Real Glory

LOCH A TUATH NEWS September 2002

I have recently been reading the history of First Presbyterian Church in Columbia, South Carolina. My interest was stimulated in part by the fact that the author, David Calhoun, is the author of the magisterial two-volume history of Princeton Seminary, published by the Banner of Truth, which ought to be required reading for every minister and divinity student. Having read Calhoun's history of Princeton, where the Hodges and Warfield laboured intensely, I was keen to read his history of this particular church.

The early pastors of First Presbyterian Church included John Witherspoon, a grandson of the famous Scot of the same name who emigrated to America and became a prominent statesman and church leader, Benjamin Morgan Palmer and James Henry Thornwell. These men, to use B.B. Warfield's phrase, were "scholar-saints", and were eminent in consolidating the pulpit of First Presbyterian as a sound Reformed witness.

The link between Scotland and the Carolinas has been well documented (see, for example, Professor Douglas Kelly's book Carolina Scots), and Calhoun reminds us of the common ground between the Calvinism of Scotland and that of the Presbyterian South. Ten years after the Disruption took place in Scotland, the new building in Columbia was dedicated. I wanted to quote from Palmer's sermon at that dedication:

As for this building, beautiful as it may be in our eyes, let is please us to call it only a plain Presbyterian meeting house. The glory we see in it, let it not be the glory of its arches and its timbers; not the glory of its lofty and graceful spire, pointing ever upwards to that home the pious shall find with God; not the glory of this chaste pulpit, with its delicate tracery and marble whiteness; not the glory found in the eloquence or learning of those who, through generations, shall here proclaim the gospel; nor yet the glory traced in the wealth and fashion, refinement and social position of those who throng its courts. But let its glory be 'The Glory of the Lord risen upon it!'

Palmer's stirring words are powerful in their eloquence and in their impact. And they sound an important note which is as essential for us in Back as for the present congregation in Columbia, and wherever else the people of God meet together. Many of us worship in large church buildings, which have often been criticised for their lack of artistic ornamentation. Perhaps we have been too cautious sometimes when it comes to the aesthetics of our places of worship. But what is the glory of our churches?

Is the church at Back, for example, rightly regarded by us as a 'plain Presbyterian meeting house'? Much as we admire the glory of its location, or the beauty of its carvings and craftsmanship, or the glory of its congregation, do we wish that the glory of our church will be that the glory of the Lord be risen upon it?

We were privileged to visit Tuscany this Summer. Many of the church buildings throughout Italy are ornate in the extreme, full of relics and artefacts of religious and historical interest. But, like the temple in Ezekiel's vision, the glory has departed out of the door.

There is every indication that after two hundred years First Presbyterian Church (now in the Synod of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church) -- like many of our Presbyterian meeting houses -- is still proclaiming the Gospel of a crucified and risen Saviour. But how much we long to see our churches made glorious not by the external beauty of art and craft, but by the internal beauty of God's grace at work in the hearts and lives of men and women!