Volume 3 > Half-Volume 6

582
may be safely consigned, and as generations pass
away the worth of his actions will be better under-
stood and more permanently established.
BUCHANAN, ROBERT, D.D., was one of the
chief leaders of the Free Church of Scotland, both
during the period that preceded and that which fol-
lowed the Disruption of 1843. The   Non-Intrusion
party in the Church of Scotland, and afterwards the
Free Church, had one great leader who towered above
all his contemporaries�Chalmers�at once a divine
and a statesman. Inferior only to him came the three
great lay leaders, Speirs, Dunlop, and Dalhousie, and
the three great clerical leaders, Cunningham, Cand-
lish, and Buchanan.  The last survivor of these was
Dr. Buchanan, and with his death in the spring of
1875 the whole era to which these great men be-
longed passed away, and the Free Church entered on
a new stage of existence.
Robert Buchanan was born in August, 1802, in
St. Ninians, a suburb of Stirling, where his father
was a brewer. At the parish school he showed
such promise of future distinction, that his father
decided on sending him to the University of Glasgow,
where he went through the courses both of arts and
of theology, having determined from the first to
devote himself to the ministry. He did not greatly
distinguish himself at the university. Like many
other men of great practical ability, he had a reputa-
tion among his compeers which was unaccounted for
by his college career, but which his after life showed
to have been well founded. In 1827 Robert
Buchanan was ordained minister of the parish of
Gargunnock, not far from his native place. It is a
small and lonely country parish, and the young
minister, who had employed his leisure time there in
carrying on his studies, was in a few years translated
to the more important charge of Saltoun. Saltoun
is a well-endowed parish, with a good manse; but
what renders it remarkable above other well-endowed
country charges, and specially suitable for a young
minister of more than ordinary ability and intelligence,
is the fact that the manse possesses a valuable library,
left in it by Bishop Burnet as a perpetual endowment.
The historical part of this library was doubtless as
useful and interesting to Mr. Buchanan,  as the valu-
able theological works it contained were to his
successor Mr. Fairbairn. The names come together
for the first time as the one young minister succeeds
the other in the charge of Saltoun and the enjoyment
of Burnet's library, but during the half-century that
followed the two men were constantly found in close
association�in the courts of the church, and
specially in public church life in Glasgow. They
resembled each other, in life, in a stately and com-
manding presence, wide influence, and universal
respect paid to them by men of all different classes
and denominations. In the time of their death they
were not long divided, and in the manner of it they
were strangely alike, both passing away peacefully
during sleep without any previous special warning or
alarm.
In 1833 Mr. Buchanan received from the town
council of Glasgow the presentation to the Tron
Church of that city, the church to which Chalmers
had first gone as minister when he came to Glasgow,
and where he had begun those great schemes for the
amelioration of the masses, which he afterwards more
fully carried out in the parish of St. John's. As
minister of the Tron parish Mr. Buchanan dis-
charged his duties with remarkable zeal, assiduity,
and method, and he quickly gained a high standing
as a citizen of Glasgow, and a position of influence
in the councils of the church. In 1841 he had re-
ceived from the University of Glasgow�his own
university�the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In the
General Assembly of  1835 he  made a profound impres-
sion by his speech on the Education Report, and he
was soon called on to take an important part in the
church struggles of the time. At the time when
Buchanan came to Glasgow there was beginning in
the Church of Scotland that "Ten Years' Conflict" of
which he afterwards became the historian, the conflict
between the Non-Intrusion party and their oppo-
nents which resulted in the Disruption of the Church
in 1843. In the Assembly of  1834 the Non-Intru-
sionists gained their first great success in the passing
of the Veto Act, by which it was enacted that if,
when a minister was presented to a parish, the
majority of male heads of families in the congrega-
tion objected to him, this should be a sufficient reason,
for the presbytery to refuse to ordain him. It was
believed that this act would put a stop to the forced
settlements of ministers on unwilling congregations.
But in  1838 the Court of Session in the Auchterarder
case decided, in direct contradiction to the Veto Law,
that the presbytery was bound to take on trial for
ordination a presentee to whom a majority of heads
of families objected. In these circumstances " it was
impossible," to use Buchanan's own words in his
history of these events, "that the General Assembly
could consent to appeal the Auchterarder case to the
House of Lords, without first giving such a declara-
tion of its own views and intentions in regard to the
great cardinal principles which had been brought
into dispute, as would prevent any subsequent mis-
construction of the church's conduct."
The Non-Intrusion party felt it their duty to give
forth a clear statement of their views on the spiritual
independence of the church, and the wisdom and
discernment which the older leaders of that party so
often showed in bringing forward younger men of
ability and promise to take an important share in
debate was in no instance more signally displayed
than in the selection of Mr. Buchanan to move the
resolution that embodied those views. The resolu-
tion was, "That the General Assembly of this
church, while they unqualifiedly acknowledge the
exclusive jurisdiction of the civil courts in regard
to the civil rights and emoluments secured by law to
the church, and the ministers thereof, and will ever
give and inculcate obedience to their decisions there-
anent; do resolve, that as it is declared in the Con-
fession of Faith of this national Established Church
that  'the Lord Jesus Christ is King  and Head of the
church, and hath therein appointed a government
in the hand of church-officers distinct from the civil
magistrate,' and that in all matters touching the
doctrine, government, and discipline of the church
her judicatories possess an exclusive jurisdiction
founded on the Word of God, which 'power
ecclesiastical' (in the words of the Second Book of
Discipline) ' flows from God and the mediator Jesus
Christ, and is spiritual, not having a temporal head
on earth but only Christ, the spiritual King and
Governor of His kirk.' And they do farther resolve,
that this spiritual jurisdiction, and the supremacy
and sole headship of the Lord Jesus Christ on which
it depends, they will assert, and at all hazards defend,
by the help and blessing of that great God who in
the days of old enabled their fathers amid manifold
persecutions to maintain a testimony even to the
death for Christ's kingdom and crown. And  finally,
that they will firmly enforce obedience upon all
office-bearers and members of this church by the
execution of her laws in the exercise of the ecclesi-
astical authority wherewith they are invested."
The power with which Mr. Buchanan expressed and