"Rainy wi'oot the Principal" VIII.
The crowds in the Music Hall watched expectantly as Dr. Rainy stepped onto the platform. The craggy visage of the Free Church professor surveyed the hall, and he opened his lecture.
"When a clergyman of the Church of England comes among us to deliver to us his impressions of our Churches and of our Christianity, we owe him first of all a courteous reception. We are to presume that he came among us on a benevolent design to do us good, and we are to treat him accordingly. In that, I hope, we have not failed. And we thank him for all that was friendly, either in his criticism or in his praise. Next, however, we owe him, and we owe it to ourselves, to sift the statements which he makes and the conclusions which he implies. In the present case this duty is the more incumbent, because Dean Stanley has given us, not a version of our history only, but a version with a moral. No one, I suppose, is so blind as not to see that it is the moral rather than the story which interests the Dean. He did not come among us merely to reform our notions about our past history. He came to influence, if possible, the history of the years that are before us."
So Rainy summed up Dean Stanley's purpose. He then moved on to his own:
"I should count it an idle thing to ask you to take so much trouble merely for the purpose of showing that an Englishman has fallen into some mistakes about our antiquities or about our controversies. So ordinary and natural a circumstance could discompose no one. Still less have I come here to try to defend through thick and thin the Scots in general or my own ecclesiastical progenitors in particular. They were men, and therefore fallible and failing; they were scotsmen, and therefore when they went wrong they did it energetically, blowing a trumpet before them and defying all the world to refute them."
Yet Dr. Rainy was not willing to go as far as Dean Stanley was, nor was he willing to draw Dean Stanley's conclusions from the facts of Scottish Church history. His brief was for Scottish Presbyterianism, and to show that Presbyterianism was on the side of liberty and the rights of the people. "Prelacy and the royal supremacy [in the Church] were mixed up together. That ought never to be forgotten; each supported the other, and each made the other worse." Dean Stanley had minimised the differences between Prelacy and Presbyterianism, but Rainy was not going to let that stand. Presbyterianism stood for the independence of the Church from state interference, while Prelacy had made the Church a mere creature of the state, subject to the whims of the monarch. Prelacy had been forced on Scotland by King James VI (King James I of England). "Presbyterianism is a system for a free people that love a regulated, a self-regulating freedom; a people independent, yet patient, considerate, trusting much to the processes of discussion and consultation, and more to the promised aid of a much-forgiving and a watchful Lord. It is a system for strong Churches... It is a system for believing Churches, that are not ashamed or afraid to cherish a high ideal, and to speak of lofty aims, and to work for long and far results among all the discouragements arising from sin and folly in their own ranks and around them. It is a system for catholic Christians, who wish not merely to cherish private idiosyncracies, but to feel themselves identified with the common cause, while they cleave directly to Him whose cause it is. Our fathers felt instinctively that the changes thrust upon them threatened to supress great elements of good - not mere forms alone, but the life which those forms nourished and expressed."
Prelacy, Rainy pointed out, hangs a great deal on episcopal succession, and tends to a acramentalism that sees salvation as recieved through sacraments and not through faith in Christ. It tended to undervalue preaching, and so the revolt against Prelacy was an evangelical revolt.
Dean Stanley had spoken of the tendency of the Scots to divide on small points. It was true, Rainy admitted, that some of the divisions in the Scottish Church had been on matters which confused even many Scots of the 1870s, but that was because they cared for the Truth, and for the purity of Christ's Church. The only reason th English Establishment had not suffered any serious splits was because of a 'broad-church' mentality that was fairly careless of the Truth. The Scots, on the other hand, were 'High Church' in the best meaning of the term, for they held the very highest views of Christ's Kirk as a divine institution that ought to be kept pure.
What was more, none of the Scots Presbyterian dissenting groups ever imagined that salvation hung on believing their shibboleth, on holding their views of Church government. But Rainy could point out a number of Episcopalian authors who had taught that, unless he can present a plea of "Invincible ignorance", no man can be saved unless he holds communion with a bishop in the valid apostolic succession.
"What a gigantic superstition... a superstition certainly involving far stranger views of God, and of Christ, and of the administration of salvation in the world, than can be charges on the Church principles of the Cameronians or the Seceders, or even the Free Church itself."
So Dr. Rainy ended his first lecture. The crowds were left to mull over the lecture, and to eagerly await his second.
As we must. God willing, our next post will see how Dr. Rainy really got to grips with the Dean's lectures.
"When a clergyman of the Church of England comes among us to deliver to us his impressions of our Churches and of our Christianity, we owe him first of all a courteous reception. We are to presume that he came among us on a benevolent design to do us good, and we are to treat him accordingly. In that, I hope, we have not failed. And we thank him for all that was friendly, either in his criticism or in his praise. Next, however, we owe him, and we owe it to ourselves, to sift the statements which he makes and the conclusions which he implies. In the present case this duty is the more incumbent, because Dean Stanley has given us, not a version of our history only, but a version with a moral. No one, I suppose, is so blind as not to see that it is the moral rather than the story which interests the Dean. He did not come among us merely to reform our notions about our past history. He came to influence, if possible, the history of the years that are before us."
So Rainy summed up Dean Stanley's purpose. He then moved on to his own:
"I should count it an idle thing to ask you to take so much trouble merely for the purpose of showing that an Englishman has fallen into some mistakes about our antiquities or about our controversies. So ordinary and natural a circumstance could discompose no one. Still less have I come here to try to defend through thick and thin the Scots in general or my own ecclesiastical progenitors in particular. They were men, and therefore fallible and failing; they were scotsmen, and therefore when they went wrong they did it energetically, blowing a trumpet before them and defying all the world to refute them."
Yet Dr. Rainy was not willing to go as far as Dean Stanley was, nor was he willing to draw Dean Stanley's conclusions from the facts of Scottish Church history. His brief was for Scottish Presbyterianism, and to show that Presbyterianism was on the side of liberty and the rights of the people. "Prelacy and the royal supremacy [in the Church] were mixed up together. That ought never to be forgotten; each supported the other, and each made the other worse." Dean Stanley had minimised the differences between Prelacy and Presbyterianism, but Rainy was not going to let that stand. Presbyterianism stood for the independence of the Church from state interference, while Prelacy had made the Church a mere creature of the state, subject to the whims of the monarch. Prelacy had been forced on Scotland by King James VI (King James I of England). "Presbyterianism is a system for a free people that love a regulated, a self-regulating freedom; a people independent, yet patient, considerate, trusting much to the processes of discussion and consultation, and more to the promised aid of a much-forgiving and a watchful Lord. It is a system for strong Churches... It is a system for believing Churches, that are not ashamed or afraid to cherish a high ideal, and to speak of lofty aims, and to work for long and far results among all the discouragements arising from sin and folly in their own ranks and around them. It is a system for catholic Christians, who wish not merely to cherish private idiosyncracies, but to feel themselves identified with the common cause, while they cleave directly to Him whose cause it is. Our fathers felt instinctively that the changes thrust upon them threatened to supress great elements of good - not mere forms alone, but the life which those forms nourished and expressed."
Prelacy, Rainy pointed out, hangs a great deal on episcopal succession, and tends to a acramentalism that sees salvation as recieved through sacraments and not through faith in Christ. It tended to undervalue preaching, and so the revolt against Prelacy was an evangelical revolt.
Dean Stanley had spoken of the tendency of the Scots to divide on small points. It was true, Rainy admitted, that some of the divisions in the Scottish Church had been on matters which confused even many Scots of the 1870s, but that was because they cared for the Truth, and for the purity of Christ's Church. The only reason th English Establishment had not suffered any serious splits was because of a 'broad-church' mentality that was fairly careless of the Truth. The Scots, on the other hand, were 'High Church' in the best meaning of the term, for they held the very highest views of Christ's Kirk as a divine institution that ought to be kept pure.
What was more, none of the Scots Presbyterian dissenting groups ever imagined that salvation hung on believing their shibboleth, on holding their views of Church government. But Rainy could point out a number of Episcopalian authors who had taught that, unless he can present a plea of "Invincible ignorance", no man can be saved unless he holds communion with a bishop in the valid apostolic succession.
"What a gigantic superstition... a superstition certainly involving far stranger views of God, and of Christ, and of the administration of salvation in the world, than can be charges on the Church principles of the Cameronians or the Seceders, or even the Free Church itself."
So Dr. Rainy ended his first lecture. The crowds were left to mull over the lecture, and to eagerly await his second.
As we must. God willing, our next post will see how Dr. Rainy really got to grips with the Dean's lectures.
Labels: Principal Rainy
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