gument and repartee which
made it plain that he would have held a distinguished place in any
assembly whatever. If his debating had a fault, it was that of being
almost too dialectically cogent, so that his antagonists felt that
they were being foiled on the form of the argument before they could
get to the issues they sought to raise. But while he was an
accomplished lawyer in matters of form, he was no less an accomplished
theologian in matters of substance. Although the party of repression
triumphed so far as to deprive him of his chair, the victory virtually
remained with him, not only because he had shown that the Scottish
Presbyterian standards did not condemn the views he held, but also
because his defence and the discussions which it occasioned had, in
bringing those views to the knowledge of a great number of thoughtful
laymen, led such persons to reconsider their own position. Some of
them found themselves forced to agree with Smith. Others, who
distrusted their capacity for arriving at a conclusion, came at least
to think that the questions involved did not affect the essentials of
faith, and must be settled by the ordinary canons of historical and
philological criticism. Thus the trial proved to be a turning-point
for the Scottish Churches, much as the _Essays and Reviews_ case had
been for the Church of England eighteen years earlier. Opinions
formerly proscribed were thereafter freely expressed. Nearly all the
doctrinal prosecutions subsequently attempted in the Scottish
Presbyterian Churches have failed. Much feeling has been excited, but
the result has been to secure a greater latitude than was dreamt of
forty years ago. At first the rigidly orthodox section of the Free
Church, now almost confined to the Highlands, thought of seceding from
the main body on the ground that tolerance was passing into
indifference or unbelief. But the new ideas continued to grow, and the
sentiment in favour of letting clergymen as well as lay church members
put a lax construction on the doctrinal standards drawn up in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, has spread as widely in Scotland
as in England. The Presbyterian Churches in America and the Roman
Catholic Church now stand almost alone among the larger Christian
bodies in retaining something of the ancient rigidity. Even the Roman
Church begins to feel the solvent power of these researches. It may be
conjectured that as the process of adjusting the letter of Scriptur