ART. VII-1. A Letter to the Lord Chancellor on the Claims of the Church of Scotland in Regard to its Jurisdiction; and on the proposed Changes in its Polity. By John Hope, Esq., Dean of Faculty. 2nd Edition. Edinburgh. 1839.

2. Remarks on the Present Position of the Church of Scotland. By Thomas Chalmers, D.D. 4th Edition. Glasgow. 3. The Speech of the Right Honourable the Earl of Aberdeen in the House of Lords on Tuesday, May 5. 1840. London. 4. The Earl of Aberdeen's Correspondence with the Rev. Dr. Chalmers and the Secretaries of the Non-Intrusion Committee. 1840. Edinburgh.

5. What ought the Church and the People of Scotland to do now? By Thomas Chalmers, D.D. and LL.D. Glasgow. 1840. 6. An humble Attempt to put an end to the present Divisions in the Church of Scotland, and to promote her Usefulness. By the Rev. Lewis Rose, A.M., Minister of the Duke Street Gaëlic Church, Glasgow. Glasgow. 1840.

THE present situation of the Church of Scotland is one which

it is impossible to contemplate without astonishment. It is impossible to disguise that the line of conduct on which the majority of its clergy are now acting involves principles inconsistent with the very existence of an establishment, and subversive indeed of all government. Let not our English readers suppose that the question at issue is merely one as to the check or control to be exercised by the people over the exercise of church patron

That question, important as it was in the outset, has since merged in far more vital considerations. A Protestant Established Church-the child of the law in as far as it is an establishment,—reviving in the nineteenth century the claims of Popery, asserts her absolute independence of the law in all matters which she herself shall define to be spiritual; refuses obedience to the sentence of the law which declares her proceedings to be an invasion of civil rights; proceeds to punish by suspension from their clerical offices those of her members who as subjects felt themselves constrained amidst this divided duty' to yield obedience to the law of the land; and yet continues to retain the temporalities which she holds only in virtue of that very law which she sets at defiance! Meantime, although the present incumbents retain their endowments, every new presentation by a patron may give rise to a new resistance to law, and result in leaving the parish destitute of any established minister. For while on the one hand the Church refuses to admit the presentee to the charge, on the other the law declares the temporalities to be the property of the patron, whose presentee

has

has been illegally rejected. The fund provided by the State is withdrawn; and thus at no distant period half the parishes in Scotland may be left dependent on a precarious and voluntary provision for the services of religion. This is the shape which the question, originally regarding the alleged right of the people to reject a presentee without reasons assigned, has now assumed. This is the state of matters with which the Legislature, if it is to interfere, has to deal; and that some interference is imperatively called for, seems now to be the conviction of all.

In treating of this most painful subject there are two points on which we should wish not to be misunderstood; first, that we take the law as laid down, and mean to re-agitate in the shape of formal discussion no legal questions which have already been decided by the House of Lords:-In the next place, and once for all, we mean to convey no imputation against the motives or integrity of those clergymen by whom the counsels of the Church of Scotland have been mainly directed. That the great majority of these are men of sterling worth-pursuing an end which they believe to be for the interests of religion-we have not the least intention to dispute. We consider them as the unconscious dupes and instruments of a few artful intriguers, and hot-headed agitators.

When the first motion towards a change in the law of the Church of Scotland, with regard to the appointment of its ministers, took place in 1832, that law, as understood to be fixed by statute and practice, was in substance this :-That the right of presentation to the benefice belonged to the patron; the right of objecting to the presentation, but always upon reasons stated and substantiated, to any member of the congregation; the right of determining upon these reasons to the church courts. It was

admitted, even by those least favourable to patronage, that the church which had grown up under this system, 'so far from being in a decaying or falling state, was in a most flourishing condition.'* The practical effect of that church on the general information of the people, on their private morals, and on their religious character,' was stated by one of the most pious and learned of its ministers, Sir Henry Moncreiff, to equal, if it did not surpass, what could be imputed in the same points to any other church in the world.'

It was undoubtedly not a very easy, or at first sight a very promising task, to persuade the people of Scotland that a system which had led to such results-results not disputed by any of the advocates of Presbyterianism-was an evil which called for reform. Accordingly, the first attempts made to inflame the popular mind

*Lord Moncreiff's Evidence on Patronage.

on

on the subject by those Presbyterian purists, to whom the law of patronage had always been a prescriptive and conventional grievance, were coldly received. The first announcement of an antipatronage society' by 'members and ministers of the Church of Scotland'-(ministers who owed their appointment to patronage) -was received with a mingled feeling of pity and surprise; and the earnest importunity of their appeals to the public for aid to enable them to defray the expense of their purchased but unpaidfor patronages seemed sufficiently to denote that for some years at least the society maintained no very vigorous or popular exist

ence.

But times more favourable both for lay and clerical agitation arrived. The coincidence of the desire to popularise the ecclesiastical constitution' of the Scottish Church, with the movement which took place a year or two before in the political constitution of the country,' would be in itself suspicious and remarkable, but the connection between the two, as cause and effect, does not appear to be disputed by Dr. Chalmers.* The opposition to the existing law of patronage was one of the forms in which the revolutionary spirit displayed itself in Scotland. The first overt act of hostility to the law of patronage took place in the memorable year of 1832: after the revolutionary convulsions of 1830 had dislocated Europe, and the success of the reform agitation at home had carried into the general mind a feverish longing for innovation and a superstitious deference for the mere expression of the democratic will. To certain political intriguers, who were eager to make a tool of the Church, patronage presented an inviting, and it was now thought a practicable, object of attack. It was a salient point in the polity of the church, upon which it was thought that, in the present restless and unbalanced state of opinion, conscientious convictions, and party spirit—ancient prejudices and recent appetite for change-pressure from without, and wavering from some portion of the garrison within-might all be brought to bear with combined operation.

A direct and avowed attack on patronage, however, would have been too bold a step. Many who were prepared practically to nullify the right by subjecting it to limitations inconsistent with its exercise-many who conscientiously believed that this mutilation of the right of patronage was required for the well-being of the church-would have been startled by the proposal for its abolition. Even those who were prepared to go the whole length, and who steadfastly contemplated this as their ultimate object, could not delude themselves into the belief that the church could by her own powers abrogate at once the law of the land. It was

* What ought the Church and the People of Scotland to do now? p. 5.

necessary

necessary in the mean time, in order to secure the support of a majority in the Assembly, to rest satisfied with a proposal which, while it professed to leave the right of patronage untouched, should yet in truth and substance render it ineffectual. It is of importance to observe, in reference to the way in which the objects of the party have gradually developed themselves, that in the 'overtures' submitted to the assembly in 1832 on the subject of patronage, not only was the intention of advocating its abolition denied, but even the idea of giving a veto to the majority of the congregation upon the appointment by the patron was studiously disclaimed; Lord Moncreiff, in particular, expressing his surprise that such an inference should be drawn from the overtures under discussion, which merely proposed to render the formal call or consent-which as a matter of practice, though not of law, had always been given by a few of the parishioners to the nomination by the patron-more real and effectual.* In 1833 the very proposal of giving a veto to the majority of the congregation was submitted to the Assembly by Dr. Chalmers, and supported by the vote of Lord Moncreiff.

It is of course no matter of surprise that, in the strangely composite body by whom the veto was advocated, the most opposite views should prevail as to the grounds on which it ought to be rested; some claiming for it the sanction of direct scriptural authority-others content to rest it on no higher basis than expediency; some contending that the proposed measure was but a return to the ancient law and constitution of the Church of Scotland-others admitting its novelty, but maintaining that it was competent for the church by her own inherent powers to establish any new limitation she pleased upon the right of patronage. But it does appear somewhat singular that not a few of those who advocated the measure in 1833, and maintained its competency and legality, did so with a secret consciousness-which the event has justified-that it was neither agreeable to the existing law, nor within the powers of the Assembly, and that the probable result would be a collision with the courts of law, and the consequent sacrifice of the temporalities of the church. Among these, we regret to say, was the most distinguished supporter of the measure, Dr. Chalmers. He has repeatedly admitted that these consequences were distinctly foreseen by himself; and that a great blunder' was committed by the Assembly when they ultimately passed the measure in 1834!

*Adverting to the remarks of Mr. Whigham, who had pointed out the clear drift of the overtures, his lordship observed, 'What is the next point in his speech? He said that those who wished to remit these overtures to a committee maintain that there is, or ought to be, a veto in the majority of the congregation. I have not heard that maintained.'

An

An outline of the important debate of 1833 will sufficiently place before the reader the general grounds on which a change in the law was advocated and resisted. It will have this farther advantage, that the reasons assigned by the opponents of the measure for their resistance to the proposed change, on the grounds of its injustice and inexpediency, apart from its illegality, will afford an answer by anticipation to the reasonings of those who would now endeavour to obtain from the legislature what the church at last confesses herself unable to accomplish.

The speech of Dr. Chalmers on this occasion was an epitome of the character of the man: fervent, enthusiastic, generally. haunted by some one idea which rules over his mind like a spell, to the exclusion of all countervailing or collateral considerations; distrustful of human nature, and yet always confident of his own power of controlling it by means of some favourite moral or political panacea; a confidence that seems in no case to be shaken by the accident that this latest specific often stands out in startling contradiction to that which it has supplanted. As an oratorical effort the speech had its fascinations; the momentous topics which it agitated, the really sound and striking remarks which it occasionally embodied, could not fail to arouse attention, when clothed in that picturesque and peculiar eloquence which had often communicated an air of novelty to the veriest truisms, by the uncouth grandeur which it stamped upon their expression. But as a piece of logical reasoning, the speech was a phenomenon. It presented the strangest union of sobriety and rashness; of just views of human nature in some respects, with the most delusive and impracticable notions in others; and of concessions which the candour of his nature extorted from the speaker, with an apparent insensibility to the fact that upon every just principle of reasoning these concessions were fatal to his whole argument.

Nothing, for instance, could be more just than the picture he drew of popular election; the caballing, the scandal to which it gave rise; the interested motives of the bad, the 'gullibility' of the good; their hopeless incapacity to choose a pastor; and the necessity of a check by the Church itself, not only on careless patrons, but on a graceless population;' and then, having painted these evils with a power of graphic and sarcastic expression, which would have led any one ignorant of his views to suppose that he meant to give to the proposed measure the most uncompromising opposition, he suddenly set himself to maintain that the same people who were so utterly incompetent to choose, were so admirably fitted to sit in judgment on the object of the patron's choice, that their simple negative, unaccompanied by any reasons, ought to be conclusive against the presentee; and that all those

grievous