This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION. I OFFER here, to those who care to read them, my reasons for supporting the Established Church of Scotland. This Church is thought by many persons to be an effete institution, in regard to which our only duty is to destroy it, as not in keeping with the age. Before the people began to think, ...
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1885 edition. Excerpt: ... INTRODUCTION. I OFFER here, to those who care to read them, my reasons for supporting the Established Church of Scotland. This Church is thought by many persons to be an effete institution, in regard to which our only duty is to destroy it, as not in keeping with the age. Before the people began to think, before notions of equality appeared, in short before Liberalism was born, it was no excrescence on our political system, but it has become so now. Therefore it must be swept away. It is one with the Corn Laws, the Tests in Universities, the Civil Disabilities of the Jews, the English Church in Ireland, and must go the road that they have gone. No true Liberal can support it. Such is the common view. What are we to say about this view, and what does it show us? Surely this, that the common mind which holds it, though it calls itself Liberal, has not taken note of the changes Liberalism has been working out around it. The Church of Scotland has shared in these changes, and is not now the institution it once was. The State, which this Church is joined to, has shared in them also, and so largely that the old notions of it are no longer applicable. The old feelings, of opposition and jealousy, which our forefathers had towards it, are not warranted in us. I hope in the following pages to make good these statements. I hope to show that if Disestablishment ever comes--to this Church of Scotland--it will be in defiance of the principles of true Liberalism, --which I hold as sincerely as any Liberationist---not in obedience to them. How the contrary idea has got abroad it is difficult to explain; it may be owing possibly to this, that Scottish ecclesiastical matters have been left hitherto in the hands of sectaries, who believe, as we all do more or...
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