CHAPTER II.
THE
EARL OF ABERDEENS BILL
By Hugh Miller in "The Witness"
THE Earl of Aberdeen brought forward, on Tuesday last, his
long expected bill on the Church question. Cowper tells us of men who"do
nothing with a deal of skill." His Lordship has been doing nearly as much
without the skill. He proposes to re-enact an already existing law, which has
certainly not been suffered to fall into desuetude, and to do for the Church
what he confesses the Church, in even her present circumstances, can do for
herself. In one important respect, however, the proposed measure is better than
if it had not been so bad. It will, no doubt, satisfy Dr Cook (Dean of Faculty)
and his friends, for it does not contain a single clause which might not have
emanated from the Doctor himself. Dr Muir would perhaps have framed a somewhat
more liberal measure, though he, too, will soon be able to accommodate himself
to its peculiarities, just as he learned to accommodate himself to the policy
of Dr Cook. But no individual who voted with Dr Chalmers can consistently
acquiesce in the bill introduced by the Earl of Aberdeen. It will satisfy all
the friends of unrestricted patronage and the old system, but it will not have
the effect of dividing the friends of a still older and immensely better
system. It will satisfy the class who never yet satisfied the people; but the
people and their friends it will not satisfy, nor will it have the effect, we
trust, of breaking down the majorities of the latter.
"The people have
at present the right," says the Dean of Faculty, in his pamphlet," and that
they should have it is most fitting, - of submitting every ground of objection,
of whatever kind, which they may entertain against the individual, to the
clergymen of the Presbytery." The Earl of Aberdeen, in his outline of the
proposed bill, says nearly the same thing, only he says it in more words. The
patron presents to the vacant parish; and the licentiate, his choice, appears
before the Presbytery, who appoint him to preach in the parish church to the
people. The people then meet; and if the regular communicants have objections
to urge of any kind, the Presbytery receive these, either in writing or
otherwise. They next sit and decide upon them. If they are held to be
insufficient, the settlement proceeds, and the presentee is intruded upon the
people; but if the Presbytery deem them of sufficient force, he is set aside,
and the patron presents another. And such are the main provisions of the bill
introduced by the Earl of Aberdeen. What measure of protection does it furnish
which did not exist under the old system? It adds, perhaps, in some slight
degree, to the power of our Church courts; and yet that power was certainly
very considerable before. We find it stated by the Dean of Faculty, that he is
aware of no limit either to the nature of the inquiries, or to the strictness
of the examinations, to which Presbyteries may subject licentiates. The Church
may reject, he asserts, on any ground whatever: it has unlimited authority to
set aside, - unlimited authority to choose.
Now, if this view of the
matter be correct, the Earl of Aberdeen, as we have said, is merely re-enacting
an existing law; he is virtually doing nothing, and doing it at a considerable
expense. But granting that it is not strictly correct, - granting that some
little additional power is conferred on our Church courts, - what are the
Presbyterian people of Scotland to gain in consequence? What benefits did they
derive from the power vested in our Church courts for the greater part of the
last century, or in what degree would they have profited had that power been
rendered a very little greater? It was a power in almost every instance
employed either against themselves or against the true types and
representatives of the original Church, - the pious and devoted ministers whom
they most loved and honoured. Popular privileges are essentially different
things from powers conferred on Church courts; and we would just request our
readers to mark how ready the very men who are most forward in calumniating our
better ministers, and in raising against them the cry of clerical ambition and
clerical usurpation, are to extend to them, notwithstanding, those very powers
which they unjustly accuse them of coveting, and how sedulously they would
withhold every shadow of popular privilege. They profess to dread the
encroachments of the clergy, but it is only to conceal how bitterly they
dislike all interference on the part of the people.
It is scarce
necessary to pass over the various statements of the Earl of Aberdeen. He
quotes the First Book of Discipline after exactly the same fashion as Messrs
Paul and Pirie, and proves; to the satisfaction of his Peers, that the scheme
of planting vacant parishes laid down by Knox, - a scheme of free election, be
it rememhered, - was less popular than the one embodied in the veto act. The
Upper House was, of course, no place in which his Lordship had any chance of
being set right on the point. To the theology of the question there is no
reference: the seven suspended ministers are respectable ; nor do legislators
like his Lordship often look higher. Men who are too virtuous to be punished as
immoral are quite suited to teach religious truth; and to urge that there is a
very opposite doctrine in the Bible would of course be fanatical. And yet it
does seem but common sense to draw a distinction between negative and positive
character; nor does it appear very absurd to assert, that men amenable to no
law may be totally devoid of religion. Let us suppose his Lordships bill
in its present form enacted into statute, and acquiesced in by a majority of
the Church. What would be the probable, nay, the inevitable, consequences? The
Presbyterian people of the country have been thoroughly aroused on the agitated
question, and aroused as a body. At no time were they indifferent to the
principle which it involves, and very keenly could they feel, and very promptly
could they act upon it. In what cases have the military been employed against
the peasantry of Scotland since the rebellion of 1745, except in cases of
forced settlements? Or in what other cases have handfuls of poor labouring men
extended their hours of labour, and lived still more hardly than before, that
they might raise their fifties and hundreds of pounds, - at first, to contend
hopelessly in our courts of law against the intrusion of ministers whom in
their conscience they believed not suited to edify them; and latterly. to build
chapels for themselves, and support clergymen of their own choosing, to whose
ministrations they could trust?
Never did they cease to feel on the
subject; but hitherto they have been aroused to act or resist merely in detail,
- aroused by parishes at a time: they are now aroused in a body; and tremendous
will be the revulsion of feeling if they find they have been deceived, and see
the ministers in whom they trusted deserting them. We would say to our
clergymen, therefore, only give up the true non-intrusion principles embodied
in the veto act, and you will soon find how fatal an error it was ever to have
agitated them. Had you contented yourselves with the provisions of the old
system, and suffered Dr Cook or Dr Muir to direct your councils, you might
probably have continued to exist as an Establishment for thirty years: retreat
from the advanced position which you have taken up, and you will be down in one
third of the time. You will find in the supposed case the descent of a falling
Church regulated by the laws which accelerate the descent of other falling
bodies, and fearfully increasing its rapidity in the succeeding periods; nor
will the Earl of Aberdeen be atde to protect or support you. He will be wholly
unable to protect or support himself. Yield to his counsels, and timorously
retreat, - give up the cause of the people, - and you will go down first, and
he will follow you. Continue to occupy the Thermopylae in which you have taken
up your position, and both may be saved. Your place is not a new one to the
venerated ministers and elders of the much-loved Church of our fathers; but
never, perhaps, at any period did so much depend on their decision as now
depends on yours.
Supposing, howeve; that there should be no revulsion
of feeling on the part of the people, - supposing that they should at once sit
down under the disappointment as quietly and passively as if all their present
excitement was merely simulated, - how would Lord Aberdeens measure
operate in their behalf ? We all know the kind of acquirements which enabled
the intrusionists of the last and the present century to pass through, the sort
of vestibule formed by Presbyteries, into the body of the Church: a little
tolerable Latin, and a little somewhat less tolerable Greek; the general
smattering of learning which enables clever young men to write indifferent
sense in middling bad English, and justifies their high opinion of themselves;
and, withal, that acquaintance with theology which implies a sort of
half-knowledge of doctrines which they do not like, and which they cannot
understand: add to all this a degree of character which no police court in the
kingdom would be able to impugn, and we have before us the qualifications of an
accomplished liceutiate prepared for ordination, an ornament to his order; and
fitted, according to the estimate of Moderate Presbyteries, to carry away the
palm from Horsley. The people could neither love nor respect such a man, and by
the more serious among them the less would he be loved and respected. Who that
truly believes in the New Testament can think without concern of such a
clergyman in connection with a parishioner anxiously awakened to inquire, with
the jailor,"What shall I do to be saved?" - or without horror of him,
associated with terrors awakened on a death-bed, - terrors regarding a future
state of being, of which he knows nothing, and for which he cares as little? He
is presented, however, by the patron; and these feelings on the part of the
people, through which he is rendered unacceptable to them, are not permitted,
by his Lordships provision, to weigh as anything. There is not a more
definite assertion in his whole speech than that the mere unacceptableness of a
presentee should be held no disqualification. The people must render their
reasons. To affirm that in their consciences they believe the presentee
unsuited to edify them, is not stating a reason, - it is merely expressing a
belief - merely emitting such a declaration as the one required by the veto
act. But, even permitting it to stand as a reason, what weight would the
suspended ministers of Strathbogie attach to it if urged by the parishioners of
Marnoch against Mr Edwards? or into what else would it resolve itself, if
carried before the higher courts, than into mere unacceptableness? The "sheep
know the voice of the good shepherd, and him they follow;" but they will not
follow a stranger. Why? Because, believing him to be a stranger, he is
unacceptable to them. Even supposing our Church Courts disposed at the present
time to receive as legitimate almost any objections, and to act upon them, what
guarantee have the people that this spirit is to continue? "Good is ever
strongest at its beginning," says Bacon; "evil ever strongest in continuance."
The one exists only through unceasing effort; the other gathers strength and
grows up of itself.
We remark, farther, that we could not think very
highly of even the honesty of men who, when deciding cases on unconfessed and
disallowed grounds, could yet hypocritically urge that they decided them on
grounds of an entirely different kind. If unacceptableness is not to be
recognised as a legitimate cause of rejection, we would ill like to see it made
an actual cause, and some unsolid and paltry shadow of objection employed to
screen it, meanwhile, as a sort of stalking-horse. Let the Chureh of Scotland
walk in unsullied integrity, as becomes her character, - her motives and her
actions alike open to the eye of day. No one could have anticipated, when she
took up her present position, the length to which matters were to be carried
against her. Doubts were perhaps entertained whether her hold of the
secularities might not possibly be loosened by an enforcement of the principle
of the veto; but could even the shrewdest have imagined that she was to be
inhibited from preaching the gospel? It was perhaps deemed possible that the
civil power might attempt pouncing on her temporalities, but it was not deemed
possible that the civil power would attempt jostling her aside from her own
proper place among things spiritual; she has been exposed to unlooked-for
trouble. The tempest has been unexpectedly severe; and mariners are sometimes
content in such circumstances to return for shelter to the port which they have
quitted. But what might be safety to them would be destruction to her. The
heavily freighted and labouring vessel of the Church must not return. There is
security in the haven to which she is bound. On the open sea, too, there is
comparative safety, let the storm rage as it may; but inevitable shipwreck
awaits her if she turn her prow towards the shore which she has left.
May
9, 1840.
Home | Biography | Literature | Letters | Interests | Links | Quotes | Photo-Wallet