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NOTES ON THE NEWSPAPERS.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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2 dJitne . Abolition of Patronage in the Church of Scotland . —Alone among all Protestant churches , the Church of Scotland for some time was the people ' s church ; not the church of the aristocracy , kept for them at the people ' s expense . This privilege the Scottish people possessed themselves of , not without a battle of several generations , against their own aristocracy first , and next against their own and our aristocracy combined . In the conflict , as much heroism , both of action and endurance , was
displayed , as has probabl y signalized any cause since the beginning of the eternal war between right and wrong . For a century this battle lasted , and for a century more the fruits of it were enjoyed . The prize was kept , for about as long as it took to acquire . But corruption crept in ; the Church of Scotland proved no exception from the evil tendencies of human affairs in general , and of the age in particular ; the tendency of power to concentrate itself in few hands , and of what originally was
sufferance , to convert itself into a right , and the tendency of the institutions of this country , since the Revolution , to become more and more aristocratic . The appointment of the ministers of religion gradually became private property ; the Church of Scotland followed , though at a considerable distance , the steps of the Church of England , and progressively ( for degeneracy as well as improvement is gradual ) became the laird ' s church , no longer the church of the people .
Dissent from the Church of Scotland took its rise with this departure from the voluntary principle . The Seceders seceded from the abuses of the Church , not from its tenets : when the ministry of religion became a place for a great man to give away , it ceased to be a ministry for them . But dissatisfaction spread much further than avowed dissent ; and now at length , aided by the spirit of the times , it has prevailed over the evil influences opposed to it , and enforced a reform .
It is the good fortune of the Scottish Church , that its government is not a monarchy or an aristocracy , but a democracy ; it depends not upon a bench of bishops , ttutiipon a representative assembly ; and one , moreover , in which the laity as well as the clergy have a voice . In the Scottish Church , the power to root out evils resides in the sufferers from them , not in those who
are the creatures of the evils , and who profit by them . Accordingly , no sooner was the evil generall y recognized as an evil , than it has been forthwith remedied . By the regulation just adopted by the General Assembly , no patron will hereafter have the power of presenting any clergyman to a living , yvhose appointment is disapproved of by a majority of the heads of families in the parish .
; It is thus that a Church is to be saved , if any of the Churches can be saved from the storm which is now , and not prematurely , rising against them . A national endowment for the support of teachersof religion might still be preserved , if the people , for whom the Church exists , the people , who are the Church , were allowed even a negative voice in determining by what body of persons , and by what member of that body , religious instruction should be imparted to them . But the people will no longer receive their religion from a corporation of priests , imposed upon them as teachers by
their political superiors . And , as the ruling powers in the Church of England are incapable of opening their eyes to this truth , that Church , as a national institution , is tottering to its fall . 4 th June . Mr . Rawlinson and the Man of no Religion . —In the Chronicle of to-day we read the following paragraph : — ' Yesterday , at Marylebone office , a poor man , far advanced in life , suffering under the dreadful affliction of a paralytic affection , which has deprived him of the use of one side , applied to the sitting magistrates , Messrs , Rawlinson and Hoskins , for aa order to be admitted into Mary-
Untitled Article
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Notes On The Newspapers.
NOTES ON THE NEWSPAPERS .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), July 2, 1834, page 521, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2635/page/61/
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