Word Finder - kirk

definition

A church.

Kirksville was laid out in 1842, and was named in honour of Jesse Kirk.

Kirk's Illustrated History of Minnesota (St Paul, 1887) may also be consulted.

From this custom his congregation was known as the "kail kirk."

The "auld haunted kirk," though roofless, is otherwise in a fair state of preservation, despite relic-hunters who have removed all the woodwork.

The result, though disastrous, abundantly demonstrated Leslie's capacity as a soldier, and it might be claimed for him that Cromwell and the English regulars proved no match for him until his movements were interfered with and his army reduced to indiscipline by the representatives of the Kirk party that accompanied his headquarters.

But the earl of Lennox, Darnley's father, understood Moray to mean that as early as January 21-22, 1567, the house of Kirk o' Field, where Darnley was slain, had already been mined.

Lord Robert was the only friend of Darnley in Mary's entourage; and he even, according to the accusers, warned him of his danger in Kirk o' Field, to which they said that a Casket Letter (III.) referred.

He was therefore ready to co-operate with James in curtailing the powers of the Kirk which encroached on the royal authority, and in assimilating the church of Scotland to that of England.

But owing to the indirect influence of the British government, exercised through Sir John Kirk at Zanzibar, the Egyptian dominions were prevented from coming south of the Victoria Nile.

Mr Kirk is said (though his tomb exists) to have been carried away by fairies.

They carry off men and women "to their own herd," in the phrase of Mr Kirk, and are kind to mortals who are kind to them.

The works of Mr Jeremiah Curtin and Dr Douglas Hyde are useful for Ireland; for Scotland, Kirk's Secret Commonwealth has already been quoted.

The largest and most noteworthy are Burnet park (about 100 acres), on high land in the western part of the city, Lincoln park, occupying a heavily wooded ridge in the east, and Schiller, Kirk and Frazer parks.

Celtic altar-bell of hammered iron, known as the "Ronnell bell."' Such is the odour of sanctity of this venerable church that there is an old local saying that "to be thrice prayed for in the kirk of Birnie will either mend or end ye."

He had joined a sect of seceders from the kirk, and had all the characteristics of the typical Scottish Calvinist.

But the martyrs were few, compared with the numbers of people whom the reformed kirk burned for witchcraft.

Knox and the other preachers began to organize the new kirk, under " superintendents " (not bishops), whose rule was very brief.

In February 1572 he forced on the kirk an order of bishops, " Tulchan bishops," filters through which the remaining wealth of the church trickled into the coffers of the state, or of the regent.

The kirk Presbyterian was founded on the Genevan model, and was intended to be a theocracy.

The kirk was robbed afresh, benefices were given to such villainous cadets of great families as Archibald Douglas, an agent in Darnley's murder; and though, under the scholarly but fierce Andrew Melville, the kirk purified herself afresh and successfully opposed the bishops, James VI.

The death of Mar (28th of October 1572) left power in the stronger hands of Morton, and the death of Knox (24th of November) put the kirk for a while at the mercy of the new regent.

James Stewart received the Hamilton earldom of Arran, and under him and Lennox the young king began his long strife with the kirk and his halfhearted dealings with the Catholics and his mother.

Thenceforth, till James came to the throne of England, the history of Scotland was but a series of inchoate revolutions, intrigues that led to nothing definite and skirmishes in the war of kirk and state.

The strange thing is that while Elizabeth warned James against the pretensions of men who " would have no king but a presbytery," whenever he was at odds with the ministers and with the nobles who kept trying to seize his person with the approval of the ministers, Elizabeth secretly or openly backed the kirk.

The kirk was strong enough to compel James to march, more than once, against the Catholic earls, Huntly, Errol, Angus and others.

In 1592 parliament " ratified the liberty of the true kirk," leaving little liberty for king and state, since, in the phrase of one preacher, " the king might be excommunicated in case of contumacy and disobedience to the will of God," as interpreted by the ministers.

It is not known whether the mysterious events that culminated in the slaying of the earl of Gowrie and his brother, by John Ramsay, in their own house in Perth, on the 5th of August 1600, had any connexion with James's attitude to England and the kirk.

He kept the kirk for two or three years without a General Assembly, to which they had a legal!

Prelacy was " Baal worship," and the kirk thus turned the strife in the direction of religious ferocity.

The country was governed by fifty-six members of the Estate and by the dreaded commission of the General Assembly, for now the kirk dominated Scotland, denying even the right of petition to the lieges.

This was the kirk's proudest triumph; the countrymen of the preachers had been ruined on " St Covenant's Day."

The committee of Estates, on hard terms, gave an indemnity to Royalists whose swords they needed; many ministers acquiesced (" The Resolutioners "), the more fanatical dissidents were called " Remonstrants," and now the kirk was rent in twain by the disputes of these two factions.

Suppose that the kirk was restored by Charles to her position in 1592, with General Assemblies.

In the first (1660-1663) the royal commissioner to parliament was the earl of Middleton, a soldier of fortune who had been in arms for the Crown as late as 1655, who had been excommunicated by the kirk, and was determined to keep down the preachers.

The Shorter Catechism was taught; the liturgy was not brought in; the sole change was in kirk government.

By " Presbyterianism " we are here to understand, not the Presbyterian form of church government - the kirk whose motto is Nec tamen consumebatur - but the pretensions of preachers to dominate the state by the mythical " power of the keys," by excommunication with civil penalties and by the fiercest religious intolerance.

In 1690 an act restored the kirk to the legal position of 1592, under sixty of the surviving ministers deprived in r661.

In1693-1694the kirk was much irritated by William's demands for oaths of allegiance to himself, without the consent of the ecclesiastical courts.

Scotland was to have forty-five members and sixteen elected peers at Westminster; the holders of Darien stock were compensated; as a balance to equality of taxation a pecuniary equivalent was to be paid, the kirk and Scottish courts of justice were safeguarded (final appeal being to the British House of Lords), and Scots shared English facilities and privileges of trade, in name, for many years passed before Scotland really began to enjoy the benefits.

The kirk was incensed by the growth of Episcopalianism and of Popery, the restoration of patronage, and the pressure to accept an oath abjuring James, which divided a church that was absolutely anti-Jacobite.

In Scotland the kirk, as ever, was militant, but it could no longer wage war on kings and their ministers, nor attempt to direct foreign and domestic policy.

The Marrow men put in protests, and were clearly on the way to secession from the kirk.

The oath of abjuration of James was another cause of division, at least till it was watered down in 1719; and by 1726 a revival of the charges of heresy against Simson, with the increase of agitation against the majority of the Assembly who supported patrons, lighted a flame which burned the slight bonds that kept the extremists in union with the kirk.

The whole movement, intended as a return to the kirk of Knox and Melville and the Covenanters, was a not unneeded protest against the sleepy " moderation," and want of spiritual enthusiasm, which invaded the established kirk in the latter part of the 18th century, a period in which she possessed such distinguished writers as John Home, author of the drama of Douglas, Robertson, the historian, and Dr Carlyle, whose amusing autobiography draws a perfect portrait of an amiable and highly educated " Moderate " and man of the world.

Naturally the opposite party, whether seceders, or " High Flyers," as they were called, within the church, had most influence with the populace, so that " the Trew Universal Kirk " of Scotland was broken into several communions, differing but slightly in accepted doctrines, and not at all in mode of worship. Their tendency has been centripetal, and all the " Free Churches " are agreed in their views concerning the prolonged existence of " the Auld Kirk."

Craik's A Century of Scottish History (Edinburgh, 1901) gives a full account of the disruption of the Kirk.

The former is represented by the group known as the Scottish Chaucerians, by the 17thcentury Court poets, by the " English " writings of literary Edinburgh of the 18th century; the latter by the domestic and " rustic " muse from Christis Kirk on the Grene to the work of xxl y.

There are three Roman Catholic churches, a Free Kirk, an American mission, and several chapels belonging to Nonconformist sects.

The parish church of Crathie (1903), replacing the kirk of 1806, is 12 m.

The Song of Absence, Peblis to the Play and Christis Kirk on the Greene have been ascribed to him without evidence.