Dr Duff, the Famous Missionary.
It is exactly a hundred years ago this month since the General Assembly decided to send out Alexander Duff as a missionary to India. Dr Duff did a great work there, and by his burning eloquence he stirred the hearts of men to their very depths in his native land as he poured forth his impassioned appeals to them. His name is written for ever among the great heralds of the Cross who carried the message of salvation to the dark places of the earth. They were faced with tremendous difficulties, but the Lord, who put it into their heart to serve Him, upheld them in their isolation and in times of depression and discouragement.
Dr Duff’s Shipwreck.
One incident that was fitted to damp his ardour was his shipwreck at Capetown on the outward voyage to India. As he intended setting up a college he had taken with him 800 volumes. All these he lost in the shipwreck with his Bible and Psalm Book presented to him by friends at St Andrews when he was ordained. The Bible and the Psalter were found on the shore by a sailor, and Dr Duff recognised in this the voice of God saying to him that human learning was to be recognised by him as a means only, not in itself an end. When the sailor handed them to Mr Duff he read aloud to his shipwrecked companions Psalm cvi., and then knelt down and gave thanks to God “for His goodness and His wonderful works to the children of men.” Writing to Dr Inglis, he thus refers to the loss of his books and journals: “They are gone, and, blessed be God, I can say, gone without a murmur. So perish all earthly things; the treasure that is laid up in heaven alone is unassailable.” The Bible, according to “Life and Work,” is in St Andrews University Library, and the Psalm Book in the Foreign Mission Museum of the Church of Scotland, 22 Queen Street, Edinburgh.
Increase of Roman Catholics in Scotland.
In one of the series of special articles in the “Glasgow Herald” dealing with the “Irish in Scotland” the writer says: “I have found that in Glasgow and the seven counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Dumbarton, Ayr, Stirling, Linlithgow, and Fife the number of Roman Catholic school children increased in the six years from 1919 till 1925 by 6744, while the number of Protestant children came down by 12,046.” Bishop Bennett, in his Easter Pastoral Letter to the Roman Catholic clergy and laity of the diocese of Aberdeen, says the number of Roman Catholics in Scotland in 1827 was reckoned at 70,000; to-day they numbered 600,000 or about one-eighth of the whole population of Scotland.
The Pope as King.
Now that the Pope has had the temporal power restored to him a nice question arises in law as to whether Roman Catholic British subjects can acknowledge him as such and give allegiance to him.
Sports and Games on the Lord’s Day.
Scotland is moving swiftly on the downward career as far as Sabbath keeping is concerned. What a shock it would have been thirty years ago to hear that the Sabbath was desecrated by playing golf and tennis on the Sacred Day. The other week a Glasgow Tennis Club—the Whittinghame Club—decided to have “Sunday” tennis. Their decision has met with a good deal of criticism, but we may rest assured that the door that has been opened will encourage others to do the same. The plea that tennis playing on the Sabbath is quite common at hydropathics and on private courts is no justification for the encouragement of the evil. A Glasgow Congregational minister, the Rev. H. S. McClelland, Trinity Church, is reported as saying in an interview: “Yes, I must say that I am entirely in favour of ‘Sunday’ tennis, and I hope that the Corporation will see their way to opening all their public courts on ‘Sundays.’ ” We sincerely hope that they will do nothing of the kind. One enemy in the camp is of more use to Satan than a thousand outside and such encouragement to worship the god of Pleasure on the Lord’s Day is an act of open and barefaced disloyalty to Christ by anyone professing to serve Him. Since the foregoing part of this note was written it has been announced that the above Club has decided not to have Sabbath tennis.
A Foolish Sermon.
The Rev. H. S. McClelland was not content to express his opinion on the above subject in the press, he must needs add to his folly by preaching a sermon on “The Scottish Sunday,” in which he repeated the hoary legend of the funereal gloom of the Sabbath as observed in Scotland. No doubt he erred with men who ought to have known better, and if he had been only a little more familiar with the religious history of Scotland he would have agreed with the statement made by Dr Lee before the Select Committee appointed by the House of Commons on Observance of the Lord’s Day in 1834, that Sir Walter Scott relied chiefly on his imagination for the gloomy picture he drew of the Scottish Sabbath. He ended his sermon by quoting the anti-Sabbatarians’ favourite text:—”The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” Yes, but he should have reminded his hearers that the lordship of the Sabbath was not handed over to man but retained in the hands of the Son of Man who was Lord of the Sabbath. Mr McClelland’s views met with a vigorous protest at a meeting of directors of the Scottish Protection Society at a meeting held in Glasgow. He further daringly said that our Lord was a Sabbath-breaker. That was not the only lie manufactured against Him by His enemies, and it is deplorable that a professing minister of Christ should repeat it.
The Prince of Wales at Mass.
The Church of Rome made the most of the passing of France’s great soldier, Marshal Foch. A solemn Requiem Mass was held in Westminster Cathedral, at which the Prince of Wales and the Prime Minister were present. The “Glasgow Herald” reports: “The Prince immediately performed an act of homage by kneeling at the royal kneeling-desk. He remained alone, taking part in all the devotions of the hour’s service which followed. Also alone knelt the Prime Minister, who occupied a position on the opposite, or epistle side, of the catafalque.” The famous Marshal was worthy of the highest honours for his military achievements, but this recognition of the blasphemous idolatry of the Mass by a professedly Protestant Prince and Prime Minister is going beyond what decorum and charity demand. It is the recognition of an idolatrous rite under the specious plea that it is an act of honour to a dead soldier. If Pope Pius XI. pays a visit to this country we have no doubt but those high in authority will be tumbling over each other to do homage to the Man of Sin. A false charity is selling our goodly heritage for too small a sum.