CHAP. X. THE CHURCH AND THE POLITICIANS. the country the Church. Parliament signed by 180,000 males within WHILE the Strathbogie rebellion was thus engrossing CHAP. X. and agitating the church courts, the public generally Movement were every day becoming more and more alive to the in support of serious character of the controversy, and to the magnitude of those interests which it involved. There was not a city, town, village, or hamlet, from one end of Scotland to the other, that was not ringing with the familiar sounds of spiritual independence and non-intrusion. Such indeed were the strength and prevalence of the popular sympathies upon the side of the church, that within five or six weeks after the meeting of parliament in the spring of 1840, petitions had been Petitions to presented, signed by upwards of 180,000 males, above sixteen years of age, calling on the legislature to pass an act in favour of those principles which the Auchter- petitioners arder decision was threatening to destroy. opponents of this powerful movement had been able to muster, at the same date, only 1200 petitioners. Another demonstration, not less significant, in support of the great cause for which the church was so zealously contending, was made about the same period. It had always been a favourite cry of the enemies of the veto-law, that it did a cruel wrong to the licentiates of the church. They had been qualifying themselves at the cost of much money, time, and labour, for the church's service, and after all, by virtue of this odious law, they were liable to be six weeks: only 1200 on the other The side. CHAP. X. excluded from both office and emolument by an arbitrary expression of the popular will! In other words, they had been qualifying themselves "for the work of the ministry, for the edification of the body of Christ;" and they were liable to have it found and declared that it was not consistent with these ends that they should be intruded upon a christian congregation against its will. Christ's ministers were designed by Him to be helpers of His people's joy, but not to have dominion over His people's faith. And that state of things was hardly compatible with grasping at the fleece, at the expense of outraging and The students scattering the flock. The students of divinity, to their own honour, and somewhat to the confusion of those who had been wont so feelingly to plead their cause and claims in opposition to the veto-law, declared themselves by an overpowering majority on the side of the church and non-intrusion. The divinity hall of every university in Scotland had its debate and division on the question, and the aggregate numbers were found to be,-245 for non-intrusion, and 30 against it. of divinity declare for non-intrusion by a majority of 245 to 30. Meanwhile the press was not less busy than the college class-room and the public platform, in reference to this exciting and engrossing theme. Of newspapers, by much the greater number ranged themselves on the side of the courts of law,- and considering how The journal lamentably little our ordinary journalists are accustomed to contemplate any subject through the medium of the word of God, and how slight is their sympathy with the cause of evangelical religion, the fact now noticed can awaken little surprise. There were exceptions, however, even among them, and the influence ists. newspapers. which these exerted was by no means to be estimated CHAP. X. by the proportion which they bore in point of numbers to those whose weight was thrown into the contrary scale. Hostile from their instincts, rather than from The hostile their intelligence upon the subject, the opposing newspapers contented themselves, for the most part, with strong assertions and vehement diatribes: and their battery, accordingly, though its noise was sometimes very loud, neither was well sustained nor did much execution. The friendly newspapers, on the other hand, conducted for the most part by those who were thoroughly at home and in earnest upon the whole question, whether legally, historically, or scripturally considered, maintained a constant and well directed The friendly fire and this circumstance, at least with all those who were really interested in the controversy and wished to get at the truth concerning it, far more than counterbalanced the mere numbers on the other side. Of the journals out of Scotland none rendered more important service to the church's cause at the period now under consideration, than the London Record. 66 newspapers. Record. Why," said they, after alluding to the powers the civil court had assumed in the Strathbogie case, "if The London the civil court can, in this case, command the church to ordain or not to ordain,-to suspend or depose, or not to suspend or depose from the holy office,—can continue men in the exercise of the ministry when suspended or deposed by the church,-they can do it in any other. And the enactment by statute that the collation and deposition of ministers is held by the church, jure divino, becomes a dead letter, and the authority lodged in the church by its divine Head is CHAP. X. trampled under foot. The weakest and most ignorant body of dissenters in the kingdom would scoff at any authority on earth which would propose to usurp any such authority over them: and is one of the established churches of the land to have the civil magistrate set over them in spiritual matters? To say that they will not consent to it, is wholly an inappropriate and inadequate expression. They cannot do it, if they have any just or scriptural conceptions of their position and of the trust devolved upon them by God and man. The church of Scotland have in this case scrupulously rendered to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's: but they must reserve to God the things that are God's.'"* Such was the clear light in which the real merits of this great controversy presented themselves at the time, to intelligent and impartial onlookers, and the fact is not unworthy of being remembered now. Dean of Faculty's pamphlet. Among the countless publications of a different kind,—from the bulky pamphlet to the brief and pungent tract, that were daily issuing from the press, the most ponderous by far was the letter, already noticed, of the Dean of Faculty, Mr. Hope, to the Lord Chancellor of England. "One would positively think," said one of the speakerst at a great meeting held in Glasgow, on the 30th of January, 1840, in support of the church's views, "on reading the alarming insinuations and dark hints scattered through his voluminous epistle, that the Dean had * Record, in an article given at length in Scottish Guardian of 10th January, 1840. † Rev. R. Buchanan of Tron church. 6 the Guy Fawkes of racy, disco vered by the Dean. discovered another gunpowder plot. That the chapel CHAP. X. act and the veto act, and, above all, the act for uniting our good friends, the old-light seceders, to the church of their fathers, were nothing better than the perilous combustibles which that modern Guy Fawkes, Dr. Dr. Chalmers, Chalmers, had been detected busily setting in order the conspifor the nefarious purpose of subverting the British constitution; and that, if his lordship did not take care to clap his legal extinguisher' on the already lighted match, he might depend upon it the woolsack would ere long be heaved into the air, and the whole legislature, queen, lords, and commons, with the magna charta, bill of rights, trial by jury, and all the other palladia of British freedom buried irrecoverably under the monstrous and many-headed popedom of the general assembly. Perhaps many of my hearers may think I am jesting in so characterizing the celebrated letter of the Dean of Faculty. Let me give you, then, an illustration or two. I have already alluded to what is called the chapel act as a The Chapel part of the church's present policy, which has griev- Act explainously offended and alarmed the Dean of Faculty. It was passed by the general assembly in 1834; and I shall explain to you in a sentence or two what is its design, and what have been its effects. Previous to the year I have mentioned, we had a number of chapels of ease whose ministers occupied a very anomalous position,-a position altogether inconsistent with our great presbyterian principle of the perfect. parity of all Christ's ministers. Those chapel of ease ministers were allowed to exercise only half of their office. They were allowed to teach but not to rule * * * |