'thirds' of benefices, 'aye and until the Kirk come to the full
possession of their proper patrimony, which is the teinds.' The proper
patrimony of the ancient Church was, perhaps, rather the endowments
which had been gifted to it; yet Knox, who abhorred the idea of
inheriting anything from that old Church, took a share of that money,
even from the State, with reluctance. But the tithes, to be enforced
yearly from Scotsmen by the law, he claimed freely, for they were due to
the poor, were due to learning and the school, and were above all due to
the Kirk, as entrusted with these other interests no less than with its
own.

The battle was not over. The scheme of the Book of Discipline remained,
even after the statutes of 1567, a mere 'imagination,' all attempted
embodiment of it being starved by the nobility and the crown. And in our
own century the Church, retaining its statutory jurisdiction over
Catholics and Nonconformists, has lost its statutory control over both
the schools and the poor, while it has never got anything like 'full
possession' or even administration of the teinds, in which all three
were to share, but of which it desired to be sole trustee.

It it easy for us, looking back--superfluously easy--to see the
fundamental mistake in Knox's legislation. But taking that first step of
intolerant establishment as fixed, I see nothing in his proposed
superstructure which was not admirable and heroic, and also--as heroic
things so often are--sane and even practicable. And it was all conceived
in the interest of the people--of those 'poor brethren' of land and
burgh, with whom Knox increasingly identified himself. No doubt the Kirk
had no right to claim administration, even as trustee, of the tenth of
the yearly fruits of all Scottish industry. But when we think of the
objects to which these fruits were to be applied, we shall not be
disposed to deal hardly with such a claim. It is not the divided and
disinherited Churches of Scotland alone--it is, even more, the 'poor
labourers of the ground'--who have reason, in these later days, to join
in the death-bed denunciation by Knox of the 'merciless devourers of the
patrimony of the Kirk.'

* * * * *

Knox's statesmanship may have failed--partly because an unjust and
unchristian principle was unawares imbedded in its foundation, and
partly because the hereditary legislators of Scotland could not rise to
the level of its peasant-refor