by Rev. A. MacPherson
(The second part of a paper read at the Centenary Commemoration Meeting)
The Quest for Disestablishment
In 1874, Disraeli’s Conservative Government passed the Abolition of Patronage Act. Patronage had, of course, been at the bottom of the trials which led to the Disruption. Unhappily, when seeking this measure, the Established Church did not acknowledge the wrongs done by the enforcement of Patronage on those who had to leave and form the Free Church. And, what was almost as bad, they made clear their hopes that the removal of this obstacle would incite people to forsake the Free Church and return to the improved Establishment.
In the Free Church there were two responses to the Abolition of Patronage Act. The party who were becoming known as the Constitutionalists, while aware of the defects in the Church of Scotland’s attitude, did approve of the Act. Dr Kennedy said, “The troublesome monster is slain . . . and we should be glad.” There were others, though, the majority in the church courts, who accompanied their indignation at the faultiness of the Church of Scotland’s attitude, by starting a campaign for its Disestablishment. As some saw it, if that were done, and the two churches put on the same footing, it would make it easier for them to unite. And if the U.P. Church would come in too, the result would be a united Scottish Church. Mingled with this, however, and carrying more weight with many, was the view that Disestablishment would facilitate union with the United Presbyterians.
The campaign for Disestablishment went on year after year, and was still running at the time of the Declaratory Act. Its supporters chose to disregard Dr Thomas Chalmers’ words spoken on the day of the Disruption; “We have left today a vitiated Establishment; we would return tomorrow to a purified one; and we are not voluntaries.” The campaign conducted by what became known as the Voluntary or Rainy party, played its own full part in convincing true Free Church people that a major part of the Church was bent on severing its connection with vital elements of the Free Church constitution.
Professor W. Robertson Smith
Without question, the matter that most clearly revealed that a majority of office-bearers in the Free Church had fallen away from the faith they professed, was the case of discipline involving Professor W. Robertson Smith. The son of a very gifted Free Church minister, Smith’s scholastic career was phenomenally brilliant. In 1870, when he was only twenty-four years old, he was appointed to the chair of Hebrew and Old Testament Criticism in the Free Church College of Aberdeen. Some of the older men were unhappy about the appointment, but Rainy favoured it in view of the importance, as he saw it, of obtaining a scholar who would be abreast of the most recent phases of biblical criticism, and at the same time a strong evangelical. Rainy’s judgment on this disclosed his interest in the sympathy with the advance of the Higher Criticism, and also failure to estimate accurately the spiritual quality of the young professor. During the next seven years, Smith went quietly on with his work while also spending periods abroad and becoming friendly with scholars like Wellhausen. This man was Professor of Theology at Gottingen and belonged to a school of critics who did not believe in the supernatural, nor in the verbal inspiration of Scripture.
Smith’s fame as a scholar led to his being commissioned to write religious articles for the ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The first article on the subject of “Angels” caused some unease, but the second on “Bible” shocked all in the Free Church who regarded the Bible as the Word of God. The article made clear that Professor Smith had embraced the views of the most extreme German critics. The books of Moses, the Psalms, the prophet and the first three Gospels were treated in such a way as to make void their claim to be God’s Word.
The consternation aroused by the second Britannica article in 1876 prompted action by the church authorities, but it was a whole five years later that the case came to an end. During that time it passed to and fro between the Aberdeen Presbytery and the Assembly. Professor Smith had decided to fight it out on the basis of his self-claimed superior knowledge of all Hebrew matters, but also by the use of ecclesiastical procedures. He had many supporters who showed their devotion to him by greeting the 1890 decision to merely admonish their hero, with tumultuous applause. After the admonition, Professor Smith made short reply that had some appearance of humility. But even as he spoke, he knew that another controversial article was due to appear. It did, just a few days after the Assembly ended. The article was on Hebrew Language and Literature, and in it Smith made clear that he fully accepted the Graf-Wellhausen view of the first five books of the Bible. K. H. Graf was a follower of earlier critics who denied that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, and divided these five books into productions of various authors of later times. Julius Wellhausen supplemented Graf’s theory by contending that the early religion of Israel developed naturally and owed nothing to divine revelation. There were no such persons as the Patriarchs, and doubt attached to the existence of Moses himself. Neither was there in Israel’s early history a central sanctuary like the one described in Exodus and Leviticus.
Smith’s attempted root and branch destruction of orthodox belief in the divine inspiration of these books, affords all the proof that any regenerate person could need that the Professor had never been persuaded by the inward work of the Holy Spirit of the infallible truth and divine authority of the whole Bible. He claimed to be a loyal Free Churchman and strong evangelical, and his admirers saw him possessed of a simple, religious, Protestant evangelical faith, but what real Free Churchmen saw was a proud, arrogant, self-centred rationalistic opponent of the faith once delivered to the saints.
Instead, however, of treating his case as one of heresy, and disciplining him accordingly, he was asked to discontinue teaching; and at the 1891 Assembly, was removed from his chair. The long, slow progress of the case through the church courts showed what a large proportion of Free Church ministers, elders and students had now succumbed to the lure of intellectual respectability.
There are three other names which should be mentioned as evidence of the prevalence of hostile criticism of the Scriptures in the Free Church. A. B. Davidson became Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament in the Edinburgh College in 1863. In a quiet way he introduced Smith and others to the new views of Scripture which these pupils went on to develop publicly. Another man who made it clear that he was very unsound on Scripture and some of the doctrines was the Rev., later, Professor Marcus Dods. A characteristic smoothing motion of Dr Rainy’s delivered him from discipline in the 1877 Assembly. In 1890 he was again before the Assembly on very serious charges, and again by resort to specious claims for the need to adapt truth to changing circumstances, a large majority of the court tolerated his views while at the same time asserting loyalty to the Word of God and the Confession. At the same General Assembly, Dr A. B. Bruce of the Glasgow College was charged with grave errors in books he had written. He also escaped discipline by a majority which appeared willing to allow teachers of the Church’s students to hold views on the Bible and its doctrines clean contrary to what the Church officially professed.
The Declaratory Act
Coming now to the final stage of the Free Church’s departure from its original position, let us first go back twelve years to 1879 and hear what one of the noblest of ministers was saying about events in the Church he loved. “The places of the great men who have gone are occupied, but they have not been filled. And as breaches continue to be made, with what kind of material are they likely to be repaired? This must be asked if we are earnestly anxious about the future of the Free Church. There are still among us men whom the Lord called to the service of the Gospel, having endowed them with the requisite gifts and with the indispensable grace; but there is wanting among them men of outstanding healthful influence. There is a company of evangelical preachers, who, if not intellectually weak, are theologically hazy and ecclesiastically blind. Some of these, as to present burning questions, are but silly “doves without heart.” Besides these there are men whose ambition is to be regarded as advanced thinkers, that rationalists may not scorn them, and as evangelical that the Church may not scout them. There are specimens of those who attempt the alliance of science and the gospel, while they seem to have little of either on which to lay hand in order to unite them. And in the preaching of some of the later additions to the roll of ministers, the repudiation of Confessional theology is as marked as the lack of any traces of a broken heart’s experience of the power of the Cross. And what is the character of the prospective supply? Enough it is to make hopefulness difficult, that our students can not only endure to be taught by men who treat with disrespect the Word of God, but are ready to applaud to the echo, with almost one heart and voice, the men by whom rationalism is most prominently represented. If the Lord should withhold the spirit of repentance, it cannot be difficult to forecast the future of our Church.” It was Dr John Kennedy who wrote these words in 1879.
In the light of the grave, yes, shocking departures from the original standards of the Free Church, identified early by Dr Kennedy and clearly exhibited in the years that followed, no-one could be surprised at the steps next taken to relax stringency of subscription to the Westminster Confession. If, as a great many thought, the new more evangelical way of looking at Calvinism was not fairly stated in the Confession, something would have to be done about the document. Something was done, and quite quickly too, first by eminent ministers speaking, and then by the subordinate courts. Approaches by these courts to the 1889 Assembly led to the appointment of a committee. Its business was to advise the Assembly of the best way to ease the consciences of the many who now disagreed with some statements of the Confession. But, of course, the committee must bear in mind that there must be no changing of “the great doctrines of the Confession.” This insincere tongue in cheek language was to figure in the whole process then begun.
The committee’s report in 1890 recommended the framing of a Declaratory Act somewhat like the U.P. Act of 1879. Prior to the proposed Act being read at the 1891 Assembly, overtures were presented, asking the court to state plainly and unambiguously that it accepted the Confession as it stood. The Act was then read and proved to be just what faithful Free Churchmen had feared.
A very informative background to the Declaratory Act, the text, and a full explanation of it by Rev. James Sinclair can be found in the Church History, and I recommend the reading of these portions. All that can be done on this occasion is to sum up the real purpose of the Act, as opposed to its declared purpose. The professed purpose of a Declaratory Act is to declare or explain parts of the Confession which are thought to be insufficiently clear. The real purpose was (1) To relegate to the back ground, of the Church’s thinking, the fact that God’s saving love is confined to the elect, and not universal. (2) To represent faith as an act which any sinner can perform of himself; to obscure men’s involvement with Adam’s sin, and to suggest that men can be saved without the Word of God. (3) to water down the doctrine of total depravity. (4) To undermine adherence to the principle of the national establishment of religion, and (5) To allow for differences of opinion on doctrine, and make the Church decide what does or does not enter into the substance of the Reformed Faith.
As the godly in the Assembly listened to that final part of the Act, they might think that such a Church as the Free Church now was, could not be depended to uphold any doctrine which would give offence to the new enlightenment. Despite the care that Rainy, the convener, and others had taken to make the wording as innocent sounding as possible, the Act was obviously intended to allow persons taking office to modify to their own liking, statements of doctrine with which they disagreed. Using the Declaratory Act, they could now, to give one example, disregard the words “some men and angels, a definite number of them, are predestined unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death.” In place of these scriptural truths, they could stress God’s love to sinners of mankind, even to such as never heard of Christ.
Having presented the draft of the Act, Dr Rainy moved that it be sent down to the Presbyteries as an overtture under the Barrier Act. Only by this method could it become a Standing Law of the Church. A motion against this by Rev. Murdo MacAskill of Dingwall gained only 66 votes.
The limits of this paper now make it necessary to be very brief in telling what happened in the next two years. The 1892 Assembly was informed that most Presbyteries had approved of the Act, although 23 did not. Dr Rainy then moved that the Declaratory Act become an Act of the Free Church, and his motion defeated another seeking delay, by 346 votes to 195. Great and unruly jubilation greeted the result. A few dissented, protested and appealed to the next Assembly to repeal the Act, but the present fact was that the character of the Church had radically changed.
In the year that followed, it became clear that the main group of the Act’s opponents, known as the Constitutionalists were not now in favour of leaving the Church, whereas a number of students and elders were. Only one minister made known his purpose to leave if there was no repeal; this was Rev. Donald MacFarlane of Kilmallie. Assembly time came, and the ten overtures seeking repeal were disregarded on Dr Rainy’s motion that they challenged the Church’s right to legislate as it had done. A dissent was signed by 21 ministers and the same number of elders against the large majority decision. That was all the length the objectors would go. But the Rev. Donald MacFarlane went further. He went to the Clerks’ table, read a protest, put it on the table, and after his action had been discussed, left the Assembly. His protest that the Church had by the Declaratory Act ceased to be the Free Church, and that he was bound by conscience and ordination vows to remove himself from it, was not received, because it repudiated the authority of the highest court of the Church. That was exactly what Mr MacFarlane meant.
The Kames Congregation and that of his own at Raasay supported Mr MacFarlane’s action. So did Rev. Donald MacDonald of Shieldaig and a large number of elders and people in the Highland area. That part of the Free Church had all along opposed the backslidings. On 28th July, 1893, the separation was formalised. The two ministers and Mr Alexander MacFarlane, a Raasay elder, formed themselves into the Free Church Presbytery of Scotland in a meeting at Portree, and agreed to prepare a statement that would explain the solemn step they had taken. They licensed one student and set trials for another. At their next meeting on 14th August, the Deed of Separation was adopted.
It is hoped that the facts in this paper, condensed though they are, will show that it was imperative that the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland should be set up in 1893. The Lord has owned our continuance in various ways, and we should pray that by a great outpouring of his Spirit, He will bring it to pass that the relationship we bear to the Word of God and the Westminster Confession will become that of multitudes of our fellow countrymen. In large measure they are the victims of the errors of the Declaratory Act, and only saving grace will recover them.