LETTERS TO THE EDITOR.
THE CONFLICT IN THE SCOTCH CHURCHES.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—While mainly right as to his premises, " A Presbyterian Layman" is far wrong, or at least very misleading, in his inter- pretation of them, and the conclusions he draws from them, in his letter in the Spectator of September 3rd. It is true that a very friendly state of feeling has existed for many years between the clergy and members of the various Presbyterian denominations in Scotland, and that there has been for some time at least no parallel to the estrangement which " A Pres- byterian Layman" deplores as existing between Churchmen and Dissenters in England. These happy relations in Scot- land exist, however, not because of, but in spite of, the divisions among our Scottish Presbyterians. Even men and women of thirty years of age can remember a very different state of things. But of late years members of the various Scottish Presbyterian Churches have been drawing closer together because they worship after the same manner, have the same creed, and the same Church polity. It is this in- creased friendliness, as the controversies of past generations have died out, that chiefly led to the Union of 1900, and that gives good hope for a yet wider and larger union. As to the lethargy of a single dominant Church, I would reply to "A Presbyterian Layman" by denying that the Established Church of Scotland was lethargic before the Disruption of 1843. She was in a particularly lively condition, because her dominant party, who were a very large majority of her clergy and people, were fervidly and actively evangelical. Their leaven had for years been leavening the whole lump. They left the Church of Scotland in 1843, not because she was lethargic, but because the conditions of her Establishment made their position in a State Church intolerable to them. Why should one reunited Scottish Church be lethargic? Is the Church of England as a dominant Church lethargic ?-
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