In 1863 a motion was made and unanimously carried in the Free Church Assembly for the appointment of a committee to confer with a corresponding committee of the United Presbyterian Synod, and with the representatives of such other disestablished churches as might be willing to meet and deliberate with a view to an incorporating union. Formal negotiations between the representatives of these two churches were begun shortly afterwards, which resulted in a report laid before the following Assembly. From this document it appeared that the committees of the two churches were not at one on the question as to the relation of the civil magistrate to the church. While on the part of the Free Church it was maintained that he “may lawfully acknowledge, as being in accordance with the Word of God, the creed and jurisdiction of the church,” and that “it is his duty, when necessary and expedient, to employ the national resources in aid of the church, provided always that in doing so, while reserving to himself full control over the temporalities which are his own gift, he abstain from all authoritative interference in the internal government of the church,” it was declared by the committee of the United Presbyterian Church that, “inasmuch as the civil magistrate has no authority in spiritual things, and as the employment of force in such matters is opposed to the spirit and precepts of Christianity, it is not within his province to legislate as to what is true in religion, to prescribe a creed or form of worship to his subjects, or to endow the church from national resources.” In other words, while the Free Church maintained that in certain circumstances it was lawful and even incumbent on the magistrate to endow the church and on the church to accept his endowment, the United Presbyterians maintained that in no case was this lawful either for the one party or for the other. Thus in a very short time it had been made perfectly evident that a union between the two bodies, if accomplished at all, could only be brought about on the understanding that the question as to the lawfulness of state endowments should be an open one. The Free Church Assembly, by increasing majorities, manifested a readiness for union, even although unanimity had not been attained on that theoretical point. But there was a minority which did not sympathize in this readiness, and after ten years of fruitless effort it was in 1873 found to be expedient that the idea of union with the United Presbyterians should for the time be abandoned. Other negotiations, however, which had been entered upon with the Reformed Presbyterian Church at a somewhat later date proved more successful; and a majority of the ministers of that church with their congregations were united with the Free Church in 1876.
(J. S. Bl.)
In the last quarter of the 19th century the Free Church continued to be the most active, theologically, of the Scottish Churches. The College chairs were almost uniformly filled by advanced critics or theologians, inspired more or less by Professor A. B. Davidson. Dr A. B. Bruce, author of The Training of the Twelve, &c., was appointed to the chair of apologetics and New Testament exegesis in the Glasgow College in 1875; Henry Drummond (author of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, &c.) was made lecturer in natural science in the same college in 1877 and became professor in 1884; and Dr George Adam Smith (author of The Twelve Prophets, &c.) was called to the Hebrew chair in 1892. Attempts were made between 1890 and 1895 to bring all these professors except Davidson (similar attacks were also made on Dr Marcus Dods, afterwards principal of the New College, Edinburgh) to the bar of the Assembly for unsound teaching or writing; but in every case these were abortive, the Assembly never taking any step beyond warning the accused that their primary duty was to teach and defend the church’s faith as embodied in the confession. In 1892 the Free Church, following the example of the United Presbyterian Church and the Church of Scotland (1889), passed a Declaratory Act relaxing the stringency of subscription to the confession, with the result that a small number of ministers and congregations, mostly in the Highlands, severed their connexion with the church and formed the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, on strictly and straitly orthodox lines. In 1907 this body had twenty congregations and twelve ministers.
The Free Church always regarded herself as a National Church, and during this period she sought actively to be true to that character by providing church ordinances for the increasing population of Scotland and applying herself to the new problems of non-church-going, and of the changing habits of the people. Her Assembly’s committee on religion and morals worked toward the same ends as the similar organization of the Established Church, and in her, as in the other churches, the standard of parochial and congregational activity was raised and new methods of operation devised. She passed legislation on the difficult problem of ridding the church of inefficient ministers. The use of instrumental music was sanctioned in Free Churches during this period. An association was formed in 1891 to promote the ends of edification, order and reverence in the public services of the church, and published in 1898 A New Directory for Public Worship which does not provide set forms of prayer, but directions as to the matter of prayer in the various services. The Free Church took a large share in the study of hymnology and church music, which led to the production of The Church Hymnary. From 1885 to 1895 much of the energy of all the Presbyterian churches was absorbed by the disestablishment agitation. In the former year the Free Church, having almost entirely shed the establishment principle on which it was founded, began to rival the United Presbyterian Church in its resolutions calling for the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. In spite of the offers of the Establishment Assembly to confer with the dissenting churches about union, the assaults upon its status waxed in vigour, till in 1893 the Free Church hailed the result of the general election as a verdict of the constituencies in favour of disestablishment, and insisted upon the government of the day taking up Sir Charles Cameron’s bill.
During the last four or five years of the century the Free and United Presbyterian churches, which after the failure of their union negotiations in 1873 had been connected together by a Mutual Eligibility Act enabling a congregation of one church to call a minister from the other, devoted their energy to the arrangement of an incorporating union. The Synod of the United Presbyterian Church resolved in 1896 to “take steps towards union,” and in the following year the Free Assembly responded by appointing a committee to confer with a committee of the other church. The joint committee discovered a “remarkable and happy agreement” between the doctrinal standards, rules and methods of the two bodies, and with very little concessions on either side a common constitution and common “questions and formula” for the admission of ministers and office-bearers were arranged. A minority, always growing smaller, of the Free Church Assembly, protested against the proposed union, and threatened if it were carried through to test its legality in the courts. To meet this opposition, the suggestion is understood to have been made that an act of parliament should be applied for to legalize the union; but this was not done, and the union was carried through on the understanding that the question of the lawfulness of church establishments should be an open one.
The supreme courts of the churches met for the last time in their respective places of meeting on the 30th of October 1900, and on the following day the joint meeting took place at which the union was completed, and the United Free Church of Scotland (q.v.) entered on its career. The protesting and dissenting minority at once claimed to be the Free Church. They met outside the Free Assembly Hall on the 31st of October, and, failing to gain admission to it, withdrew to another hall, where they elected Mr Colin Bannatyne their moderator and held the remaining sittings of the Assembly. It was reported that between 16,000 and 17,000 names had been received of persons adhering to the anti-unionist principle. At the Assembly of 1901 it was stated that the Free Church had twenty-five ministers and at least sixty-three congregations. The character of the church is indicated by the fact that its office-bearers were the faithful survivors of the decreasing minority of the Old Free Church, which had protested against the disestablishment resolutions, against the relaxation of subscription, against toleration of the teaching of the Glasgow professors, and against the use in worship of organs or of human hymns. Her congregations were mostly in the Gaelic-speaking districts of Scotland. She was confronted with a very arduous undertaking; her congregations grew in number, but were far from each other and there were not nearly enough ministers. The Highlands were filled, by the Union, with exasperation and dispeace which could not soon subside. The church met with no sympathy or assistance at the hands of the United Free Church, and her work was conducted at first under considerable hardships, nor was her position one to appeal to the general popular sentiment of Scotland. But the little church continued her course with indomitable courage and without any compromise of principle. The Declaratory Act of 1892 was repealed after a consultation of presbyteries, and the old principles as to worship were declared. A professor was obliged to withdraw a book he had written, in which the results of criticism, with regard to the Synoptic Gospels, had been accepted and applied. The desire of the Church of Scotland to obtain relaxation of her formula was declared to make union with her impossible. Along with this unbending attitude, signs of material growth were not wanting. The revenue of the church increased; the grant from the sustentation fund was in 1901 only £75, but from 1903 onwards it was £167.
The decision of the House of Lords in 1904 did not bring the trials of the Free Church to an end. In the absence of any arrangement with the United Free Church, she could only gain possession of the property declared to belong to her by an application in each particular case to the Court of Session, and a series of law-suits began which were trying to all parties. In the year 1905 the Free Church Assembly met in the historic Free Church Assembly Hall, but it did not meet there again. Having been left by the awards of the commission without any station in the foreign mission field, the Free Church resolved to start a foreign mission of her own. The urgent task confronting the church was that of supplying ordinances to her congregations. The latter numbered 200 in 1907, and the church had as yet only 74 ordained ministers, so that many of the manses allocated to her by the commissioners were not yet occupied, and catechists and elders were called to conduct services where possible. The gallant stand this little church had made for principles which were no longer represented by any Presbyterian church outside the establishment attracted to her much interest and many hopes that she might be successful in her endeavours to do something for the religious life of Scotland.
See [Scotland, Church of], for bibliography and statistics.
(A. M.*)