Good News.—According to the report in one of the dailies, Communism is declining in this country. Its numbers have fallen from 10,800 last year to 7377 this year. The decline is most marked, strange to say, in the mining districts. South Wales, where the movement is most active, has 2300 members; Scotland, 1500, and London 1321. The Communists advance many reasons for the noticeable decline in their numbers, with which we do not at present trouble ourselves, except to say that, from whatever cause the decline comes, we are heartily glad of it, and may it continue until Communism is dead in this country.
Sabbath Observance.—Under the auspices of the Lord’s Day Observance Society large and enthusiastic meetings were held in Inverness, Dingwall, and Oban, etc., recently. The bold move on the part of the enemies of the Sabbath has awakened men to a realisation of the tremendous menace with which they are faced by a pleasure loving, God-defying generation. Without a blush officials of motor ‘bus and railway companies tell us they must have money. But as Dr Love put it:—”Cursed is the gain that is obtained by profaning the Sabbath.” Mr Norman Shaw spoke at these meetings, and the case of Mr Mackenzie, who had been dismissed for refusing to work on the Sabbath on the Great North Road, was mentioned. It is to be hoped, if the present legislation is not sufficient, that laws, with heavy penalties, will be passed rendering it illegal to dismiss any person for conscientiously refusing to break God’s commandment. We trust these meetings will stir up the people and give those who are seeking to ride rough-shod over the convictions of God-fearing men and women to understand that they must call a halt.
The Pope and Temporal Power.—The Observatore Roma, the organ of the Vatican, has recently been throwing out feelers on the question of the restoration of the temporal power to the Papacy. This organ propounds the strange doctrine that the Church has need of territory “in order to perform its spiritual functions in the world.” From some of the Italian papers it is openly hinted that the Government are quite willing to grant concessions to the Vatican. One of the leading Fascist organs, however, says:—”It is evident that for Fascist Italy a restoration, even in the most reduced form, of the temporal power which ceased in 1870, with incommensurable advantages, in our opinion, to the moral prestige of the Roman Church, should be out of the question.” If the Vatican gets the slightest encouragement from Italian statesmen we may rest assured it will press its claims with all the earnestness it can and make use of all the machinery of diplomacy it can command. Meantime the negotiations have fallen through.
The Case Against Evolution.—The place of honour in the November issue of “The Nineteenth Century and After” is given to a striking article by Mr George H. Bonner. “There is no conclusive evidence,” he says, “in historical times of the change of one species into another . . . . The species have, generally speaking, remained relatively fixed since the beginning of history. The argument that historical time is not sufficient does not alter the principle in the slightest. If this theory were proved the real explanation, there ought to be, not a few, but thousands of examples of the individuals of one species actually changing into another species before our eyes. There should not be one but hundreds of missing links found in the world to-day. If it is maintained that the process went on in prehistoric times but has now ceased, then the whole theory falls to the ground, for the essential characteristic of this interpretation of the theory of Evolution is that it is a continuous process, a progressive development of the higher from the lower.”
“A Miserable, Obscurantist and Illogical Theory.”—This is Mr Bonner’s characterisation of Evolution, which he says is “sponsored by leading minds as the standard of a crusade for truth, but in reality unsupported by any real evidence, upheld as a product of reason, but, when examined, found to be of all theories the most unreasonable.” We cannot here give even a summary of some of his striking and convincing arguments against Evolution, but content ourselves with giving one or two quotations from his article. “One might well think the human race in a curious condition,” he writes, “when a bishop [Dr Barnes] in a cathedral can preach a sermon which is absolutely inconsistent with the fundamentals of the creed of his Church. Strange things have in the past been done in the name of religion, but none stranger than this.” Again, “The teachings of Christianity . . . and the present-day teaching of Evolution are fundamentally incompatible; nor can the most skilful evasion of real issues and the glossing over of awkward questions make them consistent.” “There is not a shred of conclusive evidence,” he further writes, “for the animal ancestry of man: the whole structure of its colossal delusion rests upon certain similarities between the physical nature of man and that of the animals—similarities which are easily explainable without postulating any descent of man from the apes.” There are certain opinions in this able article with which we do not agree, but the writer has certainly touched on certain points of vital weakness in this theory that have not hitherto received the attention they deserve.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s Letter to the Bishop of Birmingham.—Dr Barnes, after the protest made by Canon Bullock-Webster in St Paul’s against his heretical teaching, addressed an open letter to his metropolitan, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in which he tries to defend himself for his statements in his sermons at Westminster Abbey and Birmingham on Evolution and the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. The Archbishop replied to him in a public letter, in which he clearly accepts evolutionary teaching while condemning the way in which Dr Barnes states it. This is a very serious matter for the Church of England, and must cause real sorrow and grief to thousands of loyal-hearted believers in God’s Word in the National Church. It is significant, also, that the weight of Dr Davidson’s censure on Dr Barnes fell on him because of his condemnation of Romish and Anglo-Catholic teaching on the Lord’s Supper. It is true Dr Barnes’s sweeping statements not only struck at Romish and Anglo-Catholic positions, but at the view held by the Reformed Church, but it is disturbing to think of the severity of the Archbishop’s rebuke on this part of the Bishop’s teaching while not a word of condemnation comes from his pen on Dr Barnes’s infidel views of the Bible account of man’s origin.
Will there be a Secession from the Church of England ?—This question is being seriously discussed in Evangelical circles in the Church of England. The determination to pass the new Prayer-Book into law is a serious matter for all those who are strongly opposed to the Romeward drift that has characterised the Anglo-Catholic movement in that Church. And while the new Prayer-Book does not go far enough in the Romeward direction to satisfy the Anglo-Catholics, it certainly goes too far to be satisfactory to true Protestants in the National Church of England. What is to happen is known to God alone, but it must be a time of real anxiety to many serious-minded persons in the English Church. Wisdom, courage, and grace are needed to guide those who would seek to do what is right in this crisis.