at has been done_?

Up to the month of May in 1834, the fathers and brothers of the "Kirk"
were in harmony as great as humanity can hope to see. Since May 1834, the
church has been a fierce crater of volcanic agencies, throwing out of her
bosom one-third of her children; and these children are no sooner born
into their earthly atmosphere, than they turn, with unnatural passions, to
the destruction of their brethren. What _can_ be the grounds upon which an
_acharnement_ so deadly has arisen?

It will read to the ears of a stranger almost as an experiment upon his
credulity, if we tell the simple truth. Being incredible, however, it is
not the less true; and, being monstrous it will yet be recorded in history,
that the Scottish church has split into mortal feuds upon two points
absolutely without interest to the nation: 1st, Upon a demand for creating
clergymen by a new process; 2dly, Upon a demand for Papal latitude of
jurisdiction. Even the order of succession in these things is not without
meaning. Had the second demand stood first, it would have seemed possible
that the two demands might have grown up independently, and so far
conscientiously. But, according to the realities of the case, this is
_not_ possible, the second demand grew _out_ of the first. The interest of
the Seceders, as locked up in their earliest requisition, was that which
prompted their second. Almost every body was contented with the existing
mode of creating the pastoral relation. Search through Christendom,
lengthways and breadthways, there was not a public usage, an institution,
an economy, which more profoundly slept in the sunshine of divine favour
or of civil prosperity, than the peculiar mode authorized and practised in
Scotland of appointing to every parish its several pastor. Here and there
an ultra-Presbyterian spirit might prompt a murmur against it. But the
wise and intelligent approved; and those who had the appropriate--that is,
the religious interest--confessed that it was practically successful. From
whom, then, came the attempt to change? Why, from those only who had an
alien interest, an indirect interest, an interest of ambition in its
subversion. As matters stood in the spring of 1834, the patron of each
benefice, acting under the severest restraints--restraints which (if the
church courts did their duty) left no room or possibility for an unfit man
to creep in, nominated the incumbent. In a spiritual sense, the church had
all p