THE ECCLESIASTICAL UNION IN SCOTLAND. D URING the next few days
the final steps will be taken in a movement in Scotland which has long claimed the attention of the country. The two leading Presbyterian bodies which stand outside of the Establish- ment, the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church, are to be united, and will for the future be known as the United Free Church of Scotland. The settlement has not been reached without opposition. It has been,if we may judge from the outside, rather a movement of the leading ministers in both bodies than of the bodies themselves. There are many in the United Presbyterian Church who await the event without enthusiasm, and many in the Free Church who regard it as a final departure from the traditions and principles of their Communion. The obvious advantages of union are so great and a diminution in the number of sects is so desirable that we are tempted to consider the cause of this apparent lukewarmness and even pronounced antagonism. Nor is the reason far to seek. The United Presbyterian Church is made up of a number of bodies who seceded at different times from the Establishment, and coalesced into their present form in 1847. The grounds of secession differed in each case, but one broad general principle was contended for, to which they gave the name of Voluntaryism. Let a Church be self-supporting, sustained by the voluntary contri- butions of its members, and in no way dependent upon the secular Government. The disruption of 1843, on the other hand, gave the Free Church a different basis. To men of the type of Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Candlish a Church established and endowed by the civil power seemed as desirable as to Cromwell. It was the interference of the civil power in affairs which they regarded as spiritual and matters of conscience, and the attempt of the secular Magistrate to dictate to the Church in ques- tions of government and administration, that led to one of the most notable religious movements of the century. There may be difference of opinion on the wisdom of the attitude, but there can be none on the loyalty of the early Free Church to a very high and pure conception of Church polity. That this conception included the Establishment is a twice-told tale, and since its realisation was impos- sible and secession was forced upon them, they sought to model the new body as far as possible on those aspects of the historic Kirk of Scotland with which they were in agreement. Hence came the admirable scheme of the Sustentation Fund, which was an attempt to provide a substitute for the central support which the Establishment had given, and to raise the m,ost remote village congrega- tion out of the difficulties of a body struggling to support itself solely by voluntary gifts. It may be said that even this was simply voluntaryism organised and extended, but the purpose of the founders of the scheme and its later results have clearly severed the Free Church from the rest of Nonconformity. The centralisation, the design to create endowments in place of those which were lost, the insistence upon the organic interdependence of the whole body, have given the Free Church all the charac- teristics of an Established Church with the State con- nection omitted.
The significance of the present union is that these prin- ciples have been finally relinquished. The Free Church is united with a Church to which voluntaryism is the very breath of life. To us there seem, nevertheless, to be very great and serious reasons for the union. It is undoubtedly the duty of Churches to unite when there is no radical differ- ence in doctrine and no final divergence of views on Church government. In this case the way has been pre- pared, for it is an indubitable fact that the Free Church within the last fifty years has been slowly departing from the traditions on which it based itself in 1843. Some may call it a growth in enlightenment ; to ourselves it seems rather the destiny which attends all sectarian history, by which the original difference tends to become emphasised and the original points of agreement to be forgotten. The history of Methodism furnishes a case in point. During the whole of his life John Wesley regarded himself as a member of the Established Church ; "and no one who regards my advice," he wrote, "will ever separate from it." One of the last important letters that he wrote was a remonstrance with a Bishop for attempting to drive his followers into Dissent. But after his death, through no fault of the Methodists, the breach widened, and now the original belief in an Establishment is a doctrine which few Methodists will subscribe to. So with the Free Church of Scotland, which has gradually been approaching English Nonconformity on this question, though in all other matters it is as unlike it as possible. At the same time, in the new United Church considerable provision has been made for difference of opinion, and the articles of union have, through the wisdom of their promoters, committed the Churches to no cast-iron theory. Again, the union will be economically a saving, for it is notorious that Scotland in many of its parts is over-churched. In little country towns there may be a Free church and a United Presbyterian church, where the population can barely suffice to support one church in activity and prosperity. Finally, the two Churches will carry to the common stock certain qualities which should give the united body the greatest strength. The Free Church has since her foundation been famous for a missionary enterprise and an evangelical earnest- ness difficult to surpass in the annals of any religious body, and of late years she has made contributions to Biblical scholarship and shown a standard of culture in her clergy which have made her easily the intellectual leader of bodies outside the Establishment. The same thing in a modified degree is true of the other party to the union, which in addition has long had a special hold upon the middle classes in the towns.
It is impossible, then, we think, to object seriously to a movement which has a real justification and may have valuable results. But at the same time a word of warn- ing seems necessary. As believers in the principle of an Establishment, we are strongly in favour, if that be im- possible, of the centralised system of the Free Church, by which the remotest congregation in the Highlands and the Isles has an organic share in the whole. In spite of our respect for Nonconformity, strong in its basis of sincere con- viction, we are firmly opposed to what the Germans call particularismus in Church affairs, that atomic voluntaryism where each congregation is, in spite of superficial bonds of union, an isolated, self-supporting unit. We have no dis- trust of the people, but in religion, where the preacher, if he be true to his calling, must be no speaker of soft things, we believe in a position for the minister above the force of popular caprice. A congregation is only human, and it is in its nature too often to prefer a specious rhetoric and the form of vulgarity which some call "popular gifts" to the seriousness and courage of a true servant of Christ. It is true that the traditions of both of the bodies in question have been as a rule against such a failing, and that neither, especially not the Free Church, has been without some form of central support. But in a union where the one has forgotten its belief in an Estab- lishment, and the other never possessed it, there. is a danger that the united Church, feeling its strength, and at the same time conscious of its position as against the Established Church, may be led into certain of the extremes of voluntaryism and particularism, which we believe to be contrary to the best traditions of Scottish religious life and the genius of the Scottish people.
But we must not forget that it is one of the most creditable aspects of the movement that its leaders look forward to some ultimate union of the whole of Presby- terianism in Scotland, to which this is but a step. It is an ideal which must commend itself to any wellwisher of the Scottish Churches, and we believe that if the United Free Church preserves the proper spirit and shows itself wise, tolerant, and charitable, the present union may be indeed the beginning of a greater union of all Scotland under one national and historic Church. We trust that to attain an end so great the United Free Church will purge itself of all narrowness or intolerance of spirit, and attempt in a sympathetic understanding of alien views, and in charity towards the Kirk of Scotland, to realise the ideal of a Church that is free indeed.
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