Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 62:245 (Jan 1905)
Article: The Ecclesiastical Situation In Scotland
Author: James Lindsay

BSac 62:245 (Jan 1905) p. 158

The Ecclesiastical Situation In Scotland

Rev. James Lindsay

I cannot deny so reasonable and natural a request as that I should say something of the ecclesiastical situation in Scotland at this time. The House of Lords has given a decision which may in some senses be said to have created a church crisis in Scotland. But I wish to say I should not have done so of my own wish or initiative. I am no ecclesiastic, and have no more remote wish than to be thought such. I am not writing to give ecclesiastical points,—though, even in our multitude of wisdoms, that might not be difficult,—but simply to render the situation somewhat more intelligible to those readers of the Bibliotheca Sacra who are remote from the local scenes and understandings of the case. I shall endeavor to write so temperately as to offer no just cause of offense to any church or party, consistently with faithfulness to fact and conscientious conviction.

The facts of the case are soon told. The Union of the Free and the United Presbyterian churches in Scotland was effected in 1900. Both churches took their temporalities with them into the Union. They were supposed to take the like principles with them also, though that could not very well be. For the United Presbyterian Church had not held—nor professed to hold—the Establishment principle, which—as laid down by the House of Lords—was an integral part of the position of the Disruption fathers. Not the whole Free Church, however, went into the Union. Whilst the overwhelming ma-

BSac 62:245 (Jan 1905) p. 159

jority went over into the United Free Church, a small section elected to remain as the Free Church, and to represent the Free Church of Disruption times. For the Church of Disruption times—the church of Chalmers, Candlish, Guthrie, and Cunningham—held precisely what this small, nonconforming section hold. These fathers left the Establishment because they did not consider it, as it then existed, to be a pure or ideal Establishment. But they had not broken with the principle, and the Establishment has long had ceded to it the things for which they contended.

No effort, unfortunately, was made by the United Free Church to conciliate this section, or come to terms by offering them any reasonable proportionate share in the property. They were few,—not thirty ministers amongst them,—and it seems to have been taken for granted that they would not make costly appeal to the House of Lords. To take this for granted was not very justifiable, for many of the appeals to the Lords are very unexpectedly taken, and, besides, are, when taken, oftener successful than is altogether creditable to the Scottish Court of Session. I am saying nothing of t...