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IF the Christian nations are
to retain freedom and
position in the world, if they are to escape being
slowly or suddenly dragged into chaos through
moral and industrial bankruptcy, it is surely high
time for all the Christian Churches, as the pledged
defenders of faith and morals, to federate themselves
as a marshalled host against a levelling movement
which aims at effacing the old rules of right and
wrong, and at swamping all creeds and all civilization under the waters of a universal deluge.
Looked at in the light of
reason, the divided
condition of Scotch Presbyterianism is a sickening
scandal. The cause of religion and morality
urgently demands union. The worldly wisdom,
which is called common sense, endorses that
demand; and the only real obstacle to union is
the perversity of unreasoning and degrading
sectarianism. Scotland, although a small and poor
corner of Christendom, in Reformation days struck
out a bold course for itself in regard to the system
of Church organisation. Our Reformers, and their
successors, the Covenanters, sought their tenets of
faith in the New Testament, but there they found
no clear guidance for Church organisation. With
what New Testament uncertain light afforded, and
with their very certain knowledge of the corruption
of the pre-Reformation Scotch Church, and what
King James and his son were aiming at, they had
no hesitation in asserting that the jus divinum of
ecclesiastical authority belonged not to Pope or
King, or bishop, but to the believers, exercised
through Kirk Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, and
Assembly, which were to represent the clergy and
laity, on an equal footing.
Unlike English
Congregationalism, Presbyterianism was a system devised for national
purposes. The founders of the Free Church took with them into dissent that
large national aim, and realised it so wonderfully that in an incredibly
short time all Scotland was covered by Free Churches with ministers placed
in them. The previous Secessionists also long retained the national Establishment
principle, but were never able to extend beyond
very restricted areas. It was long, and after long
disputes, that they renounced their original principles, and adopted Voluntaryism; which adoption
was a confession of inability to advance beyond narrow bounds, as well as a
war-cry against the Established Churches. Through the Sustentation Fund, the
Free Church acted like a national Church without endowments for many years
as long as the rule remained in the hands of the Disruption ministers and
elders. The poor Highland congregations were held up as examples of piety and
devotion to the rest of the country, and flattered in
reports to the Assembly. Little did the flattered
and praised ones foresee then that a time would
come when fidelity to what gained them credit
would be deemed an offence, and that they should
be made to feel their dependence, and that their
southern financial supporters expected them to be
humbly grateful and obedient. That change of
attitude was sure to come with change of policy
at headquarters.
It appears to me as
demonstrable as any proposition in Euclid that by no other means than reunion
with the Church of Scotland, on the old, well-guaranteed foundations, can Scotch Presbyterianism
redeem its character and recover strength to carry
out its responsibilities for the upholding of the cause
of Christianity and public morals in the land north
of the Tweed. The kind of parity between rich and
poor congregations which has all along existed in
the Church of Scotland cannot exist long, if at all,
among the non-established Presbyterians. To obtain
that parity, each congregation must have a separate
endowment which makes it financially independent
of contributions from a central fund. In the Church
of Scotland the rule is for the parish minister's
stipend to come solely out of his own parish teinds.
To that rule the chief exceptions are the new
parishes founded and endowed during the last
century. Being endowed to a modest extent, the
new charges acquire the equality with the old
parishes which is not obtainable between rich and
poor charges, except by separate endowments in a
non-established Presbyterian Church.
Were the teinds to be
confiscated, as predatory Socialists or reckless politicians wish them to
be, the old parishes would be thereby deprived of the sure provision our
ancestors had left them for the maintenance of religious service in
perpetuity. As for the recently erected and endowed charges, they may be put
aside at present, because only the Parliamentary parishes, few among five
hundred, could be touched by the self-styled Liberationists without laying Dissenting Churches exposed
to an immensely heavier amount of confiscation.
Socialists, if they could, would sweep all ecclesiastical property into their plunder bags, and that
all would be small in comparison with the rest of
what they are looking forward to. Sectarianism
drags good people into bad company, but disestablishes are not general plunderers. They would
gladly secure their life-interests to the ministers of
the Churches they are so fatuously anxious to
disestablish and disendow. They say, and it is
charitable to suppose many of them are silly enough
to believe, that they are animated by zeal for
religion in assailing, tooth and nail, the two National
Churches. If life-interests were to be respected,
the sale of the parish teinds would not bring in
much money for immediate use of any kind, and
what it brought in would quickly be spent, as in
the case of the Irish Church, with little benefit to
the plunderers. The parishioners, of course, ought
to have, for parish purposes, the whole value of
their parish confiscated Church property. But
would they be likely to get it? And if they got it,
could they make a better use of it than that which
had been made of it before, and which puts each
parish on a footing of independent equality with
any other parish in Scotland? Voluntaryism has
never succeeded in covering the country districts
with places of worship, like an Established Church.
The Free Church upheld the Establishment principle and repudiated Voluntaryism when performing
the wonderful feat of taking seisin of Scotland with
Free Churches and ministers. That feat is one that
only could take place at a time when the spirit of
religious enthusiasm had reached its highest level.
It is not a feat which can be often repeated, nor
were it repeated could parity be long maintained.
Besides the parity between rich and poor-
Presbyteries, and town and country congregations,
the fully developed Presbyterian system of Church
government and representative organisation requires
that there should be equality of rich and poor in
electing ministers. That was always the theory,
although in practice it was for a long time the
custom to leave the nomination of elders to ministers
and kirk-sessions, whose nominees, unless objected
to on their names being submitted to congregations
for approval, were forthwith ordained. The practice
of leaving ministers and kirk-sessions to select and
nominate fit persons for the eldership prevails yet
where congregations are satisfied with it, but when
direct nominating and voting by the congregation
get the preference, the popular claim cannot be
refused. Before the abolition of patronage, the
Free Church had cause for adhering to the "'43"
severance; but after that there was no justification
for further disunion which could be pled in reason's
court; and the mustering forces of secularism
formed an unanswerable argument for reunion. But
the old sects of Seceders who entered into the
Union of 1847 made Voluntaryism the corner stone
of their new United Presbyterian Church, and on
the abolition of patronage, instead of sticking to
Disruption principles and gladly joining with the
liberated mother Church, the Free Church, by a
great majority of ministers, elders, and people, went
over to the United Presbyterians, and adopted their
disestablishment and voluntary policy. What a
sad result of cultivated and politically-poisoned
sectarianism that throwing away of a glorious
opportunity for immediate reunion was!
The abolition of patronage
left the Church of
Scotland the freest and most truly democratic
Church in the world. Futile attempts were made
by some of those who were indignant at losing the
old argument against the "Auld Kirk" to deny that
the liberation was complete, because in the event of
a congregation failing to elect a minister within
six months from the date of the vacancy, the jus
devolutum would come into operation, and the choice
would fall to the Presbytery. That jus devolutum
limitation was a very ancient and wise device for
preventing prolonged vacancies. We have had now
sufficiently long experience of election of ministers
by Church of Scotland congregations to feel certain
that it was good to retain it. Six months give
ample time for looking out for a fit minister and
completing his election. But the fear of losing the
right of congregational patronage by not exercising
it within six months helps to keep down wranglings
between the partisans of ministerial rival candidates,
and to lead to unanimity of choice in the end. I
always felt confident that, in nine cases out of ten,
congregations would neither fight among themselves,
nor let the patronial right lapse to the Presbytery;
and I am now glad to know my trust in the people
has been proved well-founded. Popular election of
ministers has not caused many serious wrangles,
and in the few cases in which the jus devolutum
was allowed to take place, Presbyteries acted
so judiciously as to heal possible splits in
congregations.
To judge by calls at large,
and delayed settlements, there were more troubles about the elections
of ministers in the late Free Church than there has
been in the Church of Scotland from the abolition of
patronage to this time (1909). But the years
referred to could not be used for fair comparison,
since all that time there was strife within the Free
Church and peace within the Church of Scotland.
Scotch Presbyterian congregations, to whatever
section of divided Presbyterianism they belong, go,
as a rule, with few exceptions, about the work of
electing their ministers with a solemn sense of
responsibility, and carry it out with peaceful
decorum. In regard to the voting in these elections, it is not so easy to make the rich man's vote
and the poor man's vote of equal value in any
Dissenting Church as it is in the Church of Scotland,
where ministers' incomes do not depend on voluntary
subscriptions, whether administered by a central
body or a congregational one. This is a matter
which rural congregations should bear well in mind,
for without the sure parochial endowment they must
on the whole depend on outside help, and that outside help, however carefully the fact may be veiled,
robs them of their Presbyterian parity, and reduces
them to a position of dependence. If this position
hurts the self-respect of poor congregations, it is ten
times more trying to their worried ministers, who
have to endure lecturing exhortations from head-
quarters, and waste their time and energy on
flattering and beseeching their people for more
contributions than they can well afford to give. As
for the bazaars which all Churches now use for
raising money, do they not too often bear a close
resemblance to Vanity Fair exhibitions, and can
they not almost be described as modern imitations of
the sale of papal indulgences for raising money for
the building of St Peter's, which roused the wrath
of Luther?
Voluntaryism and Socialism
are words which
have been wrested from their original good meanings
to label purposes which are the reverse of good.
In the good sense of the term, we are all of us
Socialists in recognising the mutual obligations of
individuals and of classes and masses. In a similar
way we are all Voluntaries. But Socialism, seeking
to destroy existing institutions, in the vain hope of
establishing Golden Age happiness on the ruins,
means in its acutest form the suicidal madness of
people who have lost hold on faith in God and belief
in their own immortal and accountable souls. We
are, or ought all of us to be, Voluntaries in regard
to free will contributions of such means as we
have for distinctly good purposes. But when
Voluntaryism is made the corner-stone of Church
policy, and used as the fulcrum for the lever of
disestablishment, the good sense of the term is lost,
and an evil and ridiculously inconsistent one is
substituted. The Church of England, not to
mention the larger sums devoted to strictly ecclesiastical purposes, raised by free-will offerings since,
say, 1836, fifty millions sterling for the secular and
Christian education of the English people; and
since the Disruption, the Church of Scotland has,
by the same means, equipped and endowed some
four or five hundred new charges, besides the big
sums spent on other Church schemes, some of which
might well have been dispensed with, had it not
been for sectarian dissensions and rivalries.
Voluntaryism among the
Presbyterians of Scot-
land in my opinion unnecessarily divided from the
day on which the Church of Scotland was liberated
from that old grievance, the yoke of patronage I
think I may venture to say, has since the Disruption
yielded a total sum which would have been sufficient
for the purchase of the fee simple of the Kingdom of
Scotland, had it been set up for sale at twenty-five
years' purchase of its annual national income, like a
private estate, on the day on which King James
departed for England. How much of that total has
been wasted on keeping up indefensible disunion,
and sectarian rivalries, which weaken and dishonour
Presbyteriauism, and waste energies as well as
material resources that should be concentrated on
the high duty of upholding and spreading the
Christian faith and zealously guarding Christian
morals from its numerous assailants? Where is the
proverbial worldly wisdom of the Scotch people who
tolerate, and by their contributions support, profligate expenditure on
keeping up miserable hedges of partition, when the need for union is so
overwhelmingly urgent, and all the substantial reasons for
disunion have ceased to exist, except as ghosts of
ghosts which are imagined rather than seen even
when looked at through the conjuring glasses of
sophistry?
Christian Endeavour is much
heard of. Co-operation, of a kind, between disestablishers and
defenders of establishments is played at. The value
of these things amounts to this, that they are
admissions of the desirability of, as soon as possible,
getting forward to union, without strict uniformity.
In a broad-based union formed to act as a division of
the defensive Christian host ranged in battle array
against the anti-Christian host, with many banners,
there should be scope enough for such small
differences as those about the use of organs and the
exclusive use of the psalms. Voluntaries could be
left to support themselves by their congregational
contributions and endowments, if they possessed
any, while country congregations would be safe with
their parochial teinds, and the endowments secured
for supplementary charges.
If brought about without a
delay that might be fatal, how such a union would gather together for the
fight on behalf of faith and morals the forces and resources which are
dissipated by division, and in a large measure worse than wasted on suicidal
sectarian rivalries! How it would redeem the honour
of our democratic system of Church organisation and
government ! How strongly it would splice the
present with the past! How the blue banner of
the Covenant would float again over a marshalled
Presbyterian nation vowed to defend civil and
religious liberty, with order and justice, against
worse than Stuart Kings and their Episcopal tools !
Is not the very idea of such a union enough to
inspire every true-hearted Presbyterian with an
ardent desire for making that desire a realised fact?
When looked at from the
higher ground of
present time duty and expediency, the hedges of
separation are too artificial, costly, and unprincipled
to be kept for continued mischief. They have done
more mischief than can ever be repaired, except
through the atoning work of a national Presbyterian
union. The real difficulty is how to deal with
superfluous ministers. That difficulty is mainly, but
not wholly, a financial one. Life-interests must be
justly dealt with, and compensation given even to
those who wish to "compound and cut." In Africa,
India, and the British Colonies there is room for
any number of Presbyterian young ministers with
University and ministerial qualifications, irreproachable character, and energetic devotion to their high
calling. Divisions at home account for the fact
that Scotch Presbyterianism has not kept pace with
other denominations in the outside parts of the
British Empire. From Canada I have, in correspondence with friends there,
heard about the scarcity of Presbyterian ministers ; and complaints were
also made that the Church of Scotland and the Free Church I do not remember
that anything was said of the United Presbyterian Church had, for the last
generation or so, allowed their wastrels, who should have been disciplined
at home, to go to Canada and impose themselves on trustful congregations there, with every chance of in a short
time bringing discredit on themselves and on
Presbyterianism at large. Cases of that kind could
not have been numerous, but, however few, they did
damage. The Canadian Presbyterians have now
University and theological facilities for producing
ministers of their own, but the new settlers on the
Western plains would welcome gladly Presbyterian
ministers from the Old Country. In South Africa,
the Scotch Presbyterians, through apathy, closely
connected, if not entirely due, to the divisions at
home, failed to provide a connecting link between
the Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of
England. The Confession of the Synod of Dort,
and the Westminster Confession, on all essentials
are concordant, and the Dutch have the same
Presbyterian Church organisation as we have in
this country. But language and race- rivalries kept
the Dutch apart more than would have been the
case if the Scotch Colonists had, while otherwise in
union and communion with them, churches in which
the services were in the English language. In 1866
the only church of that kind was the one at Cape
Town, of which Mr Morgan was the pastor; and
although neither belonging, by way of official
recognition, to the Church of Scotland, or the Free
Church of Scotland, or the Irish Presbyterian
Church, Mr Morgan and his congregation very
worthily represented the whole three of them, and
showed in that small corner what healing and
cementing work among the whites Presbyterian
churches with services in English could have accomplished, if there were many of them and well spread
out. As a field for missionary labour, Rhodesia,
Uganda, and the West African British possessions
can take any number of devoted workers. Where
Mahometanism has struck its roots, or made an
impression, Presbyterian missionaries will have
better chances of gaining converts than almost any
others, because of the Mahometan hatred of any
semblance of idolatry, and because of more than
superficial similarities in modes of organisation.
At and before and after the
inauspicious and obstructive Union of 1900, aged and infirm ministers of the
uniting Churches retired on their pensions, and, to ensure efficiency,
others were furnished with colleagues and successors. Were a national union
of the Presbyterians of Scotland to be happily accomplished, there would be
many resignations, on generous pensions, of aged and infirm men, and much
consolidation by the collegiate process. Re-formation and restoration by a
great national union will undoubtedly require for its satisfactory and just
realisation a hearty shoulder-to- shoulder de- termination to financially
pay the penalty for a disunion continued long after the justification for it
had terminated, and the conquering progress of infidelity and steady growth
of the lapsed showed the dire necessity for mustering defensive forces on
behalf not only of Christian faith and morals, but also of what in all times
and all lands have been, are now, and shall ever continue to be fundamental
principles of every form of tolerably just and workable civilisation.
Besides the profligate expenditure on superfluous ministers and church
buildings, the Church of Scotland and the
United Free Church spend money on other ragged selvedges of disunion, which, if they joined, could
immediately be cut off. If the Highlands formed
part of a National Church, with teinds and endowments retained, what need would there be for
Edinburgh Highland and Islands Committees, and
for the incursions of loudly-trumpeted ministers and
intermeddling deputations from the South? Whatever erroneous views of the
Highlanders may be held in the Lowlands, they have in theory and practice
more of the faith once delivered to the saints, and, as the fruit thereof,
purer morals than are to be commonly found either in the towns or more or
less rural districts of the South. Self- respecting Highland pride is hurt
at being treated as dependent on Lowland charity, and spoken down to by
invaders assuming airs of superiority who do not understand the Highlanders
or their language, nor how they are themselves judged and found wanting.
When there is so much lapsing in one and all of the Churches professing the
Christian religion, they might well drop their schemes for the conversion of
the Jews, whose monotheistic faith remains unaffected by the infidel
literature and unsettledness of this revolutionary era. By concentration, retrenchment of disunion extravagances,
and a national shoulder-to-shoulder support of a
redeeming project, the financial problem can be
solved without imposing much heavier burdens on
voluntary contributors than disunion does just now.
Then there is this great difference to be taken into
account, that while disunion would perpetually
require the present, or, if they could be got by hook
or by crook, ever-increasing contributions, union
would in the course of a few years require less and
less for bearing the burden left to it by abolished
disunion, and what it asked for and was gladly
given would be all devoted to religious purposes
universally approved of. Appeal for funds to consummate a national union of the Presbyterian
Churches of Scotland would surely meet with a
heartier response than it is now possible to give to
appeals for money, money, money for keeping up
strife and the suicidal policy of disunion.
Why do I in this closing
chapter of my rambling
"Reminiscences and Reflections" plead earnestly, if
feebly, for the reunion of the Presbyterians of Scotland on the old foundations laid by our ancestors ?
Well, is it not a good excuse that I am a Scotsman,
and a Highlander to boot? In my youth the
Church of Scotland was efficiently discharging the
religious duties of a National Church from the
Tweed to Thurso and the isles beyond, and, in addition, giving unpaid and
important services in superintending schools and administering the affairs
of the poor, which are now entrusted to new boards and costly officials. Of
course, in Glasgow and other towns the inflow of strangers had even then
outstripped the powers of the parochial system, which, however, was
sufficient for all the requirements of rural parishes until the Disruption
diverted by far the larger part of the customary "box" contributions to Free Church purposes. I looked on
the Disruption when it took place, and more so
afterwards, as the heroic mistake of truly pious and
honest men, who first committed the mistake of
seeking to circumvent an Act of Parliament by an
Act of Assembly, instead of working to get it
properly repealed, and who, in the after controversies, became too heated to go back on their steps
and attack patronage in the right manner. I hoped,
too sanguinely, that on the abolition of patronage
the Church of Scotland and the Free Church would
gladly unite again, and that in time the United
Presbyterians, looking at the clouds which were
even then darkening the horizon of Christianity at
home and abroad, would likewise be drawn into the
great defensive union.
Disestablishment, from
whatever point of view it
is looked at, is a policy not of reconstruction, but of
destruction. It is for one thing used as an auxiliary
by those who are directly assailing all Christian
denominations. It is a policy of which the United
Free Church of Scotland ought to be ashamed, and
of which, indeed, members and adherents of it do
feel ashamed when they are called upon to politically
associate themselves, on its behalf, with Socialists
and Irish Separatists. I have no chance of living to
see it, but I still hope that the reunion of the
Presbyterians of Scotland is bound to come before
this twentieth century is much further advanced.
In conversation with men and
women of the divided
Churches, I meet with none who do not admit re-
union is a thing to be desired. I find that many
are perfectly sick of disunion, and of the profligate
cost with which it has to be upkept, and of the
almost blackmailing pressure and arts by which
funds are obtained. Voluntaryism is right enough
in its proper place, and the Established Churches
make as free use of it as the Dissenting bodies; but
it cannot be relied upon like teinds and endowments
for the perpetual maintenance of religious services in
every parish, and for giving every one of them the
equality status which is demanded by Presbyterian
organisation. Voluntaryism elevated into and insisted upon as a primary
doctrine of salvation made all attempts for bringing about a union of the
Free and Established Churches vain, when the door for it had been opened by
the abolition of patronage. The Rainy-Hutton alliance, bent upon effecting
its own scheme of obstruction, and semi-political union, made
disestablishment the precedent condition to union with the Church of
Scotland. The other objections were palpable shams. I was sorry at the time
that the project of the larger union so completely failed, but now I am
disposed to believe that the obstructive union, in doing its best for the
prevention of Presbyterian reconstruction on the old
foundations, has deeply impressed on people's minds
the value of the ancestral legacy, and the worse
than folly of dissipating and wasting religious
energies which ought to be unitedly directed against
aggressive infidelity and spreading immorality.
The populace more than the
rulers decided every
great national event in the history of Scotland.
The feudal nobility betrayed Wallace, and looked
askance at Bruce, while the common people fought
stubbornly for the liberty and independence of their
native land. At the Reformation, and at the
Covenant time, there was a coalition of gentry and
commons against the rulers. In 1688, the Church of Scotland, by the nation's
backing, won her Bannockburn victory. I do not hesitate to say that it
was to a tornado of lay opinion the Disruption owed
its completeness and reconstructive strength. The
Forty Thieves, with their wise policy, would have
had many accessions to their numbers had the
pressure from without been withdrawn. In this
time of unsettlement and encompassing clouds of
many dangers, I can think of nothing which makes
a stronger claim on the religious duty and the
patriotism of Scotch Presbyterians than the project
of reunion in a reconstructed National Church, with
all the ancestral legacies preserved. And that
glorious project can be realised very promptly as
soon as the laity will arouse themselves and
imperatively demand reunion.
A CHRIOCH.
DA Campbell, Duncan
Reminiscences and reflections
of an octogenarian Highlander |
