A recently published book, Wandering in Fields of Dreams, by Rev. P. M. Chisholm, critically reviewed by Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale.
Recently, we got a reading of a book entitled Wandering in Fields of Dreams, by Rev. P. M. Chisholm, minister-emeritus of the Free Church, Ardelve. We have reason to believe that certain persons are very active in bringing this book, for obvious reasons, to the notice of Free Presbyterians, and, because of these activities, we consider that notice should be taken in the pages of our Magazine of as much of its contents as take to do with the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. What he says of the Church of his adoption, or rather the Church to which he originally belonged, is the concern of that Church. Mr. Chisholm, as is well known to the older generation of Free Presbyterians, was, for a short while, a student of our Church, until the Southern Presbytery, for very grave reasons, found it necessary to declare that his name be removed from the roll of students of our Church.
In the book before us, Mr. Chisholm tells how he came to be associated with St. Jude’s Free Presbyterian Congregation, Glasgow, and had first been received as a communicant and then as a student. It is evident, however, that he was not long there when he thought he saw much which was unscriptural and needed his attention in order that these matters would be put right. Our author relies very much
on dreams and visions which he professes to have seen, and the remarkable thing is that the interpretation he puts on these dreams and visions are always favourable to him and condemnatory of the positions and actions of those who are opposed to him. One is a dream of the wrecking of a boat at the helm of which was the late Rev. Neil Cameron, Glasgow. He interprets this dream by certain more recent happenings in the Free Presbyterian Church, as he also does his dream of seeing St. Jude’s on fire.
Mr. Chisholm gives us some of his cogitations which speedily led to the trouble in St. Jude’s. They centre round two passages of Scripture, that is, Isaiah xxv. 10-12, and Matthew xxvii. 18, which came before his mind after a Sabbath evening service in St. Jude’s. In the first he saw the Free Presbyterian Church in its decline and fall, and in the second he saw the envy of some of the office-bearers of St. Jude’s against himself personally. On this last point one is struck with the high estimation which Mr. Chisholm must have had of his own abilities and attainments when he would conclude that anyone would be envious of him. This, no doubt, paved the way for a further vision, not a dream this time as he tells us, which he had the following evening when conducting the prayer-meeting in St. Jude’s. He saw a black cloud hovering over the congregation, and he noticed, to quote his own words, “that one of the office-bearers who sat in front of me was extremely agitated, and, in a few seconds, his countenance was changed into the form of our conception of the evil one.” We may look upon Mr. Chisholm’s conduct in divorcing the aforesaid Scriptures from their context, his unwarrantable application of them to the Free Presbyterian Church and to himself, and his unbridled imagination, together, it is to be feared, with not taking sufficient heed to the Apostle’s advice to Timothy to “refuse profane and old wives’ fables,” as the background of all his subsequent conduct while he remained in connection with our Church. His reliance on dreams and visions led him into extravagances which could hardly be rivalled by Madame Sourignon herself, who, among other tenets, held that the Church needed a thorough reformation, that there existed no more true Christians, and that all religious rites were superfluous.
His narrative of how he was dealt with, when brought to task for his rash and unfounded statements in the pulpit of St. Jude’s, is as unreliable as his interpretations of Scripture instanced already. An example of this unreliability is provided in the following reference to his appearance before the Southern Presbytery: “I got no notice of the sederunt at which they wished me to be present, with the result, that I had to wait the whole day until late in the evening, and, even then, I got no opportunity of defending myself, and was told that unless I agreed to their stipulations before a certain date my name would be erased from the students’ roll” (page 44). While the passage quoted does not contain a true statement of the proceedings of the
Presbytery in the case, it is, perhaps, written in order to show how heartless the Southern Presbytery showed itself in keeping him waiting so long. The truth, however, is, that Mr. Chisholm in his Defence of Reformation Principles (page 202), publishes the letter of the late Rev. Jas. S. Sinclair, the Clerk of the Southern Presbytery, in which it is clearly stated that the meeting was to be “in the Hall of St. Jude’s Church, on Thursday evening, the 29th inst. at half past seven o’clock” (italics mine).
Some of the statements made in the book manifest a spirit of daring presumption, intolerable in a man who has a hope in the mercy of God in Christ, while others are such sweeping assertions that one marvels that they proceed from the pen of one who does not lay claim to omniscience. The following are examples of the latter:—”If there is closer adherence to the letter in the smaller Churches, they are more corrupt in their practice” (p. 52). “Apart from recapitulation of some of our past Protestant Reformed phraseology in the smaller Churches, there is no trace of a public witness for righteousness in our land to-day” (p. 88). These statements remind us of the story of the old woman who had narrowed down the number of the Lord’s people in the world to two, her husband and herself, and then expressed her doubts as to her husband being one of them. Mr. Chisholm has, evidently, constituted himself a judge in order to judge the whole religious profession of the land and in the purity of that light, which he claims to be in his eye, none can stand. May he, in mercy, be brought down from that high pedestal, for there is only One who looked down upon this earth and found that all had gone aside.
How, it may be asked, does this self-appointed judge of his fellow-creatures stand himself? In being received as a student in the Free Presbyterian Church he expressed himself as being satisfied with the Constitution and practice of that Church, and, further, declared his agreement with the Synod’s Resolution, which bound him that, should he, at any time, change his mind as to the doctrines or principles of the Church, he would immediately inform the Church courts, and not pursue divisive courses. When he, evidently, changed his mind on these matters, instead of observing his solemn promise to inform the Church courts, we find him charged with having (1) In a public place before a mixed congregation, on several occasions delivered “personal and unfounded attacks on ministers, elders, and courts of this Church,” and also did denounce the recognised practice of employing elders, when need required, to speak from the Word at Church services! (2) “That Mr. Chisholm, in doing so, has violated the ordinary rules of Christian and ecclesiastical procedure, in not having previously brought any such charges before the proper tribunals, namely, the Courts of the Church.” We think the heathen Town Clerk of Ephesus could give Mr. Chisholm some instruction, as to his duty, when he said, “Wherefore if Demetrius, and the craftsmen which are with him,
have a matter against any man; the law is open, and there are deputies: let them implead one another. But if ye inquire any thing concerning other matters, it shall be determined in a lawful assembly.”
In the book under review, Mr. Chisholm repeats his hoary-headed legend that no ruling elder should take services. This, as has often been pointed out, has no foundation, either in Scripture or in the practice of the Church in its best days. In the Free Church in post-Disruption times and in the Free Presbyterian Church, on account of the scarcity of ministerial supply, many a large gathering was suitably exhorted, and the Lord’s people among them edified, by the exhortations of catechists and ruling elders. There are also many instances on record of many who became outstanding Christians in our beloved land who, for the first time, heard the truth in a saving manner from the lips of such men. The Lord thus has condescended to acknowledge their labours though Rev. P. M. Chisholm sees nothing in these labours but something that is contrary to Scripture and a sure sign of declension. He evidently forgets that, according to his own views on this matter, he himself had no right to preach while he was a student as he was only a layman till he was licensed, yet he continued to hold services for several years in an ecclesiastical no-man’s land after his permission to hold services had been taken from him by the Southern Presbytery. He, further, counts these years in the forty-five years in which he tells us that he preached the gospel.
The excerpt which he publishes from a letter of the Rev. Alexander MacColl, Lochalsh (page 79) is open to other and saner constructions than that which Mr. Chisholm puts on it, especially when Mr. MacColl’s letter does not hint at any disapproval of employing laymen to take services, and also in the light of the fact that Mr. MacColl often employed laymen, while in the Parish of Duirinish, Skye, to take services when he would be absent at Communions. Though the present generation were not directly under the influence of Mr. MacColl, still, there is enough known of him yet in the Highlands to convince one that he would rather have a godly laymen who adhered wholeheartedly to the Word of God and to the principles of the Free Church, taking services for him, than a minister whose spiritual state was open to doubt, whose orthodoxy was questionable, and whose ecclesiastical standing found its fit type in the weather-cock.
To our mind the book before us contains nothing to commend it but much to condemn it. One thing has struck us, and that is, that, in this book, Mr. Chisholm has proved true to the class of people to which he belongs. The Free Presbyterian Church had a varied experience of would-be reformers, but in that experience one thing has never varied, namely, the hostility of these reformers to our Scriptural testimony as a Church, so that little or no regard is paid by them to the Moral Law of God, and especially that part of it which forbids
the bearing of false witness. This has been the lot of the Church of God in all ages and in all lands. At the time Mr. Chisholm’s book came into our hands we were engaged in reading the History of the Free Presbyterian Church of Australia, by Rev. J. C. Robinson. In that book a lurid light is cast on the morality of some who made loud professions of their zeal for the strengthening of the Cause of Christ by outward unions. Those who refused to enter these unions were traduced, and anything was considered quite fair in order to utterly exterminate their pure witness on the side of Christ. One typical instance may be cited, that of Singleton, a congregation of the Synod of Eastern Australia. On page 178-179 we read, “This congregation refused to enter the union of 1864 and 1865 . . . The property eventually found its way into the hands of the unionists. Many Free Church people at this time were too trusting in regard to their properties, which fact they learned to their sorrow. The above incident came to be referred to as ‘the stolen church,’ and a gentleman of some repute, an expert in property matters, earned for himself the unenviable reputation of being ‘the Land Shark.'” This ought not to be wondered at as it is nothing but a manifestation of the promised conflict between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent, which conflict has continued throughout all the ages of the world’s history.