RUCTIONS AND RELIGION IN THE HEBRIDES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue 7395, 22 February 1902, Page 3 (Supplement)

RUCTIONS AND RELIGION IN THE HEBRIDES.

.POLICEMEN BESIEGED IN A CHURCH. (From Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, January 4. The men of the Hebrides take their religion with a grim seriousness,' and are •quite ready to set sticks whacking and -skulls cracking fbr the faith that is in them. The reader will probably only possess a. very dim idea of the ground of the quarrels which have set the Lewis Islanders in open defiance of the Law -Courts -Constabulary. To understand the situa--tion it is necessary to glance at recent •ecclesiastical history. A little more than a year ago the two great Presbyterian di§s*>nting bodies in Scotland— the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church— united, and now form the United • Free Church of Scotland. A section of the church, mainly in the Highlands, dissatisfied with the union, and also doubtful of the orthodoxy of some of the Free Church professors, refused to enter the union. In all, between 20 and 30 ministers •out of 1100 or 1200 stood out. The number of their adherents in the congregations is not certain, b.ut they claim a geod many thousands. The leaders of the minority brought an action against the United Free Church, claiming all Free Church funds and church buildings, on the plea that the Free Church In the Union had .departed from distinctive principles. The .j/ase was decided against them in the Edahburgh Courts, but it is likely to be carried to the Lords. The dissentients In a number of cases in the Highland congregations refused to give up the church buildings to a portion of the congregations — mostly a minority — who adhered to ■the United Free Church, as almost all •church buildings were held by trustees in the name of the whole Free Church. Actions were brought, and the courts ordered the fabrics to be handed over to the United Free Church. A case of this kind occurred at Ness, and the Court ordered the keys of the Free Church and the cross there to be handed over, in order that the section of .the congregation' adhering to the United Church might worship there. Duplicate keys were provided, and some of the church leaders were willing that both sections should have the use of the building:. The dissentients, who had possession, refused, and recently deforced the sheriff's officer, who tried to open the -church door under a warrant of the Edinburgh CourtOn Saturday the sheriff's officer, aided by the constable of Inverness and a number of mainland policemen, went to the island, and, with a locksmith, they proceeded to open the church doors. For a time the islanders allowed them to proceed with their work. About dusk, however, bands of men converged upon the church. and sent a volley of stones upon the constables guarding the d&or. The police promptly retired into the building, but several of them .were badly, cut and bruised before they reached the sanctuary. The crowd then set to work and speedily broke every window in the place, and battered In the door with boulders. When a cessation of the attack occurred, the chief constable, whose valour was not without the better part, asked in Gaelic of the leader what he -wanted. .The xeply was, "The police to clear oft the island," the speaker adding that unless they did so the people of Ness would not be responsible for their lives In the circumstances the officers wisely decided to quit the island, and the mob which attacked the church allowed them to go - without let or hindrance. But detached ■parties of islanders stoned the police from vantage points along the route to Stornoway, and by the time the guardians of the law reached their boat scarce one could boast a whole, unbruised skin. So the islanders rest victorious, but there is talk of a military enforcement of the law as laid down by the Edinburgh courts. If soldiers are drafted into the island there is like to be grievous bloodshed, for the Lewis and Harris population runs to more than 30,000, and though for the greater part they are a narrowminded crowd— through ignorance— there Is no question of their tenacity of purpose, and no man may question their reckless courage in fighting for any cause they deem true.