THE SCOTTISH CHURCHES.—THE RESIDUUM AND PROFESSOR ROBERTSON SMITH.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE"SPECTATOR."] SIR,—In the columns of the Times on Monday, "An English Liberal" writes in a tone of persuasive authority. It is the letter of one who is well entitled to use that tone, and differing from him as most of us do, I yet do not propose to argue with him. But it is seldom safe to take Scotch facts from English students, however eminent and loyal. I do not propose to send a late pro- test to the columns of your contemporary, even on these; but two of the representations are so grotesquely opposed to recent history, that before the week closes I must appeal to a select jury in your columns with regard to them.
1. Only a disrespectful hoax can explain the admission to "An English Liberal's" mind of the extraordinary idea embodied in the following sentence :—" It is the very reproach cast against the Established Church that it is the "Residuary Church,"— that is, the Church which looks after and is followed by the residue of the population, for whom no one cares, and who are of necessity the bulk of the poorer classes." This amazing inter- pretation is absolutely new on our side of the Border. The Free Church, when it claimed to go out as the Church of Scotland in 1843, and as such commenced to settle a full organisation -over the whole country and population, attempted for a time to speak of those it left behind as being, therefore, the Residuary Church ; and Hugh Miller, who invented -the phrase, boldly claimed to do so, on the additional ground that the piety and intelligence also of the Church had deserted the Establishment. But till now no one has imagined that it was the wealth of the Establishment that had left it, still less that this had been even suggested in the phrase. On the contrary, as Hugh Miller daily proclaimed, the poorest part of the rural population, that of the Gaelic Highlands, of which he was him- self a native, clung to a man to the Free Church, and have ever since been maintained by it. And with regard to the large towns, the suggestion that, except the Established Church, "no one cares for the residue of the population "—that is, "the bulk of the poorer classes "—is a very painful one. It is singularly remote from history, as regards the United Presbyterian Church ; while as regards the Free Church, the history of its home missions and "excavations of the masses," growing in extent from Dr. Chalmers's days down to sour own (when, in this year of depression, it has given an addi- tional £100,000 to this object alone), is probably unparalleled, not only in Scotland, but in the world. Comparisons in this kind of thing are most odious. But how is it possible to avoid -them, when such extraordinary statements are made as to matters of fact, and even as to the meanings of historical and familiar words ?
2. Again, it is given as an argument against Disestablishment that "the late prosecution of Professor Robertson Smith would not have occurred at all, had he been a minister of the Esta- blished Church of Scotland. But it is a hopeful symptom that even in the narrowest of all the Scottish Churches, it should have ended so nearly in an acquittal."
Now, on this matter the following facts are not only true, but are notorious in Scotland .-1. The private origin of the pro-
secution of Professor Robertson Smith was the refusal on the part of certain divinity Professors of the Established Church (who, according to the scandalous system still existing in Scot. land, have a monopoly of the theological Chairs of the University, and therefore of recommendations for its degrees) to give the degree of D.D. to the brilliant Free-Church Professor, while during the last three years they have lavished it on fourth-rate men, provided they are politically in favour of Establishment.
2. The public origin of the prosecution was the immediate publication in the Edinburgh organ of the Established Church of an elaborate attack upon the " German " views of Professor Smith,—an attack publicly and uncontradietedly ascribed to the pen of one of the Professors who had opposed the granting of the degree, and which was in any case intended to excuse the refusal, and to commence the subsequent agitation.
3. The agitation was carried on by an active coalition between what claimed to be the dominant party,—i.e., the Con- servative majority of the Established Church, and the small Conservative minority of the Free Church, and it was carefully and anxiously mixed up with the claim that Establishment is the only security for purity of doctrine. The Moderator's address of the Assembly of 1877 was largely directed to blowing the flame of orthodoxy, and throughout town and country the resources of the pro-Establishment Presbyterians were for a twelvemonth concentrated upon inflaming the attack.
4. No one in Scotland doubts that it was the duty of the Free Church in some way to investigate the charges which had been thus systematically forced upon its notice as a Presbyterian body. Even Principal Tulloch took the opportunity of proclaim- ing, unguardedly and with exaggeration, that "anything that was said on the same subject in Essays and Reviews,' which convulsed the country from Cornwall to Caithness, was nothing in comparison" with Professor Robertson Smith's views. Yet in the face of all this, the Free Church Committee of Assembly, appointed to look after charges of heresy, formally refused to find a true bill against him. And it was on Professor Smith's own demand in open Assembly that the charges vaguely made should be reduced in his own Presbytery to definite form, and raised in a legal, Presbyterian way, that the process was authorised, and that on the ground that it was ins right to demand it. Is it meant to be said that this right would have been refused in the Established Church ?
5. The result of the process thus raised by Professor Smith himself, and not by his Church, and originated not by his Church, but wholly from without it, was what might have been expected, by one who understands the open, free, democratic system of Presbytery. The occasional correspondent of the Times gave a true account of it, and it has been such as to do extra- ordinary credit to the system which discusses such things in open day, and refuses to hide or huddle them up. There has as yet been only "nearly an acquittal," but as the lead- ing journal pointed out at the time, the refusal to acquit on one head was due to a narrow majority, obtained by a coalition with the leading Free Churchmen who are either against Establish- ment or against immediate Disestablishment. Whether they were right or wrong, I will not say, though I have my own views, but the one vote in that direction was the result of the not yet ex- hausted wave of agitation which had been raised by the Conser- vative leaders of the Scottish Establishment, and chiefly with political Conservative views. The party of freedom—gradual freedom, perhaps—in the Free Church Assembly is also the party of Disestablishment.
Yet with these facts known to every one in Scotland, the Robertson-Smith process is quoted in England as an argument in favour of the Established Chuch, and against the Free Church !
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