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The Itinerant Witness.

Of the funds distributed by the Union a part was in most cases for "the immediate relief of the Pastor, and a part to assist him in Itinerating".⁹⁹  The Union's finances were limited at this time, however, and to a considerable degree the golden age of itinerancy lay in the past. So much so that in March 1813 one writer sought to advocate The Importance of Itinerancies and breathe new life into the practice. He asked:

                does not past experience furnish sufficient encouragement for adopting with vigour and perseverance, such a plan as we are now recommending? Were there not hundreds, perhaps thousands, even in Scotland, brought to repentance by means of itinerancies, of whom the greater part perhaps remain to this present, ...¹⁰⁰ 

The same month saw the inauguration of the Association of the Congregational churches in the County of Stirling and its vicinity for the spread of the Gospel.¹⁰¹ 

Then, in 1816,

                a Society consisting of Members of the Edinburgh Congregational Churches was formed. Its object was the diffusion of evangelical truth in the Highlands, Islands and other destitute parts of Scotland, by employing Ministers of considerable standing in the Church without regard to the denomination to which they belonged, to preach the Gospel, and to circulate suitable religious tracts. During the first three years of the Society's operations, upwards of 16 Ministers were employed in the summer months, in some of the most destitute districts of Scotland. These Ministers however were all Congregationalists, the Society not being able to find any others suitable for the work. In addition to the Northern and Western Islands visited by the Itinerants of this Association, the southern parts of the country were frequently and extensively traversed, upon some districts of which a darkness then settled that might be felt. The Society expended during the three first years of its existence upwards of £330 ...

                The Society continued its operations every summer until the Congregational Union was able to undertake more extended Itinerances than it could do during its first years.¹⁰² 

Shortly after the Edinburgh Itinerant Society¹⁰³  was formed, the Society in Paisley and its Vicinity, for Gaelic Missions to the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, came into being on 31st March, 1817.

                This Society was instituted in 1817, and its object was to send the Gospel to the Highlands and Islands by means of Gaelic preachers. It originated in a deep conviction of the want of adequate instruction in these parts. ... The Ministers employed by the Society were all connected with the Congregational body of this Country viz. Mr. Alexander Mackay of Arran - Mr. Malcolm McLaurin¹⁰⁴  of Islay - Mr. James Dewar of Nairn - Mr. Alexander Dewar of Avoch - Mr. John Campbell¹⁰⁵  of Oban - Mr. Peter McLaren¹⁰⁶  of Callander and Mr. James Kennedy¹⁰⁷  then of Aberfeldy. These Brethren generally spent five or six weeks in summer for a number of seasons as agents of the Paisley Society, ...¹⁰⁸

Following the formation of the latter two societies, the Annual Report of the Union in 1818 was able to express "high approbation of a Society in Paisley for Sending Itinerants to the Highlands; and The Edinburgh Association for Encouraging Itinerancies." Both agencies, having enabled "some of our brethren ... still farther to extend their very requisite labours," were viewed "as necessary and powerful co-adjutors in the great work ..."¹⁰⁹ 

Something of the golden age of itinerating was returning, as can be seen from the statement in the Annual Report in 1818:

                during the past year, not fewer than twenty-four preachers have been enabled to extend their labours, by means of the Congregational Union, considerably beyond what they could otherwise have done. And nearly the one-half of these may be almost considered as regular itinerants.¹¹⁰ 

1825, saw the birth of two other agencies, The Angus, Mearns, and Perth Shires Itinerant Society¹¹¹  and The Fifeshire Home Missionary Association.¹¹²  And a Sale of Ladies' Work in Edinburgh, in April, 1827, raised £164 and enabled six Gaelic speaking Congregational ministers to be employed to itinerate in the Highlands of Perthshire, the county of Sutherland, and in the Western Islands.

                Those in the northern districts spent the summer months, the only time they could spare; but the one in Perthshire,¹¹³  and the one in the Western Isles, continued their exertions during the winter; as in that season they were more successful in finding the Highlanders at home ... ... the exertions of the minister who spent the winter months in the Islands ... [were] extensive ... [and] unremitting. In the various places he visited, he preached 132 sermons, from the beginning of November to the end of February, in general to attentive and sometimes pretty numerous congregations, under circumstances which would have deterred the less hardy inhabitants of our districts from attending. "I often wished," says Mr M. in his journal, "that our Edinburgh friends could witness, for one day, a congregation in       or      , either in the open air or in one of their miserable places of worship, then they would have ocular demonstration of their indifferent accommodations, together with their dress and whole outward appearance. This would give them some idea of their own privileges and comforts. In      , where public worship is conducted, many elderly people of both sexes assemble without shoes, good or bad, and though I felt grieved at their hardships, yet I was glad that none of their privations were ever urged as any apology for neglecting these opportunities.¹¹⁴

One of the S.P.G.H's first agents was a catechist, Alexander McKenzie,¹¹⁵  appointed to itinerate in the Northern Highlands in 1798. On conclusion of his task, McKenzie was sent to the Western Isles, where he laboured with some success.¹¹⁶  And it is worthy of note that some twenty-eight years or so later, as far as Argyll was concerned, Alexander McKay¹¹⁷  could reply to a request from the Secretary of the Congregational Union of Scotland regarding how far the Gospel was being preached by ministers connected with the Union in Argyllshire:

                The field occupied by our Ministers on the mainland of Argyleshire [sic] in their stated and itinerant labours extends from the Mull of Kintyre on the south to Tyndrum on the north, and from Dunoon on the east to Ardramurchan [sic] on the west, comprehending the whole length and breadth of the mainland.¹¹⁸

McKay adds the names of 20 islands belonging to Argyll in which missionaries connected with the Union had laboured, and says "I believe very few parts of the county of Argyle have escaped the notice of your preachers, and in many places good has been done."¹¹⁹

By 1828, in the Highlands and Islands alone, the Union was aiding fifteen brethren who preached in the Gaelic language, and four who preached in the Orkney and Shetland Isles.¹²⁰

It was an age in which there were regular itinerancies in regions immediately surrounding Independent fellowships and more extended itinerancies in remoter, distant, regions, an activity of which William McGavin¹²¹  was to say:

                It is a fine thing, Sir, to preach in a pulpit, with a velvet cushion, surrounded by hundreds of well dressed admiring hearers; but it is a very different thing to leave home, and all the comforts connected with home, and to go to remote glens and solitudes, without shelter from the storm and rain, and where scarcely the necessaries of life are to be obtained, seeking out persons who are perishing for lack of knowledge, that we may impart to them that Gospel which brings salvation to the guilty and the perishing. ... To go to the glens and the mountains  -  the high ways and hedges  -  to go to the lanes, and closses, and hovels of our city population  -  to instruct the ignorant, to restore the wandering, and to reclaim the vicious, is more honourable than to occupy the pulpit of the most splendid cathedral, and to preach to the greatest nobles of the land. This too is honourable work. It is a noble thing to preach the gospel in a cathedral; but I hold it more honourable to preach it in a hovel; because it indicates that humility, disinterestedness, and self-denial, which ought always to characterise the ministers of Christ.¹²²

English concern for the Gaels.

It should not go unnoted that the financial assistance received for itinerancy from English Independents at the beginning of the 1820s in particular was considerable. For example, the Union Treasurer's account for 1821 reveals that £833, of a total income of £1483, came from England and enabled the Congregational Union of Scotland to greatly enlarge its witness. After £518 was allocated to thirty-five churches and preachers for the more general purposes of the Union, £799 was allocated as follows: £100 to the Glasgow Theological Academy, for the support of Gaelic Students, £25 for three itinerancies in the Highlands during the spring, £100 for itinerancies in the summer, "including Mr McNiel to Shetland, &c. &c.", £20 for tracts for distribution and £553, in various sums, to sixteen churches "that their pastors may not only be wholly devoted to the work of the ministry, but that they be enabled to add to their stated pastoral labours, the more extensive undertaking of itinerant preaching".¹²³  Nor should it go unnoticed that in 1832 it was reported

                that of the expenditure, exceeding a Thousand Pounds, not much more than a fourth part has been appropriated to the original object of the Union, the support of the weaker churches; and such have been the extensive and aggressive operations of the Institution, now more than ever a Home Missionary Society, that besides promoting local itinerancies in the Lowlands, considerably more than one half of its Funds, or about £600, has been expended on the important labours of its numerous agents in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.¹²⁴

A Wind of Change.

Ten years later, however, at least with regard to Missions in the Highlands and Islands, concern was beginning to be expressed. The question was posed as to how suitable men might be recruited for service, especially in the light of the fact that "the present labourers in the field are, for the most part, in the decline of life, and others are not coming forward to supply their places?"¹²⁵  In the meantime men like Alexander Dewar of Avoch continued to labour on in what was for them a never-ending crusade prosecuted through the medium of itinerancy. Often they battled on until they were no longer able. For example, it was reported in 1848 that

                Owing to his growing infirmities, Mr Dewar was unable to perform his itinerating work this year. He made two unsuccessful attempts, and was obliged to return home without accomplishing the work on which his heart was set.¹²⁶     

There was also a feeling, in the early 1840s, that protracted meetings¹²⁷  were commendable. In April, 1842, upwards of twenty pastors met ...

                for the purpose of conferring with each other on the method of promoting the revival of religion, by means of protracted meetings. Much information was communicated of a very cheering nature, as to the benefit which has arisen in all the places where this mode of working has been adopted and carried fairly through, and as to the stability of those whose conversion there was any reason to entertain well-grounded confidence. As much inconvenience had arisen from the injury done to the churches of some of the brethren who had been somewhat frequently away from home, a great deal of deliberation was had as to the best mode of obviating the evil, and at the same time spreading more widely the benefits of protracted meetings, the result of which deliberation was the appointment of ... a committee for making arrangements for holding meetings in connection with such churches as may be desirous of having them.¹²⁸    

At any rate, c.1841, few thought of devoting themselves to Home missions longer than they could help it, believing that form of ministry to be subordinate to the pastoral, suggests an approach to things radically different from that pursued by men like Alexander Dewar, John Campbell of Oban, Alexander McKay, Malcolm Maclaurin, George Murray¹²⁹  and James Kennedy. Probably the difference arose to a degree out of a growing "professionalism" amongst the clergy over the years in a denomination which had by this time become "respectable". However, it would be wrong to assert that at any given time there was simply a first generation and second generation of Congregationalists holding specific sets of views. One man who never belittled the office of the home missionary was Greville Ewing.

                The country pastors felt towards him as a father, and drew spirituality from his sanctified genius. He had learned during his itinerancies what a pastor's life in the country was, and he entered into the peculiar difficulties of their position with deep sympathy. No one in his hearing would have ventured to speak slightingly of them.¹³⁰   

Things seem to have been allowed to drift. In the financial year ending in 1850, grants were made to twenty-three churches, and two brethren engaged in itinerant labours, in the Lowlands, and to sixteen churches and nine preaching stations in the Highlands and Islands. The churches in the Lowlands were granted £537 to assist them support the ordinances of the Gospel among themselves and £445 for itinerancies, the churches in the Highlands and Islands received £270 for the former purpose and £550 for the latter.¹³¹

"Have we a mission, and are we discharging it?"

However, in an age of great change questions continued to be asked concerning the effectiveness of Scottish Congregationalism's witness, questions such as "have we a mission, and are we discharging it?"¹³²  It now appeared other denominations were more attentive to the principle of purity of communion than they once were, more sympathetic to the idea of observing the sacrament of The Lord's Supper with greater frequency than they used to do and more awake to the importance of itinerancies in the more destitute districts of Scotland.¹³³  It was felt that the whole aspect of the mission field had changed, others preached the Gospel in all its integrity, simplicity and fullness, and no longer was a Sabbath evening congregation necessarily composed of those who had not heard the Gospel during the day in their stated churches.¹³⁴  Much of the foregoing stemmed from the witness of Scottish Congregationalism down through the years and in this respect the spiritual witness of Scottish Congregationalism cannot be separated from the Disruption of the Established Church of Scotland in 1843. Until 1843, many of those who desired a more evangelical form of preaching than that offered in the Established Church often found it in a Congregational church.¹³⁵  After 1843, those amongst such individuals, who had never given up either their nominal connection with the Established Church or their Presbyterian views of church-order, could find their needs satisfied in the Free Church or newborn zeal of the residuaries. They carried with them into these bodies the spirituality which had been cherished and cultivated in the Congregational churches and were not slow to confess how the Congregational witness had enriched their lives spiritually. Nevertheless, the Free Church in particular deprived many of the Congregational churches of a large number of adherents and, being a large body actuated by a vigorous first love, spread its efforts over the length and breadth of the country and reduced the scope for evangelistic activity on the part of Congregationalists.    

Had numbers been aimed at the rolls of Congregational churches would have had many upon them over the years who did not truly seek fellowship. It was a vital principle of the early Independents from the outset, however, that every communicant should be converted, and that no one should be admitted into a church who had not given evidence of being born again. They acted on this principle, and would not abandon it. As a result, over the wide districts of the country where their fellowship came to be known, the influence which they exerted was very much greater than the fewness of their number might have led us to anticipate. On the other hand, possibly the churches supported by the Congregational Union owed their poverty in some instances, perhaps in every instance in some degree, to the principle of purity of communion. The foregoing, coupled with depopulation of the Highlands and Islands through emigration and removal to towns and cities, was especially damaging. The following comment on removals from country churches appeared in the 1863 Annual Report:

                The difficulties and hardships attendant on the attempt to keep the Church separate from the world, are described in various letters, and dwelt upon in such terms as to show how very needful it is for our Churches to be faithful to a principle they have ever esteemed as vital. Numbers could easily be secured by surrendering it, but, with the abandonment, a valuable testimony to Scriptural purity of communion would be removed from our land.¹³⁶ 

Urbanisation.

In 1855 a considerable proportion of the Union's funds was still being expended annually on the Highlands and Islands. The accounts for the year ending in 1855, reveal grants to churches in the Lowlands of £380 and £347 to churches in the Highlands for general purposes, plus £380 for itinerancies in the Lowlands and £411 in the Highlands.¹³⁷  However, an article published in the same year, Our Weaker Churches, sought to address the question facing the denomination of "the continued existence or non-existence" of some of the weaker churches.

                Some of these are in number few, in resources limited, in moral influence small; around them a state of things has arisen which greatly circumscribes the sphere of their spiritual activities; and several of them are to a considerable extent, preserved from extinction solely by the external aid the funds of the Union afford.

                Shall such assistance be continued or shall it not? Is it expedient that the resources of the Union, which have of late been scarcely equal to the demands made thereon, should be appropriated to the same extent as formerly, to the support of churches which are either relatively or absolutely what they once were; and whose dissolution would certainly not be attended or followed by such a decrease of spiritual agency, as the same event would have occasioned ten or fifteen years ago? And would it not be a wiser and a better thing to appropriate to other and more promising forms of evangelistic agency, the pecuniary power presently so applied?¹³⁸ 

After lengthy consideration of the subject, the writer concluded:

                If the congregational churches of Scotland have aught peculiar in their mission, ... that appears to us to be primarily to the masses congregated in the towns and cities of our native land. Concentration, not diffusion is our need; the latter with our limited forces is weakness, the former strength.¹³⁹

This was a conclusion with which men like James Wilson¹⁴⁰  of Aberdeen had no difficulty in identifying. Some years before, Wilson had outlined to the Annual Meeting of the Union the history of the Ragged Kirk movement in Aberdeen and

                urgently pressed the claims of the degraded classes in other large towns upon the sympathies of the Christian church, and hoped that as the effort in Aberdeen had been so signally blessed by God ... that the friends of humanity and religion in other places would be constrained to go and do likewise.¹⁴¹

Five years later, in 1857, Wilson gave expression to his belief that the Congregational Union was passing into a new phase in its history:

                At first they had to look to the country; now it was mainly to the towns. Let them by all means support the earnest men in the country, but unless they planted more Churches in large towns, Congregationalism would not do its duty to the great masses of people it was so well adapted to improve. He hoped the churches would be encouraged to use their efforts, and that they would be ready to devote a portion, at least, of their funds to the evangelization of the masses in large cities.¹⁴²  

The belief within the Union that a part of its funds might be profitably expended on missionary operations in larger towns was eventually encapsulated in a revision of the Regulations of the Institution in the late 1850s. To the two objects previously specified, namely, the aiding of poor churches and the employment of itinerants, there was added a third, the encouraging of "movements designed to originate new churches in the larger towns."¹⁴³  However, insufficient funds and the intention of the new provision being understood to be to extend the Union's operations, and not merely change their sphere, produced a reluctance to finance new initiatives at the expense of churches already receiving grants, or of itinerants employed by them, and led to delay in the implementation of any action in the spirit of the new provision.¹⁴⁴ 

"I have sometimes thought, that I have heard just a little too much about our principles, and seen too little of their practical outcome."

The issue of insufficient funds was not new. For example, between 1847 and 1867 the churches contributed £24,670 to Union funds, an average of £1,233 per annum. The income for the first year of the above period, 1847, being £1,442 and that of the last £1,199.¹⁴⁵  Bearing in mind the general rise in living standards over this period and increased membership in the city churches, David Arthur¹⁴⁶  was prompted to ask, "how shall we account for a stationary or decreasing measure of pecuniary support to that institution which is peculiarly and emphatically the institution of the denomination?"¹⁴⁷  Indeed, had the Union's objects as a Church Aid and Home Mission Society ever been adequately promoted, namely:

                First, to afford to Churches connected with it such pecuniary aid as may be required, to enable them, to the best advantage, to maintain the ordinances of the Gospel among themselves, and to promote the interests in their neighbourhood; Secondly, To employ approved Preachers in more limited or more extended itinerancies, throughout the country at large; and Thirdly, To encourage movements designed to originate new Churches in the larger towns.¹⁴⁸

Arthur concluded that the Union to a large extent had and was fulfilling its role well as a church aid society. As to itinerancy, he had nothing to say, believing "If the practice is not obsolete the need for it at least is not urgent, ..." On the other hand, lack of finance, Arthur asserted, had ensured that movements designed to form churches in the larger towns had never been prosecuted by the Union "to any considerable degree", though this object had always appeared to him of first importance.¹⁴⁹  In the course of his argument, Arthur stated:

                In Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee, and Aberdeen, not to mention many other considerable towns, we have a population of eight or nine hundred thousand, or nearly a third of the inhabitants of Scotland, and I am not aware that in these vast accumulations of human beings the Union sustains so much as one agent whose business is to evangelize in order to the origination of new churches. Now, simply, and merely in contrast, let me remind you, that in Orkney and Shetland, containing a population of some sixty or seventy thousand inhabitants, you expended last year, and it has been the same for many years, some four hundred and fifty pounds. Now, mind you, I do not utter an opinion, far less pronounce an adverse judgment, on this expenditure. I only say if you do this, then that other, and in my estimate much more urgent work should not be left undone. ... I only put in a protest against the utter neglect of what we have declared to be one of our objects, viz., evangelistic effort in order to the "origination of new churches in our large towns." ... I have sometimes thought, that I have heard just a little too much about our principles, and seen too little of their practical outcome.¹⁵⁰

At the same meeting, David McLaren, the Union Treasurer asserted:

                I am persuaded we must go deeper than we have been doing into first principles, if we would improve the state of matters which cause us regret. ... I remember well the meeting of this Union thirty years ago in this town. ... it was the first time it was held in Dundee. Some incidents are vividly impressed on my memory.  -  One, particularly. There were several sermons preached in the open air that morning by ministers attending the meeting; that at the Cross, by the venerable Greville Ewing. I think I see the old blind man standing below the arches of the Town House. If I remember rightly I afterwards read that one soul at least was blessed by that sermon; and well do I recollect the happy expression of his countenance as he told us at breakfast immediately after, that that morning he completed his three-score years and ten. Things are somewhat changed with us since then, whether for better or for worse I shall not inquire. Nor shall I say what we may have less of. We have more members, we have more wealth, we have more rank, we have more intellectual power in our pulpits, we have more of the aesthetic in our worship and in our buildings; and if these have been our ambition it has been attained. God grant that it may not be also true of us which is written, "He gave them their desire, but he sent leanness into their souls."¹⁵¹

Middle Aged and Respectable.

By 1867 Scottish Congregationalism had aged greatly and in many respects ceased to be the vibrant body of its youth. Many changes had taken place in Scotland since the first young Congregational itinerants ventured forth with their radical message that "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God",¹⁵² a message that had attracted young people in particular.¹⁵³  And, apart from their form of church polity, very little now distinguished Scottish Congregationalists from their fellow Christians in Scotland.

In light of the foregoing, perhaps David Arthur's assertion, I have sometimes thought, that I have heard just a little too much about our principles, and seen too little of their practical outcome, should be read out at periodic intervals during every meeting of those who describe themselves as Congregationalist in Scotland. The sentiment expressed is as true today as when it was first uttered. Congregationalism still remains a form of church polity which demands an extremely high standard of commitment to maintain it and in practice it often falls sadly below the ideal.

Postscript  -  A missed opportunity.

Hopefully, Scottish Congregationalism today would affirm that in its essence Christianity is following Christ, that is, it is a way of living based on the values and attitudes Jesus embodied in his life and teaching, that this desire to follow Jesus is the sole requirement of church membership and no formulation of the Christian Faith can be made binding upon the conscience of a Christian man, and that the bond of Christian unity and the sufficient test for membership of a Congregational Church is the confession of a personal faith in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.¹⁵⁴  Sadly, the above has not always been the case.

John Kirk,¹⁵⁵  minister of the Hamilton Congregational Church, published a series of addresses in 1842, entitled The Way of Life Made Plain,¹⁵⁶  arguing that "not only did Jesus die for every man, but that God's Spirit strives with every man, and that they who yield are saved, and those who resist are unsaved".¹⁵⁷  This was an opinion that had been strenuously opposed several years before¹⁵⁸  by Kirk's former tutor, Ralph Wardlaw,¹⁵⁹  the doyen of Moderate Calvinists in Scotland, and most Congregationalists, as moderate Calvinists, accepted the doctrine of limited atonement in full conformity with the Westminster Confession's statements on divine sovereignty and the doctrine of election, hence Arminianizing tendencies in Scottish Congregationalism, such as Kirk's, were strongly resisted. For those involved in the controversy the points in question were believed to have a direct bearing on their attempts to win men and women for Christ. One camp sought to impress on people that every obstacle for the conversion and salvation of the sinner had been removed, except the sinner's unbelief, and the other sought to uphold the sovereignty of God in every facet of conversion and salvation. And as each church was free and independent of others in regard to the religious doctrine it might hold or teach, those who opposed Kirk's assertion that the influence of the Spirit was as universal as the atonement of Christ made use of the churches' two instruments for common action  -  the Theological Academy and the Congregational Union. The Academy's students had three questions put to them, one of which was, "Do you hold, or do you not, the necessity of a special influence of the Holy Spirit, in order to the regeneration of the sinner, or his conversion to God, distinct from the influence of the Word or of Providential circumstances, but accompanying these means, and rendering them efficacious?"¹⁶⁰  Nine students were expelled as a result of their answers and about a month later in May 1844, seven of these students applied to the Committee of the Congregational Union to be employed as preachers connected with the Union, but were refused.¹⁶¹  Shortly after, as a result of correspondence on the subject of Kirk's views, the four Glasgow churches found they could no longer continue to hold fellowship with the churches in Hamilton, Bellshill, Bridgeton, Cambuslang and Ardrossan,¹⁶²  and the Congregational churches in Aberdeen likewise found they could no longer hold fellowship with the churches in Blackhills and Printfield.¹⁶³ 

Scottish Congregationalism, which had commenced with a radical message some forty years before, failed with others in Scotland to appreciate Kirk's message and the nascent Evangelical Union benefitted tremendously from the events outlined above.