Correspondence on the Church Question
No. CCXCIV. — To JOHN HAMILTON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, 18th February 1840.
MY DEAR SIR, — I beg that you will tolerate my dissertations. With me the uppermost object is to secure our independence. Should we be able to secure it with a less measure of Non-Intrusion, and should we lose it because of our insisting on a higher measure, we shall never be able to hold up our faces either to the Church or to the country. We shall for the sake of the gnat have been giving up the camel. I am not insensible to the importance, in one way, of identifying the cause of the Church with the cause of the people. I feel quite assured, that without them the Conservatives, as a body, would have been on the side of the authority of the Court of Session. This is an important element. But the other is a most important element too. There is throughout a general longing, all over Scotland, for a settlement. Even our lowest measure would satisfy a large majority, both of the Church and of the middle classes in the country, and would be followed up, I trust, by such a pure and vigorous administration on the part of our ecclesiastical courts, as to enthrone our beloved Church in the hearts of the general population.
You know the aspect under which I view an Act of Parliament when it respects the powers of the Church. Its object is not to convey the powers, but to convey and make sure to us certain temporal benefits in the exercise of those of our powers which it defines. If it do not comprehend all the powers, if at a certain point beneath, its temporalities are made to cease, this is not an interdict on the powers which are beyond — no limit on our powers, but on their own bounty. It is this which makes my conscience appear to be so elastic on the subject of Non-Intrusion; while on the subject of independence, I am not sure but I go further than any of you. Paul said, on justification by faith, of those who tried to mitigate the doctrine and encroach upon it, “to whom I gave place, no, not for an hour.” I say, of the slightest inroad on the spiritual independence of the Church,” to which I give place, no, not by one hair-breadth/5 The time appears fully come, when, by next General Assembly, every refractory licen tiate should be deprived, and every refractory minister deposed.
I should like you to learn Sir Frederick Pollock’s notion of the change which I propose in the style of ecclesiastical legislation. It would clear away an ambiguity which hangs over the connexion between Church and State, securing for us certain benefits, if not to the whole extent of the exercise of these powers, at least up to a certain limit, and leaving us at entire liberty beyond that limit to do all which is competent for a Church of Christ. The full and practical observation of this principle would, by the removal of a flaw, mightily strengthen the cause of religious establishments.
Speaking of Sir Frederick, I value his co-operation chiefly upon one account. You are as well acquainted with styles of Acts of Parliament as he is; but his London and Parliamentary experience gives him the advantage of knowing what the things are, and what the forms of expression which would be either most offensive or most conciliatory to the English members. If a man of tact, he will even know how, in the wording of a matter that would revolt them, if seen in its nakedness, to put it so that it shall escape the dislike and animadversion of that very sensitive and high-minded assembly of men, who, however enlightened within their own province, are downright ignoramuses in regard to Scottish Presbytery — the object of contempt because of its littleness in their eyes, and with some of keen, even of loathing antipathy, because of its imagined affinity to puritanism — at once hated religiously from the natural enmity of the heart to the truth, and hated politically from the historical recollections of the seventeenth century, which saw a monarch of England brought to the scaffold.
It is right to say, that notwithstanding the tone of this letter, and though I have written Lord Aberdeen, I have avoided the mention of a single word which can in the least fetter, but will rather facilitate the objects of the deputation. — I am, my dear Sir, yours truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCXCV. — To JOHN HAMILTON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, 24th March 1841.
MY DEAR SIR, — You have prescribed for me a truly arduous, and I fear unprofitable task, and the reiteration of the veriest truism, and that for the conviction of minds in a state of hopeless prejudice, and obstinately shut against the reception of it. There is nothing in common between our Scottish Evangelicals and our modern destructives, they are under the operation not only of diverse but of antagonistic influences. The Chartists know this well, and they everywhere oppose us. They are acting most intelligently for the prosecution of their ulterior objects, and in this respect forming a perfect contrast to the Conservatives, who are at present their coadjutors, in pulling at the same rope along with them. My belief is, that acting together they will pull down our Establishment; when the further account will have to be settled between themselves, the infatuated aristocracy will find when too late that they have lent a hand to the demolition of the only breakwater which stood betwixt the anarchists and their own order.
These are plain truths, nevertheless I utter them, and that for the purpose of your making them as widely known among your Conservative friends as possible, believing as I do that nothing but plain truths at this time of day will save us.
They arc now lending themselves to a policy which must alienate from their cause the flower of our Scottish clergy, and in which if they succeed they will deprive of all its moral weight that Church whose ministrations were never more efficient and prosperous than at this moment, and which ministrations have ever been on the side of order, and contentment, and loyalty, and the other peaceable fruits of righteousness.
But, perhaps, it will avail you more, if, instead of spending your strength on such a demonstration, you make it palpable to their understandings that zealous though we are for the principle of a religious Establishment, there are many hundreds of our clergy, and these the best and most influential among them, who are in perfect readiness for a dissolution of the connexion between Church and State, rather than have an Establishment on the terms which the Court of Session would now prescribe to us.
If this letter be short it is because I hold the warfare of argument to be now over, and that it is no longer a contest of opposite reasonings, but of opposite wills, and opposite determinations. My confidence is no longer in man, but in the righteousness of our cause, and in that, when forsaken by all our earthly friends there is a God above, who, after the purposes of His wise and holy discipline have been fulfilled, will again visit in mercy the Church of our fathers. “We are perplexed, but not in despair,” — I am, yours very truly, No. CCXCVI. — To SIR GEORGE SINCLAIR.
Burntisland, 18th August 1841.
DEAR SIR GEORGE, — I am very unwilling to believe that we might not obtain the wished-for consummation, by the passing of the Duke of Argyle’s Bill, without incurring the delay necessarily implied in the appointment of a Commission of Inquiry.
At all events, I think the only footing on which the Church can come to an agreement with the State in regard to your proposed suspension of all legal actions by both parties, is, to express her willingness that, whatever the civil consequences might be which follow in the train of her decisions on the conduct of any of her office-bearers, and might in the ordinary course of law prejudicially affect their interests — that these civil consequences may, by an extraordinary Act of the Legislature, be remitted in favour of those who should otherwise have suffered from them. The Church, for example, could bear to have their temporalities made over for life to the Strathbogie ministers, and the temporalities of the respective parishes to which they had been presented to the nominees for Auchterarder and Lethendy; but could not, I imagine, without a surrender of the very principle for which she is contending, consent either to recall the sentences already passed on the former delinquents, or to suspend the actions now pending before her own courts against the latter. The difference between the Church and the State is, that the Church cannot deviate from the path of her conceived duty in matters ecclesiastical; whereas the State may, on grounds of political expediency, suspend or alter her methods of procedure in the disposal, as seemeth to her good, of things secular. The Church goes all the length she can go when she acquiesces in this unlooked-for stretch and exercise of power.
But for the above consideration I should hail the appointment of a Commission, confident as I am that the fullest inquiry would serve the best for the vindication of the majority of our Church, and that the result would be to soften away many a prejudice, and remove many a misconception, which now obtains on the subject both of their measures and of the spirit and character of the leading members in that body — nay, would demonstrate, not only the perfect innocence, but the Christian, or, which is tantamount to this, the truly Conservative patriotism of all their doings.
Neither do I object to any of the names you mention, and hail with particular satisfaction those of the Duke of Argyle, the Marquesses of Bute and Breadalbane, Sir William Rae — to which your own ought to be added. But my strong preference is, for such an immediate and right settlement as would supersede the necessity of such a Commission; and let me entreat you to consider this as the first and not yet matured view which I have taken of your suggestion. — I ever am, my dear Sir George, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCXCVIL — To SIR GEORGE SINCLAIR.
JBurntisland, 30th September 1841.
MY DEAR SIR GEORGE, — You seem not to be aware that I am not a member of the Committee on the Church Question — driven from it, in fact, by the mortifying experience which I had had of the little reliance that was to be placed on the professions of public and Parliamentary men.
I could not therefore give a direct response to your proposition without the usurpation of a power which in no shape or degree belongs to me. May I beg, therefore, that you will present it to some other member of the Committee; and to none could you do it with greater propriety than to Dr. Gordon, our present Moderator; and I shall most cordially acquiesce in the arrangement which you propose, should it seem good to him and to his colleagues.
I am not able to comprehend what is meant by a last opportunity which we must seize upon now, or the cause of the Church might be irrecoverably gone, unless it be that unless the wishes of Lord Aberdeen in London, and his adviser in
Edinburgh, shall be consulted by making his Bill the ground work of an arrangement, the best and greatest of our national institutes must be sacrified to the vanity or doggedness of the two men. The very thought of this makes my blood boil with indignation. Sir Robert calls out for time and leisure (and most rightly) to mature his civil and economical measures. But there must be an instant soldering, it would appear, of the aifairs of the Church; and so as to lay the irritated humours of a mortified peer and an impracticable lawyer. The thing is beyond endurance.
But let me explain myself in reference to a former letter. Should we get no more than the liberum arbitrium, it will be the clear duty of the Church to work it in the best way pos sible; and most happy should I be, if it so turned out, that because of its efficacy in securing a succession of evangelical and efficient clergymen, it vsuperseded all further demand for any ulterior changes or reformations. — Ever believe me, my dear Sir George, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
P.S. — On reading over this letter I find I have been making myself hot by the imagination of a possibility. You, however, must know better, and can perhaps say whether the possibility be a truth ? — T. C.
o No. CCXCVIIL — To SIR GEORGE SINCLAIR.
Burntisland, BOth September 1841.
MY DEAR SIR GEORGE, — Since writing you this morning, I have seen the report of Sir William Rae’s speech at Rothesay; and I must say that I look far more hopefully to a measure where with he has to do than to aught which may be grafted on Lord Aberdeen’s Bill, or concocted between his Lordship and the Dean of Faculty. I do think that, after this announcement, the most graceful and becoming thing for both the Dean and the Earl, would be to retire from the concern. The Dean did us great mischief by conjuring up the Strathbogie case, which I have no doubt was gotten up mainly under his auspices and by his encouragement, and which I fear will prove far the most serious obstacle in the way of an adjustment. — I ever am, my dear Sir George, yours most respectfully, No. CCXCIX.- — To SIR GEORGE SINCLAIR.
Edinburgh, 6th October 1841.
MY DEAR SIR GEORGE, — I return you many thanks for your very kind letter, all the more grateful to my feelings that I had the apprehension of having been somewhat too stout and controversial in my former communications.
I have heard through another channel of the good you are doing. Be assured that if we had but the reasonable prospect of a fair and well principled adjustment, all my efforts should be on the side of peace and charity. I never was a friend to agitation for its own sake; and would infinitely rather that the circumstances of the Church allowed its ministers to remain quietly at their respective homes, and prosecute the labours of their high vocation in their own parishes.
Since writing the last page, I have seen some friends of the Church, both lay and clerical. Their feeling seems to be, that it will be impossible, after the attempt of the opposite party to disestablish us, to stop the progress of Defensive Associations but by a definite measure, with the character and certainty of which the bulk of the Church and country might be satisfied. — I have the honour to be, yours, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.*
* For the remaining letters of this series, see “Selections from the Correspondence,” &c., edited by Sir George Sinclair, Bart.
No. CCC. — To THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.
Edinburgh, 27th October 1841.
MY LORD, — There should, I think, be such a freedom of the Church from civil coercion, that she should be at liberty to apply her own tests on every appointment by the Patron for the determination of the question — Is it for the Christian good of the people that this presentee should be inducted in a given parish as their minister? This we have had since the Revolution till the recent usurpations by our Court of Session. It is true that the congeniality of a man’s preaching with the popular conscience has been regarded by the suffering party in Scotland as the element of fitness; and this because of the adaptation between the subject-matter of Christianity and the human conscience. I could say much in defence of this peculiarity of ours, which, till now, has never been invaded from without, though overborne for a century by Moderatism within. But I will not detain your Lordship further than by saying, that I should hold it an immense improvement on the ecclesiastical system in England, as well as on ours, not that you should adopt all our views on the element of the popular will, but that you should have the benefit of the principle which, if conceded to us, would set our question at rest, — “that the power of the Patron and of the Civil Courts should cease from the moment that the presentee is handed over to the Church Courts,” This would leave the ecclesiastical power clear for the determination of its own proper questions, that is, for sitting in judgment on all the likelihoods of usefulness on the part of such a presentee to such a parish. The majority of our Church are at this moment willing to endure the deprivation of all their temporalities rather than have the authority of the Court of Session, as exercised within these four last years, forced upon us by the legislature. It will in fact prove the suspension, if not the breaking up, of a religious Establishment in this country. — I am, my Lord, yours, &c. THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCI. — To THE BISHOP OF LLANDAFF.
18th January 1842.
MY LORD, — I am glad to observe from your Lordship’s letter, that we are like to be protected from the Civil Courts; but we must be protected from them when giving effect to our own views on the subject of Non-intrusion. We do not ask the Church of England to adopt that principle; but we ask her to act upon it as our principle, just as a self-regulating body should not be disturbed in the execution of its own by-laws, these not being inconsistent with the order of civil society. Oui contest is not for the specific object of Non-intrusion, but for the greater and comprehensive object of independence in spiritual things, so well advocated by the Archbishop of Dublin. — I am, yours, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCII. — To THE HONOURABLE AND REV. DR. WELLESLEY.
Edinburgh, December 1841.
MY DEAR SIR, — I beg to send you the enclosed statement, with such marks and observations of my own as occurred in reading it. The only thing better than the Duke of Argyle’s Bill, which I shall mention at present, were the following up of a suggestion made by the Duke of Wellington, that we should frame a measure of our own and send it up for the sanction of Parliament. We may be said to have as good as done this when we approved, by a great majority, of the Duke of Argyle’s Bill, though I have no doubt that we could frame another motion for giving effect to our principle, if this were preferred.
Would the British Government think it justifiable to propose that the priesthood of Hindostan shall either renounce their idolatrous religion or be stripped of their endowments, both the religion and the endowments having been long in subsistence at the time that their country was acquired by us? And the parallel question to this is, Would it be justifiable to force from the Church of Scotland the surrender either of presbytery or any one of what the Church holds to be its essential principles, on the pain of losing her endowments if she refuse, seeing that both presbytery and its principle of non-intrusion were in full operation along with the endowments at a time when this country was annexed to England? In other words, are Scotchmen to be treated worse than Hindoos? I may send another memorial on the subject; but this, as being the latest, is the worthiest of your attention.
P.S. — It is of prime importance to remark, that the passing of the Duke of Argyle’s Bill would not alienate a single clergyman from our Church; the forcing of another Bill might occasion such a disruption as would lead to our overthrow. — T. C.
c [The distinguished talent and Christian patriotism displayed by the youthful Marquess of Lome, in a publication entitled a “Letter to the Peers,” not only awakened Dr. Chalmers’s liveliest admiration, but filled him with the highest anticipations of the powerful influence which, in his after life, might be exerted by one so gifted and so good, not only upon his own order, but upon society at large. On receiving this publication Dr. Chalmers addressed the following letter to the Marquess.]
No. CCCIIL — To LORD LOENE.
Edinburgh, 28th January 1842.
MY DEAR LORD LORNE, — I have read your work with the most profound interest and satisfaction, insomuch that I fear to incur the semblance of insincerity by telling you all I think of its merits. Let me therefore copy a sentence which I have just written to Lord Galloway, after having entreated him to read your Letter: — “It is a truly admirable and far the best pleading in favour of the Church, on the grounds of constitutional law, that has yet appeared. Heaven grant that it may open the eyes of our rulers, and take them out of that false position which they now occupy — having the names of Conservatives, yet undermining the best and most truly Conservative of all our national institutes,” As an address to statesmen, we have had nothing half so good, or that promises to be half so influential during the whole controversy; and I am sure it will cheer and encourage the hearts of very many of our friends.
In writing to yourself, instead of expatiating on the general merits of your composition, let me enter more into particulars. I like what may be termed the construction of the argument, and think you have happily both relieved and strengthened no little a part of it by your reference to history — more especially when you infer the character of our principles from the nature of the opposition to them, as embodied in the “Black Acts.” Again, the deference paid to our Constitutional liberties by the Law of Patronage, in that it enacted but the forfeiture of the emoluments as the penalty of its own violation, is exceedingly well-reasoned and brought out; and I think it most fortunate that you brought this to bear on that mischievous article in “Blackwood” — the evil influences of which your Lordship’s counter observations are so well fitted to neutralize. I furthermore rejoice in the pointed notices which you have taken of the Moderates, and think you particularly felicitous in instan cing the check of refusing the supplies in the hand of Parliament as demonstrative of the real nature of the British Constitution, however seldom, nay, even though it should never be put into operation.
I do hope that your clear and masterly distinction between the legal and the constitutional, or between the leges and the leges legum, will tell on the public understanding, and that your exposure of the Strathbogie ministers will enable men to see in its just light the whole extent of their delinquency; and I look confidently forward to a reaction of sentiment against the Court of Session from the perusal of your pamphlet.
But far the most brilliant and effective part of your pamphlet is that in which you deal so successfully with Sir Robert Peel’s Letter. This will probably interest your readers the most of all you have written; and there is a truly additional test given to your work by your notices of Lords Aberdeen, Brougham, and Melbourne.
I feel that I have given you a most inadequate representation of all I think and feel on the subject of your work. To supplement this in some degree I shall send you your own pamphlet as marked by me in the course of my perusal of it — a habit of mine in reading. I remember being much interested by falling in with a pamphlet of my own, marked in the same way, and from which I learned what the passages were which had been met by a responding intelligence and good liking on the part of him who read it. I have only resolved now on thus sending the pamphlet to you, so that the marks were just the spontaneous indications of the moment, and I will not add another; although on looking over it, I find that the part I liked most is marked the least — that is, your argument on Sir Robert Peel, which I must have refrained from marking till I got to its closing passages.
Let me add, that there is a certain command of statement and reasoning which must add greatly to the impressiveness of your work. I was afraid, from its being so closely argumentative, that it might not be read with so much interest and attention by the general run of readers. I am happy to find, however, that Mrs. Chalmers pronounces on it as most lucid and intelligible; and she is particularly struck with your exposure of the infirmities of Sir Robert Peel’s Letter. Another lady in our neighbourhood, to whom I sent my own copy from the shop yesterday, has returned it with a line, saying, that she never till now saw clearly into the merits of our case.
You have done us a great service. Many, very many, of the - Church’s best friends will bless God and rejoice because of it. I shall be delighted to hear of your Lordship’s improved health, and will ever have the greatest pleasure in attending to your Lordship. — I have the honour to be, my dearest Marquess, yours most gratefully and most affectionately, [” I cannot,” said his Lordship, in writing to Dr. Chalmers at this period, o “refrain from expressing my deep regret at the nature of the proceedings of the Presbytery of Edinburgh. I regret that the Presbytery has urged upon the General Assembly to engage in an Anti-patronage war, because it gives ground for the charge that the Church mounts in her demands to meet and to secure popular applause. I regret it, because this moving a ’ peg higher,’ as Dr. Candlish has expressed it, can be justified on no principle that I am aware of, and lowers, in my opinion, the character of her position. I do not, indeed, view Patronage as some have done, as if it were a great leading institution, and as if it were revolutionary to speak against it; but I again repeat, that I see no cause or just ground for the Church demanding what she did not demand before. I see no ‘course of events’ which calls for such a change; but I do see, and am thoroughly convinced of the impolicy and inutility of such a change, and I feel sure that those who have felt themselves ‘shut up’ to enter an Anti-patronage contest, have contributed much to ’ shut up ’ the Church from any remaining chance of settlement. I do not know how the Duke can preface his Bill in the House as a ’ settlement of the question,’ with any confidence or truth, if the
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Church adopts such a course; nor do I know any means by which he could persuade the Peers that it is their duty to advance in their concessions in proportion as the Church rises in her demands.” The able and earnest remonstrance from which these sentences have been quoted elicited the
following lengthened reply.]
No. CCCIV. — To LORD LORNE.
Edinburgh, 19th February 1842.
MY DEAR LORD LORNE, — Your Lordship cannot be more annoyed than I have often been by the evils that we have suffered from the complication of our question; and by what I have felt to be the tactlessness of many of our friends, who have obtruded their Non-Intrusion on the attention of Englishmen, when they should have kept by the cause of spiritual independence, or who, in the ordering of this cause before them, have argued independently of the special exercise or application that had been made of the Church’s inherent power, when their great strength would have lain in defending the power itself. It is not to be told how much the real merits of our question have been obscured and mystified by this unfortunate complication; and one great ingredient of force and clearness in your Lordship’s work is the close adherence” of it to that one principle, on which alone we can expect to engage the sympathies of the English Church, and, I may add, the sympathies of all the churches in Christendom. There is all the difference between the two parts of our controversy that there is between a genus and a species. Your Lordship has done well in confining your view to the genus — the generic or comprehensive principle, which, if once secured, would leave the possession of the species to ourselves.
But two things can be alleged in explanation of this; and the latter of the two goes far to justify, insomuch as it has precipitated a far more ostensible reference to the principles of Non-intrusion than might otherwise have been expedient.
In the first place, the only exception which Lord Aberdeen and others would lay upon our free discretion is, on the power of giving effect to the dissent of the people, however honest and religious we may judge that dissent to be, unless they are able to substantiate it by such reasons as we can approve of. Now, without entering at present on the lightness of our giving effect to a dissent in these circumstances, (which I think admits of most ample vindication,) let me but advert to the high estimation in which it was held by the Church — insomuch that they elevated it from the rank of a mere judicial principle on which they might act or not according to circumstances, to the rank of a law on which they must act invariably — thus marking a distinguished preference for the object or principle of that law. But it has been disallowed by the Court of Session; and what we want, therefore, is, that the Legislature shall append civil effect to it, through some such Bill as the Duke of Argyle’s. Now, what is the return made to this application by Lord Aberdeen’s Bill? It is something a great deal worse than a refusal, simply to confirm our law; for this were merely to consign the principle thereof back to its own level, and would leave us to act on it as heretofore as we saw cause. But more than this, he would degrade it immeasurably beneath the place it had before the Veto Law was passed — when we were at least free to act upon it judicially, though not bound to act upon it statutorily. He would take away this freedom, and on the tenderest of all points — that is, the very thing which we so much valued as to make it the object of a universal enactment, he would make the object of a universal prohibition; so that what formerly we may have done at any time, we must never, according to his Bill, do now. By his Bill, then, there are two principles struck at and done violence to: first, by an abridgment of our freedom at all — the principle of our spiritual independence; second, by an abridgment of it on this particular question — the ancient constitutional principle of Non-intrusion. It is like the infliction of a double violence; and we are not to wonder at the double resentment or resistance to which it has given rise — or that what they have singled out as the object on which to violate our liberty, should have called forth our special regards or special vindication, as well as the general cause of liberty itself.
But, secondly, and still more urgently. When we did urge our spiritual independence apart from Non-intrusion, what use was made of this by our opponents? They gave forth that we had lost sight of the people, and were intent only on our own power. I can imagine nothing more exquisitely unjust and injurious, than the treatment of the Church in this respect, by the adversaries who were opposed to her. The only part of our spiritual independence that was in jeopardy was the power of giving effect to the dissent of the people; and it is in fact for their cause that the Church has incurred all the plagues and the perils of this controversy. And, on the other hand, the only exception which our antagonists were for laying on our spiritual independence, was the liberty of giving effect to the people’s dissent; so that really, after all, their opposition, though ostensibly against us, was virtually and in effect against the people through us. Yet would these opponents of ours brand us with seeking our own aggrandizement, and not caring for the people; and, Conservatives though most of them were, gladly accepted the aid both of Radicals and Voluntaries, in urging home a popular invective and outcry against the pretensions of a domineering priesthood. This was beyond all endurance, and the temptation, or rather the necessity, was quite irresistible, that we should place the principle of Non-intrusion more on the foreground than we had done, that the real object of the Church might be understood, and so her character vindicated against the unworthy artifices of her multiform and motley opponents. I speak on my own historical recollections of what actually happened. At the outset of the Non-intrusion Committee’s negotiations with Lord Aberdeen, and when I myself was Convener of it, I held converse as well as correspondence with his Lordship, and was quite willing at that time to exchange the Veto Law for the liberum arbitrium. It was reported ihat he in consequence wrote to the Dean of Faculty, now Lord Justice-Clerk, that he had prevailed on us to give up the Veto Law; and the representation which our enemies grafted on this report, and industriously circulated to our prejudice, was, that we had surrendered the people, and were now standing out on the question of our own power only. This was very hard to bear, when, in point of fact, what we have been standing out for all along, is for the power of protecting the people; and, to save our selves from the vile mystification practised against us by these our determined adversaries, we were obliged, whether we would or not, to speak, not in the general of spiritual independence only, but of the special and indeed the only contest for which that independence is at present staked — a contest for the security of Christian congregations against the intrusion of unacceptable ministers.
And now, my Lord, let me refer to an expression in your letter, when you say that the Church, by quitting the argument of her spiritual independence as the alone ground of her vindication, has given up the only position in which she was unassailable. She, in the first instance, has not given up this position, though compelled also to make use of other arguments besides. But what I particularly wish is to direct your Lordship’s attention to the distinction between a cause being unassailable in respect of argument, and the same cause being unassailable in respect of practical safety. It is truly a possible thing to make out a resistless demonstration in favour of our Church; and yet, if we do nothing more but keep by the terms of that demonstration, and make triumphant repetition of it, we may in fact be neglecting the only means by which to save her from destruction. I have already shewn what practically the effect is, when we make exclusive allegation of our own spiritual power. Our adversaries, with a singular disregard of all principle and truth, have availed themselves of this for the purpose of detaching and alienating the people from our cause. It was a most natural feeling on the part of our friends, that if, with the mere view of simplifying, we were to concentrate our argument on a single point, and this to make us controversially stronger, or stronger on the abstract than we otherwise might be, we should thereby become weaker in the concrete, and fall before a weight of adversaries regardless of all argument, and resolved at every hazard, and though with the sacrifice of every principle, to overbear and trample on the Church of Scotland. Should it come to this — should we be crushed by the hand of power, and our virulent and determined enemies get the better of us on the field of living contest, it will be a poor consolation that we had the better of them on the field of argument. We are not, therefore, to keep by the topic of our spiritual independence alone, when our enemies take such dishonest advantage of this. We are, in truth, fighting not only our own battles, but the battles of the people; and why should not the people be made aware of it? Are we to forfeit the benefit of an alliance with those for whose best and highest interests we are putting to hazard all our possessions and interests in this world; and this in order that we might become an easy prey to those heartless oppressors, who first would asperse and blacken, and then would destroy us?
V^You have estimated well the evil of complicating an argument unnecessarily. But in some cases it may be a necessary
LORD LOliNE. S91
evil. Certain it is that it lias cast an obscuration over the real strength and merits of our cause, in the eyes even of what may be called the higher reason of the country; and this is precisely the obscuration which your Lordship’s work is so well fitted to dissipate. But even if educated minds are puzzled by the complexities of a question, how much more must we expect this in the minds of the general population? Now, what has the Church been doing for the sake of making out a necessary reformation, with the greatest ease and least possible disturbance? for, essentially conservative as she is, she would like to work out all her improvements in the safest and most pacific way. She for ten years has been labouring to effect a composition between the rights of patronage and the rights of popular conscience, so as to amalgamate these two distinct elements; and she succeeded by means of her Veto Law, which, if let alone, might have secured both the peace and efficiency of our Church for an indefinite period. But she has been precipitated into a warfare upon this question; and with singular moderation has her majority kept by a midway position, between an absolute and unlimited patronage on the one hand, and popular election on the other. She has thus subjected herself to the heavy disadvantage of maintaining a complex, when she might have adopted a simple proposition, and so commanded the cordial, unmixed, enthusiastic support of the great bulk and body of the religious public in Scotland. “When I say that in their minds there is not room or comprehension for more than one idea, I say nothing especially disparaging to them; for this is precisely what your Lordship, as well as myself, must have experienced of those of the Conservative and cultivated orders who are now arrayed in hostility against the Church. For the sake of propitiating their understandings, you would cast off Non-intrusion from the controversy, and keep by spiritual independence. Now, for this very reason, we, to propitiate the full understandings of the coun try at large, should cast off Non-intrusion too, and keep by the one simple and intelligible principle of the abolition of patronage. There is no reason why, if Government and the Conservatives will not grant us the half measure which would have satisfied us, we should not lay hold of all the additional strength that we shall gain by seeking the whole measure — and more especially as the whole measure would satisfy us better. I have no affection whatever for Patronage in itself, nor do I see a single positive argument or principle that would incline me to the adoption of it. But as it exists, I for one, on the principle of making the most of things as they are, should have rejoiced in any practical expedient, by which to harmonize the right government of the Church with a state of matters already in being. But these foolish Conservatives won’t let us; and with all my native preferences for the position of the extreme gauche upon this question, as no other alternative is left me, I most congenially and approvingly will go along with them. This is precisely the movement of our Church at this moment; and if she is charged because of it, with the waywardness of moving from one extreme to another, it is truly owing to no waywardness of hers, but to the impracticable obstinacy of the extreme droit, who, whether we look to ecclesiastical or to secular politics, will be found the real, though not the proximate causes, of all the violent and precipitate changes which take place in society.
In the present instance, I can clearly see a most justifiable reason (apart from the policy of it) for passing at once to the lower extreme, rather than attempting to take up with some of the intermediate positions. My general inclination is for a gradual and pacific march of improvement. Leibnitz’s law of continuity in physics, I should like to see exemplified in politics also. In spite of all the ridicule that has been cast on bit and bit reforms, it is a style of reform which I greatly prefer to such sudden and large transitions by movements per saltum, as was effected for instance through the late Reform Bill. On this principle, I should have been satisfied at first with a mere liberum arbitrium — the very least and gentlest modification that could have been attempted on Patronage. But in very proportion to the moderation of my demand, now that it has been resisted, is my conviction of the intractable nature of the element I have had to deal with. Had I treated with Patronage from some of the more distant positions and been withstood, the hope might still have remained within me, that, by taking a nearer position, I might gain from it some mitigation of its rigours. But I have been treating with it all along from the nearest position which is at all possible. Of all men I have made the least and the gentlest demands upon it, and have therefore had the most emphatic evidence of its unyielding and impregnable quality. I of all men, then, am the most logically and legitimately entitled to pass at once to the conclusion, that nothing will serve but the utter extinction of this unruly element. Patronage and the popular will may not necessarily and in their own nature be immiscible, but enough for a practical conclusion that the men in power and in possession will not allow of their combination, and that, therefore, they are immiscible in deed and in actual performance. If the thing will not be regulated, it ought to be destroyed.
It grieves me to say that a process is now in operation which, if continued, will at length open the eyes of all virtuous and sound-hearted men, and convince them that Patronage is a thing which it is impossible to keep terms with. I allude to the profligate system now adopted of treating and trafficking with our licentiates ere they shall obtain a presentation. This tampering with the principles of the future ministers of religion bodes fearfully both for the Church and the country by another generation. It is dropping poison into the fountains of the national morality; and if not arrested, will so speed the progress of corruption, that it must soon be visited by its own natural penalties, as well as call forth the judgments of offended Heaven on a degenerate land.
But it may well ‘be asked, do we put ourselves into a likelier position for success by taking up the ground of Anti-patronage? Not certainly if we look singly to the existing dispositions of our legislators; nor am I at all sanguine that these will be much influenced or operated on through the medium of the Scottish population. On that population — I mean the best and most religious part of them — we are gaining every day; and if Conservatives, on the one hand, have not scrupled to avail themselves of Radicals and political dissenters in opposition to the Church, we, on the other, might most legitimately rejoice in the accessions made to our strength from the truly Christian and conscientious dissenters who will swell our ranks on the event of that disruption to which many of us are now looking forward, and for which I am happy to say that a most hopeful preparation is now going on. It is our duty to do all we can for the averting of such a catastrophe, but it is also our duty to be in readiness for the worst; and though I have a great dislike to all agitation when there is no practical call for it, yet, in present circumstances, I must confess that I do look with the most benignant complacency on the Defence Associations which are multiplying so fast in various parts of our country. They will form a ready-made apparatus for the support of a Church in full possession of that spiritual independence which had not been permitted to us within the pale of the national endowments. I trust it may be so well supported and extended as that we shall be enabled, in perfect freedom from the interdicts and tracasseries both of courts and of heritors, to impart without let or hindrance the blessings of Christian instruction to those many thousands who hitherto have been utter strangers to the habits and decencies of a Christian land. Heaven grant that, in this spirit of true charity and Christian patriotism, our ministers might be enabled, in return for their sufferings and their cares, to render this best of services to the commonwealth; and, by saving the country from that sorest of all distempers, a profligate and irreligious common people, to save our now blind and infatuated aristocracy from themselves.
I have written with all the heaviness of an invalid, and am now rusticating in the country for the benefit of my health. But I could not leave your able and interesting letters any longer unreplied to. I shall rejoice at all times to hear from you, and promise never to inflict so long an epistle upon you in future. It would suit my strength and my engagements better to write not at length on the general subject, but shortly, and on single points of it at a time. Let me earnestly recommend as the object of your attention what may be called the human nature of our question, now that you have acquitted yourself in a style so masterly on the law of the question. I should rejoice if you were to make a study of the workings of this one system and that other throughout the country at large, and amongst the people who live in it. I feel assured it would convince you not of the innocence only, but the positive good of having our Church more popularized. It would dissipate the association so extensively prevalent between a popular system in the Church and democracy in the State, and land you in a conclusion the very reverse of that which is the all but universal faith of those of your own order.
No. CCCV. — To LORD LORNE.
Edinburgh, 15th March 1842.
Mr DEAR LORD LORNE, — I received your last letter some days ago. It, in conjunction with your Lordship’s truly admirable preface to the second edition of your work, convinces me that substantially we are far more at one than appears to be upon the surface. The most material difference respects the time in which the Church should have simplified the object of her endeavours, and openly announced what many of us have all along felt. Her optimum is the abolition of Patronage. It was the hopelessness of this attainment which restrained her from framing an expression sooner; and it is now her hopelessness of any effectual security against the evils of Patronage which convinces her that the time has now come for attempting the entire removal of it. Had your Lordship been aware of the whole of our correspondence with men in power, and of the treatment we have received at their hands, I feel confident that you would not think we had become hopeless too soon. I shall only instance the last of a long series of disappointments, in that Sir James Graham held out the prospect of an amicable settlement, provided that we did not agitate the country; and professes now, that had he understood our object of gaining the liberum arbitrium, he never would have entered into negotiation with us at all. Our confidence in public men is now completely shaken; and it is too much in them to expect that we shall lend ourselves any further to the objects of their policy by neglecting to avail ourselves any longer of the only human help which remains to us — the friendship of the people — until hostile statesmen shall have finished their last work upon us, and we thrown off by the one party shall have made new provision in the support of the other party, for a refuge to fall back upon.
Meanwhile, can anything be fairer than the warning now given to the men in power? They know that the Duke’s Bill would bring us all into a state of quiescence; and they also know that the passing of their own favourite measure would be gall and wormwood to the great majority of the Church. They arc able to avert the consequence of this if they choose; and if they do not, whether that consequence shall be the abolition of the Patronage or the ruin of the Establishment, this is a result which must be laid in either case, not at our door, but at that of our opponents.
There is one thing, however, which I believe they do not know, and which, perhaps, it were well they did, for it is a matter on which they seem to be absolutely incredulous, — and that is the perfect determination on the part, I believe, of hundreds of our clergy rather to be driven from their places than to surrender the spiritual independence of the Church. I, this morning, received a printed sketch of what will soon be circulated among the Non-intrasionist clergy, and which will shew what the prospects are which they now cherish, and what the provision is which they are now planning to meet the possibilities that are before them. I cannot think it wrong to send my copy to your Lordship; and indeed I think it but fair and desirous that even our worst enemies should be apprized of what is really going forward, &c. THOMAS CHALMERS.
P.S. — I have this day seen a Highland minister who assures me that the whole of his synod (Glenelg) are in readiness to quit the Establishment rather than submit to a civil supremacy over the Church. — T. C.
No. CCCVI. — To WILLIAM LAMONT, JUN., ESQ., GLASGOW.
Edinburgh, Sth April 1842.
DEAR SIR, — I regret that I cannot attend a meeting, the spirit and the objects of which I so thoroughly approve.
It is cheering to observe the progress of our great cause; and that while, on the one hand, the ministers of our Church, in spite of every effort to shake or to seduce them, remain an unshrinking and undiminished majority in defence of her violated liberties, on the other hand, the public are becoming more alive every da”y to a sense of her wrongs. So that, between a resolved clergy and an attached and confiding people, let us hope, with the blessing of God, that the best and greatest of our National Institutes will yet stand its ground against all the attempts which have been made, and are still making, whether to vitiate or to destroy it.
I feel that I cannot estimate too highly the labours of your important Association; and do hope, that under your influence, and within the sphere of your operations, many others will arise in your own likeness, and be instruments in the hand of Providence for the diffusion of sound information and right views of our question, both in the West and throughout the whole of Scotland.
On the subject of patronage, I had long been in the Jiabit of regarding it as practicable to harmonize her initiative voice in the appointment of a minister with the sacred prerogatives of conscience, and the deference I have ever held due to the collective voice of every honest and religious, however humble a congregation. The experience of so many fruitless and fatiguing negotiations have now wearied me out, and forced both myself and many others to desist from this as a vain and hopeless enterprise. The reported attempts of patrons to tamper with the principles of our young licentiates on their entrance into the ministry, and so instil a deadly poison into the very fountain-heads of the nation’s morality, have now completed my antipathy to the whole system, and led me to the conviction, that it were best both for the Church and the country of Scotland if it were conclusively put an end to. — I have the honour to be, dear Sir, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS
No. CCCVIL — To ALEX. CAMPBELL, ESQ., M.P.
Dunkdd, 13d April 1842.
MY DEAR SIR, — I should have replied sooner to your kind note of more than a week ago. Be assured that the delay does not proceed from any indifference to your proposed movement, in which I earnestly pray that God may speed and prosper you; and I further hope that you will put the right inter pretation on my non-appearance in London at this time; I stand much in need of repose, and I have come here to recruit between the labours of my class and the meeting of the General Assembly.
You are aware that Lord Lome dislikes the Anti-patronage movement that is now afloat, and seemed to regret it as a disturbing force in the way of his father’s Bill. Now, were I a legislator instead of an ecclesiastic, and disliked the method of popular election, I should be disposed to reason thus: — The passing of such a Bill, it is needless to disguise, would slacken, if not arrest, the Anti-patronage movement, even as the Veto Law did; and this is a consideration which should not only stimulate the movement of such a measure, but, more encouraging still, will, in all likelihood, enlist others to support him, on purpose to avert what they think a great evil. In my eyes, so far from being an evil, I look forward to it as our final and most secure landing-place; but, whether you will agree with me in this or not, you will at once perceive that this Anti-patronage movement, fairly viewed, should be hailed as an auxiliary, and looked upon not as a conflicting but as a conspiring force upon your side, and all this without prejudice to
the opinion of, an opinion which I myself expressed
in my correspondence with Lord Aberdeen, that the optimum of this matter were a Church whose ministers were paid by the State and chosen by the people.
I am most thankful, and I am sure that in this I am sympathized with by thousands, for the true Christian patriotism of your efforts on the side of the Church’s independence, and enlargement out of her present difficulties. — Ever believe me, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCVIIL — To JOHN C. COLQUHOUN, ESQ.
1842.
MY DEAR SIR, — I yesterday saw your letter to Mr. Hamilton. You wish the Church to declare publicly, that it would be satisfied with the liberum arbitrium. Should it not be enough for legislators to know that this is the lowest measure under which the great proportion of our clergy, I hope the majority, could conscientiously minister in the Church as an Establishment?. We cannot say more, and for two reasons; first, the use made of such a declaration by our unprincipled enemies, would be to hold forth the Church to the country as having abandoned the people, satisfied with power to itself; but secondly, and chiefly, it is a declaration which the Church could not honestly make. For my own part, I should greatly prefer such a bill as that set forth by Mr. Hamilton, and still more would I prefer the total abolition of Patronage; yet, for the sake of the immense benefit to the people, which is conferred by an Establishment that is at all tolerable, I would keep by it with the liberum arbitrium alone, determined, at the same time, that as far as possible this said liberum arbitrium should be so exercised in every one instance, as that no minister should in any case be intruded on a parish contrary to the will of the congregation.
For what purpose should more be required of us than this? Is it that the odium of having sacrificed the people should be shuffled off by Members of Parliament and laid upon the Church? Let each party bear their own burden; and I for one am very glad that an alternative between the liberum arlitrium and the popular dissent, should be left with the legislature. Our unequivocal preference is for the latter. If their preference is for the former, let this be brought above boards, that the public may estimate at its real value the profession, not of Liberals only, but of all denominations. I rejoice to think that our majorities promise to be unbroken, and that the modern fines and rebukes of the Court of Session will tell about as little on our noble-hearted Church, as did the boots and halters and thumbscrews of their worthy predecessors be fore them. — I am, yours, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. GCCIX. — To ALEXANDER GORDON, ESQ., LONDON.
Edhiburgli, 3d January 1843.
MY DEAR SIR, — It is my earnest and anxious desire that you may not be annoyed after so much trouble, if I frankly state to you the difficulties which I feel in complying with the requisition by which I have been so much honoured, and that, too, at the hands of so many high and estimable men.
My greatest objection lies in this, that it is more of a Scotch than of an English or London requisition. I would not like to lecture in London because I was set to it by people here, but because I was drawn to it by people there; what would be influential with me were a requisition sufficiently numerous, and the more so the better, by men of course possessing weight in society, but still by men desirous of such lectures for them selves, and that because they really want to become informed on the subject of them. It is with this view that I should defer more to a requisition signed by literary and ecclesiastical than by merely official men. To make plain my meaning, I would lay greater stress on any one of such names as those of James Hamilton or Isaac Taylor, or Joseph Bunting or Christopher Benson, or Hallam or Thomas Carlyle, &c. &c., than for any half-dozen Members of Parliament, merely as such. I do not say this to the disparagement of those few who have subscribed your requisition; for, apart from their situation, I can recognise some of great mental power and great Christian worth amongst them. But I want to make it plain to you, that the chief recommendation of names in my eyes would be, that they were such names as afforded a sufficient guarantee for a desirous and intelligent audience. In this view, such names as those of William Hamilton and Alexander Gillespie — and first and foremost of all, allow me to specify your own — are to me of far greater influence than the names of hundreds at a distance from London; neither do I see that there is any virtue in the names of whole corporations, such as kirk-sessions and others. The most powerful of all requisitions were one subscribed by respectable citizens, amongst whom one could discern men of literature, and ecclesiastics of all denominations. And then, as to our Church question, I should like you to know how very little desirous I am of enlightening mere statesmen and politicians on the subject. After the repeated disappointments of the years that are past, it is very natural for statesmen to magnify their office, and to imagine that all which is said or done bears a reference to them. The truth is, that in all my future treatment of these topics, my converse will be with secular and Christian philanthropists rather than with statesmen; indeed, I would shrink from a position or character which I should feel so utterly grotesque as that of an expedition to London for the purpose of schooling the Parliament; and for doing away every aspect of aught so ridiculous, I feel relieved, as if by the removal of an obstacle in the way, by the recent deed of our Convocation, which will probably bring our whole matter to an issue before I can possibly go to London, which certainly cannot be sooner than the month of April; and if I do go, it will be for the purpose of addressing those who take an intellectual or Christian interest in the grave ecclesiastical question. The doings and state of the Church of Scotland may supply preface and illustrations for my argument, but it will be an argument not intended, not perhaps fitted for, the apprehension of statesmen, but which, with the blessing of God, might serve, in these extraordinary times, to unite and direct the energies of those who have the Christian good of our people at heart, and who, either with or without Establishments, are ready to co-operate in whatever might best conduce to the spread of truth and righteousness in our land.
Let me entreat that you will take no more trouble in this matter. Forgive all that may appear harsh or ungrateful to you in this letter. If I do go to London, it can only be on a very clear and imperative call of duty, for all my personal tastes and inclinations would forbid the movement — a movement, therefore, which would require a much louder call, and a much clearer and opener path than I yet see before me. I cannot let this letter go without expressing the high esteem and value in which I hold such names as those of Sir John Pirrie and Mr. Plumptre. — With kindest regards to Mrs. Gordon and your family, I ever am, &c., No. CCCX. — To ALEXANDER GORDON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, 2d February 1843.
MY DEAR SIR, — Your requisition has now assumed such a shape, both in its substance and in the signatures which are appended to it, that I am now greatly more disposed to entertain it than I was at the earlier stages of our correspondence on the subject.
You are aware that I have all along deprecated the idea of a lectureship in London on the Scottish Church question, and that, from the very first, I have shrunk from the possibility of any such construction being put on any such lectureships being delivered there, as a presumptuous and futile attempt to influence the decision of that question; and the question had not commenced, at least so as to attract public notice, when I delivered my lectures in 1838 on National Establishments of religion, and the proposed supplement to these will naturally partake of the same general character, being intended for an audience not of statesmen but of scholars, who take a literary or professional interest in the subject — a subject of paramount importance, and which will outlast all the fluctuations of this world’s restless politics.
I feel the utmost possible respect both for the noble and parliamentary requisitionists whose names were in the first presentation, transmitted some weeks ago, but not without the apprehension that the very appearance of these should foster an erroneous notion of the real design and character of the proposed undertaking. They are the literary and ecclesiastical names both in the first and subsequent presentations which have decided me in its favour, and I now look forward in good earnest to the probability of my sooner or later visiting your metropolis for the fulfilling of the task which you have put into my hands.
But, lest in any quarter there should be a lurking expectation of my appearance there either before or during the discussion of our Church question in Parliament, let me state, once for all, that I cannot possibly attempt the delivery of these lectures till the month of June, or after the rising of our General Assembly, by which time it is to be hoped that the decision of the Legislature, whatever that may be, on the wrongs complained of by the Scottish Church, will be no longer a matter of anticipation, but a matter of history.
I regret that I can only yet hold out a conditional promise of complying with the request by which you and the other requisitionists have honoured me, and I fear that a whole month must elapse ere I can venture on a definite reply. — Ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours with greatest esteem and regard, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCXI. — To ALEXANDER GORDON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, March 1843.
MY DEAR SIR, — Referring to my letter at the beginning of last month, I beg now to state, that the idea of my lectureship in London on the subject specified in our recent correspondence, must, for a time at least, be abandoned.
The prospect of a disruption in our Establishment has led to the formation of a financial committee for the support and extension of the Free Presbyterian Church in Scotland. Of this committee I have been appointed convener, and the importance, as well as weight and labours of the consequent duties, must detain me in Scotland for several months to come. I feel assured that after the turbulence of party passions has subsided, the Church of Scotland will be found, from first to last, to have acted a consistent part throughout all the stages of this controversy.
The call or concurrence by the people in the appointment of ministers has ever been the integral part of our constitution. When the method she laid down some years ago for regulating this part of our procedure was litigated before the Civil Courts, she made appearance for no other purpose than to prevent, if possible, a separation of the temporalities from the cure. In this she failed, as she had often done in former questions of disputed settlements brought before the civil tribunal, and was prepared to undergo all the consequences which had ever followed on any adverse decision — that is, a forfeiture of the benefice. It is the first time since the Revolution that other consequences have been made to follow, that orders are issued forth on our Church by the Civil Courts for the doing of ecclesiastical acts, so that we at their bidding, and by the enforcement too of pains and penalties, must proceed in the ordination of ministers, to establish the pastoral relation between them and their people, however much we might deem the step we should be thus compelled to take contrary to the principles of the word of God, and to the Christian good of parishes. At no stage have we resisted the law.
When the first adverse decision of the Court of Session was appealed to the House of Lords, and confirmed there, we conformed to that decision to the extent of all which had ever followed on similar adverse decisions. We resigned the temporalities; but more than this was required of us, and, for the first time since the Revolution Settlement, an interdict was by the Court of Session laid across the path of one of our Presbyteries when engaged in prosecuting the trials of one of our licentiates with a view to his ordination. It is true that besides this, such trials, when there is no legal question, are in general preparatory to the immediate entrance on the living and the cure. But the effect of such a question in all past instances, when given against us, was only to dissever the living, and never to intermeddle in any way either with the ordination or the cure. It was for the first time in the history of our Church that this distinction had been violated, insomuch that it was felt to be an outrage by the unanimous Commission of the General Assembly, where there were men of all ecclesiastical parties, although since then a party has been found to acquiesce, not only in this, but in all the subsequent and still larger excesses of the Court of Session, which now claims the power of taking our whole discipline and government in its own hands. The challenge has been made by one of their own number to tell what the inch of ground is on which the Church of Scotland has now a free jurisdiction, or to specify a single question wherewith the Court of Session might not intermeddle so as to bring the Church, even in things of the most exclusively sacred and spiritual character, under its own absolute control.
To be protected from this altogether novel invasion by the Court of Session, we made another appeal to the House of Lords in the case of Auchterarder, and they have again confirmed this second and distinct adverse sentence of the inferior Court. It is only now that we can be charged with resistance to the law should we abide in the Establishment, and refuse obedience to this new usurpation. Rather than incur the charge, we choose to quit a territory where such disobedience can be alleged against us. For our carrying this determination into effect two steps, we conceive, have to be taken — the first is the appeal to the Legislature, not to reverse the decision of the House of Lords, that we know to be incompetent, but to modify or remove the solitary statute passed many years subsequent to the settlement of Presbytery, and now discovered, for the first time, to conflict with the constitutional acts by which, both at the Revolution of 1688, and at the union between the two States, the liberties of the Scottish Church were by solemn treaty granted and secured to the Scottish nation. The Acts on which we have all along rested our security were not once looked at and referred to in the House of Lords, and in the House of Commons the only treatment bestowed upon them is that the principles which they embody — though recognised and ratified by their own predecessors in the legislation of other days — are now denounced as monstrous and intolerable; meanwhile there has been no change in the claims or pretensions of the Scottish Church, the only change which has taken place is in the principles and will of the English Parliament.
Our appeal to the Church’s constitution having thus been defeated, there remains but one other appeal more, that is to the Church’s conscience — even that resolute and unswerving conscience, which, after the struggles of more than a century, won for us our ecclesiastical constitution, which still is vigorous and entire as ever, now that the constitution of our Establishment has been destroyed. We can no more acquiesce at this day in the power of the State over things spiritual, than we did in the seventeenth century. It is true that the same Government which is pleased at the change which has been effected in the conditions on which, as a National Church, we obtained our support, might also change the conditions on which all Churches whatever now enjoy their toleration; but even this will not move us. We can no more yield to the Peers of England their maxim that the Church is the creature of the State, than we can consent to the dogma of one of their own philosophers, that morality is the creature of law — the one is Hobbism in Ethics, the other is the Hobbism of Christianity: both are alike abhorrent to us. In a few short weeks the renunciation of our connexion with the State will take place by the deed of the General Assembly.
I once intended, but now give it up as a hopeless and unavailing task, to touch both on the mis-statement of our principles, and the glaring misrepresentations of fact, which, in the matter of our Church question, have so blinded and bewildered the English understanding. All this has now gone by, while the general question of the footing on which a National Establishment of religion might be upheld, or of the harmony which I hold to be the possible, nay, the most easy and practicable harmony of the legal provision, on the one hand, with the liberties of the Christian Church upon the other, — this question, so far from losing its interest, has only now risen to the importance which it never had before. Let us hope that, with the blessing of God, events will at length open men’s eyes, and work out what all remonstrance and all argument have failed to effect. — I have the honour to be, &c., No. CCCXII. — To ALEXANDER GORDON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, 17 th May 1843.
MY DEAR SIR, — I have now left Dunkeld. Your letter of the llth has given me inexpressible relief; for personally I have no wish but the contrary to be in London, and without a very clear and imperious call of duty I would rather not incur the fatigues and the hazards of a lectureship there, however brief. At the same time, I think it likely that the gentlemen whom you have consulted have misunderstood both your object, and also my own views and inclinations. I never would have thought of lecturing in London till after the determination of our question by the Legislature. I could not have prevailed on myself to do so before it, and would have recoiled from the semblance of aught so presumptuous and grotesque as that of schooling the Parliament. My idea of the proper time, if ever it shall come, for my appearance would have been subsequent either to their resolution of doing nothing, and so leaving us to our present struggles with the Court of Session, or to their resolution of passing such a positive and obnoxious measure as would have forced us out of the Establishment altogether. On either of which events I should have felt it desirable to harmonize our resistance in the one case, or our secession in the other, with the principles which I advocated in my former lectureship on the lawfulness and expediency of National Churches; and such would have been the substance of my reply to any requisition had it been now made to me, so that the only present effect of such a requisition would have been to manifest the interest now felt in London for the Scottish Church; — a manifestation, I do think, fitted to have a wholesome influence upon Government,
2 M and to make them, perhaps, more wary in their attempts to crush and overthrow us. I am even hopeful that, through your interview with Mr. Campbell, a certain amount of this mediate and precautionary influence may already have been brought to bear upon them; let us hope and pray, however, that any movement on my part will be superseded by an act of justice done to the Church of Scotland; and be assured that with no part of your much loved letter do I more thoroughly sympathize than when, devolving the cause upon God, you speak of waiting the evolutions of His wise and holy providence. — I am, my dear Sir, yours affectionately, o No. CCCXIIL — To EEV..
Edinburgh, IMh March 1843.
DEAR SIR, — Your letter has given me great pain — not that I see a difficulty in the question when viewed in the light of my own conscience, and according to the strength of my own confidence; but I do feel deeply for the distress of which you have presented me with so affecting a picture, and in particular my
heart bleeds for poor Mrs., whose fears are so very natural,
and must be so very distracting to her spirits.
Suffer me first to address myself to the question as one of conscience, which I do the more readily because you speak of your own misgivings on this score, when you think of the rightful claims which your creditors have to whatever might belong to you. Do not suspect me of sitting in judgment upon another man’s conscience, (1 Cor. x. 29,) but suffer me to state my own views: — If I were compelled to abandon my stipend by that highest of all necessities, (the necessity of principle,) then I should not look upon it as a thing which belonged to me, and that morally I was not more responsible to my creditors for it than if it had been wrested from me by the hand of violence.
And, second, as to the strength of my confidence, I will not rest it on any other foundation than the promise of God. If we go fearlessly on in the way of duty He will make good His own declaration, that “as the day comes, the provision will come,” He will not forsake the families of those who put their trust in Him. He hath said to such, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” So that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what men can do to me. I will not at present speak of our prospects. I would not run the hazard of misleading you by presenting you with any calculations whatever upon these. I can only say that the impressive representation which you have set before me will make me all the more strenuous in behalf of our general fund for the support of the Free Church, believing as I do, that many, very many, are our faithful clergy, with whom it will form their main earthly dependence in this matter. I have had much to encourage me, and feel assured that, under God, if the friends of our Church will give it what they might, and what they ought, we shall not only make out a moderate competency for all the disestablished ministers, but be enabled to extend over the whole of Scotland the blessings of a Christian education. I enter fully into the expression of your being paralyzed and unable to do aught for us in your own parish. However much we value the active co-operation of the minister, yet it is not indispensable to the establishment of a local association. “We are setting up these even in parishes where ministers are hostile; and it will be far more practicable in cases such as yours where they are friendly. — I am, my dear Sir, yours most truly, No. CCCXIV. — To THE SAME.
Edinburgh, 20th March 1343.
MY DEAR SIR, — I submitted your letters to one of the leading men in Edinburgh, and will not shew them to any more, as I do not think that any other conclusion can be come to than what he and I agreed upon. You are quite right in supposing that others in this season of toil will be placed in circumstances of great and peculiar difficulty; and accordingly a representation, similar to your own, was sent to me yesterday. I doubt not there will be more; and the just effect of them all is, (in the utter hopelessness of doing much, if any thing, in the way of special adaptation of our means to special cases,) to stimulate our utmost endeavours for making good the general fund, that supplemented by the separate efforts of each congregation might lighten, and if so be, do away the privations consequent on the surrender of our present temporalities.
The number of our Associations, I am happy to say, has now reached 405; and it is our earnest desire that no parish, how ever the minister might stand affected, shall be without one. But human helps will prove a vain and impious reliance without a single-minded dependence on Him who can make all things work together for our good. I will not let go my confidence that He will make all to emerge in the good of His Church, and in a surpassing compensation to the faithful adherents of His cause for all their relinquishments and all their losses. — I
beg my best regards and sympathies to Mrs.; and in the
earnest hope that God will clear up a way of comfort both for yourself and your family, I ever am, my dear Sir, yours most truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCXV. — To ANDREW JOHNSTON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, 2Qlh April 1843.
MY DEAR SIR, — I return you many thanks for your munificent and truly encouraging donation of clOO for our Free Church. You say in aid of the New Endowment Scheme. Unless you forbid me, I will assign it to the Building Fund; as in the first instance we shall chiefly look to the yearly produce of our subscriptions and Associations for the sustentation of the ministry. These Associations now amount to 405, and with the fair prospect of being doubled in the course of the summer.
In regard to your important suggestions, it is very certain that both the government sanction of our Veto and the Queen’s oath of protection to our constitutional rights have been much insisted on in the course both of our debates at home, and of our correspondence with London. I do not see that any farther delay should be incurred for the sake of a formal restatement of these, more especially as we are now declared, both by the legal courts and by Parliament, to be on the ground of rebellion against the law, if we do not implement their decisions in every such spiritual matter as they might choose to take under their cognizance and control. The sooner we make our selves off from that ground the better.
Let it be our stay and our confidence that the Lord reigneth; and that He will make all to issue in the extension of His Son’s kingdom, and the establishment of His own glory.
Perhaps you could suggest how it is that the sympathy and fellow-feeling of the evangelical public in England could be rendered most available for the promotion of our common cause in this country.
Remember me in the most cordial and affectionate manner to dear Mrs Johnston, and to the respected families of Sir Thomas F. Buxton, Mr. Gurney, and Mr. Hoare. — Ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours most gratefully and truly, No. CCCXVL — To ANDREW JOHNSTON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, Zd May 1843.
MY DEAR SIR, — I cannot lay my hand on any copy of the speech to which you refer; but the matter respecting which you inquire may be shortly stated thus: —
I never doubted the perfect competency and power of the Church to pass the Veto Law, and the obligation under which all its courts lay to regulate their procedure by its provisions. When this ecclesiastical law was found not to quadrate with the civil law, I never counted on any other effect from this want of harmony than the forfeiture of the temporalities of the benefice — in itself a very serious evil. To avert this evil, I recommended the repeal of the Veto, but in conjunction at the same time with the condition, which I held to be indispensable, that the Strathbogie ministers should retrace their steps, for that it was of prime necessity to vindicate the authority of the Church over her refractory members. These ministers, instead of making reparation for their disobedience, proceeded onwards in their course to the ordination of Mr. Edwards, for which glaring outrage they were most righteously deposed. On this I instantly withdrew my recommendation, not of one measure, but of several measures, which behoved to stand or fall together — to be adopted or rejected, not singly, but simultaneously.
It was in deference to the good of a National Establishment, or of a legal provision for the clergy, that I wished to bring our law into accordance with the law of the State. But when I found that the interpretation put on my proposal was that I deferred to the legal authority of the State in things spiritual, and also that the Strathbogie ministers proceeded on this interpretation, instead of submitting to the discipline of their ecclesiastical superiors, I gave up the attempt to secure the Establishment principle till it should be freed from the principle of Erastianism. For on any other footing than that of entire spiritual independence, I should hold a National Church to be a moral nuisance.
I know not if I have made myself intelligible. Certain it is that I have now given up all faith in the efficacy of arguments. It is by deeds, not arguments, that the truth will become manifest at last.
You will be delighted to hear that our Associations for the support of the Free Church now amount to 514; and we expect by the time of the General Assembly to have more than the half of Scotland organized.
I had a letter this morning from the munificent William Campbell of Glasgow, who now despairs of the Government being brought to reason upon our question, and tenders ^2000 for our Building Fund.
With earnest prayer for God’s best blessings on you and yours, ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours most gratefully and truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
[Durness by Golspie, 20th July 1843, — MY DEAR SIR, — From several causes, which I need not state particularly, I could not possibly leave the manse till a fortnight ago — waiting an opportunity of conveying rny furniture and part of my family by sea, from near the shores of Cape Wrath to Thurso, and my wife and the younger branches of the family by land, being a distance of at least 70 miles; not a house or hut could be got nearer for their accommodation. I have taken a room in the only inn in the district where I at present sojourn, in the midst of a poor and afflicted but sympathizing people — some of whom, I trust, have been taught to put their trust in the Lord. Hitherto we have met together to worship in the field, and we have no prospect, at present, of a site for church or manse from our noble proprietor. My feelings, and that of my family, on leaving the manse, after a happy residence of thirty-one years, I cannot easily describe. Though painful, in some respects, yet I trust it was a willing sacrifice. The cause is good; Jehovah-jireh is a strong tower. While we have had cause to sow in tears, may we reap in joy. My wife was born in the same manse she lately left empty, left two of our children’s dust behind, and accompanied by six, all hitherto unprovided for, to sojourn among strangers, has displayed a moral heroism which is soothing to my feelings. — My dear and honoured Sir, yours very truly, WM. FINDLATER.
The Rev. Dr. Chalmers, Edinburgh.]
CCCXVIL — To THE REV. WILLIAM FINDLATER.
Edinburgh, 30th July 1843.
MY VERY DEAR SIR, — I received your deeply interesting, and let me add, affecting letter on Friday, and the same day made its contents known to Mr. Dunlop, who is Convener of the Distributing Committee, and who feels on the subject of your application precisely as I do; even that it is a case which must be instantly attended to and met. I hope you will suffer no inconvenience from the delay of a few days, as the Committee does not meet till Friday next, when I am sure that your proposal will on the instant be acceded to and acted on.
Though such matters do not fall within my official range, (mine being the in-gathering rather than the out-giving department,) yet I beg that you will not let that restrain any future communications which you might wish to make to me; for I shall feel it quite a privilege and a pleasure to attend to them.
Tell dear Mrs. Findlater how my heart bled at the representation of the departure from Durness, and from the house in which she had lived from her birth. May she and you and all your family richly experience the Saviour’s promise, that though in the world we shall have tribulation, in Him we shall have peace. May we learn to sit loose to a world that is so fast loosening from our hold; and may the Giver of all grace fit and prepare us for living together in that city which hath foundations, and where sin and sorrow and separation are unknown.
You will be pleased to hear that our cause is progressing rapidly. Indeed, our chief pressure now arises from the rapidly increasing number of our adhering congregations. Nevertheless, I retain the unshaken confidence, that with God’s blessing we shall be enabled to build up all and provide for all.
Give my kindest regards to Mrs. Findlater, and with earnest prayers for Heaven’s best blessings upon you and yours, ever believe me, my dear Sir, yours most cordially and truly, No. CCCXVIII. — To PROFESSOR SEDGWICK OF CAMBRIDGE.
Edinburgh, IQth March 1844.
MY DEAR SIR, — I take it exceedingly kind that you should have bestowed the attentions and the courtesies which you have done on Dr. Candlish.
It appears very clearly to me, from your letter, that very strange exaggerations have been practised on the credulity of those at a distance from us respecting the violence and asperity of our Free Churchmen. I live in the very thick of the controversy, and can give you my solemn assurance that I do not know of more than one or two instances which require to be at all defended — and even those are of a character in no way outrageous. I observe, from the report of the London meeting, that I myself have been made the subject of one of those misrepresentations, and may therefore be regarded as an evidence at first hand on the question of its justness and truth; and I am confident you will give me credit when I tell that both the meaning and the spirit of the expression which has been imputed to me have been altogether misunderstood and perverted. The truth is, that we are far too busy, too much engrossed with our own weighty affairs, to say much, or even to think much, of our residuary friends. I am well-nigh overborne with matters which engross all my attention and time, having had no less than 210 students at our theological seminary, and of these a number of first-year attendants three times greater than I had last year in the University of Edin burgh. Such is the impulse which our movement has given to the ecclesiastical profession, that the number of theological students preparing for the Free Church in Edinburgh alone, is very nearly double the number preparing for the Establishment in all the four universities of Scotland. We are aware all the while that there is a world of calumny abroad against us, and our best way is to let it spend its force, and not trouble ourselves either with the authors who originate or with the newspapers which give it circulation. “We are doing a great work, and why should we come down to them?”
I must not attempt in this letter to enter into detail on that very voluminous controversy to which you have adverted, but which, at the same time, if your engagements would allow of it, is altogether worthy of your studious and sustained attention, involving as it does great principles, and leading as it will do to the most momentous results. I shall undertake no more at present than fill up this sheet by as succinct and synoptical a statement as I can possibly give within such narrow limits of our Scottish Church question. For the sake of brevity let me endeavour to present you with the leading points in numerical order: —
1. The line of demarcation between the civil and the ecclesiastical was a great topic of contention between the Church and the State in Scotland during nearly the whole of the seventeenth century, which at length, after the persecutions and the martyrdoms of twenty-eight years of the reigns of Charles II. and James II., was terminated by the Revolution Settlement.
2. By this Settlement, the relation in which the Church and the State stood to each other was distinctly and definitely laid down. It forms, in fact, the great charter of our constitutional law and liberties, and was solemnly renewed and ratified by the articles of union between the two kingdoms.
3. By this charter it is provided that the government of the Church is distinct from that of the civil magistrate, and the final jurisdiction in things spiritual was vested in our ecclesiastical Courts. But ours being an Established Church, questions occasionally arose which involve temporalities along with matters of purely ecclesiastical government; and so it was further provided that, where on those questions the decisions of the civil and the ecclesiastical Courts conflicted with each other, the civil decisions should infer only civil effects, and the ecclesiastical only ecclesiastical effects; and till within these few years nothing was of more familiar occurrence than the decisions of the Church courts taking effect as to all matters of discipline, and ordination, and Church government, and the contrary decisions of the law courts taking effect by the forfeiture of the temporalities, and of consequence the separation of the emoluments from the duties of the pastoral office. This precluded the respective powers from ever coming into collision, while they operated powerfully and often wholesomely as a check upon each other.
4. In 1712, or twenty- two years after the Revolution Settlement, and five years after the union, the Act of Queen Anne, for the restoration of patronage, was passed. But for more than a century after this, the great constitutional principle of the separate jurisdictions of the two sets of courts — the civil and the ecclesiastical — and the confinement of each within their own proper sphere, was observed inviolable. Contrary decisions were sometimes given on the same question as before, but still the minister, whom the ecclesiastical court admitted to any given cure, was charged with all its duties, though if, unfortunately, as it occasionally happened, the civil court gave a decision adverse to his civil rights as minister, he behoved to relinquish the temporalities of the office.
5. And not till within these three or four years has the discovery been made that the Act of Queen Anne did envelop a contradiction to the principles of the Revolution Settlement and the articles of union; a discovery which ran as counter to all the previous conceptions of the civilians as the ecclesiastics in this country — and upon which the civil courts now do what, for a hundred and fifty years, they had never offered to do — overrule the discipline, and ordinations, and all the other judgments of our ecclesiastical court; thus taking upon them selves the entire government of the Church of Scotland.
6. On this discovery being made, an application came from the Church to the Legislature — the object of which was to remodel that one law so as to bring it into union with that prior and original constitution, upon which our Church entered into union with the State in 1690, and Scotland entered into union with England in 1707. It was in fact asking of them nothing more than to rectify their own blunder, so as that no subsequent act of theirs should be suffered to violate the prior constitution which they themselves had ratified.
7. The application to Parliament was disregarded; and when the Church was thus defeated in her attempts to obtain redress on the ground of the British constitution, she had no other choice than to fall back on the ground of her original principles, appeal to her own conscience, and submit these anew to the decision of her own conscience — that conscience which bore her honourably through the struggles of the seventeenth century, and at length won for her a constitution in which she could acquiesce, but in the violation of which she cannot acquiesce; and so she relinquishes her connexion with the State, rather than submit to the government of the civil power in those matters which she deemed to be sacredly and peculiarly her own.
Such is a very brief outline of our question, and I have it not in my power at present any farther to extend it. Let me only say, that so far from upholding such an establishment as that which I have renounced, I, in every pleading for the cause of National Churches, made an express reservation in behalf of the Church’s spiritual liberties, which have now been scattered to the winds. I would have been a renegade to my own principles had I remained in an established church; and the only way of fulfilling them was to come out from amongst them.
Let me farther add, that the Free Church of Scotland is probably doing more at this moment for the establishment principle than any other church or community of Christians in the world. We have gone out on the establishment principle, and are so giving that principle all the weight of a disinterested testimony; and are at this moment, I believe, giving, in consequence, the utmost disappointment and offence to many of the Voluntaries. Had we remained in and swallowed all the humiliations which the civil power have laid and are still laying on the skeleton Establishment of Scotland, the principle of Establishments would have been thoroughly brought into utter scorn and contempt, and the triumph of Voluntaryism would have been complete. — I am, my dear Sir, yours truly, No. CCCXIX. — To D. M. M. CRICHTON, ESQ.
Burntisland, §th August 1841.
MY VERY DEAR SIR, — I mean to be at home all this week, with the exception of Friday, and also to be at home on Monday next week. If God will, I shall be in Edinburgh on Tuesday and “Wednesday.
It delights me to observe that things are fast approaching to that state in which there will be no room for the slightest shade of a difference betwixt us. I long to see you, and talk with you on a subject upon which our friends are not particularly ripe, — I mean the future economics of our Church, should the Legislature be so infatuated as to force en a disruption from the Establishment.
The man who was thought a Utopian when he, seven years ago, predicted £10,000 a year for Church Extension, and afterwards realized .£50,000 a year, has some claim to have his views considered, when he now, with far greater confidence, predicts, with the blessing of God, .£100,000 a year for Church independence, and as much more as will superadd the building of churches to a secure maintenance for one and all of our Non-Erastian clergymen.
It were well if you could let me know when I might have the pleasure of seeing you. — I ever am, my dear Sir, yours with the most cordial regard and esteem, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCXX. — To D. M. M. CRICHTON, ESQ.
Edinburgh, 18th February 1842.
MY VERY DEAR SIR, — I owe you many apologies for having delayed so long my reply to your letter of the 2d.
Go on and prosper, my dear Sir, and may God abundantly reward your labours of love. Let me again reiterate what I have often said, had we twenty labourers like you there would be enough of instrumentality at least for arousing Scotland.
With best wishes for you and yours, I ever am, my dear Sir, yours most gratefully and truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCXXL — To GEORGE YULE, ESQ.
Mornlngside, Qth June 1843.
DEAR SIR, — I am at present so much engrossed that I have not had time to reply sooner than now to your letter of the 2d of this month.
For more than twenty-five years now I have studiously avoided the habit of attending public meetings as encroachments on my strength and time which I could not well bear; and nothing but the exigencies of our Church could have led me to take that part in them which I have recently done.
And now, with my decaying vigour and my increasing engagements, I am in far less favourable circumstances than ever for sharing in a work which I must forthwith leave in the hands of younger and abler men.
There is one strong temptation, however, to attend one or other of the meetings which you propose. I should like for once to dissipate the groundless misunderstandings which still linger, I fear, in the minds of the Evangelical Dissenters, as if there were ever the slightest reluctance either on my part, or on the part of those who think along with me, to co-operate with them in all good works. But there are two reasons which oblige me to resist even this inducement, however powerfully it operates on my own taste and inclinations: —
1. The present state of my engagements, along with a sense of utter exhaustion, from which I do not hope to recover for some weeks, would disable me from doing full justice to my views.
2. An opportunity will occur, in the month of July, at the bicentenary celebration then to be held of the Westminster Assembly, and which, I trust, will be attended by the ministers and members of all evangelical denominations. I hope, in particular, that Dr. Wardlaw will return good for evil, and though
I do not meet with him now, will give us the benefit of his presence on that occasion.
I am going to use a great liberty both with him and with Dr. Winter Hamilton. Will you have the goodness to say to them how kind I should take it if they, and any other members of the deputation, would honour me so far as breakfast with me any morning during their stay in Edinburgh. — I am, dear Sir, yours truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCXXII. — To CAPTAIN BURNETT OP MONBODDO.
Bancliory House, 10th September 1843.
MY DEAR SIR, — The umbrella came safe to hand. There is another small matter which I have forgotten, Mr. B/s account for shoe-mending. I am quite ashamed that you should have such trouble about these bagatelles; and yet things small in material amount may be great in principle. “He who is unfaithful in the least, is unfaithful also in much,”
But what most impels me to write at present is to assure you of the delight which your letter has given me. You do me no more than justice when you suppose that I was greatly moved and affected at the time of our separation. I can truly say that no place and no people have taken so strong a hold both of my memory and my heart as your own Monboddo, to which I shall ever look back as I would to a much-loved home, where for the whole of a happy but short-lived week I felt myself domesticated in the midst of beauty and quietness, and, above all, of kind affection — these most soothing appliances to the mind of one who longs for retirement from the bustle and the agitations of public life. But I must not forget what some one of our poets says of the transition from loving much to loving wrong; nor so fasten my regards on your dear earthly paradise, as to withdraw me from the calls of duty, or the needful preparations for that home in the heavens, where sor row and suffering, and best of all, where sin is unknown, and, where loving each other with pure hearts fervently, we shall be enabled to serve God without frailty, and without a flaw.
I have just come from a most extraordinary scene. I had given Mr. Thomson the hope that I might preach at his tent in Banchory. He chose to placard this over all Aberdeen; and there assembled about six or seven thousand people. He got the pulpit carried from the tent to his own front entry, and I have preached the identical sermon to them that I did at Auchinblae, to six or seven thousand people assembled upon his lawn. I have been forcibly reminded of the last delicious Sabbath in your place, and which I so exceedingly enjoyed after the service was over, from the time that Mrs. Burnett received me into her carriage, and throughout the whole of that evening, when I was so much regaled, both by my own solitary walks around your house, and at the return of all its much valued inmates, to each of whom individually, I beg again to offer my most affectionate regards. — Ever believe me, my very dear Sir, yours with the greatest respect and regard, P. S. — There is nothing which has afflicted me so much for a long time as the description you give, both of your own feelings and those of Mrs. Burnett at the time of our separation. Before you receive this I shall have passed the Mill Inn in the mail for Montrose, and will look to its door with an enhanced interest. Let me entreat a place in yours and Mrs. Burnett’s prayers, that Jesus Christ may be the Lord my strength to guide and guard amid the fascinations and trials of an evil world. May Heaven’s best blessings rest upon you both. — T. C.
No. CCCXXIII. — To CAPTAIN BURNETT OF MONBODDO.
Edinburgh, 23f7 March 1847.
MY DEAR SIR, — There is a most entire accordance of principle betwixt us in all that you say throughout your last most interesting letter. Drunkenness is the great master-evil in our land. There is a variety started lately in regard to Temperance Associations, which, I think, will take well with many who recoil somewhat from the present constitution of them. An association has been recently formed by the Rev. Mr. Reid here, an eloquent and zealous teetotaller, named a Total Abstinence Association, on religious principles, and without the pledge. It hits my view better than did the former system, and I am now endeavouring to make a conscience of conforming to the object of such a society, and hope to do it better than, I fear, I could have done under the yoke of a written engagement. — Give my kindest regards, &c. &c., No. CCCXXIV. — To THE EEV. P. HENDERSON, POLLOCKSHAWS.
Edinburgh, 13th December 1845.
MY DEAR SIR, — There is no express law of the Free Church that such congregations only as are either aid-giving or self-supporting should supplement the stipend of their minister. Such a maxim might be either a sentiment or a principle, but it has not been formed into a law. But to estimate in how far as a principle it is applicable to your case, I should like to know whether you share in the equal dividend or come under the rule of one and a half more. Even though the former, I feel great satisfation in learning from you that your contributions for last year came to £74, 7s. 6^d. If all Associations made up of the poor and labouring classes were to do as well, we should be greatly better off than we are; and I do hope that your association will not only keep up its present rate of contribution, but gradually and indefinitely extend it. If you are under the rule of one and a-half more, I look upon you as being in very fair and promising circumstances for a much larger income than, I fear, we shall ever attain on the system of an equal dividend. I presume that there is a disposition on the part of your people to supplement your income. Their present contribution would secure for you under this rule upwards of dlll. But should they be disposed to make an addition to your income, I beg you to observe, and for the credit of the rule too, that for every £2 additional which they would give to their present contributions, they would get £3 in return; or, in other words, if they were to make out a supplement of £26. and send it to us through the Association, then, in virtue of their whole contribution being <^?100, you would receive ^150. Be assured that I am the last man that would say this is enough. My view of the matter is, that all our public functionaries are greatly underpaid; and I should rejoice if matters were so far advanced as that every minister of the Free Church should have £200 a year. I have the vanity to think that, if they would place themselves under my guidance, or rather, as I am no longer fit for action, under the guidance of my views for several years, they should not be long of reaching this point. But letting that pass, if you are among the one and a half rule ministers, your people have an obvious interest in giving at least ^26 of their intended supplement to you through the Association to our General Fund, when the whole accruing .£100 would come back, and ^50 to the bargain. It is true that the people would then have an interest in sending us no more, but in reserving all their additional contributions for a supplement to you. And yet I should hope better things both of them and of yourself, than that you would make a dead stand in your contributions to us so soon as you came to the ^100. I do feel confident in the general, that, when there is enough of principle in a congregation to work up their contributions so far as ^lOO, for the sake of ^150 to their minister, this of it self is a guarantee for as much more of principle as would lead them to go beyond the d£100 for the good and the interest of the Church at large. I beg that you may shew this letter to any you please, as my argument against the equal dividend, and for the principle of each congregation getting as they give. On the other hand, will you suffer me to retain your letter, and to make use of it as a case in point for the support of this principle? I shall be happy to hear from you farther, and am, my dear Sir, yours truly, THOMAS CHALMERS.
No. CCCXXV. — To SIR GEORGE SINCLAIR.
Edinburgh, %th September 1846.
MY DEAR SIR, — In regard to the Pauperism, I think it is all over with Scotland. After the matter has been legalized so far, I feel quite unable to suggest any modifications by which the evil to the landlord, and what is of still more importance, to the people themselves, can be either alleviated or done away.
In regard to the other question of our restoration to the Establishment, I look upon this as almost equally hopeless, as the Free Church could not, consistently with her principles, accede to such a movement but upon such conditions as would appear quite extravagant to all secular, and therefore to the majority of our public men. In the first place we should require to be acknowledged as the Establishment; nor could we hold fellowship with the ministers of the present National Church but upon their submitting to our discipline, or being reckoned with for their disobedience to Acts of Assembly anterior to the Disruption. In the second place, we will never again, I hope, come under the yoke of patronage, for the modification that would have kept us in, will not and ought not to recall us.
Thirdly, there behoved to be an entire recognition of our spiritual independence, to the effect, that the civil courts might never intromit with us save in those questions which related to the temporalities of the Church. There is one respect in which we would, deal more gently with the clergy of the Establishment than we ourselves were dealt with. Though they never could be recognised by us as ministers of the new-modelled Establishment till they had given the satisfaction specified in the first article, yet they should be life-rented in their temporalities, and the places left vacant would be given to our licentiates.
I feel it quite grotesque writing to you in this manner; but I am desirous of convincing you how little reason there is to expect that there can be such a re-union as that to which you refer.
Allow me to express the satisfaction I feel in renewing my correspondence with you. There is nothing intermediate that should efface the friendly recollections and feelings which our friendly intercourse in other days will ever awaken in my mind. — I am, &c., THOMAS CHALMERS.