Preface

On 18 May 1843 an event occurred in Scotland which shook the Protestant world.British North Americans watched with passionate interest as Thomas Chalmers, the aging patriarch of Scottish Presbyterians, led four hundred and fifty-four ministers, and almost forty per cent of the communicant membership, out of the Established Church of Scotland to form the Free Church of Scotland.l The immediate cause of this secession was a church-state conflict which had raged for upwards often years.The overriding question was whether or not the state, acting through its civil courts, had the right to dictate to the church in matters which the church regarded as "spiritual."For many Scottish churchmen, this was a battle for the "crown rights of the Redeemer" and was the most profound crisis of conscience since the covenanting days of the seventeenth century.What is usually referred to as the "Disruption" was, for the Scottish nation, the "most momentous single event of the nineteenth century," 2 one which was successful in dividing most elements in Scottish society.To many it was a glorious event.Lord Henry Cockburn, one of the Justices of the Court of Session, regarded it as the triumph of "principle . . .over interest" and as "the most honourable feat for Scotland that its whole history supplies."Cockburn's contemporary, Lord Francis Jeffrey, also declared, "I'm proud of my country; there is not another country upon earth where such a deed could have been done."3 Scottish expatriates shared these sentiments.Peter Brown, editor of New York's British Chronicle and later of the Toronto Banner, described the Scottish Disruption as "one of the most sublime scenes of Christian self-denial and devotion to the cause of truth that the world has ever seen." 4 Though the immediate dispute was confined to the national boundaries of Scotland, its impact was felt directly in the colonies of the British Empire like Nova Scotia, the Canadas, and Australia, and indirectly in interested churches in Sweden, Switzerland, France, the United States,

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