Every Christian’s spiritual life begins and ends with prayer, from the first cry of the renewed soul to the last sigh of the departing saint. Prayer, basic as breathing, simultaneously demands rigor from even the most seasoned warrior.
Who cares about the Free Church of Scotland? To the disinterested observer it is merely a small Presbyterian denomination in a wide, wide world. In 1843, a minority revolted against compromise in the national Church of Scotland over the issue of the interference of the State in church matters. The small band reconstituted as ‘The Church of Scotland, Free’. It received scorn and mockery as, “The Free Kirk, the wee kirk the kirk without the steeple.” At the time the Church of Scotland was, in a vital sense, Scotland. The Disruption was a national catharsis, exciting an interest almost unimaginable in our times of spiritual lethargy. When Thomas Chalmers – a Disruption leader – walked out of the State Church, “the throng at his last service was so great that the police were overpowered and the military had to be called in.”
