In the Established Kirk the Moderates were in the majority
till about 1837, when the inheritors of those extreme views which Knox
compromised about, and which the majority of ministers disclaimed
before the Revolution of 1688, obtained the upper hand. They had
planted the remotest parishes of the Highlands with their own kind of
ministers, who swamped, in 1838, the votes of the Lowland Moderates,
exactly as, under James VI., Highland 'Moderates' had swamped the
votes of the Lowland Extremists. The majority of Extremists, or most
of it, left the Kirk in 1843, and made the Free Kirk. In 1900, when
the Free Kirk joined the United Presbyterians, it was Highland
ministers, mainly, who formed the minority of twenty-seven, or so, who
would not accept the new union, and now constitute the actual Free
Kirk, or Wee Frees, and possess the endowments of the old Free Kirk of
1843. We can scarcely say _Beati possidentes_.
It has been shown, or I have tried, erroneously or not, to show that,
wild and impossible as were the ideal claims of Knox, of Andrew
Melville, of Mr. Pont, and others, the old Scottish Kirk of 1560, by
law established, was capable of giving up or suppressing these claims,
even under Knox, and even while the Covenant remained in being.
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