British Quarterly Review, American Edition, Vol. LIV / July and October, 1871

by Various

'Ah! that was something like disestablishment,' said a minister of the Free Kirk to us in the spring when the precedents of the Irish Church Bill were being discussed. He had been arguing that besides assuring their life-interests to the Irish clergy, it would be only fair to make a present to them of their glebes and parsonages. 'You should let a working-man take his working tools with him,' said our friend, and he was not sorry when the House of Lords gave a million or so of money to the new body. We were rash enough in reply to ask whether he got any equivalent for a glebe when a quarter of a century ago he and his two boys left the pleasant manse of B—— overlooking the Great Strath. But we had touched too deep a sore. The old man cheerfully turned it off with the words we have quoted above, but we could not forgive ourselves; and the thing led us back to enquire into some extraordinary scenes which took place in Scotland when many of the present generation were too young to observe them.

For this chapter of forgotten heroism, in which men of kindred blood and almost of our own generation took part, there are fortunately authentic as well as vividly descriptive materials. The reports presented year by year to the Scotch General Assemblies are the most public of all documents, and are intended to invite challenge and scrutiny. The evidence presented to the House of Commons Committee in 1848 is of great importance and of unquestioned authority. The writings of a man of genius like Hugh Miller will carry part of the truth down to other generations of readers. And yet, while much is known, much must ever remain untold. Scotchmen, who are men of education, and in a sacred office, are precisely the men to cover the sharpest pangs of poverty, and dread of poverty, with an impenetrable covering of reserve; and now that twenty-six years have passed, most of those grave, suffering faces have gone down into a deeper silence. Besides, the Free Kirk has come to be so proud of its extraordinary success in reconstruction, that it has rather attempted (notably in the recent debates in the House of Commons) to throw into the background the anguish of its birth, and to dwell rather on the achievements of the whole than on the sufferings of individuals. Our business is now rather with the latter, and fortunately there is one additional source whence this information can be derived. Dr. Thomas Guthrie, of Edinburgh, is known chiefly by his philanthropic efforts, after the example of Dr. Chalmers, to provide churches and schools and ragged schools for the masses in the large towns of Scotland; but the great achievement of his life, and one, too, for which men of all parties can now join in his praise, was that marvellous tour through Scotland in the year 1845, as the result of which parsonages, or 'manses' as they are called in Scotland, were actually provided for the seven hundred ministers, most of whom had been left homeless a year or two before, and whose places in the Establishment had all now been filled up. In the course of this great 'circumnavigation of charity,' he naturally became acquainted with facts and details, some of which found their way into speeches published at the time, and it is fortunate that we can still quote, from one of the greatest platform orators whether of England or Scotland, some of the fresh facts of that suffering time.

Until we recently came to the knowledge of these documents, we had the feeling that this suffering must have consisted more in apprehension or imagination than in actual privations—that the terrible dread which haunted men who were giving up their whole livings had scarcely any actual realization. And even though this turns out not to be the case, it is plain from Dr. Guthrie's own statements, that all over Scotland the approaching trial struck a chill to the hearts even of those who were determined to face it:—

'I remember,' he says, 'in a certain district of country, a minister said to me, "You think there is no chance of a settlement?" I said, "We are as certain of being out as that the sun shall rise to-morrow." I was struck by something like a groan, which came from the very heart of the mother of the family; they had had many trials in their day: there had been cradles and coffins in their home, and the place was endeared by many associations to the mother; there was not a flower or shrub or a tree but what was dear to her—some of them were planted by the hands of those who were in their graves,—and that woman's heart was like to break. I remember another instance, where there was a venerable mother who had gone to the place when it was a wilderness, but who, with her husband, had turned it into an Eden. Her husband had died there. Her son was now the minister. This venerable woman was above eighty years of age; yes, and I never felt more disposed to give up my work than in that house. I could contemplate the children being driven from their home; but when I looked on that venerable widow and mother, with the snows and sorrows of eighty years upon her head, and saw her anxiety about two things, namely, that Lord Aberdeen should bring in a bill to settle the question, but her anxiety, at the same time, that if Lord Aberdeen did not bring in a satisfactory measure, her son should do his duty,—I could not but feel that it was something like a cruel work to tear out such a venerable tree—to tear her away from the house that was dearest to her on earth.'

For, as we formerly said, compared with this blow, the disestablishment of the Irish Church was a fall into the lap of luxury. Every minister in Scotland who adhered to the Church lost his income in one day—Whit-sunday of 1843. On the same day they lost their dwellings. The professors of divinity, with Chalmers at their head; the missionaries, with Dr. Duff at their head; the humble schoolmasters, with no great name to sustain them—were all turned out at the same moment. And the great strain and crisis of conscience must have been in the spring of that year, when those who in 1842 had pledged themselves, with two-thirds of the Assembly, 'to endure resignedly the loss of the temporal blessings of the Establishment,' saw that there was to be no escape from the sacrifice. The dread and depression must often have been extreme; yet it was not unmixed with a sustaining joy, as in the case of the following story, with reference to Dr. Charles Mackintosh (a venerated minister in the North, whose memorials have recently been published), for which we are indebted to a correspondent who is a native of the Highlands:—

'One morning in the spring of 1843, I jumped early out of bed, for my head was full of marbles and peg-tops, and a dozen or so of games before breakfast has its attractions for a schoolboy. To my astonishment, I found my father down before me; nay, he had evidently been there for some time, for the moment I appeared he folded up the newspaper in which he had been so unseasonably engaged, and—with a break in his voice indicating an emotion that was quite unaccountable to me—he asked me to take it at once over to the manse, with his compliments to the minister. I went very readily, for, besides the comfort of fingering the marbles in my pocket, the hedge-rows were full of young birds upon whom legitimate hostilities could be waged in passing. But as I went I reflected on the austere and stately image of the minister—a man everywhere respected, but whose face inspired awe rather than love in the beholder—(Had I not seen the town-boys break and scatter round one corner of the street as soon as he appeared at the other?)—and I resolved that my interview with him should be short. And it was shorter than I expected, for I had scarcely got out of the sunshine into the manse evergreens, when I found him in the porch; and when I offered him the newspaper, he showed me that he had already got the Times, by some unusual express, and as he spoke he patted my head and smiled—but such a smile, so full of radiant kindliness! I was confounded; and as I went back between the edges the birds sang unheeded while I thought what could be up with the minister. Had anybody left him a fortune? or had he met one of the shining ones walking among the hollies in that early dawn? And it was not for some weeks that I found out that this was what had happened—the newspaper that morning had brought him the vote of the House of Commons, finally refusing an inquiry into the affairs of the Scotch Church, and so making it certain that within a few weeks he and his aged mother would leave for ever the home, at the door of which I saw him; in which his father, the previous minister, had dwelt peacefully before him, but which the son would now have to quit without retaining a farthing of his income for the future. Of course he came out, and 470 ministers with him.'

For the crisis followed in May. The disruption itself (as the actual and final wrench given to the Church came to be called) concentrated the anguish of the general sacrifice in a very painful, but, at the same time, a more poetical form. Sir George Harvey, the present President of the Scottish Academy, has painted the 'Leaving of the Manse' with much dignity and power: the grey-haired pastor moving with feeble steps from the well-known door; his wife's quiet tears, as she guides the child whose pet lamb refuses to accompany it in its early exile; the awe-struck respect of the rustics around, while the men take off their caps, and the women throw their aprons over their faces and sob. Yet the words which immediately follow what we have already quoted from Dr. Guthrie, are, perhaps, the most memorable record of the feelings which accompanied the final step:—

'I remember passing a manse on a moonlight night, with the minister who had left it,—for the cause of truth, his brother Scotchman earnestly adds—'No light shone from the house, and no smoke arose. Pointing to it in the moonlight, I said, "Oh, my friend, it was a noble thing to leave that house." "Ah, yes," he replied; "it was a noble thing, but for all that it was a bitter thing. I shall never forget the night I left that house till I am laid in my grave. When I saw my wife and children go forth in the gloaming, when I saw them for the last time leave our own door; and when in the dark I was left alone, with none but my God in the house; and when I had to take water and quench the fire on my own hearth, and put out the candle in my own house, and turn the key against myself, and my wife, and my little ones that night—God in His mercy grant that such a night I may never again see! It was a noble thing to leave the manse, and I bless God for the grace that was given to me; but, for all that, it was a cruel and bitter night to me."'

The actual circumstances of departure must have been very various: 'One minister writes to us that he left the manse with his family in a snow-storm, when the mountain was white with snow, and the sky was black with drift; but that he never knew so much of the peace of God as he did that night, when following his wife and children as they were carted over the mountain, without knowing where they were to find a place to dwell in.'

And in many places over Scotland, this was the beginning of sorrows. In some parts, and especially in the large towns, the actual hardships were nothing worse than diminution of income and straitened circumstances; while in not a few cases even that was not felt. But in the country, and especially in the Highlands, it was different. It was some years before the manses were built, and homelessness added to poverty pressed heavily on the outed ministers.