in the acts or the
opinions of those whom they are bound to regard as spiritual authorities.
Now here in Scotland, is a feud past all arbitration: here is a schism no
longer theoretic, neither beginning nor ending in mere speculation: here
is a change of doctrine, _on one side or the other_, which throws a sad
umbrage of doubt and perplexity over the pastoral relation of the church
to every parish in Scotland. Less confidence there must always be
henceforward in great religious incorporations. Was there any such
incorporation reputed to be more internally harmonious than the Scottish
church? None has been so tempestuously agitated. Was any church more
deeply pledged to the spirit of meekness? None has split asunder so
irreconcilably. As to the grounds of quarrel, could any questions or
speculations be found so little fitted for a popular intemperance? Yet no
breach of unity has ever propagated itself by steps so sudden and
irrevocable. One short decennium has comprehended within its circuit the
beginning and the end of this unparalleled hurricane. In 1834, the first
light augury of mischief skirted the horizon--a cloud no bigger than a
man's hand. In 1843 the evil had "travelled on from birth to birth."
Already it had failed in what may be called one conspiracy; already it had
entered upon a second, viz. to rear up an _Anti-Kirk_, or spurious
establishment, which should twist itself with snake-like folds about the
legal establishment; surmount it as a Roman _vinea_ surmounted the
fortifications which it beleaguered; and which, under whatsoever practical
issue for the contest, should at any rate overlook, molest, and insult the
true church for ever. Even this brief period of development would have
been briefer, had not the law courts interposed many delays. Demurs of law
process imposed checks upon the uncharitable haste of the _odium
theologicum_. And though in a question of schism it would be a _petitio
principii_ for a neutral censor to assume that either party had been
originally in error, yet it is within our competence to say, that the
Seceders it was whose bigotry carried the dispute to that sad issue of a
final separation. The establishment would have been well content to stop
short of that consummation: and temperaments might have been found,
compromises both safe and honourable, had the minority built less of their
reversionary hopes upon the policy of a fanciful martyrdom. Martyrs they
insisted upon becoming: an