SINCE the announcement of the House of Lords’ decision, various meetings of the United Free Church have been held. Their Commission met on August 10th (as also did the Free Church Commission), and meetings have been held at several places in the North—such as Inverness, Dingwall, Wick, Thurso, and Tain. Principal Rainy, Lord Overtoun, Dr. Ross Taylor, Professors Stalker, Denney, and Macewen, Principal Miller of Madras, Rev. John Kelman and others have delivered speeches on the crisis. Many ministers also have been declaiming against the decision from their pulpits or at Presbytery meetings, and have been urging their people to stand by the United Church, no matter what may be the consequences.
Many statements have been made, with a view to discredit the judgment of the House of Lords, and to weaken the effect of the decision on the minds of the community. These are of such an unwarrantable and unjust character that they call for refutation from any who love the truth. Two leading points, spiritual independence and the free offer of the gospel, we shall presently notice.
First, it has been and is still being declared all over the country that the Church’s spiritual independence has been violated, that independence which the fathers of the Free Church contended for at the Disruption. Now, this is a decided misrepresentation of the case. Verily, the ideas of United Free Churchmen on spiritual independence have received a rude and killing shock, but the thing itself has been in nowise interfered with. The Free Church never held that the Church was entirely independent of the State in determining questions of property and the terms of trust deeds. Even Principal Rainy and his colleagues consulted lawyers about property before entering into a Church union of a professedly spiritual nature. The Church of Rome only claims to be above the State and all civil law, and is this the goal at which many U.F. churchmen would fondly arrive? Probably they are nearer it than they think. Again, U.F. speakers, in the interests of the doctrine of spiritual independence, declare that the Free Church had power to alter her creed, and that the House of Lords had no right to fix them down to the Confession of Faith. They affirm that this liberty was secured in 1843, and that the civil court has now taken it away. This is far from correct. What did the Lords actually do in the matter? They simply set themselves to find out what the constitution of the Free Church was, and upon what terms the property was held, and they came to the conclusion, after hearing very full statements on both sides of the case, that the constitution of the Free Church gave no power to change any of the doctrines of its faith or any of its essential principles, that the lands, property and funds were held under this constitution, that the United Free party had departed from the constitution, and therefore from the terms of the trust, and so had forfeited their civil rights. The House of Lords has made no new conditions for the Frees or the United Frees; it has simply declared the conditions that already existed. If it has fixed down the Free Church to the Confession of Faith, it has done so because it was fixed down already by its own constitution. If there is any complaint to be made, let it be made against the proper parties, the fathers of the Free Church who framed the constitution, or rather those who have culpably misinterpreted it and have led the United Free people into the ditch in which they now find themselves.
The spiritual independence which the Free Church claimed at the Disruption was the right of the Church of Scotland to manage her own affairs, according to her constitution and God’s Word, without unlawful interference on the part of the State. That constitution had already been recognised and approved of by the State, and the Disruption fathers justly contended that the State was breaking its own contract with the Church by this interference. Unlike the men who now unwarrantably claim to be their successors, they held that spiritual independence could be enjoyed and had a full right to be enjoyed in connection with the State, and that this was the Scriptural standard or ideal of Church and State relationship. It was not freedom from State connection, but freedom in State connection they contended and suffered for. And, moreover, it was certainly not a spiritual independence that would make their successors independent of the constitution or of “the form of sound words” which they so jealously held by, that they bequeathed to them, but a spiritual independence that was defined by and lay within the scope of that constitution. The Disruption fathers in this respect had the mind of Christ and His apostles. “The faith” was something to be held fast and not to be trimmed or surrendered according to the notions of the times; it was something to be handed down intact to future generations. In fact the spiritual independence that the United Frees are claiming as the legacy left by those who went before is something which their forefathers would have disowned as an “ungodly idea,” a lawless independence that gives them liberty to wander at their own sweet will, wherever they please, a will-o’-the-wisp that has already led them to renounce not only the authority of the Confession of Faith but the authority and infallibility of God’s Word, as exemplified in the teaching of their theological professors.
The second point that is being “worked” by United Free orators and others at the present time is that the judgment of the House of Lords has condemned the free offer of the gospel, and that the Free Church is now debarred from preaching it. This is a very unjust representation of the matter. The Lord Chancellor, whatever may be his private opinion, in his judgment on the subject of Predestination and Free Will, simply places side by side paragraphs from the Confession of Faith and the Declaratory Act of 1892, and declares that they “exclude one another.” He does not enter into details on the subject. The Free Church pleaders in their speeches before the Lords never contended that the free offer or universal call of the gospel was not in the Confession, but they affirmed that the statements on this subject and foreordination in the Declaratory Act were not in harmony with the Confession. Of course, United Free speakers do not allow themselves to think that the Declaratory Act statement of the gospel call and foreordination may be open to condemnation; with a great deal of self-assumption they take it for granted that the Act is perfectly accurate in its statements, and that therefore a free gospel in the soundest sense of the term is condemned. They even go the length of saying that Free Church ministers cannot now preach a free gospel. All this is absolutely unwarranted. The Lord Chancellor is studiously general in his sentences, and all that can be safely or justly concluded is that he considers that the Declaratory Act is at war with the Confession of Faith. Free Church ministers are at as much liberty as ever to preach the universal call of the gospel.
Church Notes.
Communions. Lochcarron and Vatten (Skye), 1st Sabbath of month; Finsbay, 2nd; Applecross and Stoer, 3rd; Strathy, 4th.
Acknowledgment. The Treasurer of Dingwall Manse Building Fund begs to acknowledge the receipt of £1 from an anonymous contributor, per Rev. Mr. Macfarlane.
Synod Committee Meeting. The Committee on the Scriptures and Creed Subscription is arranged to meet at Inverness on Tuesday (not Friday as was printed by mistake in Synod report), September 13th.