CHAPTER XXIX.

THE Assembly was dissolved, but the Court of Session was still sitting, and it had much ecclesiastical business on hand. We have already narrated how the presbytery of Dunkeld had in defiance of an interdict ordained Mr Kessen minister of Lethendy. The disappointed Mr Clark, who had obtained the interdict, carried his complaint before the judges, and the judges summoned the audacious presbyters into their presence to answer for their conduct. On the 14th of June, they appeared as criminals at the bar of the High Court, accompanied by some of their friends. On being asked if they had any statement to make, they read a paper in which it was set forth that they had acted in obedience to the Superior Church judicatories, to which in spiritual matters, such as ordination, they were subordinate, and had vowed obedience. The Court took four days to consider its sentence. It was thought by many that the presbyters would be imprisoned for a misdemeanour so high as disregarding an interdict, and it was whispered afterwards that all but the majority of the judges were in favour of that course, but when the court met on the day of doom, and the accused brethren again stood at its bar, the president announced that their sentence was simply one of censure. In administering the rebuke of the court, however, the president intimated that if such a violation of the law occurred again, it would be visited with the severest penalties.1 The leniency of the court was approved of by all, for no one wished the respectable Highland ministers from Dunkeld to be ranked with the martyrs and confessors of the Church.

But a third case had now grown out of the Veto law which threatened to be more serious in its results than either Lethendy or Auchterarder. In 1837 the parish of Marnoch, in the presbytery of Strathbogie, became vacant, and the trustees of the Earl of Fife, who held the patronage, presented to it Mr Edwards, who had acted for some time as assistant to the previous minister. Mr Edwards, though a man of considerable accomplishments, was unfortunately at this period somewhat unpopular in the parish, and it was found that only one parishioner and three non-resident heritors had signed his 1 Letter to the Lord Chancellor by John Hope, p. 63.

call, while out of 300 male communicants, 261 exercised the prerogative of vetoing him. The affair was made to wear a still more ugly look by its being told that the solitary caller of Mr Edwards was the village publican. Doubting the validity of the Veto, but anxious to obey their ecclesiastical superiors, the presbytery referred the matter to the Synod, and from the Synod it went to the General Assembly which met in May 1838. The Assembly directed the presbytery to reject the presentee, and it did so accordingly.

In these circumstances, the patrons presented another licentiate of the Church, Mr Henry; and now, as in the case of Lethendy, there were two presentees to the same parish; but while, in the one case, the presbytery took its directions implicitly from the Assembly, in the other case, the presbytery was inclined to look to the Court of Session for guidance. And the Court of Session was not long of intimating its opinion in the new cause; for Mr Edwards had applied for an interdict against the presbytery taking Mr Henry upon trials, which he got upon the 30th of June; and on the same day he raised an action to have it declared that the presbytery were still bound to take him on trials. All this was duly made known to the presbytery at a meeting on the 17th of July, when it was resolved, by a majority, "that the Court of Session having authority in matters relating to the induction of ministers, and having interdicted all proceedings on the part of the presbytery; and it being the duty of the presbytery to submit to their authority regularly interposed, the presbytery do delay all procedure until the matter in dispute be legally determined." Now, when the delirium of the fever is gone, it will be admitted by most wise men that this was a prudent and Christian resolve. These Strathbogie men had no desire to be imprisoned or sent to the hulks for carrying out an ecclesiastical rule of which in their hearts they disapproved; they moreover believed that it was the duty of all men to obey the law of the land; and the rights of none of the contending parties could be seriously injured by delay. But the acknowledgment on their part that the Court of Session had authority in matters connected with the induction of ministers, and their resolution to obey its interdict raised a howl of horror against them. The law-abiding presbyters were held up to public view in newspapers, pamphlets, and speeches, as black moderates, and Erastians, which, in many mouths, were now the most opprobrious names that could be used.

The case went up to the Assembly of 1839, but that Assembly had spent its strength upon the Auchterarder decision, and so it remitted it to the Commission. The Commission accordingly took it up immediately after the rising of the Assembly. It censured the presbytery for having said that the Court of Session had jurisdiction in matters connected with the induction of ministers, and that it was their duty to submit to its authority, and prohibited them from taking any steps for the induction of Mr Edwards before the next General Assembly.

A fortnight after this decision by the Commission, the Court of Session declared that the presbytery of Strathbogie were bound to take Mr Edwards on trials, and, if found qualified, to admit him as minister of Marnoch. And now what were the perplexed presbyters to do? They had no conscientious scruples like their brethren of Auchterarder, to prevent them making trial as to whether Mr Edwards could read his Greek Testament, and conjugate his Latin verbs, or even proceeding to induct him into Marnoch, if they found him in all respects qualified; but while the Court of Session had said they must do it, the Commission had said they must not. Were they to obey the civil or the ecclesiastical power? Disobedience to the one implied pecuniary damages, to the other deposition. It was a hard alternative. A majority of the presbytery had made up their mind to obey the law, whatever the result might be. They met on the 4th of December, sustained the call in favour of Mr Edwards, and appointed his trials in common form. Having done this, they resolved to report the whole matter to the Commission; for they were anxious, if it were possible, to serve two masters, even when giving contrary orders.

The

On the 11th of the same month the Commission met. exciting business that was on hand drew a great crowd of ministers to the metropolis. The conflict between the two rival powers had become more urgent than ever. The majority of the recalcitrant presbytery appeared at the bar by counsel, and were asked if they still adhered to their resolution, as embodied in the report of their proceedings. Their counsel replied that he had no instructions to recall anything. Their determination being fixed; so was their doom. Dr Candlish moved a series of resolutions, setting forth their ecclesiastical delinquencies, cancelling their proceedings, and finally suspending them from the office of the ministry. "It

is not," said Dr Candlish, "till we have been driven to the wall, it is not till we have been bearded and defied by our own licentiates, it is not till intolerable offences have been committed against all ecclesiastical authority by our own ordained ministers; nay, more, it is not till, as in this case, it has become absolutely essential to do something for the mere purpose of keeping the question open till the Assembly can dispose of it; it is not till then that we have resorted to anything like penal measures . . . Now at last we have reached the limit of forbearance. The time has come, not for vengeance, not for punishment, but for prevention." 1 Principal Lee, Dr Bryce, and Dr Muir, opposed the sentence of suspension, but at this period many of the Moderate party somewhat pusillanimously shunned the conflict, knowing it was hopeless; and Dr Candlish's motion was carried by 121

to 14.

There were now two presbyteries, one of which had been rebuked by the Court of Session for disregarding its mandates, and the other suspended by the Commission for threatening to disobey its injunctions.

That the whole region of Strathbogie might not be left destitute of gospel ordinances, the motion of Dr Candlish instructed the minority of four, who had always walked according to ecclesiastical rule, to meet as a presbytery, and take steps not only for intimating the sentence of suspension in the pulpits of the suspended ministers, but for supplying regular service in their Churches, and to do this in conjunction with an influential Committee of the Commission which was appointed for that purpose. But the suspended seven did not see the wisdom of this, nor did they like the thought of their pulpits being occupied and their parishes overrun by a riding Committee of the Commission; and so, four days after their sentence had been pronounced, they met as a presbytery and resolved to apply to the Court of Session for an interdict against any one entering their parishes or pulpits for any sinister purpose. The Court granted their petition so far as to interdict the minority of the presbytery and all others from intimating the sentence of the Commission in the Church, churchyard, or schoolhouse.

1 Report of the Speech delivered at the meeting of the Commission of the General Assembly, 11th December, 1839, on the Marnoch case, by the Rev. Robert Candlish, 1839. There is attached to the pamphlet a short preliminary notice of the facts of the case.

In Strathbogie there were therefore now two presbyteries, as (to compare small things with great) there had sometimes been two popes; the one backed up by the Court of Session, the other by the Commission of the Church.

The ministers appointed by the Commission were soon on the stage coach on their way to the region where the Earls of Huntly had once ruled with such potent sway, by the waters of the Bogie. They obeyed the interdict of the Court, in so far as they did not enter church, churchyard, or school, but they preached in the market-place, in the fields, in any barn or hall they could secure, and fulminated against the seven the sentence of the Church. In some places crowds went to hear them, for altogether it was an exciting thing, and appeared to the imaginative to be a revival, on a small scale, of the old covenanting field conventicles. Very naturally the ministers did not like this intrusion into their parishes, and therefore they again petitioned the Court of Session for help. The Court, advancing a step further than they had hitherto done, interdicted any minister from intruding into their parishes without their consent. But in spite of the interdict, the crusade was ontinued. Many were now willing to risk everything for the sake of the ideas they had espoused; some were even anxious for the martyr's crown. Happily no one complained to the Court that its interdict had been violated, and so the penalties of transgression were never enforced.

While these unhappy law-suits were in progress, enriching counsel and distressing the pious, deputations were proceeding to London to try the effect of negotiation. In July 1839 Dr Chalmers and an influential deputation waited upon the members of the Government. A Whig ministry, with Lord Melbourne at its head, was then in power. It was by the advice of the Whig advisers of the Crown that the veto law was passed, and it was thought the Whig Government were bound to do something to help the Church out of the embarrassment into which it had thus been brought. Dr Gordon was the principal speaker both when Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell were waited upon. It was thought he would be more courtly in his way of urging the wishes of the Church than Dr Chalmers; and moreover, Lord Melbourne was thought by Dr Chalmers himself to have a dislike to him. He had heard he had expressed a hope in regard to a previous deputation, that "that `d- -d fellow Chalmers was not amongst them ;" and at a dinner party at the Duke of Somer