John Caird, Glasgow, 1874

Principal John Caird

It took less than a month from the first intimation that an accusation of heresy could be laid against John Caird, Principal of Glasgow University, to its evaporation. The aftermath played out for a couple of months longer. 

Intimation of a charge
On January 7 1874, Mr William Wallace, an elder at Kirkintilloch, told an ordinary meeting of the Glasgow Synod of the Church of Scotland that he would like to see Rev Caird, Principal of Glasgow University, summoned to the following meeting. He wished to discuss Caird's sermon on “Unbelief” which he had recently preached in Govan and, slightly modified, in Dundee. These had been reported in the Glasgow News on December 22, 1873 and January 5, 1874.

Wallace had already been in communication with Professor Caird by letter. He had suggested to Caird that the tenet that a person was not responsible for his religious belief was at the root of his teaching; Caird had denied that he held such a doctrine. Despite this denial Wallace wanted to pursue the matter and he did so with Caird's permission.

The Clerk of the Synod, Dr. Smith, questioned whether Dr Caird was in fact a member of the Synod. His interest was not to establish the synod's jurisdiction but because Caird was not at that point on his list of members. If he were to be added to the membership, then the Glasgow Synod would be entitled to one more representative on General Synod. 

In time-honoured tradition a sub-committee was formed. Seven members, including Mr. Wallace, were tasked to examine the preliminary question of whether Caird was in fact a member of the Synod. If so, he was subject to its jurisdiction. 

Whether by design or default, the delay also bought Synod managers time to decide, away from public scrutiny, how to manage a potentially tricky political issue of two intersecting questions: the theological questions at issue, and the relationship between the Synod and the University. Both questions at this moment focused on the person of Principle Caird. 

Coverage in the papers

Newspapers were not going to wait until the Synod's next meeting. The following day, the Manchester Evening News opened its article on the issue with “Once more, in Scotland, common sense has come to loggerheads with orthodoxy.” adding, "This rebellion against stereotyped the forms of religious thought and expression north the Tweed, is one of the most interesting phenomena of our time." (Jan 8, 1874, p.2 col.3) 

It delineated the key question:  how was Scripture to be interpreted, and by whom? 

Caird, the paper said, had asserted that Scripture should be subject to, and interpreted by, same canons of criticism applied to other historical and ethical writings. "The methods of proof" he had averred "must be similar to those recognised in ordinary science and disputed questions in the domain of law." After all, Caird had asked, not unreasonably, what other means do we have?

 

Culturally and religiously, this was an evident threat to the status and authority of the clergy:

Accordingly, disbelief in any given interpretation of Scripture cannot be a "a punishable sin," unless there is an infallible interpreter on earth. But there is no infallible interpreter, and, therefore, on the showing of Dr. Caird, disbelief [in] any formula or orthodoxy is not punishable as sin. Such are the bearings of new heresy sensation which has arisen in Scotland, and the issue of the case will be waited for with curiosity.

This is the logic of religious pluralism: in the  absence of an "infallible interpreter" 

Caird straddles the academic and religious worlds, but he puts his weight on the foot in academia. Christians, he said,   

The newspaper concluded that the logic of this position was that everyone could make up their own mind. And if the people who examined scripture with integrity failed to arrive at the same conclusions as the Church, there would be no culpability. It quoted Caird as asserting, 

To hold that in the next world they will be damned for their honest doubts, or their ignorance in this matter, [even] to hold a doctrine wholly opposed to the true conception of God, is monstrous, and even blasphemous. 

The York Herald added a little additional spice with its headline “A Queen’s Chaplain Charged With Heresy” (9 Jan 1874, p.1 col.5.) 

No further action
At the following meeting of the Glasgow Synod (3 Feb 1874) debate lasted several hours. Finally, a motion to appoint a committee to confer with Dr. Caird was defeated and the alternative, to take no further action, passed.

The Synod Clerk, Dr. Smith, then appealed to General Synod, but withdrew his complaint in March when it became clear that there were insufficient grounds for a prosecution (Inverness Courier, 2 Apr 1874, p.3 col.5). The whole matter had simply fizzled out.

The Aftermath
There was, however, still a reckoning to be had. But, such as it was, it was displaced from the Presbytery’s members and procedures onto the the Glasgow News journalist who had reported Caird’s sermon. He complained to the editor of the rival Glasgow Herald of his treatment in that paper:

SIR, As you have declared in a leader in the Glasgow Herald of to-day that I have “much to answer for," and that I am, in fact the author of a "public scandal," perhaps you will allow me a few words of explanation as to the exact extent to which I am responsible for the lamentable state of things which you have so pathetically described. (Glasgow Herald 27 Mar 1874, p.6 col.9)

Given the interest in Professor Smith’s views the reporter had been sent to cover his sermon in Glasgow. He complained about the conditions: the room was crowded; facilities for reporting were not given him; he “was obliged to take the notes in his hat” as well as “on his knee.”; the report was squeezed into two columns and should have had four; it was telegraphed from Dundee to Edinburgh with the inevitable errors; he was not responsible for putting text into inverted commas - and, even so, he said, it was not “unusually inaccurate”.

This was immediately followed by a riposte, also anonymous but evidently from Professor Smith’s hosts. The reporter’s story, they said, was pitiful. He was given no facilities because none had been asked for.

And a footnote: in 1868 Caird was able to confer an honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity on John McCloud Campbell who, in 1831, had been expelled from the Church of Scotland for heresy.