Drapers and Sabbath Trading.
At the annual conference of the Drapers’ Chamber of Trade, held at Birmingham last month, Sir Herbert Ormond, Stoke Newington, introduced the question of trading and the lighting of shop windows on the Sabbath. While he approved of the shops being lit on week days after business hours, he thought there was no necessity to have shops lit on the Sabbath. A resolution asking the Government to check the evils of Sabbath trading and lighting shops and the employment of assistants on this day was carried.
Religious Instruction in Schools and the Government’s Local Government Scheme.
As many of our readers are aware, in the Government’s Bill soon to be introduced into Parliament dealing with the change in local government, the powers of Education Authorities are to be transferred to County Councils. The Roman Catholics and Episcopalians, who are strongly entrenched by the 1918 Act, have been wide enough awake to see to it that a promise has been given to them that they will not lose the ground they have gained. The larger Presbyterian Churches are moving with the view that in the new order of things provision be made in the Bill for mandatory religious teaching in the other schools as well as in the transferred voluntary denominational schools. One could wish that the 1918 Act, so objectionable and glaringly unjust in the clauses dealing with religious instruction in the Roman Catholic and Episcopal Schools, would get such an overhauling as not to be a by-word to coming generations of Scotsmen as a gross injustice enacted by a British Parliament.
Trouncing One of the Literary Idols.
In a recent number of the “Outline,” Prof. Dearmer has a few strong things to say about Mr Hilaire Belloc’s “How the Reformation Happened.” Mr Belloc is one of the most popular writers of the day, and is using his literary gifts like the pervert, Mr G. K. Chesterton, as a propagandist for the Romish faith. Mr Belloc contributed recently a series of articles to a Roman Catholic paper. These he has now reprinted, and the book is reviewed by Prof. Dearmer, who has no difficulty in showing that Mr Belloc is too biased a writer to deal fairly with the Reformation, and that he is rather too much given to rely on his imagination for his facts to be a reliable historian. Mr Belloc’s undoubted literary gifts may be suitable in the sphere of belles lettres, but it would be wiser for him to leave the difficult subject of Church History to more competent hands. Prof. Dearmer singles out his references to the Albigenses, the English Reformation, and the Massacre of St Bartholomew’s Day as instances of his careless and inaccurate handling of history. In regard to the latter event the reviewer quotes Lord Acton, the greatest of Roman Catholic historians of modern times, as computing the massacred at 8000 as compared with Mr Belloc’s “about 2000.” Prof. Dearmer quotes the “judicial Kitchin” as saying: “At the lowest computation 2000 fell in Paris and about 20,000 in the provinces.”
The Roman Catholic Candidate for the American Presidency Rejected.
Mr Hoover, the Republican candidate for the American Presidency, was elected by a record majority. His opponent, Mr Al Smith, the Democratic candidate, was a Roman Catholic, and there can be no doubt but this told against him. We do not mean to say that this was the main cause of his smashing defeat, but it is generally recognised that it formed an important factor in keeping him out of the Presidential Chair. As Protestants we rejoice that the American people had the commonsense not to elect a Roman Catholic to a place of such commanding power. Mr Hoover is a Quaker, and while we have no sympathy with Quaker sentiments, yet we cannot help feeling that the interests of the great American Republic will be safer under his guidance than under Mr Al Smith’s. It is not to be forgotten, however, that Mr Smith had no less than 20 million votes to Mr Hoover’s 40 million, which shows how great was the support he received.
“What Doest Thou Here Elijah?”
These words came vividly to mind in reading a cutting from the “Manchester Guardian” sent by a friend, giving an account of the opening of a Roman Catholic Bazaar by Sir William Joynson Hicks. Sir William, from some of his remarks, it appears, felt it necessary to make some attempt at an apology for being engaged in such questionable work. “You belong to the old faith,” he said, “I belong to the Reformed faith and am a keen supporter of it . . . Would it be right for me to disregard the great Church of Rome? Would it be right that the religious life of the nation should be kept by any one particular religion?” Then he goes on to say:—”No doubt many would object to my opening a Roman Catholic bazaar. But why should they. How anyone professing to call himself a Christian can have an objection to opening a Roman Catholic bazaar I cannot understand. We are all working for the same cause, for the progress of God’s Kingdom, in the way we think it right. We may not all see eye to eye with each other, but at least we can respect each other. In these days of agnosticism and indifference surely those who do believe in the great eternal verities should stand together and fight for the extension of God’s kingdom.” Now, when it is recalled that this is the man who fought so valiantly, in the name of Protestantism, for the rejection of the Revised Prayer Book, one is ready to call in question a Protestantism that expresses itself as above. While the Prayer Book controversy was proceeding we saw Sir William’s name mentioned as one of those present at a race meeting. Attendance at horse-racing and hobnobbing with Roman Catholics in helping them to build new churches may be suitable enough for the world, but is not the kind of religion and Protestantism that won the Reformation battle.
What We Have Come To.
“It is not often,” says the “Manchester Guardian,” “that one sees a crowd struggling and jostling to get into a church.” This out-of-the-way sight was witnessed recently at All Saints’ Church, Manchester, when the evening service was followed by a performance of Mr Jerome K. Jerome’s play, “The Passing of the Third Floor Back,” by Mr Frank Forbes-Robertson and his company. The experiment, we are told, proved extremely attractive, and there were about 1600 present, while many could not obtain admittance. The devil has long been using many churches for the furtherance of his kingdom, but there is an audacity in some of his recent moves which indicate that he now feels that he can do in broad daylight and in the name of religion what was formerly done under the covert of darkness and in the name of the world. The men who are selling the pass to the enemy are guilty of a sin which only the Judgment Seat of Christ will reveal in its fulness, and the men and women whom they are ruining for eternity are to be pitied by all who have a spark of Christian charity.
John Bunyan Among the Philistines.
Last month the ter-centenary of John Bunyan’s birth was celebrated. There was a great deal of lip-service paid to the great Puritan allegorist and preacher. Literary men with about as much religion as a piece of Aberdeen granite took upon themselves to pass judgment on the work done by the Holy Spirit in the heart of Bunyan, and with an ignorance which was as deplorable as it was deep, attributed his sense of sin to a morbid imagination and his conversion to natural causes. One of the chief transgressors was Mr Alfred Noyes, the poet, whose perversion to Romanism may account for his errant criticism. In his own day Bunyan said the Philistines did not understand him, and when one reads the essays, lectures, and speeches delivered by some of these literary gentlemen one feels that Bunyan’s statement is as true to-day as when he first wrote it. No doubt there were many meetings where the great truths Bunyan stood for and preached with all his heart were proclaimed, but one wonders what Bunyan would think of what such men as Dean Inge, etc., had to say about him. “No service,” says the “Christian,” “will be done to Bunyan, or to the cause for which he stood, and for which we here stand to-day, if the apologetic attitude of some of his present-day admirers is permitted to go unchallenged.”
The Seriousness of Bunyan’s Religion.
In his preface to “Grace Abounding” Bunyan has a striking paragraph worth noting. “I could have enlarged much,” he says, “in this my discourse, of my temptations and troubles for sin, as also of the merciful kindness and working of God with my soul. I could also have stepped into a style much higher than this in which I have here discoursed, and could have adorned all things more than here I have seemed to do, but I dare not: God did not play in convincing of me; the devil did not play in tempting of me; neither did I play when I sunk as into the bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell caught hold upon me; wherefore I may not play in my relating of them, but be plain and simple, and lay down the thing as it was. He that liketh it, let him receive it; and he that doth not, let him produce a better.”
Interesting Jewish Movement in Poland.
One of the Scottish dailies had recently a paragraph with the interesting news that a new Jewish sect had been formed on the eastern border of Poland, near Vilna, and with headquarters at Kucewicze, its adherents numbering about 16,000. The new sect have decided to form a Jewish Church. They recognise the Deity of the Lord Jesus and study the New Testament. They, however, adhere to the general rabbinical regulations. The study of the New Testament should open the eyes of these Jews to the futility of their ribbinical regulations and traditions. Is it the rising of the Sun of Righteousness on a people long in darkness? Who can tell?
Armistice Day.
Armistice Day this year fell on a Sabbath, and instructions were sent out to the officials of the Scottish Churches by the Scottish Secretary suggesting that services in places of worship should be arranged so as to begin at such an hour as might be convenient in order to ensure that there should be everywhere a pause in the service at 11 a.m. when the silence would be observed in every place of worship. We yield to no one in our admiration for what our soldiers did for us on the bloody fields of battle, and we honour the memory of those who fell, but we have no hesitation in saying that the Government officials had no right to interfere with the worship of the house of God for the purpose of paying respect to the fallen in battle. These services are becoming a real danger; opportunity is given and taken for using prayers for the dead at many of them. foolish and dangerous sentiments are expressed as to the fate of those who fell, and if things continue as they are it wont be long till a kind of worship will be paid to our fallen soldiers. Honour to whom honour is due, but let us take care we are not giving to the creature the glory that belongs to the Creator.