The Free Presbyterian separation

The Assembly of 1893

The historian James Lachlan MacLeod writes that on Thursday 25 May 1893, at the end of a long debate in the Free Church General Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, “an elderly minister, Donald Macfarlane of Raasay, came forward and tabled his formal protest over a piece of legislation called the Free Church Declaratory Act.”¹

Macfarlane gave his own account in a letter to the Northern Chronicle, which Beaton prints: “I remained a year without taking up a separate position. The reason was that the Constitutionalists asked me not to separate till they would make an effort to make the Assembly repeal the Act. They were to do this at the meeting of Assembly in 1893. I was a member of the Assembly that year. The Assembly refused to repeal the Act. When I saw that, I tabled my protest, and took up a separate position in defence of the truth.” Beaton explains that “Constitutionalists” was “The name given to the party in the Free Church who adhered to the Constitution and opposed the policy of Dr Rainy.”²

In the same letter Macfarlane says that he had been “translated [moved to the charge of a new congregation] to Raasay before the meeting of Assembly” of 1893, and that “On the day of my induction I stated publicly before the presbytery and the congregation that I was not taking office as minister of Raasay under the Declaratory Act in any sense or to any degree.”³

The index to the Assembly’s Proceedings of 1893 lists, under “Declaratory Act”, a “Dissent and Complaint by Mr C. G. Ross”, “Dissents by Messrs Martin and M‘Intosh” and “Dissents by Messrs Grant and Lamont” (all p. 661), and “Overtures anent [concerning]” it (p. 679).⁴

Beaton writes that “Dr Rainy, after the protest had been read, rose and moved that a Committee be appointed to confer with Mr Macfarlane.” At a meeting of the Constitutionalists after the Assembly, he says, the Rev. Murdo Mackenzie of Inverness asked Macfarlane what he meant to do; Macfarlane “replied that it was his intention to have a Presbytery formed”, and Mackenzie answered, “You will compromise us.”⁵

Kames, Raasay and Inverness

According to Beaton, on his way home from the Assembly Macfarlane preached at Millhouse, Kames, where the congregation “decided to separate from the Church which had adopted the Declaratory Act, and thus became the first congregation in what was to be known afterwards as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.” On the Monday of the Raasay Communion (the second Sabbath of June) he asked all who wished to adhere “to the Confession of Faith in all its doctrines as hitherto held by the Free Church” to stand up, and “All present, with the exception of about half a dozen, stood up.”⁶

At a meeting at Inverness, Beaton continues, “the Rev. D. Macdonald, who was present, took his stand with Mr Macfarlane. It was then decided that they should take immediate steps to form a Presbytery, to be called the Free Church Presbytery of 1843.”⁷

The Presbytery at Raasay, 28 July 1893

Beaton quotes the minutes. On 27 July 1893 the Revs. D. Macfarlane and D. Macdonald, with Mr Alexander Macfarlane, schoolmaster, Raasay, met and “resolved to meet next day, and, in the name of the Head of the Church, form themselves into a separate Presbytery, not owning the jurisdiction of the courts of the presently subsisting Church, calling herself the Free Church of Scotland.” The first Presbytery met at Raasay on 28 July 1893, with those three as its members, the schoolmaster as ruling elder. “It was agreed that the Presbytery should be known and called by the name of ‘The Free Church Presbytery of Scotland.’ It was also agreed that a Statement, setting forth the reasons for taking this solemn step should be prepared, to be submitted to a future meeting of Presbytery, with a view to the same being engrossed in the minutes of the Court.”⁸

The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland’s own history says the same of Macfarlane and Macdonald: “together they constituted a Presbytery at Raasay on 28th July 1893.”⁹

The Deed of Separation, 14 August 1893

At a meeting of the Presbytery at Portree on 14 August 1893, Beaton writes, “the Deed of Separation was read and approved by the Presbytery and engrossed in the minutes.” The Deed was subscribed by “Mr Donald MacFarlane, Minister at Raasay; Mr Donald MacDonald, Minister at Shieldaig, and Alex. MacFarlane, Teacher of the Public School at Raasay, Elder, all at Portree on the fourteenth day of August, 1893”, before John Robertson MacKay, preacher of the Gospel at Gairloch, and Allan MacKenzie, student of divinity, as witnesses.¹⁰

The Deed begins by setting out what the signers held to be the constitution of the Free Church “as settled in 1843”: “the Westminster Confession of Faith, as approved by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in 1647, the First and Second Books of Discipline, the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, the Claim, Declaration, and Protest of 1842, the Protest of 1843, the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission executed in the last mentioned year”, with the Formula and Questions and “the Acts of Assembly of the Church of Scotland prior to 1843”. It then gives its reasons under five heads. In the Deed’s own words, “the present subsisting Church now calling herself the Free Church of Scotland”:¹¹

• “has … of late years repeatedly passed resolutions having for their object the separation of Church and State, and the abandonment of the distinctive testimony of the Free Church of Scotland in favour of a national recognition of religion”
• “by sanctioning the use of uninspired hymns, has departed from the original Standards of the Free Church of Scotland; and by the authorisation of instrumental music in the public worship of God has altered the ancient and universal practice of the Church of Scotland”
• “through judgments of her General Assemblies, now not only tolerates but supports office-bearers who do not hold the ‘whole doctrine’ of the Confession of Faith”
• “by passing the Declaratory Act of (1892) … has, in so far as said Church is concerned, destroyed the integrity of the Confession of Faith as understood and accepted by the Disruption Fathers and their predecessors”
• and “the majority of the Ministers and Elders who for the present rule and guide” it “have practically embraced Voluntaryism [the view that the Church should have no support from the State] … whereby they have ceased to represent the Church of Scotland as settled in 1843.”

The signers declared that they “have separated, as we do hereby separate, from the present subsisting Church, calling herself the Free Church of Scotland”, while declaring that they “in no degree abandon or impair the rights belonging to us as Ministers of Christ’s Gospel and Pastors and Elders of particular congregations”, and that they would “exercise government and discipline in our several judicatories [church courts] separate from the said Church, according to God’s Word and the Constitution and Standards of the Free Church of Scotland as understood in 1843”.¹²

Afterwards

Beaton records that the clerk of the Free Church Presbytery of Skye, the Rev. D. A. Macdonald of Kilmuir, wrote asking Macfarlane “to deliver up the keys of the church and manse because he had left the Free Church. Mr Macfarlane replied that he had not left the Free Church, but it was those who remained under the Declaratory Act who had done so.” Macfarlane moved to Broadford, Beaton says, and crossed to Raasay every week-end “until a manse was built”.¹³

The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland’s history counts its growth: “The number of places of worship increased from 26 in March 1894 to 53 in March 1895 to 70 in March 1896.” MacLeod writes that “by 1900 there were seventy-five charges and mission-stations” of the new church, which “was initially named The Free Church Presbytery of Scotland, but within a short period of time had come to be known as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland”.¹⁴

Accounts of the separation

The Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland gives its own account: “In 1892 the Free Church of Scotland followed the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland (1879) in passing a Declaratory Act to relax the strictness of subscription to the Westminster Confession of Faith. One Free Church minister, Rev. Donald Macfarlane, protested against this step; and when the Declaratory Act was not repealed the following year he separated to form the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.” It adds: “The Free Presbyterian Church maintains that this separation in 1893 was justified and necessary”.¹⁵

MacPherson, writing in 1901, describes “a secession … of a large number of members and adherents, including two ordained ministers and several students. The students adhering to the secession were licensed, and some of them ordained over seceding congregations throughout the Highlands, and in Edinburgh and Glasgow over Highland secessionists.”¹⁶

MacLeod argues that the Declaratory Act was “the obvious and superficially most important cause” but that “an important part of the explanation” for the new church being “almost exclusively, a Highland denomination” lies in “the fundamental divide between Highland and Lowland which had existed in the Free Church for decades.” Of the seventy-five congregations of 1900, he counts seventy “north of the Highland line”.¹⁷