About the same time (February 1843) circumstances compelled him to take action in the presbytery. Along with the Veto Law the Chapel Act had been passed, giving seats in the church courts to the ministers of non-territorial charges. The House of Lords had just declared that also to be illegal, when the Presbytery of Irvine met to elect commissioners to the General Assembly. The minister of Loudoun happened to be Moderator. Should he allow the chapel ministers to vote? There was more in his mind than the law; ‘it was the avowed intention,’ he says, ‘of the High Church party to get the majority in the Assembly by means of the Quoad Sacras ... and then, as the Assembly of the National Church, to dissolve the connection between Church and State, excommunicating those who might remain.’ Refusing the illegal votes, he set up a separate presbytery; and here was the first actual split in the Church.
Of all the members of the General Assembly who witnessed or took part in the procession from St. Andrew’s Church on May 18, 1843, there were none more sorrowful than the minister of Loudoun. But ere the day was over a little indignation came to his relief. ‘How my soul rises against those men who have left us to rectify their blundering, and then laugh at our inability to do so!’ Principal Tulloch has said that the act of secession would always be deemed heroic in the history of Scotland; but Norman Macleod, who, unlike the other, was an eye-witness and in the thick of events, wrote in his journal immediately after the Disruption: ‘The great movements, the grand results, will certainly be known, and everything has been done in the way most calculated to tell on posterity (for how many have been acting before its eyes!): but who in the next century will know or understand the ten thousand secret influences, the vanity and pride of some, the love of applause, the fear and terror, of others, and, above all, the seceding mania, the revolutionary mesmerism, which I have witnessed within these few days.’ For himself he felt how much easier it would have been to go than it was to stay. ‘Never,’ he wrote, ‘did I have such a fortnight of care and anxiety. Never did men engage in a task with more oppression of spirit than we did, as we tried to preserve the Church for the benefit of our children’s children. The Assembly was called upon to perform a work full of difficulty, and to do such unpopular things as restoring the Strathbogie ministers, rescinding the Veto, etc. We were hissed by the mob in the galleries, looked coldly on by many Christians, ridiculed as enemies to the true Church, as lovers of ourselves, seeking the fleece; and yet what was nearest my own heart and that of my friends was the wish to preserve the Establishment for the well-being of Britain. While the “persecuted martyrs of the Covenant” met amid the huzzas and applauses of the multitude, with thousands of pounds daily pouring in upon them, and nothing to do but what was in the highest degree popular; nothing but self-denial, and a desire to sacrifice name and fame, and all but honour, to my country, could have kept me in the Assembly. There was one feature of the Assembly which I shall never forget, and that was the fever of secession, the restless, nervous desire to fly to the Free Church.’ In the course of one of his speeches in the rump Assembly he exclaimed: ‘We shall endeavour to extinguish the fire which has been kindled, and every fire but the light of the glorious gospel, which we shall, I hope, fan into a brighter flame. And the beautiful spectacle which was presented to us on Sabbath evening, in the dense crowd assembled here to ask the blessing of God on our beloved Church, enabled me to distinguish amid the flames the old motto flashing out, Nec tamen consumebatur. We shall try to bring our ship safe to harbour, and if we haul down the one flag, “Retract: no, never,” we shall hoist another, “Despair: no, never.” And if I live to come to this Assembly an old man, I am confident that a grateful posterity will vindicate our present position, in endeavouring through good report and bad report to preserve this great national institution as a blessing to them and to their children’s children.’
The Free Church was always in his eyes ‘just an outburst of presbyterian Puseyism,’ and undoubtedly its rise was marked by a clerical reign of terror. Mr. Skelton testifies: ‘The air of Edinburgh is generally bitter with Calvinism, and in 1843 it was particularly inclement. The Free Kirk, having just made a heroic sacrifice, were naturally rather out of temper. Cakes and ale, consequently, were quite at a discount. The re-enactment of the old sumptuary laws of the Puritans began to be talked of again. The national beverage was interdicted. Young professors could not be permitted to indulge in promiscuous dancing. The presbytery thundered hoarsely against the profanation of the Sabbath as practised on Leith Pier, or round Arthur’s Seat. The slightest sign of independent vitality, intellectual or religious, was sourly repressed by a party in which the secular intolerance of the democracy was curiously combined with the spiritual pretensions of the hierarchy.’ ‘A gloomy fanaticism,’ writes the father of Norman Macleod, ‘followed the breaking up of the Established Church, and perhaps in no part of the country did this bitterness exist more strongly than in the Western Islands. In Skye, especially, it led to dividing families, and separating man from man, and altogether engendered strife which I fear it will take years to calm down.’
Although too young, even if he had been fit, to be in the front of the battle, the minister of Loudoun was notable among the remnant; and with his repute, besides, as a pastor, it was no wonder that he was besieged with offers of livings. He refused the first charge of Cupar, Fife; the Tolbooth and St. John’s, Edinburgh; Campsie, Maybole, St. Ninian’s. He accepted Dalkeith. Then he learned how much his people at Loudoun were attached to him. Many whom he had thought rocks sent forth tears. At the church gate, after his farewell sermon, there was a mournful crowd; and as he walked home he was waylaid by watchers, who seized his hand, and invoked upon him the blessing of God.
CHAPTER III
1843-1851
AFTER THE BATTLE—DALKEITH—EMBASSIES—EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE—DEATH OF JOHN MACINTOSH.