HER MAJESTY RECEIVING KING LOUIS PHILIPPE AT WINDSOR CASTLE, October 8, 1844.
Louis Philippe was the first French Monarch who ever set foot in the British Islands on a visit of peace. The. Prince Consort met him at Portsmouth and accompanied him to Windsor, where the Queen awaited him. At the banquet "he talked to me," writes the Queen, "of the time when he was in a school in the Grisons, a teacher merely, receiving twenty pence a day, having to brush his own boots, and under the name of Chabot." On the following day he was installed Knight of the Garter. He left England on the 13th.

The upheavals which took place simultaneously in the Established Churches of England and Scotland, during the early years of Victoria's reign, and so profoundly stirred religious sentiment in both countries, can scarcely have arisen from independent centres of disturbance, though the connection between them is not easy to trace. They were the outcome of an awaking from the condition of inactivity and routine into which both these Protestant Churches had passed after the agitating events of the seventeenth century, and an attempt on the part of the more active intellects, both in clergy and people, to restore ecclesiastical authority and discipline.

The movement in England has been reckoned by the late Cardinal Newman, himself one of the leading spirits in it before his secession to Rome, as beginning with a sermon preached by John Keble in the University pulpit, 1833, afterwards published under the title " National Apostasy." About the same time began the publication of " Tracts for the Times," conducted by a group of earnest, active men, including Newman, Keble, Pusey, and others, advocating a revival of High Church observances as a means of quickening spiritual life and a restoration of the patristic doctrines and practice in Church government and services. From these tracts the movement became known as " Tractarian," till in 1841 their publication came to a sudden end by reason of the famous Tract No. 90, written by Newman, and deeply offensive to Protestant feeling in England. Newman joined the Church of Rome in 1845, and thereafter the term " Puseyite " was popularly used to designate this party.

DR. THOS. CHALMERS, x780-1847.
As minister of the Tron Church, Glasgow (1815), he obtained a great reputation. He was appointed Professor of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrew's, 1823, of Theology at Edinburgh in 1828, and led the great secession in 1843. He was the first Moderator of, and was elected Principal and Primarius Professor of Theology in the Free Church of Scotland.

The corresponding movement in the Established Presbyterian Church of Scotland, commonly referred to as the Ten Years' Conflict, arose out of a question of Church government rather than one of theology. Lay patronage had been imposed on the Church of Scotland by the Act of 1712. The revival of spiritual activity, which in England took the shape of the Tractarian movement, was equally perceptible in Scotland, and resulted in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland passing the Veto Act in 1834, by which it was declared to be a fundamental law of the Church that no pastor could be appointed to a parish against the will of the majority of the congregation. It was not long before this led to appeals from the Ecclesiastical to the Civil Courts. In 1842 the General Assembly presented to the Queen a " claim, declaration, and protest," accompanied by an address praying for the abolition of patronage, to which the Home Secretary made reply that the Government could not interfere. In March 1843, the House of Commons decided by 211 votes to 76 against attempting to redress the grievance, and on May 18 following, the non-intrusion party withdrew from the General Assembly and constituted the first Assembly of the Free Church, under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Chalmers. The action was all the more significant because Chalmers, the most powerful and popular preacher in the Scottish Church of that day, and a distinguished leader of ecclesiastical thought, had hitherto been a powerful champion of the connection of Church and State. But he had thrown himself with great earnestness into the work of reclaiming the masses and bringing them into direct relations with the Church, and he felt convinced that this great work could not be carried to success unless the Church were free to choose her own instruments. Four hundred and seventy parish ministers resigned their livings and joined the Free Church. A sustentation fund was set up, based on a calculation made by Chalmers that a penny a week from each member of a congregation would produce a stipend of £150 a year for 500 ministers. It amounted to no less than £367,000 in the first year of disruption.
 

Site Copyright Worldwide 2010. Text and poetry written by Sir Hubert Maxwell is not to be reproduced without express Permission.