MR. GLADSTONE AND THE SCOTCH CHURCH. TT might have been
safely predicted that the Bill for the 1 abolition of Patronage in the Church of Scotland would draw Mr. Gladstone back to his accustomed place. He began life as an ecclesiastical politician, and the land was stirred by 'the fierce battle of the Disruption in the days of his susceptible youth. A philosophic High Churchman, he was stirred to enthusiasm when he saw hundreds of ministers resign their stipends, leave their manses, and go out into the wilderness of poverty, rather than submit to what they thought, and he thought, an outrage on Christian liberty. Although the Free Church is one of the least sacerdotal of Sacramentarian bodies in Europe, and although it hates the High Church of England almost as much as it detests the Church of Rome, it yet sets forth such claims to spiritual independence as might satisfy a Hildebrand, if they were linked to a Hildebrandine theology. They are less jealously watched by the State simply because the whole constitution of the Church and the spirit of its theo- logy tend to the side of a democratic Liberalism. There is all the difference in the world between letting a mouse into a
china-shop and letting a bull ; and there is an equal difference between the claims of Dr. Chalmers and the claims of the Papacy to be spiritually free. But substantially both demand that the Church shall be allowed to define the limits of her juris- diction, and hence that, in any case of dispute between her and the State, she shall have the casting-vote. Perhaps Mr. Gladstone never laid down that proposition in so many words even in the days of his hot theological youth, for he then dealt largely in the mystical phraseology which eludes the analysis of logicians ; and he was astonished to find the startling practical inferences which the sublimely Philistine intellect of Macaulay drew from his lofty and passionate assertions of the place that belonged to the Church in the political and the social counsels of mankind. But, at least, the principle of spiritual independence was subtly interwoven with his reason- ings. Hence the magnificent courage with which Dr. Chalmers and his followers confronted the powers and the principalities of the State ; the heroism with which they bore witness to their faith in their commission from God ; the readiness of humble clergymen to face beggary itself rather than falsify a principle too shadowy for the gross eyes of worldlings even to see ' • the passionate fervour with which a great part of the Scotch people fought for the spiritual rights of the Church, all fired Mr. Gladstone with enthusiasm, and made him almost forget that the Free Churchmen were sectaries in the eyes of the austere Anglicanism which he himself obeyed. That en- thusiasm has never left him. On Monday night it led him to speak with fervid eloquence of the sacrifice which Free Church- men had made for their faith. " Great," he said, " was the country which, in the nineteenth century, could produce men who would offer such sacrifices for their conscience and their God." The same passionate admiration for the heroism of the Non-Intrusionists has made him systematically act as the guardian of the Free Church. It was strikingly revealed a few years ago, when a deputation from the Established Church of Scotland waited on him, to pray that he would help it to get rid of lay patronage. He listened patiently while Dr. Norman Macleod was telling the familiar tale of the historic efforts which the Church had made to free itself from that fetter. Having ascertained that his visitors did not intend to make the Free Church a partaker in the bounty of the State, even after they themselves should have virtually taken up the same position as the Free Churchmen, he quietly asked what claims they would then have to possess the riches or the honours of an Establishment. Dr. Macleod had never anticipated such a home-thrust, and we are told that his burly eloquence shrivelled up with ludicrous rapidity. The leaders of the Established Church have never forgiven that manifesta tion of sympathy for their foes, and it supplies the key to the comprehension of the powerful speech which Mr. Gladstone delivered against the Patronage Bill on Monday night.
The Bill places the power of selecting ministers in the hands of such members of each congregation as may be communi- cants, and of such others as may be chosen by an elective body, named by the General Assembly. Thus one portion of the voters will have undergone a sacramental test, and the other the test of prolonged attendance at divine worship in the parish church. In either case, the electing body will be as strictly sectarian as that of a Nonconformist meeting-house. And yet it will choose a minister who is a public functionary. It will have supreme power to dispose of national property valued at £270,000 a year, almost every fraction of which would be taken away if the Church were to be disendowed. It will further have supreme power over those Church Courts which already possess such authority as, for all practical purposes, is co-orainate with that of the Courts of Law. The Church Courts can unfrock a minister, take away his stipends, advertise his infamy if he be infamous, and blast his prospects for ever. He can, of course, appeal to the Civil Courts for redress, if he be wronged ; but the process is long and expen- sive, and the mischief done by an ecclesiastical condemnation
in Scotland is often irreparable. Thus the Scotch Church has far more power of self-government than the English, and
hence it is peculiarly dangerous to place its machinery at the mercy of a sect. The peril is the greater for a reason which will not occur to the majority of Englishmen. Although Scotland is the stronghold of political Liberalism, it has a formidable minority of bigoted Tories, and they are all Epis- copalians or Established Churchmen. The Episcopalians do not count for much. They are so few and so stationary that a proposal has been made to have all of them set down in the Ordnance map. Presbyterianism looks down upon them with a polite and pitying disdain which makes the scorn of English High Churchmen for Dissenters seem feeble and tame. But the members of the Established Church are indeed a strong phalanx, and a large number of them are stubborn Tories. Nine-tenths of their ministers must have voted against Mr. Gladstone at the last election, and it is probable that the members of the Established Church will become more politically Conservative year by year, now that Mr. Disraeli is their champion, and that they must fight for the very existence of their connection with the State. Hence the Patronage Bill throws the endowments and the great authority of the State Church into the hands not only of a sect, but of a political party essentially and fanatic- ally hostile to the profoundest historical instincts of the Scotch people. We have advocated the transfer of the patronage to the ratepayers, because they best represent the Scotch people. The most far-seeing minds in the Scotch Church recommend the same plan, and all men whose instincts are political rather than eccle- siastical admit that it would be the best. We frankly acknow- ledge, however, that it is made impracticable by the fanatical hostility, not of one sect in Scotland, but of all. They have been taught to believe that secular affairs lie infinitely below religious, and that the government of the Church demands a special sanctity. It would be a waste of time to expose the inconsistency of their practice with their belief, and we accept their belief as final. If there is to be an Established Church in Scotland, the electing body must, we admit, be more or less sectarian, and the only question worth putting by practical men is, how sectarian it shall be. Mr. Gladstone could not be expected to sympathise with the demand that the power of election should be given to the ratepayers. His ecclesiastical instinct makes him shrink from a plan which seems to be a profanation of the sanctuary. But his " historic conscience " is shocked by the want of generosity, and even of bare justice, with which the Bill would treat a Church that was formed because the Government of the day persistently refused to satisfy the the claims of Dr. Chalmers and his friends to spiritual independence. Those claims could never have arisen if Lord Sinnoul had not forced the Rev. Mr. Young into the pulpit of Auchterarder against the will of the parishioners. They arose out of the reckless use of lay patronage, and they would disappear if lay patronage were to be swept away. There would then be no outward difference between the Established Church and the Free, since their Confession of Faith, their ritual, and their form of government are identical. The difference between the most extreme type of each is slight compared with the prodigious expanse of theological space which cuts off Dean Stanley from Archdeacon Denison or Canon Liddon. The first thing that a generous and far-seeing leader of the Established Church would have done on resolving to abolish patronage would have been to ask the Free Church, " Will you come back to us as equals ? We offer you terms of absolute equality. We invite a union of the two bodies ; we will give you a share of our scanty endowments ; and we are ready to join the £270,000 a year which we raise by voluntary contributions to the half a million which is the result of your more fervid zeal." Such an invitation might have saved the Church of Scotland, but not one whisper was heard of any wish to bring back the seceders. They will not be allowed even to vote for the election of ministers, although their theological creed is practically identical with that of the Establishment. They can gain the ecclesiastical franchise only by leaving a communion which is endeared to them by the memory of a heioic straggle. But they would be curs if they were to buy the sweets of conformity at such a price, and curs are not generated by the rigour of the Calvinistic discipline.
It has been said that since the Free Churchmen left the Establishment as individual men, they may go back in the same state of sublime isolation. But such comfort is a piece of sublime impudence. Dr. Chalmers and his party left the Establishment not like individual deserters who should sneak away after nightfall, but in a great compact mass, and in the full light of day. Their leaving was one of the most impressive scenes in the history of modern Scotland. And they instantly proceeded to form a Church as fully equipped with all the appliances for teaching the Gospel as the Establishment itself. Chalmers, Cunningham, Buchanan, and Begg possessed masterly powers of organisation, and they have built up a fabric which is a marvel of completeness. And yet Free Churchmen are told they may come back to the Established Church as indi- viduals. No doubt they may, if they leave their places of worship to be closed, their colleges to become music-halls, their missions to become by-words of neglect, and their faithful ministers to starve. They are at liberty to become members of the Establishment at the expense of ceasing to be men of honour.
The advocates of the Patronage Bill further say that it would be useless to invite the return of the Free Church in a body,tecause it has become hostile to the very existence of Establishments. But what right have the authors of this Bill to speak in the name of the Free Church I They have never offered union on terms of equality, and they dare not, for the most wretched of all personal reasons. They dare not because, if the forces of the Free Church were to be joined to the Established, the scanty endowments would be scrambled for by an increasing number of applicants ; the present leaders of the national communion would be confronted by others at least as able as themselves ; and the new comers would leaven the whole mass, it is feared, with a yearning for disestablish- ment. Had such an offer been made by Dr. Pine and the other Presbyterian leaders who are now nursing the Bill in London, they could at least have come into court with clean hands ; but as it is, their fingers are, to say the least, not pure as the driven snow.
It may be true that it would have been useless to in- vite the return of the Free Church and the Presbyterians, and that it would have been equally in vain to offer the ecclesiastical franchise to all the members of the Pres- byterian Churches. But if that be true, it is a fatal fact. It is fatal, because it signifies that Scotland has ceased to possess the only kind of social and theological foundation on which an Establishment can be based. In these days it cannot be based on a sect, and least of all can it be so in Scotland. There we see the Established Church opposed by two bodies which hold the same doctrines as itself, which are ruled in the same fashion, which are supported by the same social classes, and which outweigh it when they unite their forces. And they will unite their forces now that the Establishment is striving to entice their members with the bait of popular election. They will ask why the State should single out for disestablishment one of the three sects, at the expense of the others, when they and it are substantially the same. It is not we who put this question, for we wish well to the Scotch Establishment. But it has been raised by the Patronage Bill, and it cannot be got rid of. Mr. Gladstone showed that the Bill led straight to disestablishment, because it would raise up a religious war in the very country in which such a war is made most dangerous by the intensity of sectarian passions. It is absolutely marvellous that the Tories do not see how swiftly they are driving the Scotch Establishment to the abyss of ruin. Mr. Gladstone sees it, because his ecclesiastical sympa- thies enable him to understand the motives and compute the strength of the Free Church ; but the Lord Advocate has not been gifted with intellectual eyesight, and as Mr. Disraeli knows absolutely nothing about the subject, and perhaps cares less, he is going straight to a ditch, into which more things than the Scotch Establishment will fall.
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