The Free Church of Scotland 1843The Kingship of Christ in the Church

This is the first of four articles, based on addresses to the Free Church of Scotland (Continuing) United States Summer Conference, August 2018.

The existence of the Free Church of Scotland is a testimony to the kingship of Christ. The Free Church is a part, and only a small part, of the glorious kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ in this world. The Free Church declares that Christ is King, seeks to submit to him as King, and trusts in his kingship for the eternity to come. Insofar as the members of the Free Church are consistent with that profession, they are his kingdom.

1843 was the year the Free Church was established. It was not a new beginning—the Reformed Church in Scotland goes back to the Reformation. But in 1843, the Free Church was forced to withdraw from the Establishment¹The Establishment was the legislative link between the Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian, confessionally Reformed church, and the British state. In the nineteenth century, this included constitutional recognition in Scotland and financial support. to testify that Christ is King in his church. To be free, the church had to withdraw from a connection to the British state that had become oppressive and tyrannical, leaving behind the immense material and social benefits of that Established status.

1. The Background

The tragedy was that God had blessed the Church of Scotland. The number of evangelical ministers had steadily grown, so that in 1834, the evangelicals became the majority in the General Assembly.²Andrew L. Drummond & James Bulloch, The Scottish Church, 1688–1843 (Edinburgh, 1973), 225. The evangelical leader was Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), who, as professor of divinity at Edinburgh University, was influencing a whole generation of young ministers. This new generation of evangelical ministers loved Scripture, preached the necessity of the new birth, and of atonement by the blood of Christ, and upheld the whole doctrine of the Westminster Confession of Faith.³For a recent publication profiling some of the leading members of this generation, see Sandy Finlayson, Unity & Diversity: The Founders of the Free Church of Scotland (Fearn, 2010).

The dominance of the evangelicals allowed for an upsurge in the planting of new congregations, missionary work in cities, and foreign missionaries sent overseas. One can read the Memoir and Remains of Robert Murray McCheyne or Diary and Life, both by Andrew Bonar, to get a flavor of the excitement and Gospel urgency of the Church of Scotland in the 1830s. Alexander Duff from Perthshire pioneered Christian missions to India; William Chalmers Burns saw powerful revival blessing accompanying his preaching in Dundee and Kilsyth; John MacDonald, “the Apostle of the North” visited and carried this revival blessing back into the Highlands of Scotland, where he preached Christ fervently in the Gaelic language.

But there was a problem: the Church of Scotland was established—its property was owned by the state, and parliament had passed legislation that gave the patronage of vacant parishes to local landowners. These patrons were not necessarily godly men, or even Presbyterians—many were more English than Scottish, and members of the Church of England. The right of patronage for a parish was property which could be seen advertised for sale in newspapers.

Sometimes it worked well. For example, the proprietress of the Isle of Lewis, Mrs. Stewart Mackenzie, exercised the right of patronage on behalf of the crown, and presented evangelicals to four of the six churches on Lewis.⁴Murdo MacAulay, Aspects of the Religious History of Lewis (Inverness, n.d. [1986]), 169, 214. But in practice, the landlords more often chose nominees of social standing, men to whom they owed favours, and even where the candidates’ actual suitability was considered, they often preferred refined orators to godly evangelists. All too often, they chose moderates—men worldly in character, moralistic in emphasis, and to all appearance spiritually dead. 

In such days, when transport was limited and books were scarce, the dependence of the people upon the local parish pulpit for Christian instruction was almost complete. The Lord’s people might desire a zealous evangelist like Thomas Guthrie, or an experimental searcher of souls like Alexander Moody Stuart, or a burning lover of Christ like Horatius Bonar. In a vacancy, they would hear such candidates. But the patron had a right to choose a cold moderate who preached on “the beauty of unselfishness” or “honesty, its own reward”—and that might be the pulpit occupied for forty years. Meanwhile, evangelical probationers often had to wait years after license until at last they obtained a charge.

The situation was intolerable and had to change.

II. The Doctrine

Christ is King in his church, not the monarch, parliament, or any arm of the state. We pray, “Thy kingdom come” (Matt. 6:10). It is he that builds his church.

Consider his ownership—Christ purchased his kingdom (“the church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood” Acts 20:28). He reigns because he redeemed this kingdom with the cost of his own life. As a result, Christ instituted his kingdom (“And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence” Col. 1:18). He reigns because he began this kingdom. As a result, Christ is the only source of authority in his kingdom (“Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this” Isa. 9:7). Christ therefore reigns both now and for all eternity (“he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” Luke 1:33).

Christ is reigning by means of his Word. So, in that Word, Christ has defined the offices by which his church is ruled, given the qualifications for them, and commanded the appointment of office-bearers on that basis, as in 1 Tim. 3. The appointment of these office-bearers is thus a spiritual duty of the church itself, and a function of the kingship of Christ. It is not just more fair, or democratic, or even prudent to leave the appointment of office-bearers in the hands of the church—it is nothing less than to let Christ reign.

Consider the scene in Acts 1: the vacancy was identified; two candidates were nominated by the Lord’s people; they offered prayer that the Lord would show who should be elected; and then the choice was made  (“They gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias” Acts 1:26). Some think that indicates a random choice, but the word “lot”, kleros, just means “portion or piece” as in a piece of wood. This was rather a vote, each individual making his choice, and the choice falling upon Matthias.⁵I am indebted for this point to James Moir Porteous, Jesus Christ King of the Church (n.p., [1872] 1999), 73. This was a spiritual duty, done spiritually, as unto Christ.

It is not a matter of indifference who chooses the minister of the congregation. Ultimately Christ does, and his choice is effected by his faithful people. There was and is no room for a government-appointed patron. Ultimately it was the same heresy as the Stewart kings with their so-called “divine right” to rule over the Christian church—it was the same heresy as the bishops who had been rejected by Scotland in place of Presbyterianism in 1690; it was the same heresy as that of the pope, when he calls himself the head of the church. Patronage was an intrusion on the crown rights of King Jesus.

III. The Battle

The evangelicals knew this, and patronage had previously caused splits in the Scottish Church in the eighteenth century. By the 1830s, the issue had become a battleground between the church and the law of the land, as the evangelical party tried to restrict powers of patronage.

In 1834, two pieces of legislation were passed by the General Assembly:

Chapels Act—this provided for new churches to be planted in parishes that were too large geographically, or too heavily populated for effective ministry. The new congregations (known as chapels of ease) were granted a full right of participation in church courts, free of patronage;

Veto Act—this gave the membership of congregations (specifically male heads of households) the right to protest against the patron’s nominee for the vacancy.

These acts were controversial—they were seen as evidence of the church opposing the rule of parliament. It was only a matter of time before battle would be joined.⁶Drummond & Bulloch, Scottish Church, 225.

In Auchterarder, the patronage was held by the 11th Earl of Kinnoul, who seems to have been a typical Anglo-Scottish peer—he was born in Bath and died at Torquay. When the charge fell vacant in 1834, he presented as nominee a probationer named Robert Young. Young, when he preached in the congregation, was supported by just two male members, and was opposed in protest by five sixths of the male heads of household. Under these circumstances, the church refused to proceed with an ordination and induction, but Lord Kinnoul insisted and took his case to law. The courts overruled the church, and in 1839 the House of Lords (the British equivalent of the Supreme Court) upheld the rights of the patron, rejecting the Veto Act as illegal in civil law. One law lord remarked contemptuously that the consent of the members was as irrelevant as the arrival of the champion’s horse to the coronation of a monarch.⁷Ibid., 225.

In Lethendy, the patron nominated Thomas Clark, who was later exposed as a drunkard. He was rejected by a protest from the people, and the patron agreed to present someone else, but in that case the nominee took legal action in his own name, and Clark was found by the courts to have a legal right to the “living” and to deserve financial compensation. Worst of all, in Marnoch, the same thing occurred, and the court actually ordered the induction of the rejected nominee, John Edwards. He had the support of only one member of the congregation—the local innkeeper. When the presbytery, made up of moderates, went ahead and obeyed the civil rather than the church courts, the assembly deposed them for contumacy and inducted the congregation’s choice of minister, David Henry. The result was an increasingly unsustainable situation in which two ministers were holding separate services in Marnoch, both claiming to represent the lawful established Church of Scotland.⁸G. N. M. Collins, The Heritage of our Fathers (Edinburgh, 1975), 48–52.

Consistently, the courts had upheld patronage as lawful, and the General Assembly’s position as unlawful. As Alexander Stewart wrote:

Not content with exercising authority within his own lawful sphere, Caesar claimed the right to rule in the house of God. The Civil Power sought to obtain the pre-eminence even in the sphere of the Church’s internal government, and to override at pleasure the authority of Ecclesiastical Courts. In the discharge of her most sacred functions the Church was to be brought under the control of the State.⁹Alexander Stewart, & J. Kennedy Cameron, The Free Church of Scotland, 1843-1910 (Edinburgh, 1920), 3.

The Veto Act could not function, as it was repeatedly overruled; the Chapels Act was struck down in 1842, removing the right of the chapel ministers to participate in church courts. If put into effect, this would destroy the evangelical majority, and leave the General Assembly ruled by moderates who would accept the rule of the courts.

What was the church to do? The evangelicals gathered in a great convocation in 1842, in Edinburgh, where the leadership and courage of Chalmers was very significant. The convocation issued The Claim, Declaration and Protest, a demand for redress from the civil authorities. But the government refused to act. The prime minister, Robert Peel, was advised that only a handful of ministers would act on the Claim.

As the assembly neared, all wondered what would happen. Many thought only a few hotheads would actually follow through. The 1843 General Assembly was constituted by David Welsh, who read a formal protest and deed of separation, and led the withdrawal of the true church from the Establishment, walking out from St. Andrew’s Church in Edinburgh, to Tanfield Hall.

Hundreds of commissioners followed him, and ultimately 474 ministers joined the Free Church. They left, knowing they must leave behind their manses, their church buildings, and their stipends, which were effectively guaranteed for life. Some were wealthy men—the great portrait of the Disruption Assembly shows Dr. Patrick MacFarlan of Greenock West signing away the richest living in Scotland.

They knew what they were doing, and they did it anyway. No one could ever turn around and say of these men, they were just in it for the job. Young John Kennedy, later a distinguished author and minister of Dingwall Free Church, was then a student living in the manse of his brother, Donald Kennedy, a minister of Killearnan. He wrote many years later:

I did know something of trial in that sifting time. I was then, on the eve of license, living in a manse, which was my brother’s, on whose kindness I was quite dependent, and which, along with my mother and my sister’s, I had to abandon. I had to lock the door of the old Manse, which had been the place of my birth and the home of my boyhood, with my weeping mother leaning on my arm, and to accompany her to a house, which had for years been untenanted except by birds, with all its windows broken, and it’s floors covered with a thick coating of clotted dust, with no prospect before us but pinching poverty during the remainder of our days of Earth.¹⁰John Kennedy, The Establishment Principle and the Diestablishment Movement, (Edinburgh, 1878), 57.

Some knew worse sufferings. Hugh and William Mackenzie, father and son, the ministers of Tongue, Sutherland, had to send their family away to Thurso, 42 miles away, the nearest place where adequate accommodation could be obtained in the face of the landowner’s hostility to their stand. They lived together in a room-and-closet in a miserable cottage, to minister to the congregation of 750 people. In these cramped, damp conditions, both fell ill. Hugh died in June 1845, William in July. Like a number of others, they gave their lives as effective martyrs.

The people suffered too. The landowners often refused to grant sites, or even permission for worship on their property. Many congregations had to worship for years in the open air—in some parishes there was no other private property at all. In such cases, services were held on the public road, as the only lawful place. In a couple of remote rural parishes there was not even a road—in these cases, worship was held on the shore between the high and low tide marks, which land was lawfully considered as the sea. In Strontian, a floating church was provided. Eventually a parliamentary enquiry was held, and most landlords buckled under the public pressure and gave sites.¹¹For a full account see Thomas Brown, Annals of the Disruption (Edinburgh, 1893).

The Disruption was a testimony to Christ the King, but more, it was actual submission to his rule. One hundred seventy-five years later, we still confess the same truth. Christ is King of his church. “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee, that it may be displayed because of the truth” (Ps. 60:4).

Footnotes

• 1
  The Establishment was the legislative link between the Church of Scotland, a Presbyterian, confessionally Reformed church, and the British state. In the nineteenth century, this included constitutional recognition in Scotland and financial support. ↩︎
• 2
  Andrew L. Drummond & James Bulloch, The Scottish Church, 1688–1843 (Edinburgh, 1973), 225. ↩︎
• 3
  For a recent publication profiling some of the leading members of this generation, see Sandy Finlayson, Unity & Diversity: The Founders of the Free Church of Scotland (Fearn, 2010). ↩︎
• 4
  Murdo MacAulay, Aspects of the Religious History of Lewis (Inverness, n.d. [1986]), 169, 214. ↩︎
• 5
  I am indebted for this point to James Moir Porteous, Jesus Christ King of the Church (n.p., [1872] 1999), 73. ↩︎
• 6
  Drummond & Bulloch, Scottish Church, 225. ↩︎
• 7
  Ibid., 225. ↩︎
• 8
  G. N. M. Collins, The Heritage of our Fathers (Edinburgh, 1975), 48–52. ↩︎
• 9
  Alexander Stewart, & J. Kennedy Cameron, The Free Church of Scotland, 1843-1910 (Edinburgh, 1920), 3. ↩︎
• 10
  John Kennedy, The Establishment Principle and the Diestablishment Movement, (Edinburgh, 1878), 57. ↩︎
• 11
  For a full account see Thomas Brown, Annals of the Disruption (Edinburgh, 1893). ↩︎