Moderator for Scotland

Into Edinburgh's St. Giles's Cathedral, cradle of Presbyterianism, marched some 1,500 leaders of the Church of Scotland last week. The occasion: the service preceding the annual installation of the Church's new Moderator.

Present were the King's Lord High Commissioner, the Duke of Montrose, in his Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve commodore's uniform; William Y. Darling, Edinburgh's Lord Provost, many a purple and ermine-trimmed civic and legal dignitary. Present also were about a dozen living ex-Moderators in their traditional black dress coats, white lace ruffled shirt fronts and cuffs, black knee breeches, black shoes with silver buckles.

The walls of the historic fane had witnessed more than four centuries of Scottish Church history. It was in St. Giles's that austere, turbulent, dissenting John Knox had thundered against the papacy; in the street outside he had distributed his thunderous treatise: "The Monstrous Regiment of Women," directed against Mary of Scotland and Elizabeth of England.

Reminiscent of the Scots' battle against English Episcopacy was the tablet on the wall commemorating Jenny Geddes. In 1637 Jenny (so the story goes) struck a stout blow for Presbyterian independence when the Dean commenced reading the collect from Archbishop Laud's high-church Prayer Book. "Fause loon!" she cried. "Daur ye say mass in my lug! (ear)," and chucked a stool at the Dean.

The King's Man. The service over, the Duke, civic dignitaries, ministers and elders went in formal procession from the Cathedral to the Church's Assembly Hall near by.

In the square, bare building the new Moderator was installed in his high office. The bullpit and the galleries were packed (the few women who attended were segregated in a part of the gallery). In a fenced-in square the ex-Moderators sat with their backs to the audience. Above them on a throne sat the Duke. Although representing the King (who is a Presbyterian in Scotland, an Anglican elsewhere in the Empire), his duties were purely decorative. For nothing in this world or the next would the Scots permit State interference in religious matters.

"Indefatigable As He Is Wise." Loud and clear rang the metrical psalms and hymns. Many were the ceremonial bowings between the retiring Moderator, Dr. C. W. G. Taylor, the Duke, the people in the hall. Cried Dr. Taylor, after reporting on his year's moderatorship (mostly visits to presbyteries, wartime camps, munitions factories): "I have the honor to submit to you . . . John Baillie . . . indefatigable as he is wise." Then he called for Baillie's election by the time-honored formula, "It is your will." The assembled Scots gave assent by vigorous handclaps.

Out went a clerk to fetch Dr. Baillie. Down from his chair came Dr. Taylor, clasped his successor's hand, placed on his finger the ring of his new office. Then the new Moderator took his seat of authority.*

The Duke, speaking in his best quarterdeck manner, read a brief message from the King, paid his own tribute to the new Moderator. After Baillie's polite response, the new Moderator turned to the people, gave them a triple bow, later shook hands with Presbyterian representatives from other lands, including four U.S. chaplains.

The New Head. Young for a moderator (56), Baillie is the son of a Rosshire manse. Bright as a new threepenny bit, he went to Edinburgh University (where he now teaches divinity), collected scholarships as a child strings daisies. After further study in Germany he returned to Edinburgh to teach moral philosophy. U.S. centers of learning know him well: at intervals between 1919-41 he lectured at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Union and Auburn Seminaries. While at Auburn (1920) he was ordained in the Presbyterian Ministry. He thus becomes the Church of Scotland's first American-ordained Moderator.

Small, slightly built, grey-haired, with thin drooping cheeks, Baillie has a somewhat weary air, resembles an undersized, underfed St. Bernard dog. But as soon as he speaks in his crisp, incisive Highland voice, the listener is aware that he is a man of unassuming but confident mental powers. His fame, as the Duke said in his tribute, stems from his four-fold talents as "scholar, teacher, preacher and author." (Best-known books: Invitation to Pilgrimage; And the Life Everlasting.)

Scholar Baillie's popularity among Scots also grows from the fact that, while he has a fine sense of ceremony, he also likes common things. His favorite relaxations are walking and fishing; he prepared for the installation by three weeks with rod & reel at a Highland loch.

The Great Disruption. All the praises last week were not for the Moderator. The Duke, Taylor and Baillie each noted that this year marks the centennial of "The Great Disruption": each praised the Presbyterians who, in 1843, led 474 ministers and elders out of the old Church to found the Free Church, to retain the right of the kirk to choose her own ministers, appoint kirk sessions, synods and assemblies by the democratic right of election under common approval.

Secessions were nothing new for the Scots. They have thrived on religious rebellion from Knox's day down. While last century's revolt did not cause men to murder one another, as happened on earlier occasions, ministers who refused to help in the fight for a free and democratic kirk found themselves sometimes in awkward spots, including being hung by the heels under parish bridges.

A few "wee frees" still stay outside the Church of Scotland, constitute the small (23,375 members) Free Church of Scotland. On the same day Dr. Baillie was installed, they held their own service in St. Columba's Church, seated as their Moderator Dr. David McKenzie. Said one of them: "We have come to praise the disruption fathers, not to entomb them anew under any rearrangement of admitted facts." By & large, the good folk of Edinburgh seemed somewhat indifferent to both installations. Some citizens even derided the ceremonial pomp of the larger group. John Knox, some felt sure, would have lambasted their ceremonial complacency just as roundly as he had denounced Queen Mary's. Said one shrewd old Scottish reprobate, watching the colorful procession debouching from St. Giles's : "Just luik at they weeked auld deevils."

*Though the Moderator's office is mainly honorary, he is the head of one of the strongest of State churches. Of the country's 5,000,000 people, 1,278,297 are Presbyterians of the Church of Scotland.

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