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skill in music, and a manner in which dignity was combined with animation, he carried everything before him. But the sphere in which he shone to most advantage was the General Assembly, where he faced the lordly Moderates, and gathered and formed into an invincible phalanx the scattered remnant of the old Presbyterian following. He was an acknowledged prince among debaters. Brougham, the greatest Parliamentary orator of his time, had said that there lived but one man whom he feared to meet in debate, and he was Andrew Thomson.

He had caught the mantle of the Erskines and Moncreiffs, and recalled the "watchwords of primitive order and popular rights." Wherever a congregation found itself in danger of having a minister forced upon it by a worldly patron and the Moderate majority, Andrew Thomson "lifted up his intrepid voice" and pleaded its cause. Intimately associated, both in personal friendship and ecclesiastical sympathy, with Dr. Thomas M'Crie, the biographer of Knox and Melville, and the greatest living authority upon the Church of Scotland, he took delight in appealing to the heroic age of Presbytery, and made conscience of keeping always unfurled the banner of the Church's contention for the Crown Rights of her Lord. He was the type of a successful party leader, glowing with an ardour that attracted the young men, ever willing to marshal his squadrons for the charge. Presbyterian Scotland, from hundreds of manses and thousands of cottages, watched the course of Thomson and the progress of the new party with ecstasies of approbation. Sir George Sinclair told the present writer that once, in

the south of Scotland, in those times, he entered into conversation with a fellow-traveller in a coach, and got upon the subject of the Church and the Assembly and the prominent ministers. For his companion Andrew Thomson, or, as he called him, "Tamson," was all the law and all the prophets. If Sir George mentioned any minister who was not in Thomson's brigade, he was not thought worth speaking of. But if Sir George was happy enough to know and name one of the other kind, then his companion brightened up in a moment, and he said, with flashing eyes, "Aye, he's ane 0 Tamson's men!"

BUT

CHAPTER V.

Thomson in a Characteristic attitude.

UT we cannot do better, with a view to understanding the situation, than glance into the Assembly of 1820, and observe what was going forward. The old king had died in January of that year, and his son, George the Fourth, had succeeded him. In February an Order was issued by the Privy Council, and was transmitted in due form to the Assembly at its meeting in May, on the subject of prayers for the Royal Family "in that part of Great Britain called Scotland." After citation of one or two Acts of Parliament, "it is ordered," proceeds the document, "by His Majesty in Council, that henceforth every minister and preacher shall, in his respective church, congregation, or Assembly, pray For his most sacred Majesty King George, and all the Royal Family ;' of which all persons concerned are hereby required to take notice and govern themselves accordingly."

To this Andrew Thomson demurred. The spiritual independence of the Church was imperilled. No power on earth, he affirmed, was entitled to dictate the terms in which she was to pray to God. Thomson moved as

follows: "That it be declared by the General Assembly that no civil authority can constitutionally prescribe either forms or heads of prayer to the ministers or preachers of this Church, and that the Orders in Council which have been issued from time to time respecting prayers for the Royal Family are inconsistent with the rights and privileges secured by law to our ecclesiastical Establishment; but that, as these Orders appear to have originated in mistake or inadvertency, and not in any intention to interfere with our modes of worship, the General Assembly do not consider it to be necessary to proceed further in this matter at present." A conventional expression of loyalty followed, and a profession of entire willingness to address supplications to God in behalf of a Royal House by which He had shed blessings on the nation; but the distinct assertion of the spiritual independence of the Church came first.

In his opening speech Thomson laid stress upon the "incontrovertible principle of the Church of Scotland, that it had no spiritual head on earth, and that consequently the King in Council had no right to interfere in its worship." As for the Acts of Parliament on which the Order was rested, he argued either that they were irrelevant, or that they had always been repudiated, in their spirit and purpose, by the truly constitutional party in the Church.

The Moderate leaders opposed the motion; but mark the reason. Not one of them challenged the soundness of Thomson's main contention, that the Church was, by her Constitution, spiritually independent. Dr. Cook, of Laurencekirk,- -a name destined to become well known

before 1843, avowed himself prepared to maintain, as well as the Evangelical chief, that no civil authority could constitutionally prescribe heads of prayer to the Church; but he denied that there had been any infringement of her liberties in the present instance. The Lord JusticeClerk Boyle took the same line, referring to the gracious manner in which the King had recently declared his resolution to support the Constitution of the Church of Scotland, and boasting of his own descent from one who had borne a distinguished part in the ancient struggles of the Church in defence of her independence. moved, therefore, that "Whereas the independence of the Church of Scotland in all matters of faith, worship, and discipline is fully established by law, the General Assembly finds it unnecessary and inexpedient to adopt any declaration with regard to the late, or any former, Order in Council relative to prayers for His Majesty and the Royal Family."

He

The original motion was seconded by Mr. James Wellwood Moncreiff; and Andrew Thomson, in concluding a spirited and eloquent debate, reiterated his conviction that the Order was an encroachment on the Church's independence, adding the pathetic and almost prophetic words: "I trust that the breath of official authority will never be allowed to wither one leaf of that Plant of Renown which our fathers watered with their blood, and of which we have been permitted by a kind Providence to eat the pleasant fruits." The motion of the Justice-Clerk was carried by 126 votes against 53.1

And did not all this, the reader may ask, arise simply 1 Sage's Memorabilia.

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