Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/184

132 by both courts, he finally carried it, not to the General Assembly, for ultimate adjudication, as he was bound to do, but to the Court of Session, where it was to be reduced to a civil question, and nothing more. In this way, admission to the holy office of the ministry and the cure of souls was to be as secular a question as the granting of a publican's license or the establishment of a highway toll, and to be settled by the same tribunal! After much fluctuation and delay that occurred during the trial of this singular case, a final decision was pronounced by the Court of Session in February, 1838, by which the Presbytery of Auchterarder was declared to have acted illegally, and in violation of their duty, in rejecting Mr. Young solely on account of the dissent of the parish, without any reasons assigned for it. But what should the Presbytery do or suffer in consequence? This was not declared; for the Court, having advanced so far as to find the veto law illegal, did not dare to issue a positive command to the Church to throw it aside, and admit the presentee to the ministerial office. The utmost they could do was to adjudge the temporalities of the benefice to Mr. Young, while the Church might appoint to its spiritual duties whatever preacher was found fittest for the purpose. Still, however, if not unchurched, she was disestablished by such a decision; and, for the purpose of averting this disastrous termination, the case was appealed from the Court of Session to the House of Lords. But there the sentence of the Scottish tribunal, instead of being repealed, was confirmed and established into law. Thus patronage was replaced in all its authority, and the veto made a dead letter. This judgment, so important to the future history of the Church of Scotland, was delivered by the House of Lords on May 3, 1839. On the 16th the General Assembly met, and Dr. Chalmers, who had hitherto seldom taken a part in the proceedings of church courts, now made anxious preparation for the important crisis. The veto, he saw, existed no longer; but was the choice of the people to perish also? The important discussion commenced by Dr. Cook presenting a motion, to the effect that the Assembly should hold the veto law as abrogated, and proceed as if it never had passed. To this Dr. Chalmers presented a counter-motion, consisting of three parts. The first acknowledged the right of the civil authority over the temporalities of the living of Auchterarder, and acquiesced in their loss; the second expressed the resolution not to abandon the principle of non-intrusion; and the third proposed the formation of a committee to confer with Government, for the prevention of any further collision between the ecclesiastical and civil authorities. A heart-stirring speech of three hours followed, in which he advocated each point of his motion with such irresistible eloquence, that it was carried by a majority of forty-nine. In this speech, the following comparison between the two national churches was not only fitted to send a patriotic thrill through every Scottish heart, but to enlighten those English understandings that could not comprehend the causes of a national commotion, in which they, nevertheless, found themselves somehow most deeply implicated:—

"Let me now, instead of looking forward into consequences, give some idea to the Assembly of the extent of that degradation and helplessness which, if we do submit to this decision of the House of Lords, have been actually and already inflicted upon us—a degradation to which the Church of England, professing the king to be their head, never would submit; and to which the Church of Scotland, professing the Lord Jesus Christ to be their head, never can. You know that, by the practice of our church, the induction and the ordination go