A Happy New Year!
At the beginning of a New Year it is a time-honoured custom to wish one another a Happy New Year. The future is hid from us and like the children of Israel we need to be reminded that we have not gone this way hitherto. We know not what the year we are entering on has in store for us of joys or sorrows, of successes or bitter disappointments, but whatever may be our appointed lot it is well known to Him who has set the bounds of our habitations which we cannot pass. The year that has passed was one of anxieties in many of the relations of life—in business and in the home. Yet, it would be ungrateful of us if we did not recognise the restraining Hand which kept back our cruel enemy from wreaking his vengeance on us as so many of us anticipated. The hair-raising descriptions of what we were to pass through certainly did not act as a sedative to nervous people. For four months these awful things did not happen to our cities and towns which we as a people dreaded. To Him whose power has restrained the Enemy would we desire to give thanks. What things in righteousness may yet be in store for us we know not but whatever is allotted to us may we be enabled in all circumstances to look to Him who rules in heaven and earth and not forget His goodness to us in the past. At the time of writing it is those who defend us on the sea and those who trade in deep waters and our airmen upon whom the heaviest blows have fallen. For our sailors, soldiers, airmen and men of the mercantile marine our prayers ascend to the throne of grace; and our earnest desire is that they might be prepared by the Lord for whatsoever He has ordained for them. To parents harassed with anxiety for their sons we would extend our sympathies and pray that their fears may be disappointed. To all our readers we would in the words of Dr. Duncan wish them a happy eternity.
Well Stated.
“All our readers must feel that it is a very solemn time. However blameless we as a nation may be in regard to the cause of this war, we know that God is judging us. Despite all our spiritual and temporal privileges we are a God-forgetting nation. Error and worldliness abound in the Churches, Established and Free [i.e., the Nonconformist], the Lord’s Day is very widely desecrated, gambling and immorality show themselves everywhere, and the cinemas, whist drives, and dances demonstrate that a very large number of the people are “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.” Sad to say that though we are in the midst of this terrible war, there is no indication of national repentance. Of the greater number it must be said, “There is no fear of God before their eyes”—Rev. T. Houghton in the Gospel Magazine (December).
Glasgow “Sunday” Concerts.
According to one of the Glasgow dailies, Concerts on the Lord’s Day are to become a regular feature of Glasgow’s war-time winter season as a result of the notable success of the first “Sunday” Concert given by the Orchestra about the middle of November. In giving this item of news the daily above-mentioned referred to Lord Provost Dollan as an outstanding advocate of the “Sunday” Concert. Glasgow’s Lord Provost, not for the first time, has shown himself to be on the side of the Anti-Sabbatarian forces in Scotland that have as their objective the obliteration of the time-honoured respect for the Sabbath in Scotland. One, of course, need not expect anything better from a Roman Catholic. War-time conditions are being made an excuse for all kinds of Sabbath desecration. Satan knows how to make use of these conditions to advance his kingdom and he has many willing servants among our own countrymen and Roman Catholic Irish and those Roman Catholics of Irish extraction. It has been well said that Truth is the first casualty in war and we venture to say Sabbath observance is the second. Hence the movements for concerts on Sabbath, opening of cinemas, sports, entertainments, all ostensibly for the benefit of those defending us. To serious-minded people it is a poor way of preparing them for the contest.