There is another advice which we would fain give you, though it may be regarded as of a somewhat equivocal kind: Rely upon yourselves. The man who sets his hopes upon patronage, or the exertions of others in his behalf, is never so respectable a man, and, save in very occasional instances, rarely so lucky a man, as he who bends his exertions to compel fortune in his behalf, by making himself worthy of her favours. Some of the greatest wrecks we have seen in life have been those of waiters on patronage; and the greatest discontents which we have seen in corporations, churches, and states, have arisen from the exercise of patronage. Shakespeare tells us, in his exquisite vein, of a virtue that is twice blessed,––blessed in those who give, and blessed in those who receive. Patronage is twice cursed,––cursed in the incompetency which it places where merit ought to be, and in the incompetency which it creates among the class who make it their trust. But the curse which you have mainly to avoid is that which so often falls on those who waste their time and suffer their energies to evaporate in weakly and obsequiously waiting upon it. We therefore say, Rely upon yourselves. But there is One other on whom you must rely; and implicit reliance on Him, instead of inducing weakness, infinitely increases strength. Bacon has well said, that a dog is brave and generous when he believes himself backed by his master, but timid and crouching, especially in a strange place, when he is alone and his master away. And a human master, says the philosopher, is as a god to the dog. It certainly does inspire a man with strength to believe that his great Master 278 is behind him, invigorating him in his struggles, and protecting him against every danger. We knew in early life a few smart infidels––smart but shallow; but not one of them ever found their way into notice; and though we have not yet lived out our half century, they have in that space all disappeared. There are various causes which conspire to write it down as fate, that the humble infidel should be unsuccessful in life. In the first place, infidelity is not a mark of good sense, but very much the reverse. We have been much struck by a passage which occurs in the autobiography of a great general of the early part of the last century. In relating the disasters and defeats experienced in a certain campaign by two subordinate general officers, chiefly through misconduct, and a lack of the necessary shrewdness, he adds, “I ever suspected the judgment of these men since I found that they professed themselves infidels.” The sagacious general had inferred that their profession of infidelity augured a lack of sense; and that, when they got into command, the same lack of sense which led them to glory in their shame would be productive, as its necessary results, of misfortune and disaster. There is a shrewd lesson here to the class who doubt and cavil simply to show their parts. In the second place, infidelity, on the principle of Bacon, is a weak, tottering thing, unbuttressed by that support which gives to poor human nature half its strength and all its dignity. But, above all, in the third and last place, the humble infidel, unballasted by right principle, sets out on the perilous voyage of life without chart or compass, and, drifting from off the safe course, gets among rocks and breakers, and there perishes. But we must not trespass on your time. With regard to the conduct of your studies, we simply say, Strive to be catholic in your tastes. Some of you will have a leaning to science; some to literature. To the one class we would say, Your literature will be all 279 the more solid if you can get a vein of true science to run through it; and to the other, Your science will be all the more fascinating if you temper and garnish it with literature. In truth, almost all the greater subjects of man’s contemplation belong to both fields. Of subjects such as astronomy and geology, for instance, the poetry is as sublime as the science is profound. As a pretty general rule, you will perhaps find literature most engaging in youth, and science as you grow in years. But faculties for both have been given you by the great Taskmaster, and it is your bounden duty that these be exercised aright. And so let us urge you, in conclusion, in the words of Coleridge:
“Therefore to go and join head, heart, and hand,
Active and firm to fight the bloodless fight
Of science, freedom, and the truth in Christ.”
DISRUPTION PRINCIPLES.
One of the many dangers to which the members of a disestablished Church just escaped from State control and the turmoil of an exciting struggle are liable, is the danger of getting just a little wild on minute semi-metaphysical points, and of either quarrelling regarding them with their neighbours, or of falling out among themselves. Great controversies, involving broad principles, have in the history of the Church not unfrequently broken into small controversies, involving narrow principles; just as in the history of the world mighty empires like that of Alexander the Great have broken up into petty provinces, headed by mere satraps and captains, when the master-mind that formed their uniting bond has been removed. Independently of that stability which the legalized framework of a rightly-constituted Establishment is almost sure to impart to its distinctive doctrines, the influence of its temporalities has in one special direction a sobering and wholesome effect. Men carefully weigh principles for the assertion of which they may be called on to sacrifice or to suffer, and are usually little in danger, in such circumstances, of becoming martyrs to a mere crotchet. The first beginnings of notions that, if suffered to grow in the mind, may at length tyrannize over it, and lead even the moral sense captive, are often exceedingly minute.
They start up in the form of, mayhap, solitary ideas, chance-derived from some unexpected association, or picked up in conversation or reading; the attention gradually 281 concentrates upon them; auxiliary ideas, in consequence, spring up around them; they assume a logical form––connect themselves, on the one hand, with certain revealed injunctions of wide meaning––lay hold, on the other, on a previously developed devotional spirit or well-trained conscientiousness; and, in the end, if the minds in which they have arisen be influential ones, they alter the aspects and names of religious bodies, and place in a state of insulation and schism churches and congregations.
Their rise somewhat resembles that of the waves, as described by Franklin in his paper on the effects of oil in inducing a calm, or in preserving one. ‘The first-raised waves,’ he says, ‘are mere wrinkles; but being continually acted upon by the wind, they are, though the gale does not increase in strength, continually increased in magnitude, rising higher, and extending their bases so as to include in each wave vast masses, and to act with great momentum. The wind, however,’ continues the philosopher, ‘blowing over water covered with oil, cannot catch upon it so as to raise the first or elementary wrinkles, but slides over it, and leaves it smooth as it finds it; and being thus prevented from producing these first elements of waves, it of course cannot produce the waves themselves.’ In applying the illustration just a little further, we would remark, that within a wholesomely-constituted religious Establishment, the influence of the temporalities acts in preventing the rise of new notions, like the smoothing oil. If it does not wholly prevent the formation of the first wrinkles of novel opinion, it at least prevents their heightening into wavelets or seas. If the billows rise within so as to disrupt the framework of the Establishment, and make wreck of its temporalities, it may be fairly premised that they have risen not from any impulsion of the light winds of uncertain doctrine, but, as in the Canton de Vaud and the Church of Scotland, in obedience to the strong ground-swell of sterling principle. 282
Now we deem it a mighty advantage, and one which should not be wilfully neutralized by any after act of the body, that the distinctive principles of the Free Church bear the stamp and pressure of sacrifice. The temporalities resigned for their sake do not adequately measure their value; but they at least demonstrate that, in the estimate of those who resigned them, the principles did of a certainty possess value up to the amount resigned. The Disruption forms a guarantee for the stamina of our Church’s peculiar tenets, and impresses upon them, in relation to the conscience of the Church, the stamp of reality and genuineness. And that influence of the temporalities to which we refer, and under which the controversy grew, had yet another wholesome influence. It prevented the wrinklings of new, untried notions from gathering momentum, and rising into waves. The great billows, influential in producing so much, were the result of ancient, well-tested realities: they had rolled downwards, fully formed, as a portion of the great ground-swell of the Reformation. The Headship of the adorable Redeemer––the spiritual independence of the Church––the rights of the Christian people: these were not crotchets based on foundations of bad metaphysics; they were vital, all-important principles, worthy of being maintained and asserted at any cost. It is indeed wonderful how entirely, immediately previous to the Disruption, the Church of Scotland assumed all the lineaments of her former self, as she existed in the days of Knox and his brethren. Once more, after the lapse of many years, she stood on broad anti-patronage ground. Once more, after having been swaddled up for an age in the narrow exclusiveness of the Act of 1799, that had placed her in a state of non-communion with the whole Christian world, she occupied, through its repeal, the truly liberal position with regard to the other evangelistic churches of her early fathers. Once more her discipline, awakened from its long slumber, 283 had become efficient, as in her best days, for every purpose of purity. She had become, on the eve of her disestablishment, after many an intervening metamorphosis, exactly, in character and lineament, the Church which had been established by the State nearly three centuries before. She went out as she had come in. There was a peculiar sobriety, too, in all her actings. Her sufferings and sacrifices were direct consequents of the invasion of her province by the civil magistrate.
But she did not on that account cease to recognise the magistrate in his own proper walk as the minister of God.