by a majority found that, Mr Young
having been duly presented, the Presbytery was bound to take him upon
trials. An appeal was ultimately taken to the House of Lords, and by
it, in 1839, the decision of the Court of Session was re-affirmed. By
the highest legal authority the Veto Act was found to be worthless.
But the Church had gone too far to retrace her steps, and she now
raised the banner of Spiritual Independence. Other questions had come
to the front which heightened and intensified the feeling that
prevailed. By the equally illegal Chapel Act, also passed in 1834,
chapel districts were formed into parishes _quoad sacra_, and their
ministers found entitled to seats in the Church Courts. The minister
of Ardoch Chapel at once took his seat in the Presbytery, and was
followed in due time by the ministers of the West Church, Crieff, and
the Chapel at Blairingone. The Church had been led into an _impasse_
from which there was no outlet but by secession. The secession came.
In defence of their somewhat mysterious principles no fewer than 451
ministers, on the 18th day of May, 1843, left the Church. All the
world wondered. It was said that in no country other than Scotland
could such a spectacle have been seen. Yet one cannot help looking
back with sorrow upon the blundering that made it possible. Like the
Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, it was "magnificent, but not
war."

With the addition of the chapel ministers the membership of
Auchterarder Presbytery had risen to eighteen. The parish of
Auchterarder was still vacant. Of the remaining seventeen, eight were
found to have seceded. Of these, five were legal members of
Presbytery--viz., James Carment, Comrie; Peter Brydie, Fossoway; John
Reid Omond, Monzie; John Ferguson, Monzievaird; and James Thomson,
Muckhart. The three others were the chapel ministers--Samuel Grant,
Ardoch; Finlay Macalister, West Church, Crieff; and Andrew Noble,
Blairingone. The case of Mr Brydie, of Fossoway, was somewhat
peculiar. On October 13, 1843, he petitioned the Presbytery asking it
to annul its judgment with regard to him, and submitted a medical
certificate to the effect that at the time of his secession he was "in
a state of lunacy." The Presbytery, having consulted the Synod,
reponed him, on the ground that at the time he separated himself from
the Church he had been in a state of unsound mind.

The Presbytery now once more consisted of fifteen parishes an