“One thing is needful,” which he called the sole requisite to justification, or acceptance with God. By the sole requisite to justification, he understood the work finished by Christ in his death, proved by his resurrection to be all sufficient to justify the guilty; that the whole benefit of this is conveyed to men only by the apostolic report concerning it; that every one who understands this report to be true, or is persuaded that the events actually happened, as testified by the apostles, is justified, and finds relief to his guilty conscience; that he is relieved not by finding any favorable symptom about his heart, but by finding their report to be true; that the event itself, which is reported, becomes his relief so soon as it stands true in his mind, and accordingly becomes his faith; that all the divine power which operates in the minds of men, either to give the first relief to their consciences, or to influence them in every part of their obedience to the Gospel, is persuasive power, or the forcible conviction of truth.
From this we see that he saw with some degree of clearness the nature of faith, but not that the divine economy provides that faith shall be perfected by surrender to an ordinance of the Lord’s own appointment. On some other points in regard to faith he was more or less confused. He advocated the weekly observance of the Lord’s Supper; love feasts; weekly contribution for the poor; mutual exhortation of members; plurality of elders; conditional community of goods; and approved of theaters and public and private diversions, when not connected with circumstances really sinful. His influence extended to the north of Ireland, but the people there did not adopt all his views. They attended weekly to the Lord’s Supper, contributions, etc., but were opposed to going to theaters or such places of amusement; to the doctrine of the community of goods; feet washing, etc., as advocated by Sandeman. Sandeman’s influence extended also to England and to this country.
HALDANE AND AIKMAN
At the close of the eighteenth century spiritual religion in Scotland was at a very low ebb. Then village preaching and extensive itineraries were entered upon by James A. Haldane and John Aikman. They were members of the Established Church of Scotland. They took in hand preaching tours unauthorized by the clergy. They were “laymen,” and preaching by such men was then a strange thing in Scotland. Their labors were so far successful that a revival of spiritual life set in at many places and a spirit of inquiry was aroused. They made successive tours throughout all Scotland, as far as the Orkney Islands. Then Robert Haldane turned his attention to the spiritual needs of his native land, and determined to devote his large fortune to spreading the Gospel through its benighted districts. This led to the formation of a society for the dissemination of religious knowledge, and to the employment of young men of known piety to plant and superintend evening schools for the instruction of the young in religious truths. This movement grew to considerable proportions. But it met with determined opposition, both from Presbyterian Dissenters and the Established clergy. The decrees were fulminated by entire bodies, as the Relief Synod, obviously leveled against the devout and ardent itinerants. In like spirit the Antiburger Synod decreed:
That as lay preaching has no warrant in the Word of God, and as the Synod has always considered it their duty to testify against promiscuous communion, no person under the inspection of the Synod can, consistently with these principles, attend upon or give countenance to public preaching by any who are not of our community; and if any do so they ought to be dealt with by the judicatories of the Church, to bring them to a sense of their offensive conduct.
Going beyond this, the General Assembly of 1799 accused the itinerant preachers of “being artful and designing men, disaffected to the evil constitution of the country, holding secret meetings, and abusing the name of liberty as a cover for a secret democracy and anarchy.” In the midst of this opposition a church was formed of some fourteen persons in a private house on George Street, Edinburgh, which was the beginning of the Tabernacle Church Leith Walk, in which James Haldane eventually became minister, in which capacity he exercised, without any emolument, all the public and private duties with unbroken fidelity and zeal for a period of fifty years. For some time this church was content with monthly communion, but in 1802 it resolved to spread the Lord’s table on the first day of every week. By the close of 1807 some eighty-five Independent churches had been established. Out of this movement a further advance took place, and thence arose Baptist churches in Scotland.
THE SCOTCH BAPTISTS
Churches holding the immersion of believers as the only authorized baptism have, possibly, stood out against the apostasy (not as Baptists), even from the days of the apostles, though frequently driven into hiding places by the force of persecution and for the preservation of their faith and order and also of their lives.
Concerning the origin of the Baptists in England I shall not dwell; though their early history is very interesting, and far more in accord with the apostolic style than the present-day Baptists. Passing at once to Scotland, I find no trace of Baptist churches till the latter part of the eighteenth century, excepting one of short duration formed by soldiers of Cromwell’s army. The earliest Scotch Baptist Church is said to have been formed in Edinburgh in 1765 under the efforts of Robert Carmichael, who had been a minister in the Antiburger Church at Coupar-Augus; but later became minister of an Independent Church (“Glassite”) in Edinburgh, of which Archibald McLean was a member. Early in life a strong impression had been made on the mind of McLean by the preaching of George Whitfield. In 1762 he withdrew from the Established Church of Scotland and united with this Independent Church. But it was not long till some trouble arose over a case of discipline which resulted in the withdrawal of both Carmichael and McLean from the church. While thus standing aloof from church membership they directed their attention to baptism. McLean, not having read a line upon the subject, went carefully through the whole of the New Testament with the inquiry before him, “What is baptism?” This led him to the firm conviction that only those capable of believing in Christ are its subjects and that it must be performed by immersion of the whole body in water. A year later Carmichael reached the same conclusion. He then went to London where he was immersed by Dr. Gill at Barbican, October 9, 1765. On returning to Edinburgh, he baptized McLean and six others, and formed a Baptist church. In 1769, Carmichael moved to Dundee, and McLean became minister of the newly-formed church. Other churches of immersed believers were soon planted in Glasgow, Dundee, Montrose and other places, and the sentiment in favor of returning to the scriptural act of baptizing grew among the people. The marked piety and noble disinterestedness of Archibald McLean stand out as worthy of all admiration. His labors were immense and given gratuitous, as he persisted in continuing in employment as overseer of a printing establishment.
As Scotch Baptist churches multiplied there arose a disturbing element. McLean and others held the necessity of an ordained elders to the proper observance of the Lord’s Supper; consequently, notwithstanding that they taught the importance of observing the Lord’s Supper on the first day of every week, it had to be omitted when an ordained elder could not be present. But ere long others among them saw more light and insisted that elders were not essential to the being of a church, that the church existed before its eldership, and that where the church is the Lord’s table should be spread on the first day of every week, irrespective of the presence of an ordained elder. This led to contention, and, indeed, to separation. But truth will not down. We may go with it any distance we please, but when we say, “Thus far and no farther,” truth struggles to remove the hindrances thrown across its path, and in the end starts on afresh to complete the journey.