Salemina and Francesca both incline to the Established Church, I lean instinctively toward the Free; but that does not mean that we have any knowledge of the differences that separate them. Salemina is a conservative in all things; she loves law, order, historic associations, old customs; and so when there is a regularly established national church,—or, for that matter, a regularly established anything,—she gravitates to it by the law of her being. Francesca's religious convictions, when she is away from her own minister and native land, are inclined to be flexible. The church that enters Edinburgh with a marquis and a marchioness representing the Crown, the church that opens its Assembly with splendid processions and dignified pageants, the church that dispenses generous hospitality from Holyrood Palace,—above all, the church that escorts its Lord High Commissioner from place to place with bands and pipers,—that is the church to which she pledges her constant presence and enthusiastic support.
As for me, I believe I am a born protestant, or "come-outer," as they used to call dissenters in the early days of New England. I have not yet had time to study the question, but as I lack all knowledge of the other two branches of Presbyterianism, I am enabled to say unhesitatingly that I belong to the Free Kirk. To begin with, the very word "free" has a fascination for the citizen of a republic; and then my theological training was begun this morning by a gifted young minister of Edinburgh whom we call the Friar, because the first time we saw him in his gown and bands (the little spot of sheer whiteness beneath the chin, that lends such added spirituality to a spiritual face) we fancied that he looked like some pale brother of the Church in the olden time. His pallor, in a land of rosy redness and milky whiteness; his smooth, fair hair, which in the light from the stained-glass window above the pulpit looked reddish gold; the Southern heat of passionate conviction that colored his slow Northern speech; the remoteness of his personality; the weariness of his deep-set eyes, that bespoke such fastings and vigils as he probably never practiced,—all this led to our choice of the name.
As we walked toward St. Andrew's Church and Tanfield Hall, where he insisted on taking me to get the "proper historical background," he told me about the great Disruption movement. He was extremely eloquent,—so eloquent that the image of Willie Beresford tottered continually on its throne, and I found not the slightest difficulty in giving an unswerving allegiance to the principles presented by such an orator.
We went first to St. Andrew's, where the General Assembly met in 1843, and where the famous exodus of the Free Protesting Church took place,—one of the most important events in the modern history of the United Kingdom.
The movement was promoted by the great Dr. Chalmers and his party, mainly to abolish the patronage of livings, then in the hands of certain heritors or patrons, who might appoint any minister they wished, without consulting the congregation. Needless to say, as a free-born American citizen, and never having had a heritor in the family, my blood easily boiled at the recital of such tyranny. In 1834 the Church had passed a law of its own, it seems, ordaining that no presentee to a parish should be admitted, if opposed by the majority of the male communicants. That would have been well enough could the State have been made to agree, though I should have gone further, personally, and allowed the female communicants to have some voice in the matter.
The Friar took me into a particularly chilly historic corner, and, leaning against a damp stone pillar, painted the scene in St. Andrew's when the Assembly met in the presence of a great body of spectators, while a vast throng gathered without, breathlessly awaiting the result. No one believed that any large number of ministers would relinquish livings and stipends and cast their bread upon the waters for what many thought a "fantastic principle." Yet when the Moderator left his place, after reading a formal protest signed by one hundred and twenty ministers and seventy-two elders, he was followed first by Dr. Chalmers, and then by four hundred and seventy men, who marched in a body to Tanfield Hall, where they formed themselves into the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland. When Lord Jeffrey was told of it an hour later, he exclaimed, "Thank God for Scotland! There is not another country on earth where such a deed could be done!" And the Friar reminded me proudly of Macaulay's saying that the Scots had made sacrifices for the sake of religious opinion for which there was no parallel in the annals of England. On the next Sunday after these remarkable scenes in Edinburgh there were heart-breaking farewells, so the Friar said, in many village parishes, when the minister, in dismissing his congregation, told them that he had ceased to belong to the Established Church and would neither preach nor pray in that pulpit again; that he had joined the Free Protesting Church of Scotland, and, God willing, would speak the next Sabbath morning at the manse door to as many as cared to follow him. "What affecting leave-takings there must have been!" the Friar exclaimed. "When my grandfather left his church that May morning, only fifteen members remained behind, and he could hear the more courageous say to the timid ones, 'Tak' your Bible an' come awa' mon!' Was not all this a splendid testimony to the power of principle and the sacred demands of conscience?" I said "Yea" most heartily, for the spirit of Jenny Geddes stirred within me that morning, and under the spell of the Friar's kindling eye and eloquent voice I positively gloried in the valiant achievements of the Free Church. It would always be easier for a woman to say "Yea" than "Nay" to the Friar. When he left me in Breadalbane Terrace I was at heart a member of his congregation in good (and irregular) standing, ready to teach in his Sunday-school, sing in his choir, visit his aged and sick poor, and especially to stand between him and a too admiring feminine constituency.
When I entered the drawing-room, I found that Salemina had just enjoyed an hour's conversation with the ex-Moderator of the opposite church wing.
"Oh, my dear," she sighed, "you have missed such a treat! You have no conception of these Scottish ministers of the Establishment,—such culture, such courtliness of manner, such scholarship, such spirituality, such wise benignity of opinion! I asked the doctor to explain the Disruption movement to me, and he was most interesting and lucid, and most affecting, too, when he described the misunderstandings and misconceptions that the Church suffered in those terrible days of 1843, when its very life-blood, as well as its integrity and unity, was threatened by the foes in its own household; when breaches of faith and trust occurred on all sides, and dissents and disloyalties shook it to its very foundation! You see, Penelope, I have never fully understood the disagreements about heritors and livings and state control before, but here is the whole matter in a nut-sh—"
"My dear Salemina," I interposed, with dignity, "you will pardon me, I am sure, when I tell you that any discussion on this point would be intensely painful to me, as I now belong to the Free Kirk."
"Where have you been this morning?" she asked, with a piercing glance.