Chapter XV: Conclusion: Of the War in Affghanistan (6)

Such were some of the thoughts which arose in our mind when spending an hour all alone with the Rev. Mr Clark's pamphlets. We bethought us of an Eastern story about a very wicked prince who ruined the fair fame of his brother, by assuming his body just as he might his greatcoat, and then doing a world of mischief under the cover of his name and appearance. What, thought we, if this, after all, be but a trick of a similar character? Dr. Bryce has been long in Eastern parts, and knows doubtless a great deal about the occult sciences. We would not be much surprised should it turn out, that having injected himself into the framework of the Rev. Mr. Clark, he is now making the poor man appear grossly inconsistent, and both an Erastian and an Intrusionist, simply by acting through the insensate carcase. The veritable Mr. Clark may be lying in deep slumber all this while in the ghost cave of Munlochy, like one of the seven sleepers of Ephesus, or standing entranced, under the influences of fairy-land, in some bosky recess of the haunted Tomnahurich. We must just glance over these Dialogues again, and see whether we cannot detect Dr. Bryce in them.

And glance over them we did. There could be no denying that the Doctor was there, and this in a much more extreme shape than he ever yet wore in his own proper person. Dr. Bryce asserts, for instance, in his speeches and pamphlets, that the liberty for which the Church has been contending is a liberty incompatible with her place and standing as an Establishment--and there he stops; but we found him asserting in Mr. Clark's Dialogues, that it is a liberty at once so dangerous and illegal, that Voluntaries must not be permitted to enjoy it either. We saw various other points equally striking as we went along. Our attention, however, was gradually drawn to another matter. The _dramatis personæ_ to which the reader is introduced are a minister and two of his parishioners, the one a Moderate, the other a Convocationist. It is intended, of course, that the clerical gentleman should carry the argument all his own way; and we could not help admiring how, with an eye to this result, the writer had succeeded in making the parishioners so amazingly superficial in their information, and so ingeniously obtuse in their intellects. They had both been called into existence with the intention of being baffled and beaten, and made, with a wise adaptation of means to the desired end, consummate blockheads for the express purpose. 'A man is a much nobler animal than a lion,' said the woodman in the fable to the shaggy king of the forest; 'and if you but come to yonder temple with me, I will show you, in proof of the fact, the statue of a man lording it over the statue of a prostrate lion.' 'Aha!' said the shaggy king of the forest in reply, 'but was the sculptor a lion? Let us lions become sculptors, and then we will show you lions lording it over prostrate men.' In Mr. Clark's argumentative Dialogues, Mr. Clark is the sculptor. It is really refreshing, however, in these days of cold ingratitude, to see how the creatures called into existence by his pen draw round him, and sing _Io Pæans_ in his praise. A brace of Master Slenders attend the great Justice Shallow, who has been literally the making of them; and when at his bidding they engage with him in mimic warfare, they but pelt him with roses, or sprinkle him over with _eau de Cologne_. 'Ah,' thought we, 'had we but the true Mr. Clark here to take a part in this fray--the Mr. Clark who published the great non-intrusion sermon, and wrote the _Rights of Members_, and spoke all the long anti-patronage speeches, and led the debate in the Assembly anent the rights of the people, and declared it clear as day that the Church had power to enact the Veto,--had we but him here, he would be the man to fight this battle. It would be no such child's play to grapple with him. Unaccustomed as we are to lay wagers, we would stake a hundred pounds to a groat on the true Mr. Clark!'

The twilight had fallen, the flames rose blue and languid in the grate, the deep shadows flickered heavily on the walls and ceiling; there was a drowsy influence in the hour, and a still drowsier influence in the Dialogues, and we think--for what followed could have been only a dream--we think we must have fallen asleep. At all events, the scene changed without any exertion on our part, and we found ourselves in a quiet retired spot in the vicinity of Inverness. The 'hill of the ship,' that monarch of Fairy Tomhans, rose immediately in front, gaily feathered over with larch and forest trees; and, terminating a long vista in the background, we saw Mr. Clark's West Kirk, surmounted by a vast weathercock of gilded tin. Ever and anon the bauble turned its huge side to the sun, and the reflected light went dancing far and wide athwart the landscape. Immediately beneath the weathercock there flared an immense tablet, surmounted by a leaden Fame, and bordered by a row of gongs and trumpets, which bore, in three-feet letters, that, 'in order to secure so valuable an addition to the church accommodation of the parish, the Rev. Mr. Clark had not hesitated, on his own personal risk, to guarantee the payment of three thousand pounds.' Our eyes were at first so dazzled by the blaze of the lackering--for the characters shone to the sun as if on fire--that we could see nothing else. As we gazed more attentively, however, we could perceive that every stone and slate of the building bore, like the tablet, the name of Mr. Clark. The endless repetition presented the appearance of a churchyard inscription viewed through a multiplying glass; but what most astonished us was that the Gothic heads, carved by pairs beside the labelled windows, opened wide their stony lips from time to time, and shouted aloud, in a voice somewhat resembling that of the domestic duck when she breaks out into sudden clamour in a hot, dry day, 'Clark, Clark, Clark!' We stood not a little appalled at these wonders, marvelling what was to come next, when lo! one of the thickets of the Tomhan beside us opened its interlaced and twisted branches, and out stepped the likeness of Mr. Clark, attired like a conjurer, and armed with a rod. His portly bulk was enwrapped in a voluminous scarf of changing-coloured silk, that, when it caught the light in one direction, exhibited the deep scarlet of a cardinal's mantle, and presented, when it caught it in another, the sober tinge of our Presbyterian blue. Like the cloak of Asmodeus, it was covered over with figures. In one corner we could see the General Assembly done in miniature, and Mr. Clark rising among the members like Gulliver in Lilliput, to move against the deposition of the seven ministers of Strathbogie. In another the same reverend gentleman, drawn on the same large scale, was just getting on his legs at a political dinner, to denounce his old friends and allies the Evangelicals, as wild destructives, 'engaged in urging on the fall of the Establishment, in the desperation of human pride.' Here we could see him baptizing the child of a person who, as he had fallen out of church-going habits, could get it baptized nowhere else; there examined in his presbytery for the offence with closed doors; yonder writing letters to the newspapers on the subject, to say that, if he _had_ baptized the man's child, it was all because the man was, like himself, a good hater of forced settlements. There were a great many other vignettes besides; and the last in the series was the scene enacted at the late Inverness Presbytery, when Mr. Clark rose to congratulate his old associates, in all the stern severity of consistent virtue, on the facile and '_squeezable_' character of their representative for the Assembly.

The conjurer came out into an open space, drew a circle around him, and then began to build up on the sward two little human figures about three feet high, as boys build up figures of snow at the commencement of a thaw. Harlequin performs a somewhat similar feat in one of the pantomimes. He first sets up two carrots on end, to serve for legs; balances on them the head of a large cabbage, to serve for a body; sticks on two other carrots, to serve for arms; places a round turnip between them, to serve for a head; gives the crazy erection a blow with his lath sword, and straightway off it stalks, a vegetable man. Mr. Clark had, in like manner, no sooner built up his figures, than, with a peculiarly bland air, and in tones of the softest liquidity, he whispered into the ear of the one, Be you a Convocationist, and into that of the other, Be you a Moderate; and then with his charmed rod he tapped them across the shoulders, and set them a-walking. The creatures straightway jerked up their little heads to the angle of his face, bowed like a brace of automaton dancing-masters, and after pacing round his knees for a few seconds, began Dialogue the first, in just the set terms in which we had been reading it beside our own fire not half an hour before. It seemed, for a few seconds, as if the conjurer and his creations had joined together in a trio, to celebrate the conjurer's own praises. 'Excellent clergyman!' said the Convocationist. 'Incomparable man!' exclaimed the Moderate. 'No minister like our minister!' said the two in a breath. 'Ah, gentlemen,' said the conjurer, looking modestly down, 'even my very enemies never venture to deny that.' 'You, sir,' said the Convocationist, 'bring on no occasion the Church question to the pulpit; you know better--you have more sense: we have quite as much of the Church question as is good for us through the week.' 'For you, sir,' chimed in the Moderate, 'I have long cherished the most thorough respect; but as for your old party, I dislike them more than ever.' 'I am not mercenary, gentlemen,' said the conjurer, laying his hand on his breast; 'I am not timid, I am not idle; I am a generous, diligent, dauntless, attached pastor; I give alms of all I possess--in especial to the public charities; I make long prayers,--my very best friends often urge on me that my vast labours, weekly and daily, are undermining my strength; I fast often,--I have guaranteed the payment of three thousand pounds for the West Kirk, and three-fourths of my stipend have gone this year to the liquidation of self-imposed liabilities. True, I will be _eventually repaid_,--that is, if my people don't leave me; _but I have no other security beyond my confidence in the goodness of the cause, and the continued liberality of my countrymen_.' And in this style would the reverend gentleman have continued down to the bottom of the fifth page in his first Dialogue, had it not been for a singularly portentous and terrible interruption.

The haunted Tomnahurich rose, as we have said, immediately behind us, leafy and green; and not one of its multitude of boughs trembled in the sunshine. Suddenly, however, the hill-side began to move. There was a low deep noise like distant thunder; and straightway the _débris_ of a landslip came rolling downwards, half obliterating in its course the circle of the conjurer. Turf, and clay, and stone lay in a mingled ruin at our feet; and wriggling in the midst, like a huge blue-bottle in an old cobweb, there was a reverend gentleman dressed in black. He gathered himself up, sprung deftly to his feet, and stood fronting the conjurer. Wonderful to relate, the man in black proved to be the veritable Mr. Clark of three years ago--Mr. Clark of 1840--Mr. Clark who published the great non-intrusion discourse, who wrote the _Rights of Members_, who spoke the long anti-patronage speeches, who led the debate in the Assembly anent the rights of the people, and who declared it clear as day that the Church had power to enact the Veto. The conjurer started backwards like a man who receives a mortal wound: the two little figures uttered a thin scrannel shriek apiece, and then slunk out of existence. 'Avoid ye,' exclaimed the conjurer, 'Avoid ye! _Conjuro te, conjuro te!_' He then went on to mutter, as if by way of exorcism, in low and very rapid tones, 'I have no anxiety to refute the charge of inconsistency, which some have endeavoured to fasten on me, from detached portions of what I have written or spoken, during several years, on what may be termed Church politics. In matters not essential to salvation, increased light or advanced experience may properly produce change of sentiment in the most enlightened and conscientious Christian. For a man to assert that he is subject to no change, is to lay claim to one of the perfections----' _Dialogue 1st_, p. 6.

'And so you won't go out,' said the true Mr. Clark, interrupting him.

'No, sir,' replied the conjurer. 'I have maturely considered the proposed secession from the Established Church, and, without pronouncing any judgment on the motives or doings of others who may think or act differently, I deeply feel that in such a measure I could not join without manifest sin against the light of my conscience.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 4.

'Ah,' rejoined the true Mr. Clark, 'did I not say it would be so? I knew there would be found a set of recreant priests, who, for a pitiful morsel of the world's bread, would submit to be the instruments of trampling on the blood-bought rights of the Scottish people, and call themselves a Church, while departing from their allegiance to Him who is the source of all true ecclesiastical authority; but never can these constitute the Church of Scotland!'--_Sermon_, p. 40.

'I cannot reconcile it with the views I have long entertained of my duty to the Church and to the country,' said the conjurer, 'to secede from the National Establishment, simply because it wants what it wanted when I became one of its ministers.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 12.

'Wanted when you became one of its ministers!' exclaimed the true Mr. Clark. 'No, sir. The civil courts are now compelling obedience in cases in which they have no jurisdiction, and have levelled with the ground the independent jurisdiction of the Church,--a Church bearing in its diadem a host of martyrs, and which never hitherto submitted to the supremacy of any power, excepting that of the Son of God.'--_Sermon_, pp. 59-63.

'I won't go out,' reiterated the conjurer.

'Well, you have told me what you have long deemed to be your duty,' said the true Mr. Clark. 'I shall repeat to you, in turn, what I three years ago recorded as mine. "It is the duty of the Church," I said, "to maintain its position, confirmed as it is by solemn statutes and by the faith of national treaties, until that shall be overthrown by the deliberate decision of the State itself. Should such a circumstance really occur, as that the Legislature should insist that the Church holds its endowments on the express condition of its rendering to civil authority the subjection which it can consistently yield to Christ alone, there being then a plain violation of the terms on which the Church entered into alliance with the State, that alliance must be dissolved, as one which can be no longer continued, but by rendering to men what is due to God.'"--_Sermon_, p. 28.

'I deny entirely and _in toto_,' said the conjurer, 'that the present controversy involves the doctrine of the Headship.'--_See 2d Dialogue_.

'Admit,' said the true Mr. Clark, 'but the right of secular courts to review, and thus to confirm or annul, the proceedings of the Scottish Church in one of the most important spiritual functions, and the same power may soon be, under various pretexts, used to control all the inferior departments of its ecclesiastical procedure. Will any man say that a society thus acknowledging the supremacy of a different power from that of Christ is any longer to be regarded as a branch of the Church whose unity chiefly exists in adherence to Him as its Head?'--_Sermon_, p. 45.

'The claim,' said the conjurer, 'is essentially Papal.'--_Dialogue 2d_, p. 6.

'No,' replied the true Mr. Clark, 'not Papal, but Protestant: our confessors and martyrs chose to suffer for it the loss of all their worldly goods, and to incur the pains of death in its most appalling forms.'--_Sermon_, p. 45.

'Papal notwithstanding,' reiterated the conjurer. 'But it is not to be wondered at, that in the earliest stages of the Reformation, men newly come out of the Church of Rome should have been led to assert for the office-bearers of their Church the prerogatives which Romanism claimed for her own.'--_Dialogue 2d_, p. 7.

'What!' exclaimed the true Mr. Clark, 'is not the present contest clearly for the rights of the members of Christ,--rights manifestly recognised in His word, and involving His Headship?'--_Sermon_, p. 37. _See also_ p. 31.

'Not at all,' replied the conjurer. 'The question is one of faction, and of faction only. Struggles for the victory of mere parties have been as injurious to vital godliness in the Church as the same cause has been to the true prosperity of the State.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 15.

'Faction!' exclaimed the true Mr. Clark; 'the Church of Scotland is now engaged in asserting principles which the allegiance it owes to Christ will never permit it to desert. And let it be rung in the ears of the people of Scotland, that the great reason why the asserting of the Church's spiritual jurisdiction is so clamorously condemned in certain quarters, is because it is employed to maintain the rights of the people.'--_Sermon_, pp. 37-39.

'To be above the authority of the law, no Church in this country can be,' said the conjurer. 'The Church courts would be able, were their principles fully recognised, to tread under foot the rights of the people as effectually as ever they resisted those of patrons.'--_Dialogue 1st_, pp. 14 and 16.

'Nothing can be more absurd than such insinuations,' exclaimed the true Mr. Clark. 'The Church disclaims every kind of civil authority, and simply requires that there be no interference on the part of civil rulers with its spiritual functions. How that which declines a jurisdiction in civil matters, can in any sense of the word, or in any conceivable circumstances, be injurious to civil liberty, it is impossible to conceive.'--_Sermon_, p. 32.

'Alas,' said the conjurer, 'if the Church by recent events has been exhibited in a lower position than Scotsmen ever saw it placed in before, this has been occasioned by the unhappy attitude of defiance of the civil tribunals in which it was unadvisedly placed, and which no body, however venerable, can be permitted to occupy with impunity in a well-governed country.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 12.

'Degradation!' indignantly exclaimed the true Mr. Clark; 'did the Church, in consequence of the findings of the civil courts, proceed to act in opposition to what it believes and has solemnly declared to be founded on the Scripture, and agreeable thereto, it would exhibit itself to the world a disgraced and degraded society, utterly fallen from the faithfulness to religious duty which marked former periods of its history.'--_Sermon_, p. 21.

'Clear it is,' said the conjurer, 'that the Church must not be permitted to retain with impunity her attitude of defiance to the civil tribunals. Were it otherwise, an ecclesiastical power might come to be established in this kingdom, fully able to trample uncontrolled on the most sacred rights of the nation.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 12.

'Nothing, I repeat,' said the true Mr. Clark, 'can be more absurd than the insinuation. The liberties of the Church of Scotland have been often assailed by the civil authorities of the land, but uniformly by those who were equally hostile to the civil freedom of the country. Its rights were, during one dreary period, so effectually overthrown, that none stood up to assert them but the devoted band who, in the wildest fastnesses of their country, were often compelled by the violence of military rule to water with their blood the moors, where they rendered homage to the King of Zion; while, in the sunshine of courtly favour, ecclesiastics moved, who without fear bartered, for their own sordid gain, the blood-bought liberties of the Church of God, and showed themselves as willing to subvert the civil rights of their countrymen as they had been to destroy their religious privileges.'--_Sermon_, p. 30.

'To be above the law,' reiterated the conjurer, 'no Church in this country can be.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 16.

'There may arise various occasions,' said the true Mr. Clark, 'on which the injunctions of man may interfere with the injunctions of God; and in every such case a Christian man must yield obedience to the authority of the highest Lord.'--_Sermon_, p. 22.

'Sad case that of Strathbogie!' ejaculated the conjurer.

'Very sad,' replied the true Mr. Clark. 'What is your version of it?'

'Listen,' said the conjurer. 'What has been termed the Veto Law was enacted less than ten years ago, and after lengthened legal proceedings, was declared illegal by the House of Lords, the highest judicial authority in this kingdom. For proceedings adopted in conformity to this decision, seven ministers in the Presbytery of Strathbogie were first suspended and then deposed from their ministerial offices, without any other charges laid against them than that they sought the protection of the civil courts in acting according to their decision. For refusing to obey a law which the House of Lords declared to be illegal, no minister can be lawfully deposed from his office in this country, unless we are prepared to adopt a principle which would ultimately subvert the entire authority of the law. The civil courts, simply on the ground that these ministers had been deposed for obeying the statutes of the realm, reversed the sentence, as what was beyond the lawful powers of any Church in this land, whether Voluntary or Established. And on the same principle, they interfered to prevent any from treating them as suspended or deposed.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 10.

'A most injurious representation of the case,' said the true Mr. Clark. 'Seven ministers, forming the majority of the Presbytery of Strathbogie, chose to intimate their resolution to take steps towards the settlement of Mr. Edwards as minister of Marnoch, in defiance of the opposition of almost all the parishioners, and in direct contempt of the instructions given them by the superior church courts. The civil courts in the meantime merely declared their opinion of the law, but they issued no injunction whatever, so as to give the presbytery the pretext of choosing between obeying the one or the other jurisdiction; and they violated the express injunction of the supreme church court, without being able to plead in justification that they had been compelled by the civil authority to do so. They chose to act ultroneously in violation of their duty to the Church. They had solemnly promised to obey the superior church courts, and had never come under any promise to obey in spiritual things any other authority. In proposing to take the usual steps for conferring the spiritual office of a pastor in the Church of Christ, in defiance of the injunction laid upon them by the supreme court of the Church of Scotland, they plainly violated their ordination engagements. And in actually ordaining Mr. Edwards, the whole procedure was a solemn mockery of holy things.'--_Sermon_, p. 26.

'After all,' said the conjurer, with a sigh, 'the agitated question is but of inferior moment.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 3.

'Inferior moment!' exclaimed the true Mr. Clark; 'no religious question of the same magnitude and importance has come before this country since the ever-memorable Revolution in 1688. The divisions of secular partisanship sink into utter insignificance when compared with this. Let the principles once become triumphant for which the Court of Session is now contending, and the Church of Scotland is ruined.'--_Sermon_, pp. 7 and 59.

'Ruined!' shouted out the conjurer; 'it is you who are ruining the Church, by urging on the disruption. For my own part, I promised, as all ministers do at their ordination, never, directly or indirectly, to endeavour her subversion, or to follow divisive courses, but to maintain her unity and peace against error and schism, whatsoever trouble or persecution might arise; and now, in agreement with my solemn ordination engagements, have I determined to hold by her to the last.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 9.

'What mean you by the _Church_?' asked the true Mr. Clark. 'The Church and the establishment of it are surely very different things. Men have talked of themselves as friends of the Church, because they were the friends of its civil establishment, and loudly declaim against the proceedings of the majority of its office-bearers now, as fraught with danger to this object. But what do they mean by the civil establishment of an Erastian Church! Is it possible that they mean by it the receiving of certain pecuniary endowments as a price for rendering a divided allegiance to the Son of God? If that be their meaning, it is time they and the country at large should know that the Church of Scotland was never established on such principles.'--_Sermon_, p. 42.

'It is not true, however,' said the conjurer, 'that the majority of the faithful ministers of Scotland have resolved to abandon the Establishment, though this may be the case in some parts of the country.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 16.

'Not true, sir!' said the true Mr. Clark; 'nothing can be more true. All--all will leave it except a set of recreant priests, who for a pitiful morsel of this world's bread will submit to be the instruments of trampling on the blood-bought rights of the Scottish people.'--_Sermon_, p. 42.

'What has pained me most in all this controversy,' remarked the conjurer, 'has been the insidious manner in which certain persons have endeavoured to sow disunion--in some cases too successfully--between ministers and their hearers.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 3.

'Sir,' exclaimed the true Mr. Clark, 'Sir, every individual would do well to remember, when summoned to such a contest as this, the curse denounced against Meroz for remaining in neutrality when the battle raged in Israel. This curse was denounced by the angel of the Lord, and is written for the admonition of all ages, as a demonstration of the feelings with which God regards the standing aloof, in a great religious struggle, by whatever motives it may be sought to be justified.'--_Sermon_, p. 59.

'The men who thus sow disunion,' said the conjurer, 'never venture to deny that they, whose usefulness they endeavour to destroy, are ministers of the gospel,--urging on the acceptance of a slumbering world the message of celestial mercy, which must produce results of weal or woe destined to be eternally remembered, when the strifes of words which have agitated the Church on earth are all forgotten.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 4.

'Hold, hold, sir,' said the true Mr. Clark. 'On the event of this struggle depends not merely the temporal interests of our country, but the welfare of many immortal spirits through the ceaseless ages of future being.'--_Sermon_, p. 60.

'It is so distracting a subject this Church question,' said the conjurer, 'that I make it a point of duty never to bring it to the pulpit.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 3.

'In that you and I differ,' said the true Mr. Clark, 'just as we do in other matters. I have written very long sermons on the subject, ay, and published them too; and in particular beg leave to recommend to your careful perusal my sermon on the _Present Position_, preached in Inverness on the evening of the 19th January 1840.'

'I suppose you have heard it said, that I changed my views from the fear of worldly loss,' said the conjurer.--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 4.

'Heard it said!' said the true Mr. Clark. 'You forget that I have been bottled up on the hill-side yonder for the last three years.'

'Sir,' said the conjurer, with great solemnity, 'when the West Church was built, in order to secure this valuable addition to the church accommodation of the parish, I did not hesitate to undertake, on my own personal risk, to guarantee the payment of three thousand pounds. This obliged me to diminish, to no small extent, my personal expenditure, as the only way in which the pecuniary burden could be met, without diminishing my contributions to the public charities of the town, and to the numerous cases of private distress brought continually under my notice, in the various walks of ministerial duty. And though the original debt is now reduced to half that amount by the liberal benefactions received from various individuals, still nearly three-fourths of my stipend this year has been expended on this object, in terms of my voluntary obligation. The large sum which I am now in advance, I believe, will be eventually repaid; but for this I have no security beyond my confidence in the goodness of the cause, and the continued liberality of my countrymen. All this respecting the West Church is known to few, and would not have been mentioned by me at this time, had it not been for the perseverance with which some, inaccessible to higher motives themselves, have endeavoured to persuade my hearers that mercenary considerations have produced the position I have felt it my duty to take in the present discussion.'--_Dialogue 1st_, p. 5.

For a few seconds the true Mr. Clark seemed as if struck dumb by the intelligence. 'Ah! fast anchored!' he at length ejaculated. 'Fairly tethered to the Establishment by a stake of fifteen hundred pounds. Demas, happy man, had a silver mine to draw him aside--a positive silver mine. The West Church is merely a negative one. Were it to get into the hands of the Moderates, it would become waterlogged to a certainty, and not a single ounce of the precious metal would ever be fished out of it; whereas you think there is still some little chance of recovery when you remain to ply the pump yourself. Most disinterested man!--let your statement of the case be but fairly printed, and it will serve you not only as an apology, but as an advertisement to boot.'

'Printed!' said the conjurer; 'I have already printed it in English, and Mr. M'Donald the schoolmaster is translating it into Gaelic.'

But we have far exceeded our limits, and have yet given scarce a tithe of the controversy. We found ourselves sitting all alone in front of our own quiet fire long ere it was half completed; and we recommend such of our readers as are desirous to see the rest of it in the originals, to possess themselves of the Rev. Mr. Clark's _Sermon_, and the Rev. Mr. Clark's _Dialogues_. They form, when bound up together, one of the extremest, and at the same time one of the most tangible, specimens of inconsistency and self-contradiction that controversy has yet exhibited; and enable us to anticipate the character and standing of the evangelic minority in the Erastian Church. 'If the salt has lost its savour, wherewithal shall it be salted?'

_April 12, 1843._

PULPIT DUTIES NOT SECONDARY.

There are two antagonist perils to which all evangelical Churches, whether established or unendowed, are exposed in an age in which men's minds are so stirred by the fluctuations of opinion, that though there may not be much progress, there is at least much motion. They lie open, on the one hand, to the danger of getting afloat on the tide of innovation, and so drifting from the fixed position in which Churches, as exponents of the mind of Christ, possess an authoritative voice, into the giddy vortices of some revolving eddy of speculation, in which they can at best assume but the character of mere advocates of untried experiment; or, on the other hand, they are liable to fall into the opposite mistake of obstinately resisting all change--however excellent in itself, and however much a consequence of the onward march of the species--and this not from any direct regard to those divine laws, of which one jot or tittle cannot pass away, but simply out of respect to certain peculiar views and opinions entertained by their ancestors in ages considerably less wise than the times which have succeeded them.

An evangelistic Church cannot fall into the one error without losing its influential voice _as_ a Church. It may gain present popularity by throwing itself upon what chances to be the onward movement of the time; but it is a spendthrift popularity, that never fails in the end to leave it exhausted and weak. The political ague has always its cold as certainly as its hot fever fits: action produces reaction; great exertion induces great fatigue; the desired object, even when fully gained, is sure always, like all mere sublunary objects of pursuit, to disappoint expectation; and the Church that, forgetting where its real power lies, seeks, Antæus-like, to gather strength in this way from the earth, contracts in every instance but the soil and weakness inherent in those earthy and unspiritual things to which it attaches itself. It, too, comes to have its cold ague fits and its reaction--periods of exhaustion, disappointment, and decline. And the opposite error of clinging to the worn-out and the obsolete produces ultimately the same effect, though it operates in a different way. A Church that, in behalf of some antiquated type of thought or action, opposes itself to what is in reality the onward current of the age, is sure always to fare like stranded ice-floes, that, in a river flooded by thaw, retain the exact temperature under which they were formed, when the temperature all around them has altered. The ice-floes and the obsolete Church may be alike successful for a time in keeping up the ancient state of things within their own lessening limits, but both are eventually absorbed and disappear. While the more versatile ecclesiastical body, tossed by the cross currents and eddies of novel and uncertain change, loses its true course and makes shipwreck, the rigidly immoveable one, anchored over the worn-out peculiarities of bygone days, is borne down by the irresistible rush of the stream, and founders at its moorings.

The Free Church, as a body, is, we trust, not greatly in danger from either extreme. They are the extremes, however, which in the present day constitute her true Scylla and Charybdis; and it were perhaps well that she should keep the fact steadily before her, by laying them down as such on their chart. Not from the gross and earthy fires of political movement in the present day, or from the cold grey ashes of movement semi-political in some uninspired age of the past, must that pillar of flame now ascend which is to marshal her on her pilgrimage through the wilderness, at once reviving her by its heat and guiding her by its effulgence. The light borrowed from the one would but flicker idly before her, a wandering and delusive meteor; the other would furnish her with but an unlighted torch, unsuited to cast across her way a single beam of direction and guidance. Her light must be derived from an antiquity more remote than that of the uninspired ages, and her heat from a source more permanent than that of present excitement, social or political: the one direct from the unerring record of those times when God walked the earth in the flesh; the other from that living spirit without whose influence energy the most untiring can be influential in but the production of evil, and earnestness the most intense may be profession, but cannot be revival. Strength must be sought by her, not in the turmoil of evanescent agitation, nor in the worn-out modes of an age the fashion of which has perished, but in the perennial verities of the everlasting gospel. While so far adapting herself to the times as to present an armed front to every form of error, she must preach to her people as if the prisoner of Patmos had but just completed the record of Revelation.

There is one special error regarding this the most important portion of her proper work--the preaching of the word--to which it may be well to advert. It has become much the fashion of the time--most unthinkingly, surely--to speak of preaching as not the paramount, but merely one of the subsidiary duties of a clergyman. 'He is not a man of much pulpit preparation,' it has become customary to remark of some minister, at least liked if not admired, 'but he is diligent in visiting and in looking after his schools; and preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Or, in the event of a vacancy, the flock looking out for a pastor are apt enough to say, 'Our last minister was an accomplished pulpit man, but what we at present want is a man sedulous in visiting; for preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' Nay, ministers, especially ministers of but a few twelvemonths' standing, have themselves in some cases caught up the remark, as if it embodied a self-evident truth; and while they dare tell, not without self-complacency, that their discourses--things written at a short sitting, if written at all--cost them but little trouble, they add further, as if by way of apology, that they are, however, 'much occupied otherwise, and that preaching is in reality but a small part of a minister's duty.' We have some times felt inclined to assure these latter personages in reply, that they might a little improve the matter just by making preaching no part of their duty at all. But where, we ask, is it taught, either by God in His word or by the Church in her standards, that preaching is merely one of the minor duties of the minister, or indeed other than his first and greatest duty? Not, certainly, in the New Testament, for there it has invariably the paramount place assigned to it; as certainly not in our standards, for in them the emphasis is '_especially_' laid on the 'preaching of the word' as God's most 'effectual means' of converting sinners. If it be a truth that preaching is but comparatively a minor part of a minister's duty, it is certainly neither a Scripture nor a Shorter Catechism truth; and, lest it should be not only not a truth at all, but even not an innocuous _untruth_, we think all who hold it would do well to inquire how they have come by it.

We have our own suspicion regarding its origin. It is natural for men to exaggerate the importance of whatever good they patronize, or whatever improvement or enterprise they advocate or recommend. And perhaps some degree of exaggeration is indispensable. In order to create the impulse necessary to overcome the _vis inertiæ_ of society, and induce in the particular case the required amount of exertion, the stream of the moving power has--if we may so speak--to be elevated to the level of hopes raised high above the point of possible accomplishment. To employ the language of the mechanist, the necessary _fall_ would be otherwise awanting, and the machine would fail to move. If, for instance, all men had estimated the advantages of free trade according to the sober computations of Chalmers, the country would have no Anti-Corn-Law League, and no repeal of the obnoxious statutes. And yet who can now doubt that the calculations of Chalmers were in reality the true ones? In like manner, if it had been truly seen that the 'baths for the working classes' could have merely extended to the humbler inhabitants of our cities those advantages of ablution which the working men of our sea-coasts already possess, but of which--when turned of forty--not one out of a hundred among them ever avails himself, we would scarce have witnessed bath meetings, with Dukes in the chair; nor would the baths themselves have been erected. But the natural exaggerative feeling prevailed. Baths for the working classes were destined somehow to renovate society, it was thought; and so, though Chartism be now as little content as ever, baths for the working classes our cities possess. And, doubtless, exaggeration of a similar kind has tended to heighten the general estimate of the minor duties of the clergyman; and were there no invidious comparisons instituted between the lesser and the paramount duties,--between what is secondary in its nature magnified into primary importance, and what is primary in its nature diminished into a mere secondary, and standing as if the one had been viewed by the lesser, and the other through the greater lens of a telescope,--we would have no quarrel whatever with the absolute exaggeration in the case, regarded simply as a mere moving force. But we must quarrel with it when we see it leading to practical error; and so, in direct opposition to the common remark, that preaching is but a small part of the minister's duty, we assert that it is not a small, but a very large, and by far the most important part of it; and that it is not our standards or the Scriptures that are in error on this special head, but the numerous class who, taking up the antagonist view, maintain as a self-evident proposition what has neither standing in the New Testament, nor yet guarantee in the experience of the Church.

No apology whatever ought to be sustained for imperfect pulpit preparation; nay, practically at least, no apology whatever has or will be sustained for it. It is no unusual thing to see a church preached empty; there have been cases of single clergymen, great in their way, who have emptied four in succession: for people neither ought nor will misspend their Sabbaths in dozing under sermons to which no effort of attention, however honestly made, enables them to listen; and what happens to single congregations may well happen to a whole ecclesiastical body, should its general style of preaching fall below the existing average. And certainly we know nothing more likely to produce such a result than the false and dangerous opinion, that preaching is comparatively a small part of a minister's duty. It is supereminently dangerous for one to form a mean estimate of one's work, unless it be work of a nature very low and menial indeed. 'No one,' said Johnson, 'ever did anything well to which he did not give the whole bent of his mind.' It is this low estimate--this want of a high standard in the mind--that leads some of our young men to boast of the facility with which they compose their sermons,--a boast alike derogatory to the literary taste and knowledge and to the Christian character of him who makes it. Easy to compose a sermon!--easy to compose what, when written, cannot be read; and what, when preached, cannot be listened to. We believe it; for in cases of this kind the ease is all on the part of the author. We believe further, we would fain say to the boaster, that you and such as you could scuttle and sink the Free Church with amazingly little trouble to yourselves. But is it easy, think you, to mature such thoughts as Butler matured? And yet these were embodied in sermons. Is it easy, think you, to convey in language exquisite as that of Robert Hall, sentiments as refined and imagery as classic as his? And yet Hall's noblest compositions were sermons. Is it easy, think you, to produce a philosophic poem, the most sublime and expansive of any age or country? And yet such is the true character of the Astronomical Sermons of Chalmers. Or is that spirituality which impresses and sinks into the heart of a people, independently at times of thought of large calibre or the polish of a fine literary taste, a thing easily incorporated into the tissue of a lengthened sermon? Think you, did Maclaurin's well-known _Sermon on the Cross_ cost him little trouble? or the not less noble sermon of Sir Matthew Hale, on _Christ and Him crucified_? Look, we beseech you, to your New Testaments, and see if there be ought slovenly in the style, or loose and pointless in the thinking, of the model sermons given you there. The discourse addressed by our Saviour from the mount to the people was a sermon; as was also the magnificent address of Paul to the Athenians, where he chose as his text the inscription on one of their altars, 'To the unknown God.' There may be a practical and most mischievous heterodoxy embodied in the preacher's idea of sermons, as certainly as he may embody a heterodoxy theoretic and doctrinal in the sermons themselves.

The ordinary course of establishing a Church in any country, as specially shown by New Testament history and that of the Reformation, is first and mainly through the preaching of the word. An earnest, eloquent man--a Peter in Jerusalem--a Paul at Athens, on Mars Hill--a John Knox in Edinburgh or St. Andrews--a George Whitfield in some open field or market-place of Britain or America--or a Thomas Chalmers in some metropolitan pulpit, Scotch or English--addresses himself to the people.

There is a strange power in the words, and they cannot but listen; and then the words begin to tell. The heart is affected, the judgment convinced, the will influenced and directed: ancient beliefs are, as the case may be, modified, resuscitated, or destroyed; new or revived convictions take the place of previous convictions, inadequate or erroneous; and thus churches are planted, and the face of society changed. We limit ourselves here to what--being strictly natural in the process--would operate, if skilfully applied, as directly on the side of error as of truth. It is the first essential of a book, that it be interesting enough to be read; and of a preacher, whatever his creed, that he be sufficiently engaging to be attentively listened to; and without this preliminary merit, no other merit, however great, is of any avail whatever. And when a Church possesses it in any great degree, it is sure to spread and increase. Are there churches in the Establishment which, though thinned by the Disruption, have now all their seats let, and are crammed every Sabbath to the doors? If so, be sure there is popular talent in the pulpit, and that the clergyman who officiates there does not find it a very easy matter to compose his sermons. Nay, dear as the distinctive principles of the Free Church are to the people of Scotland, with superior pulpit talent in the Establishment on the one hand, and in the ranks of the disendowed body, on the other, a goodly supply of those youthful ministers who boast that they either never write their sermons, or write them at a short sitting, we would by no means guarantee to our Church a ten years' vigorous existence. These may not be palatable truths, but we trust they are wholesome ones; and we know that the time peculiarly requires them. It is, however, not mainly with the Establishment that the Free Church has to contend.

We ask the reader whether he has not marked, within the last few years, the _début_ of another and more formidable antagonist, with which all Christian Churches may be soon called on to grapple?

Our newly-instituted athenæums and philosophical associations form one of the novel features of the time,--institutions in which at least the second-class men of the age--Emersons, and Morells, and Combes--with much that is interesting in science and fascinating in literature, blend sentiments and opinions at direct variance with the great doctrinal truths embodied in our standards. The press, not less formidable now than ever, is an old antagonist; but, with all its appliances and powers, it lacked the charm of the living voice. That peculiar charm, however, the new combatant possesses. The pulpit, met by its own weapons and in its own field, will have to a certainty to measure its strength against it; and the standard of pulpit accomplishment and of theological education, instead of being lowered, must in consequence be greatly elevated. The Church of this country, which in the earlier periods of her history, when Knox was her leader, and Buchanan the moderator of her General Assembly, stood far in advance of the age in popular eloquence, solid learning, and elegant accomplishment, and which, in the person of Chalmers in our own days, was vested in the more advanced views and the more profound policy of a full century hence, must not be suffered to lag behind the age now. Her troops must not be permitted to fall into confusion, and to use as arms the rude, unsightly bludgeons of an untaught and undisciplined mob, when the enemy, glittering in harness, and furnished with weapons keen of temper and sharp of edge, is bearing down upon them in compact phalanx.

We know what it is to have sat for many years under ministers who, possessed of great popular talent and high powers of original thought, gave much time and labour to pulpit preparation. We know how great a privilege it is to have to look forward to the ministrations of the Sabbath,--not as wearinesses, which, simply as a matter of duty, were to be endured; but as exquisite feasts, spiritual and intellectual, which were to be greatly relished and enjoyed. And when hearing it sometimes regretted, with reference to at least one remarkable man, that he did not visit his flock quite so often as was desirable--many of the complainants' sole idea of a ministerial visit, meanwhile, being simply that it was a long exordium of agreeable gossip, with a short tail-piece of prayer stuck to its hinder end--we have strongly felt how immensely better it was that the assembled congregation should enjoy each year fifty-two Sabbaths of their minister at his best, than that the tone of his pulpit services should be lowered, in order that each individual among them might enjoy a yearly half-hour of him apart. And yet such, very nearly, was the true statement of the case. We fully recognise the importance, in its own subordinate place, of ministerial visitation, especially when conducted--a circumstance, however, which sometimes lowers its popularity--as it ought to be. But it must not be assigned that prominent place denied to it by our standards, and which the word of God utterly fails to sanction.

It is, though an important, still a minor duty; and the Free Church must not be sacrificed to the ungrounded idea that it occupies a level as high, or even nearly as high, as 'the preaching of the word.' To that peculiar scheme of visitation advocated by Chalmers as a first process in his work of excavation, we of course do not refer. In those special cases to which he so vigorously directed himself, visitation was an inevitable preliminary, without which the appliances of the pulpit could not be brought to bear. Philip had to open the Scriptures _tête-à-tête_ to the Ethiopian eunuch, for the Ethiopian eunuch never came to church.

But even were his scheme identical with that to which we particularly refer, we would say to the young preacher who sheltered under his authority, 'Well, prepare for the pulpit as Dr. Chalmers did, even when he had the West Port congregation for his audience, and we shall be quite content to let you visit as much as you may.' The composition of a sermon was never easy work to him. He devoted to it much time, and the full bent of his powerful mind; and even when letting himself down to the humblest of the people, the philosopher of largest capacity might profitably take his place among the hearers, and listen with an interest never for one moment suffered to flag.

_May 3, 1848._

DUGALD STEWART.