Rare Book Monthly
Articles - October - 2003 Issue
The Doctrine of Caiaphas by Rev. David Murdoch D.D.
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Nor was that all. The paper which contains the contract, expressly says “that the congregation shall unite.” Now, the congregation were never notified of such a purpose as appointing Commissioners. Three times did I read out that “two Trustees were to be elected.” Not once did I call out the other part; and yet, without telling the people, without telling me, they go forward with resolutions, cut and dry, calling that a meeting of the congregation, brought together for the purpose, and assuming that the people have asked for a dissolution.
And Presbytery accepts of these Commissioners, and positively, upon the ground of the advice given, when they had no more authority than a Council, they judicially act, and dissolve the relationship. As a Council, they ignore a meeting of the Church, consisting of eight-eight females and forty-five males; but when a Presbytery, they receive Commissioners unappointed, from a meeting of SEVENTEEN men.
I expected and wished the congregation to meet once more. I had a right to expect this. They had not been called once together during all the preceding agitation; and ever since the Advisory Council had taken from me the pitiful six months, which were properly mine, I have considered myself as about to be kicked out before my time; whereas I wished to go forth freely of my own will, and at the will of the people. That being denied to me, and given as a sop to my enemy, I desired to know what the congregation thought of it. I regarded then, I do now so regard that act, in the light of punishment. What is more, the world so esteems the shortening of my time, as an infliction for some delinquency. I wanted to see if the people regarded it so. But I have been tricked out of this. What a shyster lawyer would call a “snap judgment,” has been obtained against me, and I have no resource but appeal.
That I was, in all this, sincere and candid, I wrote a letter to Mr. Robinson, on the 1st September, referring to a mission church I was about to open. The tenor of his reply will speak for the spirit of my letter. My proposition was to go on in good feeling as brethren, rather than in opposition and ill-will. I asked for the sanction and patronage of the mother Church, as the best means of promoting general good. And this is the answer: -
