i liii YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. By the sa^ne Author. Lectures on the History of the Jewish Church. Part I. — Abraham to Samuel. 'With Maps and Plans. $2.50. The Same. Part II. — From Samuel to the Captivity. Each one volume crown Svo, cloth, neiv and cheaper edition. 1^2.50. — »^ Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church, ¦yVith an Introduction on the Study of Ecclesiastical History. One volume crown Svo, cloth, new and cheaper edition. $2.50. Sinai and Palestine. One volume crown Svo, cloth, new and cheaper edition. $2.50. Sermons Preached before His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, During his Tour in the East, in the Spring of 1S62. One vol ume i2mo, cloth. $1.50. ^' Sent postpaid, on receipt of price. LECTURES ON THE HISTORY CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH IN 1872. fbe^-cr-e ^€. Philpaophic l^^st(^ubeJ AETHUE PENEHYN STANLEY, D. D. DEAN OF WESTMINSTER, COBRESPONDINO M£MBE£ OF THE INSTITUTE OF FKANCE. NEW YORK: SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, AND COMPANY, SUCCESSORS TO CHAELES SCKIBNEE AND COMPANY. 1872. RIVBBSIDE, CAMBBIDGE: STBBEOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY. PREFACE. I HAVE prefixed to these Lectures a Sermon preached in Old Greyfriars' Church at the kind invitation of the Rev. Dr. WaUace, Minister of the Parish, on January 7, 1872. It indicates the spirit in which I would wish the subject in the Lectures to be approached, and on that account seemed a not unfitting introduction. I have also wished to retain it as a record of the revival of a custom which had for a considerable period fallen into disuse, but which once was well recognized both in the Church of England and the Church of Scotland. It had long been my intention to avail myself of the liberty of preaching in the sister Church, which the law of both Churches allows, and had only waited till a fitting oppor tunity occurred. It is sufficient in iUustration of this Hb erty, to refer to the interesting passage at the close of the twentieth edition of Dean Ramsay's " Reminiscences of Scottish Life," as regards the practice and feeling at the beginning of this century; to Bishop Ewing's admirable vindication of the principle in the " Sermon on Christmas time," iatended to have been preached before the Univer sity of Glasgow ; and to Principal TuUoch's able essay on the " EngUsh and Scottish Churches " in the " Contempo rary Review," in December, 1871. That such an event should have taken place without remonstrance or opposition in the Church of Scotland is a decisive proof of the Uber- VI PEEFACE. aUty which, as I have remarked in the closing Lecture, is characteristic of its present condition. The Lectures are printed as nearly as possible in their original state. Some iuaccuracies of detail have been cor rected, some ambiguities removed, and some passages which had been omitted for the sake of brevity have been re tained. I would venture here to repeat what was, in fact, impUed throughout the Lectures, that they do not profess to give anything Uke a complete account of the history of the Scot tish Church. Some of its most conspicuous personages, such as John Knox and Andrew MelviUe ; some of its most conspicuous features, such as its system of education and of discipUne ; some of its most conspicuous events, the General Assembly of 1638, and the Disruption of 1843, — have been passed over, partly as sufficiently weU known, partly for other reasons equally obvious. I wiU add that I have also, on principle, abstained from entering into the details of the several controversies in which the Church of Scotland has been at different times involved. The particular points at issue between the Burgh ers and the Anti-burghers, between the Secession, the Re Uef, and the Free Church, between the Moderates and Populars, the Collegers, the Usagers, the Unionists and Anti-unionists, could only have been set forth by a minute investigation and exposition which would have diverted the attention from the general features of interest common to aU of these divisions. I have in my first Lecture indicated that the copiousness of the sources of Scottish ecclesiastical history, as well as the excellent modem works on the subject, render any lengthened narrative unnecessary. I do not pretend to more than a superficial knowledge of the vast literature which PEEFACE. vii covers this field. But it may be convenient to give a brief summary of the chief works that can with advantage be consulted. For the general history, I would specially name the com pendious, but thoroughly Uberal and weU-digested " Church History of Scotland," from a Presbyterian point of view, in two volumes, by the Rev. John Cunningham, Minister of Crieff ; and the exact and candid " Ecclesiastical History of Scotland," from an EpiscopaUan point of view, in four volumes, by Mr. George Grub ; also the numerous notices of ecclesiastical affairs in Mr. Burton's elaborate " History of Scotland ; " and the lucid exposition of aU legal questions in Mr. Taylor Innes's admirable work on the " Law of Creeds in Scotland." For the early Celtic period I would refer to Mr. Stu art's " Sculptured Stones of Scotland," and " The Book of Deer ; " to Dr. Reeves's edition of Adamnan's " Life of Co lumba ; " to Innes's " Early History of Scotland ; " and to the modem reproduction of some of the chief characters in Montalembert's " Monks of the West." To these, it is to be hoped, will be shortly added Bishop Forbes's " Kalen- dar of the Lives of the early Scottish Saints." For the mediseval period, I must repeat my deep obliga tions to the lamented Joseph Robertson, which began from the moment when I first became acquainted with him — of which none can have any adequate notion but those who had the privilege of conversing with him, but of which perma nent traces are left in the smgularly interesting " Essay on Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals," in the eighty-fifth vol ume of the " Quarterly Review," and in the masterly Pref ace to the " Statuta Ecclesiae Scotianae." I would also name the "Sketches of Early Scottish History," by Mr. Cosmo Innes. vm PEEFACE. For the period of the Reformation, it is enough to men tion the " History of the Reformation," by John Knox him self ; the " Lives of John Knox and Andrew Melville," by Dr. M'Crie ; the chapters relating to it in Froude's " History of England," and the Lectures on that and the succeeding period by Principal Lee. For the period of the great struggle with the English State and hierarchy I would indicate BaUlie's " Letters ; " Wodrow's " History " and " Analecta ; " the various Lives of Rutherford, Claverhouse, and Leighton, with the notices in Burnet's " Own Time," and Macaulay's " History of England." For the period of the eighteenth century, I would spe cially refer to the Lives of Robertson and Blair, Sir H. Moncrieff Wellwood's " Life of Dr. John Erskine," Buxton's " Life of David Hume," the Autobiographies of Dr. Carlyle, and Dr. Somerville, and of Thomas Boston, and the histories of the various secessions. For the events near to our own time, it may perhaps suffice to mention Dr. Hanna's "Life of Chalmers," Mr. Herbert Story's Lives of " Story of Rosneath " and of "Robert Lee;" and Mrs. Oliphant's "Life of Edward Irving." To name the pamphlets and works relating to the Disruption of 1843 would be in itself a catalogue. Of one other source of iUustration I have freely availed myseK, because in no other way could I so bring home the subject to the inteUigence both of Englishmen and of Scots men, nainely, the allusions to Scottish ecclesiastical history in the romances of "The Monastery," "The A.bbot," " The Legend of Montrose," " Old MortaUty," " The Heart of Mid-Lothian," " Redgauntlet," " The Antiquary," " Waverley," and " Guy Mannering." In no other Uke works of genius are the references to the religious feeUngs PREFACE. IX of the author's country so frequent ; in none other is a knowledge of those feelings so necessary for a due under standing of the humor, the argument, and the characters that are produced. In conclusion, I would here repeat what in substance I have elsewhere expressed, my regret if in any untoward re mark I have wounded feeUngs which I would fain conciUate, not only from their intrinsic claim on my regard, but also from the kind indulgence I have received in Scotland even amongst the sections of the Church from which I most widely differ. If any such expressions stUl remain, I must plead in their behalf that in treading so fiery a soU it was almost impossible not to awaken some slumbering ashes; and that in so complex and interesting a subject it would have indicated a want of self-respect, and of respect for those whom I was addressing, if I had not touched, when required by the necessities of my argument, on the faults as weU as on the virtues of the country in which I had the honor to be so generously welcomed ; always Avith the en deavor (according to the rule laid down in the Address by which these Lectures are prefaced) to understand the truth which lay at the bottom of the error, and to make the best of whatever is admirable even in those from whom we are in other points the most divided. CONTENTS. " THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT." PAGE The Eleventh Commandment of the World .... 3 The Eleveuth Commandment of the Churches ... 3 The Eleventh Commandment of Christianity .... 4-6 I. Its original meaning ....... 7-1 1 n. Its application to the Divisions of Churches . . . 12-16 1. Better mutual appreciation .... 13 2. Larger and deeper theology 14 3. Union for great objects 15 Greyfriars' Church 17 LECTURE L THE CELTIC, THE MEDLEVAL, AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. Plan of the Lectures 21-23 L The Celtic Church 24 The abbatial system 25 The vitality of the early saints .... 26 St. Ninian 28 St. Serf 28 St. Mungo 29 St. Columba and lona 30-36 Mkaculous stories of earlier and later Scottish saints . 37 Reverence for sacramental ordinances ... 39 n. The Mediaeval Church 41 Its extraneous origin 41 St. Margaret and St. David 43 Rise of St. Andrew's . 45 Fall ofthe Mediseval Episcopacy 46 m. The modern Episcopal Church 47 Its English origin 4^ xu CONTENTS. PASS Its relations to Presbyterianism .... 48 Its state of persecution 51-57 1. Its violent divisions 52 2. Its antagonism to the English Church and State 53 3. Its romantic character 54 Lord Pitsligo 58 Bishop Jolly 58 Its present mission 59 LECTURE n. THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND, THB COVENANT, AND THE SECEDING CHURCHES. The meaning of the name " The Church of Scotland " Its Unity and its Divisions how to be explained I. National Independence .... 1. Negative character 2. Spiritual independence Rejection of the English Liturgy Solemn League and Covenant 3. Minuteness of theological divisions Whitefield and the Seceders . U. Results 1. Fervid devotion 2. Judaic theology .... 3. Poverty of general theology 4. Moral inconsistency Lord Crawford and Lord Grange . m. Higher religious excellence Samuel Rutherford 65-67 68, 69 70-91 74 77 80848689 92 92 95 9798 9899 100-106 LECTURE m. THE MODERATION OF THB CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Reply to Mr. Buckle HI Moderation in the age of the Reformation . . . . 112-113 Buchanan 112 Regent Murray . X12 John Knox • . . j^g Hugh Rose of Kilravoch .... .114 Early Erastianism H4 CONTENTS. xiii PAOE Moderation in the seventeenth century 116 Character of Henry Morton 116 Patrick Forbes 117 Robert Douglas 118 Robert Leighton 121 His devotion 121 His latitudinarianism 124 Memorials of Leighton 130 Lawrence Charteris 131 The Revolution Settlement and the word " Moderation " 132 Carstairs 133 The Literary clergy 141 Home 143 Blair 143 Robertson 144 Hume and Campbell 147 The Relief 149 The Glassites 150 Intolerance 151 Sir George Mackenzie 151 Controversies respecting — Aikenhead 154 Simson 154 Wishart 154 Leechman 155 Lukewarmness 155 Reception of Whitefield 156 Macknight and Leslie 159 ¦ Irving and M'Leod Campbell 159 Note on the Moderate and Popular Parties . . . . 160 LECTURE IV. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Union ofthe Church 165 The Spiritual Church of Scotland 166 Points of Union 166 1. Sentiment towards the Ancient Churches . . . 168 Larger liberality of Episcopalians . . . . 1 71 Dean Ramsay 171 Bishop Ewing 171 2. Laro-er liberality of Seceding Churches . . . 172 XIV CONTENTS. PAGE Thomas Chalmers 1 75 Dr. John Duncan 179 The United Presbyterians 180 3. Indications of general enlargement .... 181 Edward Irving 181 Thomas Erskine ...... 183 Robert Burns 187 Walter Scott 190 4. The Future of the EstabUshed Church . . . . 193 Its historical character ...... 194 Its Presbyterian character 1 95 Its vitaUty 196 Its relations to the Seceding Churches . . . 198 Its relations to the Church of England . . . 200 Chronological Table 205 ((r THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT." SERMON PREACHED IN OLD GREYFRIARS' CHURCH, EDINBURGH, ON JANUARY 7, 1872. THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. "A new commandment I give unto you." — John xiii. 34. We all know the Ten Commandments. Ls there such a thing as a new commandment — an The Eiev- Eleventh Commandment? We sometimes mandment hear in conversation of such an Eleventh world. Commandment invented by the world, in cynical contempt of the old commands, or in pursuit of some selfish or wicked end. Of such an Eleventh Commandment, whether in jest or earnest, we need not here speak. It is enough to be reminded of it, and pass it by. But there is also what may be called the Eleventh Commandment of churches and sects. In the oldest and most venerable of all r^j^^ gjg^_ ecclesiastical divisions — the ancient Samar- ™anijSent' itan community, who have for centuries, maritL^*' without increase or diminution, gathered ^'^'^'' round Mount Gerizim as the only place where men ought to worship — there is to be read upon the aged parchment-scroll of the Pentateuch this command ment, added to the other Ten : " Thou shalt build an altar on Mount Gerizim, and there only shalt thou worship." Faithfully have they followed that com mand ; excommunicating, and excommunicated by, all other religious societies, they cling to that elev enth command as equal, if not superior, to all the rest. This is the true likeness of what all churches 4 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. and sects, unless purified by a higher spirit, are tempted to add. " Thou shalt do something for this particular community, which none else may share. Thou shalt do this over and above, and more than thy plain, simple duties to God and man. Thou shalt build thine altar on Mount Gerizim, for here alone ' our fathers have said that God is to be worshipped. Thou shalt maintain the exclusive sacredness of this or that place, this or that word, this or that doctrine, this or that party, this or that institution, this or that mode of doing good. Thou shalt worship God thus and thus only." This is the Eleventh Command ment according to sects and parties and partisans. For this we are often told to contend more than for all the other Ten together. For an Eleventh Com mandment like to this, half the energies of Christen dom have been spent, and spent in vain. For some command like this men have fought and struggled and shed their own blood and the blood of others, as though it were a command engraven on the tables of the everlasting law ; and yet, again and again and again, it has been found in after ages that such a command was an addition as venerable, perhaps, and as full of interest, but as superfluous, as misleading, as disproportionate, as that Eleventh Samaritan com mandment : " Thou shalt build an altar on Mount Gerizim, and there only shalt thou worship." But there is yet another Eleventh Commandment, TheEiev- ^^^ of t^c world, uor yet of mere churches mindme^t ^r sccts — the truc Eleventh commandment ChrisUan of the Christian Religion. I have spoken of religion. .^j^^^^ Samaritan commandment as I have seen it far away in the sunny vale of Shechem, beneath eutheefoed and ushee. 5 the gray cliffs of Mount Gerizim. May I introduce this Christian commandment by a scene nearer home, within the bounds of your own kingdom and Church of Scotland ; a story known doubtless to many amongst you, but which a stranger may be permitted to recall. There may be some here present who have visited the retired Vale of Anwoth, on the shores of Galloway. In the seventeenth century the minister of the parish of Anwoth was the famous Samuel Rutherford, the great religious oracle of the Covenanters and their adherents. It was, as all read ers of his letters will remember, the spot which he most loved on earth. The very swallows and spar rows which found their nests in the church of An woth were, when far away, the objects of his affec tionate envy. Its hills and valleys were the witnesses of his ardent devotion when living ; they still retain his memory with unshaken fidelity. It is one of the traditions thus cherished on the spot, that on a Sat urday evening, at one of those family gatherings whence, in the language of the great Scottish poet, " Old Scotia's grandeur springs,' when Rutherford was catechizing his children and servants, that a stranger knocked at the door of the manse, and (like the young English traveller in the celebrated romance which has given fresh life to those same hills in our own age) begged shelter for the night. The minister kindly received him, and asked him to take his place amongst the family and assist at their religious exercises. It so happened that the question in the catechism which came to the stranger's turn was that which asks, " How many 6 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. commandments are there?" He answered "Eleven." " Eleven ! " exclaimed Rutherford, " I am surprised that a man of your age and appearance should not know better. What do you mean ? " And he an swered, " A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another." Rutherford was much impressed by the answer, and they retired to rest. The next morn ing he rose early to meditate on the services of the day. The old manse of Anworth stood — its place is still pointed out — in the corner of a field, imder the hill-side, and thence a long, winding, wooded path, still called Rutherford's Walk, leads to the church. Through this glen he passed, and, as he threaded his way through the thicket, he heard amongst the trees the voice of the stranger at his morning devotions. The elevation of the sentiments and of the expressions convinced him that it was no common man. He accosted him, and the traveller confessed to him that he was no other than the great divine and scholar. Archbishop Usher, the Primate of the Church of Ireland, one of the best and most learned men of his age, who well fulfilled that new commandment in the love which he won and which he bore to others ; one of the few links of Christian charity between the fierce contending factions of that time, devoted to King Charles I. in his life-time, and honored in his grave by the Protector Cromwell. He it was, who, attracted by Rutherford's fame, had thus come in disguise to see him in the privacy of his own home. EUTHEEFOED AND USHEE. 7 The stern Covenanter welcomed the stranger pre late; side by side they pursued their way along Rutherford's Walk to the little church, of which the ruins still remain ; and in that small Presbyterian sanctuary, from Rutherford's rustic pulpit, the arch bishop preached to the people of Anwoth on the words which had so startled his host the evening be fore : " A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another ; as I have loved you, that ye also should love one another." Let me, on this occasion, humbly endeavor to fol low the example of that illustrious prelate, and leav ing the old eleventh commandment of the Samaritan sect, say a few words on the new eleventh command ment of the Christian Church. I. Let me speak first of its original meaning. If we can easily imagine the surprise of the pious i. its orfg- Scotsman when he first heard of an eleventh ing. commandment, much more may we figure to our selves the surprise of the Apostles when they, for the first time, heard this new announcement from the lips of their Divine Master. " What ? Are not the Ten Commandments enough ? Must we always be pressing forward to something new ? What is this that He saith, ' A new commandment ? ' We can not tell what He saith." True it is that on those old Ten Commandments, much more on the two great commandments, hang all the law and the prophets. They contain the land marks of our duty — the landmarks of our religion. But there is yet a craving in the human heart for something even beyond duty, even beyond rever ence. There is a need which can only be satisfied 8 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. by a new, by an eleventh commandment, which shall be at once old and new — which shall open a new field of thought and exertion for each generation of men ; which shall give a fresh, undying impulse to its older sisters — the youngest child (so to speak) of the patriarchal family, the youngest and holiest and best gift of Him who has kept the good wine till the last. Many a false eleventh commandment, as I have said, has been put forth by the world to sup ply this want in its way ; many a false eleventh com mandment has been put forth by the churches in their way. But the true new commandment which our Saviour gave was, in its very form and fashion, peculiarly characteristic of his way — peculiarly char acteristic of the Christian religion. The novelty of the commandment lay in two points. First, it was new, because of the paramount, predominant place which it gave to the force of the human affections, the enthusiasm for the good of oth ers, which was, — instead of ceremonial, or mere obe dience, or correctness of belief, — henceforth to be come the appointed channel of religious fervor. And secondly it was new, because it was founded on the appearance of a new character, a new manifestation of the character of Man, a new manifestation of the character of God. Even if the Four Gospels had been lost, we should see, from the urgency with which the Apostles press this new grace of Love or Charity upon us, that some diviner vision of excellence had crossed their minds. The very word which they used to ex press it was new, for the thing was new, the example was new, and the consequences therefore were new also. "Love one another," was the doctrine of Jesus Christ, " as I have loved you." ITS PECULIARITY. 9 The solid blocks or tables on which the Ten Com mandments were written were of the granite rock of Sinai, as if to teach us that all the great laws of duty to God, and duty to man, were like that oldest pri meval foundation of the world — more solid, more enduring than all the other strata ; cutting across all the secondary and artificial distinctions of mankind ; heaving itself up, now here, now there ; throwing up the fantastic crag, there the towering peak, here the long range which unites or divides the races of man kind. That is the universal, everlasting character of Duty. But as that granite rock itself has been fused and wrought together by a central fire, without which it could not have existed at all, so also the Christian law of Duty, in order to perform fully its work in the world, must have been warmed at the heart, and fed at the source by a central fire of its own — and that central fire is Love — the gracious, kindly, generous, admiring, tender movements of the human affections; and that central fire itself is kept alive by the consciousness that there has been in the world a Love beyond all human love, a devouring fire of Divine enthusiasm on behalf of our race, which is the Love of Christ, which is of the inmost essence of the Holy Spirit of God. It is not contrary to the Ten Commandments. It is not outside of them, it is within them ; it is at their core ; it is wrapped up in them, as the particles of the central heat of the globe were encased within the granite tables in the Ark of the Temple. This was what the Apostle Paul meant by sajang, " Love is the fulfilling of the Law." This is what St. Peter meant by saying, " Above all things, have fer- 10 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. vent," enthusiastic " Love." This is what St. John meant when, in his extreme old age, he was carried into the marketrplace of Ephesus, and, according to the ancient tradition, repeated over and over again to his disciples the words which he had heard from his Master, " Little children, love one another." They were vexed by hearing this commandment, this Eleventh Commandment, repeated so often. They asked for something more precise, more definite, more dogmatic ; but the aged Apostle, we are told, had but one answer : " This is the sum and sub stance of the Gospel ; if you do this, I have nothing else to teach you." He did not mean that ceremo nies, doctrines, ordinances were of no importance; but that they were altogether of secondary impor tance. He meant that they were on the outside of religion, whereas this commandment bel(5nged to its innermost substance ; that, if this commandment were carried out, all that was good in all the rest would follow ; that if this commandment were neg lected, all that was good in all the rest would fade away, and all that was evil, and one-sided, and exag- erated, would prevail and pervert even the good. He meant, and his Master meant, that as the ages rolled on, other truths may be folded up and laid aside ; but that this would always need to be enforced and developed. This, then, is the new commandment ; we are to love one another, by making the best of one another ; by seeing, as far as we can, their better side. " He that will live in peace and rest Must see and hear and say the best." So says an ancient proverb, which well expresses the ITS MEANING. 11 meaning of this divine command. The new command ment was not, " Agree with one another in opinion or in form." It was not, as often has been said in the name of religion, " Hate, kill, extirpate one another." It was not, as in our weakness we often say, " Flatter, indulge, yield, to one another." It was not, as might in one sense well be said, " Teach one another, or govern one another." The command was, " Love one another." Love one another in spite of your differences, in spite of your faults, in spite of the excesses of one or the defects of another. Love one another, and make the best of one another, as He loved us, who, for the sake of saving what was good in the human soul, forgot, forgave, put out of sight what was bad — who saw and loved what was good even in the publican Zaccheus, even in the penitent Magdalen, even in the expiring malefactor, even in the heretical Samaritan, even in the Pharisee Nicodemus, even in the heathen soldier, even in the outcast Canaanite. Make the most of what there is good in institutions, in opinions, in communities, in individuals. It is very easy to do the reverse, to make the worst of what there is of evil, absurd, and erroneous. By so doing we shall have no difficulty in making estrangements more wide, and hatreds and strifes more abundant, and errors more extreme. It is very easy to fix our attention only on the weak points of those around us, to magnify them, to irri tate them, to aggravate them ; and, by so doing, we can make the burden of life unendurable, and can destroy our own and others' happiness and use fulness wherever we go. But this was not the love wherewith Christ loved us ; this is not the new love 12 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. wherewith we are to love one another. That love is universal, because in its spirit we overcome evil simply by doing good. We drive out error simply by telling the truth. We strive to look on both sides of the shield of truth. We strive to speak the truth in love, that is, without exaggeration or misrepresenta tion ; concealing nothing, compromising nothing, but with the effort to understand each other, to discover the truth which lies at the bottom of error; with the determination cordially to love whatever is lov able even in those in whom we cordially detest whatever is detestable. And, in proportion as we en deavor to do this, there may be a hope that men will see that there are, after all, some true disciples of Christ left in the world, " because they have love one to another." II. Such is the original of the Eleventh Command- Appiica- ment, as it was first delivered by Christ and E?°venth^ his Apostlcs. It is in one sense old, for it mentor''" ^as been in the world for eighteen cen- ionso™" turies. Yet in another sense it is always c uTc es. jjQ^^ fQj. j^ often has been superseded, even amongst Christians, by that old Samaritan command ment of which I spoke at the beginning. It is always new, for it admits and demands ever fresh applications to the circumstances of every Christian congregation, every Christian nation, and every Christian Church. May I, on this occasion, pass by the application to individuals and to nations, and fix your attention for a few moments on the new im pulse, the new facilities whicli we possess for fulfill ing the love which different churches ought to have one towards another, loving each other, even as Christ loved them all. ITS APPLICATION. 13 (1.) First, this love does not imply the necessity of absorbing one church into another, or of (i-) Better . 11.1 mutual ap- destroying one church m order to make preciation. room for another. It consists — and herein the tend encies of our age give us an immense assistance in carrying out the new commandment — it consists in a better understanding, a better appreciation of the peculiar spirit of every church — in recognizing the peculiar semblance which exists under outward di vergencies. For this discharge of our Christian duty, the increased knowledge of our past history, the in creased means of personal communication, are homely, but not less sacred channels through which this grace may flow in and out on all the various sections of Christendom. It was a just remark of a veteran statesman and historian of France, in speaking of the electric effect produced on the fiercest of the leaders of the old Revolution by being suddenly, and for the first time, brought into close contact with the unfor- timate Queen : " How many estrangements, misun derstandings, mortal enmities, would be cleared up and dispelled, if the adversaries could, for a few mo ments, meet eye to eye and face to face." Not less true is this of ecclesiastical than of political hostili ties. The more we see of each other, the more we know of each other, the less possible is it to believe each other to be out of the pale of Christian salva tion, or Christian sympathy ; the more necessary does it become, in thinking and in speaking of the pres ent ecclesiastical state and the future eternal state of the divided churches,' to "bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, endure all things " of those whom, in the times of our mutual ignorance, we re- 14 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. garded as aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise. (2.) Secondly, this love, this increased intercourse (2.) Larger aud appreciation, does not imply the dispar- theoiogT'' agement or the discouragement of Christian truth or Christian theology, in the proper sense of those words. On the contrary, it is the necessary consequence of the larger growth and deeper root which true Christian theology has taken, and may yet more fully take, in the circumstances of our time. Not without reason did the venerable patri arch of German Catholic theology, when, address ing a short time since the University of Munich, de clare that of all the sciences that which would gain most from the impetus of modern events was Theol ogy, which must henceforth " transform her mission from a mission of polemics into a mission of ironies ; which, if it be worthy of the name, must become a science, not, as heretofore, for making war, but for making peace, and thus bring about that reconciliar tion of churches for which the whole civilized world is longing." • It is but a natural result of the deeper study of the several parts of the Bible, according to the intention, meaning, and force of each — that the inward spirit and meaning of Christian truth should be seen athwart and beneath the outer forms in which the necessary development of later times has encom passed it. It is but the natural result of the increas ing age of the world, that it should learn that tem perance in theological argument, that better sense of proportion in theological statements, which we sometimes see in the increased moderation of the ex perience of individuals, in the mildness of the mei- ITS APPLICATION. 15 lowed old age of Athanasius and Augustine, of Lu ther, of Baxter, and of Wesley. It is but the nat ural result wherever lofty intellectual powers, or powerful spiritual discernment, have turned on theo logical subjects. The religious thoughts of Bacon, But ler, and Berkeley, of Shakespeare, Milton, and Wal ter Scott ; or, again, of Pascal and Thomas a Kempis ; or, again, coming down to a lower level, of Bishop Wilson's Maxims, or Whichcote's Aphorisms ; or yet, again, the sermons of Frederick Robertson in the Church of England, and the " pastoral counsels " of John Robertson in the Church of Scotland, alike lead us to that peaceful path of true wisdom '* which the lion's whelp hath not trodden nor the vulture's eye seen " — which the fierce fanatic hath not known, nor the jealous polemic guarded. (3.) Thirdly, the true union between Christian Churches promoted by the deepening sense (3.) Union f . •' r O for great — deepening m all that have eyes to see or objects. ears to hear the signs of the time — the deepening sense of the mighty works that have to be achieved, and that raay be achieved, for the moral and social regeneration of mankind. There are unions between churches that are often proposed as mere strategic operations against some church or party which we dread or dislike.^ Such strategy may be needed; for, in this mixed world, we must ever be raore or less militant. But with operations of this kind the new commandment of Christian love has no special concern. It is when we see some union formed for high philanthropic objects, or inspired by a common feeling of sympathy for what is in itself just, noble, 1 See Lecture IV. 16 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. and true, that we recognize a sample of what ought to be the animating principle of the true fraternal unity of churches. " Nothing," says a philosophic observer of our own time, " produces such steadfast friendships as working together for some public good." Nothing so fuses together all differences as some event which evokes the better side of human nature in large masses of men. Few could fail to be struck by the sudden transformation of the whole British nation into a people with one heart and one soul, in the recent combination of personal compas sion and national sentiment called out by the anxiety for the safety of the heir to the English throne. Such an example is a likeness of what might be effected by a loyal, universal enthusiasm on behalf of the great principles of truth, justice, and benefi cence, which are the true objects of the devotion of Christendom. The age of the Crusades, for which Robert the Bruce sought to give his heart's blood, is past and gone. But there are causes of Christian charity far holier than that for which the Crusaders fought, which might call forth more than the Crusa ders' chivalry. The Solemn League and Covenant is dead and buried ; but the New Commandment, which bids us unite instead of dividing, and build up instead of destroying, is a league far more sacred, a covenant far more binding than any which your forefathers ever signed with their blood, or followed to death or victory. The famous Confession of Faith which issued from Westminster in the seven teenth century, as the expression of the whole Church and nation of Great Britain — noble and in spiring though it was, in some respects beyond all GEEYFEIAES' CHUECH. 17 the confessions of Protestant Europe — is yet not to be compared with the uniting and sanctifying force of the Christian English literature which in the nineteenth century has become the real bond and school of the nation, beyond the power of educa tional or ecclesiastical agitation to exclude or to per vert. Such are some of the manifold ways in which the Eleventh Commandment may in this age be Associa^ fulfilled as never before. And surely it may Gre^riars' be said, that if there be any spot where, ^^^''^¦ should the preacher be silent on this great theme, the very stones would immediately cry out, it is this venerable sanctuary. Of Greyfriars' Church and churchyard, as of my own Abbey of Westminster, it may truly be said, that it is the consecrated temple of reconciled ecclesiastical enmities. Here, as there, the silence of Death breathes the lesson which the tumult of life hardly suffered to be heard. In the same ground with the martjTs of the Covenant lies the great advocate by whose counsel their blood was shed.* Within the same hallowed bounds sleep the wise leaders of the Church of Scotland in the next generation, whom the persecutors and the persecuted of an earlier age would alike have condemned. And not only is this lesson of larger, gentler, more dis criminating justice forced upon us by the thought of that judgment-seat before which these all are passed; but the memory also of the deeds which have been wrought within these precincts impresses the same truth upon us. Here it was that Episcopalian minis ters shed tears of grateful sorrow over the grave 1 See Lecture* III. 18 THE ELEVENTH COMMANDMENT. of Carstairs; here Erskine, with generous candor, preached the funeral eulogy over his ecclesiastical rival, William Robertson. On this spot, where a vast congregation of every age and rank pledged them selves against every form and shade of Prelacy, the Scottish Church has, in these latter days, had the courage to revive the ancient forms of liturgical worship, and welcome the ministrations of Episcopa lian clergy. These contrasts are of themselves suflicient to re mind us how transitory are the feuds which have in earlier days rent asunder the churches of these isl ands — how eternal are the bonds which unite them, when viewed in the light of history, and as before the judgment of a higher world. And if the ghosts of the ancient disputes have been here laid to sleep, never, we trust, to return — if the coming of a brighter age, and the opening of a wider horizon, has dawned from time to time on the teachers, fa mous in their generation, who have ministered within these walls — then, I trust, it will not have been unsuitable that in this place, and on this occasion, a Scottish congregation should have heard from an English churchman, the best New Year's blessing under the form of this sacred text : " A new com mandment I give unto you, that ye should love one another." LECTURE L THE CELTIC, THE MEDIAEVAL, AND THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH. DELIVEEED BEFORE THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTE, JANUARY 8, 1872. LECTURE I. THE CELTIC, THE MEDI.a;VAL, AND THE EPISCOPAL CHUECH. It requires some courage in an Englishman to ad dress a Scottish audience on a subject so peculiarly their own as the Church of Scotland. The motto of your own thistle, " Nemo me impune lacessit," might almost be rendered in regard to the Scottish Church, — " No one has ever meddled with it without re penting of it." And this apprehension might be yet further increased, when it is remembered that I ap pear before you as the representative of a prelatical hierarchy, as an Erastian of the Erastians. But I gather confidence from the kind indulgence which I have received from all sections of the Scottish Church, and I venture to premise that in the plan which I propose to take I find some grounds of en couragement. It is not my intention to attempt any narrative of Scottish ecclesiastical history. Even were pianofthe it possible for me to do so, it is uimeces- '^'='™«^- sary. No part of the British islands has had the his tory of its Church so fully told as Scotland.^ Assum ing, therefore, in my audience a knowledge of the general facts, all that I now propose is to call at tention to such leading features as serve as land marks to the whole. 1 See Preface to the Lectures. 22 CELTIC, MEDLEVAL, AND EPISCOPAL CHURCHES. Lect. L In speaking of the Church of Scotland, I shall have occasion in my following lectures to show more at length that the only strict and legitimate sense in which the word can be applied is in reference to the National Church of Scotland, as established by law. But it so happens that in Scotland this expression takes a wider range than the corresponding phrases either in England or Ireland. There are at present what may be called three Churches in Scotland, — the Established Church, the Dissenting Presbyterian Churches, and the Dissenting Episcopalian Churches ; and the course of my lectures will follow these di visions. But, nevertheless, such a distinct demarca tion as this would be misleading. However much the Scottish nation has been broken up by religious divisions, these divisions have not only not broken up the unity of the nation, but they have not altogether broken up the unity of the Church. There is a true sense in which the Established Church, the different Seceding Churches, and the Episcopalian Churches, are all parts of one and the same Church of Scotland — a sense truer than that in which this might possi bly be said of the Three * Irish Churches, or of the Church of England in relation to the numerous churches and sects which surround it. The three forms of Scottish belief and church government have at different times so overlapped and run across each other, that there have been periods when, without any straining of language, each one of them might have been called the Church or the religion of Scot land. And yet more, the different elements specially 1 See Lecture on " The Three Irish Churches," in Essays on Church and State, p. 379. Lect. L PLAN OF THE LECTURES. 23 characteristic of each, are in varying proportions characteristic also of the whole. There are Scottish traits which are never lost in any of them ; there are peculiarities which might seem to belong only to one or other of these forms, but which yet reappear in each of the three. The tartan is the same through out; it is only the red, the blue, or the green that are differently adjusted. It need hardly be said, that an ecclesiastical his tory where such affinities can be traced is exceed ingly instructive, as showing how the true grounds of union or disunion underlie the superficial grounds of either. And when from the relations of the differ ent Scottish communions towards each other we pass to their common relations to other churches, a new interest arises from the strongly marked, almost gro tesque exaggeration in which these different forms represent the ecclesiastical virtues and vices which in a fainter or milder aspect appear in other commu nions. An English High-churchman may be encour aged or discouraged, as the case may be, at finding himself reproduced in vivid colors by a Scottish Free- churchman or Covenanter. An English Noncon formist may be warned or stimulated by seeing his likeness in an Anti-burgher, or a Cameronian. An English Latitudinarian may be comforted or troubled, as the case may be, by finding his close aflBnity with a Scottish Moderate. The well-known wish of the great Scottish poet is fulfilled by the lessons of Scot tish church history : — " O that some fay the gift would gie us. To see ourselves as others see us." Perhaps the Scotsman may derive some of the bless- 24 CELTIC, MEDLEVAL, AND EPISCOPAL CHUECHES. Lect. L ings of this gift, when he hears himself described by an Englishman. Certainly the Englishman may derive some of those blessings by seeing himself, as the case may be, caricatured or transfigured by a Scotsman. I propose, then, in the foUowing lectures, to en- pian of the deavor to bring out some of these points in Fe'ctures. the different departments of Scottish history. The present lecture will be devoted to the somewhat complicated task of passing in review the early con dition of Scottish religion. In so doing, it will be my object to obtain some glimpses into the ancient elements, out of which the present ecclesiastical con dition has arisen ; to show the identity of customs and sentiments between the earliest and the latest stages ; to mark the influence from first to last exercised by the southern kingdom through these channels, and to exhibit through the successive stages the develop ment of Episcopacy in Scotland, and the extremely entangled state of its relations to Presbyterianism. It is obvious that this can only be done in a dis cursive and disjointed manner, but the subject within the prescribed limits admits of no other treatment. The first period, then, is that of the earliest be- The Celtic ginniugs of Scottish Christianity, from the Church. fourth to the eleventh century. Let me first speak of the outward frame-work of the ecclesiastical constitution. The relation of early Presbyterianism to early Episcopacy in Scotland is the more worth discussing because it forms part of a larger system which prevailed throughout Celtic Christendom. That there were persons bearing the name of bishop in the earliest Christian history of Scotland is un- Lect. L THE CELTIC CHUECH. 25 doubted.^ But it is equally undoubted that they had no dioceses, no jurisdiction, no territorial episcopal succession. Their orders were repudiated by the prelates of England and France.^ The primate of the Church of Scotland for the first three hundred years of its history was not a bishop but a presbyter — first the abbot of lona,^ then of Dunkeld. The atba- i he succession was a succession, not of Epis- tem. copal hands, but of a dead presbyter's relics.* Early bishops of St. Andrew's, Glasgow, and the like, figure in legends, but they had no existence in fact.^ The abbot, not the bishop, was regarded as the ordinary ecclesiastical ruler, and the superiors of the various monasteries, by which the country was evangelized, looked to the chief abbot as the head of their whole churcH. It was, in fact, the same system as that which prevailed in the ancient Irish Church,^ of which some traces are stUl, even in the Latin Churches, to be seen in the all but episcopal power of the great Benedictine abbots of Monte Casino and La Cava. Thus much is acknowledged by all. It may be more doubtful, but it is still the most obvious infer ence from Bede's ' narrative, that the abbots and presbyters of lona actually ordained or consecrated the bishops whom they sent forth to England ; and it is therefore exceedingly probable that the episco pal succession of the northern provinces of England 1 Grub, i. 139. Irish Churches." Essays on Church 8 Ibid. 127, 128. and State, 382, 383. 3 Ibid. 135. 7 Bede, iv. 3, 5. This inference is 4 Ibid. 131. contended by Mr. Grub (i. 151-157) S This is well put in Burton's in an able but not conclusive argu- History of Scotland, i. 281. ment. 6 Ibid. 14. Lecture on the " Three 26 THE CELTIC CHUECH. Lect. L has been deeply colored by Presbyterian blood. It was the belief of the chief Scottish chronicler of the Middle Ages that these same exalted presbyters consecrated^ bishops, and crowned and consecrated kings. The first Christian rite of coronation is, in fact, derived from Columba's coronation of the Celtic Chief of the Hebrides.^ That which in England was believed to be so inalienable a prerogative of the see of Canterbury that Becket shed his blood rather than concede it even to his brother primate of York,^ was in Scotland yielded without a struggle by the whole of the Scottish Episcopate to a wild abbot fresh from Ireland. It is not to be inferred from this account, that the early ecclesiastical system of Scotland was like the modern. It was, no doubt, as unlike modern Pres byterianism as it was unlike modern Episcopacy. The abbots were not bishops, but they were prelates. They were presbyters, but they had no presbyteries. Still it is possible that the subtle influence which ancient institutions exercise over far distant ages may in this case have been not without its effect, and that when the earthquake came in which Epis copacy perished, the Scottish soil had been to a cer tain degree prepared for its overthrow, by the fact that the earliest evangelizers had not been bishops. There is another peculiar characteristic of this The vital- early period, which is specially to be seen early "'^ i'^ Scotlaud. Whatever remains there were saints. Qf ^j^g early Celtic saints of England have 1 Fordun's Scoti-Chronicon, vi. ^ Memorials of Canterbury, 68,69, 49; Grab. i. 159. 78, 90, 125. * Adamnan, iii. 5. Martene, ii. 213. Lect. L THE CELTIC CHUECH. 27 long since perished. The one solitary name which figures in the ancient Christian history of England, is the martyr of the Roman city of Verulam, St. Alban. After him, no other ecclesiastical association exists, legendary or historical, if we except the ob scure saints of Cornwall and Wales, till we reach Augustine. The memories of St. Botolph and St. Dunstan, of St. Edmund and St. Edward, although they retained a strong influence during long tracts of the Middle Ages, can hardly be said to have main tained their vitality to our own time. But in Scot land, even in spite of the vast counter wave of the Reformation, the local attractions of these primitive missionaries still hold their ground, and their suc cessive apparitions may well recall for a moment the various stages of the original Celtic faith. The first figure that distinctly emerges from the mists of fable in the pages ^ of Bede is the Cumbrian or Galwegian saint of the White House, the first stone church of the Roman camp of Leucophibia or Whif^ horn.^ We can still see the ruined chapel on the lonely island promontory, the yet more ancient pri ory where his remains repose — once the spot to which kings and princes came ^ in pilgrimage across the trackless wilds of Galloway long after such toil some devotions had ceased in England. We can explore the cave called by his name, which opens 1 Bede, iii. 4. Grub, i. 12. mit these slight recollections of the 2 Is not " Whithorn " and pos- instructive intercourse with him dur- sibly " Candida Casa " simply the ing a delightful visit to the " holy Anglicized and Latinized form of places " of Galloway, in 1871, when Leucophibia? he discovered the cross mentioned 3 Mr. Stuart of the Kegister in the lecture. House, Edinburgh, will, I trust, per- 28 THE CELTIC CHUECH. Lect. L from beneath the samphire-covered cliSJ undermined by the waves of Glenluce Bay ; and on which a rudely carved cross still marks the original sanctity of the spot ; where, following the practice of his master, St. Martin of Tours, he may well have retired for his devotions. These, and the churches and chapels which bear his name through out Scotland are standing monuments of the once wide-spread power of the name of St. Ninian ; and to him alone, of all British saints, a coeval monu ment still points in unmistakable characters. No where in Great Britain is there a Christian record so ancient as the gray weather-beaten column which now serves as the gate-post of the deserted church yard of Kirk Madreen ^ on the bleak hUl in the cen tre of the Rinns of Galloway, and bearing on its battered surface, in letters of the fourth century,^ the statement that it had marked the graves of three saints of Gallic name, Florentius, Vincentius, and Mavorius. Few, very few, have been the trav ellers that have reached that secluded monument ; long may it stand as the first authentic trace of Christian civilization in these islands. Or, to pass from Galloway to Fifeshire, where in England shall we find a hermitage so vener- St. S6rf. able as the caves which St. Serf scooped out for himself on the craggy " desert " " of the shores of the Firth of Forth, or on the romantic spot marked 1 Doubtless Mathurinus, the dis- ^ it jg given at length in Mr. ciple (according to the Eoman Ha- Stuart's Sculptured Stones of Scot- giology) of St. Martin of Tours, land. Plate Ixxi. p. 36. with whom, according to Bede, St. 3 " Desertum," the modern " Dy- Ninian himself had passed some sart." time on his return from Rome. Lect. L THE CELTIC CHUECH. 29 by the little chapel beneath the wooded hill of CiU- ross, where he discovered the infant Kentigern, his darling Mungo? Or, if we carry on the story of that wondrous child, what city of Great Britain bears, as its heraldic emblems, such a train of legendary associations as in the three miracles of St. Kentigern still retained on the shield of the great commercial city of Glasgow ? ' Or what scene of ancient British missionary labors can we so viv idly represent to ourselves as the circle of venerable trees on the banks of the Molendinar,^ under whose shade sprang up the wooden church which the same Kentigern erected as the centre of that Cumbrian Christianity, which reached from St. Asaph to Stir ling. And as we are led on, not by an episcopal but a true apostoHcal succession, from one of these saints to another, the legend of St. Kentigern carries us on to the first distinct and definite personage of the Scot tish Church. To his retreat above the brawUng mUl- stream in what was even then a consecrated grave yard — the first germ of that vast cemetery, whence the statue of John Knox looks down over the teem ing city of Glasgow ^ — came, according to tradition, to exchange their pastoral staves, the Abbot of lona, the founder of the hierarchy which lasted for four hundred years, St. Columba. " The way of the holy hath been made light," said the one. "The holy shall go," cried the other, " from strength to strength — they all shall appear in Zion." * 1 Burton, i. 24. ^ Ibid. 2 See the admirable article on * Montalembert's Monks of ihe " Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals," "West. Moines de T Occident, ili. by the lamented Joseph Bobertson, 325. in the Quarterly Review, Ixxxv. 130. 30 THE CELTIC CHUECH. Lect. I Let me say a few words concerning lona, and con cerning Columba. The natural features and the Celtic names still preserved in lona^ give us the complete frame-work of the earliest authentic history of Scottish Chris tianity. We can trace Columba's arrival and sojourn here almost step by step. The northern coast of Ireland and the western coast of Caledonia were to the dwellers on either side almost as one country — both were regarded as the land of the Scots. From the promontories of Antrim the Scot tish shores are completely visible. When Columba left his native glens in Donegal, and his dear familiar oak groves of Derry, a banished, excommunicated man, these shores were to him the natural outlet of his zeal. He was to leave his own island ; but whilst he sought the nearest sphere of his future labors, it must also be one which placed him beyond the temp tation of returning home. In the Hebridean group, the first which he reached was that formed by Jura with its three craggy " Paps," and the two islands now called, we can hardly doubt, from himself and his companion, Colonsay^ and Oransay. But from Colonsay Ireland was still visible. He could not trust himself within view of it. He, with his twelve companions, in their frail coracle, embarked 1 I have given here the results of refer for more complete details on a personal investigation of the local- the subject. ities of lona in the summer of 1869. * The parallel with Oransay Since that time the results of a yet seems decisive as to the explana- more extended investigation of the tion, and though Colonsay is called island and its history has been pub- " Coloso " by Adamnan, this can lished in a charming little volume only be from the attempt to Latinize by its present noble owner, the it. Duke of Argyll ; to which I gladly Lect. L THE CELTIC CHUECH. 31 once more. They pushed on across the open sea. In front there rose a pyramidal hill, which seemed to beckon them on. It was Dun-I, "the hill of I, or Hy." At the south end of the island there is a bay deep withdrawn behind a group of rocky islets that stand out above the waves. Between these rocks Columba drove his coracle, and found himself on a beach of the pure white sand, which is the glory of the shores of lona, sprinkled with the green serpen tine pebbles which pilgrims and travellers have long carried off as trophies. This is stUl called the Port of the Coracle,^ and beneath the long low mound, slightly fenced around with cairns and stones, sixty feet long, is said to lie buried the original bark. Overhanging this bay is a rocky hill,^ which Columba climbed, and looked once more westward. Ireland was now invisible ; he felt himself secure. From this point, which was henceforth to be called " the Hill with the Back turned on Ireland," he descended into the island which he was to make his own. He advanced across the low hills which part the Bay of the Coracle from the long plain which looks towards the Isle of Mull. Whatever may have led him in the first instance to lona, it was the peculiarity of this plain which fixed his continuance there. He was in an island — removed from the immediate danger of attack from the savage Highland tribes — 1 Port-a-hurrach, the Gaelic mod- 2 For these different allusions to ification of " currach " in composi- the local features — locus eminentior tion. When Johnson and Boswell — in saltibus — the ivy — the wood- came to the spot, they were per- en structure of the huts, see Adam- plexed by finding, as they thought, nan's Life of Columba. the English word wherry in Port-a- wherry. Boswell's Johnson, iii. 34. 32 THE CELTIC CHUECH. Lect. L but still sufficiently within reach of the main-land (for such the Isle of Mull may, comparatively speak ing, be called) to communicate with its inhabitants, and to receive provisions and communications from them. The strait is so narrow that the human voice could be heard across; and one of the most frequent incidents in his life is that signals came of some ex pected or unexpected guest from the opposite shore. " Some one is coming ovef who will upset my ink- bottle ; " and so it proved. Every trace of the actual habitations of Columba has perished ; but so un changed are the natural features of the place that we can fix, if not the very spot on which he pitched his little hut, yet the close neighborhood of it. It was, in all probability, the low knoll immediately above the humble inn of the modern village. There is a glen on the west of the island, over whose rocky walls hangs, in vast tresses, the ivy which was used to weave together the walls of the huts, built of the branches of thorn and briar which grow not far off. In this glen, and in others of like kind, Columba would retire at times from his little community to stUl deeper solitude. One of them is still called the Glen of the Temple, and leads to the corn plain on the other side of the island, still, as in Columba's time, bearing the name of Machar or " Sandy Plain ; " out of the midst of this rise two green hills. It is curious that to these and not to the towering peak of Dun-I, is attached the legend which invests the island with its most peculiar sanctity. Columba, in one of the retreats of which we have spoken, with drew into this plain, forbidding any of his disciples to follow him. One of them, more curious than the Lect. L THE CELTIC CHURCH. 33 rest, climbed a rocky point which runs out into the plain, and from thence reported that he saw Columba on the larger of the two hills holding converse with the angels. After the lapse of a thousand years that eminence is still called the "Knoll of the Angels,"^ the same name which was given to it from this asso ciation within a hundred years of its supposed occur rence. Nearer to the habitation of the saint cluster the local recollections of his last days. Winding along the slope of the shore, on which the little set tlement was established, came the old white pony, which received his parting affectionate caresses on the eve of his death.^ The scene of this event is in aU probability marked by the one cross which remains standing in lona, commonly called the cross of Mac lean. Immediately above the settlement rises a sin gularly marked and prominent knoll, which com mands the whole Strait of Mull. This hill, still called the Tor. Ab, — the HiU of the Abbot, — the first to whom that venerable name was given, is, we cannot doubt, the little hill, " the Monticellus," which Columba, now enfeebled with age, climbed on the day before his death, and foretold its future fame. What Columba was in Ireland I have elsewhere described.® What he was in Scotland is un- His mia- fortunately lost in a tissue of unmeaning Scotland. miracles. But there is no reason to doubt the highly characteristic tradition that the evangelization of Scotland was due in the first instance to a deadly 1 Cnoc Angel. It is also called " Adamnan, iii. 23. the Great Hill ofthe Fairies, as the 3 " The Three Irish Churches," smaller hill is called the Little Hill Lectures on Church and State, pp. ofthe Fauries. The story is told in 384, 386. Adamnan, iii. 16 (Reeves, 257). 3 34 THE CELTIC CHURCH. Lbot. L quarrel between two Irish clans about the appropria tion of a Psalter, and that the first apostle of Scot land was under the ban of the visible Church. The form which this part of the tradition assumes is full of interest. A councU of the Irish clergy had met and driven him forth as an excommunicated outcast. In the council — so runs the story — was one of the two mysterious Irish saints who bore the name of Bren dan.^ Saint Brendan, when the excommunicated man appeared in the council, rose up and embraced him. The whole council burst into exclamations of horror. " You would do as I have done," said Bren- dan; "and you would never have excommunicated him, if you saw what I see." ^ Such excommunicated men have been seen in Scotr land and in England often since. They may be seen at this moment in Rome, in Paris, and in Munich, There was a freedom and justice in this old Celtic con ception of true greatness, which even at this day we have hardly obtained. Columba is not the only ex communicated man who, to the eyes of the truly dis cerning, has had beside him angels, and before him a pillar of fire. Brendan was right in thinking, " a pUlar of fire before him and the angels of heaven beside him. I dare not disdain a man predestined 1 Not, I fear, the one who, as mortal life, he was allowed to retreat beautifully told in Matthew Arnold's thither from the fires of hell. Poems, in his Arctic voyages had * This other was the elder St. seen and brought back the pathetic Brendan, whose funeral, attended vision of Judas Iscariot, refreshing by angels, was seen in a vision by himself on the iceberg in the one Columba when in lona. Montalem- diiy in every year, in which, for the bert's Moines de V Occident, iii. 135. one deed of mercy performed in his Leot. 1. THE CELTIC CHURCH. 3^ by God to be the guide of an entire people to eternal life." It is a story which teems with instruction. His career remains a glorious proof how the ban of the visible Church against the moving spirits of mankind may turn out to be vanity of vanities. Whatever the shortcomings of Columba, St. Brendan was right in saying, that we cannot afford to " disdain a man predestined to be the evangelizer and apostle of such a nation as Scotland." The other recollections of lona are of a later age. The Martyrs' Bay — the white beach oppo- The sane- site to Mull, which derives its name from the lona. massacre of the natives by Danish pirates, — is the spot on which the funeral processions from the sur rounding islands have disembarked their mournful freights, and placed them on a rude mound at the curve of the shore. Thence they were borne, kings of Scotland, kings of Norway, lords of the Isles, to the cemetery consecrated by the neighborhood of Columba's bones, but deriving its name from his com panion of dubious fame, the indiscreet Oran. It is the oldest regal cemetery, of Great Britain — before Dunfermline, before Holyrood, before Westminster, before Windsor. Itr is, further, the most continuously ancient cemetery of the world. In none other have the remains of the dead been laid through an un broken track of one thousand three hundred years, beginning with Columba and his companions, end ing with the shipwrecked mariners of a few years ago. And as it is the most venerable cemetery of the Celtic race, so also is it marked by that singular 36 THE CELTIC CHUECH. Lbct. I. characteristic of Celtic countries — the union of tena cious reverence with reckless neglect, which only within our own time the care of the present owner, worthy of the precious possession intrusted to his charge, has endeavored to rectify and prevent. With Oran's cemetery ends the true historic connection of lona with Columba. The cathedral of lona, with its Norman arches, carries us both by its style and its name to a region far removed from the first Celtic missionary. The architecture tells of its origin from the half Norman Margaret, under whose auspices the royal funerals were transferred from lona to Dun fermline, indicating the transfer of sanctity from these western islands to the seat of Lowland govern ment. The name of " cathedral " tells how far the Church of Scotland had, in the fourteenth century, drifted away from the days when the abbot of lona was supreme over the Hebrides, and when no Episco pal chair had constituted any Scottish church into a cathedral. But of that long mediaeval history of lona nothing, or next to nothing, has come down to us. The last historic picture which the sacred island presents us is but within fifty years of Columba's death, when the French Bishop Arculf, driven by stress of weather on his return from the Holy Land, found a refuge in the humble tenement of the Abbot Arculf and Adamnan, and where Adamnan took down Adamnan. f^.^^ j^-g jnouth the Only description of Pal estine that exists between the fall of the Roman Em pire and the Saracenic occupation. We see, as we read the disjointed record, the traveller telling, the abbot questioning, till the whole story was at last recorded in its present rude form. Lect. I. ITS PECULIARITIES. 37 It was not till the close of the eighteenth century that the fame of Columba once again at- p, j„,jn. tracted to these distant shores a pilgrim from °°"" the world of letters, as illustrious as ever was drawn from regal or episcopal thrones — and that the Holy Island received a new canonization in the immortal sentence which now springs to the memory of every educated Englishman when lona is named. " We were now treading that illustrious island which was once the luminary of the Caledonian regions. That man is little to be envied whose patriotism will not gain force on the plains of Marathon, or whose piety will not grow warmer among the ruins of lona." Before we finally quit this early period of the Scottish Church, I will venture to note two gen eral features which link together the old and the new Scotland in a close connection often little sus pected. One is the fertility and rapidity of develop ment equally displayed in the miraculous legends of the ancient and modern saints of Scotland. The miracles of the early Scottish saints are Miraculous storiGS of not in themselves more fantastic or marvel- earlier and I'll ii'i '"'"" s*"^ ous than those which adorn the hagiology tish saints. of England, or the southern countries of Europe. But what gives them a singular interest is, that they are of the same kind as those which sprung up on the same soil twelve centuries later, in a theological atmosphere of the most opposite char acter. Even as regards the natural enthusiasm which gathered round their lives or their graves, there is no country in which the traveller passes, by such an immediate transition, from the saints of the 38 THE CELTIC CHUECH. Lect. 1 fourth century to those of the seventeenth, as when in Galloway he comes fresh from the grave of St. Ninian at one end of the Wigtonshire promontory, to the graves of Margaret Maclachlan and Margaret Wilson, who sleep in the churchyard above the Bla- denoch at the other end. And when we read, that in heavy showers of rain St. Ninian rode on without a drop falling on his book of devotions ^ except when a light thought passed through his mind, and that Robert Bruce the Covenanter made a long ride to Stirling under the same circumstances, perfectly dry, whilst his less godly companion was drenched to the skin, we feel at once that, though divided by the chasm of many generations, and by the widest revo lutions of opinion, we are not only in the same phys ical atmosphere of endless mist and storm, but in the same spiritual^ atmosphere of wild credulity and in exhaustible imagination. Nowhere can the vexed questions of the miracles of religious history be bet ter discussed than in Scotland, because nowhere do they appear so impartially repeated under the most diverse phases of theological thought ; because no where is it more evident that, whatever may be said either by orthodox or heterodox critics, historical facts can be disentangled from legendary accretions, and the repetition of the same incidents in these two most divergent epochs proves decisively that neither, on the one hand, do true facts necessitate the belief 1 I owe this parallel to Mr. Stu- below the Boat of Garton Station, art. where a stone (since destroyed) was 2 It is believed in Morayshire erected to commemorate the event. that, at a funeral of a saint belong- Nothing ofthe kind has occurred in ing to the so-called " Men," the England since the legend of St Spey was miraculously dried up to Alban. enable the procession to cross just Lect. I. ITS PECULIAEITIES. ' 39 in the accompanying dubious miracles, nor, on the other, need the questioning of dubious miracles dis credit the truth of the facts or the nobleness of the characters connected with them. Another aspect of the same identity of sentiment between the earliest and the latest develop- Reverence ment of the Scottish Church is in regard to mental or- the doctrine of the Sacraments. Perhaps if in earlier there were any subject on which it might times. have been thought that the rent of the Reformation would have divided, by an impassable gulf, the past and the present history of Scotland, it would be the veneration for the Eucharist. Yet this is the very point in which a likeness starts to view such as would be vainly sought in any other country in Europe, over which a like change had passed. Let me give two examples. It was remarked in the eleventh century that one deeply-rooted feeling of the ancient Scottish Church, as represented by the Culdees, was the awful reverence for the sacrament, growing to such a pitch that from mere terror of the ordinance, it had ceased to be celebrated, even at the great fes tival of Easter.^ Such a sentiment, so overleaping itself, has perhaps never been equaled again, except in the Scotland of the nineteenth century. Those who know the influence of the " Men " in the High lands tell us that the same extravagant awe, causing an absolute repulsion from the sacred rite, is still to be found there.^ Old gray-headed patriarchs are to be seen tottering with fear out of the church when the sacramental day comes round ; many refusing to 1 Grub, i. 195, 196. For a beau- Scotland, see Principal Shairp'g tiful picture of the true reverence poem of Kilmahoe. of a Presbyterian Sacrament in 2 Cunningham, i. 99. 40 THE CELTIC CHURCH. Lect. L be baptized, many more abstaining from the Eucha rist altogether ; and, at the time when the Veto Act was discussed, it was found incompatible with any regard to the rights ofthe parishioners to leave the election in the hands of the communicants, because in the extreme north (where the "Men " prevailed), out of a congregation of several thousands, the com municants, from motives of excessive reverence, did not exceed a hundred.^ The other is a more pleasing incident. It is re corded that a poor half-witted boy in Forfarshire^ clamored incessantly to be allowed, as he expressed it, to partake of his Father's bread in the sacra mental elements. At last the minister conceded the point. He partook ; and the same night, on return ing from the Sacrament, he kept repeating, in a rap ture of reverence, " I have seen the Pretty Man." The next morning he was found dead in his bed. Let those who think that what are called high views of the Eucharist are peculiar to Episcopalian or Catholic Churches consider how in this affecting story is contained the spiritual element of the same sentiment which, in its grosser shape, has given birth to the miracle of Bolsena and the excesses of Tran substantiation. Let those who think scorn of the humble Presbyterian ordinances reflect how in them the adoring veneration of the worshipper may be pitched in as lofty a key as beneath the dome of 1 Turner's History of the Seces- Reminiscences, 20th edit p. 239. ] sion, pp. 182, 184. had already heard the story from 2 This strange incident has been Mr. Erskine of Linlather, and 1 turned into a, little story, entitled have been told that it occurred at Yeddie's First and Last Sacrament, Tannadine, between Forfar and and it is also told in Dean Ramsay's Kerriemuir. Lect. I. THE MEDLEVAL CHURCH. 41 St. Peter's, or amidst the splendor of copes and chasubles. Is it too much to suppose that a sub terranean current of Christian feeling has linked together the child and the man of Scottish history in this respect, more evidently than in the regions where otherwise the break has been less violent ? ^ II. The second phase of Scottish religion is that which dates from the establishment of the The Mediaeval Anglo-Norman hierarchy by Queen Marga- hierarchy. ret, and continues down to the Reformation. There is one leading peculiarity of this period which, whilst it appears still more prominently in the third stage, on which we shall presently enter, belongs also in some degree to the first, which we are leaving. Scotland is, in some respects, essentially self-con tained, and on this depends a large part of foreign its ecclesiastical history, as we shall see in "^"™««^- my next lecture. Yet there is also a sense in which it is peculiarly dependent on other countries. Its geography almost lends itself to the connection. Look at the three long fingers of Galloway, reaching out into the «ea till they almost clasp the coast of Cumberland and the Isle of Man, and even the shores of Ireland. The kingdom of Strath- Clyde embraced in its folds the Cumbrian Churches and tribes on both sides of the Solway. That wild estu- 1 Even in detail some of the Eu- ly raised by the English ritualists charistic controversies which agitate and their opponents, respecting the Episcopal Churches have broken out elevation of the consecrated ele- on the like questions in Scotland, ments. It took the form of a schism There was in the last century a between Lifters and Antilifters, long ritual dispute between a pres- which at last emerged in the Old byter and his presbytery exactly and New Lights. analogous to that which was recent- 42 THE MEDIAEVAL CHUECH. Leot. L ary was not a dividing boundary, but a highway of communication for Ninian and for Kentigern (as well as for Bruce and for Guy Mannering) to trav erse in their passage to and fro on their familiar journeys or look at the Border. Cuthbert was an English even more than he was a Scottish saint. His return from the highlands of lona to his native lowlands of Melrose was a more decisive emigration than his wandering over the Cheviots of Lindisfarne. His own Eildon Hills brooded over him on the whole of his southern journey. Or look at Edinburgh itself Who is it that gives the name to your own romantic town ? It is no Celtic chief — it is no de scendant of Fergus or Fingal. It is the Northum brian Edwin, the first-fruits of Christian Yorkshire — the convert of the first English Primate of the North. And not only on England, but on France also, did Scotland lean, often as on a broken reed, even from her earliest days, both of Church and State.. In Nin- ian's education at the centre of French Christianity in Tours, we have a dim foreshadowing of that long connection which so deeply colored the language and the architecture of Scotland through so many ages, and which, even in our own day, by a subtle sympathy, seemed to draw the heart of the Scottish nation, in spite of every political and ecclesiastical difference, towards the fortunes of suffering France during the late war. But this adventitious influence was stUl more apparent in the period which we are now approaching. The ancient Church had, although transported from a distance, become by the eleventh century thoroughly national. It was a Celtic Church, planted by Celtic missionaries in a Celtic people. Lect. I. ITS EXTRANEOUS ORIGIN. 43 It was the "Scotland" beyond the Irish Channel that gave its name and reUgion to the Scotland of lona and Melrose. But the Mediaeval Church was altogether a foreign intrusion, the more so from the fact that it found a preexisting Church to modify and subdue, and that it was imposed by Teutonic settlers on a Celtic population. As lona indicates the purely Irish character of the Church of Columba, so the Queen's Ferry and St. Margaret's Hope represent the purely English char acter of the Scottish Church of the Middle Ages. As across the Hebridean sea from Ireland came the ship which bore the first fortunes of Scottish Christianity, so up the recess of the Frith of Forth from England came the ship which bore the second. I need not repeat the romantic tale, how Margaret, the gj jjar- Saxon Princess, and her companions,^ flying ^''™'' from the Norman conquerors, were driven ashore by stress of weather in the quiet bay which now bears her name ; how she toUed along the track towards the Celtic " fortress by the winding stream " where Malcolm with the Great Head was intrenched in the depth of his wooded glen ; how he found her seated on the stone which still may be seen on that same road by which she approached Dunfermline ; how he wooed and won her hand ; how she, with the arts of continental civilization then just taking root in Eng land, soothed and tamed her fierce husband ; how, under her guiding influence, rose the Westminster of Scotland, Dunfermline Abbey, the resting-place of kings, which henceforth diverted to itself for many 1 The whole story of Margaret is Andrew's in Good 'Words, August, well told by Principal Shairp of St 1867. \ 44 THE MEDLEVAL CHURCH. Lect. I. generations the glory which had hitherto belonged to lona. There, beside Malcolm, at the east end of the church, her remains reposed. Thence, on the eve of the battle of Largs, it was believed by the Scots that the tombs of Dunfermline gave up their dead, and that there passed through its northern porch to " war against the might of Norway " a lofty and " blooming matron in royal attire, leading in her right hand a noble knight, refulgent in arms, with a crown on his head, and followed by three heroic warriors, like armed, and like crowned." ' These were Mar garet, and her consort, and her three sons, the found ers of the Mediseval Church of Scotland. " What she began those three sons long continued — the meek Edgar, the fierce Alexander, the saintly David. Their aim was to assimilate the Scottish Church in all re spects to the English." Melrose, Holyrood, Kelso, Newbattle, Aberbro- Engiish thock, Kinloss, Dryburgh, Jedburgh, and half influences, ^j^g gggg q£ Scotlaud, wcrc fouudod by the third of these sons, and all these were based on an English model. The constitution of Glasgow and Dunkeld was copied from Salisbury, of Elgin and Aberdeen from Lincoln, Dunfermline from Canter bury, Coldingham from Durham, Melrose and Dun- drennan from Rievaulx, Dryburgh from Alnwick, and Paisley from Wenlock.^ St. David, like his mother, was in all his thoughts and views an Englishman. The Church which they thus erected was, to all intents and purposes, an Eng lish Church, in the place of the old Celtic Church of the Culdees. 1 Quart. Rev. Ixxxv. p. 120. 2 Quart. Rev. bcxxv. 117; Burton, ii. 62, 64. . Lbot. L ITS EXTRANEOUS OEIGIN. 45 Perhaps the spot which most distinctly brings to light the transfer of the seat of Scottish ec- ^ee of st clesiastical forms from the Celtic west to the Andrew's. Anglicized east is St. Andrew's. It is dimly shadowed forth in the migration of Kenneth with his sacred atone from Dunstaffnage to Scone. It is traced more closely in the steps by which the venerable sea-girt fastness rose to be the primatial throne of Scotland. The remnant of the old Culdee church on the ex treme promontory of the Muckross, or Headland of the WUd Boar, has been long superseded by the vast adjacent pile of the metropolitan cathedral. That pUe rests for its legendary basis on the relics of the new patron saint of Scotland, which St. Rule brought from Achaia in his saUless and oarless boat, but for its historical basis on the new growth of Norman and English influences which spread from Fifeshire over the whole of Lowland Scotland. So fully was the external origin of the national episcopate recognized, that the supreme jurisdiction over the Scottish bishops was vested partly in the Norwegian Archbishop of Drontheim, partly in the English Archbishop of York.^ It was not till the best of the mediaeval prelates of Scotland, Bishop Kennedy, had so Ulustrated the see of St. Andrew's by his statesmanship and his virtues, that this badge of the foreign extraction of the Scottish Church was finally rejected, and that in 1472 it received for the first time a native primate.^ But the gaunt skeleton of the cathedral of St. Andrew's — the storm-vexed, shattered castle, which 1 Robertson's Statuta Ecclesiae * Grub, i. 377. ScotiancB, Pref. pp. cxi., cxii. 46 THE MEDLEVAL CHUECH. Lect. 1. witnessed from without the execution of Wishart, and from within the murder of Beaton — hurries us to the close of the mediaeval Episcopacy of Scot land. The fall, the tremendous fall, of the work of Mar- The fall gafot aud David well indicates, from another Medieval point of vicw, its extraneous origin. The Church. beginning of its decline dates from the hour when the power of England over Scotland was broken on the field of Bannockburn. Then, when the Eng lish intrusive elements were driven back across the Border, the Scottish episcopate received its death blow. In a double, in a treble sense this may be traced. Partly the spirit thus evoked rose, as we shall see,^ against English interference. Partly, and by a riiore immediate result, the disorder into which the country was thrown, and the withdrawal of the civilizing influences of England, led by degrees to the hideous and disproportionate corruption which took possession of the Scottish hierarchy during the last two centuries of its existence. This is an all- sufficient explanation for the wild ^ and disproportion ate violence with which, beyond any other country in Europe, Scotland carried out the work of the Reformation. . 1 See Lecture II. the eye of an English traveller at 8 I would not be understood here Melrose, Dryburgh, Jedburgh, and to refer to the common belief of Kelso, were not the work of Scottish the indiscriminate destruction of sa- fanatics, but of the Catholic Eno-lish ered buildings. Such a destruction soldiers of Henry VIU. (see Quart. doubtless took place at Perth and Rev. Ixxv. 141-150). What is St. Andrew's. But it was not gen- meant is the extreme antagonism eral, and the ruins which most im- to ancient usages, as set forth in mediately and conspicuously strike Lecture U. Lect. I. THE MODEEN EPISCOPAL CHUECH. 47 III. We have now reached the third stage of our progress, which begins at the point when ^he this connection between the English and Epfsc™=i Scottish Churches was to be rent asunder, ^'i""''- and when in the sixteenth century the new elements eventually were exploded, which formed what has been the purely National Church of Scotland. On this I shall enter hereafter; but for the present I still continue to track the struggle of Episcopacy and of the English connection with the native influ ences at work in Scotland itself. All know the attempts of the Stuart Kings to re vive Episcopacy after its interruption by the Refor mation. On the one hand it is curious to observe how, like the Episcopate of Margaret and David, it was not of Scottish but of English growth. Arch bishop Spottiswoode, from whom the episco- jtsEngUsh pal succession under James VI. took its rise, ''"^"' was consecrated entirely by English hands in the private chapel of London House, and lies himself in Westminster Abbey. Archbishop Sharpe, from whom the second succession sprang, under Charles IL, was equaUy the creation of English prelates in the same Abbey, in the Chapel of Henry VII. But, on the other hand, whether from policy or necessity, the whole settlement of modern Scottish Episcopacy was far more Presbyterian, far less Epis copal and Catholic, than in any country in Europe. Doubtless this was partly occasioned by the fact, that in England itself the sentiment towards Pres byterian Churches was far more generous and com prehensive in the century which followed the Ref ormation than it was in that which followed the 48 THE MODEEN EPISCOPjVL CHURCH. Lect. L Restoration. The English Articles are so expressed as to include the recognition of Presbyterian minis ters. The first English Act of Uniformity was passed with the expressed view of securing their ser vices to the English Church. The first English Re- itsreia- formcrs, and the statesmen of Elizabeth, Presby- would havc been astonished at any claim of terianism. gxclusivc sauctity for the Episcopal order.^ But it was in Scotland that this mutual recognition was most apparent. John Knox had as little belief in the paramount and divine character of Presbyte rianism as Cranmer had in the paramount and di vine character of Episcopacy. So far from shunning connection with the English Church, he eagerly sought to fortify its friendly relations with the Church of Scotland : so far from regarding the con tact with Prelacy as a soul-destroying abomination, almost his last signature, " with a dead hand but a glad heart," ^ is subscribed beneath the name of the Archbishop of St. Andrew's. It was not Knox, but Andrew MelviUe,' who introduced into Scot land the divine right of Presbytery, the sister dogma of the divine right of Episcopacy, which Bancroft and Laud introduced into England. But even after the mutual charities of the first age of the Ref ormation had been thus contracted, in Scotland, 1 See this well drawn out in Lord (Tracts of David Fergusson, p. 80). Macaulay's Correspondence with The sermon itself which is thus the Bishop of Exeter ; and in Prin- recommended is also a remarkable cipal TuUoch's article on the Eng- proof of Knox's moderation. Com- lish and Scottish Churches in the municated to me by the kindness Contemporary Review, December, of Lord Neaves. 1871. 3 Compare Sir H. M. WeUwood's 2 See the signature to David Life of Erskine, p. 507. Fergusson's sermon on Sacrilege Lect. 1 ITS RELATIONS TO PRESBYTERIANISM. 49 the two systems in practice flourished in the closest contact with each other. The General Assembly, of which the constitution had been inspired by An drew Melville, continued to sit side by side with the hierarchy of James VI.^ The Episcopalian curates in Charles II.'s reign were under the Presbytery, the Kirk session, and the Synod, with the Bishop presiding.^ The Confession of Faith held by the Episcopal Church of Scotland was not that of the Episcopal Church of England ; it was substantially the same as the Confession of John Knox.^ The Scottish Prayer-book (with one exception, that of the words of administering the Eucharistic elements) was not, as is often erroneously supposed by both sides, more Roman and less Protestant than the Eng Ush, but in all essential points was more Protestant and less Roman. " Presbyter " was everywhere sub stituted for " Priest." The Apocryphal Lessons were omitted. The service for the Eucharist embodied the true Protestant doctrine of spiritual sacrifice in the very centre of the consecration prayer far more prominently than is the case in the present English Prayer-book.* The consecration ^ itself was accord ing to the Anti-Prelatic, not the Prelatic view of the subject.- In the Ordination Service, as appointed 1 Cunningham, ii. 18. Even in published in the Scottish Guardian the very acts of hostility this joint of February 1, 1872, p. 71. authority was recognized. The 2 Burton, i. 269. deposition of the Bishops of Charles 3 Innes's Law of Creeds in Scot- L bythe General Assembly of Glas- land, pp. 38, 639. gow in 1638 was recognized as an * See this well brought out in ecclesiastical act, depriving them Bunsen's Christianity and Mankind, not only of all civil, but of all spir- ii. 184-186. itual authority. See the interesting * Scottish Liturgies, p. 109. memorandum of Joseph Robertson, 4 50 THE MODEEN EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Lect. I. under James VL, there was a marked exclusion^ from the Ordination of Priests of the questionable words which, according to many devout churchmen, both of that time and our own, are " the very essential words of conferring orders." There was no form at all for the ordination of Deacons.^ The Scottish Bishops of James VI. were not reordained in Eng land.^ Even the Scottish bishops of Charles II.'s time,* though they submitted to the ceremony, did so, as we shall see, at the advice of Leighton, on the ground that all such matters were wholly indifferent, and with one exception they never insisted on reor- daining Scottish ministers ^ who had received Pres byterian ordination. The Prayer-book throughout the time of James VI. and Charles II. was never publicly used, except during the short time that the Princess Anne was with her father in Edinburgh.® The Episcopalian clergy and bishops preached and officiated in no peculiar dress, or else generally in black gowns, as distinct from the blue gowns and broad blue bonnets of the Presbyterians. This is the real origin of '•' Black Prelacy " and " True Blue Presbyterianism." ^ There was an Episcopal chapel in Forfarshire, where till quite recently the clergyman always officiated in black, and black serge was the only ecclesiastical vestment known at the beginning of this century in the Episcopal Church of Glasgow. 1 It seems that perhaps the omis- bishops, who himself, though he had sion was corrected under Charles I. received episcopal consecration, had Scottish Liturgies, p. lix. never received episcopal ordination. « Grub, ii. 322-324, 368. 5 Grub, iii. 218 ; see Lecture HI. 3 Ibid. ii. 296. 6 Cunningham, ii. 250. < Ibid. iii. 128. Tillotson was 7 j owe this to the kindness of ordained priest by one of these Dr. Crawfm-d of Edinburgh. Lect. I. ITS PEESECUTIONS. 51 The Communion was received sitting. The sign of the cross was not used in baptism. Extemporaneous instead of liturgical prayers were almost everywhere used. The requirement of tokens for the Eucharist, which was enjoined in the Scottish Prayer-book, is still in force in the Presbyterian Church, as well as in the older Episcopalian congregations of the north. In short, of all that now constitutes to the outward eye the main characteristics of Scottish Episcopacy, not one existed before the beginning of the eight eenth century.^ The Episcopalian clergy, after the Revolution, were quite willing to officiate in manses and churches side by side with their Presbyterian brethren.^ The nearly equal division ofthe country between them at that time, and the near approxima tion to an arrangement which might have included both within the same Church, and which would prob ably have succeeded but for purely political difficul ties,^ show how superficial after all were the differ ences which parted them. The earliest examples of the intrusion* of pastors by imperious patrons on un wUling congregations were not of Episcopalian or even Erastian incumbents on Presbyterian congre gations, but of Presbyterian pastors on Episcopalian congregations. There remains to be considered the final aspect of the Episcopal Church, when it was proscribed its state of • 1 1 • in -iTi persecu- m its turn as it had itself proscribed the cution. Covenanters. In one sense, indeed, it has never entirely lost its legal position. It was, and is still 1 Burton, viii. 46 7. the case argued in Life of Ruther- 2 Leighton, as we shall see, was ford, p. 38. Presbyterian by ordination ; Ruther- 3 Grub, iii. 311-318. ford may have been, perhaps was, * Burton, viii. 220. Episcopalian by ordination. See 52 THE MODEEN EPISCOPAL CHURCH. Lect. L entitled the "Episcopal Communion, protected and allowed by an Act passed in the tenth year of the reign of Queen Anne, chapter seven." In later years it received a small state endowment, only recently withdrawn from it. But during and after the Stuart Rebellion, it was visited by a hand almost as heavy as that which had rested on the Presbyterians at the close of the preceding century ; and it is a salutary warning to mutual forbearance when we read the very same adventures in the very same caves and moss hags — the very same apprehension of the lap wings hovering near the place of their concealment, as had breathed through the legends of the Camero nians.^ From necessity, as well as from inclination, more and more the Episcopal communion shrank from its public place in the nation, except in the short periods when the Stuart Princes were for the inoment in the ascendant. Carubbers Close was their metropolitan church. " I have been looking," said Dundee, " for the primate of the Episcopal Church, and cannot find him ; he belongs to the Kirk Invisible." " I belong," says Pleydell in " Guy Mannering," " to the suffering Episcopal Church of Scotland, which is now — happily — the shadow of a shade." ^ But there are three points during this dark and se cluded period in which it was still thoroughly Scottish and thoroughly national. First, it shared to the full that peculiarity of Scot- 1. Its tish religion which will appear most distinctly visions. in my next lecture, — its violent divisions 1 Lord Medwyn's Life of Lord thau 150 clergy in communion with Pitsligo, p. 32. the Scottish bishops. Grub, iv. 32. 2 In 1745 there were not more Lect. I. ITS PECLTLIAEITIES. 53 on points of the smallest dimensions. What Burgh ers and Anti-Burghers, Relief and Secession, Old and New Lights were to the followers of John Knox, that the long disputes of Collegers ^ and Usagers, of old Episcopalians and new Episcopalians, of the Scottish and the English Communion Offices, often were to the followers of Laud and Sharpe. No ecclesiastical struggle, except that of the rival Popes, has more tried the Episcopal system than that in the month of June, 1727, in Edinburgh, when the bishops of the two contending parties of Collegers and Usagers strove to outdo each other by consecrating and de posing rival bishops, so as to secure the point at issue, " if not by equal arguments, yet by equal numbers.^ Secondly, there was the antagonism to the English Church and State. This, which in the Puri- ^ j^^_ tans was produced by the hostility to a gov- ^^^"'™ ernment which rejected the Covenant, in the chfrch Episcopalians was produced by the hostility *°'^ ^'*'®' to a government which rejected the divine hereditary right of kings. In the time of the Stuart sovereigns, the Episco palians of Scotland were almost as Erastian as their English brethren. But this gradually passed away ; the anti-Hanoverian tendencies of the Episcopal clergy gradually detached them from their ancient principles ; and the " Usagers " went to the length of throwing aside their loyalty to King James, for which their brethren the " Collegers " were ready to sacrifice everything. To a certain degree this feeling has lasted almost to our own day. The memory of 1 See Grub, iiL 387 ; iv. 21-29. 2 Skinner, ii. 644, 645. Cun ningham, ii. 398. Grub, iv. 5, 6. 54 THE MODEEN EPISCOPAL CHUECH. Leot. I. the massacre of Glencoe still lives in the Episcopalian inhabitants of the fatal valley, when it has expired elsewhere. Jacobitism and not Liberalism was and is the root of the Episcopalian jealousy of state in terference.^ It was with the utmost reluctance that, in the last century, the Scottish Episcopalians could be induced to accept the English Articles,^ or to hear the name of George III. in the English Liturgy ; and no Presbyterians could have been more alarmed than they were at the encroachments of the English clergy.^ One of the solemn articles of agreement with the American bishop of Connecticut was, that the members of his church, when in Scotland, should hold no communion in sacred offices with those " per sons who, under the pretense of ordination by an English or an Irish bishop, do, or shall take upon them to officiate as clergymen in any part of the national Church of Scotland, and whom the Scottish bishops cannot help looking upon as schismatical* intruders." This leads me to the third characteristic, which 3 Its has found its home more completely in the romance. Scottish Episcopalian s than in any other of the Church of Scotland more strictly so called, when, from being an aspiring or a dominant Church, it became a vanquished and persecuted communion ; when, for its attachment to the exiled Stuarts, it became the Church of the Jacobites and Nonjurors. 1 It was not without reason that these " Letters " in determining the when a celebrated English divine future theological career of Dr. wished to express his covert hostil- Newman is powerfully described in ity to the doctrine of the connection his " Apologia," p. 70. of Church and State, he did so 2 Grub, iv. 101, 115. under the assumed name of " a Scot- 3 Ibid. iv. 1 74. tish Episcopalian." The effect of * Ibid. iv. 94. Lect. I. ITS PECULIAEITIES. 55 No history of any European state has been so ro mantic as that of Scotland. Whatever England has to show of early romance pales before the stories of Robert Bruce and James V. What English abbey can in this respect compete with Melrose? what chapel with Rosslyn ? what city with Edinburgh ? What are the earliest efforts of English poetry — what are the triads of Wales, or the early songs of Ireland, compared with the romantic charm (what ever be their other merits or demerits) of the poems of Ossian ? It is this peculiar embodiment of Scot tish character that Shakespeare has reproduced in "Macbeth." Whether or not he was in that band of actors who came to amuse King James VI. at Aberdeen, it is certain that he has caught the gen eral air and tone of Scottish scenery and Scottish history : the blasted heath, extending for leagues along the coast of Forres ; the witches lingering in Scotland long after they had died out in the rest of Europe ; the castles, haunted by deeds of blood, and by dead men's ghosts ; the prophetic dooms of royal families and great houses ; this is the very genius of Scotland, because it belongs to that weird, uncanny, magic world which has always enveloped Scotland as in a mist of wonders. And when that " meet Nurse for a poetic child " produced a second Shakespeare of her own, this was the at mosphere in which he was born and bred. Walter Scott had many greater qualities, which I shall de scribe before I conclude these lectures; but it was this " wizard note " of the mediaeval past, with all its spells and glamours, that first woke " the Harp of the North " to its special task. 56 THE MODEEN EPISCOPAL CHUECH. Lect. I. It is this element of which so large a share is re flected in the modern Episcopalian Church of Scot land. There are three great historic names which specially represent this passion, and which all belong to the stream of Episcopalian tradition. One is Mary Queen of Scots. Hers is a story which has become thoroughly national, yet certainly not Presbyterian — not even Protestant. To John Knox and Andrew MelviUe the name of the ill-fated Queen suggests the idea of a perfidious and abandoned murderess. It is by the ancient Catholic, by the modern Episcopa lian party in Scotland, that the fire of veneration for the unfortunate Mary has been kept alive. The next is Dundee.^ The interest which gathers round the last exploits of Claverhouse — which glorifies the Pass of Killikrankie, and which has enkindled all the fury of chivalrous defense in his behalf, even within our own time, is purely and exclusively Episcopalian. He is the hero of the fallen cause. He was lamented by the Episcopalian party as the last of the Grahams, the last of the Scots, the last (in their eyes) of all that was greatest in his native country.^ The third is Charles Edward. His career is not only the last great romance of Scotland, it is almost the last ro mance of Europe. Round his name — round his career — cling the last traditions of Highland fidelity, of mediaeval adventure, of soul-stirring ballad; and they were interwoven with the innermost fibres of the Scottish Episcopal Church in the eighteenth century. No doubt each of these is but a questionable idol. I He is said to have been the first 2 Scott, History of Scotland, ii. intelligent admirer of Ossian. Bur- 115. ton, viii. 104. Lect. I. ITS PECULIAEITIES. 57 The church which worshipped at the shrine of Mary Stuart, of Claverhouse, and of Charles Edward, could hardly be said to have reached the highest ideal of Christian excellence. In the whole Stuart and Jaco bite cause there was (as every reader of " Waverley " may see) a worldly, weak, and trivial side. But there was also a noble, a chivalrous, a poetic side ; and of this the Episcopalian gentry aud the Episco palian clergy were the chief depositaries.^ Who that had ever seen the delightful castle of Fingask, explored its inexhaustible collection of Jacobite rel ics, known its Jacobite inmates, and heard its Jac obite songs, did not feel himself transported to an older world, with the fond remembrance of a past age, of a lost love, of a dear though vanquished cause ? Who is the Scotsman — who is the Presby terian that is not moved by the outburst of Jacobite, Episcopalian enthusiasm which enkindled the last flicker of expiring genius, when Walter Scott mur mured the lay of Prince Charlie on the hills of Pau- sUippo, and stood wrapped in silent devotion ^ before the tomb of the Stuarts in St. Peter. Let me, in parting from this period of Scottish history, take two examples of its peculiar fruits. No church is worth celebrating which has not borne some choice manifestation of the Christian life. Every church, however limited, is worth describing, which has borne any such as, humanly speaking, we should not have had but for its influence. One is a layman, Alexander Forbes — ^^Lord Pit- 1 Let me also name, in connection guished of whom have have been with these same subjects, the noble Episcopalians. band of Scottish antiquaries living 2 gee Lord Houghton's Poems. and dead, some of the most distin- 58 THE MODEEN EPISCOPAL CHUECH. Lect. I. sligo. If, as I have heard it said, he is the original Lord Pit- ^^ *^® " Baron of Bradwardine," he is suffi- siigo. ciently known to all the world. But we can not imagine a more gracious and attractive specimen of that type of character of which I have been speak ing, than is presented to us in the little volume pub lished by his kinsman. Lord Medwyn. His hair breadth escapes I leave to be read in those pages. But his kindly, generous feeling towards his oppo nents, the mystical piety which he had learned in France from Fenelon and Madame Guyon, the unos tentatious sincerity which made his presence at the Episcopal chapel the signal for a general sympathy of devotion, are the true glory of the Episcopal Church of that time. When, in spite of his age and infirmities, he determined to join Charles Edward at Aberdeen, he believed that he was simply obeying the call of God. When the little party of horsemen assembled, he rode to the front, took off his hat, and, looking up to heaven, said, " Lord, Thou knowest our cause is just. March, gentlemen." " It seemed," says one who was present when he joined the army, " as if religion, virtue, and justice were entering the camp with this venerable old man." ^ If Lord Pitsligo may be taken as a choice speci- Bishop ^^^ of t^® old Episcopalian laity. Bishop ''°^^^- Jolly may be taken as a choice specimen of the old Episcopalian clergy. He was a man, of whom it was wittily observed by one of his abler and younger brethren still living, " that he had a reason for nothing, and an authority for everything ; " who, when he was asked at the beginning of the stir oc- 1 Grub, iv. 190. Lect. L ITS PRESENT MISSION. 59 casioned by the Oxford Tracts, what he thought of the Reformation, said that " he had not come down so far in his regular course of Ecclesiastical history." " You go," said an American traveller, " from the extremity of Britain to see the Falls of Niagara, and think yourselves amply rewarded. If I had come from America to Aberdeen, and seen nothing but Bishop Jolly, as I saw him for two days, I should hold myself fully rewarded. In our new country we have no such men ; and I could not have imagined such without seeing him. The race, I fear, is expired or expiring even among you." His departure was like his life. The last book which he held in his hand on the evening before his death, was Sutton's treatise, "Disce Mori;" and he was found, alone, with his hands crossed on his breast, and his countenance se rene in death. Doubtless the primitive simplicity, the gentleness, the quiet retiring holiness which so struck the trans atlantic traveller in the aged bishop, was shared by many others in the Episcopalian households of Scot land high and low. Perhaps of this whole type of character it may be said, that it is expired or ex piring. But it was a precious and peculiar spectacle in those rough rude times ; it is for us at least to cherish the memory of it. IV. These, then, were some of the latest peculiar ities of the Episcopal Church of Scotland in the cen tury that is gone. I would venture to say a few words on its peculiarity, rather, let me say, its pecul iar mission, in this. It has ceased to be half Presby terian, as it was in the seventeenth century. It has ceased to be Jacobite, as it was in the eighteenth. 60 THE MODERN EPISCOPAL CHUECH. Lect. L It is now, for the most part, and for practical pur poses, a branch of the English Church in Scotland ; for the benefit of the English settlers, or of Scots men with an English education. Native congrega tions of Episcopalians doubtless exist, the descendants of those Jacobites and Nonjurors of whom I have just spoken. Individuals have migrated from Scot tish Presbyterian families, under the changed circum stances of later times. But the larger section of the Scottish Episcopal communion derive their impor tance from the new influences that I have indicated, and from the connection, once so much dreaded, but now so much encouraged, between themselves and the Church of England. In this, as we have seen, lies the true continuity of its connection with the historical past ; in this lies its interest in the coming future. The increased in tercourse between the two countries has increased and fostered its strength, its numbers, and its wealth. If it were so ill-advised as to make use of this its new situation to claim in Scotland an exclusive and national position ; if it were to affect to disdain and ignore the Church of Scotland, by the side of which it has been allowed freely to expand itself; if it were to employ its relations towards England to di vide the Scottish rich from the Scottish poor, the past from the present history of Scottish religion ; if it were to lend itself as a field for the eccentricities of ^ disaffected English clergy, then, indeed, we might look back with regret to the time when the greatest of its members rejoiced to think that it was " but 1 It was but fair to say that on by the leaders of the Episcopal the two chief occasions when this Church itself. attempt was made, it was frustrated Lect. I. ITS PRESENT MISSION. 61 the shadow of a shade." But if, following the coun sels^ of its most venerable and most gifted leaders, it were to regard itself as a supplement to the needs of the National Church ; if it should be willing " to interchange with that Church all good offices, whether of charity or religion, without compromise of its own principles ; " if it should aid the gener ous efforts of the National Church to promote that intercourse ; if it should thus encourage in Scotland the knowledge that Christianity can exist outside of the Presbyterian Church, as well as within it ; if it can keep alive in Scotland, by its own example, a sense of English art, of English toleration, and of English literature ; if it continued to discharge the office which from time to time it has fulfilled during its simpler and humbler days, of presenting Christian life and Christian truth under that softer, gentler, more refined aspect, which its native Gaelic,^ and its foreign English elements have alike conspired to pro duce, then the Church of Scotland may hail in it a not unimportant auxiliary for the transmission of the same beneficent influences from our southern civili zation that were once conveyed by Queen Margaret and her three sons, that were eagerly cherished by John Knox, and that were desired and, in great meas ure obtained, by the eminent statesmen who ce mented the union of the two Kingdoms. 1 See especially the close of the 2 Por this singular delicacy of the 20th edition of Reminiscences of old Celtic race, see Bishop Ewing's Scottish Life and Character, by Dean Celtic Church ofthe West Highlands, Ramsay, pp. 320-325. p. 8. LECTURE IL THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND, THE COVENANT, AND THE SECEDING CHURCHES. DELIVEEED BEFOEE THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTBj JANUARY 9, 1872. LECTURE II. THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND, THE COVENANT, AND THE SECEDING CHUECHES. In this and the ensuing lectures I proceed to speak of the Church of Scotland, properly so called. In the mouth of an English Churchman, no less than of an impartial historian, I need not say that this can only mean the Church as established by law. It is this for which every English Churchman is asked to pray, by the canons of the English Convocation, which enjoin that prayers are to be offered up "for Christ's Holy Catholic Church, that is, for the whole congregation of Christians dispersed throughout the world, especially for the Churches of England, Scot land, and Ireland." " There can be no doubt," says the candid and accurate annalist of Scottish Episco pacy, " that the framers of this have meant to ac knowledge the northern ecclesiastical establishment, at that time Presbyterian, as a Christian The Church With the exception of the Scotland is the Na- Roman Catholics, it was the only Christian tionaiEs ... tablished communion then existing m Scotland, and church. questions regarding any other state of matters than that actually before them could not have occurred to the Convocation." -^ It is this also which is recognized in the most solemn form by the British Constitution. 1 See the discussion on the Canons of 1603 in Grub, ii. 282. 5 66 THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. H. The very first declaration which the sovereign makes — taking precedence even of the recognition of the rights and liberties of the English Church and nation, which are postponed till the day of the coronation — is that in which, on the day of the accession, the sovereign declares that he or she will maintain inviolate and intact the Church of Scotland. That which was signed by her Majesty may be seen in the Register House of Edinburgh, and has the peculiar interest of being the first signature of her name as Queen. There is a large blank left, in the doubt which was then not yet solved, whether one or more of her names would be used, and the single name therefore stands — alone of all her signatures — in a space too ample for the word ; and imme diately following comes, after the signature of the Princes of the Blood Royal, the name of the dignified and cautious Primate who then filled the see of Can terbury. In the Act of Union itself, which prescribes this declaration, the same securities are throughout exacted for the Church of Scotland as were exacted for the Church of England ; and it is on record that, when that act was passed, and some question arose amongst the Peers as to the propriety of so complete a recognition of the Presbyterian Church, the then Primate of all England, the " old rock," as he was called. Archbishop Tenison, rose, and said with a weight which carried all objections before it, " The narrow notions of aU churches have been their ruin. I believe that the Church of Scotland, though not so perfect as ours, is as true a Protestant Church as the Church of England." ^ 1 Carstairs' Stale Papers, 739, 760. Lect. n. SENSE OF THE WORD. 67 No Scotsman, no EngUshman can see the meeting of the General Assembly in Edinburgh without feel ing that it is the chief national institution of the northern kingdom. No other ecclesiastical assembly in the realm meets with such a solemn and distinct recognition, with such a pomp and circumstance of royalty, with such a well-ordered and well-under stood tradition of rights and privileges and duties. What is thus legally acknowledged receives a yet further confirmation in the common parlance even of unwiUing witnesses. It is sometimes the custom of English Churchmen and Scottish Episcopalians, to distinguish in Scotland between "the Church" and " the Kirk," meaning by the former the Episcopalian, and by the latter the Presbyterian system. It is difiicult to imagine a more complete testimony to the national character of the Presbyterian Church than this surrender to it of the true Scottish name of the Chvirch itself The "Kirk," whatever the word may mean in English, in Scotland means " the Church" as truly as Eglise in French, or Chiesa in Italian. To speak of the Presbyterian community as "tbe Kirk," and the Episcopalian community as " the Church," is in fact to say that the Presbyterian com munity is the national Church of Scotland, and the Episcopalian community an offshoot of the Church of England. I shall therefore not hesitate to speak of " the Church of Scotland " in its more peculiar and proper sense, as that which, under divers changes, has set tled down into the great Presbyterian Church of North Britain. I have, however, already intimated, that I thus use 68 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IL the word the more readily because, in a certain sense, it embraces all the various branches into which it has at times been divided, and because, in so speaking, we are brought face to face vrith one of the most singular features of the Scottish Presbyterian Church, namely, its marvelous outward uniformity. The Church of England, no doubt, in the largest legal sense, includes alike all Englishmen, whether con forming or non-conforming ; but whereas in England every branch of the vast religious community, so called, has its own peculiar constitution — and the Convocation, the Thirty-nine Articles, the Prayer- book of the Established Church ; the Conference of the Wesleyans, with its " Conferential " books ; the Congregational Union of the Independents; the monthly meetings of the Quakers ; — whereas, even in the Established Church, the ritual, in spite of the Act of Uniformity, varies from the majestic splendor of St. Paul's Cathedral to the elab orate ceremonial of St. Alban's, Holborn, and the simplicity of the ordinary parish church — in Scot land, on the other hand, with very rare exceptions, all the Presbyterian communions acknowledge not only the same Westminster Confession, the same Directory, the same Longer and Shorter Catechisms, but also the same form of Presbytery, Kirk Session, and General Assembly, the same dress, the same order of Divine worship, the same gestures in prayer and praise, the same form in the sacramental ordi nances, the same observances at the burial of the dead. It is a uniformity which Rome might have enjoined, and which England might envy. But, combined with this phenomenon, emerges the Lect. n. ITS DIVISIONS. 69 not less curious and instructive fact that, within this outward unity has arisen an amount itgdivis- of inward diversity and estrangement which "'"^' England, with her multifarious sects, and even Rome, with the internecine war of her internal dissensions, can hardly equal or surpass. This is a fact which, under any circumstances, is full of interest. Every Church, whether Catholic or Protestant, may always learn a useful lesson from the contem plation of any instance which brings out the essen tial difference between external and dogmatic union on the one side, and inward spiritual union on the other side. The Church of Scotland is, in this re spect, like a city set on a hill for the wonder of all the churches of Europe, even before we descend into the causes and consequences of the phenomenon. It is this task which we now undertake. The general fact is that, within the National Church of Scotland, as within the character of the Scottish people, there are two separate tendencies : one of an uniting, comprehensive character, which I shall consider at length in my third lecture ; the other of a dividing, antagonistic character, of which I shall treat in the present. It will be my object, therefore, to penetrate be neath the surface of the Presbyterian platform which the Scottish Church has in common with the Prot estant Churches of Geneva, Holland, France, and Ger many — to discover, if possible, those elements of the Scottish national character which form, as it were, the backbone of its ecclesiastical constitution, and which, though appearing from time to time in the Established, or even the Episcopalian Church, are 70 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. H. best seen in those outlying sections which, claiming each to be the Church of Scotland, exhibit in the most salient, but therefore the most patent and unmistak able forms, the strength and the weakness of Scot tish religion. As in speaking of Scottish Episcopacy, so in speaking of Scottish Presbyterianism, it will be understood that I dwell not on the general life and belief common to all Christian Churches alike, but on those peculiarities which distinguish each from each. I. The first feature then which marks the Scottish National rcUgion of the last three centuries is its stub- independ- . . ^ ^ enceT bom independence. When James VI. saw in London Mrs. Welsh, the daughter of John Knox, he asked her how many bairns her father had left, and whether they were lads or lasses. She answered " Three," and that they were all lasses. " God be thanked ! " said the king, lifting up both his hands ; " for if they had been three lads, I never could have brooked my three kingdoms in peace." -^ The feeling of King James towards John Knox and his actual children may well have been felt at times by many reasonable men towards his spiritual children. Had each of the three kingdoms been in habited by a Church as sturdy and as unmanageable as that which took up its abode in Scotland, it may be easily believed that the rulers of Great Britain would have had no light task before them. This independence of the Scottish Church belongs in fact to the independence of the Scottish race. It was nurtured, if not produced, by the long struggle first of Wallace and then of Bruce, which gave to the 1 Cunningham, ii. 43. Lect. n. ITS INDEPENDENCE. 71 whole character of the people a defiant self-reliance, such as, perhaps, is equally impressed on no other kingdom in Europe. The patriotism and the eccle siastical exclusiveness of Davie Deans in the "Heart of Midlothian," flow in the same indivisible channel. " Well, said that judicious Christian worthy, John Livingston .... that, howbeit he thought Scotland a Gehenna of wickedness when he was at home, yet when he was abroad he accounted it as a paradise. For the evils of Scotland he found everywhere, and the good of Scotland he found nowhere." And when Jeanie Deans shrinks from giving up the slayer of Porteous, it is because her religious education had made her regard it as an act of treason against the independence of Scotland. " With the fanaticism of the Scottish Presbyterians there was always mingled a glow of national feeling, and she trembled at the idea of her name being handed down to posterity with that of the ' fause Menteith.' " Burns's imagi nary address of Bruce at Banockburn is but the counterpart of the genuine song of the Covenant ers at Dunselaw : — " That all the warld may see There 's nane in the right but we, Of the auld Scottish nation." The badge of the Church of Scotland — the Burn ing Bush, " burning but not consumed " — is as true a type of Scotland's inexpugnable defense of her ancient liberties, as it was of the ancient Jewish Church and people on their emergence from Egyptian bondage. And so the early history of the Scottish Presbyterian Church has been one long struggle of dogged resistance to superior power. " Scotland must 72 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Leot. IL be rid of Scotland, unless we gain deliverance," was the dying speech of the martyr Renwick.-^ Man}?- of the Scottish sects have in later times drifted into the doctrine of an imaginary separation from the state and nation. Nothing can be more unjust to themselves, or more untrue to history. Their independence is as secular, as political, as na tional as ever was the compliance of the most lati tudinarian of Erastians. It is this antique splendor which casts a halo round the Scottish struggle for independence, even when we least approve of it. It was magnificent in the struggle of John Knox against all the fascinations Of Queen Mary. It was magnificent in the struggle of Andrew Melville against James VI. It was magnificent, even if some what grotesque, in the struggle of the whole people against Laud aijd Charles I. It was magnificent in the still more fiery struggle of the Covenanters against Claverhouse and Lauderdale. It was mag nificent when, passing over into the Episcopalian Church, it strove against William III. at Killikran kie, or against George II. at Prestonpans and CuUo- den. It magnificently combined both the extreme Episcopalians and the extreme Presbyterians in its unavailing^ protests against the endeavors of the wisest statesmen of England and Scotland to bring about the union of the two countries. It was mas- nificent even when carried to a pitch of extrava gance of dissent unequaled by any other nation in the various entrenchments occupied by the Cove- 1 Wodrow. the course of lectures at the Phil- 2 See the lively description of osophical Institute, in 1871, was this opposition in the brilliant lee- opened by Lord Rosebery. ture on " The Union," with which Lect. H. • ITS INDEPENDENCE. 73 nanters, by the Secession, by the Relief, by the Old Lights, by the New Lights, by the Collegers, by the Usagers, by the Burghers, by the Anti-burghers, by the Free Church, and by the United Presbyterians, against the Established Church, and against each other, in every one of the contests in which each separating communion maintained that it, and it alone, was the true Church of Scotland. The main peculiarity of dissent in Scotland has been that it was not properly dissent at all, and that it earnestly repudiated the name. English Noncon formists pride themselves on their nonconformity ; but Scottish Nonconformists pride themselves on their churchmanship. In this respect they are like the Dissenters of Russia. They are, indeed, with the exception of the Russian Dissenters, the most conservative of all ecclesiastical bodies.^ They looked not forward to an age of progress, but backward to a golden age of purity — the triumphant Church from 1636 to 1680. Their claim of identity with the doctrine, discipline, and worship of the Church of Scotland was the very cause of their separation. They seceded not from the Church itself, but from the majorities of the Church, " out of a regard to the Church's honor and faithfulness ; and their bit terness was the perverted fiow of love." ^ By one of those strange contradictions which we often find in ecclesiastical and political movements, these elements, which in their own nature are in the highest degree retrogressive and conservative, have become mixed up with what is called a Liberal 1 Lectures on the Eastern Church. * Innes's Law of Creeds in Scot- Lectui'e XU. land, p. 246. 74 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. II. movement; and the cause which has for its watch words the names of Freedom and Progress, has for its weapons the sword and shield of the narrowest of all beliefs, and the most retrograde of all philoso phies. Yet there still lives at the bottom of this tendency of the Scottish character a virtue, most highly to be valued, most necessary for these times especiaUy, whether in the ranks of Conservatives or Liberals ; and that is the force of unyielding convic tion, the courage to resist external pressure, whether of the many or of the few ; the determination of James Fitz-James : — " Come one, come all — this rock shall fly From its firm base as soon as I." All honor to Scottish Churchmen for the stubborn ness of their fight, their devotion not only of them selves to death, but, at times, even to absurdity, for what were deemed the rights of conscience, and the sacredness of truth, and the glory of Scotland. When we descend from the general grandeur of the cause to the principles at stake, the story, if less imposing, is still exceedingly instructive. 1. There are three features of these Scottish ec- Negative clesiastical struggles which pervade their character. ^^^^^^ histovy. The first is their almost en tirely negative character. We often hear, in modern times, of the evils of negative theology. It is an objection which is sometimes overstrained, for in order to promote truth we must remove error, and every removal of error is a negation. StiU, whether for good or evU, no church has so abounded in purely negative theology as the Scottish. It is the only Church which produced by name a " Neg?6^ve Lect. II. ITS INDEPENDENCE. 75 Confession of Faith," ^ containing only the doctrines which were not to be believed, instead of the doc trines which are to be believed. In order to see any likeness to it we must go back to the Fourth Council of Toledo, and study the creed of the Visigothic King Reccared, which consists from first to last of nothing but anathemas.^ It is the only Protestant Church which has even amongst its more temperate forms of subscription not only assertions of truths to be em braced, but an enumeration of errors to be condemned. " Do you disown aU Popish, Arian, Socinian, Arminian, Bourignian,^ and other doctrines, tenets, and opinions whatever, contrary to and inconsistent with the Con fession of Faith ? " It is the only Church which could boast of a branch professing to be the purest section of the Church, known by the simple and convenient name of No. The Presbyterian iVo?z-Jurors were for many years characteristicaUy and gravely designated by the simple name of Nons.^ The " dying testimo nies," as well as the living creed, of this purest of Presbyterian Churches were all couched in this uni formly antagonistic form. " I leave my protest," says a stern Cameronian, in the middle of the last century, " against all sectarian errors, heresies, and blasphemies, particularly against Arianism, Erastianism, Socinianism, Quakerism, De ism, Bourignianism, Familism, Skepticism, Arminian- 1 The name given to the "Na- 325), has been the first dropped. tional Covenant" of 1850. Innes's The rigid Free Church, in this re- Law of Creeds, p. 36. Cunningham, spect alone freer than the Establish- i. 448. ed, allows of the orthodoxy of this 2 Harduin's Councils, iii. iTS. good, though eccentric, French lady 3 The denunciation of the inno- who taught it. cent Antonia Bourignon, which was * Burton, ix. 60. the last added (Cunningham, ii. 76 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Leot. H. ism, Lutheranism, Brownism, Baxterianism, Anabap- tism, Millenarianism, Pelagianism, Campbellianism, Whitfieldianism, Latitudinarianism, and Independency, and all other sects and sorts that maintain any error, heresy, or blasphemy that is contrary to the Word of God, etc., and all erroneous speeches vented from pul pits, pages, or in public or private discourses ; and against all toleration granted or given at any time, in favor of these or any other errors, heresies, or blas phemies, or blasphemous heretics, particularly the tol eration granted by the sectarian usurper, Oliver Cromwell, the anti- Christian toleration granted by the Popish Duke of York, and the present continued toleration granted by that wicked Jezebel, the pre tended Queen Anne." ^ And this negation is carried out even into the de tails of Ritual. Scotland, as well as England, has its Ritualism, its symbolism. But its symbolism is one which depends for its meaning not on what it affirms but on what it rejects. The Church of Scotland sat in praise, because others stood. It stood in prayer because others knelt. It was silent in funerals be cause others spoke. It repudiated Christmas because others observed it. I do not say that this symbolism is not as reasonable or as edifying as much that we cherish beyond the Border ; but it is a symbolism peculiar to Scotland, and originating in that antago nism of which I have spoken. Negation, as I have said, has its value, and has its drawbacks. The Church of Scotland, in the aspect which we are now considering, is a splendid speci men both of the good and evil of this form of theol- 1 Burton, ix. 60. Lect. II. ITS INDEPENDENCE. 77 Ogy. There is a sentence of Voltaire which well illustrates its use, " That which resists supports." Such has been the beneficent side of the contradic tious character of the Scottish Church. There is a sentence of Goethe which describes how the scoffing Fiend is always saying " No " and never " Yes." That is the darker side even of the most fervent forms of the same tendency. The second feature is the vigor which has been given to the claims of spiritual independence, spiritual It is extremely difficult to distinguish how ence. far this is a development of the passion for national in dependence, and of the passion of antagonism already mentioned ; or how far it has a separate ecclesias tical growth. It can hardly be doubted that, in the first instance, if not created it was greatly fostered by the historical circumstances of the formation of the Scottish Church. The original independence of the General Assembly was an accident arising from the political confusion of Scotland at the time. It soon received the sanction of the legislature, which at once placed it in a unique position amongst Prot estant Churches. What was called its spiritual au thority was, in fact, temporal power conceded on a very large scale to a body which became the Second Parliament of Scotland. This claim to independence from the state was, in the close of the seventeenth century, increased from another quarter. The origi nal Covenanters, so far from being opposed to inter ference of the civil power in ecclesiastical affairs, laid it down as one of the fundamental maxims of their Solemn League, that the state should be bound- to promote true religion, and to procure that all 78 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IL " evil instruments for hindering the reformation of religion shall receive condign punishment from the supreme judicatories of the kingdom." The " new forcers of Conscience " under the Long Parliament, whom Milton attacked with such unsparing vehe mence, were the leaders of the Covenant. It was they " Who dared adjure the civil sword To force the consciences which Christ set free ; Taught them by mere A. S. and Rutherford, To ride us with a classic hierarchy." But when the State had broken loose from the Cov enant, the Covenanting section of the Church in retaliation broke loose from the State ; and the pro test in behalf of Christ's "kingly rights," as the doctrine was called, though in its ideal sense intended to assert the true doctrine of the supremacy of duty and religion over every other consideration, drifted away into the secondary and very subordinate ques tion of the supremacy of the Covenanting Church over the Uncovenanted State ; and thence, as the traditions of the Covenant faded away, into the yet more remote and subordinate position of the suprem acy of ecclesiastical courts, whether covenanted or uncovenanted, over all civil courts whatever. " We never," says Ralph Erskine, " declared a secession from the Church of Scotland, but only a secession from the judicatories in their course of defection from the primitive and covenanted constitution." ^ Out of these converging circumstances, combined with the more democratic spirit of the Scottish people, much more than from any fixed or abstract principle, sprung those claims of spiritual indepen- l Phillips's Whitefield, p. 231. Lect. II. ITS INDEPENDENCE. • 79 dence which have been raised within the Church of Scotland, in a stronger form than in any Christian community, except that of Rome ; and which, though they reached their highest form in the Cameronians and in the Free Church, exist in a modified shape both in the Established Church and in the Episcopal ' communion. Out of these tendencies grew that ex treme sensitiveness of the Scottish clergy to regal or legislative interference, which Hallam well calls " Presbyterian Hildebrandism," '^ which has caused the name "Erastian" to be placed in the blackest list of heresies. The doctrine is no doubt a representation, greatly distorted, of a noble truth — the indefeasible supe riority of moral over material force — of conscience over power — of right against might, and the vehe mence with which it was supported in Scotland gave a strong impulse to the cause of Civil Liberty. But this heavenly treasure has been often enshrined in very earthly vessels ; and in its earthly as well as its nobler aspects it has curiously brought into close proximity the two churches which naturally are most opposed to each other. Hildebrand and Andrew MelviUe would doubtless have started with horror at either being thought the twin-brother of the other. But so it was ; and even in actual history the affinity has been recognized. Walter Scott has finely touched a living chord when he described how Balfour of Burley at last made common cause with the Episco palian Claverhouse against the English invaders ; and, in our own time, the admiration excited amongst English High Churchmen by the Disruption of 1843 1 See Lecture I. ^ Constitutional History of England, 'iii. ill. 80 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. D. led by rapid steps to their own large secession to the Roman Church in 1845 ; and the most estimable of Scottish Free Churchmen has found a welcome ally in the most prelatical of Anglican colonial bishops. There are two well known scenes which bring out clearly the form in which these feelings of antago nism and independence displayed themselves. The rejection of the English Liturgy took place on July 23, 1637. There is an exact forecast of these Rejection troublcs SO dcscriptive of Scottish religion, Engulh ^^^ so much to the credit of the good sense Liturgy. g^j^^ good faith, perhaps, one ' may add, the Scottish prudence of James VL, that even if open to question as to some of its details, it is worth citing both as a prelude and a comment. "I keep him back," said the King (speaking of Laud, not yet Archbishop), "because he hath a restless spirit. When, three years since, I had obtained from the Assembly of Perth the consent to the Five Articles of order and decency in correspondence with the Church of England, I gave the promise that I would try their obedience no further anent ecclesiastical affairs, yet this man hath pressed me to incite them to a nearer conjunction, with the Liturgy and Canons of England ; but I sent him back again with the previous draft he had drawn For all this he feared not mine anger, but assaulted me again with another ill-fangled platform to make that stubborn kirk stoop more to the English pattern. But I durst not play fast and loose with my soul. He knows not the stomach of that people. But / ken the story of my grandmother, the Queen Margaret, that after she was inveigled to break her promise i3aade to some muti- Lect.il its INDEPENDENCE. 81 neers at a Perth meeting, she never saw good-day, but from thence, being much beloved before, was despised of all the people." ^ What the result was in St. Giles's Church on that fatal day, when the " black, popish, and superstitious book," as it was called, was opened by the unfortu nate Dean of Edinburgh, can hardly be imagined in these more peaceful days. " Wolf," " crafty fox," " son of a witch," " false Judas," were the epithets with which the prelates who assisted were " mightily upbraided ; " and, had they been actually all these things, they could hardly have been worse treated. And yet, " these speeches " of a certain woman, says a grave eyewitness, "proceeded not" (and probably he was quite right) "from any particular savage or inveterate malice that could be conceived against the Bishop's person, but only from a zeal to God's glory, wherewith the woman's heart was burnt up ; for, had she not discerned the signs of the beast in the Bishop's bowels of conformity, she had ^ never set against him with such a sharp-tongued assault." The two special incidents, which figure in all versions of the tumult, under different forms, de serve a more particular notice. The first was when " the old herb-woman " " hear ing the Archbishop, who watched the rubric, direct the Dean to read the Collect' of the day," gathered up her indignation in the well known exclamation, confounding " cholic " and " collect," and discharged at the Dean's head the famous stool, which he escaped by "jowking," but gave the signal for a universal discharge of the like fauld stools of the 1 Hacket's Williams, p. 14. 2 Ajppendix to Lord Rothes, p. 200. 6 82 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. D. ladies or their waiting-maids throughout the church. Had they waited till the Dean had read the Col lect,^ it is possible that they might even then have changed their minds. It is curious at this distance of time to read as innocent and beautiful an expres sion of prayer as could be found in any part of the services of either Church : — " Lord of all power and might, who art the Author of all good things, graft in our hearts the love of thy name, increase in us true religion, nourish us with all goodness, and of thy great mercy keep us in the same through Jesus Christ our Lord." The other incident was apparently later in the day, when " a good Christian woman " who, unable to escape from the church after its doors were closed to quell the disturbance, had retired to the furthest corner to be beyond reach of the hateful service, and who then, hearing, as she thought, the " mass sang in her lug," turned round on the offender, and "shot against him the thunderbolt of her zeal, and warmed both his cheeks with the weight of her hands." The dreadful provocation which called for this explosion was, that "a young man sitting be hind her began to sound forth ' Amen.' " ^ Never, except in the days of the French Revolu tion, did a popular tumult lead to such important results. The stool which was on that occasion flung at the head of the Dean of Edinburgh extinguished the English Liturgy entirely in Scotland for the seventeenth century, to a great extent even till the nineteenth; and gave to the civil war of England 1 Seventh Sunday after Trinity. 2 Appendix io Lord Rothes, p. 155. Lect. n. ITS INDEPENDENCE. 83 an impulse which only ended in the overthrow of the Church and Monarchy.^ No doubt the exasperation had its root in the indomitable native vigor of which we have been speaking. But the intrinsic slightness of the in cidents which roused it is the best proof of the force of the feeling. It is instructive as an instance of the folly of pressing outward forms, however innocent, on ¦ those who cannot understand them. It is an instructive reflection to both parties, that the main offenses which provoked this terrible mani festation might now be repeated with impunity in every Church in Scotland, Established, Free, or Seceding. It is an equally instructive reflection, that the two ecclesiastical communions that are now most closely allied against the existing constitution both of the Church of England and of the Church of Scotland, come from the spiritual descendants of Archbishop Laud in England, and the spiritual descendants of Jenny Geddes in Scotland. The other scene to which I will call attention is the adoption of the National Covenant. Of all TheNa- National Confessions of Faith ever adopted, enant. at least in these realms, it is the one which for the 1 The whole transaction is ably would seem that what particularly described in Burton (vi. 442), who roused thefirstof the two assailants, certainly shakes the identity of the was the inopportune correction of " old herb-woman " with the Jenny the Dean by the Archbishop, which Geddes who burnt her stool at the called attention to the complication festivities ofthe Restoration. of the English service, when the The incidents, when read in the Dean had to turn over the leaves to three original accounts of the Large look for the Collect of the day ; and Declaration, Gordon's Scots' Affairs, that the second was excited by the and the Appendix to Lord Rothes' sound of a response unusual in Pres- Memoirs, are sufficiently distinct. It byterian worship. 84 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. H, time awakened the widest and the deepest enthu siasm. It was in the Greyfriars' Church at Edin burgh that it was first received, on February 28, 1638. The aged Earl of Sutherland was the first to sign his name. Then the whole congregation followed. Then it was laid on the flat grave-stone still preserved in the church-yard. Men and women crowded to add their names. Some wept aloud, others wrote their names in their own blood ; others added after their names "till death." For hours they signed, till every corner of the parchment was filled, and only room left for their initials, and the shades of night alone checked the continual flow. From Greyfriars' church-yard it spread to the whole of Scotland. Gentlemen and noblemen carried copies of it "in their portmanteaus and pockets," requiring and collecting subscriptions publicly and privately." ^ Women sat in church all day and all night, from Friday till Sunday, in order to receive the Communion with it. None dared to refuse their names. The general panic, or the general contagion, caught those whom we should least expect. The chivalrous Montrose, the gay Charles IL, the holy and enlightened Leighton, were constrained to follow in the universal rush. From Scotland it spread to England ; and there assumed the more portentous shape of the Solemn League and Covenant. What had begun by being an impassioned, yet not unrea sonable, determination to defend the rights of Pres- The bytery in Scotland, had now grown into a League determination as impassioned to enforce it nant. throughout the empire. The imperious dic- 1 Rothes, p. 46. Lect. n. ITS INDEPENDENCE. 85 tation of the Church of Scotland reached into the heart of London. There, in St. Margaret's Church, beneath the shadow of Westminster Abbey, the Covenant was read from the pulpit, article by arti cle, in the presence of both Houses of Parliament and of the Assembly of Divines. Every person in the congregation stood up, with his right hand raised to heaven, and took the pledge to observe it. One by one they signed their names; and thence it was spread and enforced with all the penalties of the law, and by all the pressure of enthusiasm, in every county in England. Hardly any ventured to decline. Forced explanations, mutual reservations, here and there were expressed. The voice of one just and wise man, Richard Baxter, was raised against this indiscriminate enforcement of so minute and terrible a confession. But, on the whole, it took its place as the very first and chiefest creed of the Church of Great Britain. The vehemence with which it was first received, the tenacity with which it still retains its hold on the Cameronian ^ portion of the Church of Scotland, is one of the most signal proofs of the power of Scottish religion to enkindle the whole nation. " I dinna ken what the Covenant is," said an old Scottish dame, even in our own day ; " but I'll maintain it." " To pass in "silence over the sworn Covenant " was, according to Rutherford,^ a denial of Christianity itself But, on the other hand, the rapid subsidence of this enthusiasm, even at the time; its almost total disappearance now even 1 I have elsewhere given an in- the Cameronians in Ulster. Atha- stance of this from the practice of nasian Creed, p. 67.) 8 Letters, p. 349. Bonar, p. 201. 86 THE CHURCH OE SCOTLAND. Lect. H. amongst those who might be thought of the direct spiritual lineage of those who imposed it, is a strik ing example both to Scotland and all the world of the transitory nature of those outward expressions of party zeal, which at the moment seem all impor tant. There are documents of a like sulphurous kind which still hold a certain place, though they were not engendered in so impassioned an atmosphere as the Solemn League and Covenant. But their original source is identical, and their ultimate fate will doubt less be the same. This leads me to the third point in Scottish theol- Minute Ogy which is worth noticing, namely, the division. Uttlencss and the minuteness of the points on which its religious divisions have taken place. Perhaps in themselves they are not smaller or more obscure than some of those which divided the Church in the fourth and fifth centuries. But they have this peculiarity in Scotland, that they have hardly ever reached beyond the Scottish borders, or even the borders of the contending churches. The Solemn League and Covenant, as we have seen, for a few years had a vast extension through the whole realm. But the subsequent secessions, which have almost all had some relation to it, and which are in fact its direct offspring, are entirely confined to Scotland and Scottish colonies. It is said that on the day of the Disruption of 1843, when the news flew through Edinburgh that four hundred ministers had left the Established Church, a well known judge exclaimed with a just feeling of national pride, " Have they gone out ? There is not another country in the world in which Lect. H. ITS DIVISIONS. 87 such a spectacle could be seen." He was right. There was no other country in the world where so noble a testimony could have been borne to the sacredness and tenderness of scrupulous consciences. But it is no less true that, in no other country in the world would the consciences of so many able and ex cellent men have been so deeply wounded by the in tricacies of a legal suit, of which the point at issue can only be ascertained by a searching investigation of conflicting statements, even amongst those who are most keen in the controversy. In the great Craigdallie case, which formed the analogous bone of contention between " the Old Lights and the New Lights," Lord Eldon expressed this difficulty with characteristic solemnity : " The Court," ^ he said, " has pronounced an interlocutor, in which it describes the utter impossibility of seeing anything like what was intelligible in the proceedings, and I do not know how the House of Lords is to relieve the parties from the consequence. The Court of Session in Scotland are quite as likely to know what were the principles and standards of the Associate Presbytery and Synod of Scotland as any of your lordships; and are as well, if not better able, than your lordships, to decide whether any acts done or opinions professed by the defenders, Jedidiah Aiken and others, were opinions and facts which were a deviation on the part of the defenders from the principles and standards of the Associate Presbytery and Synod. If they were obliged to justify their finding as they do, intimating that they doubt whether they understood the subject at all, under the words, ' as far as they are capable of 1 Innes's Law of Creeds in Scotland, pp. 341, 342. 88 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. H understanding the subject,' I hope I may be per mitted without offense to you to say, that there may be some doubt whether we understand the subject, not only because the Court of Session is much more likely to understand the matter than we are, but be cause I have had the mortification, many times over, to endeavor myself to understand what these prin ciples were, and whether they have or have not de viated from them ; and I have made the attempt to understand it, till I find it, at least on my part, to be quite hopeless." The perplexity of Lord Eldon has often been felt by humbler inquirers. This extreme obscurity and particularity of theological statement of which he complains, has doubtless been the result of many causes. It belongs to the stubborn pugnacity of which I have just spoken. It belongs also to the extraordinary eagerness inherent in all movements of a party character, — but, from the union of logical subtlety and fervid impetuosity, particularly con spicuous in Scottish agitations, to invest small details with the grandeur of universal principles. There is a saying of Samuel Rutherford in his preface to the " Rights of Presbyterianism," which ought to be the exception in all sound theology, but which, in many of these Scottish disputes, has been taken as the rule. " In God's matters there is not, as in grammar, the positive and comparative degrees ; there are not a true, and more true, and most true. Truth is in an indivisible line that hath no latitude." This tendency may also have been in fact in creased by the peculiarity of the Westminster Con fession. Latest born, with one exception, of all Lect. n. ITS DIVISIONS. 89 Protestant Confessions, it far more nearly approaches the full proportions of a theological practice, and exhibits far more depth of theological insight than any other. But, on the other hand, it reflects also far more than any other the minute hair-splits ting and straw dividing distinctions which had reached their height in the Puritanical theology of that age, and which in sermons ran into the six- teenthly, seventeenthly sections, that so exercised the soul of Dugald Dalgetty as he waited for the conclusion ofthe discourse in the chapel of Inverary Castle. It accordingly furnished the food for which the somewhat hard and logical intellect of Scotland had a special appetite. The more genial influence of a general literature which had already sprung up in England, and which, as Matthew Arnold would say, had already played freely round its theological hterature, and diffused something at least of " sweet ness and light " into its darkest corners, had hardly yet made itself felt in Scotland. Questions of purely secular interest, patronage, decisions of courts of law, various details of civil administration, were thus in vested with the dignity of fundamental principles, and pursued through all the ramifications of Cove nanting theology. It would be ungracious, and it would be need-- less to multiply instances. Let one suffice, whitefield When George Whitefield came to Scotland, seceders. bursting with enthusiasm, burning with Calvinistic fervor, he expected nothing but sympathy from the disciples of John Knox, and especially from that extremest and straitest sect which, under the guid ance of Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine,' had, for the 90 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. D. sake of purer air and more fiery zeal, deviated from the Church of Scotland as he had from the Church of England. " Come," said Ralph Erskine, with a simplicity which is almost tragical, — "come, if possi ble, dear Whitefield ; there is no face on earth which I would more earnestly desire to see. Yet," he adds, " I do desire it only in a way that I think would tend most to the advancing of the Lord's kingdom, and Reformation-work in our hands." The humble man sion may still be visited at Dunfermline, in which Whitefield was received by the zealous brothers. A small low chamber, opening into a still smaller ora tory, such as used till lately to be seen in many of the old houses in Edinburgh, was the scene of this sin gular conference. They required that he should only preach for them : they were the Lord's people. But Whitefield would hear of none of their limitations. He would refuse no call, he said, " to preach Christ, whoever gave it ; were it a Jesuit or a Mohammedan, I would use it for testifying against them. If others are the devil's people, they have more need to be preached to. If the Pope should lend me his pulpit, I would declare the righteousness of Christ therein." They then determined to instruct him in the order of church government. He was required, before he proceeded a step further, to sign the Solemn League and Covenant. To their amazement he knew noth ing about it, " as he had been busy with matters of greater importance." "Every pin of the taberna cle," they said, "was precious." He could not be persuaded, and they parted asunder.'^ But they still pursued him and his work; and, 1 Gledstone's Life of Whitefield. Lect. n. ITS DIVISIONS. 91 after the wonderful effects produced by his preaching on the green bank at Cambuslang, still called " Con version Brae," the Seceders, with the Cameronians at their back, appointed the 4th of August as a day of fasting and humiliation throughout their whole body, for the countenance given to Whitefield,^ " a priest of the Church of England, who had sworn the Oath of Supremacy and abjured the Solemn League and Covenant, and for the system of delusion attending the present awful work on the bodies and spirits of men going on at Cambuslang." They published the " Declaration, Protestation, and Testimony of the suffering remnant of the anti-Popish, anti-Lutheran, anti-Erastian, anti-Prelatic, anti-Whitefieldian, anti- Sectarian, true Presbyterian Church of Christ in Scotland against George Whitefield and his encour- agers, and against the work at Cambuslang and other places." In this protest the zealots and polemics of every Church may see their own faces reflected. Its spirit can hardly be said to have passed away from the Church of Scotland altogether. It would be most unjust and uncharitable to dwell on its manifestations as if they were general or predominant ; and I shall, as I proceed, gladly acknowledge the immense ad vance made within the last thirty years, even in those quarters in which it chiefly prevailed. Yet surely it still is true, that hardly anywhere in Christendom could have been heard such animated and able de bates as have been quite recently witnessed in the assembly of the greatest of the Seceding Churches in Scotland ; one on " the Double and Single Refer ence," the other on " the Unlawfulness of Human Hymns." 1 Burton lx. 201, 301. 92 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. n, II. It remains to sum up the good and evil of this aspect of Scottish theology, which has so deeply col ored the Church of Scotland, which has been the one prevailing hue of those portions of it that make up the bulk of its outlying sections. 1. On the one hand, it is undeniable that this has Fervid de- bccu the sourco at which some of the finest votion. ^^^ noblest spirits of the Scottish Church, especially in its less educated classes, have been fed. The elaborate arguments of the Westminster Con fession, and the long wail of the Judicial Testimony — the stubborn resistance to Popery and Prelacy — have formed the rough husk within which lies hid the Divine fire of Scotland's Burning Bush. If intol erant excesses of this tendency have given occasion to the withering sarcasms of Burns' " Holy Fair " and " Holy Willie," its nobler side has furnished that un rivaled picture of a poor man's religious household, — " The Cotter's Saturday Night " : — " The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face. They, round the ingle, form a circle wide ; The sire turns o'er, with patriarchal grace. The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride : His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside. His lyart haifets wearing thin an' bare ; Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide, He wales a portion with judicious care. And ' Let us worship God 1 ' he says, with solemn air." Most true it is that " from scenes " and from stud ies Uke these " old Scotia's grandeur springs." The Solemn League and Covenant, strange as it seems to us, inspired a rapture seemingly as pure and heav enly as if it had been the " Imitatio Christi." Listen to the " Swan Song " — the very name is full of emo- Lect. IL ITS DEVOTION. 93 tion — "or the dying testimony of that old, flour ishing, and great Christian princely wrestler with his Master and valiant contender for Christ's truths and rights and royal prerogatives, James Masson." "When I first heard the Covenant mentioned, I thought my heart fluttered within me for joy. Then, therefore, at such times and in such places I took it, as at Dumfries, Pierpoint, Kirkmalo, and Iron Gray, which I never forget to this day, and hope never to do. 0, what shall I speak to the commendation of those covenants ? If they were then glorious and bright, I believe that they will be nine times as bright. And 0, the sweet times of Covenanting I had likewise at communion in those days, when the Church was in her purity, and the Lord shined on W., and in other places, at the preaching of his word, which I cannot now tell over, being past my memory. But the back-looking to them now and then does not a Uttle refresh my soul, as at Loche Hilt and ShaUoch- burn, where, besides the sweet manifestations to my soul, and the soul of others then present. He was to be as a wall of fire round about us, defending us from our enemies." ^ The splendid appeal of Ephraim Macbriar to his judges in " Old Mortality," which is almost literaUy copied from that of Hugh M'Cail, is as genuine an outcome of the wild theology of those days as the ravings of Habakkuk Mucklewrath. The tombs of the Covenanters are to the Scottish Church what the Catacombs are to the early Christian Church. If the inscriptions which hope that their persecutors wUl " Find at Resurrection-day, To murder saints was no sweet play," — 1 Burton, viii. 253. 94 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. D. recall to us the savage imprecations of Tertullian, and the author of the treatise " De Mortibus Perse- cutorum," the simple ever-recurring rhymes which enumerate the names of those who died for the " covenanted work of Reformation," are more like the monuments of the Christians of those first ages than anything else which exists in modern times. In no other Protestant Church has such genuine veneration gathered round the graves of martyrs and scenes of martyrdom as at Auchinleck, where the whole parish migrated to the foot of the gallows on which Alex ander Peden was hanged ; or at Wigton, where the two women were drowned on the sea-shore for refusing the Test ; or in the green spot called " the Martyrs' Field," on Magus Moor, through which no plough has ever been driven since the Covenanters were buried there who slew Archbishop Sharp. The outward circumstances which nourished this singular devotion have almost totally passed away. The devotion itself remains, a proof of the intensity of belief that can be sustained by the narrowest form of doctrine, if it be planted in a manly, independent understanding, and a warm, self-sacrificing heart. " The soldiers of the Cameronian regiment," said Kerr of Kershaw, who, as Mr. Burton says, " being among them, but not of them," rendered to them this noble testimony, " are strictly religious, and make the war a part of their religion, and convert state policy into points of conscience. They fight as they pray, and pray as they fight. They may be slain ; never conquered. Many have lost their lives ; few or none ever yielded. Whenever their duty or their religion calls them to it, they are always unanimous and ready LECT. IL ITS THEOLOGY. 95 with undaunted spirit and great vivacity of mind to encounter hardships, attempt great enterprises, despise dangers, and bravely rush to death or victory." ^ 2. But, on the other hand, this marvelous energy of Scottish Presbyterian religion ought not to blind us to the fact of the curious defects by which the forms of it here considered have been so long disfigured. I do not now speak of the extravagances of Calvinism, which it shared with the Reformed Churches of Ge neva, of Holland, and of Connecticut. But there are some features which it possesses almost peculiar to itself The immense preponderance of the teaching of the Old Testament, and of some of the most tran sitory parts of the Old Testament over the New, and over the most essential part of the New, cannot but have cribbed, confined, and soured the relig- j^^^;^ character ious teaching of the country. Even in Burns's l^f^" beautiful picture of the " Cotter's Saturday ^^^"^"^y- Night," the scenes from Jewish history and from the most Judaic book in the " Christian volume " coun terbalance all the rest. Much more was this the case in the earlier days, whence this form of teaching took its rise. The Scottish religious civil wars were, in the Acts of the General Assemblies, regarded as equivalent to the wars of the Lord in the Jewish times.^ In a well known pamphlet of the seventeenth century — " Issachar's Ass braying under a Double Burden " — a careful observer has found that, out of a hundred or more references to the Bible, eighty-four are to the Old Testament and only fifteen to the New.^ Of one of the most eminent lay politicians of the Covenanting Church, Lord Macaulay remarks,* 1 Burton, vii. 460. 3 Ibid. 256. 3 Cunningham, ii. 137. * Macaulay, iii. 28. 96 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IL that " He had a text of the Old Testament ready for every occasion. ... It is a striking characteristic of the man, and of the school in which he had been trained, that in all the mass of his writing which has come down to us, there is not a word indicating that he had ever heard of the New Testament." The in tense reverence for the Sabbath, beyond what is taught not only in the Roman Catholic or Anglican Churches, but in any Lutheran or Calvinistic Conti nental Church, is an example of the same tendency ; a reverence, no doubt, which has fostered many of the finest qualities in the Scottish people, and which must be honored accordingly, but which assumed a disproportion, and became, so to speak, a malforma tion of the religious system analogous to that which is created in Russia by the excessive veneration for sacred pictures, and in France and Italy by the ex cessive veneration for particular saints. Passing over some of the more obvious conse quences of these peculiarities, there is one which de serves special notice, as probably the most direct result from the narrow, technical, and antagonistic basis on which Scottish religion has been constructed, and the numerous checks by which its free develop ment is guarded. In one of Dr. Johnson's most inso lent moods, when in the Isle of Skye, he attacked the ignorance of the Scottish clergy : " The clergy of England have produced the most valuable works in support of religion, both in theory and practice ; what have your clergy done since they fell into Presby terianism ? Can you name one book of any value on a religious subject written by them ? " ^ His oppo- 1 BosweU, ii. 476. Lect. H. ITS THEOLOGY. 97 nents were silent. The charge of general ignorance might, as we shall see hereafter, have been easUy rebutted ; and, as regards theology, if we pass from Dr. Johnson's time to our own, there are several liv ing theologians of the Church of Scotland at whose feet Englishmen might be proud to sit. But Absence of the charge that no theological work had theology. proceeded from Scotland which had more than a local reputation, is absolutely true with regard to the more strictly Presbyterian theology of which we are now speaking ; and true, with a very few exceptions, which shall be noticed in their proper places, of Scot tish theology altogether. A dearth so extraordinary in a nation whose struggles have been so profoundly religious, is a singular phenomenon. It may be in part explained, as Boswell tried to explain it, by the assiduity of the Scottish clergy in their parochial ministrations ; in part by the poverty of the ecclesias tical endowments. But it must be chiefly explained by the technical and minute subjects on which Scot tish theology has run. There are, doubtless, many treatises of Scottish theology — well known in Scot land — but the language, the matter, the thoughts are so restricted as to prevent them from ever reach ing a wider circle of readers. " At the date," says Carlyle, " when Addison and Steele were writing their ' Spectators ' " — (he might have added, when Jeremy Taylor and Barrow, when Locke and Cud worth were writing their treatises on theology and on Scrijpture, in works which are stUl reckoned amongst the glories of English literature) — "our good Thomas Boston was writing with the noblest intent, but in defiance of grammar and philosophy, his ' Four- 7 98 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IL fold State of Man.' There were the schisms in our national Church, and the fiercer schisms in our body politic and theologie, ink, Jacobite blood, with gall enough in both to have blotted out the intellect of the country." ^ This general fact is a striking proof how strong a tendency there is in such angular relig ion, in these stringent obligations to a past system of theology, to dry up, as far as religion is concerned, the intellectual forces even of a highly intellectual people. It was under these straitening influences that the miserable superstitions of witchcraft lingered in Scotland after they had expired everywhere else ; and that the strange delusions of what are called the " Men " long maintained a hold over the peasants and ministers of the Highlands. And yet more. It is instructive to notice the Moral instances, perhaps more striking from the inconsist- , , *-^ ency. sharpucss of the contrast, in which the strong religious zeal of Scottish partisans has at times con trived to be united with worldly character or vicious Ufe, such as we find in the history of some of the cor responding phenomena of the ecclesiastical history of France or of -Russia. If any one imagines that Balfour of Burley in "Old MortaUty" is an over drawn caricature of this tendency, let them consider the undoubted historic instances of Lord Crawford and Lord Grange. Lord Crawford was appointed President of the Parliament by William Ill's govern ment in the hope of concUiating the rigid Presby terians. His exuberant use of the Old Testament has been already noticed. "Alone," says Lord Ma caulay, " or almost alone of the eminent politicians, 1 Carlyle, Essays, iii. 361. Lect. n. ITS THEOLOGY. 99 he retained the religious style which had been fash ionable in the preceding generation," and was by his own school confidently pronounced to be a saint.^ " Yet," continues Lord Macaulay, " to those who judge of a man rather by his actions than his words, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish politician, who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and whose zeal against Episcopal government was not a little whetted by his desire to obtain a grant of Epis copal domains." ^ Lord Grange was one of those grasp ing, vindictive, violent men that figure conspicuously in the earlier days of Scottish mediaeval history. His wife, his kinsfolk, were the objects of his most cruel persecutions. " It is almost frightful," says Mr. Bur ton, " to find a man of this kind in firm alliance with the most rigid Presbyterian divines, conforming to the worship and discipline of their Church, so as to fulfill the most ample requisitions of the most exact ing, and a powerful and well-trusted member of the Church courts. His diary of self-communing con tinues in a uniform strain the exalted tone of piety belonging to one who, as Wodrow says, thought there was too much preaching up of morality and too little of grace. Yet if there was any act of rigor, of in decent outrage on private life or opinion. Grange was the one to whom it was committed, and he per formed the duty with genuine and unconcealed en joyment." ^ III. It may seem invidious thus to have dwelt on the darker traits of a great and noble people. If I have done so at more length than may have seemed becoming, it is because thus only could I draw out 1 Cunningham, ii. 445. ^ Macaulay, iii. 296. 3 Burton, viii. 309. 100 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Leot. H. the peculiarities which are most instructive for them Reii ous ^^^ f^^ "^ *° contemplate. In my two next excellence, jectures I shaU hope to show that there has been in the Church, and may yet be, a more excel lent way even than the Solemn League and Cove nant, or the Judicial Testimony, or the fiery Baptism of the Disruption. But even in the aspect in which I have now been regarding the religion of Scotland, this exceUent way may be discerned. I have, in describing this fervid atmosphere, indi cated how not only the Church of Scotland, in all its length and breadth, but the Church of England also may well warm its frozen heart, and get the chill out of its bones, by drawing near to the Burning Bush of Scotland's ancient Church. But that flame itself soars higher yet. It is at once a proof of the singu lar candor and the true religious instinct of Walter Scott, that of all the Scottish characters in his Scot tish romances, none more truly represent the highest Christian type than- Jeanie Deans, the daughter of an Anti-burgher, and Bessie Maclure, the mother of two martyrs for the Covenant. Let me dwell for a few moments on at least one Samuel historical character of this period, which ford. doubtless may stand for many. I have al ready quoted a line from one of Milton's poems, in which he glances with contemptuous scorn at what he deemed the obscure name of Rutherford. He did not care to inquire what that name represented to the Scottish people. Samuel Rutherford is the true saint of the Covenant. His boyhood is enveloped with legends, such as those of which I spoke in my first lecture. His native place was Crailing, of which Leot. II. SAMUEL EUTHEEFOED. 101 he hiraself afterwards said, " My soul's desire is that that place, to which I owe my first birth, in which I fear that Christ was scarcely named as touching any reality of the power of godliness, may blossom as the rose." It is said that the great-grandfather of the present Marquis of Lothian always raised his hat as he passed the cottage where Rutherford was born. A tradition ran that in his childish sports he , . His life. had fallen into a well, and when his compan ions got back they found him on a hill, cold and dripping, but uninjured. "A bonnie white man," he said, " came and drew him out of the well." It is exactly the story of St. Cuthbert's childhood, repeated in the seventeenth century. ^ Anwoth, on the shores of Galloway, was the scene of his pastoral ministrations. I have already spoken elsewhere of the traditions of his manse ^ and church, and described the scene of his interview with Arch bishop Ussher. Men said of his life there, " He is always praying, always preaching, always entreating, always visiting the sick, always catechising, always writing and studying." " There," he says, " I wres tled with the angel, and prevaUed. . Woods, trees, meadows, and hUls are my witnesses that I drew on a fair match betwixt Christ and Anwoth." ^ We need not follow his life in detail. He was taken from Anwoth and imprisoned at Aberdeen, for his opposition to the policy of Charles I. He finally left Anwoth, after the triumph of the Covenant, to become Professor at St. Andrew's, where he remained tUl his end. He was already on his death-bed when he was sum- 1 Life, p. 6. 2 " The Eleventh Commandment." 3 Life, p. 186. 102 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. H. moned by the Parliament of Charles II. to appear before it on the charge of high treason. "I am sum moned," he replied, "before a higher Judge and judicatory : that first summons I behove to answer ; and, ere a few days arrive, I shall be where few kings and great folks come." On the last day of his life, in the afternoon, he said, "This night will close the dawn and fasten my anchor within the veil, and I shall go away in a sleep by five o'clock in the evening. There is noth ing now between me and the resurrection, but ' This day shalt thou be with me in paradise.' 'Glory, glory dweUeth in Emmanuel's Land.' " When Parliament voted that he should not die in the College, Lord Burley rose and said, " Ye cannot vote him out of heaven." He lies in the church yard of the ruined Cathedral of St. Andrew's ; and, Uke a mediaeval saint, has attracted round him " the godly, who desired that they might be laid even where his body was laid." -^ I pass from his life to his character. An English His char- merchant at St. Andrew's said : " I heard a ^^"' sweet, majestic looking man [one of the other professors], and he showed me the majesty of God. Afterwards I heard a little fair man [Samuel Rutherford], and he showed me the loveliness of Christ." It is the same spirit as that in which, when Lord Kenmare once asked him, " What will Ghrist be like when He cometh ? " he replied, " All lovely." ^ The chief record of this is in his letters from "Christ's Palace at Aberdeen," as he termed his prison. They teem with figures of speech, so offen- 1 Bonar's Life, p. 26. 8 Life of Rutherford, p. 107. Lect.H. SAMUEL EUTHEEFOED. 103 sive to the taste of a more refined age, that they are now, in great part, unreadable. Yet they were stUl, till the beginning of this century, a popular book of devotion in Scotland, England, and Holland. Richard Cecil, the.most cultivated of modern English Evati- gelicals, said of him : " He is one of my classics, and he is a real original." Richard Baxter, the most latitudinarian of the fathers of Non-conformity, said, " Hold off the Bible, such a work the world never saw." And they contain passages which fully bear out this character : " With Samuel Rutherford,-' the bitter and bigoted controversialist, let us have no fellowship. To Samuel Rutherford, the writer of those glowing letters, let the full sympathies of our soul be given." Listen to his consolation to a lady on the death of a promising son. " I was once in your condition. I had but two children, and both are dead since I came hither. The supreme and absolute Father of all things giveth not an account of any of his matters. The good husbandman may pluck his roses, and gather in his lilies at midsummer, and, for aught I dare say, in the beginning of the first summer months ; and he may transplant young trees out of the lower ground to the higher, where they may have the use of a purer air at any season of the year. What is that to you or to me ? The goods are his own ; the Creator of time and wind did a merciful injury (ifl dare borrow the word) to nature, in landing the passenger so easily." ^ 1 "The Church and its Living 13, 1859, by the Rev. J. Hanna, Head;" a Sermon preached Nov. LL.D. 8 Letters, p. 308. Bonar, p. 136. 104 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IL Listen to his description of the voyage of life : " How fast, how fast doth our ship sail ! Ah ! how fair a wind hath time to blow us off these coasts and this land of dying and perishing things ! Ah, alas ! our ship saileth one way, and fleeth many miles in one hour, to hasten us upon eternity, and our love and hearts are sailing close back over, and swimming towards ease, lawless pleasures, vain hopes, perishing riches, or to build a fool's nest I know not where, or to lay our eggs within the watermark, or fasten our bits of broken anchors on the worst ground in the world — this fleeting and perishing life; and, in the mean whUe, time and tide carry us on another life, and there is daily less and less oil in our lamp, and less and less sand in our watchglass. 0, what a wise course it were for us to look away from the false beauty of our borrowed prison, and to mind and sigh for our country, ' Lord, Lord, take us home ! ' " Listen to his lamentations for Scotland : ^ " Christ lieth like an old forecasten castle forsaken of its in habitants ; all men run away now from Him. Truth, innocent truth, goeth mourning, and wringing her hands in sackcloth and ashes. Woe, woe, woe to the virgin daughter of Scotland ! woe, woe, woe to the in habitants of this land ! . . . . These things take me up so that a borrowed bed, another man's fireside, the wind upon my face (I being driven from my home and dear acquaintance, and my poor flock), find no room in my sorrow ; I have no spare or odd sorrow for these ; only I think the sparrows and swal lows that build their nests in the kirk of Anwoth blessed birds." ^ 1 Letters, p. 378. 2 Ibid. p. 363. Lect.H. SAMUEL EUTHEEFOED. 105 Listen to the expression of his better hope for his country : " I dare not speak one word against the all-seeing and ever-watching Providence of God. -I see Providence runneth not on broken wheels ; but I, like a fool, carried a provender for mine own ease, to die in my nest, and to sleep still tUl my gray hairs, and to lie on the sunny side of the mountain in my ministry at Anwoth But now I see God hath the world on his wheels, and casteth it as a potter doth a vessel on the wheels ! " ^ " 0, that He would strike out windows and fair and great lights in this old house, this downfallen soul, that the rays and beams of light, and the soul-delighting glances of the fair, fair Godhead, might shine in at the windows and fill the house. A fairer and nearer and more direct sight of Christ would make room for his love, for we are pinched and straitened in his love. 0, that he would break down the old narrow vessels of those narrow and shallow souls, and make fair, deep, wide, broad souls, to hold a sea and full tide, flowing over all its banks of Christ's love ! .... 0, what a heaven we should have on earth to see Scot land's moon like the light of the sun, and Scotland's sunlight manifold like the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord raiseth up the head of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wounds ! " ^ " We see God's working, and we sorrow. The end of his working still hidden, .... and therefore we believe not. Even amongst men we see hewn stones, timber, and a hundred scattered parcels and pieces of our house, all under tools, hammers, and axes, and saws. Yet the house — the beauty and care of so 1 Letters, p. 378. 2 Ibid. p. 385. 106 THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. II. many lodgings — we neither see nor understand for the present. These are not in the mind and head of the builder as yet. We see old earth, unbroken clods, graves, and stones ; but we see not summer, lilies, roses, and the beauty of a garden." ^ " Alas ! that we will not pull and draw Him to his old tents again, to come and feed among the lilies till the day breaks and the shadows flee away. 0, that the nobles would come, in the strength and courage of the Lord, to bring our lawful King Jesus here again. I am persuaded He shall return in glory to this land ; but happy sure they who would help to convey Him to this country, and set Him up again on the mercy-seat between the cherubim. 0 Sun, return again to darkened Britain ! .... I know He can also triumph in suffering, and weep, and reign, and die,, and triumph, and remain in prison, and yet subdue his enemies. But how happy could I live to see the Coronation-day of Christ, to see his mother who bare Him put the crown upon his head again, and cry with shouting, till the earth shall sing, ' Lord Jesus, our King, live and reign for ever more.' " ^ That Coronation-day to Rutherford meant, no Conciu- doubt, in its outward form, the enforcement ^"'"' of the Solemn League and Covenant, and almost every section of the Church of Scotland now existing would have seemed to- him a miserable apostasy. But in the inner shrine of his devotions a higher spirit lingers, which we may humbly trust would find its solace even in our latter days. And so, in like manner, I would speak for a moment of 1 Letters, 305. « Ibid. 350. Leot.il ITS CONSOLATION. 107 those who invest with the like sanctity modern watchwords and war-cries equally transitory. I have been told that in the " Convocation," or solemn as sembly, that preceded the Disruption of 1843, a venerable minister exclaimed : " When I heard that the decisions of spiritual courts had been reversed by a decision of the House of Lords, I felt as an in fant would feel if, whilst clinging to its mother's breast, it found that its mother had been suddenly shot dead." It was a pathetic appeal, which thrilled the whole Assembly. Yet if I might venture, from the experience of the past, to offer some consolation, I would suggest that the Church of Scotland has far too much life to be shot dead by any such ex ternal act as that to which the sacred orator referred. Again and again has that cry of the death of the Church of Scotland been raised : first, when the Cov enant was broken ; then when the Black Indulgence was granted ; then when the Act of Union between England and Scotland was passed. On that last occa sion was made the famous speech of Lord Belhaven, almost identical in words with those of the Free Church minister in 1843. All Scotsmen know it by heart : " I think I see our ancient mother Caledonia, Uke Csesar, sitting in the midst of our senate, rue fully looking round about her, covering herself with her royal mantle, awaiting the fatal blow, and breath ing out her last with the exclamation, ' And thou too, my son.'" The apprehension, the agitation, the very figure of speech of the illustrious statesman and the venerable ecclesiastic were the same, and sprang from the same source. And to both of them the same answer may be returned which was returned 108 THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IL by Lord Marchmont to Lord Belhaven: "I awoke, and behold it was a dream." It was a dream to think that the great Scottish nation could be extinguished by incorporation with the civilization of England. It is a dream to think that the great Scottish Church was to be extinguished because it chose to submit to the decisions of law and the contact with the English State. What forms of life Scottish religion still retains, and will retain if it be true to itself, I propose to consider in the next lectures. LECTURE III THE MODERATION OP THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. DELIVEEED BEFOEE THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTE, JANUAEY 11, 1872. LECTURE III. THE MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. It will be remembered that Mr. Buckle, in his " History of Civilization," took Scotland as Buckie's 1/.1 ,. 1 . .1 charge the example of the most bigoted, priest-rid- agaiust the . T^ A . Church of den country m Europe, next to Spain ; and Scotland. drew a frightful picture of the Scottish clergy at the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. The picture itself is probably overcharged ; but, even if it were correct, the whole effect of the indict ment is set aside by the fact — which Mr. Buckle has altogether overlooked — that in the period fol lowing this dark age, the Scottish clergy were the most liberal and enlightened of all the churches of Europe ; nay, that even during the time that he imagines the Scottish Church to be lost in hopeless barbarism, there was a succession of men, who com bined the deep religious sentiment which he admits, and the spirit of independence which he admires, with a just and philosophic moderation which, had he known, he could not have failed to admit and to admire equally. The tendency which I am now about to describe is part of the prudential, " canny " side of the Cale donian character, and is as essential a feature of it 112 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. ID. as the perferindum^ ingenium Scotorum, which I ven tured to depict in my last lecture. Let us trace it first in some of its earliest manifestations, and then in the Augustan age of its ascendency, where it found its home in the heart of the Established Church during what is called the reign of the Moderates. If the Church of Scotland had a Luther in Knox, Modera- it had au Erasmus in the wide and polished tion in the f i~i i-»i 9 1 • c ^ • age of the culturc of Georffo Buchanan ; ^' and if his Reforma- ° . tion. royal pupil had fulfilled the theological promise which he gave in his early years, Scotland might have had on her throne a monarch as latitudi narian as Maximilian II. of Germany, or as WUliam the Silent of Orange. " He is neither Lutheran nor Calvinist," writes the Scottish correspondent to the French court, " but in many points much nearer to us. He thinks that faith is dead without works, that there is no predestination, and so forth. He holds a (false) opinion that Faith in God alone can save a man, let him belong to what religion he may." ^ In the Regent Murray the fervor of the Refor mation was combined with a forbearance strongly contrasted with the fierce temper of the age. " His house was compared to a holy temple, where no foul word was ever spoken. A chapter was read every day after dinner and supper in his family ; yet no 1 It would seem that the original writers of European influence and word in Buchanan (Op. i. 321) is celebrity. See a very interesting prcefervidum. article on Buchanan in the North 2 It has been said that George British Review,'^o.xci.'M.iirch., 1867. Buchanan, David Hume, and Wal- 3 Froude, xi. 665. ter Scott are the three Scottish Lect. III. IN TEE AGE OF THE REFORMATION. 113 one was more free from sour austerity, and he had quarreled once with Knox, ' so that they spoke not together for eighteen months,' because his nature shrank from extremity of intolerance, because he insisted that his sister should not be interdicted from mass." -^ With true Scottish humor and sagac ity he took up his post at the door, and declared with much solemnity that he had placed himself there " that no Scotsman might pollute his eyes with the abominable thing." ^ John Knox himself had a tinge of moderation which has been but little recognized either by his friends or his enemies. His Confession of Faith stands alone amongst Protestant Confessions for the acknowledgment, far in advance of its age, of its own fallibility : " We protest that if any one will note in this our Confession any article or sentence impugning God's Holy Word, that it would please him of his goodness, and for Christian charity's sake, to admonish us of the same in writing; and we, upon our honor and fidelity, do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God (that is, from his Holy Scriptures), or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss." ^ The rigid Sab batarianism of modern times received no sanction either from his practice or his teaching. He supped with Randolph on one Sunday evening, and visited Calvin during a game of bowls on another.* The austere theology of Andrew MelviUe was tempered 1 Froude, xi. 502. by Dr. Robert Lee in his Address 2 Cunningham, i. 376. on the Position ofthe Clergy. 3 This is admirably brought out * Hessey's Bampton Lectures, y. 269, 270. 8 1 14 MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. DL by an interest in classical and academical literature, the very reverse of a hard ^ and narrow Puritanism. As in England, so in Scotland, there were gentle or prudent spirits who, in spite of the wide chasm between the ancient and the Reformed Church, still in a measure belonged to both. Such was Hugh Rose, the Black Baron of Kilravoch. " He lived in a very divided, factious time ; there falling out then great revolutions in Church and State, religion changed from Popery to Protestant — the Queen, laid aside, being in exile. Yet such was his ever ingenu ous, prudential carriage, that he wanted not respect from the most eminent of all the parties." What was said of a debate betwixt him and two neighbors might be said of his whole life. " Hutcheon Rose, of Kilra voch, an honest man, ill guided betwixt them both." ^ Such, perhaps in a less creditable form, was John Winram, sub-prior of St. Andrew's, who through the whole of that troubled period retained his ofiice, and has the fact recorded on his tombstone in St. Leon ard's church-yard. Conversis Rebus, — " though the world had even turned upside down," he contrived still to live and die sub-prior of St. Andrew's. Again, the Erastian element in the Scottish Church Early — its closc counectiou with the State, and lirastian- .... ism. with all the influences of the State, was ex ceedingly strong from its very first beginning. The original Confession of John Knox ^ contains nothing 1 See the interesting account of History, p. 440. See also his sum- his scheme for the university of St. mary ofthe whole family. Andrew's. M'Crie, Life of Mel- 3 Innes, Law of Creeds, p. 23. ct:&, ii. 358. , Knox's fTisiorr/, pp. 208-216. See 2 Cosmo Innes's Early Scottish also his Appellation to the Nobility and E.^fatea of .'Scotland, in 1556. Lect. III. IN THE AGE OF THE EEFOEMATION. 115 on the independence of the Church ; and it, as well as the Westminster Confession, afterwards was made binding on the Scottish Church by Act of Parlia ment.^ The General Assembly, as I have already said, was itself a kind of parliament. Its forms were borrowed not from the CouncUs of the Church, but from the Scottish Parliaments. The ouveriures of the Parliament are the overtures of the Assembly.^ It was a very different body then from that to which, by successive purifications of the lay element, it has since been reduced. The King, the Regent, the Privy Council ors, the Barons, had a seat and a vote in it when they chose to exercise them. The qualification of King as elder was not insisted on. When the great laymen came in any numbers the ministers were com pelled to sit outside the bar. The presence of the Re gent and the nobility was felt by the Assembly itself to be " most comfortable and most earnestly wished of all, and his absence most dolorous and lament able."" In the Westminster Assembly the advance of Scot tish theology depended considerably on the advance* of the Scottish army. The English members of par liament were always passing in and out of the Jeru salem Chamber, and kept a constant watch over its deliberations. 1 The original movement of the cession, c. v. Cunningham, i. 481, Scottish Reformation was not so 483. much popular as baronial. The * Read Baillie's Letters. " He great lords held the cause in their allows that the pressure of the Scot- own hands, and by their influence tish army helped forward the accepts mainly it was decided. ance of the Scottish theology in 2 Burton, i. 567. Westminster." Chalmers' Life, iii. 3 See Turner's History of the Se- 437. 116 MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IIL The Covenant, as we have seen, invoked in the strongest terms the aid of the State, and only turned against the State when the State turned against the Covenant. This brings us from the fierce struggles of the fifteenth to those of the seventeenth century. Even on the face of the general movement there are traces of a milder spirit. The Westminster Confession, complete as it seemed to be, was yet from the first seen to partake of the latitude and largeness of a compromise. It contained no special mention of divine order, or necessity of the ecclesiastical oflices recognized in the Presby terian Church. In the regulations for the Eucharist^ there is nothing to guard against a free communion. Professor Mitchell, of St. Andrew's, has ably pointed out the liberal tendency of many of its statements, as might be expected from an assembly which con tained such men as Selden, Lightfoot, and Calamy. Still more clearly is this visible in individual ex amples. It has been sometimes complained that Walter Scott's character of Henry Morton in " Old Mortal ity," with his enlarged views and philosophic Chris tianity, is an anachronism. But to any student of those times it is evident that the great master was in this instance as faithful to historical truth as when he painted Mause Headrigg or Sergeant Bothwell. Not only is the prototype of Morton to be found in ' Confession, xxvi. 21. The spe- tion, and were intensified in the cial precautions which limited this seceding Churches. See Grub, iii. freedom as well as the more strin- 125, and Moncriefi"'s Life of Ers- gent forms of subscription, were the kine, p. 139. work of later ecclesiastical legisla- Lect. in. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 117 the contemporary school of the English Latitudina- rians who had gathered round Lord Falkland in the vale of Great Tew, or round Cudworth in the Platonic repose of Cambridge ; but in Scotland also his like ness may again and again be traced. Just such a man — half Presbyterian and half Episcopalian — had been Patrick Forbes, the laird of Corse, who in early youth had been the friend of Andrew Melville, and who in later life reluctantly accepted the bishop ric of Aberdeen from James I. "If wherein our doubt seemeth defection, his Highness would so far pity our weakness and consider our peace as to en force nothing but what first in a free and national council were determined, wherein his Highness would neither make any man afraid with terror, nor pervert the judgment of any with hope of favor, then men may adventure to do service. But if things be so violently carried as no end may appear of bitter con tention, nor any place left to men in office but to stir the coals of detestable debate, for me I have no cour age to be a partner in that work. I wish my heart's blood might extinguish the ungracious rising flame in our Church." ^ That is Henry Morton all over. That is the true statesmanlike and Christianlike policy which might yet have saved Episcopacy and Presby terianism alike from their worst excesses. And Pa trick Forbes was no hireling priest or skeptical philos opher. He had become a lay preacher at the urgent entreaty both of his Episcopalian and Presbyterian neighbors ; and he became a bishop in the hope of moderating the passions of the Episcopal party. If even he,- too, was afterwards led away by the frenzy 1 See Bishop Forbes's Funerals. Grub, ii. 34. 118 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. of the time, yet he retained enough of his original goodness to call down the eulogy, not only of those whom he joined, but even of some of those whom he had left. Wodrow regarded him as the " best of the Scottish prelates;" and the Aberdeen colleges re mained a monument of his enlightened zeal, when almost every trace of the Scottish Episcopate per ished. But it is in the history of the next generation that this element of Scottish religion began to exercise a wider influence. Look at the deputation of Scottish ministers who Eohert wcut up to Londou for the rearrangement of Douglas, ^^g Church at the time of the Restoration. Some of them were obscure enough ; but two were men of suflicient interest to redeem the character of any school of thought from insignificance or contempt. One was Robert Douglas. He held the highest place in the Scottish Church. He had been twice mode rator. He had preached the coronation sermon of Charles II. at Scone. He was one of the chief promot ers of the Restoration. He was a stanch Presbyte rian, convinced of the divine right of Presbytery, full of zeal for the Covenant.-^ But he was always against extreme measures. "He was," says Burnet, who knew him in his old age, " a reserved man — too calm and grave for the furious men, yet much depended on for his prudence " — too prudent, indeed, Burnet thought him — " for he durst not own the free thoughts he had of some things for fear of offending the people." His theology was thus described by the partisans who were eager to scent out those free 1 Wodrow, ii. 329. Lect. m. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 119 thoughts : " He had a singular ivay of preaching, mthout doctrines, which some called scumming the text." ^ He re garded Ruthford's fanatical " Protestation " in behalf of the Covenant as " the highest breach of all the articles of the Covenant that ever was since the work of Reformation began." He was " a great State preacher, one of the greatest of that age in Scotland — for he feared no man to declare the mind of God to him — yet very accessible, and easy to be con versed with. Unless a man were for God, he had no value for him, let him be never so great and noble." "^ He lived on gracious terins with his opponents. Of one of the ministers with whom he had variance on some ecclesiastical matters, he said, " I love him as my own soul." Against Sharpe, no doubt, he spoke angrily, but probably because he believed him insin cere. "Take it, James," he said, when there was the question of the archbishopric of St. Andrew's ; " take it, and the curse of God be on you for your treacherous dealing."^ "Brother, no more brother, James. If my conscience had been as yours," he said to Sharpe, " I could have been Bishop of St. Andrew's before you." " But," he added to some one else, " I will never be Archbishop of St. Andrew's unless I be ChanceUor of Scotland also, as some were before me." He was, in fact, a statesman as much as a divine. He had served as chaplain in the army of Gustavus Adolphus ; and that great king was reported to have said of him when he took leave : "There is a man who, for wisdom and prudence, 1 Wodrow's Analecta,!. 166; iii. 3 Burton, vii. 405. Scott's His- 82, 83, 298. tory of Scotland. 8 Wodrow's Analecta, iii. 82, 83. 120 MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. m. might be counselor to any prince in Europe ; he might be a moderator to a General Council; and even for military skill I could very freely trust my army to his conduct." Yet in his statesmanship he never lost his sacred character. He had, whilst in the army of Gustavus, got the most part of all the Bible in his memory, having then taken no other book to read, so that " he was as a concordance to the exactness of a Jew." ^ He was one of those whom we sometimes meet in history, evidently far greater than circumstances per mitted them to show themselves. There was a majesty and authority in his face that caused those who looked at him to stand in awe of him ; " an air of greatness," says Burnet, " that made all that knew him inclined to believe he was of no ordinary de scent." If anything could enhance the interest of this mysterious, lofty-minded man, — " the great Mr. Douglas," as he was called, — it would be the extraor dinary parentage to which these words of Burnet point. True or false, the romantic story was cher ished in the popular belief that his grandfather was George Douglas of Lochleven, and his grandmother the illustrious captive of that famous castle.^ If of Douglas we unfortunately know but little, we are fully informed as to one of his companions. Robert Leighton was the one saint common both to the Presbyterian and the Episcopalian Church. His whole education and early ministry was Presbyterian. His outward form of doctrine was a temperate Cal- 1 Burnet, Own Time, i. 34. Wod- lecta, i. 166. Burton, v. 103 ; vii. row's Analecta, iii. 82. 405, 406. s Burnet, L 34. Wodrow's Ana- Lect. HL DJ THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 121 vinism. The work by which he is chiefly known, his " Commentary on St. Peter's Epistles," was written when he was in charge of the parish of Newbattle. It was only in later life that, for a few years, he re luctantly entered, and then gladly quitted the office of Bishop and Archbishop, which he had chiefly used for the sake of reconciling Presbyterianism and Epis copacy together. He was, indeed, a man whom either church might be glad to claim. But the peculiarity of his po- ^^^,5^^ sition was, that he combined a sanctity equal ^®'8"°°- to that ofthe strictest Covenanter or the strictest Epis copalian, with a liberality in his innermost thoughts equal to that of the widest Latitudinarian of the school of Jeremy Taylor or of Hoadley. Let us look at both these points more minutely. They both appear far more strongly in the records of his life and conversa tion than could be inferred from his published writings. There are few men whose character gives the im pression of a more complete elevation both above the cares and the prejudice of the world — of a more entire detachment from earth. Sometimes this appeared in his playful sayings on the misfortunes of life. On some great Hisdevo- pecuniary loss he made a jesting remark. *'*"^" " What ! " said his relation ; " is that all you make of the matter ? " " Truly," answered Leighton, " if the Duke of Newcastle, after losing nineteen times as much of yearly income, can dance and sing, while the solid hopes of Christians will not avail to support us, we had better be as the world." Once as a party embarked on the Thames in a boat between the Savoy and Lambeth, the boat was in imminent danger of 122 MODEEATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. ID. sinking, and most of them crying out, Leighton never lost his serenity ; and, to some who expressed their astonishment, replied, "Why, what harm would it have been if we had all been safe landed on the other side ! " More often he expressed this gravely. "It is in vain," he would say, " for any one to speak of divine things, without something of divine affections. An ungodly clergyman must feel uneasy when preaching godliness, and will hardly preach it persuasively. He has not been able to prevail on himself to be holy, and no marvel if he fail of prevailing on others. In truth he is in danger of becoming hardened against religion by the frequent inculcation of it, if it fail of melting him." He felt deeply the weariness of the world and of the Church. " I have met with many cunning plot ters, but with few truly honest and skillful undertak ers. Many have I seen who were wise and great as to this world ; but of such as are willing to be weak that others may be strong, and whose only aim it is to promote the prosperity of Zion, I have not found one in ten thousand." To the Lord's Prayer he was specially partial, and said : " 0 ! the spirit of this prayer would raake rare Christians." ^ " One devout thought is worth all my books." ^ The Psalter he called " a bundle of myrrh that ought to lie day and night in the bosom."* Scarce a line in it that had passed without the stroke of his pencil. " My uncle did not give thanks,'' ob served his little nephew, "like other folks."* His 1 Pearson's Life of Leighton, vol. 3 Ibid. p. cxvi. i. p. cxiii. 4 Ibid. p. cxviii. * Ibid. p. cxiv. Lect. III. IN THB SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 123 longing to depart grew into a passion. " To be con tent to stay always in this world," he said, " is above the obedience of angels. Those holy spirits are em ployed according to the perfection of their natures, and restlessness in hymns of praise is their only rest. But the utmost we poor mortals can attain to is to lie awake in the dark, and a great piece of art and patience it is spatiosam fallere noctem." Often would he bewaU the proneness of Christians to stop short of perfection ; and it was his grief to observe, that "some good men are content to be low and stunted vines." -^ This is a letter to a friend when he was Principal of the University of Edinburgh : " 0 ! what a weari ness is it to live amongst men and find so few men, and amongst Christians and find so few Christians ; so much talk and so little action; religion turned almost into a tune and air of words ; and, amidst all our pretty discourses, pusillanimous and base, and so easily dragged into the mire ; self and flesh, and pride and passion domineering, while we speak of being in Christ and clothed with Him, and believe it, because we speak it so often and so confidently.^ Well, I know you are not willing to be thus gulled, and, hav ing some glances of the beauty of holiness, aim no lower than perfection, which is the end we hope to attain, and in the mean time the smallest advances towards it are more worth than crowns and sceptres. I believe it you often think on those words of the blessed Apostle Paul [on the corruptible and incor ruptible reward]. There is a noble guest within us. 0 let all our business be to entertain Him honorably, 1 Pearson's Life of Leighton, vol. i. p. cxix. 2 Ibid. p. ciii. • 124 MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IIL and to live in celestial love within ; that will make all things without to be very contemptible in our eyes. I should run on did I not stop myself. Therefore, ' good night ' is all I add, for whatever hour it comes to your lot, I believe you are as sensible as I that it still is night ; but the comfort is, it draws nigh to wards that bright morning." This eagerness resulted from his earnest desire "to see and enjoy perfection in the perfect sense of it, which he could not do and live. That consummation is a hope deferred, but when it cometh it will be a tree of life." He longed to escape from the public toils in which he was involved, " if only into the air, among the birds." " Though I have great retirement here at Dunblane," he writes to his sister, — "as great and possibly greater than I could find anywhere else, — yet I am still panting for a retreat frora this place, and all public charge, and next to rest in the grave. It is the pressingest desire of anything I have in this world ; and, if it might be, with you or near you." To close his life was, he said, " like a traveller pulling off his miry boots." His well-known wish was to die in an inn — " the whole world being a large and noisy inn, and he a wayfarer tarrying in it as short a time as possible." So, in fact, he breathed his last in the Bell Inn, Warwick Lane. With this singular spirit of devotion was combined Hisiati- a freedom of thought and elevation above tudinarian- _ ° ism. the common prejudices of saints, which give him a rare place amongst . divines. He was fully aware of the difficulties which beset the popular prob lems of theology. To his nephew, who complained that there was a certain text of Scripture which he Lect. in. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 125 could not understand, his answer was, " And many more that I cannot." Being once asked about the saints reigning with Christ, he eluded the question by replying, " If we suffer with Him, we shall also reign with Him ; " and, when pressed stiU further, answered at last : " If God hath appointed any such thing for us He will give us heads to bear such liquor. Our preferment will not make us reel." To curiosity on such points he answered in the words of the angel to Manoah, " Why askest thou thus after my name, seeing it is secret?" "Enough," he said, "is dis covered to satisfy us that righteousness and judgment are within, though round about his throne are clouds and darkness." "That prospect of predestination and election," he said, " is a great abyss into which I choose to sink rather than attempt to sound it. And truly any attempt to throw light upon it makes it only a greater abyss." He fully entered into the doubts and difficulties of others ; and, even whilst most condemning them, be lieved them to be quite compatible with a true love of God. "Whatever be the particular thoughts or temptations that disquiet you, look above them and below to fix your eyes on that infinite goodness which never faileth them that (by naked faith) do abso lutely rely and rest upon it, and patiently wait on Him who hath pronounced them all (without exception) blessed that do so." "Say often within your own heart, 'Though He slay me yet wiU I trust in Him.' And if, after some intervals, your troubled thoughts do return, check them still with the holy Psalmist's words, ' Why art thou so cast down, 0 my soul ? ' " WhUst disposed almost to a monastic seclusion of 126 MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. III. religious meditation, — to the practice, as he would say, of constantly dressing and undressing his soul in devotional exercises, — he yet felt that a mixed life was the most excellent.'^ He ventured to call it, thus reversing the common use of the word, " an angelical life ; " as being " a life spent between ascending to fetch blessings from above and descending to scatter them' among mortals." He hated the notion of " dressing religion with a hood and bells." ^ He was the only man of that age — we may al most say of any age — that deliberately set himself, as to the work of his life, to the union of the two Churches. He was absolutely indifferent to the forms of either. " The mode of church government," he said " is unconstrained ; but peace and concord, kindness and good will are indispensable. But, alas! I rarely find men bound with a holy resolution to contend for the substance more than the ceremony, and disposed in weak and indifferent things to be weak and compliant." * It was this supreme indifference to forms, and this intense desire of union which caused him not only to accept, however unwillingly, the office of a bishop, but to accept the conditions of being reordained by Episcopal ordination. It was nothing to him how often he was reordained. It was in his eyes a mere form which conveyed of itself no additional sanctity ; and, therefore, whUst the worldly Sharpe hesitated, the holy Leighton saw no difficulty. It was the like indifference, which, when he came to Scotland, in duced him to use every means of conciliation to en able Presbyterians to come into friendly terms with 1 Pearson, p. cxiv. 2 Ibid. p. cxvi. 3 Ibid. p. cxiii. Lbct. IU. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 127 the bishops. He entreated the Episcopalians to abstain from imitating the severities of the Cove nanters, justifying the sarcasm, that "the world goes mad by turns." ^ Strictly Protestant as he was, whether as taken from his dogmatical or his latitudinarian side, he yet had an indulgence even for Roman Catholics, at that time very unusual. To a "highfiying Scotsman," who said to him, " Sir, I hear your grandfather was a Papist, your father a Presbyterian, and you a bishop — what a mixture is this ! " he replied, " It 's true, sir ; and my grandfather was the honestest man of the three." ^ Some one was told to ask him what he thought of the Beast, adding, " I told the inquirer that you would certainly answer you could not tell." " Truly you said well," replied Leighton ; " but if I was to fancy what it were, it would be something with a pair of horns that pusheth his neighbors, as both have so much practiced ofiate in Church and State." He strongly condemned the zeal of proselytizers, whether Roman or Protestant, " who fetched ladders from hell to scale heaven." " I prefer," he said, " an erroneous honest man to the most orthodox knave in the world ; and I would rather convince a man that he has a soul to save, and induce him to live up to that belief, than bring him over to any opinions in whatsoever else beside. Would to God men were but as holy as they might be in the worst of forms now among us. Let us press them to be holy, and miscarry if they can." Being told of a person who had changed his persuasion, all he said was, " Is he 1 Pearson, p. cxiii. 2 Wodrow's Analecta, i. 26. 128 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. III. more meek — more dead to the world ? If so, he has made a happy change." ' His aphorisms are full of spiritual wisdom. " One half the world lives upon the weakness of the other." " All things operate according to the disposition of the subject." "It is better to send a congregation home still hungry than surfeited." " Deliver me, 0 Lord" he used to say, "from the errors of wise men, yea and of good men." ^ One single expression, perhaps, best shows the secret at once of his unworldliness, his humor, and his high philosophy. He was reprimanded in a synod for not " preaching up the times." " Who," he asked, " does preach up the times?" It was an swered that all the brethren did it. " Then," he re joined, " if all of you preach up the times, you may surely allow one poor brother to preach up Christ Jesus and Eternity ! " * Such a breadth of view provoked, as was to be ex pected, the suspicions and attacks of narrow zealots. " Mr. Guthrie used to say, in the time of hearing him preach he was as in heaven ; but he could not bring one word with him almost out of church doors — referring to his haranguing way of preaching without heads." * He was thought to be " lax in his principles anent the divinity of Christ, and upon the matter an Arian " ^ — " very much suspected to be an Arian, and vented several things that way." Mr. David Dickson complained of his expositions on charity. 1 Pearson's Life of Leighton, vol. ' Ibid. vol. i. p. xvi. i. p. cxxvii. 4 Wodrow's Analecta, ii. 348. 2 Ibid. p. cxvi. S Ibid. i. 274 ; ii. 212. Lect. DI. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 129 "People should not make a fool of their charity." Leighton replied, " I do not know what you mean, but the Scripture makes a fool of charity, for it says, ' Fools bear all things, and charity beareth all things.' " The austere Wodrow cannot forbear to add the comment on this playful remark, — "A very light expression." -^ He gave great scandal at Edinburgh by recom mending " Thomas h, Kempis " as one of the best books ever written, next to the inspired writers. " Mr. Dickson refused it, because, amongst other reasons," he added, " neither Christ's satisfaction nor the doctrine of grace, but self and merits run through it."^ What the effect of Leighton's character was on his contemporaries appears from the remarks of Burnet. Totally unlike as that forward, restless, active prelate must have been to the retiring and sensitive Leigh ton, his testimony is the more striking. "I bear still the greatest veneration for the memory of that man that I do for any person, and reckon my early knowl edge of him, and very long and intimate connection with him for twenty-three years, among the greatest blessings of my life, and for which I know I must give account to God in the great day in a most particular manner. He had the greatest elevation of soul, the largest compass of knowledge, the most sanctified and heavenly disposition that I ever yet saw in mortal. He had the greatest parts as well as virtues with the perfectest humility that ever I saw in man. He had a sublime strain in preaching with so grave a gesture, and such a majesty both of 1 Wodrow, Analecta, iii. 452. 8 Ibid. ii. 349. 130 MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. thought, of language, and of pronunciation, that I never once saw a wandering eye when he preached, and have seen whole assemblies often melt in tears before him. I never heard him say an idle word that had not a direct tendency to edification, and I never once saw him in any temper but that which I wished to be in at the last moments of my life." We can still figure to ourselves the Cathedral of Memorials Duublanc, as it appeared during his minis- ton, trations. The beautiful nave was probably as it is now — complete in all its proportions, save the roof The choir was lined with the old stalls of the fifteenth century; but round the walls ran an unsightly gallery now removed. The Bishop's house opened on the grassy slopes leading down to the Al lan, along whose steep banks was an avenue of trees, still known by the name of the Bishop's Walk ; and the library founded by him yet remains, alone of inhabited ecclesiastical edifices in Scotland retaining a mitre over the door. In England, his burial-place at Horsted Keynes is still venerated, and his " Commentary on St. Peter," alone of ancient Scottish works of theology, is read on the south of the Tweed ; and the " Aphorisms " drawn from it have been made the basis of one of the most philosophical of English theological trea tises, — Coleridge's " Aids to Reflection." It is not without reason that I have dwelt at such length on the character of Leighton. Not only does such a character of itself consecrate the Church in which he was born and bred, but it sheds its own lustre on the special tendency which it exemplified. However much, in later days, the Moderate party in Lect. III. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 131 the Church of Scotland may have seemed to become " of the earth earthy," it is something for them to be able to claim, as their pattern, the most apostol ical of all Protestant Scotsmen. However chimerical may seem in our days an equal respect to Episco pacy and Presbyterianism, it is enough that the pro jected — the all but completed — union between them originated in a head so clear and a heart so pure as Leighton's. We pass on to another, who is also commemorated by Burnet, Lawrence Charteris, minister of the beautiful village of Dirleton, who was "often moved to accept a bishopric, but always refused it." " He was a perfect friend and a most sublime Christian. He did not talk of the defects of his time like an angry reformer, that set up in that strain because he was neglected or provoked ; but like a man full of a deep but humble sense of them. He was a great enemy to large confessions of faith, chiefly when they were imposed in the lump, as tests; for he was positive in few things. He had gone through the chief parts of learning; but was most conversant in history as the innocent- est sort of study, that did not fill the mind with sub tlety, but helped to make a man wiser and better." ^ It is impossible to imagine anything breathing more fully the best spirit of Christian latitude than his address to his people on the Fast Day of 1690 : " All who are wise and who have a right sense of true religion and Christianity, cannot but see there has beeu a great defection among us. The defection has not been from the truth, or from the funda- 1 Burnet, Own Time, i. 216. 132 MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lbct. ID. mental articles of the Christian faith, but from the life of God and the power of religion, and from the temper and conversation which the Gospel requires of us." ' We have arrived at the momentous period when the Church of Scotland entered on the outward con ditions of existence under which it has continued Theword cvcr siucc. It was now that there began "Modera- . ° tion." the full ascendency of that great philosophic virtue and Evangelical grace in the Church of Scot land, of which the name has in these latter days been used as though it were the title of a deadly heresy, but which the Apostle has employed to designate one of the most indispensable of Christian duties in the impressive precept, "Let your moderation^ be known unto all men." What the Apostle thus enjoined was the key-note of the address of the King's Commissioner, Lord Carmichael, when after an interval of forty years the General Assembly resumed its functions in 1690 : " We expect that your management shall be such as we shall have no reason to repent of what we have done. A calm and peaceable procedure will be no less pleasing to us than it becometh you. We never could be of the mind that violence was suited to the advancing of true religion ; nor do we intend that our author ity shall ever be a tool to the irregular passions of any party. Moderation is what religion requires, neighboring churches expect from, and we recom mend to you." 1 The whole address is given in " sweet reasonableness." Still, the .Grub, ii. 327. word "moderation," for any single 2 The original word, no doubt, phrase, is probably the best that has that deeper meaning which an could be found. accomplished critic has rendered Lbct. m. IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY. 133 This was the true " Revolution settlement," in the highest sense of the word — this was the Eevolution caU to which, on the whole, the Church of ««"'«»«»*• Scotland from that time since has remained faithful. The first great preacher of this new national Covenant, — the oracle which, we can hard- , . . Carstairs. iy doubt, inspired that royal recommenda tion to the General Assembly, was one of the most iUustrious benefactors of the Scottish Church and nation.^ It was the singular fortune of King Will iam III. to have had for his two most intimate advisers and friends, two of the most eminent eccle siastics of Great Britain, both of them Scots. In the south, next to the Primate Tillotson, was Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. In the north the real Presbyterian Primate of the Church of Scotland, William Carstairs. Carstairs has left nothing in writing ; but his life is filled full of Christian strength and wisdom. His earliest public appearance was undergoing the ago nizing trial of the thumbscrew before the Privy CouncU in Edinburgh. All present, even his judges, were struck by the extraordinary fortitude and gen erosity of a man " who stood more in awe of his love for his friends than of the fear of torture, and hazarded rather to die for them than that they should die for him." Recommended to the Prince of Orange by this 1 The anecdotes here given are Carstairs has fallen into worthy mostly taken from M'Cormick's Pre- hands, — the Rev. Herbert Story, of face to Carstairs' State Papers. Rosneath, who, as a descendant of Since delivering this lecture I have the sister of that eminent man, has been delio-hted to hear that the task been intrusted with the original of publishing a complete memoir of letters. 134 MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. heroic courage, as well as by the singular sagacity which he showed on the same occasion in revealing to his judges only what was of no use to them and no harm to any one else, he accompanied William on his eventful voyage to England, and was the first, Scotsman and Presbyterian as he was, to call down the blessings of Heaven on the expedition, by the religious service which he celebrated immediately on his landing at Torbay, after which the troops all along the beach, at his instance, joined in the 118th Psalm. Frora that time he was Williara's companion to every field of battle — his most trusty adviser in all that related to the affairs of Scotland. " Cardinal Car stairs " was the name by which he was usually known, alluding to the saying of Cardinal Ximenes that he could play at football with the heads of the Castilian grandees. The King had one all-sufficing explana tion of his influence : " I have known Mr. Carstairs long ; I have known him weU ; and I know him to be an honest man." One famous instance of his power is recorded, unique in the history of princes and churches. An oath (" the oath of assurance," as it was caUed), extremely obnoxious to the General Assem bly, had been intended by the English Government to be imposed on its merabers. The Commissioner sent up an earnest remonstrance against it by a special messenger. There was just time for him to return to Scotland with the King's final determina tion on the night before the Assembly was appointed to meet. Carstairs was absent when the messenger arrived ; and in that interval WUliam, under the ad vice of his ministers, refused to listen to the remon strance, and sent off his instructions by the messen- Lect. Hi. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 135 ger. When Carstairs arrived at Kensington, he heard what had happened. He found the messenger setting off for Scotland, and demanded him in the King's name to deliver up the dispatches. It was now late at night ; not a moment was to be lost. He ran to the royal apartment, and was told by the lord in waiting that the King was ih bed. He insisted on entering and found William fast asleep, drew the curtain, threw himself on his knees by the bedside, and awakened him. The King, startled, asked what had brought him, and for what he knelt. " I am come to ask my life." " What can you have done," said William, " to deserve death ? " Carstairs told what had occurred. The King was furious ; Carstairs begged only for a few words to explain. The King listened, was con vinced, threw the dispatch into the fire, wrote a new one at the dictation of Carstairs ; the messenger set off, and, in consequence of this delay, arrived only just in time, on the very morning of the fatal day. The crisis was averted, and the constitutional estab lishment of the Church of Scotland at this day is, humanly speaking, the result of that^ memorable night. He afterwards became Principal of the University of Edinburgh, and his Latin orations in that post made his hearers fancy themselves transported to the Forum of ancient Rome. Four times in eleven years he was Moderator of the General Assembly, and by his calm words in that chair the clergy of the Church of Scotland were induced to acquiesce in the Act of Union. It was during the animosity which he 1 The accuracy of the story has ascertained, without any adequate been doubted ; but, as far as can be grounds. 136 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. incurred on that occasion that his colleague in Grey friars' Church, of which he was the minister, who was violently opposed to the Union, made a fierce attack upon him on the morning of a certain Sunday on which Carstairs was to preach in the afternoon. Whilst this attack was going on, the eyes of the whole congregation were fixed on Carstairs, who, with great composure, began to turn over the leaves of his Bible. In the afternoon a vast concourse as sembled to hear him, when he gave out for his text, "Let the righteous smite me, it will not break my bones ; " in which he took occasion to vindicate his colleague from any want of regard for him ; that, as he knew the " uprightness of his colleague's inten tion and the goodness of his heart, he was deterrained to consider any rebuke directed to himself from that place as the strongest expression of his love." It need not be said that congregation and colleague were alike vanquished. A like instance of his kindly temper is recorded by the younger Calamy, as having occurred onan occasion when he was present in the General Assem bly. An old gentleman in the most insulting tone had attacked Carstairs. " I, sir, am as good a man as yourself; bating that you have a sprinkling of court holy water to which I must own myself a stranger. I tell you again, sir, you shall withdraw, or we'll go no further." ^ To which Carstairs, " with great meekness," replied : " ' Dear brother, I can raore easily forgive this peevish sally of yours than you perhaps wUl be able to forgive yourself when you come to reflect upon it,' and so withdrew. The 1 Calamy's Life, ii. 159. Lect. m. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 137 matter in dispute was soon determined by the As sembly, but the angry old gentleman could not rest without asking the pardon of his generous foe." This fine good-humor pervaded all the relations of life. When Calamy told him the insight which he had acquired into the practices of the General As sembly, he cried out : " Verily, to spy out our naked ness are you come; and had you spent ever so much time in contriving a way to discover all our defects at once, you could not have fixed on one more effect ual." " One thing," says Calamy, " which gave a peculiar relish to any intercourse with the College at Edinburgh was the entire freedom and harmony be tween the Principal and the Masters, they expressing a veneration for him as for a common father, and he a tenderness for them as though they had been his children. Were it so in all societies of that sort," adds Calamy, " they would be much more Ukely to answer the ends of their institution, than by running into wranglings and contentions, and harboring mu tual jealousies and suspicions." When Calamy was attacked, and not without ground, for the latitude of a sermon which he had preached on the importance of being contented with the narae of " Christian," without pretending to make any addition, by which in reality they would take from it, it was Carstairs who, with " great mildness and prudence," replied to the fanatic who had as saulted hira.'^ It raay be well to fill up the outline of the public life of Carstairs by sorae touching private incidents. When he was imprisoned in the castle at Edinburgh, 1 Calamy, ii. 179. 138 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IIL a little boy of twelve years old, son of Erskine of Cambo, Governor of the castle, in the course of his rambles through the court, carae to the grate of Car stairs' apartment. As he always loved to amuse himself with children, he went to the grate and began a conversation. The boy was delighted, and every day came to the prison-grate — told him stories, brought him provisions, took his letters to the post, was unhappy if Carstairs had no errand to send and no favor to ask. When Carstairs was released, they parted with tears on both sides. One of the first favors that Carstairs asked of King William was that he would bestow the office of Lord Lyon on his young friend, to whom he had owed so much ; and he obtained it, with the additional compliment that it should be hereditary in the family. So in fact it continued, till it was unfortunately forfeited by the engagement of Erskine's eldest son in the rebellion of 1745. Another story illustrates the freshness and siraplic- ity of his pastoral character, amongst the absorbing public affairs which occupied hira. His sister, the wife of a Fifeshire clergyman, had become a widow. Carstairs had just arrived in Edinburgh from London, to transact business with King William's ministers. She came over to Edinburgh and went to his lodg ings. They were crowded with the nobility and officers of state ; and she was told she could not see him. " Just whisper," said she to the servant, " that I desire to know when it would be convenient for him to see me." He returned for answer, " Immediately," left the company, came to her, and most affection ately embraced her. On her atterapting to apologize. Lect. UL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 139 " Make yourself easy," he said ; " these gentlemen are come hither, not on my account, but their own. They will wait with patience till I return. You know I never pray long." And so, after a short fervent prayer, suited to her circumstances, he fixed the time for seeing her more at leisure, and returned in tears to the company. Towards the ejected Episcopalian clergy he acted with the utmost tenderness and consideration. Two striking instances are recorded. He had a visit from one of them, of the name of Cadell. Carstairs ob served with pain that his clothes were threadbare. He eyed him narrowly, and begged him to call again, on the pretext of business, in two days. Meanwhile, he had ordered a suit of clothes from his tailor, to suit not his own but Cadell's make. When CadeU arrived, he found Carstairs in a furious passion at his tailor for mistaking his measure, so that neither coat, waistcoat, nor breeches would sit upon him. Then, turning to Cadell, " They are lost if they don't fit some of my friends ; and, by the by, I am not sure but they may answer you." .CadeU tried them. They were sent to his lodgings. On putting them on, he found in one of the pockets a ten-pound note, which he immediately brought back. " By no means," said Carstairs. " It cannot belong to me, for when you got the coat you acquired a right to every thing in it." When the great Churchman passed away in full age, he was interred with all honor in the venerable grave-yard of his own church of Greyfriars. As the second founder of the Presbyterian Church was laid in his grave, two mourners were observed to turn 140 MODEEATION EST THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. m. aside and burst into tears. They were two Episcopal Nonjurors, whose farailies for years he had supported. The grave is unmarked by any monument. The name of Carstairs belonged to no party, English or Scottish. It is not faraous araong the zealots on either side the Border. But there is none of which the whole ecclesiastical profession ought to be raore proud. There is none which more completely rebuts the one-sided accusations of Mr. Buckle against the Church of Scotland. There is none which I cora mend more warmly to the grateful memory of the Scottish people, or to his successors, whether as Mod erators of the General Assembly or as Principals of the College of Edinburgh. It is not surprising that, after the troubles of the Union were over, the school which had carried the Church of Scotland safely through that crisis, and which numbered amongst its followers such names as Leighton, Charteris, and Carstairs, should have been^ in the ascendant. The old leaven of the Covenant ing, Calvinistic systera still continued, but it was more and more subdued, and when it did appear vented itself rather in indignant protests and seces sions than in the actual government of the Church. When Calamy visited Scotland in 1703, "that which he took to be most remarkable was that not one in all the General Asserably was for the Divine right of the Presbyterian form of Church govern ment, though they submitted to it." ^ What a defec tion in the eyes of the anti-Prelatic anti-Erastian suffering remnant ! what an ad vance in the eyes of all enlightened Christians! 1 Calamy, vol. ii. p. 153. Lbct. in. E; THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 141 It was now that, in the midst of those narrow prej udices which have given rise to Mr. Buckle's The impeachment, there sprung up within the ciergy. Church of Scotland a body of clergy, who, for culti vation and enlightenment, were second to none in Christendom. When Warburton contemptuously said of the Scottish clergy that they were " half of thera fanatics and half infidels," he was merely express ing, with the insolent contempt with which high English ecclesiastics have sometimes spoken of other churches, the fact that, side by side with the religious fervor of Scotland, there existed a liberality as con spicuous.-^ Even imder the fanaticism of the Cove nanters there lay a deep-seated reverence, as we have seen, that the English Church would have done well to recognize in its own Nonconforming members ; and what Warburton thought infidelity was the growth of that free and open inquiry which, more than any single cause, kept Christianity alive and respected in England and Scotland during the last century, whilst it was perishing on the Continent. I have spoken of the absence of any eminent work on specially theological subjects emanating from the Scottish clergy. But this deficiency was wonderfully counter balanced by their extraordinary activity in the gen eral walks of knowledge. "I must confess," said Dr. Alexander Carlyle in 1 The same sentiment is expressed of a banker's chief clerk, who had more at length in Warburton's Let- appropriated a considerable sum of ter to Dr. John Erskine. (See Sir money, was the books he was in the H. Moncrieff Wellwood's Life of habit of reading. " What books ? " Erskirve, pp. 56, 56. Home once asked the philosopher. " Boston's said partly in play to Hume, the Fourfold State and Hume's Essays." historian, that the cause of the fall Mackenzie's Life of Home, p. 22. 142 MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. Ill 1747,^ on the question of the augmentation of poor livings, " that I do not love to hear this Church called a poor Church, or the poorest Church in Christen dom I dislike the language of whining and complaint. We are rich in the best goods a church can have — the learning, the manners, and the char acter of its members. There are few branches of literature in which the ministers of this Church have not excelled. There are few subjects of fine writing in which they do not stand foremost in the ranks of authors, which is a prouder boast than all the pomp of the hierarchy Who have written the best histories ancient and modern ? It has been cler gymen of the Church of Scotland. Who has writ ten the clearest delineation of the human under standing and all its powers ? A clergyman of this Church. Who has written the best system of rheto ric, and exemplified it by his own writing ? A clergy man of this Church. Who wrote a tragedy that has been deemed perfect ? A clergyman of this Church. Who was the most perfect matheraatician of the age in which he lived ? A clergyman of this Church. .... Let us not complain of poverty. It is a splendid poverty indeed. It is paupertas foecunda virorum." This was a noble boast, and it is well borne out by the brilliant galaxy of naraes that adorned the chairs and pulpits of Edinburgh in the raiddle and the close of the last century. Not till quite our own generation have poetry, philosophy, and history found so natural a home in the clergy of England as they did then in the clergy of Scotland. Robert Watson, the historian of Philip II. ; Adam Fergusson,^ 1 Grub, iv. 155. gusson, see Lord Cockburn's Me- 2 For a lively description of Fer- moirs, p. 48. Lect. HI. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 143 the historian of Rome ; John Home, the author of the tragedy of " Douglas " ; Hugh Blair, the author of the celebrated " Sermons " and of the " Lectures on Rhet oric " ; Robert Henry, the philosophic author of the " History of Great Britain " ; ^ and, lastly and chiefly, William Robertson, the historian of Scotland, of America, and of Charles V., were all ministers of the Church of Scotland. It is a striking tribute to the eminence of the Scottish clergy of that epoch, that when Guy Mannering casts his eyes over the letters of introduction which Pleydell had given hira to the first literary characters in Edinburgh, three at least were rainisters. Of these eminent men, Home may perhaps be considered to have passed voluntarily from his ecclesiastical to his literary career.^ But of the others, their ecclesiastical career cannot be parted from their literary eminence. No other ser mons in Great Britain have been followed by so splendid a success as the once famous, now forgot ten, discourses of Hugh Blair. Neither of „ .r m 1 • Blair. Tlllotson nor of Jeremy Taylor m past times, nor of Arnold or Newman or even Frederick Robertson in our own time, can it be recorded, as of Blair, that they were translated into almost all the languages of Europe, and won for their author a public reward from the Crown. Nor was it only the 1 For an amusing account of Dr. step in the liberties of the Church Henry's last days, see Lord Cock- of Scotland. When Mrs. Siddons burn's Memoirs, p. 51. came to Edinburgh not fifty years 2 The fight which was fought afterwards, the General Assembly over the tragedy of Douglas, and adjourned its sittings that its min- the comparative victory which he isters might attend the theatre. won, may be regarded as a decided Grub, iv. 83. 144 MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. vulgar public that was satisfied. Even the despot of criticism (fastidious judge, zealous High-church man, fanatically English as he was), the mighty Samuel Johnson, who had a few years before de clared that no Scottish clergyman had written any good work on religious subjects^ pronounced, after his perusal of Blair's first sermon, " I have read it with more than approbation — to say it is good is to say too little." ^ " If they are like the first, they are sennones aurei, ac auro magis aurei. I had the honor of first finding and first praising his excel lences. I did not stay to add my voice to that of the public." ^ "A noble serraon," he exclaimed of another; "I wish Blair would come over to the Church of England." "I love Blair's sermons, though the dog is a Scotchman and a Presbyterian, and everything he should not be. I was the first to praise him — such is my candor Let us ascribe it to my candor and his merit." What Dr. Robertson did for history it is difficult for us, with the advances made since his time, fully to comprehend. It is only when we look on what preceded his works that we are as tonished at the comprehensive grasp, the dignity, the learning with which, first of his countrymen, he rose to the height of that great argument. Yet how little do those who know of him as the familiar historian of Charles V. think of him as for many years the mighty Churchman who ruled the Church of Scotland as no one had done since the death of Carstairs. "Those two doctors," said Johnson, speaking of him and Blair, " are wise men and good 1 Boswell, iii. 459, 467. 2 Ibid. iv. 68. Lect. m. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 145 raen." ^ His first appearance was as a young minis ter in the General Assembly, where he at once led them captive by his eloquence. From that time for twenty years he remained its complete raaster. His adrainistration was remarkable as showing how coin- plete independence of worldly influence may be combined with complete vindication of the supe riority of the law to ecclesiastical caprices. He insisted on the same strictness in the judicial pro ceedings of thei Assembly as was observed in the other courts of justice, and left behind him a series of decisions which were long venerated as a kind of coraraon law in Scotland. He was also as thorough a Latitudinarian as Leighton. " The first thing," said Lord Elibank, " that gave me a good opinion of you. Dr. Robertson, was your saying, while parties ran high soon after 1745, that you did not think worse of a man's moral character for his having been in rebellion. This was venturing to utter a liberal sentiment while both sides had a detestation of each other." "Dr. Johnson," said Dr. Robertson to the old champion of orthodoxy when they met in London, " allow rae to say that in one respect I have the advantage of you. When you were in Scotland you would not come to hear any of our preachers ; whereas, when I come here I attend your public worship without scruple, and indeed with great satisfaction." ^ " Who is Mr. Hayley ? " he writes to Gibbon ; "his Whiggism is so bigoted and his Christianity so fierce that he almost disgusts one with two very good things." * 1 BosweU, iii. 93. « Ibid. iv. 196. 3 Gibbon's Letters, ii. 251. 10 146 MODERATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. He exhibited the singular spectacle of the leader of the Presbyterian Church advocating the relaxation of the penal laws against the Roman Catholics, whilst a nonjuring divine, who afterwards became a bishop, Abernethy Drummond, was active in opposing it.^ He foretold the time when the whole 'question of subscription to the existing Confessions would occupy the mind of the Church, and though he could not see his way to a solution of the problem, he never, even in the plenitude of his power or of his years, used any effort to prevent it. And, as he stood at the head of the intellectual and ecclesiastical life of Scotland, so his individual character was not un worthy of such eminence. We still are allowed in his declining years to follow " the pleasant-looking old man, with an eye of great vivacity and intelli gence, a large projecting chin, a small hearing trum pet fastened by a black ribbon to a button-hole of his coat, and a large wig powdered and curled " — helping the boys to feed their rabbits on the green, or feasting them with cherries frora his favorite tree, or watching the blossoms of the fruit which he was not to see.^ And when he was laid in his grave in Greyfriars' Church-yard, he was honored by the noblest of all testiraonies — a eulogy frora a rival in the Church, with whora for long years he had con tended but never quarreled. It describes the very model of ecclesiastical statesmanship, the true Arch bishop of the Church of Scotland." ^ 1 Grub, iv. 142. (Life, i. 27), that on November 5, 2 Cunningham, ii. 550. 1788, he heard Dr. Robertson 3 It is quoted at length in Grub, preach on the occasion of the cen- iv. 144. It is recorded by his cele- tenary of the English Revolution a brated grandson, Lord Brougham sermon " of singular and striking Lect. ni. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY, 147 There is another less eminent theologian, but whose work is of extraordinary interest, not so much from its intrinsic merits as from the singular illustra tion which it affords of the rare liberality of the Scottish clergy at this time. I refer to the " Treatise on Miracles," in answer to David Hume, by campbeii Dr. George Carapbell, of Aberdeen. It is iiume. not too much to say that the name of Hume was, and is still, one of the chief objects of theological terror — not only in Great Britain, but in Europe. Hume was the great skeptic of a skeptical age. But if so good a judge as Adara Smith could say of him that he was the " most perfectly wise and virtuous man he had ever known," it is worthy the consider ation- of Christian ministers to ponder well before they treat such a character as an eneray of religion. Nor did he put hiraself forward as an unbeliever. " I am no Deist — I do not so style myself; neither do I desire to be known by that appellation."^ He interest from the extreme earnest- other grandson, Mr. WiUiam Rob- ness, the youthful fervor, with ertson, of Kiuloch Moidart. which it was delivered." It is yet l Boswell, i. 255. A like story is more interesting as a proof of his told of his speech to Peter Boyle, liberal sentiments, if it be true that who called on him after his mother's it was filled with allusions to the death, and found him sitting over approach of another Revolution, to " the fire. Do you really think, " the events then passing on the David, that there is nothing more Continent, which would produce an left of her than in those ashes." event which our neighbors would " Peter," said Hume, laying his ere long have to celebrate like to hand on his friend's knee, " you that which had then called them very much mistake my opinions if together ; " his boundless exultation you ascribe to me anything of the in contemplating " the deliverance kind." I venture to repeat this of so many millions of so great a story as it was once repeated to me nation from the follies of arbitrary from an authentic source, in a form government." I have received a somewhat more lively and likely confirmation of the story from an- than that in which it is usually 148 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IH. was constant in his attendance at the worship of the Church,^ and he presents a delicacy of expression on religious subjects which, even if prudential, stood in remarkable contrast with many of the contemporary scoffers both in England and on the Continent. His reward was that the graces of his character were acknowledged by the clergy even raore readily than by the laity. The two Primates of England and Ire land were alone amongst their countrymen in en couraging him to prosecute his history. In his own country he lived on the most intimate terms with the leading clergy of Edinburgh. Blair openly defended him from attacks which he believed to be unjust. The General Asserably ^ steadUy refused, though hard pressed, to censure his writings. The works of his friend Lord Kaimes, although an elder, were not even noticed by that body. The crowning example of Christian courtesy was shown by Dr. Carapbell. Before publishing his treatise he submitted it to Hume's perusal, and at once accepted his great ad versary's criticisms on passages in which the mean ing of the controverted word had been misunder stood, or which needed to be softened. Hume himself gracefully acknowledged the urbanity of this truly Christian controversialist.^ The whole transac tion is a green oasis in the history of polemics, and was of itself sufficient to redeera the Scottish clergy from the indiscriminating charges which, with an ignorance surprising in such a man, Mr. Buckle brought against them. given from Dr. Carlyle. See Bur- 2 ibid. ii. 430. ton's Life of Hume, i. 294.) 3 Cunningham, ii. 507, 515. 1 Burton's Hume, ii. 453. Lbct. ID. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 149 It is in the Established Church that these eminent men found their home. The narrower spirits of the age took refuge in one secession after another in pur suance of the principles indicated in my previous lecture. Yet there are two striking exceptions which show how the generous principles nurtured within the Establishment extended to sorae of the com munities which broke off from it. One such is the separation commonly called the Relief. Gillespie of Carnock stands almost alone amongst the founders of Scottish schisms in having been driven out of the Church rather than volunta rily retiring from it. The word " Relief" ex- 1 n 1 1 11 11 T. The Relief. pressed all that he needed ; and that " Re lief," according to the somewhat stern rule of exter nal discipline established by Dr. Robertson, was not granted to him. With the close atmosphere of the Secession he had no sympathy. When con demned by the Assembly he replied in words which are a model of dignified and temperate sub mission : "Moderator, I desire to receive this sen tence of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland pronounced against me with real concern and awful impressions of the divine conduct in it ; but to me I rejoice that it is given not only to re joice in the name of Christ but also to suffer for it." He heaped no calumnies on the Church after his dep osition. In his first serraon preached in the open fields he expressed his hope that no public disputes would ever be the burden of his preaching, but Jesus Christ and Hira crucified. " He desired at all seasons to have in his eye that the wraih of man worketh not the righteousness of God, and then went on to speak of 150 MODERATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IIL the great truths of the Gospel without one reflection on what had passed." He still loved the Church from which he had parted, and rather than seek assistance elsewhere, resolved to take his whole work upon himself. The coldness of the Church towards him was a hard re turn ; yet to the end he reraained faithful to his first love, and on his death-bed recommended his congre gation to "reseek comraunion with it." The "Re lief" has now been absorbed into the United Pres byterians. May we not trace in the gentler and freer spirit which at tiraes appears in that body the traces of the first originator of one of its corapo- nent parts — the latitudinarian, moderate, Christian- minded Gillespie ? There was yet one other Scottish sect of this period which in a different form exhibited something of the same enlarged temperaraent. Alone of all the secessions that of John Glasse was not based upon the Covenant but rather on a protest against it. Alone of all Scottish seceders he founded his theology not on the likeness of Christianity to Judaism but on its unlikeness. Extravagant as sorae of his tenets were, yet his conception of the Church as a purely spiritual coraraunity had in it a germ of eternal truth not to be found in the hierarch ical pretensions of the other seceders ; and the res toration of ancient Christian usages, fantastic as they were, had at least the merit of consistency. Alone in western Christendom this little sect has retained the undoubtedly primitive and once Catholic usages of weekly communions, of love feasts, of the kiss of charity, of washing one another's feet, of abstain- Lect.HL in the EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 151 ing from things strangled, and from blood. It ia much to the honor of the General Assembly that they long bore with the eccentricities of this child like reformer ; and in his case they adopted a prece dent which, though harsh in its application, contained a principle full of forethought and kindly feeling. Whilst withholding from him the office of rainister of the Established Church, they distinctly recognized him as a minister of the Gospel.-' In this unattached and inoffensive attitude he continued to act. His son-in-law, Sanderaan, continued his teach- 11 .1 11/. . . ly Sandeman. ing, and the simple unostentatious piety oi this singular Scottish communion has been rewarded in our days by enrolling and retaining amongst its merabers the most illustrious and the most religious of modern philosophers, Michael Faraday. There was no doubt a repressive tendency, a nat ural revulsion from the extravagance of the intoier- forraer generation, such as the stern rule of Moderates. Robertson and the shrewd worldly sense of men like Alexander Carlyle unduly fostered. One example of the intolerance which is at times found in the most tolerant of schools appears in the earlier history of the Scottish Latitudinarians ; and if the popular view of it may be taken as correct, is too striking to be passed over by any impartial observer. In the venerable cemetery of Greyfriars' Church, which contains the dust of all the contending sir George factions of Scottish history — where the mon- zie. ument of the Covenanters recounts their praises al most within sight of the Grassmarket where they died ; where rest the noblest leaders both of the 1 Cunningham, ii. 455. 152 MODEEATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Leot. HI. moderate and of the stricter party — there rises another stately monuraent, at once the glory and the shame of Scottish Liberals. It is the ponderous tomb, bolted and barred, of Sir George Mackenzie, the Lord Advocate under James 11.^ He it is of whom Davie Deans has said that " he will be kenned by the name of Bloody Mackenzie so long as there 's a Scot's tongue to speak the word." He it is -^hora Wander ing Willie saw in that terrible scene — the master piece of Scott's genius — ofthe revels of the old per secutors in the halls of Hell. " There was the Bloody Advocate Mackenzie, who for his worldly wit and wisdom had been to the rest as a god." At the mas sive wooden doors of that huge raausoleuin in the Greyfriars' Church-yard, even to this day we are told that the boys of the old town of Edinburgh ven ture as a feat of boyish audacity in the gloaming to shout through the key-hole, and then fly for their lives : — " Lift the sneck and draw the bar. Bloody Mackenzie come out if ye dare." The strange and instructive aspect of this sinister and blood-stained meraory is that it belongs to one who was deeraed, even by his political adversaries, " the brightest Scotsman of his time," who was a bold advocate of the rights of the subject, a reformer of some of the worst abuses of Scottish law, and a phil osophic theologian of the largest type. " It is in re Ugion as in heraldry," he said ; " the simpler the bear ing is, it is so rauch the purer and the ancienter." t I derive my impressions of Contemporary Review of August, George Mackenzie from the hostile 1871, by A. Taylor Innes. ' but candid and able essay in the Lbct. III. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 153 " I am none of those who acknowledge no temples but in their own heads. To chalk out the bordering lines of the Church militant is beyond the geography of my religion." He was perfectly indifferent to the claims of Episcopacy and Presbytery. The laws of his country were for him a sufficient warrant for the forras of religion. Yet this great lawyer, so just, so enlightened b'eyond his age, was by stress of circum stance, and partly by the excess of his philosophic indifference, induced to frame and administer those dreadful laws by which the Scottish Covenanters were tortured, exiled, and slaughtered. He remains a warning to all liberal statesmen and divines that liberality of theory does not always carry with it lib erality of action. When I stand in that historic cemetery before the torab of the ancient Covenanters my heart glows with respect for honorable though mistaken adversaries. When I seek for the grave of Carstairs, or gaze on the tomb of Robertson, I deUght in the thought that spirits so generous and so noble as theirs were fellow- workers and forerunners in the mission which I and those with whora I labor delight to honor. But when I turn to the raonument of the Bloody Mackenzie, it is with the bitter thought that I see there the memo rial of a valued friend, who has betrayed and dis graced a noble cause, and given occasion, it may be, to the eneraies of freedora, charity, and truth to blas- pherae those holy naraes. The deviations from the true moderation of the Church of Scotland, which marked the history of Sir George Mackenzie, no doubt appeared frora contro- time to time in the later periods which IpecUng!" 154 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. we have been considering. And it was assisted by the continued inheritance of the old Covenanting leaven, without which the Church would not have been the Church of Scotland, and which maintained its hold on- the General Asserably through what was Aiken- Called the " popular party." The cruel exe- ^^'^' cution of Thomas Aikenhead, and the decree of the General Assembly against what were absurdly called the " atheistical opinions " of " the Deists," black ens fhe same page of Scottish history that is bright ened by " the Act for the settling of schools." ^ It was this sarae persecuting spirit which, at a later period, as we have seen, attempted, but in vain, to condemn Home, and Kaimes, and Hume ; which en deavored to cast out the less known but still highly- interesting names of Simson and Leechman. Simson; -t n i They were all accused of heresy, and they were all treated leniently, if not acquitted, by the Assembly, Simson's case was the most complicated, and involved the longest controversy. But the two Wisharts and Leechman are again examples, like Leighton and Charteris, of the union of the purest and most elevated religion with free and large spec ulation. Wishart, who was an ardent ad- mirer of the most saintly of English Latitudi narians,^ Whichcote, was accused of having diminished the "due weight and influence of arguments taken frora the awe of future rewards and punishments ; " also of " wishing to remove confessions, and freeing persons from subscribing thereto," and for " licen- 1 Macaulay, iv. 584. Cunning- teresting essay on Benjamin Which- ham, ii. 313. cote, in the Contemporary Review 2 See Principal TuUoch's in- ofNovember, 1871. Lect. m. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 155 tiously extending the liberty of Christian subjects." It is of his brother George that Henry Mackenzie has said : " His figure is before rae at this moraent. It is possible some who hear me may remember him. Without that advantage, I can fixintly recall his saint ed countenance — that physiognomy so truly expres sive of Christian meekness, yet in the pulpit often lighted up with the warmest devotional feeling. In the midst of his family it beamed with so much patri archal affection and benignity, so much of native politeness graced with those manners which iraprove its form without wasting its substance, that I think a painter of the apostolic school could have found no more perfect model." Wishart was acquitted, both by the Synod and General Assembly, in 1745.^ Leechman was Professor of Divinity at Glasgow. He was in appearance like an ascetic monk ; a man distinguished alike for his primitive and apostolic manners, his love of literature, and his liberal opinions. The ground of attack against hira was a philcsophic sermon on prayer. The Assembly acquitted him in words as honorable to itself as to him : " We have seen, on the one hand, the beauty of Christian charity, and -the condescension, to remove offense ; on the other, the readiness to make all satis faction." 2 It is perhaps another form of the almost inevitable onesidedness of each of the great move- ^^j^g, ments of the human mind that, during the ^'•^¦'ess. ascendency of the Moderates, the Church of Scotland partook of the lukewarraness of zeal in behalf of great religious and philanthropic objects which per- l Cunningham, ii. 373-400, 469. 2 Ibid. ii. 469. 156 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lbct. HI. vaded all Christendom during the eighteenth century. Yet, in justice both to Scotland and to that now un duly depreciated age, it must be remembered that then, for the first time, were set on foot endeavors seriously to evangelize and enlighten the outlying districts of the Highlands, which, during the fierce contentions for and against the Covenant, had been left untouched, in the depths of ignorance and super stition. Even the system of parochial education, the peculiar glory of the Scottish Church and nation, which had been foreshadowed in the wise schemes of, Knox, was first put in force after the settlement of the Revolution.^ And if we ask for the more stirring signs of re- Eeception Ugious rcvival, it can hardly be said that of ^Thitc- field: Scotland, during the last century, fell behind England, nor the Established Church of Scotland behind the seceding sects. It is true that when Wesley crossed the Border he found a want of that cordial response which he had found in many parts of his own country. He was too English — must I say, too Arminian, too Oxonian — to rouse the sym pathies of the North. But even he, when in 1736, in the far distant Darien, he lighted on the Scottish settlement, after bitter complaints of hearing an ex temporary prayer, and of there being public service only once a week, adds, " Yet it must be owned that in all instances of personal or social duty this people utterly sharaes our countryraen. In sobriety, indus try, frugality, patience, in sincerity and openness of behavior, in justice and raercy of all kinds, being not content with exeraplary kindness and friendliness to 1 Cunningham, ii. 314. Lbct. IIL IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 157 one another, but extending it to the utmost of their ability to every stranger that comes within their gates." ^ And when Whitefield came to Scotland it was not, as we have seen, in the seceding Churches, gy ^j^^ but in the Established Church, that he found ^"''^''^' his chief support, — if not support, at least tolera tion.^ It was from the Church of the Moderates, not from the Church of the Covenant, nor that of the Episcopalians, that three thousand comraunicants went forth to receive the Holy Eucharist frora what the Seceders called the " foul prelatic hands " of the EngUsh clergyman.^ In the West, his chief supporter was no wild fanatic, but a learned, unostentatious scholar, a slow, cautious, and prudent parish minister, M' CuUoch of Cambuslang. In the East, the support which had been denied him by Ebenezer BytheEa- Erskine was gladly given by the leader of ciiurch. the popular party — Webster * — who, whatever may have been his short-comings, and however rauch he may have been in some respects opposed to the leaders of the Moderate school, has not only the glory of having forwarded the mission of the English en- 1 Wesley's MS. Journal, commu- the words here cited, but his whole nicated by the kindness of Dr. Rigg. intercourse with Dr. Carlyle and 2 Whitefield caUed himself " a the whole attitude towards the Es- moderate Catholic clergyman of the tablished Church make him a lib- Church of England." Gledstone's eral, a humanizing influence, such Whitefield, p. 496. as would have been vainly sought 3 Gledstone, p. 292. in the ascendency either of the 4 Webster well illustrates the Covenanters, or even of that party general influence of the Moderates, to which in a political and tempo- No doubt he was in the purely tech- rary sense Webster belonged. See nical sense of the word what would for his position especially Dr. Som- be called " the opposition " to the erviUe's Afemmrs, pp. 102-107. school of Robertson. But not only 158 MODEEATION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. ID. thusiast, but of having summed up the whole pro ceeding with those golden words, which no mere enthusiast could have conceived or penned : " I shall conclude with observing that the grave opposition made to this Divine work by several good men through misinformation or raistaken zeal, and the slippery precipice on which they now stand, may teach us that it is indeed a dangerous thing to cen sure without inquiry. It may serve likewise as a solemn warning against a party spirit which so far blinds the eyes. It also gives a noble opportunity for the exercise of our Christian sympathy towards these our erring brethren .... and should make us long for a removal to the land of vision above , , , . where are no wranglings, no strivings about matters of faith, and where the whole scherae of present worship being removed we shall no more see darkly as through a glass, but face to face, where perfect light will lay a foundation for perfect harmony and love. It is with peculiar pleasure that I often think how my good friend Ebenezer shall then enter into the everlasting mansions with many glorified saints, whora the Associate Presbytery have now given over as the property of Satan. May they soon see their raistake; and raay we yet altogether be happily united in the bonds of peace and truth." This is Moderation, if ever there was such on earth. This was in the very depth of the eighteenth century, at the very moraent when the Moderate party were beginning to establish their sway. When we are taught to think of the Edinburgh of that age as cold and dead, let us remeraber that it was of it that Whitefield, when he left it, exclaimed, "0 Edin- Lect. m. IN THE NINETEENTH CENTUEY. 159 burgh, Edinburgh, I think I shall never forget thee ! " And that same Edinburgh never forgot him. When, years afterwards, he came to the Scot tish capital again, he was in danger of being hugged to death by the enthusiastic reception of its citizens, and he sat, it is said, araongst them, "like a king of men on his throne." When, yet later, two months after his death, Foote endeavored to bring out a play in ridicule of his eccentricities, the town indignantly rose, and the pulpits of the Established Church rang with earnest rebukes.^ The balance which was held thus evenly in the last century, at the beginning of this was disturbed ; and two memorable convulsions undermined the hitherto strong position of the Moderate party in the Chvirch of Scotland. One was the contest for the chair of mathematical professor be- Macknight tween Macknight and Leslie. On that occar ^n"! Leslie. sion the Moderate clergy, the descendants of Robert son and Blair, were found, from a fatal mixture of party and professional spirit, ranged on the side of ignorance and bigotry ; and the Popular clergy, the descendants of Rutherford and Thoraas Boston, from a combination of political strategy with hereditary animosity against their ancient eneraies, were found as charapions of science and freedom. The other was the occasion when, from the union of these two discordant forces, the Church Irving and of Scotland drove from its ranks the bright- Campbeii. est genius and the most philosophical and most spiritual divine that had for many years adorned its clergy — Edward Irving and John M'Leod Campbell, 1 Gledstone's Whitefield, pp. 477, 499. 160 MODEEATION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. HI. Into these and the yet more strange controversies that followed I decline to enter. The fires of the Disruption still glow too warmly, even in its ashes, to allow a stranger to walk boldly among them. But they may be watched from a distance, amidst the lights and shadows thrown upon them from the past, and from the hopes of a brighter future, which I reserve for my next lecture. NOTE. In treating the somewhat complex aspect of the Church of Scot land during the last century, it may be well to repeat briefly the position already indicated. It was not my intention to enter into the detailed questions at issue between the " Moderate " and the " Popular " party ; but to describe the general influence of the spirit of moderation over the whole Church. The name of " Mod erate," like all other party names, has been used as a term of reproach equally for the best and the worst of men ; and it was therefore my object, as far as possible, to abstain from employing it in this technical and at the same time indiscriminate seuse. It is clear that, in point of fact, the Church of Scotland at large was as proud of the leaders of its public opinion in the eighteenth century, as the seceding sections of the Church are now anxious to dispar age them. It is suflicient to contrast the contemptuous expressions used by modern partisans, with the cordial and generous tribute of one whose very name is a guarantee for strictness of life and faith. " 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 manner, 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 their places in the world may catch a por tion of their spirit! God grant that while they, like Elijah of old, may yet seem to be dropping their mantle on the earth, their spirit also, like that of the prophet, may yet remain to bless the children Lbct. in. IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 161 of men." ^ This was the feeling towards the leading " Moderates " expressed by the venerable biographer of the leader of the popular party of that age. It is the very school, whose beneficent influ ence is portrayed in these gloVring terms, which has in recent declarations been described as the '' antagonist of the religious life of the Scottish Church,'' and of which it has been said that " iheir history was in one word, — ' Ruin.' " 1 Sir Henry Moncrieff Wellwood's Life of Erskine, p. 481, 11 LECTURE IV. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHURCH OP SCOTLAND. DELIVERED BEFORE THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTE, JANUARY 12, 1872. LECTURE IV. THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. I HAVE almost reached the farthest limits to which I shall have to tax your patience and your forbear ance. But I would stUl venture to say a few words on the future of the Church of Scotland, so far as it can be divined from the moral and religious phases of its former history and of its present condition. The question which I would propound is. What germs can we find of unity and prosperity in union of the discordant elements of which we have of^sco""'' been speaking? It will not be supposed '™'^" that I come here to suggest any details of organic union, such as have been soraetiraes proposed be tween the Free Church and the United Presbyte rians, or between the Episcopal and the Presbyterian Churches generally. In such projects of internal ad ministration it becomes not a stranger to interraed- dle, and even if it did, the study of the ecclesiastical history of Scotland, as of other countries, would make me hesitate in proposing schemes of union which are often rather military defenses against a comraon foe than harmonious aspirations after a common good ; and which often cannot be effected without efiacing peculiarities which are not less valuable than unity itself When I look on the three estranged sections of Scottish religious life, I fully sympathize with that 166 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IV. touching appUcation of Coleridge's beautiful lines, which was made some years ago by a distinguished Moderator of the General Assembly : ^ — " Alas 1 they had been friends in youth ; But whispering tongues can poison truth ; Each spake words of high disdain And insult to his heart's best brother : They parted — ne'er to meet again ! But never either found another To free the hollow heart from paining ; They stood aloof, the scars remaining, Like cUffs which had been rent asunder : A dreary sea now flows between ; But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder, ShaU whoUy do away, I ween. The marks of that which once hath been." Nevertheless, the increasing elements of union, which are visible in other Churches, have not failed in Scotland. It will be remembered that when the lamented Prevost Paradol addressed the audience of Edinburgh a few years ago, he said, in answer to the question of what Church he was an adherent : " I belong to that Church which has no name, but of which the members recognize each other wherever they meet." ^ He meant, no doubt, that fellowship of sentiment which creates a unity amongst all educated men throughout Christendom. It is the intellectual and philosophical expression of a very old theological truth, — that which constitutes the first clause ofthe The Spirit- twenty-fifth article of the Confession of Faith : uai^church « rpj^g Catholic Or Uuivcrsal Church, which is '^'*- invisible, consists of the whole number of 1 Address of the Rev. Dr. Nor- 2 Lectures delivered at Edin- man M'Leod, as Moderator of the burgh in 1869. General Assembly in 1869. Lb€t.IV. in its SPIRITUAL ASPECT. 167 the elect which have been, are, or shall be, gath ered into one, under Christ, the Head thereof, and is the spouse, the body, the fullness of Him that filleth aU in all." These elect spirits, and the influences which they embody, are indeed confined to no one Church or country, but they are the links which draw all Churches and countries together. And it is one of the advantages of our time, as Prevost Paradol observed, that education of itself forms an intellectual unity amongst cultivated men, which, though un known in the earlier ages of Christian Europe, is now beginning to take its place beside the moral unity already perceived to exist amongst the good raen of every time — a communion of sages not indeed coex tensive with, but analogous to, the comraunion of saints. But what is true of the universal Church and of the general community of the civiUzed world, is also in a more restricted sense true of the religious com munions of particular countries, and especially of Scotland. The true spiritual Church of Scotland includes them all — with the characteristics comraon to Scots men, but without the dividing characteristics of the several communions. And this union is, as regards the Presbyterians of Scotland, the more easy, because of that singular identity of outward doctrine and rit ual of which I have before spoken : " It is a fine say ing of a German Professor in his history of the Scot tish Church," said one of the noblest of modern Scottish Free Churchmen,^ " ' In Scotland there are no sects, only parties.' He meant that we should 1 Dr. Duncan, in Knight's Peripatetica, p. 36. 168 union of the church of Scotland, lect. iv. not dignify our differences by the name of sects ; we are only parties in one great sect — the species of a genus." To all who have been subject to the influ ence of the religion of Scotland there remains a pe culiar flavor derived from no other source ; and many might be named of whom the description of the Wanderer in Wordsworth's "Excursion" is literally true : — " The Scottish Church, both on himself and those With whom from childhood he grew up, had held The strong hand of her purity ; and stUl Had watched him with an unrelenting eye. This he remembered in his riper age With gratitude, and reverential thoughts. But by the native vigor of his mind, By loneliness, and goodness, and kind works, WTiate'er, in docile childhood or in youth, He had imbibed of fear or darker thought Was melted all away : so true was this. That sometimes his religion seemed to me Self-taught, as of a dreamer in the woods ; Who to the model of his own pure heart Shaped his beUef as grace divine inspired. Or human reason dictated with awe." I propose to follow out the thought of this larger and more original growth of religion by taking ex amples from the various communions which shall exhibit the elements of this invisible or spiritual Church of Scotland, not in their disunion, but in their union ; and I will conclude by showing what is the bearing of this union on the fortunes of the central institution of the National Church itself. Let rae speak first of the present sentiment pre vaUing towards the more ancient forms of Christen- Antiqua- dom. It cauHot bc doubted that thev are nan re- it/., vivai. now regarded from quite a different point Lect. IV. ITS ANTIQUAEIAN EEVIVAL. 169 of view to that in which they were regarded in Scot land in the sixteenth, the seventeenth, or even the eighteenth century, Scotland has been visited by that revival of antiquarian and raediaeval lore which was, in the tiraes of which we have spoken, alraost equally distasteful to the spirit of the Covenanters and the spirit of the Moderates. Nay, it may almost be said that in that reaction she has herself borne a principal part. It was Walter Scott, as Carlyle has well described, who gave the chief stimulus to the movement in Great Britain, and the authors of the " Tracts for the Times " claimed him, not without ground, though with a total misconception of his larger and loftier position, as one of its first founders. But this one fact of itself shows that the change of which I speak was altogether independent of any extraneous ecclesiastical influence. The ritual of the Church of England, which Jenny Geddes or her stool cast out from the Episcopal and Presbyterian Churches alike, has at last gained cora plete possession of the Episcopal Church, and is here and there making its way even in Presbyterian Churches. The organ, so long regarded as the " kist full of whistles," or even as the Beast of the Apoc alypse, has been heard to breathe out its prelatic blasts in more than one of the Established, and even of the Secession Churches. The architecture of mediaeval times has in our later days been copied by every branch of Presby terianism. The remains of the ancient abbeys are deeply cherished by the spiritual descendants of the Protestant mobs who destroyed them, sometimes even more than by the spiritual descendants of the ancient Catholic chiefs who built them. 170 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IV. Never in the most monastic corner of Canterbury or of Westminster have I found an eye more keen to appreciate or a tongue more ready to express the peculiar charm of Gothic architecture than in an old Scottish sacristan of the parish church of Dunblane^ who had never crossed the Border, but was able, with genuine enthusiasm, to point out the delicate pro portions, the " perfect window," the historic associa tions of the venerable cathedral under which his own church was sheltered. Lord Cockburn has coraraem orated in an epitaph half comical, half tragical, the shoemaker " who was for seventeen years the keeper and shower " of the Cathedral of Elgin ; and told how, " whilst not even the Crown was doing anything for its preservation, he, with his own hands, cleared it of many thousand cubic yards of rubbish, disinter ring the bases of the pillars, collecting the carved fragments, and introducing order and propriety. Whoso reverences this cathedral wUl respect the memory of this man." No Dean of Anglican chap ter or Roman basilica is more proud of the sacred edifice committed to his charge than is the parish minister of Sweetheart Abbey, amongst the ruins of which he dwells, and whose very stones he delights to honor. The existence of this wide-spread feeling in the Presbyterian Church is a proof, on the one hand, that however rauch the Episcopal Coramunion may assist, it was not needed to create, sentiments and tastes which have grown up indigenously in Scotland itself It is a proof, on the other hand, that any Scottish Episcopalian who understands the waiits of his age and appreciates the feelings of his countrymen, will Lect. IV. IN REGARD TO EPISCOPALIANS. 171 by the Church of Scotland be received as a brother and a friend. When I said in my first lecture that the future mission of the Episcopal Church was prin cipally to convey English ideas into Scotland, nothing was further from my thoughts than to deny the ex istence of purely northern Episcopalians. No one knows better than myself how genuine is the Scottish blood which warms many a true Episcopalian heart. It has not been my intention in these lectures to name any Uving illustrations of my arguments, but in this case I raay be perraitted to prove the ^^ jj^. truth of my position by pointing to two dig- EpL'copa- nitaries of the Scottish Church, to whom I ^^^' refer with the raore freedora because I know they are not present, whora I select frora their brethren both as furnishing the most undoubted instances of this native Caledonian character in the Episcopal Com munion, and as the most significant examples of the general truth which I am endeavoring to enforce. Is there any single ecclesiastic in Edinburgh who rallies round him a wider amount of genuine p^.^^ ^^^^_ Scottish sentiment and brotherly love, than ^^^' that venerable Dean who is an absolute imperso nation of "the reminiscences" of all the Scottish Churches, who in his largeness of heart embraces them all, and in his steadfast friendship, his generous championship of forgotten truths and of unpopular causes, proves himself to be in every sense the in heritor of the noble Scottish name which he so worthily bears ? And if we look into the wilds of the Highlands,. — although it is " a far cry to Loch Awe," -g^^^ — we must bring out from thence one who, ^"^s- 172 UNION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IV. in all meetings of Anglican or quasi-Anglican prelates, bears witness by his very countenance and appear ance to the romantic character which I have before described as the main link in the last century between the Scottish Episcopalian Church and the rest of the nation. There, in the region of Argyll and the Isles, may be seen one who has under his charge the most purely native and unalloyed specimens of hereditary Episcopalians ; who, in all the graces and humors of his race, is a Celtic Scotsman to the backbone ; who lias always, though a Bishop, acknowledged the Christian character of his Presbyterian brethren; who, though a Dissenter, has always borne his testi mony against the secularizing influences of the volun tary system of which he is an unwiUing victim ; who, though a minister of one of the secessions from the Church of Scotland, has always lifted up his voice in behalf of those wider and more generous views, of which the grand old office of Episcopacy was intended to be the depository, and to which, though it has often been unfaithful in Scotland as elsewhere, it may, through such men as those of whom I speak, render the most signal services both in their own sphere and in the Church at large. I turn to the other sections of religious life, — those which more nearly adhere to the national form of worship, — the various fragments which have at various tiraes broken off" frora the Established Church, and which I have described as inheriting more than any other the spirit of the ancient Covenanters, No Larger doubt thcrc is a difficulty in bending to anv moderation . "^ ' ° •' of these- accommodation the stubborn steadfastness ceding , Churches, which p.rides itself on isolation, and Uves by Lect. IV. IN EEGAED TO THE SECEDING CHUECHES. 173 disruption. Often, when we think of them or their forefathers, on the mountain side, or in their hall of assembly, the well-known lines of Milton recur : — " Others apart sat on a hill retired, . . . . and reasoned high Of providence, foreknowledge, wiU, and fate. Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute. And found no end, in wandering mazes lost." Yet even here there are symptoms of a spirit from another quarter which has broken and wUl still more break into this retirement. Even David Deans's doubts " had been too many and too critical to permit him unequivocally to unite with any of the seceders from the National Church, He had ever been a humble pleader for the good old cause without rushing into ' right-hand excesses, divis ions, and separations. Even he, after making the necessary distinctions betwixt compliance and defec tion,' ' holding back and stepping aside,' 'slipping and stumbling,' ' snares and errors,' was brought to the broad admission that each man's conscience would be the best guide for his pilotage, and that in the Estab Ushed Church his son-in-law might safely find a field for his ministrations; and, on his death-bed, it was only, as May Hettly observed, when ' his head was carried ' and his mind wandering that he muttered something 'about national defections, right-hand extremes and left-hand fallings off":' his deliberate expressions were of duty, of humility, and of the full spirit of charity with all men." ^ In like manner, let us hope that the age of the Disruption has been succeeded by a generation not 1 Heart of Mid-Lothian. 174 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IV. baptized into that fierce fire, and probably there are few now in Scotland who can enter into the violence with which at that time households were rent asunder, children quarreled in the streets, ancient friends parted. Auchterarder, the scene of the original con flict, after a few years settled into a haven of perfect peace ; the pastor whose intrusion provoked the col lision between the spiritual and civil courts lived and died respected by the whole parish. Many would now join with the honored historian of the catas trophe of 1843 in that truly Christian discourse, in which, whilst vindicating the right of the Free Church ^ to sever itself, he withdrew any claim to its being regarded as a fundamental or essential prin ciple of religion. There are few who would now speak of a well- intentioned endeavor to reconcile two complex legal claims as an attempt to "hurl the Redeemer from his throne," and "to tear the crown from the Sav iour's head ; " or who would consider that even occasional attendance at the worship of the Estab lished Church was " a sin," or " its Church meetings as no better than the assembling of so many Moham medans in a Turkish mosque," or " the parish min ister as the one excommunicated man pf the district, with whom no one is to join in prayer, whose church is to be avoided as an impure and unholy place, whose addresses are not to be listened to, whose visits are not to be received, who is everywhere to be put under the ban of the community." These exaggerated expressions of party spirit are 1 " The Church and its Living vember 13, 1859, by the Rev. John Head," a sermon preached on No^ Hanna, LL, D. Lbct. IV. IN REGARD TO THE SECEDING CHURCHES. 175 worth citing only as water-marks of the tide of bit terness, which has now receded far into the ocean, never more, it may be hoped, to recover the shores which it has left. On the other hand, the religious fervor, of which the Covenanters and the seceders of various views claim, and perhaps with justice, to be the predom inant representatives, has overflowed all the bor ders of the Churches. The language, no doubt, of Rutherford's Letters and Thomas Boston's " Fourfold State " (as of Bunyan's " Grace Abounding " amongst Englishmen), is now antiquated and distasteful ; but the grace and beauty of their devotion is appreciated in a far wider circle than when they lived. And from the revivals of our more modern days, out of the smoke and sulphur of the volcano of the Disrup tion, two names of the departed emerge of which the main claims consist in those qualities — not which divided them from their brethren, but which brought them together. Every Scottish Churchman, I had almost said every Scotsman, claims, whether before or after Thomas 1843, the honored narae of Chalmers. To Chalmers. attempt to portray his noble character would be in me as impertinent as for you it would be needless. Yet there are a few words which I would fain utter — the more so, as they are in part suggested by my own humble recollections of that wise and good man. VirgUium tardum vidi. Eleven days before his death, in the city of Oxford, for the first and last time, I had the privilege of speaking with Dr. Chalmers, I was too young and too English at that time to be much occupied with the divisions which parted the 176 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IV. Free from the Established Church; and there was assuredly nothing in his appearance or conversation which recalled them. But I was not too young to appreciate, nor am I yet too old to forget, the force, the liveliness, the charity jvith which he spoke of everything on which he touched. Three points specially have remained fixed in ray raeraory which assuredly betokened a son not of the Covenant, but of the Church universal. He was full of the contrast of the two biographies which he had just finished; one was that of " John Foster," the other of " Thoraas Arnold." " Two men," he said, "so good, yet with a view of life so entirely difierent ; the one so severe and desponding, the other so joyous and hopeful," He had completed the perusal of another book, of which it seemed equally strange that he should have through all his long life deferred reading it till that time, and that having so delayed he should then have had the Vponderful energy to begin and master it. It was Gibbon's " Decline and FaU ; " and the old man's face. Evangelical, devout Scotsman as he was, kin dled into enthusiasm as he spoke of the majesty, the labor, the giant grasp displayed by that greatest and most skeptical of English historians. Another spring of enthusiasm was opened when he looked round on the buildings of the old prelatic, mediaBval Oxford. " You have the best machinery in the world, and you know not how to use it." Such were the words which are still written, as taken down from his mouth, on the photograph of the University Church in the High Street, which was given to him by his host^ at that time, which was restored to that host 1 Henry Acland, now the distinguished Regius Professor of Medi cine at Oxford. Lect. IV. IN REGARD TO THE SECEDING CHURCHES. 177 by Chalmers's famUy after his death, and by him given to me when I left Oxford, in recollection of that visit. " You have the best machinery in the world, and you know not how to use it." How true, how discriminating, and how amply justified by the prodigious efforts which, as I trust, since that time Oxford has raade to use that good machinery. How unlike to the passion for destruction for destruction's sake which has taken possession of many who use his venerable name in vain ! How like to the ac tive, organizing mind, which saw in establishments and institutions of all kinds not lumber to be cast away, but machinery to be cherished and used. In front of that academic church of Oxford we parted, just as he touched on the question of the interpre tation of the Apocaljrpse. "But this," he said, "is too long to discuss here and now ; you must come and finish our conversation when we meet at Edin burgh." That meeting never came. He returned home ; and the next tidings I had of him was that he was departed out of this world of strife. As I read his biography that brief conversation rises again before me, and seeras the echo of those wider and more generous views which at times were overlaid by the controversies into which he was drawn. Such is his own account of his longing recollection of the earlier days when he lived in the great ideas which are the foundation of all reUgion. " 0, that He possessed me with a sense of his holi ness and his love," he exclaims, after an interval of twenty-six years, " as He at one time possessed me with a sense of his goodness and his power and his pervading agency. I remember," he continues, 12 178 UNION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND Lect. IV. " when a student of divinity, and long before I could relish evangelical sentiment, I spent nearly a twelve month in a sort of mental elysium, and the one idea which rainistered to ray soul all its rapture was the magnificence of the Godhead and the universal sub ordination of all things to the one great purpose for which He evolved and was supporting creation. I should like to be so inspired over again, but with such a view of the Deity as coalesced and was in harmony with the doctrine of the New Testament." Such a view he doubtless gained ; nor was it, if we may humbly say so, in any way incompatible (if Science and Religion both be true) with that which was the source of his earliest, and, so it would seera, his latest religious fervor.^ Even late in life he was accused by suspicious zealots of being an enemy to Systeraatic Divinity ; and his reply was certainly not calculated to allay the alarra. Long did he cling to the freer and nobler views of Theology. "My Christianity," he said raost wisely and truly, " approaches nearer to Calvinisra than to any of the isms in Church history ; but broadly as Calvin announces 'truth,' he does not bring it forward in that free and spontaneous manner which I find in the New Testament." The passage from English poetry which he quoted more frequently than any other was that pregnant pas sage from the Moravian Gambold, which contains within itself the germs of all the broader and higher views of faith: — " The man That could surround the sum of things, and spy The heart of God and secrets of his empire 1 Hanna's Life of Chalmers, iii. 206. Leot. IV. DSf EEGAED TO TIIE SECEDING CHUECHES. 179 Would speak but love. With love the bright result Wo-uld change the hue of intermediate things. And make one thing ofall theology." And even in the very ferment of the Sustentation Fund he could exclaim, " Who cares about the Free Church compared with the Christian good of the people of Scotland ? Who cares about any Church, but as an instrument of Christian good? For be assured that the moral and religious well-being of the population is of infinitely higher importance than the advancement of any sect," ^ The other departed Ught of the great movement of 1843, whom I would recall for a moraent, j^^^ jy^_ is one whom I never met, but whom the de- ''^°' scriptions of his friends and disciples place before us in so vivid a light, that one almost seems, to have seen hira, — in his multifarious learning, in his sim ple-minded, eccentric detachment frora all the cares of this world, almost a Scottish Neander, — I mean Dr. John Duncan. In that charming volume, which gives the most casual, but also the most intiraate convictions of his raind, it is remarkable that, to the peculiar doctrines which divide the Free Church from the Established, there is hardly an allusion; that even its peculiar Calvinistic theology and Pres byterian platform occupies a very secondary place. " I am first a Christian, next a Catholic, then a Cal vinist, fourthly a Paedo-Baptist, and fifth a Presby terian." How many would have reversed this order, and even placed before all, " I am a Covenanter ; I am a Non-intrusionist." " I suspect," he said, " that, after all, there is only one heresy, and that is Anti- 1 Hanna's Life of Chalmers, i. 147, 241, 251 ; iv. 384, 394. 180 UNION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IV. nomianism." How many there are who think almost everything is heresy except Antinomianisra. Again, let us hear him on the progress of theology. " There is a progressive element in all things, and therefore in religion It is a mistake to look on the Fathers as our seniors. They are our juniors. The Church has advanced wonderfully since its foundation was laid." Again, let us hear the touching descrip tion of an ancient Catholic monument, which implies even more than it says: "There is an old stone cross of granite by the roadside as you wind up the hUl at Old Buda in Hungary, upon which a worn and defaced image of our Saviour is cut, which I used often to pass. Below the granite block are the words, ' 0 vos omnes qui transitis per viam attendite et videte si est uUus dolor sicut dolor meus.' The thorough woebegoneness of that iraage used to haunt rae long — that old bit of granite, the ideal of human sorrow, weakness, and woebegoneness. To this day it will corae back before rae — always with that durab gaze of perfect calraness — no com plaining — the picture of meek and raute suffering, I am a Protestant and dislike image-worship, yet never can I get that statue out of ray mind,"^ I might follow out these remarks to the other se- United ceding comraunions, I have already spoken PrGsbv—terians. of thc fiucr elements of the Relief and of the Glassites of the " Secession ; " I gladly record that their deadly feud with Whitefield was at last suspended. And for the United Presbyterians, it is something to say that they have merged at least one 1 Peripatetica (Reminiscences of Dr. Duncan by his friend and pupil, Dr. Knight). Lect. IV. EDWAED IRVING. 181 difference in a coraraon principle. It is still more to say that they have relaxed in some degree the strictness of the obligation which binds the Scottish Churches to the Westminster Confession. It is most of all to say that there are amongst them those who regard freedom of thought as more valuable than freedora of patronage, and that " Rab and his Friends" and the " Horce Subsecivce " represent to all the world the precious gifts which all the Churches equally may long to claim. As I approach the Established Church, I venture to advert to yet a few other names of the E^^ard dead, which belong to the whole Scottish ^""'^• Church in it widest sense. One is Edward Irving. If by the pressure of an exclusive infiuence which then preponderated, but has now ceased, within the Scottish Church, he was cast out from its pale — if, partly by his genius, partly by his eccentricities, he soared into regions far removed frora it, he was not the less, by nature and by choice, its genuine child. WeU it is that he should rest in the crypt of Glasgow Cathedral — that one great religious monuraent of Scotland which combines in unbroken continuity the age and the youth of her eventful history. No Scottish, no English divine within our memory, has so nearly succeeded in uniting modern thought with the stately, stiffj elaborate oratory of ancient times. His true teachers were the great writers of a wider range than his own country or coraraunipn. Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity," found in a farm house near Annan, was, as he calls it, " the venerable companion of his early years." " I fear not to con fess," he said, " that Hooker, Taylor, and Baxter in 182 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IV. theology ; Bacon and Newton and Locke, in philoso phy, have been my companions, as Shakespeare and Spenser and Milton in poetry. I cannot learn to think as they have done — that is the gift of God ; but I can teach myself to think as disinterestedly, and to express as honestly what I think and feel," Coleridge was to him " the wise and generous teacher, the good man who had helped an anxious inquirer to the way of truth." ^ His earliest friend and school-fellow was the greatest of living Scottish writers. No words that Thomas Carlyle ever wrote are raore full of pathos than those which fell from his pen on hearing of his friend's death. " Edward Irving's career has closed. The spirit of the time which would not enlist him as its soldier must needs in all ways fight against him as its enemy ; it has done its part, and he has done his. One of the noblest natures — a man of antique, heroic nature, in questionable modern garniture which he could not wear. But for him I had never known what is meant by the comraunion of man with man. His was the freest, brotherliest, bravest human soul mine ever came in contact with, I caU him, on the whole, the best man I have, after trial enough, found in this world, or now hope to find The voice of our son of thunder — with its deep tone of wisdom that belonged to all articulate-speaking ages, never in audible amidst wUdest dissonances that belong to this inarticulate age — has gone silent so soon. Closed are those lips. The large heart, with its large bounty, where wretchedness found solaceraent, and they that were wandering in darkness the light as of 1 Oliphant's Life of Irving, i, 30, 56, 416, Lect. IV. THOMAS ERSKINE. 183 a home, has paused. The strong man can no raore ; beaten on frora without, undermined from within, he must sink overwearied at nightfall, when it was yet but the midseason of day. He was forty-two years and sorae months old ; Scotland sent him forth a Herculean man : our mad Babylon wore and wasted him with her engines, and it took her twelve years He died the death of the true and brave. His last words, they say, were ' In life and in death I am the Lord's.' He sleeps with his fathers in that loved birthland. Babylon, with its deafening inanity rages on, but to him innocuous, unheeded for ever." ^ The mention of Carlyle and Irving suggests an other, — a venerable spirit lately removed xhomas frora us, dear to each of them, dear to many ^^'"''«- a Scottish heart, — Thomas Erskine of Linlathen. There are not a few to whom that attenuated form and furrowed visage seemed a more direct link with the unseen world than any other that had crossed their path in life. Always on the highest sumraits at once of intellectual cultivation and of religious speculation, he seeraed to breathe the refined atmos phere, — " Where the immortal shapes Of bright aerial spirits live insphered In regions mild of calm and serene air. Above the smoke and stir of tliis dim spot, Which men caU Earth." Other loving hands ^ may describe his goings out 1 Carlyle, Essays. Ewing, which contains also the 8 For the present it may be sufii- graceful tribute to his memory by cient to refer to the interesting Pref- Principal Shairp. Present Day ace to "Some Letters of Thomas Papers, pp. 1-66. Erskine," by his friend Bishop 184 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IV. and comings in araongst you. But it raay be per mitted to an English stranger, who knew hira only during his later years, to bear this humble testimony to the gift which the Scottish Church in all its branches received in that aged servant of the Lord. I have heard it said that once meeting a shepherd in the Highlands, he said to him, in that tone which corabined in so peculiar a manner sweetness and coraraand, and with that penetrating eraphasis which drew out of every word that he used the whole depth of its meaning, " Do you know the Father ? " and that years afterwards, on those same hills, he en countered that same shepherd, who recognized him, and said, " I know the Father now." The story, whether true or not, well illustrates the hold which the memory of that face and figure and speech had on all who ever came across it. Never shall I for-- get, on my first visit, the profound pathos with which, in famUy worship, he read and commented on the 136th Psalm, " Who sraote Egypt and his firstborn : for his mercy endureth forever. . . " . . Who sraote Pharaoh in the Red Sea : for his mercy endureth forever." " Yes," he said, " there was mercy even for Pharaoh ; even Egypt and his first born had a place in the mercy of God ; " and then, with the sarae thought, darting forward to a like stern text of the New Testament : " ' Jacob have I chosen, and Esau have I rejected ; ' yes, but Jacob was chosen for his special purpose, and Esau — that fine character — was rejected and preserved for another purpose not less special." " The purpose of God is to make us better. He can have no other intention for us." Lect. IV. THOMAS ERSIONE. 185 No written record can reproduce the effect of con versations, of which the peculiar charm consisted in the exquisite grace with which he passed from the earthly to the heavenly, from the humorous to the serious, from the small things of daily affection to the great things of the ideal world, " The element of the bird is the air ; the element of the fish is the water; and the heart of God is Jacob Bohraen's eleraent." This was a favorite quotation of his from the mystical Silesian. " That is true of all of us ; we are just fish out of water when we are not living in the heart of God." " What is Christianity ? It is the belief in the inexhaustible love of God for man." " He came to seek that which is lost until He find it." " What is human existence ? It is not pro bation, it is education. Every step we take upwards or downwards is a stepping-stone to something else." " What is the proper use of Religion ? The sun was made to see by, not to look at." ^ " What is the effect of Revelation to us ? It is the disclosure to us of our true relations to God and to one another, as when an exile, after long years' absence, returns home, and sees faces which he does not recognize. But one in whom he can trust comes and says, ' This aged man is your father ; this boy is your brother, who has done rauch for you ; this child is your son.' " These and such as these were amongst the sublime thoughts that sustained his soul in what at times might have seemed an almost entire isolation from all ecclesiastical ordinances, but what was, in fact, a 1 This saying he used to cite as cannot think of God without think- one of the best of his esteemed ing of Thomas Erskine." Present friend Alexander Scott, who was Day Papers, p. 5. wont to say, in regard to him, " I 186 UNION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IV. comraunion with the inner spirit of all. Presbyte rian by his paternal connection with the author of the Institutes and the rainister of Greyfriars,^ Epis copalian by his maternal descent and by his early education, it came to pass that in later life, whilst still delighting in the occasional services and minis trations of the Episcopal Church, and enjoying to the last the tender care of an EpiscopaUan curate, he yet habitually frequented the worship and teach ing of the National Church, both in country and in town — a living proof of the effacement of those boundary lines which, before the exasperations of our latter days, were to raany of the best Episcopa lians and Presbyterians alraost as if they did not exist. In all the varying Scottish coraraunions he had those who counted his friendship one of their chief privileges; and not only there, and in the hearts of loving friends in England, but far away with Catholic Frenchmen in Normandy, and in the bright religious society in which he had dwelt in forraer days by the distant shores of Geneva, his raemory was long cherished, and will not pass away so long as any survive who had seen him face to face. There are two others, of a far different type, whom I have reserved for the last, because, unlike those whom I have hitherto noticed, their names are known, not only in the contracted circles of a theo logical atmosphere, not only through the length and breadth of Scotland, but wherever the English tongue 1 He used to say, in later life, " I with his peculiar humor, " and this, greatly value the fixed order of I think, is the one single spiritual Lessons and Psalms in the Prayer- benefit which I have received from book " ; and then he would add, the Church of Eno-land." Lect. IV. EOBEET BUENS. 187 is spoken, and wherever genius and wisdom are hon ored, and who are nevertheless completely Scotsmen, completely Scottish Churchmen, in the largest sense ; who, though departed from us for a longer space than those I have just named, are still living and present influences ; who, in their different measures, can be overlooked in no Scottish ecclesiastical history worthy of the name — I mean Robert Burns and Walter Scott. Each of these great men represents the several tendencies of which I have spoken, — the Romantic, the Independent, and the Moderate attitude of the Scottish Church. And each justifies his title to be considered not only as a poet, but as a prophet — not only as a delightful companion but as a wise religious teacher. Bums was the Prodigal Son of the Church of Scot land, but he was still her genuine offspring. I g^bert have already spoken of "The Cotter's Satur- ^™- day Night." But this was not all. He who could pen the keen sarcasms of " Holy WiUie's Prayer," and the " Address to the Unco' Guid," which pierce through the hollow cant and narrow pretensions of every church in Christendom with a sword too trenchant but hardly too severe, showed that he had not lived in vain in the atmosphere of the phUosophic clergy and laity of the last century, whose kindly and genial spirit saved him from being driven by the extrava gant pretensions of the popular Scottish reUgion into absolute unbelief Much as there may be in these poems that we lament, yet even they retain frag ments of doctrine not less truly Evangelical than philosophical. 188 UNION OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IV. " Wha made the heart, 'tis He alone Decidedly can try us. He knows each chord, its various tone. Each spring, its various bias : Then at the balance let 's be mute. We never can adjust it ; What 's done we partly may compute. But ken na what 's resistet." That may perhaps not be the theology of Calvin, but it certainly is the theology of the Sermon on the Mount, What prayer raore comprehensive and more pa thetic was ever uttered for a Christian household than that left at the manse where the poet had slept? " O thou dread Pow'r, who reign'st above I I know thou wilt me hear : When for this scene of peace and love I make my pray'r sincere. " The hoary sir6 — the mortal stroke Long, long, be pleas'd to spare 1 To bless his little filial flock, And show what good men are. " She, who her lovely ofispring eyes With tender hopes and fears, O bless her with a mother's joys, ' But spare a mother's tears ! " Their hope, their stay, their darling youth, In manhood's dawning blush ; Bless him, thou God of love and truth. Up to a parent's wish ! " The beauteous, seraph sister-band. With earnest tears I pray. Thou kuow'st the snares on ev'ry hand, Guide thou their steps alway I " When soon or late they reach that coast, O'er life's rough ocean driv'n. May they rejoice, no wand'rer lost, A family in heav'n 1 " Leot. IV. ROBERT BURNS. 189 What advice more profound and more pastoral was ever given as a guide for youth than in the " Epistle to a Young Friend " ? — " I wave the quantum o' tlie sin. The hazard o' concealing ; But och ! it hardens a' within. And petrifies the feeUng. " The fear o' hell 's a hangman's whip. To haiJd the wretch in order ; But where ye feel your honor grip. Let that aye be your border : In slightest touches, instant pause — Debar a' side pretenses ; And resolutely keep its laws. Uncaring consequences. " The great Creator to revere. Must sure become the creature ; But still tlie preaching cant forbear. And ev'n the rigid feature : Yet ne'er with wits profane to range Be complaisance extended ; And Atheist-laugh 's a poor exchange For Deity ofiended ! " When ranting round in pleasure's ring. Religion may be blinded ; Or if she gie a random sting. It may be little minded ; But when on life we're tempest-driv'n, A conscience but a canker — A correspondence fix'd wi' Heav'n Is sure a noble anchor. " In ploughman phrase, ' God send you speed,' Still daily to grow wiser ; And may ye better reck the rede. Than ever did th' Adviser." Behind all the wretchedness of his life, and all the levity of his language, it is irapossible not to see in 190 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IV. that dark struggle the traces of the two main prin ciples of Scottish religion which I have in these lec tures endeavored to describe, and which, in one short, impressive passage. Burns has himself described for us : — '' StUl there are tvro great pillars that bear us up, amid the wreck of misfortune and misery. The one is composed of the different modifications of a certain noble, stubborn something in man, known by the names of courage, fortitude, magnanimity. The other is made up of those feelings and sentiments, which, however the skeptic may deny them, or the enthusiastic disfigure them, are yet, I am convinced, original and component parts of the human soul ; those senses of the mind, if I may be allowed the expression, which connect us with and link us to those awful obscure realities — an all-powerful, and equally beneficent God ; and a world to come, beyond death and the grave. The fixst gives the nerve of combat, while a ray of hope beams on the field : the last pours the balm of comfort into the wounds which time can never cure,^ Of Walter Scott I have already indicated, by the Walter ^lauy Ulustratious which his works supply, Scott. jjQ.^ ]jg jjj^g sounded all the depths and shoals of Scottish ecclesiastical history — how entirely he has identified himself with every phase through which it has passed, even, it may be, those which were least congenial to himself Episcopalian, and, in one sense, Jacobite as he was in his personal feel ings, yet in his whole public life he never parted from the Church which as a Scotsman he claimed as his own. The worship of that Church was to him " our national worship " ; ^ its traditions and charac ters counterbalance many times over in his writings 1 For the whole complex state- to the Rev. Principal Baird, July, ment of Burns's life and teaching, 1828, furnished by the kindness of see Carlyle's Essays, i. 324-398. Mr. Bailey. * Unpubhshed letter addressed Lbct. IV. WALTER SCQTT. 191 those which he derived from the Episcopal com munion. * It would require a separate lecture to point out the services which he has rendered to the Church of Great Britain as well as of Scotland, not only by the wholesome, manly, invigorating spirit -of his works, — not only bythe example of his untiring conscientious resolution", not only by the equity and elevation of his judgment of the contending factions in the Scottish Church and State, but by the firm yet ten der grasp with which he handles so many of those graver questions which now, even more than when he lived, exercise modern thought. Such, for exam ple, is the light which he throws by incident or argu ment, or passing speech, in one or other of his romances, on the due proportion of doctrine and practice ; on the power of prayer ; on the effect of miracles ; on the intermingling of the natural and the preternatural in human history ; on the relations of the clergy to the State and to the coraraunity at large ; on the superiority of internal to external evidence ; on the critical and philosophical compari son ofthe several parts of the Bible with each other; on the great controversy between authority and reason ; on the relative advantages and disadvan tages of the Roman and the Protestant Churches ; on the distinctive peculiarities and the common features of the Churches of England and Scotland ; on the historical characteristics of Christianity and of Mohammedanism ; on the effect produced in all our views by the approach of Death and of Eternity ; on the nature of true forgiveness ; on the varying yet identical forms of superstition ; on the essential dif- 192 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lect IV. ference between fanaticism and religion. The eluci dations and illustrations which abound in those mighty works of fiction, of these and like problems, are more than enough to justify the place here given to him as one of the great religious teachers of Scot tish Christendom. Happy that Church which has been blessed with such a theologian, whose voice can be heard by those whom no sermons ever reach, pro claiming lessons which no preacher or divine can afford to despise or to neglect. In thus gathering up the fruits of the true spiritual Warning Church of Scotland, I have dwelt on these fSa'mbii- individual instances partly because they bring parties. out in a Stronger light what I wish to ex press ; partly also because they tend to enforce a les son which, greatly needed everywhere at this time, is specially needed in the ecclesiastical atmosphere of Scotland. It is said that Oliver CromweU, when addressing the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, said : " I beseech you, my beloved brethren — I beseech you in the bowels of Christ, to helieve that ¦you may be mistaken." It was a remark pregnant with wisdom, and equally applicable to Pope, Prelate, and Presbyter ; and that was a true echo of it which was heard in the advice deUvered by the greatest modern Scottish philosopher to the Seceders of 1843, and which is equally applicable to all phases of popular panic and contagious excitement, " Be not martyrs hy mistake." But over and above the general lesson which every son of Adam needs against believing in his own infallibility, I venture to think that there was a peculiar truth in the saying both of the Protector and the philosopher. It is this : that large bodies of Lect. IV. THE ESTABLISHED CHUECH. 193 raen, especiaUy large parties of raen, not only may be mistaken, but are, by the very reason of their moving in masses and parties, likely to be mistaken. And this tendency to adopt party watchwords as oracles, and to turn all questions into party watchwords, is a peculiar temptation in our own time, and judging from past and present experience, has always been a special temptation in Scotland. Against this ten dency one of the greatest safeguards is the contem plation of such individual examples as I have given, which strike across these superficial boundaries, and which prove the power of the individual being to stand by his own internal convictions, and to bring, if so be, the world round to himself, if only he is determined not to follow but to guide. Of all the earnest exhortations which Walter Scott delivered to those who were to follow hira, the most earnest,^ as though it were engrained in his mind by the long and bitter experience through which his own country had passed, is the entreaty to shun party spirit as one of the most fatal obstacles to the public good. Whilst thus insisting on the elements of Scottish religious life, which are above and beyond all insti tutions and all parties, it is impossible to avoid the question (not what party, but) what institution most corresponds to these aspirations ? And here we can not doubt that, viewing it as a whole, and with all aUowance for its short-comings, it must be that insti tution which alone bears on its front without note or comment, the title of « The Church of Scot- The^E3tai>. land." Like aU the other religious comrauni- church. ties in the country it is compassed about with its own 1 Tales of a Grandfather, 3d series. 13 194 UNION OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lbct. IV. temporal surroundings ; but it is the one which in its idea most answers to " the Church without a narae," of which I spoke at the beginning of this lecture, the Spiritual or Invisible Church which owns no earthly head. As of the Church of England, so of the Church of Scotland, and of every National Church, the glory is, according to the " golden raaxira " of the " ever- meraorable Hales," to carry, like the prophet Amphi- araus, a " blank shield with no device of sect or party." The Episcopal comraunion carries on its shield, by the mere force of its narae, the device of Episcopacy. The " Free Church " claims by the as sumption of that name the special device of the inde pendence of the spiritual above the civil courts, or of the principle of the popular election of its ministers. The Cameronians exist in virtue of their ancient tes timony for the Covenant. The United Presbyterians bear the device of the voluntary system and of the unlawfulness of contact with the State. But the Established Church, from which these have all se ceded, bears no other device but the Thistle of the Its histor- Scottish nation and the historic recollections ter. of the Burning Bush of the Scottish Church. Whatever Scottish Christianity is prepared to become, that the Church of Scotland is prepared to be. It treats Presbyterianism, Episcopacy, Patronage, Non intrusion, as in themselves mere accidents. It has gone through the various phases of the wild monastic clanship of the Culdees, of the Anglo-Norman hier archy of St. Margaret, of the Scottish hierarchy of Robert Bruce, the mixed Presbyterian and Episcopal government under Queen Mary and Jaraes VL, the Lect. IV. THE ESTABLISHED CHUECH. 195 mixed Episcopal and Presbyterian government under Charles I. and Charles IL, the purely Presbyterian government from WUliam III. onwards. It has passed through the Liturgy and the Confession of John Knox, the Solemn League and Covenant, the Sum and Substance of Saving Doctrine, the Westminster Confession and the Westrainster Directory; and, again, through the alternations of doraination, from the Regent Murray to Andrew Melville, to Ruther ford and the Covenanters, to Carstairs and the Mod erates, to Chalmers and the " popular party." None of these phases need be altogether lost to it. The Westminster Confession, no less than the Solemn League and Covenant, will always be preserved amongst its historical documents, although both raay have ceased to express the mind of the raodern Church of Scotland ; although, as time rolls on, the stern requirements of adhesion to the Confession which emanated from the Jerusalem Chamber be laid aside, as the far sterner adhesion to the Confession that emanated from Greyfriars' Church has been laid aside long ago. Its romance, its independence, its fervor, its prudence — must we not add its exqui site and unrivaled huraor — these are the heir-looms of the Church of Scotland, which it has never lost, and which, whatever be the change of its internal form, it need never lose. There is yet this further merit which the Church of Scotland may claim. Whatever may be its Presby- 1 . . 1 .J. terian in store for its future, its past history and its character. present condition are standing proofs that not only Christian devotion, but Christian culture and civiliza tion can coexist with a form of ecclesiastical govern- 196 THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH. Lect. IV. ment which dates only from the sixteenth century, and with a Confession of Faith which is derived not from Nicaea or Alexandria but from Westminster; not from Athanasius, or Constantine, or Charlemagne, or Thomas Aquinas, but Calvin, In the total col lapse of the Episcopate through the larger part of the western world, since nine hundred bishops have accepted an acknowledged fable as an essential arti cle of the Christian faith, every Episcopalian ought to be thankful for the existence of a living Christian Church, which shows that outside the pale of Prel acy Christian life and Christian truth can flourish and abound, even if it should fail amongst the Episcopal communions. And, again, it is a standing proof that the idea of Its vital- ^ National Church, so fruitful in itself, so '•y- entwined with all that is noblest and best in the feelings both of citizens and of Christians, holds its ground against all the undermining influences brought to bear upon it. Nothing shows more clearly the inherent vitality of an EstabUshed Church, than that in Scotland it should have survived the tremendous shock of the Disruption, It is the glory of the Free Church that it maintained itself on the strength of a single abstract principle, by the sheer force of self-denying energy, and of a bold appeal to the scruples of conscience. It is the still greater glory of the Established Church that it maintained itself in spite of the loss of many of its most zealous ministers, by the strength of its ancient traditions, by its firm conviction of right, and by its promises of a glorious future ; that it has received new life into its ranks, that it has had the courage to repent Lbot. IV. ITS PROMISE FOE THE FUTURE. 197 of its former errors,^ that it has become the centre of hopes and aspirations unknown to its own former existence, or to the comraunions which have divided from it. The very word " Residuary " used against it as a reproach, was, and is, its best title of honor. Churches and .secessions which build themselves on particular dogmas are not residuary ; they gather to them many of the most ardent and energetic, but they gather also the fierce partisans and the narrow proselytizers, and they leave out of sight those who are unable or unwilling to follow the leaders of ex tremes. But churches which are founded on no such special principles, which have their reason of exist ence simply because they profess in its most general aspect the form of Christianity most suitable to the age or country in which they live, these are " residu ary " churches, because they gather into themselves the residue of the nation, the simple, the poor, who are too little instructed to understand the grounds which separate the different churches ; the refined, the thoughtful, who understand them too well to care about them, who care more for the religious, moral, and intellectual life of the" people than for the Solemn League and Covenant, fOr Non-Intrusion, or for spiritual jurisdiction. If, therefore, the liberal intelligence of Scotland can raaintain its ground against the force of party spirit, there is little fear lest the Established Church of Scotland should lose its hold on the affections of the Scottish nation. To destroy it would not be to 1 As for example, the almost en- teaching of Dr. John M'Leod Camp- tire change of feeUng in the Estab- bell. See Lecture IIL lished Church vrith regard to the 198 THE ESTABLISHED CHUECH. Lect. IV destroy merely an ancient institution, with endow ments which would be taken from it only to be use lessly squandered, and with opportunities for Chris tian beneficence which no wise man would wilUngly take away in an age where raaterial progress is so disproportionately active — it would , be to destroy, as far as huraan efforts can destroy, the special ideas of freedora, of growth, of comprehension which are avowedly repugnant to the very purpose of the Seceding Churches, but which are inherent in the very existence of a National Church, The Seceding Churches, whether Episcopal or Its rela- Presbytcrian, have doubtless their own pe- seceding** cuUar missious. As in England, so in Scot- churches. i^^^^ [^ ^^s the foUy of the Established Church not to acknowledge and utUize these pecul iar missions in times past, so it will be the wisdom of the Established Church in both countries to ac knowledge and utilize thera in times to come. One of the most distinguished of living Scotsmen once pointed out to me the striking architectural effect which presents itself on ascending to the old city of Edinburgh in the well-known view of the Hall of the General Assembly as seen through the vista of the Free Church college. Nowhere else is either seen to such advantage as when the chief institution of the Church of the Disruption forms the foreground ofthe chief seat of the Church ofthe Establishment. Take away either, and the effect would be annihi lated. This is a parable which applies to Established Churches and Seceding Churches everywhere. The Mother Church, whether of England or Scotland, can only be properly appreciated when rising behind the Lect. IV. ITS FEOMISE FOE THE FUTUEE. 199 foreground of the Dissenting Churches. The Dis senting Churches would lose half their significance if the Established Church, whose short-comings they desire to rectify, but from which they derive their original life, and which serves to them as a centre and support, were swept away. It was a miserable intolerance when the Established Church in ancient times endeavored to prevent the growth of Noncon forming communities that satisfied peculiar wants which from its very nature it could not equally sup ply. It would be an act of still raore inexcusable barbarisra if in our raore enlightened age Seceding Churches were in their turn to insist on a new Act of Uniforraity, and, by destroying the Established Church, extinguish aspirations which they can never satisfy, because they deny their lawfulness and con demn their development. But they can render to the Church and the nation of Scotland services pecul iarly their own; they can, in times to come, as in times past, keep alive in the heart that peculiar fire of devotion and warmth which in Established Churches is sometimes apt to die out in the light of reason and the breath of free inquiry, just as the Es tablished Church has been the means of sheltering the inteUigence, without which devotion dwindles into fanaticism, and the charity and moderation, without which the most ardent zeal profits nothing. For these and for a thousand like ministrations there is surely ample room without the necessity of diverting the energies either of the National Church or of its divided branches into the contemptible rivalry of destroying and crippling each other's usefulness. 200 FUTUEE OF THE CHUECH OF SCOTLAND. Lect. IV. The Church of Scotland has a claim on the at- its claim tachracut of all those who are unwiUing to fromlSg^ let go the opportunity of unfolding to the iishmen. utraost the Capacities of an institution which has already done so rauch for the civilization and the edification of the whole Erapire. Englishmen and Scotsmen of all persuasions may well be proud of maintaining a Church which has at tiraes in these islands been the chief support of the united inter ests of culture, freedora, and religion ; a Church which Carstairs and Robertson, Chalmers and Irving adorned; which Sir Walter Scott and Sir William Hamilton supported, because they felt that no exist ing institution could equally supply its place ; of which the leading statesman of the last generation, though an Englishraan and an Episcopalian, thus spoke to the students of the University of Glasgow : " When I have joined in the public worship of your Church, think you that I have adverted to distinc tions in point of form, to questions of Church govern ment and Church discipline ? No ; but with a wish as hearty and as cordial as you can entertain, have I deprecated the day when men in authority or legis lation should be ashamed or unwilling to support the National Church of Scotland." ^ There spoke the true voice of the great days of English statesmanship. And no English Churchman who forecasts the signs of the times can fail to echo the hope. Doubtless the Church of England has much to suggest to the Church of Scotland which the Church of Scotland, at least in the present day, 1 Speech of Sir Eobert Peel at Glasgow. See Chalmers's Life, iv. 171. Lect. IV. ITS RELATIONS TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 201 is most eager to acknowledge. I yield to no man living in my hopes of the magnificent mission which is open to the Established Church of England, if only it be true to itself — if only it be convinced that the true method of self-defense is not merely to repel the attacks of its adversaries, but to turn its adversaries into friends by the fulfillment of its lofty vocation. But the Church of Scotland has also its own to give us in return. It gave us in ancient days one of the best of our prelates — the first complete raodel of a truly pastoral bishop, Gilbert Burnet. It has in these latter days given to us the Primate who most recalls the enlightened spirit of Tillotson — a Scots man of the Scots — Archibald Campbell Tait. It has in these latter years set an exaraple of noble liberal ity to all the Churches by its readiness in welcoraing in its pulpits "the ministrations^ of Prelatists no less than of its own seceding members. When I think of the cordial and intelligent sym pathy which it has been my privilege to encounter in many a manse, east and west, highland and low land; when I think of the freedom and charity which have inspired the ministrations of Greyfriars' Church in Edinburgh, past and present ; when I re flect on the teaching that has gone forth and is going forth from the Cathedral and Barony Church of Glas gow, and from that noble University which has done so much in former days, and in our own, for uniting in the closest bonds of affection the inteUectual and I I am aware that the law of the ing that it is hitherto only in the various Presbyterian communions Established Church that this liberty leaves it equally open to them to — at least as regards the Episcopal avail themselves of this liberty. But clergy —has been acted upon. I beUeve that I am correct in say- 202 FUTURE OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. Lbct. IV. moral life of both countries ; when I call to mind the true union of philosophy and religion which in the pulpit of the National Church welcomed the scientific gathering at Dundee ; when I remeraber what I may be allowed to call my own St. Andrew's, with the genial intercourse and varied learning which has so often cheered my studies, as I have lingered there listening to " the two mighty voices " of its sounding sea and its vast cathedral : when I think of all these things, I cannot doubt of the true freedora and strength (in all that constitutes real freedom and strength) of the Established Church of Scotland. It was, in old days, customary for Oxford divines to speak of the Church of England as Judah, and the Church of Scotland as Saraaria.-' That con- teraptuous thought has now been exchanged for a wiser and' a better feeling. The most 'accomplished scholar, the most purely Oxford theologian amongst the Scottish bishops, has in these latter days spoken with a far truer a^nd nobler sense of the mutual rela tions of the two Churches, and entreated them to be at one with another on the equal terms of " Euodias and Syntyche." ^ Yet Scotland might, if she chose, not altogether refuse the ancient reproach of Sa maria. Samaria had prophets at times when Judah was in darkness. The stern Elijah, the beneficent EUsha, the simple Amos, the tender Hosea, had their horae not in the southern but in the northern king dom ; and the hiUs and vales of GaUlee nurtured the Divine Light which Jerusalem labored to extinguish. But there is, if I raay continue the sacred parallel 1 See the Lyra Apostolica. Charles Wordsworth, D. D. (Bishop 8 Euodias and Syntyche, by of St. Andrew's). Lbct. IV. ITS RELATIONS TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. 203 yet further, a better and a nobler end for both. As in those two divided Churches of Palestine, so in these two once rival Churches of Britain, the highest prophetic instinct points to a time when these re criminations will cease forever, — " when Judah shall no longer vex Ephraim, and Ephraim shall no longer envy Judah," CHRONOLOGY OF THE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. CELTIC CHURCH. A. D. 360-432. St. Ninian in Galloway. 432. St. PaUadius, St. Serf, and St. Teman in Fifeshire. 454-601. St. Kentigern in Strathclyde. 563-597. St. Columba in lona. 865. Migration of Kenneth to Scone. MEDIEVAL CHUECH. 1080. Marriage of Malcolm Canmore and Margaret at DunfermUne. Norman hierarchy. 1124-1153. Reign and reUgious foundations of St. David. 1305-1329. Reign of Robert the Bruce. Severance of the connection with England. 1440-1465. Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrew's. 1472. St. Andrew's converted into a metropolitan see. EEFOEMATION. 1539. Death of Patrick Hamilton. 1546. Death of George Wishart. Murder of Cardinal Beaton. 1547-1572. Preaching of John Knox. 1560. Adoption of the Confession of Knox, and abolition of the Ro man Catholic Church by the Scottish Parliament, August 17-24. Meeting of the First General Assembly, Decem ber 20. 1561. Arrival of Queen Mary. 1565. Marriage with Darnley. 1566. Murder of Rizzio. 1567. Murder of Darnley. 1567-1570. Regency of Murray. 1570-1581. Regency of Morton. 1570. Restoration of Episcopacy. 1572. Death of Knox. 1574-1606. Preaching of Andrew MelviUe. 1582. Death of George Buchanan. 206 CHRONOLOGY OF THE A. D. 1586. Death of Queen Mary. 1592. Restoration of Presbytery. ECCLESIASTICAL STRUGGLES WITH ENGLAND. 1603. Accession of James VI. to the throne of Great Britain. 1606. Restoration of Episcopacy. 1618. The Five Articles of Perth. 1625. Accession of Charles I. 1633. Coronation at Holyrood. Valuation of tithes. 1637. Attempt to impose the EngUsh Liturgy. Tumult at St, Giles's. 1638. The National Covenant. Greneral Assembly of Glasgow. Res toration of Presbytery. . 1643, Solemn Lgfigue and Covenant to enforce Presbytery throughout tho kingdom. Assembly of Divines at Westminster. 1648. Westminster Confession of Faith. Longer and Shorter Cate chisms. 1650. Battle of Dunbar. 1651. Coronation of Charles U. at Scone. 1660. Restoration. 1661. Rescissory Act. Death of Samuel Rutherford. 1662. Restoration of Episcopacy. 1665-1687. Persecution ofthe Covenanters. 1679. Murder of Archbishop Sharpe. Battle of Bothwell Brigg. REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT. 1688. The Convention. 1689. Restoration of Presbytery. 1690. General Assembly. Separation of Cameronians. 1691. Suppression of Episcopacy. 1694. Carstairs and the Oath of Assurance. 1707. Act of Union. 1712. Patronage Act. 1712. Legal Protection of the Epis- 1715. Death of Carstairs. copal communion. 1718-1722. "Marrow con troversy." 1728-1729. " Simson contro- 1724-1727. Usagers and CoUegers. versy." 1734. Death of Wodrow. 1732-1734. Secession of the Erskines. 1736. Porteous mob, "Ju dicial Testi mony." CHUECH OF A. B. 1725-1739. Secession of the Glassites. 1741. First Preaching of Whitefield. • 1 744. " Leechman contro versy.'' 1746. Division between Burghers and Antiburghers. 1751-1780. Administi-a- tion of WiUiam Bobertson. 1752. Secession ofthe "Re Uef." 1757. Tragedy of "Doug las." 1763. Hume and CampbeU. 1779. Agitation on Penal Laws. 1780-1790. The Buchan- ites. 1798. Preaching of Row land Hill. 1833. Deposition of Ed ward Irving. 1834. His death. 1843. Disruption. 1847. United Presbyteri ans. Death of Chalmers. SCOTLAND. 207 1 745. Revolt of Charles Edward. 1 746. Episcopalian Disabilities. 1765. Introduction of Scottish Com munion Office. 1784. Concordat with Bishop Sea bury of Connecticut. 1792. Repeal of Episcopalian Dis- abUities. 1804. Acceptance of the Thirty-nine Articles. 1838. Death of Bishop Jolly. Standard Works AT GREATLY Hi: DUCED Fii ICES. R E D u c r. I) FROM TO FROUDE'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Popular edition. 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"It is a boy*s stor^' — that is, supposed to be written by a boy — and has all the freshness, the unconscious simplicity and naivete which the imagined authorship should imply ; while nothing more graphic, more clearly and vividly pictorial, has been brought before the public for many a day." Any or all of the above volumes senl, post-paid, u^on receipt of the ^rice hy the publishers, SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG & CO., (Successors to Charles Scribner & Co.), G54: Sroadioai/, New Yorh, A Mo7iu7nent of Modern Scholarship ¦ ??-? JUST PUBLISHED BY SCRIBNER, ARMSTRONG, & CO. 654 BROADWAY, NEW YORK. JoiDFtf s Hialopps of JPleto. o- ¦ THE DIALOGUES OF PLATO. Translated into English, with Analysis and Introductions, by B. JoWETT, M.A., Master of Balliol College, Oxford, and Regius Professor of Greek. Four Volumes Crown Svo, $12.00 per set, in Cloth, or ONE HALF THE PRICE OF THE ENGLISH EDITION. CRITICAL ESTIMATES. From the New York Tribune. The present work of Professor Jowett will be welcomed with profound interest as Ihe only adequate endeavor to transport the most precious monument of Grecian thought among the familiar treasures of English literature. The noble reputation of Professor Jowett both as a thinker and a scholar, it may be premised, however, is a valid guarantee for the excellence of his performance. He is known as one of the most hard-workin'^ stu dents of the English universities, in the departments of philology and criticism, whose ex emplary diligence is fully equalled by his singular acuteness of penetration, his clear and temperate judgment, and his rare and absolute fidelity to the interests of truth. Holding a distinguished official place in English letters, no man exhibits less of the pride of position, or is devoted to the cultivation of learning with greater simplicity of purpose and an 'iqual almost child-like sweetness of life. A devoted adherent of the Established Church, he is free from ecclesiastical prejudices. Withojt the natural passion for innovation which is so often the principal spur of ardent reformers, he has stood in the front rank of the advocates of a progressive and liberal theology. Of retired and gentle habits, he has shrunk from no personal sacrifice when a great crisis has demanded an open avowal of opinion in opposi tion to worldly and conventional interests. IJut the peculiar distinction of Professor Jow ett is his eminence as a scholar, especially in the language and literature of ancient Greece. Of this the impress is stamped on the pages of the great work hefore us. With no parade of learning, there is perpetual evidence of profound mastery of the subject ; the ease and grace with which the matter is handled comes fro;n knowledge that is an habitual posses sion of the mind, and not prepared for the occasion ; while the idiomatic force and precision of the style shows an intimate acquaintance with the resources of the English tongue. The pleasant flow of the language makes the reading of the translation a constant enjoy ment. We do not know the theory on which it is founded, or if it is founded on any theory at all ; but it is certain that, apart from the nature of the topics under discussion, sad the local coloring and environment of the scene, there is litde to remind us that it is not da ori ginal production in the vernacular. For aught that is here indicated to the contrary, the bees that settled on Plato's lips might as well have swarmed from an English as an Attic hive. The claim= of Plato to the study and admiration of thoughtful inquirers in this age of experiment and analysis repose on his profound exposition of the ideas which lie beyond the domain of physical research, which no process of anatomy or chemistry can detect, and which are revealed only in the universal consciousness of humanity. No dissection of the brain, no tracing of the subtle threads of nervous action, no demonstration of the exquisite enginery of the heart, or the marvellous courses of the blood, throws the faintest light on the piinciple of justice, the sentiment of love, the obligations of duty, the aspirations of rever ence, or, in one word, on the mystic Trinity of philosophy, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good. Of this sublime evangel, Plato was the consecrated apostle. His message still finds an echo in the soul of the ages. His words of '* sweetness and light," of moral beauty and intellectual grace, so lovely in their transparent candor, so acute, and yet so gentle, so masterly in logic, aud yet so tender In emotion, will never lose (heir significance and power, until sensation has taken the place of ideas in the consciousness of man. From Blackwood's Magazine. This work by Professor Jowett is one of the most splendid and valuable gifts to Litera ture and Philosophy that have for a long tirae been oftered. Its first or most obvious ex cellence is the perfect ease and grace of the translation, which is thoroughly English, and yet entirely exempt from any phrase or feature at variance with the Hellenic character. Ver/ few translations, other than the Bible, read like an original : but this is one of them. It has other and more recondite excellences. It is the work, almost the life labor, we believe, of a profound scholar, a thoughtful moralist and metaphysician, and a most suc cessful instructor of youth ; and It is manifest that the complete success that has attended his execution of the task is Itself the means ol concealing the diligence, industry, and abil ity with which philological and interpretative difficulties must have been solved or over come. It is a great matter, even for the best scholars, to possess such a guide and help in the study of the original ; and to others, desirous of knowing thoroughly and appreciating worthily the wi.se thoughts and literary beauties of one of the greatest writers that ever lived, the boon is inestimable. The Introductions to the several Dialogues seem to be ex cellent, and are appropriately directed to explain the point of view which the great Greek philosopherocciipied, and to point out the fact that his very errors— and we think some of these verj' great — arose out of his keen perception of evils which needed a remedy, but ivhich, we belir;ve, can only be remedied by higher influences than any that were withia teach of a Pagan Philosophy. Ralph Waldo Emerson's Estimate of Plato. Of Plato I hesitate to speak, lest there should be no end. You find in him that which you have already found in Homer, now ripened into thought— the poet conveited into a philasnpher, with loftier strains of musical wisdom than Homer reached ; as if Homer were the yoi.th, and Plato the finished man ; yet with no less security of bold and perfect song, when he cares to use it, and with some harp-strings fetched from a higher heaven. He con tains the future, as he came out of the past. In Plato you explore modern Europe in its causes and seed— all that In thought which the history of Europe embodies or has yet to embody. The well-informed man finds himself anticipated. Plato is up with him too. Nothing has escaped him. Every new crop m ttie fertile harvest of reform, every fresh sug gestion of modern humanity is there. If the student wishes to see both sides, and justice done to the man of the world, pitiless exposure of pedants, and the supremacy of truth aud the religious sentiment, he shall be contented also. Why should not young men be edu cated on this book? It would suffice for the tuition of the race — to test their understand ing and to express their reason. From the British Quarterly Review. Professor Jowett has accomplished a great feat in giving to the world a complete English translation of Plato's "Dialogues ;" for it certainly is no small matter to have placed Plato in the hands ofall, conveyed in language divested, as far as possible, of mere technicalities and scholasticism, and put in a form equally accessible and alluring to average students of ancient or modem philosophy. And as this is a real benefit to non-classical readers, so the work itself is a real translation, in so far as nothing is intentionally omitted. We have the genuine Platonic dialogues in their Integrity, without foot-note or comment, in the place of the excerpts or extracts which the nature of Mr, Grote's great work rendered necessary, and ofthe occasional and somewhat too frequent omissions of passages in Dr. Whewell's equally laudable, but, perhaps, not equally successful, endeavor to present Plato — in part, at least — in a popular form to the English reader. From the very nature of Plato's philoso phy, w'Mch is to a considerable extent tentative and progressive, and which is constantly working out with variations the same leading ide?s, it is essential to the English student to have the work complete. The Republic, of which an excellent version by Messrs. Davies and Vaugha:: has for some time been before the world, is to a considerable extent a rksuini of Plato's earlier views — an epitome of Platonism, in fact ; but a student may know the Republic fairly well, and yet have a vast deal to leam from such dialogues as the Thecete- tus, the Philebus, the Parmenides, the Tim