70

FREEBENCH-FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND

66

the Freewill Baptists with the "Christians," who were led by Elias Smith (1769-1846) and had been bitterly opposed by Randall, was nearly successful. Between 1820 and 1830 the denomination made considerable progress, especially in New England and the Middle West. The Freewill Baptists were joined in 1841 by many in the Carolinas who did not join the larger body distinguishing open-communion Baptists "-those themselves by the name of Original Freewill Baptists-and soon afterwards by some of the General Baptists of North Carolina and some of the Six Principle Baptists of Rhode Island (who had added the "laying on of hands" to the Five Principles hitherto held); and the abbreviation of the denominational name to Free Baptists suggests their liberal policy-indeed open communion is the main if not the only hindrance to union with the "regular" Baptist Church.

Colleges founded by the denomination, all co-educational, are: Hillsdale College, opened at Spring Harbor as Michigan Central College in 1844, and established at Hillsdale, Michigan, in 1855; Bates College, Lewiston, Maine, 1863, now non-sectarian; Rio Grande College, Rio Grande, Ohio, 1876; and Parker College, Winnebago City, Minnesota, opened in 1888. At the close of 1909 there were 1294 ministers, 1303 churches, and 73,536 members of the denomination in the United States. ing Star of Boston, established in 1826, is the most prominent The Mornjournal published by the church. In British North America, according to a Canadian census bulletin of 1902, there were, in 1901, 24,229 Free Baptists, of whom 15,502 were inhabitants of New Brunswick, 8355 of Nova Scotia, 246 of Ontario, and 87 of Quebec. The United Societies of Free Baptist Young People, an international organization founded in 1888, had in 1907 about 15,000 members. At the close of 1907 the “Original Freewill Baptists" had 120 ministers, 167 churches, and 12,000 members, practically all in the Carolinas.

See I. D. Stewart, History of the Free Will Baptists (Dover, N. H., 1862) for 1780-1830, and his edition of the Minutes of the General Conference of the Free Will Baptist Connection (Boston, 1887); James B. Taylor, The Centennial Record of the Free Will Baptists (Dover, 1881); John Buzzell, Memoir of Elder Benjamin Randall (Parson field, Maine, 1827); and P. Richardson," Randall and the Free Will Baptists," in The Christian Review, vol. xxiii. (Baltimore, 1858). FREEBENCH, in English law, the interest which a widow has in the copyhold lands of her husband, corresponding to dower in the case of freeholds. It depends upon the custom of the manor, but as a general rule the widow takes a third for her life of the lands of which her husband dies seised, but it may be an estate greater or less than a third. If the husband surrenders his copyhold and the surrenderee is admitted, or if he contracts for a sale, it will defeat the widow's freebench. As freebench is regarded as a continuation of the husband's estate, the widow does not (except by special custom) require to be admitted. FREE CHURCH FEDERATION, a voluntary association of British Nonconformist churches for co-operation in religious, social and civil work. It was the outcome of a unifying tendency displayed during the latter part of the 19th century. About 1890 the proposal that there should be a Nonconformist Church Congress analogous to the Anglican Church Congress was seriously considered, and the first was held in Manchester on the 7th of November 1892. In the following year it was resolved that the basis of representation should be neither personal (as in the Anglican Church Congress) nor denominational, but territorial. England and Wales have since been completely covered with a network of local councils, each of which elects its due proportion of representatives to the national gathering. This territorial arrangement eliminated all sectarian distinctions, and also the possibility of committing the different churches as such to any particular policy. The representatives of the local councils attend not as denominationalists but as Evangelical Free Churchmen. The name of the organization was changed from Congress to National Council as soon as the assembly ceased to be a fortuitous concourse of atoms, and consisted of duly appointed representatives from the local councils of every part of England. The local councils consist of representatives of the Congregational and Baptist Churches, the Methodist Churches,

the Presbyterian Church of England, the Free Episcopal Churches, the Society of Friends, and such other Evangelical Churches as the National Council may at any time admit. The constitution states the following as the objects of the National Council: (a) local councils; (c) to encourage devotional fellowship and mutual Evangelical Free Churches; (b) to assist in the organization of To facilitate fraternal intercourse and co-operation among the Churches; (d) to advocate the New Testament doctrine of the counsel concerning the spiritual life and religious activities of the Church, and to defend the rights of the associated Churches; (e) to promote the application of the law of Christ in every relation of human life. Although the objects of the Free Church councils are thus in their nature and spirit religious rather than political, there are occasions on which action is taken on great national affairs. Thus a thorough-going opposition was offered to candidates at the general election of 1906 who pledged themto the Education Act of 1902, and whole-hearted support accorded selves to altering that measure.

parochial system for the purpose of local work. Each of the associated churches is requested to look after a parish, not of A striking feature of the movement is the adoption of the course with any attempt to exclude other churches, but as having connected with some existing church. Throughout the United a special responsibility for those in that area who are not already Kingdom local councils are formed into federations, some fifty in number, which are intermediate between them and the national council. The local councils do what is possible to prevent overlapping and excessive competition between the churches. They also combine the forces of the local churches for evangelistic and general devotional work, open-air services, efforts on behalf of Sunday observance, and the prevention of gambling. Services are arranged in connexion with workhouses, hospitals and other large part of the operations of the local councils, and the Free Church Girls' Guild has a function similar to that of the Anglican public institutions. Social work of a varied character forms a Girls' Friendly Society. The national council engages in mission work on a large scale, and a considerable number of periodicals, hymn-books for special occasions, and works of different kinds explaining the history and ideals of the Evangelical Free Churches have been published. The churches represented in the National Council have 9966 ministers, 55,828 local preachers, 407,991 Sunday-school teachers, 3,416,377 Sunday scholars, 2,178,221 communicants, and sitting accommodation for 8,555,460.

A remarkable manifestation of this unprecedented reunion and published a catechism expressing the positive and fundawas the fact that a committee of the associated churches prepared mental agreement of all the Evangelical Free Churches on the January 1899). The catechism represents substantially the creed of not less than 80,000,000 Protestants. It has been widely essential doctrines of Christianity (see The Contemporary Review, circulated throughout Great Britain, the British Colonies and the United States of America, and has also been translated into Welsh, French and Italian.

Zealand, South Africa, Jamaica, the United States of America and India. It is perhaps necessary to add that it differs essentially The movement has spread to all parts of Australia, New from the Evangelical Alliance, inasmuch as its unit is not an individual, private Christian, but a definitely organized and particular doctrine of churchmanship which, as explained in visible Church. The essential doctrine of the movement is a the catechism, regards the Lord Jesus Christ as the sole and Divine Head of every branch of the Holy Catholic Church throughout the world. For this reason those who do not accept the deity of Christ are necessarily excluded from the national council and its local constituent councils.

free to go into any parish, to use a revised edition of the Book
FREE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, a Protestant episcopal church
of Common Prayer, to associate the laity with the clergy in the
"essentially one with the established church of England, but
government and work of the church, and to hold communion with
Christians of other denominations." It was founded in 1844

in opposition to the Tractarian movement, and embodies the distinctively evangelical elements of the Reformation. It preserves and maintains to the letter all that is Protestant and evangelical in the liturgy and services of the Anglican church, while its free constitution and revised formularies meet the needs of members of that communion who resent sacerdotal and ritualistic tendencies. There are two dioceses (northern and southern) each with a bishop, about 30 churches and ministers, and about 1300 members.

energy and vigour, began in 1638. The proceedings of the Assembly of that year, afterwards tardily and reluctantly acquiesced in by the state, finally issued in the acts of parliament of 1649, by which the Westminster standards were ratified, lay-patronage was abolished, and the coronation oath itself framed in accordance with the principles of Presbyterian church government. Another period of intense reaction soon set in. No Assemblies were permitted by Cromwell after 1653; and, soon after the Restoration, Presbytery was temporarily overthrown by a series of rescissory acts. Nor was the Revolution Settlement of 1690 so entirely favourable to the freedom of the church as the legislation of 1649 had been. Prelacy was abolished, and various obnoxious statutes were repealed, but the acts rescissory were not cancelled; presbyterianism was re-estab lished, but the statutory recognition of the Confession of Faith took no notice of certain qualifications under which that document had originally been approved by the Assembly of 1647;1 the old rights of patrons were again discontinued, but the large powers which had been conferred on congregations by the act of 1649 were not wholly restored. Nevertheless the great principle of a distinct ecclesiastical jurisdiction, embodied in the Confession of Faith, was accepted without reservation, and a Presbyterian polity effectively confirmed both then and at the ratifica

FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. In one sense the Free Church of Scotland dated its existence from the Disruption of 1843, in another it claimed to be the rightful representative of the National Church of Scotland (see SCOTLAND, CHURCH OF) as it was reformed in 1560. In the ecclesiastical history of Scotland the Free Churchman sees three great reforming periods. In his view these deserve to be called reforming on many accounts, but most especially because in them the independence of the church, her inherent scriptural right to exercise a spiritual jurisdiction in which she is responsible to her Divine Head alone, was both earnestly asserted and practically maintained. The first reformation extended from 1560, when the church freely held her first General Assembly, and of her own authority acted on the First Book of Discipline, to 1592, when her Presbyterian order was finally and fully ratified by the parliament. The secondtion of the treaty of Union. This settlement, however, did not period began in 1638, when, after 20 years of suspended animation, the Assembly once more shook off Episcopacy, and terminated in 1649, when the parliament of Scotland confirmed the church in her liberties in a larger and ampler sense than before. The third period began in 1834, when the Assembly made use of what the church believed to be her rights in passing the Veto and Chapel Acts, It culminated in the Disruption of 1843. The fact that the Church, as led first by John Knox and afterwards by Andrew Melville, claimed an inherent right to exercise a spiritual jurisdiction is notorious. More apt to be overlooked is the comparative freedom with which that right was actually used by the church irrespective of state recognition. That recognition was not given until after the queen's resignation in 1567;2 but, for several years before it came, the church had been holding her Assemblies and settling all questions of discipline, worship, and administration as they arose, in accordance with the first book of polity or discipline which had been drawn up in 1560. Further, in 1581 she, of her own motion, adopted a second book of a similar character, in which she expressly claimed an independent and exclusive jurisdiction or power in all matters ecclesiastical," which flows directly from God and the Mediator Jesus Christ, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head on earth, but only Christ, the only king and governor of his church "; and this claim, though directly negatived in 1584 by the " Black Acts," which included an Act of Supremacy over estates spiritual and temporal, continued to be asserted by the Assemblies, until at last it also was practically allowed in the act of 1592.3 This legislation of 1592, however, did not long remain in force. An act of parliament in 1606, which " reponed, restored and reintegrated" the estate of bishops to their ancient dignities, prerogatives and privileges, was followed by several acts of various subservient assemblies, which, culminating in that of 1618, practically amounted to a complete surrender of jurisdiction by the church itself. For twenty years no Assemblies whatever were held. This interval must necessarily be regarded from the Presbyterian point of view as having been one of very deep depression. But a second reformation, characterized by great "It is her being free, not her being established, that constitutes the real historical and hereditary identity of the Reformed National Church of Scotland." See Act and Declaration, &c., of Free Assembly, 1851.

In the act Anent the true and holy Kirk, and of those that are declared not to be of the same. This act was supplemented by that of 1579. Anent the Jurisdiction of the Kirk.

The Second Book of Discipline was not formally recognized in that act; but all former acts against "the jurisdiction and discipline of the true Kirk as the same is used and exercised within the realm " were abolished; and all " liberties, privileges, immunities and freedoms whatsoever" previously granted were ratified and approved.

long subsist unimpaired. In 1712 the act of Queen Anne, restor ing patronage to its ancient footing, was passed in spite of the earnest remonstrances of the Scottish people. For many years afterwards (until 1784) the Assembly continued to instruct each succeeding commission to make application to the king and the parliament for redress of the grievance. But meanwhile a new phase of Scottish ecclesiastical politics commonly known as Moderatism had been inaugurated, during the prevalence of which the church became even more indifferent than the lay patrons themselves to the rights of her congregations with regard to the "calling" of ministers. From the Free Church point of view, the period from which the secessions under Ebenezer Erskine and Thomas Gillespie are dated was also characterized by numerous other abuses on the Church's part which amounted to a practical surrender of the most important and distinctive principles of her ancient Presbyterian polity. Towards the beginning of the present century there were many circumstances, both within and without the church, which conspired to bring about an evangelical and popular reaction against this reign of "Moderatism." The result was a protracted struggle, which is commonly referred to as the Ten Years' Conflict, and which has been aptly described as the last battle in the long war which for nearly 300 years had been waged within the church itself, between the friends and the foes of the doctrine of an exclusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction. That final struggle may be said to have begun with the passing in 1834 of the "Veto " Act, by which it was declared to be a fundamental law of the church that no pastor should be intruded on a congregation contrary to the will of the people," and by which it was provided that the simple dissent of a majority of heads of families in a parish should be enough to warrant a presbytery in rejecting a presentee. The question of the legality of this measure soon came to be tried in the civil courts; and it was ultimately answered in a sense unfavourable to the church by the decision (1838) of the court of session in the Auchterarder case, to the effect that a presbytery had no right to reject a presentee simply because the parishioners protested against his settlement, but was bound to disregard the veto (see CHALMERS, THOMAS). This decision elicited from the Assembly

The most important of these had reference to the full right of a constituted church to the enjoyment of an absolutely unrestricted freedom in convening Assemblies. This very point on one occasion at least threatened to be the cause of serious misunderstandings between William and the people of Scotland. The difficulties were happily smoothed, however, by the wisdom and tact of William Carstares.

See Act and Declaration of Free Assembly, 1851.

This principle had been asserted even by an Assembly so late as that of 1736, and had been invariably presupposed in the " call," which had never ceased to be regarded as an indispensable pre requisite for the settlement of a minister.

of that year a new declaration of the doctrine of the spiritual | evangelical party had been further hampered by the decision of independence of the church. The "exclusive jurisdiction of the court of session declaring the ministers of chapels of ease to the civil courts in regard to the civil rights and emoluments be unqualified to sit in any church court. A final appeal to secured by law to the church and the ministers thereof" was parliament by petition was made in March 1843, when, by a acknowledged without qualification; and continued implicit majority of 135 (211 against 76), the House of Commons declined obedience to their decisions with reference to these rights and to attempt any redress of the grievances of the Scottish Church. emoluments was pledged. At the same time it was insisted on At the first session of the following General Assembly (18th May "that, as is declared in the Confession of Faith of this National 1843) the reply of the non-intrusion party was made in a protest, Established Church, 'the Lord Jesus Christ, as King and Head signed by upwards of 200 commissioners, to the effect that since, of the church, hath therein appointed a government in the hand in their opinion, the recent decisions of the civil courts, and the of church officers distinct from the civil magistrate'; and that still more recent sanction of these decisions by the legislature, in all matters touching the doctrine, discipline and government had made it impossible at that time to hold a free Assembly of of the church her judicatories possess an exclusive jurisdiction, the church as by law established, they therefore "protest that it founded on the Word of God, which power ecclesiastical" (in shall be lawful for us, and such other commissioners as may the words of the Second Book of Discipline) " flows immediately concur with us, to withdraw to a separate place of meeting, for the from God and the Mediator the Lord Jesus Christ, and is spiritual, purpose of taking steps for ourselves and all who adhere to us→→→ not having a temporal head on earth, but only Christ, the only maintaining with us the Confession of Faith and standards of spiritual King and Governor of His Kirk." And it was resolved the Church of Scotland as heretofore understood-for separating to assert, and at all hazards defend, this spiritual jurisdiction, in an orderly way from the Establishment, and thereupon and firmly to enforce obedience to the same upon the office- adopting such measures as may be competent to us, in humble bearers and members of the church. The decision of the court dependence on God's grace and the aid of His Holy Spirit, for of session having been confirmed by the House of Lords early in the advancement of His glory, the extension of the gospel of our 1839, it was decided in the Assembly of that year that the Lord and Saviour, and the administration of the affairs of Christ's church, while acquiescing in the loss of the temporalities at house according to His holy word." The reading of this document Auchterarder, should reaffirm the principle of non-intrusion as was followed by the withdrawal of the entire non-intrusion party an integral part of the constitution of the Reformed Church to another place of meeting, where the first Assembly of the Free of Scotland, and that a committee should be appointed to confer Church was constituted, with Dr Thomas Chalmers as moderator. with the government with a view to the prevention, possible, This Assembly sat from the 18th to the 30th of May, and transof any further collision between the civil and ecclesiastical acted a large amount of important business. On Tuesday the authorities. While the conference with the government had no 23rd, 3964 ministers and professors publicly adhibited their better result than an unsuccessful attempt at compromise by names to the Act of Separation and deed of demission by which means of Lord Aberdeen's Bill, which embodied the principle they renounced all claim to the benefices they had held in conof a dissent with reasons, still graver complications were arising nexion with the Establishment, declaring them to be vacant, and out of the Marnoch and other cases. In the circumstances it consenting to their being dealt with as such. By this impressive was resolved by the Assembly of 1842 to transmit to the queen, proceeding the signatories voluntarily surrendered an annual by the hands of the lord high commissioner, a "claim, declara- | income amounting to fully £100,000. tion, and protest," complaining of the encroachments of the court of session, and also an address praying for the abolition of patronage. The home secretary's answer (received in January 1843) gave no hope of redress. Meanwhile the position of the 1 According to the Free Church" Protest" of 1843 it was in these cases decided (1) that the courts of the church were liable to be compelled to intrude ministers on reclaiming congregations; (2) that the civil courts had power to interfere with and interdict the preaching of the gospel and administration of ordinances as authorized and enjoined by the church; (3) that the civil courts had power to suspend spiritual censures pronounced by the courts of the church, and to interdict their execution as to spiritual effects, functions and privileges; (4) that deposed ministers, and probationers deprived of their licence, could be restored by the mandate of the civil courts to the spiritual office and status of which the church courts had deprived them; (5) that the right of membership in ecclesiastical courts. could be determined by the civil courts; (6) that the civil courts had power to supersede the majority of a church court of the Establishment in regard to the exercise of its spiritual functions as a church court, and to authorize the minority to exercise the said functions in opposition to the court itself and to the superior judicatories of the church; (7) that processes of ecclesiastical discipline could be arrested by the civil courts; and (8) that without the sanction of the civil courts no increased provision could be made for the spiritual care of a parish, although such provision left all civil rights and patrimonial interests untouched. The narrative and argument of this elaborate and able document cannot be reproduced here. In substance it is a claim "as of right' on behalf of the church and of the nation and people of Scotland that the church shall freely possess and enjoy her liberties, government, discipline, rights and privileges according to law, and that she shall be protected therein from the foresaid unconstitutional and illegal encroachments of the said court of session, and her people secured in their Christian and constitutional rights and liberties. This claim is followed by the " declaration" that the Assembly cannot intrude ministers on reclaiming congregations, or carry on the government of Christ's church subject to the coercion of the court of session; and by the "protest that all acts of the parliament of Great Britain passed without the consent of the Scottish church and nation, in alteration or derogation of the government, discipline, rights and privileges of the church, as also all sentences of courts in contravention of said government, discipline, rights and privileges, "are and shall be in themselves void and null, and of no legal force or effect."

"

The first care of the voluntarily disestablished church was to provide incomes for her clergy and places of worship for her people. As early as 1841 indeed the leading principle of a "sustentation fund" for the support of the ministry had been announced by Dr Robert Smith Candlish; and at " Convocation," a private unofficial meeting of the members of the evangelical or non-intrusion party held in November 1842, Dr Chalmers was prepared with a carefully matured scheme according to which "each congregation should do its part in sustaining the whole, and the whole should sustain each congregation." Between November 1842 and May 1843, 647 associations had been formed; and at the first Assembly it was announced that upwards of £17,000 had already been contributed. At the close of the first financial year (1843-1844) it was reported that the fund had exceeded £61,000. It was participated in by 583 ministers; and 470 drew the full equal dividend of £105. Each successive year showed a steady increase in the gross amount of the fund; but owing to an almost equally rapid increase of the number of new ministerial charges participating in its benefits, the stipend payable to each minister did not for many years reach the sum of £150 which had been aimed at as a minimum. Thus in 18441845 the fund had risen to £76,180, but the ministers had also increased to 627, and the equal dividend therefore was only £122. During the first ten years the annual income averaged £84,057; during the next decade £108,643; and during the third £130,246. The minimum of £150 was reached at last in 1868; and subsequently the balance remaining after that minimum had been provided was treated as a surplus fund, and distributed among those ministers whose congregations have contributed at certain specified rates per member. In 1878 the total amount received for this fund was upwards of £177,000; in this 1075 ministers participated. The full equal dividend of £157 was paid to 766 ministers; and additional grants of £36 and £18 The Scottish members voted with the minority in the proportion of 25 to 12. The number ultimately rose to 474.

how far the courts of law would be prepared to go in the direction | New College, Edinburgh) to the bar of the Assembly for unsound of recognizing voluntary tribunals and a kind of secondary exclusive jurisdiction founded on contract. But, whether recognized or not, the church for her part continued to believe that she had an inherent spiritual jurisdiction, and remained unmoved in her determination to act in accordance with that resolution "notwithstanding of whatsoever trouble or persecution may arise." 2

teaching or writing; but in every case these were abortive, the Assembly never taking any step beyond warning the accused that their primary duty was to teach and defend the church's faith as embodied in the confession. In 1892 the Free Church, following the example of the United Presbyterian Church and the Church of Scotland (1889), passed a Declaratory Act relaxing the stringency of subscription to the confession, with the result that a small number of ministers and congregations, mostly in the Highlands, severed their connexion with the church and formed the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, on strictly and straitly orthodox lines. In 1907 this body had twenty congregations and twelve ministers.

In 1863 a motion was made and unanimously carried in the Free Church Assembly for the appointment of a committee to confer with a corresponding committee of the United Presbyterian Synod, and with the representatives of such other disestablished churches as might be willing to meet and deliberate with a view to an incorporating union. Formal negotiations The Free Church always regarded herself as a National Church, between the representatives of these two churches were begun and during this period she sought actively to be true to that shortly afterwards, which resulted in a report laid before the character by providing church ordinances for the increasing following Assembly. From this document it appeared that the population of Scotland and applying herself to the new problems committees of the two churches were not at one on the question of non-church-going, and of the changing habits of the people. as to the relation of the civil magistrate to the church. While on Her Assembly's committee on religion and morals worked the part of the Free Church it was maintained that he "may toward the same ends as the similar organization of the Establawfully acknowledge, as being in accordance with the Word of❘lished Church, and in her, as in the other churches, the standard God, the creed and jurisdiction of the church," and that "it is of parochial and congregational activity was raised and new his duty, when necessary and expedient, to employ the national methods of operation devised. She passed legislation on the resources in aid of the church, provided always that in doing so, difficult problem of ridding the church of inefficient ministers. while reserving to himself full control over the temporalities The use of instrumental music was sanctioned in Free Churches which are his own gift, he abstain from all authoritative inter- during this period. An association was formed in 1891 to proference in the internal government of the church," it was declared mote the ends of edification, order and reverence in the public by the committee of the United Presbyterian Church that, services of the church, and published in 1898 A New Directory "inasmuch as the civil magistrate has no authority in spiritual for Public Worship which does not provide set forms of prayer, things, and as the employment of force in such matters is opposed but directions as to the matter of prayer in the various services. to the spirit and precepts of Christianity, it is not within his The Free Church took a large share in the study of hymnology province to legislate as to what is true in religion, to prescribe and church music, which led to the production of The Church a creed or form of worship to his subjects, or to endow the church Hymnary. From 1885 to 1895 much of the energy of all the Presbyfrom national resources." In other words, while the Free Church | terian churches was absorbed by the disestablishment agitation. maintained that in certain circumstances it was lawful and even In the former year the Free Church, having almost entirely incumbent on the magistrate to endow the church and on the shed the establishment principle on which it was founded, began church to accept his endowment, the United Presbyterians main- to rival the United Presbyterian Church in its resolutions calling tained that in no case was this lawful either for the one party or for for the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland. In spite of the other. Thus in a very short time it had been made perfectly the offers of the Establishment Assembly to confer with the evident that a union between the two bodies, if accomplished dissenting churches about union, the assaults upon its status at all, could only be brought about on the understanding that waxed in vigour, till in 1893 the Free Church hailed the result of the question as to the lawfulness of state endowments should the general election as a verdict of the constituencies in favour be an open one. The Free Church Assembly, by increasing of disestablishment, and insisted upon the government of the day majorities, manifested a readiness for union, even although taking up Sir Charles Cameron's bill. unanimity had not been attained on that theoretical point. But there was a minority which did not sympathize in this readiness, and after ten years of fruitless effort it was in 1873 found to be expedient that the idea of union with the United Presbyterians should for the time be abandoned. Other negotiations, however, which had been entered upon with the Reformed Presbyterian Church at a somewhat later date proved more successful; and a majority of the ministers of that church with their congregations were united with the Free Church in 1876.

(J. S. BL.)

In the last quarter of the 19th century the Free Church continued to be the most active, theologically, of the Scottish Churches. The College chairs were almost uniformly filled by advanced critics or theologians, inspired more or less by Professor A. B. Davidson. Dr A. B. Bruce, author of The Training of the Twelve, &c., was appointed to the chair of apologetics and New Testament exegesis in the Glasgow College in 1875; Henry Drummond (author of Natural Law in the Spiritual World, &c.) was made lecturer in natural science in the same college in 1877 and became professor in 1884; and Dr George Adam Smith (author of The Twelve Prophets, &c.) was called to the Hebrew chair in 1892. Attempts were made between 1890 and 1895 to bring all these professors except Davidson (similar attacks were also made on Dr Marcus Dods, afterwards principal of the

1 See Taylor Innes, Law of Creeds in Scotland, p. 258 seq. The language of Dr Buchanan, for example, in 1860 was (mutatis mutandis) the same as that which he had employed in 1838 in moving the Independence resolution already referred to.

During the last four or five years of the century the Free and United Presbyterian churches, which after the failure of their union negotiations in 1873 had been connected together by a Mutual Eligibility Act enabling a congregation of one church to call a minister from the other, devoted their energy to the arrangement of an incorporating union. The Synod of the United Presbyterian Church resolved in 1896 to "take steps towards union," and in the following year the Free Assembly responded by appointing a committee to confer with a committee of the other church. The joint committee discovered a "remarkable and happy agreement" between the doctrinal standards, rules and methods of the two bodies, and with very little concessions on either side a common constitution and common questions and formula" for the admission of ministers and office-bearers were arranged. A minority, always growing smaller, of the Free Church Assembly, protested against the proposed union, and threatened if it were carried through to test its legality in the courts. To meet this opposition, the suggestion is understood to have been made that an act of parliament should be applied for to legalize the union; but this was not done, and the union was carried through on the understanding that the question of the lawfulness of church establishments should be an open one.

"

The supreme courts of the churches met for the last time in their respective places of meeting on the 30th of October 1900, and on the following day the joint meeting took place at which the union was completed, and the United Free Church of Scotland (q.v.) entered on its career. The protesting and