The Price of the Union in Money.
—The U.F. Commission heard in a masterly business speech from the lips of Mr. John Nicholson the real price of the Union in money. It is certainly a staggering bill. Mr. Nicholson said that the losses affecting particular specified funds such as Sustentation, Aged and Infirm Ministers’, Home Missions Funds, etc., amounted to £455,269. The Committee recommended that these losses should be met by deduction from the amount under each head coming to the United Free Church. In addition to these losses of capital there had been losses of local funds and of properties not covered by the Special Building Fund. General losses and charges not otherwise met and requiring to be dealt with under a scheme of allocation were £134,850. This sum is made up of losses on allocation of properties, special expenditure and expenses of Free Church and Executive Commission. The United Free Church expenditure in the proceedings before the Royal Commission was given as £24,939, and in connection with the Act of 1905 the Executive Commission and financial arrangements following as £46,550. The whole cost of the Executive Commission, £15,048, was borne by the United Free Church. The expenses allowed to the Free Church by the Executive Commission amounted to £55,431. The Joint Committee held that this sum constituted a burden upon the funds recovered. Their estimate of funds available towards reducing the burdens falling on the various committees brought out the sum of £77,350, chiefly from the Emergency Fund. In speaking to the report, Mr. Nicholson said that happily there was a sumptuous balance on the Emergency Fund of £80,350. If they deducted £15,000 for contingencies and added £12,000 for income recoverable they had a net balance of £77,350 available for distribution among the committees. The light, jaunty air with which Principal Rainy and his followers treated the warnings of men who were wiser than they would not have been so apparent if this immense bill had been set down before the late Principal and his followers. It is to be hoped that the gentlemen engineering the next great union movement will sit down and consider the cost lest they make a like astounding ecclesiastical and financial blunder.
Church Litigations.
—In an interesting and instructive article on the above subject in the February number of the Quarterly Register, the organ of the Alliance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian System, there occurs the following paragraph:—“The decision of the House of Lords has led several of the British Presbyterian Churches to adopt resolutions declaring their liberty to make, from time to time, such changes in their doctrinal standards as they may think desirable. We confess we cannot see that there was the slightest use in doing so. Every Church not connected with the State is, before the Law, a Voluntary Society, having perfect liberty to alter or modify its doctrinal Confession as often as it pleases, so long as its action is confined to doctrinal changes. But if there be any property held by the Society, then, in case of a change in doctrine, it is the right and duty of the State as the supreme curator bonorum to see that the intent of the donor will still be carried out—an organized Church or denomination being, after all, but a trustee acting for donors who had placed certain property in its hands for a specific and specified purpose. If property be involved, all the resolutions in the world, seeking to set aside one of the first principles of Common Law, are not worth the paper on which they are written.”
Dr. Hay Fleming’s Important Book.
—I am glad, says Mr. Walter Walsh in the English Churchman, that Dr. Hay Fleming’s important book on “The Reformation in Scotland: Causes, Characteristics, Consequences” has at last been published by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton. It makes a handsomely-printed volume of 666 pages. His exposure of the corrupt state of the Church of Scotland in pre-Reformation times is startling, and the urgent need of a Reformation is proved conclusively. In support of this many authorities are cited, chiefly Roman Catholic. Dr. Fleming justifies the way in which the Reformation was carried out. “If,” he writes, “the Reformation in Scotland had to be characterized in one word, that word would be ‘thorough.’ Its thoroughness was at once its chief characteristic and its glory.” Stern discipline was enforced by the Reformed Church. “In 1567 the Countess of Argyll, for assisting at the baptism of James VI. ‘in a Papistical manner,’ was ordained ‘to make public repentance in the Chappell Royall of Striveling, upon ane Sondy in tyme of preaching.’ That was the Chapel in which the baptism had been performed.” Just fancy what a commotion such discipline as this would create in England were it enforced against the nobility and others in the present day! Dr. Fleming may well speak of the “Impartiality of Discipline” in Scotland at the Reformation. All classes of society had to submit to it. His book is a valuable addition to our knowledge of the Scottish Kirk during the most momentous period of its history.
A Jesuit on John Knox.
—Immediately after the appearance of Dr. Hay Fleming’s book, referred to above, a Jesuit priest wrote a scurrilous letter to the Glasgow Herald of 3rd March, in which he described Knox as a man of the lowest moral character. Dr. Hay Fleming replied in the same journal, on the 10th ultimo, and had no difficulty in showing that the Jesuit priest had a few points yet to learn in Scottish Reformation history. A Jesuit can make a little knowledge go a long way without ever realising its danger, but when he is confronted by an historian of Dr. H. Fleming’s standing—it is the case of the mouse facing the lion. The antics of the former may be nimble enough, but once the paw of the king of beasts comes down on the tiny creature—it is as near annihilation as anything we have in this world.
Good Books.
—Rev. D. Macfarlane, F.P. Manse, Dingwall, will send “Memoir and Sermons of the Rev. D. Macdonald, Shieldaig,” to any reader for 2/3, including postage. “The Papal Conquest,” by the Rev. Dr. Robertson, Venice, may be had from Messrs. Morgan & Scott, 12 Paternoster Row, London, E.C., for 4/6—postage, 4d. extra.