...'
The State, in fact, if we may speak carnally, ought to pay the piper,
but must not presume to call the tune.
Now we touch the skirt of the mystery, what was the difference between
the Free Kirk and the United Presbyterians, who, since 1900, have been
blended with that body? The difference was that the Free Kirk held it
to be the duty of the State to establish _her_, and leave her perfect
independence; while the United Presbyterians maintained the absolutely
opposite opinion--namely, that the State cannot, and must not,
establish any Church, or pay any Church out of the national resources.
When the two Kirks united, in 1900, then, the Free Kirk either
abandoned the doctrine of which, in 1851, she said that 'she holds it
still, and through God's grace ever will hold it,' or she regarded it
as a mere pious opinion, which did not prevent her from coalescing
with a Kirk of contradictory ideas. The tiny minority--the Wee Frees,
the Free Kirk of to-day--would not accept this compromise, 'hence
these tears,' to leave differences in purely metaphysical theology out
of view.
Now the root of all the trouble, all the schisms and sufferings of
more than three centuries, lies, as we have said, in some of the ideas
of John Knox, and one asks, of what Kirk would John Knox be, if he
were alive in the present state of affairs? I venture to think that
the venerable Reformer would be found in the ranks of the Established
Kirk, 'the Auld Kirk.
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