Expository Times, Jan 2006
The year 2006 sees the anniversary of the death a hundred years ago of Robert Rainy, Principal of The Free Church of Scotland’s New College in Edinburgh, and a very distant relation of Gladstone, who described Rainy, ten years before his death as “unquestionably the greatest of living Scotsmen.” Others were less fulsome. In the highlands he was called “black Rainy”, in the Church of Scotland he was referred to as “this unprincipled Principal”, and the press like to dub him “Dr Misty as well as Dr Rainy”.
Robert Rainy became a student for the Free Church ministry the year after the Disruption in 1843, and was minister first at Huntly in Aberdeenshire and then the Free High Church in Edinburgh before being appointed to the chair of Church History in New College in 1862 at the age of 36.
If ever there was someone who was prepared to pay any price for the peace of Jerusalem it was Robert Rainy. He supported the appointment of William Robertson Smith to teach the Old Testament in the Free Church College in Aberdeen. He was not himself opposed to the higher criticism which Robertson Smith espoused. And Rainy took the view that the articles questioning the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, for which Robertson Smith was to stand trial for heresy were not matters of faith.
As the controversy over Robertson Smith developed, Rainy became convinced that the Aberdeen teacher had lost the confidence of the Free Church, and for that reason rather than any question over the truth of what he taught, Rainy was prepared opposed Robertson Smith when his case came to the Assembly, saying as he closed the debate, “I say with all my heart that I wish that it was Professor Smith putting me out of my chair rather than I should be putting him out of his”.
Rainy was wrong, not just in the sense that Robertson Smith was vindicated but in believing that the unity of the church could be preserved by compromising principles.
In the years following the deposition of Robertson Smith, Rainy became an outspoken supporter of the disestablishment of the Church of Scotland, even although the Free Church’s great leader Thomas Chalmers had claimed that the Free Church of Scotland believed in the establishment principal, and he was leaving a “vitiated” establishment but would rejoice to return to a pure one. Part of the reason for Rainy’s support for disestablishment was his conviction that the public mood in Scotland was in favour of a union between the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church, which firmly believed in the voluntary principle.
As part of paving the way for eventual union with the United Presbyterian Church Rainy pioneered a Declaratory Act which, he claimed, was a minor matter but which committed the Free Church to the liberal evangelicalism which marked the United Presbyterian Church rather than the dogmatic Calvinism which was the hallmark of Rainy’s own church.
Opponents of the Union, mainly in the highlands held that a union with a church which supported disestablishment would be a denial of the Free Church’s constitution. But Rainy replied “The only authentic Free Church tradition is the right of the Church to determine its own constitution, its own principles, its own doctrine”. The result of the union was that a Free Church continued as well as the United Free Church which Rainy championed. The minority Free Church took its case eventually to the House of Lords claiming that it, and not the United Free Church which Rainy had championed was “carrying out the intentions of the donors “ and so was entitled to the entire property of the former Free Church.
Robert Rainy died in Australia, where he had gone to try to recover his health. His last clear words were “I am quite sure, I am quite satisfied; God will always, always guide His Church”. It is always a temptation to which leadership in the Church is peculiarly tempted: to assume that its own ecclesiastical policy coincides with the will of God”. And leadership in the Church is also particularly prone to the conviction that if the end is what is understood to be the greater glory of God, then that end justifies whatever means are necessary.
Robert Rainy was Moderator of his church on three occasions. When the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland meets each year, those attending, like the students of New College all year round, use the large hall named after Robert Rainy to eat their lunch.