Makers of the Scottish Church

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1908 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XV. ROBERT RAINY. A. When the history of the Scottish Church in the nineteenth century comes to be written, it is certain that the name of Robert Rainy will take a place by itself, as undoubtedly that of a real Maker of the Church. His name will stand beside those of Knox, Henderson, and Carstares. Rainy belonged to the same succession. He had the far-seeing intuition of Knox: he had the spirituality, breadth of brow, and idealism of Henderson: he had the caution, diplomacy, and statesmanship of Carstares. What he was to Scotland and to the Scottish Church will not be accurately seen until it becomes possible to look back on his work from the standpoint of a future generation. It is not possible to do it now, when the Church of Christ in Scotland is still feeling keenly his loss. But no account of the Makers of the Scottish Church could be complete without some appreciation, however slight, of Principal Rainy. 1. The problems which faced an ecclesiastical statesman such as Principal Rainy were the compelling problems of an age of readjustment. They were not, of course, the problems of the centuries of the past. They were not the problems of Church government with which Henderson and Melville and Carstares had to wrestle. Nor were they the problems of State domination which had been fought out by the Secession fathers and the men of 1843. But the problems of an age of readjustment went back fundamentally to the same old problems of Liberty, and there was involved in them the same time-old question of the Church's Spiritual Independence. The problems involved in readjustment were crystallised in questions such as these: Was the Church of Christ free to follow what she thought to be the mind of Christ? Was she free to follow, in...