Free Church of Scotland

“ Yet for a proper national scheme, such as has for many years been desired in Scotland, the Free Church would at once be ready to give up an organization so interesting in its origin, and so powerful in its results. Some years ago, in the midst of the keenest opposition by the Conservative party and the Established Church, the choice of a teacher of any denomination was allowed to the heritors ”

“ The period of the disruption in Scotland was one of such struggle concerning great and fundamental principles of Church government, that the Free Church, during the first quarter of a century of its existence as a separate communion, had little time to devote to a consideration of the subject of worship ”

“ The Free Church always regarded herself as a National Church, and during this period she sought actively to be true to that character by providing church ordinances for the increasing population of Scotland and applying herself to the new problems of non-church-going, and of the changing habits of the people. Her Assembly’s committee on religion and morals worked toward the same ends as the similar organization of the Established Church, and in her, as in the other churches, the standard of parochial and congregational activity was raised and new methods of operation devised. ”

“ They are in circumstances in which the ripple passes into the wavelet, and the wavelet into the billow. On this head, as on all others, there is great value in the teachings of history; and the Free Church might be worse employed than in occasionally conning the lesson. Each fifty years of the last century and half has been marked by its own special questions of the kind among the non-established Churches of Scotland. ”

“ This union was not consummated without hot opposition, a small remnant of the Free Church standing outside and claiming at law the disposal of the great endowments bestowed on certain principles now put into the background. As I write, the House of Lords still delays its decision on a question of momentous interest, which the Scottish Courts decided in favour of the main body. There can be no doubt that what has already got the nickname of the “Wee Free” Church better represents the views of its spiritual fathers. ”

“ A very short time will see the Free Church, the United Presbyterian Church, and the Reformed Presbyterian Church—all the large Presbyterian communities who have protested against patronage, and whose leading principle is the liberation of religion from State control—absolutely united in their work, and partitioning Scotland between them. ”

“ At the Assembly of 1901 it was stated that the Free Church had twenty-five ministers and at least sixty-three congregations. The character of the church is indicated by the fact that its office-bearers were the faithful survivors of the decreasing minority of the Old Free Church, which had protested against the disestablishment resolutions, against the relaxation of subscription, against toleration of the teaching of the Glasgow professors, and against the use in worship of organs or of human hymns. Her congregations were mostly in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland. ”

“ But as the faithful Servants of God in this Church in former times, did by His good Hand upon them in the right administration of free and lawful Assemblies, bring the Work of Reformation in Scotland unto a great perfection, and neer conformity with the first pattern: So, unfaithful men minding their own things more then the things of Christ, and usurping over their Brethren and over the Lords Inheritance, did deface the beauty thereof, first by encroaching upon the liberty and freedom of Assemblies; afterwards by taking away the Assembly themselves. ”

“ The building up of the new Church was set about with true Scottish energy, prudence, ay, and generosity. For when Cockney jesters sneer at Scottish poverty, they do not consider how ready this people is to spend its savings and sparings on what it believes a good cause. Mainly from the contributions of the poorer class was the Free Church sustained. Most of the rich and mighty were against it, some of them bitterly hostile, many landlords refusing ground for sites, so that at first preachers and congregations had often some taste of the Covenanters’ sufferings in open-air worship. ”

“ English dissent is apt to take a socially humble and apologetic attitude. A Free Churchman never thought of himself as a dissenter, and could not be looked down upon from any point of view. In all parts of the country his Church took rank beside the Establishment; in some it gained an ascendency. In the Highlands especially, where the exaltation of warm Celtic blood goes to its highest, and where eloquent ministers have inherited the devotion once inspired by warlike chiefs, the “Auld Kirk” is often little more than empty walls and a stipend. ”

“ And we protest that whatsoever Determinations, Acts, Ratifications, Declarations, Sentences, Censures, or Commissions that shall be made, or given out by them, may be void and null, and may be interpreted as not binding to the Church of Scotland, and that notwithstanding thereof it may be free for us, and such as adhere to us, to exercise our Ministerie, and enjoy the warrantable Christian liberty of our consciences according to the Word of God, the National Covenant, and Solemn League and Covenant, and Solemn Engagement to Duties, and all the Acts and Constitutions of this Church ”

“ Voluntary, Establishment, and Free Church––possessed itself of the land in all its length and breadth. The only other form of religion that has a territorial existence in Scotland at all is Popery, and Popery holds merely a few darkened districts of the outer Hebrides and of the Highlands. It would fail, out of the one thousand one hundred parish schools of the country, to carry half-a-dozen; and no other form of religious error would succeed in carrying so much as one parish school. There is no Socinian district in Scotland; old Scotch Episcopacy has not its single parish ”

“ For many years afterwards (until 1784) the Assembly continued to instruct each succeeding commission to make application to the king and the parliament for redress of the grievance. But meanwhile a new phase of Scottish ecclesiastical politics commonly known as Moderatism had been inaugurated, during the prevalence of which the church became even more indifferent than the lay patrons themselves to the rights of her congregations with regard to the “calling” of ministers. ”

“ At least they have a chance to be richer in the spirit of a people once more disposed to the principles of the Royalist than to those of the Edinburgh Review. The Free Church clergy have been specially inquisitorial against old customs, fostered rather by the priests, who, so long as mass be not neglected, smile indulgently at the diversions and the memories of their flock, nor frown too sternly even at superstitious traditions. There was a time, of course, when this Church appeared as champion of the new against the old. ”

“ She was confronted with a very arduous undertaking; her congregations grew in number, but were far from each other and there were not nearly enough ministers. The Highlands were filled, by the Union, with exasperation and dispeace which could not soon subside. The church met with no sympathy or assistance at the hands of the United Free Church, and her work was conducted at first under considerable hardships, nor was her position one to appeal to the general popular sentiment of Scotland. ”

“ We know nothing of that kinde, that all of us who love Unitie, Order, and Edification, may not perfectly agree in, without scandall or disturbance: And we beseech the Lord to keep that Kirk free of such Sects and Monsters of Opinions, as are daily set on foot and multiplied in this Kingdome, through the want of that Church-government by Assemblies, which hath preserved us, and we hope, through the blessing of God, shall cure them. ”

“ Forsomuch as the cause and occasion of all the distractions which have happened of late both in Church and Common-weale of this Our Kingdome, have proceeded from the conceived fears of innovation of Religion and Lawes: To free all our good Subjects of the least suspition of any intention in Us to innovate any thing, either in Religion or Laws; and to satisfie, not only their desires, but even their doubts: We have discharged, and by these presents do discharge the Service book, book of Canons, and high Commission, and the practice of them, or any of them ”

“ It is not only in Scotland that Seceders split up into Auld Lichts and New. And in Scotland, by the way, the Wee Free Church that lately made such a profitable contention for the faith as once delivered to Calvinistic saints, begins to generate a fissiparous ferment, having already mutinied against the lay champion who led it to victory and booty. At least sects are fewer in Scotland, which seldom{131} welcomes exotic divinity, its taste being for home-made dissensions. ”

“ Having seriously considered with our selves, that nothing in this world is so precious, and ought to be so deare unto us as our Religion; that the diseases of the Church after long toleration did threaten no lesse then her utter ruine, and the expiring of the truth of Religion at last; and that a free Generall Assemblie was the ordinarie remedie appointed by divine Authority, and blessed by divine providence in other Churches ”

“ They are fast drifting from their old moorings. Increasing numbers of them are beginning to realize something of the beauty of liturgical worship. Many are deploring our unhappy divisions, which give such occasion to infidels to blaspheme, and are longing for the blessedness of a corporate re-union, which would present an Established Church of Scotland, with peer and peasant worshipping side by side ”

“ But we have no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution. It is enough for our present purpose to observe that the present Church of Scotland, which comprizes so much sound doctrine and learning, and has produced so many distinguished characters, is the legitimate representative of the indulged clergy of the days of Charles II, settled however upon a comprehensive basis. ”

“ Those miserable modes of peculation are the most pardonable of any produced by the Church: we have no right to regret a trifle sacrificed at the shrine of compassion, even when that compassion is mistaken; but our reason revolts at imposition, when it calls coercion to its aid, and assumes the name of right.
Without any national predilection, which you know I am above, I think our Church affairs in Scotland are arranged upon a better system than any other that I know of: hence their Clergy are in general examples worthy of imitation, for learning, piety, and moral conduct. ”

“ It is at least allowable to assert that the leaders in the Scottish Church in the days of the Westminster Assembly and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, regarded the perfect liberty in worship allowed by the Directory not only as scriptural, but as suitable for the attainment of the great ends of public worship, for on no other grounds would they have consented to its adoption in Scotland. And if Presbyterians of to-day desire to imitate the spirit and methods of their ancestors, it is reasonable that they should study the example of the men of the second Reformation. ”

“ PROPOSED DISESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE CHURCH IN ENGLAND AND IN SCOTLAND. —The perfect application of the principle of religious equality demands, in the opinion of many English Liberals, the disestablishment of the State Church in England and in Scotland. [Footnote: The Established Church in Scotland is the Presbyterian.] They feel that for the government to maintain any particular sect, is to give the State a monopoly in religion. They would have the churches of all denominations placed on an absolute equality. Especially in Scotland is the sentiment in favor of disestablishment very strong. ”

“ Yea, it were enough to make people loathe the articles of their faith, to hear such men as these take the Covenant of God in their mouths; and therefore it is expedient that the Church of God be purged of such foul scandals as it hath been polluted with in these men’s persons. And this is profitable likewise for the faithful, that they may learn to be wise and holy, and that they fall not into the same faults, lest the same censure come upon them. And truly if the Lord had directed to another remedy for these men, the Kirk of Scotland would have been glad to use it ”

“ Not only did Presbyterianism bind Scotland together as it had never been bound before by its administrative organization, but by the power it gave the lay elders in each congregation, and by the summons of laymen in an overpowering majority to the earlier Assemblies, it called the people at large to a voice, and as it turned out a decisive voice, in the administration of affairs. If its government by ministers gave it the outer look of an ecclesiastical despotism, no Church constitution has proved in practice so democratic as that of Scotland. ”

“ Though the Reformation did not begin so soon in Scotland as in Germany and England, it made more striking changes and overthrew the old Church more completely than it did in either of those countries. It first gave to the people an independent national life. ”

“ Wherever the Reformation was radical and complete, it did more than correct the abuses of the church of Rome—more than establish a purer mode of worship. It abolished for ever the sacerdotium as the badge of a peculiar order. It extinguished the distinction between clergyman and layman; and thus gave, as we shall see, a totally new aspect to the constitutional policy of all the nations which embraced it. This was more particularly the case in Scotland. Here there can be no mistake as to what the Reformation effected. ”

“ The Kirk, with its powerful local ministry, connected with each other by numerous links, attempted to revive in Scotland the pretensions of the old dominant Church, and it succeeded in creating a vast spiritual power, often in conflict with the authority of the State. The principal fact in Scottish history, during the last years of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth, was the opposition given, by the Presbyterian clergy, to the acts and even the rights of the Crown ”