IN his preface Dr. Maclean tells of his meeting with an old friend in Skye who expressed sympathy with the minister of St. Cuthbert’s in the storm of controversy his sermons on the subject dealt with in this book had called forth in the press. His friend was evidently as far astray and befogged as the minister himself for he said: “No, I did not approve of prayers for the Blessed ones; it is the others we ought to pray for. . . I remember the others every night.” In parting, this old friend remarked: “Don’t trouble yourself about persons who write about the dead and say that it is wrong to pray for them. They are those who never lost a son.” Dr. Maclean’s comment is characteristic: “He never sat in a lecture room, but he knows God.” One could scarcely believe that a professed minister of the gospel would put so much weight upon the sentiment of one that was evidently much in need of spiritual enlightenment. We do not know this man’s spiritual state but we have no hesitation in saying that if his spiritual condition is indicated by what he said to Dr. Maclean the man does not know God. Dr. Maclean is a strong advocate of the doctrine of the universal Fatherhood of God. His reasoning is almost as bad and erratic as his theology. It is inconceivable he says, that any father would fix eternally the condition of his son because of the act of any one moment. If the son told a lie that he might escape punishment would any father wish that his son would continue a liar for ever? he asks. “A father who would so act,” he adds, “would be a demon and God is our Father.” For a piece of sheer mis-statement of the case this would be hard to beat. Dr. Maclean should know that those who spend eternity in hell are there not for one sin but for a multitude that cannot be reckoned and the justice of the Highest revealed in the Cross was not something to be swept aside by vapid sentiment.
*“Death Cannot Sever,” by Norman Maclean, Minister of St. Cuthbert’s Parish Church, Edinburgh. Hodder & Stoughton, London.
Dr. Maclean has no hesitation in saying that those who feel the urge to pray for the voyagers on the great sea of life, in eternity as well as in time, are not, in yielding to that urge, acting contrary to God’s will (p. 64). To this he adds: “For even hell itself, and the denizens thereof, are within the compass and the omnipresence of God.” What has God’s omnipresence got to do with this question? In further arguing for prayers for the dead he holds that the living and the dead are so closely united that they without us cannot be made perfect—”The felicity of the dead is thus dependent upon the living.” If this is meant for exegesis it seems incredible that a minister with the theological training he ought to have would ever write it. If it is an inference drawn from what he says it is bad reasoning and untenable as a conclusion. The dead, we are told, are interested in the life they have left behind. The Covenanter, for instance who suffered in the Grassmarket in the vicinity of St. Cuthbert’s “would deem it an added bitterness to the cup of woe which they drank if the succeeding generations turned their backs on the great ideals for which their fathers died” . . . It is impossible to imagine that the fathers of old could have any bliss in their Paradise if they saw this, their country, sinking into paganism. . . . It is, therefore no flight of the imagination to say that the living and the dead are so inextricably knit together that the felicity of the latter is dependent on the former” (pp. 66, 67). Is the felicity of heaven such a fickle thing after all as to be dependent on the living? What a miserable conception Dr. Maclean must have of the happiness of the saints in glory. Here is another piece of inconsequent reasoning: “It is not only unreasonable to restrain all prayer in behalf of the dead, but it is contrary to all the instincts of the human heart. It does violence to our very nature. And as there can be nothing of good in us except what was first in God who is our Maker, it must therefore do violence to God” (p. 68). But what is the value of all the instincts of a heart that is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. If its instincts were followed where would Dr. Maclean find himself at last? Dr. Maclean is horrified that prayers for the blessed dead should not be offered up. “Surely,” he says, “there have been rarely found among men a more monstrous conception of God than that which actually would have us to believe that the all-loving Father reprobates prayers for His children who have passed through the shadow into the light” (pp. 76, 77). Dr. Maclean and those who think with him are taking too much upon them when they charge the saints of God in this land who refused to pray for the blessed dead with having a “monstrous conception of God.” It is a libel upon their memory. The fact that prayers for the dead have been offered up in St. Cuthbert’s is not a matter to glory in but to be ashamed of in view of the fact that it is contrary to the standards of the Church of which he is a minister and whose pay he receives. And that this has been done for many years does not give validity to the practice.
It is not only here that Dr. Maclean errs for he has lost his way amidst the flitting shadows of spiritualism. And we must emphatically protest against the use he makes of the Bible to substantiate the vagaries of psychical research. The Bible to him is the most psychical of all books. It seems, notwithstanding what the Confession of his Church says: “The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man’s salvation, faith and life is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture: unto which nothing at anytime is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men” (Confession of Faith, chap. I. sec. vi.) that “the Bible has gone on being written, and is being written now” (p. 160).
Dr. Maclean brushes the Confessional teaching aside as completely at variance with the marvellous revelations coming to those who are duped by the claims of Spiritualism. “If God ceased the activity of revelation on the Isle of Patmos: if He had nothing more to say, He would surely be a God outworn.” After making this statement he goes on to say the Bible is the most psychical of all books and immediately proceeds to give illustrations beginning with the incident at Endor. Then follows Jacob’s wonderful dream at Bethel which he places on a level with one of Sir A. Conan Doyle’s. Joseph’s, Solomon’s, the Wise Men’s dreams are quoted to rebut the view that such revelations have been limited to a bygone age. But that is not all, the Bible according to Dr. Maclean proves to the hilt the theories of Spiritualists in reference to clairvoyance, clairaudience and levitation. Clairvoyance we are informed is one of the commonest forms of psychical experience and he instances the case of Abraham seeing the angels at his tent door in the plains of Mamre: Joshua’s vision of the Captain of the Lord’s host; the visions of Daniel, Stephen, and John in Patmos. As instances of clairaudience he adduces Saul hearing the voice from heaven on the way to Damascus; Peter hearing the voice which said: “Rise, Peter, kill and eat.” Dr. Maclean’s contention is that “the voice” has not ceased and that the records of psychical research affirm this (p. 124). As instances of levitation he mentions Ezekiel being lifted up by the Spirit; Jesus walking on the sea; Peter walking on the water; Philip caught up by the Spirit of the Lord. But we must stop as our space is running to its allotted end. There are many things that might be touched on which must in the meantime be left unnoticed. As we read the abuse the Bible narratives have suffered at Dr. Maclean’s hands there came to our mind a speech delivered by Principal Story in the Assembly of the Church of Scotland when Robinson of Kilmun was on trial for the heretical teaching of his book The Saviour in the Newer Light. Dr. Story delivered that day one of the most impressive speeches we have ever listened to. Our sympathies with Dr. Story, as far as his ecclesiastical career was concerned, were antagonistic but we forgot all this as we listened to one of the most damaging indictments that a heretic ever heard. Dr. Story ended his speech with crushing effect and a fitting gesture of the hand as he said: “He has treated the Gospels as if they were only records fit for the waste-paper basket.” A hush fell on the Assembly; every one realized that Robinson’s doom was sealed; and so it was. The point of our story is that Dr. Maclean has treated the Word of God as if they were the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research in the instances he has adduced to show that the Bible is on the side of spiritualism. The Bible has suffered many things at the hands of Presbyterian ministers but this is the first time a minister occupying a position of prominence has done it such dishonour from this standpoint.
It is really difficult to grasp what is Dr. Maclean’s position in regard to the fate of the dead. Sometimes one feels he is an advocate for the Larger Hope but a statement such as the following seems to point to sheer Universalism or the salvation of all “The day will surely come at last,” he writes, “when the harmony of God’s universe will not be broken by the crying of one lost soul” (p. 153). We heartily agree with one of his reviewers who cannot be charged with narrow-mindedness when he says: “In his argument, so far as it can be called an argument, there appears to be a fundamental confusion of thought between the fate of the dead in Christ and the dead in general, and he does not seem to realise that the revelation of the unseen given in the gospel is morally worlds away from the pictures painted by spiritualists.” There is a certain haughty tone in the book which we dislike and which ill befits one who is breaking away from a faith still held by thousands in Scotland and which he solemnly owned himself at his ordination. This comes out in the treatment he metes out to one of his critics in the press who according to Dr. Maclean was using the Bible as a quarry from which to get stones to throw at him. As a knock out blow to his critic he points to the stone lying immovable for years in contrast to a young rabbit. Where there is life there is movement and change, says Dr. Maclean. This is a favourite proposition with men who are drifting from the moorings. But it does not do justice to the case of such men as Dr. Maclean who receive the emoluments of a Church whose faith they are renouncing.
There are different kinds of life. There is the life of the parasite such as the mistletoe which has movement and change but it has no root of itself; it is attached to the oak and living on its substance. It is life, no doubt, but it is the life of a parasite. If the Church of Scotland has any fidelity left it cannot allow this book to pass unnoticed. For Dr. Maclean’s teaching strikes not only at the robust teaching of the older theology but as strongly at the nebulous theology of the Church of Scotland. Silence is a betrayal of the truth attacked and ignoring of it for any cause is open disloyalty to the Bible.
Of old the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel saying: “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel that prophesy and say thou unto them that prophesy out of their own hearts: Hear ye the word of the Lord; thus saith the Lord God: Woe unto the foolish prophets, that follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing! . . . They have seen vanity and lying divination saying: The Lord saith: and the Lord hath not sent them: and they have made others to hope that they would confirm the word. Have ye not seen a vain vision and have ye not spoken a lying divination, whereas ye say; The Lord saith it; albeit I have not spoken” (Ezek. xiii. 2-7).