The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a pseudo-General Assembly. When there are two suns visible, or two moons, the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a parhelios, and the mock moon a paraselene. On that principle, we must call this mock Assembly a para-synodos. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the Seceders in the fabrication of names. They distinguish as quoad sacra parishes those which were peculiarly quoad politica parishes; for in that view only they had been interesting to the Non-intrusionists. Again, they style themselves The Free Church, by way of taunting the other side with being a servile church. But how are they any church at all? By the courtesies of Europe, and according to usage, a church means a religious incorporation, protected and privileged by the State. Those who are not so privileged are usually content with the title of Separatists, Dissenters, or Nonconformists. No wise man will see either good sense or dignity in assuming titles not appropriate. The very position and aspect towards the church (legally so called) which has been assumed by the Non-intrusionists—viz. the position of protestors against that body, not merely as bearing, amongst other features, a certain relation to the State, but specifically because they bear that relation, makes it incongruous, and even absurd, for these Dissenters to denominate themselves a "church." But there is another objection to this denomination—the "Free Church" have no peculiar and separate Confession of Faith. Nobody knows what are their credenda—what they hold indispensable for fellow-membership, either as to faith in mysteries or in moral doctrines. Now, if they reply—"Oh! as to that, we adopt for our faith all that ever we did profess when members of the Scottish kirk"—then in effect they are hardly so much as a dissenting body, except in some elliptic sense. There is a grievous hiatus in their own title-deeds and archives; they supply it by referring people to the muniment chest of the kirk. Would it not be a scandal to a Protestant church if she should say to communicants—"We have no sacramental vessels, or even ritual; but you may borrow both from Papal Rome." Not only, however, is the Kirk to lend her Confession, &c.; but even then a plain rustic will not be able to guess how many parts in his Confession are or may be affected by the "reformation" of the Non-intrusionists. Surely, he will think, if this reformation were so vast that it drove them out of the national church, absolutely exploded them, then it follows that it must have interveined and indirectly modified innumerable questions: a difference that was punctually limited to this one or these two clauses, could not be such a difference as justified a rupture. Besides, if they have altered this one or these two clauses, or have altered their interpretation, how is any man to know (except from a distinct Confession of Faith) that they have not even directly altered much more? Notoriety through newspapers is surely no ground to stand upon in religion. And now it appears that the unlettered rustic needs two guides—one to show him exactly how much they have altered, whether two points or two hundred, as well as which two or two hundred; another to teach him how far these original changes may have carried with them secondary changes as consequences into other parts of the Christian system. One of the known changes, viz. the doctrine of popular election as the proper qualification for parish clergymen, possibility is not fitted to expand itself or ramify, except by analogy. But the other change, the infinity which has been suddenly turned off like a jet of gas, or like the rushing of wind through the tubes of an organ, upon the doctrine and application of spirituality, seems fitted for derivative effects that are innumerable. Consequently, we say of the Non-intrusionists—not only that they are no church; but that they are not even any separate body of Dissenters, until they have published a "Confession" or a revised edition of the Scottish Confession.
IV. Lastly, we have to sum and to appreciate the ultimate consequences of these things. Let us pursue them to the end of the vista.—First in order stands the dreadful shock to the National Church Establishment; and that is twofold: it is a shock from without, acting through opinion, and a shock from within, acting through the contagion of example. Each case is separately perfect. Through the opinion of men standing outside of the church, the church herself suffers wrong in her authority. Through the contagion of sympathy stealing over men inside of the church, peril arises of other shocks in a second series, which would so exhaust the church by reiterated convulsions, as to leave her virtually dismembered and shattered for all her great national functions.
As to that evil which acts through opinion, it works by a machinery, viz. the press and social centralization in great cities, which in these days is perfect. Right or wrong, justified or not justified by the acts of the majority, it is certain that every public body—how much more then, a body charged with the responsibility of upholding the truth in its standards!—suffers dreadfully in the world's opinion by any feud, schism, or shadow of change among its members. This is what the New Testament, a code of philosophy fertile in new ideas, first introduced under the name of scandal; that is, any occasion of serious offence ministered to the weak or to the sceptical by differences irreconcilable in the acts or the opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities. Now here in Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no longer theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation: here is a change of doctrine, on one side or the other, which throws a sad umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the church to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always be henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet no breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit the beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the first light augury of mischief skirted the horizon—a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. In 1843 the evil had "travelled on from birth to birth." Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy; already it had entered upon a second, viz. to rear up an Anti-Kirk, or spurious establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like folds about the legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman vinea surmounted the fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under whatsoever practical issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook, molest, and insult the true church for ever. Even this brief period of development would have been briefer, had not the law courts interposed many delays. Demurs of law process imposed checks upon the uncharitable haste of the odium theologicum. And though in a question of schism it would be a petitio principii for a neutral censor to assume that either party had been originally in error, yet it is within our competence to say, that the Seceders it was whose bigotry carried the dispute to that sad issue of a final separation. The establishment would have been well content to stop short of that consummation: and temperaments might have been found, compromises both safe and honourable, had the minority built less of their reversionary hopes upon the policy of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they insisted upon becoming: and that they might be martyrs, it was necessary for them to secede. That Europe thinks at present with less reverence of Protestant institutions than it did ten years ago, is due to one of these institutions in particular; viz. to the Scottish kirk, and specifically to the minority in that body. They it was who spurned all mutual toleration, all brotherly indulgence from either side to what it regarded as error in the other. Consequently upon their consciences lies the responsibility of having weakened the pillars of the Reformed churches throughout Christendom.
Had those abuses been really such, which the Seceders denounced, were it possible that a primary law of pure Christianity had been set aside for generations, how came it that evils so gross had stirred no whispers of reproach before 1834? How came it that no aurora of early light, no prelusive murmurs of scrupulosity even from themselves, had run before this wild levanter of change? Heretofore or now there must have been huge error on their own showing. Heretofore they must have been traitorously below their duty, or now mutinously beyond it.
Such conclusions are irresistible; and upon any path, seceding or not seceding, they menace the worldly credit of ecclesiastical bodies. That evil is now past remedy. As for the other evil, that which acts upon church establishments, not through simple failure in the guarantees of public opinion, but through their own internal vices of composition; here undeniably we see a chasm traversing the Scottish church from the very gates to the centre. And unhappily the same chasm, which marks a division of the church internally, is a link connecting it externally with the Seceders. For how stands the case? Did the Scottish Kirk, at the last crisis, divide broadly into two mutually excluding sections? Was there one of these bisections which said Yes, whilst the other responded No? Was the affirmative and negative shared between them as between the black chessmen and the white? Not so; and unhappily not so. The two extremes there were, but these shaded off into each other. Many were the nuances; multiplied the combinations. Here stood a section that had voted for all the changes, with two or three exceptions; there stood another that went the whole length as to this change, but no part of the way as to that; between these sections arose others that had voted arbitrarily, or eclectically, that is, by no law generally recognised. And behind this eclectic school were grouped others who had voted for all novelties up to a certain day, but after that had refused to go further with a movement party whose tendencies they had begun to distrust. In this last case, therefore, the divisional line fell upon no principle, but upon the accident of having, at that particular moment, first seen grounds of conscientious alarm. The principles upon which men had divided were various, and these various principles were variously combined. But, on the other hand, those who have gone out were the men who approved totally, not partially—unconditionally, not within limits—up to the end, and not to a given day. Consequently those who stayed in comprehended all the shades and degrees which the men of violence excluded. The Seceders were unanimous to a man, and of necessity; for he who approves the last act, the extreme act, which is naturally the most violent act, à fortiori approves all lesser acts. But the establishment, by parity of reason, retained upon its rolls all the degrees, all the modifications, all who had exercised a wise discretion, who, in so great a cause, had thought it a point of religion to be cautious; whose casuistry had moved in the harness of peace, and who had preferred an interest of conscience to a triumph of partisanship. We honour them for that policy; but we cannot hide from ourselves, that the very principle which makes such a policy honourable at the moment, makes it dangerous in reversion. For he who avows that, upon public motives, he once resisted a temptation to schism, makes known by that avowal that he still harbours in his mind the germ of such a temptation; and to that scruple, which once he resisted, hereafter he may see reason for yielding. The principles of schism, which for the moment were suppressed, are still latent in the church. It is urged that, in quest of unity, many of these men succeeded in resisting the instincts of dissension at the moment of crisis. True: But this might be because they presumed on winning from their own party equal concessions by means less violent than schism; or because they attached less weight to the principle concerned, than they may see cause for attaching upon future considerations; or because they would not allow themselves to sanction the cause of the late Secession, by going out in company with men whose principles they adopted only in part, or whose manner of supporting those principles they abhorred. Universally it is evident, that little stress is to be laid on a negative act; simply to have declined going out with the Seceders proves nothing, for it is equivocal. It is an act which may cover indifferently a marked hostility to the Secession party, or an absolute friendliness, but a friendliness not quite equal to so extreme a test. And, again, this negative act may be equivocal in a different way; the friendliness may not only have existed, but may have existed in strength sufficient for any test whatever; not the principles of the Seceders, but their Jacobinical mode of asserting them, may have proved the true nerve of the repulsion to many. What is it that we wish the English reader to collect from these distinctions? Simply that the danger is not yet gone past. The earthquake, says a great poet, when speaking of the general tendency in all dangers to come round by successive and reiterated shocks—
"The earthquake is not satisfied at once."
All dangers which lie deeply seated are recurrent dangers; they intermit, only as the revolving lamps of a lighthouse are periodically eclipsed. The General Assembly of 1843, when closing her gates upon the Seceders, shut in, perhaps, more of the infected than at that time she succeeded in shutting out. As respected the opinion of the world outside, it seemed advisable to shut out the least number possible; for in proportion to the number of the Seceders, was the danger that they should carry with them an authentic impression in their favour. On the other hand, as respected a greater danger, (the danger from internal contagion,) it seemed advisable that the church should have shut out (if she could) very many of those who, for the present, adhered to her. The broader the separation, and the more absolute, between the church and the secession, so much the less anxiety there would have survived lest the rent should spread. That the anxiety in this respect is not visionary, the reader may satisfy himself by looking over a remarkable pamphlet, which professes by its title to separate the wheat from the chaff. By the "wheat," in the view of this writer, is meant the aggregate of those who persevered in their recusant policy up to the practical result of secession. All who stopped short of that consummation, (on whatever plea,) are the "chaff." The writer is something of an incendiary, or something of a fanatic; but he is consistent with regard to his own principles, and so elaborately careful in his details as to extort admiration of his energy and of his patience in research.
But the reason for which we notice this pamphlet, is, with a view to the proof of that large intestine mischief which still lingers behind in the vitals of the Scottish establishment. No proof, in a question of that nature, can be so showy and ostensive to a stranger, as that which is supplied by this vindictive pamphlet. For every past vote recording a scruple, is the pledge of a scruple still existing, though for the moment suppressed. Since the secession, nearly 450 new men may have entered the church. This supplementary body has probably diluted the strength of the revolutionary principles. But they also may, perhaps, have partaken to some extent in the contagion of these principles. True, there is this guarantee for caution, on the part of these new men, that as yet they are pledged to nothing; and that, seeing experimentally how fearfully many of their older brethren are now likely to be fettered by the past, they have every possible motive for reserve, in committing themselves, either by their votes or by their pens. In their situation, there is a special inducement to prudence, because there is a prospect, that for them prudence is in time to be effectual. But for many of the older men, prudence comes too late. They are already fettered. And what we are now pointing out to the attention of our readers, is, that by the past, by the absolute votes of the past, too sorrowfully it is made evident, that the Scottish church is deeply tainted with the principles of the secession. These germs of evil and of revolution, speaking of them in a personal sense, cannot be purged off entirely until one generation shall have passed away. But, speaking of them as principles capable of vegetation, these germs may or may not expand into whole forests of evil, according to the accidents of coming events, whether fitted to tranquillize our billowy aspects of society; or, on the other hand, largely to fertilize the many occasions of agitation, which political fermentations are too sure to throw off. Let this chance turn out as it may, we repeat for the information of Southerns—that the church, by shutting off the persons of particular agitators, has not shut off the principles of agitation; and that the cordon sanataire, supposing the spontaneous exile of the Non-intrusionists to be regarded in that light, was not drawn about the church until the disease had spread widely within the lines.
Past votes may not absolutely pledge a man to a future course of action; warned in time, such a man may stand neutral in practice; but thus far they poison the fountains of wholesome unanimity—that, if a man can evade the necessity of squaring particular actions to his past opinions, at least he must find himself tempted to square his opinions themselves, or his counsels, to such past opinions as he may too notoriously have placed on record by his votes.