Orthodoxy Versus Compromise

THE CONTENTS of this paper are not uplifting for they trace the decline of the Free Church of Scotland. But the truth must be told.

We remember that the Free Church of Scotland came into being as the climax of a slow but sure spiritual revival in Scotland. In the face of Moderate deadness and the debilitating drainage of people away from the National Church, God was pleased to bless the Church of Scotland. Moderate ministers like Drs Chalmers, Gordon and Dodds were converted to Christ and they in turn began to influence students coming forward for the ministry. Pulpits began to be filled with men who were Calvinistic and Evangelical. This in turn had its effect on the congregations not only in conversions to God but in stopping the drain of godly people from the Church.

We have seen already what progress the new Church made in the first few years of its life. Among other things, it had the best theological college in Britain with a galaxy of talent that has rarely if ever been equalled. William Cunningham, John Duncan, George Smeaton, Douglas Bannerman and James Buchanan were on the staff of the New College. These men were not only outstanding lecturers, they were authors of books that are classics in Reformed literature. In addition there were outstanding preachers in Free Church pulpits - Robert Gordon and John Bruce, the Bonar brothers (Horatio and Andrew), David Brown and Patrick Fairbairn, Thomas Guthrie and Moody Stewart - to mention but a few. These were men who put their souls and their brains into their sermons. Mission work both home and overseas was at a passionate intensity. Numbers grew and congregations multiplied. But like everything human the Church became flawed and like an early church of the apostles,' it left its first- love. What was at its formation a living, Calvinistic, Evangelical Church became in less then 60 years the home of Liberal Theology and was like a ship without chart, compass, anchor or rudder.

The Reason Why.

What was the cause of this serious decline? The answer to this is complex but we can give the broad outlines. Basically the Church lost its spiritual vision and its priorities became inverted. It had grieved the Holy Spirit. The chief cause of this grieving was pride of achievement. The Free Church had accomplished much. After some 20 years of its founding, it membership was reckoned in hundreds of thousands and its income was in the same figures annually. It had three theological halls manned by first class scholars; it had teacher training colleges second to none; it had a reputation for scholarship and pulpit ability; it had missionary outreach in the known mission fields of the world and its ministers were serving in most of the British colonies; it had voluntary Christian societies permeating all levels of society; it was recognised by the impartial to be the truest representative of Presbyterianism in Scotland. Its progress had been phenomenal but it was tainted by pride of achievement in which human ability and effort were given more than their share of praise. There was scorn for the Auld Kirk and its deadness and not a little envy at its privileged position. The Lord is near the humble but knows the proud afar off.

The inversion of the Church's priorities and the loss of spiritual vision included:-

a. Making reputation for scholarship her great concern.
To this end the Church sent some of her brightest students to German theological halls which had a reputation for scholarship. Irreverent scholarship and research was at work there and the students came back infected. Becoming Professors of Divinity themselves, they corrupted their students and others. Robertson Smith, A.B.Davidson, Marcus Dodds, George Adam Smith were among those who departed from the orthodox faith and taught others their error. Undoubted scholars they were but without the spiritual convictions of their 'fathers.'

b. Venturing into the political arena.
Men like Robert Candlish of Disruption fame led the church along political lines seeking the disestablishment of the Auld Kirk for its own advantage. Most Free kirk folk were Liberals in politics - Liberals in the British sense not the Australian - and there were many Free Kirkers and finely held seats and shaky governments. If the ministers whipped up public opinion a lot of pressure could be put on vulnerable MPs and Governments for political ends. And it was. This was not only diversionary for the Church but dishonest since the Church of the Disruption held the Establishment principle.

c. Becoming obsessed by union with another Presbyterian body - the United Presbyterian Church.
While unity is to be sought with all Christians and union with another similar Christian community is desirable if it can be achieved without loss of principle, the Free Church was so taken with this union that she was prepared to compromise her own principles to achieve it. The U.P. Church had looser ties to the Confession of Faith than the Free Kirk and was what is known as a Voluntary Church, ie. she held that there should be no connection between the Church and the State. To obtain this union the Free Church drew up a Declaratory Statement to relieve her ministers and office bearers from strict adherence to the Confession of Faith and made the Establishment Principle an open question ('You can believe it if you like but you're not bound to.'). The snare with a Declaratory Statement is that its vague statements make it possible for two people with opposite views to accept the same form of words. There is no doubt that worldly considerations such as greater numbers, greater wealth, greater influence and greater opportunities in a ministerial career had a lot to do with this union. The movement began in the late 1860s and continued into the early 1870s but the resistance to it was so strong that it was dropped for nearly twenty years. The union culminated in the formation of the United Free Church in 1900 when only a score of ministers and their congregations chose to continue as the Free Church of Scotland.

d. Yielding to the influences in current society.
It was a time of great change and unrest in every field of human learning and experience - in politics, science, industry, education, philosophy, art and literature. Humanism was rampant with its doctrine that man is the measure of all things and was the master of his fate and the captain of his soul. According to the Humanists, Man was evolving from his animal origins through education, the advance of science, political emancipation and better social conditions and had the prospect of a golden future. Uniformitarianism in geology and evolution in biology could explain the world and man's existence. Human values were relative and the product of social experiment. Religion including the Christian had evolved over man's history from the crude to the refined as the product of man's search for meaning in life. Governments must become increasingly secular with no connection with the Church and must take over education and public welfare once the province of the Church. Education must be liberal in character and freed from any influence of religion. Such were the ideas in society and the Church to a large degree succumbed to them.

e. Adopting a weak evangelicalism in place of the robust Calvinism of the founding 'Fathers.'
It was an era of shallow Arminian evangelism. American Revivalism had come to Britain with its decisionism and emotional campaigns. The accompanying unthinking, shallow creed was no match for scholarly, religious liberalism. It was concerned only with the so-called conversion of the soul and regarded sound doctrine as irrelevant or divisive. It was weary of creeds and dogmatic statements and shunned the discipline of a thoughtful Christianity. Catchy hymns and choruses, testimonies and snappy to-the-point sermons were preferred to solid instruction and the purity of Reformed worship.

It was the tragedy of the times that the current weak evangelicalism could not see the peril of religious liberalism and it took no steps to combat it. The heretical Free Church Professors when brought to account by earnest men were easily able to find acquittal in the General Assembly. Men could not see what all the fuss was about. These men professed the evangelical faith, why waste time on theological quibbles.

f. Endeavouring to make the Church's message attractive to modern thought.
One of the direct consequences of departing from Reformed and Biblical theology was the belief that if only the Church would accommodate its message to the scientific mind of modern man he would accept the gospel. So those doctrines that were most unpalatable to modern man had to be put aside or watered down. There must no mention of man's depravity and his dire need for Christ's atonement and for the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit as well as for God's election, before he could become a Christian. Rather the stress was on man's fundamental goodness and his ability to grasp and accept the truth of the gospel if it was presented reasonably.

g. The lust for freedom of thought and expression in religious research untrammelled by Church Creeds or obligations to maintain the Church's Confession of Faith. It was regarded as the honest thing to do to openly declare or publish ones findings even if they contradicted the Church's testimony. But it was not honest. Those men had subscribed to the doctrines of the Confession of Faith as expressing their own faith. They held their position on the strength of that subscription. They had no business declaring or publishing contrary opinions.

The contempt shown to the makers of the early creeds and the Confession of Faith and the arrogance of the assumption that truth did not arise until that generation became scholars is obvious.

It was often declared by these innovators that God had still more light to break from his Word and the Reformed Church must always be reforming itself. Unhappily their conclusions did not come from God's Word but often cast doubts on its adequacy or its accuracy. Their light was darkness. The Church was not reforming but deforming itself! That generation wanted no restraints. It would be free from the apron strings of Mother Kirk and not held in bondage to seventeenth century theology. There was want of godly fear in the latter Free Kirk and a great impatience with the theology of the Reformation. Freedom of thought and expression were prized more highly than humble submission to the Scriptures.

Conclusion.

It might be asked what were the old Free Kirk stalwarts doing at this time? The old stalwarts had either gone to their reward or were so aged that they took no further part in the affairs of the church. There were some doughty survivors like Dr Begg who fought valiantly against the tide until death claimed him. The few who did resist were neither numerous not exceptionally brilliant. Their group lacked men of deep learning and they were liable to defend the truth as a custom or tradition of the Church rather than establish it in a scholarly way from Scripture and so refute the heretics in the Church.

By 1900 the time of the Union, the Free Church had changed its attitude to the Bible which was no longer regarded as inspired and infallible; it had lessened its adherence to the Confession of Faith; it had abandoned the principle of the National Establishment of Religion and the social philosophy that went with it; it had greatly modified the Reformed worship introducing hymns, organs, choirs and anthems; it had radically changed the expression of its piety - Christian pilgrims were now to be more concerned with the surroundings of their path than the straightness of the way and the goal to be reached. It was not the Church of the Disruption Fathers.

The new church formed in 1900, the United Free Church, went all the way in 1907 when it legislated to enable it to change its creed whenever the majority considered it expedient. All office bearers were committed to hold to the essentials of the Faith but those essentials were never spelt out. They meant different things to different people. So it set out on the sea of life like a ship without chart, compass, anchor or rudder. Its radical attitudes were yet to come to full-blown unbelief and thinly disguised humanism.

Many good men went into the United Free Church but they could not see where the Church was heading or the implications of the momentous decisions made by an unbelieving majority. The revival of the early nineteen hundreds was past and there was little of the spirit of self sacrifice abroad. So many tamely submitted to the spirit of the age and the comforts of their situation.

There is one name which we cannot omit from this account of the decline of the Free Church. It is that of Principal Rainy. He succeeded the great John Cunningham as Professor of Historical Theology and then later became Principal of the New College. He was regarded as a saint by some and as a villain by others. There is no doubt that he more than any other individual moulded and guided the Free Church in the latter part of its history. He was a sound scholar and remained an orthodox Calvinist until his dying day. But he was a master at swaying men and in influencing Assemblies. He was fluent, politic and able to manipulate Church law to achieve his ends. He was a consummate planner and a first class debater. He had all the gifts to persuade a gathering of men and most of them well educated, to do the things he felt needed to be done and to give the impression that they had done what they wanted to do. He could threaten and coax, turn principles into expedients and expedients into principles whenever he chose. He lost few debates and fewer proposals. He was the master mind behind the Union of 1900 and all the accommodation and compromise involved. His great passion was unity within the Free Kirk and union with the United Presbyterian but it had to be on his terms. It was a matter not only of deep disappointment but of bitter chagrin that some dared to defy him and refuse to go into the union.

Postscript.

The remnant who continued as the Free Church - sneeringly called 'The Wee Frees' by their opponents - went to court over the matter of the Church's patrimony. They felt that money and property had been donated to maintain the Free Church testimony, a Reformed and Calvinistic testimony. The United Free Church did not hold that testimony therefore those Free Churchmen who went into the United Free Church had abandoned the Free Church and its testimony and were no longer entitled to the patrimony. They lost their case in the Scottish courts but the House of Lords upheld their appeal. The Lordly Judges ruled that those who went into the Uniting Church had abandoned the Free Church testimony and were not entitled to the patrimony of the Free Church. All the vast properties and wealth of the old Free Church were now put in the trust of the minority. They obtained the name and Trust Properties and Funds of the Free Church of Scotland. However, since the continuing Free Church was too small to carry out the responsibilities of these trusts, the Government intervened and by an Act of Parliament appointed a Commission to share out the wealth and property in accordance with the size and necessity of each Church. The decision of the House of Lords in 1904, has become a test case, a precedent, for the Law of Trusts. If funds are subscribed for a particular institution or cause, they cannot be diverted to other institutions or causes. It is a breach of Trust Law to do so.