The year now at its close has been beyond comparison more remarkable.
In the earlier twelvemonth, no real change took place in the existing state of things. Its striking events resembled merely the phenomena of a mid-winter storm in Greenland, where, over a frozen ocean, moveless in the hurricane as a floor of rock or of iron, the hail beats, and the thick whirling snows descend, and, high above head, the flashings of aurora borealis lend their many-coloured hues of mystery to the horrors of the tempest. Its transactions, picturesque rather than important, wholly failed to affect the framework of society. That floor of ice which sealed down the wide ocean of opinion retained all its mid-winter solidity, and furnished foundations as firm as before for the old despotic monarchies and the blood-stained persecuting churches. But how immensely different the events of the year now at an end! Its tempests have been, not those of a Greenland winter, but of a Greenland spring: the depths of society have been stirred to the dark bottom, where all slimy and monstrous things lie hid, and, under the irresistible upheavings of the ground-swell, the ice has broken up; and amid the wide weltering of a stormy sea, c.u.mbered with the broken ruins of ancient tyrannies, civil and ecclesiastical, the eye can scarce rest upon a single spot on which to base a better order of things. The "foundations are removed." A time of great trouble has come suddenly upon the kingdoms of Europe--a time of "famines, and pestilences, and fearful sights, and great signs from heaven;" "signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring."
The extreme stillness of the calm by which this wide-roaring tempest has been preceded, forms one of not the least extraordinary circ.u.mstances which impart to it character and effect. In the _Vision of Don Roderick_, the fated monarch is described as pausing for a time amid the deep silence of a vast hall, pannelled and floored with black marble, and sentinelled by two gigantic figures of rigid bronze that stand moveless against the farther wall. The one, bearing a scythe and sand-gla.s.s, is the old giant Time; the other, armed with an iron mace, is the grim angel of Destiny. Not a sound or motion escapes them. In that dim apartment nothing stirs save the sands in the gla.s.s, and the inflexible look of the stern mace-bearing sentinel marks how they ebb.
The last grains are at length moving downwards--they sink, they disappear; and now, raising his ponderous mace, he dashes into fragments the marble wall: a scene of savage warfare gleams livid through the opening, and the wide vault re-echoes to the hollow tread of armies, the shrill notes of warlike trumpets, the rude clash of arms, and the wild shouts of battle. And such, during the last few years, has been the stillness of the preliminary pause, and such was the abrupt opening, when the predestined hour at length arrived, of those clamorous scenes of revolution and war which impart so remarkable a character to the year gone by. A twelvemonth has not yet pa.s.sed since history seemed to want incident. Time and Destiny watched as statue-like sentinels in a quiet hall, walled round by the old rigid conventionalities, and human sagacity failed to see aught beyond them; the present so resembled the past, that it seemed over-boldness to antic.i.p.ate a different complexion for the future. But, amid the unbreathing stillness, the appointed hour arrived. The rigid marble curtain of the old conventionalities was struck asunder by the iron mace of Destiny; and the silence was straightway broken by a roar as if of many waters, by the wrathful shouts of armed millions--the thunderings of cannon, blent with the rattle of musketry--the wild shrieks of dismay and suffering--the wailings of sorrow and terror--the shouts of triumph and exultation--the despairing cry of sinking dynasties, and the crash of falling thrones. And with what strange rapidity the visions have since flitted along the opened chasm!
A royal proclamation forbids in Paris a political banquet; four short days elapse, and France is proclaimed a Republic, and Louis Philippe and his Ministers have fled. Britain at once recognises the Provisional Government; but what are the great despotisms of the Continent to do? Six days more pa.s.s, and the Canton of Neufchatel declares itself independent of Prussia. In a few days after, the Duke of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha grants to his subjects a representative const.i.tution, freedom of the press, and trial by jury; the King of Hanover has also to yield, and the King of Bavaria abdicates. These, however, are comparatively small matters. But still the flame spreads.
There is a successful insurrection at Vienna, the very stronghold of despotism in central Europe; and the Prime Minister, Metternich, the grim personification of the old policy, is compelled to resign. Then follows an equally successful insurrection at Berlin; Milan, Vicenza, and Padua are also in open insurrection. Venice is proclaimed a Republic. Holstein declares itself independent of Denmark, Hungary of Austria, Sicily of Naples. Prague and Cracow have also their formidable outbreaks. Austria and Prussia proclaim new const.i.tutions.
Secondary revolutionary movements in both Paris and Vienna are put down by the military. There are b.l.o.o.d.y battles fought between the Austrians and the Piedmontese on the one hand, and the Germans and the Danes on the other; and, in a state of profound peace, the people of a British port hear from their sh.o.r.es the boom of the hostile cannon.
The Emperor of Austria abdicates his throne, the Pope flees his dominions, and a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte is elected President of France. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, the ebullitions of the revolutionary element serve but to demonstrate its own weakness. In both England and Scotland, the moral and physical force of the country--in reality but one--arrays itself on the side of good order and the established inst.i.tutions. A few policemen put down, without the a.s.sistance of the military, the long-threatened rebellion in Ireland; and the Sovereign Lady of the empire, after journeying among her subjects, attended by a retinue which only a few ages ago would have been deemed slender for a Scotch chieftain or one of the lesser n.o.bility, and without a single soldier to protect her, and needing no such protection, spends her few weeks of autumn leisure in a solitary Highland valley,--a thousand times more secure in the affections of a devoted and loyal people than any other European monarch could have been in the midst of an army of an hundred thousand men. Such are some of the wonderful events which have set their stamp on the year now at its close.
We regard the old state of things as gone for ever. The foundations have broken up on which the ancient despotisms were founded. It would seem as if "the stone cut out without hands" had fallen during the past year on the feet of the great image, and ground down into worthless rubbish the "iron, the clay, the bra.s.s, the silver, and the gold." And "the wind," though not yet risen to its height, seems fast rising, which will sweep them all away, "like the chaff of the summer thrashing-floor;" so that "there shall be no place found for them." But while we can entertain no hope for the old decrepit despotisms, we cannot see in the infidel liberalism--alike unwise and immoral--by which they are in the course of being supplanted, other than a disorganizing element, out of which no settled order of things can possibly arise. It takes the character, not of a reforming principle destined to bless, but of an instrument of punishment, with which vengeance is to be taken for the crimes and errors of the past; and, so far at least, a time when we need expect to witness but the struggles of the two principles--the old and the new--as they act and react against each other, stronger and weaker by turns, as they disgust and alienate by their atrocities in their hour of power such of the more moderate cla.s.ses as had taken part with them in their hour of weakness. It is the grand error of our leading statesmen, that they fail to appreciate the real character of the crisis, and would fain deal with the consequent existing difficulties in that petty style of diplomatic manoeuvre with which it was their wont to meet the comparatively light demands of the past. It would seem as if we had arrived at a stage in the world"s history in which statesmanship after this style is to be tolerated no longer.
How instructive, for instance, the mode in which, for the present at least, an all-governing Providence has terminated the negotiations of this country with the Pope! Contrary to the wishes and principles of the sound-hearted portion of the British people, our leading statesmen open up by statute their diplomatic relations with the Pope, palpably with the desire of governing Ireland through the influence of that utterly corrupt religion which has made that unhappy island the miserable lazar-house that it is; and, lo!
Providence strikes down the ghostly potentate, and virtually, for the present, divests him of that "property qualification" in virtue of which the relation can alone be maintained. But not less infatuated than our statesmen, and even less excusably so, are those men--professedly religious and Protestant, but of narrow views and weak understandings--who can identify the cause of Christ with the old tottering despotisms and the soul-destroying policy of princes such as the late Emperor of Austria, and of ministers such as Metternich. It would not greatly surprise us to see Protestants of this high Tory stamp, who have been zealous against Popery all their lives long, taking part in the "lament of the merchants and mariners" over the perished Babylon, when they find that the representatives of the Roman Emperors must fall with the Roman See.
There are two wild beasts, like those which Daniel saw in vision, contending together in fierce warfare,--the old Babylonish beast, horrid with the blood of saints, and its cruel executioner--the monster of Atheistic Liberalism; but Christ has identified His cause with neither. No reprieve from the prince awaits the condemned culprit; and with the disreputable and savage executioner he will hold no intercourse. Destruction, from which there is no escape, awaits equally on both.
We began with a reference to Dryden"s _Year of Wonders:_ we conclude with an anecdote regarding that year, connected with the history of one of the most eminent judges and best men England ever produced. It needs no application, showing as it does, with equal simplicity and force, how and on what principle the terrors of years such as the "_Annus Mirabilis_" of the seventeenth century, or the "_Annus Mirabilis_" of our own, may be encountered with the greatest safety and the truest dignity. We quote from Bishop Burnet"s _Life of Sir Matthew Hale_:--
"He" (Sir Matthew), says the Bishop, "had a generous and n.o.ble idea of G.o.d in his mind; and this he found, above all other considerations, preserve his quiet. And, indeed, that was so well established in him, that no accidents, how sudden soever, were observed to discompose him, of which an eminent man of that profession gave me this instance:--In the year 1666 an opinion did run through the nation that the end of the world would come that year. This, whether set on by astrologers, or advanced by those who thought it might have some relation to the number of the beast in the Revelation, or promoted by men of ill designs to disturb the public peace, had spread mightily among the people; and Judge Hale going that year the Western Circuit, it happened that, as he was on the bench at the a.s.sizes, a most terrible storm fell out very unexpectedly, accompanied with such flashes of lightning and claps of thunder, that the like will hardly fall out in an age; upon which a whisper ran through the crowd, "that now was the world to end, and the day of judgment to begin." And at this there followed a general consternation in the whole a.s.sembly, and all men forgot the business they were met about, and betook themselves to their prayers. This, added to the horror raised by the storm, looked very dismal, insomuch that my author--a man of no ordinary resolution and firmness of mind--confessed it made a great impression on himself.
But he told me "that he did observe the judge was not a whit affected, and was going on with the business of the court in his ordinary manner;" from which he made this conclusion: "that his thoughts were so well fixed, that he believed, if the world had been really to end, it would have given him no considerable disturbance!""
_December 30, 1848._
EFFECTS OF RELIGIOUS DISUNION ON COLONIZATION.
It is well that there should exist amongst the evangelistic churches at least a desire for union. We do not think they will ever be welded into one without much heat and many blows. Popery, with mayhap Infidelity for its a.s.sistant, will have first to blow up the coals and ply the hammer; but it is at least something that the various pieces of the broken and shivered Church catholic should be coming into contact, drawn together as if by some strong attractive influence, and that there should be so many attempts made to fit into each other, though with but indifferent success, the rough-edged inflexible fragments. It is much that the attractive influence should exist.
Among the many inventions of modern times, a singularly ingenious one has been brought to bear on the smelting of iron. A powerful magnetic current is made to pa.s.s in one direction through the furnace, which imparts to each metallic particle a loadstone-like affinity for all the others; and no sooner has the heat set them free, than, instead of sinking, as in the old process, through the molten stony ma.s.s to the bottom, solely in effect of their superior gravity--a tedious, and in some degree uncertain process--they at once get into motion in the line of the current, and unite, in less than half the ordinary time under any other circ.u.mstances, into a h.o.m.ogeneous, coherent ma.s.s. May we not indulge the expectation of similar results from the magnetic current of attraction, if we may so speak, which has so decidedly begun to flow through the evangelistic churches? True, so long as the little bits remain unmolten, however excellent their quality, they but clash and jangle together, if moved by the influence at all; but should the furnace come to be seven times heated, it will scarce fail to give unity of motion and a prompt coherency to all the genuine metal, however minute, in its present state, the particles into which it is separated, or however stubborn the stony matrices which dissociate these from the other particles, one in their origin and nature, that lie locked up in the sullen fragments around.
Never perhaps was there a time when the great disadvantages of disunion were so pressed in a practical form on the notice of the churches as at the present. It formed the complaint of one of our better English writers considerably more than a century ago, that we had religion enough to make us hate, but not enough to make us love, one another. At that time, however, sects, to employ one of Bacon"s striking phrases, "had not so grown to equality" as now; and storms in the moral world, as in the natural "at the equinoxia,"
when night and day are equal, are commonly greatest, adds the philosopher, "when things do grow to equality." The unestablished Protestant denominations formed in the times of Queen Anne a mere feeble moiety, that could raise no efficient voice against the established religion; and Popery, newly thrust under feet, after a formidable struggle, that threatened to overturn the const.i.tution of the country, had no voice at all. Matters are very different now: things have grown to an equality; night and day, as "at the equinoxia," have become nearly equal; and society can scarce take one step for the general benefit, without experiencing, as a thwarting and arresting influence, the effects of religious difference. Do we regret that the Government of a country such as ours should be practically irreligious in its character? Alas! were every Government functionary in the empire a thoroughly religious man, Government could not act otherwise than it does in not a few instances, just in consequence of our religious differences. Are there millions of the people sinking into brutality and ignorance, and do our rulers originate a scheme of education in their behalf?--our religious differences straightway step in to arrest and cripple the design.
Are there whole districts of country subjected to famine, and are we roused, both as Britons and as Christians, to contribute of our substance for their relief?--our religious differences immediately interfere; and a Church greatly more identified by membership with the sufferers than any other, has to fight a hard battle ere she can be permitted to co-operate in the general cause. Is there a ragged-school scheme originated in the capital, to rescue the neglected perishing young among us from out the very jaws of destruction?--forthwith rival inst.i.tutions start up, on the ground of religious differences, to dwarf one another into inefficiency, like starveling shrubs in a nursery run wild; and projected exertions in the cause of degraded and suffering humanity degenerate into an attack on a benevolent Presbyterian minister, who refuses to accept, from conscientious motives, of a directorship in a Popish inst.i.tution. This is surely a sad state of things,--a state grown very general, and which threatens to become more so; and in a due sense of the weakness for all good which it creates, and of the palpable state of disorganization and decomposition favourable to the growth of every species of evil, physical and moral, which it induces, we recognise at least one of the causes of the general desire for union. To no one circ.u.mstance has Rome owed more of its success than to the divisions of the Protestant Church; and great as that success has been in our own country, where, as "at the equinoxia," day and night are fast "growing to equality," it is but slight compared with what she has experienced in America and the colonies. It is a serious consideration in an age like the present, in which the country looks to emigration for relief from the pressure of a superabundant population, that religion has suffered more in the colonies from its sectarian divisions, than from every other cause put together.
The way in which the mischief comes to be done is easily conceivable.
The Protestant emigrants of the country quit it always, with regard to their churchmanship, as a mere undisciplined rabble. The Episcopalian sets sail in the same vessel, and for the same scene of labour, as the Independent--the Free Churchman with the Baptist--the Methodist with the Original Seceder--the Voluntary with the Establishment-man; and they squat down together on contiguous lots, amid the solitude of the forest. Were they all of one communion, there might be scarce any break created in their old habits of church-going and religious instruction. The community, considerable as a whole, though very inconsiderable in its parts when broken up into denominational septs, would have its minister of religion from its first settlement, or almost so; and, from the rapid increase which takes place in all new colonies in congenial countries and climates, the charge of such a minister would be soon a very important one, and adequate to the full development of the energies of a superior man.
But alas for the numerous denominational septs! Years must elapse, in some instances many years, ere--few and scattered, and necessarily deprived of every advantage of the territorial system--they can procure for themselves religious teachers: they fall gradually, in the interim, out of religious habits, or there rises among them a generation in which these were never formed; and when at length a sept does procure a teacher, generally, from the comparative fewness of their numbers, the extent of district over which they are spread, and the lukewarmness induced among them by their years of deprivation--circ.u.mstances which make the charge of such a people no very desirable one to a man who can procure aught better, and which have some effect also in rendering their choice in such matters not very discriminating--he is frequently of a character little suited to profit them. They succeed too often in procuring not missionaries, nor men such as the ministers of higher standing, that divide the word to the congregations of the mother country, but the country"s mere remainder preachers, who, having failed in making their way into a living at home, seek unwillingly a bit of bread in the unbroken ground of the colonies. The circ.u.mstances of Popery as a colonizing religion are in all respects immensely more favourable. For every practical purpose, it is one and united: it is furnished with an army of clergy admirably organized, and set peculiarly loose for movement at the will of the general ecclesiastical body by their law of celibacy. It possesses in prolific Ireland a vast propelling heart, if we may so speak, ever working in sending out the blood of a singularly bigoted Romanism to every quarter of the world. It has already begun to influence the elections of the United States; and should the Papal superst.i.tion be destined to live so long, and should its membership continue to increase at the present ratio, there will be as many Papists a century hence in the great valley of the Mississippi, and the tracts adjacent, as are at present in all Europe. In no field in the present day has Rome more decidedly the advantage than in that of colonization; and it is surely a serious consideration that it should owe its successes in such large measure to the divisions of Protestantism.
But these divisions exist, and no amount of regret for the mischief which they occasion will serve to lessen them. We are not disposed to give up a single tenet which we hold as Free Churchmen; and our brother Protestants of the other denominations are, we find, quite as tenacious of their distinctive holdings as ourselves. And so the evils consequent on disunion in infant colonies and settlements-evils which, when once originated, continue to propagate themselves for ages--must continue, in cases of promiscuous emigration, to be educed, and Rome to profit by them. We find a vigorous attempt to grapple with the difficulty, by rendering emigration not promiscuous, but select, originated by a branch of the New Zealand Company, which we deem worthy of notice. It is calculated, from the proportion which they bear to the entire population of the country, that from a thousand to fifteen hundred Free Church people emigrate from Scotland every year.
A number equal to a large congregation quit it yearly for the colonies; but absorbed among all sorts of people--in Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, the United States, Australia, and Southern Africa, etc. etc.--these never reappear as congregations, but are subjected, in their scattered, atomic state, to the deteriorating process, religious and educational, to which we have referred as inevitable under that economy of promiscuous emigration unhappily so common in these latter times. In an earlier age the case was different. The Pilgrim Fathers who first planted New England were so much at one in their tenets, that they had no difficulty in making the laws of the colony a foundation on which to erect the platform both of a general church and of an educational inst.i.tute; and till this day, the character, moral and intellectual, of that part of the States tells of the wisdom of the arrangement. Now why, argue the Company, might not a similar result be produced in the present age, by directing the Free Church portion of the outward stream of emigration, or at least a sufficient part of it, into one locality? If the disastrous effects of division cannot be prevented by reconciling the disagreements of those who already differ, they may be obviated surely, to a large extent, by bringing into juxtaposition those who already agree. And on this simple principle the Company has founded its Free Church colony of Otago. Of course, regarding the secular advantages of the colony, we cannot speak. New Zealand has been long regarded as the Great Britain of the southern hemisphere. It possesses for a European const.i.tution peculiar advantages of climate; the neighbourhood of the settlement, for several hundred miles together, is deserted by the natives; Government is pledged to the appointment of a Royal Commissioner to watch over the interests of Her Majesty"s subjects in connection with the Company, and to afford them protection; the committee for promoting the settlement of the colony includes some of the most respected names in the Free Church; and thus, judged by all the ordinary tests, it seems to promise at least as well as any other resembling field of enterprise open at the present time. But respecting the principles involved in this scheme of colonization, we can speak more directly from the circ.u.mstance that we find them recognised as just and good by the General a.s.sembly of our Church. The records of the a.s.sembly of 1845 bear the following deliverance on the subject:--"The General a.s.sembly learn with great pleasure the prospect of the speedy establishment of the Scotch colony of New Edinburgh [now Otago] in New Zealand, consisting of members of the Free Church, and with every security for the colonists being provided with the ordinances of religion and the means of education in connection with this Church. Without expressing any opinion regarding the secular advantages or prospects of the proposed undertaking, the General a.s.sembly highly approve of the principles on which the settlement is proposed to be conducted, in so far as the religious and educational interests of the colonists are concerned; and the a.s.sembly desire to countenance and encourage the a.s.sociation in these respects."
We have seen the waste of mind which takes place in the colonies of a very highly civilised country adverted to in a rather fanciful and rationalistic connection with the desponding reply of the captive Jews to their spoilers: "How shall we sing the Lord"s song in a strange land?" Ages, sometimes whole centuries, elapse, remarks the commentator, ere the colonies of even eminently literary nations come to possess poets and fine writers of their own. There is first a struggle for bare existence among the colonists, during which the higher branches of learning are necessarily neglected; and when a better time at length comes, the general mind is found to have acquired, during the struggle, a homely and utilitarian cast, which militates against the right appreciation, and of course the production, of what is excellent. And thus the true divinities of song fail to be sung in a foreign land. There is, we doubt not, truth in the remark, though somewhat quaintly expressed, and somewhat doubtfully derived. The necessities of a colony in its youth, and the peculiar cast of mind which they serve to induce, are certainly not favourable to the development of poetic genius. But there is, alas!
another and more scriptural sense in which the "Lord"s song" too often ceases to be sung in a strange land. We have already adverted to the process of deterioration, moral and religious, through which it comes to be silenced; and it is one of the advantages of the Otago scheme, that it makes provision in, we believe, the most effectual way possible, in the present divided state of Protestantism, for preventing a result so deplorable. Youth is an important season, as certainly in colonies as in individuals; and we question whether the characteristic recklessness of Yankeeism in the far west and south may not be legitimately traced to the neglected youthhead of the States in which it is most broadly apparent. The deterioration of a single generation left to run wild may influence for the worse, during whole centuries, the character of a people; and who can predicate what these colonies of the southern hemisphere are yet to become? They may be great nations, influencing for good or evil the destinies of the species in ages of the world when Britain shall have sunk into a subordinate power, or shall have no name save in history. Those records of the past, from which we learn that states and peoples, as certainly as families and individuals, are born and die, and have their times of birth and of burial, may serve to convince us that the melancholy reflection of one of our later poets on this subject is by no means a fanciful one:
"My heart has sighed in secret, when I thought That the dark tide of time might one day close, England, o"er thee, as long since it has closed On Egypt and on Tyre,--that ages hence, From the Pacific"s billowy loneliness, Whose tract thy daring search revealed, some isle Might rise, in green-haired beauty eminent, And like a G.o.ddess glittering from the deep, Hereafter sway the sceptre of domain From pole to pole; and such as now thou art, Perhaps New Zealand be. For who can say What the Omnipotent Eternal One, That made the world, hath purposed?"
_June 16, 1847._
FINE-BODYISM.
Of all the dangers to which the Free Church is at present exposed, we deem the danger of _fine-bodyism_ at once the least dreaded and the most imminent. And the evil is in itself no light one: it marks, better than any of the other _isms_--even the heresies themselves--the sinking of a Church that is never to rise again. Churches have been affected by dangerous heresies both of the hot and the cold kinds, and have yet shaken them off and recovered. The Presbyterians of Ireland, now so sound in their creed, were extensively affected, little more than half a century ago, by Arian error and the semi-infidelity of Socinus; and the Church that in 1843 had become vigorous enough to dare the Disruption, recorded in the year 1796 its vote against missions, and framed in the year 1798 its law against church extension. But we know of no Church that ever recovered from _fine-bodyism_ when the disease had once fairly settled into its confirmed and chronic state. In at least this age and country it exists as the atrophy of a cureless decline. It were well, however, that we should say what it is we mean by _fine-bodyism_; and we find we cannot do better than quote our definition from the first speech ever delivered by Chalmers in the General a.s.sembly. "It is quite ridiculous to say," remarked this most sagacious of men, "that the worth of the clergy will suffice to keep them up in the estimation of society. This worth must be combined with importance.
Give both worth and importance to the same individual, and what are the terms employed in describing him? "A distinguished member of society, the ornament of a most respectable profession, the virtuous companion of the great, and a generous consolation to all the sickness and poverty around him." These, Moderator, appear to me to be the terms peculiarly descriptive of the appropriate character of a clergyman, and they serve to mark the place which he ought to occupy; but take away the importance and leave only the worth, and what do you make of him? What is the descriptive term applied to him now? Precisely the term which I often find applied to many of my brethren, and which galls me to the very bone every moment I hear it--"_a fine body_"--a being whom you may like, but whom I defy you to esteem--a mere object of endearment--a being whom the great may at times honour with the condescension of a dinner, but whom they will never admit as a respectable addition to their society. Now, all that I demand from the Court of Teinds is to be raised, and that as speedily as possible, above the imputation of being "_a fine body_;" that they would add importance to my worth, and give splendour and efficacy to those exertions which have for their object the most exalted interests of the species."
The Free Church has for ever closed her connection with the Court of Teinds; but her danger from _fine-bodyism_ is in consequence all the greater, not the less. The Sustentation Fund is her Court of Teinds now; and it is to it that she has in the first instance to look for protection from the all-potent but insidious and vastly under-estimated evil under which no Church ever throve. The outed ministers are comparatively safe. Unless prudence be altogether wanting, and the wolf comes to the door, not, as in the child"s story-book, in the disguise of a soft-voiced girl, but in that of a gruff sheriff"s officer, they will continue to bear through life the old status of the Establishment, heightened by the _eclat_ of the Disruption. But our younger men of subsequent appointment stand on no such platform, nor will any of their contemporaries or successors step upon it as a matter of course when the heroes of the conflict have dropped away, and they come to occupy their vacant places. Their status will be found to depend on two circ.u.mstances, neither of them derived from the men of a former time--on their ability to maintain a respectable place among the middle cla.s.ses, and on their scholastic acquirements and general manners. A half-paid, half-taught, half-bred minister of religion may be a very excellent man; we have seen such, both in England and our own country, among the non-Presbyterian Dissenters who laboured to do well, and were exceedingly in earnest; but no such type of minister will ever be found influential in Scotland, either in extending the limits of a Church, or in benefiting the more intelligent cla.s.ses of the people. And the two circ.u.mstances of acquirement and remuneration will be found indissolubly connected. A Church of under-paid ministers, however fairly it may start, will, in the lapse of a generation, become a Church of under-taught and under-bred ministers also. Nor is there any chance that the evil, once begun, will ever cure itself, for the under-bred and the under-taught will be sure to continue the under-paid. That animating spirit of a Church, without which wealth and learning avail but little, money now, as of old, cannot buy; but the secular will be ever found to depend on the secular,--the general rate of secular acquirement on the general rate of secular remuneration; and unless both be pitched at a level very considerably above that of the labouring laity, which const.i.tutes the great bulk of congregations, even the better ministers of a Church need not expect to escape _fine-bodyism_. And once infected with this fatal indisposition, they must be content to suffer, among other evils, the evil of being permitted to lay whatever claim to status they may choose, without challenge or contradiction. "Oh yes," it will be said, should they a.s.sert that their Church is the Church of the nation, and that it is they themselves, and not the ministers of the Establishment, who are on the true const.i.tutional ground,--"Oh yes, Church of the nation, or, if ye will, Church of the whole world, or, in short, anything you please; for you are _fine bodies_." Chalmers exercised all his sagacity when he demanded of the Court of Teinds "to be raised, and that as speedily as possible, above the imputation of being a _fine body_."
And what Chalmers demanded of the Court of Teinds, every minister of the Free Church ought to ask of the Sustentation Fund.
But how is the demand to be effectually made? It is well known to statesmen, who, when they once get a tax imposed by Parliament, can employ all the machinery of the police and the standing army--of fines, confiscations, and prisons--in exacting it, that yet, notwithstanding, in the arithmetic of finance two and two do not always make four. There are certain pre-existing laws to be studied--laws not of man"s pa.s.sing, but which arise out of man"s nature and the true bearings and relations of things; and unless these be studied and conformed to, the Parliament-imposed tax, though backed by the constable and the jail, will realize but little. And if the statesman must study these laws, well may the Church do so, who has no constables in her pay, and to whom no jail-keys have been entrusted. It ought, we think, to be regarded as one fundamental law, that whatever has been gained by the seven years" establishment of the Fund, should not be lightly perilled by bold and untried innovations. True, there may, on the one hand, be danger, if let too much alone, that its growth should be arrested, and of its pa.s.sing into a stunted and hide-bound condition, little capable of increase; but the danger is at least as great, on the other, that if subjected to fundamental changes, it might lose that advantage of permanency which whatever is established possesses in virtue of its being such; and which has its foundation in habit, and in that vague sense of responsibility which leads men to give, year after year, what they had been accustomed to give in the previous years, just because they had given it. Let it not be forgotten, that though much still remains to be done in connection with this Fund, much has been done already--that a voluntary tax of about eighty thousand pounds per annum, raised from about one-third, and that by no means the wealthiest third, of the Scottish people, is really not a small, but a great one--and that as great, and as worthy of being desired and equalled, do the other non-endowed Churches of the country regard it. No tampering, therefore, with its principle should be attempted: he was an eminently wise man who first devised and inst.i.tuted it,--not once in an age do churches, or even countries, get such men to guide their affairs,--and it ought by all means to be permitted to _set_ and consolidate in the mould which he formed for it. We would apply in this case the language of a philosophic writer of the last age, when speaking of government in general:--"An established order of things," he said, "has an infinite advantage, by the very circ.u.mstance of its being established. To tamper, therefore, to try experiments upon it, upon the credit of supposed fitness and improvement, can never be the part of a wise man, who will bear a reverence for what carries the marks of the stability of age; and though he may attempt some improvements for the public good, yet will he adjust his innovations as much as possible to the ancient fabric, and preserve entire the chief pillars and supports of the inst.i.tution."
It ought, we hold, to be regarded as another law of the Fund, that the means taken to increase it should be means exclusively fitted to lead the givers to think of their _duties_, not of their _rights_. The Sustentation Fund is not the result of a tax properly so called, but an acc.u.mulation of freewill offerings rendered to the Church by men who in this matter are responsible to G.o.d only. What the Church receives on these terms she can divide; but what the givers do not place at her disposal--what, on the contrary, they reserve for quite another purpose--she cannot lay hold of and distribute. It is not hers, but theirs; and the attempt to appropriate it might be very fatal. Hence the danger of the question regarding the appropriation for general purposes of supplements, which was mooted two years ago, but which was so promptly put down by the good sense of the Church. It would have led men to contend for their rights, and, in the struggle, to forget their duties; and the battle would have been a losing one for the Fund. We regard it as another law, that the distribution of the sustentation money entrusted to the Church should be a distribution, not discretionary, but fixed by definite enactment. A discretionary licence of distribution, extended to some central board or committee, even though under the general review of the Church, could not be other than imminently dangerous, because opposed in spirit to the very principle of Presbytery. And if Presbytery and the Sustentation Fund come into collision in the Free Church of Scotland, it is not difficult to say which of the two would go down. It has been shrewdly remarked by Hume, that in monarchies there is room for discretionary power--the laws under a great and wise prince may in some cases be softened, or partially suspended, and carried into full effect in others; but republics admit of no such discretionary authority--the laws in them must in every instance be thoroughly executed, or set aside altogether. Every act of discretionary authority is treason against the const.i.tution. And so is it with Presbytery. Give to a central board or committee the power of sitting in judgment on the circ.u.mstances of ministers of their body, and of apportioning to one some thirty or forty pounds additional, and of cutting down another to the average dividend, and, for a time at least, the Presbyterian independence is gone. But the reaction point once reached--and in the Free Church the process would not be a very tedious one--the discretionary authority would be swept away in the first instance, and the Sustentation Fund not a little damaged in the second. It is of paramount importance, therefore--a law on no account to be neglected or traversed--that the distribution of the Fund be regulated by rules so rigid and unbending, and of such general application, that the manifestation of favour or the exercise of patronage on the part of the board or committee authorized to watch over it may be wholly an impossibility.
It is, in the next place, of importance carefully to scan the sources whence the expected increase of the Fund is to come. The givers in the Free Church at the present time seem to lie very much in extremes. A considerable number, animated by the Disruption spirit, contribute greatly more to ministerial support, in proportion to their incomes, than the old Dissenters of the kingdom; but a still larger number, reposing indolently on the exertions of these, and in whom the habit has not been cultivated or formed, give considerably less. It was stated by Mr. Melvin, in the meeting of the United Presbyterian Synod held on Wednesday last, that, "on an average, the members of weak congregations in connection with their body contributed to the support of their minister about 14s. 6d. per annum, besides about 2s. 6d. for missionary purposes, while some of them contributed even as high as 25s. to 26s." Now, an average rate of contribution liberal as this, among the members of country congregations in the Free Church, would at once place the Fund in flourishing circ.u.mstances, and render it, unless its management was very unwise indeed, sufficient to maintain a ministry high above the dreaded level of _fine-bodyism_. Nor do we see why, if we except the crushed and poverty-stricken people of some of the poorer Highland districts, Free Church congregations in the country should not contribute as largely to church purposes as United Presbyterian congregations in the same localities. The membership of both belong generally to the same level of society, and, if equally willing, are about equally able to contribute. Here, then, is a field which still remains to be wrought. Something, too, may be done at the present time, from the circ.u.mstance that the last instalment of the Manse Building Fund is just in the act of being paid, and those who have been subscribing for five years to this object, and formed a habit of periodic giving in relation to it, may be induced to transfer a portion of what they gave to the permanent fund, and so continue contributing. Ere, however, they can be expected to do so, they must be fairly a.s.sured that what they give is to be employed in strengthening and consolidating the Church, and in raising her ministers above the level of _fine-bodyism_, not in adding to her weakness by adding to her extent. Until a distinct pledge be given that there shall not be so much as a single new charge sanctioned until the yearly dividend amounts to at least a hundred and fifty pounds, we must despair of the Sustentation Fund. One may hopefully attempt the filling up of a tun, however vast its contents; but there can be no hope whatever in attempting the filling of a sieve. And if what is poured into the Sustentation Fund is to be permitted, instead of rising in the dividend, to dribble out incontinently in a feeble extension, it will be all too soon discovered that what we have to deal with is not the tun, but the sieve; and the laity, losing all heart, will cease their exertions, and permit their ministers to sink into poverty and _fine-bodyism_.
_May 15, 1850._
ORGANSHIP.
Some six or eight months after the Disruption there occurred an amusing dispute between two Edinburgh newspapers, each of which aspired to represent the Establishment solely and exclusively, without coadjutor or rival. The one paper a.s.serted that it was the _vehicle_ of the Established Church, the other that it was the Church"s _organ_; and each, in a.s.serting its own claim, challenged that of its neighbour. The organ was sure that the vehicle lacked the true vehicular character; and the vehicle threw grave doubts on the organship of the organ. In somewhat less than half a year, however, the dispute came suddenly to a close: the vehicle--like a luckless opposition coach, weak in its proprietorship--was run off the road, and broke down; and the triumphant organ, seizing eager hold of the name of its defunct rival as legitimate spoil, hung it up immediately under its own, as a red warrior of the West seizes hold of the scalp of a fallen enemy, and suspends it at his middle by his belt of wampum. The controversy, however, lasted quite long enough to lead curious minds to inquire how or on what principle a body so divided as the Established Church could possibly have either vehicle or organ.
If the organ, it was said, adequately represent Dr. Muir, it cannot fail very grievously to misrepresent Dr. Bryce; and if the vehicle be adapted to give public airings to the thoughts and opinions of the bluff old Moderates, those of Dr. Leishman and the Forty must travel out into the wind and the sunlight by an opposition conveyance.
One organ or one vehicle will be no more competent to serve a deliberative ecclesiastical body, diverse in its components, than one organ or vehicle will be able to serve a deliberative political body broken into factions. Single parties, as such--whether secular or ecclesiastical--may have their single organ apiece; but it seems as little possible that a Presbyterian General a.s.sembly should have only one organ representative of the whole, as that a _House of Lords_ or a _House of Commons_ should have one organ representative of the whole. An organ of the Establishment in its present state of disunion, if at all adequately representative, could not fail to resemble Montgomery"s strange personification of war: "A deformed genius, with two heads, which, unlike those of Ja.n.u.s, were placed front to front; innumerable arms, branching out all around his shoulders, sides, and chest; and with thighs and legs as mult.i.tudinous as his arms. His twin faces," continues the poet, "were frightfully distorted: they glared, they grinned, they spat, they railed, and hissed, and roared; they gnashed their teeth, and bit, and b.u.t.ted with their foreheads at each other; his arms, wielding swords and spears, were fighting pell-mell together; his legs, in like manner, were indefatigably at variance, striding contrary ways, and trampling on each other"s toes, or kicking each other"s shins, as if by mutual consent." Such would be the true representative of an organ that adequately represented the Establishment.
We are led into this vein on the present occasion by a recent discussion in high quarters on the organship of the Free Church,--a Presbyterian body, be it remarked, as purely deliberative in its courts as the Parliament of the country, and at least sufficiently affected by the spirit of the age to include within its pale a considerable diversity of opinion. It is as impossible, from this cause alone, that the Free Church should be represented by a single organ, as that the _House of Commons_ should be represented by a single organ. The organ, for instance, that represented on the education question the Rev. Mr. Moody Stuart, would most miserably misrepresent the party who advocate the views of the great father of the Free Church--the late Dr. Chalmers.
The organ that represented the peculiar beliefs held, regarding the personal advent, by the party to which Mr. Bonar of Kelso belongs, would greatly misrepresent those of the party to which Mr. David Brown of Glasgow and Mr. Fairbairn of Saltoun belong. The organ that advocated Dr. Cunningham"s and Dr. James Buchanan"s views of the College question, would be diametrically opposed to the view of Dr.
Brown of Aberdeen and Mr. Gray of Perth. The organ that contended for an ecclesiastical right to legislate on the temporalities according to the principle of Mr. Hay of Whiterig, would provoke the determined opposition of Mr. Makgill Crichton of Rankeillour. The organ that took part with the Evangelical and Sabbath Alliances in the spirit of Dr.
Candlish of St. George"s, would have to defend its position against Mr. King of St. Stephen"s of the Barony; and the organ that espoused the sentiments held on tests by Mr. Wood of Elie, would find itself in hostile antagonism with those entertained on the same subject by Mr.
Gibson of Kingston. And such are only a few of the questions, and these of an ecclesiastical or semi-ecclesiastical character, regarding which a diversity of views, sentiments, and opinions in the Free Church renders it impossible that it can be adequately represented by any one organ, even should that organ be of a purely ecclesiastical character. But a newspaper is _not_ of a purely ecclesiastical character; and there are subjects on which it may represent a vast majority of the people of a Church, without in the least degree representing the Church itself, simply because they are subjects on which a Church, as such, can hold no opinions whatever.
It is, for instance, not for a Church to say in what degree she trusts the Whigs or suspects the Tories--or whether her suspicion be great and her trust small--or whether she deem it more desirable that Edinburgh should be represented by Mr. Cowan, than mis-represented by Mr. Macaulay. These, and all cognate matters, are matters on which the Church, as such, has no voice, and regarding which she can therefore have no organ; and yet these are matters with which a newspaper is necessitated to deal. It would be other than a newspaper if it did not. On these questions, however, which lie so palpably beyond the ecclesiastical pale, though the Church can have no organ, zealous Churchmen may; and there can be no doubt whatever that they are questions on which zealous Free Churchmen _are_ very thoroughly divided--so thoroughly, that any single newspaper could represent, in reference to them, only one cla.s.s. The late Mr. John Hamilton, for instance--a good and honest man, who, in his character as a Free Churchman, determinedly opposed the return of Mr.
Macaulay--was wholly at issue regarding some of these points with the Honourable Mr. Fox Maule, who in 1846 mounted the hustings to say that the "grat.i.tude and honour of the Free Church" was involved in Mr. Macaulay"s return. And so the organ that represented the one, could not fail to misrepresent the other. Now, we are aware that on this, and on a few other occasions, the _Witness_ must have given very considerable dissatisfaction in the political department to certain members of the Free Church. It was not at all their organ on these occasions; nay, at the very outset of its career, it had solemnly pledged itself _not_ to be their organ.
The following pa.s.sage was written by its present Editor, ere the first appearance of his paper, and formed a part of its prospectus:--"The _Witness_," he said, "_will not espouse the cause of any of the political parties which now agitate and_ _divide the country_."
"Public measures, however, will be weighed as they present themselves in an impartial spirit, with care proportioned to their importance, and with reference not to the party with which they may chance to originate, but to the principles which they shall be found to involve." Such was the pledge given by the Editor of the _Witness_; and he now challenges his readers to say whether he has not honestly redeemed it. Man is naturally a tool-making animal; and when he becomes a politician by profession, his ingenuity in this special walk of constructiveness is, we find, always greatly sharpened by the exigencies of his vocation.
He makes tools of bishops, tools of sacraments, tools of Confessions of Faith, and tools of Churches and church livings.
We had just seen, previous to the _debut_ of the _Witness_, the Church of Scotland converted by Conservatism into a sort of mining tool, half lever, half pickaxe, which it plied hard, with an eye to the prostration and ejection of its political opponents the Whigs, then in office; and not much pleased to see the Church which we loved and respected so trans.m.u.ted and so wielded, we solemnly determined that, so far at least as our modic.u.m of influence extended, no tool-making politician, whatever his position, should again convert it unchallenged into an ign.o.ble party utensil. With G.o.d"s help, we have remained true to our determination; and so a.s.sured are we of being supported in this matter by the sound-hearted Presbyterian people of the Free Church, that we have no fear whatever, should either the a.s.sertors among us of the unimpeachable consistency of the Conservatives, or of the immaculate honesty of the Whigs, start against us an opposition vehicle to-morrow, that in less than a twelvemonth we would run it fairly off the road, and have some little amus.e.m.e.nt with it to boot, so long as the contest continued. The _Witness_ is not, and, as we have shown, cannot be, the organ of the Free Church; but it is something greatly better: it is the trusted representative--against Whig, Tory, Radical, and Chartist--against Erastian encroachment and clerical domination--of the Free Church people. There lies its strength,--a strength which its political Free Church opponents are welcome to test when they please.