Andrews in 1546. 'The sorrows of Scotland' had
endured when Knox died for but twenty-six years. Since his death, 332
years have gone by, and the present sorrows of the United Free Kirk
are the direct, though distant, result of some of the ideas of John
Knox.
The whole trouble springs from his peculiar notions, and the notions
of his followers, about the relations between Church and State. In
1843, half the ministers of the Established Kirk in Scotland, or more,
left the Kirk, and went into the wilderness for what they believed to
be the ideal of Knox. In 1904 they have again a prospect of a similar
exodus, because they are no longer rigid adherents of the very same
ideal! A tiny minority of some twenty-seven ministers clings to what
it considers to be the Knoxian ideal, and is rewarded by all the
wealth bestowed on the Free Kirk by pious benefactors during sixty
years.
The quarrel, for 344 years (1560-1904), has been, we know, about the
relations of Church and State. The disruption of 1843, the departure
of the Free Kirk out of the Established Kirk, arose thus, according to
Lord Macnaghten, who gave one of the two opinions in favour of the
United Free Kirk's claim to the possessions held by the Free Kirk
before its union, in 1900, with the United Presbyterians.
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