Imagini ale paginilor
PDF
ePub

moment. The one he looked upon as substantially a question de fide; the other he considered as standing on the much lower level of a question of interpretation; and hence, with his usual masculine common sense and genuine candour, he admitted without hesitation that there was room at this point "for considerable difference of opinion "—room, in short, for an open question. (Loud cheers.)

But more than this. It so happens that we have recorded evidence of the precise conclusion to which these views of Dr Cunningham would have carried him, in disposing of that great question of union among the Churches which is now before us, had he been alive and in the midst of us this day. Not long after the Disruption, and more than twenty years ago, he published the statement I am now about to read. First, he laid down the general proposition, "That with the views we entertained we could not say that we never could in any circumstances enter into alliance with the State and receive State assistance." I suppose there is not a man in this Assembly who is not prepared to say the same thing. None of us would say, or could say with the views we entertain-that in no conceivable circumstances whatever would we become an Established Church. If union with the other Churches were impossible, except on the footing of our thus forestalling the whole possible future of opinions and events, and binding ourselves by such a peremptory declaration as Dr Cunningham describes, the prospect of union, so far as we are concerned, would, of course, have to be abandoned. But for any such declaration no demand has been, or is in the least likely, by any of the Churches, to be made. Having then, put such a declaration aside, as obviously inadmissible and unreasonable, Dr Cunningham goes on to deal with this very question of union, as if, with almost prophetic insight, he had foreseen, in 1844, the exact state of things we have to face in 1867; and surely the fact that he was then giving his judgment on this question, under no bias or preoccupation of mind, such as the existing discussion might be supposed to create among some of us, ought to give that judgment peculiar weight and force. Continuing the statements, the first of which I have already quoted, he proceeds thus :

"2. That we never would receive such assistance upon any terms or conditions, expressed or understood, which were in the least inconsistent with the free and full exercise of all our rights and liberties as a Church of Christ.

"3. That we could scarcely conceive anything more improbable than that the rulers of Great Britain, or of any of the kingdoms of this world, would be willing to give assistance and support to a Church upon terms and conditions with which it would be lawful for a Church of Christ to comply, and that this improbability was so great as practically to amount, in our judgment, to an impossibility.

"4. That even if the State were to make to us proposals which, viewed in themselves, involved nothing that was, in our apprehension, inconsistent with the full recognition of all our rights and liberties as a Church of Christ, we would attach very great weight, in deciding upon them, to the consideration of the way and manner in which our acceptance or refusal would bear upon our relation to the other Churches of Christ(cheers)—as there is good reason to believe that the maintenance of a strict relation between the Churches of Christ in a community would

have a far more important bearing upon the interests of religion and the welfare of Christ's people than anything the civil power could do." (Applause.)

I have produced these statements in this Assembly, as I did on another occasion elsewhere, not only because of the high consideration that is due to them, as coming from the man who was at once our profoundest theologian, and the ablest expounder, and most powerful vindicator of our Free Church principles-(cheers) but because they lie so directly in the line of the argument I am addressing to the House.

The other negotiating Churches most reasonably wish, at the stage at which we have arrived, to know what we intend to make of that particular point of difference between by much the largest of these Churches and ourselves which is now clearly seen to exist. If we make so much of it as to be of opinion that its existence is incompatible with the projected union, now is the time to say so. (Hear, hear.) To have formed that conviction, and yet to conceal it and keep it back, in the circumstances in which we are placed, is impossible. (Applause.) To continue these eventful negotiations with a foregone conclusion fatal to their whole object and issue already in our minds, would be not merely an inexcusable folly, but an outrage upon all honourable feeling. (Loud cheers.) Brought, therefore, as we thus evidently are, into a position that compels us to look in the face the difference to which I have alluded, I, for my part, am glad to know what such a man as Dr Cunningham would have thought and said upon the subject.

Now, the statements which I have read show, beyond all question, that his mind was made up twenty years ago, and made up altogether apart from any pressure or exigency of the moment, as to these three things-First, that the rights and liberties of the Church of Christ must be preserved at all hazards, and that no sort of State connexion which, even by the remotest implication, imperilled them, ought ever to be entered into by this Free Church. Second, that it is nothing less than visionary to expect that the rulers of any nation in Christendom will afford a civil establishment of religion to any true Church of Christ on really scriptural terms. (Hear, hear.) And therefore, that to refuse to go into a union with other Churches, in itself right and desirable, merely for the sake of keeping open a contingency as to State connexion so improbable as to amount to an impossibility, would be an act of flagrant folly, if not something far worse. (Loud cheers.) And, third, that even if a State connexion were offered to us by which these rights and liberties were completely guaranteed, it would still be our bounden duty to consider what effect our accepting such a civil establishment would have upon our relation to the Churches of Christ around us. (Applause.)

If our taking such a step were of necessity to set us at variance with these other Churches, and to make union with them impossible, or to break up a union already formed-and if it were to breed perpetual dispeace and jealousy between them and us-Dr Cunningham would, in that event, have regarded the position of an Establishment as not worth the purchasing at so great a price-(loud cheers)-it being hist decided conviction that there is nothing which State favour and patronage can do for the interests of religion, and for the welfare of Christ's people, at all to counterbalance that which they would lose by the hin

dering or the breaking up of a right relation among the Churches of Christ themselves. (Renewed cheers.)

If anything more than these explicit statements be needed to enable us to ascertain how Dr Cunningham would have decided the question which God in His providence is this day placing before us, another sentence from the same remarkable document will suffice :-" The question," he finally says, "of National Establishments is, with the views and in the circumstances of the Free Church, a purely theoretical one; and of this I feel confident, that before the period come, if it ever come, when the rulers of Great Britain shall make to the Free Church proposals which she could for a moment entertain, the Churches of Christ in that country will have attained to such a unity of sentiment, and such a cordiality of affection for each other, as to secure united and harmonious action in regard to all important matters that may bear upon the welfare of each and all of them."

And what is this but to say, what must be self-evident to every thoughtful mind, that if the all but unimaginable contingency spoken of should really come to pass-if so marvellous a change should be wrought, within any period about which we need to concern ourselves, upon the people and parliament of this kingdom, as that they should be of one heart and one soul as to the true doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the Church of Christ-that marvellous work of grace upon the State must be contemporaneous with, or rather the fruit of, such an outpouring of the Spirit of God upon the Churches of Christ themselves, that the path of duty to all of them could not be otherwise than so plain as to make disagreement and disunion impossible? (Applause.)

Such, Moderator, are the views upon the question which, in one form or another, we shall have this day to dispose of, that were pronounced by that eminent man by anticipation, so to speak, two and twenty years ago. Without knowing, or at any rate, without at all remembering that Dr Cunningham had written the statements I have now quoted, I had myself, after a careful and earnest consideration of the whole subject, arrived at the very conclusions these statements set forth. When, therefore, my attention was recently called to them, I need hardly say that it afforded me a satisfaction of the liveliest kind-a satisfaction in which I cannot doubt that the overwhelming majority of this Assembly will be found to share. (Applause.)

I have dwelt so long on this branch of the subject—which, indeed, is the one at present of the most special and pressing importance that I shall not detain the Assembly long with any of the other matters to which the report I have laid on the table refers. As regards the second head of the programme, it will be seen from the report that all those important doctrines of the gospel with which it deals have again been made the subject of full and earnest conference in the joint-committee, and with the same result as last year. A motion was, indeed, made in the committee, that their finding should take a different form, and should be expressed in the following words :-"That the committee are agreed that Jesus Christ, in the purpose of the Father, and in His own intention, offered Himself to satisfy Divine justice only for the sins of the elect." This motion, however, which was supported only by the mover, Dr Wood, and the seconder, Dr Gibson, was not adopted, for reasons which appear

"The com

in the following decision to which the committee came :— mittee having resumed consideration of the second head of the programme, and having held a lengthened conference on the subject, decline to adopt the foregoing motion, on the twofold ground, that it is not a full and adequate statement of the doctrine of the Confession of Faith on the great subject to which it refers, and because it would involve the Committee in the unwise and unsafe course of substituting, in a formal official deliverance, other language than that of the Confession of Faith itself, in setting forth the doctrines which the Churches represented in the joint-committee hold. And further, as the result of this renewed conference, the committee resolve to adhere to the finding on this head of the programme which they reported to the Supreme Courts of the negotiating Churches last year, as follows :- That, in regard to the doctrines on which alone the joint-committee had seen it necessary to call for explanations, the joint-committee found, with lively satisfaction, that, holding as all the Churches represented in the joint-committee do, the Westminster Confession of Faith as their common standard, they were in entire harmony as to the views which that Confession gives of the teachings of the Word of God.""

It is quite true that, in the course of the conference whose results the finding I have now read embodies, it came out this year-as it had done last year-that a certain difference existed as to what bearing, if any, the infinite sufficiency of Christ's atonement has on the free offer of salvation which the gospel makes to sinners of mankind at large-a difference, however, not peculiar to any one of the committees, but existing, more or less, within each and all of them.

On this subject, it will be remembered by many members of the House that a truly admirable statement was made by Principal Fairbairn in last Assembly, in which he most clearly showed that the difference turned on a point as to which the Confession of Faith has given no deliverance. The Confession, he said-and, as he thought, most wisely-had viewed the redemptive work of Christ in the light of the divine intention towards the elect, and as to everything bearing on that view of it had been full and explicit, while it had maintained a marked reserve as to all besides. Dr Fairbairn regarded the attitude which the Confession had thus taken up, in dealing with the unspeakably profound subject of the Atonement, as truly wise on two grounds :-The one, that the view of this subject which it presents is the strictly proper one for a Confession, as being the one with which the members of the Church have directly to do, as all professing to be partakers of redemption, and as that which constitutes the ground of their fellowship and of their hopes as believers; the other, that it is the view on which alone the Scriptures furnish adequate materials for doctrinal statements. was his judgment, accordingly, that "in speaking of the work of Christ in relation to sinners generally, or to men as not certainly known to belong to the elect, the whole that can be required of any one is, that he do not use language which, either directly or by plain implication, contravenes the statements in the Confession as to particular redemption." "To push doctrine," he added, "or to require consent further, were virtually to make a new Confession." (Applause.)

It

I was much interested to observe that in addressing, a fortnight ago,

his own Synod on this very point, Dr Goold-(loud applause)—a man held most justly in the highest esteem, both for the soundness of his judgment and for the soundness of his theology-(renewed applause)-took up precisely the same position. "The question, be it carefully noted," he said, "is not in reference to the absolute efficacy of the atonement in regard to the elect. On this point there is complete agreement. Nor is the question in relation to the infinite sufficiency of the atonement. Nor does the question refer to the universal offer of the gospel. On this point also the agreement is as complete. Nor does it refer to a point on which the most orthodox divines have differed, namely, whether the universality of the offer depends on the simple command of God, or on the infinite merit of the Cross. In the Churches represented in the conference there were some who took the one ground and some who took the other, and some who took both as the basis of an indiscriminate call. The one point really before us was, whether a certain sentence in the Confession warranted the belief that satisfaction to divine justice in the death of Christ includes a provision for a universal offer of the gospel." Having thus singled out and set forth the one point on which the discussion and the difference turned, Dr Goold added this-" My own impression is, that the difference of view lies outside of the Confession, and is not strictly determined by any sentence contained in it."

For myself I am thoroughly convinced that this is the real state of the case; and that, in so far as the second head of the programme is concerned, there is not the shadow of a ground why the negotiating Churches should not become one. Heresy may break out in any or in all of our Churches; but what other or better human security can we have for either keeping it out, or putting it out, than the honest and unflinching exercise of discipline, based on a bona fide adherence to a common Confession of Faith? (Applause.)

On this very subject of adherence to the Confession, it is well known that no little ado was made in some quarters about the terms in which that adherence is, by some of the Churches, expressed. The language used by the United Presbyterian Church, for example, in her formula, and in the questions put to office-bearers at ordination, is considerably different from ours, and even from that of the former Secession Church. As this diversity of language had given rise, in some minds, to doubts as to whether it was intended to convey some diversity of meaning, the attention of the joint-committee was formally called to the subject by the committee of the Free Church. The result of the conversation regarding it which in consequence took place was exactly what was to have been expected. Not only did the United Presbyterian committee assure us that their form of adherence to the Confession meant exactly what ours meant, but they added, that, so far as they knew and believed, their Church would be quite willing to go back to the Old Secession form of adherence, which was almost identical in terms with our own. (Applause.)

To the subject of State Endowments I hope the Assembly will allow me for a moment to return before sitting down. As regards the action we are now to take, that subject is really the point in hand. If it is not to be an open question, these union negotiations must now, obviously, and at once, come to an end. That the United Presbyterian Church differed with us on this subject we knew all along. At any rate no one

« ÎnapoiContinuă »