seem for the members of a supreme court, like the General
Assembly, to be baffled by those of a subordinate court: but still, since
each party must be regarded as representing far larger interests than any
personal to themselves, trying on either side, not the energies of their
separate wits, but the available resources of law in one of its obscurer
chapters, there really seemed no more room for humiliation to the one
party, or for triumph to the other, than there is amongst reasonable men
in the result from a game, where the game is one exclusively of chance.

From this period it is probably that the faction of Non-intrusionists
resolved upon abandoning the church. It was the one sole resource left for
sustaining their own importance to men who were now sinking fast in public
estimation. At the latter end of 1842, they summoned a convocation in
Edinburgh. The discussions were private; but it was generally understood
that at this time they concerted a plan for going out from the church, in
the event of their failing to alarm the Government by the notification of
this design. We do not pretend to any knowledge of secrets. What is known
to every body is--that on the annual meeting of the General Assembly, in
May 1843, the great body of the Non-intrusionists moved out in procession.
The sort of theatrical interest which gathered round the Seceders for a
few hurried days in May, was of a kind which should naturally have made
wise men both ashamed and disgusted. It was the merest effervescence from
that state of excitement which is nursed by novelty, by expectation, by
the vague anticipation of a "scene," possibly of a quarrel, together with
the natural interest in _seeing_ men whose names had been long before the
public in books and periodical journals.

The first measure of the Seceders was to form themselves into a
pseudo-General Assembly. When there are two suns visible, or two moons,
the real one and its duplicate, we call the mock sun a _parhelios_, and
the mock moon a _paraselene_. On that principle, we must call this mock
Assembly a _para-synodos_. Rarely, indeed, can we applaud the Seceders in
the fabrication of names. They distinguish as _quoad sacra_ parishes those
which were peculiarly _quoad politica_ parishes; for in that view only
they had been interesting to the Non-intrusionists. Again, they style
themselves _The Free Church_, by way of taunting the other side with being
a servile church. But how are they an