"Rainy wi'oot the Principal". XXVI.

Rainy was beginning to settle down after the union of 1900. As the acknowledged leader of the United Free Church, he knew that his responsibilities would be great. He would have to try to hold together the new Church as he had tried to hold together the old. While the most troublesome Constitutionalists had adhered to the minority, there were still some who had gone into the union, and they were unlikely to have been tamed by it.

Almost immediately after the union the United Free Church met its first crisis. The outspoken Higher Critic Dr. George Adam Smith, Professor of Hebrew and Old Testament Criticism at the United Free Church College, Glasgow, had published his Yale Lectures on preaching. Dr. Smith had chosen as his subject Modern Criticism and the Preaching of the Old Testament. Dr. Smith was not a man to shy away from controversy, and he had certainly not done so in his lectures. He had declared that the early chapters of Genesis were "formed from the raw material of Babylonian myth and legend;" that "The god of early Israel was a tribal god;" that the Israelites "did not deny the reality of other gods;" and that, the Higher Criticism "having won its war" with the older views of Scripture, "it only remained to fix the amount of the indemnity." Quite understandably the conservatives in the United Free Church were horrified. They sent up a memorial to the College Committee in 1901, calling their attention to the book. The Committee, for its part, immediately set up a meeting with Smith, where he gave them a lengthy written explanation of certain passages in the book. They decided not to proceed against Dr. Smith, saying that what was needed was discussion, not another heresy trial.
Still, the matter was discussed at the United Free Assembly in 1902. It was Rainy's responsibility to move the motion declining to institute heresy proceedings against Dr. Smith. Rainy made it very clear that this did not mean he had shifted his position since the publication of The Bible and Criticism. He thought that much of Dr. Smith's book was wrong, but what was called for was reasoned debate. James Orr seconded the motion, and the motion was carried.
Writing to a friend after the event, Rainy said: "The critics overrate the certainty of their conclusions."
The United Free Church accepted the motion. Shortly afterwards Dr. Smith went to be the Principal of Aberdeen University, and so his statements on the Old Testament were treated as no longer the United Free Church's problem.

The United Free Church's problem was in fact something else. But before we come to deal with that, we shall say something about Rainy's life and work in the period just after the Union. That, God willing, will be next time.