Reading Robertson’s Rise and Progress with Discernment
James Dodson
John MacMillan Robertson’s The Rise and Progress of the Southern Reformed Presbyterian Congregation, now called the Renwick Free Church is a useful and affecting little book, but it must be read with a careful distinction between historical testimony and theological judgment. It gives us a vivid picture of congregational life: the desire for ordinances, the burden of church extension, the affection borne toward faithful ministers, the place of psalmody, the use of regular courts, the sacrifices of ordinary members, and the seriousness with which a congregation sought a settled ministry. In these respects, the book is a rich source of instruction. It reminds us that the Covenanter testimony was not merely a set of abstract principles, but was embodied in families, elders, ministers, collections, buildings, prayers, calls, sermons, communion seasons, and local congregational labour.
Yet the reader must not mistake warmth for soundness at every point. The book was written from within a later nineteenth-century atmosphere, when many Reformed Presbyterians were learning to reinterpret the older testimony in light of civil and ecclesiastical changes. Robertson’s account of voting, oaths, juries, lawsuits, and political recognition must therefore be read as evidence of a transition, not as proof that the transition was lawful. Changed constitutional arrangements do not, by themselves, remove the perpetual obligation of the Covenants, nor do they alter the duty of nations to own the crown rights of Christ. The danger is to let the language of providence, practical wisdom, and altered circumstances become a cloak for relaxing testimony.
The same caution is needed in reading the book’s treatment of Presbyterian union. Robertson rejoices in union and is careful to say that the historical position of the Reformed Presbyterian Church was preserved. But such claims require judicial examination. Union is not good merely because division is painful; it is good only when truth is maintained, terms of communion are preserved, and testimony is not reduced to a memory. A church may retain names, documents, and affectionate recollections while losing the practical edge of its public witness. Therefore, the reader should ask not simply, “Was union desired?” but, “Was the covenanted testimony maintained in its integrity?”
There are also smaller signs of nineteenth-century declension: Sabbath schools, voluntary societies, congregational agencies, and attempts at musical innovation appear within the narrative. Some of these things may be historically interesting, and some may have been attended with providential usefulness; but they must not be confused with Christ’s appointed ordinances or with the ordinary Scriptural means of catechizing, worship, and discipline. The account of resistance to a congregational choir is especially instructive, because it shows that older instincts regarding simplicity of worship, congregational psalmody, and opposition to musical novelty had not yet disappeared.
The safest way to profit from the book is to read it as a local history of a Covenanter congregation in transition. Receive its concrete details gratefully. Learn from its zeal for ordinances, its honour for faithful preaching, its congregational sacrifice, its attachment to psalmody, and its concern for order. But do not let its affectionate tone sanctify every judgment it records. Its very usefulness lies partly in showing how decline often comes: not first by open contempt for the past, but by reverent admiration of the past joined to practical modifications that slowly empty the testimony of its force.
Thus, Robertson’s book should be read neither with suspicion that refuses all profit, nor with simplicity that receives all things without trial. It should be read as a witness: a witness to real piety, real congregational labour, and real Covenanter memory; but also a witness to the subtle ways in which a church may pass from maintaining a testimony to explaining why that testimony need no longer be maintained in the same way. The discerning reader will gather the gold, mark the dross, and come away more resolved to honour both the spirit and the substance of the Covenanted Reformation.