hat can be known and recognised by the
maintaining of those principles to which the Church of our fathers was
true when she was on the mountain and on the field, when she was under
persecution, when she was an outcast from the world.'

Thus the Free Kirk was _the_ Kirk, and the Established Kirk was
heretical, was what Knox would have called 'ane rottin Laodicean.' Now
the fact is that the Church of Scotland had been, since August 1560, a
Kirk established by law (or by what was said to be a legal
Parliament), yet had never, perhaps, for an hour attained its own full
ideal relation to the State; had never been granted its entire claims,
but only so much or so little of these as the political situation
compelled the State to concede, or enabled it to withdraw. There had
always been members of the Kirk who claimed all that the Free Kirk
claimed in 1843; but they never got quite as much as they asked; they
often got much less than they wanted; and the full sum of their
desires could be granted by no State to a State-paid Church. Entire
independence could be obtained only by cutting the Church adrift from
the State. The Free Kirk, then, did cut themselves adrift, but they
kept on maintaining that they were _the_ Church of Scotland, and that
the State _ought_ in duty to establish and maintain _them_, while
granting them absolute independence.

The position was stated thus, in 1851, by an Act and Declaration of
the Free Kirk's Assembly: 'She holds still, _and through God's grace
ever will hold_, that it is the duty of civil rulers to recognise the
truth of God according to His word, and to promote and support the
Kingdom of Christ without assuming any jurisdiction in it, or any
power over it....'

The State, in fact, if we may speak carnally, ought to pay the piper,
but must not presume to call the tune.

Now we touch the skirt of the mystery, what was the difference between
the Free Kirk and the United Presbyterians, who, since 1900, have been
blended with that body? The difference was that the Free Kirk held it
to be the duty of the State to establish _her_, and leave her perfect
independence; while the United Presbyterians maintained the absolutely
opposite opinion--namely, that the State cannot, and must not,
establish any Church, or pay any Church out of the national resources.
When the two Kirks united, in 1900, then, the Free Kirk either
abandoned the doctrine of which, in 1851, she said that 'she holds it
still, an