John Tulloch · 27 of 27

IV. John Knox. · Part 5

As a thinker, save, perhaps, on political subjects, he takes no rank; and his political views, wise and enlightened as they were, seem rather the growth of his manly instinctive sense than reasoned from any fundamental principles. Earnest, intense, and powerful in every practical direction, he was not in the least characteristically reflective or speculative. Everywhere the hero, he is nowhere the philosopher or sage. He was, in short, a man for his work and time—knowing what was good for his country there and then, when the old Catholic bonds had rotted to the very core. A man of God, yet with sinful weaknesses like us all. There is something in him we can no longer love,—a harshness and severity by no means beautiful or attractive; but there is little in him that we cannot in the retrospect heartily respect, and even admiringly cherish.

Of his special work we have already so far spoken. It was truly a great and noble work, though with harsh features in it, like the man himself. It was the result of no mere party motives, but the expression of a revived Christian interest, and of a new and healthy national feeling. Nowhere does the spiritual principle appear more prominently as the spring of the Reformation than in Scotland. The reawakened idea of individual relation and responsibility to God, and of the only possible realisation of both in Christ, is everywhere the living impulse, originating and carrying forward the movement. But there is also more than this. Alongside of the spiritual influence, and bound up with it in a very notable, expressive, and more complete form than elsewhere, is the principle of Nationalism. The Scottish Reformation was not merely a spiritual insurrection; it was a national revolution—the expression of a new social life, which now in the sixteenth century had become the most educated and intelligent in the country. The two influences, civil and religious, intersected and moulded one another in a marked degree, though in what degree exactly it is difficult to say. In no other way can we explain the radical change that then passed upon the face of Scotland, than by the fact that new social forces, which had been for some time working in the country, came now to the surface, and stamped themselves definitely upon its expanding civilisation. Knox was at once the preacher of a free Gospel, and the representative of this broader and freer nationality. And correspondently with this character, the movement which he headed, and which practically he carried forward to triumph, assumed from the beginning a marked political aspect, and sought to guarantee itself in new modes of political as well as spiritual action. The General Assembly of the Church was in reality a Commons’ House of Parliament, discussing the most varied interests of the country, and giving effect to the popular, or at least the middle-class feeling, on all the urgent questions of the day. It was the substantial national power which the Assemblies thus enjoyed which made them so prized on the one hand, and so feared and hated on the other. The clergy, and barons united with them, felt that with the right of free assembly they were powerful against any combination of their enemies. The sovereign and great nobles knew that in the face of these Assemblies they could never hold the country by the old feudal bonds of government. It was a life-and-death contention on either side; and Scottish Presbytery became thus, in the very circumstances of its origin, and still more in the progress of its history, intensely political, and could not help becoming so.

A Calvinistic creed and a Presbyterian ritual were the shapes into which the Scottish Reformation, not at once, but very soon, and from the growing necessities of its position, hardened itself. At first, we have seen, it did not bear any strong impress of Calvinism; the affinity was apparent, but the likeness was far from rigorous; and had it been left to its own free national development, undisturbed by royal despotism and ecclesiastical arbitrariness, it might have matured, both doctrinally and ritually, into a form comparatively expansive and catholic. It might have gradually penetrated the old historical families of the kingdom which had hitherto stood aloof from it, and moulded the nation,—people, barons, and nobles,—into religious unity. This, however, was not to be its fate. It was not destined to a quiet career of diffusion and growth, but to a career of tragic storm and struggle, in the course of which, while it kept its own with a brave tenacity and a grand heroism, which shed an undying glory amid the stormy gloom of its eventful history, it yet never fused itself more deeply than at first into the outlying sections of the national life. The original oppositions, after the lapse of a hundred and twenty years, reappear at the Revolution only more intensified and defined than ever; and to this day they remain uneffaced, and probably uneffaceable. Scotland presents, in this respect, a singular and original spectacle. While Presbyterianism, in its scarcely differing shades, keeps a vigorous and immovable hold of the heart of the nation, there are yet traces of genuine sentiment in the country transmitted by clear lines of descent from the sixteenth century, that not merely lie outside of it, but show no inclination to mingle with the main current of the national religious feeling.

In the course of the opposition which it encountered, Calvinism, in its most rigorous form, naturally became the dogmatic stronghold of the Scottish Reformation. Clearness, definiteness, and a bold and ready audacity of doctrinal opinion, became necessary elements of strength as the struggle went on; and when the Protestant influence in Scotland allied itself with English Puritanism, and, in fact, became one of the most prominent phases of the great Puritanic movement, it took up, of course, the doctrinal as well as the anti-ritual peculiarities of this movement, and the “Confession of Faith” and “Directory of Public Worship” are the remarkable monuments of this second stage of its history. Beyond doubt, also, the more rigorous Calvinism of the Confession was a natural expression of the Scottish mind applied to religious subjects, sharing, as this mind strongly does, with the French, in that “logical directness” which delights in constructive systems, and in the exhibition of coherency and theoretical order, rising from some single principle, rather than in an adaptive earnestness and manifoldness of opinion. It is nevertheless strange, considering the marked nationality of the religion of Scotland, that it is an English and not a Scottish document that remains the historical expression of the National Faith.

The Calvinism of Scotland seems at first sight to have enjoyed a more consistent and vigorous life than that either of Geneva or of Holland; but a nearer inspection proves that the difference is more apparent than real. Scottish Theology has, in truth, undergone a series of singular modifications during the last two hundred years, from the polemical hardness and spiritual sentimentalisms of Rutherfurd—the devotional and apologetic mildness of Halyburton—the fervid but untempered earnestness of Boston—the polite moralisms of Blair—and the conciliatory doctrinism of Hill and Campbell—to the genial but inconsistent theories of Chalmers. And of all these modifications none is more singular, and certainly none less understood, than that which sprang from the admission of Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of philosophical necessity as constituting a renewed basis and point of defence for Calvinism. A meagre rationalism, under the name of moderatism, had in the last century eaten away the heart of the old Calvinistic religious when the cold breath of this new doctrine came as a bracing restorative to the logical mind of Scotland, and it was eagerly seized upon and embraced as a supposed mediatrix between philosophy and faith. It had an intrinsic charm to such a mind as Chalmers’s, and more than anything seemed to strengthen him in the old dogmatic pathways; but a union so unnatural could not even be blessed by his strong genius, and this theological necessitarianism is already giving place before the progress of a more spiritual philosophy.

Whether the Scottish mind is likely at length to free itself from its intense logical tendencies, and to expand into a broader, more learned, and more genial and comprehensive theological literature, it is somewhat difficult to say. Undoubtedly the higher intelligence of the country has shaken itself largely free from the old dogmatic bonds. A disintegrating process is at work in the forms of both its religious thought and life; and many, where their fathers found living wells, find only empty cisterns. The danger of this temper is, that it may become impatient and destructive, rather than inquiring and freely conservative, and thus, as in last century, that dogmatism may pass into rationalism, and spiritual earnestness into indifference. The best, indeed the only, safeguard against this is the growth of a critical and historical spirit, which, while looking back with reverence to the past, and appreciating all that is good and holy and great in it, is not yet absolutely wedded to it as a formula beyond which, or apart from which, there can be no life. There is some hopeful evidence of the rise of such a spirit spreading from the richer soil of the English theological mind, and quickened by the fertile seeds from Continental scholarship and thought. It were well that this spirit should ripen free from German arbitrariness or audacious self-confidence of any kind.

Perhaps the living study of such men as these pages have feebly endeavoured to sketch may be helpful in this direction—men whose example of Christian energy, and patriotism, and piety, is so much greater than their mere dogmatisms. The world may outlive the latter—nay, in so far as they were merely personal or intellectual, it has already outlived them; but the former are. the needful salt of its ever-freshening life. We have entered into the labours of these men, and fruits have sprung from them. in some respects of a richer and more enduring strength than they themselves dreamed of. Ours is the inheritance; theirs was the labour. While we rejoice in our higher heritage, let us not forget those who first broke the bonds of spiritual tyranny. Thought must advance, and none need try to check it. But while we move forward, let us revere the Past; and as we enter within the gates of a New era, let us look back with admiration, and, so far as we can, with love, if not with regret, to the great figures that stand at the illuminated portals of the Old.