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 SCOTLAND

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SCOTLAND

— private munificence came to the rescue, and within seven years more than two hundred churches were added to those already existing in Scotland. The first half of the nineteenth century, however, though a period of progress, was by no means a period of peace mtliin the establishment. Side by side with the evangeUcal revival had sprung up again the old ag:itation about the essential evil of lay private patronage. Internally the Church was torn by doc- trinal controversies, resulting in the condemnation and expulsion of some ministers of distinction and repute, while in open opposition were the noncon- forming bodies which had. at least temporarilj^, coalesced under the title of the United Seceders, preached uncompromising voluntarj'ism, and de- nounced all state connexion with churches, and state endowments of religion, as intrinsically unscriptural and impious.

It was, however, the age-long grievance about patronage which proved the rock on which the Estab- lished Church was to split asunder and to be wellnigh shattered. The Veto Act, passed by the General Assembly in 1833, provided that the minister pre- sented by the patron was not to be instituted unless approved by a majority of heads of families in the congregation; but the highest legal tribunals in Scot- land absolutely refused to sanction this enactment, as did the House of Lords, to which the Assembly appealed. The claim of the Church to legislative independence was rudely brushed aside by the Pres- ident of the Court of S(>ssion, in his famous declaration that "the temporal head of the Church is Parliament, from whose acts alone it exists as the national Church, and from which alone it derives all its powers". The result of this momentous conflict was what was known as the "Disruption" of 1843, when 451 out of 1203 ministers quitted the church, together with fully a third of its lay members, and initiated a new religious organization thenceforth known as the Free Church (see Free Church of Scotland).

The Established Church, shorn by the Disruption, of all the men who had been most prominent in pro- moting the evangelical revival, swept from its statute- book everj'thing disallowed by the civil courts, be- came again "moderate" in its polity, and frankly Erastian in its absolute subservience to the civil power. With its national reputation seriously im- paired, and abandoned by its labourers in the mission field, who all, with one solitary exception, joined the rival Church, its task was for many years a difficult and ungrateful one. It is to its credit as an organ- izing body that it promptly set to work, and with some measure of success, to repair the breaches of 1843, to recruit its missionary staff, to extend its borders at home, to fill up the many vacancies caused by the latest schism, and to erect and endow new parishes. In 1874, thirty-two years after the Dis- ruption, the Assembly petitioned Parliament for the abolition of the system of patronage, so long the great bone of contention in the Church. The prayer was granted, and the right of electing their own minis- ters conferred on the congregations — a democratic ar- rangement which, however gratifying to the electors, often places the candidate for their suffrages in a position both humiliating and unflignified, and is not mfrequently acajmpanied by incidents as ludicroas as they are dlsedifying. Nor has the new order of things apparently brought appreciably nearer the prospects of reunion bcstwerm the Established and Free Churches, although the question of patronage, and not that of State recognition, was the main point of cleavage between them. A union of a kind, though not a complete one, there has been of sornf; of the reli- gious bodifjs outside the pale of the Establishment: but the Stat« Church herself seems powerless to recall or reunite the numerous sects which have wandered

from her fold, difficult or impossible as it seems to the outside observer to discover what essential points of difference there are between them in matters either of doctrine, discipline, or church government.

The Established Church of Scotland maintains that her system of government, by kirk-sessions, presby- teries, .synods, and the General Assembly, is "agree- able to the Word of God and acceptable to the people" ; but she does not claim for it exclusively the Divine sanction and authority. There is no doubt as to its general popularity in Scotland, to whose people the democratic element in Presbyterianism strongly ap- peals. In the lowest judicatory body, the kirk- session, the laymen or "elders" greatly preponderate, and they are as numerous as the ministers in presby- teries and synods; wiiile the members of the supreme bodj', the General Assembly, are chosen by popular election. The Sovereign is represented at the As- sembly by his Lord High Commissioner; but his presidency is merely formal, and the Assembly is opened and dissolved not by him in the first place, but by the elected head or "moderator", in the name of Christ, the "head of the Church". It is needless however, to add that popular election and democratic government notwithstanding, the Scottish Estab- lished Church is, like its English sister, the creature of the State and ab.solutely subject to it; and nothing in its parliamentary creed can be changed except with the sanction of the authority to which it owes its existence. Viewed in the light of the history of the past three centuries, the passionate claim made by a section of Scottish Presbyterians to "spiritual in- dependence" is as ludicrous as it is pathetic. Their Church enjoys exactlj^ as much independence — neither less nor more — as may be conceded to it by the State which created and upholds it.

Present-day Statistics. — The number of ecclesiastical parishes in Scotland (1911) is 1441; of chapels, 80; of mission stations, 170; total, 1691; and the increase of church sittings since 1880 is stated to be 196,000. The total endowments of the Church from all sources (i. e. the national exchequer, local funds, "tcinds" or tithes, either in kind or commuted, and funds raised within the Church) are reckoned at about £360,000 annually. The number of communicants, as returned to the General Assembly in May, 1910, was 711,200; and there were 2222 Sunday schools taught by about 21,000 teachers, with a roll of children amounting to nearly 301,000. It is claimed in the official returns of the Church that her membership has increased 52 per cent in 36 years, during which period the growth of the total population of Scotland has increased only 33 per cent. The Established Church performed in 1908 45 per cent of Scottish marriages, as compared with 26 per cent (United Free) and 10 per cent (Catholic). Reckoning the population of Scotland in 191 1 at about 4,750,000, the proportion of communi- cants of the Establislnnent would be about 14 per cent of the whole. The Church of Scotland has in recent years displayed much energy in the extension of her work both at home and abroad. Since 1878 the Home and Foreign Missions have doubled their incomes; 460 new parishes have been erected, and 380 new churches built; missions have been established in Africa and China, and a Universities Foreign Mi.s- sion started; and guilds and associations have been founded in connexion with a great variety of religious objects. During the same period of thirty-six years a sum of betw(en sixt((!n and seventeen millions sterling (exclusive of government grants, school fees, and interest on capital) has been voluntarily con- tributefl for parochial, missionary, and charital)l(pur- poses in conn(!xion with the Established Church.

The four Scotti.sh Universities all possess faculties of "divinity", with well-endowed professors lecturing on theological or quasi-theological subjects; and a