RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
Presbyterians
in the Kikuyu highlands have effected such results as to call forth enthusiastic approval. The "martyrs of Blantyre" have earned a place for themselves in missionary annals. The late Dr. Ruffelle- Scott ranks among the greatest of those who have carried the light of Christ to the dark places of the earth, a man most mystical yet most practical, a constant student yet sympathetic with the ignorant, inspired with burning zeal yet gifted with marvellous administrative skill. The Chinese mission at Ichang has now 852 baptized Christians, of whom 480 are communicants. Special commendation must be given to the work of the Women's Association for Foreign Missions, whose spheres of labor are virtually identical with those of the Foreign Missions Committee. " The staff abroad includes 62 European missionaries, four from New South Wales, and three from New Zealand. With the assistance of over 200 Eurasian and native teachers and Bible-women they carry on educational, evangelistic, industrial, and medical work in schools, zenanas, hospitals, and city and village dispensaries for women and children." Other committees are those on Education, the Conversion of the Jews, Small Livings, Aged and Infirm Ministers, Church Interests, Temperance, Sunday-schools, Highlands and Islands, Correspondence with other Reformed Churches, Psalmody and Hymns, Aids to Devotion, Benefice Registers, and Church Records. All of them, it may honestly be said, are under wise and capable management. The relation of the Church to the Westminster Confession has been receiving much attention in recent years; and the General Assembly of 1910, in the exercise of a right ratified by a recent Act of Parliament, has adopted a formula of subscription less rigid than that hitherto enjoined upon the clergy. In 1910 meetings were held between representatives of the Church of Scotland and of the United Free Church looking to the union of those bodies. Pearson M'Adam Muir.
2. United Free Church: If the essence of the United Free Church be the soul in it that is marching on, it was born at the Reformation. The ideal of a Scottish National Church which then arose was of a church free from the State, selfconstituted and self-governing. Scot-
1. Early jan(j j^g aiwavs been by a vast ma-
..^s 1 u~ jority Presbyterian, and her disputes Ideals have seldom been doctrinal. Divisions have been caused mainly by differences in the interpretation of the claim of the church to spiritual freedom, and by questions, often more theoretical than practical, regarding the relation of Church to State. The history of the religious forces now gathered up in the United Free Church is the history of successive stands made by men for their own ideal of a free church, and of the gradual aggregation of the various independent churches thus formed. Time and again the starting-point was, not dissent from a theological doctrine, but a differing interpretation of the application of the principle of spiritual independence, and a new assertion of the rights of the church. The United Free Church claims continuity through all its branches with the original reformed Church in Scotland, and maintains, as against decisions of IX. -14
the law courts, (particularly in the period preceding the Disruption of 1843 and in 1904), its own interpretation of the rights and powers of that church. In 1560 the church constituted itself and adopted Knox's Confession. It existed without sanction of any Act of Parliament until 1567. In 1647, without consulting Parliament, it displaced Knox's by the Westminster Confession. These and other acts are claimed as instances of the exercise of that spiritual freedom, between which and the advantages of the Establishment as interpreted by civil courts various parties considered in later times that they had to make their choice. This legislative power of altering doctrine, discipline, and government was, it was claimed by the United Free Church in the litigation following the union of 1900, recognized in the Barrier Act of 1697, which provided that no alteration should be made without being sent down to Presbyteries.
The first formal division arose in 1688. Intransigeant Cameronians (see Cameron, Richard, Cameronians), in dissatisfaction with its compromising spirit, refused to concur in the Revolu-
tion Settlement and remained an iso- 2. Early Iated bod untn lg76 when th
Secessions.. , ., J „ „, , ,T . J
joined the tree Church. .Next came
the two secessions which eventually coalesced in the United Presbyterian Church. The first, the Associate Synod, originated through the deposition in 1733 of Ebenezer Erskine (q.v.), along with three supporters, for preaching a sermon claiming for Christ the headship of the Church and declaring the church " the freest society in the world." This was a -ried especially at an Act of Assembly (1732) placing the election of ministers in the hands not of the congregation, but of the majority of elders and heritors. These four declined reinstatement a year later, disliking the hostility of the "Moderate" majority to their " Marrow " theology (see Marrow Controversy). They had forty-five congregations in 1747 when the great " Breach " took place on the question of the lawfulness of taking a certain burgess oath (see Erskine, Ebenezer). The breach was healed in 1820 when the United Secession Church was formed, but not before both Anti- Burghers and Burghers had thrown off small minorities of Old Lights, the main bodies or New Lights having developed more modern views as to the limitations of the duty of the civil magistrate in the ecclesiastical sphere (see below, 6, § 1). The "Old Light Burghers" found their way back to the Establishment just in time to come out at the Disruption. The "Old Light Antiburghers " (afterwards called Original Seceders) joined the Free Church in 1852, with the exception of a minute remnant who still remain separate. The United Secession Church was distinguished for its foreign missionary enthusiasm, and grew and prospered until the Union of 1847.
The second secession, going later to form the United Presbyterian Church, was the Belief Church, and originated with Thomas Gillespie (q.v.), who stood almost alone till 1761 when a presbytery was formed " for the relief of Christians oppressed in their Christian privileges." This church rapidly grew and was distinguished for its liberal spirit.
Presbyterians