|
FROM the Tweed to John o' Groat's, the
Church of
Scotland was left in a very dilapidated condition by
the sweeping "beam sleibh" or deluge burst of the
Disruption; but it ravaged the Highlands a hundred
times worse than the Lowlands, although a few
ministers of high reputation and force of character,
and consistency of conduct, firmly kept their footing
and the majorities of their congregations. The most
popular ministers of the day left the Church, shaking the dust off their feet; and with anything but
farewell words of blessing on their lips. Among the
Moderate ministers left behind were scholarly, cultured men, who were excellent parish workers, and,
in their sober style, excellent preachers also. The
least active among them attended decently to their
set duties, and few, if any of them, unless sarcastically, would use the
words of the minister who, when told that many of his people were going off
to the Free Church, is reported to have asked his informant, "Did you see
them carrying away the stipend on their heads?" The Cook Moderates, who had
now the majority, were resolute defenders of the Church's broken walls,
although their ecclesiastical policy was too much akin to, and too closely
connected with, the Toryism of the new set of landlords,
who separated themselves from their people and
thought of driving them instead of leading them, to
be ever really reconstructive, since it could never be
made acceptable to the people of either Highlands
or Lowlands. The redeeming hope and recuperative
power depended chiefly on the party of the "Forty
Thieves," and particularly on the younger and
bolder men who widened their policy. Cookites
themselves saw that the legal decisions had imposed
undue restrictions on the exercise of spiritual functions, so relief had to be sought from legislation, and
as the Peel Government hearkened to the cry for
relief, and perchance felt remorseful for previous
inflexibility, the worst of the grievances were
removed. But the Peel Government and private
patrons had no thought of capitulating to those who
went out protesting on the 18th of May. The
seriousness of the secession took them completely
by surprise, but they still believed that in the rural
districts at least it would be found impossible to
uphold a Free Church equipment in every parish for
any length of time. That happy inspiration of Dr
Chalmers the Sustentation Fund did what had
never been done before, and gave an establishment
stability to a non - established church. But it
could not give the equality demanded by the
Presbyterian theory. Nothing could do that but
its own perpetual separate endowment for every
parish. However, that was lost sight of in the
enthusiastic years during which the rich were
giving of their wealth and the poor of their poverty,
like very brethren, to cover all Scotland with Free
Churches and to provide their ministers with in-
comes. A full generation had to pass by ere Time
the Revealer made astonished Highlanders aware of their dependent position,
and of the patronage and control which went with the holding of the purse.
In truth the spirit in which the Free Church was founded had to give place
to a different spirit before that revelation came. But to return to the
Broken Walls. Government and private patrons made haste to find qualified
men to present to vacant charges. They had difficulty in finding a
sufficient number of them for filling up all the vacancies in six months,
but they managed to do so. They mustered what, without irreverence, might be
called a motley host of returned colonials, schoolmasters with probationer
qualifications, and not a few old probationers who, hopeless of getting
charges, had fallen back into secular work and habits. The young
probationers and the divinity students who were nearly ready for being
licensed were unfortunately few, the larger number of them having joined the
Free Church. In the motley host there were undesirables who, for the next
dozen years or so, gave the Church Courts trouble with scandal cases, libel
prosecutions, and depositions. But these undesirables were far fewer than
might well have been expected when there had been no opportunity for
selection. Most of the men who received promotion after they had given up
hope and had become worthy teachers or had fallen back into secular life,
comported themselves with ministerial dignity, and preached to shadowy congregations with conscientious regularity. They
suffered social boycotting, which amounted to moral
persecution in many Highland parishes, where, how-
ever, they performed the useful service of saving
parish endowments from lapsing and left them open
for successors with better chances than their own.
While other consequences of the Disruption
had
to remain on the knees of Time, two were forthwith
perceived, namely, that a new Poor Law Act must
be passed, and that the school system, which with
little cost had done so much good, was to be
subjected to the undoubted evil of division and the
equivocal benefit of educational rivalry. I think
now, as I thought then, that the Church of Scotland blundered most foolishly and tyrannically in
depriving the parish and other teachers who adhered
to the Free Church of their offices and incomes.
Had these teachers been let alone, a rival set of
schools would not have been set up by the Free
Church. Although there were some daft fanatics
in that communion who thanked God they were not
like other men, and who maintained it was not fit
that the children of the godly should be taught in
the same schools as the children of the Moderates,
and by teachers who, albeit professing the same
faith, had not all of them the special Free Church
unction of grace, that nonsensical view was not
held by the overwhelming majority of Free Church
parents. The foolish illiberalism of the then rulers
of the Church of Scotland, however, gave the
practice their chance, and they used it.
It was in 1856 that Mr Moncrief, then Lord
Advocate,
introduced a Bill into the House of Commons,
which, if passed into law, would have remedied a
great deal of the mischief done, by throwing the
schools open to all Presbyterian teachers, and
at the same time would have relieved the Free
Church from what was a growing burden to her,
notwithstanding what her schools earned from the
Government Grant. At our statutory Widows'
Fund meeting, we parish schoolmasters of the
Presbytery of Weem passed a resolution in favour
of Mr Moncriefs Bill, which, on being published,
called out a small ebulition of clerical indignation
that resulted in another meeting being called and
in the resolution being rescinded by the votes of
the members who had not attended the statutory
meeting. My neighbour, Mr Macnaughton, school-
master of Dull, and I stood to our guns; and our
protest against the rescinding of the resolution, and
our reason for looking with favour on the Bill
being published with the rescinding, the clerical
interveners gained little by having meddled in
the affair.
The ratepayers and taxpayers of this
twentieth
century, burdened with the upkeep of public boards
and bodies with numerous officials, will find it
difficult to understand how cheaply and, on the
whole, how satisfactorily affairs were administered
in the rural districts when country gentlemen, as
Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply,
did the work now entrusted to County Councils, and
when ministers and kirk-sessions looked after the
poor. The rapid growth of population in manufacturing towns and districts had, no doubt, outstripped
the powers of the old system to cope with pauperism
among the heterogeneous multitudes of incomers in
such places, but it was the Disruption which made
it impossible in rural parishes to continue that good
old system any longer. The "box" funds dried up
at their source; for half of the Sunday worshippers
everywhere, and a vast deal more than that in the
Highlands, had gone off to the Free Church where
all the money they could give (and many of them
ungrudgingly gave more than they could well spare)
was urgently wanted for establishing a non-
established Church, from the Tweed to John o'
Groat's. Ministers and elders looked of old upon
their unpaid services to the poor as a most important
part of their religious duty. They were able as
Parochial Boards are not to discriminate between
God's poor and the Devil's poor. The widow,
orphan, arid those stricken with disease, and the
honest old man or woman who had fallen upon evil
days, were tenderly cared for, while those poor by
their own laziness or vices were put under religious
and moral pressure to mend their ways, and openings
were found for them to make fresh starts. Under
this pressure, and with new chances, the Devil's
poor were frequently reclaimed from laziness and
evil habits. They were taught that self-help is the
best help of all "Se fein-chomhnadh an comhnadh
is fhearr a th' ami." So well did kirk-sessions man-
age their financial affairs that some of them had
money out on interest, when the 18th of May, 1843,
gave the old system of poor relief and management
its death-blow. |
