sions for the day depended almost exclusively on the uncer- 2 A 370 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. tain fishing of the night ; and they had to rest wholly for their religious provision on the National Establishment. Voluntaryism had done nothing for them, and could do no- thing. But what had the Establishment done ? It had given them a qualified minister, — a man who had been tried for a very gross crime by the General Assembly, but at a period when the General Assembly was the one court in Europe in which no such accusation was in any instance followed by conviction ; and so, though all the parish held him guilty, he was still a qualified minister. He was naturally a dull man, of somewhat less than average intellect, based on a strong animal nature ; and his pulpit ministrations were perhaps the most miserable things of the kind ever heard, — pieces of disjointed patchwork, badly read, borrowed in part without judgment, and, where original, written without care or thought. It was impossible to listen to them : regarded in a religious light, they were desecrations of the Sabbath, — in an intellectual, mere lullabies to set men asleep. The manse was one of the houses in the parish in which no family worship was kept, save for one week in the year, — the week in which the sacrament was dispensed ; and then, in-order to appear as decent as possible in the eyes of one or two low- country ministers who usually came to assist on such- occa- sions, the family were called together, and the form gone through. We saw in one instance an act of discipline per- formed in the parish. The minister had come home from his morning walk fierce with passion, — actually bellowing ; his two elders were instantly sent for, to hold a session; and three boys were brought before them to undergo the censure of the Church. The little fellows had met their minister in his walk, and had deemed it excellent sport to remind him, somewhat too circumstantially, of the offence for which, a few years before, he had been tried by the General Assembly. And such was an average specimen of the respect entertained for TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 371 liim by liis parishioners. We cannot give the darker shades of this picture; we shall not even hint at them. Be it enough to say, that such was the only clergyman in a tract of coun- try considerably more than thirty miles square, and that we had no alternative, for some thirty Sabbaths together, but that of either attending his church, or of attending no church at all. To have heard sermon anywhere else would have in- volved a two-days' journey. Here, then, so far as we our- selves, and ninety-nine hundredths of the poor parishioners, were concerned, the worst tangibilities of intrusion were in- volved. Arguments translated into facts the most stubborn bore equally against the plausibilities of Voluntaryism on the one hand, and the sophisms of Moderatism on the other. The reservoir provided here at the public expense was but an accumulation of filth, breathing miasma and infection. Then, why care for its maintenance, say the Voluntaries ? Because there was none other in the locality, and the people perished for thirst. Then, why now endanger its existence, say the Moderates 1 Because, existing as a mere tank of stagnant corruption, it mattered not to the surrounding country whe- ther it existed or no ; or, we should perhaps rather say, its existence, in the circumstances, was a positive evil. We exert ourselves, therefore, not to break down the reservoir, but to purify it, — to cleanse it from the feculent poison which has long reeked and festered in it, and to fill it with the pure and living stream, that all around may drink and be refreshed. This, however, is not quite what we intended to say. We set out by remarking that the country does not contain a single individual to whom religion is anything, who is not living in a certain felt relation to the tangibilities of intru- sion or non-intrusion ; and we thus present the reader with one passage in our experience of the tangibilities of intrusion. Need we say that gladly would we have exercised the veto on the appointment of this Highland minister of the Mode- 372 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. rate school, or that all his people would eagerly have joined with us 1 Of the latter, we may just remark, that they were a simple-hearted, inoffensive race of men, not indifferent to the blessings of the gospel, and not too unintelligent to dis- tinguish it from its counterfeits. We changed the scene for a district in the south of Scot- land not five miles from the Scottish capital. It would be worth while inquiring how it should almost always happen that the common country people in the neighbourhood of large towns are less intelligent, not only than the common people of the towns themselves, but also than the common country people who reside in more sequestered localities. Such, however, in our individual experience at least, we have ever fc oid to be the fact. "We have seen shaded maps, on which, from the statistics of crime as furnished by the crimi- nal courts of the several districts, a darker or lighter shade was given to particular localities. Here, where crime most abounded, the shade was intensely deep ; there, where it was somewhat less frequent, a lighter tint spread over the pro- vinces ; yonder, where it was less frequent still, the tint was still lighter; and a faint twilight tinge indicated a yet lower degree of delinquency than characterized even the lowest of the other three. Could the comparative ignorance and intelli- gence of the several provinces of a country be marked out in a similar manner, we are convinced that well nigh all our large towns would present the singular appearance of specks of comparative light, encircled, if we may so speak, by halos of darkness; and that a medium tint, here darker, there lighter, would spread over the country beyond. In the southern locality to which we had now removed we found ourselves within the very circle of one of these tenebrific halos. There was a stagnant vacancy of mind among the people, — a slum- brous lack of intelligence, — and at least as strongly-marked an indifference to religion as to all kinds of useful secular TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 373 knowledge. Carters, common labourers, and farm-servants, formed the great bulk of the population, with a thin sprink- ling of mechanics, petty dealers, and public-house-keepers. Church-going among the carters and labourers seemed to have entirely worn out ; the farm-servants were better but by a single degree ; and, whatever one might have thought of religion itself, there was certainly little to afford pleasure in contemplating the more palpable effects of the want of it here. The men, dirty and unwashed, and in their week-day clothes, might be seen loitering about their hamlets every fair Sabbath morning, more especially about the public-houses, to which, in the villages, according to the too faithful de- scription of Cowper, almost every tenth step conducted the traveller. The Sabbath evening passed in brawling and coarse debauch. Not the Highland parish itself presented to the Voluntary a field more hopeless, though, of course, from an entirely different causa In the southern locality there was money enough consumed on the taverner to have supported half a dozen clergymen ; but while there existed a strong appetite for what the taverner had to give, there existed no appetite whatever for what the clergyman had to give : the supply was fitted to the demand, on the true Adam-Smith principle ; and there were no efforts made at the time to lessen the one kind of appetite, or to create the other. The parish had of course its qualified minister, — a respectable, indolent, not unsensible Moderate, within whose bounds of superintend- ence one could have lived for years not in the least in danger of his coming to the knowlege of the fact. We never saw him, though we resided a considerable part of two twelve- months in his parish, except in the pulpit. There, however, we have heard him read, rather drowsily, a sort of essays called sermons, in which there was now and then a respect- ful allusion to Christianity as something very good, and neither nonsense nor heresy ; bnt in which flat and unprofitable va- 374 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. cancy was occupied by but the uncertain eclioes of ill-defined thought, and 'in which no Saviour was offered to a perishing people, and no scheme of salvation unfolded to them through his blood. A respectable rural congregation, — small com- pared with the population of the parish, but not very small absolutely, — dozed around him in the pews, or in waking fancy sowed their turnips or reaped their corn. In relation to ourselves at least the case was one of decided intrusion : we would have vetoed, if we could, this inoffensive Moderate, of whom nothing worse could be said than that he was of no man- ner of use ; we would have vetoed him, and have taken very conscientiously, when we had done, the necessary declaration. In this southern district, however, less than a journey of two days sufficed to bring us out and home from other churches than the parish one ; Dr M'Crie preached within fewer than five miles of us ; and so, quitting our State-provided minister, we became Dissenter for the time. One example more of a similar kind. The Voluntary controversy had burst out in its first fury, and, with certainly no long- cherished prejudice in favour of Establishments to mislead us, — with very considerable expe- rience, too, of the working of at least one Establishment, — we had quietly taken our side. "We had gone to reside in a southern burgh, filled at the time with the buzz of politics and the din of controversy. Voluntaryism mustered strong, and an incipient Chartism still stronger ; and, not particularly enamoured of the spirit of either principle, we naturally sought the parish church in preference to any of the three chapels of the place. We had no previous knowledge of the party to which the clergyman belonged. We knew merely that he was a clergyman of the Establishment ; and establishment at that period was the great watchword of the party to which we had attached ourselves. We found that he was a gentle- man, — certainly not gross, and by no means either unaccom- TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 375 plished or uninformed. There was a considerable amount of elegance in his discourses : a laudable degree of care had been obviously bestowed on the composition ; the thinking, if neither bold nor original, had enough of vigour to solicit the attention of some of his more intelligent people, — almost all Conservatives ; and his perorations, generally neat, bore always some complimentary reference to a Saviour, and to some inexplicable benefit which He had bestowed upon man- kind. But what that benefit was, or how mankind might avail themselves of it, this respectable gentleman neither knew himself, nor could he tell it to others. His theology rose no higher than that of Blair ; his ability of enforcing it was con- siderably lower ; and had we been set to pick out in all lite- rature, sacred and secular, the compositions which his dis- courses least resembled, we would have selected the Epistles of St Paul. It was pity for him ! He was generous and hospitable, though a little imprudent perhaps, for he some- times gave dinners on Sabbath, — a thing which no Moderate minister should do in these latter evil days, however much inclined. He could occasionally give his pulpit, too, to men of his own party so much more extreme than himself, that even his congregation, — a sufficiently Moderate one, — were accustomed to complain. The only sermon and prayers we ever heard from a clergyman confessedly not Unitarian in which even the name of Christ did not occur, we heard de- livered from his pulpit, but not by himself. We continued to attend his church for nearly two months ; but, beginning to find that Establishments may be countenanced at too high a price, we left him for the time, and went over to the "Vo- luntaries. Nor was the change, in this instance at least, very advantageous ; but if the animating spirit was not su- perior, the form of words was at least more sound. We need scarce add, that our relation to this accomplished and highly qualified minister was the intrusion relation; — that we 376 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. would have vetoed him if we could, and taken the declara- tion. But it is high time to illustrate the opposite prin- ciple, — the non-intrusion one, as opposed to the anti-patronage principle on the one hand, and to the intrusionist principle ou the other. A single instance may serve to translate it into fact. We have lived under the ministry of men whom we would not have chosen, and whom we could not have rejected. A country parish far from towns, with a simple rural po- pulation considerably out of the way of the influence of our lighter periodical literature, and with the Shorter Catechism stereotyped on their general tone of thinking, — a good sin- cere man, of moderate ability, labouring among them in the ministry, walking conscientiously his round of duty, and use- ful and acceptable in that round, not so much from any in- trinsic fitness in himself, as from his practical acquaintance with that scheme of salvation which He who adapts all his means to the accomplishment of his ends has thoroughly ac- commodated to the wants and wishes of the human heart. We have lived in such parishes, and under the ministry of such men. We have remarked too, that such parishes, left to their free choice, would select for themselves such men. The higher order of minds would scarce fit them equally well ; — a principle which applies in a similar degree to all literature and all philosophy. Between the loftier and the humbler minds there must exist an intermediate class ; wanting which, the lowlier could receive no benefit from the loftier. Burke was unintelligible frequently in even the House of Commons ; and until Colin Maclaurin brought down the " Principia" of Newton to the still high level of the previous flights of phi- losophy, men of no ordinary intellectual stature had to take its extraordinary merits on trust. It is on identically the same principle that in a simple country district the gospel would be more acceptable and more useful from a Boston TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 377 than from a Butler. And hence the importance of permit- ting men, in such matters, both to judge and choose for them- selves. The mind requires its particular fit as certainly as the body, and, when enlightened by Christian principle, takes its own measure best. What we meant to remark, however, was, that in such parishes we have felt ourselves living in relation to the tangibilities of the mere non-intrusion prin- ciple. Left to ourselves, we would have perhaps chosen men of a higher intellectual order, — men such as, in Edinburgh for instance, all, whether Churchmen or Dissenters, can vir- tually choose for themselves, in virtue of their living in rela- tion to the tangibilities of the anti-patronage principle ; but never surely would we have vetoed such men. — February 12, 1842. PART THIRD. John Knox might have been an English bishop had he willed it. It is matter of history that the offer of a diocese was made him at the special request of Edward VI., backed by his council ; and, could honours and emoluments, and the favour of royalty, have biassed the Reformer, Puseyism would now be looking up to him as one of her transmitters of the apostolic virtue. He would have formed a connecting link in the long electric chain through which she charges her sur- plice-coated vessels of the altar with the subtile and fiery fluid which already lights tapers there, and bids fair ere long to kindle up faggots. But Knox himself, in the supposed case, like all the better bishops, his contemporaries and friends, would have been utterly unconscious of what he conveyed. The tractors of the mesmerist take as much note of the pla- netary fluid which they are said to transmit, as he would have done of the apostolic ichor. We are told by Dr M'Crie of the Latimers and Cranmers, his associates, that they were 378 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. " strangers to those extravagant and illiberal notions which were afterwards adopted by the fond admirers of the hier- archy and liturgy. They would have laughed," says the historian, " at the man who would have seriously asserted that the ceremonies constituted any part of the ' beauty oi holiness,' or that the imposition of the hands of a bishop was essential to the validity of ordination. They would not have owned that person as a Protestant who would have ventured to insinuate that where this was wanting there was no Chris- tian ministry, no ordinances, no Church, and perhaps — no salvation." Nor are we left to guess at the opinions of Knox on the subject. In the concluding chapter of the " First Book of Discipline," — a work hastily drawn up, but of which the well-matured materials must have revolved as thought in the mind of the Reformer for years, — we are told that the Popish priesthood, " having received no lawful calling to the holy ministry, are utterly devoid of either power or authority to administer the sacraments of Christ." For it is " not the clipping of crowns," it is added, " nor the crossing of fingers, nor the blowing of those dumbe dogges called the bishops, nor yet the laying on of their hands, that maketh true minis- ters of Christ Jesus." What then ? Certain it is that what Ronie itself did not possess, Rome could not have conferred on others. But how are true ministers made 1 Hear the Reformer himself. " By the Spirit of God, first of all, in- wardly moving the heart to seek to enter into the holy call- ing for Christ's glory and the profite of his Kirk ; thereafter by the nomination of the people, the examination and ap- proval of the learned, and public admission by both the Church and the flock." Assuredly a more likely matter ! — a better scheme, obviously, than the clipping or crossing pro- . the blowing of the " dumbe dogges," or the laying on of their hands. Knox lived three centuries ago ; but we are quite content to stake his masculine understanding against TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 379 that of Newman and Pusey united, giving thein all the odds of the world's progress into the bargain. .Now, there are great truths embodied in this singularly pregnant sentence of the Reformer, and very admirably do they translate into fact. They describe adequately the quali- fied minister, in the only rational definition of the term, — a man qualified to be useful in his high walk of duty, because called to it by God himself, chosen by the people, and ad- mitted by the Church. We sketched in our last, as speci- mens of a numerous class, three several clergymen under whom we had been living at different times in the intrusion relation, and described them as all qualified ministers accord- ing to the Moderate definition. One of the statements of Dr Cook, in the anti -patronage debate of last General Assembly, fully bears us out. The confessed leader of his party rose to say, that " absolute patronage had never been known in this country." There was laughter, as well there might, from the opposite benches, and cries of "Marnoch!" "Marnoch!" " Will the gentlemen hear but my explanation," said the reverend Doctor, somewhat testily % "It will remove all ground for the merriment they have manifested. Can a pa- tron go elsewhere but to a man who has affixed to him the stamp of the Church's approbation 1 ? No man can be brought into a living whom the Church has not solemnly and care- fully examined, and declared fit for the work of the minis- try." And to exactly the same effect is the doctrine main- tained by Mr Robertson of Ellon. It is on this principle, he holds, that the late Presbytery of Strathbogie did right, not wrong, in giving the qualified minister Edwards to the parish of Marnoch. It is on this principle that, nicely con- scientious, he cannot sustain mere dissent on the part of the people as an adequate ground for rejecting a presentee, and demands, therefore, tangible reasons of objection on which he may sit and judge. His entire hostility to the Yeto is founded 380 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. on this principle, — the principle that all the licentiates and all the ministers of the Church must be held qualified, unless the contrary can be established, — just as in the eye of the law all men must be held innocent of crime, unless they can be proven guilty. And on nearly a similar basis did Dr Muir found his motion in the General Assembly of 1839. The fundamental principle of the party involves, when translated into fact, either the great and palpable falsehood that all the ministers and all the licentiates of the Church of Scotland are qualified to edify the body of Christ, and, of necessity, not only members of that body themselves, but also peculiarly fitted for their calling by God himself; or the equally palp- able falsehood that the Christian people have no other mea- sure of duty with respect to what and whom they hear, than the ability of church courts to detect delinquency and error. We draw bolt and bar every night, and set a guard in our streets, in the belief that there may be thieves and men of violence abroad. Fling open your doors, says Moderatism, and dismiss the watch : the millions of the country are all honest and inoffensive, except the few hapless individuals who have been convicted of crime in the High Court of Jus- ticiary, and either thrust out of the world or banished the kingdom. We have opposed the priest-making of Puseyism to the process through which, according to Knox, true ministers of Jesus Christ are made. The one is all sheer materialism, — " crossing," " clipping," " blowing," and the " laying on of hands." The very basis of the other is spiritual. But it is not all spiritual. It is in part spiritual, in part intellectual, and, if we may so express ourselves, negatively moral ; and it will be found that it is the merely negatively moral and intellectual portions of it which Moderatism selects, and that the spiritual is altogether rejected. It approaches the Puseyite scheme to the nearest degree possible in the circumstances, TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 381 Hit in one very important respect, eacli tried by its own standard, it falls materially below it. "We cannot try men's hearts," said the old statesman, when passing judgment on the favourite of a friend who had been recommended as faithful, but rejected as incompetent, — " we cannot try men's hearts, but we can at least catechise their heads." Now, there is a provision in the scheme of Knox for the catecliising of the head. The approbation of learned mi- nisters, appointed for the purpose of examination, is a sine qua non to admission. Character, too, in the negative sense, is held to be at least equally important. " It is to be observed," says the Reformer, " that no person noted with publique in- famie be either promoted to the regiment of the Church, or retained in ecclesiastical administration." And such, in the constituting of a true ministry, was the part given to church courts, in contradistinction to the part assigned in the same work in the first instance to the Spirit of God, and the part assigned to the people in the second. The Church, according to the Puseyite scheme, deals witli the materialisms of ordi- nation, reckoning on a necessarily accompanying virtue ; the Scottish Church, in her courts, according to somewhat less than one-half the scheme of Knox, deals with matters equally tangible and evident, — matters of doctrine, acquirement, and, in the low judicial sense of the term, character. Dr Pusey and his friends give us the evidence of our senses for the cross- ing, the blowing, and the laying on of hands : Dr Cook and his friends, selecting one portion of the scheme of Knox, pro- fess equally to give us the evidence of our senses for the lite- rature, the theology, and, if we may so express ourselves, the lack of character positively bad. Both deal equally with tan- gibilities ; but there is this striking difference between them : the tangibilities in the case of Puseyism, viewed in connection with its own ostensible beliefs, are fraught with a necessary virtue. In virtue of his baptism, the priest is a regenerated 382 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. man : in virtue of his ordination, — we apologize to our read- ers for using such terms, but they are those of the party, — in virtue, we say, of his ordination, he is both qualified to rege- nerate others, that is, to baptize them, and to feed their souls with the body of the Lord, — that is, to administer to them the sacrament of the Supper. Moderatism is less consistent. It does not hold that baptism is regeneration ; it does not hold that the sacrament of the Supper is the body of the Lord ; it does not hold that any of those tangibilities on which it insists, — literature, theology, or negative character, — is what the sacraments are not — conversion : it holds, — for in the cir- cumstances it is impossible it should hold otherwise, — it holds that a fully qualified and accomplished minister, — one who, according to Dr Cook, cannot, in the nature of things, be in- truded, no, not into a Culsalmond or a Marnoch, seeing that the " Church has affixed to him the stamp of her approba- tion," and whom Mr Robertson could not conscientiously re- ject in virtue of any rejection on the part of the people, — may be, notwithstanding, an unconverted man, practically unac- quainted with the gospel himself, and with neither wish nor will to urge the acceptance of it upon others. But though such be the consistency of Moderatism, not such was the scheme, nor such the views, of Knox. Church courts were left to deal with facts and arguments, — to cate- chise the head and the life of the presentee. To the people a part at least equally important was assigned, and in which, resting as it did between God and their conscience, the Church too well knew her duty to interfere. "Christ the Head of every man !" There is a duty, doubt- less, which the Church owes to her adorable Head, and to the people her members. But in no degree does that duty super- sede the duty which every individual member owes to Christ as his Head ; and his responsibility for what and how he hears is a responsibility which he cannot roll over upon any TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 383 Crunch. Churches, however false and detestable, are never to be summoned to the bar of judgment. Their portion is in this world exclusively. The tyrants of the Inquisition must be there, — the assassins of St Bartholomew's day, — the blood- hounds of the Irish massacre, — the murderers of Hamilton, and Wishart, and Walter Mill, — the kindlers of the flames of Smithfield, — the iron-hearted persecutors of the Piedmon- tese, — all who in the cause of Rome pursued to the death the saints of the living God. But Rome herself will not be there. Her judgment shall be in this world. Long ere the great white throne shall be set, or the books opened, — ere the sea, and death, and hell, shall give up their dead, — must her place be void among the nations, — a dark and silent blank, where there shall no light shine and no voice be heard, and from which, for ages and centuries, shall the smoke of her burning ascend ; while around and over shall the great voice of much people be heard, praising God " for his righteous judgments 1 ' in " avenging the blood of His servants at her hand." Nor will the Scottish Episcopal Church stand at that awful bar. Not Rome herself wears a redder surplice, nor do her hands smell more rankly of murder. But her portion will be assigned her in this present world also. One Church only shall abide the day of the Lord's coming, — that Church of all climes and all ages, which shall comprise all saints, and the roll of whose members is the Book of Life. It is as indi- viduals, each man apart, that all shall have to stand at the bar of final judgment ; and hence the necessary recognition of the will of the people in all for which the people shall have to answer there. Hence, too, the solemn bearing of the doctrine of Christ's Headship on the existing controversy, not only, and not chiefly even, in its connection with the Scottish Church, but in its bearing on every one of the Church's members individually. To Christ, as his Head and King, must every man render an account of how and what he hears. And 384 TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. lience the peculiar fitness of the enlightened and truly Chris- tian principle of Knox. Mark the close adaptation, the one to the other, of the two first qualifications which he lays down as esssential to the character of the minister of Christ, and the formation of the pastoral tie. The first, in an especial manner, concerns the minister himself. It involves as its basis conversion to God, for without conversion qualification cannot exist ; and then, farther, "the Spirit of God inwardly inovin" the heart to seek to enter into the holy calling of the ministry, for Christ's glory and the profit of the Kirk." On this surely most important foundation rests the ordination formulas of both the English and the Scottish Church. Hence the solemn avowal of the candidate for orders in the one, that he judges himself " to be inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take the office upon him." Hence the not less solemnpledge of the licentiate in the other, that " zeal for the honour of God, love to Jesus Christ, and desire of saving souls, are his great motives and chief inducements in entering into the functions of the holy ministry, and not worldly designs and interests." But this is not enough. For the truth of this solemn oath there is but one man responsible, — he who takes it ; whereas the consequences and character of his ministry must inevitably affect more than himself ; — the people have also their respon- sibility : if lie must render an account of what and in what spirit he preaches, they also must render an account of what and in what spirit they hear. "Christ is the Head of every man !" And so the people's turn comes next. It is the people who must nominate.' By the light which God has vouchsafed, — by their sympathies, their experience, and their knowledge, as Christians, — by those deeply based, undefinable feelings, through which the voice of the true Shepherd is dis- t i n guished from that of th e stranger and the hireling, — through . in short, that entire capacity in Christ's people to which the command, " Beware of false teachers," is addressed by Christ TRANSLATIONS INTO FACT. 385 himself, — must their views be regulated, their choice directed. It is they, the people, not Presbyteries or Synods, who are mainly interested in the matter. Life and death must tell of it. Throughout time the complexion of their spiritual being may depend upon it. Its effects, as it regards them, are to ■stretch onwards through eternity, and reach the dread bar of final judgment. And who, in a question so vital, shall dare interfere, and take the decision out of their hands, though all unable, in the impotence of presumption, to di- vest them of the attaching responsibility 1 Who are the pro- phets prepared to stand in this gap 1 Muirs, Cooks, and Robertsons'? One tells us there can be no such thing as in- ti'usion in the circumstances, seeing that all clergymen are alike qualified : " there is no man to whom a patron can go who has not affixed to him the stamp of the Church's ap- probation." Another assures us that his conscience inter- feres, and that he must be permitted, therefore, to decide for the Marnochs and Culsalmonds of the country, that Ed- wardses may be thrust into the one, and Middletons into the other. A third takes a still bolder flight. The wise, the good, the venerable of the country, assert the principle of Knox; and he coolly tells them that they are just " taking a forward step in the great march, the end of which would be, in Scotland, the dissemination of infidelity and misrule." It is unnecessary to show how miserably these men fail in their duty, by thus absorbing that of the people into their own, — confounding, by something immensely worse than any mere confusion of idea, the examination of the Church with the privileges of the flock. Nor need we again refer to the nice and masterly precision with which Knox could line out the provinces of each. It would be no easy matter to exhaust our subject. It stretches along the entire line of the exist- ing controversy. Every principle has its corresponding fact, — every argument its answering illustration. — Feb. 1 6, 1 842. 2 B 366 THE TWO CONFLICTS. THE TWO CONFLICTS. We have had occasion oftener than once to remark the great celerity of movement, if we may so speak, which characterizes the events of the present age. It would seem as if the loco- motive and the railroad had been introduced into every de- partment of human affairs, — as if the amount of change which sufficed in the past scheme of Providence for whole centuries had come to be compressed, under a different economy, within the limits of less than half a lifetime. Events thicken in these latter scenes of the great drama. There is a condensa- tion of the matter as the volume draws to its close, — the adop- tion of a closer and denser type. One seems almost justified in holding that the great machine of society is on the eve of being precipitated on some all-important crisis, and that the rapidity with which the wheels revolve marks the sudden abruptness of the descent. Now, there is at least one advantage which should be de- rived from living in such a time. It furnishes opportunities which have a tendency, if well employed, of lengthening the term of one's rational existence. It provides reflection with the materials of extended observation ; and enables us to weigh one class of events against another, not, as our fathers did, in two unequal scales, — the one furnished by personal ex- perience, the other by the uncertainties of historical narra- tive, — but in the more equally adjusted balances of personal experience alone. A Scotchman of the times of Charles I. knew of only religious struggles. It was the one question of the age, whether all religious light was to pass to the people through the medium of Laud and his coadjutors, broken into a coloured maze of deceptive splendour, in which every object put on a false and distorted appearance ; or whether they should not look direct on that Sun of Revelation which, more THE TWO CONFLICTS. 387 emphatically than in the meaning of Solomon, " it is a good thing to behold," and whose bright yet sober effulgence is the untinted medium of truth. A century passed, and a sleepy expression of mediocre power and half-intelligence rested on the face of British society. The great religious struggle had been over for more than an age ; and the denizens of the time, in summing up the portion of history which fell within the ran«e of their own experience, could have told of little else than of the petty intrigues of corrupt and selfish statesmen, or of the conflicting claims of rival princes, — men by whom kingdoms, with their people, were regarded as but mere fa- mily properties, and wars as but a sort of lawsuits that de- termined their disposal. There passed half a century more, and all was changed. The masses were in motion ; the great interests of classes and communities were agitated ; and politics had become a desperate game, at which the people played deeply against their rulers, with happiness and free- dom as the supposed stake, and at the close of which, falling into a true gambler's quarrel, they filled the earth with an- archy, violence, and blood. The series of these three great states of things, if we may so express ourselves, occupied two whole centuries. Individual experience stretched but a little way along the line. It could know, in its own proper cha- racter, of only one of the three conditions. Its borrowed recollections of a former state of things failed adequately to mingle with its observations of a present state : they were not personal recollections; — there was substance on the one hand,— mere shadow on the other. Men looked on a gray and silent past, through the darkened and coloured glass of history, as merely curious inquirers ; while on the living, bustling, tangible realities before them they gazed through the clear atmosphere of sentient existence, as earnest, excited, interested spectators. Through that quickening of the wheels of Providence to 388 THE TWO CONFLICTS. which we advert, the case is essentially different now. In- dividual experience embraces the three distinct states ; and men in the prime of middle manhood, who have not misused their experience, know at least a little of each. The intrigues of mere individuals form no inconsiderable portion of our country's history during the reign of George IV., — so much so, that from the trial of Caroline to the death of Canning, there seems little that may not be referred to the petty ma- noeuvring of diplomatists, or to the piques or partialities of the sovereign. With the times of "William, however, a sterner element is introduced ; the masses become the all potent moving power of the State engine, and for a time legislation serves but to index their wishes. A noiseless re- volution then succeeds : there is a sudden shifting of scenes, — a changing of actors, — a thorough revival of principles, unseen, on at least the surface of affairs, since the times of the Charleses. The antagonist parties that at the Reforma- tion shook all Europe with the violence of their conflict, rise in their most characteristic form, in the two great establish- ments of the empire ; and though the contest at its present stage may be regarded as but an affair of outposts, the war has already begun. Twenty years have thus repeated to us the lessons of two centuries. We are afraid it will scarce be disputed that the great poli- tical movement of the country has terminated in disappoint- ment among at least the masses. Chartism, however doubtful its evidence on other matters, testifies all too truly, by the very extent of its own existence, that the physical condition of the people has not been bettered : the Election Committees of the House of Commons demonstrate all too unequivocally that their moral character has not been improved. Nay, to state the case in negatives is to do it injustice. Indirectly at least, the tone of our national morality has been greatly lowered. Whigs, Tories, Radicals, Chartists, are all alike in error, if TIIE TWO CONFLICTS. 389 ever before there sat a British Parliament based on so large an amount of bribery and corruption as the Parliament so lately called together under the provisions of the Reform Bill, and to secure the return of which, nearly a million of the people registered their votes. Are our religious struggles to terminate in disappointment equally marked and lamentable, — to leave behind them, even though successfully maintained, no nobler trophies among our people than the pangs of an ever- accumulating physical distress, or the atrocities of an ever- sinking moral degradation ? We have formed far other hopes : nor are there indications wanting which serve to show that in these hopes it is not irrational to indulge. The signal suc- cess which in the past year has attended the several Schemes of the Church, du» :ng a season of great depression and dis- tress, is of itself a sign of encouragement. In tones more sig- nificant than those of speech, it reminds the class who, on the plea of "lacking leisure to do good," are solicitous to cease from the present conflict, that He who decreed of old that the walls of Zion should be "built in troublous times," can build them in troublous times still. It furnishes no incurious or uninstructive employment to run over the various features of the two great popular move- ments which have agitated Scotland during the last twelve years, — the political and the ecclesiastical. They present themselves to us as a series of scenes ; but we shall lack time * even for bare enumeration. In the " Vision of Don Ro- derick," the dead stillness is broken by the blast of a trumpet, and straightway the giant Destiny arises, and, striking down with his iron mace the curtain of rock which interposes be- tween him and the future, all in an instant becomes violence, commotion, and war. We have a similar recollection of the first beginnings of the great political movement. We stood in a calm still evening early in the August of 1830 — only twelve years ago ! ! — beside a half-deserted seaport in the 3^0 THE TWO CONFLICTS. north of Scotland. A fleet of fishing-boats, bound for the herring-bank, mottled the offing, — a large French lugger lay- moored beside the quay, with her huge brown sails drooping heavily from her masts in the calm. Groupes of town's-people, mostly mechanics, sauntered along the shore, or rested in front of the lugger, looking curiously on the foreigners. The en- tire scene seemed representative of quiet industry enjoying a leisure hour amid the repose of nature. But " hark the twanging horn ! " It was the post coming in : a few minutes elapsed, and then a newspaper, damp from the folds, was handed to one of the mechanics. How strangely exciting — how tremendously important — the tidings which it conveyed ! " Revolution in France ! " — three days' war in the streets of Paris ! — the Government overpowered ! — the King de- throned ! — the people signally victorious ! — huzza ! It was interesting to mark the sudden effect, — the instant hive-like buzz, — that arose among the congregating groupes, — the ex- citement among the French crew, none of whom could read English, but to whom, notwithstanding, the important news- paper was handed, — the unnatural effect of their strange French pronunciation of the English words, as they hurried over them, made all the more strange and unnatural by the intense emphasis with which the words were accompanied, and which spoke so unequivocally of the overpowering anxiety to know what they conveyed. It was the first blast of the trumpet that had blown, and the whole British people awoke. There ensued a period of unquiet agitation and sanguine hope, — agitation in which all among the labouring classes shared, and hope in which they all indulged. Scarce any one deemed himself so obscure but that some of the anticipated good might reach him : there was at least some indirect advantage to be derived to him; — his labours were to be less, or his remuneration greater, or he was at least to walk more on a level with the aristocrats THE TWO CONFLICTS. 391 of the country. The future historian of this stirring period would require no slight skill adequately to represent the gene- ral expression of society, if we may so speak, during its high fever of excitement and expectation. Some of the earlier effects might be easily anticipated. There is scarce a village in Britain that cannot point out its wrecks of the Reform Bill, in the forms of broken-down and dissipated mechanics and bankrupt shopkeepers. Not that the Reform Bill was bad; — we see it interposed by the providence of God at the present time as a bulwark between the Church of Scotland and the miserable politicians who would so fain crush and destroy her. But, if not bad in itself, it at least led to much that was bad. The village trader, whose predecessors in business had gone on quietly adding pound to pound, and had risen, on their hard-earned and honest savings, to the en- joyment of the accompanying modicum of respect and influ- ence, found a different way to rise, — a way which the accom- panying municipal reform, no doubt good in itself also, — threw more widely open to him than even the extension of the Parliamentary franchise. Influence, respect, civic honours and authority, were the rewards of his predecessors in busi- ness, if they but prospered in their calling. He, on the other hand, found a way to civic authority without prosper- ing in his calling ; nay, of which, if he availed himself, all hope of prospering in his calling might be rationally regarded as at an end. He learned to canvass for votes on his own behalf, and rose to the dignity of a bailie : he learned to canvass for his friend the Member, and enjoyed the unspeak- able honour of handing the great man through the streets on the day of the election. He became eloquent on platforms, brilliant at public dinners, skilful in the framing of resolu- tions, happy in the drawing up of patriotic petitions, — ac- quired, in short, the whole trick of public business, and, in nine cases out of ten, winded up his own by getting into the 392 THE TWO CONFLICTS. Gazette. A general unsettledness possessed the community, — the unsettledness of salient hope. In almost every village there were two great classes, — the solicitors and the solicited ; and as the spirit of Young Reform was honest, enthusiastic, sincere, the soliciting class exerted themselves for the gene- ral good and their own individual glorification ; while the class solicited were passively patriotic just for the general good alone. But the spirit of Young Reform became less honest as it grew older. Experience came to teach unwill- ing pupils that there lies but little within the reach of mere statesmanship. The overtoiled poor had to work as long «nd to fare as hardly as before. Periods of depression came on, as if there had been no extension of the franchise. The funded debt increased, as if the Reform Bill had never passed the Lords. Men became weary, too, of seeing a vulgar up- start aristocracy of cunning canvassers and adroit beggars of votes taking the places of the solider and not worse burghal aristocracy, who had carried things all their own way under the ancient regime, and of finding that the new men, like the old, were getting places in the colonies for their sons, and places in the excise for their nephews, and the people meanwhile none the better. Chartism broke off indignant, and set up for itself. A quieter and tamer class crept silently into the opposite scale, and solaced themselves, when regis- tering their Tory suffrages, by calling them Conservative. Worst of all, franchise-holders began to consider by thousands whether, as they could do almost nothing for the country by giving their votes, they might not do just a little for them- selves by selling them : and hence the election markets of the country, with their ticketed oaths and priced perjuries. The generous romance, the high-toned enthusiasm, of Young Reform, evaporated as he rose in years, until at length, changing his character altogether, he sunk into a worn-out and selfish truckler, devoid both of virtue and the belief in THE TWO CONFLICTS. 393 it ; and thus what had been Young Reform became Old Cor- ruption. Nor has the great political fever been more favourable to the intellectual than to the moral character of our country. A few contemplative natures there are that need no other spur to quicken them in the pursuit of knowledge than just the love of it. But it is far otherwise with the great bulk of the species. In the average intellect attention never con- centrates save under the influence of some serious belief. And hence the superficiality of a merely political people. They catch up shadows of opinions, impalpable and unreal as those thin films which, according to the old metaphy- sicians, bodies in the light are continually casting off, and which were regarded as the direct causes of vision. They are less the recipients of knowledge than the objects on which a kind of knowledge is reflected, — mere blank tablets, athwart which a periodical press throws, like a huge magic-lanthorn, its fantastic and ever-shifting images. The period of political excitement created no thinkers. There was not enough of earnestness left among the people, after the first delirium had passed, to give motion or direction to their thoughts. It was Christianity through which the popular mind in Scotland was originally developed : through Christianity alone can it be awakened anew. The distracting turmoil of secular politics, with the accompanying excitement, has ever served but to dissipate and weaken it. From the ecclesiastical struggle we anticipate effects of a very different character from those produced by the political one ; and certainly the first fruits are not of a kind suited to disappoint expectation. Both struggles might be repre- sented, we have said, in a series of scenes ; nor would the scenes characteristic of the ecclesiastical struggle form the less striking series of the two, — whether we choose to draw from the atrocities that impart to the resistance of the Church its 394 THE TWO CONFLICTS. character of stern necessity, — or from the strange instances of discordant coalition exhibited in the motley array of her assailants, — or from the courts in which bewigged and be- robed law deals upon her its censures, in all the conscious bravery of horse-hair, white ribbon, and taffeta, and devoid only of moral weight, — or, more pleasing surely, from the spectacle of earnest multitudes gathered together in her be- half, and prepared to assert her cause in its true character, as Scotland's old hereditary quarrel, — or from the evening meet- ing in some rural hamlet, to which, from distant glens and solitary hill-sides, a devout and thoughtful people have ga- thered, to wear out the night in implorations to heaven for her safety, — or from scenes of family devotion in many a lonely cottage, in which her name and her cause are not for- gotten, when gray-haired patriarchs wrestle in prayer with their God. Very much still remains to be done ; but we accept as a token of good in her behalf, the' strengthening devotional feeling of the country, — the deeper tone of spirituality im- parted to the ministrations of so many of her clergymen, — the great increase in the number of her prayer-meetings ; nay, it is something too, that Moderatism itself, provoked to unwonted diligence, should be attempting, with a hand stif- fened by disuse, to trace out the line of duty. Instances are not wanting in which, awaking from its sleep of a century, it has half-striven, in its bewilderment, to escape from its dreams of effete commonplace, into the living realities of the gospel ; and we have high authority for saying that it is well Christ should be preached, even though preached out of con- tention. There is much implied in that marked increase which has taken place, during the course of the last twelve- month, in the funds of the various Schemes of the Church, and to which we have already referred. It conclusively proves that the controversy in which she is entangled has had THE TWO CONFLICTS. 395 no narrowing or secularizing effect on the minds of the classes most engaged in it, — that its tendencies are of a directly op- posite character, — and that, amid harassments and perplexi- ties at home, there has been more thought of our countrymen abroad destitute of the means of religious instruction, of the poor benighted Hindu, of the long lost house of Israel, of the young among ourselves growing up in ignorance, and of the old and middle-aged passing on in darkness to their graves, than at periods when the peace among us was unbroken, and all our narratives of persecution belonged ex- clusively to the past. Nor are there proofs wanting that the effects of the struggle are good intellectually. Our litterateurs need be in no fear of seeing the country thrown back into a state of barbarism. It was in times such as the present that the humble peasantry of Scotland learned to foil at their own weapons the most skilful controversialists of the persecuting Church, and left their death-testimonies to posterity, to bear witness alike to the indomitable firmness and integrity with which they maintained their principles, and to the high de- gree of intelligence which they had learned to exert in the defence of them. " The severities to which he had been subjected," says Sir James Macintosh, " had led Bunyan to revolve in his own mind the principles of religious freedom, until he had acquired the ability of baffling, in the conflict of argument, the most acute and learned among his persecu- tors." There is an important principle involved in the re- mark. It exhibits the necessity which stimulates to thought and invention, arising direct out of religious belief acted on by persecution, — a principle the efficacy of which may be soon tested in Scotland, as of old. Meanwhile there is a de- gree of interest excited, which has already operated favourably on the popular mind : men are falling back upon the past, with all its earnest feeling and deep thinking, who were con- tent hitherto to skim over the cold superficialities of the pre- 396 THE TWO CONFLICTS. sent : the Reformation is recognised once more as super- eminently the great event of modern history; and there is more read and known regarding it than at any other period for the last hundred years. It is a fact of some importance, that our ecclesiastical histories have become the most popular and sale- able books of the time. " I have ever been an enemy to religious strife," said Lord Dunfermline, in allusion to the existing controversy, when throwing his entire weight into the opposite scale, — " I have ever been an enemy to religious strife." His Lordship had gained a great deal by the political " strife," then well-nigh at its close, — influence, title, broad lands, and solid guineas; whereas by the " religious strife" he could expect to gain nothing. Besides, its cross movements had thrown him out in his calculations, and converted the last political act of his life into a somewhat ludicrous blunder. And so, as the sin- gularly charitable advocate of the grossnesses of intrusion, and the singularly liberal detester of the just rights of Chris- tian men, he looked very magnanimous, and denounced " re- ligious strife." We have attempted placing the two strifes before our readers in some of their more palpable effects. Both were alike ordered by the Disposer of all things, and their time and their bounds set, with no reference, surely, to the antipathies or predilections of Churchmen or politicians. Peace and war come alike from God. Bat it seems no diffi- cult matter to say which of the two seems the nobler and more hopeful battle, or in which it is most a privilege to be called to contend. — May 25, 1842. TENDENCIES. 307 TENDENCIES. PART FIRST. One finds but little difficulty in estimating the tendencies of a bygone time in the page of history. The events stand out in a clear light, portable in bulk, and arranged in due order. We see in what they have begun and in what they have ter- minated ; and arrive, with scarce an effort, at our conclusions regarding their general scope and bearing. But it is far otherwise with the tendencies of a present age. It is no such easy matter to estimate their strength and direction. We are too deeply interested in the passing events to appreciate them justly, or we are interested in them too slightly, and our indifferency has equally the effect of setting our judgments at fault. They bulk large or small in our minds, — less in agreement with their own true proportions than in accord- ance with the medium of predilection or prejudice through which we survey them. We are too much among them, and too near them, to see them as they really are, or to mark the direction in which they are bearing us in their course. The current of tendency in the past, as exhibited in history, is a clear, transparent stream, that sparkles in the sunshine. As involved in the occurrences of the present, it is a turbid and sullen tide, with a sombrous curtain of cloud resting over it and on either hand, and with thick darkness before. The voyager finds it a comparatively easy matter to trace his course on the chart. The observations are already taken to his hand on the graduated margin, and carried carefully across by the reticulated lines ; and the ocean he is crossing must be a wide ocean indeed, if he does not see the land which he has laft a very few inches astern of him, and the land to which he is going a very few inches ahead. But it is a quite dil- 3y8 TENDENCIES. ferent matter to trace his course over the broad and living sea, with its tossing waves and its perplexing currents, whei_ the distant horizon sinks all around him over a trackless waste of waters, and he knows that far beyond the line of that wide circle, where sky and sea seem to meet, the waste spreads oxx, and on, and on, for hundreds and thousands of miles. And when all is dark with sleet and rime, and his barque is stag- gering onward before the tempest, — when wild uproar and giddy tumult reign below, and gloom and thick cloud darken the heavens above, — when no star looks out from amid the rack by night, and no sun shines through the thick fog by day, — when, amid the restless welter of the deck, he has lashed his pilot to the helm, and stationed his forlorn watch in the top, — he must be content to confess a lack of knowledge as certainly as a lack of power, and that he is in no degree less able to control the irresistible waves and winds that are driv- ing him involuntarily on, than to say where they have brought him, or to what untried scenes of terror or peril they are hurry- ing him away. But however difficult it may be to estimate the true ten- dencies of a present age, it is all-important that they should be estimated ; just as it is all-important to the voyager in the storm that he should know where he is, and to what coast he is driving. And it is peculiarly important in an age like the present, when the powers of good and evil seem as if mustering their forces for some signal struggle. We are told by chivalrous old Barbour, in his " Acts and Achievements of the Bruce," that when " Sir Aymer and Johne of Lome, Chasit the kiuge with hounde and home," the pursuing body despatched five of their lightest and most active men to overtake the hard-pressed warrior, then in full view, and to detain and hold him at bay until the coming up TENDENCIES. • 399 )f the rest. And overtake and bring him to bay they did. But ere the main force of Lome and Sir Aymer could reach the green holm in which he had turned on his pursuers, the sward was cumbered by five bleeding and mutilated corpses, and the formidable fugitive had again shot far ahead. The Church of Scotland has not fared so well. The Voluntary controversy overtook her in her course during the dominancy of a Whig Ministry, and had unquestionably strength enough to keep her at bay during a time which she could have em- ployed, had she not been so entangled, as peculiarly oppor- tune and favourable for securing her safety. Placed in an eminently popular position, and warmly supported by her lay members, who felt that her quarrel was in reality theirs, she had to deal with a Government whose only mode of estimat- ing the importance of religion was by determining the votes that it could command, and to whom, with more than the emphasis of the old proverb, " the voice of the people was the voice of God." The religious element, in its character as such, never entered into their calculations. If the popu- lar power of Scotch Voluntaryism mustered as twenty, and the popular power of the Scotch Establishment as twenty- one, they would just have subtracted the lesser from the larger sum, and have given the Church the benefit of the balance. Every vote against her was regarded as a positive deduction from the justice of her claims. And it was under a Govern- ment of this character that the Voluntary controversy broke out, to divide the popular forces of the country, and to place our rulers for the time in the circumstances of the ass be- tween the two bundles of hay. Let political Voluntaries as- sert what they may, the controversy is now dead, — dead as any of the five hapless pursuers of the Bruce, who, like evan- gelic Dissent in this instance, were so active to their own hurt ; but it is all too apparent that, ere it sunk into utter weakness and died, it accomplished its work : it entangled 400 TENDENCIES. and detained the Church at a time when otherwise she would have been employed in making secure her safety through the popular influences ; and, when thus entangled and kept at bay, other enemies came up. The same change of Ministry* which had the effect of placing an already sinking Voluntaryism hors de combat had the effect of placing a much elated and sanguine Moderatism in what Moderatism itself deemed a position of great strength. It saw full before it a scene of triumph, — the return of the days of its old majorities, and of its high-handed and much- loved policy ; and all that seemed necessary to secure almost instant victory was just one bold stroke. Hence the unceas- ing exertions of Moderate influence with the Conservative Government to baffle all attempts at even an indifferently fair adjustment of the controversy. The Church, in her course towards safety, — a course that had now become much more dubious and uncertain than before, and which promised, humanly speaking, much fewer chances of escape, — had to contend with an enemy formidable mainly from the entangle- ment and delay that it occasioned. Moderatism had most certainly no intention of bringing down the Establishment : it is well aware how very miserably it would fare without it. "We give our present Lord Justice-Clerk [Hope] full credit for attachment to the Scottish Establishment, and believe that, had he to choose between two great evils, he would rather see it Evangelistic than Puseyite. At this most important result, however, has the Church now arrived, and the ques- tion has assumed a new aspect in consequence. It is a point virtually decided by the resolutions of the late Convocation, that the existing controversy shall be either settled on fair non-intrusion principles, or that the Establishment of Scot- land shall not be a Presbyterian Establishment. The second • The accession of the Conservatives to power in 184L TENDENCIES. 401 enemy that has entangled and kept the Church at bay pro- mises soon to sink into a state of as great powerlessness as her first enemy. But it, too, may have accomplished its work. The Great Apostacy has been meanwhile rising into strength in England, and asserting its place as the master principle of that kingdom. It was powerless at the time when "Voluntaryism contended with our Church. When Moderatism contended with her, its joints were still unknit, its muscles undeveloped, its strength rather prospective than actual. But it is an immensely stronger principle now. The Church has been detained and entangled in her course by antagonists much indeed her inferiors in prowess ; but ere she has succeeded in fully mastering them, it would seem as if the main body of the enemy had come up. How strange if, in the revolutions of those cloud-enveloped and mysteri- ously-complicated wheels of Providence, which the Prophet in vision saw, the efforts of Voluntaries, — many of them truly Christian men, — and the active hostility of Moderates, — men at least hostile to superstition and to the dogmas of the " ma- lignant Church," — should turn out to be but mere diversions, made all blindly and unwittingly in favour of the Great Apostacy ! There can be at least little rational doubt that Puseyism will now exert an influence on the adjustment of our Scottish Church question which at an earlier period it could not have exerted. "When Voluntaryism began its opposition, Pusey- ism had no existence ; when Moderatism began its opposi- tion, Puseyism was comparatively weak. Nay, independently of both, the Church, in her present position, had she been but prepared to take it up, might have very possibly compelled a fair and liberal settlement from Conservatism when Sir Robert Peel entered upon office, or from Liberalism ere Lord Mel- bourne quitted it. Neither of these statesmen, left to them- selves, could have contemplated for a moment the disestab- 2 c 402 TENDENCIES. lishrnent of the national religion of Scotland, with all the lono- train of evils which such an event must of necessity chaw along with it, as a thing to be permitted in any circum- stances. But a new party has become strong in the political field, that, through the disturbing influence of an element of religious belief, will be wholly incapable of estimating these evils aright. We say an element of religious belief. It is common to all sincere religionists, whether their creed be a true or a false one, to " hope against hope," — to hope at least against probability, — to shut their eyes to what seem the teachings of experience in cases in which these teachings run counter to some promise of their religion, and to open them to the promise only. We believe, as Christians, for instance, that the knowledge of the Lord shall one day cover the whole earth. Why ? Do we find grounds for any such belief in either the present state of things or in the world's past history 1 Very slight grounds indeed. If we see true Churches springing up in one part of the globe, do we not see them dying out in another % Tahiti and the Sandwich Islands have their Christianity. Yes ; but what lias become of the Seven Churches of Asia ] America has Lad her revivals. Yes ; but how much of the living religion of the Reformation is now to be found on the Continent of Europe 1 We do not found our belief in the ultimate triumph of our religion on the evidence of history, or on a survey of the present prospects of society : we have a much better foundation ; — we ground it on the promise of our God. And, let the probabilities run as they may, it is a belief which we shall therefore continue to hold fast. Now, false, like true Churches, have their beliefs, firmly held after this fashion, which run counter to the probabilities ; nor can there be ele- ments that more disturb calculations, or that lead to the per- petration of greater follies and crimes. Puseyism indulges in them ; nor has there been any lack of indication regard- TENDENCIES. 403 ing the points on which, they are concentrated. There is not one of our readers more thoroughly based in the belief that China, or Hindustan, or the Persian empire, shall be one day Christian, than Puseyism is grounded in the belief that Scot- land shall be one day Puseyite. It is formidable, in a crisis like the present, to have to come in contact with such a prin- ciple. The rational weighers of probabilities are easily dealt with : not so the blind hopers against hope. Men of expe- diency, such as Sir Robert Peel, — men less in danger of believ- ing anything they don't see than of doubting when they ought to believe, — will find no difficulty, as we have said, in at least estimating the circumstances in which our country is at present placed. Sir Robert two years ago would have acted in due accordance with such an estimate. But it is at least questionable whether the expediency-party which he repre- sents is powerful enough to act upon it now. The hopers against hope, — the bigots who " believe because it is impos- sible," — muster strong in the rear of our statesmen of mere expediency. Their influence to disturb, disarrange, disap- point, is great, and will, we doubt not, be vigorously exerted. We have to expect, in consequence, we are afraid, much wil- ful misrepresentation, much intentional misapprehension, much exaggeration of our claims as unreasonable and absurd, much insinuation that our designs are selfish and dishonest, de- lays ingeniously spun out to wear us down, perhaps a bill meanly equivocal in phrase, framed intentionally to palter in a double sense, — perhaps no bill at all. If such be the state and apparent tendency of things, what course ought the Church to pursue 1 Is it at once her inte- rest and her duty vigorously to persevere in forming her con- gregational associations, and in securing everywhere the ad- herence of her people? Her better consolations and encou- ragements are to be derived from the highest of all sources ; but there can be no harm in remembering, besides, that if 40-i TENDENCIES. there be powerful principles opposed to her, the principles for which she has to contend have been, ever since the Re- formation at least, by much the strongest in Scotland. " It matters not," says Carlyle, in his quaint but striking man- ner, — " it matters not though a thing be a small thing : if it be a true thing it will grow," Cromwell and Napoleon were once puny infants. But there was a principle of life in them, and of undeveloped power ; and so they both grew up to be very great men. Rather more than a century ago, Moderat- ism cast out of the Church of Scotland four clergymen. A small matter, it may be thought. Yes, — small in much the same way that the infant Cromwell and the infant Napoleon were small. The transaction involved one of the principles of our present controversy. The thing was a small thing in itself, but then it embodied a great and true principle, and so the small thing grew. And in the present day, the four ejected clergymen are represented by five hundred clergymen and by five hundred thousand people. If the worst comes to the worst with the Church of Scotland, she bids fair to begin her course, not as a small, but as a very great thing, — to be- gin with the five hundred ministers and the five hundred thousand people. And to the life-imparting, growth-secur- ing principle of the Secession, she adds another master-prin- ciple, whose strength has also been amply tested in Scotland. The contendings of the Secession in the last century involved mainly the non-intrusion principle. The contendings of our Presbyterian fathers in the previous century involved mainly the great doctrine, that Christ is the only Head of the Church, and that, in the things which pertain to his kingdom, she owns no king or lord but Him. And in our present struggle both these principles of strength are united. We have glanced, however, at but a small portion of our subject ; it is of great extent, and as important as extensive ; and we shall embrace an early opportunity of returning to it. — December 24, 1842. TENDENCIES. 405 PART SECOND. Jt is a widely-spread belief of the present time, and certainly one of its not less striking characteristics, that the men of the passing generation are to be the spectators of a series of stranger changes and more remarkable revolutions than have been witnessed in almost any former period of the world's history. We say, widely spread. It is a belief that pro- fesses to be founded on Scripture, and has, in consequence, one set of limits in the far-diffused infidelity of the masses. Nay, more, it professes to be founded on an interpretation of Scripture exclusively Protestant, and has thus another set of limits in the superstitions of Puseyism and Popery, that still further restrict its area. But outside these lines of boundary, inevitable in the present state of Christendom, — outside of infidelity on the one hand, and of Popery and Puseyism on the other, — it may well be described as a belief extensively diffused. There is scarce a country in the world in which Protestantism exists as a living faith, from America to Aus- tralia, and from Australia to Great Britain, in which it does not exist. There is scarce a Protestant body, from the Epis- copalian to the Independent, the Baptist to the Presbyterian, in which it has not its zealous asserters. It may be found in minds of almost every calibre, — in union, in some instances, with great doctrinal extravagancies, and active, ill-regulated imaginations, — united in others to codes of belief soundly orthodox, and to great general sobriety and strength of judg- ment. The extent to which it prevails renders it one of per- haps the more remarkable traits of the religious world in the present day. Beliefs of a somewhat similar character have spread not less widely at other times. A belief that the end of the world was close at hand had immense influence in stir- ring up our ancient barons and their retainers to engage in 406 TENDENCIES. the earlier crusades ; but it was the belief of a barbarous and uninformed age, alike remarkable for the credulity of a su- perstitious laity and the pious frauds of an unprincipled priest- hood. A belief obtained very generally among Papists early in the latter half of the seventeenth century, that the year 16G6 was to be marked by some great religious revolution and the coming of Antichrist ; and, through a curious coinci- dence, the Jews pretended, says Voltaire, that their Messiah was to come this year, — a delusion which led in part to the temporary success of that singular impostor, Sabbatei Levi j while in England, says Burnet, "an opinion did run through the nation" that this year was to usher in the day of judgment. But the belief, thus various in its character, and which is said to have originated in a vulgar misapprehension of the mystic number in the Apocalypse 0>66, was restricted, like the other, to the superstitious and the ignorant. It is a pe- culiarity of the existing belief, that it is entertained by all our more eminent expounders of prophecy in the present time, and that the writings of well-nigh all the more judicious ex- pounders of the past bear upon it also. The Medes, Tillin- gasts, and Flemings of the seventeenth century point direct in the same line with the Keiths, Brooks, and Bickersteths of our own. The fact is unquestionably a curious, and surely not un- important one, in its character as a fact. It was curious even as a fact, that a belief should have prevailed throughout the world in the days of Augustus Caesar, that some very great personage was just about to appear upon earth ; nor was the importance of the belief lessened in the least through the mis- takes and misapprehensions to which, in some instances, it led. It was no doubt sufficiently absurd in Yirgil to imagine he had found the wonderful child for whom the whole world was waiting, and under whose reign " the serpent's brood shall die," in the obscure Salonius, the infant son of Pollio. TENDENCIES. 407 It was scarce less absurd in Tacitus, in the following century, to hold that he had discovered the king, "who was to come forth of Judea, and reign over the whole earth," in the Em- peror Vespasian. But perversions and misconceptions such as these militated in no degree against the general basis of reality in which the belief itself was founded. It had its foun- dations in truth, however wrapped up in the empty and un- tangible obscurities of Sybiline prediction, or mixed with the gross and palpable delusions of an impure idolatry, or misdi- rected by the active but blind ingenuity of philosophic his- torians or accomplished poets. And the incident of the eastern sages, as recorded in Matthew, shows us that it was a belief through which, employed aright, the Saviour might be found, even by men outside the pale of Judea. This general belief of the period, so curiously handed down to us in pagan lite- rature, was in reality a warning in Providence to the whole world, that the King of the world was coming. ]STow, we speak advisedly when we say, that not since that time was there any belief founded in prophecy at once so widely spread and entertained by men of such general soli- dity of understanding, as the belief of the present age, to which we refer. It has no doubt been exhibited, like the other, in many a various phase of absurdity and delusion. All our readers must have heard of Lady Hester Stanhope, who died, a few years since, amid the upper wilds of Lebanon, in the full expectation that she was to be visited there by the Sa- viour in person, and who kept in her stables a horse on which he might ride. They must be acquainted also with the ex- travagancies, in the same line, of the followers of Campbell and Irvine. They may have differed widely, too, from the peculiar views of the variously-composed body known as the " Personal Peign Men" of the present day, and perhaps thought of the class with a sort of tacit reference to the " Fifth Mo- narchy Men" of the times of the Commonwealth. We ques- 408 TENDENCIES. tion, however, whether it would be in any degree more wise to slight the belief in which these extravagancies have origi- nated now, than it would have been wise to have slighted the belief in which the extravagancies of Virgil, and not a few of his contemporaries, originated in the reign of Augustus Csesar. The belief which furnished the Roman poet with but the occasion of a mean compliment to the reign of a cun- ning usurper, led to far higher results in the case of the eastern sages ; the belief which, operating on the crazed imagination of a Lady Stanhope, terminated in but an insane folly, may be a very different thing indeed in the mind of a Dr Keith ; and we think there can be at least no harm in urging on our readers an examination into the extent to which it in reality prevails, and of the data on which it professes to be founded. There is at least nothing fanatical in the advice. It can be in no degree irrational to devote one's self humbly and prayerfully to the careful study of that portion of Scripture regarding which Christ himself has so emphatically said, " Behold, I come quickly : blessed is he that keepeth" in mind " the sayings of the prophecy of this book." There is but one book in the whole Bible to which the blessing particularly refers. It is the book on which this belief of the religious world pro- fesses to be specially based, — the belief that the present re- markable pause among the kingdoms of Europe is but a pause preceding some great hurricane, in which the very founda- tions of society may be unfixed, — that the sixth vial is now in the course of being poured out on the vast river Euphrates, to dry up its failing waters in the sight of peoples and nations that have peace given them meanwhile, as if to enable them the more carefully to mark the sign, — and that, when that sign shall be accomplished, there shall burst forth upon them a storm like that which the prophet saw in the cave, when "a great and strong wind rent the mountains, and brake in pieces the rocks, before the Lord." TENDENCIES. 409 Tlie inquirer, in the course of bis search, and especially when setting himself to examine rather the extent and va- rieties of the belief than the grounds of it, will scarce fail of finding many curious passages, — some of them, no doubt, very extravagant, some of them eminently striking ; and the fol- lowing passage among the rest : — " When the beast of Rev. xiii. ] , is described," says a writer of the present year, " he has xipon his ten horns ten crowns ; but when the beast of Rev. xvii. 3, is represented as carrying the woman, he still has ten horns, but he has not a crown upon any horn." And who, ask our readers, can be the writer of this wildly demo- cratic, this fiercely revolutionary passage, — this passage that in reality outdoes, in its quietness, the loudest treason of the most ostentatious Chartism 1 No democrat, no revolution- ist, we assure them. It was written in a quiet English vicarage, by a beneficed clergyman, — a man who, believing, indeed, that the present age will not pass before all the ten horns of the beast shall want their crowns, has yet evidently no other interest in the democratic spirit than that which he takes in it as one of the signs of the times. That such passages should be written and published by such men, must be regarded as one of the signs of the times also, and, we are of opinion, one of not the least significant. The phase which it presents maybe well deemed extreme ; but, as one of the many phases exhibited by a widely-extended belief, remarkable, in all its multitudinous aspects, for its unity of general scope and direction, we deem it not without its degree of startling interest. But in speculating on the effects of the disestablishment of the religion of Scotland, let us deal with the probabilities of the event as if no such belief existed. It is of signal im- portance, at a time like the present, that a conviction so widely spread should be carefully examined. If found to be solid, it may greatly influence conduct ; but it must not be 410 TEXDEXCIES. permitted to influence calculation. There can, however, be no harm in referring to the somewhat shrewd circumstance, that the calculations and the belief fill with revolution ex- actly the same period of time. He must know exceedingly little of the history of either Presbyterian Scotland or of revolution in general, who believes that our vexatious Church controversy is to sink at once into quiet whenever some five hundred ministers and some five hundred thousand people shall have quitted the Establishment. It is only then, pro- perly speaking, that the war is to begin. Revolutions go commonly, like twin stars, by pairs. There is first a com- paratively quiet revolution, and then a much more noisy one ; and the civil courts have succeeded in accomplishing only the quieter of the two. They have succeeded in revolutionizing the constitution of the Church of Scotland ; and when they shall have disestablished her, the work, so far as it is theirs, shall be complete. But the other revolution is still alto- gether future. The revolution of Charles I. was pretty nearly accomplished when John Hampden had been made to suffer fine and imprisonment in England, and the service-book of Laud had been introduced into the High Church of Edin- burgh. But then came the counter-revolution, and it was not fully accomplished until a discrowned head, melancholy of visage, and with locks prematurely gray, had dropped with hollow sound on the scaffold at Whitehall. The revolution of James was well-nigh complete when the refractory bishops had been sent to the Tower ; the counter-revolution was not completed until after William had landed at Torbay. Charles the Tenth brought/iis re volution to a close when he had revoked and disannulled the constitution of France ; but it took three days longer, and a considerable amount of hard fighting be- sides, to bring to a close the revolution that followed. Such, in short, is the general history of revolution. Such, we are certain, has been its invariable history in Scotland in connec- TENDENCIES. 411 tion with the Presbyterianism of the country. The war, we repeat, instead of drawing near a close, is but on the eve of beginning. It will be carried on under one set of circumstances in our country districts, and under another set in our large towns. Democracy has its strongholds in the one, Conservatism in the other ; and in the more democratic localities will the war be hottest at first. All the churches of Aberdeen connected with the Establishment will fall vacant in one day : with these, four-fifths of the churches of Glasgow, four-fifths of the churches of Edinburgh, and, in short, in nearly correspond- ing proportions, the churches of almost all the other large towns and cities of Scotland. Nor is it merely ministers that these churches will lack ; — they will lack also congregations. Moderatism has spoken of its five hundred licentiates patrio- tically waiting on tiptoe to rush, each like an ancient Curtius, into the five hundred perilous breaches that are to be made on this occasion in the Establishment. But it has not yet .said anything of five hundred waiting congregations. The gap made by the congregations must remain unfilled, like the gaps made by the Indian tomahawk in the cranium of Lieutenant Lesmahago. Now, it is a very simple fact, but a not unimportant one, that it is the congregations who pay the seat-rents ; whereas the patriotic licentiates, instead of paying the rents, will be able only to benefit the community by receiving the stipends. It is also a fact, that in Glasgow, Paisley, Dundee, Aberdeen, and several of our other large towns, the magistrates receive the rents with one hand, and pay the stipends with the other ; and we are afraid it would scarce fail to put the good men somewhat out, should the inveterate old habit be so broken upon through an inability of finding employment for the receiving hand, that they would have to restrict themselves to the use of the paying hand exclusively. 412 TENDENCIES. Out of the twenty- nine pulpits of Ross-shire, twenty would be left vacant ; and to persons at all acquainted with the character of Scotch Highlanders in the present age it is quite unnecessary to say what would be the nature of the ferment which such an event would occasion. Our High- landers are a patient people : they have, alas ! been much trampled upon, and they have borne it quietly. But though a patient, they are not a weak people ; nor are they unin- telligent. They have got names, in their simple expressive Gaelic, for the two parties in the Church. They describe the clergy of the one party as " the ministers who care for their souls," and those of the other as " the ministers who do not." They understand perfectly, too, the true nature of a religious Establishment. They regard it, not as a pension fund set apart for the sustenance of a useless clergy, but as a provision made for their benefit. It is but a few years since a party of them, ejected from their homes in the north of Scotland, left in quiet sadness their mountain hamlet, on their journey to the sea-port from which they were to take ship for America. They had been previously ground down by the exactions of a needy and rapacious landlord, until their lives had become ceaseless struggles between want and hard labour; and the feeling that binds Scotch Highlanders to their native soil had been in some degree weakened in conse- quence. But it was their native soil that they were leaving, and so they quitted it, as we have said, in silent sorrow. In their onward journey, they passed the parish church. It was the one part of all the country that was theirs : it was their only property. It was the only thing that the landlord had not been able to tax until, like the hard-earned fruits of their labours, it had become his own. It was theirs, and they were now leaving it for ever. A host of recollections rushed upon them, at once tender and sacred ; and there, beside the much- loved building, and amid the ashes of their fathers, they lifted TENDENCIES. 413 ap their voices and wept. And it is men such as these that the revolution of the civil courts is now on the eve of rob- bing of their only property. It would be utter madness to speak of resistance : they will not resist, — their much-loved ministers have taught them better - but let these twenty churches be thrown vacant, — let all the evangelistic churches of the Highlands be thrown vacant, — and the cause of the aristocracy in Scotland will count weaker from the date of the event than it had hitherto done, by thirty thousand fight- ing men. Conservatism, too, may give up at least the north- ern Highlands as a political field whenever it pleases. One of the first effects of the revolution in country districts every- where will be a thorough separation between the intrusion landlord and the non-intrusion tenant. The political feeling never attained to great strength among the rural population of Scotland. It is the proprietary and the acres of the coun- try that have hitherto voted at elections. Landlords have been in the habit of bringing the representatives of their estates with them to the poll, and their estates have inva- riably turned out to be of the same mind with the landlords themselves. There is now a new element introduced, or rather an old element revived; and our proprietary would do well to take the measure of its strength. " All for the Church, and somewhat less for the State," was a leading principle of the old Scotch Whig, as drawn by Belhaven in the days of the Union ; and it will be found that the character still ap- plies. But we are indicating, and that feebly, not so much the first beginnings of the war in our country and Highland districts, as the directions which these first beginnings are likely to take. We feel that we are only entering on our subject. — December 28, 1842 414 TENDENCIES. PART THIRD. Is the reader acquainted with that singularly amusing and interesting work, the "Autobiography of Heinrich Stilling 1 ?" Heinrich, a German of the true type, — for to a simplicity so extreme that it imparted a dash of eccentricity to his cha- racter, he united great natural powers, and acquirements of no ordinary extent and variety, — had passed, in his eventful career, through many changes of station and employment. In early life he had wrought as a journeyman tailor in an ob- scure province. In his first stage of advance he had taught a village school. In the second, he had acted as a sort of mer- cantile clerk and agent. In the third, he had applied him- self to the study of medicine, and practised with various suc- cess as a physician in a tenth-rate German town. In a fourth, he had added the practice of surgery to that of physic, and had learned to couch for the cataract. He had received, in a fifth, an appointment to a professorship of agriculture and commerce in a provincial academy. In a sixth, he had been transferred, first to one university, then to another of higher standing and celebrity ; and distinguished himself by his lec- tures on the economical, financial, and statistical sciences. Continuing to practise gratuitously as an oculist, he acquired a degree of skill perhaps unequalled at the period over Europe ; and became the honoured instrument of restoring to their sight many hundreds of the blind. He rose high in fame as an author ; did much, through the exercise of his very popu- lar powers, to stem the flood of neologic rationalism, which, during the latter half of the last century, deluged the Conti- nent ; asserted, in his writings, in opposition to the cold in- operative Theism disseminated from France as a centre, that " God must and will be worshipped in his Son," and that "in Christ, and in Christ only, is the Father of men to be found." TENDENCIES. 41 And, after a long and singularly useful life, he died, about thirty years ago, in the possession of the esteem of all good men, with a long list of honorary titles attached to his name, a popular and influential writer, a leading professor of the practical sciences, a doctor of philosophy and medicine, and private aulic councillor to the Grand Duke of Baden. We refer to his strangely varied and surely not inglorious career, for the sake of an illustration which it furnishes, in connection with one of the more striking peculiarities of his character. As he rose, step by step, in his course, he was ever in the habit of seriously inquiring of himself whether he had yet reached the proper place to which Providence in an especial manner, as he thought, had been guiding him from his youth up. He had all along felt himself gravitating, through the force of events, if we may so speak, towards some unknown vocation, the true destiny of his life,— as the sun, with all its planets, is said to gravitate towards an unseen and mysterious centre, hidden deep in the profound of space ; and, believing that there awaited him some peculiar, specific work to perform, he was solicitously anxious at each stage to know whether he had yet entered on the exercise of it, or whether he might not continue to await the call of duty in- viting him to some other sphere of action. There can be little doubt that he carried the feeling to an extreme more in accordance with the peculiar mysticism of the German than the sober common-sense of the British character ; but the doubt need be quite as slight that, in the great majority of cases, men err on the opposite side, and err much more fatally than Stilling did. It is much to know one's real place and vocation,— so very much, that half the blunders and mishaps which occur in life, including all that is ridiculous in the classes that shoot above their proper mark, and almost all that is most pitiable among the classes that shoot beneath it, occur just in consequence of their not knowing their legitimate 416 TENDENCIES. sphere and proper employments. They fail to appreciate their true destiny, and make shipwreck in consequence ; just as those who failed to solve the enigmas of the Sphinx were destroyed by the monster, as a penalty of their misap- prehension. But why so obvious a remark 1 It may be found not with- out its bearing, we are of opinion, on the present crisis of the Scottish Church. It may at least serve us to illustrate what we might be perhaps unable to make equally plain without it. The disestablished Church of Scotland bids fair to take up a place not occupied by any Church in Europe since the times of the Reformation ; and it would be well that all sin- cerely interested in her welfare, and the work which in times past she has been honoured to cany on, should not mistake it. We can imagine scarce anything more fitted to be fatal than a misapprehension of her true place, — her proper em- ployment ; and it is impossible not to see that there may in some instances be considerable danger of such a misappre- hension. The question which, with respect to himself, cost Heinrich Stilling so much grave thought and severe self- examination, should seriously engage every member of the Free Church of Scotland with respect to her. What, in the present great crisis, is her proper place 1 — what her true vo- cation ? Of one thing we may be assured : the separating process of which her contest with the civil powers has been so remarkably the occasion, and which, in its various stages of involuntary classification, serves so strikingly to remind one of the testing trials of the bands of Gideon, bears refer- ence to some very important end. We may be assured fur- ther, that the work prepared for the parties which it divides will be in meet accordance with their respective characters. Among the prose writings of the poet James Montgomery, there is an exceedingly curious little piece, less known than most of his other writings, designated an " Apocryphal TENDENCIES. 417 Chapter in the History of England," which purports to de- scribe a state of matters induced by the total extinction of Christianity in the country. There are many curious inci- dents narrated in it ; and one of the most curious is a sort of missionary enterprise, undertaken with the design of re- storing the vanished faith, by the country's more prudent scep- tics and more sagacious men of the world. So long as Chris- tianity existed among them, we are told, they had been in- different to it at best; some of them had made it the sub- ject of not very respectful jokes, — some of them had openly contemned it ; but, now that it was gone, they suddenly opened their eyes to the startling fact, that a vast and irre- sistible mass of depraved, reckless, hunger-bitten intelligence was preparing to bear down upon them and destroy them, and that the only barrier efficient to protect them in the cir- cumstances was just the Christian superstition. That barrier, therefore, they had set themselves determinedly to re-erect. They went out to preach, says the poet, in " market-places and town-halls, and on oratorio evenings at the theatres ; but alas ! never having known much of the matter, and having cared less, — having the misfortune, too, of being pretty widely known, and of being conscious of it, — they drivelled so ex- quisitely in their confusion, as to provoke at once the scorn and the wrath of the multitude, who presently silenced them with such missiles as were wont to be thrown on better men in the days of Whitfield and Wesley." Now, the incident is of course a fictitious one, but it is not on that account without its large admixture of truth ; — it is true to nature, if not to fact : and the country will by and by have an opportunity, it is not improbable, of seeing many counterparts to it among the real occurrences of the time. The residuary Establishment will find it as necessary to exert itself in behalf of a nominal Evangelism, when the true shall have left it, as it was found necessary by the scep- 2 D 418 TENDENCIES. tics of Montgomery's "Apocryphal Chapter" to exert them- selves in the behalf of Christianity. Moderatism will find itself in circumstances in which, for the first time, its very existence shall have to depend on its ministerial exertions ; and, for a season at least, violent exertions will be made. The dead body will be galvanized in all its limbs and features ; and if the wild convulsions and contortions fail to resemble life, they will have at least the merit of being exceedingly like possession. But the impulse, though more than suffi- ciently energetic in the commencement, will not, and cannot, be permanent. The stone of Sisyphus will return to where it gravitates. It has been well and philosophically remarked, that no man ever changed his true character merely by de- termining to change it; — there is something more than the sheer force of resolution required : and what is true of the individual is equally true of every body composed of indi- viduals. Moderatism will set itself to work with, no doubt, a dogged determination of working hard and long. It will strive for a while to transmute into activity, by sheer dint of resolution, its native indolence of character. It will set itself to propel the ponderous axles and pinions of the Estab- lishment by main strength ; but that which should be the grand moving power of the machine it will assuredly neglect. It will merely set its shoulder to the master wheels. The sole moving power of any Church, whether established or disestablished, — the only moving power, indeed, that is of the slightest value, — that is not rather mischievous than beneficial, — is that power which acts through converted minis- ters and office-bearers, with all the permanent efficacy of a fixed law. And as this moving power Modei^atism neither has nor wishes to have, its exertions must of necessity be both inoperative and short-lived. The remark refers mainly to Moderatism of the genuine type ; for mainly to Moderatism will the throes and spasms of this period of convulsion be re- TENDENCIES. 419 stricted. The Quietism of the residuary Establishment will walk softly, according to its nature, — then, as now, appalled rather than stimulated by the Disruption ; its Rowism will continue to halt lamely, like a patient with an unset bone its Politico-Evangelism, as if palsy-struck for the time, will cower helplessly under the consciousness that when a reli- gious ministry has lost its character, its zeal comes to be re- garded as but the mere ebullitions of an offensive selfishness, and that to remain as quiet as possible is its true policy in the circumstances, seeing that the more thoroughly it may succeed in hiding itself, the better may it hope to fare. Now, it would be much, we repeat, for the disestablished Church to know at such a time its true place and vocation. It will stand on high ground, and this not merely in the eyes of religious men all over the world, but also in the estimate of mere men of honour. A clergyman not a hundred miles from Edinburgh, who gave in his adherence to the resolutions of the Convocation, felt, since the late discussion in Parliament, that he had taken a step of doubtful prudence ; and, sitting down all alone, with the glebe in his front and the manse in his rear, he resolved, in the first place, to let his signature in the fatal list stand for nothing, and to exert himself, in the second, whenever the opportunity should occur, in repealing the Veto. Not quite satisfied, perhaps, with the resolution at which he had arrived, and naturally desirous of making up by the gratulations of others what was wanting in his own, he bethought himself of one of his neighbours, — an Intru- sionist heritor, — much a Moderate and a man of the world, who had sturdily opposed him hitherto in all his movements on the side of the Church, but whom, in the main, he had found respectful and not unfriendly. I must just call on Mr , he said, and tell him what I have at length deter- mined on doing, and that we are much more likely to a^ree 420 TENDENCIES. for the future than hitherto. And call on him he accord- ingly did. But, alas ! there awaited the poor man none of the anticipated congratulations. The heritor, unluckily a gentleman, and acquainted with the code of honour, though ignorant of the constitution of the Scottish Church, heard him patiently avow his altered sentiments and resolutions; and then, seriously addressing him, — " Mr ," he said, " hitherto I deemed you and your party in the wrong, but, though I opposed, I respected you ; and, regarding you as honest in your convictions, I had pleasure in recognising you as my minister. I must now beg leave to say, that you have found means to change my opinion, and that I can at- tend your ministrations no longer." "We instance the story merely to show that there are points of a practical bearing in the existing contest which even mere men of the world can thoroughly appreciate. The man honest in acting up to his convictions, and who can make large sacri- fices for the sake of principle, is deemed at least an honour- able man by the numerous class ignorant of those higher motives which bear reference to an unseen world. With the members of this class, in spite of themselves, the disestab- lished Church must stand high, — a witness to the importance of truths little known or heeded, but which are destined, in these latter times, to grow upon the notice of the world, to constitute the great watchwords of its terminal struggle be- tween the powers of good and of evil, and to receive their final confirmation at the last day from that adorable Sove- reign of all, whose right equally it is to rule over the nations now, as to judge them then. With the men who in reality know the truth, whether at home or abroad, the position of the disestablished Church will be better appreciated. The testing trial has been protracted and severe, — the chaff and dust have been blowing off at every stage in the process : it will be a chosen and well-tried band that, at the last stage, TENDENCIES. 421 now apparently so near, shall go forth from the Establish- ment, leaving behind them the residual culm and debris ; and, let party assert what it may, the sacrifice ultimately will not be under-estimated. The religious feelings of the country will be on their side ; nay, the very consciences of their opponents will be on their side also, in the degree at least in which these consciences are enlightened and awakened ; and, as in other times, death-beds, despairing and unblest, shall yield an impressive testimony in their favour. Now, it would be of vast importance for the Church to be fully conscious of all this. In her new circumstances she will be exposed to peculiar temptations and dangers ; and there is nothing which, with the blessing of her Great Head, seems so suited to guard and strengthen her against these, as a right apprehension of her true place and standing. It would be well for her to know where her strength lies ; it would be well for her to know also in how many different ways it might be possible to make that strength less. The history of our Scottish Seceders, — so very pregnant a one, that we much regret it has not yet been written in a style worthy of it, and which we would fain recommend as a theme not unsuited to the pen of the ablest and most judi- cious writer of the party, Mr M'Crie, — is full of instruction to the Church in her present position. It reads its signifi- cant lessons also to the Church's opponents. What, how ever, we would specially advert to at present, in connection with it, is the important fact, that the first Seceders, goaded, no doubt, by that persecution which maketh even wise men mad, suffered themselves, in the latter stages of their struggle, to lose temper, and that, as a consequence of losing it, they lost also much of the power which their position would have otherwise secured to them. When thrust violently out of the Church, they carried with them the warm sympathies of all its better people. They had taken their stand on the old 422 TENDENCIES. Presbyterian ground, and had maintained the ancient quarrel nobly, and in a right spirit. Though weak in the ecclesias- tical courts, they were morally strong, — for they had much of the strength of Scotland behind them, and the high- handed tyranny of Moderatism was exactly the sort of thing best fitted to strengthen them yet further. They failed, however, fully to realise the true nature and importance of their position. They quitted the Church under the irritation of defeat : they felt that they had been wrongously over- borne and beat down, on ground on which, constitutionally, they had a right to stand ; and we are much mistaken if their after mishaps and dissensions may not be traced mainly to their indulgence in this unhappy feeling. The same men who, during the series of persecutions to which they had been subjected in the church courts, had acted with uniform temper and judgment, lost all command of themselves when they came afterwards to discuss, in their free, independent Synod, points of not the highest possible importance ; and, after a series of the most deplorable and ill-judged wrang- lings, they broke up into separate parties, that refused to hold all communion with one another. The lesson, we repeat, is eminently instructive. There is much which ought to be guarded against in the irritation which persecution induces. And there is another danger to be avoided, against which it is possible the first Seceders were not sufficiently watchful It is perhaps natural for men who have suffered for conscience sake to feel that they have, as it were, purchased a right, by their sacrifices, to maintain their peculiar opinions bluntly and uncompromisingly. The state induced is, for obvious reasons, unfavourable to a spirit of conciliation and conces- sion ; and hence, probably, in part at least, the unhappy dif- ferences of the first Seceders. Men who had submitted to the loss of all rather than yield to even the supreme judica- tories of the Church, felt afterwards very little inclination to TENDENCIES. 423 yield to one another. Now, to enable the Free Church of Scotland rightly to profit by the teachings of history in this instructive case, there seem to be but two things necessary ; — a sedulous cultivation, through the appointed means, of the spirit of her Master, and a right appreciation of the high place which she seems destined to occupy. The course of the Church is becoming plainer every day ; but, like every other course which every other Church on earth has pursued, it is not quite devoid of its shoals and quicksands, on which the unwary might make shipwreck ; and it may be found no unprofitable task to map out a few of the more formidable of these. — March 29, 1843. PART FOURTH. It is of the nature of Protestant dissent in free States in which there exist established religions, to take its stand on the side of Liberalism. There are principles involved in its character and position that determine its political place, if we may so speak, with well-nigh the certainty of a fixed law ; and it must be sufficiently obvious, that if such be the ten- dency of dissent generally, the bias in the Free Church of Scotland cannot fail to be mightily strengthened by the pe- culiar circumstances of her situation. In the first place, she must necessarily recognise her dis- establishment as a consequence of a most unjustifiable revolu- tion effected in the very vitalities of her constitution, through the aggression of the civil courts, seconded, in the narrowest spirit of partizanship, by the existing Government. In the next place, it is impossible not to see that the persecuting influence will be brought to press hard upon her, especially in countiy districts, through the agency of the privileged classes, — the classes who possess the lands, and inhabit the manor- 424: TENDENCIES. houses, of the country. It is obvious, too, that there are points at which the residuary Establishment, backed by the power of the secular courts and the State, will be made to abut against her with harassing and irritating effect. Ques- tions will be necessarily arising between the skeleton Church and the National Church de jure, in which the powers that be will prove themselves no impartial adjudicators ; and thus there bids fair to be induced among the adherents of the Free Church a spirit of disaffection with the order of things, through which they will be made to suffer. There are ana- logies, too, between the important spiritual rights for which they contend, and the secular claims asserted by Liberalism, which must exert, in some cases, a sort of fraternizing influ- ence. The cause of religious liberty ever involves that of civil liberty also. For two whole centuries, — from the times of the Reformation, until the earthly principle, true to its original character, degenerated into mere license, — another name for tyranny, — and demanded not only emancipation from the rule of man, but unconditional release from the laws and government of God also, — it went hand in hand with the spiritual principle. With the return of the old circumstances, — circumstances in which the pressure of persecution will be again felt, — the old coalition among the classes who suffer will be again formed : in short, the inevitable tendency of the disruption of the Establishment will be to increase the movement party in the country, by imparting, from causes such as we have enumerated, a deep tinge of Radicalism to minds which, but for that event, would have remained under the control of the Conservative influences. Now, what, we ask, with such a state of things in pro- spect, will be at once the duty and the interest of the Free Church of Scotland ? Here is a powerful current, that threatens to set in athwart her course. How should she steer with regard to it ? Exactly as the mariner steers, who, TENDENCIES. 425 in crossing the Atlantic, takes into acccunt the influence of the great gulf-stream, and directs his course a few points higher than his destined port, in order to counteract its ef- fects, and make allowance for leeway. If the Church become in all her congregations what some of our Dissenting bodies have become, — a mere congeries of political societies, — she will inevitably make shipwreck and perish. There is no more dissipating element in existence, with regard to all that con- stitutes the life and strength of religion, than the political element. Let us look steadily at the matter. The Church, we would first remark, has been removed, in the course of Providence, from all temptation of making common cause with the Whigs. She has scarce more to do with them as a party than with their antagonists the Tories. Her friends and her enemies are ranked equally on both sides. Lord John Russell and Sir Robert Peel make common cause against her. The Church has been removed, we repeat, from all temptation of making common cause with the Whigs. She has been taught, in a manner sufficiently significant, that her cause and theirs, how- ever assimilated by apparent analogies, is not at all identical ; it is in no degree more identical with that of the Radicals as a party ; and in the history of her struggle for the last three years, she has had proofs in abundance that Chartism is de- terminedly hostile to her. It would seem as if Providence, in the course of events, was shutting her out of that political field, in the mazes of which she might otherwise lose herself If there be a perilous current threatening to bear her away in one direction, the breath of heaven is evidently swelling her sails in the other ; and we think she would do well to profit by what must be deemed more than mere warning in the case, — what must be regarded rather as the compulsory guidance extended by a wise and tender parent to a child which, if left to itself, might, in its ignorance and its wilful- 4 2 G TENDENCIES. ness, go grievously astray. There is a call in Providence to the Church, that she dissipate not her powers in the political field. The subject is so important, that we may be permitted to indulge in an additional remark or two regarding: it. If, during the last twelve years, any one lesson has been taught to the country with more point and emphasis than any other, it is the lesson that no one should trust very implicitly to any merely political party, or expect very great advantages from any merely political change. In the course of that eventful period we have seen Whiggism come into office in the cha- racter of a powerful principle, and ejected from it in the cha- racter of a weak and effete one ; and it must have required bi>t ordinary powers of observation to see, from the peculiar data furnished during this time, that such must be for ever the fate of Liberalism in Britain, until an age arrive in which the majority of both statesmen and people shall be pervaded by a spirit of vital Christianity. A recurrence of cycles has been often remarked in the history of states and peoples, — cycles in which long periods of despotism are followed by comparatively brief and stormy periods of liberty running wildly into license, and in which these are succeeded by long periods of despotism again. Chateaubriand has written a whole volume on the subject, — a sparkling, if not a very solid one, — in which he shows that all history is little else than a record of these cycles of alternate despotism and license. They form, if we may so speak, the gusts and pauses of the great moral storm which sin has raised in the world, and which must continue to rage until He who stilled the tempest of old shall, when the appointed time comes round, command it to be still also. Now, we have just seen one of these cycles re- volve in Britain in a comparatively still atmosphere. Among a less civilized people, or in a worse balanced Constitution, it would have taken the more strongly marked form of a stormy TENDENCIES. .97 revolution, preceded and followed by a state of despotism. In Britain it has been of a quieter and more subdued character ; and we may see in its workings, in consequence, some of the laws in which these ever-recurring cycles originate, — just as we may see through the unbroken eddies of a river, those ir- regularities of bank and bottom by which the eddies are pro- duced ; whereas in the wilder rapids, where all is foam and uproar, we find the disturbing agents concealed by the very turmoil which they occasion. Whiggism, out of office in this country, and purified by being much and long in a minority, addresses itself, in all its questions of real strength, to the natural consciences of men, and finds a ready response among the classes in whom no selfish interest disturbs the free exercise of the guiding power with respect to the particular points agitated. Nor is the principle to which it appeals, — the native sense of right, — by any means a weak one, in matters in which it does not meet, in those who entertain it, with a sense of personal advantage as an antagonistic power. The cry, "Emancipate your slaves," for instance, was just the proper voice of this natural sense of right ; and it was a loud and powerful cry. It procured even- tually the good which it demanded. Be it remembered, how- ever, that it arose from men who derived none of their wealth from the thews and sinews of the slave. It was a cry in which the merchants of Liverpool or the planters of the West Indies did not join. And why 1 Did these men want natural con- science ? or were their wives and daughters, who made com- mon cause with them, less influenced by the sense of right than the other wives and daughters of England and the colo- nies 1 No. We are convinced it would be unjust to say so : they were persons of just the average rate of virtue ; but their sense of right was controlled and overpowered by what, in the unrenewed human character, is, and always must be, an immensely more powerful principle, — the sense of personal 428 TENDENCIES. advantage And so the entire class, — though on other ques- tions of right and wrong that did not involve their personal interests they might and would have been sufficiently sound, — struggled hard to prevent the emancipation of the slave. The illustration is pregnant with those principles which serve to unlock the problem of the political cycle. Let us but imagine the great bulk of the men who called loudest for the emancipation of the slave at one time, becoming, through some unexpected turn of fortune, slaveholders at another, — their possessory feelings, as in the case of the planters, converted into principles of greater strength than their sense of right, — and we have Whiggism before us in its character in and out of office. Its strength in the Opposition is the strength of the natural conscience ; it becomes weak in office, because it comes under the influence of the selfish and possessory feelings, and because, in the average human character, these invariably pre- vail as principles of action over the conscientious ones. And be it remarked, that this character of average virtue must as certainly be that of every merely political party numerously composed, as the stature of the members that compose it must, when thrown into the aggregate, and divided by their num- ber, be of the average height, or their longevit}', when simi- larly treated, be of the average duration. Individuals may attain to a much higher rate of virtue, — individuals may be generous, disinterested, much influenced by the better mo- tives, and little moved by the worse : but bodies must con- tinue to bear the average character, — bodies must continue to be moved more strongly by the selfish than by the gene- rous feelings, — until a period arrive when, through the diffusion of a Christianity not merely nominal, but vital and real, the virtue of society shall be elevated to the high level of the con- verted man. And till that time come, the political cycle must continue to revolve, like the giddy and restless wheel to which the Psalmist compared the wretched unrest of his TENDENCIES. 429 enemies, exciting hopes to produce only disappointment, agi- tating men's minds and arousing their passions, but leav- ing their characters unimproved, and lessening in no degree the amount of their unhappiness. Does the remark seem rather declamatory than solid 1 We are convinced it contains an important truth, which bears with no indirect effect on the true vocation of ministers of the gos- pel. The Free Church of Scotland has nobler and better work before her than can be found in climbing the political wheel, and in seeing it ever and anon descending to the mediocre level above, to which society cannot permanently rise so long as its average virtue is that, not of renewed, but of unregenerate nature. She will have many temptations to cast herself into the movement party. It would be well for her to know that they are, in almost every case, temptations to be resisted. There is, in particular, one specific form in which, in at least our country districts, temptation bids fair often to present itself. In almost all the rural parishes of Scotland, the great bulk of the people will be determinedly on her side, and the great bulk of the lairdocracy as determinedly opposed to her ; and where the large-farm system prevails, and the political franchise is enjoyed by only some five or six individuals in a parish, and these, mayhap, all Moderates, it may be deemed desirable, in order to give her weight in the political scale, that the franchise should be extended. A species of Radicalism threatens to be thus induced, at one, in at least its main doc- trine, with the universal suffrageism of the mere political Radical and Chartist; and members of the Free Church woulc 1 perhaps do well to be on their guard against it. The true cha- racter of universal suffrage cannot be adequately tested by any reference to its probable style of working in a quiet Presby- terian parish, or to the moral and intellectual fitness for the franchise of our humbler classes, where best instructed, and most under the influence of religion. It must be judged with 430 TENDENCIES. reference to its probable effects in the aggregate. The popu- lar voice in the Scottish parish might be right ; but the im- portant question to be determined is, whether the popular voice all over the British empire would be right. We much fear it would not. Civil and religious liberty have long'gone hand in hand, and their names have been so united for cen- times in toasts and watchwords, that w T e cau scarce mention the one without calling up the other. It does not seem at all unlikely, however, that there is a time coming when what will be termed civil liberty shall cease to tolerate religious liberty. The question bids fair to arise, Is a citizen to be denuded of his rights of Christian membership simply for acting in ac- cordance with both the spirit and letter of the law of his coun- try 1 — a law constitutionally enacted, be it remarked, by the people's representatives. And thus the case promises to be so stated, that the spiritual liberty of retaining in the Church's own hands the power of the keys will be deemed not only an aggression on the civil liberty of the subject, but an offence also against the representative majesty of the people. The two liberties will be brought into direct collision as antagonist powers. That liberty which constitutes the beau ideal of the Chartist is invariably of an Erastian cast ; and the class, if such there be, who may long for universal suffrage on the Church's behalf would do well to be aware of the fact. There are Voluntary spirit-dealers in Edinburgh that sell whisky on Sabbath under the protection of Mr Home Drummond's Act, and deem it a very absurd thing that their Churches should have a different law on the subject. Their Churches have a right to make the fourth commandment a test of communion, and in this right their religious liberty is involved. But it is Mr Home Drummond's Act that involves the civil liberty of the spirit-dealing members. A persecution originating among the masses on principles such as these might be a very terrible one. In her troubles hitherto, the earth has invariably TENDENCIES. 431 helped the woman. It is not improbable that a time of trouble may yet arise in which the earth will refuse to help her. One of our main objections, however, to a course of political agitation on the part of the Church is the dissipation of strength and spirit, if we may so speak, which such an agitation must induce. The political element in this country is rather a restless than a strong one. It acts vigorously up to a cer- tain point, and there fails at once. The contest comes : votes are recorded ; the stronger party gains ; the losers sit down under the disappointment, to console themselves as they best may ; and this is just all. There are no great sacrifices demanded, and none made ; and a habit comes to be formed, in consequence, by no means favourable to those larger and more serious demands which in times of trouble religion makes on her adherents. It is a fact not unworthy of notice, that the merely politico-Evangelicals of the Church soon left her. They voted, spoke, and canvassed for her reform bill, the Veto Law, — regarding votes, speeches, and canvassings, as just the proper enginery of party ; and then left her when a time of suffering arrived, because suffering is no word in the vocabulary of the mere partizan. The spirit of the ordinary ten-pound freeholder who records his vote in behalf of his party, and does no more, is an essential- ly different thing from that of the martyr ; and it is the spirit of the martyr that Christianity, in times like the present, de- mands. We would not have indulged in these desultory re- marks, were the danger to which they refer less imminent. It can scarce be necessary to add by way of qualification, that it is one thing to become a mere political society, and quite another to perform in the right spirit political duties. Many of the members of the Free Church must possess, as members of the community, political privileges ; and to these, as to privileges of every other kind, a sense of responsibility must attach : they must exercise them, and their voices in 432 TENDENCIES. the legislature of the country must, in the aggregate, be found influential. In a Constitution such as ours, the strength of parties must continue to fluctuate : there will be periods of action and re-action ever recurring. The cycles will revolve as before. In the commencement of these cycles, when the spirit of liberty remains still fresh and unweakened by the selfish influences, permanent advantages in the cause of right will continue to be gained. In the commencement of the last cycle, for instance, the slave was emancipated ; and the friends of the Church would do well to possess their souls in patience, and watch, in the Church's behalf, the com- mencement of the next cycle. It is one thing to direct to right ends the political power of a party, and quite another to be carried away by it. But our subject lengthens on our hands ; and there are various other points on which it might be well to touch. How ought the Free Church to deal by the residuary Estab- lishment 1 — how by the Voluntaries 1 — how by their bitterer opponents among the lairdocracy 1 What other dangers has she to fear besides the great danger of dissipating her power and lowering her character in the political field 1 How shall she best guard against the growth of a narrow and exclusive spirit ? and on what objects mainly should she concentrate her energies? — April 5, 1843. PART FIFTH. How ought the Free Church to deal by the residuary Estab- lishment, and how by the Voluntary body 1 We are con- vinced that very great danger may be incurred by mistaking the true course with regard to either. A war of extermina- tion waged blindly against the one, or an equally blind union formed with the other, for but the purpose of carrying on TENDENCIES. 433 that war with greater effect, could scarce fail to be attended with disastrous consequences to the Free Church of Scotland. Her strength would leave her in the struggle, and she would sit down at its termination, whatever the result, in a lower and far less advantageous position than that which, when the Disruption takes place, it will be assuredly her destiny to occupy. Let us remark, in the first place, that nothing seems more natural, in the circumstances, than that she should rush head- long into such a war. It seems quite as much a thing to be expected, on the ordinary principles which govern human conduct, as that, in the hour of her extremity, she should have yielded to the encroachments of the civil power rather than forfeit her endowments, and have set herself down de- graded and useless, — one of the less respectable sinecurists of the State ; for it is as natural for a man to strike when he is injured, as to cry for quarter when he is overcome. In the party who will continue to harbour within the Establishment, the Church must recognise of necessity the men who have in- jured her most deeply ; and the recent agitation of the "Vo- luntary controversy must serve to draw her attention to the exact point, if we may so speak, at which the retributive blow might be dealt at least most readily, if not with most effect. There is a line of batteries already thrown up against the Establishment, simply in its character as such, conspicuous enough to catch every eye ; a numerous and formidable body lie entrenched behind these ; and all that may seem necessary in order to secure the overthrow of the beleaguered institu- tion, in its miserably undermined and exhausted condition, may be just to join forces with the besiegers, and, with num- bers and artillery increased in the proportion in which those of the garrison will be diminished, attempt carrying it by storm. Independently, too, of this natural feeling of hosti- lity, and of the circumstances which may well serve to direct 2 E 434 TENDENCIES. it into the Voluntary channel, the Free Church must iuevi- tably meet with an amount of provocation from the skeleton Establishment which Voluntaryism has never yet received from any Establishment whatever. There will be a struggle for the possession of the people between the Church and the endowed institution, in which the latter, conscious of its weak- ness in all that constitutes moral and religious character, will call to its assistance the factor and the landlord ; the same coarse instruments of persecution which were employed in England in the middle of the last century against the fol- lowers of "Whitfield and Wesley will be set into operation at the bidding or through the influence of the residuary Estab- lishment in Scotland against disestablished Evangelism ; and in wide districts of country the State endowment will take, in consequence, the very repulsive form of a sort of Govern- ment grant for putting down the gospel. The Establishment will be recognised as an unsightly incubus, squatted in all its leaden weight on the very bosom of religious liberty ; and the feeling for its destruction bids fair, in consequence, to mount very high. A war against the Establishment seems quite as natural in the circumstances, we repeat, as it seems natural that the Church, in her hour of extremity, should have quit- ted her hold of her spiritual privileges, and clung fast to her endowments. But we can trust that the Free Church of Scotland is des- tined to baffle the calculations of mere men of the world, however sagacious, on more questions than one. They have already seen her casting into the golden balance of the sanc- tuary, with its one scale visible to the material eye, and its other scale invisible save to the eye of faith, all her worldly possessions, and seen what to them must have been a myste- rious and unknown quantity outweighing them all. And we anxiously hope that those who, calculating on data such as we have indicated, trust in a short time to see the Free TENDENCIES. 435 Church a community of Voluntaries, are destined to be dis- appointed as signally. We deem it of paramount importance, at a time like the present, that she cleave to her Establish- ment principles. We say, at a time like the present. We would have deemed it of great importance at any time, espe- cially in connection with that testimony which the Church of Scotland, in all her periods of trouble, has been so pecu- liarly called on to maintain, — her testimony for the Headship of Christ, not only over the Church, but over states and na- tions in their character as such ; and with this testimony we deem the Establishment principle closely interwoven. But we are much mistaken if there are not peculiar circumstances in the present time which conspire, on other accounts, to ren- der the maintenance of the principle more important politi- cally than perhaps at any previous period since the Revo- lution. We do not take our place among those Radicals and Chart- ists of the day who can see nothing admirable in the frame- work of the British Constitution. We hold, on the contrary, by the old-fashioned belief so well expressed by De Lolme, and so invariably entertained by all the more philosophic in- tellects of the last century, that the Constitution of Britain is by far the most perfect which the world has yet seen. Many a favouring providence, which human means could never have effected, and whose remote consequences lay far beyond the reach of human sagacity, have conspired to render it what it is. It would be as impossible for mere politicians to build up such a Constitution by contract, as it would be for them to build up an oak, the growth of a thousand summers. We need scarce add, — so obvious must the remark seem, — that the man or party who stands upon confessedly constitutional ground must have a mighty advantage over the man or party who stands on some unrecognised principle which one individual may deem good, and another quite the reverse. One British 436 TENDENCIES. subject holds, for instance, that the murderer should be put to death ; another, that death is too severe a punishment for any crime, even for murder itself ; and the point of difference betwixt them, regarded merely as a matter of argument, leaves much, no doubt, to be said on both sides. But for all prac- tical purposes, how immense the advantage derived to the former from the circumstance that his principle is a constitu- tional principle ! In the same way, how veiy great the ad- vantage which the ten-pound freeholder, deprived unjustly of his franchise, possesses over the mere Chartist, prevented from votino- because he wants the qualification i The freeholder can base his claim on constitutional ground ; the Chartist can base his on but what he deems the intrinsic justice of one of the Five Points. Now, be it remarked, that the Voluntary prin- ciple is not a constitutional principle j it is less so than some of the Five Points even ; it is as little so as that of the man who contends that the murderer should not be put to death. The Establishment principle is the constitutional one ; and there are battles in prospect which can be fought on this around alone. And so signally important do these conflicts promise to be, that the integrity, nay, the very existence, of the Constitution, may come to be staked upon them. Let us refer to just two of the number, — one of these a highly pro- bable occurrence, the other at least a possible one. It is far from improbable, as we have repeatedly shown, that the skeleton Establishment, in its time of exhaustion and peril, may call to its aid the Episcopacy of England, and bar- ter its Presbyterial forms for that assistance, without which it may find it altogether impossible to subsist, Now, on what ground, we ask, could the people of Scotland raise their pro- test with most effect against a transaction so utterly iniqui- tous in itself, and so pregnant with disastrous consequences to the country % How best fight, on this question, the battle whose result may be found to determine ultimately that of TENDENCIES. 437 the great battle of Protestantism itself? As a Voluntary ? The Voluntary has not a handbreadth of constitutional ground on which to fight it. His quarrel is with Establishments in the abstract, — a quarrel in no degree less alien to the genius of the Constitution than the cause of the Chartist. He could assail a Scoto-Episcopal Establishment with but the argu- ments which he has already employed in assailing a Scoto- Presbyterian Establishment. He could but propose dealing with it as the Chartist proposes dealing by the House of Lords. But in the event of an invasion such as we antici- pate, how very different the ground which the asserters of the Establishment principle could occupy ! The opponent of all Establishments could appeal to but a sort of unembo- died conviction, which he himself entertains, — a something which hovers between an opinion and a belief in his mind, and which would underlie, of necessity, the insuperable disad- vantage of being denied the status of a first principle. The asserter of Establishments could appeal, on the contrary, to the plain letter of the Constitution. He would be placed in the circumstances, not of the Chartist, alleging that he had a right to exercise the franchise in virtue of one of the Five Points, but of the ten-pound freeholder, asserting that he had a right to exercise the franchise in virtue of his ten-pound freehold. He could take his stand on the Treaty of Union ; he could take his stand on the unequivocal pledge embodied in that solemn oath which all our monarchs have sworn at their accession, from the days of Queen Anne to the days of Queen Victoria. In raising his protest, he could remind the advisers of the Crown that high treason against the Consti- tution is still a capital offence ; he could caution Ministers of the State, — not in the style of a wild, blood-thirsty democrat, but with the sobriety of a British subject, aware of his rights, and determined to assert them, — that they were in danger of rendering themselves amenable to the fate of Strafford : **> 438 TENDENCIES. political Churchmen, bent on the conquest of Samaria, and enamoured of the principles of Laud, he could point, in no spirit of intolerance, to the bloody scaffold of the zealot : so long as Puseyism was in the ascendancy, he could maintain against it, on constitutional ground, a war of appeals and protests : and he could occupy the hour of re-action, when that hour came, in tabling his articles of impeachment for high crimes and misdemeanours against the Constitution. Surely a vantage ground of such mighty importance is not, at a time like the present, to be lightly abandoned. Let us advert to just one point more. If Popery be not destined to rise in this country, and become for a time the dominant power, not a few of the country's best and most sagacious men have greatly misunderstood the mind of God as revealed in prophecy. And certainly not since the days of James "VII. did its rise seem more probable, from causes in actual operation, than at the present time. It is of im- portance, surely, in preparing for the coming contest, that those remaining ramparts of the Constitution which were reared with a direct view to it, — reared to bear point-blank against Popery, — should at least not be suffered to fall into a state of dilapidation and decay ; and among these, where shall we find a bulwark half so important as that which the doctrine of the Protestant Succession furnishes ? Hume him- self, — a man not at all apt to be biassed in his judgments by religious predilections, — has characterized this doctrine as a leading one in the Constitution, — nay, as, beyond any other, the doctrine that fixed the Constitution. He has described it as the grand expedient through which the long controversy between the prerogatives of the Crown and the rights of the people was terminated in favour of the latter. " It obtained," he says, "every advantage, as far as human skill and wisdom could extend." " It established the authority of the prince on the same bottom with the privileges of the peopla By TENDENCIES. 439 electing him iu the royal line, we cut off all hopes of ambi- tious subjects, who might in future emergencies disturb the Government by their cabals and pretensions ; by rendering the crown hereditary in his family, we avoided all the incon- venience of elective monarchy ; and by excluding the lineal line, we secured all our constitutional limitations, and ren- dered our Government uniform and of a piece. The people cherish monarchy because protected by it ; the monarch fa- vours liberty because created by it \ and thus every advan- tage is obtained by the new establishment." The philosopher remarks farther, — and surely his testimony on the point may be received without scruple, — that " the disadvantages of re- calling the abdicated family consisted chiefly in their religion, — a religion prejudicial to society, and which affords no tole- ration, or peace, or security, to any other communion." Now, be it remembered, that we live in a time when, by an already powerful and still rising party, this doctrine of the Protestant Succession is covertly assailed, and the Revolution through which it was secured assailed not so covertly; — they already designate it as the rebellion of 1688. The conversion of the British monarch to Roman Catholicism, did no such doctrine exist, would be a glorious event in the annals of Popery. The rising Apostacy would hold in the throne of the united kingdom such a post of vantage as the whole world could not equal. It has its golden dreams regarding it now, — dreams which, if destined to rise into power, it will assuredly strive hard to realize ; and the only constitutional point on which Protestantism could plant itself in its war of defence would be just the point furnished by this doctrine. But could Voluntaries occupy that point 1 Could it be occupied by the man who asserts that religion is but the business of individuals, and that states and nations, in their character as such, should have no religion ? Assuredly not. If religion be but the business of individuals, the British monarch, in 440 TENDENCIES. his character as an individual, has a right to choose a religion for himself. If states, as such, should have no religion, on what right principle can it be held that states should deter- mine the religion of their sovereigns 1 The doctrine of the Protestant Succession falls at once if dissociated from the principle of national religion. It is a doctrine behind which no consistent Voluntary can entrench himself. We would fain press on every member of the Free Church the great importance of the Establishment principle. To lay it down at a time like the present would be such an act of madness as if a warrior divested himself of his armour on the eve of a great battle, and then entered naked and de- fenceless into the fray. It furnishes the only ground on which coming contests are to be maintained, and the cause of Presbytery and of Protestantism asserted. But it is one thing to hold resolutely by the Establishment principle, and quite another to determine on the course pro- per to be pursued respecting some existing Establishment. The Government, in its wisdom, has been pleased to endow Maynooth. It is quite possible, however, vigorously to op- pose the yearly grant to that institution, without being in the least a Voluntary. A Convocationist may hold firmly, on similar grounds, by the Establishment principle, and yet set himself in determined opposition to the residuary Establish- ment. Be it remarked that, had not the latter been con- verted into something which he deemed exceedingly bad, he would not have quitted it. He foregoes its temporal advan- tages rather than remain in connection with it. Bather than acquiesce in the revolution which has been effected in it, by yielding allegiance, in matters spiritual, to the revolutioniz- ing power, he gives up his whole living, and, thus resembling one of those French royalists who preferred submitting to voluntary exile to taking the oaths to the Convention, what principle is there to prevent him from resembling these royal- TENDENCIES. 441 ists still farther, by taking up arms against it ? For our own part, we are utterly unable to see any. If in reality revolu- tionized into so bad a thing that honest men refuse to remain within its pale, even though their whole means of living, altered in character by the revolution, be held out to them as a bribe for doing so, on what grounds could they be cen- sured for making war on it 1 "We have but one reply to the question, — we can see none. In this, however, as in all other things, it may be well to employ St Paul's distinction between the expedient and the lawful. A war of the kind might be entirely just, but we are far from being convinced that it would be in any degree expedient. Unlike the "Voluntary controversy in its prin- ciples, it would yet resemble it in its effects. It would scarce fail to assume in its progress the secularizing, semi -political form, which would best consort with its semi-political cha- racter ; and the deep-toned religious feeling which has, we trust, been strengthening in the course of the present contro- versy, would infallibly evaporate in the progress of a contro- versy in which the Free Church would have a great many more hands to assist her than now, but, we are afraid, much fewer hearts to pray for her. Nay, that very assistance would be of itself an evil. It would mix up her people, through the influence of a common object, with Destructives and mere Voluntaries, — men at one with them in their hostility to the residuary Establishment, but thoroughly at variance with them in their principle of action ; and they would derive, to a cer- tainty, no benefit from the contact. But one inevitable effect of the controversy we would deplore more than any of the others. It would surround, as with a wall, the residuary Establishment, and freeze within it, — bind up, as if in ice, — many a well-mean • ing man, infirm of resolution, and halting at present between two opinions, who, were the matter managed otherwise, might be solicited and drawn forth. Voluntary opinions were decid- 4 42 TENDENCIES. eciiv on the increase in this country some fifteen or twenty vears ago : the Voluntary controversy broke out ; men took rheir side ; and from that moment Voluntaryism ceased to increase. The Free Church must deal more wisely ; nor, in this respect at least, is her course a difficult one. There are strong religious sympathies operating in her behalf ; she has but to throw herself full upon these by engaging heart and soul in her proper work, — the evangelizing of the country. It is a highly dangerous matter for two vessels to meet in rude collision in the open sea, — so dangerous, that there are instances not a few in which the effects have been fatal to both. But the loadstone rock of which we read in the east- ern tale, with its long flight of stairs and its tower atop, was in no danger whatever. It did not go out of its way to run down vessels ; it merely exerted its attractive power, while they were yet at a distance, in drawing out their nails and fastenings, and they then fell to pieces of themselves. The Free Church would do well not to set herself to run clown the residuary Establishment, but to employ her attractive in- fluence in drawing out its few remaining fastenings. If it be comparatively easy to say how the Free Church should deal by Voluntaryism, it seems a still more simple mat- ter to say how she should deal by Voluntaries. The contro- versy is over for the time for all practical purposes. It di- vided many excellent men ; it divided also many men who were by no means excellent. Never, in this respect at least, was there a more unfortunate quarrel. It found the pious Churchman linked close to the Evangelic Dissenter, and, tear- ing them apart, united the one to some malignant Tory, — a mighty friend to Establishments, but a bitter hater of the Cross ; and bound the other to some miserable infidel, not more an enemy to religious Establishments than to religion itself. There were strange unions effected on both sides. Of the five northern proprietors who have refused the Convoca- TENDENCIES. 443 tionists sites on their lands, three were such sound Establish- ment men, that they stood contested elections on the strength of their attachment to the principle. And Voluntary jour- nalists, who would have filled whole columns with frothy in- dignation had these proprietors been Irish ones and the Con- vocationists Papists, have given a place in their pages to their insolent and repulsive epistles, without the addition of note or comment, as if the religious liberty of the country was in no way involved in the case. The fact has thus a double bearing, and is illustrative of the rubbish on both sides. Be it remarked, that the mingled heap of grain, dust, and chaff which the controversy gathered up on the part of the Church has been thoroughly winnowed of late ; whereas the corre- sponding heap on the Voluntary side still remains what it was. Providence has not yet seen meet to apply the fan, — an obstacle, it may seem, in the way of union. It is pro- bable, however, that in thus speaking of an union of Volun- taries and Establishment men, we make use of wrong terms, — we make use of terms of difference, not of agreement, — and fall into some confusion of idea in consequence. With the Voluntary simply in his character as a Voluntary a devout Churchman can have no sympathy ; — with a Churchman simply in his character as a Churchman the devout Volun- tary can have no sympathy. Voluntary and Churchman are their terms, not of agreement, but of difference, — their re- spective battle-cries when they fought against one another. It would be absurd to dream of an union co-extensive with their designations of difference : it can be co-extensive with but their sentiments of agreement. It can be but a re-union of Christian with Christian ; not a heterogeneous coalition be- tween mere Voluntaries and mere Establishment men. — May P. IOC! 444 TENDENCIES. PAKT SIXTH. How "night the Church to deal by her bitterer opponents among the landowners of the country 1 "We very recently propounded the question, in one of our serial articles, as worthy of consideration. Only a few weeks have passed, and the hostility, whose scope and direction we could but antici- pate then, has taken a determinate course, and become em- bodied in action. Events move quickly in these latter stages of the controversy, — so quickly, that well-nigh half the anti- cipations of the " Tendencies" have been already converted into facts. We are continually reminded of the striking figure of that old poet who complained that the language was growing upon and covering up his earlier writings, as the flowing sea grows upon the sand, and obliterates and covers up all its tidal lines and all its ripple-markings. One north- ern Baronet, who is an Episcopalian, denies the Convoca- tionists sites on his lands because he himself is not a Convo- cationist ; another northern Baronet, who is a philosopher, denies them sites on his lands because they weakly prefer the Assembly's Shorter Catechism to the Catechism of Phreno- logy ; a third northern Baronet, who is a Presbyterian, de- nies them sites on his lands because he has a thorough respect for them, and agrees with them in all matters essential. The pretexts are various, but the overt acts are the same : in each and every case the rights of property are stretched to overbear the rights of conscience, and the principle virtually embodied, that the country's acres should determine the coun- try's religion. Now, there must be something monstrously wrong here ; — property can have no such rights attached to it. A sophism in argument may escape at times the detection of even acute intellects; whereas a sophism in action lies open, from its very TENDENCIES. 445 nature, to the detection of every honest mind. The common sense of mankind is sufficient to ensure its discovery ; and even were common sense to fail, common feeling would fasten upon it with the unerring precision of an instinct. The sophism in action never escapes ; and the practical sophism of our northern proprietors, that the rights of property may be so stretched as legitimately to overbear the rights of con- science, has been already appreciated in its true character all over Britain. Wherever over the world the vital influences of Christianity exist, — nay, wherever there exists common sense and common honesty, associated with the tolerating principle, — policy such as theirs must be at once recognised as grossly offensive and flagrantly unjust. There is an element of strength in the circumstance that, in order to estimate aright the policy of such men, it is not at all necessary one should hold by the principles of the Con- vocationists. Our readers are not Papists : they believe, om the contrary, that the conversion to Protestantism of the de- luded adherents of the Man of Sin would be one of the most desirable events which could possibly take place in the Chris- tian world. But not on that account, were the Protestant proprietors of Ireland to deal by their Papist tenants and cottars as our northern Baronets are dealing by their Presby- terian ones, would they have any hesitation in making up their minds regarding the real nature of the transaction. It would at once appear to them in its true character, as an act of coarse and repulsive oppression ; and as coarse and repulsive must such acts be ever held in the common sense of mankind, whether the objects on which they are brought to bear be Presbyterian or Popish. In stretching the rights of property so far that they over- lay the rights of conscience, there is a monstrous sophism in- volved, which all can at least feel ; and the circumstance has served to originate many a curious speculation regarding the 446 TENDENCIES. tiue limitations of the right of the proprietor, among a peor^e- never yet characterized by any peculiar obtuseness of intel- lect. And certainly the age of the Chartist and the Radical is not quite the age which a wise proprietor would choose for forcing such inquiries on the masses. The speculations which necessity imposes upon a people are generally very acute, and rarely inoperative in the end. We are told of Buuyan by Sir James Macintosh, that "he foiled the magistrates, the clergy, the attorneys, who beset him, in every contest of argument, especially in that which relates to the independence of reli- gion on the civil authority ; for it was a subject on which his naturally vigorous mind was better educated by his habi- tual meditations, forced upon him by necessity, than it could have been by the most skilful instructor." There were many in the age of Bunyan to whom the despotism of Charles and his brother rendered such meditations habitual ; and when these reached their degree of ultimate intensity, like those fluids that crystallize at a certain point of saturation, they solidified into the great national act which we are now ac- customed to designate as the Revolution of 1688. It is un- wise, we repeat, on the part of the proprietary of the coun- try, to force upon its people a train of inquiry regarding the rights of the proprietor, — especially unwise at a time like the present, when there are so many disturbing elements to lead to extreme conclusions. Chartism has arrived at its own characteristic findings, — findings which it embodied last year in its great petition ; and were the infection to spread among the soberer and more solid classes of the community, the effects might be fatal. It is of importance, however, — for the strength of opinion always depends eventually on the breadth and soundness of the foundations on which it rests, and there are sacred rights of property against which no man, or no class of men, can safely transgress, even in speculation, — it is r»f importance, we say, that the people of the Free Church should TENDENCIES. 44 7 entertain just sentiments on this matter, from which no in- solence of insult, or no degree of oppression, should be per- mitted to drive them. It was one of the enormous hardships to which the Px.a- tans of England were subjected in the reign of Charles JLl. that " every Dissenting clergyman was forbidden from coming within five miles of his former congregation." Now, there are proprietors of the north of Scotland who will be able, if they but carry their threats into execution, to prevent Presbyterian clergymen from residing within twenty miles of their former congregations. But, monstrous and tyran- nical as such a power may seem, has not every man a right, it may be asked, to do what he pleases with his own 1 and does not the power of the proprietor arise solely, in this in- stance, from just the legitimate exercise of this right 1 Nay, not so fast. It is true, there are cases in which a man may do what he pleases with his own ; but it can be in only those cases in which the effects of what he does terminate with what is his own ; and not even in the whole of these. Pie may employ the bludgeon which he has purchased in any and every way in which that bludgeon is alone concerned ; but he must not employ the bludgeon which he has purchased in breaking his neighbour's head ; for, though the bludgeon be his own, the head is not. Nay, further ; he must not employ the bludgeon which he has bought in cruelly maltreat- ing the horse which he has also bought. There are thus cases in which he may not do what he pleases with his own. The law takes into account not only the sense of suffering in the irrational animal which is his, but also the feelings of his neighbours with regard to the sufferings of that irrational animal, and fines and imprisons him for outraging them. The rule that a man may do what he pleases with his own is a rule of exceptions and limitations. Now, be it remembered that, though the acres of the north country belong to the £48 TENDENCIES. proprietors of the north country, its religion does not belong to them. The bludgeon is theirs, but not the head ; and if they violently employ those acres to the detriment of that re- ligion, they do so at their imminent peril. Nay, by putting these acres to other than the recognised and legitimate use, they grievously shock and outrage the feelings of their neigh- bours : that they also do at their peril. If it be at all just to protect those proper feelings which sympathise in the suffer- ings of the brute creation, does not immutable justice decree that those higher sentiments of the soul which rest on the Son of God as their proper object, and those rights of con- science which bear reference to his law exclusively, should be at least equally shielded from violence and outrage 1 The rights of property can be but co-extensive with the true ends and purposes of property. The possessor of a field tills, sows, and then, that he may reap the fruit of his labour, carefully encloses it ; and the law affords him its protection by punish- ing the trespasser, just because the trespasser interferes with the true end and purpose for which property is held. But property is not held in order that the course of useful science may be arrested ; and so, when Government is employed in taking a trigonometrical survey of the kingdom, it empowers its surveyors to enter the man's field if necessary, and fix their theodolites there. Property is not held in order that an important branch of national industry may be put down ; and so, should the field be on the sea-shore, a herring-curer, if he can find no other place on which to heap up his fish, in order to get them transferred to his casks, may fence off a portion of it, and heap them up there, giving, of course, re- muneration fully adequate for the produce which he may have t rumpled down, or the general deterioration which he may have occasioned. Property is not held in order that great and beneficial designs may be successfully thwarted ; and so I ariiament, if it see meet, may empower some projector or TENDENCIES. 449 joint-stock company to cut a deep canal into the centre of the man's field, or to span it over with some vast viaduct, or to cut it asunder by some broad thoroughfare. The rights of property, we repeat, are but co-extensive with the ends for which property is held ; and he who, on any pretext, stretches these rights, so as to render them subversive of the rights of conscience, is guilty of as flagrant injustice as if he had had no property on which to take his stand. He is simply a per- secutor, worthy the unqualified detestation and abhorrence of mankind ; and his worn-out plea, that he has a right to do what he may with his own, is but a miserable sophism, in every way worthy of the deeds of wrong and oppression of which he renders it the apology. But it can scarce be neces- sary to insist on points of a character so palpable as these. It will not be enough, however, thus to remove the bars and obstacles which might otherwise prevent the current of popu- lar opinion from dashing full against the persecuting proprie- tary of the country. So great is their power, and so many the means of annoyance within their reach, that, had the Church to maintain with them merely a political quarrel, she would scarce fail to be o'ermastered and borne down in the conflict, however unequivocally in the right. The tide of popular sympathy would set in too late and too feebly to avail her. She must not forget in what, under God, her strength lies, — that she has ahold of the religious feelings of the country; and that wherever she succeeds in enlightening a conscience dark before, there also does she of necessity succeed in making good a lodgment from which the power of the landlord and the factor will be utterly unable to expel her. She is strong, doubtless, in the popular character of the rights for which she has so resolutely and so devotedly contended, — strong on a principle somewhat similar to that through which the Whigs were strong when, after carrying the Reform Bill by a bare majority in the lower House, they dissolved Parliament, and 2 F 450 TENDENCIES. appealed to the country. But were her sti-ength of this merely semi-political kind, — were it based on but the popu- larity of her principles, — it would be a strength insufficient for her. It would evaporate in the furnace. The only strength which can ultimately avail her must lie in the unchanging fealty of converted hearts. Wherever she is rendered the honoured means of a conversion, there she secures an inalien- able friend, fitted to abide in her behalf the day of trial. We have been often struck by the remarkable figure in the Apo- calypse, in which the witnessing Church is represented as lying slain in the great city. The dead bodies of the two prophets are exposed in the street ; the sounds of mirth and wassail ring loud around them ; and there is rejoicing and giving of gifts because they are gone. What more hopeless than a cause sunk so low, that its sole representatives are two lifeless car- cases, cruelly denied the repose and shelter of the tomb, and exposed to the heartless insults of an ungenerous enemy ! They lie festering and dead ! a moment passes, and, lo ! " the spirit of life from God has entered into them ;" they stand upon their feet ; o'ermastering astonishment and terror fall upon all beholders ; and in the presence of their enemies a great voice from heaven talks with them. In even her dark- est day there are hopes to which the Church may continue to cling : the numbers and energy of her asserters will bear no chance proportion to the conversions of the country ; and one of those seasons of wide-spread and sudden revival which are, we trust, destined to characterize and bless the latter day, would have the effect of raising her up at once, like the resuscitated bodies of the slain prophets, a terror to her ene- mies, and a wonder to all. Her strength must lie in the con- versions of the country, and her chance of success, humanly speaking, in directing all her exertions under an abiding sense of the importance of the fact. It is, in truth, the grand se- cret, which her friends know, and her enemies do not. TENDENCIES. 451 Ere we conclude for the time, let us add one remark more. The true way of utterly ruining the cause of the Free Church, when the crisis comes, would be simply to yield to those feel- ings of excitement which in some districts it may well oc- casion, and fly in the face of the law. Let the authorities be supplied with but a single act through which a charge of outrage and bona fide rebellion may be fixed upon the Church, and there will be means instantly exerted to put her down, which have not been employed in Britain since the times of the persecutions of the Charleses. A few ploughmen, assisted by the bedraVs son in Culsalmond, smoked their pipes in the parish church, and broke some dozen or a score of panes, and straightway a detachment of the military were marched into Strathbogie, and there was a justiciary trial got up, at which an enlightened jury decided there was nothing to try. The soldiery and the Justiciary Court would be but imperfectly typical of the means which, in the result of some unhappy outbreak, would be set in instant requisition to crush the dis- sociated Church. The menials of Pilate and Caiaphas are coming out against her with their swords and staves ; but a too zealous Peter must not be permitted to strike in her de- fence. It is essential to her wellbeing, — perchance to her very existence, — that all the outrages should be perpetrated by her opponents. It was O'Connell's most important lesson to the people of Ireland, that they should keep their tempers and the peace. "We would warn, in especial, warm-hearted friends of the Church in the Highlands, — the fighting men of Scot- land, — the men who, in not a few districts, are to be sepa- rated violently from their beloved ministers, and to see mi- serable hirelings set in their place, — that they may do much for her by their prayers, but nothing, and less than nothing, for her by their swords ; that they cannot strike a single blow in her behalf which will not be made to descend with ten- fold effect on her own honoured head. — May 10, 1843. 452 mr forsyth's MR FORSYTH'S " REMARKS." [It has been made a principle, in selecting these articles, to omit those of a decidedly personal character. A vein of original and powerful humour entered, however, so largely into Mr Miller's writing in defence of the Evangelical party, that it was desirable to have some manifesta- tion of it in the present volume. The following article conveys no idea of Mr Miller's keener irony and more refined satire : it is in his roughest style ; but, so far as it goes, it is characteristic ; and it is believed that its broad humour can now be enjoyed without the infliction of pain upon any.] There has appeared within the last few weeks a very remark- able little work on our ecclesiastical struggle, from the pen of Robert Forsyth, Esq., "advocate, an Edinburgh philosopher, who settled the principles of moral science rather more than thirty years ago, and who has now very laudably come for- ward, — impelled by patriotic feeling and a strong sense of duty, — to settle the Church question. He found himself " not entitled" he says, " to look on in silence." The mere capacity of doing good suggests always to well-regulated minds the absolute necessity of doing it ; and so, while very many individuals who have not written essays on moral science, nor acquainted themselves with the secret causes of the im- mortality of the soul, have felt that they had a right to main- tain the character of silent spectators, Mr Forsyth, finding that he had no such right, — that he was not " entitled to look on in silence," — has been, of course, precipitated into authorship ; and his pamphlet, which has the merit, as we have said, of being a very remarkable one, has already at- tracted the favourable notice of most of our Edinburgh con- temporaries. " A very excellent and seasonable treatise," says the Edinburgh Advertiser, and characterized by " great ability and research." Assuredly yes, says the Evening Post : mr forsyth's "remarks." 453 " it exposes with equal profoundness and originality the ille- gal and dangerous proceedings of the democratic party in the Church." " The pamphlet of Mr Forsyth seems to us an able one," adds the Scotsman: it " sets the pretensions of the non-intrusionists in a very clear light," and " we would direct attention to it, as presenting the ideas of a well-in- formed, experienced, and religiously-disposed man." And the Observer tells his readers that it is a work eminently worthy even his notice, though, from a press of occupation, he has not been able to notice it as yet. Now, all this is certainly high praise. It has been often satisfactorily shown that the opinion of the Scottish news- paper press is just the opinion of the people of Scotland, — of course, by parity of reason, the opinion of the Edinburgh press must be just the opinion of the people of Edinburgh ; and here have we our intelligent and respectable citizens, Whig and Tory, harmonionsly at one in regarding the pam- phlet which Mr Forsyth has been so happily necessitated to produce, as seasonable, excellent, able, original, profound, clear in the light which it casts, and full of research, — and in eulogizing Mr Forsyth himself as an " experienced, well- informed, and religiously-disposed man." Now, it would be of course absurd on our part to risk an opinion in direct op- position to all this. We may venture to remark, however, that Mr Forsyth's pamphlet, though much more consistent than any other production which has appeared on the same side, and though, in the main, somewhat more amusing, has the disadvantage of being not quite complete in itself. Many of its more striking passages bear tacit reference to the doc- trines of his great philosophical work, — reference so direct, that to a man unacquainted with the peculiarities of the doc- trine developed in his " Principles of Moral Science," his Church principles must often appear either altogether obscure, or in a very considerable degree extreme, if not irrationaL 454 mr forsyth's "remarks." And this, we say, is decidedly a defect. We hold that Mr Forsyth's pamphlet on the Church question should be in every respect as independent of his great philosophical work, as his "Teat philosophical work is independent of his pamphlet on the Church question. Mr Forsyth must be surely aware, that in this unthinking and superficial age, in which meta- physics languish, there are many men and many women deeply interested in our ecclesiastical struggle, who have yet cultivated no close acquaintance with his " Principles of Moral Science." " The truths of Butler are more worthy the name of dis- covery" says Sir James Macintosh, " than any with which we are acquainted." We infer, from the assertion, that Sir James must have been ignorant of the ethical philosophy of Mr Robert Forsyth. It was reserved for this man of high philosophic intellect to discover, early in the present century, after first spending several years as a licentiate of the Church of Scotland, that though there are some human souls that live for ever, the great bulk of souls are as mortal as the bodies to which they are united, and perish immediately after death, like the souls of brutes. Thinking souls, such as the soul of Mr Robert Forsyth, continue to think on for ever ; but the vast rabble of souls, that either do not think at all, or think to little purpose, curl, and revolve, and expand, for a very little after they are exhaled from the body, somewhat like the puff of a cigar in a quiet atmosphere, and then melt away into nothing. Of what possible use, argued the philo- sopher, could the souls of the mere populace be in another world 1 In the present they are of very considerable value. They constitute a sort of moving power to the bodies of our artizans, clerks, and manufacturers. They produce hats, and shoes, and broadcloth, and law documents ; they build houses, and keep shops, and makes sausages and suits of clothes ; but in the future state they would be of quite as little value as MR FORSYTH'S " REMARKS." *55 the steam or water power of a mill or engme dissociated from the cranks of the engine or the pinions of the mill, and sub- limed to the dignity of a soul. Where there are neither heads nor feet, there can he no demand for either ha* : or shoes. Ho attenuated tailor-soul will he required to tat measure with his figured tape of the flunking part of Mr Robert Forsyth, or to illuminate his disembodied sensorm m with rows of buttons. He will be independent of broadcloth and of bend leather, and miss neither his clerk nor the butcher's shop. All must have heard of the famous argu- ment once maintained between Corporal Trim and Uncle Toby regarding the souls of negroes, and how the honest old captain came finally to the conclusion, that if the blacks have not souls as certainly as the whites, " it is a sad setting U p of one man over another." Now, a similar thought seems to have crossed the mind of the philosophic Mr Forsyth ; nor can we imagine aught more suited to render a person of a benevolent disposition uneasy; but a farther discovery served at once to remove the painful feeling. He discovered, by a singularly ingenious process, that the happy few whc , mheri immortality achieve it for themselves. They work it on simply by dint of thinking. The ploughman s soul does not sink into annihilation simply because it is the soul of a plough- man nor does the shoemaker's soul perish qm shoemakmg soul They perish just because they have not been exercised in thinking-just because they have not been writing treatises on moral science, or pamphlets on the intrusion side m the Church question. The sensoriums of a Burns and a Bloom- Eeld may be living yet. If souls die, it is all their own fault. They do not take exercise to render them strong and hardy ; and so perish the moment they step out of doors, just as children over-delicately nurtured and kept in an overheated nurserv are killed at times simply by running out into the cold. All the hardy well-trained souls survive. But we are 456 mr forsyth's "remarks." doing less than justice to Mr Forsyth, in not employing bis own philosophic language. " From the capacity that is conferred upon the human mind of ad- vancing in perpetual improvement, we conclude that it is destined for immortality. * * * But it is not to every individual that this capa- city or this destiny belongs. Some minds are too undiscerning to per- ceive the value of intellectual improvement. Other minds become s< i deeply enamoured of certain pursuits peculiar to their present state, that they will be unable to burst through the fetters of habit, and to engage in the study of what is good and excellent in the works of their Maker. These minds, having no employment in which to occupy themselves, would exist hereafter in vain j and such is the constitution of mind, that if it is not employed, it sinks into thoughtlesness, and loses its intelligent cha- racter. But those minds that engage in the pursuit of intellectual im- provement, or in the study and diffusion of science, when they remove from this world will find themselves only placed in a better situation for advancing successfully in their career. Their employment cannot come to an end, for it is infinite ; and their minds will continue for ever to become still more active, more discerning, and more enlarged. It is no mean prize, then, that awaits the lovers of Wisdom. She is lovely in herself, and worthy of all regard and pursuit ; but she is not given to man as a bride without a dowry. The possession of her communicates no less than immortal life. This is the highest prize in the great lottery of existence. * * * Let it never be forgotten, then, for whom it is that immortality is reserved. It is appointed as the portion of those who are worthy of it ; and they shall enjoy it as a natural consequence of their worth. This is a part of the plan according to which the Mighty Artist has formed the universe. Whatever is defective or imperfect, and has no tendency to improvement, will gradually pass away and dis- appear for ever ; but the minds that shoot vigorously towards excellence will be cherished, and endure and flourish without end. And this is all that can be said ivith any tolerable degree of certainty on so obsure a sub- ject." — Principles of Moral Science, 1805, pp. 501, 502. But though beyond this Mr Forsyth did not arrive at cer- tainty (and unquestionably minds of a lower and less philo- sophic nature could scarce have carried demonstration so far), he was enabled, through the exercise of that fine faculty, imagination, to go a very considerable way farther. In an exquisite allegory, attached, by way of appendix, to the chap- ter in which his great discovery is promulgated, we are pre- MR FORSYTH S "REMARKS." 457 sented with a view, singularly graphic and picturesque, of the expectoration of souls. The reader of the " Principles of Moral Science" is suspended in mid-air, with Mr Forsyth, in the character of the " Angel of Instruction," beside him j and on the earth beneath he is made to see all the dying, brute and human, engaged in vomiting souls. The view somewhat resembles that which the adventurous sailor takes from the maintop of a crowded and tempest-overtaken trans- port, when horrible nausea occupies the labouring passengers below. We see the " souls of dying men departing from their bodies," and the " souls of dying beasts." We mark the spirits of the beasts coming creeping out, like half-suffocated wasps escaping from the fumes of the deadly sulphur, when, in the silent twilight, some reckless urchin assails with fire and brimstone their devoted citadel, and then squatting them- selves down in the open air, and quietly evaporating j or, to employ Mr Forsyth's own classic illustration, " melting away gradually, like the cloud rising from the river, which the morning sun drinks up." Not so tranquil, however, the pro- cess through which the spirits of unthinking men pass into annihilation. " The souls of dying men are more active," says Mr Forsyth, " than the souls of dying beasts, for they spring upward, and seem to look around them, as if seeking for some work wherein to labour." They come frothing out like small beer in the dog-days, just escaped from the bottle, and wheel round and round in uneasy and short-lived activity, like drops of boiling oil sprinkled from a dipped rush-light on the colder oil of the lamp, — or like vivacious lady-birds stuck fast upon pins, — or like the wicked old lady in Beck- ford's Vathec, the rapidity of whose revolutions rendered her altogether invisible. But, soon squatting themselves down in utter exhaustion, they evaporate, " and pass away, and are forgotten, and no trace of them remains." Very different, however, is the destiny of vigorous souls of profound thought 458 mr Forsyte's " remarks." and solid acquirement, — the souls that have " engaged in the pursuit of intellectual improvement," and produced treatises on moral science. They " never lose their activity, nor fall asleep at all, like the rest." They visit " the sun, and the moon, and other worlds," expatiate at large over the whole earth and the whole sea, make their way into the recesses of Mr Forsyth's study, and there acquaint themselves thoroughly with his opinions on the Church question, long ere his in- valuable manuscripts have passed into the hands of the pub- lisher. Well has it been remarked by this Edinburgh philo- sopher, that " it is no mean prize that awaits the lovers of Wisdom." Now, without some previous acquaintance with this fine philosophy, there are passages in Mr Forsyth's Church pam- phlet, the force of which cannot be adequately appreciated. And hence, we urge, the incompleteness of the work, re- garded as a whole. The happy few who have mastered his " Principles" must, of course, feel themselves quite qualified to enter into the deeper meanings of his " Remarks." But why write for only the happy few ? Why not render his pamphlet as independent of his " Principles" as he has already rendered his " Principles" independent of his pamphlet 1 All interested in the Church question are not, we repeat, deeply read in the metaphysical discoveries of Mr Forsyth. And yet, what, without a knowledge of the great discovery whose results we have just communicated to our readers, is the real force of a passage such as the one in which Mr Forsyth sets himself to annihilate the Veto 1 United to his discovery, it is all-potent ; dissociated from it, it is a piece of mere com- monplace. We quote from his pamphlet : — " A young man," says Mr Forsyth, " after employing his best years, and considerable expense, in a University education, and the study of the learned languages and of theology, would, according to custom, pre- sent himself for examination before the Presbytery of his birth or resi- dence. He is declared qualified to preach, and is allowed to preach for REMARKS." 459 any minister employing him. Yet, on receiving a presentation from the Crown, or some other patron, he might find his prospects blasted, because a number of clowns had been pleased to say, without assigning a reason, that they dissented from his settlement, whether because they wished some otber individual, or wantonly acted to show their power. Admis- sion to the communion table affords no test of the ability of a man to decide on the qualifications necessary to a minister who is to instruct men in the history and principles of Christianity. A man may be a sin- cere believer in the gospel, and of the most decent life, who yet is trujy an illiterate person, engaged in mechanical labour. To say that such a man shall have power to ruin the prospects of a learned man, against whom he can state no well-founded objections, is palpably absurd." Now, if this passage be taken simply as it stands, even Mr Forsyth's warmest friends must be forced to allow that it is by no means a striking one. Dr Cook has said as much, and Dr Bryce, and the Edinburgh Advertiser, and the gentle- man who in the Observer writes " Columns for the Kirk." But, taken in connection with Mr Forsyth's great discovery, even the Witness itself must confess that it does all it was intended to do, — that it annihilates the Veto. Let the reader mark well some of the phrases employed : — " Number of clowns," — " admission to the communion table no test of ability," — " illiterate person engaged in mechanical labour." These are all phrases of deep significancy when coupled with the discovery of Mr Forsyth. In his " Principles of Moral Science," we are expressly told that " men who spend their lives in the unremitting drudgery of such kinds of labour as require little exercise of the mind, are apt to sink into a state of indolence and stupidity." " They become incapable of thinking," it is added ; " and if at any time they make an unusual exertion towards it, their attention soon wavers and fails, and they speedily re] inquish an effort that is so sensibly above their strength." They are, in short, men whose souls, like the souls of brutes, perish at death. Mark, next, the an- tagonist class of phrases used in connection with the licensed candidate : — " University education," — " learned languages," 460 mr forsyth's " remarks." — " theology," — fitted to " instruct in the history and prin- ciples of Christianity," — " qualified preacher," — " learned man." There is an achieved immortality of soul implied in the very terms. The human souls that do not die, says Mr Forsyth, in his "Principles," are the souls that, when on earth, are " engaged in the pursuit of intellectual improvement, or in the study and diffusion of science." Now, in how strik- ing a light does not this place the entire question ! True, it militates with much directness against the great bulk of our Scottish patrons, — men whose souls, on Mr Forsyth's show- ing, could be of no manner of use in the other world, unless, indeed, the other world had its mail-coaches to drive, and its dog-kennels to superintend, and its tournaments to ride tilts at ; and whose minds, as they have been doing nothing what- ever to improve and strengthen them, must of necessity be thin, weak, rickety minds, disposed to evaporate in the mo- ment of expiration. But then, does it not make more than amends by at once clearing up the line between the rights of licentiates and the claims of the people ? We can scarce imagine anything more preposterous than that plebeian clowns, — poor illiterate ploughmen and mechanics, — men whose spirits must wriggle in uneasy consciousness for some ten or twelve minutes after death, only to give up existence for ever, — should be once permitted to stake their supposed spiritual interests against the well-based temporal welfare of some meritorious man of learning, who has studied his soul into immortality, and who, in following up his high destiny, may one day play somersaults in the sun's fiery atmosphere, or disport delighted, amid glowing pumice and molten lava, in some sublime volcano of the moon. There is a flood of light cast here on the cases of Dunkeld and Auchterarder, and on the intrusions of Culsalmond and Marnoch. We had marked several other passages for quotation in the pamphlet of Mr Forsyth ; and, from the respect which we mr forsyth's "remarks." 461 must at all times entertain for the " ideas of a well-informed, experienced, and religiously-disposed man," may possibly again return to them. By the way, is it not a gratifying circumstance to find that the Scotsman is beginning to think all the better of people for their religion, — nay, that he now actually knows what religion is 1 There is still hope of our contemporary. He had a lugubrious article, some few weeks ago, on the damage which he has sustained in his circulation from the misrepresentations of ministers and the insinuations of ministers' wives. They have censured him as Socinian, — they have denounced him as infidel. But their hostility will now surely cease ; — they may be assured that he has learned to set a high value on " religiously-disposed men," and to know them wherever he finds them. With regard to the philosophic Mr Forsyth, our reflections are more melancholy. He was at one time a licentiate of the Church of Scotland, and yet the Church lost him. There are respectable citizens of Edinburgh who have heard him preach in the West Kirk ; and it is a fact known to at least a few, that he was a can- didate, on one occasion, for the parish of Liberton. But the mortal rabble who have not learned to think, — the dying illiterate, born to plough and make shoes, — were unable to value him as they ought ; and so, setting himself to the study of the law, and to the discovery of the true principles of moral science, the Church lost him. And, save for this un- toward circumstance, this fine old Moderate of the classical model of Robertson and Blair would be now a leader in the General Assembly, on the side that lacks talent most. How tantalizing the reflection ! We must add further, that the perusal of his writings of remoter and more recent date has awakened in our mind a rather melancholy thought, which we scarce know how to express. " Let it never be forgotten," he says, in promulgating his discovery regarding the immortality of the great bulk of human souls, — " let it never be forgotten, 462 STATE-CARPENTRY. that whatever has no tendency to improvement will gradually pass away, and disappear for ever." Now, it is a solemn but not the less indisputable fact, that there has been no improvement in the writing or thinking of Robert Forsyth, Esq. advocate, for the last thirty-seven years. Nay, the reverse is very palpably the case. He writes worse, — he thinks less vigorously, — he has less of taste, — his style is rougher, and his grammar less unexceptionable, — than when he fixed the principles of moral science in the good year 1805. Alas for the inference ! but we at least have determined not to draw it. — January 14, 1843. STATE-CARPENTRY. It has been remarked, that in proportion as our English dra- matists sank in the genius of their profession, they made amends in some sort by becoming adepts in all the merely mechanical parts of it. If they could no longer attain to the sublime in their poetry, they at last succeeded in making unexceptionable thunder. If their dialogues were no longer easy and natural, no one could say the same of their side- scenes of painted canvass, or their snow-showers of white paper. If wit no longer flashed athwart the scenes, never in any former time were their flashes of ground rosin equally vivid. If their descriptions were tame, so were not their draperies and drop-curtains. Their plots might be unskil- fully managed, but their trap-doors were wrought to admira- tion. They were masters of costume, if not of character ; and ghosts, lions, and tempests, Nahum Tates and Elkannah Set- tles, amply occupied the place of truth, power, and nature, William Shakspeare and Philip Massinger. The poets dis- STATE-CARPENTRY. 463 appeared, but their successors the play-wrights were ingenious after their kind. We live in an age in which, apparently for some purpose of judgment, the more prominent actors on the political stage are but a kind of mechanists and play-wrights, — men that bear the same sort of relation to true statesmen that the Shadwells and Settles of the English drama bore to its Jon- sons and Fletchers of an earlier period. There is this dif- ference, however, that whereas the play-wrights were skilful after their kind, our mechanical statesmen are not. They are by no means mechanical statesmen of a high degree of skill. Their trap-doors creak in the opening ; their ghosts awk- wardly drop the winding-sheet in the rising; their lions be- tray the pasteboard; when they thunder, we detect the roll of the rusted shot in the iron kettle ; and when they lighten, the rosin puffs unkindled in a cloud of white dust athwart the stage. They are State-wrights of an inferior grade. Never was there an age or country in which problems of more signal difficulty or of more awful importance rose to demand the practical solution of the true statesman, than rise in Britain at the present day. The masses are sinking every- where into perilous ignorance, — degenerating into avast brute power, terrible of fang and claw, and more terrible still in the brute heart that is growing up within it, growling in its den in uneasy hunger, and threatening to burst out, that it may lap the blood and tear the entrails of these poor State- carpenters. And lo ! they are setting themselves to see whether they cannot smoothe down the shag of its degenerate nature, and humanize its heart again by a scheme of Puseyite edu- cation. They are trying whether it may not be tamed into quiet and good order just by parading a few ghosts in front of it, — old, dry, bloodless ghosts of the apostolic succession, baptismal regeneration, and the real presence, — and by getting up behind these a picturesque screen of pillared aisles and 464 STATE-CARPENTRY. transepts, crosses and choirs, organs and stained glass. They have fallen, in their wisdom, on a scheme resembling that of the ingenious breeder of live stock, who fixed bits of look- ing-glass in the walls of his pig-styes, immediately behind the feeding-troughs, that the animals within might occupy their whole minds in admiring the impalpable images, and feed, in consequence, with the quiet and profit which a state of plea- surable excitement induces. Between the two schemes, how- ever, there obtains this mighty difference, that whereas the swine-feeder associated his bodiless images with his well-filled feeding-troughs, our le a ., intelligent governors trust to the bodiless images alone, without taking into account in what manner the poor brute-power is to be fed, or caring a farthing whether it is to feed or no. And so they strain hard in their Factory Bill to raise their obsolete images, — their old scare- crow ghosts, — things in which they themselves, with reference to themselves, have no faith whatever. But they lack the true art of the play-vvright ; and, lo! amid the clapping of trap-doors and the creaking of hinges, the wretched design, as defective in its management as deplorable in its conception, stands palpable to all. And then, how exquisitely mean their style of dealing with the growing pauperism of the country, that frightful gangrene which is so fast eating into its very vitals ! How utterly unable have they shown themselves to seize on one principle of power, — one moral element, — through which the plague might be staid ! By dint of great mental exertion they have contrived to learn that sixpence of assessed money, after due deductions for the expense of collection and superintendence, is well-nigh adequate to the purchase of a threepenny loaf, and that rather fewer threepenny loaves are demanded by the hungry pauperism of the country when they are eaten in workhouses or on the tread-mill, than when eaten in any other way. And this is just all they know. Those great moral means of adding to the general health of the body- STATE-CARPENTRY. 4 G f) politic, through which, it might be made to absorb its pauper- ism, just as a sound natural body absorbs the extravasated blood and inert matter of a severe contusion, filling with life and feeling what had become dead and insensate, they alto- gether lack the ability of comprehending. There is no guid- ing moral sense within them sufficiently enlightened by Re- velation to lead their intellects into the right track ; and so they wander blind in a perplexing labyrinth of mean and in- adequate expedients. Never, perhaps, was there a time in which the exigencies of the kingdom so enormously overtopped the capabilities of its rulers. Our own poor Scotland, in her periods of greatest difficulty hitherto, had always her great men, — rulers fitted to the time, and adequate to the work of her deliverance. She lay in a rude state when Edward I. attempted her subjugation ; and it might have seemed a very small matter whether her fierce and barbarous people, our early ancestors, should have lived as the slaves of England, or have continued to enjoy the wild liberty of their half-savage condition. But there were great though remote consequences involved in the preservation of her independence : she had purposes to serve in the economy of Providence which could not be effected by an enslaved province : and so, in her time of extremest peril, God called upon two great men to fight her battles, — men of that very type and mould of greatness that was best fitted for her deli verance in such an age, — -iron-headed, iron-handed cham- pions, whose very nature it was that they could neither yield nor despair. They had a long and a sore battle to maintain in her behalf; and one of the two, ere its close, fell under the axe of the hetdsman. But they were thoroughly fitted for the appointed work, and so the appointed work was thoroughly done. A great moral revolution drew on. The Man of Sin, red with murder and reeking with impurity, was to be struck down in Scotland The people that had been preserved from 2 G 4 ()' (3 ST ATE-CARPEXTRY. the domination of a foreign State had now to be delivered from the thrall of a degrading superstition. The exigencies of the contest demanded quite a different kind of greatness from that of Wallace and the Bruce ; and so John Knox was called forth to fight out the quarrel in behalf of the truth ; and he did fight and gain it. The contest altered in its cha- racter : it had to be maintained for the rights of conscience, not with an ecclesiastical power, but with the civil magis- trate. The dauntless Reformer who had fought in the front of the first battle had passed to his reward, and he seemed to have left no man behind him fitted to take his place ; but there was one Andrew Melville, a poor sickly orphan boy at- tending one of our public schools at the time ; and when a leader was most needed, — needed so much, that the cause of civil and religious liberty seemed lost for want of one, — An- drew Melville was summoned to take the lead. And so the battle was carried on. At the second Reformation, the same want was felt as at the first ; but it was necessary that the cause should prevail, and so the quiet manse of Leuchars fur- nished in Henderson a leader adequately fitted to grapple with every difficulty of the time, and whose extraordinary commission was at once recognised by his country. How wofully different the state of matters with regard to our go- verning powers of the present day ! One is continually re- minded of the complaint of the kelpie in the old legend, — "The hour is come, but not the man." Great exigen- cies have found little men to grapple with them, and in a style, of course, that exhibits the character of the men, not of the exigencies. The stratagems by which chambermaids out-manoeuvre one another in the graces of their mistresses have been substituted for the large principles by which the guidance of great affairs should be invariably regulated ; and questions that affect the deepest feelings, and involve the vastest consequences, — questions that can have rest on only 8TATE-CAEPEXTRY. 4GV the basis of eternal truth and justice, — have been attempted to be settled through the exercise of exactly the same kind of arts that are employed by jockeys when they sell horses at fairs. We are reminded of the text in which God represents himself as taking away, for the sins of a people, the prudent and the counsellor, the captain and the honourable, the judge and the prophet ; and appointing "children to be their princes, and babes to have rule over them." The Church question has been again brought before the House of Lords, and with just the usual result. Truly, the part taken by her Majesty's Government in these barren discussions would be eminently ludicrous, were it not so pitiable. Has the reader ever seen a nervous gentleman running on tiptoe with his coat-tails tucked up under his arm, magnanimously re- solved on clearing at a leap some formidable five-feet ditch, but stopping abruptly short at the edge, at once panic struck and angry, and merely gazing across for lack of courage to do more ? Has he seen him repeat and re-repeat the vast effort, and bring it in every instance to the same grave conclusion 1 If so, he will find it no easy matter to fall on a fitter emblem of my Lord Aberdeen and his coadjutors than the nervous gentleman. Ever and anon his Lordship tucks up his coat- tails, and, taking a vast ran, to clear at a bound the Church question, gets panic-struck just as he reaches its nearer edge, and, standing stock-still, grins angrily across. His Lordship, and his Lordship's coadjutors, have not yet felt what it is they have to deal with. The steam of their Ministerial Sunday dinners so obscures their dining-room panes, that they fail to see through them the religious beliefs of the country. Thev mark on the dimmed glass what they deem impalpable sha- dows stalking past, and as impalpable shadows they persist in treating them. Fools and slow of heart, who have faUe«l utterly to know the day of their visitation ! Do they not even, yet see, that it is not with a handful of clergymen, but witii 468 STATE-CARPENTRY. the deeply-based religion of Scotland, that they have to do? — that they have come in rude collision, in their blindness, with a principle which, in its long struggles, has been often over- borne and grievously oppressed, but never eventually over- come, and whose battles, once begun, never terminate till opposition dies 1 The Church, however, should feel grateful to the Earl of Aberdeen for the declarations of his short speech. They are not in the least equivocal. "We find his Lordship com- plaining, in his introductory sentence, of a certain existing desire "to extort from her Majesty's Government, at the last moment before the meeting of the General Assembly, some declaration different from that which had been already delibe- rately given." And this desire, as her Majesty's Government had thoroughly made up their minds on the matter, his Lord- ship deemed, of course, a very annoying sort of thing. We find him politely adding, however, that " he had no objections again to state the nature of the measure which, at a, Jilting time, her Majesty's Ministers were ready to bring forward." " Again to state !" These are plain English words, and they mean, that what his Lordship on this occasion had no objection to state was, not a new revelation of the mind of Government, but a revelation which had been made on some occasion before. They unequivocally premise that his Lord- ship's statement was but the repetition of a former statement ; and obvious it is, that that former statement cannot be held to mean some vague, little marked statement of some unin- nuential member of the Cabinet, but just none other than the statement "deliberately given," with express reference to which ins Lordship had resolved not to be entrapped into any an- tagonist declaration. Now, where shall we find this delibe- rate statement ] There was no allusion made in her Ma- jesty's Speech to our Scottish Church question. Her Ma- jesty's Speech was a great document, filled with quite higher STATE-CARPENTRY. 469 matters, — matters such as her Majesty's gratitude for the Scot- tish lath-arches and Scottish huzzas, which arose in honour of her Majesty's last year's visit. Virtually, however, the Church question had a Queen's Speech of its own ; and this sort of Queen's Speech, — a public document, embodying the delibe- rate declaration of her Majesty's Government, — their stereo- typed Scriptural canon, from which they were too good Chris- tians to be driven, — bears the name of " Sir James Grahams Letter." There exists no other "deliberately given declara- tion" on the part of Government, to which a Crown Minister could refer • and our readers would do well to ponder the Earl of Aberdeen's frankly avowed resolution regarding it. His Lordship's re-statement of its conditions is in a some- what short-hand style, though not quite unmarked by the adroitness of the diplomatist. He condenses the rather tedious sophistry of the red-hair argument into a not unplausible-look - ing sentence, which intimates liberty of objection on the part of the people, and freedom of judgment in deciding on the grounds, on the part of the Church ; with the proviso, how- ever, that these grounds should be in every case faithfully re- corded. The people may object if they please, to the red hair of the presentee ; and then the Church, should it also con- scientiously dislike red hair, and so deem the objection a solid one, has straightway but to enter on its books, — " unsuitable presentee, — red-haired, — people and we don't like red hair/' and then, — why, then, the red-haired presentee must just be content to despair of his settlement, unless, indeed, there be some hope for him in those details and modifications of the measure which the Earl of Aberdeen " abstained purposely from entering into," lest "certain persons" should misinter- pret and misrepresent them. The comment of Lord Brougham on this important portion of the Noble Earl's speech was suffi- ciently emphatic. " If his Noble Friend's announcement was understood in one sense," he said, " it would be an utter aban- 470 STATE-CARPUS TRY. doninent of the claims of the civil courts, and would be cal- culated to excite much alarm f but "taken in another view, it was quite consistent with sound doctrine and civil rights, and did not touch patronage." He might well have added, that the Church was quite at liberty to repose as confidently as she could on the one meaning ; and lawyers, such as his Lordship, to seize fast hold of the other. The Earl of Aberdeen stated further, in just accordance with his introductory sentences, that " the broad and general principles on which the Government were ready to act" were in " conformity with the declarations that had been often made by him ;" and " that it remained to be seen whether the Ge- neral Assembly, after what he had said, would think it neces- sary to secede, or to wait for the purpose of ascertaining what her Majesty's Government intended to propose to the Legis- lature." There must surely be some confusion of idea here. Had the Noble Earl set out by stating that her Majesty's Go- vernment were at length determined to give some declaration different from that which they had already deliberately given," — had he, instead of using the significant " again to state" used the equally significant " state for the first time" — had he said that their broad and general principles of settlement were principles not in conformity with their previously emitted declarations, but, on the contrary, principles which they had but recently taken up, — principles newly adopted by them, not the old ones, — then, on at least his Lordship's showing, there might be some plausible reason for delaying the seces- sion, just " for the purpose of ascertaining what Government intended proposing to the Legislature." But seeing that the principles of this prospective measure are confessedly the old principles, where, we marvel, lies the reason for delay 1 With measures on the old principles the Church is sufficiently ac- quainted already; she has seen and does not like them ; they are disagreeable sights at best; and she would be but little in STATE-CARPENTRY. 471 earnest should she lengthen out delaj' until the " fitting" but un determinate time when her Majesty's Government may- think proper to add one more to their number. The Earl of Aberdeen's concluding remark might surely have been spared, and yet it is possible enough to find an apology for it too. "lithey" [the Evangelical party] "did think it necessary to secede at once," said his Lordship, " he imagined that they would be scarcely able at the last day to call on the God of truth to witness that they had been driven to this course by the persecution of the Legislature." " "When you consider," says Carlyle, in an eulogium on Cromwell, — " when you con- sider that Oliver believed in a God, the difference between Oliver's position and that of the subsequent governors of this country becomes, the more you reflect on it, the more immea- surable." His Lordship's allusion to Deity here, charitably regarded, and taken in connection with the fact that his Lord- ship is one of those governors, may tell, after all, to his Lord- ship's advantage. In shipwreck much depends on knowing the exact moment in which the wreck, fast beating to pieces on a lee shore, may be quitted with greatest chance of escape ; and it requires both resolution and presence of mind to enable the seaman promptly to avail himself of it. Much depends, in battle, on knowing the exact moment in which the charge may be made with most effect. It would be well that on Thursday the Church should not linger, no, not for a moment, beyond the propitious hour, within the wreck of the Erastian Establish- ment. It might be fatal to convert her broad unanimous question of principle into a contracted disputed question of time, — a question respecting an hour or a day, — a question whether the separation should take place at one instant or at another, — whether it should be an incident of the 18th, or of the 19th, or of the 20th. It would be quite w T orthy ot our State-carpenters to exert themselves heart and soul in 472 THE DISRUPTION. striving to transpose the whole matter into a question of hours and minutes, — to hold out some vague promise, — to tuck up their coat-tails at the last moment, and cry out, " O, wait for one short half-week, till we have gathered way, and we shall then overleap the separating ditch, and be altogether with you." But it would be quite unworthy of the Church to suffer the State-wrights so to entrap her." — May 17, 1843. THE DISEUPTION. The fatal die has been cast. On Thursday last the Reli- gion of Scotland was disestablished, and a principle recognised in its stead which has often served to check and modify the religious influences, but which in no age or country ever yet existed as a religion. Not but that it has performed an im- portant part, even in Scotland. It has served hitherto to control the Christianity of the Establishment, — to dilute it to such a degree, if we may so speak, as to render it bearable to statesmen without God. And now its appointed work seems over. It constituted at best but the drag-chain and the hook, — things that have no vocation apart from the chariot. But the time has at length arrived in which the State will bear with but the hook and the drag, apart from that which they checked, — with but the diluting pabulum, apart from that which it diluted ; and so a mere negation of Christianity, — an an- tagonist force to the religious power, — has been virtually re- cognised as exclusively the principle which is to be entrenched in the parish churches of Scotland. The day that witnessed a transaction so momentous can be a day of no slight mark in modern history. It stands between two distinct states of tli ings, — a signal to Christendom. It holds out its sign to these THE DISRUPTION". 473 latter times, that God and the world have drawn off their forces to opposite sides, and that His sore and great battle is soon to begin. The future can alone adequately develop the more im- portant consequences of the event. At present we shall merely attempt presenting the reader with a few brief notes of the aspect which it exhibited. The early part of Thursday had its periods of fitful cloud and sunshine, and the tall picturesque tenements of the Old Town now lay dim and indistinct in shadow, now stood prominently out in the light. There was an unusual throng and bustle in the streets at a comparatively early hour, which increased greatly as the morning wore on towards noon. We marked, in especial, several knots of Moderate clergy hurrying along to the levee, laughing and chatting with a vivacity that reminded one rather of the French than of the Scotch character, and evidently in that state of nervous excitement which, in a certain order of minds, the near approach of some very great event, indeterminate and unappreciable in its bearings, is sure always to occasion. As the morning wore on, the crowds thickened in the streets, and the military took their places. The principles in- volved in the anticipated Disruption gave to many a spectator a new association with the long double line of dragoons that stretched adown the High Street, far as the eye could reach, from the venerable Church of St Giles, famous in Scottish story, to the humbler Tron. The light flashed fitfully on their long swords and helmets, and the light scarlet of their uni- forms contrasted strongly with the dingier vestments of the masses, in which they seemed as if more than half engulphed. When the sun glanced out, the eye caught something pecu- liarly picturesque in the aspect of the Calton Hill, with its imposing masses of precipices overtopped by towers and monu- ments, and its intermingling bushes and trees now green with the soft, delicate foliage of May. Between its upper and under 474: THE DISRUPTION. line of rock, a dense living belt of human beings girdled it round, sweeping gradually downwards from shoulder to base, like the sash of his order on the breast of a nobleman. The Commissioner's procession passed, with sound of trumpet and drum, and marked by rather more than the usual splendour. There was much bravery and glitter, — satin and embroidery, varnish and gold lace, — no lack, in short, of that cheap and vulgar magnificence which can be got up to order by the tailor and the upholsterer for carnivals and Lord Mayors' days. But it was felt by the assembled thousands, as the pageant swept past, that the real spectacle of the day was a spectacle of a different character. The morning levee had been marked by an incident of a somewhat extraordinary nature, and which history, though in these days little disposed to mark prodigies and omens, will scarce fail to record. The crowd in the Chamber of Presence was very great, and there was, we believe, a considerable de- gree of confusion and pressure in consequence. Suddenly, — whether brushed by some passer by, jostled rudely aside, or merely affected by the tremor of the floor communicated to the partitioning, — a large portrait of William the Third, that had held its place in Holyrood for nearly a century and a half, dropped heavily from the walls. " There," exclaimed a voice from the crowd, — " there goes the Revolution Settle- ment." For hours before the meeting of Assembly, the galleries of St Andrew's Church, with the space behind, railed off for the accommodation of office-bearers not members, were crowded to suffocation, and a vast assemblage still continued to besiege the doors. The galleries from below had the " overbellying " appearance in front described by Blair, and seemed as if piled up to the roof behind. Immediately after noon, the Mode- rate members began to drop in one by one, and to take their places on the Moderator's right, while the opposite benches THE DISRUPTION. 475 remained well-nigh empty. What seemed most fitted to catch the eye of a stranger was the rosy appearance of the men, and their rounded contour of face and feature. Moderatism, in the present day, is evidently not injuring its complexion by the composition of "Histories of Scotland" like that of Ro- bertson, or by prosecuting such " Inquiries into the Human Mind" as those instituted by Reid. We were reminded, in glancing over the benches, of a bed of full-blown piony-roses glistening after a shower; and, could one have but substituted among them the monk's frock for the modern dress-coat, and given to each crown the shaven tonsure, not only would they have passed admirably for a conclave of monks met to deter- mine some weighty point of abbey-income or right of forestry, but for a conclave of one determinate age, — that easily cir- cumstanced middle age in which, the days of vigil and ma- ceration being over, and the disturbing doctrines of the Re- formation not yet aroused from out of their long sleep, the Churchman had little elst to do than just amuse himself with concerns of the chase and ti » e cellar, the larder and the dor- mitory. The benches on the left began slowly to fill, and on the entrance of every more distinguished member a burst of recognition and welcome shook the gallery. Their antago- nists had been all permitted to take their places in ominous silence. The music of the pageant was heard outside ; the Moderator* entered, attired in his gown; and ere the ap- pearance of the Lord High Commissioner, preceded by his pages and mace-bearer, and attended by the Lord Provost, the Lord Advocate, and the Solicitor-General, the Evangeli cal benches had filled as densely as those of their opponents , and the cross benches, appropriated, in perilous times like the present, to a middle party careful always to pitch their prir ciples below the suffering point, were also fully occupied * The late Rev. Dr Welsh, Professor of Church History in the University of Edinburgh. 476 THE DISRUPTION. Never before was there seen so crowded a General Assembly : the number of members had been increased beyond all pre- cedent by the double returns \ and almost every member was in his place. The Moderator opened the proceedings by deeply impressive prayer ; but though the silence within was complete, a Babel of tumultuary sounds outside, and at the closed doors, expressive of the intense anxiety of the excluded multitude, had the effect of rendering him scarcely audible in the more distant parts of the building. There stood be- side the chair, though on opposite sides, the meet representa- tives of the belligerent parties. On the right we marked Principal M'Farlan of Glasgow, — the man, in these altered times, when missions are not held disreputable, and even Moderates profess to believe that the Gospel may be com- municated to savages without signally injuring their morals, who could recommend his students to organize themselves into political clubs, but dissuade them from forming mission- ary societies. On his left stood Thomas Chalmers, the man through whose indomitable energy and Christian zeal two hundred churches were added to the Establishment in little more than ten years. Science, like religion, had its repre- sentatives on the Moderator's right and left. On the one side we saw Moderate science personified in Dr Anderson of New- burgh, — a dabbler in geology, who found a fish in the Old Red Sandstone, and described it as a beetle : we saw science not Moderate, on the other side, represented by Sir David Brewster. The Moderator rose and addressed the House in a few im- pressive sentences. There had been an infringement, he said, on the constitution of the Church, — an infringement so great, that they could not constitute its General Assembly without a violation of the union between Church and State, as now authoritatively defined and declared. He was therefore com- pelled, he added, to protest against proceeding further ; and, THE DISRUPTION. ' 477 unfolding a document which he held in his hand, he read, in a slow and emphatic manner, the protest of the Church. For the first few seconds, the extreme anxiety to hear defeated its object, — the universal hush, hush, occasioned considerably more noise than it allayed ; but the momentary confusion was succeeded by the most unbroken silence ; and the reader went on till the impressive close of the document, when he flung it down on the table of the House, and solemnly departed. He was followed, at a pace's distance, by Dr Chalmers ; Dr Gor- don and Dr Patrick MTarlan immediately succeeded; and then the numerous sitters on the thickly occupied benches behind filed after them, in a long unbroken line, which for several minutes together continued to thread the passage to the eastern door, till at length only a blank space remained. As the well-known faces and forms of some of the ablest and most eminent men that ever adorned the Church of Scotland glided along in the current, to disappear from the courts of the State institution for ever, there rose a cheer from the gal- leries, and an impatient cry of "Out, out," from the ministers and elders not members of Assembly, now engaged in sallying forth, to join with them, from the railed area behind. The cheers subsided, choaked in not a few instances in tears. The occasion was by far too solemn for the commoner manifesta- tions of either censure or approval : it excited feelings that lay too deep for expression. There was a marked peculiarity in the ar>nearance of their opponents, — a blank, restless, pivot-like turning of head from the fast emptying benches to one ano- ther's faces ; but they uttered no word, — not even in whis- pers. At length, when the last of the withdrawing party had disappeared, there ran from bench to bench a hurried, broken whispering, — " How many 1" — " how many 1 ?" — "A hundred and fifty?" "No;" "Yes;" " Four hundred T "No;"— and then for a moment all was still again. The scene that fol- lowed we deemed one of the most striking of the day. The 478 THE DISRUPTION. empty vacated benches stretched away from the Moderator's seat in the centre of the building, to the distant wall. There suddenly glided into the front rows a small party of men whom no one knew, — obscure, mediocre, blighted-looking men, that, contrasted with the well-known forms of our Chalmerses and Gordons, Candlishes and Cunninghams, M'Farlans, Brew- sters, and Dunlops, reminded one of the thin and blasted corn- ears of Pharaoh's vision, and, like them too, seemed typical of a time of famine and destitution. Who are these 1 was the general query ; but no one seemed to know. At length the significant whisper ran along the house, " The Forty." There was a grin of mingled contempt and compassion visible on many a broad Moderate face, and a too audible titter shook the gallery. There seemed a degree of incongruity in the sight, that partook highly of the ludicrous. For our own part, we were so earned away by a vagrant association, and so missed Ali Baba, the oil kettle, and the forty jars, as to forget for a time that at the doors of these unfortunate men lies the ruin of the Scottish Establishment. The aspect of the Assem- bly sank, when it had in some degree recovered itself, into that expression of tame and flat commonplace which it must be h encefo rth content to bear, until roused, happily, into short-lived activity by the sharp paroxysms of approaching destruction. A spectacle equally impressive with that exhibited by the ministers and elders of the Free Church, as they winded in long procession to their place of meeting, there to constitute their independent Assembly, Edinburgh has certainly not witnessed since those times of the Covenant when Johnston of Warriston unrolled the solemn parchment in the church- yard of the Greyfriars, and the assembled thousands, from the peer to the peasant, adhibited their names. The procession, with Dr Chalmers, and the Moderator in his robes and cap of office, at its head, extended, three in depth, for a full quarter of a mile. The Lord Provost of the city rode on before. THE DISRUPTION. 479 Rather more than four hundred were ministers of the Church : all the others were elders. Be it remembered, that the number of ministers ejected from their charges at the Resto- ration, and who maintained the struggle in behalf of Presbytery during the long persecution of twenty-eight years, amounted in all to but three hundred and seventy-six ; but then, as now, the religious principles which they maintained were those of the country. They were principles that had laid fast hold of the national mind, and the fires of persecution served only to render their impress ineradicable. "We trust in a very few weeks to see the four hundred increased to five. Is it not strange how utterly the great lessons of history have failed to impress the mean and wretched rulers of our country in this the day of their visitation 1 Bishop Fairfoul, when urging on the act that desolated the parishes of Scotland, assured Commissioner Middleton that there would not be ten in his diocese who would not prefer sacrificing their principles to losing their stipends ; and Commissioner Middleton believed him. The time of ejection came. On the last Sabbath of October 1662, the Presbyterian ministers preached and bade farewell to their congregations ; and on that day, as we find it stated by Burnet, two hundred churches were at once shut up, and abandoned equally by pastors and by people. " And never," says Kirkton, " was there such a sad Sabbath in Scot- land." Great was the astonishment, and even consternation, of the Government. " They had committed," says Hethering- ton, " the grievous error into which unprincipled men are so apt to fall, of concluding what the Presbyterian ministers would do by what they themselves would have done in simi- lar circumstances, and saw their error when it was too late to repair it." The struggle went on for more than' half an age, and terminated only when a dynasty had changed, and a discrowned king wandered in unhappiness, and begged, an exile in a foreign land. — May 20, 18-43. 480 THE CLOSE. THE CLOSE. The Free and Residuary Assemblies have closed their sit- tings, — the over- strung mind of the Scottish public demands its interval of rest ; and thrilling excitement and incessant labour give place, for a brief period, to comparative quies- cence and repose. For our own part, for at least a few months to come we shall see the sun rise less frequently than we have done of late, and miss oftener the earliest chirp of the birds that welcome the first gray of morning from among the old trees of Heriot's and the Meadows. The chapter added to the history of the Church of Scotland has just been completed : the concluding page presents the usual blank in- terval ; and we feel inclined to lay down the volume for a space, and ponder over its contents. Almost all our readers must be acquainted with Hether- ington's admirable History of the Church of Scotland, — our only existing ecclesiastical history that brings down its event- ful narrative to times so near the present as to record in its latter pages the events which but a year or two ago were ex- hibited as matters of news in the public prints. The unfinished appearance of the close of this volume must have been re- marked by all its readers. It reminded us always of an in- teresting story, with a handful of the concluding leaves torn away : it was a drama mutilated in the terminal scenes of the fifth act. The current of the narrative flowed onwards, broad- ening and deepening in its interest to one definite point of time, and then, like the current which Mirza saw in his vision, disappeared abruptly in the thick mists of futurity, just when the signs of some great change had increased most in num- ber, and become most palpable in their indications. The historian may now complete his work by uniting to his coii- THE CLOSE. 481 eluding chain of occurrences the catastrophe in which they have terminated. The old state of things is over, and a new state has begun. There are points of prominent interest involved in the event, which must be apparent to all. It is now exactly two hundred and eighty-three years since the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland held its first meeting, and laid down in its First Book of Discipline, and its first Confession of Faith, the truths in which it believed, and the principles by which its government was to be regulated. These embodied in all their breadth the Redeemer's rights of prerogative as sole Head and King of his Church, and, with these, all those duties and privileges of the Church's members which his rights necessarily involve and originate. They brought out everywhere the grand master-idea, that wherever God, as King, promulgates a law, there must there spring up on the part of man, as his subject, not merely a corresponding duty, but also a right, — a duty in relation to his adorable King, — a right in relation to his fellows, — the duty of obedience with respect to the one, — the right of being at perfect freedom to obey with regard to the others. The fogs of a dreary superstition had enveloped for ages the throne of Deity ; God had been long an unknown and unrecognised Sovereign ; and it was ne- cessary, therefore, that his rights should be broadly asserted. An iron despotism had pressed upon the people : it was imperative, therefore, that their corresponding rights, — their rights, which originate in his rights, — should be broadly asserted also ; and on this master-idea, — the fundamental idea of all Kevelation, — the Church of Scotland, in accordance with the Divine pat- tern, built up her Confession of Faith and her Book of Dis- cipline. The points most prominently developed in her first General Assembly must be familiar, through these well-known works, to all our readers. Her doctrine of the Divine Head- ship, — her doctrine of spiritual independence, — her scheme 2 H 482 THE CLOSE. of ecclesiastical discipline, — and her broad anti-patronage principle, — rose up in high relief. The relation, too, in which she stood to all the other Reformed Churches of the world was one of peculiar mark. Her great leader had been, only a few years before, one of the chaplains of the King of England ; he had been the chosen minister, at an early period, first of a congregation at Frankfort, then of a con- gregation at Geneva ; he had held communion with Evan- gelism wherever he had found it ; and the Church to which he belonged, and which he led, had, like himself, her bonds of Christian communion and fellowship extended all over Europe. Wherever there existed a Church of the Refor- mation, there the Church of Scotland recognised a sister and ally. Now, let the reader but compare her last General Assem bly, in which Evangelism maintained its place, — the Assem- bly of 1842, — with her first General Assembly, — that of 1 560 ; and we are sure he will scarce fail to be struck by the resemblance. There was not a single principle prominently maintained in the one that was not determinedly asserted in the other. It would seem as if, in completing her cycle of nearly three centuries, she had taken a few steps in advance over the identical ground from which she had at first started. Her last Assembly was just her first Assembly come back again. The doctrine of the Divine Headship asserted its prominent place, as at first, in due connection with the old master-idea that the rights of the Divine King originate, of necessity, inalienable rights in his subjects ; and hence her struggle with the invading civil power, to preserve intact her spiritual independence. She asserted her discipline; and, in the due exercise of the keys, ejected and shut out of her com- munion the thief and the swindler, holding fast the dooragainst the beleaguering force, that would have so fain thrust them in again : she received friendly letters and deputations, THE CLOSE. 483 as of old, from her sisters of the Reformation : she repealed the infamous act of 1799, that had placed her in a state of non-communion with the whole Christian world : and, pass- ing upwards from the mere non-intrusion principle of her Second Book of Discipline, to the free-election principle of her First Book, she solemnly avowed, with her great founders, that " it appertained to the people, and to every several con- gregation, to elect their minister." The last step completed the cycle, — it was all that was wanting to complete it ; and the Church of Scotland stood once more on the identical ground from which three centuries ago her career of useful- ness had begun. How exquisitely true to Goldsmith's fine simile ! The beleaguered hare, when pursued " by hounds and horses," is described as " panting to the place from which at first she flew." Her course may have included many a dis- tant track, and involved many a tortuous winding; but she dies in her form at last. Is it not a significant circumstance, that the Church disestablished by a British Parliament in 1843 should be in every respect, down to even the minutest point, the identical Church established by a Scottish Parlia- ment in 1567 ? Restored in all her lineaments, she quits, just as she entered it, the asylum furnished her by the State, for the State refuses to grant her harbourage any longer on the old terms ; and, shaking off the dust of her feet in tes- timony against it, she again sets out on her pilgrimage, with the same hostile world around her, and the same unchanging God above, — that world in which her Master suffered, and which He will one day thoroughly overcome, — and that God for the integrity of whose laws she has contended, and who has promised that in her hour of persecution He will be with her in the fire. Curiously significant as this circumstance may seem, it has found in the Disruption a kind of counterpart, if we may so SDeak, which we deem at least equally curious and signili- 484 THE CLOSE. cant. Has the reader ever marked a watch-spring snapping in the centre, and the two fragments, which in their entire state formed but one circle, coiling into two independent circles, that presented to each other no point of reunion 1 The Disruption no sooner takes place, than each, through a principle of elasticity in itself, instantaneous in its operation, is bent away in a direction diametrically opposed to that of its neighbour. And such, on an immensely extended scale, has been the effects of the Disruption in the Church. Its two parties, that for so many years formed, ostensibly at least, but one body, have no sooner drawn apart, than, moved each by its own internal principle, they have coiled up into antagonist bodies. The residuary Assembly of 1 843 has been even more remarkable than the General Assembly of 1842. It required a series of years to bring up Evangelism to the identical ground occupied by our first Reformers ; whereas, to throw Moderatism back to the ground which it occupied in its palmi- est days, — to throw it back a whole half-century, — was but the work of a moment. To use the figure of Cowper, " the bow, long forced into a curve," and then suddenly released, has " flown to its first position with a spring." Is it not strange how very obviously, in these latter days, almost every form and modification of religion among us is returning to its ori- ginal type 3 There is a resurrection everywhere of the iden- tical bodies in which their deeds of good or of evil were wrought of old. Laudism stands erect in England, with all its rags of Rome about it, like a thief surrounded in court by the property which he has stolen. Rome herself has revived among us, and receives, in her true character, the patronage and support of the State. The Evangelism of our first Re- formers comes forward, disestablished and denounced, to begin among the people anew her peculiar work of reformation. And now, here is Moderatism shutting itself up from the com- munion of all Christendom, — recognising the secular power THE CLOSE. 485 as possessed of sole authority to bind and to loose, — throwing up at once the reins of discipline, — brim-full as ever of cruel pity for its erring ministers, — coarsely regardless as ever of those sacred rights of the people which originate in their duties, — true, in short, in every respect, to its original type, — the identical Moderatism of the days of Robertson and of Hill. Graves are opening in these latter times, and Churches are coming forth, restored to their original state and condi- tion. What does so wonderful a resurrection portend 1 Is there no hour of judgment at hand, in which there is a throne to be set, and books to be opened % How very brief a period has elapsed since the Govern- ment of this country could have settled at small expense the Church question ! and how entirely has it passed be- yond the reach of human adjustment now ! In disestablish- ing the religion of Scotland, there has been a breach made in the very foundations of national security, which can never be adequately filled up. The yawning chasm is crowded with phantoms of terror : there are the forms of an infidel Erastianism in front, and surplices, crosses, and treble crowns in the rear ; while deep from the darkness comes a voice, as of many waters, the roar of infuriated multitudes broken loose from religion, and thirsting for blood. May God avert the omen ! That man must have studied to but little pur- pose the events of the last twelve days, who does not see that there is a Guiding Hand ordering and regulating all. The pawns in this great game do not move of themselves ; the adorable Being who has " foreordained whatsoever cometh to pass" is working out his own designs in his own way. The usurpations of civil magistrates, the treachery of un- faithful ministers, the errors and mistakes of blind-hearted and incompetent statesmen, all tend to accomplish his decrees ; and it would be well, surely, since in one way or other all must forward his purposes, to be made to forward 486 UlvION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. them rather as his fellow-workers than as his blind insensate tools. Let the disestablished Church take courage : there is a time of severe conflict before her, but the result of the battle is certain. — June 1, 1843. UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. Some of our readers must have witnessed the singularly im- posing scene at Canonmills, on the evening of Sabbath the 28th May, when Edinburgh so poured out its inhabitants to attend the ministrations of the Free Church, that the vast hall, containing with ease an assemblage of three thousand persons, could receive scarce a tithe of the whole; and when, after the building had been filled with its one huge congre- gation to overflowing, and many thousands had returned disappointed to their homes, such vast multitudes still con- tinued to linger outside, that they were formed into five con- gregations more. Perhaps on no former occasion was Edin- burgh the scene of a spectacle so extraordinary. The unbroken stream of human beings that continued to pour downwards from the city, long after a counter-current, like an eddy tide creeping along the shore, had begun to ascend, giving evi- dence that hundreds had been already disappointed, — the vast masses that blackened the area around the building, and choked up every avenue of access, — the crowds that besieged the doors, — the mustering into distinct groupes, as congre- gation after congregation was formed in the open air under a dark and lowering sky, — the voice of psalms arising from so many contiguous points, united and yet distinct, as if each of the six assemblages had been but an individual worship- per, — and then, when the clouds broke and the rain descended, UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 487 the perseverance manifested by each of the groupes in hold- ing its place in undiminished bulk around the preacher, like our Scottish congregations of old, faithful in times of trial, till at length the showers ceased, and the quiet of a mild though sombrous twilight settled down over the whole, — the spectacle, in short, with all its various accompaniments, formed one of those pregnant scenes which grow upon the mind, affecting the imagination more powerfully when called up in memory at an after period, than even when under the eye, and that, from this quality of increasing instead of dimi- nishing in bulk, as months and years intervene, are once witnessed never to be forgotten. Imposing and unprecedented, however, as the spectacle must have seemed, the present age bids fair to witness many such. They seem destined to form one of the characteristic marks of these latter times, in which religious questions are so fast assuming their old place and importance. The spec- tacle described took place, as we have said, on the 28th May. Only four days passed, and the capital of the sister kingdom became, in turn, the scene of a spectacle which, if less pic- turesque in its details, was almost identical in its character. Exeter Hall, — a building which accommodates with compara- tive comfort, in its one huge apartment, fully five thousand persons, was crowded by at least six thousand ; and out of the surplus multitudes that could not gain access, two other large meetings were formed. What object could have drawn together such immense crowds, — an object, says one of the speakers who addressed the larger meeting, in an explanatory letter to the editor of the Patriot, altogether new to the re- ligious public? They assembled to lay the foundations of an expansive scheme of Christian union among all the various Evangelistic Churches of the empire ; and there met on the same platform, for the purpose of cordial co-operation in this good cause, Baptists and Moravians, Presbyterians and Epia- 488 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. copalians, Wesleyans, Independents, and Lutherans. Every Evangelistic Church sent its representatives; and the absence of all representation on the part of the others served but to indicate their character. The Papist was not there, nor the Puseyite, nor the High Churchman, nor the Socinian, nor the Unitarian, nor the Residuary. The two extremes were want- in or • — Erastianism and semi-infidelity were absent on the one hand, and superstition and priestly domination on the other. It cannot, we think, be doubted that, in the religious world, the current has at length fairly set in in favour of union and co-operation. The Evangelistic Churches are at length yielding to the emergencies of time. During a long period of external quiet, they existed as a congeries of inde- pendent States, rather more at peace, we are afraid, with the world without than with one another. Each had its own disputed rights and bye-laws, — its own municipal and burghal privileges, — for which it stood up quite often enough against its fellows ; and they forgot at times, in the heat of contro- versy, the great federal union by which they had been bound together. They differed as near neighbours sometimes differ when there is no common enemy to annoy them. But the exigencies of the time demand a wiser and more expansive course of policy. Persia is on the march, and so Athens and Lacedemon must resign their private quarrels, and arm, not in front of one another, but side by side. Hitherto the con- federated States have held but their own local Parliaments : we hail in the Exeter Hall meeting on Thursday the rudi- ments of a General Congress. The armies of the rising Apostacy are mustering on every side of us. A decrepid Erastianism holds the temporalities of the Scottish Establish- ment, not so much on its own behalf as on behalf of Puseyite Episcopacy, in the way that a guardian holds property for a minor : of the temporalities of the English Establishment, Home, under a false name, has already entered on possession. UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 489 The invading power has seized, either in its own proper character, or by proxy, on the strongholds and fortalices of the country ; and it is high time, therefore, and more than time, that Protestantism should be calling her war councils, and laying clown her lines of defence. The bond of union in such councils, — the constitution, if we may so speak, of such general congresses, — do not threaten to involve, if a spirit of wisdom and charity be present, any very formidable difficulty. It was moved at the great Exe- ter meeting, by the Hon. and Rev. Baptist Noel, that the meeting had assembled on the grounds furnished by truths common to all the Evangelistic Churches, especially on that first principle of the Reformation, " the sufficiency and autho- rity of the Holy Scriptures as the sole rule of Christian faith, and the right of private judgment," — that " it recognised as the bond of union, the great doctrines unanimously received by all Evangelical Christians, such as the doctrine of the holy Trinity, of the infinite love of the Father, of the per- fect atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, of the sanctify- ing grace of the Holy Spirit, of justification by faith alone, and of the necessity of regeneration to a Christian life and character ;" and farther, that the meeting held " the agree- ment in these fundamental truths among evangelical Chris- tians to be so unanimous in substance and spirit as to form a firm foundation for concord and union." To somewhat similar effect were the remarks of Dr Candlish in our Free Assembly, on the bicentenary commemoration of the Assem- bly of "Westminster, — a meeting well suited, we trust, to for- ward and mature the scheme of general co-operation. Though the Committee appointed in reference to the commemoration contemplated, he said, a meeting of Churches holding the Westminster Standards, they by no means wished it to be understood that they included in their design no other Churches. "Were it of a character so restricted, some of 490 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. their best friends would be excluded, — such a body, for in- stance, as the Wesleyan Methodists. Their scheme embraced, he repeated, the whole Evangelistic Churches of Christen- dom. As forming the true pale of these Churches, we recognise just two barriers. There are two walls, if we may so speak, which shut in the Evangelistic bodies on opposite sides from all those Churches with which they must not and cannot as- sociate. "The one where Christianity abuts on the antagonist superstition is the wall of baptismal regeneration : the other, where Christianity abuts on the antagonist infidelity, is the wall of Christ's mere humanity. These are impassable bar- riers : we cannot scale the rampart above ; we cannot ford the moat below ; we cannot join hands with the parties that lie entrenched behind. Does the Socinian and the Uni- tarian long for union on the one hand 1 — then let them unite with their proper congener the Deist. Does the High Church- man and the Puseyite long for union on the other 1 — then let them unite with their proper congener the Roman Catholic. Between these and the Evangelistic Churches there can be no union. Erom the one wall there stretches away a dolo- rous region of ice and darkness, under the polar night and polar winter of Popery, in which no plant of grace can thrive, or where, if the true seed falls, carried as if by the winds, it produces, amid the chills and the gloom, merely a stinted and colourless verdure, that speaks of but the lack of the cheering light and the absence of the genial warmth. From the other wall there spreads an arid and burning waste of fluctuating sand, — the howling desert of infidelit),- — watered by no re- freshing rain or by no living spring, and where, if the seed falls, it lies inoperative and dead for ever. Of the Temperate and well- watered region between, it is one's proper part, at a time like the present, to look rather to the spiritual pro- duce, than to the phenomena, if we may so speak, of its va- UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 491 rious climates. All the Churches of this zone, in which con- version from sin to God takes place as the legitimate end and object of their ministrations, are to be regarded as sister Churches. What, for instance, constitutes the chief bond of imion between the Free Church and that body to which Dr Candlish so directly alluded, — the Wesleyan Methodists 1 The fact mainly that, notwithstanding certain doctrinal dif- ferences, our common Father recognises both bodies, by send- ing down upon them his Spirit, and thus appropriating in both, through conversion, a seed to Himself. God owns Wesleyanism, and therefore we own it. He owns, after a si- milar manner, the Presbyterianism of Scotland, and therefore Wesleyanism owns it in turn. And this we hold to be a sim- ple and perfectly intelligible bond of union. It is a bond which furnishes us with the principle on which Wesleyanism, and the other Evangelistic bodies similarly circumstanced, may well join with us in commemorating the bicentenary of our West- minster Assembly. Our Standards are not theirs in every respect ; but if they recognise them in the main as great boons to the world, — works through which, by the blessing of God, many conversions have been effected, and the beliefs in great truths kept alive, — if they look upon them in con- nection with the Presbyterianism of Christendom, in the same light in which we look upon the labours of the earlier Me- thodists in connection with its Methodism, — then most cer- tainly may they join us with all cordiality in our bicentenary commemoration. The reader will perhaps forgive us should we illustrate our views on this subject by a simple story. We remember tell- ing it once before, in a rather widely- circulated periodical ; but our object on that occasion was somewhat different from the present, and we addressed a very different circle of readers. We may perhaps be permitted to urge, by way of apology, that if we somewhat exceed the conventional limits of the 492 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. article-writer of the present day, we keep far within those of the article-writer of the days of Queen Anne, when Whiggism was at once elaborate and happy in the Freeholder, and Tory- ism in the Examiner and the Craftsman. Need we point out the rationale of the story, or the moral which it carries 1 "Willie had quitted the north country a respectable Presbyterian, but it was not until after meeting in the south with some pious Baptists that he had become vitally religious. The peculiarities of Baptist belief had no connection whatever with his conversion ; higher and more generally entertained doctrines had been rendered efficient to that end ; but, as is exceedingly common in such cases, he had closed with the entire theological code of the men who had been instrumental in the work ; and so, to the place which he had left an unconverted Presbyterian, he returned a converted Baptist. Certain it was, however, — though until after his death his townsmen failed to apprehend it, — that "Willie was better fitted for Christian union with the truly religious portion of them in the later than in the earlier stages of his career. "Willie the Presbyterian was beyond compari- son less their Christian brother than "Willie the Baptist, niaugre their diversity of opinion on one important point. And in course of time they all lived to see it. We may add that, of all the many arguments promulgated in favour of tole- ration and Christian union in this northern town, there were none that told with better effect than the arguments furnished by the life and death of "Willie "Watson, the "poor lost lad." It is now fifty years since Willie Watson returned, after an absence of nearly a quarter of a century, to his native place, a seaport town in the north of Scotland. He had been employed as a ladies' shoemaker in some of the districts of the south ; no one at home had heard of Willie in the inter- val ; and there was little known regarding him on his return, except that, when he had quitted town many years before, be UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 493 had been a neat-handed, excellent workman, and what the elderly people called a quiet, decent lad. And he was now, though somewhat in the wane of life, a more thorough master of his trade than before. He was quiet and unobtrusive too, as ever, and a great reader of serious books. And so the better sort of the people were beginning to draw to Willie by a kind of natural sympathy. Some of them had learned to saunter into his workshop in the long evenings, and some had grown bold enough to engage him in serious conversation when they met with him in his solitary walks ; when out came the astounding fact, — and, important as it may seem, the simple-minded mechanic had taken no pains to conceal it, — that during his residence in the south country he had left the Kirk, and gone over to the Baptists. There was a sudden revulsion of feeling towards him, and all the people of the town began to speak of Willie Watson as " a poor lost lad." The "poor lost lad," however, was unquestionably a very excellent workman ; and as he made neater shoes than any- body else, the ladies of the place could see no great harm in wearing them. He was singularly industrious too, and in- dulged in no expense, except when he now and then bought a good book, or a few flower-seeds for his garden. He was, withal, a single man, with only an elderly sister, who lived with him, and himself, to provide for ; and what between the regularity of his gains on the one hand, and the moderation of his desires on the other, Willie, for a person in his sphere of life, was in easy circumstances. It was found that all the children in the neighbourhood had taken a wonderful fancy to his shop. He was fond of telling them good little stories out of the Bible, and of explaining to them the prints which he had pasted on the walls. Above all, he was anxiously bent on teaching them to read. Some of their parents were poor, and some of them were careless ; and he saw that, unless they 494 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. learned their letters from him, there was little chance of their ever learning them at all. Willie, in a small way, and to a very small congregation, was a kind of missionary ; and, what between his stories, and his pictures, and his flowers, and his apples, his labours were wonderfully successful. Never yet was school or church half so delightful to the little men and women of the place as the shop of Willie Watson, " the poor lost lad." Years of scarcity came on ; taxes were high, and crops not abundant ; and the soldiery abroad, whom the country had employed to fight in the great revolutionary war, had got an appetite at their work, and were consuming a great deal of meat and corn. The price of the boll rose tremendously ; and many of the townspeople, who were working for very little, were not in every case secure of their little when the work was done. Willie's small congregation began to find that the times were exceedingly bad. There were no more morn- ing pieces among them, and the porridge was always less than enough. It was observed, however, that, in the midst of their distresses, Willie got in a large stock of meal, and that his sister had begun to bake as if she were making ready for a wedding. The children were wonderfully interested in the work, and watched it to the end, — when, lo ! to their great and joyous surprise, Willie began and divided the whole baking amongst them. Every member of his congregation got a cake ; there were some who had little brothers and sisters at home who got two ; and from that day forward, till times got bet- ter, none of Willie's young people lacked their morning piece. The neighbours marvelled at Willie. To be sure, much of his goodness was a kind of natural goodness ; but certain it was that, independently of what it did, it took an inexpli- cable delight in the Bible and in religious meditation ; and all agreed that there was something strangely puzzling in the character of "the poor lost lad." UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 495 We have alluded to Willie's garden. Never was there a little bit of ground better occupied : it looked like a piece of rich needlework. He had got wonderful flowers, too, — flesh- coloured carnationss treaked with red, and roses of a rich gold- en yellow. Even the commoner varieties, — auriculas, and anemones, and the party-coloured polyanthus, — grew better with Willie than with anybody else. A Dutchman might have envied him his tulips, as they stood, row above row, on their elevated beds, like so many soldiers on a redoubt ; and there was one mild dropping season in which two of these beautiful flowers, each perfect in its kind, and of different colours too, sprung apparently from the same stem. The neighbours talked of them as they would have talked of the Siamese twins ; but Willie, though it lessened the wonder, was at pains to show them that the flowers sprung from dif- ferent roots, and that what seemed their common stem was in reality but a green hollow sheath formed by one of the leaves. Proud as Willie was of his flowers, — and, with all his humility, he could not help being somewhat proud of them, — he was yet conscientiously determined to have no miracle among them, unless, indeed, the miracle should chance to be a true one. It was no fault of Willie's that all his neigh- bours had not as fine gardens as himself : he gave them slips of his best flowers, flesh-coloured carnation, yellow rose, and all ; he graffed their trees for them too, and taught them the exact time for raising their tulip-roots, and the best mode of preserving them. Nay, more than all this, he devoted whole hours at times to give the finishing touches to their parterres and borders, just in the way a drawing-master lays in the last shadings, and imparts the finer touches, to the landscapes of a favourite pupiL All seemed impressed with the unselfish kindliness of his disposition ; and all agreed that there could not be a warmer-hearted man or a more obliging neighbour than Willie Watson, " the poor lost lad." 496 UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. Eveiything earthly must have its last day. Willie was rather an elderly than an old man, and the childlike simplicity of his tastes and habits made people think of him as younger than he really was ; but his constitution, never a strong one, was gradually failing ; he lost strength and appetite, and at length there came a morning on which he could no longer open his shop. He continued to creep out at noon, however, for a few days after, to enjoy himself among his flowers, with only the Bible for his companion ; but in a few days more he had declined so much lower, that the effort proved too much for him, and he took to his bed. The neighbours came flocking in : all had begun to take an interest in poor Wil- lie ; and now they had learned that he was dying, and the feeling had deepened immensely with the intelligence. They found him lying in his neat little room, with a table, bearing the one beloved volume, drawn in beside his bed. He was the same quiet, placid creature he had ever been, — grateful for the slightest kindness, and with a heart full of love for all, — full to overflowing. He said nothing of the Kirk, and nothing of the Baptists ; but earnestly did he urge on his visitors the one master truth of Revelation. Oh ! to be secure of an interest in Christ ! — there was nothing else, he assured them, that would stand them in the least stead, when, like him, they came to die. As for himself, he had not a single anxiety : God, for Christ's sake, had been kind to him during all the long time he had been in the world ; and He was now kindly calling him out of it. Whatever He did to him was good, and for his good ; and why, then, should he be anxious or afraid ? The hearts of Willie's visitors were touched, and they could no longer speak or think of him as " the poor lost lad." A few short weeks went by, and Willie had gone the way of all flesh. There was silence in his shop ; and his flowers upened their breasts to the sun, and bent their heads to the UNION AND ITS PRINCIPLES. 497 bee and the butterfly, with no one to take note of their beauty, or to sympathize in the delight of the little winged creatures that seemed so happy among them. There was many a wistful eye cast at the closed door and melancholy shutters, by the members of Willie's congregation ; and they could all point out his grave. — June 10, 1843. THE END. 2i APPENDIX. THE CARDROSS CASE. In appending to this volume the address of the Rev. Dr Candiish on the Cardross ease, delivered at the meeting of the Commission of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland held in Edinburgh in November 1860, a brief explanation of the circumstances out of which the case arose may be necessary for those readers who may not have otherwise acquainted themselves with it. The address, which is here introduced by the special permission of Dr Candiish, presents a luminous exposition of the bearing of the action upon the spiritual independence of the Church, — a principle ably and eloquently vindicated by the author of this volume also. Mr M'Millan, while Free Church minister of Cardross, was, under two separate counts, charged by the Presbytery of Dumbarton, of which he was a member, with drunkenness, or with being " the worse of drink ;" and also, under a third count, with immodest conduct towards a married female, with certain aggravations. The Presbytery, after hearing evi- dence, found, by a majority, the first count in the libel not proven ; the second count, by a majority, proven, with the exception of indistinctness of articulation ; and with respect to the third count, they set aside the aggravating circumstances, and by a majority found a part of it proven. Against this judgment Mr M'Millan appealed to the Synod, the next h' •yhest court, who, after hearing parties, unanimously discharged the fi .'st count of the libel, and by a majority found the second and third counts not proven. An appeal against this decision was taken by certain members of the Synod ; and the matter accordingly came before the General Assembly, the Supreme Court of the Church. After the case had been debated at cp*eat length on both sides, the General Assembly, on the motion of Dr Candiish, seconded by George Dalziel, Esq. W.S., by a large majority de- livered the following judgment : — " That, on the first count of the minor proposition of the libel, the Assembly allow the judgment of the Synod to stand ; on the second count of the minor proposition of the libel, sustain 500 APPENDIX. the dissent and complaint and appeal, reverse the judgment of the Synod, and affirm the judgment of the Presbytery finding the charge in said count proven ; and, on the third count of the minor proposition of the libel, sustain the dissent and complaint, reverse the judgment of the Synod, and find the whole of the charge in said count, as framed origi- nally in the libel, proven." In consequence of this decision, Mr M'Millan was suspended sine die from the office of the boly ministry, and the pastoral tie between him and the congregation of Cardross was dissolved. Mr M'Millan hereupon raised an action in the civil court, to prohibit the General Assembly from carrying out their sentence ; and on an inter- dict being served upon that body, he was cited to appear at their bar to answer for his conduct. Having appeared at the time appointed, and ad- mitted that he had raised the action in question, the Assembly at once unanimously passed sentence of deposition upon him. Mr M 'Millan now raised other two actions in the civil court against the General Assembly, and individual members of it, for a reduction of their sentences, and claim ing damages. Dr Candlish, in moving the adoption of the Report which had been read on the subject, said, — I must crave the indulgence of the Commission if I trespass at some length in bringing before them a statement of this case. It is the first time that I have opened my mouth on the subject since the sentences were passed in the General Assembly which have given occasion to these proceedings in the civil court. I have not said a word in public on the subject since the meeting of the General Assembly in 1858. I suppose the Commission are aware that I stand in the position of having been personally a good deal held up before the community in connection with these sentences that have been carried into the Court of Session. I rather fear that some even of our own Church have a sort of impression that it was some extreme view of mine, which I got the General Assembly of 1858 to give its consent to, that has been the cause of all this distraction and distress. If so, I can only say that I am here now to answer for all that was done by that General Assembly, although, after all, I really did nothing more than express the general mind of that Assembly. Still, for the reason I have stated, — partly personal to myself, as well as on general grounds, — I should like you to exercise a little patience if I tres- pass on the time of the Commission. (Applause.) I wish, first, to clear away one or two prejudices on the part of some people that have got up in connection with this case. I shall mention only two of these prejudices, which it seems to me that all due pains should be taken to clear away. The first arises out of our being com- pelled to plead the case in the civil courts, not upon the merits of our .sentences, but on the question of the competency of the civil courts to touch our sentences, whatever their merits might be. Obviously this implies that we must assert the doctrine that, let our proceedings be ever so irregular, and ever so contrary to the Court of Session's views of jus- tice, that court has nothing U- do f such actions have been raised. But never once have they been raised through any attempt to set aside spiritual sentences as such — never once have the spiritual sentences of these Churches been attempted to be touched. Now, that is one sufficient answer, showing the differ- ence between our position and the position of these other Churches, — that now, for the first time, the civil courts (I do not care under what pretence or on what plea) are indicating their willingness to cancel, to reduce, to rescind spiritual sentences. That is a new thing in the history of non-established Churches. But I have another answer, and, I think, a far more important answer. (Hear, hear.) This case is not to be regarded as altogether new. This case cannot be separated from the action which the Court of Session took during the Ten Years' Conflict — (hear, hear) — which issued in the Dis- ruption. We cannot separate the proceedings of the Court of Session now from the proceedings of the Court of Session then. For it was then that the) r "fleshed their maiden sword" in this matter, — it was then that they acquired the extreme facility which they seem to have got in handling spiritual matters as if they were civil. (Applause.) We must remember that it was during our struggle while in the Establishment that the civil courts were asked, and consented, directly to touch spiri- tual sentences, — sentences of deposition from the office of the holy minis- try, — sentences as directly, as immediately, and as exclusively spiritual, as this which we pronounced in the case of Mr M 'Millan. They were asked to touch these sentences during our struggle, — they did touch them, as we all know ; and they got to touch them with a sort of fami- liar fondness. (Laughter and loud cheers.) We were accustomed to maintain, over and over again, — I believe I have myself said it more than once in the General Assembly, — that the principle on which they proceeded in touching the spiritual sentences of the church courts then would, if fairly carried out, warrant their touching equally all Church sentences. (Hear.) No doubt, at the first there seemed to be an im- pression, — and the plea was always put forward, — that these spiritual sentences of ours were somehow connected with questions about stipend ; and that therefore these spiritual sentences came under the review of the civil court, because these stipends were the gift of the State, — these stipends were State property, enjoyed at the State's discretion by the Church, — these stipends, therefore, brought the matter under the con- trol of the State Court. We, of course, were accustomed to maintain that they mi) ht separate these two tilings, — that they might look at and 504 APPENDIX. deal with questions about stipends, without touching spiritual sentences. We were overborne and overruled. From less to more they went on, a* we all know. They did touch our spiritual sentences. And they touched them, as the contest went on, even where there was no civil interest whatever that could be pretended to be affected ; where there was not, and could not be, any civil interest at all connected with the case. I must be allowed to refer to the history of the past, to show that this is not an afterthought, but that we were alive to the consideration that the principle on which the civil court was thus acting was a princi- ple of a much wider sweep than many thought ; that that principle really amounted to nothing short of the assertion, that they were perfectly war- ranted in interfering with the sentences of a spiritual court, whether established or not, whenever any one should choose to say that he was personally injured. Now, to prove this, I take the liberty of quot- ing from a book which is well known, and which I hope this coming struggle, if it is to be a struggle, will make better known, — the "Ten Years' Conflict" — (applause) — a book which I hope the Presbyteries of the Church will see is thoroughly known by all entrants to the minis- try, — following the example of the metropolitan Presbytery, which exa- mines third-year students regularly upon this book : it is an example which I hope the other Presbyteries of the Church will not hesitate to consider worthy of imitation. (Cheers.) I quote from this book for the purpose of showing that what I have been alleging is not an afterthought of mine. I refer to what is said about the Culsalmond case. It was a purely spiritual case, and had nothing whatever to do with any civil matter. Mr Middleton, who had been officiating as assistant at Culsal- mond, was simply interdicted from dispensing religious ordinances for a time ; and the minority of the Presbytery, — the majority being recusant, — were enjoined to supply ordinances. There was avowedly no civil question that could possibly be regarded as turning upon that procedure of the Church. Now, in reference to that case, I find the author of this book saying, " Lord Ivory could not believe what, however, had been over and over again foretold in the General Assembly, — that the claim of the Court of Session to jurisdiction in all matters which might seem to affect civil rights was a claim elastic enough not only to reach this case of Mr Middleton, but any other case with which the courts of the Church should ever be called to deal. Further on, this remark is made : — " For while the principle might be applied only where stipends and patronages were concerned, if it was good for the purpose of overthrow- ing ecclesiastical sentences merely because they indirectly affected such civil interest as this, it would soon be discovered to be quite as available for overthrowing any ecclesiastical sentences whatever." (Cheers.) Now, I refer to these things, not of course for the purpose of simply saying that we were right in our opinion that the principle then main- tained by the civil courts had so wide a sweep as to cover what is now taking place ; but rather to point out, not only to our own view, but, if I might venture to speak to other Churches, to the view of these other ( 'hurches, the danger in which our liberties now are. If this were a mere extempore sort of idea of the Court of Session, then we might hope that it was a sort of whim or hobby that would pass away. But it is right that we should be alive to the gravity of the case, — to the serious- ness of the crisis. And it is with that view alone that I ask this Com- APPENDIX. 505 mission of our Church to connect what the civil court is now doing with what the civil court learned to do then ; to see that the civil courts ap- parently have set themselves, — not by a sudden impulse, but deliberate- ly, — to assert a principle that is inconsistent not only with the liberties of the Established Church, but with the toleration of any Christian Church whatever. (Hear and applause.) I pass on now to say a few words — they shall not be many — on the subject of the interlocutor of Lord Jerviswoode, his finding and his rea- sons. The note appended to his interlocutor is one which I have read carefully. Some parts of it appear to me, with all deference to the learned Judge, to be very weak ; and after all the study I have been able to give them, other parts are to me perfectly unintelligible. (Laugh- ter and applause.) I take the liberty of giving just a single instance of each sort. I do not pretend to know what is judicial and what not. But surely it is an extraordinary reason to give for repelling these pleas of ours, simply that " they might be pleaded in bar of any claim for reparation in respect of wrong alleged to be suffered," and "the pursuer is thus driven to the necessity of challenging these sentences." Why? Not because Lord Jerviswoode is of opinion that these sentences do really stand in the way of his getting reparation, — not because they may be legi^mately pleaded in bar of his getting reparation, — not because Lord Jerviswoode is of that opinion ; but because Mr M'Millan's counsel may choose perhaps to say they are of that opinion. (Laughter and cheers.) Because they choose to aver that these sentences of ours, if not reduced, may stand in the way of the man getting such civil redress as it may be competent for him to get, therefore "he is thus driven to the necessity " of this course. Lord Jerviswoode will not take the responsibility of saying whether the plea is right or wrong. (Hear, hear.) In repelling our pleas, at the very least he was bound, I humbly think, as a judge, to do so. Not to say that " the pursuer alleges that these pleas are a bar ; " but, on his own responsibility, to declare that in law they are a bar. (Hear, hear.) He has not dared to do so ; and I question whether any judge on the bench will say that these sentences of ours may be va- lidly pleaded as a bar, if not reduced, in the way of getting redress. We never pleaded them in bar of the man getting any civil redress they like to give him. They may give him damages if they choose ; — let him get damages from the Church if he can. We contend that these sen- tences of ours, as spiritual sentences, do not hinder the Court of Session from looking the thing to the utmost in the face, and giving him redress just as if the sentences had no existence ; or, on the supposition of their existence, as if they were the most monstrous piece of injustice which the Inquisition ever practised. We admit all that. We never pleaded them as a bar in the way. But because "they might be pleaded in bar of the man getting redress," therefore, says Lord Jerviswoode, the de- fender "is driven to the necessity of challenging them." He, a judge, says this without taking the responsibility of saying whether our sen- tences really are or are not bars ; and so he insists that they are to be swept out of the way because they "might be pleaded." (Applause.) Another extraordinary thing in the note, — and one which I cannot understand, — is the argument that Ids Lordship seems to urge in favour of the principle, that the Court of Session must bo the judges in regard 506 APPENDIX. to what our constitution is, and whether or not we are adhering to our constitution in every instance. It must be in the power of any one to carry this question, — namely, what is our constitution, and whether we adhere to it in carrying out our spiritual sentences, — it must be in the power of any one to carry this question into the civil courts. For Lord Jerviawoode says, — "When, as here, a member of the body challenges its acts as contrary to the constitution, the terms of that constitution, as forming the measure of the obligation among the members of the body, must be admitted or proved. To hold otherwise would truly be to deny to such an association that power to regulate its own constitution, and to frame its own laws, in which its liberty coiisists.'" It thus ap- pears, according to his Lordship, that our liberty consists in this, that any member of our i ody may drag us into the civil court on this ques- tion of our constitution, and whether we are adhering to it or not ; and we must follow him there. That is the liberty with which the Court of Session, it would seem, is inclined to favour us. But now, in regard to the interlocutor itself, I think the meaning of it is very plain. Let me speak first of what it reserves, and then of what it repels. The question reserved is, What is our constitution, or the contract between Mr M'Millan and us? — What is the constitution of the Free Church of Scotland to which Mr M'Millan bound himself to submit, and whether we were or were not adhering to that constitution in our proceedings against him ? We urge, as one of our pleas, that by our constitution Mr M'Millan is prevented from seeking this particular re- dress which he is now seeking ; and that plea is reserved. Now, it is reserved apparently on the ground of more evidence being required, — more evidence as to what the constitution is which Mr M'Millan has solemnly bound himself to acknowledge. More evidence is required as to what our constitution is, and as to what is the amount of Mr McMil- lan's obligation under that constitution. I think it is important to call attention to a fallacy here. What more evidence can be given as to what our constitution is ? We put in our Claim of Eights, — we put in our Deed of Demission, — we put in our Formula, — we put in all the documents that constitute really our profession as the Free Church of Scotland, — and in that way show what the terms of our constitution are, and what Mr M'Millan's obligation under that constitution is. We have no more information to give, — we have no more evidence to lead, — we have nothing more whatever to say on that point. There is a gross fallacy in calling for more proof, and it arises in this w r ay. In the course of the pleading, Mr M'Millan has referred to the usages and rules of the Church of Scotland prior to the Disruption, as still acknow- ledged by us to be binding upon us, in so far as they have not been repealed, in our ecclesiastical procedure. Now, we totally deny the competency of any reference to these rules and precedeuts as regards the question whether our constitution shuts out the civil courts from the review of our spiritual sentences. I know that reference to these pre- cedents and rules may be very right and legitimate within ourselves, in discussing within ourselves what is the proper form of procedure, — how we should dispose of particular cases that come before us, — and what spiritual sentences we should pronounce. In arguing among our- selves on these points, or in arguing with Mr M'Millan, or any one else, APPENDIX. 507 at our own bar, we, of course, refer freely to the precedents and rules binding upon the Church before the Disruption as still in force, in so far as they have not been modified or repealed. That is quite true. But all that is merely with the view of our making up our minds as to what our sentences should be. In judging of the particular question, how- ever, now raised on the part of Mr M'Millan,— which is not whether, according to our constitution, these sentences are, in view of these rules and precedents, right, but are they liable to challenge and reduction m the civS aourts? We have nothing whatever to do except to point to the Claim of Rights, the Deed of Demission, and the Formula. We have nothing whatever to do except to point to the solemn obligation under which we hold that every man conies when he enters this Church, that, be our sentences right or wrong, he will not carry them for reduction into the civil courts. That is the point on which we are at issue. To crave more evidence about the rules and precedents in force in the Church is nothing to the purpose here. To the question as to who is to be the judge of our adherence to these rules and precedents,— We are exclusively the judges, is our plea. " No," is their plea ; the Court of Session is to be the judge. But how is that to be determined ? Not by looking at these rules and precedents, but by looking at the constitu- tion of our Church, as embodied in the documents I have named, to see whether it allows of an appeal to the civil courts upon the pretence that our ecclesiastical rules and precedents have been violated. (Cheers.) That is the point at issue. But for the determination of that point Lord Jerviswoode has got all the information he possibly can get. If we went before a jury to morrow, we have not a word more to say than we have already said. Then, again, as to the pleas that have been repelled, I suppose the meaning of the interlocutor is very obvious. In the first place, the repelling of those pleas is a distinct assertion that the civil court will not, and cannot, distinguish between things spiritual and things civil. Lord Benholme's finding was that, in respect of the subject-matter, this action is not competent. His finding was the finding of a man who could draw the line between what is civil and what is spiritual. Looking at the subject-matter, he saw at once that it was an ecclesiastical sentence, pronounced by an ecclesiastical court, in an ecclesiastical case ; and, taking that plain common-sense view of it, he at once pronounced it to be not civil, but spiritual, and therefore— being in its nature a thing spiritual — not within the competency of the Court of Session to deal with. But the sentence of Lord Jerviswoode very plainly reverses that finding of Lord Benholme. Accordingly, if that sentence stand at law, it is now declared that the civil courts do not dis- tinguish between matters civil and matters spiritual. That is a new thing for the civil courts to say,— that they cannot trace the distinction between a matter spiritual, — a matter avowedly affecting conscience alone, — and a matter civil, touching person or property ; that they can- not recognise any distinction whatever between things in their own na- ture civil, and things in their own nature spiritual. I would just like to hear some of our lawyers who take a patriotic and constitutional view of this question, — I would like to hear any one who is familiar with history, say how long the liberties of any country would be safe if the civil courts cannot distinguish between matters civil and matters spiritual. 508 APPENDIX. (Cheers.) Let any student of history answer that question. Let any student take up the whole of modern history, and the greater part of ancient history, and answer that question, — How long the liberty of any country would be safe if the civil power gave forth the principle, and acted upon it, that they could not distinguish between things spiritual and things civil? (Hear, hear, and cheers.) If there be any one maxim more thoroughly in accordance with all history than another on the sub- ject of civil and religious freedom, it seems to me to be this, — that the basis of civil liberty is liberty of conscience — (hear, hear) — and that, without liberty of conscience, there can, in the long run, be no liberty whatever. How the civil magistrate is to recognise and protect liberty of conscience without drawing the line between matters spiritual and matters civil, will defy, I think, even the Court of Session to show. (Applause.) That is the first principle involved in that judgment ; and 3, very grave and serious principle surely it is. The other is, that, as they cannot distinguish between things, so neither can they distinguish between persons. They cannot distinguish things spiritual from things civil, — they have no sort of eyes for that. Neither, apparently, can they distinguish persons, or associations of persons. They cannot distinguish, apparently, an association of persons combined for the worship of God, for mutual edification, and for the im- provement of one another in manners and morals, from an association of persons in an insurance company or in a debating club. That really is the effect of the decision. It is an absolute refusal to recognise any dis- tinction between a Church or ecclesiastical body, and any other body of men associated for any purpose whatever in accordance with the law. Now, if this be the principle fairly involved in the rejection of our pleas, I need scarcely say that we are indebted to Lord Jerviswoode for putting the question in so plain a light that he who runs may read. (Hear.) Now — now I think it must be clear to all men that the battle is not for any outwork, but for the very citadel, — that what we are called to contend for is just the right of conscience, — the right of conscience, both in individuals and in associations of individuals, — the right of a society to meet, avowing that it meets, not by mutual consent, but by the ordinance of Heaven. (Hear, hear.) Of course, this plea is a plea of conscience ; and it is only as a plea of conscience that we would ever expect the civil magistrate to recognise and respect it. We do not ask the civil magistrate to say that he believes we are a society meeting and acting together under the Divine ordinance. But we ask him to regard us as a society saying that we meet and act together under the Divine ordinance ; and we ask him to give us credit for saying that honestly and conscientiously. We say, that unless we have full liberty, as a society, to carry out our views, — to meet and act as a so- ciety constituted, not by mutual consent, but under the Divine ordinance, — we are not enjoying the full benefit of the toleration and protection of the State. (Applause.) I may be allowed now to go a little into the general question of the Church's claim, having got over the prejudices that I have stated, and disposed of the special judgment before us. For we are now really come to the point at which the abstract question, as it may be called, is raised, and must be fixed. It is important, therefore, that the whole world APPENDIX. 509 should know what it is that, as a Church of Christ, we really claim, and what the refusal of our claim implies. Here, in the first place, it should be thoroughly understood that we concede a great deal to the civil magistrate, — that is, to the supreme power, and to the subordinate powers, in the State. For example, we concede and admit the full right of the civil magistrate to be thoroughly informed, and thoroughly to inform himself, in regard to everything that we do. We admit his entire and perfect right to know what we are about, to know every step that we take, and to be informed thoroughly as to our proceedings. Further, we admit his perfect right to form his own judgment in regard to our proceedings. We do not ask him to take our judgment ; we thoroughly and fully admit that it is his right and duty to form his own opinion, and pronounce, if he see cause, his own judgment, upon every step that we take. If he should be of opinion that any step which we take is against good morals, — that any step which we take is contra bonos mores, — he is perfectly entitled, of course, — as we held ourselves entitled in India to put down idolatrous prac- tices on the ground of their abominable cruelty, — he is perfectly entitled to form his own opinion in regard to that, and to act upon it. For we say he is not only perfectly entitled, but bound, in whatever question comes before him arising out of our proceedings, to follow his own judg- ment, and not ours. We distinctly maintain that if any question what- ever of any sort comes before him in connection with any proceeding of ours, he is not bound to follow our opinion, but he is entitled to follow his own, and bound to do so. Further, we of course claim no right whatever to exercise any discipline or any control over parties who do not belong to our communion. If anybody raises a question in the civil jourt whether he belongs to our communion or not, we say at once, that is a question with which the civil court must interfere and must deal. They must entertain the question, if I go to them and say that such or such a Church has pronounced a sentence against me when I was not really a member of that Church. The civil magistrate is bound to listen to me, and bound to look into the case, and form his own opinion, and give what civil redress he can, if he thinks I have been dragged under the ban of a Church to which I had not consented to belong. These, surely, are important admissions. Then, moreover, we most fully and thoroughly admit that we have no right whatever to use our discipline, or put forth any exercise of ecclesiastical power, for the purpose of in- juring any man's property or person. If any man alleges that we are using our ecclesiastical power for the pnrpose of injuring his property or person, we say that man is entitled to appeal to the protection which the civil courts of the country can give him. (Applause.) All these thinys we admit, and we think they fully cover all that can fairly be required on the part of the civil magistrate for keeping the Church within bounds, and preventing the Church from interfering with the liberties, and properties, and persons, of the subjects of the realm. I may refer to a case that has been pleaded by Lord Jerviswoode, — the case of Sir William Dunbar. I do not go into the technicalities of the case ; but plainly it seems to fall under one of the concessions I have now made, — namely, that we have no right to exercise discipline, or put forth ecclesiastical power, upon any man who does not belong to our communion ; for the real question that was raised was simply this, — not 510 APPENDIX. whether the sentences pronounced by the bishop were competent in themselves, but whether Sir William Dunbar was really under his juris- diction at the time they were pronounced. That was really and sub- stantially the question that was raised. Was the exercise of discipline on the part of the bishop an exercise of discipline over one who was under his jurisdiction ? The Court held that Sir William Dunbar's ori- ginal connection with the bishop had been conditional, — that the condi- tions had not been fulfilled, — that Sir William Dunbar had withdrawn from his connection with the Episcopal body, — and that, of course, the exercise of discipline in the case was wrong, and that Sir William Dun- bar would be entitled to damages. They did not pretend even then to reduce the sentence, however, but they were willing to give redress for the wrong. (Hear.) These are things which we frankly concede to the civil court, — these are matters in regard to which we fully acknowledge the competency, and the right and duty, of the civil magistrate to form his own opinions, and act upon his own opinions, irrespective of anything that we may say, or think, or do. What, then, after all, does our claim really mean ? It means this, — nothing else than this, and nothing less, nothing more than this, — that we shall be entitled to say who shall, and who shall not, be members and office-bearers in our communion. (Hear, hear, and applause.) This is the sum and substance of our whole plea. (Hear, hear. ) We ask no more than that, and we can do with nothing less. We admit fully the competency of the civil courts to act according to their own judgment, and deal with our sentences in any way they choose. We simply ask them to respect our right to declare who shall and who shall not be office-bearers of our Church, and who shall and who shall not be members of our Church. But with any liberty short of that, surely no Christian Church could exist almost for a day in the land, except only as the Christian Church existed in past ages, and can exist again — under persecution — (hear, hear) — for obeying God rather than man. It is here precisely that the element of conscience comes in, — the ele- ment of Divine authority ; not of Divine authority which we ask the civil court to believe that we have, but of Divine authority which we ask them to believe that we conscientiously say that we have ; for that is all. We are not merely in the position of a body of men associated by mutual consent : our association is not based upon consent merely. Consent, as I have admitted, is indispensable to form the connection of any man with our body ; but the association itself, although connection with it maybe based on consent, is not itself based on consent. (Hear.) My con- nection with the association is based on consent, but the association with which I connect myself is not based upon consent. I connect myself with it, knowing and avowing that I connect myself with an association which itself believes, and which 1 believe, to be founded upon conscience and the express ordinance of G-od. (Loud applause.) Now, suppose the case of an association founded merely upon consent interfered with by the civil courts. The civil courts find that such and such proceedings are contrary to law, — that such and such proceedings are null and void. They find that such a man is wrongfully expelled, and must be received back again. If consent be all, then we have many alternatives, — the association, I APPENDIX. 511 mean, has many alternatives. We may consider,— Can we or can we not, against our own mind and judgment, accommodate our procedure to the judgment of the civil court ? It is a mere matter of consent Or we may consider, if we cannot do that, — Cannot we dissolve the society ? — cannot we dissolve the whole body ? If it is an assurance company, and we are unduly interfered with, we may consider, first, whether we may not conform to the civil courts' desire ; and if we cannot do that, whether we may not separate, and dissolve, and break up. But when an association pleads,— and the State must believe they plead in earnest, else there is no toleration, — when an association pleads that it exists by Divine authority, — the authority of Him who alone is Lord of the con- science,— when an association pleads that, and the civil court comes in to review and reverse its proceedings, that society has no alternative. (Hear.) That society cannot adopt the plan either of adapting its pro- cedure to the dictates of the civil court, or of dissolving itself. (Hear.") It can do neither the one nor the other. It must simply stand and suffer. (Applause.) Look now at the claim set up on the other side. It is a claim to reduce our sentences. I am quite aware that there is some sort of shadowy dis- tinction held out to us in this very Note of the Lord Ordinary, as well as in the Lord President's speech, by which the Lord Ordinary seems to hold himself bound. There is some sort of hint that the reduction of our sentences is to be done in a delicate and tender way. The eel is to be skinned very tenderly ; the worm, according to Isaac Walton's plan, is to be impaled "as though they loved him." (Laughter and cheers.) " Oh," it is said, "you need not be so much afraid ; we will handle you very gently ; we will reduce your sentences only to civil effects, in ordertolet us get at the action of damages. If you will have patience, you will see that the reduction of the sentences is not so formidable a thing after all. It may even turn out something very beautiful." Some sort of shadowy, ideal, half-reduced sentence looms in the distance, which is to reconcile us to the whole operation. I have several reasons for demurring to our being drawn away by this fair ideal. In the first place, before it comes to that, I should like that the civil courts were shut up to say whether or not it is indispensable. Before I embrace this semi reducta Venus, I would like to know whether the civil courts cannot possibly manage their business without forcing her into my arms. I am entitled, I think, before they talk about any shadowy dis- tinctions of that sort, to ask whether anything of that kind is needful in order to get any action of declarator, or any damages, or any restitution of manse, glebe, or Sustentation Fund, — I am entitled to ask them to say whether, and on what ground, it is indispensable that these sentences of ours should be touched at all. Tho civil courts may come and say, " We are extremely anxious to respect your rights to the utmost, but we have a solemn statutory duty to perform, and we cannot possibly get at it except through this door ; we must open it a little." But I say first, " I have a little objection to that door being touched at all. You say that you will open it very cautiously and very gently. But I am surely entitled to ask you to show me why it is necessary that you should open it at all. There is another door already open to you ;— there is your ac- tion of declarator, or your action of damages. Let our sentence stand. Deal with it as res judicata. Take 't as a matter of fact. Make 512 APPENDIX. a kirk or a mill of it if you choose. (Laughter.) But don't open thia door." But, secondly, I am inclined to say, I don't quite like this sort of half- open door — this sort of partially reduced sentence ; because, as ' ' burnt bairns dread the fire,"' so I have got some experience of that sort of thing in times past. We were told, in our former battle, "You needn't be so much afraid ; it is not your spiritual jurisdiction that is going to be touched, but we must get at the question of stipend ; we must get at the Veto Law ; we must get at the rights of patrons ;" and so forth. We told them over and over again, " You can vindicate the rights of patrons — you can deal with the stipends as you like — without touching our sen- tence.'' But we were always told again, "You needn't be so much afraid ; we just touch your sentences to civil effects. " Very well, by and by it plainly appeared that they were going to touch our sentences in the first instance delicately, but soon boldly and sweepingly enough, as I have shown. They came to have a sort of pleasure in touching our sentences, even although there was no civil question at all alleged to be connected with them. I have another objection, in the third place, to allege to this idea of a sort of partial reduction. I don't pretend now to be so much of a meta- physician or a logician as I perhaps once might have been ; but I ques- tion a little the possibility of anything like a partial reduction. Really I should like some hair-splitting lawyer to enlighten me on this point, as to the possibility of this sort of half-reduction— this sort of touching our sentences for one purpose, and letting them stand for another. Really — "To be or not to be, that is the question." (Laughter.) Is the sentence to exist or not ? If the civil courts reduce the sentence, how can they, after reducing it, say that the sentence is there to any effect at all in any sense whatever ? Either the sentence is, or the sentence is not. If they allow the sentence to be, we give them full permission to do what they choose with it. But if they say the sen- tence is not to be, why, then, the sentence is not — (laughter and applause) — and there is an end of the matter. That is not metaphysics only, Moderator, nor is it simply a plea of form. It may be practically shown — very soon it may be practically found — that no such distinction possibly can be made. And this is my fourth and last objection. We used to be always told, and I suppose it is true, that the civil court never moves, but that some one must move it. It cannot act spontaneously — it has no spontaneous life or principle of activity. It must be put in motion. But it follows that if somebody moves it, it must move. There is the point. (Laughter. ) It may be shown that whatever they may mean by this reduction, it cannot stop there. The sentence is reduced, — Mr M'Millan accomplishes his object of the sentence being reduced. No matter what the civil court may intend by that ; Mr M'Millan having got that, proclaims himself to be in the eye of the law the minister of the Free Church at Cardross ; and he is en- titled to proclaim himself to be in the eye of the law the minister of the Free Church at Cardross. Well, what follows ? I don't suppose any Presbytery of our Church would go the same road that the Presbytery of iStrathbogie went. But there might perhaps be found one or two rebel- APPENDIX. 513 lious individuals, or we might even find one or two honest but crotchety men, who might come to the opinion that they were bound to obey and respect the civil sentence, and to recognise Mr M'Millan as ministerof the Free Church at Cardross. They fraternize with him accordingly, in- vite him to their communions, and assist him in his, and are deposed by us for doing so. Well, Mr M'Millan and these persons might go to the civil court, and might move the civil court to recognise them as the Free Church of Scotland. (Hear, hear.) I would like to know how the civil court would get out of that ? I would like to know how they could help recognising Mr M'Millan and his friends as the Free Church of Scotland, and handing over to them this building, and every other building and pro- perty belonging to the Free Church of Scotland. I do not see, for my part, how the civil court could help that, any more than they could help formerly supporting ministers censured for what they called obedience tc the law. Or the affair might take the shape of Mr M'Millan claiming his seat in the Free Church Presbytery of Dumbarton. His claim is refused. He applies for an interdict against the Presbytery doing busi- ness without him, or brings a declarator to have it found that all the pro- ceedings of the Presbytery taken in his absence shall be null and void. I cannot see how the civil court can stop short of granting his prayer. They must acknowledge Mr M'Millan' s full right to claim his seat in the Presbytery of Dumbarton, and declare the proceedings of the Presby- tery null and void so long as his right to take his seat is refused. I do hope that, among our friends at least, we shall hear nothing more about this claim on the part of the civil court which is implied in repell- ing our plea, being one that might be even partially allowed with safety to our spiritual freedom. It is the first time in Scotch law,— it is the first time in the common law of this country, — that any such thing has been admitted as a direct reduction of the sentences of a Church, — of a Church that owes nothing to the State, and asks nothing from the State. Whether our friends of other denominations were right or wrong for- merly in saying, that in virtue of our connection with the State, and our deriving certain emoluments from the State, we must necessarily be to a certain extent under State control, it is not worth while now to inquire. The plain fact now is, that here a new principle is about to be asserted in Scotch law, — a new principle in the constitution, — the principle, namely, that the civil court may at any time, and to any effect it chooses, reduce the spiritual sentences of an ecclesiastical court tolerated in the land. That is the serious and grave nature of the case now at issue. It is, I say, the question of a principle now asserted, I believe, for the first time. It is impossible to look at that summons without seeing what it means. Damages are spoken of, no doubt. But can any one look at the action about our sentence of suspension, and not see that the damages there con- cluded for are claimed on the supposition that our sentences, which have done an injury to Mr M'Millan, are to be reversed, and Mr M'Millan to be reponed, and get again his former position as a minister, and partici- pate in the Sustentation Fund, and have everything else that he had before, with damages simply in the way of solatium for the time he has been kept out, and the trouble to which he has been put 1 (Hear.) That is the first action. The second, in so far as it is an action against the Church, concludes for no damages at all, but simply for the reduction oi 2 K 514 APPENDIX. our sentence, and the reponing of Mr M*Millan into ths position he oc- cupied before. That is the grave nature of the summons. Really I cannot help saying how much I wish that our legal men, and the judges of the land, would read the history of the past, and look at this question, not through any mere technicality, but on constitu- tional grounds. Surely they might come to perceive that it must in- deed be a serious matter when a question is raised which deals with the constitutional standing of the Church of Christ in this free country of ours. So serious is it, that I am not surprised to hear of some who, in the view of its possible issues, are inclined to ask whether there is no possibility of compromising this question. "Is there no possible way," they inquire, " in which Mr M'Millan can get his pecuniary compensa- tion somehow or other, and this question be postponed ? If necessary, we can take it up again as a question of abstract principle." Some of our friends are so much alarmed about the question, that they would fain, if it were possible, adopt some intermediate course. But I believe it will be practically impossible to adopt any intermediate course without sur- rendering these pleas — (hear)— without admitting substantially that we have no standing whatever as a Church in the land. If we do not do that, we must ttand upon the abstract principle, as it may be thought, of the right of the Church of Christ in this Christian land to be recognised, in the exercise of her discipline, ,in declaring who shall and who shall not be members and office-bearers in her communion. It is premature to anticipate consequences. I hope, as things move on, — because this may be but the beginning of a somewhat protracted struggle : it may require time, and it may require pains, to explain it fully in all its bearings, — but I trust that, as things move on, men's eyes will be opened in and out of the Parliament House, to the magnitude of the question now at issue. I for one cannot suffer myself to believe that this question will be decided in the Court of Session without the opinion of the whole court being taken. (Hear, hear.) I cannot suffer myself for a moment to doubt that this question will be viewed by the Judges as a question equal in gravity to the question in the Auchterarder case, in which they took the opinion of the whole of the Judges. (Hear.) If, as I believe, they are in the habit of taking the opinion of the whole court on trumpery cases about a little property, or a little petty personal claim, I think it is not to be anticipated or imagined as possible, that a question like this, — a question so gravely affecting the interests, and the very existence, of the Church of Christ, — a question so gravely affecting constitutional law, — will be decided without the opinion of the whole Judges being taken. (Hear.) It is very plain that the question cannot rest in the Court of Session. (Applause. ) Therefore it is all-important, — indeed, I would almost say, indispensable,— -that before it comes up to the court above, the opinion of all the Judges should be taken. As to the court of last resort, it is not for us to speculate on what may be the course of procedure there. I confess that, whatever doubts I have as re- gards our own court, — chiefly because it has got so dreadfully mystified by past proceedings, and got into such a state of confusion of ideas upon the subject of civil and religious rights and liberties,— I have some hope that this question might be put in a way that would commend itself to the common sense of Englishmen, whether in the House of Lords or throughout the country. For we must, if this struggle goes on, have our APPEND [X. 515 Dissenting friends in England along with us. (Applause.) We must make our claims plain and palpable to the whole world. I cannot help thinking it probable, that when Mr M 'Millan goes to Eng- land to state his case before Englishmen, they may be inclined to take a broad, common-sense, English view of the matter. They may be very much inclined to put to him this question : " Mr M 'Millan, what is it that you want ? State to us precisely what it is you want. Do you want to bf restored to the holy ministry in Cardross ; or do you want to get damage? for alleged wrong ? Tell us plainly, and let there be no ambiguity. Ii you want the former, you cannot get it. If you want the latter, say so distinctly ; let this case go, and bring another action, without a plea of re- duction in it. " Surely it is plain common sense that this question might be put to Mr M 'Millan : "What is it you really want?" Some of our friends believe that, after all, Mr M 'Millan only wants damages, — that he wants civil reparation for the wrong that he alleges our spiritual sen- tences have done. Now, I think it right to say, — and I do not think I urn violating any rule of propriety in saying, — that I have the best ground for assuring you and all the world that this is not what Mr M 'Millan wants at all — (hear, hear)— that Mr M 'Millan, or those backing him — I don't know who they are — distinctly declare that they want the reponing of Mr M 'Millan into his charge at Cardross, — that they want to bring the Church into the position of being compelled to own the civil power in this spiritualmatter — (hear) — in the matter of the sentences pronounced against him. (Hear, hear.) I have evidence to that effect. It is quite a mistake to say that they merely want damages. They want the reduction of the sentences and the reponing of Mr M 'Millan. I am not going too far in saying that this is the real question raised by certain parties, who would like the Church of Christ to be brought into a state of thorough subjection to the civil power. (Applause.) Now, I would like just to say one or two things in regard to what seems to be our duty. I hope the Commission will approve of the step that has been resolved on, of appealing this case to the Inner House. (Hear.) But I hope they will do more than that. We have a Commit- tee for managing this case, — that is, for managing it simply in a legal point of view, — for advising with counsel, and so forth. But the case will require to be managed in a broader aspect, and in broader bearings. I hope this Commission will not separate without appointing a large and influential Committee, consisting of ministers and elders through all the Church. That Committee should be intrusted with the duty of co-operating with the ^Vssembly's Committee, and endeavouring to take measures duly and pro- perly for enlightening the country — (hear) — for enlightening our own people, in regard to this matter — (applause) — for obtaining the necessary funds, and for conferring and consulting with the brethren of other de- nominations ; for we must endeavour to secure in this great question the co-operation of our friends of the United Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church, and all other non-established bodies in the land. I rejoice to state that we have the fullest assurance, on the part of influential men among all these bodies, of their thorough sympathy with us, and their thorough determination to stand up for us. Moreover, if we are to be involved in a serious struggle for our very liberties, I hope that this Commission will instruct its large Committee to enlighten the people, not only in Scotland, but, if needful, across the Border— (hear) 516 APPENDIX. — and 1 am not sure but England may be a great deal tbe better of a ques- tion of this kind passing across the Border. I earnestly hope that this Church will deem the present struggle at least as vital as the struggle that seemed to be ended in the Disruption. To my mind it is equally, if not more so. We could then pass from thu platform of the Establishment, to what we held to be the broader ground of religious toleration. We were always patted on the back, and encou- raged, and told, " Oh, just get down from this platform of the Estab- lishment, and then your liberties are safe." That was always what we were told. We had therefore, or were told that we had, a way of escape then. Now we have no alternative. We have no other ground on which to stand than that which we took — you all know at what a sacrifice — at the time of the Disruption. We have no other platform on which we can take refuge. If this is declared to be the law, we will simply require to stand and suffer. We cannot escape. We will then be in a somewhat analogous position to that in which the Protestant Church in France is, — both the Protestant Church connected with the State, and the Pree Protestant Church in France. Nobody would say that these Churches are tolerated. They exist, no doubt, with a certain liberty of action. Their ministers are permitted to preach ; but their Synods are not permitted to meet. They have no freedom of ecclesiastical action. Nobody would say that these Churches are tole- rated fully as Churches. Well, we may be reduced to that position. Nay, our position might even be worse. I am not sure that, even in obedience to the civil court, wu could give up our Presbyteries and Synods. (Hear, hear.} I am not sure that we could forget the maxim of Knox, — "No Assembly, no free gospel." We would scarcely be in the posi- tion of our forefathers before the Revolution. They were prevented from meeting. I do not know that we would be prevented from meeting. But we would meet cum periculo ; we would meet to decide questions at our peril. And there, perhaps, would be found an aggravation of the wrong done to us. The law might be such as not to prevent our meetings, as they are hindered in France, and as they were hindered also in the days before the Revolution in our own country. The law might allow our meetings, only declaring substantially, that whatever we do — in our Kirk- Sessions declaring so and so not to be admissible to the communion- table, onwards throughout our Presbyteries, and up to the General As- sembly — is subject to review, revision, and reversal, in the civil court Thus we might be suffered to carry on our business only on peril of having our sentences reduced, and ourselves subjected to civil pains and penalties unless we consented to their reduction. That, surely, is a state of matters alarming enough to contemplate. It should fill all lovers of their country with very serious concern. We would dtill exist as a Church. We would still have a certain measure of liberty as a Church. We might still meet together as a Church, and try to manage many de- partments of duty. But we would be acting under coercion and com- pulsion ; and if we did not choose to submit to coercion and compulsion, - — to submit to the civil court as a court of appeal, — then, so far, under persecution. For it cannot be denied that, to allow the Church to carry on her procedure under such risk as this, would be a limiting of the mea- sure of toleration granted to that Church. T would earnestly hope that this question, if revived, will be found to APPENDIX. 517 b»», as \hy same question has always been found to be in Scotland, asso- ciated with manifest tokens of the Divine presence and the Divine bless- ing on the Church. I daresay there are some — and I myself might be inclined to sympathize with them very much — who may regard the in- trusion of this question at this crisis as peculiarly unseasonable. There may be those— and I would largely sympathize with them — who may grudge the attention of the Church being, as they think, distracted and drawn away from great spiritual awakenings, and their great duty in con- nection with such awakenings, to a struggle of this sort, — a struggle ap- parently upon a point of law. I would only, before I close, express a hope that all who might be inclined to cherish such a feeling will, before they indulge in it, make themselves acquainted with the past experience of their country. If they do, they will see that these two things have frequently gone together in the history of the Church of Scotland,— a struggle for her independence, under her great and only Head, and * 'arge outpouring of the Spirit of God. (Loud applause.) Edinburgh ; Printed by M'Farlane dc Erskine. HUGH MILLER'S WORKS. NEW CHEAP RE-ISSUE, Price FIVE SHILLINGS EACH, Crown 8vo, Cloth. MY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMASTERS; OR, THE STORY OF MY EDUCATION. 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