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IN setting forth the
influence exerted by Christianity upon the people of Scotland, and
through them upon the general advance of civilization throughout the
world, it will not be necessary to dwell long on the earlier periods
of the history. The precise point of time when the gospel first
found its way among the warlike and intractable tribes inhabiting
the region has never been clearly ascertained. The strong
probability, as stated by the historian of the Church, Hetherington,
is that the "religion of Christ had penetrated to the mountains of
Caledonia before the close of the second century." During the
succeeding centuries, down to the middle of the sixth, it gained an
increasing hold upon the people of the land, as seen in the
widely-diffused worship of the Culdees and the permanent
institutions founded by Columba at Iona. After the sixth century,
however, this simple and primitive style of Christianity gradually
crave way to the more ambitious and imposing ritualism of the Church
of Rome; so that during the Middle Ages, down to the era of the
Protestant Reformation, Scotland had become to all intents and
purposes a papal country wholly subject to the Roman domination and
intensely devoted to its interests.
In the sixteenth
century, under the masterly leadership of Knox and his heroic band
of Reformers, lay and clerical, that ascendency was after many
conflicts broken for ever, and the great mass of the Scottish people
became as intensely Protestant and Presbyterian as it had before
been Roman Catholic. The relics and the monuments of that protracted
ascendency may be seen to this day all over Scotland in the
crumbling walls and the ruined splendor of many an ancient castle,
cathedral and abbey, which still linger on the scene to tell how
terrible was the struggle that delivered the Scottish people from a
foreign and despotic sway.
From the thorough
reformation of the sixteenth century, the true spiritual glory of
the Scottish Church begins. Our purpose, accordingly, in this brief
chapter, is to speak only of those influences, evangelical,
educational and civilizing, which belong to this last period of the
history, and which have gone forth from the combined labors of the
several Reformed Churches of Scotland. Of these there have been four
distinct and important bodies.
The first and
smallest of these, the Episcopal, or Anglican, Church, has never had
any strong hold on the Scottish people, and, although its history
dates back almost to the period of the Reformation, it represents a
very small portion of the population. Its history during the earlier
periods, under the Stuart dynasty, was a record of tyranny,
usurpation and bloody persecution not exceeded by the worst times of
the papal domination, and it fully ,justified the remark which grew
into a proverb—that "Episcopacy never appeared on Scotch soil except
as a persecutor." Introduced at first by the treachery of James VI.
of Scotland, a man of some book-learning, of much pretension and of
small practical statesmanship, who had become recreant to his own
early professions, it was always an exotic and never flourished. His
successor strove in vain to force the system upon people who
abhorred its prelatical orders and its ritualistic forms of worship.
Its forcible introduction at the first only served to illustrate the
extreme folly of the would-be Solomon who attempted it, and its
absolute failure to take root in the land, despite the fostering
care and the persecuting protection of successive monarchs, only
showed how deeply and ineradicably attached were the Presbyterian
people of Scotland to their own simpler and purer ecclesiastical
polity and worship.
It would not be
right, however, to hold the Scottish Episcopal Church of the present
day responsible for the intolerant bigotry of its royal supporters
and its unwise prelates of the persecuting ages. Presbyterianism
itself, though it suffered so much and came so near being crushed
under the iron heel of oppression during that long reign of terror,
was not entirely free from the intolerant spirit of the times. When
the day of deliverance came with the Revolution of 1688 and the
Hanoverian succession, Episcopacy in turn had to suffer many
disabilities during the following century. Still, it held its ground
in Scotland, and, though small, is to-day an intelligent and
influential body within the limited sphere of its operations. Both
in polity and in the form of worship it has become far more
assimilated to the character of Anglican Episcopacy than in its
earlier career. It now has seven dioceses in Scotland, with as many
bishops, and a clergy numbering two hundred and thirty.
The Roman Catholic
Church in Scotland is of about equal strength, having one archbishop
and a clergy of two hundred and sixty. It, however, draws its
ministers and its membership not so much from the Scottish people as
from the Irish population resident in the cities. Catholicism does
not flourish in the land of Knox.
It is through the
Presbyterian churches that Christianity has gained its enduring
influence over the Scottish mind and made that influence felt around
the globe. It may be questioned whether in any other country
Christianity has ever gained a hold so strong and so general over
all the deepest affections of a united people. With the small
exceptions first named—the remnants of the papal and Episcopal
Churches—Scotland is to-day, and has been for three centuries, as
decidedly Presbyterian as it is intensely Protestant and Christian.
The reformation from the beginning was thorough and complete, and it
wrought into the inmost convictions of the Scottish people a system
of doctrine, worship and polity, grounded on the word of God and the
rights of private conscience. This system proclaimed as its
distinctive fundamental principle the supreme headship of Jesus
Christ as sole Lord of the conscience and Sovereign of the Church.
This in essence was Presbyterianism as understood by Knox, and by
Calvin at Geneva before him. This, through all its reformations and
divisions in Scotland, and in every other land is Presbyterianism
still, and this the Scottish people received with all their hearts
when they renounced the sacramental system of Rome and threw off the
papal yoke.
While the potential
influence of Christianity over the Scottish population has remained
for centuries an incontestable fact, it is easy to see how
Christianity, having once gained that ascendency, has never lost it.
Even down to our own times the faith of the children remains
substantially the same as was the faith of their fathers. They have
neither renounced it at the demand of a rationalistic infidelity on
the one hand, nor on the other surrendered it for some more
pretentious and plausible form of ecclesiastical order. Why is this,
and what is the secret of the strong hold which Presbyterian
Christianity has had from the first, and still has, in Scotland? The
true answer is to be found partly in the method of public
instruction adopted by the Scottish clergy, and partly in that
universal system of biblical and catechetical instruction in which
every Scottish family was required to indoctrinate its children. The
Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible, was the basis of
all Scottish preaching, and the people, from the period of the
Reformation down through all the history, were Bible-readers, had
the Bible in their hands even in the public sanctuaries, as in their
own houses, and would not tolerate any preaching except as it was
scriptural. The first and highest element of all pulpit ministration
was that it should expound the word of God, inculcate its essential
doctrines and apply its precepts to life and conduct. The Scottish
preacher was nothing except as he was a student, an expounder, a
teacher, of the word of God. A ministry thus biblical, doctrinal and
expository made an intelligent Christian people thoroughly grounded
in the faith and in the knowledge of the Bible. And in time such a
people demanded such a ministry.
Along with this
public instruction of the Sabbath-day and the house of worship was
the equally potential method of training the Scottish children and
youth in the home circle under the faithful discipline and
instruction of their parents. Both at home and in their schools the
Bible was faithfully taught, as were also the Westminster Catechisms
and Confession of Faith. The result was that every Presbyterian
child in Scotland, always under the double instruction of the
Christian home and the Christian Church, was early indoctrinated in
all the essential truths of the Bible, and grew up with a knowledge
of God and of salvation which he could nevermore forget. It may,
indeed, be questioned whether the youth of any Christian land ever
received a more thorough and valuable acquaintance with the saving
truths of the gospel than did the youth of Scotland under this
vigilant and wise discipline, unless the exception be in our own
Presbyterian and New England churches of a hundred years ago, where,
in fact, they obtained precisely the same kind of education, both
biblical and catechetical, under the wise usages established by
those mighty men of old, the Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers. The system
in each case was the same, with the same result.
It has become the
fashion in our day to criticise and disparage this early method of
biblical and Christian training for the young as lacking in breadth
and culture, but, with all our wider culture and more artistic
methods, it may well be doubted whether we have yet discovered any
system of education better adapted to fortify the mind in habits of
virtue and form a really great character than the one so long tried
and so thoroughly tested by the Presbyterian churches of Scotland,
and after them by the early Congregational and Presbyterian churches
of our own country. We well know what this system of biblical and
catechetical instruction of the pulpit and the fireside did for the
people of Scotland and of America through all the earlier history,
and what it is still doing both there and here so far as it is
maintained. It made Scotland and it made New England Bible-reading
and Sabbath-observing lands; it made great individual characters; it
made flourishing and intelligent communities whose type and whose
influence to this day have not died out. Whether the more popular
methods that are now supplanting them will do as much remains to be
seen.
The chief growth of
Presbyterianism in Scotland, however, has been during the last two
centuries, or since the memorable Revolution of 1688. Prior to that
event, as already stated, it had to struggle for existence, and it
had been brought so low under the reign of the Stuarts that the
General Assembly which met for the first time under William and
Mary, in 1690, had not met before for thirty-seven years. "If the
Revolution," says Macaulay, "had produced no other effect than that
of freeing the Scotch from the yoke of an establishment which they
detested and giving them one to which they were attached, it would
have been one of the happiest events in our history." Low as the
Church was brought by these bitter and persistent persecutions, the
truth itself had not been crushed; the people had not lost their
martyr-spirit nor renounced their allegiance to Christ's cross and
covenant and crown.
Leaving out of view
some minor ecclesiastical communions that still exist as the mere
fragments of larger divisions, the Presbyterian Church of Scotland
of our day is comprised in three separate bodies, each having its
own organization, all holding substantially the same doctrinal and
ecclesiastical standards or confession of faith, and all together
representing the great bulk of the Scottish population. The first of
these, and the most ancient, dating from the formation of the First
General Assembly, in 1560, in the time of Knox, but distinctly
connected with the British government at the Revolution of 1688, is
the Established Church, now consisting of about fourteen hundred
parishes, or congregations, and nearly fourteen hundred ministers.
The second is the United Presbyterians, a body formed in 1847 by the
union of two distinct secessions from the old Established Church—one
in 1733, called the Associate, or Secession, Synod, under Ebenezer
Erskine; the other, called the Relief Synod, in 1761. This united
body now consists of five hundred and twenty-six parishes and five
hundred and sixty-four ministers. The third is the Free Church of
Scotland, the result of what Hetherington calls the third
reformation and the third secession, formed in 1843 under the lead
of Dr. Chalmers. This Church now comprises ten hundred and nine
pastoral charges and ten hundred and sixty-eight ministers. This
will suffice to show the relative strength of the three principal
Scottish Churches. Besides these, some small remnants of the
Original Seceders and the Reformed Presbyterians are still found.
It has been remarked
by its enemies, and sometimes conceded by its friends, that the weak
point of Scottish Presbyterianism is its tendency to disintegration,
as seen in its numerous divisions. Possibly its whole influence on
the people and on the outside world would have been stronger and the
work of Christ more effectually accomplished had there been no
divisions, and had the Church been a unit presenting always an
unbroken front to the world. But any one who has attentively read
the history knows that this bitter experience of conflict and
division has never been a thing left to the Church's option. The
division at every great crisis has been unavoidable. It has not
sprung from within, but has forced itself upon the Church from
without. It has been the sad price paid for being connected by law
with the civil state. Every single secession in the long history of
the Scottish churches has arisen from some attempt of the dominant
civil power to intrude into and control the spiritual functions that
belong exclusively to the spiritual sphere of the Church. The civil
government, either on the part of the Crown or through the
legislative body and the courts of law, has in every case intruded
into purely spiritual matters where it had no right to intrude, and
could not intrude without violating sacred compacts. This Erastian
principle of the English government has from time to time been
asserted in one way or another, and this usurped authority in
spiritual matters the people of Scotland have always resisted. This
alone has Made the divisions and disruptions of the Scottish Church.
But for this the three existing Churches of Scotland might have
always formed one unbroken body. If this one great stumbling-block
of division were out of the way, who will say that the Churches of
Scotland might not now speedily come together in one great national
Church?
There are worse
things than divisions, and these the Churches of Scotland have so
far avoided. However much they have been divided, and are still
divided, they have all been substantially agreed on the great
doctrines of the faith once delivered to the saints; they all stand
firmly by the essentials of the Westminster Confession; they all
contend earnestly to-day, as in former ages, for the fundamental
principles of the Christianity of Knox, of Calvin and Luther, of
Augustine and Paul. They have not gone to pieces, as in some
nominally Christian lands, on the deceptive rocks of rationalism,
nor, as in others, on the equally dangerous sands and shoals of a
sacramental ritualism. They stand to-day where they have stood from
the first, like a rampart of adamant forming a tempest-beaten but
indestructible breakwater of sound doctrine against that wild ocean
of doubt and skepticism which has engulfed other Churches and
threatens at times to carry everything before it. Divided on the
subordinate points of ecclesiastical and political allegiance, they
stand to-day, as they have always stood, a unit on the grand old
doctrines of the Protestant Reformation.
It is at this point
that we are brought face to face with the essential element of the
entire Scottish civilization and with the real strength of the
Scottish character. It lies in its religion, in the theology of the
people. The fundamental fact of Scottish civilization as developed
in all the history of the country is Christianity. But for
Christianity, Scotland, shut up within bleak and narrow borders,
would scarcely have been heard of in the world's affairs.
Christianity has made the Scottish character. Still more: the
fundamental fact in Scottish Christianity through all the ages has
been its uncompromising adherence to the word of God. No people were
ever more thoroughly indoctrinated into the very letter and spirit
of the Scriptures. The true Scotsman—at least, since the time of
Knox—has known nothing so well as his Bible. That he has read from
his youth up, and in large measure committed to memory; that has
been his life's catechism. Of the nation it might be said, as it was
of Timothy, " From a child thou hast known the holy scriptures,
which are able to make thee wise unto salvation." That knowledge has
been like a fire in the bones of the Scottish people. It has taken
possession of them and controlled them. Scottish Christianity from
the beginning has been a living faith. It has been both a life and a
doctrine moulding the entire character of the people. In other
words, it has been a theology grounding itself on the word of God
and on the sound philosophy of experience and common sense.
This element of
Scottish character has been strikingly presented by Hugh Miller in
his fine volume First Impressions of England and its People. After
contrasting the strong characteristics of the common people of the
two countries, lie says: "It was religion alone that strengthened
the character of the Scotch where it most needed strength, and
enabled them to struggle against their native monarch and the
aristocracy of the country, backed by all the power of the state,
for more than a hundred years." To the question of an Englishman
whom he met, and with whom he discussed the subject, " What good
does all your theology do you?" he replied, "Independently
altogether of religious considerations, it has done for our people
what all your societies for the diffusion of useful knowledge and
all your Penny Magazzlles will never do for yours: it has awakened
their intellects and taught them how to think. The development of
the popular mind in Scotland is a result of its theology." The
deeply-significant fact is that Christian theology, through its
Sabbath worship, its pulpit ministrations, its weekly expositions of
the word of God, its Church catechisms and its various schools of
learning, has been, and is, the chief civilizing element of
Scotland--the one great educational influence over the young and the
adult mind of its people. Scotland is to-day a standing
demonstration to the world of what Christianity can do for a people,
and can accomplish through them, when it is permitted to gain a
complete ascendency in the land.
The successive
periods and movements in the Scottish Church during the whole three
hundred years since the Reformation are well represented by their
prominent leaders as given by Dr. W. M. Blackburn in his Church
History. John Knox represents the Reformation, 1525--1575; Andrew
Melville, the introduction of a purer Presbyterianism, 1575-1638;
Alexander Henderson and Samuel Rutherford, the Solemn League and
Covenant and the Westminster Confession, 1638—1660; Archbishops
Robert Leighton and Sharpe, the enforcement of Episcopacy upon
Scotland, 1660—1688; William Carstares, the Restoration of
Presbyterianism, 1690; Ebenezer Erskine, the tendencies to
disruption, 1734; William Robertson, the moderation of the
Established Church, 1750-1840; Alexander Duff, the spirit of
missions, 1800-1843; Thomas Chalmers, the Free Church, 1843.
The controversy which
led to this last disruption of the old Establishment was of ten
years' continuance, from 1833 to 1843. It grew out of the abuse of
patronage and the interference of the civil courts, intruding a
minister into a pastoral charge contrary to the will of the people,
even when the presbytery had refused to install him. With singular
infatuation the English government persisted in forcing this issue,
so that all efforts to compromise the difficulties at last became
fruitless. The great result is graphically set forth in the
following paragraph from Dr. Blackburn's History:
"The final issue came
in 1843, in the General Assembly at Edinburgh, when that old city
was full of excitement on one great question: Will these four
hundred non-intrusionists secede from the Established Church? Some
said that not forty of them would go out. Dr. Welsh, the moderator,
took the chair, invoked the divine Presence, and calmly said that
the Assembly could not be properly constituted without violating the
terms of union between Church and State. He read a protest against
any further proceedings, bowed to the representative of the Crown,
stepped down into the aisle and walked toward the door. To follow
him was to forsake the old Church, its livings, salaries, manses,
pulpits and parishes. Dr. Chalmers had seemed like a lion in a
reverie, and all eyes were turned upon him. Would he give up his
chair of theology? He seized his hat and took the new departure.
After him went Gordon and Buchanan, Macfarlane and MacDonald,
Guthrie, Candlish and Cunningham, and more than four hundred
ministers, with a host of elders. A cheer burst from the galleries.
In the street the expectant crowd parted and admired the heroic
procession as it passed. Jeffrey was sitting in his room quietly
reading, when some one rushed in saying, 'What do you think? More
than four hundred of them have gone out.' Springing to his feet, he
exclaimed, 'I am proud of my country. There is not another land on
earth where such a deed could have been done.'"
The deed was in
keeping with scenes that had often been witnessed in Scotland in the
olden times, but for the nineteenth century it was certainly a
spectacle of sublime import, as demonstrating that spiritual
Christianity was still a living power amongst men, and not an empty
name. No stronger proof short of actual martyrdom could have been
given that the Christianity of our day, as embodied in one of the
leading Churches of Christendom, was more than an abstract theory,
more than a genteel profession. Men saw that it was a grand
principle of right and duty which could lead hundreds and thousands
of educated people to sacrifice all earthly interests for truth's
and conscience' sake. It was an argument and a vindication which
even ungodly and worldly men could not fail to understand and
profoundly respect. Both the Church and the world needed such a
demonstration, and unquestionably the moral influence of it was felt
to the ends of the earth. What Scotland thus did was not done in a
corner: it was in the full light of the sun ; it was at the noontide
of our century; it was an act and a lesson for all mankind and for
all coining history. The future alone can estimate its true dignity
and its inestimable worth.
The ministers of the
British Crown just forty years ago stood powerless to prevent that
great disruption or repair the injustice which their own egregious
folly had forced upon an intelligent and conscientious Christian
body, but since their day a far abler minister than Lord
Aberdeen—Mr. Gladstone, one of the greatest statesmen of any age or
nation—has taken occasion in the British Parliament publicly to
vindicate the principles and the character of the band of Christian
heroes who, with Welsh and Chalmers at their head, made the
eighteenth day of May, 1843, memorable and glorious in the annals of
Scotland.
What followed this
impressive separation from the old Church and inauguration of the
Free Church of Scotland is thus briefly told by Dr. Hetherington:
"On the Sabbath after
the termination of the first General Assembly the ministers of the
Free Church abstained from using their former places of worship, and
preached in halls or barns or in the open air to audiences many
times more numerous and unspeakably more intensely attentive than
had ever before attended their ministrations. There were in their
own devotions and instructions a fervor, a pathos and a spirituality
to which they had rarely or never before attained, and their people
gazed on them and listened to them with an earnest, sympathizing and
admiring love which rendered every word precious and its impression
deep and lasting. It may be safely said that the gospel was that day
preached in Scotland to a greater number of eager and attentive
auditors than had ever before listened to its hallowed message. And
yet that was but the beginning. From Sabbath to Sabbath and almost
every week-day evening the people sought to hear, and the ministers
of the Free Church hastened to proclaim, the glad tidings of
salvation. Nor did the remarkable avidity of the people to hear and
willingness of the ministers to preach bear almost any reference to
the recent controversy and its result, but both ministers and people
felt themselves at last free, and they used that freedom in the
service of their divine Lord and Master. Within two months after the
disruption upward of two hundred and forty thousand pounds sterling
had been subscribed, and nearly eight hundred associations formed.
Churches in all directions began to be erected; every minister and
probationer was constrained to discharge double or threefold duty;
and still the demand continued to increase."
From that day onward
until now this last and freest of the Scottish Reformed Churches has
had a steady increase, and has sent its evangelical influences into
every Christian land and into the dark regions of paganism. Nor in
this has it stood alone. The other two great Scottish cornmunions,
the Established Church and the United Presbyterian Church, have been
awakened to new life and activity in all the departments of
Christian work. |
