SIR, — In your leading article in the Spectator of August 6th
you say, "There is no contesting the legality of the decision." Of course there is no contesting the fact that the decision is
final in law, as pronounced by the highest Court of the land. But we do contest the justice of the decision, even in point of law ; nor, surely, is it very presumptuous to say so, seeing that it is the opinion of six out of the eleven Judges (Scotch and English) who heard the case, an opinion which it is an open secret was also held by Lord Shand, but for whose death the judgment of the House of Lords would have confirmed that of the Court of Session in favour of the United Free Church.
The crucial point of the matter, as Dr. Hunter hints in his letter to you, is that the characteristic claim of the Scotch Church to spiritual independence has no parallel in the English Church, and therefore is easily misconceived by Englishmen. The history of the two Churches in their respective relations to the State has been as widely diverse as can be. In England the Church's Reformation was carried through by the power of the Crown, and the authority of the State has always been a primary factor in the control of its affairs. But in Scotland the Reformation was the work of the people, and the Church had to wage for generations a continual conflict against the autocracy or encroachment of sovereigns and nobles who had no sympathy with its Presby- terianism. Hence the conception of the necessity of independence and, consequently, of its right of self-government was burned into its soul by bitter experience. The Confession of Faith, while it uses strong language regarding the duty under which the State lies as the protector and fosterer of the Church, explicitly denies to it "the power of the keys "—i.e., any jurisdiction whatever in spiritual things. But, further, the Scotch Church was by its very constitution a self-governing body. It possessed all the means for being so. It was democratic in that the basis of authority lay with the people, with the whole membership, and it was representative, with a graduated series of courts—Session, Presbytery, Synod— culminating in the General Assembly as the ultimate court of appeal. Provision was thus made in the fullest manner for the maintenance of the spiritual rights of the individual member, and for a final verdict which should represent the corporate wisdom of the Church, which was alone acknowledged as spiri- tually supreme. The Barrier Act, which was passed in 1697 to prevent any hasty legislative action by the General Assembly, necessarily implied the claim of the Church as represented in the Assembly to this legislative authority. To say, as Lord Robertson does, that the Act did not " confer " any additional legislative power is to say what no one denies. But any one who knows what Scotch Presbyterianism has been from the first will agree with Lord Lindley that an "extensive power, to which no limit is set is there unmistakably assumed and recognised." In all this there is the broadest contrast to the condition of the
English Church, which from the Reformation has in its internal affairs been subject to the intervention of the State, and which has never officially made the claim to spiritual self-government, nor has it possessed any ecclesiastical organisation whereby that claim could be practically realised. When, then, the majority of the General Assembly found in 1843 that their assertion of spiritual independence was disallowed by the State, they withdrew from the Establishment, and con- stituted the Church of Scotland Free. What other meaning could attach to that act than that they hoped by so doing to secnre the full right of self-government, denied to them while they con- tinued in the Establishment, and that they affirmed their title henceforth to order their own doctrine, worship, discipline, and government? Would they have surrendered Establishment and endowment, both of which confessedly they prized, if they had imagined that they were no more at liberty to modify in regard to any of these four aspects of Church life than they were before ? Would they not have counted it a mockery to be told that they could modify if they chose, but only on condi- tion of forfeiting the possessions which they had accumulated during sixty years ; and that they would have to abandon these as they had to abandon the endowments of the Establishment ? Their claim undoubtedly was that they had paid a great price for the liberty of self-control, but that by paying the price they had secured it. It would have been all right, say the five Judges,
if this claim, this power to modify, had been expressly stated in the disruption documents. But deeds surely make that as plain as words.
Quite in accordance with this affirmation of the Church's title to revise its creed is the teaching of the Confession of Faith itself. "The purest Churches under heaven," says the Confession, "are subject to mixture and error" (chap. xxv, 5); and again, "All synods or councils since the 'Apostles' times may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as a help in both" (chap. xxxi. 4). The Scotch Church, by its adhesion to the Confession, acknowledges that the Westminster Assembly. which drew it up was liable to error. It cannot affirm the Confession's infallibility in face of its own disclaimer. If, then, any error should be discovered in the statements of the Confession, how could it be corrected except by the Church itself? Thus to deny to the Church the power of revising its doctrine is to turn the language of the Confession into absurdity. The Confession of Faith does not occupy, and has never occupied, in the Presbyterian Church what Lord Robertson calls a "stable position," meaning by that that it is immutable. It has invariably been termed a "subordinate" standard, subject to perpetual reference to, and correction by, the one final standard, the Holy Scriptures. Lord Robertson's argument as to its "stability" contradicts the Confession's own words by making it a "rule of faith." Well might Lord Macnaghten say, "For my part, I should hesitate long before I could give my voice for a decision which I fear will compel, or at any rate direct, her (the Free Church) to subordinate the Scriptures to the Westminster Confession of Faith."
One practical result of the House of Lords' judgment is worth noting. Negotiations were begun by the Free Church in 1863 for union with the United Presbyterian Church, and were continued till 1873, when for the timo they were abandoned, though with the hope of future resumption. The General Assembly solemnly put it on record that in its opinion there was, in principle, no bar to union. Now, the capital fund of the Church, amounting in 1900 to £1,062,173, which has been alienated by the recent decision, was in 1867 only £92,766; so that, with the exception of some £30,000, the whole million was contributed after the Free Church had set its face in the direction of the Union, for which it is now penalised. The vast mass of the Fund was given by donors in full view of the gradual approximation of the two Churches. It was to the Free Church as a living organism, claiming to be capable of adjusting itself to new conditions, that they gave their money ; and to deprive her of it now is in the case of numberless benefactions to go right in the teeth of the donors' intentions. This is a violation of the Lord Chancellor's own maxim, that it is "a legal obligation, that money given for one purpose shall not be devoted to another." It was open to the House of Lords to treat the Free Church as if it had been a commercial company, with formal title-deeds to be literally interpreted. It has done so ; and by doing this it has glaringly failed to understand the real character of the Scottish Church, as Scotsmen have always conceived it, as a spiritual body, with a constitution which made every provision for needed administrative or legislative change, and authorised by its own Confession to exercise its self-governing power. But it was just as open to the House of Lords, had it chosen, as our own Scotch Courts did, to recognise in such a case as this the inapplicability of the strict law of trusts. As the Supreme Court of Appeal, it was entitled to take a wider purview, to consider the claims of equity, and to look at the question in the light of the history of the Church on whose action it was called to pronounce. Had it done so, its decision would not have been the worse law in that it made a nearer approach to justice.
—I am, Sir, St.c., D. W. FORREST.
Morningside, Edinburgh.
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