Expenses of the Churches’ Commission.
The Commissioners have now issued the second volume of their Report, which contains, among other items, the Commission’s expenditure. It gives an abstract of the accounts of the Commission from 11th August, 1905—the date of the passing of the Act—to 31st December, 1909. The expenses of the Commission, which were met by the Church funds in dispute, amounted to £15,031—the Free Church paying £6,800, and the United Free the remainder. Of the total, £6,086 was for salaries to a secretary, two clerks, and a messenger until April, 1907, and thereafter an additional clerk. The local inquiries by Assistant Commissioners cost £4,040, and embraced £1,748 as fees to the Assistant Commissioners, £1,186 as travelling expenses and subsistence allowances of Assistant Commissioners and shorthand writers, more than one-half of this item, it is explained, consisting of the expenses of a circuit for inquiries on the West Coast and in the islands, for which a yacht was chartered for the Commission and for the representatives of the Churches. Conveyancing and accounting entailed an expense of £2,574. Office rents, rates, and furnishing cost £954; and printing, stationery, and equipment, £692. This heavy bill does not include the heavy legal expenses incurred by the respective Churches in preparing their case for the Commission.
Whitewashing a Cruel Persecutor.
Professor Terry recently delivered a lecture on “Claverhouse” to the Aberdeen University Celtic Society. In the report of the lecture it is said Professor Terry was warmly thanked for “a paper which could not fail to fascinate as well as convince.” Professor Terry belongs to a school of historians who have come under the spell of Claverhouse, and the Professor had no difficulty, by his own special methods, of getting rid of all the charges against the “bluidy Claverse.” The newspaper report, in referring to Professor Terry’s treatment of the John Brown, Priesthill, murder, says the audience was left in no doubt as to the real facts of the case—facts which did not tally with the story related by Wodrow, but which indeed went to prove that John Brown was an outlaw and a “determined irreconcilable.” Yes! an outlaw and a determined irreconcilable indeed, and who that had a spark of Christian manliness and independence would not have been the same? But that does not brand the name of the Christian carrier with the foul stain of criminality, nor justify the cold-blooded murder enacted before a heroic wife’s eyes on that dreadful May morning in 1685. All the special pleading of Napier and Terry cannot wipe out the stain of martyr blood shed at lone Priesthill.
Claverhouse’s True Character.
In the most recent and most thorough study of the Covenanting period—Dr. King Hewison’s Covenanters—the author has no difficulty in heaping up charge against charge, until at length one feels an overwhelming sense of pity towards the defenceless peasantry whom he harried and persecuted. “Little wonder,” says Dr. King Hewison, “that such a horrid leader, followed by a troop of dare-devil riders, making over hill and dale, as the crow flies, forty or more miles by day or night, could boastingly report to Linlithgow: ‘No body lays in their bed that knows themselves any ways guilty within forty miles of us’.”
Calvin’s Great Contribution to Theology.
Dr. Warfield in his second paper, in estimating Calvin’s greatest contribution to theology says, that it is not the emphasis he lays on the doctrine of predestination as standing alone. “What is special,” he says, “to himself is the clearness and emphasis of his reference of all that God brings to pass, especially in the processes of the new creation, to God the Holy Spirit, and the development from this point of view of a rich and full doctrine of the work of the Holy Spirit. Here, then, is probably Calvin’s greatest contribution to theological development. In his hands, for the first time in the history of the Church, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit comes to its rights. Into the heart of none more than into his did the vision of the glory of God shine; and no one has been more determined than he not to give the glory of God to another. Who has been more devoted than he to the Saviour, by whose blood he has been bought? but, above everything else, it is the sense of the sovereign working of salvation by the almighty power of the Holy Spirit, which characterises all Calvin’s thought of God. And above everything else he deserves, therefore, the great name of the theologian of the Holy Spirit.”
Roman Catholic Disabilities.
I am afraid, says Mr. Walsh in the English Churchman, that many persons are under the delusion that England is the only country which imposes disabilities on the Church of Rome. This is by no means the case, for the Papacy is not allowed to do as it likes even in the Roman Catholic nations of Europe. Roman Catholic disabilities are also imposed even in the Latin and Roman Catholic South American Republics. The Times of Tuesday issued a wonderful illustrated supplement of no fewer than seventy-two pages, making with the body of the paper eighty-eight pages. The supplement is entirely devoted to an account of the South American Republics. In a brief section on “Church and State” (page 43) we read that the Argentine President “can, with the advice and consent of the Supreme Court, grant or refuse passages to Decrees of the Councils, Bulls, Briefs, and Rescripts of the Supreme Pontiff at Rome. The Paraguayan Constitution has the same provision. The Uruguayan President can conclude Concordats with the Apostolic See, and has the like discretion regarding Pontifical Bulls. So have the Presidents of Chile and Bolivia, who can nominate Archbishops, Bishops, Canons, and Prebendaries. The Peruvian President enjoys like powers.” These important disabilities are unknown in England, which gives the Papacy a freer hand than do these Roman Catholic Republics of South America. And yet we are hearing constant protests against the alleged intolerance of Protestant England? In some respects she is, I think, too tolerant.