ht to submission, accepting an 'indulgence' from
the State, while but a few upholders of the old pretensions of the
clergy stood out in the wildernesses of South-western Scotland. There
might be three or four such ministers, there might be only one, but
they, or he, to the mind of 'the Remnant,' were the only 'lawful
ministers.' At the Revolution of 1688-89 the Remnant did not accept
the compromise under which the Presbyterian Kirk was re-established.
They stood out, breaking into many sects; the spiritual descendants of
most of these blended into one body as 'The United Presbyterian Kirk'
in 1847. In the Established Kirk the Moderates were in the majority
till about 1837, when the inheritors of those extreme views which Knox
compromised about, and which the majority of ministers disclaimed
before the Revolution of 1688, obtained the upper hand. They had
planted the remotest parishes of the Highlands with their own kind of
ministers, who swamped, in 1838, the votes of the Lowland Moderates,
exactly as, under James VI., Highland 'Moderates' had swamped the
votes of the Lowland Extremists. The majority of Extremists, or most
of it, left the Kirk in 1843, and made the Free Kirk. In 1900, when
the Free Kirk joined the United Presbyterians, it was Highland
ministers, mainly, who formed the minority of twenty-seven, or so, who
would not accept the new union, and now constitute the actual Free
Kirk, or Wee Frees, and possess the endowments of the old Free Kirk of
1843. We can scarcely say _Beati possidentes_.

It has been shown, or I have tried, erroneously or not, to show that,
wild and impossible as were the ideal claims of Knox, of Andrew
Melville, of Mr. Pont, and others, the old Scottish Kirk of 1560, by
law established, was capable of giving up or suppressing these claims,
even under Knox, and even while the Covenant remained in being. The
mass of the ministers, after the return of Charles II. before
Worcester fight, before bloody Dunbar, were not irreconcilables. The
Auld Kirk, the Kirk Established, has some right to call herself the
Church of Scotland by historical continuity, while the opposite
claimants, the men of 1843, may seem rather to descend from people
like young Renwick, the last hero who died for their ideas, but not,
in himself, the only 'lawful minister' between Tweed and Cape Wrath.
'Other times, other manners.' All the Kirks are perfectly loyal; now
none persecutes; interference with private life, 'Kirk