answer to the objec under the worthy tion, that veto a really presentee may be rejected. 1834. furnishing a clear authority for the adoption of the veto. In CHAP. VL reference to the alleged hardship to the presentee, of being shut out from a parish by the mere dissent of the congregation, a point on which the opponents of the veto had laid great stress in the discussions of the year before, Lord Moncrieff took the most favourable case for their argument, the case of a really worthy person suffering under this right of exclusion, and met it in these striking terms:-"Either," His lordship' said his lordship, "the people are right and there is some defect in the individual, and thus our sympathy should be with the people and not with the individual who is rejected; or the individual is a worthy man, of good gifts and qualifications, of pure and upright principles; and then, I appeal to the assembly if it can be really said to be an injury to the man that he is thus prevented from entering into a parish situated as we suppose; for I come back to the man of pure and upright heart and honest intentions, who desires to minister in the church for the benefit of those under him, and for the glory of God; and I ask whether such a man, introduced into the parish against the wish of the people, can be said to enjoy a benefit, or to have suffered an injury, in being thrust upon the people? A deserted church,— desolation in his heart,-the meeting-houses rising around him, sabbath after sabbath treading his way to the church. door, and there finding none whom he can spiritually edify; returning to his home meditating upon the condition into which he has been brought, and the total abuse and frustration of his powers,-his learning a burthen,-his talents utterly useless, because he has not been placed in a sphere where he might employ them." There are probably many ministers in the establishment, at this moment, who could tell, from an intimate experience, whether the picture which Lord Moncrieff so graphically sketched in 1834, has not turned out to be most painfully just and true. The motion Lord Moncrieff's notion. CHAP. VI. with which his lordship concluded was in these words:That the general assembly having maturely considered the overtures, do declare that it is a fundamental law of this church, that no pastor shall be intruded on any congregation contrary to the will of the people; and that in order to carry this principle into full effect, the presbyteries of the church shall be instructed, that if at the moderating in of a call to a vacant pastoral charge, the major part of the male heads of families, members of the vacant congregation, and in full communion with the church, shall disapprove of the person in whose favour the call is proposed to be moderated in, such disapproval shall be deemed sufficient ground for the presbytery rejecting such person, and that he shall be rejected accordingly, and due notice thereof forthwith given to all concerned; but that if the major part of the said heads of families shall not disapprove of such person to be their pastor, the presbytery shall proceed with the settlement. according to the rules of the church; and further declare, that no person shall be held to be entitled to disapprove, as aforesaid, who shall refuse, if required, solemnly to declare in presence of the presbytery, that he is actuated by no factious or malicious motive, but solely by a conscientious regard to the spiritual interests of himself or the congregation: and resolve that a committee be appointed to report to an interim diet of the assembly, in what manner, and by what particular measures, this declaration and instruction may be best carried into full operation." A great deal was attempted to be made some years afterwards, by a certain between the learned person,* of the alleged inconsistency between this motion of Lord Moncrieff, and that submitted by Dr. Chalmers to the assembly of the year before. "The truth is," said Dr. Chalmers, commenting on Mr. Hope's ground Difference, alleged by Mr. Hope, to exist motion of 1833 and that of 1834. Mr. Hope (now lord justice clerk) in his Letter to the Lord Chancellor, &c., &c. Edinburgh, 1839. . 1834. 1834. less allegation, "that the rejection by the people, and on grounds which they are not called upon to state or indicate, is just as absolute by the motion of 1833, as by that of 1834; and the only difference between the two years is, that the security required by the church for the moral honesty of the dissent was different, and in the latter year, instead of appearing in the body of the motion, had a place assigned to it among the supplementary regulations for carrying the motion into effect."* CHAP. VI The opposi veto led by tion to the the Rev. Dr. Mearns. tary mode. ratism of shire, The opposition to the reforming movement was this year headed by the Rev. Dr. Mearns, professor of divinity in the university of Aberdeen. No fewer than three other clerical speakers from the same county followed him on the same side. Certain districts would seem to have their indigenous opinions, just as they have their indigenous plants. When Dr. M'Crie was in the act of asserting, in a wellknown pamphlet which appeared some months before, that "none will appear as the advocates of patronage, or deny that it is a grievance," the recollection of the ecclesiastics The herediof Aberdeenshire came suddenly across his mind, and immediately he qualified the sentence that had dropped from his pen. "When I say none, I have not lost sight of certain divines in the distance, who, by the help of their northern lights, contrive to see everything in a position the reverse of that in which they appear to other men: who would persuade the people, that what they believe to be a burden too heavy Dr. M'Crie's to bear, is, in reality, as light as the web of the gossamer; and remind us of the lordly Peter, in the Tale of a Tub, who called the brothers a couple of blind, positive, ignorant, wilful puppies,' because they would not believe that a dry crust, which he put into their hands, was a glass of * Remarks, &c., &c., occasioned by the publication of a Letter to the Lord Chancellor by the Dean of Faculty, by Thomas Chalmers, D.D. Glasgow, 1839. P. 13. Aberdeen letter on that subject. Speech of CHAP. VL claret, and some slices, which he cut from a loaf, to be as 1834 'true, good, natural mutton as any in Leadenhall market.' They have been nursed in the same school, have breathed the same air, and imbibed the same spirit with their predecessors, the doctors of Aberdeen in the seventeenth century, who, when all Scotland were rejoicing in the recovered liberties of the presbyterian church, made their cloistered walls resound with their plaint, and vowed to live and die under the shade of regal and prelatic despotism."* That old stock was not extinct, and furnished, as has been noticed, a large proportion of the speakers who took part in the assembly of 1834 in withstanding the proposed limitation of their favourite law of patronage. The opposition of Dr. Mearns, calm and clear, like his own thoroughly argumentative intellect, was rested almost exclusively upon one single ground. "This motion," he said, "was a giving up to the Mearns: people of the power of judging. It was a transfer of the veto to be a right of collation." The right of collation he held to be "a great principle, early vindicated and maintained by the church, implying an entire power to grant admission, to extrude, to fix qualifications in the abstract, and to examine into the possession of these qualifications by every individual nominee, including also the right of induction." He admitted. that, under this right of collation belonging to the church, there was included "the right on the part of the congrega tion to be consulted, to have the nomination intimated, and opportunity afforded them to express their consent or dissent; such reasons to be judged of by the ecclesiastical court." But he contended that the motion of Lord Moncrieff amounted "to a transfer of the essential right of the church to judge of all qualifications, and the giving to the people a co-ordinate voice and authority in this matter, which was at variance declares the transfer of the right of collation from the Presbyteries to the people *What ought the General Assembly to do at the Present Crisis? Edinburgh, 1833. Pp. 8, 9. repeats the objection of Dr. Mearns. 1834. with the whole system." Apart from the question of expe- CHAP. VL diency, this argument constituted the main strength of the opposition. Dr. Cook recurred to it again and again. Dr. Cook "Nothing could be more manifest," said he, "than that the meaning of the statute was, that the judging of the qualifi cation was not with the people, but that, when a person was presented by the patron, the ecclesiastical courts were to proceed to consider the qualification: that the judgment of the inferior (church) court might be carried to the superior, and that the final settlement of the matter lay with tho general assembly. Of the opinion of the people as to this, not the slightest mention is made. But what is the motion of my honourable friend? It sweeps all this away,—it wrests from presbyteries all control or judgment in tho matter, it renders them purely ministerial: and where a majority of the people, without assigning the slightest cause for it, disapprove the presentee, let the sentiments of the presbytery with respect to him be what they may,-let them be ever so fully satisfied that he would be a conscientious and zealous minister,-they must reject the presentation and prevent his admission. Is not this in direct opposition to the law which has been quoted ?" plausible but However plausible such considerations at first sight may The objection appear, they admit of a very simple and conclusive answer. groundless. In the first place, it is abundantly obvious that they proceed upon a total disregard of the principle, so emphatically laid down in the standards and laws of the church, that "no pastor shall be intruded upon any congregation, contrary to the will of the people." As Lord Moncrieff, in his speech Lord Monat the close of the debate, observed, "when some gentlemen tell us that intrusion is used with different significations, what is that to the purpose, when the words are, ‘against the will of the people.' The declarations of the books of discipline," continued his lordship, "are familiar to all, and crieff's an swer to it. |