Disruption of the State Church of Scotland--Its Causes--The Veto
Act of the Assembly of 1834--Mr. Young Presented to the Church of
Auchterarder--Is Vetoed by the Communicants and Rejected by the
Presbytery--Resort to the Civil Courts--The Decision--Intrusionists
and Non-Intrusionists--The Final Secession of 1843--The Free
Church--Dr. Chalmers--Dr. Hill.
One of the most important ecclesiastical occurrences of our times is the
disruption of the State Church of Scotland. We see a venerable
establishment, founded in the religious affections of a great people,
sustained by the arm of secular power, rent in twain, and five hundred
of its ministers, possessing a moiety of its talents and piety, and
drawing in their train a proportional share of their congregations,
secede in obedience to the dictates of conscience, and, under the
leadership of one of the most learned, eloquent, and celebrated divines
of the age, assume the position of Voluntaries. The difficulties which
caused this result arose somewhat in this wise:
In consequence of some controversy as to the right of "patrons" to
"present" pastors to churches, a majority of whose members were
unwilling to receive them, Lord Moncrieff, in the General Assembly of
the Church, in May, 1834, moved a resolution declaring that the
disapproval of a majority of the male heads of families, being
communicants, should be deemed sufficient ground for a Presbytery
rejecting any person presented as a clergyman to a parish in Scotland.
After a warm debate, it was carried, 184 to 138. It was sent down to
the Presbyteries, and, being sanctioned by a large majority of them,
was confirmed by the General Assembly of 1835. This was known as the
_Veto Act_. It was intended to declare the existing law. Whether legal
or not, (for on this point, when the trouble arose, lawyers and judges
of course differed, and the books, as usual, furnished precedents on
both sides,) the veto had generally been acquiesced in for a long
period.
In October, 1834, Lord Kinnoul presented Mr. Young, a licensed
probationer, to the Church of Auchterarder. Of the heads of families,
being communicants, 287 out of 330 protested against the admission of
Mr. Young to be their pastor. The Presbytery of Auchterarder, in
obedience to the resolution of the Assembly of 1834, rejected him. A
suit was commenced in the civil courts, by Lord Kinnoul and Mr. Young,
against the Presbytery. After great displays of learning and acrimony,
the Court of Session, in 1838, by a majority of 8 judges to 5, decided
that the rejection of the presentee was illegal, and that the Presbytery
was bound to take Mr. Young "on trials."
Presbyterian Scotland, from John O'Groat's to Gretna Green, was
violently agitated with the question. It divided into parties known as
Intrusionists and Non-Intrusionists--Doctors Macfarlane, Cook, and Hill,
being conspicuous among the former, and Doctors Chalmers, Welsh, and
Candlish, among the latter. Every Presbytery was rent with discussion,
while the debates in the venerable General Assembly were hardly less
violent than in the East India Company Court of Proprietors, when Mammon
strives with Mercy for the rule of Hindostan, or when political chiefs
in the House of Commons struggle for mastery in the councils of Europe.
The majority of the Assembly having sustained the Presbytery of
Auchterarder, the Presbytery appealed from the decision of the Court of
Session to the House of Lords. In 1841, I believe, the Lords dismissed
the appeal--thus, in effect, affirming the judgment of the Court below,
and pronouncing the Veto Act illegal. Upon this, the Court of Session
made a further order, directing the Presbytery to take Mr. Young on
trials. Whereupon, the Assembly, after a violent debate, in which the
Veto was sustained by a power of Caledonian eloquence that John Knox
would have gloried to hear, resolved, by a majority of 49, that the
principle of Non-Intrusion could not be abandoned, and that no presentee
should be forced upon a parish contrary to the will of the congregation.
Acting under this vote of the Assembly, the Presbytery still refused to
receive Mr. Young; and, thereupon, the Court of Session gave damages to
Lord Kinnoul and Mr. Young in the sum of L10,000, and prohibited the
Presbytery from settling any minister over the Church of Auchterarder,
though he were to be maintained by the Non-Intrusion portion of the
congregation.
Matters had now reached a point from which there seemed to be no retreat
for either party. The Non-Intrusionists, though they had prevailed in
the assembly of the saints, had altogether failed in the court of the
unbelievers. In the mean time, other similar cases had arisen,
especially those of Strathbogie, Culsalmond, and Glass, where obnoxious
pastors, who had been obtruded upon churches, were marched into the
pulpits on the Sabbath, guarded by police and soldiery, and the people
compelled to receive the gospel with batons over their heads and
bayonets at their hearts. These spectacles aroused the spirit that fired
the same people a century before, when, in the piquant language of
Sydney Smith, the persecuted Scotchman, "with a little oatmeal for food,
and a little sulphur for friction, allaying cutaneous irritation with
the one hand, and holding his Calvinistic creed in the other, ran away
to his flinty hills, sung his psalm out of tune his own way, and
listened to his sermon of two hours long, amid the rough and imposing
melancholy of the tallest thistles." The same spirit, in 1842-3, refined
by a higher civilization, and tempered by a more liberal learning, made
the same people prompt in deciding, that when the decrees of the Lord
Jesus Christ and the Lord Chancellor of England came in conflict, the
latter must be repudiated and the former obeyed. The interdicts of the
Courts were not merely disobeyed--they were literally torn in pieces and
trampled under foot by incensed assemblies, amidst the applause of
multitudes.
But, though other instances of intrusion had arisen, that of
Auchterarder was the case on which the question turned. That question,
stated in its simple form, was, whether the will of the patron or the
will of the communicants should prevail, in making the presentee the
pastor of the parish; and whether the members of a Presbytery were
liable to damages to the patron for rejecting his presentee on the veto
of the people. But the points involved penetrated far deeper. They
touched not only the right of the Church of Scotland to be supreme in
her ecclesiastical affairs, but they involved the whole subject of a
union of the Church with the State. They reached beyond this. They
raised the question of the right of the people to be supreme in
religious affairs. They stopped not here. They leaped the boundary that
divides spiritual and civil authority, and mooted the question of the
supremacy of the popular will--the question, whether the people are the
legitimate source of all power--an inquiry which stops not in its
researches till it has explored the foundations of human government in
their broadest aspect. Not only, then, were the rights of the
communicants of Auchterarder, of the Presbytery of Auchterarder, of the
Church of Scotland at issue, but the decision of this case involved
principles which might shake the minarets of the Metropolitan Cathedral,
the towers of Parliament House, the walls of the Throne Room of St.
James.
Looking to the possibility of such consequences, it is no wonder that
the "Moderates" attempted to soothe the irritation by that dernier
panacea of conservatives and cowards--a compromise. The Scotch Church
question had already found its way into Parliament. In 1840, Lord
Aberdeen had introduced a bill to settle the difficulties. It slept in
the archives of the Peers till the Tories came into power. Dr. Chalmers
was now consulted by the Government. He gave his opinion as to what
would satisfy the Non-Intrusionists. He was promised a bill that would
justify a Presbytery in rejecting a presentee on even the most frivolous
objection--as red hair or a black skin, for instance. But, instead of
this, a bill was introduced which did not allow the Church judicatories
to reject unless on grounds satisfactory to the civil court. The
tergiversation of the Government wrung from Dr. Chalmers the
exclamation, that "the morality of politicians was the morality of
horse-jockies."
The General Assembly of May, 1842, met. It was opened by the Lord High
Commissioner of Her Majesty, with unusual pomp, blandness, and
hypocrisy. All hope of reconciliation had not fled. The friends of the
Veto cherished the delusion that purity and peace, that non-intrusion
and non-resistance might yet walk hand in hand; and, not being prepared
to break with the Government, they suffered the Assembly to adjourn
without taking any decisive action. During the ensuing summer and
autumn, Sir James Graham, the Home Secretary, endeavored to cajole the
Non-Intrusionists, and succeeded in inducing 40 or 50 conservative
clergymen of that party to express their approval of a settlement of the
question on the basis of a compromise, which should give a great deal of
power to the people and the Kirk, and a little more to the Court of
Session. The battle was fought, on popular grounds, in the House of
Commons, in the winter and spring of 1843. A deputation of Non-Intrusion
clergymen was present. Remaining in London till hope had abandoned them,
they returned to Scotland, and prepared for the final disruption of the
Church. An act was subsequently passed--such an one as would have been
gladly accepted in 1840--but it came too late.
The General Assembly of 1843 met on the eighteenth of May. An immense
throng crowded the floor, the galleries, the aisles of the edifice,
eager with expectation. The Lord High Commissioner went through the
ceremony of opening the Assembly, in a style of chilling pomp. Dr.
Welsh, the Moderator of the last Assembly, rose, read the solemn protest
of his brethren, and the disciples of John Knox quietly left their
seats, and shook the dust from their feet on the threshold of the church
of their fathers. When the crowd outside saw the venerable forms of
Chalmers, Welsh, and their followers, emerging from the ancient edifice,
they lifted their hats and bowed their heads, with bosoms too full for
the utterance of a cheer. But, as the ejected presbyters wended their
way toward the high rock in the vicinity of the Castle where glittered
the spires of the New Assembly Hall, thousands of acclamations rent the
air, mingled with the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, from streets,
windows, roofs, and balconies. They entered the house, followed by a
throng, in which emotions of enthusiasm and solemnity struggled for the
mastery. The Assembly immediately organized, by placing its great
founder, Dr. Chalmers, in the chair. Having uttered a sublime prayer, he
gave out the psalm, "God is our refuge in distress," so often sung in
the bloody days, in the glens of Scotland, by the hunted Covenanters,
when
"Leaning on his spear,
The liart veteran heard the word of God
By Cameron thundered, or by Renwick poured
In gentle stream."
The Free Kirk was now launched. The crew was zealous, but untried; the
pilot, though skillful, was about to explore an unknown and tempestuous
sea. But a voice was heard above the raging of the elements, saying,
"Peace! be still!" The Assembly vigorously entered on the work of
bringing order out of confusion, symmetry out of chaos. The five hundred
clergymen who soon rallied round its altars, made noble sacrifices for
conscience' sake. They had to leave the greater part of their churches,
their glebes, their manses; many, literally, abandoning their
_livings_. Their flocks followed them to their cost; for new church
edifices were to be erected, and salaries to be raised, not from tithes,
stipends, and ecclesiastical funds--for these had been left behind in
the Exodus--but out of the pockets of those who, for the first time,
found themselves Seceders in fact, and Voluntaries in position. They
were prepared for this. Congregations met in groves, in barns, in lofts,
in halls, and heard the Word. They raised funds, and built churches.
They appealed for aid to their brethren in England and America. They
soon amassed a fund of L300,000, for the support of poor pastors and
parishes. They encountered great difficulties in obtaining sites for
churches. Many of the Intrusion landlords would neither give nor sell
them building spots. They would lease or sell lands for cockpits,
horse-races, gambling-houses, dram-shops, and even for Methodist or
Baptist places of worship; but they would not permit a chapel of the
Free Kirk of Scotland to pollute the soil. In process of time,
Parliament and public opinion brought these refractory landlords to
their senses. Excluded in a great measure from the current public
newspapers, they established journals of their own. Denounced by
Blackwood, looked coldly upon by the Edinburgh, though the Westminster
gave them two or three able and hearty articles, they set up the North
British Review, which at once took rank with the first quarterlies in
the kingdom. Shut out from the theological schools of the old Kirk, they
founded a seminary of their own, placing Dr. Chalmers at its head, as
professor of divinity. During the six years of the existence of the Free
Church, it has drawn to itself a large share of the numbers and vitality
of the Presbyterian body of Scotland. The Old Kirk has a great deal of
wealth, a great many churches, and a great deal of pomp. It also enjoys
a great deal of languor, a great deal of vacancy, and a great deal of
chagrin.
Yet it must be confessed that this secession, so extraordinary in its
immediate results, so congenial to the liberal tendencies of the times,
so far-reaching and powerful in its remote and collateral consequences,
has never excited that enthusiasm in the mass of ecclesiastical
reformers in Great Britain, which might have been anticipated. The
reasons given for this apathy are, that a body which had so long wielded
ecclesiastical power over others, by virtue of State laws, ought in its
turn to yield obedience to those laws--that the Seceders had held on
upon their power so long as they could exert it in their own way--that,
in the exercise of spiritual authority, they had been far from tolerant
of Dissenters--and that, at the very moment of their egress from the
Kirk, they repudiated Voluntaryism as a principle, and offered incense
to State-church establishments.
There was, no doubt, solid ground for some of these charges. As to the
course of the Seceders, while members of the State Kirk, many of their
acts were no doubt oppressive. The deeds of May, 1843, are broad enough
to cover a multitude of such sins. As to the repudiation of
Voluntaryism, while in the very act of Secession, it was a concession to
that tempting expediency which, in a crisis when principle and numbers
are both important, yields some of the former to gain more of the
latter. The Free Church has outgrown this folly of its infancy, and in
riper years has repudiated the repudiation. It is now, both in position
and profession, a Voluntary body. Learning wisdom from experience, and
acting on the maxim, alike pure and profitable, that honesty is the best
policy, long may it bless the land of Knox, Renwick, and Chalmers!
To attempt a sketch of the talents, genius, and virtues of DR. CHALMERS,
would be a work of supererogation. It is ample eulogy to say, that he
was the Moses of the Exodus, the Luther of the Reformation, I have
faintly described. The sublimity of that position dims even the splendor
of those productions of his pen and tongue which have made his name
familiar in two hemispheres. His memory lives on memorials more
enduring than monumental brass or marble--the hearts of a whole people.
I have somewhere seen a portrait of REV. DR. HILL, Professor of Moral
Philosophy in Glasgow University, and a leader of the Intrusion party,
sketched in the General Assembly of 1840, which I transcribe from
memory, bearing witness to its faithfulness to the subject. Dr. Chalmers
had just resumed his seat, after a powerful speech, when a tall, thin
gentleman, on the other side of the house, distinguished for an uncommon
length of neck and face, with a complexion inclining to sallow, and an
imperturbable gravity of countenance, caught the eye. Never before had
there been seen so prodigious an extent of white neckcloth, a figure so
immovably rigid, an expression so inveterately grave. He sat so bolt
upright, that the spectator was curious to know whether he ever shifted
his position or moved a feature. He rose to address the assembly. He
opened his mouth, and his words came marching out, dressed in the somber
hues and with the melancholy tread of a funeral procession. It was
evident that great truths were for the first time to be communicated to
mankind. He laid down his premises. They reminded one of the lawyer in
the farce, who, when pressed for a definition, thundered out, "Law
is--law!" "Judgment," exclaimed Rev. Dr. Hill, "judgment is an act of
the mind." There was a suppressed laugh from the Non-Intrusion side of
the house. The Doctor drew himself up more stiffly, and looked across
the house in dignified astonishment, as if desirous to single out the
men who disputed first principles. "I am in the right," he solemnly
reiterated--"judgment, Moderator, is an act of the mind!" He went on
with his speech. It was a dead skeleton of logical phraseology, divested
of the muscle, flesh, and blood of living argument; the speech of a man
whose father, perhaps, could argue, and who, without a particle of
causality, tried to argue too, sheerly through the exercise of filial
imitation. As he spoke, a nervous torpor crept over the Assembly--the
spectators began to nod--the reporters dropped their pens--the older
divines, sinking under the weight of their dinners, rested their heads
on the front boards--the very gas seemed to burn with a rounder and a
dimmer flame--and when, after a long infliction, the last sentence of
the peroration died away in the far galleries, and the spell was broken,
there was a stretching of limbs and jaws, and a raising of hands over
the benches, and a straining to collect and concentrate scattered
thoughts, till by and by the members seemed to realize that they were
actually sitting in a General Assembly; whereupon, a gentleman moved an
adjournment, and all retired with the conviction, that whoever might
doubt whether Dr. Hill was a profound philosopher and ecclesiastical
historian, he possessed most astonishing _mesmeric_ qualities and
powers.