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declaration by the church would have only expressed the animus imponentis, a change in whose animus does not necessarily or satisfactorily relieve the conscience of the subscriber. But the corresponding alteration in the formula carried over the change into the utterance of him who accepts it; and the whole doctrinal movement was carried out, in the usual Scottish fashion, by open and keen debating for and against, so fairly and frankly that, at the ultimate vote, none of its conservative opponents thought it necessary to record their dissent. The only protest, indeed, was from the other side, Mr. Macrae, now of Dundee, refusing to accept as adequate the modicum of revision which had now passed into the legislation of the church.

While one church was thus definitely advancing, another was struggling amid much confusion with principles which necessitated change. Professor Robertson Smith, a young but distinguished scholar of the Free Church, had been appointed her teacher of Hebrew and Exegesis at Aberdeen. He was soon also made subeditor (and afterwards editor-in-chief) of the new "Encyclopædia Britannica," and in it naturally wrote some of the more important Biblical articles. As early as 1876 some of these, and especially one on Deuteronomy, had raised strong feeling; for in it Mr. Smith had represented that the last book of the Pentateuch was written many ages after Moses, and that its apparent historicity was merely a dramatic form into which the sacred author chose to throw his great brochure. The committee of the Free Church on its colleges at once met, and, while finding that there was no ground of process for heresy, yet left the matter to Mr. Smith's own Presbytery to investigate. The Presbytery might also have taken an intermediate course, but the professor, to the general surprise, rather challenged a prosecution under the Westminster Confession of Faith, which he alleged favored his general doctrine of Scripture. The matter was carried on through the years 1878 and 1879, the assembly of the latter year finding, by a majority, only one out of eight charges valid. But that charge, also, the assembly of the following year, by a small majority the other way, dismissed, and so quashed the whole case. The result, narrow as it was, was very remarkable. For Professor Smith's formal answer to the accusation in his Presbytery had broadened the question largely. He deliberately maintained that Scripture is only divine, and is only infallible, where it reveals to us "that knowledge of God and his will which is necessary to salvation." To that element in it, and to that alone, there is the witness of the

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enquiry, in the spirit of patience, humility, and brotherly charity." But before the year was out, this suggested truce was broken by the appearance in the "Encyclopædia" of other articles written by Professor Smith at an earlier date, and containing views which it was contended were to be tolerated under the recent decision. The explosion was sudden and strong, but its bearing on the question of the creed was specially interesting. The regular

course would have been, either to leave the "decision to future enquiry" extrajudicially, or to commence a new judicial process. That might, like the previous one, have taken four years; but it would be by no means too long for the interests involved. And that, as before, was the course demanded by Professor Smith and his friends. But the lovers of orthodoxy with one voice declined to stand upon the creed: they refused to try their professor by it, or to inquire whether he stood within it; and by a large majority, in the assembly of 1881, they summarily declared that it was "no longer safe or advantageous for the church that Professor Smith should continue to teach."

This violent procedure was chiefly prompted by indisposition to enter at once and publicly upon the field of prolonged "enquiry" which the assembly had the year before invited; for such an enquiry would plainly have involved the question, not merely whether such views were within the creed, but whether the creed itself was adequate for the time. Dr. Norman Walker, the vigorous editor of the official magazine of the body, publicly avowed that it was not, and that, in the interests of sound doctrine, the time had come for parting from the Westminster Confession in its capacity of modern standard. There were fifty points, he maintained, within the confession whose denial he should be sorry to pronounce heresy; while there were many others outside it, the denial of which neither the church in the present day, nor the individual member of it, should tolerate even for a single meeting of assembly. It was plain that the "future enquiry," which the final decision in Doctor Smith's matter cut short, was thereby only postponed; and that, when it again came to the surface, this, like so many other important questions, would lay as a duty on the conscience of the Free Church the revision of an obsolescent creed.

It did not come to the surface again for years. But the " unconscious cerebration" of the Christian mind was working below, and in this church (the others in the mean time being passive) it at last took effect in an enactment in 1884 as to deacons. These

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This, I think, the Westminster Assembly failed to do. The Confession of Faith was the embodiment of their longer creed; it was their 'symbol' (ovuẞóλacov), their agreement among themselves. Very naturally the members of that assembly were highly pleased that the points of agreement among them, even the minuter points, were so numerous. The longer and more minute the document became, so much the better; for it indicated so much larger an agreement. But the very quality that enhanced its excellence in this respect made it less adapted to be imposed as a term of communion on every office-bearer of the church in all time coming. And if it had been proposed to the Westminster divines to frame a creed, the belief of which, in every article and clause, should be a sine qua non of office forevermore, which should carry its authority down through the centuries with all their modifications of light and shade, which should claim the homage of the young converts of India and China, the converted cannibals of the South Seas, the Zulu and the Hottentot, and peradventure of every variety of the human race over the surface of the globe, we can hardly doubt that a document far shorter and simpler would have been the result."

The practical alterations, however, proposed by Dr. Blaikie, were few and cautious, and some who agreed with him hesitated in raising so large a question with so small a result. Thus Dr. Marcus Dods, one of the most distinguished of our Scottish theologians, promptly said:

"Were the proposed alterations radical, the church might well afford to be disturbed in such an interest. It were worthy of any church to consider whether creeds, used as terms of office, have not done more harm than good, accentuating peculiarities and perpetuating inconsiderable distinctions; whether freedom of thought and the currents of public opinion are not more likely than the imposition of a creed to bring all Christendom to a common recognition of the truth; whether a church is justified in holding a creed which cannot be expected ever to become the creed of the Church Catholic, thus dooming herself to everlasting sectarianism; whether a church is justified in exacting from her ministry any confession of faith beyond the one article of faith in Christ as the Living Supreme, which she is justified in demanding of her members."

Views varying like these necessarily raised the question of the timeliness of action, and not a few were heard to counsel postponement. To some-among others the present writer-postponement of such a question seemed not morally justifiable. And even on the side of expediency it appeared not so much timid as reckless," passiveness, in the admitted presence of explosive forces, being morally undistinguishable from a policy of precipitation and explosion." Great interest attached to the coming General

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