What is a Free Church?

All hope of a pacific arrangement on the part of the government being now at an end, the momentous event, which many had for some time been dreading, seemed unavoidable. From the high and independent position which Dr. Chalmers and his followers had taken, they could not in honour draw back; therefore they nobly resolved to separate from the Established church. At the General Assembly which met in May, 1843, Dr. Welsh, the moderator, laid a protest on the table to this effect, and withdrew, followed by those who adhered to the protest, and proceeded in solemn silence to Tanfield Hall, Canonmills - a large building situated at the northern extremity of the city of Edinburgh. There they constituted themselves into the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland, choosing Dr. Chalmers as their first moderator.

"On Tuesday, the 23rd of May, the ministers and professors, to the number of four hundred and seventy-four, solemnly subscribed the Deed of Demission, formally renouncing all claim to the benefices which they had held in connection with the establishment, declaring them to be vacant, and consenting to their being dealt with as such. Thus, by a regular legal instrument, the ministers completed their separation from the establishment, and the Free church of Scotland assumed the position of a distinct ecclesiastical denomination, holding the same doctrines, and observing the same forms of worship as had been received and observed in the National church."

Thus, in one day, these ordained ministers of the Scottish establishment gave up their manses, their churches, their benefices, and state support. Their wives and children had to leave their comfortable parsonages with their glebes and gardens. To many of these the new position wore a gloomy aspect, and they were ready to blame the leaders for having gone too far. But the zeal and sympathy of the people soon placed their ministers in finer buildings as churches than they had left, and abundantly met all their need. In a few years about eight hundred new churches were built by the liberality of the people, which must have cost nearly a million of money. Dr. Chalmers, foreseeing what must take place, had made arrangements some months before the disruption, for establishing associations throughout the country, with the view of collecting funds for the support of the ministry; and so successful was his plan that, before the day of trial came, six hundred and eighty-seven separate associations had been formed in all parts of the country, and at the close of the first year of the history of the Free Church, her income amounted to the munificent sum of three hundred and sixty thousand, seven hundred and nineteen pounds, fourteen shillings, and threepence.

Such was the sympathy felt with this movement in Scotland, that all contributed liberally to the various funds connected with the Free church. And even to this day, after the lapse of more than thirty years, the source of her supply, we are told, shows not the slightest symptoms of exhaustion.*

While setting aside the state, rejecting all alliance with it, and while refusing at the same time to take the position of the Christians who had previously separated from nationalism, the founders of the Free Church wished, in constituting themselves as a body, to preserve some bond which these did not possess and which the state did not furnish. This bond is the clergy, the clerical body.

How simple are the Lord's words to the Jews, "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). First of all, the soul, individually, by the reception of the truth revealed in Christ, is set in perfect freedom before God. Freedom from what? Everything that would hinder your heart and soul thoroughly enjoying God. "The servant abides not in the house for ever: but the Son abides ever" (John 8:35). The servant is in bondage; the Son is in liberty. There is the contrast; and who is the Son? The blessed Lord Himself; and what does He do? The moment He takes you into association with Himself, of course on the ground of death and resurrection, you are in the same atmosphere as He is, and therefore when He says, "the Son abides ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed" (ver. 36), He indicates the abiding liberty into which His grace brings us, that we may enjoy the rich portion He shares with us. I like to admit, honestly and openly, that I am a Free Churchman. You say, The Free Church of Scotland? No, nor of any other land; the Free Church of God — of Scripture. I am also a thoroughly Established Churchman; and greatly rejoice further to be a member of the United Church. The Established-United-Free Church is the Church of Scripture, and membership of anything but that is foreign to its teaching. God's Assembly is established, united, and free, and I should be ashamed to own that I was a member of aught else. All Christians are united to Christ and to each other, are in the liberty of sonship before God individually, and are brought by God into the most wonderful liberty collectively, His saints, all together, forming the temple of God. Now see how other scriptures present it.

Was there then no movement of conscience in that which produced the Free Church of Scotland? Assuredly there was. The question of patronage had agitated Scotland for a century at least. In other countries the consciences of a great number of persons, ministers or laymen, had been burdened by the mixture of the world and the Church, or driven to separation by other reasons: but these difficulties had never produced free churches. Conscience acted individually. Some understood one another perhaps, and acted in concert. A secession was formed - a separation, a school of theology, or the like. Individual conscience, and a certain spiritual activity, delivered from the yoke, found free course; but the national body, as yet intact, persevered in judging this as an irregularity, and sometimes persecuted it.

82 Matters no longer rest there. All is debated. The ties which bound up the whole in one bundle are unloosed. The notion of liberty has weakened the rights of the Church which the state supported. It is no more solely the conscience of spiritual men who, by faith, open for themselves a road in the face of personal difficulties created by associations which they respect. A principle is laid down, as the sole religious principle that maintains the rights of the conscience and of Christ, and, as such, declares itself entitled to occupy the theatre of the world. The providence of God is prominent therein. This is an important consideration for faith and conscience. People desire the Church to be formed according to Christ. Men, long dogged in their consciences, and pushed forward now by providential circumstances, are seen to shake off the yoke of an alien influence, and to act with faith, in the design of forming a church which answers to the wants of the times, such as they understand them, and to the ideas they have got of what the Church ought to be.

It is evident this is a public fact, that the formation of free churches has been a result, a produce of the political movements of the day. The consequence has been that they have not extended beyond the sphere on which these movements have acted. The revolution of the Canton of Vaud produced a free church of the Canton of Vaud; the revolution of Geneva gave occasion to a free or evangelical church of Geneva; and the revolution of February is the cradle of the free church of France.

There is another thing which is more serious. In the whole of the organization of the Free Church the Holy Spirit is not even named; and, with the exception of the profession of faith contained in the second article of the "Constitution," it mentions it nowhere. It could not do so. The Spirit of God is the power of the unity of the body of Christ. "There is one body and one Spirit," Eph. 4:4. Now the Free Church of the Canton de Vaud has an altogether different unity, a bond of quite another nature. For it, such as it has constituted itself, there is one body, and it is that one body; "The churches which have been formed since the year of grace 1845, in the Canton de Vaud, are, by the present act, united into one body." There is the unity of the Free Church. It is not that of the body of Christ, it is such as leaves this on one side. The Spirit of God is not, consequently, nor can He be, recognized nor sought as the One whose presence forms, characterizes, and establishes unity, and gives it as a banner the name of Jesus alone. One Spirit and one body is what does not enter into the framework of the unity of the Free Church. Its unity denies the other. "One body" excludes everything which is not itself.

The Christians of whom we speak are quite willing to be freed from the yoke of the state. That one can understand. But it is in order to establish over the flock, without being held in check by the state, the still heavier yoke of ministry. Now the ecclesiastical yoke, the yoke of the clergy, is of all the most intolerable. It is the weight of the name of God attached, and attached without restraint, to the will and the iniquity of man, because evil is clothed with the authority which ought to have laid hold of the conscience. The world has seen the effects of it.*

ON THE SCOTCH MOVEMENT AND THAT OF THE FREE CHURCH ON THE CONTINENT.

In due course came the Protestant Reformation — the mightiest religious upheaval that has yet been witnessed. The Bible became an open book once more. But Scriptural simplicity was not recovered. The civil authorities took religious matters in hand, with the result that State Churches were formed. These, which soon became as intolerant as Popery, ultimately drove out from amongst them those who dissented from their Rubrics, and so various Nonconformist bodies came into being. But both the State and the Free Churches were one in their reverence for the Scriptures, their fidelity to the great fundamentals of Christianity, and their horror of Popery. But how do matters stand to-day? The Church of England is honeycombed with conspiracy, hundreds, if not thousands, of its clergy being members of Romanising Societies. The Bishop of London is suffered without rebuke to fraternise with Greek idolatry in St. Petersburg and the Archbishops of Canterbury and York are allowed to speak in Convocation of "our sister-Church of Rome," without protest from those around them. In addition to all this, many of the clergy openly scoff at the inspiration of the Scriptures, and repudiate some of the most sacred verities of the faith, as the Saviour's virgin-birth, etc. The ranks of the Nonconformist ministry also contain a large number of men who are best described as religious infidels. Socialist leaders are welcomed into their pulpits with acclamation. There are doubtless faithful individuals in many quarters, but we speak of what characterise the mass.

People are in error on the continent, on the subject of the Scotch movement. This movement has been essentially popular. The king of England and the great noblemen, episcopal for the most part, had the right to nominate to a very large number of parishes, which, for a century past, had been a subject of contestation in the Church of Scotland. The people wished to name their pastors. Attempts at accommodation were made; they failed. The ministers and the evangelical elders put themselves at the head of the movement. The civil tribunals having constrained certain parishes to receive ministers named by the patrons, the separation took place. The evangelical ministers left the synod; the people of the parishes left the churches. The mass of the population found thus a means of escaping from the ancient rights of patronage of the episcopalian aristocracy, which the tribunals and the whole civil order maintained in these rights.

The Free Church admits discipline in principle and in fact. The manner in which it orders the exercise of it, the formula of its doctrines on this subject, betrays in a somewhat curious way the conflict between the need of pious souls and the difficulty which a church of the multitude puts in the way of it. The 31st Article of the "Constitution" lays down in principle that all discipline shall be in the hands of the pastor assisted by the church council. Next, if all gentle means fail, what will the council do? What rule will it follow? After having consulted the word of God, "it will follow the course which shall seem marked out thereby." There would have been in any case this faculty or this latitude without an article of Constitution. This is but a declaration of incompetence, by which the assemblies will escape the organization intended by the "Constitution": for, suppose the church council saw in the word of God that the conscience of all the body ought to be concerned in discipline, the Free Church would see its constitution violated in its fundamental principle, and an independent authority established. Evidently, a church which should exercise this discipline in a regular manner, could not receive every member of a church not disciplined, even were he an elder, although he might belong to the Free Church; and, in fact, a church exercising this discipline would cease to form an integral part of the body, and would become a dissenting church. How, too, exercise this discipline by means of the conscience of the whole body, if the body is a church of the multitude? The presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church becomes here an essential question.

51 It will be on this point, and on the question of the nomination of pastors, that as a system the Free Church will be broken. Its "Constitution" will remain as a memorial of the powerlessness of man to constitute by human means that which is only of God. That which proceeds from faith on the part of the individuals who have taken part in it, whatever there is of conscience (and there is this), will remain as a precious proof of the goodness and patience of God.

I should not have deemed it necessary to pass this work in review, if I had only had in view the Free Church of the Canton de Vaud. The work of God in that country will bear its fruit, according to the measure of the power which acts in it. If there is found there a testimony superior to that of the Free Church, accompanied by a power which God can put honour upon, this testimony will attract those who are truly spiritual. If there be not, the Free Church will pursue its course and will take the form which will result not from its "Constitution," but from the elements of life, of good or of evil existing in the midst of the assemblies that compose it. The "Constitution" is neither the expression nor the form of the efficacious principle which has brought this work into existence. It is the form which the clergy have wished to give it, and that will not last. I speak of it because elsewhere people are deluding themselves with the hope that a similar clerical movement will bring in a deliverance that they are waiting for.