THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND.* PROBIBLY the majority even of Presbyterian
readers of this volume will admit that its author is a moderate Anglican, who wishes to be scrupulously fair to such as he does not see eye-to.eye with in ecclesiastical matters. But it may very fairly be objected that Dean Luckock's book ought not to have been included in a series entitled " The National Churches." The Church in Scotland, as understood in England, is not the same thing as the Church of Scotland. In a sense, indeed, it is the very opposite, as it is a Dissenting communion, whereas the other is an Establishment,—in other words, a "National Church." If this mistake be condoned, however—or adequately un- derstood—Dr. Luckock's Presbyterian critics will no doubt frankly admit that, even if he has taken his information from too exclusively Anglican sources, he presents an impartial view of the ecclesiastical situation north of the Tweed. Thus, alluding to the late Bishop Wordsworth's favourite proposal for a union between the Church of Scotland and the Church in Scotland, he Bays :—" At present, notwithstanding individual expressions of brotherly kindness and good-will on both sides, which men are so apt to interpret in the light of what they wish, there can be no real doubt that union involves something which the Presbyterian Church will not, and the Episcopal Church cannot, surrender."
The reasonable Presbyterian will, however, have another crow to pluck with Dr. Luckock. After all, Scotch Presby- terianism—the Church of Scotland in. the truly "national" sense—means John Knox as decidedly as Scotch poetry now means Burns, and Scotch romance means Scott. Dr. Luckock tries, in his own way, to do justice to Knox. In his preface, he says that " Knox's disinterestedness, when placed in con- trast with the rapacity of his lay colleagues, deserves the highest praise." In the body of the book, and in a chapter entitled " Queen Mary and John Knox," this view is repeated. "In a generation of unbounded rapacity, and with ample opportunity of self-enrichment, even in the closest league with men who subordinated every principle to a passion for greed, he is never known to have appropriated a single groat that he could not legally claim." So far well ; but the Dean of Lich- field's general view of Knox recalls too readily what Mr. R. L. Stevenson says in one of his two admirable papers on " John Knox and his Relation to Women,"—" The hard energy of the man in all public matters has possessed the imagination of the world ; he remains for posterity in certain traditional phrases, browbeating Queen Mary, or breaking beautiful carved work in abbeys and cathedrals that had long smoked themselves out, and were no more than sorry ruins, while he was still teaching children in a country gentleman's family." At all events, it is certainly going too far to talk of Knox's " insatiate thirst for bloodshed." The "Reformer," as he is still styled, half in affection and half in fear, on the other side of the Tweed, was a mas- terful man, and, when possessed by an idea, was as ready to go through fire and water with a view to give effect to it as Cromwell or Prince Bismarck or Mr. Gladstone. Bat to credit him with an "insatiate thirst for bloodshed" is to attri- bute to him an absolutely perverted nature. Knox, it may be, was quite prepared to lose his own life, or to sacrifice the lives of others. But that meant nothing more than that, when he was possessed by the ecstacy of that triumphant Puritan- ism of which he was the forerunner in Scotland, he accounted human life as a trifle if weighed in the balance with Divine principle. Dr. Luckock, further, goes a trifle too far when he makes out Knox to have been filled with but one idea, and that the negative one of a hatred of the Papacy. If he had said that Knox was filled with the enthusiasm of Presbyterian parity—though he himself would have but imperfectly un- derstood the phrase— and that he sought the downfall of the Papacy as a step to the establishment of that parity, Dr. Luckock would have been nearer the mark.
• Tho Church in Scotland. By Herbert Mortimer Lookook, D.D., Dean of Lichfield. London Wells Gardner, Darton, and Co. 1893, This volume will be found useful by any one who can inter- pret "the Church in Scotland" as meaning "the various churches that have existed and still exist in Scotland," It is an excellent and handy manual of the good—and also the evil—work done by all religious associations north of the Tweed. The early chapters, which deal with such subjects as the dawn of Christianity, Columba, the Culdees, and Margaret, Queen of earthly Queens," travel over familiar ground, it is true, but are none the less notable and valuable on that account. As we have seen in the case of Knox, Dr. Luckock is apt to come into collision with popular sympathies when he deals with the more stormy periods of Scottish ecclesiastical history, of which the centres are the Reformation, the Restoration, and the Revolution. If he is disposed to take a too severe view of John Knox, he seems inclined to take too lenient a view of that deserter from Presbyterianism, James Sharp. At all events, if it was desirable to quote Burton to Sharp's advan- tage, should not Cromwell's celebrated characterisation have been quoted to his disadvantage ? (In this connection, by- the-way, is Dr. Luckock quite justified in saying positively that the men who murdered Archbishop Sharp on Magus Moor on May 3, 1679, " entered into a plot for his assassina- tion "P The tradition is that Balfour of Burley and his friends were on the outlook for the Archbishop's jackal, when the " superior fiend," as they regarded him, fell providentially into their hands, and that they seized the oppor- tunity thus offered them. This tradition has, at all events, not been upset by historical investigation.) The concluding portion of Dr. Luckock's volume, dealing with events which come near our own time, is of most interest for what it tells of the later history, including the divisions, of Scotch Episco- palianism. He does his best to understand and explain Presbyterian differences and schisms also, but he may be pardoned for not being able to penetrate such mysteries as that of " spiritual independence." Altogether, this book ought to be useful as a popular lecture is useful,—as a means of revivifying one's knowledge of subjects with which one is familiar.
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