When they rose from their knees more than one elder was weeping, and every man's face was white and serious, and still Rochally stood as if he desired to go, but was not able till the minister gave the decision of the court. The Spirit of the Holy Ministry, which is the most awful office upon earth, and the most solemn, descended in special measure upon the minister, a man still young and inexperienced, but who was now coming out from the holy place of the Most High.
“Andrew Harris, I ask you, in the name of the Kirk whom the Lord loved and washed from her sins in His own blood, lovest thou the Lord Jesus Christ?” Then the minister and the elders faded from before Rochally's eyes, and the faithful, honest man who had sinned so long ago, and wept so bitterly, stood face to face with the Master.
“Lord,” said he, for the first time lifting up his head, “Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.”
It was after midnight when the minister wrote out the minute of that meeting, and it states that an objection was taken to the life of Andrew Harris; but the Session ruled that it was not relevant, in which ruling the objector acquiesced, and the Session therefore appointed that Andrew Harris, farmer at Rochally, be ordained on the day appointed to the office of elder in the Free Kirk of Thomgreen.
XXI.—WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
WHEN Carmichael was Free Kirk minister of Dramtochty, and in the days of his youth, he had casual ways, and went at his own free will. He never came across the moor behind his manse on a summer day, and entered the cool pine wood which separated it from the ploughed land, without sitting down beside a certain pool of a burn which ran through the fringe of the wood. Because the water broke over a little rock and then gathered in a cup of gravel, and there was a heather bank where he could he as comfortably as in his favourite study chair, which had seen the Rebellion, but had changed its covering as well as its creed more than once since then; because the Highland cattle came to drink at that pool if you were not fussy and suspicious; and because all the sounds of the moor—the bleating of the sheep, the cry of the grouse, and the wail of the whaup and the drone of the bees—mingled in one music, and fell pleasantly upon your ear. “For five minutes only,” he said to himself, and then some Highland cows, with their absurd little calves, arrived, and would have considered it ill-mannered for him to rise; and he fell a-thinking while time flew. He rose with a start and hurried down to the main road, and made for the bridge over the Tochty, fearful lest he should be too late when the messenger came with momentous tidings from the telegraph office at Kildrummie.
For two years the Glen had been in the most delightful state of intellectual ferment, and it was freely said by those who could remember that conversation had not risen to such a high level for fifty years, not even during '43. It goes without saying that the subject which exercised the minds and tongues of the Glen had to do, not with markets, but with Kirks; and while many had feared that the golden age of the Disruption would never be repeated in Drumtochty, when children were taught the doctrine of spiritual independence as they were supping their porridge, and women spoke freely about the principle of “Coordinate Jurisdiction with Mutual Subordination” as they hoed turnips in the fields, even Jamie Soutar was compelled to allow that the present debate had points of excellence altogether its own. While the spirit of disruption had wonderfully sharpened the edge of the intellect, the new spirit of concord which was abroad had still more powerfully quickened the feelings of the heart. By the fireside, where the guidwife darned the stockings and the guidman read the Muirtown Advertiser from the first word of the advertisements to the last word of the printer's name, out at work where they were planting potatoes or reaping the com, on the way to market as they walked down to Kildrummie station on Friday morning or crammed themselves by fives and sixes into Hillocks' dog-cart, but most of all in the kirkyard or at the Free Kirk door, men and women had been discussing with unswerving honesty and amazing subtlety, but with great goodwill and eager longing, how the differences between the Free Kirk and the Established could be reconciled, and upon what terms of honour and self-respect they could be united so that there should be again one Kirk in Scotland, as in the former days. According to the light which Providence had been pleased to give to other parishes, which was as twilight to the sunlight of Drum-tochty, they also argued this great affair, till even Kildrummie had pronounced ideas on the subject; and Rabbi Saunderson, the minister of Kilbogie, had announced a course of twenty-five sermons on the “Principle of Unity in the Christian Church, considered biblically, theologically, historically, and experimentally.” The ecclesiastics on both sides had not regarded the movement with conspicuous favour, and, while stating that the end in view was not only admirable but one they had always desired, they felt it their duty to point out difficulties. They mentioned so many, indeed, and expounded them so faithfully, that it would not have been wonderful if the people had lost heart and abandoned a hopeless enterprise; for as a rule it had been the ecclesiastics who spoke and the people who kept silence; the ecclesiastics who passed measures and the people who paid for them. This time, however, the younger ministers had taken the matter into their own hands, and refused to serve themselves heirs to past controversies or to bind themselves to perpetuate ancient divisions; they were men of another age, and intended to face the new situation. There had been enough dividing in Scotland since the days of the Covenanters; it was time there should be some uniting, and when they were at it they wanted thorough-going and final union. And the people, who in every country parish had, Sabbath after Sabbath for more than a generation, passed one another in opposite directions going to their kirks, began to inquire why they should not all go in one direction and meet under one roof as their fathers had done; and when people began to ask that question, both with their heads and with their hearts, it was bound to be answered in one way.
The ecclesiastics had yielded under pressure, and as Carmichael went down to the bridge he recalled, with a keen sense of humour, their marvellous proceedings and the masterly game which had been played by the diplomatists of the Kirks, their suave expressions of brotherly love, their shrewd foresight of every move, their sleepless watchfulness of one another, their adroit concessions which yielded nothing, their childlike proposals which would have gained everything, and their cheerful acquiescence in every delay. But the temper of the people was not to be trifled with, and if the young party among the clergy were not skilled in the wiles of Church Courts, they had considerable vigour of speech, and the managers of affairs were given to understand that they must bring things quickly to a head. Early last spring the leader of the Free Kirk had submitted his terms, which the Established Kirk men studied together for three days and then read in seven different ways, and they in turn submitted their proposals, which were so simple and direct that the great Free Kirk man was genuinely disappointed, and wished that it had been his lot to negotiate with a Roman cardinal. But the people were getting impatient, and when the Assemblies met in the end of May, the pleasant spring-time, the terms had been adjusted, and Carmichael ran over them as he came down the near road through Hillocks' farm and pronounced them good. That the Free Church and the Established should unite together; that its legal title should be the Church of Scotland; that it should retain the ancient endowments and all the accumulated funds of both the former Churches; that the newly-constituted Church of Scotland should cease its legal connexion with the State, but maintain the old parochial system; that the new Church should re-arrange its resources so as to meet every religious and moral want in Scotland, and work with the State for the well-being of the Scots Commonwealth. The motions were proposed about the same time in the two Assemblies, in speeches worthy of the occasion: in the Established Kirk by a Scots noble; in the Free Kirk by the ablest ecclesiastical statesman of his day; Carmichael was thankful that he was in the Free Kirk Assembly when the motion was carried, with tears and cheers, none objecting, and that he was in time, with a fearful struggle, to get his head within the door of the Tolbooth, when the ministers and elders of the Established Kirk stood up as one man at the bidding of their moderator, and before Her Majesty's Lord High Commissioner, and declared for union; and thankful that he was one of the crowd that poured out of both Assemblies in the High Street of Edinburgh and heard the bells of St. Giles, which had been the witness of many a fierce conflict, ringing out the news of peace and concord through the grey capital of the nation.