aw and hay that stuffed him
sticking out in tufts from his waistband. 'O for an hour of Knox!'
The Scottish Church of the present age has already had its Knox.
'Elias hath already come.' The large-minded, wise-hearted Knox of
the nineteenth century died at Morningside three years ago; and he
has bequeathed, as a precious legacy to the Church, his judgment on
this very question. 'It were the best state of things,' he said, 'that
we had a Parliament sufficiently theological to discriminate between
the right and the wrong in religion, and to endow accordingly. But
failing this, it seems to us the next best thing, that in any public
measure for helping on the education of the people, Government
were to abstain from introducing the element of religion at all
into their part of the scheme; and this not because they held the
matter to be insignificant,--the contrary might be strongly
expressed in the preamble of their Act,{13}--but on the ground that,
in the present divided state of the Christian world, they would
take no cognizance of, just because they would attempt no control
over, the religion of applicants for aid,--leaving this matter
entire to the parties who had to do with the erection and management
of the schools which they had been called upon to assist. A grant
by the State on this footing might be regarded as being appropriately
and exclusively the expression of their value for a good secular
education.'

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{10} To demand of that Parliament which carried the Reform Bill
the repeal of the Patronage Act, instead of enacting, on her own
authority, the Veto Law.

{11} 'I see,' said Knox, when the Privy Council, in dividing
the ecclesiastical revenues of the kingdom into three parts,
determined on giving two of these to the nobility, and on
dividing the remaining part between the Protestant ministry
and the Court,--' I see two-thirds freely given to the devil,
and the other third divided between God and the devil: if the
end of this order be happy, my judgment fails me!' Our church
courts, if they declare for the system of denominational
grants, in opposition to the territorial endowments of a scheme
truly national, will be securing virtually a similar division
of the people, with but this difference, that God's share of the
reserved moiety may be a very small share indeed. And can it
possibly be held that the shame and guilt of such an arr