THE PULPIT IN SCOTLAND AS IT IS, AND AS IT WAS FORTY OR FIFTY YEARS AGO.

SOME

OME time before his death Mr. Spurgeon made sweeping representations or misrepresentations regarding the Nonconformist Churches in England. According to him, they were on what he called "the down grade." They had opened their gates to the historical criticism of the Scriptures, with the result that young ministers did not preach as he preached. Their sermons dealt less with "the plan of salvation," and more with the actual facts of life; and this, he alleged, implied unbelief on their part in the atonement and a Socinian view of the person of Christ. From time to time a similar cry has been raised in Scotland; and therefore while there last autumn I made observations and inquiries, with the object of ascertaining what, if any, foundation exists for the alarm which some excellent people undoubtedly feel. I had spent seven years in Scotland-from 1853 to 1860and had heard during that time such men as Caird, Norman McLeod, Guthrie, Bonar, Candlish and John Ker. There are no such preachers now. Those were men of altogether exceptional pulpit and spiritual power. They were the real leaders of the Scottish people. Whether we are to seek the explanation in the fact that, for a generation or two previous, there were few avenues so open to young men as the Church, and consequently much of the best brains of the country studied for the ministry, whereas since that time commerce and industry have been offering more and more splendid prizes, while the Home and India. Civil services have been thrown open to competition, and in other directions inviting avenues are tempting young men of ability to enter on promising careers; or whether Scotland shared in that religious revival which culminated in England in the High Church and Broad Church movements, the sequence of the Low Church quickening under Charles Simeon, and so gave birth to a race of spiritual giants, whose form was too often determined by the "ten years' conflict," or by theological controversies, which seem to us now as barren as that once celebrated conflict itself; or some better explanation can be given, the fact is undoubted that not only had Scotland the galaxy of preachers mentioned above, but that others even greater had just passed

or were passing away,-Irving, John McLeod Campbell and Young expelled from the Churches, McCheyne, Morrison, and the greatest of all, Chalmers. If we were to judge the pulpit by half a dozen or a dozen specimens, it must be confessed that the present is not equal to the past. But, if we are to judge by the average pulpit, then-so far as my experience goes-the present is far in advance of the past. The change in the general tone and freshness of the pulpit amounts to a revolution, and though in revolutions something is apt to be lost, there has, in this case, been gain all along the line. For the gain has been not merely in the preaching, but in every part of the service, and in the architecture, the decent surroundings, and even the eleanliness and comfort of the buildings. Instead of the usually awkwardlooking precentor, with his pitch-pipe ostentatiously used, there is the choir, often sustained by an organ. The Scriptures are read with intelligence. And the prayers, though there is still the total silence on the part of the people, which is so appalling to those unaccustomed to it, are not so long, nor so rambling, nor so explanatory nor so doctrinal as they used to be. But, to my mind, the greatest gain has been in the sermon; and in order to prove this, as far as it can be proved by one man, I shall summarize my experiences in the sixth decade of the century and compare them with my more recent observations and inquiries. I may add that my knowledge of Scotland and its pulpit in the former period was not inconsiderable; for I had spent a good part of each summer wandering over almost every section of the land, with a lover's passionate enthusiasm for its history and scenery, and with eyes and ears wide open. The average sermon at that time was verbose, formal and official, and when it was otherwise, the spirit was sectarian and the range of thought limited. The most earnest preaching was generally to be heard in the Free Church, but too often it had features which repelled young men. In an introductory lecture delivered by the late Prof. W. G. Blaikie to his class of Pastoral Theology in New College, Edinburgh, 1889, its defects were thus fairly and frankly set forth : "You may say, perhaps, the disruption pulpit was full of faults. It was a monotonous pulpit, always harping on the same string. It was a narrow pulpit, always insisting on its own one aspect of truth. It was an unscientific pulpit, not interpreting Scrip

ture by approved canons, but just according to the fancy of the interpreter. It was a fantastic pulpit, allegorizing or spiritualizing many things, as if the Old Testament were an assortment of puzzles, and the great thing were to find out its mystical meaning. You may say it was a pulpit deficient in ethical teaching, deeming it enough to have taught doctrines and principles, and comparatively careless about their application to daily duty. Perhaps some may say it was not without a certain tendency to that fanaticism which separates religion from life, which encourages men to think of religion as a department by itself, and of business and social enjoyment as belonging to another sphere. And you may say, perhaps, that it was a cheerless pulpit; it frowned on certain pleasures which are not only innocent, but necessary as relaxations from the strain and pressure of busy life." As against this terribly black list of its apparently admitted faults, he pleads that "it had this grand merit, that Jesus Christ crucified for sin was conspicuously its centre and its foundation, its crown and its glory." But, we may well ask, how a pulpit which is "monotonous," "narrow," "unscientific," "fantastic." "deficient in ethical teaching, "with a tendency to the fanaticism which separates religion from life," and "cheerless," could by any possibility preach Jesus Christ faithfully? The good Doctor pleaded that "if the disruption pulpit had these faults, the natural problem for the present age is to mend them." For, he says, "they are not essential faults; they are separable faults; let them therefore be lopped away." The gun which was supplied with new lock, stock and barrel was mended, the old parts being separated or lopped away; but how much of the old gun was left?

The complaint I had with the Scottish pulpit forty or fifty years ago was radical. It indentified religion with soundness of creed, its creed was narrow, and it dreaded departures from "the form of sound words" as certain to lead the vagrant into destructive heresy. It was therefore timid and dull, though the timidity and dulness were often hidden behind loud oratory and vehement gesticulation. "When the Professor gives you your text, how do you proceed to write a sermon on it," once asked a fellow-Divinity student, a junior who wished me give him some hints. I explained my method; a study of the book as a whole, then a

study of the passage and of the verse, then a grip of the main truth expressed, then reflection as freely and fully on that as possible, and then attempts to write, as I did not expect my first copy to satisfy me.-"But, man," he ejaculated, almost horrified at such freedom on my part, "are you not afraid of writing some heresy or other?" Of course, men of genius were not under this bondage, but the average man is not strong. Men of spiritual natures, who had passed through conflict to peace, who had sounded the depths of sin in themselves and had found grace to be deeper far, men like Paul, Augustine and Luther, never wearied of preaching the cross, and the people never wearied of hearing them. But all the Apostles were not Pauls. All the Fathers were not Augustines. All Lutherans were not Luthers. And so the average man, not daring to be true to himself and to the Spirit of God which would have fitted him for his own honest work, sank down to be a mere imitator, a cuckoo instead of an independent witness to the truth. "No man," says Dr. Blaikie, "went into a disruption church without being sure to hear of Jesus Christ and Him crucified." That, he considered to be its glory; and yet in a subsequent part of his lecture he says that the following frame of a model discourse prescribed by a "moderate minister of last century" was, "scoffing;"-1st, Show what is the natural state of man; 2nd, Explain the scheme of redemption through Jesus Christ; and 3rd, Conclude with a practical application." But, what other model could a youth take if he was expected to preach "Jesus Christ and Him crucified" in every sermon, on penalty of being considered unsound? In the very Epistle from which this expression is taken, Paul did not confine himself to the atonement, but treated a great variety of subjects with the utmost freedom, though always from the standpoint of Christian principle.

Mrs. Oliphant, in her "Life of Edward Irving," tells us how his generous impetuosity and fearless love of truth, qualities which should always be found in young men, led him to characterize the ordinary orthodoxy to which he had been accustomed. "While himself the sincerest son of his mother church, and loving her very standards with a love which never died out of him, he was always intolerant of the common stock of dry theology, and the certified soundness of dull men. 'You are

content to go back and forward on the same route, like this ferry boat,' he is reported to have said as his party were crossing the Gairloch; but as for me, I hope yet to go deep into the ocean of truth.'" His fate may not be considered inspiring. But, who would not be Edward Irving, rather than any member of the presbytery which deposed him? And though some suffer shipwreck, no one shrinks now from crossing the Atlantic, or from exploring its depths.

A change has passed over the Scottish pulpit, which I found a change for the better and indicative of new and more promising points of view than the old. The present-day preaching is essentially Biblical, and the Bible is understood to be not so much a book as the purified essence of an extensive literature. It is no longer regarded as a catechism or even in Dr. Chalmer's words as "our great stutute-book," but rather as the poetry and prophesyings of inspired men to whom were given revelations of the deep things of God and man, and whose words still find echoes in all true hearts. The Rabbis considered "the Law" to be the essence of revelation, and the prophets to be merely commentators on the law; but the Christian, to whom Jesus is the great prophet, utterly rejects such a view of the relative importance of the two great collections of O. T. sacred books.

The present-day preaching is historical, because biblical. Redemption, it understands, took the form of a long continued historical movement and therefore to interpret the different books or epochs aright, the principle of development is frankly accepted. Truths are seen in their proper perspective, instead of being on the same plane, as in a Chinese picture; and Bible characters are understood, because seen in the light of their own times, and their words are not fitted to the procrustean bed of any system of theology. The historical spirit is the gift of God to our century and although it imposes earnest study on the preacher-it has worked wonders on the exposition of the Scriptures.

The present-day preaching is practical rather than doctrinal. Doctrine is of course implied, but it is presented to the people in its relation to life and not as the contents of a museum. This requires something more than the easy going method of making every sermon revolve round the three R's, of Ruin, Redemption and Regeneration. It calls for hard work; much and wide read