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 BX 9178 .R34 1872 
 Rainy, Robert, 1826-1906. 
 Three lectures on the Churct 
 of Scotland 
 
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 THREE LECTURE^. 
 
 CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, 
 
 WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE DEAN OF WESTMINSTER'S 
 RECENT COURSE ON THAT SUBJECT, 
 
 DELTVERED IN THE MUSIC HALL, ON THE 24th, 26th, AND 31ST JANUAHY, 1872, 
 
 1^ 
 
 EGBERT RAINY, D.D. 
 
 THIRD EDITION. 
 
 EDINBURGH : 
 JOHN MACLAREN, PRINCES STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLXXII. 
 
NOTE. 
 
 The Course of Lectures delivered by the Dean of Westminster, and 
 referred to in those which follow, closed on Friday, the 12th of 
 January. Those now published were resolved upon on Tuesday, the 
 16th, and were delivered on the earliest days thereafter on which 
 the Music Hall could be procured for the piirpose — viz., on the 24th, 
 26th, and 31st of January. Readers will understand that no great 
 elaboration is to be looked for in such circumstances. The Lec- 
 tures are now published as they were delivered ; except that passages 
 omitted in delivery from want of time, are restored to their places, 
 effect is given to one or two corrections in matters of fact, for- 
 warded to me by the courtesy of gentlemen on whom I had com- 
 mented, and one or two notes are added which have occurred to me 
 in passing the sheets through the press. 
 
 R. R. 
 Edinburgh, Zrd Fch-uary, 1872. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 Introductory. 
 
 Object of Lectures, 
 
 Strategical Operation, 
 
 Does Dean Stanley understand us ? 
 
 Relations of our Presbyterianism to Episcopacy, 
 
 Experiment of 1572, 
 
 Experiment of James I. and Charles I., 
 
 Black and Blue, .... 
 
 Effects of Episcopacy in Scottish Church, . 
 
 Motives of the Presbyterians, 
 
 Tendencies which accompany Prelacy, 
 
 Small " Points " of Scottish Presbyterian Sects, 
 
 Russian Dissenters, 
 
 Burghers and Anti-Burghers, 
 
 Recruiting Eff'orts, 
 
 Scottish Interest in Church Questions, 
 
 Contrast, ..... 
 
 Bishop Jolly and Mr. Cowper, 
 
 PAGE 
 
 3 
 
 4 
 6 
 
 10 
 12 
 12 
 13 
 15 
 17 
 17 
 18 
 20 
 21 
 21 
 22 
 
 LECTURE IL 
 Independence of the Church. 
 
 Scottish Antagonisms, 
 
 What is the Church ? 
 
 Church or no Church ? 
 
 Church Liberty and Church Government, 
 
 The Unintelligible Question, 
 
 Dean's View, 
 
 New Lights on History, 
 
 " Political Circumstances," 
 
 Littleness of the Question, 
 
 Edinburgh in 1637. Young Man in Comer 
 
 Was the Cause Worthy ? . 
 
 The Covenant, 
 
 Questionable uses of it. 
 
 Martyrdoms and Absurdities, 
 
 Conscience, Individual and Social, . 
 
 Worth of the Idea, 
 
 24 
 25 
 26 
 27 
 29 
 30 
 31 
 32 
 33 
 34 
 37 
 37 
 38 
 40 
 42 
 43 
 
Contents. 
 
 Influence on Scottish Convictions, 
 
 Parliament, 
 
 Hildebrandism, 
 
 Laudianism, 
 
 Disruption of 1843. Dean's View, 
 
 Establishments, 
 
 FAGE 
 
 46 
 46 
 47 
 50 
 51 
 53 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 Views op Christianity dominant in Scottish Church Life. 
 
 Two Conditions— the First, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 . 55 
 
 The Second, 
 
 
 
 
 
 58 
 
 Illustration, Dr. Chalmers, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 61 
 
 The Dean and the Moderates, 
 
 
 
 
 
 64 
 
 Cui bono ? . 
 
 
 
 
 
 65 
 
 Precursors, Kobert Douglas., 
 
 
 
 
 
 66 
 
 Leighton, .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 67 
 
 Carstairs, .... 
 
 
 
 
 
 68 
 
 The Dean's Case, 
 
 
 
 
 
 69 
 
 Moderate Tolerance, 
 
 
 
 
 
 70 
 
 Moderate Zeal ; the Highlands, 
 
 
 
 
 
 71 
 
 Moderate Zeal ; Whitefield, 
 
 
 
 
 
 73 
 
 The Secession, 
 
 
 
 
 
 74 
 
 True History of Moderatism, 
 
 
 
 
 
 75 
 
 Culture before Truth and Life, 
 
 
 
 
 
 81 
 
 Dean's Sympathy with Moderatism, 
 
 
 
 
 
 83 
 
 Robert Burns, 
 
 
 
 
 
 85 
 
 Advocacy of Established Churches, . 
 
 
 
 
 
 87 
 
 Answer for the Non-Established, 
 
 
 
 
 
 89 
 
 Conclusion, 
 
 
 
 
 
 90 
 
 Appendix A, . . . 
 
 
 
 
 
 93 
 
 Appendix B, ... 
 
 
 
 
 
 96 
 
THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 When a clerg3rman of the Church of England comes among us 
 to deliver to us his impressions of our Churches and of our 
 Christianity, we owe him first of all a courteous reception. 
 We are to presume that he came among us on a benevolent 
 design to do us good, and we are to treat him accordingly. 
 In that, I hope, we have not failed. And we thank him for 
 all that was friendly, either in his criticism or in his praise. 
 Next, however, we owe him, and we owe it to ourselves, to 
 sift the statements which he makes and the conclusions which 
 he implies. In the present case this duty is the more incum- 
 bent, because Dean Stanley has given us, not a version of our 
 history only, but a version with a moral. No one, I suppose, 
 is so blind as not to see that it is the moral rather than the 
 story which interests the Dean. He did not come among us 
 merely to reform our notions about our past history. He 
 came to influence, if possible, the history of the years that are 
 before us. Every one of these lectures, like ^sop's Fables, 
 looks towards a practical application. The Dean, one may 
 complain, does not state his moral quite so plainly as ^sop 
 did. But we shall have no great difficulty in gathering what 
 it is as we proceed. 
 
 The element of the lectures now referred to is that which 
 
4 First Lecture, 
 
 gives them a claim to attention, and this alone has induced 
 me to ask you to hear me to-night on the other side. I 
 should count it an idle thing to ask you to take so much 
 trouble merely for the purpose of showing that an Eng- 
 lishman has fallen into some mistakes about our antiqui- 
 ties or about our controversies. So ordinary and natural a 
 circumstance could discompose no one. Still less have I 
 come here to try to defend through thick and thin the 
 Scots in general or my own ecclesiastical progenitors in par- 
 ticular. They were men, and therefore fallible and failing; 
 they were Scotsmen, and therefore when they went wrong 
 they did it energetically, blowing a trumpet before them, 
 and defying all the world to refute them. Yes, and being 
 Scotsmen they had like ourselves the moral and intel- 
 lectual physiognomy which the world, favoured with many 
 a wandering specimen, knows so well ; an ungainly people, 
 shall I say, wearing our principles in a serious pedantic way, 
 angular, lumbering, roundabout in our motions, argumenta- 
 tive, inflexible. Why, the very birds of the air, passing us 
 on easy wing, could they see our inner man as they see our 
 outer, would judge us, from the point of view of their conscious- 
 ness, much as the Dean does. Defence here is useless; let us 
 not attempt it. The Dean, coming among us, discerns this 
 family likeness in us all. He only discerns in us all what we 
 have all discerned in one another. To enjoy a joke and a laugh 
 at one another is a privilege that has been claimed and exercised 
 by religious parties in Scotland ever since the days of John 
 Knox. Long may it be ere so wholesome a practice shall be 
 proscribed. We have been able to combine it with reverence, 
 with earnestness, with a strength of conviction and of purpose 
 not easily shaken either by laughter or tears. 
 
 It is no untried "strategical operation" which the Dean has 
 employed, in making our history the means of raising doubts in 
 om' mind about our principles and our prejudices. Every 
 
Strategical Operations. 5 
 
 reader of bis works knows this method well. I remember a pas- 
 sage somewhere in which he dwelt with delight on the idea, that 
 theological principles, carefully built up and fenced by argument, 
 often simply vanish into air when they are brought into contact 
 with great and good men, whose greatness and goodness is not 
 of the regulation pattern of the theologians. Such men, he 
 said — Socrates, for instance, Spinoza, William Penn — simply 
 walk through the fences the theologians have set up. And the 
 method has an opposite application. The representative of a 
 principle makes himself and it ridiculous on the Dean's page, and 
 so principle and representative are turned about their business 
 together. Just so we have seen, of late, a long procession 
 of Scotsmen, headed by Lord Pitsligo, and Bishop Jolly, and 
 closing with Robert Burns and Walter Scott, marched up and 
 down through our Scottish principles and practices, upsetting all 
 our fences, obliterating all our demarcations, driving us from our 
 fixed points, tearing off our theological garments, until we are 
 left nearly as naked as we were bom. It cannot be wondered 
 at, surely, if we drop some natural tears at finding ourselves so 
 maltreated by kindly Scots of our own flesh and blood. Yet 
 we need not wonder, perhaps, that these well-tried tactics 
 should have been applied by the Dean to the case of Scotland 
 and to the minds of Scotsmen. The Scottish vote has once or 
 twice come heavily into the scale in decisive moments of the 
 history of these islands. Two hundred and thirty years ago, 
 when the liberties of England were in question, the Scottish 
 vote determined the issue. Two years ago, when the main- 
 tenance of the Irish Establishment — always questionable on 
 other grounds — had begun to threaten us with the endowment 
 of Romanism (and no man advocated the maintenance of the 
 one and the adoption of the other more ably than Dean Stan- 
 ley), it was the Scottish vote that, right or wrong, determined 
 its overthrow. There are other questions rising on which the 
 Scottish vote may again tell heavily. If the Dean thought he 
 
^ First Lectw'c. 
 
 could either win us, or bewilder us, he surely had a perfect 
 right to try; and he has shown no lack of courage in the 
 effort he has made. 
 
 But if profitable lessons are to be drawn from our history, 
 our mentor must first understand it and us. For I hope 
 it is not Scottish arrogance to assume that with all our 
 faults w^e have done enough in the world to have a claim 
 to be understood. Perhaps Dr. Stanley does thoroughly un- 
 derstand us. But if so, I shall take leave to say that it is his 
 first great success in this department. Through all his works 
 — works written always so charmingly — works that bear 
 token of an eye which nothing picturesque escapes, either in 
 the physical or the moral world — this is precisely what one 
 misses — a sjanpathetic appreciation of the deeper and the 
 stronger currents of religious life and of doctrinal controversy. 
 In Dr. Stanley's pages movements dependent on these have 
 their outside wonderfully depicted, but their inner meaning 
 scantily realised. And the reason is plain. Dr. Stanley's mind 
 turns ever to the limitations, the compensations, the counter- 
 poises which balance and qualify all assertions, which take away 
 the sharpness of the definition, which temper and assuage the 
 confidence with which it is propounded. That habit of the 
 understanding may or may not be desirable in itself; but let 
 this be remembered, that Church history has been mainly made, 
 certainly in all its worthier passages, by men of intense convic- 
 tions ; and hardly without the experience of intense conviction 
 shall it be understood or represented. 
 
 I am anxious to be done with these preliminaries. But I must 
 yet further say that in any estimate the standard by which we 
 are to be measured, and the point of view from which it is ap- 
 plied, is the main point. One way of applying a standard was not, 
 I think, intended by the Dean. But it might, I fear, be impressed 
 on the audience, and how to deal with it I don't know. In many 
 a smiling allusion and many a quip-courteous, as events and 
 
The Early History. 7 
 
 characters pass in review, I seem to hear a gracious gentleman 
 saying — I am an Episcopalian ; surely you could not have any 
 objection, or let us say, any strong objection, to Episcopacy. 
 And I am an Erastian ; now, is it not absurd of you to pretend 
 to me that there is any great harm in State supremacy ? And 
 I am a Moderate ; why in the world should you cherish anj^ 
 objection to the Moderates ? And I am a Broad Churchman ; 
 I don't believe in or don't care for many doctrines you believe 
 in or care for ; surely you won't pretend to justify yourselves 
 in making any great fuss about these points? To all this 
 what can a man answer, — at least a well-bred man ; especially 
 when one has been reminded that we owe all our civilisation to 
 England ? 
 
 Now I leave introductory observations. And I pass 
 the sketch which Dr. Stanley has given us of the early 
 Christianity of Scotland. Those fragments of our buried 
 past, which he pieced so gracefully together, he treated 
 with a cordiality of appreciation which we in turn ap- 
 preciate. I will not be tempted to say one word of 
 the changes introduced by Margaret and her sons. Nor 
 will I meddle much with the history of the Scottish Epis- 
 copal Communion in its separate state. One point must be 
 touched upon, perhaps, before I end. But for the present 
 it is enough to say that while I have the very worst opinion of 
 the system of Scottish Episcopacy as it existed in the days of 
 its supremacy, I admit most willingly that all along men 
 memorably good were found among its adherents; and ad- 
 versity brings out the best points of all Churches. I do not 
 know a pleasanter experience than when, in travelling through 
 the strifes of ecclesiastical parties, one stumbles On a clear 
 instance of unequivocal religious and holy life associated with 
 that very thing which one is for the present called to fight 
 with. In so far as the Dean held up truly devout and good 
 men in any of the Scottish Churches to the admiration of the 
 
8 Fwst Lecture. 
 
 rest, he was performing a good office for all of us, and we are 
 all grateful to him. 
 
 But I must be allowed to say a few words about the 
 relations of our Scottish Presbyterianism to the Prelacy 
 which was introduced among us, and pressed upon us at 
 different periods. And to-night, so far as I touch on Pre- 
 lacy, I shall confine myself within strict limits. Practically, 
 and as a matter of fact, Prelacy and the royal supremacy were 
 mixed up together. That ought never to be forgotten ; each 
 supported the other, and each made the other worse. But I 
 reserve to next night whatever concerns the liberty of the 
 Church; and on next Wednesday I intend to speak of the 
 Moderate party, and of the views of the gospel and of Chris- 
 tian religion which ought to be applied to our Scottish history. 
 To-night, after saying what I think requisite regarding the 
 topic of Episcopacy, as I have just now limited it, I will take 
 up some other matters which must be touched on, and which 
 do not fall naturally under either of the other heads. To- 
 night's topics, therefore, are of subordinate importance in- 
 trinsically, and a little miscellaneous as well, defects for 
 which I apologise beforehand. 
 
 On the topic of Episcopacy, as now limited, I should wish 
 to be as short as possible. Dean Stanley appeared to imply 
 that our Scottish history, rightly read, proved us mistaken in 
 supposing that there was any difficulty in combining the two 
 systems in the most friendly relations. Difficulties, as it would 
 appear, were manufactured or imagined ; that was all. To 
 illustrate this we were directed to 1572, the last year of 
 John Knox's life. Episcopacy was introduced then, and John 
 Knox made no stir against it. 
 
 . Now in that year the Church, along with the State, was 
 entering into a very curious experiment. The object was 
 to get some arrangement effected in virtue of which the 
 patrimony of the Kirk, or some of it, might be applied to 
 
Experiment of 1572. 9 
 
 relioious uses. The distribution of it in moderate incomes 
 to the various labourers throughout the country was desired 
 by the Church, but resisted by the State. The great bene- 
 fices must be k'ept up — ostensibly on legal and constitutional 
 grounds, really in order that there might be good fat geese 
 for the nobles to pluck. A compromise was effected, and 
 part of this compromise was that nominal bishops, abbots, 
 and priors should be appointed. As to the bishops, they 
 were to have the name of bishops in Church and State 
 both. But in the State and in law they were to have the 
 legal character and incidents of bishops; while it could be 
 maintained plausibly that in the Church they were not to have 
 the ecclesiastical character of bishops, for they were to have 
 the powers only of superintendents, according to the well- 
 known order then established, and were to be subject in that 
 character to the General Assembly. It was an experiment, 
 whether the Church could not effect an adjustment regarding 
 the property by consenting to names and titles, without intro- 
 ducing thereby any serious change into her pre-existing consti- 
 tution. It was not a safe experiment, for a variety of reasons, 
 and the Church very soon came to see that, and withdrew 
 from it again in a very few years, rather unceremoniously. 
 But that was the nature of the experiment. John Knox did 
 not like it. He gave it no countenance. He was in his " de- 
 crepit age," as he pathetically calls it, and within a twelve- 
 month of his death. His brethren thought the experiment 
 might be tried. And he did not publicly oppose it. But that 
 which he did not oppose was the giving of the name and legal 
 incidents of a bishop to a man who in the most important re- 
 spects was not to be a bishop. For those bishops were not 
 clothed with personal jurisdiction over their brethren as mem- 
 bers of a superior order, and they had not committed to them 
 the administration of any ordinance to which their brethren 
 were not competent. 
 
lo First Lecher e. 
 
 But at a later period, we are told, the two systems flourished 
 together — that is, in the latter days of James I., and in those 
 of Charles I. Episcopacy was set up again by the Crown. 
 Bishops, presbyteries, curates, and kirk-sessions were all welded 
 into one system, and need never have quarrelled if men had been 
 wise. The inference drawn from this statement for our Scottish 
 Episcopal neighbours does not concern me. But the inference 
 implied as to the subsequent unreasonableness of Scottish 
 Presbyterians is plain enough. Why did they divorce what 
 was so happily joined ? Now, this is an essential misrepresen- 
 tation. And it draws all its plausibility from circumstances 
 very easily explained. 
 
 With all possible goodwill to the work, it was not pos- 
 sible of a sudden to banish Presbyterianism and introduce 
 Anglican Episcopacy. The thing could not be done; and 
 therefore a large though a diminishing amount of Presby- 
 terianism was spared for the time. The policy was to make 
 head step by step, to keep up a steady pressure in the hope of 
 ultimately tempering the Church to the intended result. With 
 this view, during the reigns of James and Charles every device 
 was exhausted to outwit, deceive, and concuss the Presbyterians, 
 yet in such a way as to avoid any general collision. Leading 
 and resolute men were banished. Pliable tools were placed in 
 great positions. Promises were made and broken. Innovations 
 were introduced with the assurance that nothing more was 
 intended, while yet those innovations were made the stepping- 
 stones to new changes. Nonconformity was treated with that 
 judicious sort of repression which discouraged it without driving 
 it mad. The names and forms of Church Courts were allowed 
 to remain, while yet power was steadily though gradually con- 
 centrated in the hands of the bishops. It was a very well 
 managed scheme, and it had a kind of success. Men were 
 gradually brought to accommodate themselves to each succes- 
 sive stage of the process. At last, however, an attempt to ac- 
 
Floitrishing in Contact. 1 1 
 
 celerate it led to the explosion of 1637 and 1638, which 
 swept away the incubus as if it had been a mere nightmare. 
 That warning was remembered ; and even when Episcopacy 
 was revived in the darker days of Charles II., those who 
 managed for the Crown determined to mingle some method 
 with their zeal. And the method now, as before, was to leave 
 some Presbyterianism, both in government and worship, in those 
 inferior strata of the system which touched most nearly the 
 common life and experience of the people generally, until the 
 sterner Presbyterianism could be worn out of the country, and 
 things made ready for a safe move in advance. That was 
 what the Dean describes by saying that " the two systems flou- 
 rished in the closest contact." There is a great deal in a phrase. 
 So Popery and Protestantism flourished in Oxford when James 
 VI. forced . Popish Fellows into Protestant colleges. So, also, 
 we may say that Germany and France flourished in the closest 
 contact, after the siege of Paris ended last year. France could 
 not fight; yet her national life was not gone, her institutions 
 were not annihilated. Better off than the Presbyterians, she even 
 had her Assembly. Germany, meanwhile, drawing her inspira- 
 tion from quite other sources, sat upon France, exchanged 
 polite proposals with M. Thiers, and dictated conditions as seemed 
 to her good. The two systems "flourished in the closest contact." 
 I was a little amazed, I confess, at the Dean's statement that 
 the Assemblies of Andrew Melville sat side by side with the 
 hierarchy of Charles I., remembering, as I did, that the want 
 of Assemblies was a notorious and outstanding grievance of 
 that reign. But I perceive that the Dean must have intended 
 to convey that the hierarchy were haunted by the ghost of the 
 murdered Assembly, which I believe to be quite true. The 
 Assembly came to life indeed in 1638, which was in the reign 
 of Charles I. But I do not think the hierarchy would have 
 described the action of the Glasgow Assembly by the polite 
 euphemism of saying that it " sat by their side." 
 
1 2 First Lecture. 
 
 Nay, so shadowy was the distinction, as we may gather, that 
 actually Prelacy was called "black," because the prelatic ministers 
 wore black gowns ; whereas we are to take it that those of the 
 other side wore blue cloaks and broad bonnets. Let the Dean 
 be assured that no Presbyterian minister ever troubled his head 
 whether the cloak he preached in was black or blue. Disputes 
 about the colour of vestments in which the gospel is to 
 be preached do not belong to our parish. We have never been 
 civilised enough to understand them. And we had other 
 reasons, tolerably strong, for calling Prelacy black. 
 
 In the resistance which our fathers made to Episcopacy, and 
 also to various institutions and ceremonies which usually go with 
 it, they sometimes exaggerated the intrinsic importance of the 
 point in debate. That happens in all debates, and it is pecu- 
 liarly apt to happen when men are maintaining their sincerity 
 under oppression, and are like to be ruined for so doing. But 
 not to speak at present of the royal supremacy, which I have 
 reserved, I wish to call up to your minds what Scotsmen looked 
 back upon in 1638. What may be made of Episcopacy in 
 Churches that heartily approve of it I do not inquire. But 
 what Episcopacy proved to be, as forced on a community that in 
 various degrees disliked it, doubted or denied its authority, and 
 feared its tendency, was this — it meant the worst kind of humilia- 
 tion ; it meant the expulsion and silencing of venerated men ; it 
 meant the promotion of forward and fawning and lax men to 
 positions in the Church of which they were unworthy; it 
 meant an unhappy, dubious, perplexed state of mind on the 
 part of many worthy and able men, anxious to make no need- 
 less disturbances, yet doubtful, and more than doubtful, 
 whether they were not betraying a noble and scriptural con- 
 stitution ; it meant persistent deception, and manoeuvring, and 
 falsehood on the part of leading Churchmen ; it meant a 
 state of things in which every influence that is ecclesiasti- 
 cally demoralising was in full play, in which temptation to 
 
Motives for Defence. 1 3 
 
 fawn and cringe was a great ecclesiastical force. Men looked 
 back on it all the more indignant because they felt personally 
 ashamed and humiliated. And their resolution was that they 
 would be finally done with it. Henceforth, by God's help, 
 they were resolved that no institution should be accepted or 
 sanctioned unless it could be made good to the Church's con- 
 science out of God's Word, and set up on that ground, 
 cordially, heartily, and resolvedly. If they said strong things 
 about Episcopacy, and the Dean can produce many such 
 sayings if he pleases, they only, in the language of their 
 own proverb, " roosed the ford as they found it." It had 
 been a very bad ford for them. 
 
 Nor let it be said that the recoil connected with those tem- 
 porary circumstances betrayed men so far into a narrow and 
 petty position, unfit to be permanently maintained. It is always 
 to be maintained. All that might tempt us to look askance on 
 Christians who are persuaded in favour of Episcopacy has long 
 passed away. We have the best reasons for honouring and 
 loving many of them ; and some of them are among the fore- 
 most in upholding those very views of Protestant truth and of 
 evangelical religion which we count to be unspeakably more 
 important than any form of government. All that might 
 tempt us to look askance on such men is past. But all 
 remains that should dispose us to enduring and enthusiastic 
 thankfulness that our fathers upheld Presbyterianism and shut 
 Prelacy out. 
 
 For the earnestness "with which Presbyterianism was main- 
 tained was due to something else besides the confidence men 
 had in their theoretical conclusions about Church govern- 
 ment. Everything that is theoretically good and true has 
 its practical witness in itself, from which it receives daily 
 confirmation. So it was with Presbyterianism. Presbyterian- 
 ism meant organised life, regulated distribution of forces, 
 graduated recognition of gifts, freedom to discuss, authority to 
 
14 First Lecture. 
 
 control, agency to administer. Presbyterianism meant a 
 system by which the convictions and conscience of the Church 
 could constantly be applied by appropriate organs to her affairs. 
 Presbyterianism meant a system by which quickening influence 
 anywhere experienced in the Church could be turned into effec- 
 tive force and transmitted to fortify the whole society. Pres- 
 byterianism meant a system in which every one, first of all the 
 common man, had his recognised place, his defined position, 
 his ascertained and guarded privileges, his responsibilities 
 inculcated and enforced, felt himself a part of the great unity, 
 with a right to care for its welfare, and to guard its integrity. 
 From the broad base of the believing people the sap rose 
 through Sessions, Presbyteries, Synods, to the Assembly, and 
 thence descending diffused knowledge, influence, organic unity 
 through the whole system. Yes, Prebyterianism is a system 
 for a free people ihat love a regulated, a self-regulating 
 freedom ; a people independent, yet patient, considerate, trust- 
 ing much to the processes of discussion and consultation, and 
 more to the promised aid of a much -forgiving and a watchful 
 Lord. It is a system for strong Churches — Churches that are 
 not afraid to let their matters see the light of day — to let 
 their weakest parts and their worst defects be canvassed before 
 all men that they may be mended. It is a system for 
 believing Churches, that are not ashamed or afraid to cherish a 
 high ideal, and to speak of lofty aims, and to work for long 
 and far results, amid all the discouragements arising from 
 sin and folly in their own ranks and around them. It 
 is a system for catholic Christians, who wish not merely 
 to cherish private idiosyncrasies, but to feel themselves identi- 
 fied with the common cause, while they cleave directly to Him 
 whose cause it is. Our fathers felt instinctively that the 
 changes thrust upon them threatened to suppress great elements 
 of good — not mere forms alone, but the life which those forms 
 nourished and expressed. When Episcopacy shall have trained 
 
Tendencies of P^^elacy. 15 
 
 the common people to care, as those of Scotland have cared, 
 for the public interest of Christ's Church, and to connect that 
 care with their own religious life as a part and a fruit of 
 it, then it may afford to smile at the zealous self-defence of 
 Scottish Presbyterianism. 
 
 But, besides all that, there was, and there is, another 
 reason for the strength of the objection to prelatic Episcopacy 
 cherished by Scottish Presbyterians. In itself the difference 
 might be regarded as implying merely a diverse judgment from 
 ours as to the number and relation of office-bearers by whom 
 the Church is to be governed — surely a very small affair, 
 the existence of which need not hinder the warmest recog- 
 nition and co-operation. But Episcopacy is fated, I fear, to 
 bring other things in its train. From the circumstances of 
 its long history ; from the fact of its being established, where 
 it is established, rather on grounds of tradition than of Scrip- 
 ture ; from its being associated with festivals, and ceremonies, 
 and like inventions, methods of Church life which rest on the 
 same traditionary ground ; from its being the . link on which 
 hangs suspended a whole system of salvation by Church and 
 sacraments, which depends on Episcopal succession ; it follows 
 that wherever Episcopacy comes, the rest presses in behind. 
 Episcopacy led up to Popery, though many a bishop fretted and 
 fought against that result. So, though many a sincere and 
 honest Episcopalian Protestant detests the system I am speak- 
 ing of, he can never get rid of it. It comes, and it comes not 
 merely as an element or fact, but as a singularly arrogant and 
 imperious force, demanding for itself and its principles a com- 
 plete ascendancy, and forcing on the Churches where it exists the 
 alternative of submission or of perpetual strife about the very first 
 principles of Protestant truth. It was the perception of this, 
 growing clear to the Scottish mind, that lent more than half its 
 intensity to the revolt of 1638. And the same reason holds 
 still. To keep those superstitions clean out of our Churches, 
 
1 6 First Lecture. 
 
 to disembarrass ourselves of a world of foolish, mischievous, and 
 misleading practice and sentiment, by the very simple process 
 of holding fast to Presbyterianism, is to gain a greater good by 
 adhering to a lesser good. We value them both ; and we 
 know that in the day we resign the one we shall lose the other. 
 We have no temptation to resign Presbyterianism in our 
 day ; but most devoutly do we thank and praise God Almighty, 
 who gave grace to our fathers to maintain it amid the tempta- 
 tions of theirs. And I repeat that in 1637, when our Church 
 resolved that it would be tampered with by Episcopacy no more, 
 not the system itself only, but the train of accompaniments 
 and tendencies that cleave to it, determined their resolution. 
 
 Now, when we take our stand against Episcopacy, and 
 against the multitude of things that go with it, in worship and 
 otherwise, it seems to be thought that we betray a small, scru- 
 pulous spirit. Why object to this one and this other beneficial 
 and useful invention, graceful, poetic, fragrant with the associa- 
 tions of 1500 years? Our answer is, that if we once began we 
 should have plenty of small scruples, such as agitate our friends 
 across the Border. And the only remedy is either to swallow 
 all that any one plausibly proposes, or else to sweep all these 
 things away in a mass, on the ground that whenever we begin 
 to introduce man's inventions into God's worship and service 
 we deviate from the true path. Of these alternatives we adopt 
 the second. There is nothing petty or small about it. Like 
 every other principle, it may be taken up and applied in a small, 
 anxious, casuistical spirit. In itself it is large, broad, and 
 manly. We have nothing to say to that immense apparatus 
 of human inventions, we refuse to have anything to do with 
 them, we simply dismiss them all ; and thereby we are rid of 
 a thousand small questions and petty disputes. 
 
 Here I had intended to speak of the nature and influence 
 of the covenanting movement : but I will reserve it to next 
 lecture. 
 
Scottish Sects and Points. 1 7 
 
 But, before I close this lecture, I wish to advert to one 
 of the things which struck the Dean about us, and that is 
 the smallness of the points on which the Scottish Dissent- 
 ing sects divided. I think he might have told us in the 
 first place, but perhaps he did not know it, that beyond all 
 question the moving influence which led the first Seceders 
 to take up a marked position was no small point, but it was 
 anxiety with respect to the chief matters of the way of sal- 
 vation by Jesus Christ ; neither did they secede even on that 
 ground, but were deposed by the enlightened and liberal 
 Moderates. It was after being deposed they made up their 
 minds that from the position thus providentially assigned them 
 they had no cause to return, all things considered. And as this 
 influence had much to do with their beginning, so it continued 
 to be the secret of their multiplying and the source of their 
 influence, at the very least, as much as any peculiarity what- 
 ever. However, what strikes the Dean about all the Presby- 
 terian sects is, first, that we are all conservative, which is true, 
 resting on the old constitution, and protesting against corrup- 
 tions ; and, secondly, that we divide on small points. So that 
 he can think of nothing like us but the Russian sects. Now, 
 here the Dean did not openly declare all that was in his heart; 
 but I am glad to be able to suj)ply that lack. For, long ago, 
 as it happened, the Dean described the Russian sectaries, 
 coupling the description with an admonition to Free Church- 
 men and Established Churchmen alike to lay the facts to 
 heart. As he still, after long years, dwells on the parallel 
 with a more precise application, I feel it a privilege to hold the 
 mirror up. Hear, therefore, Seceders, and Cameronians still more, 
 what you are like. Here are some of the grounds of the Eastern 
 nonconformity. It is a sin in the Established clergy that they 
 give the benediction with three fingers instead of two. It is 
 a sin to pronounce the name of Jesus with two syllables instead 
 of three, or to repeat the hallelujah thrice instead of once. 
 
 to 
 
1 8 First Lecture. 
 
 All processions ought to go from left to right, according to the 
 sun, not from right to left. It was a most alarming innovation 
 to use the service books, or the revision of the Authorised 
 Version, in which mistakes arising from time and ignorance 
 have been corrected. It is or was a mark of heresy to eat the 
 new unheard-of food, the potato, for that accursed apple of the 
 earth is the very apple with which the Devil tempted Eve. 
 And you can imagine the delight with which the Dean wrote 
 down this closing instance : — " It is a departure from every sound 
 principle of Church and State to smoke tobacco." The ancient 
 czars and patriarchs had forbidden it. " Peter the Great, for that 
 very reason, and for commercial reasons also, tried to force the 
 abhorred article on the now reluctant nation, and asked whether 
 the smoking of tobacco was more wicked than the drinking of 
 brandy. ' Yes,' was the answer, reaching perhaps the highest 
 point of misquotation that the annals of theological perverse- 
 ness presents, ' for it is said, not that which goeth into a man, 
 but that which cometh out of a man, that defileth the man.' " 
 
 Not presuming to add anything to this instructive picture 
 of our friends, I remark that it is perfectly true that Scottish 
 religious bodies were, for a time, in the way of dividing on 
 small points ; it is quite true, and really if I had any means 
 of throwing doubt upon it, I could not have the heart to 
 do it. Who would deny or abridge the peculiarities of that 
 phase of Scottish character and incident to which the Dean 
 pointed ? Who would forego the touches of Scottish life that 
 cluster round those "testimonies?" 
 
 I knew of a couple who lived many years ago in the 
 Upper Ward of Lanarkshire. They were eminently worthy 
 people, and deeply attached to one another. The man was 
 a typical Scottish patriarch — his name is not unknown to Scot- 
 tish literature — his mind overflowed with a sweet reflective 
 piety, as elevated as it was sincere. Of this couple the one 
 was a Burgher, and the other an Anti-Burgher. Cherish- 
 
Btirghers and Anti- Burghers. 19 
 
 ing the deepest confidence in one another, they had never 
 dreamt of drawing one another into any unfaithful compromises 
 by " occasional hearing" that might confuse the clearness of their 
 respective " testimonies." Every Sabbath-day they set off, the 
 wife riding behind 'her husband ; and after depositing her at 
 her own place of worship, he proceeded to his, calling for her 
 on his return. So the years passed. At length the reunion 
 of the denominations was accomplished over the grave of the 
 buried Burgher oath. Both husband and wife were agreed in 
 seeing no difficulty in principle, and they acquiesced readily 
 in the ecclesiastical proceedings. But the difficulty followed. 
 The union of the bodies took away the reason, and indeed the 
 seemliness, of the two going to diverse churches. To go to 
 church together followed, of course;' and it was an utterly dis- 
 comfiting and bewildering experience. Many a time they had 
 mingled fervent prayers together ; but to get down at the same 
 door, to sit in the same seat, to look on at the same Bible, and 
 to go home together, after having heard the same sermon — it 
 was like beginning a new education in their old age. Their 
 very love had realised itself as extending across the dividing 
 line ; and now when the dividing line was taken out of the 
 way, they did not know what to make of it. Neither of them 
 disguised the feeling that they would have gone to the grave 
 in which they were to lie side by side with more content by 
 the old road than by the new one. That union was one of 
 the last providential trials which came to chasten two Christian 
 lives full of love and of good works. 
 
 Well, of those divisions it is enough to say that the parties con- 
 cerned can well afford not to be very careful either to excuse or 
 account for them, can well afford to join in the laugh over any 
 Scottish idiosyncrasies that appeared in them. They stand as 
 a warning of dangers to which our Scottish Churches are exposed. 
 I think the line of things along which they came admits of expla- 
 nation in a way that is instructive, but I cannot trespass on your 
 
20 First Lecture. 
 
 time. I may say this, that the Seceders, when they resolved to 
 keep their separate position, and to state a separate cause, very 
 naturally fell back on the old lines of the Covenants from which 
 battle had been delivered so often. But they took tliem up not 
 merely in their general spirit, but with a' renewal of the old 
 modes of applying them, so as to pledge their members precisely 
 to those documents and to the testimonies which embodied 
 their present application. Hence came a sort of mutual responsi- 
 bility among them for the view taken by each member of new 
 events as they emerged, which was sure to run them into diffi- 
 culties on the point of personal uprightness. In those difficulties 
 they were entangled for a time ; and so came that succession of 
 splits crosswise, which has furnished such a fund of hard Scottish 
 names to lecturers disposed to moralise on Scottish divisions. 
 Those who care to do so may make of them what they can. 
 
 But was it not due to those bodies to remark, that instead of 
 giving themselves up to the dividing tendencies, they still 
 clung to the catholic conception of the Church — they still 
 realised the duty which the Church owes not merely to truth, 
 but to love, and to the just liberties of their members ; and 
 that under these influences they did what Churches have not 
 very often done,— they worked themselves out of the com- 
 plications from which the dividing influence sprang? Was 
 it not worth noticing that a reuniting movement, thoroughly 
 Scottish in its whole principles and working, set in and pre- 
 vailed ? Look across the Border, and see whether anything 
 like this earnest application of mind and heart to realise a 
 worthy Church life exists there. You have there in the 
 Establishment a loose system of Churches, held together by 
 the external bond, which notoriously would fly in pieces if 
 that bond were removed ; and you have a system of Noncon- 
 formist Churches, which, with distinguished excellences, yet 
 escapes all difficulty on this subject by declining to carry 
 Church life, organised upon definite principles and responsi- 
 
A Contrast. 21 
 
 bilities, beyond the limits of the individual congregation. 
 There was nothing to hinder our Dissenters splitting up in- 
 definitely, had they been so disposed. Their history has taken 
 a very different turn. 
 
 Now, though I have been touching mainly minor points, 
 I think it has partly appeared that he who will draw les- 
 sons from our history ought to appreciate and investigate 
 one question. What is the meaning and source of that grave 
 enthusiasm about the Church as a divine institution which 
 has so remarkabty appeared among our Scottish people ? It 
 is an enthusiasm connected not with a hierarchical or sacer- 
 dotal, but with a Christian popular view of the Church. Has 
 Dean Stanley appreciated it? Not at all, but only noted 
 points in which the working of it appeared to him, looking 
 from his point of view, odd or unaccountable. To try to get a 
 little nearer to the heart of this business must occupy us in the 
 remaining lectures. 
 
 But in its intensest and most exclusive forms, this enthu- 
 siasm of ours always maintained a wide catholicity of view with 
 respect to the visible Catholic Church of Christ. This may be 
 best illustrated by a contrast. 
 
 What would have been said if in any of these Dissenting 
 Churches it had been held forth by leading ministers that 
 the salvation of the soul turns on the belief of a point of 
 Church government ? In point of fact, although they were 
 occasionally run into difficulties and divisions, they all held 
 wide and catholic principles respecting the fellowship of salva- 
 tion, and unchurched no Christian body on the mere ground 
 of not holding Avith them. But if they had held forth any 
 such doctrine as I have indicated, how would Dean Stanley 
 most justly have pointed his moral and adorned his tale ! But 
 some one says. Why put such a case ? The thing is out of the 
 question — salvation depend on a point of Church government ! 
 I beg such an one's pardon. There are those among us who 
 
22 First Lecture. 
 
 hold so. There are those who hold that a man who errs on a 
 point of Church government escapes the loss of his soul only if 
 he can present the plea of invincible ignorance. We all hold, 
 I suppose, that deliberate, conscious defiance of God's will, 
 known to be His will, is rebellion, and is incompatible with 
 His favour, whether the point be great or small. But this is 
 quite a different matter. There are those who hold that there 
 is a point of Church government so momentous that error 
 about it excludes from the fellowship of salvation, and leaves a 
 man to God's uncovenanted mercies ; only, if his ignorance be 
 invincible ignorance (not by his own fault), it may be hoped 
 that those unrevealed mercies will overtake his case. Bishop 
 Jolly, the same whom Dean Stanley described, wrote thus : — 
 " Every Christian is bound to maintain communion with his 
 proper bishop, and to join with none but such as are in com- 
 munion with him, . . . that being the only way to be in com- 
 munion with Jesus Christ, the Invisible Bishop and Head of 
 the catholic Church. ... As the one bishop is the principle 
 of unity to a particular Church, by our union with whom we 
 are united to the one Invisible Bishop, Jesus Christ, so schism 
 in any diocese consists in a causeless separation from the com- 
 munion of the one Bishop, whereby the schismatics are sepa- 
 rated from the communion of the Invisible Bishop, and so from 
 the whole catholic Church in heaven or earth." And after- 
 wards, dwelling on the greatness of the sin, and protesting against 
 those who hold these views being thought uncharitable, he 
 says : — " At the same time, they make great allowance, as they 
 trust our compassionate Saviour does also, for the case of those 
 whose invincible ignorance or prejudice will not let ^hem see 
 the truths of these principles." In like manner, in a work by 
 Rev. John Comper, of Aberdeen, published in 1854,'''" the author 
 dwells on the necessity, or at least the assured safety, of attend- 
 ing the ministrations of those who have Christ's commission 
 * See Appendix, A. 
 
Conclusion. 23 
 
 derived to tliem through a regular successive transmission from 
 the apostles; and after describing at large the inefficacy of 
 ministrations not in the line of apostolical succession, he pro- 
 ceeds : — " I anticipate the inquiry, Do you therefore deny sal- 
 vation to all who are not happy enough to live under an 
 apostolically derived and regularly ordained ministry ? . . . I 
 can safely reply we do not assert that salvation cannot be 
 had by any out of the apostles' fellowship. There is such a 
 thing as involuntary, invincible ignorance. . . . He who 
 knows well how far eiTor is the result of the force of early 
 instructions, associations, and other circumstances which uncon- 
 sciously to ourselves give a bias to the mind, and how far it is 
 the fruit of wilful prejudice, intellectual pride, or indocility of 
 heart, will award to each according to his deserts ; saving, as 
 we trust and do not doubt, in His own inscrutable ways, those 
 whose errors are their misfortune and not their fault, being 
 involuntary and invincible ; and as surely — for His Word has 
 affirmed it — consigning the wilful deniers of His one truth to 
 the fate of those who make or believe a lie, which, in the awful 
 words of Holy Scripture, is ' to be damned.' Of individuals, 
 indeed, we judge no man. To his own Master each standeth 
 or falleth." That is, he will not judge who is or is not invin- 
 cibly ignorant. Other materials I have from quarters nearer 
 home, but I forbear to use them. 
 
 Do I say that all this is uncharitable ? Not at all. I make 
 no doubt Bishop Jolly would have gladly rendered any charitable 
 office to the soul or body of any of us. I impute no want of 
 charity. But I say. What a gigantic superstition, and, be it 
 remembered, one by no means peculiarly Scottish — a supersti- 
 tion certainly involving far stranger views of God and of Christ, 
 and of the administration of salvation in the world, than can 
 be charged on the Church principles of the Cameronians or the 
 Seceders, or even the Free Church itself 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 The vision of the Scottish Church that floats before the eye of 
 the Dean of Westminster is a vision of the Church militant. To 
 him it appears militant, not only in the sense of withstanding and 
 enduring what an evil world might lay upon it, but in the sense 
 of standing ready, with a peculiar appetite for combat, to call to a 
 reckoning any one who may cross its path. Here he finds his 
 main clue, as regards the question of the Church's independence. 
 Looking at that principle merely as a principle, he finds it very 
 difficult to account for. It grew partly, he says, out of con- 
 vergent circumstances and a democratic spirit. But he is not 
 very happy in selecting his " circumstances." Much is to be 
 ascribed, he thinks, to the influences that arose when the 
 covenanted Church and the covenanted State fell asunder and 
 quarrelled. Unfortunately, the doctrine was most clearly, 
 carefully, and elaborately defined, just at the very time when 
 they had not quarrelled, but were in the strictest friendship. 
 The doctrine of the Church's independence could not be very 
 ripe, he thinks, in the early covenanting days, for in those 
 days the Church taught a quite different doctrine, viz., that 
 the State had a great deal to do with religion. But what will 
 he say when he learns that these outrageous Scots taught both 
 doctrines, and even developed them side by side in no fewer 
 than a hundred and eleven propositions ? After all, however, 
 the passion for national independence ,and the passion for 
 antagonism he finds to be the main sources of it. So that, 
 if I may translate the Dean into the language of our worthy 
 
What is the Church? 25 
 
 fathers themselves, the liberty of the Church was a plant that 
 grew Avholly on the stock of old Adam. This is all we can make 
 of it. And a sad mistake our history must have been, for 
 the most part, if this be so. For his own part, the Dean's 
 theory is very simple. The best state of the Church is to be 
 regulated by the wisdom of Parliament. The old interpreta- 
 tion of a figure in the Revelations was that the Church, crowned 
 with twelve stars, signifying the apostolic doctrine, has the moon, 
 the region and representative of mutation, under her feet. But 
 the Dean crowns her with the moon, and what becomes of the 
 twelve stars we shall see perhaps in next lecture. 
 
 For the present we speak of the Church. 
 
 In the presence of this great gulf between the Dean and 
 us, will the audience forgive me if I halt a little, and try 
 to get footing and survey the position before we proceed ? 
 Since the difficulties are so great, we must look well about 
 us. Is the Church of Christ a distinct society? Indeed, is it 
 a society? Was it meant to be such? Was it constituted as 
 such? Was it furnished with means and institutions, whereby 
 it could exist and be — could have a mind, express a mind, 
 and apply its mind as a society ? Is it distinct, as such, from 
 other societies, say the State? When we are aiming at comply- 
 ing with God's revealed will about the Church, are we to aim at 
 what I have now expressed? are we to take that to be our duty 
 and set it before us, as part of our ideal and our goal ? 
 
 It has been a prevailing conviction among Christian people that 
 the Church of Christ was to be a society, having its o^vn basis, its 
 own peculiar life, its own constitution and means of action, and 
 supplying some uses and ends not unimportant to the world. 
 If so, there is no escaping the question what sort of society it 
 should be, and on what principles it should be regulated. 
 That is a question which will exercise the Avorld — not the Church 
 itself only, but the world too — in the coming years. 
 
 Well, but if we mean that, let us understand what we mean. 
 
26 Second Lecture. 
 
 According to some people, according to Dean Stanley, for instance, 
 we must take it that tlie Church is not so much a society, but 
 rather a dispersion. It is the discrete aggregate of Christians, 
 or rather of people touched more or less by Christian sentiments 
 and influences, existing in the world, or in any particular 
 country. It may indeed have formed itself into various 
 organised forms of Churches, hierarchies, and the like, to good 
 effects and to bad, at various times. And these organisations, 
 or some of them, have been in a sense necessary and proper. 
 But still the best state of the Church is that it should dissolve 
 itself as an element or flavour in the general community, and 
 that the representation of it, as well as the regulation of it, 
 should devolve upon the organ of the general community, i. e., 
 the State. This is the goal. All other arrangements are 
 therefore provisional and inferior. 
 
 One ground on which this scheme tries to rest itself, in a con- 
 fused way, is the general impression conveyed by this question. 
 After all, are not the Christians the great thing — the Christians 
 with their Christian belief and their Christian practice? If you 
 have got the Christians influencing the community, and influenc- 
 ing one another, as they cannot but do, is not that the great thing? 
 What more do you need or should you care for ? Well, I reply, 
 being a Protestant, Yes, that is the great thing. In those Chris- 
 tians, those believers, whom spiritual bonds link to Christ and to 
 one another, stands that great eternal Church invisible, which, 
 frail and fleeting as it may seem, is steadfast as the being of 
 the Son of God. Whatever Churches may be, or may not be, let 
 believers be the salt of the earth. But then most Christians 
 believe that, in virtue of their obedience to Christ, one of their 
 first duties is to join outwardly in society with other Christians 
 for some appointed ends, whereby they become visible as a 
 society ; and the operations of this society, in point of fact, 
 were meant to bear most directly on the continual maintenance 
 and reproduction of that invisible Church. Now, if it still be 
 
Church Organisation. 27 
 
 said, Ah, well, but the Christians — the Christians are the great 
 thing — then I say this : If you choose — if you think it scrip- 
 tural and right — do without the Church visible altogether. 
 Dismiss it and be done with it. Only in that case don't 
 meddle farther with it, and don't pretend to speak about it. 
 There arc Christians, earnest people, whose views amount practi- 
 cally to a renunciation of all visible Churches. That is a 
 conceivable plan; if it is ever generally carried out, it does not 
 need much of a prophetic gift to see what will come of it. 
 Take that plan if you will ; have nothing but the individual 
 Christianity, and such benevolent associations as may rise up 
 out of it. But if you are to have the Church, why, then you 
 must have regard to what the Church was meant to be. 
 
 Now, the question about the Church which comes before us 
 to-night is more general and more important than any question 
 of Church government merely in itself is. It is a question for 
 all Churches, on the assumption that they believe themselves 
 to be organised and governed in a lawful way. But questions 
 of Church government do get mixed up with that which alone 
 concerns us to-night in this manner — Churches may be organised 
 in such a fashion that they could not possibly get on, if they 
 were set to do Church work, without help and without control. 
 Hence the members of those Churches are biassed in favour of 
 vague and confused views, and they try to bias others. The 
 answer to any representations coming from this quarter is to 
 say, Go and get organised better, and then we will speak to 
 you. For instance, the Church of England, for the purpose of 
 forming and expressing its own life through its own organs, is 
 clearly the worst organised Church in the world, ^vith the 
 exception perhaps of some of the Lutheran Churches. It 
 would be a mockery of common sense to trust the uncontrolled 
 government of that great Church to a score of bishops, or to 
 such a body as Convocation now is. But then while German 
 writers modestly confess that the Lutheran Church organisation 
 
28 Second Lecture. 
 
 is the weakest and least defensible part of their whole system, 
 members of the Church of England come down here full of the 
 impressions derived from their own system, or no system, and 
 would have us to copy them. They know so surely that to 
 get the Church absorbed in the State and governed by the 
 State is far the best way ; no other system will do half so well ; 
 indeed, no other system will do at all. The short answer — 
 but, of course, it would have to be very politely expressed — 
 but the substantial answer is — Go home again and get your 
 own Church organised. If Episcopacy be the right way of it, 
 keep it, and organise your Church with bishops ; but put 
 it in working order ; if you can't trust the clergy, take in the 
 laity ; if Episcopacy alone won't do, eke it out with Presby- 
 terianisui ; and if that won't do either, go on to Congrega- 
 tionalism, and help it out with that. Do this, and make a 
 beginning even in this nineteenth century. But if you won't, 
 then don't come to us, who have been working our Churches 
 these 800 years, to tell us, like the fox in the fable, that 
 your own defects are a providential blessing which have quali- 
 fied you to be the model for all mankind. 
 
 Now, not in our bewildered country only, but even elsewhere, 
 a suspicion Jias visited the minds of Christians, that this society, 
 the Church, ought to be free — more particularly that it ought not 
 to be subjected, and ought not to subject itself, to the authorita- 
 tive control of the State in the discharge of those functions which 
 are allotted to it by Christ, To speak of Scotland only, one of 
 Kuox's companions wrote these words to the Regent : — " There 
 is a spiritual jurisdiction and power which God hath given unto 
 his Kirk and to those who bear office therein ; and there is a 
 temporal power given of God to kings and civil magistrates. 
 Both the powers are of God, and most agreeing to the fortify- 
 ing of one another, if they be right used. But when the cor- 
 ruption of man entereth in, confounding the offices, . . . then 
 confusion folio weth in all estates." Knox himself embodied 
 
The Unintelligible Question. 29 
 
 his views of the subject rather in practice than in theory. 
 Under his guidance the Church acted with the freest conscious- 
 ness of her own competency, while at the same time she 
 showed the utmost anxiety to get the State to act along Avith 
 her. At that time no one could foresee the questions that 
 might arise regarding the Church's freedom, and the form in 
 which they might arise. Very soon, however, they began to 
 come into view, and from that day to this Scotland has been 
 familiar with them. The incidents have altered, and the 
 changes in men's views of toleration, as well as on other matters, 
 have somewhat varied the pressure of particular difficulties 
 and of particular arguments. But in all essential respects, in 
 those respects in which it ought to occupy thinking men, it is 
 the same question as when the opposition to the Church's 
 liberties was carried on under the banner of the royal supre- 
 macy. 
 
 But now, before Ave go further, Ave have a great difficult}^ 
 to face. HoAv I can decently ask such an audience to join 
 me in attempting it, is a hard question. I am to make 
 plain what this liberty of the Church can possibly mean. Yet 
 to Dean Stanley it is either utterly unintelligible — and in 
 that case how can it be made plain either to me or to you ? — or 
 it is Hildebrandism, that is to say, rank Popery — in Avhich 
 case, if I dare to utter it, surely I shall as Avell deserve a 
 " cutty stool " as if I had even sung mass in your " lug." In 
 this strait I shall, at all events, try to be short. We say that 
 the Church of Christ, as a society, acting through its OAvn 
 organs and guides, is entitled and bound to have a conscience 
 about the doing of those things Avhich are the peculiar work 
 of Churches. This conscience is to be regulated by a regard 
 to God's revealed will, and not to accept authority imposing 
 obligation to obey from any other quarter; and the Church 
 is entitled and bound in all the things specified ahvays to give 
 effect to this conscientious judgment. 
 
30 Second Lecture. 
 
 Those things which the Church is thus freely to do, subject 
 to the bidding of no master on earth, are those things which 
 Christ set it up to do. As to all other matters, the Church 
 and the members of it are simply to obey lawful rulers. But 
 Christ delivered to His Church truth to be confessed and taught, 
 and also work to be done in the forming, maintaining, and loos- 
 ing of various relations, and in seeing to the performance of 
 various services. These, as we fanatical Scottish men say, are 
 the sphere in which the Church must not bind herself to take 
 authoritative direction from any quarter but one. 
 
 Now this may be true or false, absurd or sane; but to say that 
 it is difficult to understand is what, in a Scotsman, we should call 
 affectation. In the Dean one does not know what to call it. 
 Perhaps civilisation. As to calling it Hildebrandism, we shall 
 say a little about that by and by. 
 
 Yet the Dean finds it so difficult to imagine the principle I 
 have stated taking root in any body of men as a genuine prin- 
 ciple, that he is forced, as we have seen, to account for the 
 whole long struggle as merely one form of our national jealousy 
 of foreign domination. It is the same temper, he thinks, the 
 same principle, the same cause. The Scotsman would not 
 have his national way of it altered. When a question in 
 dispute concerned his Church, he cast about for a theological 
 pretext, and persuaded himself to believe it. But that was 
 merely putting on an ecclesiastical uniform for ecclesiastical 
 battle — changing the kilt, as it were, for the celebrated blue 
 cloak. Really, it was the old secular national self-assertion 
 applying itself to the new battle. Nolumus snores Scotice 
 mutari. And so certain is this, that on the strength of it he 
 appeals pathetically to the Seceders. You have been per- 
 suaded, he says, to become voluntaries, to cut loose from Church 
 and State connection. That, on your part, is so great a mis- 
 take that it is a kind oi felo de se. The Seceders, I may say, 
 have often been told that, but now they must hear it on a quite 
 
New Lights on Histojy. 3 1 
 
 new ground. The very bottom, the Dean argues, of your 
 assertion of independence, if you trace it to the bottom, is not 
 Church, but State, not ecclesiastical, but patriotic ; it is simply 
 the old Scottish privilege, which is not of grace, but of nature, 
 the privilege, namely, of being always in the right. Hear 
 that, Andrew Melville and George Gillespie, Ebenezer Erskine 
 and Adam Gib ! 
 
 Who will despair of progress or deny new light ? Here 
 are Andrew Melville, who came from Geneva, formed in 
 the school which Calvin had left to the presidency of Beza, 
 and that circle of genial and able men who went with Mel- 
 ville into banishment. Here are Henderson, and Gillespie, 
 and Dickson; and Rutherford, as interminable in distinctions 
 as he is rich in poetry and feeling ; and Durham, whose favourite 
 field is not Church questions, but who touches them often, and 
 always with a master's hand, and many more, contemporary and 
 subsequent, whom I do not name. They thought they had a 
 principle in their minds. Really they did. They were con- 
 firmed in that opinion by finding that they agreed with one 
 another about it. They also thought, or were under an im- 
 pression, that they loved that principle as scriptural. In their 
 own apprehension also they felt bound to contend for it — they 
 thought that was what they contended for. Great numbers of 
 their countrymen also were under the imagination that an 
 agreement with these men had come to pass within them. 
 Some wrote books and some read them, and some even an- 
 swered them ; some went to banishment, some went to battle, 
 some went to the hills and were shot, or captured and hanged, 
 or starved, thinking in their own minds they had a belief, which 
 they could not deny as long as they had it. On the strength 
 of the idea that they were contending for this principle, men 
 have differed about them ever since; some have blessed theui 
 for it, and some have banned them. Down comes the Dean 
 of Westminster, and he tells us, Pooh ! principle ! not a bit of 
 
32 Second LectiLre. 
 
 it ; of course the honest men thought a principle was at the 
 bottom of their minds, and of their battle ; quite a mistake ; 
 fought just because they were Scotsmen ; had to fight; couldn't 
 help it ; gallant fellows, though ; and then he takes a survey of 
 us from Andrew Melville's days down to the Disruption; and 
 as he marks each successive trial of strength and endurance he 
 choruses. Magnificent ! what independence ! what sturdiness ! 
 what courage ! magnificent ! 
 
 Yes, I reply, very magnificent ; but if this be the true view, oh, 
 what fools ! what utter, arrant fools ! what unchristian fools, that 
 cursed the history of their country with the miseries, the divi- 
 sions, the arrested development, the interrupted Christian activi- 
 ties, not for a principle, not even for a false principle, but for a 
 mere doggedness which only fell into the mistake of supposing 
 that it served a principle ! What an array of fighting fools, from 
 Andrew Melville down to the greater name of Thomas Chalmers ! 
 And how great a man the Dean of Westminster, who has seen 
 through them all ! 
 
 And what is the ground of it? How had the patriotism 
 of Scotland occasion to betray men into so wonderful a mis- 
 take? When the question began, it began on Scottish soil, 
 between Scottish men. James wished arrangements made 
 which the Church disapproved; the Church stood upon her 
 right ; James stood on his supremacy. What he proposed, 
 and what he professed would content him, was the revival of 
 the arrangements entered into in the year 1572. Those had 
 been Scottish arrangements; the sanction of Knox himself could 
 be plausibly claimed for them; there was nothing to arouse mere 
 Scottish jealousy. And unless men had believed that there was 
 a principle on which they ought to stand, we have no reason to 
 believe that any mere desire to thwart the King and to have 
 their own way would have been allowed to create the diffi- 
 culties and the sufferings that followed. 
 
 It is nothing to the point to say that political circumstances 
 
Littleness. 33 
 
 existed in Scotland that tended to suggest the idea of a claim 
 for the liberty of the Church. It is a mistake to confound the 
 essential principles of a cause with the circumstances which may 
 have favoured its development. Political circumstances favoured 
 the Scottish Reformation. Much more did political circum- 
 stances not merely favour, but in a manner determine, the course 
 of the Reformation in England ; and yet neither in Scotland nor 
 in England was the Reformation essentially a political movement 
 or a political passion. 
 
 As little does it affect the merits of the case to say that 
 feelings of patriotism reinforced the energies of the Church's 
 struggle. Very likely they did ; and when Dean Stanley speaks 
 of the temper formed in the wars of independence reappearing 
 in the Church conflicts, I have nothing to object. I suppose 
 that for the maintenance of any kind of independence, secular 
 or sacred, some natural staunchness is a help. God can make 
 the weakest strong ; yet that which Burns calls a " stalk of 
 carle hemp in a man" is a gift not to be despised. If the 
 Scots had any of it, they needed it all. 
 
 In this as in other connections the Dean is fond of pointing 
 out what he deems the littleness of the questions that some- 
 times arose. I grant it to be very clear that, in defending the 
 liberty of the Church, if the cause itself be great, the points 
 which become the occasion of raising it must sometimes be 
 little. That depends on the assailants. They are generally 
 skilful enough to try to make their onset on a point that seems 
 small, knowing that so they can make the defenders seem 
 more punctilious and unreasonable. Besides that, however, 
 it is quite true — let us conceal nothing that is true — men may 
 be small as well as points. You cannot avert the presence of 
 human infirmity. If you discuss questions, you cannot always 
 avert casuistry ; if you call men to have a conscience and to 
 exercise it, you cannot always avert scrupulosity ; if you call 
 men to take up responsibilities, you cannot always avert fussi- 
 
34 Second Lecture. 
 
 ness and exaggeration ; if you call men to claim privileges and 
 power, you cannot always avert arrogance, impatience, injustice. 
 What share of these faults our fathers showed I am not careful 
 to determine. They had their share doubtless. But here I 
 will leave generals, and take one of the Dean's instances, that 
 I may try in that instance whether the cause in which Scot- 
 land contended should be deemed small or great. 
 
 Those who heard or have read the Dean's lectures will remem- 
 ber his description of the crisis in Edinburgh in 1637 — the poor 
 Bishop and Dean, with their innocent service-boo|c ; the insane 
 fury of the women; the foregone conclusion that Popery, apos- 
 tacy, and all manner of evils were impending ; the outburst of 
 epithets; and the final explosion, that proved critical for so many 
 interests. To so fine a point are things brought, that a young 
 man in a corner saying Amen proves in the last analysis to be the 
 veritable cor'pus delicti. That was what provoked the women 
 and brought on the catastrophe. Who could have thought it ? 
 A young man said Amen, in a corner, and forthwith Scotland 
 rose up and revolutionised three kingdoms. What a people ! 
 May not Scotland stand still with horror, even at the distance of 
 two hundred and thirty years, and moan with Macbeth — 
 
 " I could not say Amen 
 When they did say God bless us." 
 
 And if the Dean should kindly say, with Lady Macbeth — 
 
 " Consider it not so deeply," 
 
 must we not still reply — 
 
 " But wherefore could I not pronounce Amen I 
 I had most need of blessing : and Amen 
 Stuck in my throat !" 
 
 How impressively does the Dean end his account by remind- 
 ing us that the " main offence which provoked these terrible 
 manifestations might now be repeated, one might almost say with 
 impunity, in every Church of Scotland, Established, Free, or 
 Secedincf !" 
 
Edinburgh in idjy. 35 
 
 Well, now, I will not make mucli of the fact, believed 
 then, and believed still, that these innovations were but 
 steps in a progress; and that the progress was to be, under' 
 Laud's inspiration, either to Popery or to a point so near 
 Popery that it would not be difficult, after it was reached, to 
 complete the baneful transformation. That was what made 
 people's minds so electrical about the . mass. But I will not 
 dwell on it. Look at the obvious facts. I mentioned in my 
 last lecture what the experience of the Scottish Church had 
 been for a generation before the date in question. What hap- 
 pened now ? Under the authority of the Crown there came 
 forth, first of all, a Book of Canons, and then a Prayer-book ; 
 and I shall not dispute about the character of the Prayer-book. 
 Look only at what is indisputable. The Book of Canons might 
 seem at first to bear hard on the ministry only. It involved 
 and required an explicit acknowledgment of the royal supre- 
 macy. By what it contained, and by what it omitted, it could be 
 shown to provide for sweeping away the remaining framework 
 of a Presbyterian Church, and it laid the Church completely at 
 the feet of the bishojos. But more than that, it denounced 
 excommunication on all who should deny the king's supre- 
 macy, on all who should say that the Liturgy contained anything 
 contrary to Scripture, on all who should deny the authority of 
 Church government by archbishops and bishops. Hereby the 
 people, as well as ministers, were exposed to the severest oppres- 
 sion at the hands of the bishops' courts. A man must not have 
 a mind nor speak his mind about the worship of God without 
 incurring excommunication. And excommunication in those 
 days was no light matter. I have not really had time to look 
 up the point, but I believe it inferred confiscation of goods for 
 all who did not within a certain time make their peace with 
 the Church. And then, which is the main matter, there was 
 the Prayer-book. It was imposed without the least pretence 
 of examination or sanction by any organised body or court 
 
36 Second Lechire, 
 
 representing the mind of the Scottish Church; no discussions 
 in Assembly, or Synod, or Presbytery ; nothing of the informal 
 jirocess by which in our Churches the real mind is formed and 
 gathered on important questions — the conferences of thoughtful 
 and serious men with their elders and with the minister, the 
 explanations asked and given, the doubts offered or cleared 
 away. Here was the right claimed and used to revolutionise 
 on the largest scale the worship of God in which the people 
 continually joined. It was done in defiance of their known 
 wishes, and under the inspiration of a theological tendency 
 which the whole people abhorred. 
 
 It was Avhen things were in this state, the whole country 
 getting into fennent, deputations coming to Edinburgh to 
 supplicate and remonstrate, all ranks organising and combining 
 —it was then that the use of this Liturgy was begun in the 
 High Church — taking place for the first time in public service, 
 and claiming the acquiescence of those who worshipped there. 
 The outburst was merely the accidental and yet inevitable 
 explosion, among passionate people, of a feeling which pos- 
 sessed the gravest and wisest men. It was no more dignified 
 than any explosion is apt to be. Nobody need applaud it; 
 but nobody need moralise over it. As to the young man in 
 the corner, I don't know what he was saying Amen to. I 
 make no doubt he meant nothing but good ; but if he was 
 thought to be saying Amen to the imposition of the Canons 
 and the Liturgy, I don't wonder that any one who was near 
 him should lay hands on his throat. 
 
 All honour to the firmness of the people who said that this 
 should not be done, who resolutely stopped it ; and all honour 
 to the discernment of the people who saw that the principle 
 here embodied was false and dangerous in all its applications, 
 and resolved that henceforth the Church should not be called 
 upon to sanction or submit to institutions not in her own 
 judgment warranted by God's Word. 
 
Was the Cause Worthyf 37 
 
 I ask if this uprising of the Scottish people is worthily 
 spoken of by the Dean, not in reference to its manliness — he 
 admires that — but as to the worthiness of the cause that was 
 put to issue ? 
 
 When those who adhered to the Commons of England rose in 
 arms, what was the quarrel? Various causes mingled; but 
 no doubt with many of them the decisive point was this, 
 that taxes should not be raised in England without the 
 consent of Parliament. All other powers and prerogatives 
 hinged on that one. Would it be thought well in a his- 
 torian to say of those who died in that quarrel, that they 
 threw away their lives for a matter of half-a-crown, perhaps, or 
 five shillings ? — for the question, whichever way decided, was 
 never like to concern them to more than that amount. Do we 
 not honour the men who stood for a principle that concerned 
 the destinies of England, all the more because their personal 
 stake was small ? Did not these men do well to judge that if 
 the sum was small, the principle might be great ? But I say 
 fearlessly, which was the nobler cause, or if you will, which was 
 the nobler nation — the nation that fired at the thought of 
 taxes raised by power without the consent of Parliament ; or 
 tbe nation that fired at the thought of worship thrust in by 
 force without the consent of the Church ? 
 
 It was this feeling which expressed itself in that great 
 movement, the signing of the Covenant. There was the 
 deepest conviction in men's minds that the course of things 
 which had been submitted to in the past was fraught with 
 intolerable mischief. The Crown forcing on and the Church 
 dubiously and unwillingly submitting to arrangements which 
 the Church judged unscriptural and unedifying — this was 
 a state of things in itself wrong and demoralising, lead- 
 ing to a moral paralysis of the Church's best energies, 
 and sure to multiply inward division and distrust. More- 
 over, it was becoming plain that no one could tell to what 
 
38 Second Lecture. 
 
 results the process might be forced on. Men knew very well 
 that in making a stand the risks might be great, and that the 
 odds must be heavy. But having for a moment the opportunity 
 to breathe free air, and to utter common convictions and re- 
 solves, it was a grand impulse which led them to join together 
 and to pledge themselves to one another in a common recognition 
 of this, as duty to God, that the system they had known should 
 end, and that what they agreed in regarding as destitute of 
 Scripture warrant should henceforth, as far as their power 
 extended, be shut out, and kept out. In time past they had 
 finessed and paltered, and had halted between two opinions. 
 They had felt the effect of that. Now henceforth they would 
 keep a clean conscience, and walk straight upon principle, 
 agi'eed upon by all. Lower motives mingled with the higher, 
 no doubt. For all that, it was a grand impulse. In the thrill 
 that went through Scotland the bulk of the nation felt itself 
 one, as it perhaps never did before or since. We have the 
 testimony of an enemy to the " great joy " with which, through 
 burgh and land, the Covenant was signed by all kinds of people. 
 Surely it is a striking thing that what so united the nation was a 
 resolution that God's authority, discerned by themselves in His 
 Word, that and nothing else, .should set up institutions in their 
 Church. That principle was written then on the fibre of the 
 Scottish people in a manner that is legible enough yet. May it 
 never be obliterated. 
 
 So far most Scottish Presbyterians will be agreed. Beyond 
 this I daresay a great variety of opinions will emerge. For 
 myself, I think it only candid to express my belief that the use 
 made of the Solemn League and Covenant, when it was made, 
 in theory at least, a test of membership in Church and State, was 
 to a certain extent '"" unwarrantable and proved to be a mistake. 
 
 * I say to a certain extent ; because I admit the right of States, and 
 Churches too, on particular occasions, when they are placed on their defence, 
 to subject their officials to tests which it might not be warrantable permanently 
 to maintain. 
 
Applications of the Covenant. 39 
 
 The temptation, however, was of the very strongest kind ; 
 strongest for the strongest and most resolute minds in that diffi- 
 cult time. To resist the influence of the Crown in Scotland, 
 taken by itself, might prove in the long run hard enough. But 
 if England backed the Crown, if the Crown gained and held 
 England in the name of the supremacy and Prelacy, what would 
 the result be ? 16 GO, and the years that followed, showed what 
 it might be. Now Scotland was still thrilling with the surprise 
 of its awakening, its unity, its sudden resoluteness, both about 
 the basis and the end of action. But did not England itself, all 
 that was best in England, seem, in that memorable Parliament, 
 to be verging towards the same temper and contemplating the 
 same results ? Might not England's action and Scotland's be 
 brought into the same line ? Might not England thrill with 
 an impulse as thorough and mastering as Scotland's had been ? 
 Might not the nations be bound to each other to achieve 
 delivery? For so great an end ought not Scotland to offer to 
 pledge every atom of manhood and resource that was in her, 
 that, joined with the better part of England, with one great 
 effort she might win the victory? The place given to the 
 Solemn League and Covenant very much represented this dead- 
 lift effort to get Prelacy and, as it was believed. Popery, dis- 
 lodged from influence in the three kingdoms by a great heave. 
 It was a " most powerful mean," so it was described, for 
 "purging and preserving" the Protestant religion. Therefore, 
 the State was to go through with it, and pledge every man to 
 the cause. And the Church could hardly be behind the State 
 in a case of that kind. 
 
 But the effect was that the nation proved to have pledged 
 itself to a work beyond its strength, for England proved not 
 at all to be of the temper which covenanting implied. And 
 since the requisite consent in England could not be main- 
 tained, the task was really as much beyond Scotland's rights 
 as it was beyond her strength. Yet Scotland was sworn 
 
40 Second Lecture. 
 
 to persevere with the enterprise. Then even for Scotland 
 itself difficulties were sure to arise — difficulties for the State, 
 from imposing so peculiar a test of citizenship ; and difficulties 
 for the Church in carrying through the theory that all her 
 members were so pledged, and must carry out their pledge con- 
 sistently. These difficulties appeared in a very edifying form 
 when Charles II. came over from Breda, and appeared among the 
 Scots as their own covenanted king. No wit of man, not 
 even of the Scot, could resolve such a problem as that. Imme- 
 diate entanglements followed, which got worse and worse, till 
 Scotland was utterly paralysed and bewildered. And yet that 
 policy, mistaken as I think the event proved it, had a strange 
 mixture of effects. In so far as it embodied in the most 
 striking form the feeling that the line of action indicated in the 
 Covenants was the true, and safe, and upright line for Presby- 
 terians, the line for a man to pledge himself to with all he had, 
 it helped to inspire that tenacious, long-enduring, indomitable 
 resolution which won the day at last. No wonder that in those 
 after days of confusion and division — days so trying that it 
 must have been a bitter thing merely to live in them — men 
 looked back wistfully to the time when, whatever the appre- 
 hensions and the dangers, the bulk of the nation moved with 
 one impulse, and vowed to labour and to suffer together. But 
 in so far as it seemed to pledge Church and State by oath to a 
 definite Scottish or British constitution, irrevocable and un- 
 alterable, it entangled men unwarrantably, and led to mis- 
 understandings that never could be cleared up. 
 
 And so there is no difficulty in producing from the martjrr time, 
 along with the basis of clear conviction on which the sufferers 
 stood, evidences enough of the painful intricacies through which 
 some of them strove to hammer out the scheme, at once complete 
 and consistent, of their own duty, and their Church's, and their 
 nation's. Now, I honour first of all the clear, broad truth on 
 which those sufferers stood, and which mainly sustained their 
 
Martyrdoms and Absurdity. ' 41 
 
 courage, which deserved and -won the sacrifices they made; 
 but as I read theii' quaint, earnest reasonings about the whole 
 detail of a position of things so entangled, beAvildering, and 
 depressing, I confess that my eyes grow dim with tears — tears 
 of admiring sympathy for those who held yn through all, 
 striving their best to clear an honest path through endless 
 perplexities and temptations — firm upon this point, as one of 
 the noblest of them phrased it, that they had " sufficient points 
 to suffer for." " Honour," says the Dean, " honour to those 
 Scottish Churchmen for their devotion of themselves, not only 
 to death, but even at times to absurdity;" and no one can 
 doubt that, in his view, the absurdity is a very considerable 
 element in the whole performance. Well, now, I will take 
 leave to ask a question. I am not going, I think, to say any- 
 thing unfah. I hate the system of insinuating a calumny 
 which one dare not openly express. The Dean has as fall 
 right to receive credit at our hands for perfect sincerity 
 and integrity as any of us at the liand of another. And 
 therefore I say beforehand, that whatever sacrifice the Dean's 
 conscience might require of him in the maintenance of 
 candour and honour, I am not to doubt he would make it 
 freely, God's gi-ace helping him, which is needed by us all. 
 But what I cannot but ask is this — "SMiat is that thing, what is 
 that doctrinal truth, in behalf of which the Dean's conscience, 
 according to his present lights, would lead him to think that 
 people ought to undergo martyrdom, and might do so without 
 absurdity ? Where would he draw the line and make a stand ? 
 I declare most seriously I don't know. I have not the least 
 idea. I don't see how any one can draw an inference or hazard 
 a guess upon the subject. The DeJin appears to me to be 
 wonderfully able to hold both sides on most theological ques- 
 tions. Judging from the intense ardour of his demonstrations 
 during the last three years, I have a kind of impression, but I 
 am not sure, that in his judgment in behalf of Erastianism a 
 
42 * Second Lecture. 
 
 man might lay down his life joyfully at the scaffold or the stake. 
 If not for that, then I am at an utter loss. 
 
 Ah, but martyrdom in a good cause is the life-blood of the 
 Church and of the world. It is that which stems the current 
 of an unbelieving epicureanism and of a scoffing scepticism, 
 and rings into the hearts of men the conviction that the faith 
 cannot die, cannot be killed, cannot be conquered, lives on in 
 the strength of an unseen Lord, and has its coming victory 
 sure. It is not the less impressive — all the more, I think — 
 because the men who suffer and overcome have plainly enough 
 their human infirmities and defects. Smooth insinuations about 
 absurdity are not going to cheat us of the memories of our 
 Scottish martyrs. 
 
 The Dean, making another effort to find out the meaning of 
 this mysterious Scottish principle, says that it was intended, no 
 doubt, to represent, though in a very distorted manner, the in- 
 defeasible superiority of moral over material force, of conscience 
 over power, of might against right. This is only about half of 
 what it represents. It represents also this, viz., the conviction 
 that Christian people, joining together in an instituted society 
 called the Church, are called and bound, and may expect to be 
 helped and enabled, all of them, and each one in his OAvn place, 
 members, elders, pastors, and so forth, to act out the Lord's 
 will as a society. I repeat, as a society; that at all events they 
 must try to do it; and their doing of it must be guided by truth 
 and animated by faith all through. Therefore, they must hold 
 themselves free to do that thing, out of conscience and faith — 
 free, not as individuals only, but as a society. 
 
 Here it is that the Dean and we diverge, and here is the point 
 that is utterly impenetrable to his understanding. It seems to 
 him that all reasonable exigencies are satisfied if it is granted that 
 an individual man is not to do or say what is against his own 
 conscience. He grants if any such thing is required, he must 
 refuse; if it is made the condition of any society in which he is, 
 
Worth of the Idea. ' 43 
 
 he can leave it and keep his conscience clear, unless, indeed, 
 on second thoughts he comes to think that he had better not 
 make so much fuss about it. To conceive it to be a point of 
 conscience that the society, the Church, should as such be 
 responsible, be free ; that it should, on common principles, and 
 in the use of institutions agreed upon as authentic, ripen its 
 mind, express its mind, give effect to its mind about its own 
 affairs — this is to the Dean impossible. I am not here to argue 
 about it. But if I have not already wearied the audience, I 
 would like at this place to say a few words about the moral 
 significance and effect of this idea — what it is worth, in short. 
 
 The life and being of Christianity, which is first of all in 
 Jesus Christ our risen Saviour, is doubtless to be found next in 
 the actual faith and love of individual men and women, saved 
 by gi'ace, learning Christ's will, and doing it. That is the 
 main, most essential thing; no Scottish peasant, whose heart 
 beat true to his Church's teaching, ever placed the Church first. 
 The first thing is to be in Christ ; and the next thing is to be 
 like Him in all manner of conversation. 
 
 But then it was our Lord's intention and is part of His 
 revealed will to have in the world a society, having its own 
 peculiar life, and doing its own peculiar work. It was to be con- 
 stituted, not by force or necessity, but by the influence which 
 Christ's call should prove to have in the minds of men. It 
 was to express itself in its distinctness as a form of force and 
 influence in the world, in addition to the influence of individual 
 Christians. For this purjDose an appointed sphere was given to 
 it, of truth to be confessed and taught by the society, and of 
 work to be done ; not superseding the confession nor the work 
 of the individual Christian as such, but resting on that, drawing 
 strength from that, lending order and method to that, rein- 
 forcing that in turn. In this sphere the society was to act 
 consciously, unitedly, learning its lessons and finding its way to 
 its work, operating with the force and weight of a society, amid 
 
44 ' Second Lecher e. 
 
 the currents of the world's affairs, striving to keep itself true 
 to its own ideal, and to win the world for Christ. Now, at 
 this point I admit that if everybody who has received a touch 
 of the civilisation of Christian countries ought to Le recognised 
 as of this society, in full standing and with equal rights — and 
 if the faith uttered by the society may equally include all 
 opinions which anybody likes to hold — and if its institutions 
 are to be any institutions which the State happens to think 
 will best accommodate them all — then undoubtedly I should 
 have difficulty in showing any important good object to be 
 secured by maintaining my views against Dr. Stanley's. 
 But if these views are not accepted, then the problem re- 
 mains for this society, so constituted, to express its peculiar 
 life and genius, and to perform its peculiar functions. 
 Now, observe that the benefit arising or to arise from this 
 society, its power for good, depends very much indeed on 
 certain difficulties which it meets because it is a society, 
 and has to overcome. It is easy enough perhaps for me 
 to come to my own conclusion as to what I can declare to 
 be true, or what I ought to attempt in duty; at least I can 
 be agreed with myself about it. But this society has to come 
 to joint decisions on these subjects, it has to ripen and express 
 a common mind, so as to attain the ends for which it is insti- 
 tuted. There must be consent; joint appreciation of truth, of 
 duty, of the relative importance of truths and duties. Here 
 there arises a peculiar tension, a necessity for dealing earnestly 
 with problems which continually require solution, of entering 
 into consultation, of ripening decisions. It must be done 
 under a supreme regard to Christ's will, but also with a regard 
 to the various apprehensions of brethren, for to this last we 
 are expressly appointed to have regard in this department. 
 Some things are to be fixed, some are to be left free ; some 
 things may be ordered so in one part of the Church, and differ- 
 ently in another. And in all this the Church has to realise its 
 
Worth of the Idea. 45 
 
 peculiar position and calling, by a constant regard both to truth 
 and to liberty, the authority of the Lord being supreme over 
 both ; a constant regard both to purity and to charity, the 
 authority of the Lord being supreme over both. 
 
 The tension thus created in the Church, and the earnest 
 exercise of mind and heart thence arising, the strenuous appli- 
 cation of conscience to all these problems, is the moral prepar- 
 ative for the Church's becoming powerful in her offices. It is 
 the means for creating and securing a force of thought and 
 feeling, a sense of duty, a clear consciousness of the Lord's 
 will, and of the circumstances in which it is to be gone about, 
 which mere sporadic and individual Christianity would be most 
 unlikely to attain. 
 
 But now all this is real and useful just in proportion as the 
 society in every part of its peculiar and proper work holds itself 
 free to do it out of faith and conscience. It must hold itself 
 free, that it may feel its constant and direct responsibility, 
 and realise its calling, that it may keep in view its ends, and 
 express its own proper genius and life. 
 
 If you ask how we Christians in the Churches have answered 
 this great responsibility, I reply at once that too often we 
 have failed sadly, conspicuously. The evidences of it are too 
 clear. There is plenty of the world in aU the Churches and 
 in all the Christians, and the effects have been seen. But 
 he knows little of human nature, and little of the administra- 
 tion of the scheme of grace, who finds in such a confession a 
 proof that it does not greatly matter how this business is 
 arranged. All the more because we are so prone to fail, and 
 do fail, it is imperative that the true conception of the Church's 
 position and work should be ever before us, and the Church's 
 obligations clearly bound upon us; all the more necessary to 
 admit no principle that should allure us to resign ourselves 
 to be governed, as a society, otherwise than by the sense of duty, 
 ripened in the Church by the heed she gives to the Lord's 
 
46 Second Lecture. 
 
 word and the Lord's providence. Therefore, in this sphere we 
 cannot, and we will not, admit any authority imposing obliga- 
 tion to obey, to control the free movement of the society in its 
 allotted work, 
 
 Now the Scottish minister, or the Scottish peasant, believing 
 that the Church was instituted for such weighty ends as have 
 been stated, took part in the work of it on that ground. He 
 was to contribute his share, to the expression by the society of 
 its own Christian mind and heart, in the appointed sphere. It 
 was an important Christian duty directly arising out of his 
 Lord's revealed will. The very first obligation lying on him 
 as a Christian man was to be in Christ's Church, by profession, 
 adherence, and sacramental seals, and in that Church to lend 
 help according to his place and gifts in carrying out the objects 
 of the society. He felt that the whole meaning and worth of 
 the Church's being and doing hung on its being true to its 
 own ideal. That implied direct responsibility, direct depend- 
 ence, direct obedience. Therefore, he spoke, and he speaks of 
 the Headship of Christ, by which he means that in duties 
 which have their being for the Christian society simply by the 
 Lord's institution, and by her relation to the Lord, she cannot 
 shift her responsibility nor escape the Judge's eye. These are 
 her work. She must do it. In doing it, as she must trust no 
 other, so she must hear no other. The great use of the Church 
 in the world is that, striving continually to apprehend and give 
 effect to the great and various considerations which her Lord 
 supplies, she should be herself. 
 
 An attempt is made, no doubt, by Dean Stanley to escape 
 all such considerations, by alleging that in a Christian country 
 Parliament represents well enough the mass of Christians, and 
 may therefore be accepted as the representative of the Church, 
 especially of the sound lay mind of it. The Church and the 
 State become one. I will not now spend time on this trans- 
 parent fallacy. If it were granted that Church and State are 
 
Hildebrandism and Laudianism. 47 
 
 or ought to be composed partly or even exactly of the same 
 members, that would not go an inch towards showing that they 
 are not distinct societies. The nature of a society depends not 
 on the mere men as you count heads, but upon that in the men 
 on which it rests, upon the ends for which and the conditions 
 under which they join it, upon the act or authority which insti- 
 tuted it, and the gi'ounds on which its maintenance is secured. 
 Is Parliament elected, or ought it to be elected, to express and 
 represent the care of Jesus Christ over His Church ? Is Par- 
 liament fit to watch over a society in which authority on the one 
 hand, and obedience on the other, are both alike to rest on faith 
 and conscience, and not on force ? Are the State, and member- 
 ship in the State, and office and eminence in the State, grounded 
 on spiritual life, spiritual attainments, spiritual gifts ? This is, 
 as Erskine of Dun said long ago, a mere confounding of all 
 estates. 
 
 I know very well what the Dean will say, one thing at least 
 that he will say, to views like these. He will say this is 
 Hildebrandism — the Popish principle which makes the Church 
 supreme in every matter she chooses to call her own. Or, 
 varying the epithet, he will say, this is Laudianism, in prin- 
 ciple identical with the Anglican High Churchism as it has 
 existed both of old and of late — a system that exalts the 
 Church in order to give dominion to the clergy — a system that 
 fences in a sacerdotal domain into which neither common sense 
 nor plain daylight shall be suffered to intrude. When objec- 
 tions take this form, the question that first occurs to me is — 
 Does Dean Stanley suppose that the way to disarm Hilde- 
 brandism is to flee into the arms of Erastianism ? Will he as 
 a historian maintain that, in the days of Hildebrand himself, 
 a mere Erastian principle reduced to practice throughout 
 Europe would have been safe ? Can any one estimate the 
 corruption that would have ensued ? Or will the Dean deny 
 that precisely the most spiritual, the most intensely Christian, 
 
48 Second Lecture, 
 
 men of the time were Hildebrand's most effective allies ? 
 That does not hinder that Hildebrandism should be judged to 
 be, as indeed it was, a springing fountain of enormous and 
 enduring evils. But it does suggest that there was something 
 in Hildebrandism itself which appealed with immense power to 
 the instincts of Christian hearts. Grant that Hildebrandism 
 was false coin ; still you shall confess that there must be true 
 coin which it imitated and strove to represent ; and your busi- 
 ness is to search out the image and superscription of that. 
 The same remark holds of Anglican High Churchism. We 
 believe it to be a mischievous system, in a variety of ways. 
 But as long as it is merely denounced from an Erastian posi- 
 tion, whether by Broad Churchmen or by Low Churchmen, it 
 will retain, and it will righteously retain, an element of power 
 that will carry it through the conflict. Minds earnestly occu- 
 pied with the prospects of the Christian religion as a public 
 cause, and of Christ's Church as a divine institute, never will 
 submit easily to the idea that such a body as the House of 
 Commons ought to have the supreme earthly control of its 
 constitution and its action. 
 
 As to Hildebrandism, it is enough to say that we recog- 
 nise the duty of the State to regulate its action in its own 
 sphere according to its own sense of duty, and to accept no 
 authoritative dictation from the Church. The State is to have 
 its own conscience ; and the Church is to affect the State's 
 action only as it can, upon the merits of each question, influ- 
 ence the common convictions and intelligence of those who 
 form the State. Therefore the State is not only at liberty, 
 but under obligation, to judge of its own duty for itself: the 
 State ought to endow or disendow, establish or disestablish, 
 concur with the Church or leave the Church to its own respon- 
 sibilities and resources, as the State shall see good. Further, 
 if the Church presumes to meddle authoritatively with things 
 tha.t belong to the State's wide domain — for instance, with pro- 
 
Hildebrandism. 49 
 
 perty, or legal rights, or the legal incidents of social relations, or 
 the like— the State is simply to disregard the Church's interfer- 
 ence, treat it as res non, maintain its own action according to its 
 own convictions. But the State ought to take notice that a society 
 has been set up, by no human authority, in which exist duties, 
 privileges, relations, based solely on the common I'ecognition, 
 in conscience, of a common Lord. In this society what is done 
 takes eJGfect, not by force, but simply by the power that convic- 
 tion and conscience happen to have in the minds of those con- 
 cerned. First, then, the State is to take notice that the society, 
 charged with duties in this peculiar sphere (called spiritual, 
 because it takes effect only in the spirits of men by spiritual 
 motives and considerations) will apply its own conscience to 
 them, and will not go against its conscience. Secondly, it is 
 claimed of the State that in regulating the outward incidents of 
 such a society (money, buildings, claims for damages, and the 
 like), the State should give full and equitable effect to the 
 principle that such a society has a right to exist, and to do its 
 o^vn work according to its own conscience. If the State will 
 not, the society will still do its own work, not minding the 
 State, carrying out its decisions in the strength of its own 
 spiritual resources. It will also submit peaceably to the "wrong 
 inflicted on it ; but it will call that wrong persecution, and 
 take all proper means to fasten the charge of persecution on 
 the conscience of the nation. Thirdly, while the State may 
 not judge that particular societies claiming to be, in their own 
 extent, representative of the Church, do accurately represent 
 in principles or spirit the Church as originally constituted, 
 yet if these societies credibly profess to take up Church 
 responsibilities as their own conscience guides them, then the 
 State ought to respect their conscience. So long as they 
 are dealing with things which it belongs to the Church to 
 deal with, they are to be regarded as having a right to a 
 Church conscience about those things. Fourthly, while the 
 
50 Second Lecture. 
 
 State regulates its own action from its own point of view, 
 both State and Church ought to count it of high importance 
 that those matters which they touch upon from different sides 
 should be regarded and treated by them, not upon discordant, 
 but on harmonious principles. This, it is maintained, might 
 to a large extent be attained by each society seeking, on its 
 own responsibility, to give effect to revealed truth — the 
 Church in all its concerns, the State in those to which re- 
 vealed truth applies. But the State is acknowledged to retain 
 all its rights and powers, whether it is Christian or not. 
 Surely this is something different from Hildebrandism. The 
 essence of Hildebrandism is to assert' that the Church's decision 
 ought to bind the State's conscience, and so decide the State's 
 action. 
 
 Then as to Laudianism, I cannot possibly go here into 
 detail. But we differ from Anglican High Churchmen in recog- 
 nising the right of members of Churches to be satisfied in their 
 own conscience of the propriety of those things which are required 
 of them : we recognise the competency of an appeal to the Lord 
 himself from the decisions of the external Church. And in 
 harmony with these views, we do not unchurch those who break 
 the external unity, if they do so only as professing to be obliged 
 in conscience to do so, that they may follow what appears to 
 them to be the Lord's will, which they cannot perform other- 
 wise. We believe there may be, and often is, sin in such 
 divisions ; but we unchurch none merely on that account. 
 Laudianism begins with the hierarchy, and prescribes from 
 without and from above the conditions of accepted Church 
 life. But we begin at the foundation. We still set before 
 us, first, the ground of all Church life, in professing Chris- 
 tians joining together at their Lord's call. We acknowledge 
 the reality of Church life in very low and imperfect degrees 
 of it. We set up the model of what we jvidge the more 
 perfect system, combining elements that vary in the clearness 
 
The Disruption. 5 1 
 
 of their revelation and in the order of their necessity ; but we 
 set it up as the goal to be attained ; and we commend it, not 
 as indispensable to the being of the Church, but as divinely- 
 given, that in the use and exercise of its various provisions the 
 Church from age to age may form itself, may grow, may work 
 to its great results. Therefore, also, our jorinciples have never 
 divided the clergy from the people. Say what you will of 
 Church domination, our people have ever felt that their foot- 
 ing in the Church is as good and sure as that of the office- 
 bearers. It is the people that have fought our battle and have 
 carried the Chiurch through. They have sometimes been before 
 the ministers, they have never been far behind. And why? 
 Why, because religious men in our Churches feel to their very 
 finger-ends that it is the common cause of us all, one cause, 
 in which their right is just as good as ours. 
 
 It is very convenient for the Dean to treat this principle as 
 something either impossible to understand or impossible to 
 appreciate. And when he comes to the Disruption, it is very 
 convenient to dismiss it with the courteous sneer at the con- 
 sciences of so many excellent men being wounded by a legal 
 suit unintelligible out of Scotland. Is this unintelligible out of 
 Scotland, that we refuse, as a Church, to take it as part of our 
 duty to form, or profess to form, the pastoral tie between pastor 
 and people, merely on the ground that a civil court bids us ; 
 that we refuse in like manner to fulfil or forbear any purely 
 spiritual act on the mere gi'ound of the same authority ; that 
 when it turned out that the terms of Establishment, in the view 
 of the State, imported an obligation in point of duty to obey 
 such decrees, the Free Church saved her honesty by renouncing 
 the pay and privileges for which she could not fulfil the terms? 
 Why, the whole world understood it ; many parts of the world 
 are feeling the effects of it. But does not Dr. Stanley himself 
 understand it ? That he does. Why, is not Erastianism, State 
 supremacy, the very apple of his eye ? Has he not contended 
 
5 2 Second Lcctuj^e. 
 
 for it these last three years, as if on this subject alone he 
 could become fanatical ? Does he not argue habitually 
 that the principle which applies to property, viz., that the 
 State decides through its courts, on its own views of 
 equity, all contests about it, carries with it, and ought to 
 carry with it, the decision of everything else ? Does he not 
 denounce the opposite view as Hildebrandisni and supremacy 
 over the State ? does he not rej)resent supremacy of the 
 State over the Church as the very optimism of the Church's 
 condition ? When in all these assertions he himself says Ay, 
 has he not the least conception of what it means to say No : 
 Yes, truly, he knows very well what it means. Meanwhile, let 
 me once more fix your attention on this, that there is no doubt 
 whatever as to the standard by which Dean Stanley measures 
 all these matters. The essential features, he says, of Church 
 and State connection are — " first, that the State should recog- 
 nise and support some religious expression of the community; 
 second, that this religious expression should be controlled and 
 guided by the State."'"" These two elements are inseparable. 
 Therefore he elsewhere argues that Parliament or the State is 
 far the best and most suitable supreme power to control Church 
 affairs. Nor is it easy to see how the argument can be resisted, 
 that if this power can or ought to command authoritatively in 
 one of the peculiar functions of the Church, so it may in all ; 
 and the only reason why it can be admitted to regulate one is 
 because there is nothing inconsistent with the Lord's will in its 
 regulating all or any. In that case, as the Dean puts it, the 
 State may devolve a part of its functions, larger or smaller, 
 upon General Assemblies or other ecclesiastical bodies, but 
 retain its supremacy, and may at any time recall what it has 
 given without introducing thereby any new principle or violat- 
 ing any to which effect had been given before. 
 
 * See Address at Sion College, republished in " Essays on Church and 
 State." 
 
Establishments. 53 
 
 Well, from this point of view it is that Dr. Stanley advocates 
 the cause of Establishments as far as the question now before us 
 is concerned. Standing here, he conveys to us his assurance 
 that in the Established Church the Church has as much liberty 
 as she has any need for. Standing here, he commends her as 
 a Church not likely, happen what may, to sacrifice her position, 
 or to fail to conform herself to whatever the condition of the 
 nation or the indications of the State may seem to require. 
 Standing here, he rejoices in the conviction that no scruples 
 about Church independence will in any case induce that Church 
 to resign the position in which she blesses the simple and 
 the intelligent, and the heretics and the half heretics. Now, 
 I am not to say whether this advocacy is accepted or repudi- 
 ated, I don't know whether the Establishment welcomes it or 
 no. But I see that things are running all this way in regard 
 to Established Churches generally. The idea of guarding the 
 Church's liberty in such Churches grows less and less practi- 
 cable — indeed, it was always difficult — but it also apj)arently 
 grows less and less intelligible. Like Dr. Stanley, men are 
 tempted to try to represent that there really is no such ques- 
 tion, that the whole affair is a dream; and they argue in par- 
 ticular, just as he does, that since in all Churches, Established 
 and non-Established, the Courts will dispose of questions of 
 property and actions of damages, that really settles everything, 
 and no tangible distinction remains. That is a most significant 
 token of the mode of view and feeling which men are cherishing. 
 It indicates just a wish to get rid of the subject, to cease to see 
 it, to escape from all trouble about it, and all obligations con- 
 nected with it. 
 
 In that prospect I will not resign the hope that among 
 those who will come forth and fight by our side will be 
 some of those who are at present in the ranks of the Estab- 
 lishment itself. But the prospect is a very serious one in 
 our existing circumstances; it is so for a reason which I will 
 
54 Second LechLre. 
 
 give. Heretofore, even in Churches constituted on Erastiaa prin- 
 ciples as to their general administration, the sense of a certain 
 separate sphere and peculiar province has been maintained in 
 this way, viz., that the Church's faith, settled by ancient creeds 
 or by Reformation standards, was regarded as a thing by itself, 
 not to be meddled with, not to be altered. Just because that 
 was understood, a certain ecclesiastical firmness, though within 
 narrow limits, could appear, which maintained the impression, 
 that over against the State, the Church, as the representative 
 of the faith, had a place and right of her own. But this 
 modern Erastianism has it for one of its principal objects and 
 ends, or I may say, relies on this as one of its principal condi- 
 tions, that the Church's faith, through the action of the State, 
 shall be made so latitudinarian as to leave religious sentiment 
 perhaps, but little indeed of fixed and definite religious teach- 
 ing. I believe that great forces in this country are working 
 steadily to that result. But the considerations connected with 
 the topic are more appropriate to my next lecture. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 I CONFESS that the topics which ought to be disposed of to- 
 night are so weighty and so many that I approach them with 
 hesitation ; and I cannot conceal from myself the probability 
 that my lecture will be only too visibly overloaded and overlaid. 
 If, then, the transitions prove sometimes abrupt, and the treat- 
 ment insufficient, it is due simply to difficulties which I have 
 not been able to overcome. I intimated that in to-night's lec- 
 ture I would consider the views of the gospel and of Christianity 
 in the light of which the history of our Scottish Churches is to 
 be understood ; without a reference to which, therefore, it can- 
 not be estimated. 
 
 It appears to me that the life and power of our Scottish 
 Churches have always been dependent on two closely con- 
 nected conditions. One is their theology ; that which they have 
 taught for truth on the relations of the human soul to God, on 
 the way of salvation, and the principles of the administration 
 of grace. 
 
 This theology Dean Stanley describes as negative. Ac- 
 cording to one report, he applies that term to our Confession. 
 If he did so, I shall only deny the propriety of the descrip- 
 tion. The Confession is negative just in so far as any 
 document containing strong and careful affirmations is apt to be 
 negative, by denying the contrary of what it affirms. This 
 holds also of the Articles of the Church of England, and indeed 
 of most documents that profess to distinguish truths to be con- 
 fessed from errors that are to be dismissed or denied. But, at 
 
56 Third Lecticre. 
 
 any rate, our theology, it is said, is negative. That is, we are 
 mainly occupied in protesting against things which we do not 
 hold. The Cameronian whom the Dean has found, who left 
 his dying protest against nineteen heresies, besides the 
 twentieth of Toleration, which he dwelt upon more at large, 
 is produced probably as an extreme specimen. But we are to 
 take it that this, though not always in such extremes, is the 
 character of our theology. Probably there must be some foun- 
 dation of truth in this. If we had leant at all to the other 
 side, the Dean would have pointed out to us, perhaps, that we 
 are not negative enough. Let us suppose, to save discussion, 
 that on the whole, and at some times more especially, we have 
 exceeded somewhat in keeping a very strict eye on what we 
 were not to hold. In return for this concession, will the Dean 
 concede that he is a little too negative on his side also ? For 
 we perceive that he disapproves of our theology; we are not to 
 abide by that, but what he would recommend us to take in its 
 room, or how he would have us remodel it we find it very dif- 
 ficult to discern. 
 
 But if the Dean believes that our Scottish theology has been 
 only or mainly a thing of negations, he is extremely far out. 
 In conceding, as I did just now, that possibly we have leant 
 overstrongly at times to marking minutely what we did not 
 hold, I conceded nothing of any great importance. The truth 
 is no assertion, no positive faith is worth a farthing that does 
 not contain in it virtual negations. Hash and presumptuous 
 inferences, both positive and negative, have been drawn by 
 theologians of all schools and in all ages ; the mistake, in par- 
 ticular, of reasoning on an incomplete enumeration of alterna- 
 tives, has multiplied needless and unjustifiable anathemas. For 
 all that, unless a man will forbear to think, he must test his 
 positives by negatives, and vice versa; if he knows what he 
 means, he must know what he does not mean. A man may 
 affect a precision which God has given him no means of attain- 
 
First Condition. 57 
 
 inej. How far that has been the case is not to be settled off-hand 
 by lecturers on either side. All that is really implied in the 
 assertion, that we have occupied ourselves with negatives, so 
 far as I concede it, is, first, that our people have been prone to 
 think on theological subjects, and therefore to explicate their 
 thinking both by yes and by no ; and, secondly, that they have 
 not been able to arrive at the theological perfection which 
 enables men to hold both sides of theological questions. For 
 some, upon any debated question, find the path of truth to lie 
 in equally favouring both views; and thus they pass from the 
 negative, which is an elementary stage, to that which may be 
 called the ultra-positive, which is very near perfection. We 
 have never got so far as this ; however, we have been accus- 
 tomed to count it no bad thing for a Church that its people 
 should be disposed to think on the greatest of all subjects. Nor 
 are we ashamed to maintain this, although we know that, the 
 tendency existing, it appears at times in very unedifying forms ; 
 and that just as many a time a disreputable Englishman has 
 turned out to a riot for Church and State, so many a time has 
 a disreputable Scotsman debased religion by noisy argument for 
 or against orthodoxy. 
 
 However, what I chiefly wish to say is this. Our Con- 
 fession, or body of doctrine agreed upon by our ministers and 
 office-bearers, touches certainly a good many points. But the 
 theology on which our Churches live, the theology of our pul- 
 pits and our closets, is in reality simple, and grows obviously 
 out of the Scriptures, if these are admitted to teach a few 
 fundamental positions. It is in substance the theology of 
 the Reformation ; the Reformation doctrine of man's utterly 
 fallen state ; the Reformation doctrine of atonement and 
 justification by faith ; the Reformation doctrine of regenera- 
 tion, and of the indebtedness of every one who is saved to 
 a sovereign mercy that is unspeakable ; and the Reforma- 
 tion doctrine of the free gospel call addressed to every 
 
58 Third Lecher e. 
 
 sinner; all this resting on the ancient catholic faith of the 
 Trinity and the person of Christ. It may be said of it that it 
 is wholly pivoted on two main positions, the conception of the 
 fall, and the conception of the atonement— an intensely real 
 fall, an intensely real redemption, God in Christ becoming 
 known according to the relations implied in these two. Now, 
 this working theology of our Chm'ches, as I have said, is 
 simple ; but it is decided. The truths which compose it lose 
 their meaning when faintly realised or dubiously fingered. They 
 are indeed decisive truths, and many a conflict about them has 
 arisen, and does arise, in earnest minds among us. But vic- 
 tory and emergence out of such a conflict consists in finding at 
 last something to say aye to, implying something to say no to. 
 And every one who intimately knows Scottish religion, the 
 religion that is the life-spring of our Churches, knows how it 
 lives in a positive faith realised according to the positive con- 
 ditions supplied by these doctrines. These things, believed 
 among us, are not negations. But they do, I confess, imply 
 one great negation which thoroughly pervades our whole con- 
 ceptions. They do imply that nature is not grace, and that 
 grace is not nature. They do directly and peremptorily con- 
 tradict a fashionable tendency of the time on that subject. 
 How wonderfully grace may be adapted to nature — how 
 wonderfully the one may, especially in some cases, be, as it 
 were, hidden in the other — we are willing to learn. But the 
 Scottish Churchman who has given up that distinction has 
 to build up his beliefs again for himself, from a point not very 
 far from the foundation. And the new structure mil certainly 
 not be the faith of the Scottish Churches. 
 
 I said that there were two conditions on which, as I think, 
 the life and power of the Scottish Churches have always been 
 dependent. I have described one ; I proceed to the other. It 
 is the common conception prevailing and cherished o,mong us of 
 what conversion is, what the divine life in the soul of man is. 
 
Second Condition. 59 
 
 This is closely connected with what I last described ; for 
 the conception now referred to is congruous to the fundamental 
 theology which we teach, and is explained and justified on that 
 ground. Yet it deserves to be separately named and separately 
 considered. First, because it carries us from the department of 
 truth to that of devout attainment ; secondly, because experi- 
 ence proves that, without conscious insincerity, men may main- 
 tain a high standard of doctrinal orthodoxy, in our form of it 
 as well as in other forms, in whom the element now referred 
 to is not very operative, and even the conception of it 
 is faint and uninjfluential. So arises what we may call 
 orthodox Moderatism. But the element now named is a 
 great factor in our Scottish Church life ; for immediate energy, 
 for direct result, for inspiring force, at least as great a factor 
 as that I named before. Existing as a common conception, it 
 controls our Church life ; it is both a motive power and a fly- 
 wheel ; it is that to which, consciously or unconsciously, other 
 things are continually referred. It is both an influence which 
 we feel and a result to which we tend. 
 
 Now, when I say all this, let me not be misunderstood. 
 When we ascribe so much to it, let us not be thought to 
 assume that all our people stand actually in this grace — we 
 habitually warn them to take no such thing for granted — nor 
 that all our elders, nor that all our ministers, are in the experi- 
 ence of it, however deplorable it be if they are not. All 
 positive decisions about individuals we decline. Nor are we 
 assuming that it exists among us in a superlative degree, or in 
 a greater degree than among other Churches. We know it is 
 far safer to suspect that we have less than to presume that 
 we have more. We hope in God, indeed, that we have a mea- 
 sure of it among us. But I assert only that this common 
 conception has generally held the convictions of our Churches 
 as a certain reality; whether by some largely realised and 
 experienced, or by some humbly aspired after, or by some felt 
 
6o Third Lechtre. 
 
 as impending overhead, as it were, while they are conscious 
 that it is not effectually sought or honestly dealt with. This 
 conception, I repeat, dominates our Scottish Churches in so far 
 as they represent genuine Scottish Churchmanship. As com- 
 pared with some other Christians, it is not our manner to 
 be ready to make large professions. We seldom express our- 
 selves very freely as to individual state and prospects. On all 
 points of feeling, indeed, we are perhaps too little ready to be 
 frank. But while we may not be ready to say much as to 
 what we have felt of this, innumerable voices among us will 
 testify that they believe it, and, more than that, that they 
 have seen it. We have seen it in many a life mastered and 
 pervaded by the faith and consciousness of redemption ; we 
 have seen it in many a life manifestly moving under the influ- 
 ence of the realised relation to sin and to the Saviour, and grow- 
 ing into His likeness ; so that the meaning of it is very well 
 known among us, and the sense of it pervades our system. Pres- 
 byterianism, indeed, is so constructed that it never formulates 
 ecclesiastical judgments about the existence or non-existence of 
 this great element in individual cases. Its working is regulated 
 so as to provide for the divine life arising only by degrees to 
 conscious certainty and establishment. Presbyterianism ac- 
 knowledges that seeds may be sown in the heart of childhood 
 which manifest their unquestionable peculiarity only after 
 years. Presbyterianism is prepared to work not only for imme- 
 diate and manifest fruits, but also for gradual developments 
 and long results. Nevertheless, the conception to which I 
 refer is an ever-present and regulating consciousness. If there 
 are those among us, as there are, of course, who have no regard 
 to it or faith in it, they do not sway the Church's movements ; 
 generally they feel consciously disqualified from attempting to 
 do so. 
 
 Nor let it be thought that this conception is a rigid iron 
 thing, that sits like a fetter on the heart of the Church. It 
 
Dr. Chalmers. 6i 
 
 may be apprehended on various sides, mth various degrees of 
 fulness, with various estimates of the elements it contains. Of 
 all who share in it, there are no two probably who represent it 
 to themselves exactly in the same way. And yet morally it is 
 one — one great type through all, capable of being approached 
 on a thousand sides, but felt by each to be a unity, the ground 
 of a common consciousness, whence proceed various forms of 
 action, in which also the same unity is recognised. 
 
 Now, I will take an illustration of what I mean on this last 
 point from a quotation made by Dean Stanley, but not on his 
 part, as I am disposed to think, thoroughly understood. It is 
 in his notice of Dr. Chalmers. The notice, I may say, is singu- 
 larly fresh and hearty, worthy of the great old man it depicts, 
 and most honourable to the Dean himself ; but it closes with a 
 sudden significant turn, which almost makes one smile, so adroitly 
 does the Dean, if I understand him, seduce Dr. Chalmers to serve 
 for a moment in the ranks of the Dean's own army. A sentence 
 from Chalmers' private writings is made to suggest an inference; 
 and then a conversation which occurred at Oxford between Dr. 
 Chalmers and the Dean is represented as supporting that infer- 
 ence ; the truth being that the inference in unfounded, and the 
 conversation at Oxford has nothing to do with it Avhatever. 
 " Oh that He possessed me with a sense of His holiness and 
 love, as once He possessed me with a sense of His power and 
 His all-pervading agency " — that is the sentence ; and the in- 
 ference is that he looked back to those earlier days, and spoke 
 of them with a regTetful feeling — those being '' days in which 
 he lived in the great ideas which are at the foundation of all 
 religion." And the conversation at Oxford, being so catholic 
 in its tone, is held further to justify the imj)ression that a 
 certain regi'ess from his last days to his first ouglit to be recog- 
 nised, a relenting of middle-life intensities, which brought the 
 end not to the same note perhaps, but to the same key with 
 the beoinninu'. 
 
62 Third Lectu7^e. 
 
 This is a sheer delusion. There was not a day in Dr. 
 Chahners' life, from one end to the other, nor a principle ever 
 held by him, that would have hindered his expressing his 
 interest in Oxford, and his admiration of it, and of whatever is 
 great in the Church or literature of England, in the very same 
 terms. It was a habitual feeling with him, and pervaded his 
 life. As to the sentence quoted, I marvel that one who has 
 read the literature of so many Christian schools as the Dean 
 could so mistake it. The days referred to were referred to 
 just because in Dr. Chalmers' belief they were the days before 
 the awaking of the true religious life. In those days, in 
 Dr. Chalmers' case, as in many another, a glow of earnest 
 sentiment and high enthusiasm gathered around the great 
 ideas of the Divine power and omnipresence. They were 
 true thoughts, and worthy to be realised with such a glow 
 of feeling ; and this perception of truth he ascribed to the 
 Author of all good gifts. But it was his deliberate and 
 most assured judgment that this kind of religion, in his own 
 case, was the religion of one who had not returned to God, who 
 had not bowed to God's will, who had never realised his own 
 relation to God, who was not at peace with God. It was his 
 deliberate judgment that this religion had not made him a man 
 of God, and that by and by it proved every way a failure. 
 And that completeness of delighted sentiment, that thorough 
 entrancement in the great thought he spoke of, was possible, 
 just because the feeling never touched the real question be- 
 tween God and him, never revealed to him his true self nor 
 the true God. A change came. The great question of sin 
 arose in its simple reality, the question of salvation. The 
 revelation came of a Saviour, of an atonement, of grace, of the 
 divine, omnipotent love that saves the lost, of holiness that 
 thrilled his heart with a sorrow and a longing he had never 
 known before. Thenceforth he lived in a new world — a far 
 greater world, a far intenser. As the narrow material heavens 
 
Dr. Chalmers, 63 
 
 of the old astronomers have broken up and widened, to our 
 eyes, to infinite depths that our souls ache to fathom, so his 
 moral and spiritual horizons fell back every way. But while 
 it opened for him a far truer, deeper peace, that new world was 
 in one sense less jDeaceful than the former ; for him, as for each 
 man who experiences such a history, it became a scene of con- 
 flict — hopeful, trustful, joj^ul conflict, yet stern, and often weary. 
 Ah, to have the whole soul brought to final harmony with the 
 hoj)es and longings that this new world inspired, with the new 
 apprehension of what God is, Christ is ! — that was so great a 
 thing, and a thing so withstood by the strange rebellious prin- 
 ciple within, that the heart strove and yearned with sorrowful 
 and contrite longings. To be so attuned to the meaning, and 
 possessed by the power of holiness and of love, the pitying love 
 that bends over sinners, as once he had been with impressions 
 of magnificent and unwearied power ! But the latter, how 
 j)ossible, how unresisted, how easily, in those early days, it 
 could touch a mind like his ; the former, how hard and high, 
 how all but impossible, the continued experience of life through 
 death. " Oh that He possessed me with a sense of His holi- 
 ness and His love, as once He possessed me with a sense of 
 His power and all-pervading agency." "■ I was alive without 
 the law once, but when the commandment came, sin revived, 
 and I died." "Nevertheless, I live, and the life I live in the 
 flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and 
 gave Himself for me." The words reveal a thought which 
 he did much to restore among us to its old power; a con- 
 ception the failure of which falls always like a blight on our 
 Churches. 
 
 Now, I am not saying that either of the two conditions I 
 speak of are peculiar to us, although each is somewhat dis- 
 tinctly different from the conditions which fill a corresponding 
 place in a large section of the Church of England. Wliat I 
 say is, that they are so vital to our history that their vigour 
 
64 Third Lecture. 
 
 or decay is among the first things to be noted in the study 
 of it.'" 
 
 Now, it fell of course in the Dean's way, in his recent 
 lectures, to point out those forms of religious teaching and 
 religious life which appeared to him most worthy of regard. 
 Besides his direct counsels, his whole lectures were pervaded 
 by silent or half-uttered assumptions with respect to the proper 
 standard on these matters. And yet, though his conclusions 
 went to sway most powerfully our judgment about such prime 
 conditions of our Church life, I find nothing like an examina- 
 tion either of what they were or what they ought to be, or how 
 they may compare with those of other Churches. His own 
 standard does indeed appear plainly enough. But anything like 
 an appreciation or estimate of what that is on which the life and 
 the proper work of Churches dej)ends, what it has depended on 
 among us, what it ought to depend on in time to come — any im- 
 pression even that this question is momentous — does not appear. 
 Our theology has been "negative;" that is almost all the light 
 we get. His own standard appears most plainly in his apprecia- 
 tion of Moderatism. But what tangible principles does he 
 present ? The Moderates, he thinks, were not altogether 
 destitute of some connection with religious earnestness, and 
 they developed a striking activity in general literature. For 
 the rest, he likes the men, he likes their tone ; as mental 
 companions he gets on with them, and is at ease with them, 
 therefore he recommends them. Did ever mortal trifle so 
 with life questions ? Was it not worth considering whether 
 
 * An amusing illustration of what we in Scotland historically ouglit to be 
 comes to my knowledge as I correct these sheets. A Hungarian student, wish- 
 ing to study Technology in the University of Edinburgh, writes for information. 
 He does not know much about our institutions, but in order to be sure of his 
 letter arriving at that which represents the main stream of our national life 
 and development, he draws from the depths of his historical consciousness the 
 following address: — "An die Calvinisch-Reforniirte Puritanische Universitiits 
 Buchhjindlung in Edinburg : " — i. e., To the Calvinistic Reformed Puritanical 
 University Library, Edinburgh. 
 
Ciii Bono? 65 
 
 there are not, or have not been, religious forces at work here, as 
 elsewhere, divided from Moderatism by an antagonism far deeper 
 than the mere Scottish fervour. Was it not worth while to 
 ask whether the decisive forces of Scottish religion can put on 
 Moderatism at his recommendation, at any less expense than 
 that of dying ? The main difficulty here is to get the really 
 vital issues into any connection at all with the Dean's line 
 of discussion, and with the assumptions that appear to per- 
 vade it. 
 
 Let us take, however, what we can get. The views which 
 pervade the lectures come out, as I have said, most distinctly 
 in Dr. Stanley's exhibition of the Moderate party in the Church 
 of Scotland. You are aware that he dwells on this element 
 of our history with peculiar predilection. Heralded by one or 
 two bright precursors, bright morning stars that rose before 
 the day, the embodied tendency begins to make itself seri- 
 ously and permanently felt at the close of the seventeenth 
 century. It is introduced as the representative of " one of 
 the most indispensable of Christian duties," as recommended 
 by the Apostle Paul. In depicting the reign of the party, 
 whatever can be claimed for them as a virtue or a praise is 
 brought out in the brightest relief. And the closing counsels 
 with which the lectures were Avound up were manifestly 
 determined by the position that Moderatism, on the whole, 
 and making some deductions for the imperfections of eveiy 
 mixed party or institution, had set the true model, had erected 
 the safest guiding lights for Scottish Christianity, 
 
 Now, in asking your attention to the topic thus raised — 
 which I will treat simply as a topic of last century, disclaiming 
 all covert allusions to parties whom I do not name — I am under 
 an obvious disadvantage. Most people here will probably not 
 be persuaded that the question is worth discussing. What is 
 the use, they will say, of any man coming down here to praise 
 up the religious services rendered to Scotland by the Moderates? 
 
66 Third Lecture. 
 
 Or, if any one does, what can it profit to give him an answer ? 
 They tell a story of Frederick the Great of Prussia, that on 
 one occasion Sulzer (I think), an earnest educationist, pos- 
 sessed with the then current notions of the natural goodness of 
 man, was speaking to the King of his educational plans. The 
 King listened and conversed with great interest, until Sulzer 
 began to enlarge to him upon the goodness of human nature 
 and the perfectibility of mankind. Quoth the King — " Ah, 
 my dear Sulzer, stop now, don't tell me that ; / know the con- 
 founded race too well ! " We know the Moderates too well ; 
 Highlands and Lowlands know them. No flowing periods, and 
 no selected anecdotes, and no clever personages depicted at 
 their best, will ever persuade us that we don't know the 
 Moderates. Notwithstanding, ladies and gentlemen, I believe 
 it will be very instructive for us to look for a little at what the 
 Dean has thus called us to re-examine. 
 
 But before entering on this task I really must refer to one 
 or two of the names which the Dean has claimed as precursors 
 of Moderatism in the early and middle part of the seventeenth 
 century. And, first of all, Robert Douglas is made to do duty, 
 on no better ground apparently than that he seems to the 
 Dean to have been a man of commanding character, good 
 sense, and statesmanlike qualities : therefore he was a Mode- 
 rate. Here the ratio decidendi bears very hard on all hut 
 Moderates. But I must say that the conclusion arrived at is 
 very hard usage of poor Robert Douglas himself. He was 
 associated with the Resolutioners, certainly, when our Church 
 was divided into Resolutioners and Protesters, each accusing 
 the other of unfaithfulness to the Covenant ; and it fell to his 
 lot to be deceived and outwitted by Sharp in 1660. But 
 neither of these facts, nor both, will prove him a Moderate. 
 How could a man be a Moderate who was thoroughly evangeli- 
 cal in his teaching, who was a jus divinum Presbyterian, 
 looking on Presbytery as the Lord's ordmance and Prelacy as 
 
L eight on. 67 
 
 man's invention, and who contended zealously for a settlement 
 on pure Covenanting principles. Really, when I find Robert 
 Douglas declaring of Prelacy, in terms which are surely rather 
 strong, that "the Lord will pluck up that stinking weed," 
 I think the Dean would have made out a fully better case if he 
 had described him as a highflyer, and as one of those fighting 
 Scotsmen whose zeal so far outran their discretion. 
 
 But then we have Leighton. Leighton notoriously cared 
 nothing for the questions debated between Presbyterian and 
 Prelatist. If that will make him out a Moderate, the case is 
 proved. But though Leighton attached only a moderate 
 degree of importance to one question debated in his own time, 
 it is mere ti'ifling to assume, on that ground, that he is to be 
 ascribed to the party called Moderate in a succeeding age, or 
 that he had any sympathy with their prevailing and charac- 
 teristic tendencies. Would God they had manifested some 
 sympathy with his ! Many Scotsmen have thought Leighton's 
 ecclesiastical course a mistake, and thought also that he found 
 it so ; and for a time, not unnaturally, a man associated by 
 office with the system of the Restoration was regarded with 
 distrust, and spoken of in terms of some depreciation. But the 
 day is very long gone by since any of us have doubted the in- 
 tegrity of his intentions or the holiness of his character. And 
 I suspect it could be shown that those who did most to bring 
 Leighton's works into the rej)ute they have long maintained 
 were Scottish Presbyterians and English Nonconformists. 
 Leighton's character and writings have been habitually 
 cherished by those in Scotland who are most averse to Mode- 
 ratism, and who recognise in him the very spirit which Moderat- 
 ism lacked. Among my own very earliest recollections are those 
 of an aged lady, very dear to me, whose life was one continual 
 strain of overflowing piety — a long pilgrimage of faith rising at 
 last into an unbroken Beulah of praise and prayer. It was piety 
 nursed under the purest Scottish and Presbyterian influences. 
 
68 Third LectiLve. 
 
 But ray impressions of Leighton were formed first by the delight 
 I used to see her take in perusing and reperusing " that blessed 
 Exposition." What would she have said had she been told 
 that Leighton was a Moderate ? 
 
 Carstairs, too, is claimed, with more apparent plausibility. 
 The truth is, Carstairs united in himself the possibilities, so to 
 say, of both the parties who afterwards divided the Church of 
 Scotland. He had sympathies that associated him with both, 
 but his peculiar career distinguished him from both. He was 
 one of those men, formed in times of revolution, who acquire 
 a dexterous adaptiveness of character, and become expert in 
 estimating the precise possibilities and flexibilities of every 
 form of principle, even those professed by the most opposite 
 parties. When such men are personally unprincipled, they 
 become the most thorough and successful intriguers. When, 
 on the contrary, they are men who do adhere to principles 
 which they value, and are not aiming at selfish ends, their 
 peculiar talent appears in effecting adjustments in the most 
 difficult circumstances, by which principles are saved, as it 
 were, by a hairbreadth, or appear perhaps with the loss of a 
 part of their skirts. Carstairs joined this politic bent and 
 adaptive skill to dispositions which led him to do what he 
 thought his best for Presbyterianism. He is not so unlike the 
 Moderates — not so removed from Dr. Stanley's own position as 
 are most of our greater Presbyterian names previous to the 
 eighteenth century. It is unreasonable to class him as a 
 Moderate; but it may well be maintained that measures in 
 which he took part preluded and prepared the actual develop- 
 ment and ascendancy of the Moderate party. 
 
 But I must hasten on to look at the Dean's account of 
 the Moderates themselves. Postponing the question as to 
 the true genius and bent of the party, let us look for a 
 minute at the account the Dean has given us of those pro- 
 perly religious attainments which may be claimed for the 
 
The De.iiis Case. 69 
 
 Moderate period of the Scottish Church. He was sensible, 
 apparently, that one is apt to look for something Christian, 
 nay, even something distinctly and emphatically Christian, in 
 the fruits of a tendency which is to be accepted as the type 
 which ought to prevail in a Christian Church. He has fur- 
 nished us therefore with a list ; singularly scanty it is. And 
 yet, scanty as it is, almost everything in it rests on a trans- 
 parent misconception. Dr. Stanley thinks he may select any- 
 thing that pertains to the Revolution Church of Scotland, any 
 person or thing that remained within it, and constitute it, if it 
 suits his purpose, into a representative or specimen of our 
 Moderate period. What was outside of the Church, or went 
 outside of it, is to stand alone on the one side, and be con- 
 trasted with any persons or phenomena found within it on the 
 other side. This, of course, is thoroughly confusing and mis- 
 leading. Inside the Church, and standing on its constitution 
 and traditions, there was a party the very life of which was 
 opposition to Moderatism. The persistent disregard of this pro- 
 duces the strangest travesties of the history. Besides, the 
 ascendancy of the Moderate party, revealing its genius and 
 applying its principles, did not begin till the eighteenth century 
 had advanced some way. But the Dean takes all together from 
 the Revolution in 1688. In this way Thomas Boston himself 
 must be made to figure as a representative man of the Moderate 
 period. 
 
 The Dean's case is of this kind. He tries to show, in some 
 instances, that in the Moderate party a basis of liberal senti- 
 ment, of wide and generous tolerance, proved to be not 
 inconsistent on fitting occasion with some devout aspiration 
 and attainment, and with some measure of religious zeal. It 
 was consistent with zeal for the extension of the gospel in the 
 Highlands, and it was consistent with some earnest religious 
 awakenings, and with cordial recognition of earnest religious 
 labourers. 
 
70 Third Lecture. 
 
 Now, in the first place, I doubt the tolerance itself. I doubt 
 it not in the case of the Scottish Moderates only, but I doubt 
 it in the case of the whole class to which they belong. The 
 personal amiability of some of them is unqifestionable. But on 
 the part of men of this class there is apt to be a very ostenta- 
 tious tolerance towards many forms of opinion, combined with 
 a fixed dislike of certain manifestations of positive religious 
 faith. This dislike, when the class gains the upper hand, has 
 often shown itself in a resolute purpose to keep down what 
 they dislike. The Dean has admitted that the principles of 
 Mackenzie — " the bluidy Mackenzie " — were strictly akin to 
 those of the Moderate party : of his feelings the less we say 
 the better. Certainly Mackenzie's practice is full to the point 
 as an illustration of the remarks I am now making. But the 
 same thing appeared in the conduct of the party itself. A 
 hard disregard of the feelings of conscientious men, and a plea- 
 sure in breaking them to the yoke, if possible, characterised 
 the party throughout. It appeared in their mode of dealing 
 with the first Seceders, it appeared in their dealings with Gil- 
 lespie, it appeared in the repressive system which they carried 
 through, at the cost of alienating the hearts of the very flower 
 of the Scottish people. 
 
 Here I may remark that the Dean, viewing as he is pleased 
 to do — I make no assumptions on the subject — the existing 
 Established Church as the successors and representatives of 
 Moderate excellency, panegyrises the liberality they have 
 shown in opening their pulpits to divines of the Church of 
 England. " It has in these latter days set," he says, " a noble 
 example of liberality to all the Churches, by its readiness in 
 welcoming within its churches the ministrations of prelates and 
 prelatists, no less than of its own seceding members." Surely 
 the Dean cannot be aware how drolly this sounds in Scottish 
 ears. The Established Church has not set the example, but 
 followed the example. In 1799, in the days of Moderate 
 
Moderate Zeal. 71 
 
 supremacy, aa Act was passed probibiting all ministers to 
 employ in any service any one not qualified according to tbe 
 laws of tbe Cburcb to accept a presentation to a pastoral 
 charge. That Act was rescinded in 1842, Avben tbe evangeli- 
 cal party was in the ascendancy, and ministers were left, as of 
 old, to employ the services of brethren of other Churches. 
 After the Disruption the state of things in the Establisment 
 was restored which bad existed from 1799 to 1842; and it is 
 only recently that it has been relaxed again, so as to allow the 
 Established Church minister tbe same right which U.P. and 
 Free Church ministers possessed by the common law of their 
 Churches, recognising the orders of the sister Churches of the 
 Reformatibn, while in the Free Church this right was granted 
 by an express statutory permission in addition. It is nothing 
 strange in our Churches that men episcopally ordained, and 
 having the confidence of the pastor, should occasionally minister 
 in them. It seems, however, to be a very arduous operation 
 to undertake it. All England cried out with amazement at 
 the magnanimous effort recently made by two prelates in this 
 direction. They seemed to suppose that the effort to receive 
 them must, on the Scottish side, be equally overwhelming. 
 There is a mistake here. We are always glad to receive 
 ministers of other Churches who are good gospel preachers, 
 provided they do it in a straightforward M'^ay, and don't talk 
 nonsense aftei-wards about " mission services." 
 
 But to return to the Moderates, With their tolerance, be 
 it more or less, they combined some religious activity, be it 
 more or less. And first, the Dean tells us, some zeal was shown 
 in setting up ordinances in the Highlands, in the remoter districts 
 of the Highlands. 
 
 I know that from a period very soon after the Revolution par- 
 ticular attention was directed by the Assembly to the settle- 
 ment of ordinances and of education in the Highlands, and 
 that the Royal bounty, gi'anted early in the eighteenth century, 
 
72 Thi7''d Lecture. 
 
 became a means of regularly prosecuting that work. But I do 
 not know that any particular credit is due on this account to 
 the Moderate element in the Church ; neither do I know that 
 as that party attained to dominion any increased zeal on the 
 subject appeared. Precisely the reverse,, as far as I am aware 
 or can form a judgment. But I do also know that, more than 
 a hundred years before, hopeful measures were set on foot for 
 overtaking the wants of the Highlands, which were interrupted 
 by the oppressions then inaugurated by the Crown. I 
 do know that the only men who laid a strong hand on the 
 Highlands for good were men who were emphatically not 
 Moderates. I do know that the people in the Highlands, 
 speaking generally, never gave their confidence in these matters 
 to any men who were Moderates. I know, indeed, that in 
 the Highlands, more than anywhere else, earnest practical 
 religion and Moderatism were currently and commonly set 
 against one another by the people as natural and born con- 
 traries. In my grandfather's own parish, after his death, they 
 used to hold meetings for many years in the open air rather 
 than attend the ministry of a Moderate, while yet they adhered 
 to the Church of Scotland and waited for better times. That 
 happened "under the reign of the Moderates;" but I can 
 assure all whom it may concern that nothing would have been 
 esteemed a bitterer insult by those honest men than to be 
 told that in adhering to the Church they were adhering to the 
 reign of Moderatism, and illustrating the fine fruits of faith 
 and a good conscience which Moderatism was able to produce. 
 
 But " under the reign of the Moderates " there were other 
 signs of life in the Church. Yes, for under the reign of 
 Moderatism there was a number of ministers, and a great 
 number of people, who believed themselves to stand on the 
 genuine constitution of their Church, and its doctrine, in oppos- 
 ing the Moderates. I don't say that no one who voted on the 
 Moderate side, especially in the first half of the century, showed 
 
Whitcjicld and the Secession. 73 
 
 an interest in the religious movements alluded to by Dr. 
 Stanley; but I say, without fear of contradiction, that all these 
 movements were formed, promoted, and advanced by those who 
 opposed Moderatism, and were by the Moderates habitually dis- 
 countenanced and disliked. 
 
 Dr. Stanley has referred to the case of Whitefield : he was 
 taken up by the Establishment, and decried by the Secession. 
 There is no doubt of it. But the circumstances should be 
 understood. Whitefield proposed to come down, as the Seceders 
 understood, prepared to negotiate terms on which they might 
 co-operate. Some negotiation was needed, for the Seceders, as I 
 mentioned in a former lecture, had entangled themselves in a 
 form of testimony which embarrassed their own action in an un- 
 usual case like this. Ultimately, Whitefield declined to enter on 
 any special terms with them ; and he held himself free, besides, 
 to preach for aU who would take him as he was. The Seceders 
 felt it trying, for reasons easily assigned. They were in the 
 very fire and glow of their Secession, for it was a year or two 
 after the Act that had finally cut them off. Their ecclesiastical 
 programme, with all its views of existing facts and parties, was 
 still bran-new, and had to be maintained to their people and 
 to all the world. They were conscious, and honestly conscious, 
 that zeal for evangelical truth was the moving spring of their 
 own action, and was the occasion at least of a great part of 
 the opposition they experienced. They believed and main- 
 tained that the cause of evangelical truth was to be supported 
 by doing what they had done, by leaving the Established Church; 
 and it concerned them much, as they believed, to maintain that 
 impression in the minds of their own people. Further, they 
 were still a very small body, and subject to the influences which 
 affect such bodies. The arrival of Whitefield, with his gi'eat 
 reputation, to confound all the dividing lines, to be a kind of 
 incarnate defiance of testimonies, and to exhibit the cause of 
 evangelical truth as perfectly dissociated from existing divisions, 
 
74 Third Lecticre. 
 
 was of course a trial. It became a temptation, and I do cer- 
 tainly think that the Seceders did not at the time deal success- 
 fully or magnanimously with the temptation. But I think it 
 was a much greater and more tempting temptation than is 
 commonly supjDosed. And hence, though ultimately they got 
 the better of it, and Ralph Erskine and Whitefield were recon- 
 ciled, which should be noticed when the story is told, in the mean- 
 time they elected to stand out against Whitefield and all his 
 proceedings with such weapons as the case admitted. The same 
 temper, arising very much from the same temptations, appeared 
 in the severity of the language they employed regarding the 
 Cambuslang work and similar movements. Biit was all this a 
 quarrel between the Seceders and the Moderates ? Why, the 
 very bitterness of it arose from this, that it was a quarrel be- 
 tween those who shared the same principles and were conscious, 
 both of them, of being opposed to the Moderates. The Se- 
 ceders would have opposed the Moderates with a great deal 
 of equanimity, and disposed of them, too, without much 
 trouble. But the very jet of the quarrel lay here, that men who, 
 as they thought, ought to have been Seceders, ought to have 
 joined them in maintaining "the Lord's cause among their 
 hands," persisted in standing on the constitution of the Scottish 
 Church as still intact ; they persisted in maintaining that that 
 was tlie right way to maintain the Lord's cause against the 
 Moderates, It was the existence of this influence (as the 
 Seceders thought, a misleading and confusing* influence, essen- 
 tially treacherous indeed to the true issue) which irritated and 
 vexed them. And for a time it disposed them to disbelieve in 
 the possibility of any extensive good being done by their old 
 friends. But both parties were quite conscious that this was 
 the true state of the case, and they reasoned with one another 
 on that footing. 
 
 The Seceders, at first few in number, but rapidly increasing 
 as the century advanced, maintained in Scotland the same 
 
X True History. 75 
 
 cause with those within the Established Church who were 
 commonly called Evangelical. The Seceders carried it on 
 with more expansive force, and with more rapid and palpable 
 results, because they were not hampered by the trammels to 
 which their allies within the Church were subjected. To them 
 we owe it that in many a parish, where but for them evan- 
 gelical religion would have died out, a vigorous Christian life 
 arose and spread abroad. Those who joined them adopted 
 their Testimony, in its different successive forms ; there was 
 little to hinder their doing so; it was but aversion of the good 
 old cause. But what drew the people to them, and multiplied 
 their congregations with such rapidity, was not the mere series 
 of points on which they stated their division ; it was not even 
 the protest against patronage, though that went home to the 
 Scottish heart. It was the authentic declaration of the gospel, 
 preached broadly and directly, and felt to be the power of God 
 unto salvation. The right which the United Presb3^terians 
 have to claim their part in the representation of the Scottish 
 Church goes deeper far than the assertion of a few ecclesiasti- 
 cal points and traditions. They stood for Trath and Life in 
 days when the battle went sore against both. And as long as 
 Truth and Life are maintained in Scotland, it will not be for- 
 gotten that a gTeat share of the honour of having carried them 
 safe through some of our darkest days was given by God to the 
 Seceders. Why, then, the Dean may ask, did they make so 
 much of the assertion of points of Church duty ? Because, we 
 answer, Truth and Life never gain the upper hand in any of 
 the Churches without awakening a resolute conscience regard- 
 ing Church duties as well as other duties. 
 
 But now, how are we to represent this Moderatism ? What 
 was it. I will say what I think of it. In doing so I cannot 
 offer to you the artistic touches which never fail in any of the 
 Dean's sketches. Bat I feel very confident that mine is the 
 truer reading. 
 
76 Third Lecture. 
 
 The rise of a party, not disposed to feel strongly on the 
 points which Scottish Churchmanship has usually put forward, 
 is often traced to certain elements which found a place in the 
 Church at and shortly after the Revolution Settlement — viz., 
 the ministers who had previously accepted the indulgence 
 (though these, I think, are rather hardly used by some of our 
 historians), and still more, the " curates " — those who, having 
 held cures under the Episcopacy, came in and submitted to 
 the Presbyterian regime. Then, since many of the curates 
 were not very good to begin with, and since, presumabl}^, it 
 was not the best of them who were so ready to conform, and 
 since the very process itself must have been rather damaging 
 and demoralising in the case of those who had previously pro- 
 fessed high Episcopalian principles, it can be explained that 
 this party was not merely cold in reference to the principles of 
 their Church, but also at the same time low in tone, morally 
 and spiritually. This explanation is obviously grounded in 
 facts and reason. There were such classes of men, and the 
 statement correctly describes the influence which their history 
 and circumstances might be expected to exert upon them. 
 Materials of this kind, reproducing themselves from generation 
 to generation, unquestionably existed. Such materials formed 
 an element in the Moderate party which bulked largely in the 
 rank and file, and communicated to the whole party much of 
 the temper and the temperature which afterwards distinguished 
 it. Such materials also lay ready to the hands of all who were 
 inclined to work the Church to State ends or to private interests. 
 
 At the same time, I am not content to rest in this account 
 of the Moderate party as sufficient. Another source of influ- 
 ence must be considered in order to account for the impulse 
 which gave momentum to the leading minds, and reacted from 
 them on their party and on the whole Church. No remote 
 processes of inference are needed in order to exhibit what it 
 was and how it wrought. 
 
Moderatisni. 77 
 
 Placed in circumstances of great disadvantage by the 
 commotions of the past, the Scottish Church (and the same 
 was true of the country generally) had lost ground. Culture, 
 development of literature, development of taste, deliberate 
 adaptation of means to ends, had been wofully checked and 
 ■ marred. The peaceful processes by which those who teach and 
 those who learn find out one another's meaning, the processes 
 by which mind, in each generation, is laid under contri- 
 bution for new and various services, had been sadly inter- 
 rupted. One of the matters often mentioned in this connec- 
 tion, and which may serve for an instance, is the style of 
 preaching. A man who preached as he could and when he 
 could, in a house or on a hillside, was not likely to take much 
 care of his style. And the habit of the pulpit had retained, 
 in point of fact, much of the old dialect, and much of the old 
 way of dividing and arranging topics ; it did so at a time when 
 in general literature the most rapid improvement was taking 
 place in these very particulars — an improvement which that 
 age was rather disposed to overvalue. That is only one in- 
 stance. After the settlement of affairs, when the prospect of 
 quiet times seemed to be confirmed, men turned eagerly to 
 recover the lost ground, and to place themselves as soon as 
 possible on the level of their age. 
 
 Men of all tendencies in the Scottish Church set about this 
 work. They did so with increasing eagerness, as they became 
 more fully aware how much leeway they had to make up. 
 Now their enterprise fell at a remarkable time in the 
 mental history of Europe. It was one of those times when 
 new impulses set in, moving men strongly into new paths, or 
 when impulses generated before begin strongly to affect the 
 general mind. Philosophy, politics, science, education, all felt 
 the breath of a change beginning or proceeding — a change not 
 of doctrine only, but of method, and in all departments men 
 believed themselves coming into clearer light and on more 
 
78 TJiird Lecture. 
 
 solid ground. The experimental, the humanly practical and 
 reliable, that was to be the guide now. As to religion, the 
 movement was partly in religion, partly from it. I say 
 partly froiYi it ; for men said — " Let us be done with these 
 discussions; let us cultivate manners, letters, material interests; 
 good sense and good taste will furnish us with all the religious 
 views we need, and will breed a milder temper than the old 
 dogmatism did." Partly in it; and the tendency was to 
 rationalise all doctrines, and lower the peculiarities of the 
 Christian system, to Socinianise, in short. Such seemed to be 
 the spirit of the age, of its foremost and choicest men. A 
 specific influence more or less connected with these tendencies 
 came across the Border. The preaching most in repute there 
 was of the school of Tillotson. That amiable and high-minded 
 man was the head of a school which eminently studied to 
 speak to the age. For that purpose it inclined to reason 
 with men on their own principles, and to be sparing in 
 the assertion of things that might be controverted. It strove 
 to speak in a tone undeniably sensible and practical, laying 
 the stress on the moral elements in Christianity, on Chris- 
 tian virtue and its advantages. This was the new, the 
 cultivated, the reflective style of preaching, this the fresh 
 working of Christian thought, this the defensible mode of 
 Christianity. 
 
 In all such times there is a kind of enchantment in the air. 
 The new way of it advances with such an imposing mien, with 
 such ample hopes, especially with such promise of fresh life or 
 new reality, that people are gained at once. To resist the 
 mental fascination is too painful. The eighteenth century 
 indeed was not to turn out in the long run to be a very great 
 affair, for reasons which are well known, and which I must 
 not stay to describe. Still it had its own real gains and 
 acquisitions to offer; and it had its own attractions at the 
 outset. Those attractions were not connected with any views 
 
Moderatism. 79 
 
 towards the supernatural or the celestial, towards lofty specu- 
 lation or high enthusiasm. Quite the other way. 
 
 This was the age. We rather look doAvn upon it now, but 
 it did by no means look down upon itself, and we must grant 
 it to have been in j)oint of fact tlie opening of a period of great 
 advance in some particular directions. Such as it was — with 
 its treasures and its hopes, its achievements, and its pursuits, 
 its temptations and its benefits— the hopeful men of our Scottish 
 Church were to throw themselves upon it and make the most 
 of it. 
 
 I have said that men of various schools and tendencies did 
 so ; no doubt, with various degrees of wisdom, fidelity, piety, or 
 the reverse. You cannot do much in the way of discriminat- 
 ing them at first. Gradually you see them settling into two 
 tendencies. The first and larger party are composed of men, 
 some of them most able and highly cultivated, others rather 
 pretentious than able, whom the spirit of the age has mastered. 
 I am describing a party, not every particular member of it. The 
 spirit of the age is what they live in, believe in. The objects which 
 it recommends, the benefits it proposes to confer, the methods 
 on which it relies, have won them. These things have become 
 with them first and uppermost — so real, so reliable, so resist- 
 less do they appear. These influences determine and mould 
 the view they take of Christian religion, and the way in which 
 they propose to regulate its administration. Confident many 
 of them, most of them, that Christian religion is well capable 
 of being victoriously defended, and that it is to be resolutely 
 maintained, tlieir views of it are still regulated and controlled 
 rather by an extrinsic standard than by an intrinsic and native 
 one. Opposed to them is a smaller party, always numbering 
 among it men who are well abreast of the acquirements of 
 their time, distinguished by maintaining views and principles 
 which to the other side seem both antiquated and unenlight- 
 ened. The former are the leaders and lights of the Moderate 
 
8o TJiird Lecture. 
 
 party, tlie latter of the Evangelical. The former — I still speak 
 of a class, and do not apply the description to every member 
 of it — have placed the second interest first, culture before truth 
 and life, by a silent, subtle process, always maintaining that 
 this is the best way to provide for the first interest itself. 
 Among the latter survive those two conditions which I spoke of 
 as the life-blood of Scottish Christianity. But they survive,. 
 maintained with difiiculty, sometimes faintly, always under 
 pressure. 
 
 The impulse to which I have ascribed the highest element 
 in Moderatism, that which led it for a time, is an impulse, as 
 you will observe, which does not so much bias men in theology, 
 but rather biases them from it. Nevertheless, a very distinct 
 theological tone arises as the product of it. It is a tendency 
 to assuage or to obscure doctrinal distinctions, to shun clear 
 assertions, to reduce Christianity, as nearly as may be, to a 
 form of natural religion touched with historic associations and 
 warmed with the faint glow of an old but dying enthusiasm. 
 And the reason is plain : life must be harmonised to some 
 fundamental note or key. When it is to be harmonised to 
 culture instead of to decisive Christian convictions, then the 
 Christianity that is retained (reverently retained, I do not 
 question) must be modified. It must be made to speak more 
 softly, and to accommodate itself to the exigencies or sugges- 
 tions of another interest. This, men then persuade themselves, 
 is its best estate — the true, the finished, the meek, the perfect 
 Christianity. The development of all this in the Church of 
 Scotland may be marked by a series of stages. First, you 
 have a generally latitudinarian tendency, with a disposition to 
 dwell only slightly on Avhat is peculiar to Christianity as a 
 supernatural revelation. Still, a certain marked devoutness is 
 retained, and a dignified Christian demeanour cultivated and 
 cherished — the idea being entertained that a more true and 
 perfect type of Christian teaching and life is thus presented. 
 
Culture before Truth and Life. 8i 
 
 This style has its representatives in such men as Principal 
 Leechman of Glasgow. In those who receive their training 
 under such men an advance is discernible. This generation 
 has practically embraced the idea that Christian teaching and 
 influences, though they must be presumed to be important, are 
 so mainly as they contribute to promote the social excellences 
 which the age values ; and so everything peculiar to Christianity 
 figures as subordinate to those especial types of social and 
 literary excellence. Such men were Carlyle, coarse and jovial, 
 and Robertson himself, so able, refined, and literary. Partly 
 contemporary with them, but rather following at a more 
 advanced stage, are men who have become conscious that all 
 this requires a scheme of teaching to sustain it very different 
 from the Church's faith ; and they are irritated by that 
 consciousness. They writhe under the standards to which the 
 Church is bound, which an earlier generation seemed not to 
 care to question ; so came the lapse into Socinianism in various 
 parts of the Church. It is accounted for partly as the adojDtion 
 of a theological system more congenial to the prevailing spirit 
 of the men ; partly, however, it is just the expression of revolt, 
 in the form that happens to be suggested and to lie nearest; 
 and so it was connected in the case of many with a revolt 
 against a number of other things besides sound doctrine. It was 
 in this stage and in this phase that Moderatism became most 
 offensive, most earthly, most injurious to the best interests of 
 the country. 
 
 Setting culture before truth and life, the secondary interest be- 
 fore the primary, Moderatism became inevitably the antagonist of 
 our Scottish religious life. It opposed itself both to the theology, 
 and to the conception of conversion and life towards God, which 
 I dwelt on at the outset. The theology sank into insignificance, 
 lost its meaning, and in many cases became hateful, though 
 some of the party always adhered, even stringently, to its formal 
 positions. The conception of conversion was still more speedily 
 
82 Third Lecture, 
 
 sunk in the notion of general improvement and moral culture. 
 The change took place half- unconsciously ; for men were hardly 
 aware at first that in taking up the new ground they must 
 move so decidedly off the old. But it took place, as I have 
 said, inevitably, and also speedily. Thus by the road of a 
 high enthusiasm and a zealous culture the upper sections of 
 the Moderate party reached the same result which was reached 
 in the lower sections by the road of mere earthliness, selfish- 
 ness, and secularity. It is indeed a most striking thing to 
 mark how instinctively the refined and cultivated members of 
 the party made common cause with the basest against evan- 
 gelical religion, as the natural enemy of both. The party 
 included a large number of respectable, kindly, hospitable men, 
 in addition to those literary luminaries whom the Dean 
 enumerates. But he may be assured that the Church politics 
 of the Moderates, bad as they were, were only after all the 
 index on the dial. The operative force lay deeper, and was 
 every way pernicious. I do not forget, in saying this, that all 
 parties are mixed. There were men among the Moderates of 
 whom, individually, no one would wish to say an unkind 
 word. And among their opponents, in the party called 
 Evangelical, there were mere partisans, bad and hollow men, 
 all the worse because they professed principles which did not 
 regulate their lives. The whole Evangelical party indeed felt 
 the chilling influence of the time, and were less high-hearted 
 than they might have been. Yet with them remained, and 
 among them were upheld, the true life and hope of the Church 
 of Scotland. By them work was done through districts and 
 parishes, greatly underestimated as to its amount and value b}^ 
 those who demand that the kingdom of God shall always come 
 with observation. 
 
 The history of Moderatism, what it began with and what it 
 ended in, the pretensions of its rise, and the undisguised base- 
 ness of its latter end, is a great historical commentary on the 
 
The Deans Sympathy. ^^^ 
 
 results, in Christian Churches, of setting the secondary interests 
 in the primary place. It is, in one word, ruin. Let us face, 
 let us understand, let us appropriate, let us sympathise with, 
 let us advance the culture of the time, so far as we have power 
 to do it. That is a great Christian duty belonging to the right 
 fulfilment of the task of the Church, and it is fitted to prepare 
 us, not only to do the Lord's work, but to learn for ourselves 
 the Lord's providential lessons. But as Christians, as Churches, 
 let us never forget that first — unconditionally, always first — 
 we have truth to speak, whether men will hear or forbear, and 
 we have a type of life to fulfil, and be, whether men will ap- 
 prove or condemn. 
 
 Looking from this point of view, it is very easy indeed to 
 understand the Dean's sympathy with Moderatism, For 
 he also dreads this one thing, a religion that mars the har- 
 mony of life by refusing to adapt itself to the spirit of the 
 age, and to ally itself with the widest variety of opinions and 
 of tendencies. I do not allege that the Dean desires to 
 obliterate from any mind those affirmations which constitute 
 the Confession of Christ's Church, and of the Protestant 
 Churches in particular. But then he is most anxious that, 
 in whatever forms embodied, religious faith should own fellow- 
 ship with the widest variety of human beliefs and of human 
 impressions. It is for religion itself he fears, if it should com- 
 mit itself to assert broadly the unconditional necessity of faith, 
 and the peculiarity of grace, and of its fruits and working in 
 this world. " Surely," he seems to say, " the current will prove 
 too strong, the effort to hold the ground will prove abortive, 
 condemned by the result. Be wise in time ! " Therefore every- 
 thing, in every sphere of life, which can in any sense have 
 ascribed to it moral w-orth, must be viewed as, 'pvo ianto, true 
 Christian religion. So, on the other side, Christian religion 
 has its character best and most wisely fixed when it is mainly 
 identified — not absolutely, but mainl}^ — with those forms of 
 
84 TJiird Lectnrc. 
 
 social excellence and attainment which are independent of all 
 doctrines, and are developed in a thousand different schools. 
 Well, I say that in such a scheme the great Christian beliefs 
 concerning incarnation, sin, and grace, even if they continue to 
 be held, change their character. They cease and must cease to 
 be what they were. Insignificant for the Church, they can no 
 longer maintain their claim to be momentous for the indivi- 
 dual. They subside into mere variable forms, equivalent and 
 exchangeable — one statement nearly as good as another; and 
 religion becomes in effect only "a form of culture, suffusing life 
 with colours of solemn and tender sentiment." 
 
 I cannot but regard it as confirmation of what I impute — 
 not of all the inferences which I draw for myself-^ — when I find 
 Dean Stanley preaching the other day on the mystery of the 
 Trinity, and explaining the " three names " to the effect that 
 the Father is God in creation, the Son is God in history, 
 the Spirit is God in conscience ; and that we have fellow- 
 ship with the Father in nature, with the Son not only in 
 Christ (who of course is reverently named), but also in all 
 elevating passages of human character and history, with the 
 Spirit in conscience. Still more do I regard it as confirmation 
 when I find him commending to Scottish Christians, in lectur- 
 ing on the Scottish Churches, the truly Christian character of 
 David Hume. No one was asking him to pass judgment on 
 Hume ; no one would hinder him from acknowledging Hume's 
 uprightness and amiability ; but it is strange indeed to find 
 Hume commended in such circumstances as a truly Christian 
 character. This is no mere excess of charity towards an indi- 
 vidual — if it were I should pass it. Nay, it is a recommenda- 
 tion of a mode of judging to be applied to principles and to 
 facts. As such it is to be met distinctly. And not concern- 
 ing myself here with what David Hume was or was not, what 
 he found or failed to find, I say that without the faith of Christ 
 there is no true Christian character. I will add, in the Ian- 
 
Robert Burns. 8 ^ 
 
 guage of the 18th Article of the Church of England—" They 
 are to be holden accursed that presume to say that every man 
 shall be saved by the law or sect which he professeth, so that 
 he be diligent to frame his life according to that law and the 
 light of nature. For Holy Scripture doth set out unto us only 
 the name of Jesus Christ whereby men must be saved." 
 
 Qmte the same impression is conveyed by some of the 
 notices interwoven into the sketch of distinguished Scotchmen 
 in the Dean's last lecture. Some of these are most beautiful; 
 but I am in the judgment of those who heard or read, whether 
 the idea is not conveyed that where genius touches upon life, 
 especially if it recognises God and duty at all, there we are to 
 own a teacher of the Christian religion 
 
 I think it right and incumbent to speak of one of these 
 cases. I mean his reference to one for whose memory we all 
 cherish very deep and peculiar feelings— Robert Burns. 
 
 But before I advert to anything the Dean said, I will ask— 
 Can no one stop the din that profanes the grave of Robert 
 Burns? Has no one the heart to hear the "inhabitant 
 below," or to understand his voice? Of all perverse destinies 
 with which earth could pei-plex his fame, did it ever visit his 
 imagination that crowds of rhetorical men would go about in 
 never-ending floods of eloquence to prove his life a great moral 
 victory and triumph ? Did he ever foresee that every after- 
 dinner orator, who wished to show what a flexible thing 
 advanced Christianity can be, would harp upon the passages 
 that saddened his own thoughtful hours, as proofs of what may 
 comport with high moral and Christian excellency? Shame 
 upon them that are so destitute of love for Burns, that have so 
 little sympathy with the pathos of his own view of his own 
 life, as not to understand they are to let that alone ! Why 
 can they not let it alone ? Let them celebrate his genius, if 
 it needs to be celebrated; let them celebrate his honest man- 
 hood—a gi-eat deal too straightforward, I will be bold to say. 
 
86 Third Lecture. 
 
 to tolerate the despicable sophistry that is spent on his career 
 
 — let them dwell on the undying glow he has shed into 
 
 Scottish minds, and hearts, and homes, and lives, and history, 
 
 and for the rest let it alone. Nobody is going to meddle with 
 
 it, if themselves will let it alone. But if they will not, on 
 
 themselves be the shame. 
 
 " A curse upon the clown and knave 
 Who will not let his ashes rest." 
 
 This by the way. Now as to Dean Stanley. We object 
 to Robert Burns as a religious teacher, because he does not 
 take his ground as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 as one who desired to follow Him. We are not judging 
 whether, at any time of his life, he became such. Neither 
 are wc standing on any question of more or less orthodoxy. 
 Neither are we questioning the beauty of the admiring tribute 
 which he paid to Christian doctrine in " The Cottar's Saturday 
 Night." Neither are we blind to the force and pathos of the 
 " Advice to a Young Man," admirable as far as it goes. But, 
 I repeat, he does not take his ground and speak his rede as 
 a believer in the Lord Jesus, and as one who desired to follow 
 Him; as I suppose, because he was not prepared to take that 
 responsibility, and was too honest a man to go farther in that 
 matter than his actual convictions warranted. This does not 
 require us to deprive ourselves of the benefit of anything good 
 or true that is in Robert Burns. But it is one reason for 
 refusing to recognise him as a wise religious teacher. Further, 
 we see that when Robert Burns broke with the ancient habit 
 or tradition of Scottish piety, whether that was his own fault 
 or the fault of the Church, or of both, that breach brought 
 with it a deplorable consequence. He continued from time to 
 time to pour out exquisite strains of occasional devotion. But 
 while he scourged that which he saw around him, savouring as 
 he judged of hypocrisy and religious hoUowness, where is the 
 indication of his finding out or working out a conception of 
 
Established Chtirchcs. 87 
 
 faith in Christ or love to Christ, distinct from that which he 
 condemned and denounced ? The blame for that we lay in 
 the most precise and stringent manner on Scottish Moderate 
 ministers. They did their best to ruin Burns, and we abhor 
 them for it— wretched men, that called themselves ministers 
 of Christ, and had not the heart to preach Him/'" 
 
 Upon the principles he has stated, the Dean appears as the 
 advocate of Established Churches. In Establishments, and in 
 those alone, in his view, can the end be secured. For, first. 
 Establishments in theory are absolutely ruled by the State, which 
 easily can remove every restriction ; and, second, Establish- 
 ments naturally tend, in his judgment, to be conformed to the 
 type which he desiderates. They are to be expressions, then, 
 of the religious sentiment of the community ; they are to be 
 brought as far as circumstances admit to the point of having a 
 blank shield, of bearing no device to which any appreciable 
 part of the community objects. They are thus to be the scene 
 in which the alliance of the Christian sentiment with every 
 form of opinion which happens to arise may go uninterruptedly 
 on from age to age. Nonconformist bodies meanwhile, besides 
 securing safety-valves for peculiar and unreasonable people, can 
 be useful for " keeping alive the fire of devotion and love, 
 which in Established Churches is sometimes apt to die out in 
 the light of reason and breadth of inquiry." Performing these 
 humble offices — and most particularly, I suppose, sheltering 
 the fire of devotion from the light of reason — they may remain 
 in their own subordinate place, while the Establishments pur- 
 sue their career in the regions of illuminism which have been 
 described. Now, observe that there is no difference between 
 the Dean and us with respect to the position that the Church 
 should labour to understand the age, and should be ever ready, 
 not only to teach what the age will receive, but herself to 
 receive the new lessons or new lights which are ascertained to 
 * See Appendix, B. 
 
88 Third Lecture. 
 
 men by the progress of God's providence. The difference is, 
 whether the Church is to perform this part of its duty livingly, 
 as a society realising its own calling and responsibility, or 
 whether it is to have all questions settled for it in the way 
 suggested. If he had only said that Churches must not rely 
 on mere traditions, but must be prepared to utter present con- 
 victions from a living and actual conscience of truth and duty ; 
 if he had said, for instance, that they must hold themselves 
 free, on a fair call, to review all merely human creeds in the 
 light of Scripture, and of all relevant argument as to their 
 structure and uses, he would only have said what we should all 
 approve. But he contemplates a quite different end, and espe- 
 cially a quite different road. He even considers the question 
 to be virtually settled for both the Church of England and the 
 Church of Scotland, and argues in behalf of both on that 
 ground, though, no doubt, he sees points in which the principle 
 is not yet properly applied. Hence, as to the Scottish Estab- 
 lishment, he regards the Confession — on grounds the validity 
 of which I don't judge — as already laid upon the shelf along- 
 side of the Covenant — like that, he says, to be honoured, but 
 like that, not to be honoured in the observance. It has not 
 been reconsidered, nor modified, nor exchanged for a new Con- 
 fession fitted for the time, but simply it is to be treasured up 
 " among historical documents." 
 
 Very well : we all know that a powerful tide is running in 
 influential quarters in favour of a general relaxation of belief, 
 and that is in favour of the Dean's design. Besides that, in 
 another way, the existing forces tend in the same direction. 
 For the more that divisions of opinion multiply, the more 
 temptation there is to men who value an Establishment to 
 widen the base indefinitely, as the natural policy for strengthen- 
 ing the institution. So that we can see how the Dean's view of 
 what Establishments ought to be and are, might receive conclu- 
 sive and unanswerable verification. I am bound, however, to 
 
Established Cktcrches. 89 
 
 record my belief tliat there are many men in the Established 
 Churches who repudiate all this, and remain where they are be- 
 cause they do not believe the Dean's theory. Meanwhile, he ap- 
 peals to us outside the Establishment not to be so unreasonable 
 as to propose to pull down Establishments, which satisfy in the 
 way indicated such aspirations as his own. Now, I will make 
 bold to answer this appeal on behalf — to speak first of them — 
 of nine-tenths of those whom the Dean has thus addressed. And 
 I say that, just in so far as the Established Churches correspond 
 to the Dean's ideal, and in so far as that becomes clear, we 
 will most certainly join with all our might to pull them down. 
 More than that, there are plenty of men in the Established 
 Churches who, on that supposition, will overcome the tempta- 
 tion of their position and come to help us. Churches of that 
 kind, if they are to be called Churches, are a moral nuisance 
 not to be tolerated for an hour. I mean Churches in which 
 the whole power, the whole means of attraction which the 
 State can employ, is devoted to support the principle that 
 the Church of Christ, as such, has no principles and no 
 conscience — has no peremptory assertions to make, no dis- 
 tinct truth and no distinct life to represent and embody to the 
 world. It would be treason to Christianity itself to connive at 
 this for an hour. 
 
 The Dean came down here, doubtless, to gratify many friends 
 and admirers, as well as to testify the interest which our history 
 has awakened in a mind which has inquired into many histories. 
 In the course of doing so, his own convictions led him to adorn 
 with the attractions of his cultivated mind the cause of Broad 
 Churchism and of Establishments, represented as one cause, and 
 to depreciate, as he can do so well, what we call evangelical 
 religion, and dissent. I have little doubt that his intention was, 
 in compliance with his own honest convictions, to strengthen 
 the cause of the Established Church in our community at the 
 cost of all the others. I will raise no debate here and now as 
 
90 Third Lecture. 
 
 to whether that is desirable or not. But this I will say, that 
 in my judgment his lectures have done more to set that question 
 agoing than any event that has recently taken place in this 
 community. There are many of us who cherish a very deep 
 feeling that, of things within a man's discretion, one of the last 
 we would like to have a hand in would be a contest with any 
 other Church about money and privileges — a contest which hardly 
 ever can be kept clear of debasing and unworthy associations. 
 As long as we are not called out, we are much disposed to keep 
 quiet. But Dr. Stanley has certainly succeeded in strongly fixing 
 our attention upon some evil influences working with increas- 
 ing strength. He has vividly set before us existing tendencies; 
 he has let us see that, short of the complete consummation which 
 he approves, there is much in the ]3resent position of the Estab- 
 lished Churches which tends towards it ; he has let us see that 
 there is much which tends to perplex and entangle good men, 
 much that almost forces them to be content with as much 
 fidelity to Church duties — (I am not speaking of merely personal 
 duties) — as circumstances or the incurable difficulties of their 
 position will allow. He has fixed our attention on these things ; 
 we are not to exaggerate them, we are not to take any hasty 
 course about them; but we are not going to forget them. 
 
 In closing these lectures, let me remember that there are 
 matters of more importance. I have had to speak for the 
 independence of the Church. Dean Stanley is mistaken if he 
 thinks either that we take it up as a mere tradition, or that 
 we wish to use it for the maintenance of any mere tradition. 
 This I have desired to show in the present lecture. We wish 
 to be free to bring the present faith and life of the Church to 
 bear on present duties, present trials, present questions. We 
 think it indeed a wise use of freedom to recognise the con- 
 stitutional basis, which supports our action and tends to its 
 strength and continuity, in the past history of the way by 
 which God has led us. We think it a wise use of freedom 
 
Conchisioii. 91 
 
 not to be carried with every wind of doctrine, nor to fall down 
 and worship whatever comes to us in the name of culture and 
 civilization. We think that in the past Christ has been with 
 His Church, and taught her many things out of the Scriptures 
 which we do well to hold fast. We believe, at the same time, 
 that more light will break out of the Word, as the Church 
 pursues her way under the discipline of Providence. We have 
 to deal with the present, not according to past convictions, but 
 according to present convictions; not according to the beliefs of 
 our fathers, but according to our own ; we have to convey, in so 
 far as we represent the Church, the message and the influence 
 which Christ's Church ought to convey to the men of our time, 
 who inherit the past and are looking forward to the future. 
 For that we would be free of every bond except the regard we 
 owe to Christ's word, and the regard which He has appointed 
 us to have to one another's convictions in shaping our message 
 and our action. That has never been an easy task at any 
 time. It is not like to be an easy task in our time. Perhaps 
 it is well that it should not be easy. 
 
 Can I speak of this, and not add also, that if any will say 
 to us, in any of our Churches, " You are far below such work 
 as this," we have no reply except to listen, and to confess that 
 indeed we are far below it ? The more we feel how far below, 
 the better for us and for the work itself. For the worst 
 enemies of the Church's liberties have been ever those who 
 vaunted those liberties, but failed to use them well. There- 
 fore I implore you to remember, if you have agreed with me 
 in any of my statements, as I would be myself reminded, that 
 the independence of the Church means nothing unless it crowns 
 a true and various Christianity that goes before. Let us take 
 heed what it is to mean with us — with us during the few 
 years we are to remain members of the Church on earth. O 
 that liberty might mean in all our Churches intense dovoted- 
 ness and unsparing service ! If it shall mean that — if it shall 
 
92 Third Lecture. 
 
 mean a heart that sets the good cause first, and labours to 
 carry it forward in every land — if it shall mean not zeal to build 
 up our own sect or party, but a love for our people, our own 
 Scottish people, those of them who love us, and those who love 
 us not, an enterprising courage to confront their difficulties, to 
 bear their burdens, to heal their sins — if it enable us to 
 cherish that high temper yet lowly spirit, out of which may 
 arise men of fire to be our missionaries and our ministers and 
 our elders, men prepared to spend their years with small care 
 for earthly ends, and much for the kingdom of our Lord Jesus 
 — if it lead us to devote to this cause the utmost we can 
 reach, of learning and culture and means, yet so that we keep 
 all subordinate to the one great aim, fusing them all into a 
 faithful service of Christ — if we maintain and increase among 
 us the consciousness of what conversion is, and what following 
 Christ is — if, being free, we are humbly candid towards divine 
 teaching and charitable towards the brethren — and if we are 
 taught to deal with all questions, not as servants of the world, 
 and not as servants of the past, but as servants of the truth 
 and of the Lord, — that will vindicate our independence at the 
 bar of history. Nothing else will ; nothing else ought. And 
 then how securely might we smile at the poor talk which 
 balances culture against faith ! for then how surely and how 
 completely all things should be ours. 
 
APPENDIX A, p. 22. 
 
 In tlie Lecture as originally delivered, reference was made to the 
 circumstance that Mr. Comper's book bore to be published by the 
 desire of Dr. Wordsworth, Bishop of St. Andrews in the Scottish 
 Episcopal Church, to whom it was dedicated. This reference is now 
 withdrawn, as Bishop Wordsworth has explained that he desires his 
 sentiments to be gathered from what he has himself written within 
 the last twelve years, and that he and Mr. Comper are not now to be 
 regarded as wholly agreeing on these matters. Lest it should be 
 thought, however, that Mr. Comper's standing in his Church is not 
 such as to wari'ant my taking him as representative of any consider- 
 able section of it, I may refer to the proceedings which took place 
 in November, 1870, iir connection with the opening of the Mission 
 Chapel of St. Margaret, Aberdeen. I do not, of course, make those 
 who attended responsible for all Mr. Comper's views. But no one 
 can read the proceedings witliout drawing the conclusion that Mr. 
 Comper is by no means an isolated and exceptional person in his 
 Church, but stands in the central stream of its life and work. All I 
 have heard of him leads me to believe him to be a very earnest and 
 laborious man. 
 
 In connection with this siibject I may add a few sentences. 
 It does not surprise us that persons persuaded in their own minds in 
 favour of Episco^oacy should represent it as a duty to be in fellowship 
 with a or the Bishop, and should represent the non-performance of 
 that duty as involving, ordinarily, some degree of sin. For, besides 
 invincible ignorance, thei^e is ignorance which, though real, and in an 
 important sense honest, is culpable. When a Prelatist chai'ges such 
 ignorance, and therefore some sin, on me, or I on him, it need scandalise 
 neither of us. Every Christian, I suppose, remains culpably ignorant 
 of something he ought to know, gi-eat or small, in doctrine or duty. 
 For the forgiveness of such sms we pray daily, wliile we pray also for 
 the more single eye and the humbler heart to which all things will 
 become more clear. But what does surprise us is, that an honest 
 difference of judgment regarding the number and relation of office- 
 
94 Appendix A. 
 
 bearers whom Clirist appointed to watch over His Church — a diiference 
 involving possibly some degree of sin on one side or other — should be 
 conceived to place either party in an exceptional or critical relation to 
 salvation, or to the care of the great Shepherd. 
 
 It does not greatly alter the feelings of surprise on our jiart, though 
 it softens the phraseology on the other side, when it is represented in 
 this way, viz., that those who do not adhere to a bishop may be re- 
 cognised as members of the one Church in a state of schism, more or 
 less culpable according to circumstances ; but that their Churches are 
 not true Churches, have not promised grace in the ordinances they 
 administer, ai'e null, in short. Let it be considered how much im- 
 jjortance those, who hold this theory attach to true Church ministra- 
 tion j and then let it be considered that, according to them, all this 
 most needful grace has been by Christ our Lord suspended on an 
 empirical arrangement, so doubtful in its evidence that the Scriptui-e 
 proof of it is given up as hopeless by many even of the Episcopalians ! 
 We on our side are withheld from erecting any of our " points " into 
 corresponding importance, not by any doubt about their authenticity, 
 but by the view we take of our Lord's way of dealing with men in 
 matters of salvation. We own personal grace wherever persons are 
 inwardly believing to Christ and adhering to Him. We own true 
 Churches whei'ever societies of professing believers, claiming and 
 exercising a Church state in professed subjection to Christ, are holding 
 forth the main fundamentals of the faith, and doing the main things 
 which He has commanded to be done in and by Churches. We admit 
 that there may be doubtfu.1 cases both of persons and Churches. And 
 we hold that different degi'ees of sin attach to the mistakes, defects, 
 and omissions both of the one and of the other. 
 
 So in particular of unity, which is greatly relied on as a character- 
 istic of Christ's Church, and so as necessitating the conclusions at 
 which our High Church friends arrive. We acknowledge that the 
 visible Church ought to be one. We acknowledge that breaches 
 which interrupt fellowship imply sin somewhere. We acknowledge 
 that in proportion as they are recklessly or wantonly made, or main- 
 tained under manifestly carnal influences, in the same proportion the 
 guilt of schism is incurred or enhanced. But we refuse to see unity 
 only in unity of constitution. We maintain that not all unity, not 
 all visible vniity, has failed, even when breaches have taken place 
 which imply sin, and are attended with evil. We maintain that the 
 
Separation, Schism, and Sin. 95 
 
 woi'st and truly fatal kind of schism may be still far off, even wlien 
 men, under misapprehensions, withdraw from a scripturally constituted 
 Chui'ch. For instance, assuming Presbyterianism alone to be scrip- 
 tural, we hold that if the inhabitants of one-half of Scotland should 
 withdraw peaceably from it, on the mistaken ground that Scripture 
 requu'ed the Church to be episcopally constituted, and should take 
 means to have their Church so constituted and governed, they would 
 be breaking unity on tlieii' part, not without some sin in their honest 
 mistake. Yet their sin might have extremely little of the spirit or 
 of the offence of schism ; and their peaceable separation might leave, 
 in a large measure, unity still untouched ; not merely inward unity, 
 but a very visible and palpable unity — a unity serving, not perfectly 
 indeed, yet powerfully, towards the great ends for which Christ 
 appointed His Church to be one. If, however (still supposing Pres- 
 byterianism alone to be scriptural), loe proceeded, on the ground of 
 their mistake and peaceable withdrawal, to charge them with a fatal 
 breach of unity, to unchurch them, and to deny the validity of the 
 ordinances they had procured to be administered, while they acknow- 
 ledged the validity of oiu"s, then in that case we should be the true 
 schismatics, the real and effective breakers of a unity which the 
 others had only somewhat defaced and obscured. We should be so 
 although, by supposition, scriptural and right in our order. For 
 always in Christ's kingdom the fundamental and vital precedes in 
 importance the external and politic. 
 
 All this is somewhat away from the subject of my Lectures, for 
 Dean Stanley, notoriously, has no sympathy with the High Church 
 \T.ews which I am characterising. But I think it worth while to say 
 so much for this reason. All men who attach importance to Chui'ch 
 duties will be found at times feeling and speaking strongly on what 
 they regard as inexcusable or disgraceful failures, perhaps treachei'ies, 
 in connection with them. In particular cu-cumstances they will 
 think themselves justified in strongly charging sin, and calling on 
 men to have no fellowship with those sius. Presbyterians have often 
 done so. But it is one thing to charge sin, even in this strong and 
 peremptory manner; it is another tiling to deny standing in the 
 visible Church merely because Church duties have not been rightly 
 apprehended or performed. When, in such cases, the language has 
 become very strong and swcei)ing, it has generally been because it 
 was felt that a dereliction of duty, a moral baseness, could be 
 
96 Appendix B. 
 
 charged, wliicli inferred (under any Church constitution) estrange- 
 ment from prosj)erous spiritual life until it was repented. 
 
 APPENDIX B, p. 87. 
 
 The expression in the text may seem strong, but it is deliberately 
 chosen. It applies, of course, only to some individuals, not by any 
 m.eans to a whole party. There are facts, known on perfectly good 
 authority, though they appear in no life of Burns, connected with one 
 or two periods in his history when his mind seemed open to the 
 influence of earnest religious convictions, which would justify much 
 harsher epithets. If all that could be charged against the Moderate 
 ministers concerned, were merely that they sought to determine him 
 in favour of some opinions divergent from my own, I should use no 
 epithets. But what is to be charged against them is sheer treason to 
 their trust as ministers of Christ. 
 
 My assertion in p. 86, line 9 and following, has been questioned on 
 the ground of statements contained in Burns' letters. In the face of 
 those statements (and remembering some others) I abide by the asser- 
 tion in the text. 
 
 LORIMER AND OILLIKS, PRINTERS, CLYDE STREET, BDINljURGH. 
 
POSTSCRIPT. 
 
 Since the last edition of my Lectures appeared, Dean Stanley has 
 published his. The text hears the marks of a good deal of minute 
 adjustment, intended, apparently, to fortify the Lectures against the 
 criticisms which have proceeded from various quarters. Some of the 
 points to which I have adverted have become less salient, or are 
 stated more cautiously, in the Dean's printed version of them. The 
 angles, genei'ally, have been somewhat rounded off. In substance, 
 however, the points I touched on are still maintained by the Dean. I 
 have, therefore, not felt called upon to make alterations upon any of my 
 own statements in the present edition, but have left them as they were. 
 In one instance only, I have gathered from the Dean's volume, that a 
 statement in his Lectures, erroneously reported in the newspajjers, had 
 led me into remarks which were irrelevant. I have therefore deleted 
 the passage. It stood near the beginning of my Third Lecture, and 
 referred to the negative character of the Confession. The Dean's 
 remarks, as it appears, were not meant to apply to our Confession, 
 commonly so called, but to the National Covenant, sometimes called 
 the " Negative Confession," because it contains a detailed protest 
 against a series of Romish errors. I will not waste time in debating 
 the merits of " negatives," which simply represented the attitude of 
 the Scottish Church and State as on their defence against Romanism. 
 All that I could say on the subject has been anticipated by Mr. 
 Taylor Innes, in an article in the March number of the Contemporary 
 Review. 
 
 I do not think it necessary to burden these Lectures with a fresh 
 specification of all the points in which I think the Dean has been 
 misled as regards the view to be taken of particular facts or features 
 of our history. I may say, however, that I have been struck, even 
 more than before, with the method of implied argument, by which he 
 leads up to his panegyric on Moderatism. He finds in many eminent 
 men moderation, that is, the disposition to a considerate and large- 
 minded estimate of things, and a calm and kindly temper. Such 
 cases are treated as the prophecies and precursors of Moderatism, and 
 the men who manifested this disposition are ranked as the spizitual 
 progenitors of the Moderates. Now, every truly eminent man has in 
 him (in a greater degree or a less) a notable power of appreciating 
 person.s from whom he diflfers, and doing justice to tendencies with 
 
98 Postscript. 
 
 which he does not wholly comply, or which he feels it his duty to 
 oppose. The noisy personages who ai"e incapable of doing so are the 
 mere lumber of all Churches and parties ; and they were certainly as 
 numerous in the (so-called) Moderate ranks as anywhere else. But the 
 whole value of the true moderation which good and great men have 
 shown, depends on its being the attendant of strong positive convic- 
 tions, and ])ronounced active tendencies. When it tempers these lead- 
 ing qvialities, moderation is an excellent thing. On the contrary, when 
 it begins to be worshipped for its own sake, and is allowed to lead the 
 thinking and the life, it is the sure token of poverty ; and it intensifies 
 the poverty from which it springs. So it was with the Moderates ; 
 and therefore they presently became bitter and fanatical in their 
 moderation. 
 
 The only passage in Dr. Stanley's published Lectxtres in which 
 (though without naming me) he adverts explicitly to a statement of 
 mine, is in j^age 140. Here he sets against my account of the 
 Moderates the testimony, as he says, of " the venerable biographer of 
 the leader of the popular party of that age," viz., Sir Heniy Moncreiff 
 Wellwood, in his Life of Erskine ; " the cordial and generous tribute 
 of one whose very name is a guarantee for strictness of life and faith." 
 He cites as follows : — "The names of such men as Cuming and Wishart, 
 and Walker and Dick, and Robertson and Blair, are embalmed, with 
 the name of Erskine, in the hearts of all who have learned in any 
 measure how to value whatever has been most respectable in our 
 Zion. God grant that while their memory is yet fresh in the mind, 
 the men who fill theii' places in the world may catch a portion of 
 their spirit ! God grant that while they, like Elijah of old, may be 
 dropping their mantle on the earth, their spirit also, like that of the 
 prophet, may yet remain to bless the children of men." 
 
 Here is enough, one would think, to extingviish Dr. Rainy ! After 
 all, however, it is only the Dean's concluding misfortune. These are 
 not the words of Sir Henry Moncreiff at all. They are part of a 
 sermon, hy Dr. Inglis — that is to say, by a very decided Moderate. 
 See passage as cited from Life of Erskine, p. 481, and compare 
 p. 396. 
 
 I may add, however, that I should be sorry to dispute the claim 
 of many Moderates to figure, in Dr. Inglis' language, among "the 
 respectabilities of Zion." 
 
 LORIMER AND (SILLIES, PRINTERS, CLYDE STREET, EDINBURGH. 
 
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