W/E are now in the heart of the Scottish conflicts of the century.It is the crisis of the contest between Cavalier and Whig.On one point the philosophers and the evangelicals agree: they are defenders of the House of Hanover and opponents of the Pretender and the Stuarts, of whom they could not expect that they would be supporters of culture on the one hand, or of Protestantism on the other.
The last formidable contest between Jacobite and Whig, was decided in behalf of the latter in 1746, at Culloden; and henceforth the former.is sinking into a state of complaining and garrulous, though often lively, old age.The religious conflicts are deeper, and continue for a longer period.From the time of Hutcheson, there is a felt and known feud, not always avowed, between the new philosophy and the old theology.It would have been greatly for the benefit of both, had there been one to reconcile and unite them.In the absence of such, each ran its own {87} course and did its own work, being good so far as it went, and evil only in its narrowness and exclusiveness, in what it overlooked or denied.The philosophers were laudably engaged when they were unfolding man's intellectual, esthetic, and moral nature; but they missed the deepest properties of human nature, when, in the fear of the ghosts of fanaticism, they took no notice of man's feelings of want, his sense of sin, and his longing after God and immortality; and the views of theologians would have been more just and profound, had they observed -- always in the inductive manner of the Scottish school -- those nascent ideas of good and evil and infinity which are at the basis of all religious knowledge and belief.The evangelical preachers were only faithful to their great Master when they declined to allow the doctrines of grace to sink out of sight; but they erred so far as they opposed the refinement and liberal sentiments which the moral philosophers were introducing, and showed that they were incapable of fully appreciating the apostolic command, "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Pity it is that it should be so, but it is only by vibrations that the world moves on, only by breezes that its atmosphere is kept pure; and when the church errs by cowardice, it has to be rebuked by the unbelieving as -- an old Covenanter might have said -- the father of the faithful was rebuked by a pagan Egyptian.It was only in a later age, and mainly through the influence of Chalmers, that the church was prepared heartily to accept what was true in the Scottish philosophy, and to acknowledge its compatibility with the doctrine of salvation by grace.
Three distinct religious parties are being formed in Scotland, not including the covenanting "remnant," who never submitted to the Revolution settlement, and whose vocation was on the mountains, rather than the colleges of their country.First, in the Church of Scotland there is the "Moderate" type of minister crystallized by coldness out of the floating elements.He is or be affects to be elegant and tolerant, and he is terribly afraid of a zealous religious life.He wishes to produce among the people a morality without religion, or at least without any of the peculiar dogmas of Christianity.As yet he himself is a moral man, and the people are moral, for they believe in the old theology; in the next age both pastors and people, retaining little faith, become considerably immoral, showing that, if we would have the fruit good, we must make the tree good.
This party, preaching moral sermons without doctrine, is the genuine product of the Scottish philosophy in the Church of Scotland.
Secondly, the Evangelical party, called by their opponents `zealots' and `highflyers,' were placed in an ambiguous position and shorn of much of their strength since the enforcement of the law of patronage.They are fast becoming a minority, and a small minority, in the church;and they have to submit to much that they abhor, as, for example, to the settlement of pastors contrary to the will of the people.But they labor earnestly to keep alive the fire all through the dark and wild night; they cherish fellowship with other evangelical churches, and anticipate the missionary spirit of a later {88} age by countenancing the " Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge."They come into collision with the philosophic moralists by maintaining so resolutely the doctrines of grace; and they carry their antagonism to the " legal " system to the very verge of Antinomianism, as shown in their favor for the "Marrow of Divinity," this by a reaction prompting the moral divines to preach a morality without an atonement for immorality.
