AFTER THE REVOLUTION SETTLEMENT.

CHAPTER I.

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IT is not easy to determine the date at which the Great Hamilton Street Congregation can be said to have originated; a short narrative will explain how this difficulty arises. After the Revolution Settlement in 1688, the Reformed Presbyterian Church enjoyed for a time the services of an ordained ministry; but in October, 1690, the ministers—Messrs Shields, Boyd and Linning—all joined the Establishment, and a large body of the people accompanied them. The majority of the people, however, continued to occupy their old independent position, and were formed into a somewhat irregularly constituted Church. They met for worship in Fellowship Meetings called Societies, the Societies in a shire formed a Correspondence, and deputations from these Correspondences formed the General Meeting, which was convened as occasion required,

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and managed the general affairs of the whole Community.

The people would willingly have sent some of their number to study in Holland, and to receive ordination from the Protestant Church there, as had been done in the case of the Rev. James Renwick, and Messrs Shields and Linning; but Mr Linning had written to the Church in Holland regarding the Society people in such terms as to make the Dutch ministers unwilling to receive any more of their students. The Societies were thus compelled to wait patiently till God in His providence should provide for them teachers in some other way.

Even in those days the Covenanting Cause had zealous friends in Glasgow and its neighbourhood. During the killing time, in a dingy low room in the Goosedubs, one of the Societies met regularly for worship; and there at one time three of the ejected ministers are said to have lain concealed. In the Minute of the General Meeting, 25th October, 1693, mention is made of the Correspondence in Clydesdale and some friends in Cathcart. A later minute gives a not very flattering glimpse of the Societies in Glasgow. It runs thus—“Conclusions of the General Meeting, Frierminon, June, 1694. That the Societies in the Barony of Glasgow convene,

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particularly James Red and Gavin Wedderspoon, and draw up causes of a fast concerning the disorders amongst themselves, and set time apart for turning away of the Lord’s wrath, and satisfaction of one another.” For a long time afterwards there is no special mention of the Glasgow Societies, and we may hope that if they were not very active in the affairs of the Church, they had at least learned to avoid disorders amongst themselves, and to live at peace.

On the 5th of April, 1704, the General Meeting received a communication from the Rev. John M‘Millan, M.A., minister of the Parish of Balmaghie, which was followed ere very long by his joining the Societies and becoming their first minister. Mr M‘Millan was a native of the Parish of Minnigaff, in Kirkcudbrightshire, where he was born in 1669. He had reached manhood before he went to study at the University of Edinburgh. There he took the degree of Master of Arts, 28th June, 1697. In his early years he was connected with the Established Church, but while a student he joined the Society people, and continued in communion with them till he entered the Divinity Hall. He was licensed to preach the Gospel by the Presbytery of Kirkcudbright, on the 26th of November, 1700. He was called to

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the parish of Balmaghie, May 29th, 1701, and ordained on the 18th of September. In 1702 the Synod of Galloway instructed its ministers to explain the National Covenant to their people. Mr M‘Millan also explained the Solemn League and Covenant, and in concurrence with his session appointed a day of fasting, when the Covenants were solemnly sworn “in the way of adherence.” In July, 1703, he and two neighbouring ministers presented a petition craving the Presbytery, among other things, to take steps to assert the Divine right of Presbytery, the intrinsic power of the Church, and Christ’s headship over the Church. The petition was very unpalatable to the Presbytery, and efforts were made to persuade the three petitioners to allow it to go to sleep. This Mr M‘Millan declined to do, but the other two ministers were more tractable, and submitted.

Failing to silence Mr M‘Millan in this way, the Presbytery appointed a meeting at Balmaghie on the 30th of December, 1703, ostensibly for the purpose of visiting the Congregation. Without Mr M‘Millan’s knowledge, a libel was prepared, charging him with following divisive courses, and this libel was handed to the Presbytery officer to be read at the Church door when the Presbytery met. Mr M‘Millan had

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been appointed to preach before the Presbytery that day. He took the libel to the pulpit and read it to the people, “obtesting them to produce whatever they had to lay to his charge.”

After the sermon the libel was again read, and an attempt to prove it was made, but none of the charges could be substantiated. The Presbytery offered to proceed no further if Mr M‘Millan would withdraw his petition. This he again declined to do, and the Presbytery thereupon broke up. Some of the members went to a neighbouring Church, and having reconstituted the Presbytery, they, without even summoning Mr M‘Millan to appear before them, at once passed sentence of deposition. Mr M‘Millan entirely disregarded this monstrous sentence, and appealed against it to the General Assembly. But that body was as little disposed to tolerate the free expression of his views as the Presbytery had been, and ultimately Mr M‘Millan, having failed to get the sentence of deposition removed, withdrew from the fellowship of the Established Church.

For more than two years the General Meeting and Mr M‘Millan frequently met to exchange views, and at length on 10th October, 1706, the Societies gave a unanimous call to him to become their minister, which call he, after some

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consideration, accepted. On the 2nd December of that year, he began his ministry among the Society people by a sermon preached at Crawford-John to a goodly company. He did not formally separate himself from the Established Church till the 29th September, 1708, when he and Mr John M‘Neil gave in to the Commission of the General Assembly at Edinburgh a joint protestation, declinature, and appeal. Ere long Mr M‘Millan appears to have gained the affection of the people in a very remarkable degree. “Many signs and tokens of the Master’s presence being with him, to the great comfort and satisfaction of the remnant who had been so long deprived of the sweet Gospel and ordinances of God’s House.” Much work awaited him, for during sixteen years the more faithful of the people had refrained from marriage, and all the children born during these years remained unbaptized. The writer remembers having had a quarry pointed out to him near Airdrie, in which, after a sermon by Mr M‘Millan, about fifty young persons were baptized, including all the members of some large families.

Shortly after Mr M‘Millan had accepted the Societies’ call, Mr John M‘Neil also connected himself with them. He was a probationer of the Church of Scotland, but his license had been

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taken from him for the active support he had given to Mr M‘Millan and the sympathy with his views which he had freely expressed. The two friends continued to be fellow-labourers for many years. Mr M‘Neil was never ordained, as he had conscientious scruples about accepting ordination from one man. He died in 1722, leaving Mr M‘Millan the only minister of the community for the long period of twenty-one years. In 1743, the Rev. Thomas Nairn, an ordained minister, who had been expelled from the Associate Presbytery for espousing the principles held by the Reformed Presbyterians on the subject of the Magistracy, joined Mr M‘Millan and the Societies, and on the 1st August of that year the Reformed Presbytery was formed. After this a number of young men were trained for the ministry under the superintendence of Mr M‘Millan, and in due course licensed and ordained.

The first licentiate of the Church was Mr Alexander Marshall, who having attended the University, and received the ordinary education of a student in divinity, was licensed to preach the Gospel in April, 1744. He was shortly after called to the ministry and ordained.

The Rev. John Cuthbertson was ordained in 1747.

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The Rev. James Hall in 1750.

The Rev. John M‘Millan—the second—in 1750.

The Rev. Hugh Innes in 1751.

The Rev. John Courtass in 1755.

But before Mr Courtass became one of the ministers, the first John M‘Millan had passed away. He died on the 20th November, 1753, O.S., in the 84th year of his age, and was buried in Dalserf churchyard, where a handsome monument has been erected to his memory. His last years were saddened by the secession of his co-presbyters, Messrs Hall and Innes, and a section of the people, and the hard things said of him in some of their pamphlets; but he was comforted by the loving regard of the Church, to which for many years he had been a father. The term M‘Millanites, often applied in after years to the Reformed Presbyterians, was hardly felt by them to be a term of reproach, so highly did they reverence the three John M‘Millans who successively ministered to the Church.

The closing days of Mr M‘Millan’s life were very peaceful. When his end was seen to be approaching, his friends gathered round him to minister to his comfort. To these friends he spoke with great freedom and fulness, both of his past life and of the future glory to which he was so near. He bore renewed testimony to the

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importance of the principles which it had been the work of his life to proclaim, and expressed a confident anticipation, which has been abundantly fulfilled, that those principles would yet receive a far wider recognition than he was privileged to see. As death drew nearer he spoke more particularly of the grounds of his hope, he repeated the special promises which had comforted him in his days of suffering for the Lord’s sake, and quietly composed himself to meet the King of Terrors, remarking that he would welcome him as a messenger sent from his heavenly Father to carry him to the mansions of glory. His last words, uttered in a whisper a few minutes before his death, were, “My Lord, my God, my Redeemer, yea mine own God is He.”

The cause of division between Mr M‘Millan and Messrs Hall and Innes was a difference of opinion regarding the atonement. Mr Hall was settled in Edinburgh, where he laboured till his death in 1781. He continued to call himself a Reformed Presbyterian even after his secession. His Church was in Lady Lawson’s Wynd, and it was in 1809 purchased by the other Reformed Presbyterian Congregation in Edinburgh, of which the Rev. William Goold, father of the Rev. Dr W. H. Goold, was then pastor.

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Mr Cuthbertson having gone to America, the Church was again left with only two ministers, Mr John M‘Millan the second, and Mr Courtass. In 1759, 1760 and 1761, three young men were licensed to preach the Gospel, who bore names which are still honourably remembered among us. Mr John Thorburn was licensed in February, 1759, Mr Archibald Grieve in June, 1760, and Mr John Fairley in February, 1761.

In 1761 the Presbytery adopted and published an Act, Declaration and Testimony, to which we shall refer more particularly hereafter. The preparation of such a statement of the principles had been begun a considerable time previously by Mr Nairn, but the work was interrupted when Mr Nairn became subject to the censures of the Church. The duty was then laid upon one of the ministers who left the Church about 1750, and for a second time the work was suspended. The doctrinal part of the testimony was written by the Rev. John Thorburn, and the historical part by the Rev. John Courtass. This testimony continued to be the authoritative statement of the principles of the Church till a new testimony, prepared by the Rev. Dr Andrew Symington and Dr Bates, was adopted by Synod in 1837.

Till after 1760 the Societies were not

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divided into separate Congregations. The ministers were ordained not over a district, but as ministers of the Community. Now the Societies seem to have felt the desirability of having a more settled ministry, and we find that for some time prior to February, 1761, the subject of “disjoining the Community” had been under consideration. A proposal was then made to form three Congregations. The minute runs thus:—

1. That the Societies in Merse, Teviotdale, Lothian, Tweeddale, Forrest, with the Societies of Carnwath and Douglas, make one Congregation.

2. Those in Eskdale, Annandale, Nithsdale, and Galloway, Cumnock, Mountherrick, and Wanlochhead, another.

3. And those in the north ward of Clydesdale, Ayrshire (except Cumnock), Renfrew and Monteath make the third.

This proposal was approved by the Presbytery, and the Clerk was instructed to intimate the same to the respective Congregations, and “also to signify the liberty that each Congregation hath to petition for any one of the ministers to be their proper pastor.”

This arrangement immediately raised diffi-

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culties, as both the Northern and Eastern Congregations were most anxious to have Mr M‘Millan as their minister; and on 19th October, 1761, the minute of the Presbytery states, “The Presbytery, finding difficulties in the division of the Community into Congregations, agree meantime to continue things as formerly, while at the same time the Rev. John M‘Millan is considered as having a relation to, and general charge of the whole as formerly.”

Before continuing the history of the Church after 1761, it will be interesting to narrate some incidents, recorded in the old minutes, which serve to throw light upon the state of society, both within the Societies and in the country at large, about the beginning of last century.

When Messrs Shields, Boyd, and Linning joined the Church of Scotland in 1690, one minister, Mr David Houston, generally resident in Ireland, remained to the Church. But soon the Societies found, or thought they found, reason to believe that Mr Houston was not so faithful as to them seemed necessary; and we find the General Meeting resolving, 17th October, 1694, “That there be no meddling with Mr David Houston until the mind of the Societies be enquired concerning him; and also, that all

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persons that goes and marries with him, contrary to conclusion and order, be suspended until satisfaction be given.” On October 9th, 1695, we also find the General Meeting resolving, “That a letter be sent to Mr David Houston, intimating to him that we disown all those who go over unto him for marriage as none of ours, until he satisfy our General Meeting in what we have to lay to his charge.” But the minute, engrossed apparently some time after its date, adds, “this fell by, and nothing was done in it.”

The Societies continued to hold themselves entirely aloof from the ministers of the Church of Scotland, declining to join with them in public worship, to receive baptism for their children at their hands, or to be married by them; nor would they attend marriages or baptismal feasts where these ministers officiated. One part of this testimony seems to have been found very hard to bear by the younger people, and we do not wonder that some of them should “have gone and married with Mr David Houston.” We find also that some contracted irregular marriages; for the minute of 20th April, 1706, mentions that, “at a meeting of the Correspondence of Jedburgh Forrest on 4th August last, after the business for which they were together was ended, they were surprised by

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Ninian Oliphant and Mary Hall standing up and taking each other by the right hand, and the said Ninian Oliphant saying, “I take this woman to be my lawful married wife, whereof ye are witnesses.” Against such unjustifiable and disorderly practice both the Correspondence and the General Meeting protest, that they may not be looked upon as approvers of, or connivers at the same.”

The Societies also held aloof from the civil government, refusing to pay cess, to pay the government tax on the cloth they manufactured, to take any oath in a civil court of law, to act as jurymen, to sue for debts, or to defend actions raised against them. They refused to take the oath of allegiance; but it is most worthy of notice, that so early as 1706, they were careful to say that their protest is only against “the requiring of an illimited oath of allegiance in such a way as may fairly be interpreted as excluding the oath of the covenant.” They seem for a long time to have regarded the government as very unstable, and to have looked for another revolution, which would lead to the constitution of a government more in accord with their ideas of what a civil government should be. We find frequent orders given to the Correspondences to see that the members were in readiness for such

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an event, all the men furnished with arms and ammunition, and also that they were drilled, had officers appointed, and places of rendezvous.

When we read that they would neither sue for a debt, nor defend an action in the courts of law, we might suppose that they would be greatly taken advantage of by unprincipled neighbours; but they were not quite helpless even in such cases. In the minute of 20th April, 1697, we read, “That if any of our brethren be wronged unjustly upon the account of their duty, they are empowered to choice any of their brethren for their assistance in the lawful reparation thereof.” Subsequent minutes confirm this resolution, and show that it was not a dead letter. In 1701, a member is suspended by the General Meeting for failing to give such assistance when called upon. In October, 1720, “The General Meeting did allow the Correspondence of Galloway to write a letter to a certain gentleman who detains and thereby thinks to defraud one of our friends a certain sum of money desiring fair counting with him.” And as there follows a re-assertion of “the duty of reparation of such as are wronged,” we have no doubt the “certain gentleman” would find it expedient to do what justice required.

In some respects the position of the Societies

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to the Government might be called an armed neutrality. On August 9th, 1693, they resolve, “It is a duty to recover by force poynds taken for supplie or other taxations when in a capacity”—that is, when they were strong enough! They also publicly burned the acts “of the present pretended parliament,” of which they disapproved, and by public declarations at Sanquhar and elsewhere, sought to free themselves from any responsibility for the acts of the Government.

The Societies took great pains to seek out, and mark with “stones of honour,” the graves of the martyrs, and they collected the information regarding the martyrs, published in 1714 under the title “A Cloud of Witnesses for the Royal Prerogatives of Jesus Christ,” and they arranged for the publication of that book. They also published sermons by Donald Cargill and James Renwick, with their two dying testimonies. Neither were the persecutors forgotten. On 21st April, 1697, orders are given, “That a true and exact account of the persecutors within the several quarters, their remarkable judgments and deaths, or what hath befallen to their families or estates, be taken up and brought to the next General Meeting.” In this minute we probably have the germ of that “judgment chapter”

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appended to the Scots Worthies, which in our early days equally fascinated and terrified us. The members of the Societies probably were not singular in regarding with dislike those who had taken part in the work of persecution. A similar feeling seems to have pervaded the vast majority of the people in the south and west of Scotland; but few would express their feelings with the same freedom, and regulate their intercourse with the persecutors by definite rule as the Society people did. On October 21st, 1697, the minutes run, “Concluded as an old conclusion, that no tradesman or others shall join in family worship with those that has been known guilty of being assizers, witnesses against, or guarders of the martyrs, or faithful sufferers, to prisons or scaffolds.”

It is doubtful whether the feeling of dislike to the descendants of the persecutors, which for many years was very strong, has even yet entirely died out. Not many years ago, in Galloway, people were quietly pointed out and named in a whisper as descendants of those who had taken part in the drowning of the Wigton Martyrs; and in the middle of the present century, a half-witted, harmless creature from the upper district of Nithsdale gave very marked expression to the popular feeling, by making an annual

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pilgrimage to the parish of Dunscore that he might dance on Lag’s grave.

One of the Martyrs’ monuments erected by the Societies was destroyed by an enemy to the covenanted cause. The following letter will show how the offender was dealt with.

“The copy of a letter from the General Meeting to John Kirkpatrick, in Burnburghead, in Closeburn.

MR KIRKPATRICK,

We having received information from our friends in Nithsdale how you retaining yʳ old malignity and enmity agᵗ yᵉ people of God have in pursuance yʳof adventured to run yᵉ risque of meddling wᵗ yᵉ monument of yᵉ dead, demolishing and breaking yᵉ gravestone of a sufferer for yᵉ cause of Christ qᶜ is highly criminal in yᵉ eyes of yᵉ law, and is more yⁿ yoʳ neck is worth, and deserves just severity as bringing to remembrance yoʳ old hatred, and yᵉ hand you had in his sufferings. And now ye seem to be longing for a visit for yoʳ old murthering actions, qᶜ if you would evite, we straitly charge and command you, upon yoʳ perill to repair yᵗ stone by laying one upon yᵉ grave, fully as good as yᵉ former wᵗ yᵉ same

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precise motto as well engraven, and yᵗ you perform yᵉ work wᵗ all expedition, and if it be not done agᵗ May day first, qᶜ is a sufficient time, we promise to pay you a visit, perhaps to your cost, and if you oblige us yʳ to assure yʳself yᵗ yoʳ old deeds will be remembered to purpose qᶜ to assure you of we have ordered this to be written in presence of our correspondence at Crawford-John, March 1, 1714, and subscribed in our name by Hu. Clark, ck.”

What the result of this letter was we have no means of knowing, but the writers were not the men to fall from their word, if Mr Kirkpatrick failed to do what was required; and probably he knew this.

While dissenting from the great majority of the nation in many important points of civil and religious polity, there seems to have grown up an exceedingly kindly feeling among the members of the Societies themselves. They not only aided each other when threatened with worldly loss for the sake of their testimony, but they regularly contributed every Sabbath and fast-day for the support of the poor; and we find the General Meeting recommending a collection to be made throughout all the Societies for a member who had suffered very severe losses, and

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was in distress. Their love and respect for Sir Robert Hamilton are very specially shown. His great influence, not always wisely exerted, can be traced from the time he took part in the business of the General Meeting till his death in 1703. The Societies then gave him a public funeral. We find a minute on 21st April, 1703, appointing four gentlemen to “converse with Mr James Kyd, and review all his counts concerning Sir Robert Hamilton’s funeral.” No one seems afterwards to have exercised so great an influence till the first Mr M‘Millan.

It is difficult for us to understand how the spiritual life of the people was sustained, when, for sixteen years, they were without a stated ministry, and when many things around, and much within their own circle, had a secularizing and deadening tendency. But there can be no doubt that true godliness did flourish in the Societies. The word of God was carefully studied; the few books the members had were theological works still prized among godly people who are not repelled by antiquated forms of expression and miserable printing; and the fellowship meetings were admirable schools for training men to study and discriminate regarding divine truth. A minute of date 20th October, 1697, shows that at these meetings all classes were

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remembered. “The former conclusions regarding catechising and proposing cases of conscience are renewed and allowed to be perused and put in practice.” The exercises seem to have been very similar to those in fellowship meetings still. The members in turn conducted the service, which began with singing, reading the scripture, and prayer. A text or subject previously appointed was then discussed by all present, women taking part in the conversation when they chose, the chairman for the day made some concluding remarks, and the meeting was closed by singing and prayer. Family religion was carefully attended to, and no doubt it was in the godly homes of the Covenanters that men and women were trained for the days of trial and suffering through which so many were called to pass.

But even as the apostle Paul had a Eutychus at Troas, so in some of the Societies there were heedless members. On October 25th, 1699, the General Meeting records: “That whereas there are some persons in Society addicted to sleeping in the meetings habitually in time of duty, and not humbled for it, but obstinately contemning seasonable admonition, such persons are allowed to withdraw until they come to the sense thereof.”

The circumstances in which the Society people lived about the beginning of last century, when

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small companies of earnest people with little general culture, and who had suffered much, frequently met together to discuss public affairs, was very favourable to the development of extreme views. We find this evil did show itself, and as the members in different parts of the country not infrequently took different views, many divisions resulted. In the minutes we find allusions to people in Galloway, in Nithsdale, in Eskdale, and in Ayrshire, “of Mr Hepburn’s party” and others, who appear to have in some way separated themselves from the General Meeting. Mr Hepburn was minister of the Parish of Urr. He had made some representations against the defections of the Established Church, and was not only suspended and deposed, but also suffered imprisonment in consequence. On his liberation he resumed his ministry, and had many followers. But he did not in all points embrace the principles of the Reformed Presbyterians, who accordingly held aloof from him. These dissensions, and the continued lack of public worship, seem very greatly to have reduced the number of the Society people. Even after Mr M‘Millan’s accession, the process of disintegration went on. Mr M‘Millan’s marriage by a minister of the Established Church of Scotland gave grave offence to many of the

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stricter sort, and some of them never again waited on his ministry. The liberality of his views on some points offended others, and so many left the community that the leaders were afraid to give the country any means of ascertaining how far their numbers were diminished. On August 15th, 1715, we find the General Meeting minuting, “Upon the danger of the threatened invasion, it is advised that whosoever inclines to rendezvous, meet in such a body as may amount to a company, or then, do it privately, lest they expose our meanness to our enemies.”

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