The Disruption itself, with all its drawbacks, had, in a large degree, the character of a triumph. Now, generally speaking, our places of worship are built, and we are far advanced with our manses and our schools. Our Sustentation Fund, too,—that precious legacy of the venerable Chalmers,-is progressing with unshaken energy, amid all the vicissitudes of the times. Are these things, then, to tell with soporific effect upon the Church, and to throw us into a dull, and formal, and unproductive routine of duty? Let us cry to the Lord that it may not be; let us cry to heaven, with incessant supplications, that grace may come down, in the richness of pentecostal supplies, to help us; let us watch that drowsiness steal not in upon our souls, and let us daily and habitually pray for the fuller indwelling of the Spirit of life to ourselves, our brethren, and our flocks. It would be wrong to overlook the fact that the historical warnings, to which reference has been made, do not perfectly apply to our case. Even were there a law, by which the fatal sequence with which they present us must be uniform, there is reason to hold that we are not altogether in the category to which they belong. Our present condition, in a temporal point of view, is not quite analogous to that of the Church under Constantine and his successors, to that of the Protestant communities when the Reformation was achieved, or to that of our forefathers after the Revolution. Our outward prosperity is chequered, and materially modified. We are still the disestablished, disendowed Church of Scotland. Many of our ministers, embracing not a few grey-haired men, have nearly the same pastoral charge as they had before, but with less than half the amount of income; while strangers have entered into the possession of their emoluments. And all of us are deprived of rights and advantages which, by Scotland's Constitution, are ours.-There is danger notwithstanding. We fought a great battle, we acquired great honour, and our outward condition is better than we ventured to hope for. There is danger lest we fold our hands, and our zeal for our Master wax cold. Let us watch and pray against that danger. Let us go to Him who never yet refused to hear us, and obtain his aid to keep the Church awake. Besides the general danger which has now been pointed out as affecting our whole proceedings as a Church, and as office-bearers therein, it may be proper to consider ourselves to be called to guard against a danger of a more special kind. In our new position of separation from the State, the ministry of the Church is, humanly speaking, dependant upon the people and their contributions for the means of temporal support. Have we no need to take care that the circumstance of being thus dependent do not lessen our ministerial faithfulness, weaken the exercise of discipline, and induce us to refrain from declaring the whole counsel of God? For no temporal advantages, however important and necessary they may be, must we sacrifice the truth, or the interests of souls! Better far that we strive to maintain ourselves and our families by the labour of our hauds, than that we purchase our earthly subsistence at the cost of the purity of the Church, and the faithful discharge of our embassy from Christ. Yet another danger to be avoided by us is the indulgence of a spirit of discontent with regard to the measure of grace which the Lord may be pleased to vouchsafe to us. There is a possibility of thinking it less than it actually is. The Lord will be offended if we take up the idea that his presence among us was bound up with the brethren we have lost. They were, indeed, blessed instruments of good; but they were not our fountain of heavenly influence. The Lord alone is the fountain of life and salvation; and we ought not to doubt that He is with us still. The promise, "Lo, I am with you alway," is given to the humblest of his people; and our access to him and to his fulness is free and immediate, and independent of any hierarchy of office or gifts. It may not be unseasonable for us also to remember that there is a possibility of despising the day of small things. We err if we are satisfied with small things, and do not seek after great; but small things should preserve us from despondency. The time of harvest is joyous, to be sure, and happy are they who gather in the sheaves; but the time of the seed is first in order, and we cannot have harvest without it. We may lament when we see no general awakenings, and when revivals are few and partial in the Church; but it would be hasty and unwarranted to infer that the Lord hath forsaken us. Days of preparation, days of patience, days of little fruit, must have their course; when they have tried our faith, and love, and zeal for a while, they may usher in upon us days of power. Sooner than we look for, such days may come; sooner than we dream of it may be said to our Church, "Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, thou that didst not travail with child: enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations; spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes." Then the new song in our mouths shall be, "Who are these that fly as a cloud, and as doves to their windows?" "Thou hast increased the nation, O Lord, thou hast increased the nation; Thou art glorified." One danger more remains to be noticed. It is the danger of division among ourselves. While our controversy with the adversaries of the evangelical cause in the Establishment was actively carried on, it had an interest which must have absorbed every tendency to internal disputes, and it left no time to pursue them. When men are occupied with questions of real magnitude, questions of minor consequence are let alone; and those who are in the act of putting all they have in peril for a sacred principle, which they hold in common, seldom fall into contentions with each other. But the love of controversy for its own sake may spring out of the necessity for controversy; it may spring out of that necessity, and be fed by it. A controversial passion may be found to survive, when a great and vital controversy is ended; and little and unprofitable controversies may rise up to gratify it. A glorious controversy between the Church and her enemies may be followed by an inglorious wrangle between one section of the Church and another. If we open the page of history, these remarks will be abundantly confirmed. What was it that happened at the period of the Reformation from Popery? On the Continent, the warriors who, with one accord, had fought the battle of the gospel, strove among themselves after it was done; and the unity and strength of the camp of the Reformation were broken by unbrotherly schisms. In England, they who fought side by side against the Man of Sin, on such questions as the authority of Scripture, the mediation and merits of Christ, and the idolatry of the Mass, next fought against each other about forms, and vestments, and attitudes: O scenes most welcome to Rome, but sorrowful to Him whose members were riven asunder! What happened to Scotland at the period of the Reformation from Prelacy? Ten years were spent in close and strong fraternity, and noble things were done. An Erastian and anti-evangelical hierarchy was cast down; our precious Confession of Faith and Catechisms were adopted, and solemn covenants were sworn to bind this Church and nation to the cause of Christ for ever. But, immediately thereafter, the brethren, whose united efforts had accomplished these achievements, were divided by internal discords; and they, who used to uphold the banner of "Christ's Crown and Covenant" together, hastened, some as resolutioners, and some as protesters, to rally round sectarian and rival standards. And what happened at the period of the first Secession, a hundred years ago? The fathers of that movement had scarcely given forth their testimony against a degenerate and despotical Church, and got rid of their connection with it, when a miserable burgess oath came across their path, and split them into hostile factions. Surely, my fathers and brethren, these striking facts are full of warning to us. Surely we are warranted to say, in the words of Scripture," that these things happened for ensamples; and that they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." We say not that a right and a wrong, a true and a false, did not exist in the controversies which distracted the spiritual Church, and broke its unity and power: we say not that, when once they were raised, it was possible to avoid taking part in them. But what we say is, that they could not have arisen at all without sin,-without, it may be, lack of charity and forbearance, no less than want of faithfulness,-among the members and office-bearers of the Church. They differed widely in this respect from the controversies that preceded them,-from the controversies that were waged between the Church and its foes. The latter sprang from the Church's fidelity to its mission, and issued in honour and glory; the former came from its unbelief, presumption, and pride, and they were followed by confusion and shame. And now the question is, shall we of the Free Church of Scotland escape the snare into which the Church of Christ in former times so often fell? We do not urge the question because of symptoms which have as yet been seen; for hitherto-let God be praised-no symptoms have appeared to alarm us. But it cannot be denied that we have reached that critical stage of our progress to which, if we take history for our guide, the danger peculiarly pertains. And we are not exempt from the frailties of our fathers. They were men of God; they prized the Church's unity; they desired the peace of Jerusalem; and bitter feuds occurred among them notwithstanding. What are we, that we should think there is no risk of our committing their errors, when we are in similar circumstances, and exposed to the same temptations? For our beloved Church there will be all the fairer prospect of escaping this and every other danger, if she watch with godly jealousy against them all; if she put not on "the crown of pride;" and if she shun to say, "I shall never be moved;"—" I sit a queen, and shall see no sorrow." We have spoken of the sins and dangers of the Church. May not recent dispensations be calling us to consider our duties too? Our responsibility is not lessened by our bereavements. Our work is not lessened. Our anxiety in regard to it, our diligence, and zeal, ought therefore to be increased. The same duties have to be done, and there is diminished strength to do them. That which devolved upon us and our departed fellow-labourers together, now devolves upon us alone. One or two of the duties of the Church may be mentioned. There is the duty we owe to the testimony handed down from our ancestors. The testimony for the Headship of Christ is the special inheritance of the Church of Scotland. Among the first words uttered by our Church, when she awoke out of Popery three centuries ago, that testimony was claimed as her own. To the Parliament of the kingdom, and in the hearing of Christendom, she said, "We confess and avow Christ Jesus to be the only Head of his Kirk, our just Lawgiver, our only High Priest, Advocate, and Mediator: in which honours and offices, if man or angel presume to intrude themselves, we utterly detest them as blasphemous to our Sovereign and Supreme Governor, Christ Jesus." Thus spake the Scottish Church by the mouth of John Knox, and while yet in her cradle. Providence must have guided her words. They announced her peculiar vocation from God, and presented an epitome of her history from that day to this. She did not forget the lesson her lisping tongue had learned. "The Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King," formed her watchward from generation to generation. In courts, in prisons, on the scaffold, at the stake, she cried, "The Pope is not our head, the Prince is not our head, our only Head is Christ." To the Church of England, to the Church of Holland, to the Huguenots of France, to the Protestants of Germany, the language of her struggles and manifold sufferings was, "Give not the things of God unto Cæsar, nor the prerogatives of Christ to the civil magistrate; let kings be your nursing fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers, but let Christ alone be your Lawgiver and Head." It is no light matter to inherit such a testimony,—a testimony in itself so great, and that was so maintained. Especially is it no light matter to have such a testimony committed to us at a time like this. Everywhere, both at home and abroad, the Churches of Christ are astir, and looking into their constitutional foundations. All over Europe, the relation between Church and State, as it has existed for centuries, is becoming unsettled, and the servants and people of God are daily growing more free and willing to consider what the true and proper relation is. The Churches, to which the Scottish Testimony has made its appeal so long, are now at last in a favourable condition for listening to it. Who knows but that God had an eye to this crisis, when he raised up the Church of Scotland, and appointed both her recent baptism of tears, and her former baptisms of tears and of blood! Let us then, through the grace of God, keep our banner aloft, that it may be seen from afar on these Scottish hills, among which martyrs used to dwell,-drawing hope and confidence from the cross of Christ, let us hold forth, with one heart and soul, the Testimony for His Crown ! There is also the duty which we owe to the true evangelical doctrine, and to the counsel of God as contained in the Word, and exhibited in our standards. Let our historical position stir us up to this duty. We are the successors and representatives of that Evangelical body which struggled so long for vital religion, and Christian orthodoxy, within the pale of the Establishment. And do we not know that, deep at the foundation of the controversy, which issued in our withdrawal from the State, lay the question, whether godliness in its living power, and genuine, evangelical development, was or was not to prevail in the Established Church of Scotland? Let the interests of evangelism, too, now brought into peril by zealous Pelagian teachers, who profess to be its friends, animate us in contending for the faith once delivered to the saints. And let us, in fine, for the credit of the name we bear,--as a Free Church of Christ,-make it clear to all, and especially to the brethren in other lands who are panting to be released from the fetters of Erastianism, that the freedom we love is not a freedom to be exercised in shaking off or in tampering with the Divine theology of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, but a freedom to be exercised in preserving it in its purity and completeness, and in employing without obstruction, every Christian device to extend its influence, and to promote its practical development. Another duty there is, which may on this occasion be fitly adverted to, associated as it is with the memory of our beloved Chalmers, and inasmuch as all of us must feel that he, being dead, yet speaketh of it. It is the duty that lies upon us with respect to the ignorant and irreligious masses of our home population. The claims of that portion of our fellow-countrymen are daily becoming more urgent. Judging by the ascertained rate of increase for previous years, the number of 30,000 persons has probably been annually added to the inhabitants of Scotland since the Disruption, making altogether an increase of 150,000. The Presbyterian population of Australia, including New South Wales and the adjacent colonies, with Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand, is somewhere about 30,000, and that number has been added to the population of our native Scotland since last General Assembly! The Presbyterian population of the British North American colonies amounts, perhaps, to from 150,000 to 200,000, and a number exceeding four-fifths of that whole population has sprung up at home within the last five years! Twenty churches of the average capacity are needed every year to meet the annual increase of the people; or rather, let me say, twenty new congregations of the average size should be formed every year out of that increase; and a hundred new congregations should have been formed out of the increase that has taken place since the Disruption. Or, if we hold,-what is certainly too favourable a supposition,-that onehalf of the increase has hitherto been absorbed into existing congregations, there ought to have been ten new congregations every year since the Disruption, and fifty altogether. How many, in point of fact, have there been? If we except congregations that have been formed out of other congregations, and cannot therefore fall under the present category, has there been so much as one in all the land besides our own West Port? But, granting that the efforts of the various Christian Churches have produced half-adozen, which we do not believe, what are half-a-dozen to the necessities of a case that demanded more than half a hundred? And what is such a state of things to end in? What sort of an issue for this country does it lead to? About 400,000 non-church goers among us five years since, risen now to half a million, and rising, rising still. Is the multitude of our population to grow for coming years and generations as we have seen, and are we to meet this great exigency with one West Port every five years? We repeat the solemn question,-to what kind of social condition is this once religious kingdom now hurrying? How long is the dreadful tide of ignorance, infidelity, and heathenism, to continue to flow? Is it to come on till faith and truth, the gospel, and the ordinances of Christ, disappear beneath its flood? May God forbid! But our duty is not finished when we deprecate the catastrophe. We are bound to ask if nothing can be done to arrest its advance, and turn back the stream. The Church will speedily have to take up this inquiry with an earnestness and a prayerful energy which she never applied to the same matter before. It will have to be considered if no new measuresmeasures on a far more extended scale, and of another description than have formerly been tried-are not demanded by the circumstances of the time. With such a call to evangelistic work as the state of the population is addressing to us, it may have to be considered whether, from the very heart of the masses themselves, where the evil to be dealt with chiefly is found, an order of evangelists ought not to be drawn, who,—with personal experience of the popular forms of ungodliness and scepticism, qualified by natural aptitude and suitable training to grapple with these, fired with unquenchable love to the souls of that vast section of the community to which they themselves belong, and undistracted by ulterior views towards a different mode of life,—might go down, in the spirit of a holy and self-denying enthusiasm, and literally dwell in the very centre of the darkness, making their light incessantly to shine there, and holding forth the Word of Life, from Sabbath to Saturday, and from January to December, in the cellars, and the garrets, on the very stairs and the landing-places, of the crowded homes of the unbaptized and benighted thousands of our land! Had we two or three hundred such devoted crusaders, clothed in the panoply of God, and armed with the love and the power of the gospel, to throw themselves into every West Port in the kingdom, and, meeting the prejudice, the passion, and the scorn of these haunts of unbelief and wickedness, with the long-suffering and gentleness of Christ, to lay siege to the hearts and consciences of men and women, old and young, on every side, might we not hope that the blessing of heaven would give the Church, our mother, often to exclaim, Who hath begotten me these? Gad, a troop cometh-a troop, a multitude, cometh, to fill the Lord's house, and to serve the Lord's Christ! O for a Scottish John Wesley, to blow the trumpet in Zion, and gather out, and organize, and direct a body of evangelists, for the work that lies before us! We fear that home missionary labour, and the ordinary duties of a congregational ministry, are too unlike to each other, both in their nature and in the qualifications they require, to warrant us in hoping that Home Missions will be attended with any considerable success, while left to the leisure which pastors and elders of congregations can command, or mainly entrusted to those who are preparing for the pastoral office. To have a reasonable prospect of accomplishing much in the field of heathenism at home, perhaps there should be men who are especially commissioned and consecrated to it, and who give up all for its sake, just as it is felt and acknowledged that there must be in the case of the field of heathenism abroad. It does not seem clear that the latter field needs more of the spirit of devotion and self-sacrifice than the former. And we ought not too hastily to conclude that, if men dedicated themselves to the evangelization of the Cowgates and Saltmarkets of Scotland, as Williams with his predecessors and coadjutors did to that of the islands of the Southern Pacific, and as Moffat has done to that of the tribes of South Africa, the results would, in the long run, be less remarkable and cheering. But we may not now pursue this subject farther. It may be that we have indulged in a dream that cannot be realised. The General As sembly will forgive it. To bring these remarks to a close. Let us, my fathers and brethren, gird up our loins, and quit us like men, and be strong in the Lord. Shorn, as we are, of much of the splendour that talent and genius threw around us as a Church, we have many things to encourage us. The promises of God are not recalled. Our Master is saying to us still, "Lo, I am with you alway:" I am with you in trouble, I am with you in peril, I am with you in toil, to the end of the world. He is not weak, though we are weak; and he has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty. The Lord our God is very pitiful: though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion; for he doth not afflict willingly the children of men. If we humble ourselves, and improve his dispensations, he may say of us, as he said of his people in former days,--" I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke; turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God. Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he a pleasant child; For since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still; therefore my bowels are troubled for him; I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord." Many will recollect that, when Thomson, and afterwards M'Crie, were suddenly removed, unbelief was ready to ask,-Who now shall hold the helm, and pilot the gallant ship amid the growing hazards of an unknown voyage? For a moment it was forgotten that an allsufficient Captain was on board,—a Captain familiar with every rock and shallow, expert to guide the vessel, and able to rule the storm! Now, then, let unbelief be hushed. The ship's company, indeed, is weakened; but the wondrous Captain, who is equal to every emergency, and can himself alone do every thing, is yet on board; and, if we are true to him, he never means to leave us. An epoch has arisen when it would ill become those, who are on the Lord's side, and who call the Lord their King, to sit down disheartened, and to fold their hands in idleness. Is it nothing that He has lately given us a little sister in Switzerland, the Free Church of the Canton of Vaud, who has inscribed our distinctive testimony on her banner? Is it nothing that, within the last few eventful weeks, the Church of the Piedmontese vallies,-the oldest Free Church in Christendom,-has been released from the oppression of many centuries; and full liberty of conscience has been granted to Protestants in France, and Tuscany, and Austria? Truly we may say, What hath God wrought! Blind should we be if we did not also mark the Divine hand in the fact that it was the Man of Sin himself who gave the first impulse to the movement which is weakening his power, and opening a door for the gospel. Fathers and brethren, at the very time we are met, the seat of Antichrist is shaking. Long ago did the souls of them that were slain for the Word of God and for the testimony which they held, send their cry from under the altar; and He, to whom the cry was addressed, is giving notice that he will answer it. With new hope and fervour let us pray— "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Forget not; * * Their martyred blood and ashes sow Surely the condition, into which all Europe has so suddenly and mysteriously been thrown, has a language which the Church of Christ cannot misunderstand. The fall of thrones, the tumults of the people, and the perplexity of nations, are signs which proclaim that He who shall come will come, and will not tarry. Yesterday we might be lieve, but to-day we see, that the events appointed to intervene between the Church and her destined enlargement and glory are running their course,-coming up from the future, and hastening into the past. For that slow march of events, which may seem to belong to the earlier stages of a great prophetic period, we have now the quick and startling succession which denotes the approach of its close. The political changes on which mankind are gazing now, are the precursors of a change more grand and wonderful than any of them all, and free from all their drawbacks,—a change that will be proclaimed, amid the hosannas of the faithful, by the joyous announcement, that the kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our God and his Christ. EDINBURGH: PRINTED BY JOHN GREIG. |