By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
In the Monthly Record of the Free Church for July-August, under the heading “Notes and Comments,” there is a paragraph dealing with a Sermon by the late Rev. D. Macfarlane, Dingwall, which appeared in the June issue of the Free Presbyterian Magazine, in which it is very evident that the writer of the note in question sincerely wished that the sermon had never been published. This, of course, is what one might expect because of how the present Free Church is exposed. He professes to see reason why such a sermon should be delivered at a time when the Free Presbyterian Church was passing “through a time of severe testing,” but says that its publication forty years afterwards is not so easily understood.
The Holy Ghost, through Solomon, says, “Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See this is new? It hath been already of old time, which was before us.” This leads us to expect that what the Free Presbyterian Church had to meet with in Mr. Macfarlane’s time is identical with what we have to meet with at subsequent times. In that sermon he says, “We are taunted with the guilt of schism if we refuse to unite with the Free Church.” It is well-known that the sin of schism has been laid to our charge ever since 1893, and the present Free Church had a good share in trying to fasten that charge upon us since 1900. Have they ever resiled from that attitude towards us? One will search in vain the Records of either their Supreme Court or their lower Courts for the least evidence that they have, Not only so but some of their protagonists in their College, pulpits, and in the Press, have been making this charge in recent years without the least scruple, and that for the simple reason that we refuse to unite with them, and have often repeated our declaration, that we are willing to unite with any Church in Scotland which holds by the Word of God and the Westminster Standards.
What he refers to as “the slight on the venerable Dr. Aird of Creich” has regard only to a mere statement of fact. Mr. Macfarlane referred to the position taken up by Dr. Aird prior to 1893 and his contention that there was more cause for a disruption in 1893 than in 1843, but that when the day of trial came “Dr. Aird remained in the Church which he so strongly condemned.” In this defection Dr. Aird was not alone. Rev. Murdo Macaskill, Dingwall, the man who tried to fill the shoes of Dr. Kennedy and who afterwards entered the Union in 1900, publicly declared that if the Declaratory Act was passed anyone who wished could preach the funeral oration of the once-glorious Free Church of Scotland, while Rev. Murdo Mackenzie, Inverness, was quite prepared to enter the Union if a Statement on the Headship of Christ over both the Church and the nations was inserted in the Basis of Union, regardless of all the errors of the Declaratory Act of 1892 and the corresponding Declaratory Act of the United Presbyterian Church which were in that Basis. This, in a letter of Mr. Mackenzie’s to a friend, he maintained, “would satisfy the most of our party if granted.” Life of Principle Rainy, Vol. ii, p. 238. These men, and all the rest who remained out of the Union in 1900, were quite content to remain under the Declaratory Act, and act in accordance with it in the Church Courts. Instead of being the representatives of the Disruption Worthies their prototype seems to be the children of Ephraim who “turned back in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of God, and refused to walk in his law.”
The Statement that “there is a mark of God’s displeasure on the now Free Church for their failing to stand in defence of Truth, as we did,” is the result of a very clear piece of reasoning, deduced from the origin of that Church. It is well-known that the Free Presbyterian Church took up its separate position because the Confession of Faith, and, therefore, the doctrines of God’s Word were thrown overboard by the General Assembly acting in its official capacity as representing the Church. The argument is used that because it was ultra vires it was not binding on the Church. None seem to have given a practical recognition of this fact at the time but those who formed the Free Presbyterian Church. Their action proved that they held it to be so ultra vires that the Assembly passing it ceased to represent the Free Church or to have any authority over them, and, therefore, when all hope of rescinding that Act was gone, they renounced the authority of the General Assembly which passed it, and continued the Free Church in its original relationship to the Subordinate Standards of that Church with the manifest approval of the Lord whom they professed to serve, for they did not go out of existence in a year or two as was so confidently prophesied by their enemies, but have continued to this day as a witness for Christ and against evil. They had nothing to expect from the world, and certainly received nothing from one-time friends, but abuse and opposition together with suffering and the spoiling of their goods, but the path of duty was made clear to them, and in dependence on the grace of God, they followed it.
It was otherwise with those who afterwards formed the present Free Church. They remained in communion with those who passed the Declaratory Act, and had to obey the Courts of that Church in ordaining ministers and inducting them to congregations, even when these ministers stated publicly that they were signing the formula in the light of the relief afforded by the Declaratory Act. To have acted in accordance with the Scriptural injunction, “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing,” would have been more in keeping with all that some of them said before the testing time came. It was not, however, the Word of God that these men followed but other counsels. In the passing of the Relieving Act of 1894 Dr. Rainy and his party threw a sop to them in order to keep them quiet. If, as the pseudo-Constitutionalists maintain, the Declaratory Act was not binding because the questions and formula were not altered, why the necessity of a Relieving Act? If a thing does not exist how can men accept relief from it? The truth is, however, that in accepting the Relieving Act they accepted counsel from Dr. Rainy’s party, and forsook the counsel of the Word of God. In this we can find no better comparison to them than Saul after he forsook the Lord betaking himself to the witch of Endor. For anyone, either in the Free Church or in the Free Presbyterian Church to accept such sophistry as is based on the Relieving Act of 1894, he would require to have his understanding dimmed, his discernment blunted, and his conscience drugged.
Reasoning thus from the analogy of Scripture it is not at all strange that men should have to say of these ministers who turned back in the day of battle that afterwards their preaching was not what it was before, for when a man’s ways does not please the Lord no one need expect that the Lord will go with such a man. While not questioning that these men had grace we must not forget that even the Lord’s people when they go astray may have many a day of mourning after an absent Lord, which spoils their comfort in their performance of duties. The stand of these men was not in defence of God’s Word but for the sake of retaining property, which certainly should have been of secondary importance. Thus we see that the origin of the separate positions of both Churches are on totally different grounds. Even Mr. Salvesen, the Free Church Counsel in the House of Lords Case said in reply to the Lord Chancellor, “I may say so strongly was this felt at the time (of the passing of the Declaratory Act) that there was a disruption from the Free Church and the Free Presbyterian Church, which exists to this day, and which was the only Church, I think, that has separated on doctrinal grounds, was formed, and it was formed because it said, ‘We can never allow ministers to be ordained and to preach to us if they are to be entitled to preach anything they please, or that the Church may declare to be substance of the Faith.’ ” Free Church Appeals, R. L. Orr, 3rd. ed. p. 327-328. As far as the Free Presbyterian leaders are concerned, to whom the writer of the Notes and Comments refers, they are still living in the Free Presbyterian Church who heard these supposed leaders exposing conditions in the Free Church, and giving many reasons why the Free Presbyterian Church should not unite with it, and yet without any change for the better in the Free Church, these ministers have been received into it. If these ministers were not genuine in their statements about the Free Church while they were with us, their conduct must have been the most consummate piece of hypocrisy that ever was acted in the name of religion, and any statement as to the “abundant evidence that their labour was not vain in the Lord” must be viewed with suspicion as betraying a serious lack of discernment.
The last paragraph in the Notes, seems, by insinuation, to connect the “divisions and desertions that have troubled the Free Presbyterian Church over the intervening years” since the sermon in question was delivered with evidence that that Church was not owned of God, and that these troubles were marks of God’s displeasure upon it. What we have already shown as to the origin of both Churches, and in the light of Scripture this seems to be a most illogical conclusion. Moses had many troubles and divisions in the camp of Israel yet the Lord was with him all the time. The New Testament Church was often troubled with divisions and desertions, yet the Lord Himself upheld it, and fulfilled His promise, “A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a strong nation.” According to the wishful thinking and public utterances of some prominent Free Churchmen, the Free Presbyterian Church is but “a new creation,” has no future to look to, and must inevitably be united to the Free Church. That hope was entertained by the Free Church ever since 1900, but, should that event take place without the Free Church returning to a Scriptural practice and forsaking her coquetting with Arminianism and Modernism, the only true witness on the side of Christ in Scotland would, by such a Union, come to an end. Whatever opinion the Free Church, or any other Church, may have of us, the truth speaks to us as a Church today as clearly as it spake to some of the godly among us after 1900, with reference to the anti-Unionists, “Let them return unto thee; but return not thou unto them.” Jer. xv. 19.