REV. SIR,—A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid. The chief minister, therefore, of the principal congregation of the Free Church cannot hope to escape observation, especially if his books, lectures, and public appearances have been in any way notable.
The language of eulogy is perhaps the most usual address that obscurity makes to eminence, but criticism also, if it be candid and pertinent, may, on occasion, justify itself. Suffer me, therefore, a little to vent my candour, while I pass in brief review some phases of your public speech and conduct. In the first place I must needs inform you (though you probably know it already) that to the legitimist party, i.e., to Free Churchmen who have kept their first estate, your public career has not been altogether palatable. It is true you have not figured much as an ecclesiastical politician, preferring a less turbulent sphere of church life; but your activity in other ways has been considerable, and the impression left is that of a man not well affected to the sacred original principles of the Free Church. Inconsistency is a familiar charge for us to advance against the men of your school. It is a charge which I think can be made good against you. Strictness of official creed and laxity of official conduct, solemn forswearing of all divisive courses at the beginning of your ministry, and thereupon a steady adherence to the unbrotherly programme of Principal Rainy, which has rent the Church into fragments—these have been salient features of your career. This sort of thing has no doubt been epidemical in your time; but covenant-breaking does not justify itself by becoming general.
The Free Church, as you knew her first, was a well-found institution, with a code of doctrine, worship, and polity, in all respects clearly defined. The simple scriptural form of the Church you knew; the venerable character of her doctrine and worship consecrated by the lives and sufferings of men of whom the world was not worthy, you also knew; the zeal and jealousy of many members of the Church for the exact maintenance of her constitution in all its parts you might easily have known; the sacred character of the oath binding all the officers of the Church you knew, and knowing all this, you accepted office in the Church. In view of all that has since taken place we may enquire, Was this well done? Was it well for such a volatile spirit to pledge himself to walk in this strait, jealously defined pathway? “It is better thou shouldst not vow than that thou shouldst vow and not pay.” Be not deceived, neither feasting with Home Rulers, nor exchanging courtesies with Romish Cardinals, nor dabbling in Disestablishment, nor giving the right hand of fellowship to the exponents of a godless criticism, nor swallowing instrumental music, nor rescinding Fast days, are at all permissible to the sworn liegeman of the Calvinistic Church of ’43, to the professed devotee of the Westminster Confession of Faith.
But it is likely you object to this use of the Confession as a prosaic foot-rule method of limiting the motions of the human spirit. It is likely you affect a certain largeness and superiority of mind, as if you would be the patron of all the creeds and not the servant of any. If you be a man for this sort of largeness and superiority, hear, I pray you, what a recent author says while discoursing on the fall of Solomon. He is descanting ominously on the shipwreck that Solomon made, and he speaks thus (I adapt his words slightly):—”There was (in Solomon) what the inspired text calls largeness of heart—very much what we would in our day call openness and breadth of mind, hospitality and catholicity of mind, even to sympathy and symbolism with beliefs, with ways of worship, and with ways of no worship, against which it had been the divine call and whole ministry of Rutherford, Bunyan, Owen, and Shepard, to warn and protect Christian people. Such proceedings as those must give a shock to the more conservative and sober, and thoughtful and religious and far-seeing minds in Scotland.” Further on the lecturer says:—”Solomon’s largeness of heart soon ended in flesh itself. His wisdom, as his life went on, descended not from above. The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable. We see it every day, we see men absolutely revolting against all smallness of heart. They loathe all your bigotry and narrowness, and hardness, and suspicion, and superstition. They see a soul of good, especially in things evil. They fraternise with men and movements that their fathers abominated. They pare down and prune away the decalogue and the creed, and the catechism, and the books of discipline of their godly upbringing. They rehabilitate and reinvest names that were a shame and reproach in their father’s house.” My author (a well known Edinburgh divine, whose name I believe is Dr. Whyte) means, I think, to say that the moral situation of people who do these things is full of peril. It is a word in season to you, sir, and to many of your fellows, which I hope you will have self-respect enough to regard.
Certain Puritan names have been inserted into the above extract from the lecture on Solomon. But you will not object to this for you exhibit a great fondness for the Puritans, even the very chief. You canvass the Puritan divines at a great rate even as if you were the sole agent for their wares; but many of us are looking on with a puzzled air, and asking why you do it? Not that we would forbid any man to bring as much honour and popularity to the Puritan divines as he can, but we cannot see how it is consistent for you to do this. The fitness of things must be observed, the laws of congruity must not be violated. The old law forbade the plowing with an ox and an ass together, and there are certain proprieties which common sense will not suffer to be traversed. We say, therefore, exploit the Puritans if you like, but in the name of sincerity and good form leave off eulogising Cardinal Newman and all that tribe. The bosom friend of Samuel Rutherford cannot be the faithful henchman of Samuel Rutherford’s mortal foe. The disciple of Thomas Shepard cannot also be the scholar of Welhausen. Say not of Professor George Adam Smith, “he is my brother;” and then of Dr. John Owen, “he is my father;” for the one believes that he may saw Isaiah asunder, the other (who is godly after the primitive manner), would for such a fault disown his own child. You understand, I hope, what our meaning is. This easy lumping together in a morning’s discourse of Rutherford, Newman, Owen, and Dr. Dods is fairly nauseous to us. Your theological ways are altogether too versatile. We like originality, wide reading and culture, but we suspect the sincerity of the man who can profess an equal relish for John Bunyan and Cardinal Newman.
The mention of Cardinal Newman calls up a matter wheret we do well to be angry, viz., your holiday visit to that dignitary. You tell us that whilst yourself and two friends were touring in England, you turned aside by way of variety to pay your respects to Cardinal Newman, “to whom you were so much indebted.” Here truly was a dishonourable business—you not only thereby compromised your own honour but the honour of your congregation, and the honour of all the members of the Free Church. Three bad boys playing truant will sometimes wind up the day by robbing an orchard; but your escapade was far wilder than that. When you turned down the path to Newman’s house did you not see the angel with the drawn sword barring your progress? Then beyond all peradventure you were blind. Did you hear no voice behind you saying “this is not the way, walk ye not in it?” Then the heavens were silent to you, and that is a bad sign. The church of which you are a minister had this as one of the articles of her testimony. “The Pope is that man of sin and son of perdition, and his communion the synagogue of Satan.” You swore that you accepted the truth of these statements, and yet you, the representative that day of the Free Church in England, thought it good form to go with an olive branch to the Pope’s principal agent in that kingdom. Some things are lawful but not expedient, but of things neither lawful nor expedient no good can be said. If you had no fear for yourself you should have had some for the young men and women who are under your influence. The whirlpool that swallowed Newman is not to be trifled with, or to be made less a terror by indiscreet familiarity with the victims of it. If you do not fear the seductions of the Church of Rome, you have too little fear in your composition. You may be far from intending to land yourself or others into it, but by your com-mercing and coquetting with the seducer you break down that wholesome dread of the enemy which we have inherited from our suffering sires, you pave the way for the overspreading of the abomination that maketh desolate.
But you say you have benefitted much by Newman, whom you esteem the prince of English preachers. Yes, if the infusion of a bad unbiblical theology be a benefit, you have certainly something to thank Newman for. Not without result have you consort with Newman. The scholar has learnt something from the master. Take for example your lecture delivered on 21st March of this year, on Solomon. David’s heart smote him because he cut off the skirt of the garment of the Lord’s anointed, even Saul; but you without compunction have cut off Solomon’s hope, yea, blotted his name from the book of life. Who taught you to call Solomon a “reprobate,” a “castaway”—the “greatest castaway in the Bible.” Was it not Newman? Newman called Solomon a “grey-haired apostate,” and after he had launched that shaft against Solomon’s good name you thought yourself at liberty to say all manner of evil against him. But if any man speak of Solomon, let him speak as the oracles of God. For the mouth of the Lord spake concerning him, as if to anticipate the scandal which his fall would cause, “I will be his Father and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity I will chasten him with the rod of men and the stripes of the children of men; but my mercy shall not depart away from him, as I took it from Saul.” 2 Samuel, vii. 14-15. Solomon’s name therefore is written in the book of life. It is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? We behold the man beloved of his God and healed of all his back-slidings, and can say nothing against it, let Drs. Whyte and Newman rail as they please. The truth is, Newman has a bad unbiblical theology, and any man that will drink from his stream will contract the taint.
Other Old Testament characters handled in your recent lectures receive also very questionable treatment. David is not indeed excommunicated, but pains are taken to divest him of the halo which he wears in the popular mind. You say, the devout psalm-singing David which we conceive of, was not the man that Absalom knew. You bring your historical imagination to bear on the subject, and reveal to us that sensuality was the way and manner of David and all his household. At your bidding, Absalom says, “The life we all led in our several stews quite turned me against my father.” You say, the state of matters in the city of David was barely better than a Mohammedan harem. These are wild exaggerations and in very bad taste. We need not scruple to admit that things fell out in the lives of these Old Testament worthies that are painful to think of; but the sacred writers do not elaborate and harp upon the sins of pardoned saints. They are related simply and impartially, and then left to the meditation of the wise in heart. But they do celebrate and set out the riches of the grace that passed over and put away such aggravated offences. It is not exhibitions of the ugliness of sin, but manifestations of the glory of grace that will do men any good. There is, methinks, too little of the latter element in all your lectures. You describe and anatomise the human heart in the way of the dramatist or realistic novel writer, but you seldom escape to the higher themes of thought. This is not well done for a doctor of divinity. Apologising for my plainness of speech, —I am, yours, &c.,
NEMO.