MACPHAIL'S EDINBURGH ECCLESIASTICAL JOURNAL. No. VI. JULY 1846. SCOTTISH THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. Balmer's Academical Lectures and Pulpit Discourses. 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh: Oliphant and Sons. Hall of Leicester, in one of his interesting conversations with the author of these volumes, remarked on the "paucity of theological writers produced by Scotland, prior to the last sixty or seventy" (now eighty or ninety) "years." The same remark has been often made by others. And while its truth is unfortunately too palpable to admit of dispute, it at the same time points to an evil of a very serious description. In all modern civilized countries, possessed of free institutions, the press is at all times an engine of tremendous power. In our own, its influence has for centuries been steadily on the increase; and it is, at the present moment, almost omnipotent. Religion cannot long, therefore, maintain its legitimate hold upon the principles and practices of the community, unless our churches are able to keep up a succession of learned and eloquent men, who can vigorously wield this potent engine, both in the defence of the truth, and the confutation of error. It is, doubtless, an immense national benefit, to enjoy the pastoral ministrations of a pious, and a pains-taking body of ecclesiastics; and in this respect Scotland, whether we look to its established clergy, or their dissenting brethren, has, for generations, been favoured with pre-eminent advantages. But the times in which we live-times characterized by daring speculation and a restless morbid appetite for change-require a great deal more than this. And as the most vehement assaults are daily made upon our common Christianity, by the combined forces of learned infidelity from without, and specious error from within, it cannot occupy the attitude which is due to its truth and importance, unless it has on its side champions who can fight its assailants with their own weapons; and by opposing wit to wit, science to science, and learning to learning, achieve for it that superiority in the conflict, which a good cause, when skilfully advocated, cannot fail to command. Scotland is not entirely barren in names of this description. She can claim, from the era of the Reformation downwards, a list of worthies, whose pens as well as tongues, have done noble service in the cause of Christianity; and of whom any church or country in the world, might be justly proud. But the list is, beyond all doubt, not so ample as could be wished, and from the intelligence, the energy, and the indomitable perseverance, so eminently characteristic of the Scotch, it is immeasurably short of what it would have been, had the ecclesiastics of Presbyterian Scotland been possessed of literary advantages, bearing any reasonable proportion to those of their brethren in Episcopalian England. But of such advantages, their share has hitherto been extremely slender; and from the complexion of the times, there is little prospect of its receiving any efficient augmentation. The Kirk of Scotland, if a pure, has always been a poor kirk; and whatever other productions may spring up amid the crevices of "the rock of poverty" on which it is founded, it is certainly not the soil which is best adapted to the growth of a rich and vigorous theological literature. At the period of the Reformation, a rapacious aristocracy ridiculed as a "devout imagination" the arrangements suggested by the rulers of the Church, for the support of religion and learning, by rightly endowed academical institutions, and parochial benefices; and they managed to quiet their consciences, by doling out to the Scottish clergy from the spoils of the Romish Church, miserable pittances, in many instances insufficient to keep themselves and their families above positive want. Nor has the increased provision of later times, been such as adequately to repair this gross act of sacrilegious injustice and political folly. In our Scottish Universities, while there is nothing in the shape of fellowships to stimulate and reward eminent academical merit, the theological chairs are not only deficient in number, but so scantily endowed, that till the recent introduction of the practice of exacting fees from the theological students, they who occupied them were from necessity compelled (as some of them are still) to join to the duties of the professor's chair the multifarious labours of the pastoral office. And thus was one great object, in a great measure, defeated, which the theological chairs in our universities ought always to answer-that of affording to proved and acknowledged talent the leisure and the access to books which would secure for the Church, along with its working clergy, a due proportion of men of profound scholarship, and extensive theological and literary acquirements. The working clergy themselves, may sometimes be accomplished preachers; but they can seldom be learned divines. The number of valuable livings in the Church being inconsiderable, none in affluent, and few even in easy circumstances, dream of educating their sons for the Church as a profession. Hence, though the curriculum of study which the Church prescribes is ample, the candidates for the ministry are, from the scantiness of their resources, obliged, in general, to spend the greater part of the period which it embraces, less in the improvement of their own minds, than in conducting the education of others. And when, at length, they are appointed to livings, their time is too much occupied with their professional duties, to devote much of it to studious research. Many of them, too, though they can command leisure, cannot command books, or the improving society of men of congenial tastes and pursuits; and thus not a few leave our college halls, crowned with the laurels of youthful literary success, and animated with high aspirations after professional eminence and usefulness, who, after struggling for a while, with the disadvantages of an ungenial position, gradually sink down to the level of their circumstances; and, with powers fitted to adorn the Church, and benefit the world, live and die unknown, beyond the narrow circle of their own flocks. Besides these disadvantages incident to the condition of the clergy of the Scottish Establishment, their Presbyterian brethren of other denominations, labour under others, still more fatal to professional eminence. Their flocks, in general, while they sometimes present a sprinkling of the middle classes of society, consist usually, except in a few city churches, of families who are a grade below them-whose tastes, therefore, and education, though leaving them severe and rigid judges in all matters of theological doctrine, do not qualify them for appreciating in their pastors any high measure of literary excellence. And as ministers, whose bread depends upon the voluntary contributions of their congregations, must produce in the shape of discourses, the article which best takes the market, the ablest of them are, in many instances, compelled to sacrifice their scholastic tastes to their worldly interests; and thus to waste their strength in the irksome and unimproving task of dressing up the few common-places, beyond which Secession orthodoxy forbids them to pass, in a garb, now, of coarse home-spun colloquial Calvinism, and now, when the audience is somewhat more refined, of flashy, flowery, and declamatory rhetoric. The improved circumstances of Dissenting congregations, and their increased intelligence of late years, have, of course, done much to mitigate this evil, but they have by no means removed it; a fact glaringly apparent from the position occupied very recently, by some of the ablest men of the Secession body-witness the late Professor Lawson, Dr. Belfrage, Dr. Stark of Denny, the author of the volumes before us, and others who might be named; who were left to spend their lives in second-rate towns or rural villages, while others, the majority of them immeasurably their inferiors, in intellect and learning, basked in the sunshine of popular favour, in the high places of Secessional distinction-the pulpits of their city congregations. Learning and talent, indeed, when dissociated, (as they often are) from popular gifts, can scarcely ever exist in the ranks of dissent. What would have been the fate of the English Bishop Butler, or of our own Dr. John Inglis-those ornaments and pillars of their respective churches, had they as preachers attempted to court the suffrages of Dissenting congregations?-Most probably to have been thrown aside for life, as too heavy and lumbering for use. And yet, how great would have been the loss, had these eminent men, from untoward circumstances, been prevented from devoting their time and talents to a profession in which they were so remarkably useful? How many cart-loads of divinity, by popular orators, would it have taken to repair the loss, had theological literature wanted that one volume-Butler's Analogy?-a volume which, unattractive though it be in style, and deficient also in some more important matters, yet forms an era in our theological literature, and has, from the first moment of its appearance till now, exerted a commanding influence over the highest orders of intellect in every part of the Christian world. Dr. Balmer, the author of the volumes before us, was at once a professor of theology, and pastor of a large congregation; and thus he laboured under those disadvantages for attaining eminence in either capacity, which have so largely contributed to stunt the growth of Scottish theological literature. It would be too much to affirm, that either of the volumes is what it would have been, if this canse had not operated against them. And though Dr. John Brown has executed his editorial task with commendable care and judgment, it must also be borne in mind, that they are posthumous writings, which want the finishing touches of the author's pen. Still they do no discredit to Dr. Balmer's memory; and if they cannot secure him the high place among theological writers, which his biographer, with the amiable partiality of friendship, would claim in his behalf, they are, unquestionably, a respectable contribution to the authorship of the Secession Church. The odium and suspicion which, notwithstanding Dr. Heugh's Irenicum, and the findings of the Secession Synod, still attach to his name as the advocate of views of the Atonement at variance with strict Calvinism, will, doubtless, for a season, impair their circulation. But as his editor, himself a sufferer on the same grounds, has carefully excluded from the selection all passages bearing on the controverted articles of his creed, we have every confidence that they will outlive this transitory state of feeling, and gradually assume their legitimate position among the standard classics of the denomination to which Dr. Balmer belonged. In the first volume, after a well-written and interesting memoir of the author from the elegant pen of Dr. Henderson of Galashiels, we have thirteen of the Academical Lectures, addressed by Dr. Balmer to the students of the Secession Church. Of these, three or four are on some of the leading truths of natural religion, and the rest on the great characteristic doctrines of the Christian revelation. The second volume contains twenty-one pulpit discourses, the majority of them delivered on sacramental occasions; and concludes with a pulpit lecture on Rom. viii. 19-22. Both volumes merit and will reward a careful perusal. Neither of them, indeed, affords ground to infer that Dr. Balmer was a man of profound or extensive theological erudition. Of this, his varied and burdensome duties as the pastor of a large congregation, did not well admit; while, at the same time, the structure of his mind obviously fitted him rather for the pursuits of elegant literature than the studies which conduct to ponderous learning. He had |