Very little thought is given these days to the question of the propriety of using instrumental music in public worship services. It is not questioned. The fact that instrumental accompaniment was more or less unknown in Presbyterian Church in Scotland up to the end of the 19th Century comes as a surprise to people, as does the knowledge that the great Baptist preacher of the Victorian era, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, never used instrumental accompaniment in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London.
In this article, we consider one of the most remarkable post-Reformation revivals in Scottish church history. It concerns what happened at the General Assembly of the Scottish Reformed Church, in 1596. It is little known by Christians in Scotland today; it was a long time ago. Yet one contemporary historian, David Calderwood (1575–1650), was to write that “This year [1596] is a remarkable year in the history of the Kirk of Scotland.”
We may consider three senses in which the Scottish Presbyterian tradition has employed the term constitution. George Gillespie, writing in 1641, frequently alludes to individual laws and regulations of the church as constitutions. The same sense of the word is found in the Church of Scotland’s Barrier Act of 1697. Alexander Henderson, also writing in 1641, uses the word to designate the characteristic form, composition and membership of the church’s superior courts. From these and similar usages, the modern meaning of the term, signifying a body of fundamental principles with which all other legislation must harmonize, gradually emerged during the years between the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and and drafting of the U.S. Constitution in 1789.
At the heart of the Free Church heritage is the gospel of Jehovah’s love in saving fallen creatures from their sin—a salvation arising from God’s eternal election of a particular people, and pursued through redemption purchased by Christ alone and applied only at divine initiative, so that all the praise for the sinner’s deliverance is reserved for the originating, procuring and efficacious love of God.
[I]f any party whatever, but especially if the State, or civil power, shall claim the right of controlling the government which Christ has appointed in the hands of Church office-bearers, they must refuse obedience to that claim, must make up their minds to suffer, if need be, the loss of all things, rather than yield to it. And this because they are only servants, ministers, stewards, entrusted by the alone Master and King with a certain authority and duty.
Standing on the pavement, we watched as twenty-two men, purportedly suspended from the ministry of the Free Church of Scotland, left the Assembly Hall. It was the largest mass suspension of ministers in Scotland since 1662: they had been forbidden to preach, and if they accepted the discipline, would have to sit in the pews and watch hostile preachers take over their pulpits. This they would not do. Together, we sang Psalm 46 and proceeded to the Magdalen Chapel for the reconstitution of the Free Church of Scotland. Why were we there? Was it just a battle over one man, or was this the proclamation of Christ’s Kingship?
It is taken for granted in most countries today, and especially in the USA, that church and state should be separate—the government and all its institutions must be secular. But the Word of God teaches differently, and therefore, so does the Free Church of Scotland. Christ is the “King of nations” (Jer. 10:7). Therefore the nation owes him obedience and loyalty. As Kuyper said, “There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry: ‘Mine!’”
Christ himself is King over what is taught in his church. His Word defines truth and determines the doctrine to be taught in his church. This does not sound controversial or radical, yet, incredibly, that truth became a battleground in the Free Church of Scotland.
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.
Who cares about the Free Church of Scotland? To the disinterested observer it is merely a small Presbyterian denomination in a wide, wide world. In 1843, a minority revolted against compromise in the national Church of Scotland over the issue of the interference of the State in church matters. The small band reconstituted as ‘The Church of Scotland, Free’. It received scorn and mockery as, “The Free Kirk, the wee kirk the kirk without the steeple.” At the time the Church of Scotland was, in a vital sense, Scotland. The Disruption was a national catharsis, exciting an interest almost unimaginable in our times of spiritual lethargy. When Thomas Chalmers – a Disruption leader – walked out of the State Church, “the throng at his last service was so great that the police were overpowered and the military had to be called in.”
