The Church and the Churches. 141 porticoes command a wider prospect; their dwellers see not alone the towering church in front, but the classic Grecian edifice by its side, the four-walled barn down the valley, and the cottage smoke among the trees. From all there is equal access to its courts, and for all equal rights. The Church is founded upon the duty of every man to join himself to it,-a duty of which the State can take no knowledge. Churches are founded upon the right of every man to join whichever sect he most approves,—a right which the State must and does protect. For But what advantage, we repeat, results, for the purposes of toleration, from the attempted classification into Churches and sects? The State only forms opinions when it needs to act upon them. It is not, like a thoughtful man, anxious to frame complete theories of the world and the Church for the mere sake of their completeness. And there is no right or jurisdiction necessary to the Christian Church which is not fully secured by the view we have taken. when the terms of the contract under which the complaining sectary appeals to the law come to be examined, it is found that but a small portion of them appears on paper. Some sects have a written constitution nearly complete; some, only certain standards of belief and signed declarations. But every contract is to be determined by the clear understanding of the parties who enter into it; and, when those parties are an educated Scotchman and an orthodox and organized Scotch Church, their general intention cannot be obscure. Every society notoriously established on a particular reading of the directions of the New Testament constitutes that reading a part of its mutual contract. And on an obvious principle of law, every neophyte, entering with notice of the established usages and principles of a Society, is bound by them. If, however, in spite of all such interpretation, it appears that a body of religionists have no mutual understanding or contract on a point essential to the character of a true branch of Christ's Church, then we maintain that such a body is no Church of Christ at all. A sect which does not pledge itself and all its members to orthodox doctrine, sacraments, and a final jurisdiction in spiritual things is not a complete Church. It is the business of the law to allow the Church to secure its own existence. The civil power can have no authority to declare a jurisdiction in spiritual matters to be final which the ci-devant Church has not so declared; or else Christ's kingdom would be of this world. Under this view let us look at the Cardross case. Mr. M'Millan, Free Church Minister of Cardross, was convicted by the Presbytery of Dumbarton on some charges of immorality, and acquitted on others. The Synod of Ayr quashed the convictions on appeal. The General Assembly, or Supreme Ecclesiastical Court, when appealed to by the Presbytery, took cognizance not only of the reversed sentences, but of the entire original accusation; and suspended Mr. M'Millan from his charge. Mr. M'Millan applied to the Judge of the Court of Session, to prohibit the Presbytery from carrying the sentence into effect; on the ground that, by the constitution of the Church, the Assembly could only consider the decisions appealed from. On hearing of this application, the Assembly summoned the delinquent to its bar, and, upon a simple 'yes or no,' deposed him from the ministry. The standards of the Church, they said, forbade any such application in any case. Mr. McMillan brought two actions in the Court of Session, asking for the reversal of those two sentences. The Court required the Assembly to produce its sentences. The Assembly at first refused, and then consented; under protest that, in doing so, they acknowledged no right in the Court of Session to review or reverse the judgments, but merely produced them as historical documents. The Court now asks for further evidence of the contract. It is perfectly clear, that in this case the civil court is asked to reverse an ecclesiastical sentence. It is asked to say that Mr. M'Millan is still a clergyman of the Free Church. It has nothing to do with his being a Minister of Jesus Christ. And the simple question is, whether the professed deposition was a real deposition, whether Mr. M'Millan was deposed from his office by an authority competent to depose him. What is the contract, the acknowledged understanding among the members of that Church? Now if there is one thing clear in the whole case, it is this,-that the office of clergyman itself, its qualifications, the admission to it and exclusion from it, the modes, and grounds, and forms, and judges of admission or exclusion, are confessedly the creatures of that particular Society. It only remains, therefore, to inquire whether this office, those modes, forms, grounds, and judges are all fixed and unalterable by the Society or its courts, bound down by an iron constitution, the infringement of which, by any power whatever, releases the contract. Is there no authority within the Church which can make a new regulation, or alter a form of procedure? And we have a complete reply in the declaration signed by Mr. M'Millan himself, which includes this clause :"I promise that I-to the utmost of my power shall-assert, maintain, and defend the said doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of this Church by Kirk-Session, Presbyteries, Provincial Synods, and General Assemblies, together with the liberty and exclusive jurisdiction thereof." In the mouth of a Free Church Minister, at least, there can be no doubt of the meaning of exclusive jurisdiction.' What, indeed, can those words mean unless they exclude appeal to any other court? 'Except on matters of form,' says Mr. M'Millan. But to what other matters could they refer? Of course, if a series of special courts is appointed to try a certain class of causes, facts and all, it must be because there is to be some speciality either in the forms or in the facts. No one can maintain that the four courts in the Church and the three out of it,-Kirk-Session, Presbytery, Synod, Assembly, Outer and Inner Courts of Session, House of Lords,-are an ascending series to try a question of fact. The facts here are such as could very well come within the cognizance of an ordinary court; they are simple accusations of immorality. Nor would it be impossible for a civil court to adjudge a question even of heresy, with the standards of the Church and the heresy complained of before its eyes. The fact is, that the grand reason why Church courts exist at all is, because they will not be bound by the rules of procedure of the civil. They are not tied by the truth or falsehood of a charge, as a judge and jury take it; the rules of evidence which save the State might ruin the Church; they exert powers of interrogation, and claim authority perfectly arbitrary. Forms of procedure constitute the differentia of an ecclesiastical court. 'Exclusive jurisdiction' can have no meaning if it involve no exclusive jurisdiction in forms of procedure. If the procedure in a Church court be not a 'spiritual matter,' what is? It is not necessary to decide where within the Church the authority on such points lies; all we know is, that if the jurisdiction of the Church courts be exclusive, it is exclusive of the jurisdiction of the civil courts. The system of ecclesiastical jurisdiction depends upon forms of procedure: every ecclesiastical system must have a supreme authority somewhere by which its constitution may grow: that supreme authority has the exclusive jurisdiction over the alteration of and sole cognizance of the departure from these forms. And if all this were obscure, surely the controversies of the Disruption would sufficiently show what the Church means by the exclusive jurisdiction' for which it yielded so much. It may be added, that the General Assembly utterly denies the informality complained of. The real danger of a decision in Mr. M'Millan's favour arises from a tendency in the judges (some of whom seem to be not altogether free from party feeling) to refuse the interpretation which is put by the character of the Church upon its formulæ, and even to treat the distinct pledge in no case to appeal on ecclesiastical points to a civil court as an unlawful stipulation. This is where the principle of toleration comes in. It is an intelligible and reasonable view of the New Testament, to say that the clerical office, and even the membership of the Church, require qualifications and depend upon considerations of which the State is no judge, and that therefore the whole jurisdiction in these matters must be left entirely to the established officers of the Church. If, therefore, such a view seems to be the standard view of the Free Church of Scotland, that view is a part of its contract with Mr. M'Millan. Notoriously, the General Assembly is the sole arbiter of the point, and therefore sole judge of the fact, whether Mr. M'Millan be clergyman of Cardross or not; and if its clerk tell the court that he is not, the statement-barring fraud-is final. On the same principle of contract are decided the cases in which the expelled members of sects have brought actions against the officers of the sects for libel. When a man enrols himself in a voluntary society, he subscribes his character to be bound by the regulations of the society,-it belongs to the common stock. So much for any moral stigma which expul sion may entail. As for the mere social status often acquired by membership, that is, in its very nature, the property of the whole; like the pecuniary emoluments, it is worn, and not possessed, during the period of membership, and of course is put off by retirement or deprivation. Besides, in most of those cases, an express bar of such actions is found in the rules of the sect. This general view of the nature of Churches concludes our survey of the field swept by our principle of religious liberty. And here we must stop; without attempting to discuss the authority or limits of those maxims of scientific jurisprudence which allow to mistaken belief a far wider toleration than abstract principles can give. The tendency of modern opinion seems to be rapidly extending the licence of honest and dishonest error; nor does our principle oppose any resistance to the extension. But if we are to claim toleration on any ground higher than expediency, we must rest it on some such theory as has been here laid down. We know no other religious reason for religious liberty; and can admit no merely speculative views of the rights of conscience to supersede or control the authority of the Bible. For such views, so far as they are not built upon obvious induction from facts, are capable of no test of truth; and, however plausible, command rather admiration than assent. The last book mentioned in our heading is an instance of an ingenious attempt to build up a system of rights and duties on the basis of moral relationships.' We owe duties to God as our Creator, duties to men as our fellow-men, duties to govern The Women of India and Ceylon. 145 ment as a convention of our own. Every natural relationship appears to carry a moral relationship with it of its own force; and the author only seems to have omitted from his consideration the moral duties which arise out of our natural relationship to our fellow-creature-the devil. All this will not do. We explicitly deny all duties other than those laid down by our Creator. Our duties to men flow from His command; our moral affections towards them are placed there by Him; government is derived from His authority; and the civil magistrate is His vicegerent. The fact is, our author has assumed that, in order to meet his opponents on their own ground, he will travel best without his Bible; and has forgotten that he is on the enchanted ground of speculative philosophy; that the prince of this world erected for the repose of the unwary that comfortable arbour in which he slept; and that he must drag back his steps for many a weary mile, ere he can regain the precious roll which alone will guide him into the Celestial City of Truth. ART. VI.—1. The Daughters of India: their Social Condition, 3. The Scottish Ladies' Association for the Advancement of Female Education in India. Report. 1860. 4. The Female Society of the Free Church of Scotland for Promoting the Christian Education of the Females of India. Report. 1860. Occa 5. The Ladies' Committee for Ameliorating the Condition of Women in Heathen Countries, Female Education, &c. sional Papers. 6. Education Despatch of July 19th, 1854. By SIR CHARLES WOOD. 7. Education Despatch of July 7th, 1859. By LORD STANLEY. 8. Correspondence relating to the Education Despatch of 1854. Ordered by the House of Commons to be printed, February 12th, 1858. 9. Ditto, Ditto, ordered ditto, August 11th, 1859. 10. The Central School Commission for the Instruction of the Population of Ceylon. Report. 1856-7. 11. Reports of several Protestant Missionary Societies. 1860. |