tihraxy of Che t:heolo0ical ^emmarjp 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
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 BX 9070 .S3 1894 
 Scottish Church Society. 
 
 Conference 1893 : 
 Scottish Church Society 
 

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SCOTTISH CHURCH SOCIETY CONFERENCES 
 
SCOTTISH CHURCH SOCIETY PUBLICATIONS. 
 
 I. 
 
 In Demy Svo (28 pp-)- Price 6d. 
 
 '^ht Scottish Church ^orictg. 
 
 SOME ACCOUNT OF ITS AIMS. 
 
 By Professor Milligan, D.D., President of the Society. 
 
 With Appendix containing the Constitution of the Society, &'c. 
 
 II. 
 
 In Demy %vo (32 pp.). Price 6d. 
 
 (Dur ^elp is in the #amc of the |Corb. 
 
 A CALL TO PRAYER : WITH FORMS OF INTERCESSION. 
 By John Macleod, D.D., Minister of Govan Parish. 
 
 Will Shortly be Publislud. 
 III. 
 
 glag ^rifsthoob in the Chvistmn CChurck. 
 
 BV 
 
 A. W. Williamson, M.A., Minister of St Cuthbert's Parish, Edinburgh ; 
 G. W. Sprott, D.D., Minister of the Parish of North Berwick ; 
 John Macleou, D.D., Minister of Govan Parish. 
 
SCOTTISH CHURCH SOCIETY 
 
 CONFERENCES 
 
 jfirst Seriee ., 
 
 ^^ Ask for the Old Paths, . . . and walk therein^ 
 
 iBDinburgb 
 
 J. GARDNER HITT, 37 GEORGE STREET 
 
 GLASGOW: JOHN SMITH & SON, 19 RENFIELD STREET 
 
 LONDON : EDWARD STANFORD, 26 & 27 COCKSPUR STREET, S.W, 
 
 1894 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The Scottish Church Society was founded in 1892, by 
 members of the Church of Scotland, for the general purpose 
 of defending and advancing Catholic Doctrine as set forth 
 in the Ancient Creeds, and embodied in the Standards of 
 the Church of Scotland ; and of asserting Scriptural prin- 
 ciples in all matters relating to Church Order and Policy, 
 Christian Work, and Spiritual Life throughout Scotland. 
 
 A full statement of its Aims and Constitution will be 
 found in the Appendix to this volume. 
 
 The First Conference of the Society was held in Glasgow, 
 opening on the 25th November 1893, and closing on the 
 29 th November, 
 
 This volume contains the papers read at that Con- 
 ference. 
 
 To the longer papers, twenty minutes' time was allowed 
 for delivery ; to the shorter, ten. This limitation — in some 
 cases, however, exceeded — explains the brevity with which 
 the subjects are treated. 
 
 It had been originally the intention of the Society to 
 publish also in this volume the pre-arranged Addresses 
 delivered at the Conference, together with some account 
 of the Discussions which followed, but it has been found 
 impracticable on account of the extent of the discussions to 
 carry out this design. 
 
 Although this volume is issued with the sanction of 
 the Society, each writer is alone responsible for his own 
 contribution. 
 
6 Preface. 
 
 The Opening Address was to have been delivered by 
 Professor Milligan, but he was unable through illness to be 
 present. His death, which occurred almost immediately 
 after the Conference, was an inexpressible loss to the 
 Society and to the Church. 
 
 Edinburgh, Ma-]) 1894. 
 
PAPERS 
 
 AND 
 
 CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 Lettek from the President — 
 
 The Very Eev. Professor William Milligan, D.D., 
 
 University of Aberdeen .... 9 
 
 Opening Address — 
 
 Rev. Thomas Leishman, D.D., Minister of Linton 
 
 Parish ....■• H 
 
 Devotional Life -. CoMxMUNion with God and 
 Communion in God — 
 
 Rev. A. Wallace Williamson, M.A., Minister of 
 
 St Cuthbert's Parish, Edinburgh ... 19 
 
 Rev. H. J. WoTHERSPOON, M.A., Minister of Burnbank 
 
 Parish, Hamilton ..... 25 
 
 National Religion : Its Principles and Possible 
 Embodiments — 
 
 The Very Rev. George Hutchison, D.D., Minister 
 
 of Banchory- Ternan Parish ... 31 
 
 Rev. R. S. Kirkpatrick, B.D., Minister of Dalbeattie 
 
 Parish ...... 41 
 
 The Present Call to Witness for the Funda- 
 mental Truths of the Gospel — 
 
 Rev. James Cooper, D.D., Minister of the East Parish, 
 
 Aberdeen ...... 47 
 
 Rev. George Campbell, Minister of Eastwood Parish 59 
 
 The Church's Call to Study Social Questions — 
 
 Rev. Professor Robert Flint, D.D., LL.D., University 
 
 of Edinburgh ..... 66 
 
8 Contents. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 The Divine Order of Church Finance and other 
 
 Systems — 
 
 Rev. Thomas Leishman, D.D., Minister of Lintou Parish 73 
 Eev. M. P. Johnstone, B.D., Minister of Fraserburgh 
 
 Parish ...... 81 
 
 The Observance in its Main Features of the 
 Christian Year — 
 
 Rev. E. L. Thompson, D.D., Minister of Hamilton 
 
 Pari-sh (2nd charge) .... 85 
 
 Rev. W. H. MACLEOD, B.D., Minister of Buchanan 
 
 Parish ...... 97 
 
 The Training of the Clergy — 
 
 Rev. Professor John Dobie, B.D., University of Edin- 
 burgh ...... 105 
 
 The Celebration of the Holy Communion and 
 THE Daily Service — 
 
 Rev. John Macleod, B.A., D.D., Minister of Govan 
 
 Parish, Glasgow . . , . .113 
 
 Rev. A W. Wotherspoon, M.A., Minister of Oatlands 
 
 Parish, Glasgow . . . . .143 
 
 The Church and the Education of the Young — 
 
 Rev. J. Howard Crawford, M.A., Minister of 
 
 Abercorn Parish . . . . .149 
 
 The Historical Continuity of the Church of 
 Scotland — 
 
 Rer. G. W. Sprott, D.D., Minister of North Bermck 
 
 Parish ...... 161 
 
 Rev. Thomas Leishman, D.D., Minister of Linton Parish 173 
 
 Evangelistic Work and its Proper Basis — 
 
 Rev. H. J. Wotherspoon, M.A., Minister of Burnbank 
 
 Parish ...... 179 
 
 Rev. J. Cromarty Smith, B.D., Minister of Alexandria 
 
 Parish ...... 189 
 
 Appendix — Programme of the Conference . . . 195 
 
 Constitution of the Scottish Church Society . 198 
 
LETTER FROM THE VERY REV. PROFESSOR 
 MILLIGAN. 
 
 The Very Rev. Dr Milligan, President of the Society, was 
 unable to be present through illness, and sent the following 
 letter to Dr Macleod, Convener of the Business Com- 
 mittee : — 
 
 " 39 Royal Terrace, 
 " Edinburgh, I3tk November 1893. 
 
 "My Dear Dr Macleod, — It is with the deepest regret, 
 and even pain, that, as I receive the completed Programme 
 of the Scottish Church Society's Conference to be held at 
 Glasgow on the closing days of this month, I find myself 
 in the providence of God, absolutely precluded from taking 
 part in the proceedings. Confined closely to bed, there is 
 no hope that I shall be able to join those who are there to 
 stand forth in vindication of some of the greatest truths of 
 our Christian faith, or to take my part in speaking to any 
 of the subjects set down for discussion, and so closely con- 
 nected with the highest privileges and labours of the 
 Church of Christ. 
 
 " It would have been to me not more a duty than a 
 delight to have been associated with my brethren in their 
 defence of the truth in the great capital of the West, and 
 among a people so deeply interested in Christian revelation 
 and religious life as are its citizens. In no place has a 
 greater effort been made than there to discredit the aims 
 and exertions of our Society. In no place, when the real 
 facts of the case have had time to be considered, and the 
 inevitable reaction has set in, shall we experience a deeper, 
 a warmer, or a more generous sympathy. It will be seen 
 that the charges brought against us are utterly unfounded. 
 
I o Dr Milliga7is Letter. 
 
 that the suspicions entertained of us have had no solid 
 ground to rest on, and that our whole conduct is deter- 
 mined by two great beliefs, — that the Church of Christ has 
 a Divine and Living Lord for her Guardian and Head, and 
 that He by His Spirit is ready to work as powerfully as 
 He has ever done in her and through her, for the accom- 
 plishment of her great mission in the world, 
 
 " These truths are not so vividly realised either by the 
 Church of Christ as a whole, or by our own particular 
 branch of that Church, as they ought to be. We feel that 
 the solemn duty is imposed on us of re-stating and re-enforc- 
 ing them. 
 
 " The very last thought that we entertain would be that 
 of forming the ministry into an independent caste to come 
 between individual Christians and their Father in heaven. 
 For my own part, I should prefer to designate the ministers 
 of Christ less as priests than as, in what appears to me to be 
 their trne Scripture character, the servants of the priesthood. 
 
 " We feel deeply how much has to be done to make the 
 Church of the Lord Jesus Christ the power for good in the 
 world she was designed by her great Head to be. In seek- 
 ing to attain this we would elevate the tone and character 
 of the ministry, and would lead it into paths of self-denying 
 labour and suffering, in which alone it can truly follow in 
 the footsteps of Him who came ' not to be ministered unto 
 but to minister and to give His life a ransom for many.' 
 
 " I dare not upon this occasion venture to say more, and 
 shall therefore conclude with only the earnest prayer that 
 the great Head of the Church may be present with you in 
 all your meetings, and may make them a blessing alike to 
 our Church and to our native land. — I am, dear Hr 
 Macleod, very truly yours, 
 
 "Wm. Milligan." 
 
ADDRESS AT OPENING OF CONFERENCE. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Leishman, D.D. 
 
 The first words of our Conference ought to have come 
 from the eminent divine who is our president, and whose 
 ripened wisdom has led him to hold so firmly the prin- 
 ciples on which our Society rests. Since it is ordered 
 so, we must meet without his guidance. His seat may be 
 occupied, but his place cannot be supplied. Let us each 
 strive, while we take counsel together, to attain that spirit 
 of sincerity and devoutness which his presence would have 
 infused into our deliberations. 
 
 Before the discussion of separate subjects begins, you 
 may expect some reference to the ends which the Scottish 
 Church Society has in view. They were stated with suf- 
 ficient minuteness and publicity at the time when it was 
 being formed. Some hard judgments found expression then. 
 Though discussion seems to have softened these, there are 
 still lingering misapprehensions as to our objects. It is 
 said that we are possessed by a spirit of sacerdotalism. The 
 word is one of somewhat vague import. Along the whole 
 range of Christian opinion it may be heard applied to any 
 one who holds somewhat loftier views than the speaker of 
 the offices and ordinances which bind together the Christian 
 brotherhood. A Quaker may be supposed to use it in 
 describing the distinctive tenets of the Baptist. Outside 
 of Christianity, it, or its exact Saxon equivalent, priestcraft, 
 is affixed to any form of the faith. But when we analyse 
 this word of opprobrium, we find that it means the opinion 
 of one who claims to be a sacerdos, a hpvjg, a sacrificer. I 
 have yet to make the acquaintance of any minister of the 
 
12 Address at Opening of Confei'ence. 
 
 Church of Scotland who so understands the functions of his 
 ministry. We know of the Great High-priesthood of Clirist, 
 The truth of the priesthood of the laity holds a prominent 
 place in the terms of this Society's constitution. There are 
 those of our clergy who differ from others in holding more 
 defined opinions, higher opinions, if you will, of their office, of 
 the message which they have to deliver, and the ordinances of 
 which they are the instruments. But they believe that they 
 have learned these things from their Church's own Standards, 
 to say nothing of the teaching of the Church Universal, 
 nothing of a purer fountain of wisdom than either. 
 
 Another charge is that we have a fuller sympathy with 
 the Church of England than is consistent with loyalty to 
 our own. Certainly we have no wish to be out of sympathy 
 with a Church which is so much at one with us in her 
 beliefs, in her duties, and in her dangers. In essence, their 
 doctrinal articles are the same as ours. Their presbyters 
 have been admitted to the ministry, as we were, by the hands 
 of a plurality of presbyters. They witness, as we do, to the 
 duty and the blessing of national Catholicity, and thereby 
 earn the enmity of the same foes. There are points on which 
 we differ, but in some of these they are coming nearer to us. 
 A series of councils, from Convocation downwards, have been 
 revived or created, without statutory powers certainly, but 
 powerful for good, through the moral influence which 
 they exercise. Their laity are being taken more largely 
 into confidence. Their worship has unquestionably be- 
 come less monotonous and cumbersome by the separation 
 of services, the amended lectionary and extended rights of 
 modification in the use of tlie prayer book. In this matter 
 some assimilation between two peoples who are becoming 
 in all other respects more closely one is inevitable. If 
 this is possible from their side without their disowning what 
 they hold to be distinctive principles, we surely can do the 
 same. I can say with confidence that many among us who 
 are credited with a readiness to make abject submission to 
 Anglicanism are those who most clearly understand what 
 
Address at Opening of Conference. \ 3 
 
 the important points of difference between the two systems 
 are, and are most keenly on the watch to see that they are 
 not effaced. It is not to England alone, nor to England 
 mainly, that they have looked for light in their endeavours to 
 make our service more fruitful of grace. Indeed, in many 
 of the changes which have been lately made, there has been 
 as much desire to reject as to adopt English usage. Various 
 unseemly features in worship which are vanishing fast were 
 memorials of English domination, introduced among: ns to 
 displace better things. Many things then lost are being 
 restored. They were characteristic of our Church at a time 
 when the peoples of this island, now happily united, were 
 to each other foreigners, and the phrases, our auld enemies of 
 England, our ancient allies of France, were household words 
 in every Scottish home. Our Reformed worship, like our 
 formulated theology, came to us from the French-speaking 
 lands, and was our cherished heritage till English influences 
 deformed it. If its usages, when revived, are found to 
 correspond with existing customs in the Church of England, 
 that surely is no reason for effacing them a second time, 
 when the old national enmities have in great part dis- 
 appeared. It is not often that we have found anything 
 to learn from the indigenous customs of England. We 
 have looked as much to the Reformed group of Continental 
 Churches with which she was once proud to associate herself, 
 or to remoter ages when both we and England were sitting 
 in darkness. The same teachers would have had the same 
 lessons for us, though the Berwickshire bank of the Tweed 
 had been the northern shore of the British Channel. While 
 most men, thinking calmly, will own that the points of con- 
 trast between the two National Churches might be reduced 
 in number, there is a possible danger of hasty and ill- 
 instructed approximation on our part. Some check to 
 this will always be found in the force of public opinion, and 
 there are those who unintentionally do their best to keep 
 it sensitive and watchful. Extreme Anglicans will press 
 upon us the privilege of being annexed to them, and so 
 
14 Address at O petting of Conference. 
 
 becoming sharers of a Catholicity which consists in un- 
 churching one half of Christendom, and being unchurched 
 by the other. They will insist on recalling to the recollec- 
 tion of Scotsmen two periods, after the union of the crowns, 
 but not of the peoples or their parliaments, when the English 
 Church saw in the Scottish only a derelict bark which it 
 was their duty to take in charge. When the mariners 
 recovered from their surprise, it fared badly with the 
 prize-crew, and the story of the recapture is not forgotten 
 yet. 
 
 One great end contemplated by the Society is the 
 strengthening of belief Here she has nothing to disown. 
 She inscribes on the very front of her constitution that 
 her " general purpose is to defend and advance Catholic 
 doctrine as set forth in the ancient Creeds and embodied 
 in the Standards of the Church of Scotland." She conjoins 
 the ancient Creeds with our own, because Christianity is not 
 a local religion, but a faith for a lost world, and we cannot 
 cling too closely to anything that makes for unity among 
 the mere section of our race which has as yet received it. 
 The Apostles' Creed has been always accepted by us. It 
 was our baptismal creed till the Long Parliament procured 
 its suppression. It still forms part of our Catechism, wher- 
 ever that is printed without mutilation. As to the two 
 others, those who look with suspicion on them and on us 
 wall perhaps reverence the authority of Samuel Rutherford, 
 when he defines a confession S.e jure to be " what everyone 
 ought to believe, as the Nicene Creed, the Creed of Atha- 
 nasius " ("Due Right of Presbyteries," p. 131). 
 
 Of late a conviction has been deepening in many minds, 
 that as to doctrine, the Scottish Church had missed her way. 
 The divergence had not its origin within her own bounds. 
 A generation or more since, the young mind of the Church, 
 weary of the attempts made to quicken Christian life by 
 reviving the ecclesiastical politicalism of two hundred years 
 before, was averting its thoughts from the past. Its atten- 
 tion was caught by a movement abroad, which seemed to 
 
Address at Opening of Conference. 1 5 
 
 promise that men's understanding of Christianity would be 
 in the ratio of their distance from its source. The bonds 
 of creeds were strained or broken. The supernatural was 
 minimised or slighted. Holy Scripture was treated as a 
 challengeable record of the doings and speculations of men of 
 old. We heard more of thinkers than of believers, and to 
 think was to look within rather than above, to guess at the 
 future rather than sit at the feet of the past. It seems as 
 if of late this movement, so far as we felt it, has been 
 losing its dynamical impulse. The opinions have become 
 so common that the fascination of fresh adventure is gone. 
 Possibly some minds unconsciously cherished them all the 
 more because they kept them more apart from the Church's 
 keenest foes. But these are now following, nay, passing, them 
 in the race. While men here and there were beginning to 
 reconsider their theological position, a political question 
 arose which helped to turn their minds in the direction of 
 the past. There was a threat of assailing the Church for 
 the purpose of severing her alliance with the State. In 
 preparing themselves for her defence, they looked to her 
 foundations, and found that these did not rest only on 
 modern acts of legislation and ancient assignments of 
 property. Following her history back to the days when 
 the Son of God was on earth, they seemed to discern all 
 along its course the ascended Lord working through His 
 own consecrated agencies to guard those inmost verities of 
 His faith which His earlier servants embodied in their 
 creeds. This Society has proved to be a rallying point for 
 men not a few, who, apart from and unknown to each other, 
 had been dwelling on these matters in the spirit of the 
 divine precept which she has taken for motto, " Ask for the 
 old paths . . . and walk therein." 
 
 Let me speak of but one other topic. This Society 
 believes in Christian unity, and by consequence must 
 protest against schism. In doing so, it is prepared to find 
 itself at variance with much of current opinion. One of 
 the commonplaces of the time is to say that the essence 
 
1 6 Address at Opening of Conference. 
 
 of schism lies not so much in visible separation, as in bitter 
 partizanship, which has often existed where unity was 
 unbroken. But experience shows that every open breach 
 has had such partizanship for its preparative, and depends 
 on it for its continuance. The choice is not between two 
 evils, but between one of them singly and both in combina- 
 tion. The partizanship that causes no breach is likely to 
 disappear. The combatants die, or they live to discover 
 that they had misunderstood each other, or that the subject 
 of dispute was less vital than it seemed. But let a new 
 sect be organized in commemoration of it, and the evil is 
 perpetuated. Schism makes provision against the healing 
 virtue of time and charity. The fervid zeal which, be it 
 always remembered, had been generated within the forsaken 
 centre of brotherhood, cools down, but the unchristian 
 antipathy abides. The initial principles of the body are 
 belittled, then disowned, then forgotten. Other principles 
 are proclaimed. Denominational traditions and professional 
 interests grow up. Rights of property are created. Let 
 Scripture and reason testify as they may to the blessedness 
 of unity, and the hatefulness and harm of severance, the 
 personal identity of the sect must at all costs be saved. 
 And a little curbing of temper or vanity might have 
 prevented it all ! 
 
 Another popular form of speech is, " Our differences are 
 not about essentials." Does that lessen the particular fault 
 of schism or increase it ? Nothing short of a conviction 
 that they are contending for something essential gives 
 logical j ustification to those who create or prolong a state of 
 things forbidding brother Christians to be one in breaking 
 of bread and in prayer. Another and comparatively a 
 modern plea is that the antagonism of rival communions is 
 wholesome, and stimulates the zeal of all. So says the 
 world. But the Word saith, " Let nothing be done through 
 strife or vainglory." It is for the time a prevalent opinion 
 that in secular politics the community is best served by 
 the unceasing contention and alternate victory of parties. 
 
Address at Opening of Conference. i 7 
 
 Possibly ages hence men may be saying that tliis was not 
 the last word of wisdom in that field. However this is to 
 be, dare we apply the principle to the kingdom that is not 
 of this world ? It were profanity to associate it with that 
 kingdom's heavenly centre and home. But as regards the 
 present frame of things, how does it accord with almost the 
 last words spoken by the Master before He went forth to the 
 betrayal and the cross? " I pray for them that shall believe 
 on Me through their word, that they all may be one, as 
 Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may 
 be one in Us, that the world may believe- that Thou hast 
 sent Me." The world has not believed, and seems to 
 suspend its belief till we are one after the likeness of that 
 heavenly Unity. 
 
 And what is the ordinance chosen to be the safeguard of 
 this unheavenly disunion ? The Holy Communion itself. 
 All the conditions of alienation may be relaxed save this. 
 There may be occasional association in other acts of worship. 
 There may be co-operation in works of charity. But the 
 blessed Supper is reserved to be the test, the life of denomi- 
 nationalism. Surely all this ought to be reversed. Sacra- 
 mental unity and common worship ought to be conserved to 
 the last ; and within the limits of the great Creeds, some 
 scheme of doctrinal comprehension might be devised allow- 
 ing scope for the variations of opinion which will arise 
 among men. Then we should hear the last of some well- 
 worn platitudes. One hears it said, " We are all going the 
 same road." We are going to the same destination, let us 
 hope, but assuredly by different roads, because we cannot 
 walk together in unity. " We are all regiments of the same 
 army, with different uniforms but under one Captain." Are 
 they so, if in the presence of the enemy they are firing 
 into each other's ranks, and if some have been embodied 
 expressly to drive neighbouring bands from the positions 
 on which their leader had posted them. Men who can 
 understand the craft and the danger of an earthly tyrant's 
 maxim, divide et imijcra, are unwittingly fellow- workers 
 
 B 
 
1 8 Address at Opening of Conference. 
 
 with the great enemy of souls, acting on it with such fearful 
 success for the disintegration of the kingdom of Christ. 
 May God make use of us, and of all everywhere who see and 
 would abate these evils, that some at least of the wounds of 
 the body, the Church, may be healed. 
 
DEVOTIONAL LIFE: COMMUNION WITH GOD 
 AND COMMUNION IN GOD* 
 
 Rev. a. Wallace Williamson, M.A. 
 
 There is a special need in our time to emphasise the 
 devotional life ; and it is therefore fitting that we should 
 deal with this subject at the very beginning of our con- 
 ference. Indeed, it may be said, unless this subject be 
 the dominant note in our discussions we shall miss much, 
 and we shall fail to carry away with us, as we hope and 
 desire to do, a deeper sense of our consecration to the 
 service of God and of His Church. 
 
 It is a constant danger, but the circumstances of our 
 time make it more grave with us, — the danger of for- 
 getting that personal Communion with God is the one 
 thing needful in our Christian life. Whatever clouds and 
 obscures this closeness of fellowship is a hindrance not 
 merely to progress in the graces of the soul, but also to 
 the outward activities by which we are called to manifest 
 the reality of our inner life. It is not merely that we 
 lose in character, we lose in power. We may seem to do 
 more, there may be a greater number of apparent results, 
 but it is certain they will not be permanent, because they 
 lack that element which alone can keep them fresh. It is 
 true of every individual life that which is true of the 
 Church, as also in Nature. We cannot rise beyond our 
 source. If we are content with the water which we find 
 down in the low grounds, we must be content also to lose 
 
 * Notes of a paper which the writer was prevented through iUness from 
 preparing and reading at the Conference. 
 
 10 
 
20 Devotional Life : 
 
 the clearness, the vigour, the freshness of the mountain 
 height. 
 
 We must continually renew the spirit of our mind. 
 This is really the end and aim of the devotional life — to 
 keep in constant touch with God, to keep fresh and real 
 that union with Christ which has been assured to us 
 as members of His Body, and of which our whole life here 
 (and hereafter) can only be the gradual unfolding — the 
 branch, so to speak, ever more and more identifying itself 
 with the vine. In the spiritual life there must be as 
 constant, as close, as vital a fellowship as there is in 
 physical life between the head and its members. Of 
 course the analogy is difficult to carry out in detail, but it 
 is for practical purposes quite simple and intelligible. To 
 relax the devotional spirit is to wither and to be in danger 
 of dying altogether. As our Lord has said, " If a man 
 abide not in Me he is cast forth as a branch and withered." 
 
 Now, I think it will be admitted that if we have suffered 
 in Scotland on any side of our religious life it has been 
 undoubtedly on the devotional side that our loss has been 
 greatest. I do not say that we cannot point in our history 
 to many bright examples which may be mentioned with the 
 noblest saints of God in any land. But it will hardly be 
 contended that this has been characteristic of our religi- 
 ous life during the latest period of our history. A great 
 many satisfactory reasons for the fact may be given, but 
 the fact remains. Our religion has been aggressive and 
 argumentative. It has also too often been censorious. 
 And though it has been marked by great strength and 
 persistent advocacy of righteousness, it has very often lacked 
 that sweet persuasive force which is stronger than any 
 arsfument, that indescribable charm of the soul which comes 
 from habitual dwelling with God, habitual walking in what 
 St Paul calls the heavenly places. We have fed the intel- 
 lect and starved the heart. 
 
 On this matter it is needless to dwell. It is a patent 
 fact, and it applies not merely to the Christian people, but 
 
Commtmion with God and Com^mmion in God. 2 1 
 
 in the first place to the Christian ministry. There are few 
 of us who have not felt how much has been lost in power 
 and spiritual influence by the one-sided training which we 
 receive, and by the want of definite devotional habit 
 engrained as a part of our daily life, so as to make it 
 a constant walk with God. Looking at the whole matter 
 from this point of view, as it bears upon the ministry we 
 have surely much need to reproach ourselves, and to strive 
 to stir up each other to greater earnestness and greater 
 regularity, as well as to greater directness and reality in 
 the practice of devotion, in daily access to God through 
 our Lord Jesus Christ, who has not only called us in 
 common with all His people to manifest His life and 
 power, but has also commissioned us as His servants to 
 cherish His flock, to lead them and feed them with the 
 word of truth. Here, as in all matters, our Lord Him- 
 self, in His earthly life and by His presence, must be 
 our example and our guide. What was real to Him in 
 His divine life was real to him in His Human life also : 
 " I am in the Father, and the Father in Me," 
 
 There is thus a very important distinction involved in the 
 twofold title of this paper which it is well to consider. 
 " Communion with God " is one thing', " Communion in 
 God " is another thing, but the one phrase without the 
 other is an imperfect expression of the full idea of Christian 
 Devotion. Each by itself is liable to misunderstanding. 
 When " Communion with God " is spoken of, it is apt to 
 suggest to many minds a vague meditative tendency, often 
 going no further than an indefinite longing which is easily 
 satisfied, and which rather relaxes than invigorates the 
 spiritual powers. On the other hand, the phrase " Com- 
 munion in God " may seem to indicate an idea of personal 
 absorption in the Being of the Eternal which is alien to the 
 teaching of the Church, and which cuts at the root of true 
 devotion. As our Confession says : — " This Communion 
 which the saints have with Christ doth not make them in 
 any wise partakers of the substance of His Godhead." In 
 
22 Devotional Life : 
 
 fact there can be no consistent grasp of the one conception 
 without the other. To attain Communion with God in the 
 Christian sense we must realise our Communion in God. 
 Our life is, as the Apostle describes it, " hid with Christ in 
 God." 
 
 The importance of the distinction will be seen at 
 once, when we consider its bearing upon the Scriptural 
 view of the Church and of the life of the individual. 
 The devotional life of the Church is a constant realisa- 
 tion of this twofold Communion. The tendency of the 
 first to pass into vagueness, and to become mere religious 
 dreaming, is corrected by the second, which specialises the 
 relation of the soul to God and to our brethren as a definite 
 personal fellowship. Into this fellowship we have entered, 
 and the seal of our Sonship has been set upon us, in virtue 
 of our calling and standing in the Church. Our whole 
 progress in the Christian life must be an unfolding of what 
 is implied in this sacred fellowship. Communion in 
 God must express itself through Communion with God, 
 and the richer our Communion with Him, the closer and 
 warmer and deeper will be our Communion in Him. 
 
 I can conceive no graver loss to the definiteness of our 
 devotional life than the falling away which is so prevalent 
 among us from clear views as to the relation in which we 
 stand through our Baptism, and by conscious faith, to our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and in Him to God the Father. Apart 
 altogether from any special view as to the value and 
 purpose of that Holy Sacrament, it has this great power 
 to the soul, that it assures us by a visible token of our 
 giving up " unto God through Jesus Christ to walk in 
 newness of life." Devotion on the part of the^Christian is 
 thus the expression of his union to God, and that not 
 merely in prayer but in all the acts of his life. It is the 
 unfolding in one very important aspect of what is involved 
 in his ingrafting into Christ. For this is the special dis- 
 tinction of our faith, that it offers Communion with God 
 through Communion in God. Communion with God is the 
 
Coinnmiiion ivitk God a7id Cominunion in God. 23 
 
 aim of every I'orm of religion. Communiou in God is the 
 special gift of Christ to His people. "All saints that are 
 united to Jesus Christ their head by His Spirit, and by 
 faith, have fellowship with Him in His graces, sufferings, 
 death, resurrection, and glory" (Confession of Faith, Cap. 
 26). The Incarnation of our Lord, with all which it in- 
 volves, is the great fact which solves for us the mystery 
 of our fellowship with God, for it brings us into living 
 touch with God through our own nature, which He has 
 taken to Himself 
 
 And if we in this Society have any message to ourselves 
 and to our brethren it must begin here. It must simply 
 take us back to the Incarnate Lord, through whom we are 
 lifted again into the life of God. It must not declare that 
 there is no Communion with God vouchsafed to the human 
 soul beyond the ordinances of the Church, forgetting that 
 the influences of the Eternal Spirit come to us in many 
 secret w^ays. But it must affirm that we have no right 
 to expect the guidance and comfort of God's Spirit in our 
 devotional life if we neglect the means that are open. 
 When we hear of that "still communion which transcends 
 the imperfect offices of praise and prayer," we seem to enter 
 a region where the wayfaring man cannot follow. To the 
 vast majority of human souls such communion is as a sealed 
 book. As Christians we know that " prayers and praises 
 are the mode of our intercourse with the next world," and 
 that God grants to us through such communion His divine 
 grace. But we know also, that He has called us into His 
 Church, and has incorporated us into the Body of Christ, 
 and has assured to us by word and sacrament spiritual 
 nourishment and growth in Him. And so our full message 
 as to the secret of the devotional life, is not merely Com- 
 munion with God, or Communion in God, but Communion 
 with God through Communion in God ; " our fellowship is 
 with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ," 
 
 I am sure that this subject must be felt by all of us to 
 be a proper beginning for the work which is to occupy us 
 
2 4 Devotional L ifc. 
 
 at this Conference. Whatever direction our thoughts may 
 take, Avhatever practical effect we may seek to give them, 
 these are hut the stream of which true devotion to God is 
 the fountainhead. From this everything real in our life 
 must flow, and to this everything real must return. To 
 breathe this ampler air is to grow in the divine life. But 
 there is a special reason why this subject of the devotional 
 life should take with us the first place. It is the Apostolic 
 order. In the Epistle to the Ephesians, the Epistle in 
 which, above all, the full conception of the Cliurch is set 
 forth, a stream of devotion flows through the whole argu- 
 ment. It is, so to speak, steeped in the spirit of prayer. 
 The Apostle begins with an ardent burst of praise and 
 then passes into an earnest supplication from which he never 
 seems to break off, though somehow he Las carried his 
 readers on to consider all the great truths of the faith, 
 culminating and combining in the truth which is the key- 
 note of all his teachinof, — Christ " the Head over all thins's 
 to the Church, which is His Body, the fulness of Him that 
 filleth all in all." Now, if there be one aim of our present 
 Conference, it is surely this, to emphasise the same great 
 truth, to bring out and to make more clear the divine 
 basis and supernatural life of the Church, to show its bear- 
 ing upon the various departments of individual and social 
 life, to endeavour to stir up in ourselves and in our brethren 
 a more living sense of the spiritual power which the 
 Church possesses, in virtue of its relation to its Ascended 
 Lord, to deal with every problem which humanity can 
 present. This is exactly the aim of the Apostle in the great 
 Epistle of the Church. And we do well to approach it in 
 his spirit — the spirit of individual con.secration to God, 
 and of fellowship in the Body of Christ — the spirit expressed 
 in the words which wo would here take as our own, " For 
 this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and 
 earth is named." 
 
DEVOTIONAL LIFE: COMMUNION WITH GOD 
 AND COMMUNION IN GOD. 
 
 Rev. H. J. WoTHERSPOON, M.A. 
 
 1. The whole Christian Hfe is of course a life of devotion; 
 but I take the expression " devotional life " in its restricted 
 sense, as meaning that life which is the link between the 
 inner life, lived in the deep thoughts of the soul, and the ex- 
 ternal Christian life, lived before men, whether in the fellow- 
 ship of ordinance, in good works, or in the daily occupation 
 and conflict of the world. It is a life of action, embodied 
 in things done, exercises performed, acts fulfilled — but 
 personal, private, individual, and as between the man and 
 God. It is not the inner life, which can be seen of none but 
 God ; the devotional life is a life which might be seen, but 
 is not suffered to be seen, being for God only, and of the man 
 himself only — his personal exercise of himself, for the realisa- 
 tion and proof and discipline of his inward faith and resolution, 
 in order that he may fulfil them strongly and unswerv- 
 ingly in the Church and before the world ; but also, and 
 still more, it is his effort to be his own offering to God ; 
 it is the cultivation of his own delight in God, as he 
 sets out, for no other eyes than his own and those of 
 God, that secret of the Lord, which is with them that 
 fear Him.* 
 
 It is the life for which Christ has given direction, when 
 He said, " When thou doest alms . . . When thou prayest 
 . . . When ye fast." t He has Himself taught us what is 
 the nature of the devotional life, what its parts, what its 
 
 * Ps. XXV. 14. t St Matt. vi. 2, 5, 7, 16. 
 
26 Devotional Life : 
 
 necessity, its order, and its reserve. Its nature is that 
 of sacrifice offered to God : consecration in act to Him 
 of what is most personal to ourselves, our possessions, 
 our bodies, our spirits. It is so needful, that it is taken 
 for granted, as essential to His Disciple : Christ does not 
 say "If ye do these things," but "When ye do tliem." 
 It is so needful, that He Himself thus dwelt with God, 
 and thus too was offered to Him. Our blessed Lord 
 fasted ; He spent nights in prayer ; of His poverty some- 
 thing was secretly " given to the poor." * He indicates, 
 too, the essential character of devotional life, as lived 
 under rule. Not under law — for it is an offering, a 
 chosen communion ; not enforced by commandment or 
 governed by precept; yet evidently deliberate, done with 
 forethought and purpose, prepared and resolved ; in nothing 
 left to occasional impulse or uncertain humour. Finally, 
 He emphasises its secrecy, as for God only ; for love of 
 Him, and out of desire for Him ; for His knowledge who 
 " seeth in secret." ^ 
 
 2. The devotional life has its point of contact with 
 the active life, inasmuch as it is a search for power — 
 the power which is drawn from God in communion of 
 life with Him ; as our Lord Himself sought and found 
 it by fasting and prayer and watching before each crisis 
 of His ministry, t These are the hidden roots of the 
 soul's life, by which it has vigour to bear its fruits in 
 the open sunlight. By prayer without ceasing, by self- 
 denials and acts of love, kept for God's sole knowledge, 
 its thoughts and habits and affections are knit into sub- 
 stantive fellowship with its Lord. It is trained to abide 
 in Him, disciplined from wandering, practised in the use 
 of grace, moulded into conformity to His mind. In this 
 the soul furnishes itself to the Holy Spirit, as a prepared 
 channel for His activity, by yielding, not itself only, but 
 
 * St John xiii. 29. t St Matt. vi. 4, 6 18. 
 
 X St Matt. iv. 1, 2 ; St Luke vi. 12, 13 ; St Matt. xiv. 23 ; St Jolinvi. 15 ; 
 St Matt. xxvi. 36-44, &c. 
 
Coimnunion zuith God and Communion in God. I'j 
 
 the members with it, to be the instruments of God's 
 righteousness unto holiness ; * offering the body, and the 
 bodily, the concrete life, in living sacrifice.*!- 
 
 The heart is assured before God through the devotional 
 life that its love is not in word or in tongue, but in 
 deed and in truth ; | we are aware of God, with Whom 
 for ourselves we have to do, to Whom for ourselves we are 
 offered and minister, trimming the lights that burn only 
 for His eyes ; presenting the incense, and laying out the 
 shewbread, in the veiled holy jjlace, which is empty 
 except for His presence and our ministry. We are con- 
 scious of Christ when, alone with Him, we have sat at His 
 feet and heard His word, § 
 
 Thus the devotional is the nourishment of faith — 
 the faith to which all things are possible. It is the 
 source of confidence ; we are able to believe, able to 
 witness for God and to act for Christ, as we go from 
 actual communion with God in Christ, ourselves with 
 God, to work the works of God, and to name the name 
 of Christ. These things are then real, true ; not con- 
 ventions or officialities : we know it, when our own private 
 and hidden life is filled with God and active in Christ. 
 " If tliou canst believe," Christ has said, " all thing's 
 are possible to him that believeth." || But it is difficult 
 to believe in mere belief of our own, which receives 
 no concrete expression in act of devotion or sacrifice ; and 
 as difficult to believe in what is only public and agreed 
 between man and man, and has nothing corresponding 
 to it in the individual activity. It is in the devotional, 
 active and embodied, yet secret and personal, that faith 
 becomes conscious of itself, and grows to the confidence 
 of power. 
 
 The devotional is the source of power in a higher way — 
 as consecrating, protecting against evil, sanctifying. IT Not 
 by itself; not unless growing out of the heart's deep con- 
 
 *Rom. vi. 19. t Rom. xii, 1. +1 John iii. 19. 
 
 § St Luke X. 39. f| St Mark ix. 23. IT St John xvii. 19. 
 
2 8 Devotional Life : 
 
 viction and the inward obedience of faitli ; not without 
 the supernatural nourishment which is found only in the 
 sacramental life of the corporate Church ; and not without 
 the diligence of evangelical fervour to do the will of God 
 and bear the cross and fight the good fight in the world. 
 But central among all these things, where the soul dwells 
 in the secret place of the Most High and abides under the 
 shadow of the Almighty ; * from which it goes, guarded 
 and armed to pass safely through temptation ; fervent in 
 the spirit to take its place in the Church's life of w^orship 
 and work ; patient, and filled with courage to stand in 
 the day of trial ; strong to do the work of God, wiiatever 
 be allotted. 
 
 3, If to-day we accuse ourselves of powerlessness and 
 uncertainty — powerlessness to accomplish tasks which 
 more and more we recognise as our charge, and our charge 
 unfulfilled — uncertainty before problems, which more and 
 more we feel are those for which we, and no others, should 
 give the answer ; if too often we find ourselves perplexed 
 and silent in face of the world which we are called to heal 
 and comfort — is not our neglect of the province of the de- 
 votional life at least one cause which we may well regard ? 
 
 " Lord, why could not we cast him out ? " " This kind 
 goeth not out but by jirayer and fasting. "t Is not that 
 our case ? Might not Christ's answer be the same to us, 
 confounded before our statistics of non-Churchgoing or 
 intemperance, as it was to those Disciples ? We have 
 looked in every direction for sources of power rather than 
 to those which Christ has indicated — these, if we have 
 not despised, we have ignored. Where are they in the 
 programme of our Church to-day for her need ? We have 
 looked to the attractive, not to the devotional — not to 
 fasting and prayer, but to elocution and feasting, eloquence 
 of discourse, "improvement of worship," and endless catering 
 for popular amusement ; as if by such means the demons 
 of indifference and Godlessness are to be exorcised. We 
 ♦ Ps, xci. 1. t St Matt. .wii. 19, 21. 
 
Covin nmion with God and Comimmion in God. 29 
 
 have trusted to the outward— to what we may do, rather 
 than to what we might be. We have forgotten the per- 
 fecting of the instrument ; or if we have thought of it, it 
 has been to seek the perfecting in multiplied agencies, 
 elaborated machinery, skilfully devised novelties of organisa- 
 tion, rather than in a deeper holiness or a nearer life of 
 communion Avith God. We have forgotten the ancient 
 conviction of the Church that saintliness is the source of 
 power in God. 
 
 4. If we are to return to any cultivation of the devotional 
 life, we must regard it, not only as a life of communion 
 with God, but of communion with one another in God. 
 The life by which we live is so essentially corporate 
 and not individual, that even the individual devotion, the 
 secret and private devotion, requires the support of con- 
 scious fellowship. Though this be a path which each 
 must tread alone, it should be to us a beaten path in which 
 we tread confidently, because it is marked by the tread of 
 the redeemed of all the Christian ages. As sheep we have 
 gone astray, and as sheep we return and are folded and 
 find pasture.* That is the nature of the flock of God, and 
 we cannot change it. I do not say that it is impossible to 
 work out a devotional rule of life for oneself, or impossible 
 to adhere to it — many a one has been forced to discover 
 the principles which I have tried to express, and to formu- 
 late them, each for himself, in some shape, better or worse, 
 and to try at least to practise them : but I do say that it 
 is difficult to do so. Is there any function more proper 
 to the Church than to say to her children, of this as of 
 public devotion, " This is the way, walk ye in it " ? The 
 devotional life is essentially a life of rule — a life ordered 
 and seeking a right order to which to conform ; a life 
 strengthened by the sense that the rule followed in secret 
 is yet a bond in Christ to those who are also exercising 
 themselves in the same warfare and to the same ends. 
 After these ages is there no experience of the saints of God ? 
 * 1 Pet. ii. 25; St John x. 9. 
 
30 Devotional L ife. 
 
 Has the Church proved no method \ Is there no counsel, 
 no gathered store of discipline and custom, wise way and 
 tried practice and consecrated formula ? Our Lord has 
 left warrant and canon : " When ye pray, say, ' Our 
 Father.' " Have we nothing of counselled petition self- 
 examination or intercession to build on that foundation ? 
 Must each be left, not only to be his own teacher in these 
 things, not only unhelped to persevere ; but actually un- 
 advised of the need of any devotional life ? 
 
 There are those here who have received the current 
 Christian education, and besides it the usual preparation 
 for the work of the ministry — who at least, if any, might 
 have been subjects of care to the Churcli in this matter ; 
 each will know for himself how much (either beforehand, 
 or in the years of registered study for license to preach the 
 Gospel of God, or subsequently during probation, or since 
 in their inexperienced efforts to find for themselves a way 
 of bearing the burden of charge laid upon him) was spoken 
 to himself of any devotional life — of rule, method, or 
 practice therein — what word concerning ''alms, fasting, or 
 prayer," the three great provinces in which that personal 
 discipline must lie. Our experience of a training for the 
 ministry is not perhaps always such as to lead one to expect 
 any very diligent care for the devotional life of the flock in 
 general. 
 
 God grant that this, among many undone things, may 
 return upon the conscience of our beloved Church. It 
 cannot be laid to her charge that she has said, " I am rich 
 and increased with goods and have need of nothing."* She 
 has sought, and is daily finding, a fuller realisation of the 
 holy calling and blessed responsibility which are upon her. 
 In this also may she own and fulfil her motherhood to us. 
 Any strong and general devotional life must be a life aided 
 and guided — one in which we are aware of sanction, order, 
 and a bond to others — so that, alone with God, we may 
 still " have fellowship one with another ; "f and when we 
 pray, say " Oxiv Father." 
 
 * Kev. iii. 17, t 1 John i. 7. 
 
NATIONAL RELIGION ; ITS PRINCIPLES AND 
 POSSIBLE EMBODIMENTS. 
 
 The Very Rev. George Hutchison, D.D. 
 
 Let me explain, first of all, what we are to understand by- 
 National Religion. It means the profession of religion on 
 the part of a community bound together as a state or 
 nation. This implies two things — a doing honour to God, 
 and a making use of His truth and laws for the good of 
 the people. And what we are to maintain is that National 
 Religion, in this sense of it, is a right and a good thing, 
 and therefore an obligatory thing so far as the circumstances 
 of a nation allow of it. 
 
 The man who believes in God and in certain things as 
 made known by Him, will feel bound to confess Him, and 
 also to avail himself of the benefits implied in such a 
 belief If he is the head of a family, he will show his 
 religion in that character, both as towards God and as 
 towards those who are subject to his authority and in- 
 lluence. If he is an employer of labour, with a number 
 of people under him in whom he feels an interest, and who 
 are, in certain respects, accountable to him, he cannot surely 
 be blamed, he cannot be said to be going out of his way, he 
 cannot be thought of as acting any other than a good and 
 praiseworthy part, if he puts himself to some trouble and 
 expense, as far as circumstances admit, to enable them to 
 turn religion to practical account in a larger measure than 
 they would be able to do if left entirely to their own re- 
 sources. It is no abrupt, unnatural, illogical step we take 
 when we pass from this to any wider community, such as a 
 
32 National Religion : its Principles 
 
 state or nation. We have the same fundamental principles 
 on this much larger scale — interest, power, influence, on the 
 part of those who rule in regard to those who are under 
 them. 
 
 We are thus far assuming that the great mass of the 
 people are believers in God, and in the more outstanding of 
 the doctrines which we connect with His name. In tliis 
 case, would it not be thought inconsistent, unnatural, un- 
 accountable to a degree, if on so great an occasion, for 
 example, as the ascension of a sovereign to the throne, 
 there should be no express recognition of God, the Fountain 
 of Power by whom kings reign, and the source of all 
 good for nations as such, not less than for the individuals 
 and the families of which nations are composed ? Are we 
 not entitled to expect that he should be held bound by 
 oath to God to be faithful to so high a trust, and that he 
 should be commended to God by prayer — such prayer as 
 would prove continuous both in private and in public 
 throughout the land ; and this on the simple ground of 
 the reasonableness of the case, and even had we no such 
 sanction as we find in the words of the apostle who exhorts 
 us in a special manner to " make supplications, and prayers, 
 and intercessions for kings and for all that are in authority." 
 Now, that is National Religion even were thei-e nothing 
 more ; and those who object to the principle of National 
 Religion are bound to object to what we have just been 
 saying, and to maintain that on occasion of such an event 
 as we have singled out there ought to be nothing higher 
 than a mere secular demonstration. Thus, as the making 
 and the executing of law, as well as the whole of the 
 administration of government, are virtually bound up 
 in the supreme authority, and are the practical exercise 
 and application of it, it follows that religion may reason- 
 ably penetrate through every branch and pore of public life. 
 
 Thus far I am assuming that the mass of the people 
 receive religion as true, and substantially the same religion. 
 But now I may be asked what about the minority, perhaps 
 
and Possible Eiiibodimeiits. 'i,'^ 
 
 a very considerable one, who do not agree with them ? Are 
 they to be compelled to acquiesce in all this ? Can this be 
 done without coercing conscience ? I have no desire to 
 impugn the conscience of the infidel, much less the con- 
 science of the voluntary religionist, both of whom occupy 
 the same ground in relation to the principle in hand. We 
 have no wish to impugn conscience in the case of either of 
 these parties. But may we be allowed to suggest, with all 
 deference, that conscience is not the monopoly of any person 
 or of any party. Neither is it confined to questions of 
 religion strictly so called. There is surely such a thing as 
 righteousness in secular affairs ; and is not this a thing with 
 which conscience has to do ? It is a principle which is 
 constantly coming up in legislation. Such and such a 
 proposal is right and just in the estimation of one set of 
 men and the reverse in the estimation of others. What is 
 to be done in a case of that kind ? Either there must be a 
 standstill, or the will of the majority must have its way ! 
 It is only on this latter principle that society is possible ; 
 the majority must prevail. The life of a nation is not to 
 come to a stand because this or that minority may be over 
 sensitive — so very conscientious as to fancy that there is no 
 conscience anywhere but among themselves and in their own 
 party. 
 
 The advocates of National Religion profess to be very 
 strong on certain questions to which conscience is fairly 
 applicable, if applicable anywhere. Let us take an example. 
 All will admit that, as regards crime, prevention is in every 
 sense better than cure. And there are very few who will 
 deny that there is a light and a strength in religion which 
 go a long way in favour of law and order, and that those 
 who are left without them are the most liable to fall into 
 disorder and crime. If this be so, is it the part of a 
 government of any pretensions to wisdom, or justice, or 
 humanity to say, " We have nothing to do with what is 
 called religion, or with any light or strength which it may 
 be capable of supplying : if these poor people want anything 
 
 C 
 
34 National Religion : its Principles 
 
 of that kind, let them find it for themselves, or let the 
 philanthropists find it for them : it is no business of ours. 
 We have only to tell these people that if they break our 
 ]aws — religion or no religion — thev shall smart for it; 
 that is all." AVhat are we to say to this ? To withhold 
 from a number of poor struggling people well known and 
 well tried means of preventing crime, and means allowed to 
 be of great power in securing the right discharge of the 
 duties of citizenship, and then to punish them for their 
 offences as unmercifully as if those means had been put 
 within their reach — is that fair ? is it just ? is it a thing to 
 commend itself to the conscience of any one whose conscience 
 is worthy of the name ? In a case of that kind, who is the 
 chief offender in the sight of the Highest ? Is it the poor 
 waif ? or is it those who leave him to his fate ? The con- 
 science of the National Religionist protests against any 
 theory of which that is the outcome. We are to leave all 
 this to the philanthropist — are we ? And who is he ? The 
 evangelist, no doubt, who tells the State that he will have 
 nothing to do with it, and that it has no standing in such 
 matters. And yet this same evangelist, as is well known, 
 turns his back upon the people as soon as they become too 
 poor to make him comfortable, and betakes himself to more 
 pleasant places where he is not required. And not only so, 
 but he wants the State to do as he has done — to retire from 
 the field and leave the people in utter destitution. That 
 is the cry which was never louder than at this day, namely, 
 that the very slender means in the form of a provision for 
 religious worship and teaching in connection with the old 
 parish churches shall be withdrawn, even in the most 
 destitute localities, and that the poor people shall be left as 
 helpless by the country as they are by the impotence of 
 voluntaryism. 
 
 This suggests the question of Endowments as one of the 
 common adjuncts of National Religion. We need not say 
 that religious endowments, founded in our own time, are 
 recognised and protected by law just as much as any other 
 
and Possible Embodiments. 35 
 
 kind of property. No one will deny that religion has as 
 good a right to its property as any other interest in the 
 country. If we go back to the early days of the Church in 
 Scotland we find more or less of Church property existing, 
 whether as the increment of the rude soil on which ecclesi- 
 astics had expended labour, or as the benefactions of pious 
 members of the Church, or as gifts from the proprietors of 
 land for the support of those who ministered in matters of 
 religion to themselves and their dependents. The property 
 which thus became attached to religion in those early days 
 was quite as fairly acquired as any of thg possessions in the 
 hands of those secular or lay owners of property in the 
 midst of whom it exercised its functions. There has been a 
 continuation of this, in one form or other, with many changes 
 and modifications down to the present time, Eeligion has 
 never been without property. In this respect it has all 
 along been on a level with the other great interests of the 
 country. It is on a level with them at this day. And 
 the question I put is this : Is there any reason in justice — 
 anything that can commend itself to any fair and intelligent 
 mind — why religion should be stripped of its property any 
 more than that other proprietors, whether private or public, 
 should be stripped of theirs ? Perhaps I shall be told that 
 religion is very much changed from what it was in the days 
 when its property was acquired either under the Celtic 
 Church or under the Church of Rome. In answer to that, 
 I say that it is religion still — a thing which has to do with 
 God and immortality, a power which ministers to the higher 
 part of our being, and that not only without interfering 
 with our interests in the present world, but also tending to 
 the furtherance of those interests both in the case of the 
 individual and of society ; so that in this view its right to 
 its property cannot be fairly challenged on the ground of 
 any change that has taken place in certain of its doctrines 
 and practices. Let me give an illustration of this. Take 
 the case of a chair of astronomy, founded in the old days of 
 that science when many errors were mixed up with it. As 
 
36 National Religion : its Principles 
 
 time went on, those errors (many of them at least) were 
 cleared aAvay, and the teaching that came to be given from 
 the chair was very different from the old teaching. Would 
 any reasonable man say that such a change as that would 
 justify the confiscation of the original endowment of the 
 chair, and its application to some other purpose for which 
 it was never intended ? And so as to religion. And it is 
 of this, observe, that I am speaking — not of this or that 
 particular branch of the Church, but of religion — and what 
 I say is that religion in one form or other has as good a 
 right, as valid and indefeasible a right to its property as 
 the owner of any field, or farm, or territory in the country 
 has to his. To take it away would be an act of injustice as 
 clear and undeniable as it would be to take away the 
 possessions of those secular proprietors. To spoil the one 
 and to leave the others in possession would be nothing less 
 than robbery. 
 
 Will a man rob God ? Can he do so with impunity ? 
 The State, in the eye of voluntaryism, has nothing to do 
 with the Bible ; yet the Bible, for all that, may have some- 
 thing to do with the State. And even in these days, now 
 near the close of this nineteenth century, there are multi- 
 tudes in this land to whom the words of an Old Testament 
 prophet are not a dead letter, but in very truth a voice 
 from the living God. And it is for the Church of Scotland 
 to proclaim it far and near, as with the sound of a trumpet, 
 that religion — I do not say this or that Church, or this or 
 that denomination — has as clear and undoubted a right to 
 its property as any other interest in the country, any art or 
 science, any institution, any agency whose services are still 
 required. Defend your Church as you may ; but let us not 
 forget that there is much more at stake than that. The 
 defence of religion — the vindication of its ancient rights 
 as one of the oldest and most outstanding interests in the 
 land — that is the battle, more than all, to which you are 
 summoned. " Will a man rob God ? " Will he do so in 
 any case ? Least of all, surely, in a case like this, where it 
 
and Possible Embodiments. 2>7 
 
 would throw burdens upou the poor from which they have 
 been always free, and when the spoil, to the extent at least 
 of £40,000 a year, in the name of Church buildings, would 
 be thrown into the hands of those who do not ask it, and 
 who do not need it, sharing as they do the broad acres of 
 Scotland among them. Will a man thus so rob God as to 
 make the rich richer and the poor poorer ? Will a man, will 
 a State thus rob God, and with impunity ? No ; never. 
 Will a man rob God ? Let that be your watchword. 
 
 You are met with a cry on the other side ; and what is 
 that ? Religious Equality. Do those wlio use the phrase 
 understand what it means ? If religious equity, or equity 
 in matters of religion, is what they mean^ we have that 
 already in the toleration which is given to religious pro- 
 fession, and teaching, and worship of whatever kind, so long 
 as it does not interfere with the good order of society. The 
 only other meaning it can have is equality among all in 
 matters of religion; and in that sense it brings the Christian 
 down to the level of the infidel, so that the nation in its 
 national character, in its national institutions, in its national 
 acts, must ignore religion altogether, or, in other words, treat 
 it as a mere nonentity not worth minding. That is the 
 plain English of it if the words have any meaning at all. 
 It is of immense importance that this should be made 
 clear ; and therefore I would represent it in some such way 
 as this : — 
 
 Religious equality, let us suppose, is a sovereign lady 
 sitting on a throne, her face full of good-nature, but not 
 without a dash of weakness. There comes into her presence, 
 first of all, a band of Nonconformist Presbyterians, and 
 they are there to claim it as their right to have the 
 National Church brought down from her high position 
 and put on a level with themselves. All right, she says ; 
 and down goes the Church to be as they are. They with- 
 draw full of joy, and they have gone but a short way when 
 they meet with another company going up on a similar errand 
 — Unitarians, and Jews, and others of various names ; and 
 
38 National Religion : its Principles 
 
 what these ask of lier gracious majesty is that all those 
 Presbyterians, old and new, young and old together, shall 
 be brought down from the place they occupy, so orthodox, 
 so unimpeachable, and ranged side by side with them ; one 
 of the effects of which would be that the Jewish Sabbath 
 would have to be recognised and protected by law just as 
 much as the Christian Sabbath, or that the Christian Sabbath 
 should cease to have any legal recognition at all ; so that 
 either we should have two Sabbaths in the week, which 
 would be one too many, or no Sabbath at all, which would 
 be one too few. But leaving that to lie over, the request 
 is granted, and the petitioners retire. The good news 
 spread, and by-and-bye a third party appears, composed 
 of infidels or atheists, or whatever you may choose to call 
 them ; and the claim of right presented by them is just as 
 valid in the eyes of the gracious lady as either of the two 
 claims she has just disposed of ; and their demand, which 
 is nothing less than to have all those various sections of 
 religionists brought down to the blank level of no religion, 
 or a denial of all religion, which is the lowest level of all, 
 is at once complied with. The religion of the nation as a 
 nation — what we call National Religion — is thus effaced by 
 means of two or three movements of the sceptre of this 
 imperial lady, with the high-sounding name of Eeligious 
 Equality. Yes ; religion must come to have no place in 
 any of the institutions of the country — such as the throne, 
 the legislature, the courts of justice, army and navy, school 
 and college, jail and penitentiary, and so on — and all this, 
 why ? Lest it should offend the infidel. The property of 
 religion — its ancient pati'imony — must be secularised, and 
 why ? In order that it may be shared with the infidel. In 
 this view, we can understand how, at the annual meeting 
 of one of the voluntary denominations in the month of May 
 1S82, two of its leading men were not ashamed to beckon to 
 the infidels all over the land, to come forward and help them 
 in their attacks on the Church of Scotland. 
 
 To hear some people talk, one would think it is a grand 
 
and Possible Embodiments. 39 
 
 thing to be an infidel now-a-days. But is he quite sure 
 that those new friends of his are as sincere as they are loud 
 in their professions ? They are no doubt quite sincere in the 
 cry of Religious Equality, so far as it brings those who are 
 above them down to their own level ; but are they indeed 
 consumed with the desire of going down to the level of those 
 who are below them ? In the case of the unthinking: 
 multitude the cry is a delusion — a cry and nothing more ; 
 in the case of those who know better, it is an imposition and 
 a sham. The man who trusts those people is to be pitied 
 indeed. Poor man ! As soon as they have made their 
 own use of him, he will be cast aside and left lamentinsf. 
 How did they treat the secularist in the school controversy ? 
 Secularism was everything with those Religious-Equality 
 men ; but as soon as a Bill was so far forward as to be safe, 
 they grasped at the old " use and wont " of religious 
 education, and left the secularist in the mire. And how is 
 it to be with the secularism of the same men in the question 
 of Church endowments ? What if, on a Bill gettinsf so 
 far on as to seem safe, they turn round and say, " Never 
 mind the disposal of the funds at present ; that can easily 
 be taken up afterwards ; there is a good time coming." 
 Alas for the poor secularist ! Has he taken the bribe for 
 nothing ? He is thinking of his cottage and his plot of 
 ground on the old parish glebe, with ample room for any 
 number, and lo ! it is but a dream. 
 
NATIONAL RELIGION: ITS PRINCIPLES AND 
 POSSIBLE EMBODIMENTS. 
 
 Rev. Roger S. Kirkpatrick, B.D, 
 
 The time at my disposal is so brief, that t shall content 
 myself with simply stating three propositions and adding 
 a few words under each. 
 
 I. The principle for which we contend is that the State, 
 as the organ of a Christian nation, must recognise the 
 sovereignty of God in Christ, and must interpret its 
 duties and responsibilities in the light of the Christian 
 Revelation. 
 
 In order to avoid ambiguity, I use the word State. 
 Confusion is often introduced by the use of the word 
 nation, which is understood sometimes as a synonym for 
 State, sometimes as a synonym for people. When, for 
 instance, we are met with the objection that national 
 religion does not consist in coronation services, public 
 ceremonials, an Established Church, that national religion 
 must rather be sought for in the hearts and lives of the 
 masses of the people, the two senses of the word nation 
 are confounded, and the distinction between national and 
 personal religion is ignored. Of course a nation is not truly 
 religious unless the masses of its people are religious. 
 That everyone admits. It is simply an assertion of the 
 universal obligation of personal religion. But a nation 
 is not merely a multitude of people. It is an organized 
 body. It lives a corporate life. And our contention is 
 that, both as representing and as directing that corporate 
 life, the State itself must be ruled by considerations of 
 
42 National Religion : Its Principles 
 
 religion, must cast its crown at the feet of the King Invisible, 
 and employ its sceptre in obedience to His sway. This 
 principle is founded on the truth that there is no power 
 but of God, and that God has exalted His Son to be 
 Prince of the kings of the earth. Now national sccalarism 
 is the one practical alternative to this principle. And 
 between national religion and national secularism the 
 choice virtually lies. That a nation, hostile or indifferent 
 to religion, should choose the latter principle, would 
 indeed cause us no surprise. But that a nation, by 
 origin, tradition and profession Christian, should ever 
 dream of renouncing the former principle in order to 
 adopt the latter is simply monstrous. Its choice might 
 perhaps to some extent be justified if the responsibilities 
 of the State were really so light and inconsiderable as 
 certain doctrines of political economy once represented 
 them to be. But both in theory and in practice such 
 doctrines of laisser faire have been discredited. And, 
 under the pressure of advancing Socialism, larger con- 
 ceptions of the responsibilities of the State prevail. Because 
 the State is " the supreme society," because the welfare 
 of the people is its care, because by its laws and institu- 
 tions it influences, and cannot fail to influence, the character 
 and destiny of millions, its manifold activity, strictly 
 political though that activity be, must proceed upon 
 assumptions that transcend the sphere of politics, upon 
 assumptions that immediately relate to the importance 
 and solemn end of human life. Now what in the case 
 of a Christian State should these assumptions be ? Not 
 surely the secularist assumption that temporal interests 
 are all-engrossing. Not merely the ethical assumption 
 that moral interests are of higher rank. But this impera- 
 tive assumption, that every individual man (and therefore 
 society at large) has eternal interests to be cared for, 
 interests that must on no account be prejudiced, interests 
 so infinitely precious that for them the Son of God laid 
 down His life. This, then, is our assertion : — A power 
 
and Possible Ejubodiments. 43 
 
 so vast aud influential as that wielded by the State, 
 a power which touches, at so many thousand points, the 
 highest interests of the masses of the people, dare not on 
 any Christian theory safely venture to ignore religion, 
 cannot on any Christian theory be left ungoverned and 
 unhallowed Vjy it. 
 
 " A King we need, one who at least shall see 
 That city's towers, where dwells true Righteousness." 
 
 TI. The principle for which we contend may certainly 
 find partial embodiments without any institution of an 
 Established Church ; but the main arguments at present 
 urged in favour of Disestablishment are equally valid 
 against all embodiments of the principle. 
 
 All possible embodiments of national religion may be 
 ranged under the two heads of homage to Almighty God and 
 service in God's name to men, which constitute the sum and 
 substance of personal religion also. Under each of these two 
 heads a nation might conceivably declare its Christian char- 
 acter without any Established Church. Under the first head, 
 for instance, without any Established Church, the Christian 
 Creed might still be solemnly affirmed ; each successive 
 sovereign might still be crowned in the name of the Holy 
 Trinity ; the royal title might still involve deliberate re- 
 cognition of the King of kings; Parliament, High Courts of 
 Justice, and all ceremonies and institutions of national im- 
 portance might still be consecrated with worship ; and days of 
 national thanksgiving and national humiliation might be 
 still observed. Under the second head, again, without any 
 Established Church, the responsibilities of the nation might 
 still be viewed and dealt with in the light of Christian duty ; 
 law might still be based on Christian ethics, and still be 
 administered in the spirit of the faith ; such special Christian 
 legislation as relates to marriage and the day of rest might 
 be still maintained ; religion might still be taught in public 
 schools, theology still hold its place in Universities ; chap- 
 lains might still be provided for the Army and the Navy, 
 
44 National Religion : Its Principles 
 
 for prisons and for poorhouses ; and religious effort might 
 still be privileged in various ways. It is extravagance 
 to pretend that no nation can be Christian that has no 
 Established Church. By conniving at many practical 
 inconsistencies, a nation, as in the actual instance of the 
 United States, may, without any Established Church, con- 
 tinue through some or all of these forms to bear a feeble 
 and intermittent witness to the faith. And, if there were 
 any real prospect of restoration of unity to the Church 
 by means of Disestablishment, and if the advocates of Dis- 
 establishment showed any honest, earnest disposition to 
 safeguard and maintain the principle of national religion, 
 these facts would deserve to be considered. But the present 
 attitude and methods of " Liberationists " give no such 
 promise. They make for further division not for peace. 
 They use their weapons recklessly. Their much vaunted 
 arguments — Eeligious Equality and the secular character of 
 the State — strike impartially at every possible embodiment 
 of the principle in question — strike therefore at the very 
 principle itself And the one logical outcome of their 
 reasoning and of their policy is — national establishment 
 of secularism ivith 'mere toleration for religion. 
 
 III. The principle for which we contend can never be 
 adequately embodied but in some such arrangement as is 
 described by the term Established Church ; and, though such 
 arrangements may be very various in character, it is essential 
 that they should always keep in view the py^omotion and not 
 the control of religion. 
 
 Plainly the embodiments already indicated are extremely 
 partial embodiments ; phantoms rather than incorporations 
 of a living principle. They do not exhaust the religious 
 duty of the State. Until, not only in prisons and poor- 
 houses, but throughout the length and breadth of its 
 dominions, it promotes the worship of God, and makes 
 provision for the ordinances of Christian instruction, the 
 State cannot be said adequately to fulfil its religious duty. 
 But this is what the State by direct interposition is 
 
and Possible Einbodiruents. 45 
 
 essentially ill-qualitied to do. The State bears the sword. 
 It is the embodiment of force. And, by means of force, 
 religion, the Christian religion above all, cannot be promoted. 
 The State may indeed attempt to avail itself of the methods 
 of teaching and persuasion. But in its hands even these 
 methods will be over-clouded by the shadow of the force 
 behind. Hence, then, the necessity for some concordat 
 between Church and State : — the Church, independent 
 within her proper sphere, fulfilling as her Divine vocation 
 a duty which the State alone could not sufficiently perform ; 
 the State, in recognition of its own responsibility in the 
 matter, proving helpful to the Church in every fitting way. 
 The measures by which this concordat is expressed we call 
 establishment — a word of no constant meaning, denoting 
 different arrangements in different realms and centuries. 
 At the present day in all the States of Europe some 
 arrangements exist for the recognition and furtherance of the 
 Church, or of various branches of the Church concurrently ; 
 and these arrangements are not mere relics of the past, but 
 have been adjusted within recent times to meet the require- 
 ments of the age. In some of them, indeed, the control of 
 religion rather than its promotion is too evidently contem- 
 plated ; and, in so far as such control is contemplated, these 
 arrangements do not embody the principle of national religion, 
 but quite another and repugnant principle. From the 
 injury of State control the Church of Scotland is singularly 
 exempt. I think that it may boldly be asserted that there 
 is not another country in the world in which the due 
 relations between Church and State are so perfectly realized 
 as they are in Scotland. Still we do not maintain that the 
 present arrangements are the only possible arrangements. 
 And if some alternative plan were suggested which, while in 
 no way releasing the State from the adequate fulfilment of 
 its religious duty, would bring healing to the deplorable 
 divisions that exist, as Christians and as patriots we should 
 be bound to weigh it carefully. As little of course in 
 national as in personal religion can we hope in this world 
 
46 National Religion. 
 
 to reach the absolute ideal. But as little in national as 
 in personal religion does that failure of the absolute ideal 
 warrant our abandoning the embodiments that already 
 exist. Clearly our constant aim should be, not to destroy 
 what of necessity is to some extent imperfect, but step by 
 step to achieve for the ideal the best possible realization 
 in existing circumstances. Until we are shown the better, 
 let us hold fast the good. 
 
THE PRESENT CALL TO WITNESS FOR THE 
 FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 Rev. James Cooper, D.D. 
 
 The Present Call ! It is always the Church's call. To 
 witness for the Fundamental Truths of the Gospel, and for 
 all the Truths committed to her keeping, was one main 
 function for which the Church was constituted. It is part 
 and parcel of her work : so bound up with her very being, 
 that unless she is performing it, she can do nothing as she 
 ought. 
 
 It will not be denied that the Church in times past has 
 recognized the obligation. Yet it may be well at the out- 
 set to point out how plainly it is laid upon her in the pages 
 of the Four Gospels. As Christ Himself was anointed, 
 He says, to preach the glad tidings to the poor (St Luke 
 iv. 18), so by Him were the Twelve sent forth, the Seventy, 
 the Church. The Twelve were to preach,, saying. The 
 kingdom of heaven is at hand ; it was for the Name of its 
 King, Jesus, they would have to witness and to suffer ; 
 and they would not have gone over the cities of Israel till the 
 Son of Man had come (St Matt. x. 22, 23). The Seventy 
 were sent two and two before Jesus' face into every city 
 and place where He Himself would come (St Luke x. 
 1-22). The Church also is to preach the Gospel to every 
 creature — a Gospel which must be believed as well as 
 practised (St Mark xvi. 15, 16); she is to make disciples of 
 all the nations, baptizing them into the Threefold Name, 
 and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever Jesus 
 hath commanded (St Matt, xxviii. 19, 20). As, to this end 
 
 47. 
 
48 The Present Call to Witness foi' the 
 
 our Lord was born and for this end came He into the 
 world, that He should bear witness unto the truth (St John 
 xviii. 37), so the Holy Ghost and the Apostles together 
 were to bear witness of Him (St John xv. 26, 27). He 
 opened their understandings, says the Third Evangelist, that 
 they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, 
 " Thus it is written, and thus it behoved the Christ to suffer, 
 and to rise from the dead the third day : and that repentance 
 and remission of sins should be preached in His name 
 among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. And ye are 
 witnesses of these things. And, behold, I send the promise 
 of My Father upon you" (St Luke xxiv. 45-49). 
 
 This, let us notice, is a creed — precisely the creed which 
 St Paul, in the 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, declares to be 
 his Gospel ; it is substantially, and almost in point of form, 
 the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 In the face of all this it is not too much to say that the 
 contrast which has once more been drawn by Dr Hatch, in 
 the opening of his Hibbert Lectures, between " the Church 
 of the fourth century, with its Nicene Creed, and the Church 
 as it came from Christ, with the Sermon on the Mount," is 
 doubly unhistorical. It is unjust alike to the Creeds and to 
 the Gospels. (1) To the Creeds. Take the most dogmatic 
 of the three — the Athanasian. Is it true that it sub- 
 stitutes the holding of correct beliefs for a righteous life ? 
 It is not true. The Athanasian Creed, when it comes to 
 speak of the judgment on which all shall turn, makes no 
 mention any more of doctrine, but of life only. " All men 
 shall . . . give account for their own works. And they 
 that have done good shall go into life everlasting ; and they 
 that have done evil into everlasting fire." 
 
 (2) The contrast is as unjust to the Gospels as it is to 
 the Creeds ; yea, to that part of the Gospels which, by Dr 
 Hatch and others, is taken for the whole. The Sermon on 
 the Mount is full of doctrine — of "High" doctrine — about 
 a particular Providence (St Matt. vi. 32); about God our 
 Father (v. 45 ; vi. 9); about almsgiving, prayer, and fasting 
 
Fundamental Truths of the Gospel. 49 
 
 (vi. 1-18) ; about despising this world and laying up treasure 
 in heaven (vi. 19-21) ; about marriage and divorce (v. 32) ; 
 about the broad way and the narrow (vii. 13, 14). It re- 
 spects, indeed, the former dispensation, the Law and the 
 Prophets, but it subjects them to the. higher authority of 
 Jesus, to obey whose sayings is to be secure, and to disobey 
 them to be lost. He, in that day, will be the Sovereign Judge 
 (vii. 22-29). We have, moreover, in the Sermon on the 
 Mount the mission of the Church — a twofold missiou : in 
 the first place, ethical — " Ye are the salt of the earth " 
 fv. 13), your function to purify the life of humanity ; but in 
 the next verse it is doctrinal — " Ye are the light of the 
 world " (v. 1 4), to dispel by your illumination from above 
 its spiritual night. The Church was only projected in 
 the Sermon on the Mount : its real birthday was the day of 
 Pentecost ; but, even as projected in the Sermon on the 
 JMount, it is a teaching body. Part and parcel of its mis- 
 sion is to bear witness unto the truth. 
 
 Nor can it be successfully maintained that this truth, as 
 it was delivered in the Gospels, is in point of fact aught 
 else than the doctrine asserted in the Three Creeds. 
 
 As we study the Gospels, we observe how, to the re- 
 velation of the Father which our Saviour made in the 
 Sermon on the Mount and in the Lord's Prayer, — which, 
 indeed, He was always making, — He straightway added the 
 revelation of His own Sonship and Divinity. Step by step, 
 deliberately, systematically. He " trained His disciples to 
 trust Him with that sort of trust which can be legitimately 
 given to God only." * " Ye believe in God," He said, " be- 
 lieve also in Me" (St John xiv. 1), Nor was He content 
 with a simple trust. He pressed for an intellectual recog- 
 nition, an overt confession, of the fact on which alone such 
 a trust could be justified. " What think ye of the Christ ?" 
 He asks, " Whose Son is He ? " (St Matt. xxii. 42). " Whom 
 say ye that I am ? " (St Matt, xvi, 13). Who can forget 
 the warm approbation with which He received the confession 
 
 * Gore, "Bampton Lectures," p. 13. 
 D 
 
50 The Present Call to Witness for the 
 
 of St Peter, making it the very rock on which He would 
 build His Church? (St Matt. xvi. 17, 18). The almost 
 coldness, on the other hand, with which, after He is 
 risen, He takes the even greater confession of St Thomas : 
 " My Lord and my God " (St John xx. 28), is not less note- 
 worthy : "Thomas, because thou hast seen Me, thou hast 
 believed "... You know it now, but you ought to have 
 apprehended it before. 
 
 Christ declared the Father ; He revealed His own 
 Divinity. He taught also precisely what the Creeds teach 
 about the Holy Ghost (John xiv.-xvi). Finally, He summed 
 up His doctrine in that Name into which He requires every 
 single member of His Church to be baptized, "The Name of 
 the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (St Matt, 
 xxviii. 19). 
 
 That Name is the kernel of the Creeds. Men may dis- 
 believe it. They may deny that Christ gave it to His 
 Church. But they cannot believe it as a truth without 
 accepting the doctrine of the Creeds ; they cannot believe 
 that Christ gave it to His Church without acknowledging the 
 doctrine of the Creeds to be the doctrine of the Lord Him- 
 self. And therefore, as a matter of historical fact, dogmatic 
 theology finds itself at home in the Four Gospels. " Increased 
 care for the [Four] Gospels and study of them, compared 
 with other parts of Scripture, was one of the things," says 
 Dean Church, " characteristic of the [Oxford] Movement." * 
 
 XL 
 
 The Trinity ; the Eternal Father ; the Deity, Incarna- 
 tion, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and Second Coming 
 of our Lord ; the Deity and Presence with us of the Holy 
 Ghost ; His inspiring of the Scriptures ; His real work- 
 ing in the Church and Sacraments ; the Communion of 
 Saints, the tremendous realities of heaven and of hell — 
 these, I take it, are the Fundamental Truths which we 
 
 * " Oxford Movement," p. 167. 
 
Fiindaniental Truths of the Gospel. 5 1 
 
 hold it is the duty of the Church to witness to in the 
 present day, as in past times. Our duty and our wisdom 
 both. 
 
 Our duty, all the more because many are everywhere 
 denying their truth or their utility. Our wisdom, because 
 we are persuaded that they supply the essential foundation 
 alike of Christian ideas, of Christian sanctity, and of 
 (Christian worship. 
 
 What is the general condition of university and pulpit 
 teaching in Scotland at this moment ? Must we not say 
 that our teachers, as a rule, from the greatest of them even 
 to the least of them, are either contradicting or ignoring the 
 Catholic dogmatic ? 
 
 (1) Take some of the teachings addressed in the name 
 of philosophy, or of science, or of history, to the highest 
 intellect of the present day. I remember that when 
 either the Burnett Bequest was remodelled or the Gifford 
 Lectures were established (I think it was the latter occa- 
 sion). Professor Bain made the remark, " that, in order 
 to a fair administration of the Trust, it would be needful 
 now and then to appoint a Hume." Why, sir, we have 
 had three Humes already.* I do not say that Mr Tylor, 
 Professor Caird, or Mr Max Muller have the philosophical 
 ability of Hume ; but that qualification to which I suppose 
 Professor Bain referred they certainly possess — the utter 
 incompatibility of their respective systems with all the 
 facts of the Gospel history, and with all that the Church in all 
 ages has regarded as the fundamental truths of Christianity, 
 Of course their language towards what they call Christ- 
 ianity is polite ; it is sometimes flattering. But their com- 
 plete antagonism to all that constitutes the Faith of the 
 Gospel they scarcely care to veil. It were not charity — it 
 were the very idiocy of optimism for the Church to ignore it. 
 
 * "We have a fourth in Professor Pfleiderer, whose Lectures are being 
 delivered amid "applause" at Edinburgh while these papers are passing 
 through the press. No doubt the systems propoxmded are mutually destruc- 
 tive ; but each successive assault undermines the faith of some. 
 
52 The Present Call to Witness for the 
 
 To Mr Tylor, religion in every form is literally " the 
 baseless fabric of a vision." It has its origin in dreams. 
 
 To Mr Max Muller, the Christianity of the Creeds is 
 altogether "legendary"; their Christ is "mythological." 
 Great theologians, whom we in our blindness canonized as 
 saints and hailed as doctors of the Church, really believed, 
 it appears, what Mr Max Muller informs us is the " funda- 
 mental doctrine of Christianity " — not, as we had supposed, 
 that the Eternal Son of God was made man, but " the 
 divine sonship of man " — of man as man ; Christ being 
 called the " Logos " or Word of God only because He was 
 the perfect exemplification of all that God desired man 
 to be. There is no Trinity. There has been no Incarna- 
 tion. And "few only" it seems "will now deny that 
 Christians can be Christians without what was called a 
 belief in miracles ; nay, few will deny that they are better 
 Christians without than with that belief." 
 
 It is painful, indeed, to have to bracket Professor Caird 
 with such as these. But amid all that is noble, grave, and 
 reverent in the " Evolution of Religion," with all his real, 
 however inconsistent, belief in God, with all his admiration 
 for Christ, it is all too clear that to him the mere notion of 
 a supernatural revelation is impossible. His system is in- 
 compatible not only with the Incarnation, but even wdth 
 our Lord's teaching in the Sermon on the Mount of God's 
 Fatherly care over us. He quotes our Saviour's saying, 
 " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it 
 abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit " 
 (St John xii. 24), as giving us the essence of the Gospel ; but 
 he denies the Resurrection which in the Gospel justifies 
 the words. To him, " Christ is no more God than Socrates " ; 
 and, as if to emphasize this rejection of the Faith, he adapts 
 Mr Morley's device of printing " God " with a small " g," and 
 prints the pronouns which refer to the Redeemer with a 
 small " h." 
 
 These are our Gifford Lecturers, the chosen exponents of 
 " Natural Religion " ! Nor does the selection seem to 
 
Fundamental TriUhs of the Gospel. 53 
 
 strike any one as strange. They are received everywhere. 
 No word of warning is raised against their Christ-dishonour- 
 ing, soul-destroying errors. Their disbelief in Christianity 
 rather helps than hinders their advancement. Professor 
 Caird has just been appointed, without protest, to be 
 Master of a great Oxford College, where hundreds of young 
 souls will be under his charge. 
 
 (2) The pulpit is for the great body of the people the 
 chief agent of Christian instruction. 
 
 And what, in respect of Christian doctrine, is the present 
 condition of the Scottish pulpit ? 
 
 Were our preachers systematically trained at College in 
 the doctrine of the Creeds ? Were they duly exercised in its 
 correlative devotions ? Do they know anything about it ? 
 Do they preach it ? What is it that is too commonly 
 preached in Glasgow churches ? Is it the fundamental 
 truths of the Gospel, awful, soul-subduing in their power, 
 holiness, and love, which bend men to their knees in the 
 worship of a present God (1 Cor. xiv. 25), who is recon- 
 ciling in Christ Jesus a sinful world unto Himself (2 Cor. v. 
 19)? Or do you, for a large part, rejoice in " a pretty ser- 
 vice," followed by a smart essay on some " topic of the day," 
 while the solemn facts which the Creed commemorates are 
 either ignored or dismissed as " dogmas," dry, unspiritual, 
 antiquated ? * 
 
 The state of the Free Church can never but be a matter 
 of profound concern for all who care for the religion of our 
 country. The Free Church is not a pleasant spectacle just 
 now. Its leader brushing aside its own claim that Christ 
 in His Church should have the homage of the nation, and 
 otfering the " patrimony of the Kirk " as a bribe to the 
 electors. Its professors minimizing one day, and the next 
 day unctuously repeating the Evangelical shibboleths ; en- 
 gaged themselves in importing the latest rationalism of 
 
 * Two eminent ministers in the West end of Glasgow assure me that this 
 is an exaggeration ; but I fear there is only too large a measure of truth in 
 it. -J. C. 
 
54 The Present Call to Witness for the 
 
 Germany or Holland, yet trying to rouse a pseudo-patriotism 
 against whatever is not, in their narrow interpretation, 
 Scotch. As if Sir Walter was not Scotch ! 
 
 " Facilis descensus Averui." 
 
 The English Nonconformists of 1660 were largely Unitarian 
 in 1690. A Free Churchman, who has come under the 
 influence predominant at present in Free Church theology, 
 told me not long since, " I must say I have not the same 
 horror of Unitarianism that I used to have." 
 
 Yet have we any reason to be better pleased with the 
 condition of our own Church ? We have less theological 
 activity : have we more orthodoxy ? We have less fierce- 
 ness (it is easy to us) ; but have we not more of easy self- 
 complacency ? We were called to humiliation lately : many 
 of our men stood up in their pulpits and declared, " We 
 have nothing for which to humble ourselves." And they 
 spoke not merely as against the Disestablishers, but in 
 view of our responsibilities as the Church of Jesus com- 
 missioned to this people ! 
 
 Evangelicalism used to have some robustness. If it was 
 afraid of preaching good works, it had at least a serious 
 sense of sin. It made a real protest against the world. 
 It had one positive institution to be sacredly observed — " the 
 Sabbath." Now it has given up even the Sabbath. It 
 relies on amusements, and sensations, and " Pleasant Sunday 
 Afternoons " — while ordinances, order, precepts are thrown 
 into a common melting-pot. Evangelicalism never believed 
 the reality of ordinances. It valued preaching, no doubt 
 as the instrument of conversions. But it valued nothing else. 
 Its prayers and hymns became simply sermons, addressed 
 not so much to God as to " the sinner " in the congregation. 
 The Sacraments it included among " forms." The pulpit, 
 accordingly, usurped the place of the Lord's Table. While 
 in regard to the Sacrament of Baptism, the result of the 
 long Evangelical ascendancy has been to create the impres- 
 sion that it is rather superstitious to attach any importance 
 
Fundamental Truths of the GospeL 55 
 
 to it whatever, A prayer at a child's funeral is necessary 
 — but baptism on any pretext may be put off ! 
 
 III. 
 
 Such are some of the prevalent teachings amid which we 
 are called to bear witness to the ancient Fundamental Truths. 
 
 We obey the call, first of all, because it is the call of God. 
 " Woe is unto us if we preach not the Gospel " (1 Cor. ix. 
 16). 
 
 But we obey it also because we know the power and value 
 of these Truths. 
 
 Jesus Christ to His people is no mere name. He is our 
 Lord, our Head, the Priest for ever who stands, and 
 feeds His fiock in the majesty of the Name of the Lord His 
 God. We know whom we worship ; for we live in Him, 
 we receive out of His fulness. " He is to-day," as Dr 
 Milligan has expressed it, " not less than He ever was, 
 the life of His people." From Him all the body has 
 its nourishment ministered, and is knit together. The 
 relation to Jesus Christ of His members is a fact of ex- 
 perience. It implies as its foundation all the truths which 
 we preach concerning Him. 
 
 We recognize these Truths historically as inseparable 
 and essential parts of the Christianity of Christ and His 
 Apostles ; theologically, as supplying the intellectual foun- 
 dation of the most characteristic thoughts of Christendom ; 
 ethically, as yielding alike the suggestions and the motives 
 of Christian sanctity ; devotionally, as the root from which 
 naturally springs, in all its varying expressions of awe, 
 tenderness, and sublimity, the characteristic worship of the 
 Church. As we bow before our Divine Redeemer the 
 Creed becomes an Anthem to His praise. 
 
 Let me particularize a little here, and I have done. 
 
 (1) What are the thoughts, the ideas, about God and 
 man that have moulded most decisively the mind of 
 Christendom ? Are they not such as these — the justice, 
 
56 The Present Call to Witness for the 
 
 the holiness, the love of God, the dignity of woman, the 
 value of every human soul, the heinousness of sin, the 
 tremendous issues of the present life, the blessedness of the 
 .saints in heaven ? These ideas are the inheritance of all 
 the Christian nations. They belong to them exclusively. 
 Where did they get them ? In their common Creed, that 
 " God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten 
 Son " ; that the Eternal Son was born of the Virgin 
 Mary ; that for the weakest brother He died upon the 
 Cross ; that sin is an injury and insult offered to the 
 personal love He bears each one of us ; that we must all 
 appear before His judgment seat ; that His faithful servants 
 shall live with Him for ever. 
 
 Or again, take Christian sanctity. Think of its various 
 features — unworldliness, heavenly-mlndedness, humility, 
 charity, purity, munificence ? What are the motives which 
 lead Christians to exercise themselves in these things ? The 
 " generous love " of Christ, who, " though He was rich, yet 
 for our sakes became poor " ; the humility of Christ, who, 
 "being in the form of God . . . emptied Himself of His 
 glory, and took on Him the form of a servant " (Philip, 
 ii. 5); the Cross of Christ, b}' which "the world is crucified 
 imto us, and we unto the world " (Gal. vi. 14) ; the Ascen- 
 sion of Christ, whereby He has lifted our heart and treasure 
 into heaven, where He " sitteth at the right hand of God " 
 (Col. iii. 2). 
 
 It was to these truths, applied to the heart by the Holy 
 Ghost, that Jesus looked as the means for the sanctifica- 
 tion of His people : " Sanctify them through Thy truth : 
 Thy word is truth " (St John xvii. 17). It was in these truths 
 that St Paul found the motive of his life of sacrifice : 
 " The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the Faith 
 of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for 
 me" (Gal. ii. 20). And when the Church had been 
 established in the world, St John not only ascribes to these 
 truths her victory ; he challenges any other motive to 
 produce them : " Who is he that overcometh the world, 
 
Fundamental Truths of the Gospel. 57 
 
 but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God ? " 
 (1 John V. 5). 
 
 The Faith, in short, of our Lord's Deity and Sonship, 
 as it is the rock on which He built His Church, so is it 
 also the spring whence flow those streams of Christian 
 holiness which refresh the world. 
 
 It was His own promise : " He that believeth on Me 
 . . . out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water " (St 
 John vii. 38). 
 
 Thou hast given us, O Lord, a dry land : give us, we 
 beseech Thee, these springs of water. 
 
THE PRESENT CALL TO WITNESS FOR THE 
 FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS OF THE GOSPEL. 
 
 Rev. George Campbell. 
 
 The vital character of those spiritual verities which lie at 
 the foundation of our Divine religion forbids the idea of 
 their ever being regarded as matters of inferior importance, 
 — as of even at all equal importance with man's sj'stems and 
 theories regarding them. The Lord Jesus habitually in- 
 sisted on the Divine authority of tlte Truth, and described 
 Eternal Life as subsisting in the knowledge of the only 
 true God and of Him whom He hath sent. He represents 
 His Church as founded upon the rock of His Divine Licar- 
 nation, received by the faith and confessed by the lips of 
 those to whom it is revealed by His Father in heaven. 
 The proclamation of this truth through word and sacrament, 
 in its naked simplicity, as the message of omnipotent mercy 
 to mankind, must likewise rank above all human ratiocina- 
 tion upon the subject ; and the acceptance of it, and of 
 Christ Himself its substance, by faith and obedience, — 
 that the baptized may be built up in the oneness of His 
 body, — must be regarded as God's requirement at the hand 
 of each soul of man. 
 
 The history of the Church is the record of the progress 
 of the entering of the Lord Jesus Christ in His Divine Life 
 into the families and hearts of men : and it is one which 
 exhibits numberless alternations of advance and decline, 
 according to the circumstances and the preparation of the 
 various races addressed. There are of necessity times when 
 it is specially needful to bring back to remembrance the 
 
 59 
 
6o The Present Call to Witness for the 
 
 great purposes and functions for which the Church is insti- 
 tuted ; and to awake a slumbering world, — shall I say a 
 backsliding Church ? — to a consciousness of the divine end 
 and method according to which, amid all our human im- 
 perfection and shortcoming, the Most High is ever working. 
 
 Without adopting any pessimistic view of the present 
 aspect of society as unfavourable to these high purposes, 
 or dwelling upon the state of division and confusion into 
 which the Church herself has fallen, — the sadly low and life- 
 less condition of which we all lament, — it cannot be denied 
 that there is need in these days to recall both the one and 
 the other to the first principles of the Gospel ; to remember 
 that from which we have " fallen, to repent, and to do the 
 first works " ; need to emphasize the apostolic exhortations 
 to "hold fast the form of sound words" and to "contend 
 earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints." 
 
 There has come to be prevalent among us an inveterate 
 prejudice against dogmatic teaching, amounting even to a 
 horror of pressing doctrinal truth upon the young ; as if 
 there were no dogmatism, no sectarianism in science, in 
 philosophy, in politics, in socialism, in rationalism ; no dog- 
 matism on the part of those who would proscribe dogmatism 
 altogether, or who, allowino: it in the reiiion of the material 
 world, would forbid it in the spiritual, in which alone we 
 have an infallible guide ; as if the spirit of the age and 
 the periodical press, with its crude conclusions on every sub- 
 ject, condemning all dogmatism but its own, were not the 
 loudest of dogmatists. It is an age of latitude of opinion, 
 of dislike to tests and restraints, and all that favours 
 fixedness of view and settledness of principle. 
 
 Accordingly, it is not beyond the truth to sa}^ that, in 
 some of these last-named spheres, a man may profess one 
 thing to-day, and almost the very opposite to-morrow. No 
 one is shocked, because every one understands that the 
 utterance both of the one and the other is unreal, both 
 alike insincerely assumed for party or time-serving purposes, 
 or for the very pleasure of startling the unthinking. Un- 
 
Fundamental Truths of the Gospel. 6i 
 
 fortunately the demoralizing effect of this swimming with 
 the current reacts in a region where faith and loyalty to the 
 truth should reign supreme, unaftected by every passing 
 breeze or current. 
 
 Now, while the soul cannot live, and society cannot sub- 
 sist on negations, it is equally true that error can never 
 either sanctify or save. Where there is no anchorage for 
 the storm-tossed spirit, it can have no rest within itself. 
 Yet, in forgetfulness of this, we allow any amount of pro- 
 fession, but not of conviction ; and zeal, the fire of the 
 soul, is cant, bad form. We tolerate everything but what 
 is earnest, and we expend our encomiums on the affecta- 
 tion, not the reality, of sincerity, for we are sincere neither 
 to others nor to ourselves. No doubt there is the enthusi- 
 asm of youth, but we get over it early, and fall into the 
 common error of accepting what looks well, rather than 
 wears well, and which we can put off when we tire of it. 
 In the humbler classes, and among a certain order of re- 
 ligionists, enthusiasm enough is also sometimes to be found ; 
 but where there is zeal without knowledge, and based upon 
 no abiding principle, there is no guarantee for stability, and 
 it is impossible to predict into what vagaries of sentiment 
 and action these sectaries may not be led. 
 
 In our dread of false appearances of goodness we have 
 assuredly run into the opposite extreme, and have put on 
 a pretence of coldness and cynicism, lest the falsit}'" of our 
 semblance of piety be exposed. It is hard to say how 
 much this, how much indifference, contribute each their 
 part as parents to that form of unbelief, which, with a 
 profession of modesty in sacred things, yet claims to be 
 a very science, a religion, under the seductive name of 
 Agnosticism. It is only Materialism under a more specious 
 guise, a rejection of tliat loving Father Who has been pleased 
 to reveal Himself in and to the child which He has formed 
 in His own likeness ; and it is, therefore, the supreme step 
 to the degradation of our nature. 
 
 The Church of every age will always, so far, reflect the 
 
62 The Present Call to Witness for the 
 
 reigning spirit of its time. Its recognised teachers come of 
 the people ; are, more or less, in sympathy with the exist- 
 ing tone of the schools through which they pass ; and while 
 they, of course, greatly regulate and shape the faith of their 
 flocks, it is not less true, on the other hand, that, like as 
 the character of any period, such like is the man whom the 
 Church puts forth and accepts as its instructor and guide. 
 As a rule, then, the clergy and people of any age and 
 country will be found to think the same thoughts, cherish 
 the same beliefs, and equally fall into prevailing errors. 
 
 Thus, if we find in many of tlie hearers of the present 
 day an impatience of sound doctrine ; a revolt from the 
 perhaps over-minute subtleties of a Puritanic theology ; a 
 spurious liberality, and a toleration of everything but the 
 truth ; the same features will be sure to characterize the 
 teaching of the pulpit. If we find, on the part of the one, 
 that articles of faith which were dear to their fathers are 
 now in a measure set light b}' ; that a critical, sceptical 
 spirit is early developed among the more highly educated ; 
 that secularism is fast forcing its way alike into our 
 elementary and our secondary schools, and insisting on the 
 exclusion of the science of revealed religion from the very 
 universities which were expressly founded for its study ; 
 that the same spirit has infected the Church, where the 
 teaching of Christian truth is pronounced dull and dry, and 
 sermons unpalatable which are not spiced with modern 
 ideas, and served up with hashed bits of science, and art, 
 and socialism, and decked with all the art of the sensa- 
 tionalist, to stimulate the cloyed appetite ; it cannot be 
 denied that some among the clergy not only minister to, 
 but are themselves not a little responsible for, such a per- 
 verted taste and craving. 
 
 Among other tendencies of modern times is a strongly- 
 marked hostility to the supernatural in every form. Such 
 appeared generations ago in the departure from the strongly- 
 expressed views of the Fathers of the Reformation on the 
 subject of the Church, the Christian ministry, and, above 
 
Fundamental Truths of the Gospel. 63 
 
 all, the Holy Sacraments. To the emphatic witness to 
 Scriptural truth on these momentous topics contained in 
 our Standards, the Church in Scotland, as a whole, has never 
 again returned. A fatal example of the same pernicious 
 tendency has once again appeared in a looseness of view not 
 only as respects Revelation and Miracle, but very specially 
 on the crucial subject of the Divinity of our blessed Lord. 
 I make no specific charge against any of my brethren of 
 unfaithfulness to this distinctive mark of a living Church ; 
 but traces of it may certainly be found in the writings of 
 accredited teachers in various bodies through the country ; 
 and on the part of others, a sailing as close to the wind as 
 they safely may. This has, naturally, greatly shocked and 
 grieved those in the ministry, and the devout, but simple- 
 minded, among the laity who value such a doctrine as they 
 do the breath of life, with whom the older types of belief 
 fondly linger. It has in many cases seriously unhinged the 
 faith of some who were disposed to plead for new forms in 
 which to express the primitive and Catholic faith, and has 
 encouraged a vagueness only too attractive to persons of 
 unexact habits of thought and belief, by its air of breadth 
 and liberality, at the cost of all that is most precious in our 
 Christian hope and heritage. And, apart from the per- 
 nicious effects of such unfaithfulness, how can we charac- 
 terize the conduct of those who profess their adherence to 
 the Church's Standards — who fill her offices as watchmen, 
 and eat her bread, yet in their teaching depart from and 
 undermine that faith, if they do not indeed sneer at some 
 of its articles ; or of another class who will contend for 
 instruction in the Shorter Catechism in our schools, and 
 make adherence to its doctrine an obligation which they 
 impose upon parents in their Baptismal service, without 
 having themselves apprehended its profound truth ; for, 
 indeed, in how few of our pulpits is the entirely Scriptural 
 teaching of that Catechism on the subject of this very 
 Sacrament and of the Holy Eucharist fully recognised and 
 expounded ! 
 
64 Fundamental Truths of the Gospel. 
 
 In conclusion, considering the manifold sources and quar- 
 ters from which these dangers spring, as well as their 
 diversified forms and temptations, it well becomes those 
 who are set for the defence of the truth, — for the love of it, 
 of their Lord, and their brethren, — and certainly in no vain- 
 glorious and self-satisfied spirit, to bear an undivided and 
 undeviating testimony to the great verities of the faith. 
 To utter upon these an uncertain sound would be on the 
 part of the Church in this our day an unpardonable 
 treachery. For they are doctrines which do not grow old 
 with the years, nor does the world, with all its enlighten- 
 ment, stand less in need of them than ever before. They 
 are spiritual facts, not matters of opinion, nor passing 
 phases or phenomena in the development of our common 
 humanity ; but the abiding, deep-laid principles of an 
 order, and of a faith which are both alike — for the Church 
 is " the Pillar and Ground of the Truth " — in very deed 
 built upon the Foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, 
 and Jesus Christ Himself the chief corner stone. 
 
THE CHURCH'S CALL TO STUDY SOCIAL 
 QUESTIONS. 
 
 Rev. Professor Flint, D.D. 
 
 The call of the Church to study social questions is not a new 
 one, except so far in form. In substance it is as old as the 
 Church itself. The teaching of Christ and of the Apostles 
 was the setting forth of a Gospel intimately related to the 
 society in which it appeared, and vitally affecting the 
 whole future of the society which was to be. The Church 
 may find in the study of the New Testament the same sort 
 of guidance for its social activity as an individual minister 
 may find in it for the right performance of his pulpit or 
 pastoral duty. 
 
 Just as in the New Testament there are the all-compre- 
 hensive and inexhaustibly fruitful germs of a perfect 
 doctrine of the ministry of the word, and of the pastoral 
 care, so are there of a perfect doctrine of the social mission 
 of the Church. Indeed, the Sermon on the Mount alone 
 contains far more of light fitted to dispel social darkness, 
 and far more of the saving virtue which society needs, than 
 any individual mind can ever fully apprehend, or than the 
 Church universal has yet apprehended. 
 
 If the call of which I have to speak were not thus old 
 as well as new ; if it were not a call inherent in the very 
 nature of the Gospel, and implied in the very end of the 
 existence of a Church on earth ; if it summoned the min- 
 isters of the Word away from the work which Christ had 
 assigned to them ; if it required them to discard their 
 divinely-inspired text-book, it could hardly be a true one, 
 
 E 65 
 
66 The ChiircJis Call to Study Social Qttesiions. 
 
 and ministers might well doubt if it could be incumbent 
 on them to listen to it. But it is no such call. For, 
 althoush it be one which summons us to reflect on what 
 is required of us in the circumstances of the present hour, 
 — one which is repeated to us by God's providence daily in 
 events happening around us and pressing themselves on our 
 attention, — it is also one which comes down to us through 
 the ages from Him who lived and suffered and died in 
 Palestine centuries ago, in order that, as God was in Him, 
 and He in God, all men might be one in Him. 
 
 The call is so distinct that the Church has never been 
 entirely deaf to it. Originating as it did in the love of Christ 
 to mankind, it necessarily brought with it into the world a 
 new ideal of social duty ; and it has never ceased to endeavour, 
 more or less faithfully, to relieve the misery and to redress 
 the wrongs under which it found society suffering. In the 
 early Christian centuries, in the time of the fall of the Roman 
 Empire and the formation of the mediaeval world, in the 
 so-called "ages of faith," and the epoch of the foundation 
 of modern states, and in all periods since, the Church has 
 had a social mission varying with the characteristics and 
 wants of each time, and may fairly claim to have largely 
 contributed to the solutions which the social problems 
 of the times received. And a zeal guided by prudence, a 
 wise activity in the social sphere, has never done the 
 Church anything but good. When the Church has kept 
 itself to itself, when it has shut itself up in its own theolo- 
 gical schools, divided itself into sects mainly interested in 
 opposing one another, and confined its work within congre- 
 gational and parochial limits ; in a word, when it has culti- 
 vated an exclusive and narrow spirit, then it has been 
 proportionately unfaithful, disputatious, and barren ; its 
 theology has been lifeless and unprogressive, its ministry of 
 the word sapless and ineffective, and the types of piety and 
 of character which it has produced poor and unattractive. 
 In the measure in which the Church is a power for good on 
 earth will it prove a power which draws men to heaven. 
 
 The call of the Church to study social questions has its 
 
The Churclis Call to Study Social Questions. 67 
 
 chief ground or reason in this, that the influence of the 
 Church, if brought rightly and fully to bear on society 
 must be incalculably beneficial to it. There is no power in 
 the world which can do so much for society as the Church, 
 if pure, united and zealous, if animated with the mind of 
 Christ, and endowed with the graces of the Spirit. 
 
 The State can, of course, do for society what the Church 
 cannot do, and has no right even to try to do ; but it 
 cannot do for society more than, or even as much as, 
 the Church may do, and should do. The power of the 
 State, just because the more external and superficial, may 
 seem the greater, but is really the lesser. Spiritual force 
 is mightier than material force. Rule over the affections 
 of the heart is far more decisive and wide-reachinfj than 
 rule over the actions of the body. 
 
 The Church, if it does not destroy its own influence 
 by unreasonableness, selfishness, contentiousness, departure 
 from the truth as it is in Christ, and conformity to the 
 world, will naturally, and in the long run inevitably, rule 
 society and rule the State ; and that for the simple reason 
 that it ought to rule them, — ought to bring them into 
 subjection to those principles of religion and of morality on 
 which their life and welfare are dependent. 
 
 Of course, if the Church be untrue to itself, unfaithful to 
 its Lord, it will do harm in society just in proportion to the 
 good which it might and ought to do. The corruption of 
 the best is the worst. 
 
 In the truths which it was instituted to inculcate, the 
 Church has inexhaustible resources for the benefiting of 
 society, which ought to be wisely and devotedly used. 
 
 Was it not instituted, for example, to spread through 
 society the conviction that the supreme ruler of society is 
 God over all ; that the Prince of the kings of the earth is 
 the Lord Christ Jesus ; that the perfect law of God as 
 revealed in Christ ought to underlie all the laws which 
 monarchs and parliaments make ; and that whatever law 
 contradicts His law is one to be got rid of as soon as pos- 
 sible, and brought into consistency with His eternal statutes, 
 
68 The CJmrcJis Call to Study Social Questions. 
 
 Well, what other real security has society for its freedom than 
 just that conviction ? What other sure defence against the 
 tyranny of kings or parliaments, of majorities or mobs ? I 
 know of none. The only way for a people to be free is to 
 have a firm faith in God's sovereignty, in Christ's Headship, 
 over the nations ; a firm faith that in all things it is right 
 to obey God rather than man ; that the true and supreme 
 law of a people cannot be the will of a man, or of a body of 
 men, or of the majority of men, or of those who ha,ppen for 
 the time to have physical force on their side, but only the 
 will of God, the law at once of righteousness and of liberty. 
 
 The God in whom the Christian Church believes, more- 
 over, is not only God over all, but God the Father of all ; 
 God who loves all with an equal and impartial love, and 
 whose love, in seeking the love of all men and the good of 
 all men, seeks also that they should love one another and 
 promote each other's good. The Fatherhood of God and the 
 brotherhood of men are truths which the Church is bound 
 to endeavour fully to impress on the mind and heart of 
 society ; and obviously the welfare of society depends on 
 the success with which this is effected. 
 
 Further, the Church has been instituted to commend to 
 the consciences of mankind the claims of a moral law, com- 
 prehensive and perfect so far as its principles are concerned ; 
 a law which does justice to the rights and requirements both 
 of the individual and of society, and therefore is free from 
 the faults alike of individualism and of socialism ; one which 
 lays the foundations of a rightly constituted family life and of 
 just and beneficent government ; and which overlooks not 
 even the least of those virtues on which the economic wel- 
 fare of a community and of its members so much depends. 
 And to give life and force to the injunctions of this law, so 
 that they may be no mere verbal precepts, but full of divine 
 fire and efficacy, they are connected witli the greatest and 
 most impressive facts, — the mercies of God, the work and 
 example of Christ, and the aid and indwelling of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
The CluLrcJts Call to Study Social Questions. 69 
 
 Does the Church commend this law in all its breadth, 
 and by all the motives which enforce it, as wisely, earnestly, 
 and effectively as it might ? I fear not altogether; and 
 yet there is great need that it should ; for, if not, there is 
 no other body, no other society, that will. Take even those 
 humble yet most essential virtues, to which I have just 
 referred under the name of economic — those personal quali- 
 ties which make a man's labour more valuable both to himself 
 and others than it would otherwise be, and which further en- 
 sure that whatever his wages may be they will not be foolishly 
 or unworthily spent. Are they not apt to be overlooked in 
 our teaching, although they were certainly not overlooked 
 in that of the Apostles ? Yet who Avill do them justice if 
 ministers of the Gospel do not ? Do you suppose it will 
 be Socialist orators like those in Hyde Park or Glasgow 
 Green, or gentlemen in quest of workmen's votes to help 
 them into Parliament, or otherwise to raise them to promi- 
 nence and power ? I trow not ; they will willingly leave 
 that task to you ; and I think you had better do it, and as 
 lovingly yet as faithfully as you can. Political economists, 
 indeed, may show, and have abundantly shown, the econo- 
 mic importance of the virtues referred to both as regards 
 individuals and societies ; but that, although all that 
 political economists can relevantly do, is not enough ; while 
 Christian ministers can bring to the enforcement even of 
 these virtues far higher and more effective considerations. 
 
 I hasten to add that the Church of Christ has been set 
 up to show forth to mankind a kingdom of God which is 
 both in heaven and in earth. Among multitudes of Socialists 
 there is a quite special hatred against faith in a heavenly 
 kingdom. It is the opium, they say, by which the peoples 
 have been cast into sleep, and prevented from asserting and 
 taking possession of their rights. Exclaims one of them — 
 " When a heaven hereafter is recognised as a big lie, men 
 will attempt to establish heaven here." Thousands of them 
 have uttered the same thought in other words. O strange 
 and sad delusion. If a heaven hereafter be a big lie, what 
 
JO The ClmrcJis Call to Study Social Questions. 
 
 reason can we have to expect that there will ever be a 
 heaven here. A merely earthly paradise can only be a fool's 
 paradise. Earth is all covered with darkness when not 
 seen in the light of a heaven above it. The preachers of 
 past days, perhaps, erred by laying almost exclusive stress 
 on the kingdom of God in heaven. The pi'eachers of the pre- 
 sent day may err by laying too exclusive stress on the coming 
 of the kingdom of God on earth, and so leading some to 
 believe that the secularist Socialists may be right, and that 
 there may be no other heaven than one which men can 
 make for themselves here. 
 
 The great and continuous call of the Church to study 
 social questions arises from her having been entrusted with 
 such powers to act on society, to regenerate and reform, to 
 quicken and elevate society, as I have now indicated. The 
 right application of them is essential to the w^elfare of 
 society ; but such application of them supposes the most 
 patient and careful and prayerful study, the most intimate 
 and living acquaintance with the Gospel on the one hand, 
 and the most thorough insight into the requirements of 
 .society on the other, and, in a high degree, the knowledge 
 and the prudence which inform a man when and what to 
 j^peak, how to say just enough and to refrain from adding 
 what will weaken or wholly destroy its effect. Bishop 
 Westcott's " Social Aspects of Christianity," and Dr 
 Donald Macleod's " Christ and Society," are greatly more 
 valuable than they would have been if their authors had 
 shown a less exquisite sense of knowing always where to 
 stop ; and such a sense, only attainable in due measure by 
 assiduous thoughtfulness, is probably even more necessary in 
 addressing congregations composed of the poor and labouring 
 classes than those which meet in Westminster Abbey or the 
 Park Church. 
 
 While there has always been a call on the Church to 
 study social questions, there is likewise, however, a special 
 call on the Church of the present day to do so. For, indu- 
 bitably, 'all over Christendom there is a vast amount of 
 L 
 
The Chttrch's Call to Study Social Qtiestions. 7 1 
 
 social unrest and discontent. The conflict between labour 
 and capital is one of chronic war, of violent and passionate 
 struggles, which too often produce widespread waste and 
 misery. And closely connected with it is a vast irreligious 
 and revolutionary movement, which sees in Christianity its 
 bitterest foe, and aims at destroying it along with social 
 order and private property. This irreligious and revolu- 
 tionary movement is to a considerable extent the effect of 
 the conflict between labour and capital, but it is to an even 
 greater extent its cause ; and, if I had time, I think I could 
 show that the deepest question still agitating Europe in the 
 nineteenth century is not the labour question but the 
 religious question : the question, How do men think and 
 feel towards God ? 
 
 The matter standing thus, there is a most urgent call on 
 the Church to study how to bring all the powers of the Gospel 
 to bear against whatever is wrong in society, and on the 
 stimulation and strengthening of all that is good in it. There 
 can be no doubt that the Church should do more than she 
 is doing for the solution of social and labour questions than 
 at present, in the sense that she ought to do her duty better, 
 present the Gospel with greater fulness and power, push on 
 her Home Mission work with increased zeal, strive more 
 earnestly to diffuse among all classes the spirit of Christian 
 love and brotherhood, of righteousness and peace, and 
 exemplify in herself more perfectly the beauty of that spirit. 
 
 Whether or not the Church ought directly to intervene 
 more than she does in attempting to solve labour and 
 other social questions is itself a question not to be lightly 
 answered. I do not say that she ought not, but certainly 
 she ought not to do so in any such way or to any such 
 extent as will take her out of her own sphere, that of her 
 Divine strength. Nor ought either a Church, or even a 
 minister of the Church, ever interfere in social or labour 
 disputes in a partisan spirit or manner, for all reasonable 
 hope of their doing good must be lost if their impartiality 
 be not perfectly visible. 
 
72 The Church's Call to Shidy Social Questions. 
 
 There has been at least one great strike in Scotland 
 where the intervention of clergymeo was little to edification 
 and wholly without effect. It should serve as a warning. 
 
 Before a minister interferes in such cases, he ought, I 
 think, to examine himself as to whether or not he has 
 these three qualifications : first, a correct and full knowledge 
 of the facts on which the dispute turns, and not merely a 
 partial and inaccurate conception of them founded on hear- 
 say and untested ix parte statements ; second, a sufficient 
 acquaintance -with economic science to enable him to 
 interpret aright these economic facts ; and third, reason 
 to believe that he knows enough about the disputing 
 parties, and is held in such esteem by them, as not to 
 be in danger of doing more harm than good by attempting 
 to mediate between them. But, perhaps, if he really 
 possess these qualifications both parties may ask his aid, in 
 which case he will be in a much better position than if he 
 had offered it. 
 
 I do not think that any of our Churches are uninterested 
 in the social questions at present disputed among us. They 
 are all, I have no doubt, anxious to see those questions so 
 settled that there may be more comfort and contentment 
 throughout the land, and to aid towards the attainment of 
 that end so far as they can. The Church of Scotland has 
 in many ways shown her solicitude for the welfare of the 
 poor, the peasantry, the labourers of Scotland. The 
 Presbytery of Glasgow has been honourably conspicuous 
 by the anxiety which it has shown for the improvement 
 of the conditions in which so many live in this city. 
 
 Thoughtfulness need not lessen or counteract zeal ; it 
 should accompany, enlighten, and assist zeal. If there be 
 an urgent and strong call that the Church in present 
 circumstances should endeavour to act, with all the power 
 with which God has endowed her, for the purification and 
 salvation of society, there must be a correspondingly urgent 
 and strong call for her to studi/ how she may most Jitllf/ 
 and effectively do so. 
 
THE DIVINE ORDER OF CHURCH FINANCE 
 AND OTHER SYSTEMS. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Leishman, D.D. 
 
 The New Testament teaches us very little about making 
 provision for the ordinances of the Church. There is no 
 more than our Lord's words when He is sending forth His 
 disciples with empty purses to preach the coming of the 
 kingdom, and a very few sayings of St Paul, such as : " If 
 we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing 
 if we shall reap your carnal things ? " (1 Cor. ix. 11). And 
 even he, though asserting the principle, waives his own 
 claim under it, preferring to support himself by the handi- 
 craft which he had learned in youth. Why is it that the 
 Scripture, while assuming that this duty rests on the 
 followers of Christ, says so little to enforce it ? Because 
 the first believers had lived from youth in the full know- 
 ledge of it. They were children of the pre-in carnation 
 Church. The new faith was to the old as the flower is to 
 the bud. Higher truths were unfolded. But there was 
 no reversal of the old morality, nor even at first of the old 
 ordinances. The prolonged disputes about circumcision 
 show how unready they were to part with divine usages till 
 they saw clear reason. Now the principle of tithe-giving 
 was one so bound up with the system of their religion, so 
 familiar to their experience, that the lesson of providing for 
 holy ordinances was one in which they needed no instruction. 
 There is, however, one passage in which St Paul deduces 
 the Christian duty from the Hebrew institution. " Do ye 
 not know that they which minister about holy things live 
 
74 The Divine Order of CImrch Finauee 
 
 of the things of the temple I And they which wait at the 
 altar are partakers with the altar ? Even so hath the Lord 
 ordained that they which preach the Gospel should live of 
 the Gospel" (1 Cor. ix. ll). In speaking of the measure 
 and end of the ordinance of tithe, we must remember that 
 the analogy covers more than the present subject of con- 
 ference. Tithe included not only the Levite's tenth, but 
 at least as much more to be devoted to the festivals and 
 to the poor. In the first Christian centuries, there could 
 not be the same regulated provision of tithe as in the Holy 
 Land, v/here the chosen people were identical with the 
 community. In the great heathen world the Christians were 
 lost to sight, or noticed only to be evil entreated and cast out. 
 But when the empire became Christian, and the faith was 
 once more a prevalent and hereditary belief, the twofold 
 obligation for which tithe had been instituted was acknow- 
 leged by the new servants of the God of Israel. The Church 
 took under her care both the bodies and souls of men, 
 relieving the needy, ministering the Gospel to the lost. 
 Amid all the darkness and corruption of the Middle Ages, 
 she faithfully remembered the poor as those of whom Jesus 
 said, " Inasmuch as ye did it to one of the least of these 
 my brethren, ye did it unto Me" (St Matt. xxv. 40). The 
 Church Reformed never forgot the duty, though grievously 
 crippled in the performance of it by the greed of mercenary 
 allies. Under increasing difficulties, no Church strove more 
 faithfully to be helpful to the poor than our own. There 
 are those still with us who can remember how in this city 
 Dr Chalmers sought to repair the old framework of charity. 
 But selfishness in the individual, and schism in the Church, 
 were too strong for him, and he lived to see it displaced by 
 a Parliamentary tax, grudgingly paid, thanklessly received, 
 blessing neither him who gives nor him who takes. Fan- 
 tastic theories, that are shaking the fabric of society, owe 
 perhaps not a little of their popularity to the disuse of alms- 
 giving which was Christian in its source as well as national 
 in its operation. 
 
 But the subject on which we have to confer to-day is the 
 
and other Systems. 75 
 
 duty of giving to the church in its corporate capacity. We 
 are familiar with two forms in which provision is made for 
 the ministration of holy ordinances. There are the yearly 
 fruits of what in former generations was devoted to the 
 perpetual service of God. There are the free offerings 
 dedicated by His people from day to day for His present 
 service. There is another source of revenue, but it is hardly 
 worthy of being classed with these. I mean the hiring by 
 private bargain, and for fixed periods, seats for the personal 
 comfort of the worshipper while he is engaged in his 
 religious duties. Obviously this is primarily an offering to 
 self not to God, and at best, the ultimate destination of the 
 funds so accruing does not extend beyond the building from 
 which they are derived. The duty of providing Christ's 
 ordinances in a world which He came to save has to do with 
 far more than the income of an individual minister from 
 whatever source it comes. When we take this broad view 
 of the duty, two questions suggest themselves. What ought 
 to be the measure of our giving, and, that being deter- 
 mined, how should it be apportioned ? 
 
 As to the measure of our gifts, it seems to be thought by 
 many that we are left absolutely to our own discretion ; in 
 other words, that the minimum is anything above nothing. 
 But in the light of Scripture can we assume that the Chris- 
 tian least may fall below the Jewish ? It may be pleaded 
 that part of the liberty wherewith Christ hath made His 
 people free is that tliey are delivered from the rigid exacti- 
 tude of Judaism. In another branch of duty we have been 
 content to adopt precisely the Jewish measure of sacrifice. 
 We consecrate to God a seventh of our time ; is it too much 
 to devote to him a smaller proportion of our means ? It 
 can be said of tithe, as indeed of the other, that it is an 
 ordinance older than the Levitical law. Jacob at Bethel 
 said, " Of all that Thou shalt give me, I will surely give the 
 tenth unto Thee," and Abraham gave tithes of all to Mel- 
 chizedek, " priest of the most high God." This is not a 
 case in which we can argue that the spirit of a law is more 
 than the letter, for the result would be to make the spirit 
 
"j^ The Divine Order of Church Finance 
 
 narrower and more selfish, instead of loftier and more free. 
 If a difference is to be made, the beneficence of a Christian 
 ought to rise to a higher level than that of the Jew. Our 
 religion is more pervaded than theirs with the spirit of self- 
 denial and love. Its mission is wider. It has not only to 
 maintain the truth in one narrow land, but to spread it 
 throughout the earth. And if, nineteen centuries after the 
 Incarnation, it has not possessed the world for Christ, is not 
 this one chief cause, tiiat the Church has not taken note of the 
 apostolic warning, " he which soweth sparingly, shall reap 
 also sparingly." If Jesus Himself said little on this very 
 duty, we have at least His Avords regarding the kindred 
 obligation of giving to the poor. No rebuke, but a word of 
 blessing, came to the publican who urged, " the half of my 
 goods I give unto the poor." And when He applied the 
 law at its strictest to test the weak point of a soul that He 
 loved. He said, " sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto 
 the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven, and come, 
 follow Me." As regards the other duty, the rule which the 
 Christian prescribes to himself ought at least to equal in its 
 measure of self-sacrifice the lowest rate accepted by the 
 Jewish law. And yet many a Christian who insists on 
 being a law to himself thinks that he hiis come to the limit 
 of reasonable liberality as soon as he begins to feel the pinch 
 of self-denial. If he passes those confines, it is not for His 
 sake, " Who became poor that Ave through His poverty 
 might be rich," but that he may rid himself of some im- 
 portunate pleader, or not appear to have less to give than 
 some rival in the battle of life. It may be said with 
 justice, that there cannot be one rule, one measure for all. 
 There may be taken into account most fairly such considera- 
 tions as the number of a man's dependants, the unavoidable 
 demands of his position, habits of early life which to one 
 person have become a second nature, while they would be 
 a burden on another to whom unaccustomed prosperity has 
 come. There is abundant room for such reckonin^js amonjj 
 the nine-tenths that remain after one has been set apart for 
 
and othey Systems. 77 
 
 God. One man's tenth is as much from him as another's 
 fifth. But we must think not only of those who have 
 abundant means, but of the poor. Can we expect them to 
 regulate their givings by this half-forgotten Jewish scale ? 
 Sometimes their defence against such claims is undertaken 
 by those who have not habitually much regard for the poor, 
 and who, it is to be feared, take up their case as the strongest 
 point against a general principle which they do not wish to 
 have pressed on themselves. But whoever pats it, the 
 question is one that must not be evaded. Christ is no 
 hard master to any. He who knew not wliere to lay His 
 head well knows the case of tlie poor, and has a dispensa- 
 tion ready for those who have enough for existence, but 
 nothing to spare. " If there be first a Avilling mind, it is 
 accepted according to that a man hath and not according to 
 that he hath not." But as to the poor, never is their 
 Master's pleasure in them greater, or His blessing on them 
 fuller, than when " their deep poverty aboundetli unto the 
 riches of their liberality." Remember the two widows 
 
 whose memory is embalmed in the pages of Holy Writ her 
 
 of Zarephath, ready to share her last meal with a stranger, 
 and her of Jerusalem, giving her last farthing for the 
 worship of God. For warning, there is the case of him 
 who, because he hid his single talent, as too mean a trust 
 to be used for his Lord, heard the words, " from him that 
 hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him." 
 But in truth the poor are not the class who most need to 
 be reminded of this duty. All who are familiar with their 
 ways know that their generosity constantly puts to shame 
 those who have a wider margin for self-denial. No doubt 
 their ready sympathy is often abused, and their hard-won 
 earnings made the prey of the unworthy. Then on the 
 one part at least the blessing does not fail, of which Jesus 
 spoke when He said, "It is more blessed to give than 
 to receive." But there are among them not a few who 
 spend so lavishly on things that bring no blessing, that they 
 cannot claim exemption from the duty of giving to God. 
 
78 The Divine Order of C/unr/i Finance 
 
 There are those of one sex who waste on drink, of the other 
 on dress, a proportion of their gains far in excess of the 
 Hebrew tenth. Out of wliat is thus cast away, what pro- 
 vision might be made for the necessities of later life, or for 
 seizing any opportunity that offered of rising in the world, 
 while yet they were living day by day in the spirit of the 
 Saviour's counsel, " Take no thought, saying, what shall 
 we eat ? or what shall we drink ? or wherewithal shall we 
 be clothed ? . . . But seek ye first the kingdom of God." 
 When persons who have been accustomed to give without 
 system in response to appeals from acquaintances or irre- 
 gular impulses of their own, are led to set aside a defined 
 sum for the service of God, they usually make the discovery 
 that they had been giving much less than they supposed. 
 In thinking of the many claims upon them, they had not 
 been accustomed to separate the claims disallowed from 
 those that were met. Finding now a larger surplus on 
 their hands than they had expected, they search out for 
 themselves objects to which it may be applied. As the 
 habit of enquiring and sifting grows, their giving becomes 
 more judicious, their own hearts more generous, more 
 tolerant of weakness, more pitiful of sin ; iu a word, more 
 like to Him whose almoners they are. 1 have been assum- 
 inof that the Christian ought to devote at least as much as 
 the Jew with a narrower mission and less precious privileges 
 offered for the direct service of God. We do not realize 
 how far we fall short of our elder brethren in the faith. 
 Some years ago our highest statistical authority estimated 
 the national income at twelve hundred millions. If we 
 assign a tenth part of that to Scotland, her tithe would be 
 twelve millions. Reckoning one half of this as the tribute 
 due by the National Church, it appears that she is not 
 giving a tithe of her tithe. Her Christian Liberality, as 
 she fondly calls it, if repeated thirteen times, would not 
 come up to Jewish liberality, calculated on the lowest scale 
 allowed by God. 
 
 The Christian having ilctermined what he ought to offer 
 
and other Systems. 79 
 
 for the upholding and extension of his Master's Kingdom, 
 has to solve a further question : how it is to be allocated. 
 With many the supreme authority on this point is a pro- 
 verb believed by them to be Scriptural, if we judge from 
 the unction with which it is quoted. " Charity," they say, 
 " begins at home." Whoever the author was, it was not 
 Solomon. It were better to recall other words, and think 
 from whose lips they came, " If ye love them that love you, 
 what thank have ye ? " Charity in the popular sense of 
 beneficence has no work within the home. Outside it, the 
 adage ought to run, "The nearer the home, the less the 
 charity." The home has its special and rightful claims 
 upon us as has the neighbourhood, the fatherland, the 
 Christian brotherhood. Of these widening circles, self is 
 the common centre. As our sympathies stretch forth into 
 each successively, personal interest wanes, but charity waxes. 
 Outside all lies the great family of humanity, the common 
 fall its heritage, the common redemption its hope. All 
 these claims must be acknowledged in just proportion, if 
 we would be like Him whose almost latest word on the 
 cross was of His mother, who wept when, for the last time, 
 He came in sight of the doomed city of His people, and 
 yet, devoted son and true patriot as He was, gave Himself 
 to die for all. Earlier in His life, one asked of Him, " who 
 is my neighbour," expecting perhaps an ansAver in the spirit 
 of that favourite proverb of the selfish, and had for answer 
 the parable of the Good Samaritan. Think what might have 
 been our state had missionaries, leaving the Mediterranean 
 shores for the savage regions of North-Western Europe, heard 
 and acted on some Latin version of "charity begins at home." 
 So far as means allow and opportunity offers, we ought to 
 do what we can alike for those who are near and for those 
 who are afar off. That stock character of the satirist, the 
 person who neglects home duties in the interest of the 
 distant savage, is infinitely less common in real life than 
 the opposite type of one-sided zeal, whose sympathies are 
 confined to his own consregation. In such minds the 
 
So /Vie Divine Order of CIntrch Finance. 
 
 boundaries of generosity and selfishness become strangely 
 confused. Some seem to suppose that so much is being 
 withheld from sessional funds when large and frequent 
 oft'erings are made in God's house for strangers and 
 foreigners that they may become fellow-citizens with the 
 saints. Gatherings for local objects and for remote, act and 
 react upon each other for good or for evil as they are 
 stimulated or neglected. " There is that scattereth, and 
 yet increase th ; and there is that withholdeth more than is 
 meet, but it tendeth to poverty." A flock, protected by its 
 office-bearers from contributions whose destination is too 
 distant to promise any reflex benefit to the donors, is not 
 unlikely to improve upon the lesson, and grow sparing at 
 home. Much, too, of what is given for congregational 
 jDurposes has self-gratification for the motive power quite as 
 much as self-sacrifice. Not that the graces of architecture 
 or the melody of sweet sounds need be undervalued as aids 
 to the worship of God. That the purpose in consecrating 
 them may be lofty, and the tribute acceptable, no one will 
 question who thinks of the alabaster box of spikenard. 
 But considering the danger that lurks in the relation of 
 these things to self, it were well that they should not have 
 the first place on the roll of a Christian's gifts. In disciplin- 
 ing ourselves in this duty, nothing is more helpful for the 
 elevation of motive than to give largely for the use of that 
 vast section of the human family who have not heard of 
 the divine Brother and the heavenly home, and who will 
 never see in the flesh the distant kindred whose prayers 
 and alms for them have come up as a memorial before 
 God. 
 
THE DIVINE ORDER OF CHURCH FINANCE 
 AND OTHER SYSTEMS. 
 
 Rev. M. p. Johnstone, B.D. 
 
 Church finance must be governed by the same principles- 
 as any other outcome of the Divine life. That life must 
 be homogeneous and uniform, or its condition cannot be 
 one of perfect health. It must express itself naturally, 
 proportionately and harmoniously. For excess in one 
 direction necessitates, with a finite being, defect in another. 
 
 This principle is contradicted by the practice of a Church 
 which strains the open-handed, and fails with the niggardly 
 elements of which it is composed. Consciousness of re- 
 sponsibility is not only not diffused throughout the whole 
 community, but is violated at either end of the scale of 
 liberality. The unwilling gift is as distasteful to God as 
 the gift withheld. There is an evident absence of that 
 cohesiveness and solidarity which belongs to real unity — 
 a unity, that is to say, which necessarily brings with it an 
 esprit die corps. The present-day condition of most 
 Churches testifies — so far as so chaotic a state of things 
 can be articulate — to the absence of Church-Self-Con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 This presents a problem less easy to deal with than the 
 condition of a Church which makes a uniform and 
 harmonious reply to the responsibilities of its existence. 
 "I would thou wert either cold or hot," was the address of 
 our Lord to lukewarm Laodicea. A sham spiritual tepidity 
 is often more hopeless than devotional frost. 
 
 If this principle be a true one, it is the bed-rock on 
 which every system of almsgiving must be built. All 
 
 F '' 
 
82 The Divine Order of Church Finance 
 
 Church hfe must be ruled by it, if it be true at all ; every 
 department of Church activity, no matter how different each 
 may be from the rest. A sense of responsibility must be 
 present in every individual of whom the body is composed. 
 " Neither much nor little " is the apostolic dictum, but each 
 man according to his ability. His Church giving must be 
 proportioned to his Church strength. Individuals, and 
 sometimes even communions, may run themselves out of 
 breath, so to speak, in this phase of Church work, to the 
 detriment of symmetry as a whole. The body is compacted 
 not by that which a single, but every joint supplieth 
 according to the effectual working in the measure of every 
 part. 
 
 The same lesson is enforced by the non-acceptability 
 before God of a reluctant gift, that is, beyond the Church 
 strength of the giver. The gift must have the same 
 relation, our Lord says, to the giver, as the fruit has to the 
 tree. This is a life relationship, and it is impossible to 
 make the fruit good by any other process than by making 
 the tree good. This is merely another way of saying that 
 Church beneficence must be in the highest sense instinctive 
 and natural. 
 
 Church authorities, generally, do not regard this. The 
 widow's mite has only a conventional, formal, unreal value. 
 Absolute magnitude in the size of gifts overshadows every 
 other feature in almsgiving. As much money as possible, 
 no matter how unwillingly. The idea of a lurking grudge 
 created in the reluctant giver's mind, and the consequent 
 <listaste engendered for Church work, never occurs. The 
 lopsided character which, well able to contribute, acquires 
 a facility for compounding thereby for spiritual felony is 
 contemplated with easy and good-humoured tolerance. And 
 who shall say how many of our Missionary catastrophes 
 have resulted from the adulteration of the stream of free- 
 will offerings by the large admixture of liberality which 
 has no real relation to the Christian stature of character 
 behind it. 
 
a7id other Systems. 83 
 
 It cannot, therefore, be by a forcing hot-house process 
 that true Church finance can be fostered and regulated, nor 
 by any system of organization which does a fraction more 
 than remove artificial and superficial obstructions. There 
 can be no spiritual increase from Church liberality, isolated 
 and disconnected from a corresponding Church vitality. 
 The first movement of animal life is, by a system of reticu- 
 lated arteries and veins, to organize itself Vitalizing is 
 more important than organizing. Too complicated a 
 machinery may prove an oppressive load to a feeble life, 
 and organization may actually extinguish and stifle a 
 flickering vitality, just as a savage community often receives 
 a curse instead of a blessing from civilization, because it has 
 power to assimilate only its baser elements. Church 
 financiers must recognize facts and forbear to legislate for 
 a state of things beyond the Church's present spiritual 
 strength. Another course indeed may be followed by 
 commercial or even a lower ecclesiastical success. But it 
 is utterly inconceivable that money as such can have any 
 spiritual offspring. It is the good man who is rich toward 
 God. It would be monstrous, unnatural, and appalling if 
 we were ever to see the world converted by a wealthy, 
 worldly Church. Like produces like. Mere money, with 
 no devotion behind it as its impelling motive power, 
 accomplishes no result on the plane of celestial things. 
 " That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which 
 is born of the spirit is spirit." 
 
 If our Lord is to do mighty w^orks on the supernatural 
 level of His unworldly Kingdom either by a Church or by 
 a saint, it cannot be merely by a complicated mechanism 
 or a perfected system as a system. The bitter, desert waters 
 of ecclesiastical activity must be sweetened by the branch 
 of spiritual consecration before they can quench the thirst 
 of a people elect, beloved ; before the waning life of a holy 
 nation can be so replenished that the arduous pilgrimage 
 becomes a triumphal progress. Neither men nor Churches 
 are mere machines. And the spasmodic liberality evoked 
 
84 The Divine Order of Church Finance. 
 
 by the galvanic battery of schedule, card, and special effort 
 will not be replaced by the steady, natural and spontaneous 
 offering until the clattering activity of Martha ceases to 
 register the highest Avater-mark on the shore of the Church's 
 work. That offering which perfumes the whole house with 
 the odour of its ointment emerges from the life of con- 
 templative devotion, and the more excellent way of working 
 begins, continues, ends by sitting at the feet of Jesus to 
 hear His Word, It must be by an increase of spiritual 
 temperature throughout the whole body pneumatical that 
 the Divine order of Church finance will be realized. This 
 is the heavenly inheritance and the jvus divinum of the 
 household of faith. Primarily, this function is in higher 
 than human hands, " Not by might nor by power but by 
 My Spirit." Secondarily, it belongs to human piety to 
 study how to increase the receptiveness of the Divine gift 
 both corporately and individually. The apostle of Church 
 finance is perhaps more apt than the minister of other 
 modes and departments of the Divine vigour to suffer the 
 eye of trustfulness to wander from the Incarnate Vision 
 among the waves of commercial anxiety and the breakers 
 of " low thoughted care." When this happens to man or 
 Church, the law of spiritual gravitation, neutralized and 
 suspended by the energy of a higher life, ever begins to re- 
 assert itself. First principles must be re-discovered, and 
 salvation recoojnized as beloncrins: to the Lord. 
 
THE OBSERVANCE, IN ITS MAIN FEATURES, 
 OF THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 Rev. E. L. Thompson, D.J). 
 
 You will not expect me (with the limited time at my 
 disposal) to enter into the Jewish origin of the Christian 
 year. For just as the great Apostolic Liturgy had its 
 Jewish origin and its early foreshadowings in the 
 Christianised prayers of the Temple Ritual, of the Service 
 of the Synagogue, and of the Domestic Rites related to the 
 sacrifice of the Paschal Lamb, so we might trace the origin 
 of a yearly celebration of Festivals in the Christian Church 
 to those of the Jewish year. The fact of the earlier 
 observance would influence the new worship, and the growth 
 out of the particular institutions of the ancient Church of 
 some very important ones of the early Church is obvious. 
 The Lord's Day, the Day of the Resurrection, did not spring 
 out of the weekly Sabbath of the Jew. There is not one 
 word in the New Testament which shows even indirectly 
 the substitution of the one for the other, or which bases 
 the observance and worship of the first day of the week on 
 the Jewish observance and worship of the Sabbath. The 
 Jewish converts observed both days. The Gentile converts 
 observed only the Lord's Day. In all our studies in the 
 history of the sub-apostolic church, and later to the Council 
 of Nicea, we see how with one voice the Fathers and Early 
 Councils declare against the observance of the Jewish 
 Sabbath, i.e., against the Judaizing influence that would 
 insist on the Christian observance of it as binding on the 
 Church. You know of the ultimate supersession of it by 
 the Lord's Day when the latter held its ground as the first 
 Day of the Creation, the Day of Christ's Resurrection, and 
 
 85 
 
86 The Observance, in its Main Features, 
 
 of the Descent of the Holy Ghost, though the valuable 
 moral and Divine feature of periodical Rest from work 
 indicated in Paradise and in the Decalogue was amply 
 considered and recognised, and passed rightly into the 
 Christian Institution. But certainly Good Friday sprang 
 from the Day of the Passover, certainly Whitsunday sprang 
 from the Day of Pentecost. One might not unprofitably 
 trace the development of the Memorial Principle in worship 
 with its roots in Divine authority, Apostolic appointment or 
 sanction, and even in human nature. What about national 
 days and local days of ancient Burghs, and days of festival 
 for great heroes, great patriots, and great poets ? Why, 
 then, such shrieks against the days of the Ecclesiastical 
 Year ? Human nature is on our side, and that in the long 
 run will help us to establish our position. 
 
 But the Early Church, and the Mediaeval Church even 
 more so, proceeded to work out the development of this 
 Memorial Principle, and broadly, it may be stated, she went 
 too far. Tlio Christian Year r)iay be a great burden or a 
 great Blessing. For making it a great and almost unbear- 
 able burden, or for converting it into a system that was in 
 danger of becoming, and did often become, a mechanical form 
 and calculation of Hours, Days, and groups of Days, with an 
 infinite series of Piites, vestments. Offices, scraps of Scripture 
 Lessons, and Ptemembrance of Saints in an over-loaded Calen- 
 dar, the Church lost, — ivell, what we have lost. She lost for 
 Scotland the blessing we are now seeking to recover — " the 
 observance in its main features of the Christian Year." 
 I cannot easily forgive the Roman Church for pushing her 
 Ritual to such an excess as to make it so burdensome even 
 to the ministrant that there came from him the pathetic 
 wail for relief which we find expressed in the Preface of 
 the English Prayer-Book and in the Homilies. Look at the 
 burden of the Breviary. Listen to the cry that went to 
 Rome, and learn how the interesting effort, at first success- 
 ful, of Cardinal Quignon for a new Scriptural and really 
 delightful Breviary came to grief For " Rome," like the 
 
of the Christian Year. 87 
 
 Bourbons, will not learn anything, nor change, even when 
 she cannot deny that the change is right and necessary. 
 Look at the Saram Missal, in pretty general use before the 
 Reformation, and observe the intricacies of the Ritual for 
 the year, the elaborate rules, the multitude of rubrics, 
 the memorials of Apostles, and Saints historical, national, 
 and local, the clashing of the interests of these and how 
 to harmonise the observance of them, the obvious need of 
 immense study of these rubrics and of the adjustment 
 of the Days and Daily Services, requiring an arithmetical 
 faculty, a power of method, a love of (Retail, and a minute 
 attention to form which could hardly escape producing 
 a mechanician in the Public Duties of Religion. Often, 
 very often, there arose and arises an absolute weariness and 
 even detestation of the burden. Who that has watched 
 carefully in Italy, France, and in Spain, the Services in 
 the choir, and scrutinized the Priests, Deacons, acolytes, 
 and choristers engaged, must have sometimes seen obvious 
 and not very pleasant — often very disgusting — signs of the 
 burden. And we need not go on to consider what the 
 effect was and is upon the people of this excessive elabora- 
 tion of the features and associated rites of the Christian 
 Year, and of a Church Calendar crowded as you see it. 
 We simply indicate the dangers of externalism and of a 
 mechanical piety and worship. 
 
 I cannot understand how all this could have come about, 
 checked as a good and healthy Memorial Principle ought to 
 have been, by (1) the study of the Prophets of the Old 
 Testament. This study should have showed the value, the 
 delightsomeness, and yet the danger of the Ritual services and 
 Festivals of the old Covenant. The Prophets never cease to 
 point out the superior obligation of righteousness, and to 
 show that mercy, humanity, and obedience are better than 
 any sacrifices. Here, for us and for all time, is an obvious 
 " other side of the question " of Ritual, which every devout 
 man will carefully consider as an element in the balancing 
 
88 The Observance^ in its Main Features^ 
 
 of the truth as to the observance of Days, Years, Festivals, 
 positive institutions in religion, and their related Ritual. 
 There is a moderation here right wise and beautiful. Really 
 the Roman Church has not shown this moderation, and people 
 naturally say she has given to worship all the burdensome 
 character of the ancient Law ; she has gone back to the 
 rudiments, the " beggarly elements," the childhood of 
 religion. For example, Christ gave a simple prayer to His 
 disciples for the very purpose of devout brevity in approach- 
 ing the awful, yet loving Presence of God. Rome would 
 not have it so. If the prayer be short, then let it be 
 repeated to abolish, as it were, the very brevity our Lord 
 desiderated. Repeated over and over again in the Services 
 or by itself, as a kind of charm, the Paternoster became a 
 mere form, the repetition emptied the Prayer of its interest 
 and reality, and converted it into a burden, so that our 
 forefathers came, alas ! to recoil from it, and gave it up 
 altogether in worship. See what followed ! The removal 
 of this Pillar of the Liturgy from the Services of the 
 Sanctuary has been the cliief instrument in the destruction 
 of our Liturgical worship. The restoration of it is really the 
 restoration of that type of worship. The use of it is the 
 admission that Forms of Prayer are allowable on the highest 
 authority, that of our Lord Himself 
 
 (2) I shall not dwell on what may be learned from the 
 Gospels as to the " Limits of Ritual." But observe, our 
 Lord fulfilled all righteousness by submission to the Rites of 
 the Law, by honouring the Festivals of the Church, by His 
 worship in the Temple and Synagogue, yet His silence on 
 these things is significant, and His insistence on spirituality 
 of Avorship — worship in sincerity, and reality, worship in the 
 light of the grand truth of God's Fatherhood — as the essential 
 features of acceptable and universal worship — are on the 
 side of the subordination of Ritual as a means to an end. 
 
 (3) A check to the undue developments of the Christian 
 Year might have been obtained from the study of St Paul's 
 position in regard to the Jewish rites and ordinances. His 
 
of the Christian Year. 89 
 
 reproach of the Church of Galatia for observing " days and 
 months and times and years " in deference to the Judaizing 
 party, and his demand that the Colossians were not to be 
 compelled to keep the yearly Jewish Festivals are suggestive. 
 He took the broad ground that the Mosaic Ordinances had 
 been adjusted to the future of the Gospel, and that their 
 fulfilment in Christ abrogated the compulsory observance of 
 them. Such a position will justify any fair-minded man 
 in maintainino^, not that Ritual and Ordinances are abro- 
 gated in the Christian Church, but that there are limita- 
 tions to these. They are always to be viewed as a means 
 and never as an end. There is to be a spiritual and devo- 
 tional freedom as well as a fixed form. There is we admit 
 a danger of being driven into a ritualistic bondage from 
 which the Church has escaped through Christ — " a bondage 
 greater than the fathers were able to bear." It was shame- 
 ful of St Cyprian to initiate this driving process and for the 
 Mediaeval Church to increase the bondage. 
 
 On the other hand, there is nothing in St Paul's position 
 or in the Epistle to the Hebrews to invalidate the propriety 
 and the value of a due observance of certain memorials and 
 memorial seasons related to Christ. Even the ceremonies 
 of the Law were permissible if still desired by the Jewish 
 convert, and were placed in subservience to the Christian 
 conscience and Christian liberty. " Circumcision Avas no- 
 thing." No, and " uncircumcision was nothing " either. 
 The Sabbath might be observed or not observed if the 
 keeping or non-keeping were done conscientiously as unto 
 the Lord. The Apostle himself kept the Feast of Pentecost 
 after it had been Christianised by the descent of the Holy 
 Ghost. Moreover, the old observances were " works of law," 
 the new memorials were works of faith and love and 
 spiritual teaching and discipline "until He come." The 
 Jewish Ritual was a type, a shadow, but the substance the 
 body was Christ, and Christ having come, the observance of 
 Days and Ordinances related to Him supplanted the need 
 and the obligatory character of the ancient ones, and stood 
 
90 The Observance, in its Main Featnres, 
 
 ou grounds specially its own. Broadl}-, these grounds are : 
 (a) The honour due to our Head in Heaven. (6) The 
 edification resulting from every means that brings an his- 
 torical Christ and His Truth before us, and that strengthens 
 the consciousness of our identity with Him in His Body. 
 (c) The fruits of the Spirit produced by the high, holy, 
 orderly and sustained communion with Christ in the presence 
 and power of the Holy Ghost, and this not of the individual 
 simply, but of the whole organism of the Church in its 
 united adoration, thanksgiving, and surrender of the will 
 and the life to our Lord in worship and in service. id) 
 The safe historical preservation of the Apostolic deposit, 
 "the Faith once delivered to the Saints." So much in 
 general, but consider the grounds for the observance of the 
 Christian Year in expansion and detail. 
 
 (1) The undoubted institution and observance of the 
 Lord's Day, the weekly Easter, solely at the beginning on 
 the ground of our Lord's Resurrection, and with no reference 
 or relation at first to the Jewish Sabbath, is the cru.K of 
 the whole question. It was done in pure holy honour of 
 Jesus, a weekly memorial of Him, and the observance of the 
 Friday previous in fasting and in sorrow as the Great Day of 
 the Sacrifice, and of other days of the week under the one in- 
 clusive word, " the Pascha," and the keen contest of the first 
 Paschal controversy, with the Palestinian claim to adhere 
 to the days of the lunar month on the one hand, contrasted 
 with the Asiatic usage of keeping to the actual days of 
 the week, all indicate a principle, viz. : our religion is an 
 historical one. It is a religion of historical facts. A Birth, 
 a Life, a Death, a Rising again, an Ascension to Heaven, a 
 Descent of a promised Comforter. Our Religion is not a mere 
 Philosophy, i.e., it is not to be described as one of the best, 
 say the very best, of those systems which great minds have 
 devised to explain the universe — to account for being and 
 law and conscience and duty — nor is it a mere Scheme of 
 Morals taught and exemplified by a Great and Good Pro- 
 phet, nor is it a beautiful, pious devotional Literature — nor 
 
of the Christian Year. 91 
 
 is it an " Evolution of Religion " explained by perfectly 
 natural causes, but an Original and Divine Revelation given 
 by a Person in the " fulness of time," through Words and 
 Deeds, by sinless character, by perfect self-renunciation, by 
 Atoning Sacrifice, and by His triumph over sin and death. 
 
 Hence the expansion of the weekly Memorial of Christ 
 by other Days relating to the great events of His life and 
 work. We have Epiphany because of the positive wondering 
 delight of the best hearts of the early Church in the thought 
 of God's Salvation being for the whole world, of Christ being 
 a Light for the Gentiles, and of the proof in the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost, without distinction, to all believers, that the 
 Church was to be Catholic. Then arose Christmas out of 
 and severed from Epiphany, to celebrate the Birth. Then 
 Advent was instituted, for just as the ancient Church was 
 kept in a spirit of expectation, desire, and hope, ever ripen- 
 ing until the aged Simeon and the venerable Anna received 
 the Holy Child Jesus in the Temple, so, as it were, before 
 our celebration of the Birth of Jesus, we are to prepare for 
 another and more glorious Coming — we are to be as sure of 
 this Second Advent as of the First. We have a pledge of 
 its certainty which the ancient Church did not have, a 
 pledge in the fact of the Incarnation. The keej^ing of 
 Advent opens the Christian Year. 
 
 And because the Prophecies and Psalms and devout 
 longings of the holy men of the olden time indicate that 
 they saw in the promised Messiah not only a gift to Israel 
 and a redemption for God's ancient people, but a Universal 
 King and Redeemer, we sing in Advent these Psalms, we 
 read the Lessons from these Prophets, and from the life of 
 the last and greatest of them, the immediate fore-runner 
 and Proclaimer of the Christ. All Christians acknowledge 
 the Lord's Day, and, likewise, I do not suppose that from 
 that first Ascension Day there ever ceased the joyous 
 remembrance of it, or that the New Pentecost, the White- 
 Sunday once baptized with the descent of the Holy Ghost 
 was ever omitted from the Christian Year, shaping itself, as 
 
92 The Observance, in its Main Features, 
 
 it did, apart from the civil year and the Jewish calendar. 
 Other observances will suggest themselves in this relation. 
 
 (2) Our religion is not only an historical one, i.e., of 
 facts related to a Person, but in relation to this Person and 
 these facts there is a Body of Doctrine — vital, fundamental, 
 Catholic. The Christian Year secures not only the remem- 
 brance of the Person of Christ and the facts of His Religion, 
 but the instruction of the Church in the Doctrine or Teach- 
 ing of our Lord and His Apostles, in relation to the Person 
 and the focts. The Law, the Prophets, the Psalms, the 
 Epistle, the Gospel are all ordered in this relation, are all 
 read and explained, so as to convey to the faithful the moral 
 and spiritual meaning and the lively power of the Historical, 
 yet Living Christ. There is security in such a system that 
 the people will hear not only of the Great Events, and see 
 not only the Central Figure of the Person of Christ, but will 
 get the explanation and the application of these to their soul 
 and conscience. 
 
 There are other securities, such as that of a living ortho- 
 doxy as to the broad Christian facts of the Creed, and the 
 great doctrines bound up with them ; yet liberty as to 
 mere theory and devout speculation and theological opinions 
 which the Puritan Theology make fundamental. Moreover, 
 you have a greater security for common honesty in the 
 Ministry, for how can a man deny the Incarnation and 
 observe Christmas as appointed by the Church, or the 
 Resurrection of Christ and ours through His, and observe 
 Easter aright ? 
 
 There is the security also that the Truths of our Religion 
 shall not be presented in the office of Preaching in the mere 
 abstract, theological, Catechism form, thus — "What is God?" 
 as if God were a " What ; " but. Who is God ? " Our 
 Father which art in Heaven ; " God, a Person revealed in 
 a Person, His Divine Son our Human Brother. Sermons 
 will be, not a reply to the question — what is Atonement, 
 xvhat is Adoption, Justification, Sanctification ? The circle 
 
of the Christian Year. 93 
 
 of the Christian Year will present these Blessed Truths to 
 the conscience by another " plan of Salvation." Here is 
 the Atoning One. Here is God the Justifier. Here is 
 the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier. Here is the Trinity, not 
 as mere discussion about a dogma, nor mere belief in a 
 dogma, but the presentation to faith and to the conscience 
 of a Father, of a Son, and of a Holy Ghost. It is no 
 answer to this, that the ordinary random method of the 
 selection of texts can be made so as to secure that these 
 Truths shall be brought before our people, and this living, 
 real, historical form of their j)resentation. As a matter of 
 fact, it does not do so. A congregation may be left the 
 entire year without hearing a sermon on the Incarnation 
 or Resurrection of Christ. Then suddenly one may hear 
 a discourse to prove the Resurrection of Christ, as if the 
 people were a body of philosophers or an audience of 
 doubters and inquirers, or of Divinity students 3'et uncertain 
 as to the basis of our Religion. The Catholic Church 
 does not argue as a practice in her worship as to the 
 facts and doctrines of the Christian Faith. She may at 
 certain times, and in certain places, require to state afresh 
 the grounds of her Creed, but she always remembers that 
 the Church meets, not as a school of philosophy, but as 
 a fellowship of believers for communion, spiritual sacrifice, 
 worship, and edification. 
 
 I must emphasise, then, what I believe to be one ad- 
 mirable feature of the Christian Year, for example, as we 
 have it, in the first Prayer Book of Edward I. It is this, the 
 security for the essentials of our faith as great, supernatural, 
 yet Historical Facts related to an Historical Person ever liv- 
 ing and teaching us still by His Word, His Holy Spirit, 
 His Church, and His Light of Pure Reason, the meaning and 
 the value of Revelation, combined with a large liberty as 
 to mere views or opinions or theories on Inspiration, 
 Atonement, Predestination, and the like, and on certain 
 unimportant Church ordinances. 
 
 It is melancholy to think that these theories or views 
 
94 T^h^ Observance, in its Main Features, 
 
 and opinions have actually been made the ground of rup- 
 ture and schism in the Church — views on which, and on the 
 " great " man who propounded them, people have actually 
 founded " churches " or sects, and called them after his name. 
 I love this strictness and yet this breadth and freedom which 
 you get in the Universal Church in her system of worship 
 reformed and purged, in her Creed, enshrined in the 
 Christian Year, in her devotional life nourished by the 
 orderly regular Distribution of the Bread of Life and Food 
 of Immortality ; and in the moral practice, so severe yet 
 so humane, and so related to the Lord we honour, and 
 remember that we walk at liberty' because we love His 
 Commandments. I claim that our National Church is a 
 Branch of this Catholic Church and enables us to realise 
 in our experience this ideal in some measure at least. Let 
 us labour for the perfect realisation. 
 
 (3) I might refer to the vahie of the Christian Year as 
 a powerful and exquisite means of creating, deepening, 
 and expressing the whole range of the emotion of the 
 Christian life. " Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing," might be 
 its motto; our hopes, desires, and watchfulness in Advent; 
 our peace with all men of goodwill to God and man at 
 Christmas, our yearning for the conversion of the heathen 
 and the triumph of Christ, our intercession and our sacrifices 
 at Epiphany, our descent in Holy Week into the valley of 
 suffering and mysterious, awful depths of Passion and Sacri- 
 fice, and our journey along the Via Dolorosa with the ''Man 
 of Sorrows," our observance with Him of the sad way to 
 the Cross, our remembrance of His Death on Good Friday, 
 our silence, our dejection even almost to despair on the 
 Saturday of the Burial, our woe yet our (piiet restful sub- 
 mission in that awful interval supported as we are by 
 our remembrance of His Promise to rise the third day. 
 Then Easter Joy — all the gi-eater because of the sorrow 
 before it — I need only name it. Our upward glance and 
 elevation of spirit on Ascension Day, our sense of power 
 
of the Christian Year. 95 
 
 in the renewed reception of the gifts of the Holy Ghost on 
 Whitsunday, Let some one more capable than I am develop 
 this advantage of the Christian Year, the Church recoo-nis- 
 ing it in the provision of Psalms and Special Prayers and 
 Anthems and Hymns — the poet of the Church revival 
 having given us a manual of sweetest song for the devout, 
 sober, yet rich and full cultivation and expression of the joy 
 and the sorrow, the poverty and the wealth, the penitence 
 and the pardon, the despair and the hope, the dying and 
 the living, of our life in Christ and in the Body of Christ. 
 
 Once again, the Christian Year, with its ordered relation 
 to Christian Worship, is in a noble sense an Art. It is 
 an Art as to its form, as to the expression of its spirit ; an 
 Art recognising the power and the freedom of the spiritual 
 life of our human nature, yet the glory of the forms 
 which that life can take, and their capacity when expressed 
 in the Holy Sacrament, and in the oblation, of prayer, and 
 praise, and all the accessories of spiritual worship, to kindle 
 the souls of men, to touch the tenderest feelings of our 
 nature, to stir pure and lofty emotion, to lift us above sense 
 and earthly passion, to join us with what is beautiful and 
 true and good, to place us in the fellowship of those who 
 either in the Church triumphant, or still in the House 
 of God on earth, worship the Father in spirit and in truth. 
 The Christian Year, as enshrined in the Liturgy of the 
 Church, is an effort of the Church to express her Faith 
 as a knowledge or Scientia for the intellect or reason, and 
 as a Revelation to the conscience and the heart with all 
 the spiritual and moral force which the Revealed Truth 
 can exercise upon our motives, our will, and our conduct. 
 It is also a Work of Art reverently and gradually con- 
 structed. Its object, in conjunction tuith the Liturgy 
 {never rightly separated from the rational freedom of Free 
 Prayer) and the other Services of the Church, with which 
 it is in living relation, is to reveal the nature and the object, 
 the spirit also, and the very tone of Christian Worship. It 
 
96 The Observance of the Christian Year. 
 
 aims at placing that Worship on its true Divine principles 
 as on a foundation, a corner stone, sure, elect, and precious. 
 It seeks to pourtray in faint outline the exquisite form, 
 and in sober reverent colour the sublime character and glory 
 of the Ideal Worship of God as realised in Heaven. It 
 desires to give shape and embodiment to our Worship here 
 in its union with that Worship before the Throne. It 
 surrounds us, therefore, even now, with the pure atmosphere, 
 the clear light, the warmth, the freshness, and the vigour 
 of the Heavenly Life. It lifts us to the Heavenly places 
 where Christ is at the Eight Hand of God. It fascinates 
 us with the suggestion of many thoughts, and deep ones, as 
 to God's Kingdom and God's Church and God's Truth and 
 Love, and especially of the infinite preciousness of that 
 Kingdom as the chief good of the soul. It indicates the 
 harmony of bounden duty and holy inclination in this 
 Worship, and it supplies us with all the inspiration and 
 helpfulness by which we may be able to offer the sacrifice 
 that God desires, both in His House and in His World, 
 with the purity of heart which obtains the vision of His 
 Face. Here there is power and beauty, here there is 
 strength and wisdom, here, in brief, in the Christian Year, 
 is a good thing that has ever been devised for the pro- 
 motion of our spiritual welfare, a wise instrument in the 
 household of the Faith for the edification and delight of 
 God's people — the chief thing among ten thousand good 
 things in the Church of Christ, and altogether lovely. 
 
THE OBSERVANCE, IN ITS MAIN FEATURES, 
 OF THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. 
 
 Rev. W. H. Macleod, B.A., B.D. 
 
 " The time has perhaps coine," said Dr Robert Lee 
 some thirty years ago, " when it may be proper seriously to 
 inquire whether there may be any good reason why we 
 should not celebrate such festivals as Christmas, Good 
 Friday, Easter, Ascension and Whitsunday with all or 
 nearly all our Christian brethren over the whole world." 
 But we have now advanced beyond the stage of mere in- 
 quiry, for there must be few that have studied the subject 
 with any degree of care who are not now convinced that 
 the observance, in their due ordei', of the outstanding facts 
 in the life of our Blessed Lord is not only a powerful 
 means of deepening- the spiritual life of the Church, but 
 also a duty which we owe to that same risen and ascended 
 Saviour. We have frequently to be reminded that the 
 Church of Christ is called to be a city set upon a hill, ever 
 bathed in the bright beams of her sun, a caudle set upon a 
 candlestick, ever sending forth light in the midst of dark- 
 ness ; and that she dare not recede from this position 
 without being guilty of unfaithfulness to her Head. She 
 has a twofold office to fulfil ; in union with her Lord she 
 is called to otfer intelligent worship to God the Father, 
 spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christy 
 and also to exhibit before the world those great acts of re- 
 demption upon which her faith is founded, " so that by 
 looking upon what she does," in the words of the judicious 
 Hooker, " the world may in a manner read what she 
 believes." But let us glance at some of the arouments 
 
 G 97 
 
98 The Observance, in its Main Features^ 
 
 which may be brought forward in support of the observance, 
 in their due order throughout the year, of those mighty 
 acts whereby our salvation has been brought to light. 
 When we contemplate the relation in which we stand to 
 the rest of Christendom, ought not the fact that, with but 
 few exceptions, the different branches of the Christian Church, 
 however much they may differ from each other in other 
 points, are practically at one in keeping the Christian year 
 be of great weight in urging us to stand aloof no longer in 
 these matters? For we are unnecessarily and unreasonably 
 accentuating the divisions which mar the unity of the Body 
 of Christ by thus separating ourselves not merely from the 
 Eastern and Western Communions but also from our 
 brethren of the Reformed Churches. As the Church of 
 Christ gathers round the manger cradle at Bethlehem, and 
 gazes, as it were, upon Him who for our sakes became 
 poor and had not where to la}^ His head, and as she gives 
 thanks for that first great Christmas Day when the heavens 
 rang with the Angel Chorus and tlie countless multitudes 
 around the throne were filled with wonder and rejoicing as 
 they contemplated the mystery of the condescension of the 
 Eternal Son ; when also beyond the veil light was given to 
 those who sat in darkness and in the shadow of death, and 
 peace and goodwill were proclaimed upon the earth, are we 
 alone to remain silent ? As the saintly George Herbert 
 expresses it, " The shepherds sing, and shall I silent be. My 
 God, no hymne for Thee ?" So also at the commemoration 
 of the other great facts of the Redemption. Catching, as it 
 were, at Christmastide from the Angel Chorus the spirit 
 of her worship, the Church goes on to perfect her Te Deum, 
 which each festival in its turn helps to swell, until the 
 harmony is complete, and the Church on earth rejoices with 
 the Church at rest, when upon Trinity Sunday she offers 
 up her full-voiced thanksgiving before the throne of the 
 Triune God. Is that Te Deum to be forever marred of its 
 completeness by our refusing to definitely remember, in 
 union with the Universal Church, those majestic events ? 
 
of the Christian Year. 99 
 
 If not a step towards the realisation of that unity for which 
 every earnest heart must be praying, it would at least be 
 an indication that we were desirous of drav/ing closer the 
 bonds which unite the scattered members of the Body of 
 Christ were we to unite at such seasons in bringing glory 
 to our common Lord. But we pass from this aspect of the 
 subject. The Teaching of Scripture furnishes us with 
 another powerful reason for such observances. The Church 
 is called to preach the Gospel, What, then, is this Gospel, 
 and how best can it be set forth ? If we study the teaching 
 of the New Testament, we shall find that* " the word Gospel 
 is exclusively applied to the announcement of certain events 
 occurring at a particular time in the history of the world." 
 And these events are, the Incarnation, Life, Passion, Death, 
 Resurrection and Ascension of our blessed Lord. And they 
 are presented in due order. No one event anticipates the 
 other, but each follows each in historical sequence. In the 
 Gospels we have brought before us the great facts of our 
 Lord's life ; in the Acts of the Apostles we have the record 
 of the founding of the Church and of the early teaching of 
 the Apostles. From the epitome of the two sermons which 
 it contains, delivered by St Peter and St Paul respectively, 
 and from other parts of the book, we gain the main feature 
 of their teaching, and it was this, viz., the proclamation of 
 the good news of the love of God the Father as manifested 
 in the Death and Resurrection of His Divine Son. It is 
 the same when we turn to the Epistles, for there again we 
 find " that the Gospel is still represented as consisting in 
 the record of the same outward facts, and not," as it has been 
 pointed out, " as so much inward experience or abstract 
 declarations of the love of God, or of the all sufficiency of 
 the work of Christ." By far the greater part, then, of the 
 New Testament is occupied with the history or life of 
 Jesus of Nazareth commencing wdth His Incarnation and 
 ending with His Ascension. " For it is the desire of God," 
 to quote again from the same authority, " that our minds 
 
 * " Cliurcli Doctrine. " M. F. Sadler. 
 
lOO The Observance, in its Main Features, 
 
 should be saturated with the account of the Biith, Life, 
 Death and Resurrection of His dear Son." This, then, is 
 the Gospel of the early Church, and thus is it set forth, 
 in due order, in those Scriptures which have been written 
 for our learning. The Church is called to preach this 
 Gospel. She has to set it before her children. How, then, 
 can she better or more powerfully bring home that Gospel 
 to her people's heart than by dwelling upon those great 
 events, in their due order, throughout the course of the 
 year ? " For to reproduce in grand outline the simple 
 story of the Son of God, is not this of all methods the 
 most natural to faith and love, the most impressive on feel- 
 ing and memory ? " And as we dwell upon the great facts 
 of the Redemption, "the year in its silent course preaches the 
 very Gospel of Scripture," and we spell out and ponder over 
 every article of our Creed. 
 
 But again, in addition to such commemorations being 
 strictly in accordance with the teaching of Scripture, we 
 can hardly overestimate their high educational value. 
 For we are thus brought face to face with facts, and we 
 are made to act over again and celebrate the history of 
 our Lord. Christmas has its message of peace and good- 
 will, its deeper message of the infinite love of God to 
 man. Yet it cannot stand alone. We cannot rest there, 
 any more than He could remain in that manger cradle. 
 Christmas leads us to Calvary, for we must follow Him 
 in all the way He had to go. And who can exhaust the 
 teaching of those days which immediately precede Easter, 
 that Holy Week which should be commemorated every 
 week ? How full they are of instruction, as we follow 
 Him during those last days upon earth, or witness that 
 triumphant joy which was His, when, on the night in 
 which He was betrayed. He instituted that Supper of 
 His love, and projecting Himself in Spirit across the 
 dark hours of the agony and death, and anticipating the 
 time when, risen and ascended to the Father's right 
 hand, He should enter upon His Eternal Priesthood, He 
 
of the Christian Year. loi 
 
 uttered that great intercessory prayer which makes audible 
 upon earth that intercession which He ever liveth to 
 make ! Who that has not commemorated that night 
 can fully understand the calling wherewith he is called ? 
 Or Good Friday, with the buffetings and the cruel stripes, 
 the crown of thorns, the dereliction, the death, the 
 victory, when, like a king laying aside his sceptre. He 
 dismissed His Spirit to the Father. Who can have his 
 sin, his own exceeding sin, brought more vividly before 
 him than by thus standing at the foot of the cross ? 
 And when Easter dawns, if we have not waited at the 
 tomb, if we have not passed in spirit from the cross, and 
 marked the place where the Lord was laid, the quiet 
 garden, the new tomb, the costly spices, the ministry of 
 loving hands, after the Passion had spent itself, how can 
 we rejoice as those who have been raised from the dead ? 
 Yet here we cannot rest, as He could not rest. " I am 
 ascending," said He to Mary. We cannot yet possess Him 
 for ever. He is on His way to receive a kingdom, but 
 He will return to be with us for ever. Easter holds 
 within it the promise of Whitsunday. And during the 
 forty days which separate Easter from the Ascension, we 
 learn to live as ever . in His sight, for He is the same yet 
 not the same, able to appear though the doors be locked, 
 able to walk with His Disciples as the shadows lengthen 
 over the land. And as we learn that lesson, so shall we 
 understand something of that joy which filled the Disciples' 
 hearts when a cloud received Him from their sight. But 
 as Ascensiontide passes, we are but led further into the 
 presence of our God. For during those ten days which 
 separate the Ascension from Whitsunday, our hearts are 
 drawn from earth to heaven, our spiritual imagination is 
 quickened as we try to realise those majestic preparations 
 in heavenly places for the homecoming of the Son of 
 God, in the truth of our humanity, and we catch an echo 
 of the celestial chorus which celebrated the enthronisation 
 of the Eternal Son. Whitsunday is the fulfilment upon 
 
I02 The Obsei'vancc, in its Main Features, 
 
 earth of that sublime event, when the Holy Spirit with 
 whom our Head was anointed flowed down to the very 
 skirts of His garment, binding the Church on earth to 
 the highest heaven, and the Disciples knew that that 
 same Jesus who had been crucified had been made both 
 Lord and Christ. Will any but a systematic presentation 
 suffice ; for will any irregular exposition, say, of the descent 
 of the Holy Spirit convey to the heart of man the full 
 significance of that event, as will its presentation, in its 
 own place, in the plan of salvation ? 
 
 If we keep the seasons, we shall be better able to keep 
 the faith. As it is, we do not attain any vivid realisation 
 of the life and death of our blessed Saviour, and hence we 
 fail to gain that intensity of interest we otherwise would. 
 To the devout heart, then, such commemorations must be 
 of inexpressible comfort and strength. 
 
 Yet it is for the Church, which is His Body, to keep the 
 seasons. It is to her that His gifts have been given, and 
 it is for that time when He may present her, without spot 
 and blameless, unto the Father with exceeding joy, that 
 the Lord waits. He desires to see that she is still true 
 to Him ; that though centuries have rolled away since 
 He passed from her midst, she still reverences His memory, 
 telling out again and yet again the old, old story of His 
 love, and feeding His people upon bread and not upon 
 stones. But we must not suffer the presentation of a 
 marred Gospel by keeping Christmas and not the other 
 festivals. They are all one, they must be treated as a 
 whole, and there is no more truly evangelical way of 
 obeying that command which He has addressed to us 
 through St Peter, when He said, " Follow Me, follow 
 thou Me." 
 
 " Ye who the Name of Jeaua bear, 
 His sacred steps pursue, 
 And let tti;»t luiud which w.is in Him 
 Be also found m you." 
 
 We need the restatement of the Gospel message. We 
 
of the Christian Year. 103 
 
 can do very well without hair-splitting arguments, but we 
 cannot do without more whole-hearted surrender to the 
 Lord. In the midst of the many anniversaries we keep, 
 let us find room for those anniversaries of Him. Let us 
 cease to give glory to vnen, and give unto Him the glory 
 that is His due. Then the Holy Spirit, who has been the 
 unconquerable strength of all His saints, will again make 
 glorious the place of His feet, leading us ever onward 
 into the truth, till we all come, in the unity of the faith 
 and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect 
 man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of 
 Christ. 
 
THE TRAINING OF THE CLEEGY. 
 
 Rev. Professor Dobie, B.D. 
 
 The subject set down for discussion this afternoon is the 
 "Training of the Clergy." In treating of this subject I 
 shall assume that the training of our future clergy, while 
 under study in the Faculty of Arts, does not come under 
 our cognisance, although it must be manifest that the mode 
 of treatment of certain departments of study in this Faculty 
 has a very important bearing upon the student's theo- 
 logical views, and that therefore it is by no means unim- 
 portant that, say, the direction of his philosophical studies 
 should be guided in a strictly impartial and unbiassed 
 manner. 
 
 I shall take for granted, then, that the student has 
 already entered upon his purely professional curriculum 
 with a view to the ministry of the Church. Now what 
 strikes one as most conspicuous in the Scottish University 
 Theological Halls is the total ignoring of the necessity 
 for special direction and guidance in pastoral and parochial 
 training, the complete want of fellowship in work, and the 
 entire absence of anything approaching the principles of 
 a common social and devotional life. I am aware that 
 it is expected by Presbyteries that every student of the 
 Church of Scotland shall engage in some sort of practical 
 work, such as parochial visiting and Sunday School teaching. 
 But I would ask, is it prudent or fitting that the Church 
 should treat so important a factor in clerical efficiency in 
 so loose and desultory a fashion ? In the University itself 
 there exists as yet no chair of practical training. As my 
 esteemed and distinguished colleague, Dr Flint, says : 
 
io6 The Training of the Clergy, 
 
 " There is no provision whatever made to guide students 
 for the ministry, as to the composition of sermons, the 
 conduct of public worship, the discharge of parochial duty, 
 taking part in the government of the Church. You 
 may," he goes on to say, "you may, of course, call, in a 
 loose sense, anything that in any way helps to prepare you 
 for your profession professional training, but in that sense all 
 your classes in the Faculty of Arts have been just as much 
 parts of your professional training as those in the Faculty 
 of Theology can reasonably be expected to be. In that 
 sense, the Chairs of Engineering, of Agriculture, of Con- 
 veyancing in the Faculty of Law, may be purely pro- 
 fessional. Not infrequently our theological Faculties are 
 represented as exclusively places of training and preparation 
 for the ministry of the Church of Scotland. In reality, 
 the most striking defect in these Faculties is, that there 
 is no provision made in them for purely professional 
 training." 
 
 Now it is evident that such a state of things must be a 
 source of great weakness to the Church, and of want of effi- 
 ciency in her ministry. Think how the case would stand 
 were the system applied and carried out in the study of 
 Medicine. I am aware that when a licentiate is appointed 
 to a parochial assistantship, he is under the direction and 
 guidance of the minister of the parish. But I greatly 
 fear, save in very exceptional cases, that the licentiate 
 is left to discover for himself the principles and methods 
 of parochial organisation, and so long as things are as at 
 present, so long as the licentiate must remain unordained 
 until he is appointed to a living, he must be debarred 
 from that intimate relationship with the parishioners 
 which is essential to the full realisation of the nature 
 and responsibility of parochial duty. 
 
 I make no doubt whatever that many of our clergy, 
 even after an extended period of probationary service, 
 have felt obliged to acknowledge that they were quite 
 inadequately equipped when they entered upon the 
 
The Training of the Clergy. 107 
 
 manifold duties of parochial life. Dr Flint suggests, 
 and his suggestion is a very admirable one, and well 
 worthy of the Church's acceptation, that while the 
 State should provide for what is general and scientific 
 in, theological education, the Church should supplement 
 what she does by providing for what may be purely pro- 
 fessional or properly denominational thereiu. "In my 
 opinion," he says, "what the Church of Scotland should 
 do, if she wishes effectively to do her duty towards herself 
 and towards her students, is to follow the example set 
 by the Dutch Reformed Church, and appoint, through 
 her General Assembly, two Professors to supplement the 
 teaching given in the Divinity Faculties by instruction in 
 practical and pastoral theology, and on the history, doctrine, 
 and law and government of the Church of Scotland, as 
 well as by the practical superintendence and guidance of 
 her students in missionary and other evangelical work." 
 This is admirable counsel, and the Church of Scotland will 
 be foolish if she does not adopt it and put it into practice. 
 
 But it is not enough. I am strongly of opinion that 
 it will not be fully effective until our students can be 
 united together and worked upon in one compact body, 
 regulated and governed by the principles of a Common 
 Life. I was more than delighted to hear the suggestion 
 of a Church House emanate from my esteemed friend, 
 the Convener of the Home Mission Committee, on the 
 floor of the last General Assembly. I believe that through 
 the medium of such an institution the practical efficiency 
 of the ministry of the Church of Scotland would be very 
 materially increased. 
 
 It has often been a mystery to me why our Church has 
 failed so long to utilise fully the services of those of her licen- 
 tiates who have not yet obtained parochial appointments. 
 We talk of the lapsed masses and the non-churchgoing and 
 the inadequacy of the parochial staff, while all the time 
 there are dozens of unemployed licentiates eager to be 
 enlisted in the Church's service. Now, I may be in error, 
 
io8 The Training of the Clergy. 
 
 but it is my impression that many of these would gladly 
 avail themselves of opportunities of furthering their ac- 
 quaintance with the practical duties of their profession, 
 without pecuniary remuneration, were they domiciled to- 
 gether and were their labours duly regulated and directed. 
 I may be over-estimating the measure of self-sacrifice 
 which the unemployed licentiate is prepared to undergo 
 for the sake of the Church and our people, but I hope 
 not. There are no signs that the spirit of devotion to 
 the National Church is waning among her younger clergy, 
 and there are more ways in which the young licentiate can 
 display his Churchmanship than in struggling to get 
 a place upon a parish leet. That enthusiasm can display 
 itself even in subordination and self-sacrifice — and here 
 it is certainly not less lovely and not less attractive, — and 
 I am fully persuaded that the institution of a Clergy 
 House in each of the four University centres, presided over 
 by an accredited superior, trusted by the Church, would 
 be an inestimable privilege as a practical training school 
 until a wider and more responsible field should open up to 
 the junior clergy. Such Sunday services as might be 
 required in the country could be supplied, in a regular 
 and methodical manner, from this centre, and throughout 
 the week days the residents would engage in parochial 
 duty in such destitute parts of the city as might from 
 time to time be selected in conjunction with, and with 
 the consent and approval of, the parish minister. 
 
 And in such an institution, and in such Church work, 
 theological students might also with great advantage be 
 conjoined. It would be no new thing for them, at least, 
 to carry on successfully important Mission work without 
 any material remuneration. The fruits of their unsalaried 
 labour are enjoyed by more than one parish in Glasgow, 
 Edinburgh and elsewhere to-day, and what has already 
 been done by free and voluntary effort on the part of 
 University students only shows what could be done by 
 more united effort on a larger and more highly organised 
 
The Training of the Clergy. 109 
 
 scale. These home-mission efforts should be directed and 
 controlled by one who has no professorial duties to dis- 
 charsre, and who can wive his undivided care and attention 
 to the task. I am bound to believe that with the blessing 
 of God the benefits of such an institution as this, with its 
 common life, its common labour, its fellowship in work, its 
 opportunities for cultivating the devotional life, its oppor- 
 tunities for private study and mutual iutercourse ; would be 
 speedily and abundantly felt alike by probationers and 
 students of the Church. I am not without a well-founded 
 hope that ere long we shall see at least the beginning of 
 such an institution in Edinburgh. 
 
 And there are so many collateral subjects of study of 
 great and growing importance to the future clergyman, 
 most of which are entirely neglected in these days. We 
 have no study of Practical or Pastoral Theology or any of 
 its branches, no homiletics, no liturgies, no catechetics, no 
 study of the science and art of education, no study of 
 Church music and its history, all of which are of great 
 importance. It is a great reproach to us that it should 
 have been left to others to revive the good old Scottish 
 institution, the parochial " Sang Schule " ; but as things 
 are at present, so scattered are our students, so multifarious 
 are the claims upon their time, it were a matter of the 
 utmost difficulty to start with success a scheme for instruc- 
 tion in choral music, and yet I am fully persuaded that 
 this is quite as important as many of the non-academic 
 pursuits which engage the theological student's thoughts. 
 
 Furthermore, it must be patent, even to the most casual 
 observer, that there is a clamant need for the extension of 
 the Scottish Theological Schools. How is this to be 
 effected ? One greatly desires that the University Com- 
 missioners had had courage and patriotism enough to seize 
 the present opportunity, which may not again soon recur, 
 of remedying our national deficiency in this direction. In 
 the absence of help from this quarter, why cannot the Church 
 take the extension of the professoriate, as well as the pastorate 
 
iio The Training of the Clei'gy. 
 
 of her parishes, upon her own shoulders ? Why should party 
 and sectarianism so largely rule the future development of 
 Scottish University theological learning ? What has been 
 done by the denominations in Scotland is surely not beyond 
 the power of the National Church. That the Universities 
 stand sorely in need of some large measure of extension, 
 both in the length of the curriculum and in the number of 
 chairs, has been abundantly proved. There can be no 
 doubt that, had medical teaching in Scotland been left solely 
 to the University faculties, we should have had something 
 very different from the large and flourishing schools which 
 are to-day our pride and glory. W^hy cannot the same 
 thing, or something like the same thing, with a little effort, 
 a little initial self-sacrifice and energy, be done for theology? 
 The new University scheme for graduation in Arts, the 
 principle of which may, I hope, sooner or later be extended 
 in the direction of an Honour School of Theology, points 
 the way to at least the institution of lectureships in connec- 
 tion with the Faculty of Theology. I trust this scheme may 
 speedily be seen in full working order. It would greatly 
 tend to recover for Scotland some, at least, of that educa- 
 tional prestige which she was once proud to possess, but 
 which, I greatly fear, she has temporarily relinquished. 
 
 One only needs to compare the professorial staff in any 
 German University with that of any of our Scottish Univer- 
 sities, to see how lamentably we are behind the age. In 
 Berlin there are eight ordinary professors, four extraordinary 
 professors, three privat-docents and one honorary professor. 
 There is scarcely any German University with less than 
 eight theological chairs now, while in each of our four 
 Universities there are four chairs — manifestly a staff, how- 
 ever efficient, utterly inadequate to furnish a fully-equipped 
 theological professoriate. As matters stand at present, the 
 most that we can hope to accomplish is to give a foundation 
 to study and some impulse to its prosecution, but further it 
 is impossible to go. 
 
 And here I would strongly emphasise the necessity 
 
The Training of the Clergy. 1 1 1 
 
 for greater attention to post-graduate studies amongst our 
 students. I am strongly of the opinion that the institu- 
 tion of a Clergy House in each of the University centres 
 would be a stepping-stone to the formation of schools of 
 private study, as well as of guilds of parochial vjovh, 
 even on the part of those who enter straight from our 
 halls into the service of the Church. But one of the 
 essential conditions of the revival of Scottish theological 
 learning lies in closer fellowship in work, in deepening the 
 bonds of common aspiration after learning, in more intimate 
 and sympathetic union of students and probationers and 
 such scholars as do not take upon themselves the parochial 
 Avork of the Church, but devote themselves, with the 
 Church's help, to the post-graduate instruction of her 
 future clergy. And I am supported in my belief by the 
 success which has attended the efforts of Dr Fairbairn and 
 his efficient staff of coadjutors at Mansfield College, Oxford. 
 I would, therefore, very strongly recommend that every 
 student at the close of his theological curriculum should 
 take up some special subject, some special line of study 
 and work, and pursue it assiduously until he has mastered 
 it and made it his own. There is far too much diffuseness 
 and far too little concentration of effort along particular 
 lines. Select a subject likely to be of use — say Church 
 History, Liturgies, or Church Law or Church Music. I 
 select those because great personal pleasure and relaxation, 
 as well as public profit, will often arise from such studies 
 as these, even when pursued in the midst of heavy parochial 
 responsibilities. What I would particularly desire to see 
 is a wiser diffusion of more earnest and more accurate 
 scholarship among the future clergy of the Church. It is 
 marvellous what has been accomplished by the persistent 
 study of a congenial and appropriate field of study, even 
 when there appeared but little leisure for its prosecution. 
 
 I am aware that the present is a period of such politico- 
 ecclesiastical disquiet and unrest, that it is very hard for the 
 claims of higher scholarship to make themselves heard above 
 
112 The Training of the Clergy. 
 
 the din of party strife and confusion. It is hard that the 
 Church of Scotland should not be allowed to pursue her 
 Divine Work of ministering in the Word and Sacraments, 
 so that her clergy might have leisure to respond more fully 
 to the claims of higher scholarship. Such a state of things 
 has long been sapping the springs of true learning and 
 devotion in the country. God grant that the time may 
 speedily come when the Church will cease to be wearied 
 with trouble from without, and will be at rest and at peace 
 to discharge to the full extent of her desire and ability the 
 work of building up God's kingdom in the world. 
 
THE CELEBRATION OF THE HOLY COMMUNION 
 AND THE DAILY SERVICE. 
 
 Rev. John Macleod, B.A., D.D. 
 
 The object of this paper is to assert," and enforce, so far 
 as that can be done within the time at my disposal, the 
 position which ought to be authoritatively claimed for the 
 Holy Communion as the distinctive and Divinely-appointed 
 Lord's Day Service of the Christian Church. I am, of 
 course, aware that we are justified in pleading for even 
 more than a weekly celebration. The practical object of 
 this paper will, however, best be served by limiting the 
 discussion of the subject to the position claimed for the 
 Sacramental Celebration as at least the appointed Lord's 
 Bay Service. 
 
 I propose, first, to define the place which belongs to the 
 celebration of the Holy Communion in relation to the 
 worship of the Church. 
 
 I propose, secondly, to indicate some of the principal 
 doctrinal points which need to be emphasised in order to 
 create or revive among our people a true discernment of 
 the place which belongs to the Holy Communion. 
 
 I propose, thirdly, to indicate certain alterations or 
 developments in the Service of Celebration (as usually 
 fulfilled) which have to be brought about before its true 
 place can be regained, or the Sacred Office can be 
 adequately rendered. 
 
 And I propose, lastly, to indicate some of the reasons 
 which call for our raising, and encourage us in raising, an 
 urgent and emphatic testimony to the need of a return 
 to the Divine order in this great matter. 
 
1 14 The Celebration of the Holy Covniuniion 
 
 Section I. 
 
 I. The apprehension of the place of the Holy Eucharist 
 as the appointed service of Christian Worship and supreme 
 means of spiritual nourishment depends upon our appre- 
 hension of certain antecedent facts. 
 
 The truth of this will have been verified by every 
 minister who has ever addressed himself intelligently to the 
 work of instructing catechumens in preparation for their 
 first Communion. 
 
 It seems to me a great, though not uncommon, mistake 
 to begin such instructions by speaking immediately of the 
 Eucharist in itself. What has first to be done is to instruct 
 catechumens in regard to the meaning of the antecedent 
 steps which have already been taken with them in the fact 
 that they (1) have been brought to receive the Gospel, and 
 (2) have been baptised into Christ, and so, through faith, 
 have been made members of His Church.* The " Know ye 
 not " line of argument so often followed by St Paul — 
 " Know ye not that so many of us as were baptised into 
 Jesus Christ were baptised into His death ? " t " Know ye 
 not that ye are the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of 
 God dwelleth in you V'l " Know ye not that ... ye are 
 not your own ? for ye are bought with a price ? " § — or, in 
 other words, the line of argument by which it is sought to 
 prepare them for the further step which God asks them to 
 take by the intelligent survey of the steps which He has 
 already taken with them, is that which leads most rapidly 
 to the issue that is sought. 
 
 II. What are some of the principal elements of such 
 instruction as must precede a due apprehension of the 
 Divinely ordered place and purpose of the Holy 
 Eucharist ? 
 
 I name five in their order. 
 
 * Gal. iii. 26, 27- t Romans vi. 3. 
 
 X 1 Cor. iii. 16. § 1 Cor. vi. 19, 20. 
 
and the Daily Service. 1 1 5 
 
 1. We have, first, to lead our people to discern both 
 the scope and the perfection of the work which has 
 been effected for all men, and not for the Church, only 
 through the Incarnation, Passion, Resurrection, and 
 Ascension of our Lord. That work implies the reconcilia- 
 tion of God and man, effected once in historical com- 
 pleteness and for all, but falling to be realised in human 
 history in successive stages, and severally by each in- 
 dividual soul. " God so loved the world." * " God was in 
 Christ reconciling the world unto Himself."! He "gave 
 Himself a ransom for all."+ He "is the Saviour of all." § 
 
 2. We have, next, to lead our people to perceive the 
 scope of our Lord's work, not now in relation to all, but 
 in its more limited aspect in relation to the Church — or 
 in other words, in its special relation to those whom the 
 Father hath given to the Son Incarnate as an election out 
 of the world in order to the further fulfilment through 
 them, as His Body, of the purposes of God. 
 
 God has done one work equally for all men in common. 
 But He does another and special w^ork for some whom 
 He takes or elects from the rest of mankind and whom 
 He constitutes, by the Gift to them of the Holy Ghost, as 
 the Spirit of Jesus Risen and Glorified, to be the Body of 
 His Son. II IT 
 
 * John iii. 16. t 2 Cor. v. 19. X 1 Tim. ii. 6. 
 
 § 1 Tim. iv. 10. II Acts xv. 14, 18. 
 
 IT The idea, it may be remarked in passing, which supplies the key to 
 much of the phraseology of the Epistles, and which alone harmonises the 
 teaching of the Apostles as to the range of future development awaiting the 
 purpose of God (1 Cor. xv. 24 ; Col. i. 19, 20 ; Eph i. 9, 10) with their hope 
 of the immediate return of the Lord, is that the Chiirch is now only in process 
 of being gathered out of the world, but will, when perfected after the 
 example of her Head, by resurrection or translation, be afterwards used as 
 an instrument of blessing to the whole Creation of God in modes and for 
 ends as yet but partially revealed (Eph. v. 25-27 ; Col. i. 28, 29). This 
 idea is strikingly brought out in Acts xv. 13-19. The Second Advent is 
 always presented as an event in human history, and not, as so often nowa- 
 days, as the end of it. There is the closest connection between the mis- 
 apprehension of the character of the Church as implying an election to 
 privilege for the sake of others whom she is to serve, and the general 
 forgetfulness of the blessed hope of the Second Appearing of the Lord unto 
 Salvation (Hebrews ix. 28). 
 
1 1 6 The Celebration of the Holy Communion 
 
 3. We have at this stage, then, to instruct our people as 
 to what the Church is, aud to urge them to pray that, the 
 eyes of their understanding being opened,* they may attain 
 to some true apprehension of this great mystery which has 
 its parallel only, as we are taught in the Holy Scripture, 
 in the m3'stery of the Incarnation, or of the Unity of the 
 Three in One.t The Church is an election taken out from 
 among mankind and constituted by the operation and 
 inhabitation of the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of the Son 
 of God Incarnate, now raised from the dead and glorified,J 
 to be that mystical Body by which He, our Divine Human 
 Head, fulfils now, and will fulfil for ever, all the functions 
 proper to Him as the Christ of God, precisely as an 
 individual man executes his purposes in and by the various 
 members and organs of that body which God has given 
 him. 
 
 4. It is to be assumed that the enquirer is at this stage 
 led, fourthly, to realise the place which has been given 
 him as a member of the Church thus described. § 
 
 5. This necessitates, fifthly, the opening up of the 
 subject of Baptism. 
 
 Instruction as to what the Church is should invari- 
 ably precede instruction on Baptism, and many difficulties 
 which often hinder the apprehension of what the Sacra- 
 ment of Baptism effects would be removed or lessened, 
 if it was more emphatically presented as the Sacrament 
 
 * See Eph. i. 15-23. 
 
 t John xvii. 11, 20, 21. 
 
 X What is distinctive (it should be here pointed out) in the temporal 
 mission of the Holy Ghost since the Day of Pentecost, as compared with all 
 His previous operations, seems to be best perceived, according as we first 
 endeavour to apprehend the glory into which our Lord, when raised from 
 the dead, entered by His Ascension. The office of the Spirit, as the Spirit 
 of Jesus Glorified, is to incorporate us, in organic unity, with our Lord as 
 glorified ; and thus to make us partakers of His risen life, of His ascended 
 jwwcr, of His present heavenly Priesthood, and of His future Kingdom 
 (Acts ii.). 
 
 § 1 Cor. xii., and specially verse 27. 
 
and the Daily Service. 117 
 
 of our incorporation into the Church,* and if our people 
 were led to weigh the statements of Holy Scripture, and 
 of the Confessions based thereupon, which undoubtedly 
 imply that Baptism confers a distinctive responsibility. 
 When it is seen as the Sacrament of Responsibility, it 
 is easy to apprehend it also as a channel of Grace. 
 
 In Holy Baptism we are, through faith, made members 
 of the Body of Christ.! Baptism is the Divinely appointed 
 seal and sign of the place of membership in the Body of 
 Christ, thus given to us by the free gift of the grace of 
 God. If the enquirer is rightly instructed as to the mean- 
 ing of Church Membership and of his baptism in relation 
 thereto, he will realise then that he is not his own,J and is 
 not at his own disposal ; that, on the contrary, he already 
 belongs to, and is at the disposal of the Lord ; that he is 
 already a member of His Body ; that he is so because of 
 God's good pleasure and appointment, and antecedently to 
 his own choice ; that he can neither add to the responsi- 
 bility thus resting upon him, nor escape from it ; and that 
 therefore the Lord has a claim upon him for the accom- 
 plishment of such purposes as He seeks to effect in and 
 
 * See John Knox's Book of Common Order (or Jolin Knox's Liturgy), 
 Post-Baptismal Prayer : — " That Thou wilt take this infant into Thy tuition 
 and defence, whom we offer a7id present unto Thee ; and never suffer him to fall 
 into such tmkindness ivherehy he may lose the force of Baptism;" Confession of 
 Faith, chap, xxviii., sec. 1 ; Larger Catechism, Questions 165, 167 ; Directory 
 on Baptism ; Address before Baptism : — " That children, by Baptism, are 
 solemnly received into the bosom of the visible church, distinguished from 
 the world and them that are -nithout, and united with believers ; and that 
 all who are baptised in the Name of Christ, do renounce, and by their Baptism 
 are bound to fight against the devil, the world, and thefiesh." See also Prayer 
 after Baptism: — "That the Lord would still continue and daily confirm 
 more and more this His unspeakable favour ; that He would receive the 
 infant noiv baptised, and solemnly entered into the household of faith, into His 
 Fatherly tuition aiul defence." 
 
 The Act of Assembly xi. (1706), emphatically requires ministers to in- 
 struct catechumens particularly as to the Covenant of Grace, and "to charge 
 upon their consciences the obligations they lie under from their baptismal 
 Covenant. " 
 
 + Rom. vi. 3, 4 ; 1 Cor. xii. 13, 27 ; Col. ii. 12 ; Gal. iii. 26, 27 ; iv. 4, 5. 
 
 ± 1 Cor. vi. 19. 
 
ii8 The Celebration of the Holy Covnnunion 
 
 by the members of His Church, precisely as a man has a 
 claim on his own hands or feet, or any of the organs of 
 his body for the execution of any work that he seeks to do.* 
 
 III. When we have instructed our people in these five 
 points — here enumerated as representing the minimum of 
 knowledge which is needful for every one who is a candidate 
 for the position of a communicant — they will naturally ask, 
 will they not ? — What, then, is the use to which the Lord 
 would put us, if we be indeed " members " of that Body 
 wliich God has given to Him to be the instrument of His 
 work ? 
 
 It is important to point out, in now proceeding to answer 
 this question, that the work of our Lord, whether viewed as 
 set forth in the record of His earthly life, or viewed in con- 
 nection with His present and post- Ascension life in Heaven, 
 has always a two-fold aspect.! 
 
 He is the Priest and the Apostle of our confession. :|: 
 
 He fulfils (1) a work of worship towards the Father, 
 and (2) a work of ministry towards the Church, and 
 through it, towards the world. 
 
 His work in both these aspects draws its distinctive 
 character and also its efficiency from the constitution of 
 His person as the God-Man, the Eternal Son made 
 Man. As God the Son made one with us — as Jesus 
 raised from the dead, and made in His Ascension Lord 
 
 * Every minister knows how almost universally in Scotland the idea of 
 mcmhcrshi}) of the Church is connected not with the Divine Act in the Sacra- 
 ment of Baptism (as it ought to be), but with our admission through 
 our own choice to the Sacrament of the Lord's Supjter. Being uninstructed 
 as to their existing responsibilities as baptised, many defer Communion in 
 the belief that they are thus escaping from contracting any responsibility 
 whatever. 
 
 t The Gosjiels, it need scarcely be pointed out, abound with illustrations 
 of this two-fold aspect of our Lord's earthly life as ministering (I) to the 
 Father and (2) from the Father. We see the germ of the future vocation 
 of the Church — as called to worship in heavenly places before the Altar of 
 God, and as called also to go forth to all the world — in the record of the 
 Apostolate, "Zfc ordained twelve that they should be with Him, and that 
 He might send tlicm forth to incach " (Mark iii. 14). 
 
 X Hebrews iii. L 
 
and the Daily Service. 119 
 
 and Christ,* He mediates for man with God, and also 
 effects God's purposes in His ministry to man. Accordingly 
 the ivork of the Church, the Christ Mystical, exactly 
 corresponds ivith these two aspects of the personal ivorJc of 
 Jesus Christ her Head. To put it still more accurately, 
 He fulfils these tiuofold operations, not only personally, 
 hut also instrumentcdly, in and through His Church. 
 
 The Church is, on the one hand, (1) a Holy Priesthood 
 set apart to fulfil, as the Body of Christ, a perpetual service 
 of worship before the Father : and on the other hand she has 
 (2) an Apostolic commission to go out and fulfil her vocation 
 as the channel of the Divine Grace in the world.! 
 
 IV. If the Church, then, is called as the Body of Christ 
 to be united with her Lord in presenting before the Father 
 a common service of worship and intercession, it is in- 
 evitable — is it not ? — to ask. How is this service to be 
 fulfilled ? Where are the materials ? Where is the order ? 
 Is there such a Divinely ordered service of Worship ? and 
 if so, Where is its institution to be found 1 
 
 The answer to these questions brings us at once to the 
 glorious Ordinance of the Holy Communion. 
 
 The celebration of the Holy Communion is the distinctive 
 Lord^s Day Service, by Christ's appointvient, of the Christian 
 Church. This is the worship which He instituted.! The 
 fulfilment of this Service it is which constitutes that worship 
 of the Father "in Spirit and in Truth," which the Father 
 " seeks," and which the Son was sent to enable us to give.§ 
 
 * Acts ii. 32, 36. 
 
 t The remainder of this paper is occupied exclusively with the connection 
 between the Service of the Holy Communion and the first of these two 
 functions ; but it is obvious that our conceptions as to the distinctive 
 character of the work of the Church in fulfilling her ministry in the world 
 must equally depend upon the measure and scope of our antecedent instruc- 
 tion as to what the Church is, according to the Divine Purpose, as the Body 
 of Christ Glorified. 
 
 X 1 Cor. xi. 23, 24, 25. 
 
 § John iv. 23, 24 ; xvi. 23, 24. What is supremely distinctive of Christian 
 "Worship is not so much that it implies the worship of Christ, as rather that 
 it is our worship with or in Christ of the Father. (See Eph. ii. 18 ; John 
 xvi. 23-28 ; Heb. xiii. 15.) 
 
I20 The Celebration of the Holy Coimminio7i 
 
 This, and none other, was the Service which He appointed 
 to be fulfilled for a Memorial of Him in whom the Father 
 is " well pleased." Whatever else we do when we meet 
 together in the congregations of the faithful, we fail to do 
 that which He appointed to be done by us as now united 
 with Himself, — that which He appointed as the highest and 
 most distinctive action of worship, if we refrain from cele- 
 brating this Holy Ordinance. 
 
 Many acts of so-called worship, such as the confession of 
 sin, prayers for pardon, the declaration of peace, the reading 
 and preaching of the Word, are but introductory to this 
 service. Other acts of still higher range, such as the 
 offering of our alms, of our thanksgiving, or of intercession, 
 are but parts of it. All other acts, such as the daily service, 
 &c., are dependent upon it. 
 
 The Sacramental commemoration on the part of the 
 Church in unity with her Lord, and before the Throne of 
 the Father, her intercessions based on that commemoration, 
 and her subsequent reception sacramentally of the food of 
 her spiritual nourishment in the Body and Blood of Christ, 
 tlie^e constitute her Divine Service. 
 
 No Lord's Day should ever pass without this service 
 being rendered. 
 
 It should be the principal service of each Lord's Day. 
 
 The Communicants should be trained to regard their 
 presence at, and their efficient assistance in, the fulfilment 
 of that Service as the principal object for which they come 
 up to the House of God, and the highest form in which 
 they can fulfil their common Royal Priesthood.* 
 
 The Service should be always fulfilled because of what it 
 is in all its parts, and especially because of the Presence of 
 the Lord there sacramentally assured to us, with " full 
 assurance of faith," " and with exceeding joy." "f* 
 
 V. The position of the Eucharist as the distinctive rite 
 
 * 1 Peter ii. 5, 9 ; Hebrews xiii. 10-16. 
 t Psalm xliii. 3, 4, 5. 
 
and the Daily Service. 1 2 1 
 
 of Christian worship has been universally recognised by the 
 spiritual instinct of the Church, and throughout all history, 
 except, indeed, in quite recent times, and within com- 
 paratively narrow sections. The truth of this remark 
 is not invalidated by a reference to the history 
 of even Presbyterian churches since the Reformation. 
 It must be sorrowfully admitted that in these churches 
 the Supreme aspect of the institution — that which we 
 may call its Godward aspect — as a service of worship 
 wrought in sacramental unity with the Lord and before the 
 Father, has been almost wholly obscured. This notwith- 
 standing however, our Confession speaks of the Holy 
 Communion as a part " of ordinary worship." Our 
 
 Directory again appears to contemplate as reasonable and 
 fit a frequency of celebration which can scarcely be less 
 than weekly.! The Fathers of the Reformation repeatedly 
 affirmed, as is well known, the propriety of the celebration 
 being made every Lord's Day. I Going back further to 
 
 * Confession, chap. xxi. see. 5. 
 
 + Directory : " Of the Celebration of the Communion," paragraph III. 
 
 X As, for example, Calvin :— " That such was the practice of the Apostolic 
 Church we are informed by St Luke in the Acts, where he says that ' they 
 continued steadfastly in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking 
 of bread and in prayers ' (Acts ii. 42). Thus we ought always to provide that 
 no meeting of the Church is held without the Word, prayer, the dispensation 
 of the Supper, and alms. We may gather from St Paul that this was the 
 order observed by the Corinthians, and it is certain that this was the practice 
 many ages after. . . . Most assuredly the custom which prescribes Communion 
 once a year is an invention of the devil, by what instrumentality soever it 
 may have been introduced. The consequence is, that almost all, when they 
 have once communicated, as if they were discharged as to all the rest of the 
 year, sleep on secure. It ought to have been far otherwise. Each week, at 
 least, the Table of the Lord ought to have been spread for the company of 
 Christians, and the promises declared on which we might then spiritually 
 feed. No one indeed ought to be forced, but all ought to be exhorted and 
 stimulated. The torpor of the sluggish, also, ought to be rebuked, that all, 
 like persons hungering, should come to the feast." (Calvin's "Institutes," 
 Book iv. chap. xvii. sees. 46, 47). Many Acts of Assembly (1701, 1711, 1712, 
 &c.) have been passed, endeavouring to secure increased frequency of celebra- 
 tion. These Acts have heretofore been attended with but little result, owing, 
 no doubt, to the lack of realisation on the part of the Church of the true 
 place of the Holy Communion, and of her own vocation. "Everything " (says 
 
122 The Celebration of the Holy Commnnion 
 
 pre-Reformation times, and to the earliest centuries, we 
 may certainly affirm that if in anything universality of 
 conviction may be taken as indicating Divine guidance, 
 it is in this. For fifteen hundred years it never occurred 
 to the Christian Church that her pnncipal Lord's Day 
 Service should be other than a celebration of the Holy 
 Eucharist. 
 
 The facts that all the extant Liturgies, carrying us back 
 almost to the Apostolic Age, are wholly services for the cele- 
 bration of the Holy Communion, and that the very word 
 " Liturgy " signifies the Order of Celebration, are in them- 
 selves a conclusive indication of what the mind of the 
 Church throughout all its earlier history has been. 
 
 The earliest notices of Christian worship, such as those 
 familiar to every reader in the writings of Justin Martyr,* 
 and in the letter of Pliny to Trajan,-f- show that the cele- 
 bration of the Communion on the Lord's Day was the 
 distinctive service of the period immediately subsequent 
 to the Apostolic Age. 
 
 It is unnecessary, however, to dwell on this. What we 
 have to get our i^eople to realise is the fact that, during the 
 time in ivhich the Church was guided by the Apostles, to 
 whovfi the Lord had committed the Holy Institution, and 
 who most surely knew luliat the mind of the Lord iuas,t 
 the observance of this rite constituted the Church's worship, 
 and ivas the supreme end for which the faithful came 
 together every Lord's Day. The power of this fact is 
 seldom realised, but the fact itself does not admit of 
 dispute, 
 
 Dr Leishnian in his valuable essay on " The Ritual of the Church ") "tends 
 to show that the prevailing custom of the laity at the time of the Reformation 
 was to communicate only once a year, except in the case of the very devout, 
 or at the approach of death. To this Popish practice the people of Scotland 
 adhere with remarkable steadfastness," 
 
 * Apol. i, 67. t "Stato die," Ep. lib. x. 97. X 1 Cor. xi. 23. 
 
and the Daily Service. 123 
 
 Section II. 
 
 I now proceed to the second section, viz., to enumerate 
 some of the doctrinal points which have to be pressed on 
 the attention of our people in order to their gaining a fuller 
 discernment of the place above assigned to the Holy 
 Communion. Here I notice six points. 
 
 1, First, it is of the highest importance to perceive that 
 the institution of the Holy Communion does not rest only 
 on the words of Jesus as spoken previous to His passion, 
 but is, in point of fact, eaually an institution of the Risen 
 and Ascended Lord. Few words demand more earnest 
 consideration than those in which St Paul announces that 
 he had received immediately from the Glorified Lord in 
 Heaven that revelation of the Eucharist, and of the manner 
 of its celebration, which he proceeded to give to the Church.* 
 
 The record of the Eucharist, as given to us in the 
 Epistle of St Paul to the Corinthians many years before 
 the Gospels were written, is thus, it is most interesting to 
 notice, the earliest fragment of Gospel history which has 
 come down to us. 
 
 The only command which it has pleased the Lord to 
 reiterate, as from the Throne of His Glory, is that which 
 concerns the perpetual obligation of His Church to fulfil 
 this rite and to celebrate a sacramental worship. 
 
 Pondering the words of St Paul, and receiving, as it 
 were, along with him, the sacred institution from the hands 
 of our Risen and Ascended Lord, we are not merely helped 
 to realise its transcendent importance as a means of effect- 
 ing the ends for which the Church exists, but also to 
 approach it from a right point of view. In other words, 
 we are helped to regard it as not merely an ordinance 
 resting, as it is so often put, on the " dying command " of 
 Jesus, and to be observed in commemoration of what He 
 was and did, but also, and still more, as an institution of 
 the Risen and Living Lord who seeks to take vis into 
 * 1 Cor. xi. 23. 
 
124 ^/^^ Celeb7'ation of the Holy Communion 
 
 unity with Himself both in the work of now celebrating, 
 in sacramental union with Him, one Glorious Worship 
 before the Father, and in the work of perpetuating as 
 His Body the revelation of the Glory of the Father in the 
 Church and in the world. 
 
 2. A second point of great importance is, that we should 
 realise the distinctive mental attitude set forth in Holy 
 Scripture, in which our Lord on the Thursday night before 
 the Passion instituted the Holy Supper, as compared with 
 that of the Friday on which He suffered. 
 
 The Thursday evening on which He first celebrated the 
 Holy Supper Avas an evening of surpassing Peace. The 
 Joy of Communion with the Father, the Joy of Self- 
 Oblation, the Joy of His anticipated triumph, the Joy in 
 which He now presents Himself before the Father and 
 pleads in full assurance of hope for the fulfilment of the 
 Father's will — this Joy on that evening was anticipated, 
 and filled to overflowing the Sacred Heart.* 
 
 The boundary lines of the Passion history, beginning with 
 the moment when, as He entered the Garden of Gethsemane, 
 He exclaimed, " My soul is exceeding sorrowful," and 
 terminating with the moment when, on the Cross, He said, 
 " Father, into Thy Hands I commend My Spirit," are not 
 more clearly defined than are the boundary lines of that 
 Thursday night of Peace in which He instituted the Holy 
 Eucharist — beginning with the moment when, " KNOWING 
 THAT He was come from God and went to God," and that 
 
 God " HAD GIVEN ALL THINGS INTO HiS HANDS," He rose 
 
 from Supper, " laid aside His garments, and took a 
 TOWEL and girded Himself," and closing with the moment 
 in which, when they " HAD SUNG AN Hymn " (the Hallel of 
 Praise), " they went out into the Mount of Olives." 
 
 The importance of realising the distinctive Peace and Joy 
 and Elation and Glory that belonged to the night of the 
 first celebration lies in this — that it is the mind of the Lord, 
 as then exhibited, when He was looking forward not only 
 
 * See John xiii.-xvii., and siiecially xiv. '27-xv. 11 ; xvi. 33. 
 
and the Daily Service. 125 
 
 to His death, but also, and with infinite desire, to the 
 Resurrection, and to the relation in which He was to stand 
 thereafter, and stands now, to the Father, into which relation 
 He was also to uplift the Church, is that which is to be 
 perpetuated by the Church in the celebration of the Supper. 
 The Eucharist should not be merely like a Good Friday 
 service. It is a Eucharist of Joy* 
 
 3. Thirdly, the Holy Communion is to be regarded as 
 being not so much the commemoration of the Death or 
 Passion of our Lord as rather the memorial of Himself, 
 and of Himself in what He is as well as in what He luas, 
 in what He does as truly as in what He did. This is the 
 Divinely ordained rite wherein the Holy Ghost, who takes of 
 the things of Christ, seeks to draw the Church up into the 
 fellowship of the mind of the Lord, into the fellowship not 
 merely of what He did nineteen centuries ago, but also of 
 what He is doing now ; exhibiting thus before the Father 
 the perpetuated expression of one mind, of the mind that 
 was and is in Christ Jesus, and is now reproduced in us to 
 the Glory of God our Father. 
 
 That filial glory which was exhibited in the consecration 
 of the first Eucharist, is reflected and perpetuated in every 
 subsequent Eucharist of the Church. The prejudice which 
 exists in many minds against the advocacy of the restoration 
 of the Holy Communion to its place as the Lord's Day 
 service of the Church on the ground that it implies mere 
 ritualism, would surely be removed if it were but perceived 
 that what constitutes the acceptableness and glory of the 
 service is the spiritual manifestation therein before the 
 Father, not only of the obedience and sacrifice of the Son, 
 in whom He is ever well pleased, but also of the like mind 
 in us, who are now, in Him, made sons of God — a manifest- 
 ation dependent upon, and effected by the Holy Spirit, 
 
 * There is surely no feature of our congregational worship, as commonly 
 rendered, more noticeable than its joylessness and lack of that abounding and 
 overflowing thankfulness which we trace in the record of Apostolic worship 
 (Eph, V. 19, 20). ^^ There is a crying for wine in the streets: all joy is 
 darkened: the mirth of the land is gone " (Isaiah xxiv. 11). 
 
126 The Cclebi^ation of the Holy Coinumnion 
 
 whose office it is to take of the things which are Christ's, 
 who therefore uses the Sacramental Ordinance which Christ 
 instituted for this very end.* 
 
 It is impossible within our present limits to dwell on this 
 point, but its importance cannot be exaggerated. The 
 Church very early in her history began to fall from her 
 realisation of her unity with the Lord in His Resurrection 
 Glory, and of her call to share and to exhibit her fellowship 
 in the joy in which He now " liveth unto God."-|- 
 
 This may be one reason why, even in the early liturgies, 
 we see a tendency to make the Eucharist too exclusively a 
 memorial of the Passion rather than of the Person of the 
 Lord. The true safeguard against this tendency is to be 
 found in meditating on the emphatic words of the institution 
 " This do in remembrance of ME." 
 
 It is true indeed that St Paul says, " As often as ye eat 
 this bread and drink this cup ye do show the Lord's death 
 till He come," and that these words appear to fix our 
 attention exclusively or especially on the death. A deeper 
 study of that passage will be found, however, greatly to 
 confirm the truth on which I am now insisting — viz., that 
 in the due celebration of the Eucharist we are led forward, 
 in sacramental unity with our Risen Lord, to offer a 
 common worship to the Father, of which the most accept- 
 able element, as pointed out above, lies in the fact that it 
 is a perpetuated expression of that mind which is in Him, 
 who liveth and was dead, but is alive for evermore. \ 
 
 In the sense in which St Paul uses the phrase, " Ye do 
 proclaim the Lord's death till He come," the words must 
 be understood to stand for the ivhole course of our Saviour's 
 passage (not only through death, but also through the 
 resurrection) into the presence of the Father. It was by 
 the resurrection following upon His death that He passed 
 " through the veil, that is to say. His flesh," into the 
 Holiest of all ; and we also exhibit or " show forth " the 
 
 * John xvi. 13-lG. t Romans vi. 10. 
 
 X Revelation i. 18. 
 
and the Daily Service. 1 2 7 
 
 reality of that access into the Holiest which He has opened 
 for us, when, in unity with Him, not only looking back to 
 Him as having died, but looking up to Him as having 
 risen, and realising His presence with us, we draw near, 
 and, eating of His flesh and drinking of His blood, pass on 
 into the Holiest, and celebrate in the mind of the Eternal 
 Son our one worship of our Father.* 
 
 4, The fourth point on which it seems to me of the 
 highest importance to insist is, that the words of institu- 
 tion, " Do this for a memorial of Me," are to be regarded 
 as applying, so far as the ritual sequence of the various 
 parts of the service is concerned, not merely, as seems 
 so commonly supposed, to the act of reception, but to the 
 entire series of actions which the Lord fulfilled. 
 
 The extent to which this point is overlooked must 
 be obvious to all. It is no exaggeration to say, that, 
 according to prevailing ideas of the Communion Service, 
 stress is almost exclusively laid upon what is called 
 "Coming to the Table," and there receiving the Sacra- 
 mental symbols. 
 
 In contradistinction to this impression it is to be pointed 
 out that the actions in the institution of the Ordinance 
 were six in number, including — (1) the Separation of 
 the elements for their holy use ; (2) the Thanksgiving 
 to the Father ; (3) the Consecration of the elements ; 
 (4) the Fraction in sacrificial spirit or intention of the 
 bread pronounced to be His Body, and the Uplifting of 
 the Cup, in the attitude of adoration ; (5) the Com- 
 munication of the Sacrament in both forms ; and (6) the 
 Reception, on the part of the Communicants, of the Holy 
 Sacrament which had thus been presented before God. 
 In a rightly ordered celebration of the Holy Service these 
 acts, in their number and their order, determine the 
 proper sequence of its parts. They fall to be wrought 
 
 * See Professor Milligan on the " Resurrection of our Lord," Lecture iv. and 
 specially note 56 appended thereto, which constitutes one of the most valuable 
 parts of this book. 
 
128 The Celebration of the Holy Comrnunion 
 
 out accompanied by the prayers of blessing, oblation, and 
 intercession, which express their meaning. In the measure 
 in which the Church is drawn up, through the power of the 
 Holy Spirit, into unity with the " mind which was in 
 Christ Jesus " when He first, anticipating the joy on which 
 He has now entered, fulfilled these sacred actions — in that 
 measure the Church is exhibiting that Memorial of Him 
 which is for ever glorious in the Father's eyes, and forms 
 the most effective exhibition of His eternal mediation to the 
 world. 
 
 (a) The Separation of the Holy Elements and their 
 presentation before God, expressed, when fulfilled by the 
 Lord Himself, the perfection of His Self-Consecration for 
 the fulfilment of the Father's will. That action is now 
 perpetuated by the Church, with accompanying prayers of 
 oblation (including our offering of the elements, of our 
 substance, and of ourselves), as an expression of the mind 
 which was in Him and is now in us. 
 
 (6) The Thanksgiving uttered by the Lord as He 
 " lifted up His eyes to Heaven " on that night of the first 
 celebration was a supreme confession of the glory of the 
 Father who had sent Him. The great Thanksgiving of 
 the Christian Church, which " it is very meet, right, and 
 our bounden duty " to renew on the occasion of every 
 Eucharist, ought, in the same way, to be an expression 
 of the filial joy of the Church, united with the Son 
 Incarnate, in the Father, whose household she is. 
 
 (c) The Blessing or Consecration of the sacred elements 
 when accomplished personally by the Lord, was effective 
 in making the Sacramental actions that followed a true 
 exhibition, before the Father, of His prevailing Passion 
 and Mediation, and an effectual means of exhibitinsr 
 His presence and communicating His life, in His Body 
 and Blood, to His Church. The consecration now accom- 
 plished in the Church through the invocation of the 
 Holy Ghost, the benediction of the Sacramental elements, 
 
and the Daily Service. 129 
 
 and the recital of the words of institution, must then be 
 regarded as effectual for precisely the same ends.* 
 
 (cZ) The fraction of the holy bread, broken in the hands 
 of Jesus as He stood before His disciples at that first cele- 
 bration and " lifted up His eyes to Heaven " + as He broke 
 it, and the uplifting of the Cup, which in like manner He 
 raised, pronouncing it to be the New Testament in His 
 Blood shed for the remission of sins — these acts (fulfilled, 
 it is to be observed, before He proceeded to give the Sacra- 
 ment into the hands of His disciples) were a true exhibition, 
 following ui^on the consecration, of His mediation, in its 
 tiuo successive parts as including both (1) the sacrifice in 
 death which was offered on the Cross, and (2) the perpetual 
 mediation which, in the consecration of the life reached 
 through resurrection. He now accomplishes for evermore. 
 This Sacramental commemoration and oblation falls, there- 
 
 * Compare Westminster Directory, ' ' Of tlie Celebration of the Com- 
 munion." Referring to this section, the author (Rev. C. G. M'Crie of Ayr) 
 ■of the "Cunningham Lectures" (1892) on "Tlie Public Worship of Presby- 
 terian Scotland," remarks: — "The section of the Westminster Directory 
 devoted to the ' Celebration of the Communion, or Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper,' has interest both for the divine and the historian. For the 
 systematic theologian the importance arises from the evidence furnished 
 therein that the Westminster divines favoured what would now be regarded 
 as High in opposition to Low Church views on the subject of the Sacraments 
 generally, and, in particular, when they sought to express the spiritual and 
 real presence of the Body and Blood of the Lord in the ordinance. This 
 appears in 'the Prayer, Thanksgiving, or Blessing of the Bread and Wine,' 
 through wliich, along with the 'Words of Listitution,' the Elements are 
 'sanctified,' and at a certain stage of which the minister is directed 
 ' earnestly to pray to God, the Father of all mercies, and God of all consola- 
 tion, to vouchsafe His gracious presence, and the effectual working of His 
 Spirit in us, and so to sanctify these Elements, botli of Bread and Wine, and 
 to bless His own ordinance, tJiat we may receive by Faith the Body and Blood 
 of Jesus Christ crucified for us, and so to feed upon Him, that He may 
 be one with us and we with Him ' " (page 441). 
 
 t Compare Matt. xiv. 19 ; John xvii. 1 ; also all ancient Liturgies : — 
 ' ' Taking Bread in His lioly, spotless, and pure and immortal hands, and 
 looking up to heaven, and showing it unto Thee, His God and Father, He gave 
 thanks. . . . Likewise also the cup after supper, having taken . . . and havitig 
 looked np to Jtcaveii, and displayed it unto His God and Father," &c. (Liturgy 
 ■of St James). 
 
 I 
 
130 The Celebration of the Holy Coinmunion 
 
 fore, to be renewed with like significance, and with actions, 
 prayers, and intercessions expressive of that significance, so 
 often as this fourth and supreme action of the Holy cele- 
 bration is repeated. 
 
 (e) The communication and (/) reception of the Holy- 
 Sacrament, which form the two concludins acts, receive an 
 immeasurably augmented fulness of meaning and blessed- 
 ness * just in proportion as we apprehend the reahty of 
 the Sacramental actions which had preceded them, and that 
 in very truth, the Lord being mystically present with us, 
 we have been united with Him in one act of worship 
 towards the Father, He being exhibited sacra mentally, as 
 appearing in the presence of God for us, and accomplishing, 
 not only personally, but also mystically, through us, as the 
 members of His Body, His eternal intercession before the 
 Throne. 
 
 Pondering these great matters, we begin to gain a 
 glimpse of the glorious significance of the Holy Eucharist 
 li'hen rightly rendered, as the 'perfect sacramental expres- 
 sion of the mind of Jesus perpetuated in the Church and 
 constituting the one spiritual offering of filial joy and 
 devotion and "all possible praise," ivhich is for ever 
 acceptable to the heart of His Father and. our Father, and 
 His God cmd our God.f 
 
 5. From what has just been said, the importance will 
 be seen of concentrating attention, fifthly, upon the fact 
 that the Service of the Holy Communion is, in its first 
 aspect, one of ivorship, one in Avhich tve seek first the glory 
 of the Father rather than direct blessing and benefit for 
 ourselves, its distinctive privilege being this, that in it, as 
 in no other service, the Lord is sacramentally present 
 ivith His people, and ive knoiu ourselves, in the sacra- 
 mental exhibition, to be then and there, really and indeedy 
 united with Him in the fidfilment of one glorious office 
 before God.. 
 
 * See Confession of Faitli, chap. xxix. sec. vii. ; Larger Catecliisni, Q. 170. 
 t Confession of Faith, chap. xxix. sec. i., ii. 
 
and the Daily Service. 131 
 
 Next to the necessity of duly instructing communicants 
 as to the effective force of the consecration as thereafter 
 making sure to us, by sacramental signs, the Presence of 
 the Lord with us in order to the fulfilment of the service 
 appointed, there is no other point of greater importance 
 than that of leading them to apprehend what we may call 
 this Godward aspect of the office, as one of sacramental 
 worship offered by the Lord, holding the Church in unity 
 with Himself, before the Father. 
 
 The apprehension of this point has been almost totally 
 lost "in Scotland. 
 
 6. Sixthly and lastly, it will be obvious that it follows 
 from the above that the privilege and duty of receiving 
 the Sacrament should be always presented to our people 
 not, as is too commonly done, as a necessity on the ground 
 of obedience to a precept, but on the ground of its inclis- 
 liensahleness as a means to the maintenance and groiuth 
 of that life xuhich has been supernaturally communicated 
 to us in OUT regeneration — a life which in its character 
 is one of perfect Sonship and perfect Brotherhood, and in 
 its range includes the Body as well as the Spirit, and will 
 find its consummation in the resurrection. We should in- 
 sist upon the simple, absolute, and immutable truth of the 
 words : " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man 
 
 AND DRINK HiS BlOOD YE HAVE NO LIFE IN YOU," and 
 
 "Whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood 
 hath eternal life, and i will raise him up at the 
 
 LAST DAY." * 
 
 Section III. 
 
 Ill the third section of my paper, at which I have 
 arrived, I propose very rapidly to state some of the more 
 important alterations in our modes of celebrating the 
 Service which are necessary as steps to the due fulfilment 
 of the rite. 
 
 * All the Reformed Confessions teach that the Lord's Supper is an 
 effectual means of grace and salvation. 
 
132 The Celebration of the Holy Coimmmion 
 
 Of these I name five : — 
 
 1. It is obvious that a 'proper and progressive sequence 
 in the parts of the sacred service ought to he ohserved. The 
 confession of sin, for example, ought to be fulfilled at the 
 outset as the first of the acts which are merely introductory 
 to the service proper, and not mingled, as is sometimes 
 done, with the intercession and other prayers following the 
 consecration.* 
 
 2. Secondly, the preaching of the Word at the service of 
 the Eucharist must be kept strictly in subordination to the 
 main actions of the Service as one of worship and interces- 
 sion, and should, in fact, be treated also as introductory. 
 
 This point is of the highest practical importance. 
 
 It is utterly impossible to realise in practice the true 
 conception of a Eucharist Service so long as the sermon is 
 made the principal feature in it. Sermons of instruction, 
 of argument, and the like, should be preached at other 
 times, and separated from services of worshij) when the 
 protracted exposition of Divine truth, often called for, 
 has to be given. What should be preached to believ- 
 ing worshippers before celebration ought to be but a 
 brief homily or devotional meditation, uttered in an 
 adorational spirit and with the definite object of quicken- 
 ing the faith of the communicants in their standing as 
 " accepted in the beloved," and as free to pass on " in the 
 full assurance of faith," f to present their worship in the 
 
 * Note the prohibitions in Exodus xxx. 1, 8. 
 
 t Heb. X. 22. 
 
 I In what is said above I do not wish to appear as if disparaging the 
 Divine Ordinance of Preaching. God forbid. There is probably as much 
 need for a higlier apprehension of the end of that ordinance as there is for a 
 truer conception of the jilace assigned in the Divine order of worship to the 
 Holy Comnnmion. We need, for one thing, to distinguish between the differ- 
 ent ends and modes of preaching — between (1) Sermons (such as are referred 
 to above) brief and devotional in si)irit, aiming cliiefly at deepening in com- 
 municants an "assurance of faith" as to their standing; and (2) sermons 
 on Christian ethics ; or (3) sermons expository of Christian doctrine ; or (4) 
 sermons of an apologetic or controversial character, vindicating the Chris- 
 tian Faith ; or (5) Evangelistic or Mission Sermons addressed to the careless 
 
and the Daily Service. 133 
 
 1 cannot dwell at present on these points, but I may say- 
 in passing, that the power of them is most marvellously 
 illustrated by a study of the structure and rites of the 
 Tabernacle which was, as we know, framed according to 
 Divine direction, as an earthly shadow of those heavenly 
 
 or impenitent. Sermons of the second or third of these classes may without 
 doubt be fitly preached at Communion celebrations. They are, however, per- 
 haps more appropriate at other services, of which preaching is intended to 
 be the principal feature. In Churches where the Holy Communion is the 
 principal Forenoon Service, they might be preached in the afternoon, or 
 either precede or form part of the closing service (if at a convenient hour) of 
 Evening Prayer. Evangelistic sermons should lie preached not only in the 
 Church (at proper times), but also much more fre(|uently than is attempted, 
 at the street corners, and wherever hearers can be found. We ought to 
 utilise certain seasons, such as Advent, the Holy Week, Pentecost, &c., 
 for apologetic sermons in defence of the Faith, and for " Mission " sermons. 
 Instead of attempting, as we almost invariably do, to combine protracted ser- 
 mons and worship, we should sometimes convene the people avowedly only to 
 hear the AVord, the sermon being on such occasions prefaced only with a 
 brief prayer for illumination, and being as elaborate and persuasive as the 
 preacher, by the Grace of God, can make it. AVe have, in short, lost much 
 from a want of variety of type in our services and methods. We neither pro- 
 vide sermons mighty, in the Holy Ghost, to arouse and convert and persuade, 
 nor supply services that (apart from the sermon) may uplift and soothe and 
 bless. The ideal arrangements on the Lord's Day (where circumstances per- 
 mitted) might embrace Morning Prayer (without sermon) at 7 a.m. or 8 a.m. 
 or 10 A.M. ; the Celebration of the Holy Communion (with sermon of suit- 
 able character) at 11 a.m. ; Afternoon Service, with sermon for children, or 
 catechetical instruction, at 3 p.m. ; Sermon at 4.15 p.m., followed by Evening 
 Prayer at 5 p.m.; or, Sermon at 5.15 p.m., followed by Evening Prayer at 
 6 p.m.; or. Evening Service, with sermon, at 6.30 p.m.; and Evangelistic 
 Sermon in church or elsewhere (at certain seasons) at 8 p.m. I suggest these 
 arrangements only by way of illustration. In this as in all things else 
 changes in the customs of the people must be introduced only in the degree 
 in which the grounds of them are understood and command their sympa- 
 thetic assent. The subject is one of great importance, and I hope to have 
 the privilege of devoting a paper to it at some future Conference. Meanwhile, 
 it is clear that a profound and growing weariness of the routine sermon 
 twice a Sunday, and of services in which sucli a sermon (too often a mere 
 essay or a poor attempt at a rhetorical oration) is always the principal 
 feature, exists in all circles. It is clear also that we realise too little that 
 the preaching of the AVord, in the sense in which the phrase is used in the 
 New Testament, embraces a personal pastoral ministry to individual souls of 
 a totally different character from the public rhetorizing with which it is now 
 almost exclusively associated. The time consumed in the perpetual manu- 
 facture of our so-called sermons is wholly disproportionate to what remains 
 
134 '^^^^ Celebration of the Holy Communion 
 
 realities Avhich ought now to be realised in the Church of 
 God.* The study of that earthly model, prefiguring the 
 worship we ought now to render, shows us, by means of (1) 
 the Golden Altar, (2) the Table of the Shewbread, and 
 (3) the Golden Candlestick which was set in the Holy 
 Place, that the distinctive worship of the Church is to 
 consist of (1) intercession, (2) offered in Sacramental form, 
 and (3) in unity with the whole Body of Christ, the 
 Lord Himself being, as it were, the true Mercy Seat t in 
 unity with whom we now abide in the heavenly places 
 before the Shechinah Glory of the Father. 
 
 In like manner the brazen Altar which was set at the 
 door I of the outer court shows the true position of con- 
 fession, and the mirror-laver,§ set between the brazen altar 
 of the outer court and the entrance to the Holy Place, at 
 which the priests washed and received assurance that they 
 were cleansed, illustrates to us, in the most wonderful 
 way, the office of the Word as preached prior to our 
 passing forward to the service of worship — which office 
 consists in reflecting to us, not what Ave were but what, 
 by Divine Grace, we are, in quickening in us the sense 
 of our being a holy and accepted priesthood in the Lord, 
 called in full assurance of faith to draio near as felloiv- 
 worshippers ivith Him, our Great High Priest, into the 
 Holy Place. 
 
 8. Thirdly, in order to bring out, in accordance with the 
 Divine order, what I have called the Godward aspect 
 of the Holy Communion as a service of worship, and an 
 oblation before God, it is essential (a) that in particular 
 the prayers of consecration shoidd he fulfilled luith the 
 
 for the careful pastoral guidance and instruction of individual souls and the 
 seeking out of tlie erring and the lost. Competitive preaddng and jmnjing, 
 it may be added, is a form of profanity which it has been reserved, it is be- 
 lieved, for this generation to invent, and which must be regarded by all who 
 think of what it means as a practice which must indeed go far towards 
 filling up the measure of our iniquity. 
 
 * Heb. iii. 5, 6 ; viii. 5. f Exodus xxv. 21, 22. 
 
 I Ih. xl. 6. § lb. xl. 7 ; xxxviii. 8. 
 
and the Daily Service. 135 
 
 utmost definiteness of intention and solemnity of form ; * 
 and (h) that the 'prayers of commemoration and intercession 
 should follov) the consecration and 'precede the Corainun- 
 ion 'proper, and indeed he separated hy a distinct interval 
 frotn the communion part of the service, regarded as em- 
 bracing only the reception of the Sacrament. 
 
 It is in connection with these points, I may say in 
 passing, that the defects of the Anglican service are most 
 obvious. The absence of a direct invocation of the Holy 
 Spirit in the consecration, the absence, also, of any true 
 oblation as following upon the consecration, the introduc- 
 tion of the intercession for the whole Church militant 
 previously to the consecration, the absence of any true 
 commemoration of the Holy Departed (a point of so much 
 importance in the light of the fact that the intercession of 
 the Church, as fulfilled in that service, should be com- 
 mensurate with the intercession of the Lord, which, we 
 know, embraces the whole Church, whether living or 
 departed, and is in point of fact a mode or form of that 
 intercession) t — all these constitute defects so great as to 
 make it impossible to accept the Anglican service in its 
 present form otherwise than as the example of a meagre, 
 disordered, and defective Eucharistic order, 
 
 4. Fourthly, it is of the greatest importance that the 
 offerings of the Com'niunicants should he hrought into 
 connection 'with the Service at the loroper place, as an act 
 in which we present our substance and our offerings and 
 ourselves before God. 
 
 This point is important as one remedy for much of the 
 
 * Among the Presbyterian exceptions against the Book of Common Prayer 
 presented at the Savoy Conference (a.d. 1661), the following occurs with 
 reference to the Prayer of Consecration : " We conceive that the manner of 
 the consecrating of the elements is not here explicit and distinct enough, 
 and the minister's breaking of the bread is not so much as mentioned." 
 
 t This subject is specially referred to in a sermon which I lately published — 
 '■'^ Judge nothing before the time " — referring to the work of the late Professor 
 Milligan, and incidentally to current criticism of the Scottish Church Society, 
 with a note on the Remembrance in Prayer of the Faithful Departed 
 (published by Hitt, Edinburgh). 
 
136 The Celebration of the Holy Comimmion 
 
 disorder which characterises the methods now in vogue 
 in regard to the gathering of the offerings from faithful 
 people for the service of God and His Church. 
 
 5. Fifthly, the utmost effort should be used to develop 
 in our congregations a sense of their common vocation as 
 partakers, through their hajjtism, of a priestly life* the 
 supreme opportunity of fulfilling Avhich towards God is 
 presented to them Avhen they are invited to take their 
 part in the sacred service. It is impossible here to 
 
 * I here venture to reproduce a note appended to the sermon above refeiTed 
 to. "All men are equally free to come to God through Christ that they 
 may ask mercy. This, hoAvevcr, does not make all men, as is sometimes 
 loosely said, equally priests, or in any sense 'jjriests unto God.' Triest- 
 hood, in that sense in which it is affirmed in tlie New Testament of all 
 Christians, implies (1) a call through Divine Grace to a place of membership 
 in the Body of Christ (1 Pet. i. 2 ; ii. 9) ; (2) admission through Holy 
 Baptism to that place (1 Cor. xii. 12, 13, and 27) ; (3) the response of Faith 
 on the part of the baptised person (Gal. iii. 26, 27) ; (4) a distinctive vocation 
 arising thence to be exercised in Christ, unto God, and in behalf of others 
 (1 Pet. ii. 5 ; Heb. xiii. 2-16 ; Rev. i. 6) ; and (5) endowment with the 
 measure of grace needed for the exercise of that vocation (Ei)h. i. 13, 
 14 ; iv. 7 ; Rom. xii. 4-6). Obviously, therefore, christened people (I use 
 the phrase— too often meaningless to us — in the full sense of Galatians iii. 
 26, 27, as meaning as many as have been laptiscd into Christ a^td have sa 
 PUT ON Christ and are the Sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus) 
 — and they only— have in reality, whether realising it or not, a priestly 
 rank and calling. Others, for example, are free to ask mercy for themselves ; 
 they only who are thus in Christ have the call laid upon them, and the right 
 to intercede for others. So also as regards all other priestly }irivileges and 
 duties. Nothing is more needed than the restoration of a due perception of 
 the distinctive priestliness of all Christians on its positive side, as based (to 
 use the phrase of the Larger Catechism) on 'the Grace of Baptism and 
 OUR engagements therein.' It is vitally connected with the restoration 
 in the mind of the laity of a sense of the call laid upon them to maintain, 
 and more actively to fulfil, their part in the worship of God (not forsaking 
 the assembling of themselves together, as the manner of matnj in these days 
 is), and of their commission to spread abroad the knowledge of the Gospel 
 throughout the earth, to be ' witnesses for the Lord' wherever they stand, and 
 to devote themselves, in Christ, to voluntarily accepted sacrifice for the service 
 of man. The (question as to the relation between the universal priesthood of 
 all Christians, and the position and functions reserved to the Evangelical 
 Ministry, is one too largo to enter upon here. I would only add, that the 
 first re(|uisite for the understanding of either part of the subject is the 
 realisation of the heavenly Priesthood, as now in exercise, of our Ascended 
 Lord, ' IN Whom are ave to the glory of God the Father.' " 
 
and the Daily Service. 1 3 7 
 
 enumerate the various ways in which this should be done, 
 but among others, and the more obvious, we may mention 
 these : — 
 
 "We must try to make them realise their unity with the 
 ministry in all the acts. St Paul unites the Church with 
 himself when he thus speaks : " For as often as ye eat this 
 bread and drink this cup ye 60 show the Lord's death till 
 He come." * " The bread which ive break, is it not the 
 communion of the body of Christ ? " -f* " The cup of 
 blessing which lue bless, is it not the communion of the 
 blood of Christ ? " 
 
 We must lead them to unite aloud in the singing of 
 the " Ter Sanctus," to say audibly the great "Amen," 
 referred to by St Paul in the Epistle to the Corinthians, at 
 the close of the Eucharistic celebration, I and to unite 
 together aloud and with one voice in the Lord's Prayer, 
 which, let me say very emphatically, is in truth the entire 
 Service of the Eucharist, in its order, compressed into 
 one Divine form. In other words, the Lord's Prayer is 
 (as we should expect) the Eucharist office or the appointed 
 Lord's Day service in germ. § 
 
 * 1 Cor. xi. 26. + 1 Cor. x. 16. J 1 Cor. xiv. 16. 
 
 § The Lord's Prayer was the earliest, and probably remained for a consider- 
 able period the one fixed liturgical formula. It was not merely closely 
 associated with the Prayer of Consecration, but constituted an invariable 
 part of it. " The change of the bread and wine into the body and blood of 
 Christ is by the v:ord of Prayer which comes from Him " (Justin, " Apoll." 66). 
 "We pray for our liread because Christ is the bread of us who belong to His 
 body" (St Cyprian in Orat. 13). For the duo iUustration of this paper it 
 would be necessary to append an example of a Form of Service embodying 
 the liturgical principles set forth. Meanwhile, however, it may suffice, by 
 way of indicating the correspondence between the progressive order of topics 
 in the Lord's Prayer, and the sequence of the various sections or parts of a 
 celebration of the Holy Conmiunion rightly ordered, to note the following 
 points : — (1) The opening invocation in the service of the Holy Com- 
 munion — in whatever form that invocation may be fulfilled — corresponds 
 to the First Petition of the Lord's Prayer. (2) The Section embracing the 
 Prayers for Pardon and of Peace, and the Prayer of Access, and for grace 
 wherewith to draw near and "worthily to magnify His glorious Name," 
 corresponds to the Second Petition. (3) The Section embracing the Lessons, 
 the Prophetic Lesson, the Epistles, and the "Gospel of the Kingdom," the 
 
138 The Celebration of the Holy Communion 
 
 We must encourage them to present tlicir private 
 offering and intercession to be united with the interces- 
 sion of the Lord, as that is accomplislied in this special 
 Service. 
 
 All these are but examples, which might be multiplied 
 indefinitely, of the ways in which we may develop in our 
 communicants the almost lost sense of their common 
 participation of a Holy Priesthood. 
 
 6. Sixthly, we need to restore the Service of the 
 Holy Communion to its place as the Divine Service of every 
 Lord's Day. In no oilier way is it possible to bring 
 about the realisation of its true character. For more 
 than a century in Scotland the Holy Communion, although 
 described in our Confession as a rite of " ordinary worship," 
 was put on the same footing as fastings and other acts 
 of humiliation of an extraordinary character. Within the 
 last few years the Fast Days, which were as frequent as 
 the Communion Sundays, have been dissevered from the 
 Communion, and in fact abolished, but almost no progress 
 has been made in the restoration of the Holy Communion 
 to its proper place. 
 
 7. Seventhly and lastly, we must aim not merely at 
 restoring the Holy Communion to its place as the Divine 
 Service of every Lord's Day, but with equal zeal endeavour 
 to lead communicants to see that it is the service at which 
 they should all seek to assist. 
 
 It appears to me that we have to be on our guard 
 
 preaching of that Gospel, the Creed, and the dedication of our alms, of the 
 elements, and of ourselves, corresponds to the Third Petition. (4) The 
 celebration proper, which ought to exhibit on earth "the very imacjc " of the 
 things fulfilled in heaven, embracing the great Thanksgiving, the Con- 
 secration, the sacramental Memorial actions, and the prayers of oblation 
 and intercession, corresponds to the Fourth, and central Petition. (5) The 
 subse(pient Sections, including the Communion proper, the administration of 
 the Sacrament, our recei)tion, and our Communion therein with our Lord 
 and with one another, as one body in Him, correspond to the Fifth and Si.dh 
 Petitions. (6) The Post-Comnuinion prayers for grace, guiilance, and hnal 
 deliverance, correspond to the ,S'evcnlh Petition. (7) Lastly, the concluding 
 act of Praise corresponds to the liturgical addition to the Lord's Prayer 
 which is found in the Do.vology, 
 
and the Daily Service. 139 
 
 against the multiplication, such as we see in England, of 
 frequent services of Communion, beginning at an early 
 hour of the clay, at which comparatively few are present, 
 and to aim steadily, whatever else is done, at the realisa- 
 tion of the Divine purpose that the Holy Communion 
 should be, as it were, the congregational Service of the 
 Day. The accomplishment of this must, at best, be a 
 very gradual work, demanding much prayer, patience, 
 and prudent effort. It is, of course, dependent, in the first 
 instance, on the revival of the truth of the Gospel as to 
 the Church and Sacraments. It must be a work carried 
 forward in the spirit of unity, and with tender considera- 
 tion of the abounding difficulties and prejudices. Indeed it 
 is perhaps undesirable that in such a movement one 
 congregation should, in too marked a degree, outstrip 
 others. The beginning of the return to the Divine Order 
 is, hoivevcr, effected luhcn that order is once asserted, and 
 luhen the return to it is made an avowed aim. 
 
 Section IV. 
 
 I promised in the fourth section of this paper to indicate 
 the reasons which so emphatically call at present for our 
 testimony to the truth of what has been above set forth, 
 and the encouragements which we possess in presenting 
 that testimony. This I can do only in a word. 
 
 1. One reason, and the only one which I here mention, 
 is found in the neglect of Divine worship, alleged on all 
 sides to be increasing. That neglect largely arises from the 
 fact that the Divine worship, at which our congregations 
 should assist, has never really been offered. 
 
 The people are in many places forsaking their atten- 
 dance on sermons. But they can scarcely be said to be 
 forsaking Divine worship, for in the highest sense of the 
 term the Divine worship is not provided for them.* 
 
 * In the disappearance of the Communion Table from some of our modern 
 churches, and in tlie overshadowing prominence of the Pulpit, the sym- 
 bolism is complete which sets forth the prevalent idea that the House of God, 
 which should be a place of Prayer for all people, is but a Lecture Hall. 
 
140 The Celebration of the Holy Commimion 
 
 When the heaving of sermons, which too often take 
 merely the form of useless and unedifying rhetorical dis- 
 plays, is made the supreme object of going to church, it is 
 not a matter for surprise that, in an age like ours, many 
 people should come to act upon the instinct which tells 
 them that the good which they are supposed to get in 
 church, they may equally get at home. The ultimate 
 remedy is to be found in leading them to see that the 
 supreme blessing to be found in the Sanctuary is connected 
 by Divine ordinance with a sacramental worship at which 
 they are called to assist every Lord's Day, and wliicli^ 
 tliereforc, as a matter of fact, cannot he found except where 
 the divinely appointed memorial is ^presented. 
 
 Sooner or later this truth, which is of momentous im- 
 portance, will come to be set forth and seen to be, as it is, 
 vital and fundamental to all reform, otherwise I see no 
 hope of permanently arresting the disintegration of con- 
 gregational and Church life now in progress. 
 
 2. The encouragements to persevering in fearless testi- 
 mony on these matters lie principally in three considera- 
 tions : — 
 
 (1) First we know that we are witnessing for Divine 
 truth. In this we have the most assured confidence. 
 God is on our side. We seek to bring about a restora- 
 tion of obedience to the will of the Lord as determining: 
 in regard to what the worship of His Church should be, 
 and to the means whereby His people should be blessed. 
 We can therefore rely on the presence with us of the 
 Holy Ghost who takes of the things that are Christ's 
 and reveals them to His people as we go forth to bear 
 our Avitness. 
 
 (2) Secondly, the nobler and most active instincts of 
 our time are in harmony with the truth which we are 
 called to affirm. Many who would remain indifferent so 
 long as the attendance on a ritual form is impressed 
 upon them as a mere necessity of precept, may be 
 brought to look at the matter in another light if they 
 
and the Daily Service. 1 4 1 
 
 once see the Evangelical and Spiritual Glory of the filial 
 and brotherly life as exhibited and replenished in its 
 higiiest form in the rightly rendered worship of the 
 Father in the Eucharist. Communicants who are lax in 
 communicating (notwithstanding their being reminded of 
 its necessity as a duty, or as a means of making a 
 profession once a year, or once in three years, in order 
 to their retaining their places as "members" of the 
 Christian Church) may be found to be more easily 
 moved when they are taught that every time the 
 Church Bell rings on the Lord's Day morning, the 
 Lord's announcement is that He is about to appear 
 sacramentally in the presence of the Father and to 
 present His intercession ; and that He asks them to 
 come up out of their own houses into the House of 
 God, and to unite with Him and, as it were, to sustain 
 in Him and with Him one mystical and ineffably 
 glorious celebration. 
 
 (3) The last encouragement which I shall mention is 
 found in the reflection that, whether our testimony is 
 accepted by many or otherwise, the Hol}'^ Eucharist, so far 
 as we may see it restored to its proper place, will be effective 
 in its intercessional aspect even for the help of those who 
 reject our testimon^^, just because it is a form, though 
 exhibited on the earth, of the prevailing mediation of the 
 Lord in Heaven, which is the ground of all our hope, and 
 of which the final fruit, whatever hindrances may for a 
 season interpose, will be found in the revelation of the 
 Kingdom and in the advent of that Day of days when the 
 implicit promise of this word will be fulfilled — "/ say unto 
 you, I ivill not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, 
 
 ■until THAT DAY WHEN I DRINK IT NEW WITH YOU IN My 
 
 Father's Kingdom." * 
 
 * Matthew xxvi. 29. 
 
THE CELEBRATION OF THE HOLY COMMUNION 
 AND THE DAILY SERVICE. 
 
 Rev. Arthur W. Wotherspoon, M.A. 
 
 The devotional life of the individual — q, service of God that 
 is reasoned, ordered, diligently cultivated, yet that is God- 
 ward wholly, a personal and secret thing — has its parallel 
 in the Church's life of Avorship. As the individual, so the 
 corporate Church maintains a service of God personal to 
 herself as the Bride of Christ, private aS offered in separa- 
 tion from the world, Godward wholly in the secret of His 
 tabernacle. And whatever is true of the individual devo- 
 tional life is true also of that cultivated by the Church. 
 Her service too must be " ordered in all things and sure," 
 regular as breathing, " sure," constant as life. 
 
 And this at once calls for Daily Service. The day with its 
 evening and its morning is God's unit of time. More may 
 not be required of us than that each day be duly hallowed. 
 But service less than daily can claim nothing of continuit3\ 
 
 To pray night and morning is the least that we require 
 of ourselves as individuals, and the Church should show 
 exami^le of no less. Morning and evening in the House 
 of God she should gather up the private prayers of all her 
 children, and present them through her Lord with in- 
 tercession. " The Prayers "* should link day to day, and 
 each week begin with " the Breaking of Bread " — a silver 
 chain with a golden clasp : that so life might be sealed 
 with the communion of Christ's Body and Blood, and might 
 abide in the communion of His Spirit. " The fire" it is 
 written, " shall he ever burrnng on the altar : it shall never 
 
 * Acts ii. 42. 
 
144 ^-^^^ Celebi^ation of the Holy Commtinion 
 
 go out ; " but we do not begin to fulfil that word until, 
 under the New Testament as under the Old, each day has 
 its daily sacrifice. 
 
 And if this be the calling of the Church as God's servant, 
 it is her calling, also, in the adoption, as one with Christ 
 and the incarnation of His Spirit. Her union with her 
 Lord involves the sharing of His office, endues her with 
 His sacerdotal robe. If the member, much more the body 
 must "abide in Christ": and to dwell in the fellowship 
 of Him who is a priest for ever is to dwell in " prayer 
 without ceasing." " As He is, so are we in the vjorld ; " as 
 He in heaven appears for us, so the Church in earth must 
 appear in God's presence for the outside world. It is for 
 the Church supremely to say, "for me to live is Christ," 
 and Christ " ever liveth to make intercession." The Church 
 is not (as it is her vocation to be) Christ to the world, 
 either as manifesting the true Christ, Priest of humanity, or 
 as fulfilling in the earth the ministry of Christ for men, — so 
 long as her prayers are spasmodic, interrupted, not " rising 
 like a fountain day and night," both for herself and for the 
 outside world. 
 
 Again, the Church's life and her work, although these 
 are not identical as some appear to think, are allied most 
 intimately. Church-workers are born not manufactured : in 
 earth as in heaven it is the ministering (worshipping, lit. 
 liturgic) spirit that is sent forth to do service for the sake 
 of others (Heb. i. 14, R.V.). As the fruit of the in- 
 dividual disciple is in holy dispositions — love, joy, peace 
 and goodness — so the fruit of the Church is in her saints. 
 Her ripe grapes are holy lives, matured and perfected : 
 and she cannot bring forth, cannot ripen, a single cluster 
 except as with a constant indwelling she herself abide in 
 Christ. May it not be for lack of that constancy that we 
 of this present age have many converts but few saints ? 
 and that our work among the heathen is crippled as it is 
 by the need of mission work at home ? 
 
 The Cliurch to her shame has need to convert her own 
 
and the Daily Service. 1 45 
 
 children : she has it not in her to bring them up in the 
 nurture of the Lord. God looks that she should bring forth 
 grapes, but she brings forth wild grapes. 
 
 (/3) If these considerations move us, they will move our 
 people also ; and in further commending Daily Service and 
 weekly Eucharist, we can appeal to our Lord and call upon 
 them to consider His legacy : — that Christ left for our 
 Church life three things alone : a sacrament that signifies 
 and seals our adoption and membership, a prayer that is 
 the prayer of God's Church and family, and finally a 
 sacrament that is worship before it is a means of grace, 
 and is indeed the one Divine service. 
 
 Our Lord left but these three, and a unique importance 
 on this account attaches to them. And since one is for birth, 
 only two remain for life. The Lord's Prayer and the Holy 
 Eucharist are Christ's sole institutions for Church worship. 
 
 Now if we consider the Lord's Prayer as instructing us 
 in this matter, as " teaching us to pray," as making known 
 " the mind of Christ " regarding prayer, — COMMON prayer 
 is taught us by the words, "Our Father . . . give us . . . 
 deliver us " ; and daily common prayer by the word 
 " daily " in the fourth petition. The Lord's Prayer is " the 
 daily" (Dan. viii. 11) of the New Testament, of which our 
 prayers, supplications, and intercessions day by day are but 
 the expansion. 
 
 But (what is as remarkable as it is instructive) thanks- 
 giving has no place in the Lord's Prayer ; which I take to 
 be because it is incomplete without the Eucharist. The 
 Lord's Prayer is the norm of the week-day prayer, and 
 over each such day there is a shadow in the Christian week. 
 Monday remembers Christ's rejection as the Priest-King, 
 when man turned on him for cleansing His own temple ; and 
 Tuesday remembers that even as a Prophet we would 
 none of Him ; Wednesday remembers His betrayal ; Thurs- 
 day His agony in the garden ; Friday the crucifixion ; and 
 Saturday His grave. Lower and lower our shame sinks us, 
 
 K 
 
146 The Celebration of the Holy Communion 
 
 even as the Lord's Prayer sinks also through its preface and 
 seven petitions — with a strange correspondence (strange if 
 no more than a coincidence) between each of these eight 
 and the days of the Christian octave. And even so the week- 
 day life that we live in the world should be ever peniten- 
 tial, " bearing His reproach," lived in the fellowship of 
 Christ's sufferings, that in the world we may " know Him " 
 as that world used Him, and be made conformable to His 
 death and so press forward. Su2^plications, 'prayers, and 
 intercessions are the note of the Daily Service. 
 
 But yet thanksgiving is enjoined in the same word with 
 these (1 Tim. ii. 1). It comes in its own place, even as 
 after the sufferings came the glory that should follow. The 
 Lord's Day is the day of thanksgiving, and the thanks- 
 giving is the Eucharist.* " What shall I render unto the 
 Lord for all his benefits ? " For benefits of such cost, the 
 purchase of His pain, what can we render ? What but 
 the " pure offering " t that He Himself gives into our hands '( 
 Holy things to the Holy. Of His own let us give Him. 
 " I will take the cup of salvation ... I will offer the sacrifice 
 of thanksgiving." Date et dabitur vohis : Christ grants 
 us so to pass from the fellowship of His sufferings to " know 
 the POWER of His Resurrection." There is " an Easter day 
 in every week " for those who thus " keep the feast " 
 (1 Cor. v. 8) having duly hallowed the week-days. 
 
 (7) Something, I am aware, is to be said for a daily cele- 
 bration of the Eucharist. But as the day is God's unit of 
 time for our earthly life, so the week is His sacred unit : 
 in the work of creation, and in the work of redemption, 
 our new creation. So that to begin each week with 
 Eucharistic service may be sufficient for continuity. 
 
 Less than weekly cannot be ; and without a continuous 
 presentation, it is as though the light were out in the Holy 
 
 * As will be known to most readers, the Greek word for thanksgiving is 
 eueharistia : as, e.g., in 1 Tim. ii. 1, St Paul exhorts to make " supplications, 
 lirayers, intercessions, eucharists." 
 
 t Mai. i. ii. 
 
and the Daily Service. i^y 
 
 Place and the shewbread table bare. And this is to sin 
 against Christ. We think too exclusively of the Church, 
 in Eucharistic worship, as presenting Christ's memorial 
 before God. In another aspect, not less true, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ Himself is the one and only celebrant in 
 every communion service. It is He who takes bread, 
 and showing it to the Father, utters the words. This is My 
 Body : He breaks it. He offers it. And this is Christ, 
 the Priest-King, presenting His Body the Church a living 
 sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, — a sacrifice and holy in 
 union with His death, — a living sacrifice as presented with 
 the Cup of salvation, "the New Covenant in His Blood." 
 We hinder our Lord's exercise of the office of His priest- 
 hood so long as we disuse the weekly Eucharist ; because, 
 in the end. He is the celebrant, and what are we but a 
 vestment for His wear. 
 
 (6) We should remind our people (finally) that so long 
 as the Lord's Table is not spread each Sunday, they forego 
 their distinctive privilege under the Gospel. For what is 
 that Gospel privilege if not (as Christ taught the Samaritan 
 woman) that all men always in every 'place may now 
 worship God, as formerly one man only (the High Priest) 
 in one place (the Temple at Jerusalem), and he but once a 
 year, might worship God. The High Priest entered through 
 the Veil into the Holy of Holies, to the Ark of the Covenant 
 and the Mercy Seat and the Glory of the Presence. No 
 man anywhere may ever so worship God as that High Priest, 
 except as entering by the new and living way which Christ 
 hath consecrated for us, — entering into the Holiest throuo-h 
 Christ s Flesh and by His Blood. 
 
THE CHURCH AND THE EDUCATION OF 
 THE YOUNG. 
 
 Rev. John Howard Crawford, M.A. 
 
 There is no question brought under the consideration of 
 this Conference of greater importance than that of the 
 Church's duty with reference to Education. In all times 
 the Christian Church has held it as one of her most pressing 
 duties to educate her children, and that in all branches of 
 useful learning. We are too apt to think that the interest 
 in education began with the Reformation, and thouo^h 
 undoubtedly the Reformers gave an impulse to educa- 
 tion such as had not before been felt, yet the Church, prior 
 to their day, had not entirely forgotten her duty. Every 
 monastery and cathedral had its school, taught often by 
 the most learned men. Principal Lee asks very justly, 
 " Who taught the Reformers themselves ? Who instituted 
 the schools in which Buchanan and Knox, Fergusson and 
 Row, Wynram and Willock, Arbuthnot and Douglas and 
 Spotswood were so well instructed as to be adequately 
 prepared for entering on the higher studies pursued at the 
 universities ? One at least of the number appears to have 
 been taught in one of the schools of the canons regular, 
 and another in a mouastery of the Mliite Friars. The 
 others we know were educated at grammar schools."* 
 
 The Church, indeed, was the mother of arts and learning 
 for many centuries ; and what education there was, came 
 through her as its source. There was then no question as 
 to the relation of religion to culture ; there was then no 
 thought of separating the knowledge of God from the 
 
 * Inaugural Address, University of Edinburgh, 1846. 
 
 M9 
 
150 The Church and the Education of the Yoiing. 
 
 faculties by which we serve man ; it was reserved for our 
 modem sophists to invent a scheme by which religion and 
 secular knowledge should be divided as if in watertight 
 compartments. 
 
 But no one can shut his eye to the imminent danger 
 which seems to lie before us of a growing desire to secu- 
 larise education. It is almost incredible that in a Christian 
 country such a possibility should be contemplated. We all 
 believe that religion is the central science which gives 
 value to all other knowledge. We all admit that education 
 is the duty of the State, and that if the State is to secure 
 any benefit from education, it must be such as will tend 
 to make upright citizens, who fear God and obey His 
 commandments.* We know that great numbers of children 
 have no religious nurture except what they receive in the 
 day-schools. And yet, admitting all these facts, there are 
 many men among us of undoubted piety who would banish 
 religion from our schools entirely. The battle was fought 
 out some years ago in America with but varying success, 
 and still wages in our colonies. It may be hoped that it 
 will never have to be fought in these realms. 
 
 Still we must beware that we are dwelling in no fool's 
 paradise in this matter. We must carefully consider our 
 own case ; which though not presenting the extreme 
 positions which other countries show, has yet enough to 
 excite our anxious inquiry. 
 
 The common schools of Scotland can boast a good lineage. 
 
 Children as they are of the Reformation, they have ever 
 
 had a religious character. Knox, like Luther and Calvin, 
 
 based his best hopes on the sound culture of the rising 
 
 generation ; knowing that young hearts 
 
 " Do deeply take and strongly keep 
 The jirint of Heaven." 
 
 The changes of time have, however, severed the close 
 
 * " It is of great importance to a State that every citizen should be of a 
 religion that may inspire him with a regard for his duty." — Rousseau, 
 "Contrat Social," v. 8. 
 
The ChiLrch and the Education of the Youiig. 1 5 i 
 
 connection of the parish schools with the Church, which 
 lasted so long and worked so well. The severance was not 
 a violent one, and the Board schools differ little in outward 
 appearance from their predecessors. There are few restric- 
 tions placed on the teaching of Christian doctrine in the school 
 hours ; and where the Board does not permit any distinc- 
 tively theological instruction through a catechism, as in 
 Aberdeen, we are told that an excellent grounding in the 
 contents of Holy Scripture is given. 
 
 Our teachers, moreover, are men of the highest character, 
 and many of them are really interested in the true Christian 
 upbringing of their pupils. I do not think any profession 
 is less affected by the negative spirit of our times than our 
 elementary teachers. Both in England and Scotland they 
 are the most valuable helpers the clergyman has. In 
 present circumstances, where almost the whole character of 
 the religious teaching depends on the individual master, 
 this is a fact to be deeply grateful for. 
 
 But is all as fair as it looks ? Is there not a tendency 
 to lightly consider the religious teaching among the parents ; 
 a tendency perhaps favoured by the School Boards ? My 
 impression is that this has grown during the last twenty 
 years. Parents are growing more indifferent to regular 
 and punctual attendance at the hour of religious teaching, 
 and the school rarely musters its full number at that 
 time. 
 
 Still, even granting that the attendance is regular, may 
 we not ask if the compulsory limitation of all religious 
 teaching to a stated hour is not in itself an evil. If the limi- 
 tation is understood to imply the exclusion of all religious 
 references or a religious spirit from the secular teaching, it is 
 surely to be regretted. Is it possible so to separate the 
 secular from the religious ? Can history and literature be 
 taught without the light which Christianity gives ? It is 
 always dangerous to think of religion and life as apart from 
 each other ; but such a mode of thought is specially injur- 
 ious to the plastic mind of childhood. Dean Stanley tells 
 
152 The Church and the Education of the Young. 
 
 us that a religious character more or less pervaded all Dr 
 Arnold's teaching, whether of history or classics or any 
 other subject. We should aim at no lower ideal than the 
 surrounding the child with a religious atmosphere in which 
 all his work should be done. To quote the beautiful 
 words of Plato,* " We must secure that the young, dwelling, 
 as it were, in a healthful land, may drink in good from all 
 around them, and airs borne from every noble work and 
 sight and sound may bring them, step by step, from earliest 
 childhood into the likeness and love of, and harmony with, 
 the beauty of truth." 
 
 Suffer me to add here a practical conclusion. We have 
 seen how much the religious nurture of the young depends on 
 the teachers, and the need of the teachers themselves being 
 soundly trained does not require to be urged.! In England 
 this is most earnestly cared for, and clergymen of distinction 
 are placed at the head of training colleges.^ In our colleges, 
 there does not seem to be any special provision for religious 
 teaching, as all the officials are laymen. Should not our 
 Church appoint a chaplain to each college, who should 
 have charge of the religious teaching ; and would not such 
 an appointment infuse a more religious spirit into the 
 institution ? 
 
 We cannot, however, leave this subject of elementary 
 schools without a glance at the struggle in England to 
 maintain some due measure of Christian teachiug in con- 
 nection with School Boards. We cannot withhold our 
 sympathy from those who desire to secure to the poorest 
 and most neglected child some knowledge of our holy religion. 
 When we read such awful facts as are told us about the 
 ignorance of some Board-school children, we cannot refrain 
 from asking: if instruction is not valueless which leaves out 
 
 * "Republic," iii. 401. 
 
 t In Switzerland, every teacher must have a certificate from a clergyman, 
 that the teaclier is fitted to conduct religious instruction. 
 
 X In this respect the work of Derwent Coleridge at St Mark's College, 
 Chelsea, deserves to be commemorated ; and has no parallel that I know in 
 Scotland, though the labours of David Stow should not be forgotten. 
 
The Church and the Education of the Yonng. 153 
 
 the best things in life. A teacher asked a class of such 
 children who was the mother of our Saviour, and received 
 for a reply, " The Queen." A district visitor spoke of Jesus 
 to a poor family, and after he was gone, the children asked 
 who was the man he was speaking of. A thousand such 
 facts might be given, we are assured. 
 
 It is not easy to understand the opposition of Noncon- 
 formists to the teaching of true Christianity in the Board 
 schools. There is no proposal to teach anything they do 
 not believe, as may be seen in the suggestions made by Mr 
 Athelstan Riley at the London Board-; and the mere lust 
 of controversy need not drive them into antagonism to 
 Christianity itself. May an outsider not add that it gives 
 a strange impression of the Church of England that so 
 powerful an organisation cannot secure what we have gained 
 so easily in Scotland ; and moreover, causes sad reflections 
 as to what may happen to her in the day of trial ? 
 
 It is vain to say that the Sunday school may be a sub- 
 stitute for religion in the day-school. In Birmingham it 
 was found some few years since that there were 26,000 
 elementary school children who went to no Sunday 
 school. The Secretary of the British and Foreign School 
 Society tells us that Sunday-school influence is not coexten- 
 sive with the needs of the neediest children, and those who 
 need moral and spiritual instruction most are most likely to 
 go to no Sunday school. In America it is said that five- 
 sixths of the children have no Sunday teaching ; and from 
 that country as from our own comes the too general assur- 
 ance that our Sunday schools are a practical failure. 
 
 I trust we are yet far off from the condition of France, 
 where all the religion taught is the existence of God, " in 
 accordance," as the officials say, " with that spiritual philo- 
 sophy which is the glory of Descartes and of France." The 
 municipality of Paris goes even farther, and will not permit 
 the name of God in a school book ; nay, has even sanctioned 
 a text-book openly hostile to all religion. The result is, of 
 course, that one-third of the children of Paris are educated 
 
154 ^''^^ CJmrcli and the Education of the Yotmg. 
 
 by the religious orders, a proportion which exactly corre- 
 sponds with that of voluntary schools in London, but is only 
 about one-half of the voluntary figures for the rest of 
 England. 
 
 The desire for the secularisation of the schools on the 
 Continent may be due to well-founded distrust of the Jesuits ; 
 but it must be surely the mere fanaticism of free thought 
 which overturned a system of which Guizot, Thiers, and 
 Cousin approved.* Sectarian strife puts us in strange 
 positions, and it is an unhappy country which sees patriots 
 like Jules Simon and the late Bishop Dupanloup t waging 
 war to the knife over the education of the young. But 
 doubtless the question of religious education in Roman 
 Catholic countries is complicated with considerations I must 
 not dwell upon. It is doubtful whether the Roman Church 
 is really favourable to popular education. The lay-school 
 can only exist by a struggle, and since the clergy wish to 
 destroy it by excommunication and other religious weapons, 
 it becomes anti-religious. It must be remembered, too, that 
 it was the Roman Catholics who brought about the 
 secularising the schools of New York,J and bitterly opposed 
 all reading of the Bible in them. We are not called on 
 to pronounce an opinion on the peculiar case of France or 
 Belgium, for their special circumstances do not exist in 
 England. 
 
 * See " L'Ecole," by Simon and Dupanloup respectively. 
 
 t Bishop Dupanloup said to the teachers of secondary schools when Jules 
 Simon's circular to them was issued, a circular which he thought would be 
 the ruin of the humanities, and tlie definite overturn of high intellectual 
 education in France: "Cling to the basis, the form, and the methods of 
 teaching which gave to France and the Church Bossuet, Fenelon, Bourda- 
 loue, Massillon, and the seventeenth century." (Note that he omits to name 
 Pascal, Arnauld, Racine, and the greater names of that period.) 
 
 X Contrast, however, with Archbishop Hughes' views, the words of Cardinal 
 Manning: "England is a Christian people, and its national character is 
 Christian because it lias been hitherto formed and perpetuated by Christian 
 schools. How can this English and Christian character be perpetuated or 
 formed when the schools liave ceased to be Christian ? If any one shall say 
 it will still be formed in the homes of the people, such an answer is either 
 from ignorance of what the homes of our millions really are, or from a levity 
 of mind." — Nineteenth Century, Dec. 1882. 
 
The Church and the Education of the Young. 155 
 
 The demand for Christian teaching in England takes 
 two forms — the one asking some definite doctrinal instruc- 
 tion in Board schools, and the other desiring a part of 
 the rates to be given to voluntary schools, or that the 
 subscribers to such schools should be exempt from the 
 rates.* The first demand seems a just one in a Christian 
 country. Only Deists can be content with a Deistic 
 religion, which is really the true name for undenominational 
 teaching. The Church cannot be content with such instruc- 
 tion, and must put but one interpretation on religious 
 teaching. M. Renan said he wished to be called a 
 Christian ; but a view of Christianity which satisfied M. 
 Renan will not satisfy the Church. t The Italian system, 
 which permits religious teaching in school hours by the 
 priest of the parish, is a wise plan. It is, indeed, recom- 
 mended by the First Book of Discipline that the reader 
 should teach in the schools, and it would still give useful 
 employment to our licentiates to fulfil such duties. It was 
 the suggestion of Julius MuUer that this should be done in 
 Germany; and it may be remembered that Oberlin, the 
 philanthropic pastor, always reserved for himself the re- 
 ligious instruction in the schools which he founded. I 
 beheve the time will come, both in England and Scotland, 
 when the clergy will visit their schools almost daily, and 
 
 * It may be noted that the conscience clause in Guizot's Scheme of 1833 
 provided that if parents exempted their children from religious instruction, 
 they must show that they i^rovided elsewhere for the religious education of 
 their children. See Kay-Shuttleworth, " Education of People." 
 
 t The Abbe Martin says with some truth :— " Religion is unquestionably the 
 one foundation stone essential to the educational fabric ; and the religion of 
 which we speak must be a dogmatic religion, having clear and well-defined 
 articles of faith, easily taught and readily remembered. The vague generalities 
 which pass under the name of natural religion may possibly exercise sufficient 
 moral restraint over the best-disposed members of the highly educated and 
 prosperous classes, to preserve them from any serious losses from propriety, but 
 they will never keep the mass of children or of working men from sin." 
 
 In Holland, the regulation is as follows :— "Measures shall be taken that 
 the scholars be not left without instruction in the doctrinal creed of the 
 religious communion to which they belong." 
 
156 The Church and the Education of the Yoimg. 
 
 teach the children the true Christian faith ; and for my 
 part, I think it their duty to do so.* 
 
 One word on the financial aspect of the question, which 
 may come to have its bearings in our own country. There 
 seems no reason why the Church demands should not be 
 yielded. Dr Hodge, of America, professed his willingness 
 to exempt Roman Catholics from school rates, since their 
 religion asked schools of their own, and most Presbyterians 
 agreed with him.t But I cannot discuss the practical 
 difficulties ; and would leave this part of the subject with 
 the words of Dean Hook written fifty years ago : "If the 
 Church of England claims a right to the exclusive education 
 of the people, it becomes her duty to seek to supply the 
 funds required, by appropriating her funds to this purpose. 
 Our bishops are bound, upon this principle, to go down to 
 the House of Lords and seek power from the legislature to 
 sell their estates." Which words we beg leave to commend 
 to our friends in the South. 
 
 The religious instruction in elementary schools in our 
 country is, as we have seen, such as to inspire us with a 
 measure of satisfaction. The teaching is regularly given on 
 a sound basis and is in some cases examined with good 
 results. The remarkable decrease of crime since the passing 
 of the Education Act is a testimony to the value of the 
 
 * The admirable laboms of the Freres des Ecoles Chretiennes are an 
 example of what may be done by pious zeal. Nor should it be forgotten 
 that the National Assembly in 1790 exempted this brotherhood from its 
 decree which suppressed other orders. 
 
 t I am of opinion, therefore, on the same grounds as are urged above that 
 the Roman Catholic and Episcopalian and other denominational schools should 
 receive assistance from the rates in Scotland. The amount given should be at 
 the pleasure of the School Board, and should only be given to schools which 
 are under Government inspection, and must therefore have been recognised by 
 the Education Department as necessary in the special circumstances of the 
 district. The object of the Education Act is to secure a good education for 
 all, Avhich in the United Kingdom means a Christian education ; and no mere 
 official pedantry should interfere with any wise way of carrying this out. It 
 must be remembered, as stated above, that no denominational school can be 
 originated without satisfying the Department that it is required. 
 
The Church and the Education of the Young. 1 5 7 
 
 common schools in England. The number of offences which 
 steadily rose till 1868, when it reached 247,000, had fallen 
 to 198,000 in 1890, and most rapidly since 1882, by which 
 time the education given had begun to tell. The number 
 of habitual criminals fell in the same period from 87,688 
 to 52,1 83. There is a corresponding decrease in pauperism, 
 notwithstanding our periods of bad trade, from 1,000,000 
 in 1870 to 775,000 in 1891. These figures give us 
 courage even in presence of difficulties which are looming in 
 the future. 
 
 So much for primary education : suffer a word or two on 
 secondary schools. From all I can learn, there is a growing 
 neglect of religion in our middle-class day schools in Scot- 
 land ; and Lord Norton says the same thing is happening 
 in England. The almost entirely secular character of our 
 Scottish Universities, the scientific tendency of the age, and 
 the keen passion for success which has invaded our middle- 
 class schools, has tended to eliminate religious instruction, 
 which can give no results that immediately pay. The 
 ethical and spiritual side of life is forgotten ; the boys and 
 girls seem too busy to have any time for religion, aod their 
 whole aim is success in examinations. But, as Mark 
 Pattison said : " Education has for its object to qualify for 
 life. Life is not the profession or the shop ; these are live- 
 lihood not life." I might give many facts to prove my 
 statements, but your own knowledge will confirm what I say 
 as to the materialistic and mechanical view of education 
 taken in our Scottish higher schools. May we not ask, is 
 all this not a throwing away of life for mere outward gain ; 
 is it not 'propter vitawj vivendi perdere causas ? 
 
 I believe that in private schools, religious teaching is 
 generally well given ; but I fear the governing bodies of 
 our secondary schools are inclined to overlook the matter 
 altogether. Can the Church be indifferent or silent on the 
 education of those who must by-and-bye take positions of 
 importance in public life ? 
 
 In days gone by, it was different. The grammar schools 
 
158 The Church and the Education of the Yonng. 
 
 of England and Scotland were founded by piety, for true 
 Christian teaching ; and the Jesuit schools were so 
 admirable that Lord Bacon says he knows none better. 
 
 In the German gymnasia the law enjoins religious 
 instruction at least twice a week.* The lower classes are 
 taught the Scripture history, the Creed, and hymns ; the 
 middle classes learn the life of Christ and Church History ; 
 while the upper classes read the Greek Testament and 
 receive lessons in Introduction and Dogmatics. The teach- 
 ing is good and interesting, and the scholars discuss 
 theological problems with eagerness. But the system 
 depends on the teacher, who may be a sceptic or rationalist : 
 and good men have felt their anxieties about it. The 
 Church has had its doubts about the value of instruction 
 which such teachers might give ; and accordingly a distinctly 
 Christian gymnasium was instituted in 1851 at Gtitersloh. 
 Here, as at Bugby under Arnold, the Christian faith was 
 to be the basis of the whole school life. 
 
 A quarter of a century before, the same idea had 
 inspired Dr Muhlenberg of America. That lover of 
 mankind saw that the Church should accept as a cardinal 
 part of its duty the providing of a distinctly Christian 
 education for youth. He realised his ideal in the well- 
 known Flushing Institution and St Paul's College, over 
 which he presided for twenty years. The example of Dr 
 Muhlenberg was followed in England by Canon Woodard, 
 who founded the schools called by his name, the best known 
 
 * In the elementary schools of Germany the religious teaching has tlie 
 foremost place in the school work, six hours per week being given to it. 
 The inspector who examines the school is bound to take special heed of the 
 religious instruction, which in the case of most of the children is based on the 
 Scriptures, the Lutheran catechism and hymn book. The minority — 
 Catholics or Jews — are entitled to a teacher of their own sect. Mr Matthew 
 Arnold says : ' ' The religious instruction in the jiopular schools of Germany 
 seems to me one of tiie best and most effective parts of the school work." 
 Yet, notwithstanding all the excellent teaching, the spread of irreligion 
 among the working classes of Germany is remarked on by their own clergy. 
 There is probably exaggeration in their statements, and the steadfast character 
 of the German nation is in itself a proof of the value of their religious education. 
 
The Church and the Education of the Young. 159 
 
 of which is Lancing College ; and later on, by the Church 
 Schuols Company, which had twenty-eight schools under its 
 management last year. 
 
 And what is the Church of Scotland doing in this 
 important question ? We have suffered our parish schools 
 to be taken from us ; we have seen endowments, bound up 
 with the Church and consecrated by pious wishes, given 
 over to secular hands ; * is there no limit to this madness 
 of indifference ? Are our clergy heedless of all change 
 except such as affects their emoluments or the numbers of 
 their communicants ? 
 
 Is it not possible for us to have schools for the middle 
 classes directly under Church control, where our boys and 
 girls can receive a really Christian education ? Such a 
 school, where the whole spirit would be religious, would be 
 a great boon to our rising generations. Do not misunder- 
 stand me when I speak of religious schools. Some seem 
 to imagine that a system like that of the Jesuits of the 
 past would be pursued ; where the soul would be stifled 
 with the tedium of perpetual religious exercises, where the 
 result would be, to quote the words of Erasmus, virtutem 
 simul odisse et nosse. The English public school system 
 at its best, or the admirable training of Port Royal, is 
 nearer the ideal school. In Scotland, we cling to the day- 
 school, and doubtless we are wise in so doing. Professor 
 Sewell said, " It has been the mistake of the English 
 Church to think more of individuals than of families. It 
 has broken up the family relationship by transplanting the 
 children into large schools, and superseding the parental 
 authority." In our country, it is due to the fact that 
 parental care is still given to the children while they are 
 at school that the great evils of an almost secular system 
 are lessened. But I am convinced that these evils are 
 apparent in the lessening interest in religion among our young 
 
 * Tlie Church, through the General Assembly, submitted to the secularising 
 of the funds of the S.P.C.K. with, I think, only one dissentient voice, that 
 of Dr Sprott. 
 
i6o The Church and the Education of the Young. 
 
 men ; and no amount of guild work, which, after all, is an 
 artificial method, repulsive to many of our best young men, 
 can make up for the loss of earlier opportunities of laying 
 the foundation of the religious life. The Church, at all 
 events, is bound to impress on parents the pressing need of 
 giving their boys and girls the best religious teaching they 
 can, and bringing them early to the Communion. I am 
 inclined to think that heretical views as to the Church, an 
 ignorance as to her mission of nourishing and bringing up 
 those who are her members by baptism, and an anabaptist 
 view as to conversion are at the root of most of our indifference. 
 But whether that be so or not, it is certain that the Church 
 does not even fulfil all her duty when she enjoins parents 
 to do theirs. Her clergy must take on themselves their 
 voluntary burden of assisting in the daily education of the 
 young. They should offer their services free of reward as 
 the priests in other lands do ; and I am convinced we should 
 reap a rich harvest not only in this world but also in that 
 which is to come. 
 
 Note. — This paper treats only of the question of Day- 
 School education : it was intended that others should take 
 up the work of the Church in Sunday Schools, Classes, 
 Guilds, and Services for the Young. 
 
THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY OF THE 
 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Rev. George W. Sprott, D.D. 
 
 As it will be necessary to speak at some length on the 
 succession of the ministry at and since the Reformation, I 
 shall only have time to allude briefly to other important 
 aspects of the question before us. 
 
 The Church before the Reformation. 
 
 The Celtic Church was marked by peculiarities of much 
 greater significance than those which referred to the clerical 
 tonsure and the proper date of Easter, but it need not de- 
 tain us, as centuries before the Reformation it was assimi- 
 lated to the rest of Western Christendom. 
 
 The Reformation. 
 
 In 1558 and 1559 the Reforming party petitioned that 
 the Church should be reformed in accordance with the pre- 
 cepts of the New Testament, the writings of the ancient 
 Fathers, and the godly rules of the Emperor Justinian, and 
 that the face of the primitive Church might be restored. 
 They asked, among other things, that the Sacraments should 
 be administered in the vulgar tongue, and the Lord's 
 Supper in both kinds ; that the immorality of the clergy 
 should be suppressed, and that bishops should be appointed 
 with consent of the gentry of the diocese, and parish 
 ministers with consent of the parishioners. The refusal of 
 this petition was followed by a religious war, in which the 
 Reforming party gained the upper hand, and in 1560 Par- 
 
 L ^6' 
 
i62 The Historical Continuity of the 
 
 liament threw off the yoke of the Papacy, and ratified the 
 Confession of Faith drawn up by the Reforming clergy. We 
 learn from Ninian Wingate that in the spring of 1559, large 
 numbers of the clergy joined the ranks of the Reformed, and 
 there is no reason to doubt that the Reformation was effected 
 with " the consent of the greater part both of pastors and 
 people," It was not a secession but a movement en onasse, 
 and from that time till 1784 the Romish Church had no 
 existence in the country as an organised body. In 1562 it 
 was ordained that as many ministers as had been accepted 
 of their kirks should remain as lawful ministers, unless they 
 had been found corrupt in life or doctrine. Of the 5 
 superintendents, 289 ministers, and 715 readers officiating 
 in 1567, the great majority must have been old priests. A 
 few years later, in St Andrews, where before the Reformation 
 there had been about 160 ecclesiastics, the whole com- 
 munity had joined the Reformed Church, except three who 
 were suspected of Popery and two confirmed Papists, one 
 of whom was a priest. In 1567 Parliament declared the 
 Reformed Church to be the only true Church of Christ in 
 the realm, and to be entitled to the teinds as its proper 
 patrimony, or inheritance. Since then it has had constant 
 national recognition ; in the eye of the law it has always 
 been the same Church, it has embraced the great body of 
 the people, it has always reflected the national character, 
 and has in turn influenced and moulded it. 
 
 But these things are not suflficient to justify its claim to 
 be the national branch of the Church Catholic, unless it can 
 be shown that it has " continued steadfast in the Apostles' 
 doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread and in 
 prayers." We proceed to prove that, while it has under- 
 gone many superficial changes, the sacred bonds which bind 
 it to the Church formed at Pentecost have never been 
 broken. 
 
 I. Doctrine. 
 
 The old Scottish Confession of 1560 kept its place as the 
 authorised doctrinal Standard of the Church till 1647, wheu 
 
C/mrch of Scotland. 165 
 
 the Westminster Confession was adopted as in nothing con- 
 trary to that previously received. This last lost its civil 
 sanction in 1661, but (as we learn from Bishop Burnet) it 
 continued to be used by the bishops and clergy during the 
 second episcopacy. In 1690 it was ratified anew by Par- 
 liament as the public and avowed Confession of the Church, 
 and it has ever since had the sanction both of Church 
 and State. The Apostles' Creed was also used both in 
 public worship and in baptism from the Reformation as 
 before till 1690. There were interruptions in the later 
 covenanting period, but after the adoption of the West- 
 minster Standards, Presbyteries disciplined those who 
 objected to its use in the baptismal service. After 1690, 
 it was continued only as an appendix to the Catechism, 
 but its use in the administration of the Sacraments and 
 in public worship has again been widely restored. We 
 have thus every right to claim that our Church at the 
 Reformation cast off Romish corruptions of doctrine and 
 has maintained the Faith in apostolic purity ever since. 
 
 II. The Apostles Fellowship. 
 
 Under this head I shall speak chiefly of the lineal descent 
 of our clergy from those ordained by the Apostles. As the 
 Westminster divines said, we have " a lineal succession from 
 Christ and His Apostles as well as a doctrinal succession." 
 Ordination is the bond which makes us participators of the 
 Apostolic ministry, and that "which mainly holds the Church 
 together" through successive generations. Bishop Lightfoot 
 expressed the verdict of the most learned divines of all ages 
 when he said, " the Episcopate " was " developed out of the 
 Presbytery." In the Old Testament Church there were the 
 High Priest, the ordinary priests, and the Levites, and the 
 obvious counterpart and fulfilment of these orders is only to 
 be found in Christ our great High Priest and Head, and in 
 the presbyters and deacons who serve under Him in His 
 Church. 
 
164 The Historical Continuity of the 
 
 Nature itself teaches us, as Calvin says, that every council 
 must have its official head, and the extent of his powers is 
 a question of expediency not of principle. But the presi- 
 dent is merely first among equals, and hence Episcopacy 
 is nothing more than a phase of Presbytery. Scripture 
 gives us examples of presidentship in the first councils of pres- 
 byters, but neither in Scripture nor in primitive times is 
 there any trace of persons receiving a second ordination or 
 consecration on their elevation to the chair. It follows from 
 this that there never has been and never can be anything 
 but ordination by presbyters in the Christian Church, even 
 if it be granted that Episcopacy dates from the Apostolic 
 age. It would have been easy for our Reformers to have 
 continued what is now-a-days called the historic Episcopate, 
 as bishops duly consecrated became reformed ministers and 
 acted as superintendents in their former dioceses. But it 
 seems never to have entered their minds that the Episcopate 
 was anything more than an ecclesiastical arrangement. It 
 was the conviction of the greatest divines of the Middle 
 Ages, that presbyter and bishop formed but one order in 
 the ministry. In 1537 the Convocation of the English 
 Church had declared that in the New Testament there was 
 BO mention made of any degrees or distinctions in the 
 ministry, except the two orders of presbyter and deacon. 
 Scottish historians, like Fordun and Major, had accepted 
 the common if erroneous tradition, that at first the Scottish 
 Church was governed by presbyters without bishops, and 
 that in the Celtic Church this had prevailed for centuries ; 
 and Boman ecclesiastics though they were, they never thought 
 of this as making any breach of historical continuity. 
 
 From 1560 till 1571 the Church was governed by Assem- 
 blies, Synods and Kirk Sessions. The Synods were presided 
 over by superintendents, who formed the executive of the 
 Church and who did very much the work of bishops. The 
 appointment of clergymen during this period consisted chiefly 
 in the admission of old priests to be ministers or readers. 
 Any new ordinations that took place were conducted by the 
 
Church of Scotland. 165 
 
 superintendents, some of whom were bishops, assisted by 
 other presbyters. 
 
 We are told by some that the chain was broken at this 
 point, because, in the case of a few laymen then admitted 
 to the ministry, the laying on of hands by ordination was 
 omitted. This is founded on a statement of the First Book 
 of Discipline, that it was not necessary. But that book was 
 never law, civil or ecclesiastical, and there is no act of the 
 General Assembly authorising such an omission. Calvin's 
 Institutes, first published in 1536 and in English in 1561, 
 contain such statements as the following : " Seeing that in 
 the sacred Assemblies all things ought to be done decently 
 and in order, there is nothing in which this ought to be 
 more carefully observed than in settling (Church) govern- 
 ment, irregularity in any respect being nowhere more 
 perilous." " It (the laying on of hands) was uniformly 
 observed by the Apostles, and ought to be regarded by us 
 in the light of a precept." " The laying on of hands ... I 
 admit to be a sacrament in true and legitimate ordination." 
 " In it there is a ceremony which ... is declared by Paul 
 to be not empty or superfluous, but ... a faithful symbol 
 of spiritual grace." In the face of such declarations from the 
 great master at whose feet our Reformers sat, it would 
 require clear proof that they laid aside this ceremony at all. 
 The records of the Church at that period are imperfect, but I 
 think it not unlikely that John Erskine of Dun, the only one 
 of the superintendents whose regular ordination is doubtful, 
 received that imposition of hands which he himself refers to 
 in letters written in 1571 as an apostolic institution, and 
 as then used at the admission of ministers. 
 
 1571—1592. 
 
 In 1571 titular Episcopacy was introduced by a con- 
 cordat between Church and State, and it continued to have 
 the sanction of law till 1592 ; but in 1580 the Assembly 
 condemned that kind of Episcopacy as unlawful, and there- 
 
1 66 The Historical Continuity of the 
 
 after Presbyteries were set up. The two systems were com- 
 bined, or rather "jumbled confusedly together," till 1592, 
 when Presbytery was ratified by the State. Under the 
 titular arrangement, Douglas, who had been ordained before 
 the Reformation, was made Archbishop of St Andrews in 
 Feb. 1571, and the imposition of hands was used at his 
 admission to that office. In the preface to an ordinal drawn 
 up under Episcopal sanction at a later period, it is stated 
 that " Our Church hath in diverse Assemblies and specially 
 in the Assembly which was kept at Edr. the 5th of March 
 1570 appointed their admittance {i.e., pastors) to be by 
 a public and solemn form of ordination," and the order then 
 adopted is spoken of as "good and commendable." John 
 Morrison appears in a list of clergy as Minister of Baro in 
 East Lothian in 1574. Some years later he was received 
 into the Church of England by Archbishop Grindal, who in 
 licensing him " to celebrate divine offices and minister the 
 Sacraments throughout the whole Province of Canterbury," 
 places on record the fact that " he was admitted and 
 ordained to sacred orders and the holy ministry by the im- 
 position of hands, according to the laudable form and order of 
 the Reformed Church of Scotland," and that he "ratifies and 
 approves the form of his ordination." In the Second Book of 
 Discipline drawn up by authority of the Church in 1577, it is 
 said that " the ceremonies of ordination are fasting, earnest 
 prayer and the laying on of hands." It is thus evident that 
 if the imposition of hands was ever omitted, it could only 
 have been in a few cases during a short period, and that it 
 was restored while most of the clergy had pre-Reformation 
 orders. 
 
 1592— 1G38. 
 
 After 1592, the Church was under Presbyterial govern- 
 ment as at present for some years, but King James was 
 anxious to restore Episcopacy, and he induced the Assembly 
 of 1610 to assent to it. The new bishops by the king's 
 orders, but without warrant from the Church, were conse- 
 
Church of Scotland. 167 
 
 crated by English prelates, who recognised the validity of 
 their previous ordination as presbyters. The historic Epis- 
 copate was thus reintroduced into the Church, and was 
 combined with Presbyterian Church Government. Reordi- 
 nation of the clergy was never dreamt of, but in the case of 
 new ordinations, bishops and presbyters laid on their hands. 
 In the ordinal drawn up during this period, the bishop, with 
 the ministers present, is directed to lay hands on the head 
 of the candidate, and to say : " In the name of God, and 
 by the authority committed to us by the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 we give unto thee power and authority to preach the Word 
 of God, to minister His Holy Sacraments, and exercise dis- 
 cipline in such sort as is committed unto ministers by the 
 order of our Church," which certainly covers both the power 
 of ordination and jurisdiction. 
 
 1638—1661. 
 
 The Assemblies of 1638 and 1639 abolished Episcopacy, 
 claiming a constitutional right to do so, inasmuch as by 
 law the bishops -were subject to the General Assembly. 
 Bat this involved no breach of continuity, and there was no 
 formation of a separate Episcopal Church. Three-fourths of 
 the clergy were then in Episcopal orders, and they were in a 
 majority in every Presbytery. The records of the time 
 show what care was taken to guard against any irregularity 
 in ordination. Take, e.g., the Presbytery Record of Kirk- 
 caldy, under date of April 26, 1638, " The Presbytery having 
 the power of ordination j\ire diuino, being also after the 
 Reformation invested therewith jicre nosti^o parliamcntario, 
 and never again deprived of the same by any posterior act, 
 either of Parliament or General Assembly, hath admitted 
 and ordained . . . Mr George Gillespie into the ministry at 
 Weems, ... by taking his oath of allegiance, and giving to 
 him imposition of hands with full power to preach the 
 word, minister the sacraments, exercise Kirk discipline, and 
 do all the offices of a complete minister." There had been 
 
1 68 The Historical Cotitinuity of the 
 
 no restrictions in the exercise of the office of presbyter im- 
 posed in either Episcopal or Presbyterian times. The power 
 of jurisdiction and ordination had always been conferred, 
 and it is worthy of note that after 1638 several of the 
 bishops became parish ministers, and one of them at least 
 took part in ordinations where all the powers of the Epis- 
 copate were conferred. 
 
 It was during this period that the first schism took 
 place in the Eeformed Church. In 1651 a small number 
 of ministers rejected the authority of the General Assembly, 
 and formed themselves into a party called the Protesters. 
 The disruption was not complete, because Cromwell did 
 not allow the General Assembly to meet after 1652, and 
 his officers interfered with Synods and Presbyteries in the 
 exercise of discipline. The Protesters, who were in close 
 alliance with the usurper, were thus kept in their parishes. 
 
 1661—1680. 
 
 We now come to the most deplorable period in the history 
 of our Church. Charles II., whose restoration was mainly 
 effected by Presbyterians, in violation of his solemn oath 
 and royal word restored Episcopacy in 1661, without a 
 shadow of warrant from the Church. The whole legislation 
 of the previous twenty-three years was annulled by the Act 
 Rescissory. Synods and Presbyteries were not allowed to 
 meet till authorised anew by the bishops. In October 1662 
 it was enacted that all ministers who had been appointed 
 since 1649 should receive presentations from the patrons and 
 induction from the bishops. About two hundred refused to 
 do so, and were deprived. The clergy ordained before 1649 
 were not directly touched by this Act, but about one hun- 
 dred and fifty of them were deprived for not attending 
 Synods and Presbyteries when revived by the bishops. 
 Douglas, the leader of the Church after Henderson, tells us 
 that he dealt with the statesmen to allow Presbyteries to 
 stand without interruption, as when Episcopacy was Intro- 
 
Church of Scotland. 169 
 
 duced in 1610, and suggested that in that case fewer minis- 
 ters would object to attend them. Some who refused had 
 powerful friends and were allowed to remain. Of the 
 clergy who conformed, many remained Presbyterian by 
 conviction, and some of the best of the bishops, such as 
 Leighton and Scougal, were but half Episcopal in their 
 judgment. Of the outed ministers, about one hundred, 
 including the most eminent, were in 1669 and 1672 
 allowed again to officiate as parish ministers without sub- 
 mitting to Episcopacy. In 1681 about eighty of the parish 
 clergy resigned rather than take the ' oaths required by 
 Government. People were compelled to attend their parish 
 churches, and the outed ministers were forbidden to preach 
 or baptise under the heaviest penalties. During these 
 twenty-eight years of persecution the doctrine and worship 
 of the Church underwent almost no change, and Synods and 
 Presbyteries met and conducted business much as in pre- 
 vious periods. At the reintroduction of Episcopacy in 1660, 
 two of the four bishops who received consecration in 
 England were obliged to submit to reordination as presby- 
 ters, on account of the English Act of Uniformity passed 
 after the Restoration, but they submitted unwillingly, and 
 there was no repetition of this insult to the Reformed 
 Churches in the case of other Scottish presbyters raised to 
 the Episcopate, nor was there any attempt to reordain the 
 parish clergy, most of whom were in Presbyterian orders. 
 The late Dr Grub informed me that he knew of only one 
 case of the kind, and he presumed that it had been done 
 privately. New ordinations were conducted by bishops, 
 assisted by presbyters, as during the first Episcopacy. 
 
 FroDi 1688 till the 'present liDie. 
 
 The Revolution of 1688 brought this bloody page in the 
 history of our Church to a close. The Scottish Parliament 
 then abolished Prelacy, ratified anew the Westminster 
 Confession, restored Presbyterian Church Government as 
 
1 70 The Historical Continuity of the 
 
 settled in 1592, vested the ecclesiastical Government in the 
 survivors of those ministers who had been deprived and in 
 those whom they should receive into communion, and called 
 a meeting of the General Assembly, after an interruption of 
 thirty-eight years. The Act Rescissory was left unrepealed, 
 so that none of the ecclesiastical legislation of the covenanting: 
 period is now binding, except such Acts as have been revived 
 by the General Assembly since 1690. 
 
 Most of the Episcopal clergy who were willing to take the 
 oath of allegiance to William and Mary were desirous to 
 continue in the Church as thus restored, and hundreds were 
 received ; but an Act of Parliament, allowing those Avho 
 preferred to remain and officiate in their parishes without 
 taking part in the Courts of the Church, was passed, and was 
 taken advantage of by many. Those who refused to take 
 the oath of allegiance to Government, and others who 
 were considered corrupt in life and doctrine, were deprived. 
 At the beginning of the Revolution in the south and west, 
 where the persecution had been hottest, many ministers 
 who had abbetted it were rabbled out of their parishes, and 
 the worst Act of the Government was the les^alisinoj of these 
 evictions. The change in the Church at that time was 
 mainly in the way of restoration, and as it was approved 
 or acquiesced in by the largest section both of the 
 clergy and people, there was no breach of continuity. 
 Since then she has enjoyed a large measure of peace and 
 prosperity, and to her influence is greatly due the high 
 character for which our countrymen have since been 
 distinguished. After 1688, ordination by Presbyteries was 
 resumed, many of the ordainers being then in Episcopal orders, 
 and it has since then been conducted with strict regularity. 
 The Moderates and Evangelicals of past generations were 
 of one mind as to the necessity of a valid ordination and 
 of an unbroken succession in the ministry. Priucipal Hill, 
 the leader of the Church in his day, and one of our greatest 
 divines, laid down principles on these subjects which leave 
 nothing to be desired. He says : " The right of preaching the 
 
Church of Scotland. 171 
 
 word, dispensing the sacraments and exercising ecclesiastical 
 jurisdiction . . . was conveyed by the Apostles to all whom 
 they ordained. . . . And every one who is ordained 
 (Presbyter) is as much a successor of the Apostles as any 
 Christian Teacher can be. . . . We contend that we are 
 successors of the Apostles invested with all the power which 
 of right belongs to any Minister of the Church of Christ." 
 
 " The idea of a right in the whole congregation to . . . 
 ordain their own Ministers ... is inconsistent with the 
 principles of Presbyterian government, and has often been 
 disclaimed by the Church of Scotland both in ancient and 
 modern times." In the ordinations of our Church the candi- 
 date is invested " with the full character of a minister of the 
 Gospel," and there is conveyed to him " by prayer and the 
 imposition of the hands of the Presbytery all the powers 
 implied in that character." The Edinburgh Christian 
 Instructor, under the editorship of Dr Andrew Thomson, 
 the leader of the Evangelical party, contained as able and 
 as strong articles as are anywhere to be met with on the 
 necessity of an unbroken ministerial succession from the 
 days of the Apostles, and on the Scottish Church possessing 
 it. During last century, if any Congregational minister 
 applied for admission into our Church he was ordained. 
 As an example, I may refer to the case of Dr Jones, the 
 minister of Lady Glenorchy's Church, Edinburgh. 
 
 It was reserved for the Assembly of 1882 to break 
 through this apostolic rule, and to admit men to the status 
 of ministers without a valid ordination. No wonder that 
 such words as the following were then heard in the General 
 Assembly : " This is a bad day for the Kirk." "We shall have 
 to become Episcopalians to save Presbytery." " Certainly 
 there is no Presbytery here." " We are no longer a Church." 
 Many protested against the decision as incompetent, and as 
 overturning the Constitution of the Church. A committee 
 was appointed to answer the reasons given, but no answers 
 were forthcoming, and protestation was offered at next 
 Assembly that such was the case. The Church has since 
 
172 Historical Continuity of Church of Scotland. 
 
 returned to its previous practice, and if any like departure 
 from its fundamental principles were again attempted, this 
 Society would have something to say on the subject. 
 
 III. The Breaking of Bread and of Prayers. 
 
 The third essential of the continuity of the Church is its 
 maintenance of the worship instituted by our Lord and His 
 Apostles. Amid many corruptions in pre-Reformation times, 
 and many defects since, that worship has never ceased to be 
 offered. 
 
 But time forbids me to enlarge, and I shall conclude 
 with a brief reference to other claimants to the honour 
 of representing the historic Church of our land. The record 
 of the Scottish Episcopal Church dates only from 3 661, 
 according to its own showing, while, as we think, it began 
 with the section that separated from the National Church 
 after the Revolution. Anglicans speak of the Romish 
 Church in this country as ''the Italian Mission"; and 
 the Episcopal Church in Scotlaud has, with at least equal 
 propriety, been described as " the English Mission." With 
 regard to the Presbyterian secessions, they did not take 
 place under the authority of the Church, nor with the 
 consent of the greater part of its pastors and people. Still 
 less can they claim identity of principle with the Scottish 
 Church in past centuries, for, not to speak of other things, 
 it has always condemned schism, and has always regarded 
 the secularisation of property devoted to God as sacrilege. 
 Their true predecessors are the protesters of 1G51. If the 
 Ancient Church of Scotland is not, and has not all along 
 been represented by our Reformed Church, it ceased to 
 exist more than three centuries aero. 
 
 The subject of re-union does not fall within the scope of 
 this paper, but, I may add, that it will be a great step 
 towards it when the Anglican bishops recognise the validity 
 of the orders of other Reformed Churches, as their prede- 
 cessors did for more than a century after the Reformation. 
 
THE HISTORICAL CONTINUITY OF THE 
 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Leishman, D.D. 
 
 The continuity of our Church, through the transmission of 
 the ministerial office from generation to generation, can 
 hardly be questioned as a tact. But the insisting on it as 
 a requisite is looked on with suspicion by many. In the 
 Church of a neighbouring kingdom some have rested the 
 principle on a narrow basis, and supported it in a narrow 
 spirit. Many among us, accepting too readily the assump- 
 tion that apostolical and episcopal succession are equivalent 
 tei'ms, have, in the recoil of resentment, fallen back almost 
 to the confines of Independency, which sees in each 
 Christian association a separate and complete organism, 
 developing from within itself the ministries of grace. Wide 
 as is the difference between this system and that of Rome, 
 there is here a certain analogy between them. In each 
 case he who professes to proclaim the mind of Christ 
 receives his visible mission from below, one from the 
 congregation, the other from the sacred College. For there 
 can be no apostolic succession to the Papacy. No earlier 
 holder conveys the office to his successor. From the death 
 of one to the election of the other, it is extinct on earth. 
 Can there be a connection between this fact and another, 
 that Rome has never made so much of episcopal succession 
 as High Anglicans do ? The extreme views held on this 
 point by some in South Britain are only another illustration 
 of the law that Christian bodies are apt to magnify unduly 
 the point of difference which distinguishes them most 
 
174 The Historical Continuity of the 
 
 sharply from local opponents. We refuse to accept their 
 voice as the voice of their Church, so long as we can point 
 to her Canons of 1604, authorised both by King and 
 Convocation, enjoining prayer to be made regularly for the 
 Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland, while in 
 Scotland there was not at that moment a single successional 
 bishop, nor certainty that there ever would be. On this, 
 however, and on various other matters, the Church of 
 England, lying so near to us as she does, and filling so 
 much of the field of vision, may employ too many of our 
 thoughts. These ought to range over something wider in 
 space than this moderately-sized island. What we hold 
 is that the radical order of the Christian ministry is the 
 presbyterate, and that, in the often quoted words of Bishop 
 Lightfoot, " the episcopate was formed not out of the 
 apostolic order by localisation, but out of the presbyterial 
 by elevation," * Even in one of the earlier Oxford Tracts, 
 believed to be by Newman, the writer, before going on to 
 press very strongly the authority of the episcopate, says, 
 " the more clear and simple principle for a Churchman to 
 hold is that of a ministerial succession, which is undeniable 
 as a fact, while it is most reasonable as a doctrine, and 
 sufficiently countenanced in Scrij)ture for its practical recep- 
 tion. Of this Episcopacy, i.e., superintendence, is but an 
 accident ; though for the sake of conciseness, it is often 
 spoken of as synonymous with it " (Tract vii. 1). Let us 
 search in Scripture for the functions which Christ assigned 
 to His apostles, be they presbyters or be they bishops. 
 Apart from the temporary one of witnessing to the fact of 
 His resurrection, they were these, to teach, to bind and 
 loose, to baptize, to celebrate the Supper, with promises to 
 be with them till the end of all things. Every one of 
 these has from the first, by common consent and practice, 
 been an office of the presbyter. What is left to the apostle 
 in his episcopal character, by direct commission from the 
 Lord ? I know of nothing, unless, with the Church of 
 
 * No one denies tliat since tlie time of the apostles, the presbyter has becu 
 the usual channel of word and sacrament. 
 
Church of Scotland. 175 
 
 Rome, we give an individual reference to the words, " upon 
 this rock I will build My Church," which excludes eleven of 
 the number. We need not follow the well-beaten track of 
 controversy through the period covered by the history of 
 the Acts and the teaching of the Epistles. Before we have 
 gone far in the line of later history, we find two offices 
 existing apart, dividing between them two titles, those of 
 bishop and presbyter, which few now deny to have been 
 at the very first convertible terms. The point at issue is 
 whether the bearers of these titles were two orders of men, 
 or a single order in two degrees of dignity. On the answer 
 depends largely the decision of the question, whether the 
 continuity of the Church rests on the body of presbyters or 
 on the bishop as such. From very early times there seems 
 to have been a virtual acknowledgment by the prelate that 
 a commission given by him alone would be incomplete. 
 For he has had it strengthened not only by the presence, 
 not only by the assent, of presbyters, but by their performing 
 the very manual act of ordination simultaneously with him- 
 self. At the present day, when the kindred question is 
 discussed of the necessity of bishops receiving their own 
 mission from brother-bishops, appeal is constantly made to 
 passages in the Fathers where a succession of bishops in 
 certain sees is taken to be a guarantee for the transmission 
 of pure doctrine. But what is plainly meant is a sequence 
 of tradition, not of consecration. For the last would be an 
 impossibility. A new bishop could not be consecrated by 
 the dead man who had left the place vacant for him. His 
 commission must come from outside, from the bishops of 
 other sees, and the familiar quotations lose all force as 
 vouchers for vertical prelatical succession. The local 
 continuity referred to by Tertullian and others could be 
 perpetuated only through the body of presbyters testifying 
 to the truth that had been handed down to them. Their 
 bishop's name would serve for chronological record, as acts 
 of Parliament are ranged under the names of reigning 
 monarchs. Our contention, that bishop and presbyter 
 continued to be in effect one order after the partition of 
 
176 The Historical Continuity of the 
 
 the names, is supported by much early evidence, particularly 
 by the full and distinct statements of St Jerome. Rome, 
 so far from identifying herself with these extreme insular 
 views which among us have excited so much prejudice 
 ao-ainst the very word succession, has always shown con- 
 siderable toleration for the opinion that the two offices are 
 essentially one. It had the support of many of the school- 
 men, among the rest of Peter Lombard and Thomas Aquinas. 
 Some canonists have held that the Pope may delegate to a 
 sino-le presbyter the right of ordaining. A case is recorded 
 in which one of the Popes, Pelagius I., was himself conse- 
 crated to the holy see by two bishops having a presbyter 
 associated with them. At the Council of Trent, no question 
 was more fiercely debated than the demand for a canon 
 resting the authority of the episcopate on Christ's institu- 
 tion, but under the influence of Rome it was finally with- 
 held. For the bishop she finds no place among the seven 
 orders of the ministry. The priest stands first. Coming 
 nearer home, we find, in the eighteenth century, cases among 
 Scottish Roman Catholics in which presbyters took part in 
 the consecration of bishops. In two of these, one so recent 
 as in 1791, the ceremony was performed by one bishop only, 
 supported by two presbyters. What had those presbyters 
 to confer ? Not the ordinary functions of their own 
 office. With these the bishops-elect were already invested. 
 There remained those only which are by usage episcopal 
 duties. The concurring presbyters, therefore, helped to 
 convey the right of creating other presbyters. It is 
 interesting in these later times to come on a trace, if a 
 faint one, of an opinion so emphatically borne witness to 
 by the most leai-ned of the Fathers of the Latin Church, the 
 author of her Vulgate. Let me add that a belief in minis- 
 terial succession is not the novelty among presbyters of the 
 Reformed Church in this country that some suppose it to be. 
 A passage is sometimes quoted from the old Scottish Con- 
 fession which is supposed to contradict it. It declares that, 
 among other things, lineal descence is no note of the true 
 
Church of Scotland. 177 
 
 Church. But it is remarkable that in the Latin version of 
 that Confession, prepared by desire of the Kirk in 1572, the 
 phrase is Umited to prelatical succession. The words are 
 " a successione perpetua episcoporum." And the doctrine 
 is very plainly set forth in the Jus Divinum Ministerii 
 Evangelici, that too much neglected book in which the 
 ministers of London under Cromwell embodied their views, 
 when they had escaped from the atmosphere of compromise 
 which Presbyterians had to breathe in the Westminster 
 Assembly among Independents and Erastians. They say, 
 " The receiving of our ordination from Christ and His 
 apostles and the primitive Churches, and so all along through 
 the apostate Church of Rome, is so far from nullifying our 
 ministry, or disparaging of it, that it is a great strengthen- 
 ing of it, when it shall appear to all the world that our 
 ministry is derived to us from Christ and His apostles by 
 succession of a ministry contained in the Church for 1600 
 years, and that we have : (1) A lineal succession from Christ 
 and His apostles. (2) Not only a lineal succession, but 
 that which is more, and without which the lineal is of no 
 benefit, we have a doctrinal succession also " (Part ii. p. 
 45). 
 
 M 
 
EVANGELISTIC WORK AND ITS PROPER BASIS. 
 
 Rev. H. J. WoTHERSPOON, M.A. 
 
 It is easiest, perhaps, to approach the consideration of 
 evangelistic work and its proper basis by considering the 
 evangelism prevalent around us. I do not mean Evan- 
 gelicalism — by the nature of the case we of this Society 
 are all evangelical, — a sound faith must at the least include 
 every detail of the theology which is popularly characterised 
 by the term. Nor do I intend the older evangelism * of the 
 earlier revival — but recent extremes and typical develop- 
 ments, which at present hold the field. 
 
 We are bound, in speaking of such work, to acknowledge 
 two things — the enormous amoiont of such work that is 
 being done, earnestly and diligently, and the 7ieed of it. 
 
 It is impossible to be satisfied with the current 
 evangelism, either for its methods or its results ; but we 
 must thankfully recognise its evidence of profound and 
 widespread interest in religion, much personal devotion, 
 real spiritual energy, and multitudinous instances of 
 individual perception of Christ. We may criticise both 
 method and result, and yet feel what a witness there is 
 
 * " What is belief? What does it demand ? Does it demand conviction of 
 sin, confession of sin, repentance, faith ? All these things, except faith, are 
 dropped nowadays, and people are led to believe that to accept Christ as a 
 Saviour, and to wish for His Salvation, is the sum and substance of a heart 
 turned to God. It requires no self-abasement, no confession of the justice 
 of the Divine \vrath, no acknowledgment of inherited corruption ; and, dis- 
 guise it as the preacher may, no sense of demerit, no sense of deserved 
 condemnation. It is in fact reduced to an easy, agi'eeable acceptance of a 
 pleasant invitation, to be had at any time that is convenient to you. 
 Herein lies the seed of an incipient Antinomianism." — Lord Shaftesbury's 
 
 Life, iii. 23. 
 
 1 79 
 
i8o Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 
 
 to the power of the Holy Name of Christ, when our ways 
 are ringing with His praises, however rudely sung, and 
 His Gospel is preached from every street corner, often 
 crudely and imperfectly enough, and yet with a fervour 
 and courage and forgetfuluess of self which may put 
 our decorousness to shame. We have, please God, in- 
 finitely more in common with these evangelists of the 
 halls and streets than with routine religion, or luxurious 
 worldliness, or intellectual negativism, though they were 
 to be found in our own parishes and pulpits. And there 
 is wholesome and sharp rebuke for us in much of that 
 undisciplined evangelism ; if by its means converts are 
 made (as they are made), while we have to comfort our- 
 selves by talking of seed growing secretly, and results 
 never to be seen in this world. We have something, 
 too, to learn from them — it is not for nothing that 
 our own converts tend (as they do) to drift from us to 
 that evangelism and its circles, looking for what they call 
 (and they mean something real) " life " — an atmosphere 
 of fervent and active fellowship. 
 
 We are bound, too, to acknowledge that it has gi'own up 
 because of the field for it, and because that field was 
 unoccupied. It sprang up because the Church had not 
 adequately recognised facts — the facts of the soul, which 
 does not always grow to conscious knowledge of the truth 
 in the process of normal Christian education, which, under 
 ordinary influences, developes often indifference and often 
 prodigalism ; and the facts of the tmie — that a vast mass 
 of our people has been drifting from all touch with 
 ordinance, and developing absolute atrophy of the spiritual 
 organism. We had too much forgotten the kindling of the 
 lamp and the sweeping of the house — the precious pieces 
 of silver lay lost in the very dust among our feet. The 
 continual mission work of the Church to her own children 
 was neglected — its organ Avas lacking in the Church's 
 order ; we must not forget that the very life of the Spirit 
 in the Christian body would necessarily compel some such 
 
Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 181 
 
 efforts to express and give effect to the Spirit's travailing 
 as those which now we see to be, by the very circumstances 
 of their existence, at fault in their basis, and defective 
 in proceeding; in some respects even positively hurtful in 
 parts of outcome. 
 
 Still farther, we should not forget what we owe to these 
 self-originated efforts at evangelism, even when they seem 
 to cross our lines and confuse our work. They are a 
 constant witness to the inner vitality of the Christian 
 faith, of itself, and for its own truth and power. This 
 is not an official religion ; not a conventional Gospel ; 
 not dependent on professional advocacy (as that of the 
 clergy will always seem to the world). Those who are 
 hostile to every clergy and antagonistic to all ecclesiastical 
 communions are possessed by the same truths as ourselves, 
 and are devoted to the same Lord we preach. In the absence 
 of that witness of mutual love and unity, which our Lord has 
 rather chosen, we may thank God for this, which has 
 helped to keep alive among the indifferent the conviction 
 that Christianity at least is true. 
 
 We must remember, too, that this evangelism has a distinct 
 faith in the present supernatural — although it regards that 
 only as in the individual ; that therein lies its force, and 
 that so far it is infinitely higher and more Christian than 
 much which passes for part of the Church's normal 
 constituent. 
 
 On the other hand, the current evangelism fails by its 
 individualism ; by its defective theology ; and by the 
 externality of its relation to the Church. That it does 
 good is evident ; but its good is essentially sporadic — 
 it is in cases. And I believe that its good is in a sense 
 limited to cases — that if its effect is regarded as in the 
 large, and as extended in result over any considerable 
 period of time, that will be found not wholly good. I 
 fear that it has confused the religious sense of the com- 
 munity by concentrating emphasis upon one or two doctrines, 
 to the practical ignoring of the rest ; that it has shaken the 
 
1 82 Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 
 
 whole traditional value attached by our people to religious 
 training, by insisting on critical experience, as the one 
 effective process of salvation ; that it has had the effect 
 of substituting conversion for Christ as the object of faith 
 — a past experience for a daily life in Christ. It has 
 obscured the whole field of Christian morality to the con- 
 science by its treatment of the consciously converted as the 
 " saved," and implicitly of all others, whatever they be as 
 humble believers in Christ and quiet followers of Him, as 
 the " unsaved." It has in part weakened spiritual modesty 
 by its habit of publicly unveiling experience for the purpose 
 of testimony. It has terribly weakened the sense of 
 parental responsibility for children, who are not to be 
 reared as Christian, but are expected to be prodigal, as a 
 necessary preliminary to return. It has depleted the Church 
 of much of its best material — those earnest and living souls 
 who are its very vigour — setting them out of sympathy with 
 its broader aims and fuller recognition of truth, drawing 
 them away to outside organisations, and creating in them 
 an attitude of criticism and disapproval while they remain 
 with us. It has unfitted our people to endure the weariness 
 of welldoing and the monotony of the spiritual life ; under 
 its influence, they have grown incapable of savouring any- 
 thing except the exciting presentation of immediate salvation 
 or eternal perdition. Yet it has wearied them with itself 
 Its preaching is an endless repetition. Its teaching is 
 limited to a few doctrines and a handful of texts. Therefore 
 it too frequently fails to hold what it gains. It continually 
 tends to pass on its subjects to one or other of two distinct 
 classes — those who have been impressed and have declared 
 their conversion, and afterwards have lapsed, and are now 
 unimpressible ; and those who go farther to seek con- 
 clusions, and leave simple evangelism for some form of 
 extreme sectarianism, such as are found among the endless 
 variety of Anabaptists and "Brethren." And it has produced 
 an extensive spiritual barrenness — a spiritual desolation — 
 among those whom it has attempted and has failed 
 
Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 183 
 
 effectively to influence. These have become " gospel- 
 hardened." They have been besieged with the ultimate 
 appeal of life and death, forced upon them under every 
 condition of unpreparedness for it ; and they are prac- 
 tised to refuse it, and to adjudge themselves as those 
 who refuse. In this way an extraordinary inaccessibility 
 of soul has been evolved — a concluded avoidance of the 
 subject of religion— which has grown to be a barrier 
 against aggressive Church work of a curiously baffling kind. 
 Finally, this Evangelism has taught the people to regard 
 itself as " Christianity." Those who adopt its formulas are 
 " Christians " — others are not. And this view has largely 
 passed into popular acceptance — so that nothing except on 
 these lines obtains recognition as distinctively religious, or 
 entitled to be regarded as real and in earnest. Thus it has 
 produced a strange sect within all the sects — an undenomi- 
 national denomination, held together by its own freemasonry, 
 having its fashions and shibboleths and enterprises — 
 practically its own organisation for worship and work — along- 
 side of and apart from those of the Church. This " un- 
 denominationalism " is rapidly growing to be a very important 
 factor in the religious life of our time. It would be useless 
 to ignore its vigour — in the form to which I refer it is of 
 very recent growth — and it has practically conquered the 
 field of popular religious activity. And its power as a dis- 
 integrating force within the Church is always more and 
 more painfully felt, disintegrating, superseding, depleting, on 
 every hand. 
 
 It is all very well to point to the good it has done for 
 countless individuals — let the praise of that be to the truths 
 which it embodies and proclaims — but the individual passes, 
 the Church lives on to be God's steward and instrument 
 from age to age. If the Church is weakened, her life con- 
 fused, her traditions broken, her grasp on the flock of God 
 slackened, the ultimate result for harm, even as regards the 
 numbers of souls to be impressed, will balance heavily 
 against sporadic and personal impressions, which end with 
 the life of the persons impressed. 
 
1 84 Evangelistic Work and its p7'oper Basis. 
 
 It is not waste of time to dwell on this, because our 
 minds are possessed by this powerful and aggressive evan- 
 gelism — we too are ready enough to accept it as holding 
 the field for its proper end ; to think of it as something to 
 be used as far as possible, something with which we ought 
 to be able to sympathise ; it is difficult for us to know 
 how to separate its truth and its good from its error and its 
 peril — to realise that its error, which is rather its defect, is 
 to be opposed and openly corrected — or to see that the work 
 it aims to do is essential, while its methods may be erron- 
 eous ; and that we must evangelise, and can evangelise, 
 on a truer basis, with a fuller doctrine, and, please God, to 
 a surer result. 
 
 The current evangelism fails because it is apart from the 
 Church. The Church is God's agency for the salvation of 
 the world, both to gain and to keep what is His for Him. 
 There can be no substitute for its failure to do this work. 
 The remedy is, not that the Church's work be done by 
 others, or done for the Church and in her interest, but that 
 she herself awake and fulfil her charge. 
 
 An evangelism which is only evangelistic must fail. It 
 brings men within the wicket gate, and leaves them un- 
 guided on the narrow way and to its countless dangers. 
 It sows the good seed, and leaves it to spring and be 
 choked. It must be one-sided and partial, attempting 
 always to lay again foundations, dwelling always on alpha- 
 betic things. By the nature of the case, it must exalt 
 these to be all in all. To have believed is, with it, not to 
 have found the way of salvation — it is to be saved. And 
 since no man can desire more than salvation, all the rest, 
 character, holiness, knowledge, growth, is by the way — 
 treated as natural inference, and left to come of itself in 
 the course of events. Evangelism has no pastorate, no 
 direction, no protection, no tending and pruning of the vine 
 branch, no nourishment. What is born of it, helpless as 
 the new-born, is left to wayside mercies. It speaks the 
 word that quickens, and forgets " He commanded to give 
 
Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 185 
 
 her meat." And it is nothing to the purpose that much at 
 least of the current evangelism professes to work for the 
 Church and to feed the Church witli its converts. That is 
 not the way of God, and it does not succeed in its professed 
 intent. The Divine method is to adopt into a family, to re- 
 store the strayed to the flock, to engraft into the vine, to build 
 the fresh stone into the age-long walls of the City of God. 
 The process cannot be broken up between the Divine agency 
 and various human agencies, however earnest and diligent, 
 without perilous results. What does not gather wiili Christ 
 scatters abroad. 
 
 It must fail, too, by the partiality of its interest in the 
 Gospel itself. Its theology ends at the cross. The 
 Resurrection, the Ascension, Pentecost are unnecessary to 
 it. It is concerned with Christ's ivorh, and with a part of 
 His work, rather than with Christ. His part is played for 
 it, in that He has suffered once for sins. 
 
 And because it omits appeal to the deepest and highest 
 motives of action. It speaks of security instead of holiness, 
 pardon instead of purity, of what we shall have, and not of 
 what we shall lose. It tells men what Christ offers, but 
 little of what Christ asks. Whereas men are drawn and 
 held to Christ by His demand as Avell as by His gift, and 
 for His sanctity and the hope of attaining to its fellowship 
 as well as by the hope of future unearthly felicity. 
 
 And again, because it has no account to give of a great 
 province of revelation — Church and ministry and Sacrament. 
 In its latest developments, it dispenses with these, and at 
 the same time invents substitutes for them. It has no 
 realisation of the normal and continuous operations of the 
 Holy Spirit, but is aware only of the extraordinary and 
 critical. 
 
 Lastly, to form an adequate estimate of it, we must see 
 not only whence it comes, but whither it goes — that practi- 
 cally, when pushed to logical inferences, it has tended to 
 emerge in the various heresies of Brethrenism. 
 
 A right evangelism must be that of the Church, in the 
 
1 86 Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 
 
 care of her order, in the fulness of her doctrine, and leading 
 to edification in her life. I do not mean that it must be 
 by the presbyterate only — as manifold as are the graces of the 
 Holy Spirit, and as widely as His gifts are bestowed, so 
 manifold should be their use in the Church and so diligent 
 her care that no gift be given in vain to any member 
 of Christ. But that evangelisation be done as her 
 work, studied and fostered and directed by her with 
 such care as the most difficult and crucial of all her 
 tasks require. 
 
 Its basis must be her basis — from Sacrament to Sacra- 
 ment — in the truths of which Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper are the Sacraments. 
 
 Those whom here she has to evangelise are her own 
 children, who have wandered blindly, or have departed 
 recklessly, or are neglected by fault of hers ; but still her 
 own. She must speak to them, not as to strangers and 
 foreigners, but as to those on whom God has a lien — whom 
 God has called ; who have already a tie to God, and God 
 to them ; to whom God owns a care, and who owe duty to 
 God. She must teach their responsibility, and she must 
 teach the complementary ability to respond. Under the 
 influence of current teaching, men are waiting for conver- 
 sion, instead of turning to God and striving to enter into 
 life. Conversion is popularly regarded as the act of God, 
 in which man is passive. I need not say to you that 
 the word is never used passively in the New Testament* 
 — it is translated passively in the Authorised Version, 
 and a whole theology of error has grown round the 
 mistranslation. We have to call upon men, as redeemed, 
 as those upon whom God's election rests, as men in 
 peril of the second death, to convert and yield to God. 
 And we must speak to them as men who liave power from 
 God to obey God, Who commands them to believe. We 
 
 * Compare the renderings of the R.V. with those of tlie A.V. in Matt, 
 xiii. 15 ; xviii. 3 ; Mark iv. 12 ; Luke xxii. 32 ; John xii. 40 ; Acts iii. 
 19 ; xxviii. 27. 
 
Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 187 
 
 must speak to them as in an atmosphere of grace sufficient 
 for them. And we must take this ground with assurance 
 of its truth, perceiving it. Our Lord has taught us the 
 nature of tUis evangelism which is committed to us. It is 
 that of the shepherd, who goes to seek for his own sheep — 
 of the woman who searches for the precious coin out of her 
 own store, lost by her in her own house, — it tells of the 
 Father forsaken by His child, yet bound to Him, even 
 in the far country, by a link of nature which cannot cease 
 to exist. 
 
 We must preach of conversion as a great reality — having 
 place in some form, consciously or not, in all living Christian 
 experience — yet not salvation by conversion — not conversion 
 as the object of faith or ground of hope ; not conversion 
 tested by power to date and place it, or to describe its 
 experience. We must preach Christ ; and grace, mercy, 
 and peace upon all who love Him in sincerity and 
 truth. 
 
 And we must preach it as a beginning, not an end — not 
 salvation, but entrance to " seek for glory and honour and 
 immortality " by patient continuance in welldoing. 
 
 We must show it as conformity to the grace of Baptism, 
 which, being once for all for entrance into Christ, leads to 
 a life continually nourished by the ordinances of God, 
 especially by the often repeated Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Body and Blood — nourished, and at the same time con- 
 secrated and offered. 
 
 And as we say, we must do. Our evangelising must be 
 so wrought in with our pastorate, whether exercised in the 
 same individual or not, that our fruit of evangelism shall 
 be our continual and tenderest care. What we quarry, we 
 must build up and carve to the adornment of the House 
 of God. What we engraft, we must tend. What we 
 gather to the fold, we must lead in and out, and see that 
 it finds pasture, and is kept and guided in the peace 
 of God. 
 
 Finally, the Church's evangelism must be in power and 
 
1 88 Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 
 
 much assurance and in the Holy Ghost — with confidence in 
 herself, as ordained of God, that He is with her, and that 
 she has the grace of God, His help. His prepared life to 
 offer to those who come at her call to Christ's arms. 
 
 And we must know the vast difficulty of recalling evan- 
 gelism to wiser and fuller lines. 
 
EVANGELISTIC WORK AND ITS PROPER BASIS. 
 
 Rev. J. Cromarty Smith, B.D. 
 
 Evangelistic work is the work of bringing the Gospel 
 to bear upon the hearts, and in consequence upon the 
 livesj of those who are living without God and without 
 hope in the world. Now the Church, and the Church 
 only, can declare the Gospel in its fulness ; for the Church 
 only holds the faith of the Gospel, and she alone has 
 been commissioned to declare it. We do not undervalue 
 the work done by those various religious societies which 
 exist ostensibly for the preaching of the Gospel, and which 
 need not have existed in such numbers if the Church had 
 been more alive to her duty, but the Gospel so preached is 
 at best but a fragmentary Gospel, and cannot raise those 
 whose knowledge and belief are confined to it to the 
 stature of the perfect man in Christ Jesus. 
 
 And what is the Gospel ? St Paul tells us : " Moreover, 
 brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I preached 
 unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye 
 stand ; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory 
 what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. 
 For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also 
 received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures ; and that He was buried, and that He rose 
 again the third day, according to the Scriptures ; and that 
 He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve " (1 Cor. xv. 
 1-5). That Christ died, that He was buried, and that He 
 rose again : these are the central facts of Christ's work. 
 All the rest of the faith leads up to and follows from these. 
 The Incarnation, the Ascension, and the Heavenly Priest- 
 
1 90 Evangelistic V/ork and its propei^ Basis. 
 
 hood of the Lord are impHed in these facts which St Paul 
 terms the "first of all." We remember that the Gospel 
 is not a mere proclamation of what Christ did for us when 
 He died, which is too often regarded as being the whole 
 Gospel, nor even of what He did during His earthly life 
 by way of teaching, and healing, and blessing : it is not a 
 mere proclamation of what Christ did, but of what He is 
 doing now in His ascended and glorified state. He came 
 down from heaven for us men, and for our salvation, but 
 He that descended is the same that ascended far above all 
 heavens that He might fill all things, and for ever until the 
 ages close He lives in all the power of His glorified 
 humanity, to save from sin and from death those who 
 come to Him. 
 
 And further, the Church alone can do evangelistic work, 
 for she alone possesses the power of conveying from Christ 
 to His people those means by which the spiritual life can 
 be nourished and maintained. Christ communicates to us 
 the benefits of redemption, as our own branch of the Church 
 truly teaches, by His " Word, Sacraments, and Prayer, all 
 which are made effectual to the elect for salvation." 
 
 In what remains we will say a little about the methods 
 by which the Church is to carry on her evangelistic work. 
 But first of all let it be said that there are, as we all 
 know, two departments of that work, or rather two fields 
 for its exercise. The Church has to evangelise the world 
 that lieth in darkness, and that world consists of our home, 
 as well as our foreign heathen, but she has, alas ! also to 
 evangelise those who are nominally within her pale, those 
 who attend more or less regularly on her ordinances, and 
 whose outward life is more or less respectable ; those who 
 cannot be classed, to use the familiar phrase, among the 
 " non-Churchgoing," There are those without to be 
 brought within, and there are those within to be built 
 up in their most holy faith. 
 
 And this being so, there are of necessity diflferent 
 methods to be used. Of course there are certain methods, 
 
Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 1 9 r 
 
 or rather certain aspects, of teaching necessary for both 
 classes — as, for instance, that all who are baptized are 
 under an obligation to serve God. But it stands to reason, 
 that the truth must be presented in one aspect to your 
 regular Church-goer, who knows, intellectually at least, the 
 way of salvation, and in another, to the man who is in 
 total ignorance of things divine. 
 
 First a very few words about evangelistic work among 
 our Church-going people. It is a truism that there are 
 many in the Church but not of the Church, many who 
 have not personally made that conscious yielding of them- 
 selves to God, call it conversion, call it realisation of their 
 Baptism, or whatever else you like. And it is to those 
 that perhaps our first duty lies, and this for two reasons : 
 (1) Our own household has the first claim upon us ; and (2) 
 our hope of converting the outside world must be small 
 unless those who are in the Church are living consecrated 
 lives. Our duty, therefore, is to them in the first 
 place, both because they are nearest to us and because 
 this is our best policy, if we may use the word, in our 
 attitude to those who make no profession. And in this 
 department there is scope for our best and most zealous 
 efforts. It is no easy task to awaken the slumbering 
 conscience, to convict of sin those who are persuaded 
 that they are not so bad as others, and to enlist in the 
 service of God those whose whole interest has been 
 centered, it may be for years past, around themselves. 
 Yet this is our task, and yet not ours, for it can only 
 be accomplished by the moving of the Spirit of God. We 
 in our work must allow ourselves to be guided by that 
 Spirit, and trust to His influence operating upon those 
 for whose souls' welfare we are striving. And surely, 
 as regards the methods of this work, we need not concern 
 ourselves to find out new inventions. As there is no other 
 name given under heaven among men whereby we must 
 be saved than Jesus Christ, so there are no other methods, 
 or at any rate no methods so good, for bringing men to 
 
192 Evangelistic Work arid its proper Basis. 
 
 God than those which have the sanction of that Church 
 to which He entrusted His work. We must awaken men 
 to the realisation of their covenant with God in Holy 
 Baptism whereby He made them His, setting His mark 
 and seal upon them, and lead them to see how unworthily 
 they have lived of their privilege as sons of God. We 
 must exhort them to diligent preparation, not only for 
 first Communion but, what is too often forgotten, for all 
 Communions, showing them how unfailingly necessary is 
 that patient, prayerful self-examination on which St Paul 
 lays so much stress : we must assure them of the Forgive- 
 ness taught in the Holy Supper by Christ in that cup 
 which is for the '' Remission of Sins," and we must teach 
 them to be very careful after Communion, to cherish the 
 grace imparted to them and to rest upon the strength 
 of the food received. About our preaching in this con- 
 nection so much might be said that it is best perhaps 
 to say nothing. I would only say, that we must remember 
 what powerful machinery the Church furnishes us with 
 in her continually revolving year of Advent, Christmas, 
 Lent, Passion-tide, Easter, Ascension, and Pentecost. There 
 we have it all : awakening, penitence, pardon, newness of 
 life, and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. By following 
 the year's course we are bound to dwell upon all these 
 things, and so to declare to our people the whole counsel 
 of God. Such preaching, if onl}' we are guided in it by 
 the Holy Spirit as we must be, and prayerfully depend 
 upon His promised power, always bears, as experience, 
 the best teacher, has proved to many of us, abundant 
 fruit of the right kind. 
 
 And now about our work among those who are without 
 the Church. Here again I am persuaded that our methods 
 need not of necessity be new. Not that any of us would 
 be so foolish as to refuse to adopt any method because 
 it is new : and the wisest man is the man who is always 
 most willing to learn from others, even if those others be 
 those from whom he differs in some things ; but there 
 
Evangelistic Work and its proper Basis. 193 
 
 is a tendency upon the part of many to abandon the old 
 methods and say that those methods have failed when, 
 as a matter of fact, they have not had even a fair trial. 
 Patient, systematic visitation of the people in their 
 homes, dealing with them as far as possible personally 
 and privately, simple preaching of the Cross of Christ, 
 with none of that tinsel and tawdriness and self-conceit 
 so deplorably common even in our own branch of the 
 Church ; these methods are old, but where honestly tried 
 have not failed, and cannot fail. 
 
 About preaching: it is well we should be on our guard 
 against going from one extreme to the other. It is true 
 that preaching has too much usurped the place of the one 
 only Divine Service among us, and we all long for that 
 time when the Holy Communion will be restored to its right 
 place as the united act of worship of the faithful every 
 Lord's day ; but because we have been putting preaching in 
 the wrong place we need not banish it from its right place. 
 On the contrary, we must pay more attention to preaching 
 than we have been doing of late. Not only the people but 
 the clergy must attend thereto with diligence, preparation, 
 and prayer. Whether it be in the Church or at the 
 street corner (and I am keenly alive to the benefit in 
 certain places of open-air preaching of the right sort), the 
 preaching of the Cross is to them that believe the power 
 of God. 
 
 About special preaching — missions, for instance — I should 
 have liked to say something, but time forbids me. Missions 
 have their place and their undoubted benefits, but they 
 have also their dangers. It is folly, for example, for a 
 man to imagine that if his parish be in a spiritually un- 
 satisfactory state he can get all put right by bringing in 
 a special preacher for a week or ten days. He should 
 always ask himself first whether or not he has done his 
 utmost in all ways and by all means at his disposal. But 
 very often a mission does do good, and perhaps the parish 
 to benefit most by it is the parish whose minister is most 
 
 N 
 
194 Evatjgelistic Work aftd its proper Basis. 
 
 faithful in his own ordinary work. Still, in all cases if the 
 mission is to do good, it must be long looked forward to 
 and carefully prepared for, and the mission preacher or 
 preachers wisely selected. 
 
 I must conclude, and I do so with a sense of leavinir 
 very much unsaid. There is specially the wide field of 
 doctrine as it relates to evangelistic work. Let this, and 
 this above all, be said, that we who are commissioned and 
 empowered to do evangelistic work must be in our own 
 hearts and our own experience persuaded of the truth. We 
 believe and therefore we speak : we testify what we know, 
 and we know and believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son 
 of God, and that only through Him can the world receive 
 life. 
 
 Let those of us who are called to the ministry lay to 
 heart the words of \\\e Apostle who has said " Give attend- 
 ance to reading, to exhortation, to doctrine. Neglect not 
 the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by 
 prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery. 
 Meditate upon these things ; and give thyself wholly unto 
 them ; that thy profiting may appear unto all. Take 
 heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine ; continue in 
 them : for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and 
 them that hear thee" (1 Tim. iv. 13-lG). 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 PROGRAMME OF CONFERENCE. 
 
 Saturday, 25th November. 
 Evening Service, Govan Parish Church, 5 p.m. 
 
 II. 
 
 Sunday, 2Qth November . 
 
 I. — Celebration of the Holy Communion, Govan 
 
 Parish Church, 11 a.m. 
 
 -Other Services in connection with, the Conference, 
 as follows :— 
 
 Chdkches. 
 
 IIOtJKS. 
 
 Hillhead, 
 
 Blackfriars, 
 Bluevale, 
 
 Cathedral, 
 
 Cowlairs, 
 
 Dean Park, 
 
 Macleod 
 Memorial, 
 
 Maxwell, 
 Oatlands, 
 
 St James', 
 
 Belmont, 
 
 Cowlairs, 
 
 Govan, 
 
 Maxwell, 
 
 11 a.m., 
 
 2 p.m., 
 2 p.m., 
 
 2 p.m., 
 
 2 p.m., 
 
 2 p.m., 
 
 2 p.m., 
 2 p.m., 
 2 p.m., 
 
 2 p.m., 
 
 6.30 p.m., 
 
 6.30 p.m. 
 
 6.30 p.m. 
 
 7 p.m.. 
 
 Pkeachers. 
 
 ( Rev. Professor Dobie, ) 
 \ B.D., Edinburgh, ) 
 Rev. H. J. Wother-'j 
 spoon, M.A., Burn- V 
 bank Parish, j 
 
 ( Rev. John Parker, St ( 
 ( James' Parish, j 
 
 ( Rev. W. W. Tulloch, ) 
 ) D. D. , Maxwell Parish, ) 
 (Rev. T. N. Adamson 
 ■{ St Margaret's, Barn 
 ( hiU, 
 Rev. M. P. Johnstone, \ 
 B.D., Fraserburgh V 
 Parish, j 
 
 I^^Rev. A. W. Wother- 
 N spoon, M.A., Oat- 
 (. lands Parish, 
 j Rev. H. M. Hamilton, 
 i D. D. , Hamilton Pai-ish, 
 ( Rev. J. Cromarty Smith, 
 •n B.D., Alexandria 
 ( Parish, 
 
 ( Rev. James Cooper, 
 \ D.D., East Parish, 
 ( Aberdeen, 
 [Rev. M. P. Johnstone, S 
 -V B. D. , Fraserburgh V 
 t Parish, j 
 
 Rev. H. J. Wother- 
 spoon, M.A., Burn- 
 bank Parish, 
 ) Rev. Professor Dobie, 1 
 1 B.D., f 
 
 ( Rev, James Cooper, 
 <J D.D., East Parish 
 ( Aberdeen, 
 
 '} 
 
 Subjects. 
 
 The Power of the Incar- 
 nation. 
 
 The Nature of Christian 
 Worship. 
 
 The Church Witnessing 
 to the Atonement. 
 
 The Church in its Rela- 
 tion TO Society. 
 
 Dally Service. 
 
 The Mission ok the 
 Comforter. 
 
 The Christian Year. 
 
 Holy Communion. 
 
 The Vocation of the 
 Christian Ministry. 
 
 The Christian Salvation 
 and Church Order. 
 
 The Supernatural in 
 Modern Christian Life. 
 
 The Bread of Life. 
 
 The Sacramental Life 
 OF the Church. 
 
 Almsgiving, Prayer, and 
 Fasting. 
 
 195 
 
196 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 III. — Special Evening Sermon on the Objects ok the 
 
 Scottish Church Society — 
 
 " Then contended I with the rulers, and said, Why is the House of 
 
 God forsaken ?" Nehemiah xiii. 11. 
 
 City Hall (Albion Street), 7 p.m. — Preacher, Rev. John 
 
 MACLEOD, D.D., GoVAN PARISH. 
 
 Monday, Tlth November. 
 I. — Morning Prayer, Govan Parish Church, 10 a.m. 
 
 II. — Conference, Berkeley Hall (St Andrew's Halls), 11 a.m. — 
 The Very Eev. Professor Milligan, D.D., President of the 
 Society, presiding* : — 
 
 Time. 
 
 Sdbject. 
 
 ReAD£R.S. 
 
 Speakeks. 
 
 11 a.m. 
 
 11.30a.m, 
 
 to 
 
 1 p.m. 
 
 1 p.m. 
 
 to 
 
 2.30 p.m. 
 
 The President's 
 Address. 
 
 Devotional Life : Com- 
 munion iritlb God, and 
 Communion in God. 
 
 National Religion : the 
 Principle and Possible 
 Embodiments thereof. 
 
 Rev. A. Wallace 
 Williamson, M.A.* 
 Rev. 1-1. J. Wother- 
 spoon, M.A. 
 
 TheVery Re V.George 
 
 Hutchison, D.D. 
 Rev. Roger S. Kirk- 
 patrick, B.D. 
 
 Rev. Henry M. 
 
 Hamilton, D.D. 
 Rev. John Parker. 
 
 Rev. M. P. John- 
 stone, B.D. 
 
 J. H. Miller, Esq., 
 Advocate. 
 
 III. — Evening Prayer, Govan Parish Church, 5 p.m. 
 
 IV. — Conference, Berkeley Hall, 7 p.m. — The Very Rev. 
 A. K. H. Boyd, D.D., LL.D., presiding* ;— 
 
 7 p.m. 
 
 to 
 
 8.30 p.m. 
 
 8.30 p.m. 
 
 to 
 10 p.m. 
 
 The I'rosent Call to 
 Witness for the Funda- 
 mental Truths of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 The Church's Call to 
 Study Social Questions. 
 
 Rev. James Cooper, 
 
 D.D. 
 Rev. GeorgeCampbell. 
 
 RcT. I'rofessor Flint, 
 
 D.D., LL.D. 
 Rev. W. W. Tulloch, 
 
 D.D.* 
 
 Rev. C. J. M. 
 
 Middlcton, M.A. 
 Rev. J. Laudreth, 
 
 M.A. 
 
 Shcriflf Birnie. 
 Sheriff Guthrie, 
 
 LL.D.* 
 William Jolly, Esq., 
 
 LL.D., F.G.S., 
 
 F.R.S.E.* 
 
 • Unable tu be at the Couferunco. 
 
Appendix. 
 
 197 
 
 Tuesday, 28</i November. 
 I. — Morning Prayer, Govan Parish Church, 10 a.m. 
 
 II. — Conference, Berkeley Hall, 11 a.m. — Rev. George W. 
 Sprott, D.D., presiding : — 
 
 11 a.m. 
 
 to 
 
 12.30p.m. 
 
 The Divine Order of 
 Church Finance and 
 other Systems. 
 
 Rev. Thomas Leish- 
 man, D.D. 
 
 Rev. M. P. John- 
 stone, B.D. 
 
 Rev. John Macleod, 
 
 D.D. 
 Patrick Cooper, Esq. 
 
 12.30 p.m. 
 
 to 
 
 2 p.m. 
 
 The Observance, in its 
 Main Features, of the 
 Christian Year. 
 
 Rev. E. L. Thomp- 
 son, D.D. 
 
 Rev. William H. 
 Macleod, B.D. 
 
 The Very Rev. A. 
 K.H.Boyd, D.D. , 
 LL.D.* 
 
 The Right Hon. 
 Sir James Fergus- 
 son, Bart.,M.P.* 
 
 III. — Students' Reception, Berkeley Hall, 3 p.m. — Paper to be 
 read by the Rev. Professor Dobie, B.D., on "The Training 
 of the Clergy." 
 
 IV. —Evening Prayer, Govan Parish Church, 5 p.m. 
 
 V. — Conference, Berkeley Ha.ll, 7 p.m.— Rev. Thomas 
 Leishman, D.D., presiding : — 
 
 Time. 
 
 Subject. 
 
 Readers. 
 
 Sfeakbbs. 
 
 7 p.m. 
 
 to 
 
 8.30_p.m. 
 
 8.30 p.m. 
 
 to 
 10 p.m. 
 
 The Celebration of the 
 Holy Communion and 
 the Daily Service. 
 
 The Church and the 
 Education of the 
 Young. 
 
 Rev. John ]\Iacleod, 
 D.D. 
 Rev. J. Parker. 
 
 Rev. John H. Craw- 
 ford, M.A. 
 
 Rev. J. C. Carrick, 
 B.D. 
 
 Rev. A. W. Wother- 
 
 spoon, M.A. 
 Rev. James M. 
 
 Campbell. 
 
 Rev. John A. Clark, 
 
 B.D. 
 llev. William Taylor, 
 
 M.A. 
 
 Unable to be .at the Conference. 
 
198 
 
 Appendix. 
 
 Wednesday, 29«A November. 
 I. — Morning Prayer, Govan Parish Church, 10 a.m. 
 
 II. — Private Conference, Berkeley Hall, 11 a.m. — Rev. John 
 MACLEOD, D.D., presiding : — 
 
 11 a.m. 
 
 to 
 
 12.30p.m. 
 
 r2.30p.m. 
 
 to 
 
 2 p. m. 
 
 Historical Continuity 
 of the Church of Scot- 
 land. 
 
 Evangelistic Work and 
 its proper Babis. 
 
 Rev. George W. 
 
 Sprott, D.D. 
 Rev, Thomas Leish- 
 
 man, D.D. 
 
 Rev. H. J. Wother- 
 
 spoon, M.A. 
 Rev. J. Cromarty 
 
 Smith, B.D. 
 
 Rev. James Cooper, 
 
 D.D, 
 Rev. T. Newbigging 
 
 Adamson. 
 
 Rev. D. H. Paterson. 
 Rev. John Charle- 
 son, a.D. 
 
 III. — Evening Prayer, Govan Parish Church, 5 p.m. 
 
 CONSTITUTION OF THE SCOTTISH CHURCH 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 I. The name of the Society shall be "The Scottish Church 
 Society." 
 
 II. The MoLto ol" the Society shall be : '' Ask for the Old Paths, . . . 
 and iculk therein." 
 
 III. The general purpose of the Society .shall be to defend and 
 advance Catholic doctrine as set forth in the Ancient Creeds, and 
 embodied in the Standards of the Church of Scotland ; and generally 
 to assert Scriptural pruiciples in all matters relating to Church Order 
 and Pulicy, Christian Work, and Spiritual Life, throughout Scotland. 
 
 IV. Among the special objects to be aimed at shall be the following : — 
 
 1, The consistent atfirmation of the. divine basis, supernatural life, 
 
 and heavenly calling of the Church. 
 
 2. The fostering of a due sense of the historic continuity of the 
 
 Church i^rom the first, 
 
 3. The maintaining of the necessity of a valid Ordination to the 
 
 Holy Ministry, and the celebration in a betitting manner of 
 the rite of Ordination. 
 
 4, The assertion of the efficacy of the Sacraments. 
 
Appendix. 1 99 
 
 5. The promotion of the religious education and pastoi\al care of 
 
 the young, on the basis of Holy Baptism. 
 
 6. The restoration of the Holy Commimion to its right place in 
 
 relation to the worship of the Church, and to the spiritual 
 life of the liaptised. 
 
 7. The revival of Daily Service wherever practicable. 
 
 8. The observance in its main featiires of the Cliristian year. 
 
 9. The encouragement, wliere practicable, of free and open 
 
 churches. 
 
 10. The advancement of a higher spiritual life among the clergy. 
 
 11. The restoration of more careful jiastoral discipline of clergy 
 
 and laity. 
 
 12. The deepening in the laity of a due sense of their priesthood, 
 
 and the encouraging them to fulfil their calling in the worship 
 and work of the Church. 
 
 13. The 2:)romotion of right methods for the pastoral training of 
 
 candidates for the Holy Ministr3\ 
 
 14. The promotion of Evangelistic work on Church lines. 
 
 15. The placing on a right basis of the financial support of the 
 
 Church through systematic giving, and the restoration of the 
 Weekly Offering to its proper place in thought and worship. 
 
 16. The better fulfilment by the Church of her duties in regard to 
 
 Education ; and to the care of the poor. 
 
 17. The consideration of Social Problems with a view to their 
 
 adjustment on a basis of Christian justice and In-otherhood. 
 ] 8. The maintenance of the law of the Church in regard to ]\larriage. 
 
 19. The maintenance of the Scriptural view (as held by the 
 
 Reformers and early Assemblies) as to the heinousness of the 
 sin of sacrilege. 
 
 20. The reverent care and seemly ordering of churches and church- 
 
 yards ; and the preservation of ancient ecclesiastical 
 monuments. 
 
 21. The deepening of a penitential sense of the sin and peril 
 
 of schism. 
 
 22. The furtherance of Catholic uuity in every way consistent with 
 
 true loj'alty to the Church of Scotland. 
 
 V. Among the methods to be adopted for the promotion of these 
 objects, shall l^e : — 
 
 1. Private and United Prayer. 
 
 2. Meetings for Conference as circumstauces may require. 
 
 3. A public Church Society Congress, to be held annually in one 
 
 of the larger towns in Scotland : a full Report of the Pro- 
 ceedings of each Congress to be afterwards published and 
 circulated. 
 
?oo Appendix. 
 
 4. The preparation and publication from time to time of such 
 
 Occasional Papers, Forms of Service, Sermons, Class-books, 
 Parochial or other Leaflets, and Devotional Literature as 
 shall be approved by the Society. 
 
 5, The delivery of special Sermons or Lectures in connection with 
 
 the Society. 
 G. The provision of aids to the spiritual life of the clergy. 
 7. The organisation of Parochial Missions. 
 
 TUR>-BDLL AND SPEAK3, PRISTKKS, KDINBCKQH. 
 
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