authority, which belongs to the essential consciousness of the Christian church. An agitation against patronage, the Disruption of 1843. ancient root of evil, and the formation of an anti-patronage society, helped in the same direction. The Ten Years' Conflict, which began in 1833 with the passing by the assembly of the Veto and the Chapel Acts, is treated in the articles Free Church of Scotland, and it is not necessary to dwell further in this place on the consequences of those acts. The assembly of 1843, from which the exodus took place, proceeded to undo the acts of the church during the preceding nine years. The Veto was not repealed but ignored, as having never had the force of law; the Strathbogie ministers were recognized as if no sentence of deposition had gone forth against them. The protest which the moderator had read before leaving the assembly had been left on the table; and an act of separation and deed of emission were received from the ministers of the newly formed Free Church, who were now declared to have severed their connexion with the Church of Scotland. The assembly addressed a pastoral letter to the people of the country, in which, while declining to “admit that the course taken by the seceders was justified by irresistible necessity,” they counselled peace and goodwill towards them, and called for the loyal support of the remaining members of the church.
Two acts at once passed through the legislature in answer to the claims put forward by the church. The Scottish Benefices Act of Lord Aberdeen, 1843, gave the people power to state objections personal to a presenter, and bearing on his fitness for the particular charge to which he was presented, and also authorized the presbytery in dealing with the objections to look to the number and character of the objectors. Sir James Graham's Act, 1844, provided for the erection of new parishes, and thus created the legal basis for a scheme under which chapel ministers might become members of church courts.
The Disruption left the Church of Scotland in a sadly maimed condition. Of 1203 ministers 451 left her, and among these Development of the church since 1843. were many of her foremost men. A third of her membership is computed to have gone with them. In Edinburgh many of her churches were nearly empty. The Gaelic-speaking population of the northern counties completely deserted her. All her missionaries left her but one. She had no gale of popular enthusiasm to carry her forward, representing as she did not a newly arisen principle but the opposition to a principle which she maintained to be dangerous and exaggerated. For many years she had much obloquy to endure. But she at once set herself to the task of filling up vacancies and recruiting the missionary staff. A lay association was formed, which raised large sums of money for the missionary schemes, so that their income was not allowed seriously to decline. The good works of the church, indeed, were in a few years not only continued but extended. All hope being lost that parliament would endow the new churches built by the church extension scheme of Dr Chalmers, it was felt that this also must be the work of voluntary liberality. Under Dr James Robertson, professor of church history in Edinburgh, one of the leading champions of the Moderate policy in the Ten Years' Conflict, the extension scheme was transformed into the endowment scheme, and the church accepted it as her duty and her task to provide the machinery of new parishes where they were required.[1] By 1854, 30 new parishes had been added at a cost of £130,000, and from this time forward the work of endowment proceeded still more rapidly. In 1843 the number of parishes had been 924; in 1909 it was 1437. By the Poor Law Act of 1845 parishes were enabled to remove the care of the poor from the minister and the kirk-session, in whom it was formerly vested, and to appoint a parochial board with power to assess the ratepayers. The Education Act of 1872 severed the ancient tie connecting church and school together, and created a school board having charge of the education of each parish. At that date the Church of Scotland had 300 schools, mostly in the Highlands. The church continued till lately to carry on normal schools for the training of teachers in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen; but these, along with the normal schools of the United Free Church, were recently made over to the state.
In 1874 patronage was abolished. The working of Lord Aberdeen's Act had given rise to many unedifying scenes and Abolition of patronage. to lengthy struggles over disputed settlements, and it was early felt that some change at least was necessary in the law. The agitation on the subject went on in the assembly from 1857 to 1869, when the assembly by a large majority condemned patronage as restored by the Act of Queen Anne, and resolved to petition parliament for its removal. The request was granted, and the right of electing parish ministers was conferred by the Patronage Act 1874 on the congregation; thus a grievance of old standing, from which all the ecclesiastical troubles of a century and a half had sprung, was removed and the church placed on a thoroughly democratic basis. This act, combined with various efforts made within the church for her improvement, secured for the Scottish Establishment a large measure of popular favour, and in the last half of the 19th Improvements in public worship. century she grew rapidly both in numbers and in influence. This revival was largely due on the one hand to the improvement of her worship which began with the efforts of Dr Robert Lee (1804-1868), minister of Old Greyfriars, Edinburgh, and professor of Biblical criticism in Edinburgh university. By introducing into his church a printed book of prayers and also an organ, Dr Lee stirred up vehement controversies in the church courts, which resulted in the recognition of the liberty of congregations to improve their worship. The Church Service Society, having for its object the study of ancient and modern liturgies, with a view to the preparation of forms of prayer for public worship, was founded in 1865; it has published eight editions of its “Book of Common Order,” which, though at first regarded with suspicion, has been largely used by the clergy. Church music has been cultivated and improved in a marked degree; and hymns have been introduced to supplement the psalms and paraphrases; in 1898 a committee appointed by the Church of Scotland, the Free Church, the United Presbyterian Church and the Presbyterian Church in Ireland issued The Church Hymnary, which is authorized for use in all these churches alike. Architecture has restored many of the larger churches from their disfigurement by partition walls and galleries—though much still remains to be done in this way—and has erected new churches of a style favourable to devotion. The cathedral churches of St Giles, Edinburgh, and of Brechin and Dunblane, the abbey church of Paisley and the Church of the Holy Trinity, St Andrews, have been restored; and the abbey of Iona, handed over to the Church of Scotland by the duke of Argyll, is now once more fitted up for worship.
The fervour of the church found a channel in the operations of a “Committee on Christian Life and Work,” appointed in Committee on Christian Life and Work. 1869 with the aim of exercising some supervision of the work of the church throughout the country, stimulating evangelistic efforts and organizing the labours of lay agents. This committee publishes a magazine of “Life and Work,” which has a circulation of over 100,000, and has organized young men's gilds in connexion with congregations and revived the ancient order of deaconesses. It was to reinforce this element of the church's activity, as well as to strengthen her generally, that James Baird (1802-1876) in 1873 made the munificent gift of £500,000. This fund is administered by a trust which is not under the control of the church, and the revenue is used mainly in aid of church building and endowment throughout the country.
The church has greatly increased of late years in width of view and liberality of sentiment, and shelters various tendencies of thought. A volume of Scotch Sermons, published in 1880 by ministers holding liberal views, brought out the fact that the
- ↑ Those branches of the church extension scheme which dealt with church building, and with the opening of new missions to meet the wants of increasing populations, were taken up by a new department, called the Home Mission scheme. The home mission as the pioneer in opening up new fields of labour, and the endowment scheme which renders permanent the religious centres that the mission has founded, are both traceable to Dr Chalmers.
