About this time the brothers Robert and James Haldane devoted themselves to the work of promoting Evangelical Christianity, James making missionary journeys throughout Scotland and founding Sunday schools; and in 1798 the eccentric preacher Rowland Hill visited Scotland at their request. In the journals of these evangelists dark pictures are drawn of the religious state of the country, though their censorious tone detracts greatly from their value ; but there is no doubt that the efforts of the Haldanes brought about or coincided with a quickening of the religious spirit of Scotland. The assembly of 1799 passed an act forbidding the admission to the pulpits of laymen or of ministers of other churches, and issued a manifesto on Sunday schools. These acts helped greatly to discredit the Moderate party, of whose spirit they were the outcome. In 1810 the Christian Instructor began to appear under the editorship of Dr. Andrew Thomson, a church man of vigorous intellect and noble character. It was an ably written review, in which the theology of the Haldanes asserted itself in a somewhat dogmatic and confident tone against all un soundness and Moderatism, clearly proclaiming that the former things had passed away. The question of pluralities began to be agitated in 1813, and gave rise to a long struggle, in which Dr. Thomas Chalmers (q.v.) took a notable part, and which termi nated in the regulation that a university chair or principalship should not be held along with a parish which was not close to the university seat.
The growth of Evangelical sentiment in the church, along with the example of the great missionary societies founded in the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, led to the institution of the various missionary schemes, and their his tory forms the chief part of the history of the church for a num ber of years. The education scheme, having for its object the planting of schools in destitute Highland districts, came into exis tence in 1824. The foreign mission committee was formed in 1825, at the instance of Dr. John Inglis (1763-1834), a leader of the Moderate party; and Dr. Alexander Duff (q.v.) went to India in 1829 as the first missionary of the Church of Scotland. The church extension committee was first appointed in 1828, and in 1834 it was made permanent. It was originally formed to collect informa tion regarding the spiritual wants of the country, and to apply to the government to build the churches found to be necessary. As the population of Scotland had doubled since the Reformation, and its distribution had been completely altered in many counties, while the number of parish churches remained unchanged, and meeting-houses had only been erected where seceding congrega tions required them, the need for new churches was very great. The application to government for aid, however, proved the occasion of a "Voluntary controversy," which raged with great fierceness for many years and has never completely subsided. The union of the Burgher and the Anti-burgher bodies in 1820 in the United Secession (see UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH) added to the in fluence of the voluntary principle in the country, while the political excitement of the period disposed men's minds to such discus sions. The government built forty-two churches in the Highlands, providing them with a slender endowment ; and these are still known as parliamentary churches. Under Thomas Chalmers, how ever, the church extension committee struck out a new line of action. The great philanthropist had come to see that the church
could only reach the masses of the people effectively by greatly increasing the number of her places of worship and abolishing or minimizing seat-rents in the poorer districts. In his powerful de fence of establishments against the voluntaries in both Scotland and England, in which his ablest assistants were those who after wards became, along with him, the leaders of the Free Church, he pleaded that an established church to be effective must divide the country territorially into a large number of small parishes, so that every corner of the land and every person, of whatever class, shall actually enjoy the benefits of the parochial machinery. This "territorial principle" the church has steadily kept in view ever since. With the view of realizing this idea he appealed to the church to provide funds to build a large number of new churches, and personally carried his appeal throughout the country. By 1840 over 200 new churches had been built.
The zealous orthodoxy of the church found at this period several occasions to assert itself. John M'Leod Campbell (q.v.), minister of Row, was deposed by the assembly of 1830 for teaching that assurance is of the essence of faith and that Christ died for all men. He has since been recognized as one of the profoundest Scottish theologians of the 19th century, although his deposition was never removed. The same assembly condemned the doctrine put forth by Edward Irving (q.v.), that Christ took upon Him the sinful nature of man and was not impeccable, and Irving was de posed five years later by the Presbytery of Annan, when the out burst of supposed miraculous gifts in his church in London had rendered him still more obnoxious to the strict censures of the period (see CATHOLIC APOSTOLIC CHURCH).