I. First, then, WHAT _is it that has been done_?

Up to the month of May in 1834, the fathers and brothers of the "Kirk"

were in harmony as great as humanity can hope to see. Since May 1834, the

church has been a fierce crater of volcanic agencies, throwing out of her

bosom one-third of her children; and these children are no sooner born

into their earthly atmosphere, than they turn, with unnatural passions, to

the destruction of their brethren. What _can_ be the grounds upon which an

_acharnement_ so deadly has arisen?

It will read to the ears of a stranger almost as an experiment upon his

credulity, if we tell the simple truth. Being incredible, however, it is

not the less true; and, being monstrous it will yet be recorded in history,

that the Scottish church has split into mortal feuds upon two points

absolutely without interest to the nation: 1st, Upon a demand for creating

clergymen by a new process; 2dly, Upon a demand for Papal latitude of

jurisdiction. Even the order of succession in these things is not without

meaning. Had the second demand stood first, it would have seemed possible

that the two demands might have grown up independently, and so far

conscientiously. But, according to the realities of the case, this is

_not_ possible, the second demand grew _out_ of the first. The interest of

the Seceders, as locked up in their earliest requisition, was that which

prompted their second. Almost every body was contented with the existing

mode of creating the pastoral relation. Search through Christendom,

lengthways and breadthways, there was not a public usage, an institution,

an economy, which more profoundly slept in the sunshine of divine favour

or of civil prosperity, than the peculiar mode authorized and practised in

Scotland of appointing to every parish its several pastor. Here and there

an ultra-Presbyterian spirit might prompt a murmur against it. But the

wise and intelligent approved; and those who had the appropriate--that is,

the religious interest--confessed that it was practically successful. From

whom, then, came the attempt to change? Why, from those only who had an

alien interest, an indirect interest, an interest of ambition in its

subversion. As matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron of each

benefice, acting under the severest restraints--restraints which (if the

church courts did their duty) left no room or possibility for an unfit man

to creep in, nominated the incumbent. In a spiritual sense, the church had

all power: by refusing, first of all, to "_license_" unqualified persons;

secondly, by refusing to "_admit_" out of these licensed persons such as

might have become warped from the proper standard of pastoral fitness, the

church had a negative voice, all-potential in the creation of clergymen;

the church could exclude whom she pleased. But this contented her not.

Simply to shut out was an ungracious office, though mighty for the

interests of orthodoxy through the land. The children of this world, who

became the agitators of the church, clamoured for something more. They

desired for the church that she should become a lady patroness; that she

should give as well as take away; that she should wield a sceptre, courted

for its bounties, and not merely feared for its austerities. Yet how

should this be accomplished? Openly to translate upon the church the

present power of patrons--_that_ were too revolutionary, that would have

exposed its own object. For the present, therefore, let this device

prevail--let the power nominally be transferred to congregations; let this

be done upon the plea that each congregation understands best what mode of

ministrations tends to its own edification. There lies the semblance of a

Christian plea; the congregation, it is said, has become anxious for

itself; the church has become anxious for the congregation. And then, if

the translation should be effected, the church has already devised a means

for appropriating the power which she has unsettled; for she limits this

power to the communicants at the sacramental table. Now, in Scotland,

though not in England, the character of communicant is notoriously created

or suspended by the clergyman of each parish; so that, by the briefest of

circuits, the church causes the power to revolve into her own hands.

That was the first change--a change full of Jacobinism; and for which to

be published was to be denounced. It was necessary, therefore, to place

this Jacobin change upon a basis privileged from attack. How should _that_

be done? The object was to create a new clerical power; to shift the

election of clergymen from the lay hands in which law and usage had lodged

it; and, under a plausible mask of making the election popular,

circuitously to make it ecclesiastical. Yet, if the existing patrons of

church benefices should see themselves suddenly denuded of their rights,

and within a year or two should see these rights settling determinately

into the hands of the clergy, the fraud, the fraudulent purpose, and the

fraudulent machinery, would have stood out in gross proportions too

palpably revealed. In this dilemma the reverend agitators devised a second

scheme. It was a scheme bearing triple harvests; for, at one and the same

time, it furnished the motive which gave a constructive coherency and

meaning to the original purpose, it threw a solemn shadow over the rank

worldliness of that purpose, and it opened a diffusive tendency towards

other purposes of the same nature, as yet undeveloped. The device was this:

in Scotland, as in England, the total process by which a parish clergyman

is created, subdivides itself into several successive acts. The initial

act belongs to the patron of the benefice: he must "_present_"; that is,

he notifies the fact of his having conferred the benefice upon A B, to a

public body which officially takes cognizance of this act; and that body

is, not the particular parish concerned, but the presbytery of the

district in which the parish is seated. Thus far the steps, merely legal,

of the proceedings, were too definite to be easily disturbed. These steps

are sustained by Lord Aberdeen as realities, and even by the

Non-intrusionists were tolerated as formalities.

But at this point commence other steps not so rigorously defined by law or

usage, nor so absolutely within one uniform interpretation of their value.

In practice they had long sunk into forms. But ancient forms easily lend

themselves to a revivification by meanings and applications, new or old,

under the galvanism of democratic forces. The disturbers of the church,

passing by the act of "presentation" as an obstacle too formidable to be

separately attacked on its own account, made their stand upon one of the

two acts which lie next in succession. It is the regular routine, that the

presbytery, having been warned of the patron's appointment, and having

"received" (in technical language) the presentee--that is, having formally

recognised him in that character--next appoint a day on which he is to

preach before the congregation. This sermon, together with the prayers by

which it is accompanied, constitute the probationary act according to some

views; but, according to the general theory, simply the inaugural act by

which the new pastor places himself officially before his future

parishioners. Decorum, and the sense of proportion, seem to require that

to every commencement of a very weighty relation, imposing new duties,

there should be a corresponding and ceremonial entrance. The new pastor,

until this public introduction, could not be legitimately assumed for

known to the parishioners. And accordingly at this point it was--viz.

subsequently to his authentic publication, as we may call it--that, in the

case of any grievous scandal known to the parish as outstanding against

him, arose the proper opportunity furnished by the church for lodging the

accusation, and for investigating it before the church court. In default,

however, of any grave objection to the presentee, he was next summoned by

the presbytery to what really _was_ a probationary act at their bar; viz.

an examination of his theological sufficiency. But in this it could not be

expected that he should fail, because he must previously have satisfied

the requisitions of the church in his original examination for a license

to preach. Once dismissed with credit from this bar, he was now beyond all

further probation whatsoever; in technical phrase, he was entitled to

"admission." Such were the steps, according to their orderly succession,

by which a man consummated the pastoral tie with any particular parish.

And all of these steps, subsequent to the "_reception_" and inaugural

preaching, were now summarily characterised by the revolutionists as

"spiritual;" for the sake of sequestering them into their own hands. As to

the initiatory act of presentation, _that_ might be secular, and to be

dealt with by a secular law. But the rest were acts which belonged not to

a kingdom of this world. "These," with a new-born scrupulosity never heard

of until the revolution of 1834, clamoured for new casuistries; "these,"

said the agitators, "we cannot consent any longer to leave in their state

of collapse as mere inert or ceremonial forms. They must be revivified. By

all means, let the patron present as heretofore. But the acts of

'examination' and 'admission,' _together with power of altogether refusing

to enter upon either_, under a protest against the candidate from a clear

majority of the parishioners--these are acts falling within the spiritual

jurisdiction of the church. And these powers we must, for the future, see

exercised according to spiritual views."

Here, then, suddenly emerged a perfect ratification for their own previous

revolutionary doctrine upon the creation of parish clergymen. This new

scruple was, in relation to former scruples, a perfect linch-pin for

locking their machinery into cohesion. For vainly would they have sought

to defeat the patron's right of presenting, unless through this sudden

pause and interdict imposed upon the _latter_ acts in the process of

induction, under the pretext that these were acts competent only to a

spiritual jurisdiction. This plea, by its tendency, rounded and secured

all that they had yet advanced in the way of claim. But, at the same tine,

though indispensable negatively, positively it stretched so much further

than any necessity or interest inherent in their present innovations, that

not improbably they faltered and shrank back at first from the

immeasurable field of consequences upon which it opened. Thy would

willingly have accepted less. But, unfortunately, it sometimes happens,

that, to gain as much as is needful in one direction, you must take a

great deal more than you wish for in another. Any principle, which _could_

carry them over the immediate difficulty, would, by mere necessity, carry

them incalculably beyond it. For if every act bearing in any one direction

a spiritual aspect, showing at any angle a relation to spiritual things,

is therefore to be held spiritual in a sense excluding the interference of

the civil power, there falls to the ground at once the whole fabric of

civil authority in any independent form. Accordingly, we are satisfied

that the claim to a spiritual jurisdiction, in collision with the claims

of the state, would not probably have offered itself to the ambition of

the agitators, otherwise than as a measure ancillary to their earlier

pretension of appointing virtually all parish clergymen. The one claim was

found to be the integration or _sine quâ non_ complement of the other. In

order to sustain the power of appointment in their own courts, it was

necessary that they should defeat the patron's power; and, in order to

defeat the patron's power, ranging itself (as sooner or later it would)

under the law of the Land, it was necessary that they should decline that

struggle, by attempting to take the question out of all secular

jurisdictions whatever.

In this way grew up that twofold revolution which has been convulsing the

Scottish church since 1834; first, the audacious attempt to disturb the

settled mode of appointing the parish clergy, through a silent robbery

perpetrated on the crown and great landed aristocracy, secondly, and in

prosecution of that primary purpose, the far more frantic attempt to renew

in a practical shape the old disputes so often agitating the forum of

Christendom, as to the bounds of civil and spiritual power.

In our rehearsal of the stages through which the process of induction

ordinarily travels, we have purposely omitted one possible interlude or

parenthesis in the series; not as wishing to conceal it, but for the very

opposite reason. It is right to withdraw from a _representative_ account

of any transaction such varieties of the routine as occur but seldom: in

this way they are more pointedly exposed. Now, having made that

explanation, we go on to inform the Southern reader--than an old

traditionary usage has prevailed in Scotland, but not systematically or

uniformly, of sending to the presentee, through the presbytery, what is

designated a "_call_", subscribed by members of the parish congregation.

This call is simply an invitation to the office of their pastor. It arose

in the disorders of the seventeenth century; but in practice it is

generally admitted to have sunk into a mere formality throughout the

eighteenth century; and the very position which it holds in the succession

of steps, not usually coming forward until _after_ the presentation has

been notified, (supposing that it comes forward at all,) compels us to

regard it in that light. Apparently it bears the same relation to the

patron's act as the Address of the two Houses to the Speech from the

Throne: it is rather a courteous echo to the personal compliment involved

in the presentation, than capable of being regarded as any _original_ act

of invitation. And yet, in defiance of that notorious fact, some people go

so far as to assert, that a call is not good unless where it is subscribed

by a clear majority of the congregation. This is amusing. We have already

explained that, except as a liberal courtesy, the very idea of a call

destined to be inoperative, is and must be moonshine. Yet between two

moonshines, some people, it seems, can tell which is the denser. We have

all heard of Barmecide banquets, where, out of tureens filled to the brim

with--nothing, the fortunate guest was helped to vast messes of--air. For

a hungry guest to take this tantalization in good part, was the sure way

to win the esteem of the noble Barmecide. But the Barmecide himself would

hardly approve of a duel turning upon a comparison between two of his

tureens, question being--which had been the fuller, or of two nihilities

which had been seasoned the more judiciously. Yet this in effect is the

reasoning of those who say that a call, signed by fifty-one persons out of

a hundred, is more valid than another signed only by twenty-six, or by

nobody; it being in the mean time fully understood that neither is valid

in the least possible degree. But if the "_call_" was a Barmecide call,

there was another act open to the congregation which was not so.

For the English reader must now understand, that over and above the

passive and less invidious mode of discountenancing or forbearing to

countenance a presentee, by withdrawing from the direct "_call_" upon him,

usage has sanctioned another and stronger sort of protest; one which takes

the shape of distinct and clamorous _objections_. We are speaking of the

routine in this place, according to the course which it _did_ travel or

_could_ travel under that law and that practice which furnished the pleas

for complaint. Now, it was upon these "objections," as may well be

supposed, that the main battle arose. Simply to want the "call," being a

mere _zero_, could not much lay hold upon public feeling. It was a case

not fitted for effect. You cannot bring a blank privation strongly before

the public eye. "The 'call' did not take place last week;" well, perhaps

it will take place next week. Or again, if it should never take place,

perhaps it may be religious carelessness on the part of the parish. Many

parishes notoriously feel no interest in their pastor, except as a quiet

member of their community. Consequently, in two of three cases that might

occur, there was nothing to excite the public: the parish had either

agreed with the patron, or had not noticeably dissented. But in the third

case of positive "objections," which (in order to justify themselves as

not frivolous and vexatious) were urged with peculiar emphasis, the

attention of all men was arrested. Newspapers reverberated the fact:

sympathetic groans arose: the patron was an oppressor: the parish was

under persecution: and the poor clergyman, whose case was the most to be

pitied, as being in a measure _endowed_ with a lasting fund of dislike,

had the mortification to find, over and above this resistance from within,

that he bore the name of "intruder" from without. He was supposed by the

fiction of the case to be in league with his patron for the persecution of

a godly parish; whilst in reality the godly parish was persecuting _him_,

and hallooing the world _ab extra_ to join in the hunt.

In such cases of pretended objections to men who have not been tried, we

need scarcely tell the reader, that usually they are mere cabals and

worldly intrigues. It is next to impossible that any parish or

congregation should sincerely agree in their opinion of a clergyman. What

one man likes in such cases, another man detests. Mr A., with an ardent

nature, and something of a histrionic turn, doats upon a fine rhetorical

display. Mr B., with more simplicity of taste, pronounces this little

better than theatrical ostentation. Mr C. requires a good deal of critical

scholarship. Mr D. quarrels with this as unsuitable to a rustic

congregation. Mrs X., who is "under concern" for sin, demands a searching

and (as she expresses it) a "faithful" style of dealing with consciences.

Mrs Y., an aristocratic lady, who cannot bear to be mixed up in any common

charge together with low people, abominates such words as "sin," and wills

that the parson should confine his "observations" to the "shocking

demoralization of the lower orders."

Now, having stated the practice of Scottish induction, as it was formerly

sustained in its first stage by law, in its second stage by usage, let us

finish that part of the subject by reporting the _existing_ practice as

regulated in all its stages by law. What law? The law as laid down in Lord

Aberdeen's late Act of Parliament. This statement should, historically

speaking, have found itself under our _third_ head, as being one amongst

the consequences immediately following the final rupture. But it is better

placed at this point; because it closes the whole review of that topic;

and because it reflects light upon the former practice--the practice which

led to the whole mutinous tumult: every alteration forcing more keenly

upon the reader's attention what had been the previous custom, and in what

respect it was held by any man to be a grievance.

This Act, then, of Lord Aberdeen's, removes all _legal_ effect from the

"_call_." Common sense required _that_. For what was to be done with

patronage? Was it to be sustained, or was it not? If not, then why quarrel

with the Non-intrusionists? Why suffer a schism to take place in the

church? Give legal effect to the "call," and the original cause of quarrel

is gone. For, with respect to the opponents of the Non-intrusionists,

_they_ would bow to the law. On the other hand, if patronage _is_ to be

sustained, then why allow of any lingering or doubtful force to what must

often operate as a conflicting claim? "A call," which carries with it any

legal force, annihilates patronage. Patronage would thus be exercised only

on sufferance. Do we mean then, that a "call" should sink into a pure

fiction of ceremony, like the English _congé-d'élire_ addressed to a dean

and chapter, calling on them to elect a bishop, when all the world knows

that already the see has been filled by a nomination from the crown? Not

at all; a _moral_ weight will still attach to the "call," though no legal

coercion: and, what is chiefly important, all those _doubts_ be removed by

express legislation, which could not but arise between a practice pointing

sometimes in one direction, and sometimes in another, between legal

decisions again upholding one view, whilst something very like legal

prescription was occasionally pleaded for the other. Behold the evil of

written laws not rigorously in harmony with that sort of customary law

founded upon vague tradition or irregular practice. And here, by the way,

arises the place for explaining to the reader that irreconcilable dispute

amongst Parliamentary lawyers as to the question whether Lord Aberdeen's

bill were _enactory_, that is, created a new law, or _declaratory_, that

is, simply expounded an old one. If enactory, then why did the House of

Lords give judgment against those who allowed weight to the "call?" That

might need altering; _that_ might be highly inexpedient; but if it

required a new law to make it illegal, how could those parties be held in

the wrong previously to the new act of legislation? On the other hand, if

declaratory, then show us any old law which made the "call" illegal. The

fact is--that no man can decide whether the act established a new law, or

merely expounded an old one. And the reason why he cannot--is this: the

practice, the usage, which often is the law, had grown up variously during

the troubles of the seventeenth century. In many places political reasons

had dictated that the elders should nominate the incumbent. But the

ancient practice had authorized patronage: by the act of Queen Anne (10th

chap.) it was even formally restored; and yet the patron in known

instances was said to have waived his right in deference to the "call."

But why? Did he do so, in courteous compliance with the parish, as a party

whose _reasonable_ wishes ought, for the sake of all parties, to meet with

attention? Or did he do so, in humble submission to the parish, as having

by their majorities a legal right to the presentation? There lay the

question. The presumptions from antiquity were all against the call. The

more modern practice had occasionally been _for_ it. Now, we all know how

many colourable claims of right are created by prescription. What was the

exact force of the "call," no man could say. In like manner, the exact

character and limit of allowable objections had been ill-defined in

practice, and rested more on a vague tradition than on any settled rule.

This also made it hard to say whether Lord Aberdeen's Act were enactory or

declaratory, a predicament, however, which equally affects all statutes

_for removing doubts_.

The "call," then, we consider as no longer recognised by law. But did Lord

Aberdeen by that change establish the right of the patron as an

unconditional right? By no means. He made it strictly a conditional right.

The presentee is _now_ a candidate, and no more. He has the most important

vote in his favour, it is true: but that vote may still be set aside,

though still only with the effect of compelling the patron to a new choice.

"_Calls_" are no longer doubtful in their meaning, but "_objections_" have

a fair field laid open to then. All reasonable objections are to be

weighed. But who is to judge whether they _are_ reasonable? The presbytery

of the district. And now pursue the action of the law, and see how little

ground it leaves upon which to hang a complaint. Every body's rights are

secured. Whatever be the event, first of all the presentee cannot complain,

if he is rejected only for proved insufficiency. He is put on his trial as

to these points only: 1. Is he orthodox? 2. Is he of good moral

reputation? 3. Is he sufficiently learned? And note this, (which in fact

Sir James Graham remarked in his official letter to the Assembly,)

strictly speaking, he ought not to be under challenge as respects the

third point; for it is your own fault, the fault of your own licensing

courts (the presbyteries,) if he is not qualified so far. You should not

have created him a licentiate, should not have given him a license to

preach, as must have been done in an earlier stage of his progress, if he

were not learned enough. Once learned, a man is learned for life. As to

the other points, he may change; and _therefore_ it is that an examination

is requisite. But how can _he_ complain, if he is found by an impartial

court of venerable men objectionable on any score? If it were possible,

however, that he should be wronged, he has his appeal. Secondly, how can

the patron complain? _His_ case is the same as his presentee's case; his

injuries the same; his relief the same. Besides, if _his_ man is rejected,

it is not the parish man that takes his place. No; but a second man of

his own choice: and, if again he chooses amiss, who is to blame for

_that_? Thirdly, can the congregation complain? They have a _general_

interest in their spiritual guide. But as to the preference for

oratory--for loud or musical voice--for peculiar views in religion--these

things are special: they interest but an exceedingly small minority in any

parish; and, what is worse, that which pleases one is often offensive to

another. There are cases in which a parish would reject a man for being a

married man: some of the parish have unmarried daughters. But this case

clearly belongs to the small minority; and we have little doubt that,

where the objections lay "for cause not shown," it was often for _this_

cause. Fourthly, can the church complain? Her interest is represented, 1,

not by the presentee; 2, not by the patron; 3, not by the congregation;

but 4, by the presbytery. And, whatever the presbytery say, _that_ is

supported. Speaking either for the patron, for the presentee, for the

congregation, or for themselves as conservators of the church, that court

is heard; what more would they have? And thus in turn every interest is

protected. Now the point to be remarked is--that each party in turn has a

separate influence. But on any other plan, giving to one party out of the

four an absolute or unconditional power, no matter which of the four it

be--all the rest have none at all. Lord Aberdeen has reconciled the rights

of patrons for the first time with those of all other parties interested.

Nobody has more than a conditional power. Every body has _that_. And the

patron, as necessity requires, if property is to be protected, has in all

circumstances the reversionary power.

II. _Secondly_, How _were these things done?_ By what means were the hands

of any party strengthened, so as to find this revolution possible?

We seek not to refine; but all moral power issues out of moral forces. And

it may be well, therefore, rapidly to sketch the history of religion,

which is the greatest of moral forces, as it sank and rose in this island

through the last two hundred years.

It is well known that the two great revolutions of the seventeenth

century--that in 1649, accomplished by the Parliament armies, (including

its reaction in 1660,) and secondly, that in 1688-9--did much to unsettle

the religious tone of public morals. Historians and satirists ascribe a

large effect in this change to the personal influence of Charles II., and

the foreign character of his court. We do not share in their views; and

one eminent proof that they are wrong, lies in the following fact--viz.

that the sublimest act of self-sacrifice which the world has ever seen,

arose precisely in the most triumphant season of Charles's career, a time

when the reaction of hatred had not yet neutralized the sunny joyousness

of his Restoration. Surely the reader cannot be at a loss to know what we

mean--the renunciation in one hour, on St Bartholomew's day in 1662, of

two thousand benefices by the non-conforming clergymen of England. In the

same year, occurred a similar renunciation of three hundred and sixty

benefices in Scotland. These great sacrifices, whether called for or not,

argue a great strength in the religious principle at that era. Yet the

decay of external religion towards the close of that century is proved

incontestably. We ourselves are inclined to charge this upon two causes;

first, that the times were controversial and usually it happens--that,

where too much energy is carried into the controversies or intellectual

part of religion, a very diminished fervour attends the culture of its

moral and practical part. This was perhaps one reason; for the dispute

with the Papal church, partly, perhaps, with a secret reference to the

rumoured apostasy of the royal family, was pursued more eagerly in the

latter half of the seventeenth than even in any section of the sixteenth

century. But, doubtless, the main reason was the revolutionary character

of the times. Morality is at all periods fearfully shaken by intestine

wars, and by instability in a government. The actual duration of war in

England was not indeed longer than three and a half years, viz. from

Edgehill fight, in the autumn of 1642, to the defeat of the king's last

force under Sir Jacob Astley at Stow-in-the-wolds in the spring of 1646.

Any other fighting in that century belonged to mere insulated and

discontinuous war. But the insecurity of every government between 1638 and

1702, kept the popular mind in a state of fermentation. Accordingly, Queen

Anne's reign might be said to open upon an irreligious people. This

condition of things was further strengthened by the unavoidable

interweaving at that time of politics with religion. They could not be

kept separate; and the favour shown even by religious people to such

partisan zealots as Dr Sacheverell, evidenced, and at the same time

promoted, the public irreligion. This was the period in which the clergy

thought too little of their duties, but too much of their professional

rights; and if we may credit the indirect report of the contemporary

literature, all apostolic or missionary zeal for the extension of religion,

was in those days a thing unknown. It may seem unaccountable to many, that

the same state of things should have spread in those days to Scotland; but

this is no more than the analogies of all experience entitled us to expect.

Thus we know that the instincts of religious reformation ripened every

where at the same period of the sixteenth century from one end of Europe

to the other; although between most of the European kingdoms there was

nothing like so much intercourse as between England and Scotland in the

eighteenth century. In both countries, a cold and lifeless state of public

religion prevailed up to the American and French Revolutions. These great

events gave a shock every where to the meditative, and, consequently, to

the religious impulses of men. And, in the mean time, an irregular channel

had been already opened to these impulses by the two founders of Methodism.

A century has now passed since Wesley and Whitfield organized a more

spiritual machinery of preaching than could then be found in England, for

the benefit of the poor and labouring classes. These Methodist

institutions prospered, as they were sure of doing, amongst the poor and

the neglected at any time, much more when contrasted with the deep

slumbers of the Established church. And another ground of prosperity soon

arose out of the now expanding manufacturing system. Vast multitudes of

men grew up under that system--humble enough by the quality of their

education to accept with thankfulness the ministrations of Methodism, and

rich enough to react, upon that beneficent institution, by continued

endowments in money. Gradually, even the church herself, that mighty

establishment, under the cold shade of which Methodism had grown up as a

neglected weed, began to acknowledge the power of an extending Methodistic

influence, which originally she had haughtily despised. First, she

murmured; then she grew anxious or fearful; and finally, she began to find

herself invaded or modified from within, by influences springing up from

Methodism. This last effect became more conspicuously evident after the

French Revolution. The church of Scotland, which, as a whole, had

exhibited, with much unobtrusive piety, the same outward torpor as the

church of England during the eighteenth century, betrayed a corresponding

resuscitation about the same time. At the opening of this present century,

both of these national churches began to show a marked rekindling of

religious fervour. In what extent this change in the Scottish church had

been due, mediately or immediately, to Methodism, we do not pretend to

calculate; that is, we do not pretend to settle the proportions. But

_mediately_ the Scottish church must have been affected, because she was

greatly affected by her intercourse with the English church, (as, e.g., in

Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, &c.;) and the English church had

been previously affected by Methodism. _Immediately_ she must also have

been affected by Methodism, because Whitfield had been invited to preach

in Scotland, and _did_ preach in Scotland. But, whatever may have been the

cause of this awakening from slumber in the two established churches of

this island, the fact is so little to be denied, that, in both its aspects,

it is acknowledged by those most interested in denying it. The two

churches slept the sleep of torpor through the eighteenth century; so much

of the fact is acknowledged by their own members. The two churches awoke,

as from a trance, in or just before the dawning of the nineteenth century;

this second half of the fact is acknowledged by their opponents. The

Wesleyan Methodists, that formidable power in England and Wales, who once

reviled the Establishment as the dormitory of spiritual drones, have for

many years hailed a very large section in that establishment--viz., the

section technically known by the name of the Evangelical clergy--as

brothers after their own hearts, and corresponding to their own strictest

model of a spiritual clergy. That section again, the Evangelical section,

in the English church, as men more highly educated, took a direct interest

in the Scottish clergy, upon general principles of liberal interest in all

that could affect religion, beyond what could be expected from the

Methodists. And in this way grew up a considerable action and reaction

between the two classical churches of the British soil.

Such was the varying condition, when sketched in outline, of the Scottish

and English churches. Two centuries ago, and for half a century beyond

that, we find both churches in a state of trial, of turbulent agitation,

and of sacrifices for conscience which involved every fifth or sixth

beneficiary. Then came a century of languor and the carelessness which

belongs to settled prosperity. And finally, for both has arisen a half

century of new light--new zeal--and, spiritually speaking, of new

prosperity. This deduction it was necessary to bring down, in order to

explain the new power which arose to the Scottish church during the last

generation of suppose thirty years.

When two powerful establishments, each separately fitted to the genius and

needs of its several people, are pulling together powerfully towards one

great spiritual object, vast must be the results. Our ancestors would have

stood aghast as at some fabulous legend or some mighty miracle, could they

have heard of the scale on which our modern contributions proceed for the

purposes of missions to barbarous nations, of circulating the Scriptures,

(whether through the Bible Society, that is the National Society, or

Provincial Societies,) of translating the Scriptures into languages

scarcely known by name to scholars, of converting Jews, of organizing and

propagating education. Towards these great objects the Scottish clergy had

worked with energy and with little disturbance to their unanimity.

Confidence was universally felt in their piety and in their discretion.

This confidence even reached the supreme rulers of the state. Very much

through ecclesiastical influence, new plans for extending the religious

power of the Scottish church, and indirectly of extending their secular

power, were countenanced by the Government. Jealousy had been disarmed by

the upright conduct of the Scottish clergy, and their remarkable freedom

hitherto from all taint of ambition. It was felt, besides, that the temper

of the Scottish nation was radically indisposed to all intriguing or modes

of temporal ascendency in ecclesiastical bodies. The nation, therefore,

was in some degree held as a guarantee for the discretion of their clergy.

And hence it arose, that much less caution was applied to the first

encroachment of the Non-intrusionists, than would have been applied under

circumstances of more apparent doubt. Hence it arose, that a confidence

from the Scottish nation was extended to this clergy, which too certainly

has been abused.

In the years 1824-5, Parliament had passed acts "for building additional

places of worship in the highlands and islands of Scotland." These acts

may be looked upon as one section in that general extension of religious

machinery which the British people, by their government and their

legislature, have for many years been promoting. Not, as is ordinarily

said, that the weight of this duty had grown upon them simply through

their own treacherous neglect of it during the latter half of the

eighteenth century; but that no reasonable attention to that duty _could_

have kept pace with the scale upon which the claims of a new manufacturing

population had increased. In mere equity we must admit--not that the

British nation had fallen behind its duties, (though naturally it might

have done so under the religious torpor prevalent at the original era of

manufacturing extension,) but that the duties had outstripped all human

power of overtaking them. The efforts, however, have been prodigious in

this direction for many years. Amongst those applied to Scotland, it had

been settled by parliament that forty-two new churches should be raised in

the highlands, with an endowment from the Government of L.120 annually for

each incumbent. There were besides more than two hundred chapels of ease

to be founded; and towards this scheme the Scottish public subscribed

largely. The money was entrusted to the clergy. _That_ was right. But mark

what followed. It had been expressly provided by Parliament--that any

district or circumjacent territory, allotted to such parliamentary

churches as the range within which the incumbent was to exercise his

spiritual ministrations, should _not_ be separate parishes for any civil

or legal effects. Here surely the intentions and directions of the

legislature were plain enough, and decisive enough.

How did the Scottish clergy obey them? They erected all these

jurisdictions into _bona fide_ "parishes," enjoying the plenary rights (as

to church government) of the other parishes, and distinguished from them

in a merely nominal way as parishes _quoad sacra_. There were added at

once to the presbyteries, which are the organs of the church power, 203

clerical persons for the chapels of ease, and 42 for the highland

churches--making a total of 245 new members. By the constitution of the

Scottish church, an equal number of lay elders (called ruling elders)

accompany the clerical elders. Consequently 490 new members were

introduced at once into that particular class of courts (presbyteries)

which form the electoral bodies in relation to the highest court of

General Assembly. The effect of this change, made in the very teeth of the

law, was twofold. First, it threw into many separate presbyteries a

considerable accession of voters--_all owing their appointments to the

General Assembly_. This would at once give a large bias favourable to

their party views in every election for members to serve in the Assembly.

Even upon an Assembly numerically limited, this innovation would have told

most abusively. But the Assembly was _not_ limited; and therefore the

whole effect was, at the same moment, greatly to extend the electors and

the elected.

Here, then, was the machinery by which the faction worked. They drew that

power from Scotland rekindled into a temper of religious anxiety, which

they never could have drawn from Scotland lying torpid, as she had lain

through the 18th century. The new machinery, (created by Parliament in

order to meet the wishes of the Scottish nation,) the money of that nation,

the awakened zeal of that nation; all these were employed, honourably in

one sense, that is, not turned aside into private channels for purposes of

individuals, but factiously in the result, as being for the benefit of a

faction; honourably as regarded the open _mode_ of applying such

influence--a mode which did not shrink from exposure; but most

dishonourably, in so far as privileges, which had been conceded altogether

for a spiritual object, were abusively transferred to the furtherance of a

temporal intrigue. Such were the methods by which the new-born ambition of

the clergy moved; and that ambition had become active, simply because it

had suddenly seemed to become practicable. The presbyteries, as being the

effectual electoral bodies, are really the main springs of the

ecclesiastical administration. To govern _them_, was in effect to govern

the church. A new scheme for extending religion, had opened a new avenue

to this control over the presbyteries. That opening was notoriously

unlawful. But not the less, the church faction precipitated themselves

ardently upon it; and but for the faithfulness of the civil courts, they

would never have been dislodged from what they had so suddenly acquired.

Such was the extraordinary leap taken by the Scottish clergy, into a power

of which, hitherto, they had never enjoyed a fraction. It was a movement

_per saltum_, beyond all that history has recorded. At cock-crow, they had

no power at all; when the sun went down, they had gained (if they could

have held) a papal supremacy. And a thing not less memorably strange is,

that even yet the ambitious leaders were not disturbed; what they had

gained was viewed by the public as a collateral gain, indirectly adhering

to a higher object, but forming no part at all of what the clergy had

sought. It required the scrutiny of law courts to unmask and decompose

their true object. The obstinacy of the defence betrayed the real _animus_

of the attempt. It was an attempt which, in connexion with the _Veto_ Act,

(supposing that to have prospered,) would have laid the whole power of the

church at their feet. What the law had distributed amongst three powers,

patron, parish, and presbytery, would have been concentred in themselves.

The _quoad sacra_ parishes would have riveted their majorities in the

presbyteries; and the presbyteries, under the real action of the _Veto_,

would have appointed nearly every incumbent in Scotland. And this is the

answer to the question, when treated merely in outline--_How were these

things done?_ The religion of the times had created new machineries for

propagating a new religious influence. These fell into the hands of the

clergy; and the temptation to abuse these advantages led them into

revolution.

III. Having now stated WHAT was done, as well as HOW it was done, let us

estimate the CONSEQUENCES of these acts; under this present, or _third_

section, reviewing the immediate consequences which have taken effect

already, and under the next section, anticipating the more remote

consequences yet to be expected.

In the spring of 1834, as we have sufficiently explained, the General

Assembly ventured on the fatal attempt to revolutionize the church, and

(as a preliminary towards _that_) on the attempt to revolutionize the

property of patronage. There lay the extravagance of the attempt; its

short-sightedness, if they did not see its civil tendencies; its audacity,

if they _did_. It was one revolution marching to its object through

another; it was a vote, which, if at all sustained, must entail a long

inheritance of contests with the whole civil polity of Scotland.

"Heu quantum fati parva tabella vehit!"

It might seem to strangers a trivial thing, that an obscure court, like

the presbytery, should proceed in the business of induction by one routine

rather than by another; but was it a trivial thing that the power of

appointing clergymen should lapse into this perilous dilemma--either that

it should be intercepted by the Scottish clerical order, and thus, that a

lordly hierarchy should be suddenly created, disposing of incomes which,

in the aggregate, approach to half a million annually; or, on the other

hand, that this dangerous power, if defeated as a clerical power, should

settle into a tenure exquisitely democratic? Was _that_ trivial? Doubtless,

the Scottish ecclesiastical revenues are not equal, nor nearly equal, to

the English; still, it is true, that Scotland, supposing all her benefices

equalized, gives a larger _average_ to each incumbent than England, of the

year 1830. England, in that year, gave an average of £299 to each

beneficiary; Scotland gave an average of £303. That body, therefore, which

wields patronage in Scotland, wields a greater relative power than the

corresponding body in England. Now this body, in Scotland, must finally

have been the _clerus_; but supposing the patronage to have settled

nominally where the Veto Act had placed it, then it would have settled

into the keeping of a fierce democracy. Mr Forsyth has justly remarked,

that in such a case the hired ploughmen of a parish, mercenary hands that

quit their engagements at Martinmas, and _can_ have no filial interest in

the parish, would generally succeed in electing the clergyman. That man

would be elected generally, who had canvassed the parish with the arts and

means of an electioneering candidate; or else, the struggle would lie

between the property and the Jacobinism of the district.

In respect to Jacobinism, the condition of Scotland is much altered from

what it was; pauperism and great towns have worked "strange defeatures" in

Scottish society. A vast capital has arisen in the west, on a level with

the first-rate capitals of the Continent--with Vienna or with Naples; far

superior in size to Madrid, to Lisbon, to Berlin; more than equal to Rome

and Milan; or again to Munich and Dresden, taken by couples: and in this

point, beyond comparison with any one of these capitals, that whilst

_they_ are connected by slight ties with the circumjacent country, Glasgow

keeps open a communication with the whole land. Vast laboratories of

encouragement to manual skill, too often dissociated from consideration of

character; armies of mechanics, gloomy and restless, having no interfusion

amongst their endless files of any gradations corresponding to a system of

controlling officers; these spectacles, which are permanently offered by

the _castra stativa_ of combined mechanics in Glasgow and its dependencies,

(Paisley, Greenock, &c.,) supported by similar districts, and by turbulent

collieries in other parts of that kingdom, make Scotland, when now

developing her strength, no longer the safe and docile arena for popular

movements which once she was, with a people that were scattered, and

habits that were pastoral. And at this moment, so fearfully increased is

the overbalance of democratic impulses in Scotland, that perhaps in no

European nation--hardly excepting France--has it become more important to

hang weights and retarding forces upon popular movements amongst the

labouring classes.

This being so, we have never been able to understand the apparent apathy

with which the landed body met the first promulgation of the _Veto_ Act in

May 1834. Of this apathy, two insufficient explanations suggest

themselves:--1st, It seemed a matter of delicacy to confront the General

Assembly, upon a field which they had clamorously challenged for their own.

The question at issue was tempestuously published to Scotland as a

question exclusively spiritual. And by whom was it thus published? The

Southern reader must here not be careless of dates. _At present_, viz. in

1844, those who fulminate such views of spiritual jurisdiction, are simply

dissenters; and those who vehemently withstand them are the church, armed

with the powers of the church. Such are the relations between the parties

in 1844. But in 1834, the revolutionary party were not only _in_ the

church, but (being the majority) they came forward _as_ the church. The

new doctrines presented themselves at first, not as those of a faction,

but of the Scottish kirk assembled in her highest court. The _prestige_ of

that advantage, has vanished since then; for this faction, after first of

all falling into a minority, afterwards ceased to be any part or section

of the church; but in that year 1834, such a _prestige_ did really operate;

and this must be received as one of the reasons which partially explain

the torpor of the landed body. No one liked to move _first_, even amongst

those who meant to move. But another reason we find in the conscientious

scruples of many landholders, who hesitated to move at all upon a question

then insufficiently discussed, and in which their own interest was by so

many degrees the largest.

These reasons, however, though sufficient for suspense, seem hardly

sufficient for not having solemnly protested against the _Veto_ Act

immediately upon its passing the Assembly. Whatever doubts a few persons

might harbour upon the expediency of such an act, evidently it was

contrary to the law of the land. The General Assembly could have no power

to abrogate a law passed by the three estates of the realm. But probably

it was the deep sense of that truth, which reined up the national

resistance. Sure of a speedy collision between some patron and the

infringers of his right, other parties stood back for the present, to

watch the form which such a collision might assume.

In that same year of 1834, not many months after the passing of the

Assembly's Act, came on the first case of collision; and some time

subsequently a second. These two cases, Auchterarder and Marnoch,

commenced in the very same steps, but immediately afterwards diverged as

widely as was possible. In both cases, the rights of the patron and of the

presentee were challenged peremptorily; that is to say, in both cases,

parishioners objected to the presentee without reason shown. The conduct

of the people was the same in one case as in the other; that of the two

presbyteries travelled upon lines diametrically opposite. The first case

was that of _Auchterarder_. The parish and the presbytery concerned, both

belonged to Auchterarder; and there the presbytery obeyed the new law of

the Assembly: they rejected the presentee, refusing to take him on trial

of his qualifications; And why? we cannot too often repeat--simply because

a majority of a rustic congregation had rejected him, without attempting

to show reason for his rejection. The Auchterarder presbytery, for _their_

part in the affair, were prosecuted in the Court of Session by the injured

parties--Lord Kinnoul, the patron, and Mr Young, the presentee. Twice,

upon a different form of action, the Court of Session gave judgment

against the presbytery; twice the case went up by appeal to the Lords;

twice the Lords affirmed the judgment of the court below. In the other

case of _Marnoch_, the presbytery of Strathbogie took precisely the

opposite course. So far from abetting the unjust congregation of rustics,

they rebelled against the new law of the Assembly, and declared, by seven

of their number against three, that they were ready to proceed with the

trial of the presentee, and to induct him (if found qualified) into the

benefice. Upon this, the General Assembly suspended the seven members of

presbytery. By that mode of proceeding, the Assembly fancied that they

should be able to elude the intentions of the presbytery: it being

supposed that, whilst suspended, the presbytery had no power to ordain;

and that, without ordination, there was no possibility of giving induction.

But here the Assembly had miscalculated. Suspension would indeed have had

the effects ascribed to it; but in the mean time, the suspension, as being

originally illegal, was found to be void: and the presentee, on that

ground, obtained a decree from the Court of Session, ordaining the

presbytery of Strathbogie to proceed with the settlement. Three of the ten

members composing this presbytery, resisted; and they were found liable in

expenses. The other seven completed the settlement in the usual form. Here

was plain rebellion; and rebellion triumphant. If this were allowed, all

was gone. What should the Assembly do for the vindication of their

authority? Upon deliberation, they deposed the contumacious presbytery

from their functions as clergymen, and declared their churches vacant. But

this sentence was found to be a _brutum fulmen_; the crime was no crime,

the punishment turned out no punishment: and a minority, even in this very

Assembly, declared publicly that they would not consent to regard this

sentence as any sentence at all, but would act in all respects as if no

such sentence had been carried by vote. _Within_ their own high Court of

Assembly, it is, however, difficult to see how this refusal to recognise a

sentence voted by a majority could be valid. Outside, the civil courts

came into play; but within the Assembly, surely its own laws and votes

prevailed. However, this distinction could bring little comfort to the

Assembly at present; for the illegality of the deposal was now past all

dispute; and the attempt to punish, or even ruin, a number of professional

brethren for not enforcing a by-law, when the by-law itself had been found

irreconcilable to the law of the land, greatly displease the public, as

vindictive, oppressive, and useless to the purposes of the Assembly.

Nothing was gained except the putting on record an implacability that was

_confessedly_ impotent. This was the very lunacy of malice. Mortifying it

might certainly seem for the members of a supreme court, like the General

Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate court: but still, since

each party must be regarded as representing far larger interests than any

personal to themselves, trying on either side, not the energies of their

separate wits, but the available resources of law in one of its obscurer

chapters, there really seemed no more room for humiliation to the one

party, or for triumph to the other, than there is amongst reasonable men

in the result from a game, where the game is one exclusively of chance.

From this period it is probably that the faction of Non-intrusionists

resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left for

sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast in public

estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a convocation in

Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was generally understood

that at this time they concerted a plan for going out from the church, in

the event of their failing to alarm the Government by the notification of

this design. We do not pretend to any knowledge of secrets. What is known

to every body is--that on the annual meeting of the General Assembly, in

May 1843, the great body of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession.

The sort of theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a

few hurried days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made

wise men both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from

that state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by

the vague anticipation of a "scene," possibly of a quarrel, together with

the natural interest in _seeing_ men whose names had been long before the

public in books and periodical journals.

The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a

pseudo-General Assembly. When there are two suns visible, or two moons,

the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_, and

the mock moon a _paraselene_. On that principle, we must call this mock

Assembly a _para-synodos_. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the Seceders in

the fabrication of names. They distinguish as _quoad sacra_ parishes those

which were peculiarly _quoad politica_ parishes; for in that view only

they had been interesting to the Non-intrusionists. Again, they style

themselves _The Free Church_, by way of taunting the other side with being

a servile church. But how are they any church at all? By the courtesies of

Europe, and according to usage, a church means a religious incorporation,

protected and privileged by the State. Those who are not so privileged are

usually content with the title of Separatists, Dissenters, or

Nonconformists. No wise man will see either good sense or dignity in

assuming titles not appropriate. The very position and aspect towards the

church (legally so called) which has been assumed by the

Non-intrusionists--viz. the position of protestors against that body, not

merely as bearing, amongst other features, a certain relation to the State,

but specifically _because_ they bear that relation, makes it incongruous,

and even absurd, for these Dissenters to denominate themselves a "church."

But there is another objection to this denomination--the "Free Church"

have no peculiar and separate Confession of Faith. Nobody knows what are

their _credenda_--what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership,

either as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they

reply--"Oh! as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever we _did_

profess when members of the Scottish kirk"--then in effect they are hardly

so much as a dissenting body, except in some elliptic sense. There is a

grievous _hiatus_ in their own title-deeds and archives; they supply it by

referring people to the muniment chest of the kirk. Would it not be a

scandal to a Protestant church if she should say to communicants--"We have

no sacramental vessels, or even ritual; but you may borrow both from Papal

Rome." Not only, however, is the Kirk to _lend_ her Confession, &c.; but

even then a plain rustic will not be able to guess how many parts in his

Confession are or may be affected by the "reformation" of the

Non-intrusionists. Surely, he will think, if this reformation were so vast

that it drove them out of the national church, absolutely exploded them,

then it follows that it must have interveined and _indirectly_ modified

innumerable questions: a difference that was punctually limited to this

one or these two clauses, could not be such a difference as justified a

rupture. Besides, if they have altered this one or these two clauses, or

have altered their interpretation, how is any man to know (except from a

distinct Confession of Faith) that they have not even _directly_ altered

much more? Notoriety through newspapers is surely no ground to stand upon

in religion. And now it appears that the unlettered rustic needs two

guides--one to show him exactly how much they have altered, whether two

points or two hundred, as well as _which_ two or two hundred; another to

teach him how far these original changes may have carried with them

secondary changes as consequences into other parts of the Christian system.

One of the known changes, viz. the doctrine of popular election as the

proper qualification for parish clergymen, possibility is not fitted to

expand itself or ramify, except by analogy. But the other change, the

infinity which has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the

rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the doctrine and

application of _spirituality_, seems fitted for derivative effects that

are innumerable. Consequently, we say of the Non-intrusionists--not only

that they are no church; but that they are not even any separate body of

Dissenters, until they have published a "Confession" or a _revised_

edition of the Scottish Confession.

IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the _ultimate_ consequences

of these things. Let us pursue them to the end of the vista.--First in

order stands the dreadful shock to the National Church Establishment; and

that is twofold: it is a shock from without, acting through opinion, and a

shock from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each case is

separately perfect. Through the opinion of men standing _outside_ of the

church, the church herself suffers wrong in her authority. Through the

contagion of sympathy stealing over men _inside_ of the church, peril

arises of other shocks in a second series, which would so exhaust the

church by reiterated convulsions, as to leave her virtually dismembered

and shattered for all her great national functions.

As to that evil which acts through opinion, it works by a machinery, viz.

the press and social centralization in great cities, which in these days

is perfect. Right or wrong, justified or _not_ justified by the acts of

the majority, it is certain that every public body--how much more then, a

body charged with the responsibility of upholding the truth in its

standards!--suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion by any feud, schism,

or shadow of change among its members. This is what the New Testament, a

code of philosophy fertile in new ideas, first introduced under the name

of _scandal_; that is, any occasion of serious offence ministered to the

weak or to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable in the acts or the

opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities.

Now here in Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no

longer theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation: here

is a change of doctrine, _on one side or the other_, which throws a sad

umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the church

to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always be

henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such

incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish

church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more

deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so

irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or

speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet no

breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and

irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit the

beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the first

light augury of mischief skirted the horizon--a cloud no bigger than a

man's hand. In 1843 the evil had "travelled on from birth to birth."

Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy; already it had

entered upon a second, viz. to rear up an _Anti-Kirk_, or spurious

establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like folds about the

legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman _vinea_ surmounted the

fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under whatsoever practical

issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook, molest, and insult the

true church for ever. Even this brief period of development would have

been briefer, had not the law courts interposed many delays. Demurs of law

process imposed checks upon the uncharitable haste of the _odium

theologicum_. And though in a question of schism it would be a _petitio

principii_ for a neutral censor to assume that either party had been

originally in error, yet it is within our competence to say, that the

Seceders it was whose bigotry carried the dispute to that sad issue of a

final separation. The establishment would have been well content to stop

short of that consummation: and temperaments might have been found,

compromises both safe and honourable, had the minority built less of their

reversionary hopes upon the policy of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they

insisted upon becoming: and that they _might_ be martyrs, it was necessary

for them to secede. That Europe thinks at present with less reverence of

Protestant institutions than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these

institutions in particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to

the minority in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration,

all brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in

the other. Consequently upon _their_ consciences lies the responsibility

of having weakened the pillars of the Reformed churches throughout

Christendom.

Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were it

possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside for

generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers of

reproach before 1834? How came it that no aurora of early light, no

prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run before

this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have been huge

error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been traitorously

below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.

Such conclusions are irresistible; and upon any path, seceding or not

seceding, they menace the worldly credit of ecclesiastical bodies. That

evil is now past remedy. As for the other evil, that which acts upon

church establishments, not through simple failure in the guarantees of

public opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition; here

undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish church from the very

gates to the centre. And unhappily the same chasm, which marks a division

of the church internally, is a link connecting it externally with the

Seceders. For how stands the case? Did the Scottish Kirk, at the last

crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections? Was there one

of these bisections which said _Yes_, whilst the other responded _No_? Was

the affirmative and negative shared between them as between the black

chessmen and the white? Not so; and unhappily not so. The two extremes

there were, but these shaded off into each other. Many were the _nuances_;

multiplied the combinations. Here stood a section that had voted for all

the changes, with two or three exceptions; there stood another that went

the _whole_ length as to this change, but no part of the way as to that;

between these sections arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or

_eclectically_, that is, by no law generally recognised. And behind this

eclectic school were grouped others who had voted for all novelties up to

a certain day, but after _that_ had refused to go further with a movement

party whose tendencies they had begun to distrust. In this last case,

therefore, the divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the

accident of having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of

conscientious alarm. The principles upon which men had divided were

various, and these various principles were variously combined. But, on the

other hand, those who have gone out were the men who approved totally, not

partially--unconditionally, not within limits--up to the end, and not to a

given day. Consequently those who stayed in comprehended all the shades

and degrees which the men of violence excluded. The Seceders were

unanimous to a man, and of necessity; for he who approves the last act,

the extreme act, which is naturally the most violent act, _à fortiori_

approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity of reason,

retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the modifications, all who

had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so great a cause, had thought it

a point of religion to be cautious; whose casuistry had moved in the

harness of peace, and who had preferred an interest of conscience to a

triumph of partisanship. We honour them for that policy; but we cannot

hide from ourselves, that the very principle which makes such a policy

honourable at the moment, makes it dangerous in reversion. For he who

avows that, upon public motives, he once resisted a temptation to schism,

makes known by that avowal that he still harbours in his mind the germ of

such a temptation; and to that scruple, which once he resisted, hereafter

he may see reason for yielding. The principles of schism, which for the

moment were suppressed, are still latent in the church. It is urged that,

in quest of unity, many of these men _succeeded_ in resisting the

instincts of dissension at the moment of crisis. True: But this might be

because they presumed on winning from their own party equal concessions by

means less violent than schism; or because they attached less weight to

the principle concerned, than they may see cause for attaching upon future

considerations; or because they would not allow themselves to sanction the

cause of the late Secession, by going out in company with men whose

principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of supporting those

principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident, that little stress is

to be laid on a negative act; simply to have declined going out with the

Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act which may cover

indifferently a marked hostility to the Secession party, or an absolute

friendliness, but a friendliness not quite equal to so extreme a test. And,

again, this negative act may be equivocal in a different way; the

friendliness may not only have existed, but may have existed in strength

sufficient for any test whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but

their Jacobinical mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve

of the repulsion to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to

collect from these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone

past. The earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general

tendency in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--

"The earthquake is not satisfied at once."

All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they intermit,

only as the revolving lamps of a lighthouse are periodically eclipsed. The

General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon the Seceders, shut

_in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at that time she succeeded in

shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the world outside, it seemed

advisable to shut out the least number possible; for in proportion to the

number of the Seceders, was the danger that they should carry with them an

authentic impression in their favour. On the other hand, as respected a

greater danger, (the danger from internal contagion,) it seemed advisable

that the church should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who,

for the present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more

absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety

there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety in

this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by looking

over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to separate the

_wheat from the chaff_. By the "wheat," in the view of this writer, is

meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their recusant policy up to

the practical result of secession. All who stopped short of that

consummation, (on whatever plea,) are the "chaff." The writer is something

of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with

regard to his own principles, and so elaborately careful in his details as

to extort admiration of his energy and of his patience in research.

But the reason for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to the

proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the

vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question of that

nature, _can_ be so showy and _ostensive_ to a stranger, as that which is

supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past vote recording a

scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing, though for the moment

suppressed. Since the secession, nearly 450 new men may have entered the

church. This supplementary body has probably diluted the strength of the

revolutionary principles. But they also may, perhaps, have partaken to

some extent in the contagion of these principles. True, there is this

guarantee for caution, on the part of these new men, that as yet they are

pledged to nothing; and that, seeing experimentally how fearfully many of

their older brethren are now likely to be fettered by the past, they have

every possible motive for reserve, in committing themselves, either by

their votes or by their pens. In _their_ situation, there is a special

inducement to prudence, because there is a prospect, that for _them_

prudence is in time to be effectual. But for many of the older men,

prudence comes too late. They are already fettered. And what we are now

pointing out to the attention of our readers, is, that by the past, by the

absolute votes of the past, too sorrowfully it is made evident, that the

Scottish church is deeply tainted with the principles of the secession.

These germs of evil and of revolution, speaking of them in a _personal_

sense, cannot be purged off entirely until one generation shall have

passed away. But, speaking of them as _principles_ capable of vegetation,

these germs may or may not expand into whole forests of evil, according to

the accidents of coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize our billowy

aspects of society; or, on the other hand, largely to fertilize the many

occasions of agitation, which political fermentations are too sure to

throw off. Let this chance turn out as it may, we repeat for the

information of Southerns--that the church, by shutting off the persons of

particular agitators, has not shut off the principles of agitation; and

that the _cordon sanataire_, supposing the spontaneous exile of the

Non-intrusionists to be regarded in that light, was not drawn about the

church until the disease had spread widely _within_ the lines.

Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future course of action;

warned in time, such a man may stand neutral in practice; but thus far

they poison the fountains of wholesome unanimity--that, if a man can evade

the necessity of squaring particular _actions_ to his past opinions, at

least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions themselves, or

his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too notoriously have placed

on record by his votes.

But, if such are the continual dangers from reactions in the establishment,

so long as men survive in that establishment who feel upbraided by past

votes, and so long as enemies survive who will not suffer these

upbraidings to slumber--dangers which much mutual forbearance and charity

can alone disarm; on the other hand, how much profounder is the

inconsistency to which the Free church is doomed!--They have rent the

unity of that church, to which they had pledged their faith--but on what

plea? On the plea, that in cases purely spiritual, they could not in

conscience submit to the award of the secular magistrate. Yet how merely

impracticable is this principle, as an abiding principle of action!

Churches, that is, the charge of particular congregations, will be with

_them_ (as with other religious communities) the means of livelihood.

Grounds innumerable will arise for excluding, or attempting to exclude,

each other from these official stations. No possible form regulating the

business of ordination, or of induction, can anticipate the infinite

objections which may arise. But no man interested in such a case, will

submit to a judge appointed by insufficient authority. Daily bread for his

family, is what few men will resign without a struggle. And that struggle

will of necessity come for final adjudication to the law courts of the

land, whose interference in any question affecting a spiritual interest,

the Free church has for ever pledged herself to refuse. But in the case

supposed, she will not have the power to refuse it. She will be cited

before the tribunals, and can elude that citation in no way but by

surrendering the point in litigation; and if she should adopt the notion,

that it is better for her to do _that_, than to acknowledge a sufficient

authority in the court by pleading at its bar, upon this principle once

made public, she will soon be stripped of every thing, and will cease to

be a church at all. She cannot continue to be a depository of any faith,

or a champion of any doctrines, if she lose the means of defending her own

incorporations. But how can she maintain the defenders of her rights or

the dispensers of her truths, if she refuses, upon immutable principle, to

call in the aid of the magistrate on behalf of rights, which, under any

aspect, regard spiritual relations? Attempting to maintain these rights by

private arbitration within a forum of her own, she will soon find such

arbitration not binding at all upon the party who conceives himself

aggrieved. The issue will be as in Mr O'Connell's courts, where the

parties played at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play,

and no longer "made believe" to be disputing, the award of the judge

became as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry of such a transaction.

This should be the natural catastrophe of the case, and the probable

evasion of that destructive consummation, to which she is carried by her

principles, will be--that, as soon as her feelings of rancour shall have

cooled down these principles will silently drop out of use; and the very

reason will be suffered to perish for which she ever became a dissenting

body. With this however, we, that stand outside, are noways concerned. But

an evil, in which we _are_ concerned, is the headlong tendency of the Free

church, and of all churches adulterating with her principle, to an issue

not merely dangerous in a political sense, but ruinous n an anti-social

sense. The artifice of the Free church lies in pleading a spiritual

relation of any case whatever, whether of doing or suffering, whether

positive or negative as a reason for taking it out of all civil control.

Now we may illustrate the peril of this artifice, by a reality at this

time impending over society in Ireland. Dr Higgins, titular bishop of

Ardagh, has undertaken, upon this very plea of a spiritual power not

amenable to civil control, a sort of warfare with Government, upon the

question of their power to suspend or defeat the O'Connell agitation. For,

says he, if Government should succeed in thus intercepting the direct

power of haranguing mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them,

and cause then to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the same topics,

from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate extension of this principle

would be--that every disaffected clergyman in the three kingdoms, would

lecture his congregation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he would

denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad government would

become, in his language, the most sacred of duties. In any argument with

such a man, he would be found immediately falling back upon the principle

of the Free church: he would insist upon it as a spiritual right, as a

case entirely between his conscience and God, whether he should press to

an extremity any and every doctrine, though tending to the instant

disorganization of society. To lecture against war, and against taxes as

directly supporting war, would wear a most colourable air of truth amongst

all weak-minded persons. And these would soon appear to have been but the

first elements of confusion under the improved views of spiritual rights.

The doctrines of the _Levellers_ in Cromwell's time, of the _Anabaptists_

in Luther's time, would exalt themselves upon the ruins of society, if

governments were weak enough to recognise these spiritual claims in the

feeblest of their initial advances. If it were possible to suppose such

chimeras prevailing, the natural redress would soon be seen to lie through

secret tribunals, like those of the dreadful _Fehmgericht_ in the middle

ages. It would be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social

chimeras through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush

so monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such

insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction

upon which the Free church has laid the foundations of its own

establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to an

officer of a church, which is faces. And every examination of the case

convinces us more and more that the Seceders took up the old papal

distinction, as to acts spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion

less or more, but under a simple necessity of finding some evasion or

other which should meet and embody the whole rancour of the moment.

But beyond any other evil consequence prepared by the Free Church, is the

appalling spirit of Jacobinism which accompanies their whole conduct, and

which latterly has avowed itself in their words. The case began

Jacobinically, for it began in attacks upon the rights of property. But

since the defeat of this faction by the law courts, language seems to fail

them, for the expression of their hatred and affected scorn towards the

leading nobility of Scotland. Yet why? The case lies in the narrowest

compass. The Duke of Sutherland, and other great landholders, had refused

sites for their new churches. Upon this occurred a strong fact, and strong

in both directions; first, for the Seceders; secondly, upon better

information, _against_ them. The _Record_ newspaper, a religious journal,

ably and conscientiously conducted, took part with the Secession, and very

energetically; for they denounced the noble duke's refusal of land as an

act of "persecution;" and upon this principle--that, in a county where his

grace was pretty nearly the sole landed proprietor, to refuse land

(assuming that a fair price had been tendered for it) was in effect to

show such intolerance as might easily tend to the suppression of truth.

Intolerance, however, is not persecution; and, if it were, the casuistry

of the question is open still to much discussion. But this is not

necessary; for the ground is altogether shifted when the duke's reason for

refusing the land comes to be stated: he had refused it, not

unconditionally, not in the spirit of Non-intrusion courts' "_without

reason shown_," but on this unanswerable argument--that the whole efforts

of the new church were pointed (and professedly pointed) to the one object

of destroying the establishment, and "sweeping it from the land." Could

any guardian of public interests, under so wicked a threat, hesitate as to

the line of his duty? By granting the land to parties uttering such

menaces, the Duke of Sutherland would have made himself an accomplice in

the unchristian conspiracy. Meantime, next after this fact, it is the

strongest defence which we can offer for the duke--that in a day or two

after this charge of "persecution," the _Record_ was forced to attack the

Seceders in terms which indirectly defended the duke. And this, not in any

spirit of levity, but under mere conscientious constraint. For no journal

has entered so powerfully or so eloquently into the defence of the general

principle involved in the Secession, (although questioning its expediency,)

as this particular _Record_. Consequently any word of condemnation from so

earnest a friend, comes against the Seceders with triple emphasis. And

this is shown in the tone of the expostulations addressed to the _Record_

by some of the Secession leaders. It spares us, indeed, all necessity of

quoting the vile language uttered by members of the Free Church Assembly,

if we say, that the _neutral_ witnesses of such un-Christian outrages have

murmured, remonstrated, protested, in every direction; and that Dr

Macfarlane, who has since corresponded with the Duke of Sutherland upon

the whole case--viz. upon the petition for land, as affected by the

shocking menaces of the Seceders--has, in no other way, been able to evade

the double mischief of undertaking a defence for the indefensible, and at

the same time of losing the land irretrievably, than by affecting an

unconsciousness of language used by his party little suited to his own

sacred calling, or to the noble simplicities of Christianity. Certainly it

is unhappy for the Seceders, that the only disavowal of the most fiendish

sentiments heard in our days, has come from an individual not authorized,

or at all commissioned by his party--from an individual not showing any

readiness to face the whole charges, disingenuously dissembling the worst

of them, and finally offering his very feeble disclaimer, which

equivocates between a denial and a palliation--not until _after_ he found

himself in the position of a petitioner for favours.

Specifically the great evil of our days, is the abiding temptation, in

every direction, to popular discontent, to agitation, and to systematic

sedition. Now, we say it with sorrow, that from no other incendiaries have

we heard sentiments so wild, fierce, or maliciously democratic, as from

the leaders of the Secession. It was the Reform Bill of 1832, and the

accompanying agitation, which first suggested the _veto_ agitation of 1834,

and prescribed its tone. From all classes of our population in turn, there

have come forward individuals to disgrace themselves by volunteering their

aid to the chief conspirators of the age. We have earls, we have

marquesses, coming forward as Corn-League agents; we have magistrates by

scores angling for popularity as Repealers. But these have been private

parties, insulated, disconnected, disowned. When we hear of Christianity

prostituted to the service of Jacobinism--of divinity becoming the

handmaid to insurrection--and of clergymen in masses offering themselves

as promoters of anarchy, we go back in thought to that ominous

organization of irreligion, which gave its most fearful aspects to the

French Revolution.

Other evils are in the rear as likely to arise out of the _funds_ provided

for the new Seceders, were the distribution of those funds confessedly

unobjectionable, but more immediately under the present murmurs against

that distribution. There are two funds: one subscribed expressly for the

building of churches, the other limited to the "sustentation" of

incumbents. And the complaint is--that this latter fund has been invaded

for purposes connected with the first. The reader can easily see the

motive to this injustice: it is a motive of ambition. Far more display of

power is made by the annunciation to the world of six hundred churches

built, than of any difference this way or that in the comfort and decorous

condition of the clergy. This last is a domestic feature of the case, not

fitted for public effect. But the number of the churches will resound

through Europe. Meantime, _at present_, the allowance to the great body of

Seceding clergy averages but £80 a-year; and the allegation is--that, but

for the improper interference with the fund on the motive stated, it would

have averaged £150 a-year. If any where a town parish has raised a much

larger provision for its pastor, even _that_ has now become a part of the

general grievance. For it is said that all such special contributions

ought to have been thrown into one general fund--liable to one general

principle of distribution. Yet again, will even this fund, partially as it

seems to have been divided, continue to be available? Much of it lies in

annual subscriptions: now, in the next generation of subscribers, a son

will possibly not adopt the views of his father; but assuredly he will not

adopt his father's zeal. Here however, (though this is not probable,)

there may arise some compensatory cases of subscribers altogether new. But

another question is pressing for decision, which menaces a frightful shock

to the schismatical church: female agency has been hitherto all potent in

promoting the subscriptions; and a demand has been made in

consequence--that women shall be allowed to vote in the church courts.

Grant this demand--for it cannot be evaded--and what becomes of the model

for church government as handed down from John Knox and Calvin? Refuse it,

and what becomes of the future subscriptions?

But these are evils, it may be said, only for the Seceders. Not so: we are

all interested in the respectability of the national teachers, whatever be

their denomination: we are all interested in the maintenance of a high

standard for theological education. These objects are likely to suffer at

any rate. But it is even a worse result which we may count on from the

changes, that a practical approximation is thus already made to what is

technically known as Voluntaryism. The "_United Secession_," that is the

old collective body of Scottish Dissenters, who, having no regular

provision, are carried into this voluntary system, already exult that this

consummation of the case cannot be far off. Indeed, so far as the Seceders

are dependent upon _annual_ subscriptions, and coupling that relation to

the public with the great doctrine of these Seceders, that congregations

are universally to appoint their own pastors, we do not see how such an

issue is open to evasion. The leaders of the new Secession all protest

against Voluntaryism: but to that complexion of things they travel rapidly

by the mere mechanic action of their dependent (or semi-dependent)

situation, combined with one of their two characteristic principles.

The same United Secession journal openly anticipates another and more

diffusive result from this great movement; viz. the general disruption of

church establishments. We trust that this anticipation will be signally

defeated. And yet there is one view of the case which saddens us when we

turn our eyes in that direction. Among the reasonings and expostulations

of the Schismatic church, one that struck us as the most eminently

hypocritical, and ludicrously so, was this: "You ought," said they, when

addressing the Government, and exposing the error of the law proceedings,

"to have stripped us of the temporalities arising from the church, stipend,

glebe, parsonage, but not of the spiritual functions. We had no right to

the emoluments of our stations, when the law courts had decided against us

but we _had_ a right to the laborious duties of the stations." No gravity

could refuse to smile at this complaint--verbally so much in the spirit of

primitive Christianity, yet in its tendency so insidious. For could it be

possible that a competitor introduced by the law, and leaving the duties

of the pastoral office to the old incumbent, but pocketing the salary,

should not be hooted on the public roads by many who might otherwise have

taken no part in the feud? This specious claim was a sure and brief way to

secure the hatefulness of their successors. Now, we cannot conceal from

ourselves that something like this invidious condition of things might be

realized under two further revolutions. We have said, that a second schism

in the Scottish church is not impossible. It is also but too possible that

Puseyism nay yet rend the English establishment by a similar convulsion.

But in such contingencies, we should see a very large proportion of the

spiritual teachers in both nations actually parading to the public eye,

and rehearsing something very like the treacherous proposal of the late

Seceders, viz. the spectacle of one party performing much of the difficult

duties, and another party enjoying the main emoluments. This would be a

most unfair mode of recommending Voluntaryism. Falling in with the

infirmities of many in these days, such a spectacle would give probably a

fatal bias to that system in our popular and Parliamentary counsels. This

would move the sorrow of the Seceders themselves: for they have protested

against the theory of all Voluntaries with a vehemence which that party

even complain of as excessive. Their leaders have many times avowed, that

any system which should leave to men in general the estimate of their own

religious wants as a pecuniary interest, would be fatal to the Christian

tone of our national morals. Checked and overawed by the example of an

establishment, the Voluntaries themselves are far more fervent in their

Christian exertions than they could be when liberated from that contrast.

The religious spirit of both England and Scotland under such a change

would droop for generations. And in that one evil, let us hope, the

remotest and least probable of the many evils threatened by the late

schism, these nations would have reason by comparison almost to forget the

rest.

* * * * *