Chapter 4

As to that evil which acts through opinion, it acts by a machinery, viz. the press and social centralization in great cities, which in these days is perfect. Right or wrong, justified _or not_ justified by the acts of the majority, it is certain that every public body--how much more, then, a body charged with the responsibility of upholding the truth in its standard!--suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion by any feud, schism, or shadow of change among its members. This is what the New Testament, a code of philosophy fertile in new ideas, first introduced under the name of _scandal_; that is, any occasion of serious offence ministered to the weak or to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable in the acts or the opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities. Now here, in Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no longer theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation; here is a change of doctrine, _on one side or the other_, which throws a sad umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the church to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always be henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet no breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit the beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the first light augury of mischief skirted the horizon--a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. In 1843, the evil had 'travelled on from birth to birth.' Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy; already it had entered upon a second, viz., to rear up an _Anti-Kirk_, or spurious establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like folds about the legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman _vinea_ surmounted the fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under whatsoever practical issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook, molest, and insult the true church for ever. Even this brief period of development would have been briefer, had not the law courts interposed many delays. Demurs of law process imposed checks upon the uncharitable haste of the _odium theologicum_. And though in a question of schism it would be a _petitio principii_ for a neutral censor to assume that either party had been originally in error, yet it is within our competence to say, that the Seceders it was whose bigotry carried the dispute to that sad issue of a final separation. The establishment would have been well content to stop short of that consummation: and temperaments might have been found, compromises both safe and honorable, had the minority built less of their reversionary hopes upon the policy of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they insisted upon becoming: and that they _might_ be martyrs, it was necessary for them to secede. That Europe thinks at present with less reverence of Protestant institutions than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these institutions in particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to the minority in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration, all brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in the other. Consequently upon _their_ consciences lies the responsibility of having weakened the pillars of the reformed churches throughout Christendom.

Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were it possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside for generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers of reproach before 1834? How came it that no aurora of early light, no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run before this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have been huge error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been traitorously below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.

Such conclusions are irresistible and upon any path, seceding or not seceding, they menace the worldly credit of ecclesiastical bodies. That evil is now past remedy. As for the other evil, that which acts upon church establishments, not through simple failure in the guarantees of public opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition; here undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish church from the very gates to the centre. And unhappily the same chasm, which marks a division of the church internally, is a link connecting it externally with the Seceders. For how stands the case? Did the Scottish kirk, at the late crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections? Was there one of these bisections which said _Yes_, whilst the other responded _No_? Was the affirmative and negative shared between them as between the black chessmen and the white? Not so; and unhappily not so. The two extremes there were, but these shaded off into each other. Many were the _nuances_; multiplied the combinations. Here stood a section that had voted for all the changes, with two or three exceptions; there stood another that went the _whole_ length as to this change, but no part of the way as to that; between these sections arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or _eclectically_, that is, by no law generally recognised. And behind this eclectic school were grouped others who had voted for all novelties up to a certain day, but after _that_ had refused to go further with a movement party whose tendencies they had begun to distrust. In this last case, therefore, the divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the accident of having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of conscientious alarm. The principles upon which men had divided were various, and these various principles were variously combined. But on the other hand, those who have gone out were the men who approved totally, not partially--unconditionally, not within limits--up to the end, and not to a given day. Consequently those who stayed in comprehended all the shades and degrees which the men of violence excluded. The Seceders were unanimous to a man, and of necessity; for he who approves the last act, the extreme act, which is naturally the most violent act, _a fortiori_ approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the modifications, all who had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious; whose casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who had preferred an interest of conscience to a triumph of partisanship. We honor them for that policy; but we cannot hide from ourselves, that the very principle which makes such a policy honorable at the moment, makes it dangerous in reversion. For he who avows that, upon public motives, he once resisted a temptation to schism, makes known by that avowal that he still harbors in his mind the germ of such a temptation: and to that scruple, which once he resisted, hereafter he may see reason for yielding. The principles of schism, which for the moment were suppressed, are still latent in the church. It is urged that, in quest of unity, many of these men _succeeded_ in resisting the instincts of dissension at the moment of crisis. True: But this might be because they presumed on winning from their own party equal concessions by means less violent than schism; or because they attached less weight to the principle concerned, than they may see cause for attaching upon future considerations; or because they would not allow themselves to sanction the cause of the late Secession, by going out in company with men whose principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of supporting those principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident, that little stress is to be laid on a negative act; simply to have declined going out with the Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act which may cover indifferently a marked hostility to the Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness not quite equal to so extreme a test. And, again, this negative act may be equivocal in a different way; the friendliness may not only have existed, but may have existed in sufficient strength for any test whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but their Jacobinical mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve of the repulsion to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to collect from these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone past. The earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general tendency in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks--

'The earthquake is not satisfied at once.'

All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they intermit, only as the revolving lamps of a light-house are periodically eclipsed. The General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon the Seceders, shut _in_, perhaps, more of the infected than at the time she succeeded in shutting _out_. As respected the opinion of the world outside, it seemed advisable to shut out the least number possible; for in proportion to the number of the Seceders, was the danger that they should carry with them an authentic impression in their favor. On the other hand, as respected a greater danger, (the danger from internal contagion), it seemed advisable that the church should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who, for the present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety in this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by looking over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to separate the _wheat from the chaff_. By the 'wheat,' in the view of this writer, is meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their recusant policy up to the practical result of secession. All who stopped short of that consummation (on whatever plea), are the 'chaff.' The writer is something of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with regard to his own principles, and so elaborately careful in his details as to extort admiration of his energy and of his patience in research.

But the reason for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question of that nature, _can_ be so showy and _ostensive_ to a stranger as that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past vote recording a scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing, though for the moment suppressed. Since the secession, nearly four hundred and fifty new men may have entered the church. This supplementary body has probably diluted the strength of the revolutionary principles. But they also may, perhaps, have partaken to some extent in the contagion of these principles. True, there is this guarantee for caution, on the part of these new men, that as yet they are pledged to nothing; and that, seeing experimentally how fearfully many of their older brethren are now likely to be fettered by the past, they have every possible motive for reserve, in committing themselves, either by their votes or by their pens. In _their_ situation, there is a special inducement to prudence, because there is a prospect, that for _them_ prudence is in time to be effectual. But for many of the older men, prudence comes too late. They are already fettered. And what we are now pointing out to the attention of our readers, is, that by the past, by the absolute votes of the past, too sorrowfully it is made evident, that the Scottish church is deeply tainted with the principles of the Secession. These germs of evil and of revolution, speaking of them in a _personal_ sense, cannot be purged off entirely until one generation shall have passed away. But, speaking of them as _principles_ capable of vegetation, these germs may or may not expand into whole forests of evil, according to the accidents of coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize our billowy aspects of society; or, on the other hand, largely to fertilize the many occasions of agitation, which political fermentations are too sure to throw off. Let this chance turn out as it may, we repeat for the information of Southerns--that the church, by shutting off the persons of particular agitators, has not shut off the principles of agitation; and that the _cordon sanataire_, supposing the spontaneous exile of the Non-intrusionists to be regarded in that light, was not drawn about the church until the disease had spread widely _within_ the lines.

Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future course of action; warned in time, such a man may stand neutral in practice; but thus far they poison the fountains of wholesome unanimity--that, if a man can evade the necessity of squaring particular _actions_ to his past opinions, at least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions themselves, or his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too notoriously have placed on record by his votes.

But, if such are the continual dangers from reactions in the establishment, so long as men survive in that establishment who feel upbraided by past votes, and so long as enemies survive who will not suffer these upbraidings to slumber--dangers which much mutual forbearance and charity can alone disarm; on the other hand, how much profounder is the inconsistency to which the Free Church is doomed!--They have rent the unity of that church, to which they had pledged their faith--but on what plea? On the plea that in cases purely spiritual, they could not in conscience submit to the award of the secular magistrate. Yet how merely impracticable is this principle, as an abiding principle of action! Churches, that is, the charge of particular congregations, will be with _them_ (as with other religious communities) the means of livelihood. Grounds innumerable will arise for excluding or attempting to exclude, each other from these official stations. No possible form regulating the business of ordination, or of induction, can anticipate the infinite objections which may arise. But no man interested in such a case, will submit to a judge appointed by insufficient authority. Daily bread for his family is what few men will resign without a struggle. And that struggle will of necessity come for final adjudication to the law courts of the land, whose interference in any question affecting a spiritual interest, the Free Church has for ever pledged herself to refuse. But in the case supposed, she will not have the power to refuse it. She will be cited before the tribunals, and can elude that citation in no way but by surrendering the point in litigation; and if she should adopt the notion, that it is better for her to do _that_, than to acknowledge a sufficient authority in the court by pleading at its bar, upon this principle once made public, she will soon be stripped of everything, and will cease to be a church at all. She cannot continue to be a depository of any faith, or a champion of any doctrines, if she lose the means of defending her own incorporations. But how can she maintain the defenders of her rights, or the dispensers of her truths, if she refuses, upon immutable principle, to call in the aid of the magistrate on behalf of rights, which, under any aspect, regard spiritual relations? Attempting to maintain these rights by private arbitration within a forum of her own, she will soon find such arbitration not binding at all upon the party who conceives himself aggrieved. The issue will be as in Mr. O'Connell's courts, where the parties played at going to law; from the moment when they ceased to play, and no longer 'made believe' to be disputing, the award of the judge became as entire a mockery, as any stage mimicry of such a transaction.

This should be the natural catastrophe of the case; and the probable evasion of that destructive consummation, to which she is carried by her principles, will be--that as soon as her feelings of rancor shall have cooled down, these principles will silently drop out of use; and the very reason will be suffered to perish for which she ever became a dissenting body. With this, however, we, that stand outside, are noways concerned. But an evil, in which we _are_ concerned, is the headlong tendency of the Free Church, and of all churches adulterating with her principle, to an issue not merely dangerous in a political sense, but ruinous in an anti-social sense. The artifice of the Free Church lies in pleading a spiritual relation of any case whatever, whether of doing or suffering, whether positive or negative, as a reason for taking it out of all civil control. Now we may illustrate the peril of this artifice, by a reality at this time impending over society in Ireland. Dr. Higgins, titular bishop of Ardagh, has undertaken upon this very plea of a spiritual power not amenable to civil control, a sort of warfare with Government, upon the question of their power to suspend or defeat the O'Connell agitation. For, says he, if Government should succeed in thus intercepting the direct power of haranguing mobs in open assemblies, then will I harangue them, and cause them to be harangued, in the same spirit, upon the same topics, from the altar or the pulpit. An immediate extension of this principle would be--that every disaffected clergyman in the three kingdoms, would lecture his congregation upon the duty of paying no taxes. This he would denominate passive resistance; and resistance to bad government would become, in his language, the most sacred of duties. In any argument with such a man, he would be found immediately falling back upon the principle of the Free Church; he would insist upon it as a spiritual right, as a ease entirely between his conscience and God, whether he should press to an extremity any and every doctrine, though tending to the instant disorganization of society. To lecture against war, and against taxes as directly supporting war, would wear a most colorable air of truth amongst all weak-minded persons. And these would soon appear to have been but the first elements of confusion under the improved views of spiritual rights. The doctrines of the _Levellers_ in Cromwell's time, of the _Anabaptists_ in Luther's time, would exalt themselves upon the ruins of society, if governments were weak enough to recognise these spiritual claims in the feeblest of their initial advances. If it were possible to suppose such chimeras prevailing, the natural redress would soon be seen to lie through secret tribunals, like those of the dreadful _Fehmgericht_ in the middle ages. It would be absurd, however, seriously to pursue these anti-social chimeras through their consequences. Stern remedies would summarily crush so monstrous an evil. Our purpose is answered, when the necessity of such insupportable consequences is shown to link itself with that distinction upon which the Free Church has laid the foundations of its own establishment. Once for all, there is no act or function belonging to an officer of a church which is not spiritual by one of its two Janus faces. And every examination of the case convinces us more and more that the Seceders took up the old papal distinction, as to acts spiritual or not spiritual, not under any delusion less or more, but under a simple necessity of finding some evasion or other which should meet and embody the whole rancor of the moment.