Page images
PDF
EPUB

than silver and gold to her children and her children's children-the brave and venerable pilgrim, in her 88th year, passed peacefully away. "The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, nor the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy upon thee."

Finally, of those called hence in the bloom of youth, we think of such as little Polly Stead, to whose childlike faith Christ was so real that she prayed that she might find her lost doll, and rejoiced in a speedy answer; of gentle Annie Birch, whose last words were "I am going home;" (Appendix D., p. 404) and the late beloved secretary of our Sunday-school, gifted, untiring, systematic, and devoted - Walter Spencer, who, catching, too early for us, the

"Murmurs and scents of the infinite sea,"

said, "I'm all right, papa-I'm all right," as he passed into the radiant realm beyond. But

"Death only grasps; to live is to pursue."

While leaves are shed, the living tree remains.

Thus, in the good providence of God, preserved through shade and sunshine, storm and calm, this old Puritan tree still occupies its ancient place. And although, like the vine of the Sacred Psalter, there have been times when, unhappily, men have put forth unhallowed hands to spoil its beauty or destroy its fruitfulness, yet firmly rooted in the hill of Zion, and watered from fountains which no human hand can seal, it still bears fruit in old age; and while underneath its branches Christian youth rejoice, wearied pilgrims,

[graphic]
[ocr errors]

378

CHAPTER V.

P

CONCLUSION.

RESBYTERY stands in the vanguard of those forces that make for liberty and order in human society-the liberty that may not degenerate into licence, and the order that may not harden into oppression. David Hume, the historian, whom no one will suspect of Puritanic proclivities, says-" So absolute was the authority of the Crown, that the precious spark of liberty had been kindled and was preserved by the Puritans alone; and it was to this sect that the English owe the whole freedom of their constitution." We stand on the old lines-the imperishable principles of Puritan and apostolic times; those principles which, rightly understood and fairly applied, are at once the foe of licence and anarchy, and of every species of oppression. Presbytery absorbs and honours, applies and maintains, with perhaps greater fulness and more even balance than any other ecclesiastical system, the wise and benign apostolic dictum, given for all time, suited to all nations—“Honour all men, love the brotherhood, fear God, honour the king." Its essential agreement with the vital representative genius of Anglo-Saxon institutions, not only industrial, social, philanthropic, and municipal, but also parliamentary, is very marked. Indeed, what AngloSaxon England has elaborated in her most characteristic institutions, civil and political, through centuries of ardent liberty-loving toil, the English Presbyterian Church, which is likewise Anglo-Saxon, has supplied by her polity within the ecclesiastical domain-a polity whose life-blood is liberty, whose action is order, whose method is popular representation; and which, against oppression, has been preserved to us by our fathers through blood and exile, toil and want, and tears. The sacred and the secular have thus kindred governing forces. The principles are homogeneous in both cases representative and democratic. Their spheres of action are at once distinct, co-ordinate, and complemental-the State in the one case, the Church in the other. Presbytery, in its cardinal principle of democratic representation, answers, in the Church, to the recently conceded democratic enfranchisement in the State. Of all ecclesiastical systems, therefore, it stands pre-eminently the most English and democratic, as opposed to all that is feudal and privileged, inequitable and oligarchic. Moreover, it was elaborated from Holy Writ, on historic English soil, by distinguished English divines, and promulgated by an illustrious English Parliament.

Here we may add, as has sometimes been remarked, that it is not difficult to find in the British Parliament the analogue, in the political sphere, of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church. Unfortunately, however, for both this country and her statesmen, the political instrument has worked, hitherto, denuded of those subordinate members of a fully equipped system represented in the Presbyterian polity by Provincial Synods, District Presbyteries, &c. One inevitable effect of this, especially in a rapidly expanding country, is an ever-increasing over-pressure of work heaped on the supreme assembly of the nation. The natural consequences appear in periodic fag of both brain and muscle of its most faithful members; liability to slip-slop or helter-skelter legislative and executive action; and ocсаsional dead-lock of the old Temple Bar 'bus description. A Naysmith hammer is admirably adapted for forging ordnance or armour for ironclads, but a much humbler instrument is sufficient for cracking nuts. The Naysmith, skilfully handled and with plenty of time on its hands, can of course do it, but otherwise the ordnance and ironclads suffer for the lack of fitness and proportion in organic adjustment. Quite recently an important step has at length happily been taken in the way of instituting the political analogue of the Provincial Synod; and County Councils, with well-compacted organisation and clearly defined functions, may fittingly crack many of even the larger nuts-say the cocoa-nuts - on which the parliamentary Naysmith has hitherto unwisely expended its energies. But that imperial instrument, in the past, has had to bend its potent forces to even filberts and hazels, and the dignity of even County Councils ought not to be endangered by these. We need, therefore, in some form or other, the political analogue of the third member of the Presbyterian system-the District Presbytery; and until that has been furnished the County Councils will not work either so sweetly or effectively as it is necessary for the wellbeing of the community they should.

He to whom we are mainly indebted for County Councils, the Right Hon. C. T. Ritchie, President of the Local Government Board, was no doubt well acquainted with the Presbyterian system of government. It

« PreviousContinue »