IN that finding there are three statements made—(1) “It is considered that proposals for union with the Free Church are premature,” (2) “It declares its firm adherence to the position taken up by this Church in 1893, and its sense of the necessity of maintaining unimpaired the doctrines and principles set forth in its Deed of Separation,” (3) “It declares its willingness to receive any who may be ready to homologate the same.”
(1) It is a fact painfully apparent to all lovers of the doctrines, principles, and form of worship set up at the Second Reformation in the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and embodied in her Confession of Faith Larger and Shorter Catechisms, that there had been for thirty years prior to 1893 wilful and deliberate departures from them by a majority in the Free Church. So painful and serious had these departures become that many of her most loyal sons and daughters were quite alienated from her, and could not recognise her as the Free Church of 1843 long before we separated from her corrupt communion. All these held very dearly the principles for which the Free Church was born, and the doctrines held by her at her beginning. As far back as 1863 it became very manifest that the majority of her ministers were quite willing to unite with the U.P. Church. This Church was Arminian in her doctrines and voluntary in her principles. The union was not to be consummated by the U.P. taking the same position with the F.C., but the F.C. was willing to abandon her own and go over to that of the U.P. Thus the F.C. showed criminal unfaithfulness towards her obligations to the Most High, and also to the never-dying souls of her adherents. Had the Confession of her Faith not been based so clearly upon the written Word of God, and had not all her office-bearers most solemnly vowed (which vows are equal to promissory oaths) to assert, maintain, and defend the said doctrines and principles, and to follow no divisive courses therefrom, the sacrilege would not look so wicked. At the time, owing to the faithfulness of a minority, who threatened to maintain the Free Church as originally constituted, the negotiations for union were abandoned. Immediately the Free Church began to demand the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland on the voluntary ground that State connection was unscriptural and sinful, one of the very things which these men vowed to maintain!
It is a well-known fact to all readers of Church history that at the Reformation hymns of human composition and instrumental music were thrown away as unscriptural by John Knox and his coadjutors. In the Confession of Faith Psalms only are allowed to be sung, and sung by the human voice. The Free Church introduced hymns first, and shortly afterwards instrumental music. These were two long steps taken on the way to Rome. Then men began to declare within her pale that the Bible is not inspired, that it is full of errors and immoralities, and that the most of it is mere fiction. She honoured these men as far as possible by setting them up in her Divinity Halls to teach her future (and her present) ministers. The Confession of Faith was then assailed, not, however, by argument which could stand before truth, reason, or science, but by sophistry and majorities. The issue was the Declaratory Act. This is a feeble description of some of the things said and done in the Babel out of which we fled in 1893. Those who now sent us this proposal for union remained in that confusion for seven years longer, and for anything known to us to the contrary, they would have been with them still were it not that some of them could not get the screen from Dr. Rainy and his party they desired, to make their capitulation appear a victory in the eyes of their followers. We don’t say this of them all. This is our first reason for saying that union proposals are premature.
(2) In the month of October, 1900, the Free Church entered into a union with the U.P. Church. The party who now sent our Synod this proposal for union refused to enter. This meant that one party in the Free Church entered into that union, and another party stood where they were—i.e., they stood that day in the same position ecclesiastically which they held all along since we separated from them in 1893. It was not from a party in the Free Church we separated, but from that Church, as a Church, because she abandoned, by passing the Declaratory Act, her own former testimony to principles and doctrines which we felt bound in our conscience to hold to the end of our life, and which it became impossible any longer to hold in her communion. What did these men do in 1900? They refused to enter into an incorporating union with the U.P. Church. What more? Nothing. They have to-day in their constitution all the innovations which the Free Church introduced into her creed and practice till 1900. If this is not true, where have they renounced these innovations? I don’t mean that they practice them all, but I mean that they have not renounced them by any public action of that Church since 1900. This leaves the relative positions of the Free Church and of the F.P. Church just as they were prior to the union in 1900. I don’t see how any person who desires truth, and looks at facts as they are, can deny this. It is certainly an easy matter for these men to rectify these things, but it is absolutely beyond the power of our Synod to unite with them as they are. This is our second reason for considering that negotiations for union are premature.
(3) At their Assembly last May they sent down for the consideration of their several Presbyteries (under the Barrier Act) several resolutions bearing on their position since the Declaratory Act was passed in 1892. In these resolutions they justify themselves all along the line since 1892. Therefore, instead of sending a proposal for union, they should have declared that we were schismatics, and should have asked us to repent of our sins and return to where we came from. For certainly, if they have done what was right we have been all along in the wrong. But who in our Church believes that he did wrong in having kept the original constitution of the Free Church, when men offered to give us a Tulchan (a calf’s skin filled with straw put standing beside the cow to deceive her in order to get her milk) instead of the real Free Church of Scotland? I know of none, but if there are any the sooner they either change their mind or leave us the better for our Church. It is a most painful thing for us to write or speak against our fellow-men after this fashion, but truth must be declared, and as we have not flinched from doing so when we felt it our duty in the past, we hope in the strength of the Lord to continue doing so. We don’t do it from animosity against any man, but from sheer sense of duty. We hope none of our people or of theirs will show any bad spirit towards each other on account of these statements, but that men will calmly reflect whether what has been said is truth or not, without prejudice or bias. For if they pass into law these resolutions, in which they indirectly incriminate our Church, they will have set up a wall of separation for all time coming, if our Church proves faithful to her own Deed of Separation, and they will bind the consciences of their own adherents to approve of every step they have taken since 1892. Several of their followers were not prepared to condemn what we did, but after these resolutions are passed into law they will be bound, in accordance with this new addition to their constitution, to condemn us. There is not a word said against hymns, instrumental music, etc., in this new piece of legislation. These innovations, if they allow them in their constitution (even without legal sanction) will not be dormant very long, but will certainly resuscitate. We humbly beg of them not to leave them there.
The second statement in the Synod’s finding is—”It declares its firm adherence to the position taken up by this Church in 1893, and its sense of the necessity of maintaining unimpaired the doctrines and principles set forth in its Deed of Separation.” In this statement there are two things to be noticed—(1) The Synod’s firm adherence to the position taken up by this Church in 1893. What was that position? The very same position which was held by the Free Church at her beginning.
For a very long period prior to 1843 the civil authorities took upon themselves to interfere with the spiritual independence of the Church of Scotland. For a long time the Church lay dormant under this sacrilegious interference. At last men began in her courts to claim full liberty from that spiritual thraldom. They took up the position held by the Church of Scotland at the Second Reformation—that her jurisdiction was not subordinate to, but co-ordinate with, civil jurisdiction. The civil powers refused to acknowledge this; and therefore, in order to maintain the right of the Church to be ruled by the Word of God, and by her own legally and scripturally constituted courts, independent of the civil authorities in her purely spiritual affairs, she refused their jurisdiction, cast their grievous yoke off her, and became the Church of Scotland Free. (There was no controversy about the duty of the nation, as a nation, to defend and support the Church. This was conceded by all in the Church, and also by the civil powers.) This step made a wide gap between those who remained in and those who came out. Those who remained lost their spiritual independence—that is, they gave up the Church’s right to govern herself by her own office-bearers, and in accordance with the Word of God and her Confession of Faith, and became entirely subservient to civil authority. The Free Church claimed to have brought out with her all that belonged to the Church of Christ in Scotland. She looked upon herself as standing on the very foundations laid in our national Zion and set forth in her subordinate standards. The bodies which afterwards formed themselves into the U.P. Church were then existent, but because they had before this time become voluntaries, the Free Church viewed them as holding principles antagonistic to her position. This is stated in the speech delivered by Dr. Chalmers on the day of the Disruption:—”The voluntaries mistake us if they conceive us to be voluntaries. We hold by the duty of Government to give of their resources and their means for the maintenance of a Gospel ministry in the land; and we pray that their eyes may be opened, so that they may learn how to acquit themselves as the protectors of the Church, and not as its corrupters or its tyrants. We pray that the sin of Uzziah, into which they have fallen, may be forgiven them, and that those days of light and blessedness may speedily arrive, when ‘kings shall be the nursing-fathers and queens the nursing-mothers’ of our Zion. In a word, we hold that every part and every function of a commonwealth should be leavened with Christianity; and that every functionary, from the highest to the lowest, should in their respective spheres do all that in them lies to countenance and uphold it. That is to say, though we quit the Establishment, we go out on the Establishment principle—we quit a vitiated Establishment, but would rejoice in returning to a pure one. To express it otherwise, we are the advocates for a national recognition and national support of religion, and we are not voluntaries.” This, in the words of Dr. Chalmers, is the position of the Free Church at her beginning. We took up the same position, and have declared in this finding our intention of adhering firmly to the same. For we have before our eyes many painful examples of the effect of laxity in holding firmly by the truth of God and the order in doctrine and worship set forth in that Word. Where is that Free Church now?—Broken up into three parties. Why?—Because she did not firmly adhere to her own position. That ought to cause us to be very circumspect, and not walk without God’s Word as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.
In my own mind I was comparing the Free Church to a large ship on board which there were many officers, a large crew, and a great number of passengers. After a while the officers changed the course, threw away chart and compass, and refused to take advice. A party, seeing that all was gone, and that the end would have to be utter ruin, took to the lifeboat, fled, and made for the land, getting into the right course, and setting chart and compass right, they set forth again on the voyage. After seven years the big ship was broken to pieces upon the rocks, and the most of those on board perished. A party got into a longboat, took with them all the regulations which wrecked the big ship, and began to signal to those in the lifeboat to leave all and come over to their boat.
The second thing to be noticed is—The Synod’s sense of the necessity of maintaining unimpaired the doctrines and principles set forth in its Deed of Separation. What are these doctrines and principles? They are the doctrines and principles contained in the Confession of Faith and Larger and Shorter Catechisms. Why does the Synod express its sense of the necessity of maintaining them unimpaired? For two reasons among many others. First, these are the doctrines and principles of the Word of God, which He, by the hands of His servants at the time of the Reformations, set up in His Church in Scotland, and upon their reception by faith, and holding them firmly to the end, the salvation of perishing sinners, not only in this generation, but to the end of time, depends. Surely, what we cannot be saved without ought, by all means, to be maintained unimpaired. And as, in the good Providence of the Most High, they have been brought to our hand, let us faithfully hand them down to posterity without losing a pin or a cord of this Tabernacle. Secondly, we have vowed in the most solemn manner imaginable that we would do so. Therefore let us do our duty by fulfilling these vows faithfully; for nothing can exempt us from this obligation. Others felt this necessity so binding that they not only took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, but they were ready to lay down their lives to maintain them unimpaired. They were certainly greater men, but their vows and obligations were not greater than ours. It is my firm conviction that none can stand the trials that are before the Church of Christ in this land but such as keep their eye upon God’s truth and the principles and doctrines set forth by His true Church in the world, based upon the truth. We can not, we dare not, we desire no otherwise. As things stand at present, union is quite impossible. We have taken our position, and we are under a necessity to hold to it, whereas those who desire union with us are not prepared to take up the same; that is clearly their duty, or show what they find wrong in it, but they are on another tack just now. Again, the most pious and intelligent among us are quite as decided as we can be that it is not possible. We claim to have the whole of the creed and principles of the Church of Christ, to abandon any of it would be sufficient to brand us with sacrilege. “Therefore, thus saith the Lord, if thou return, then will I; bring thee again, and thou shalt stand before me: and if thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth: let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.” (Jer. xv. 19.)
The last thing in the Synod’s finding is—”It declares its willingness to receive any who may be ready to homologate the same.” We don’t claim to have any monopoly of the great and eternal doctrines and principles set forth in our Deed of Separation. We have from the beginning besought the people to hold by them, and we do the same thing still. We never refused any who in sincerity desired to take up these everlasting and unchangeable truths of God’s Word along with us, but we all along, as we do still, declare that we were bound to “hold fast the form of sound words.” It is not only the Anti-Unionists, but the whole world, we desire and daily pray for, that they should be led by the Holy Spirit to hold fast the doctrines and principles of the Reformation. May the Lord, of His infinite mercy, grant that the hearts of the children in this generation may be turned to the father’s.
N. C.