THE Southern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland were shocked and grieved to read the published accounts of the movement known as the ‘Open Door,’ a movement which your Presbytery is evidently responsible for.
That the streets of Glasgow on Sabbath evenings present the Church with serious problems, urgently requiring solution, no right-thinking person will deny. We do deny, however, that the Open Door Movement supplies the solution. We are convinced, indeed, that this method is but a serious aggravation of the very problem it sets out to solve. It gives presbyterial sanction to what can only be described as a glaring breach of the sanctity of God’s Holy Day. The Glasgow Presbytery may have accepted the dogma that the Puritan Sabbath is as dead as the dodo. We cannot accept that. We believe that the God Who sanctified the Sabbath Day, and set it aside for holy purposes, is our God still—the One Living and True God; we believe that the Law established by Him, demanding the keeping holy of the Lord’s Day is still of binding authority, and any breach of it is sin and incurs His righteous displeasure.
Further, we would respectfully point out that the chief function of the Church on earth is, under God, to save souls. In the spiritual regeneration of the youth of Glasgow lies the only solution of all the problems presented in the streets of the city. It is by the faithful and prayerful preaching of the Word of God that souls are saved. When the Apostle tells us ‘I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth,’ he doubtless speaks not only for himself, but also for a vast number of faithful and devoted servants of Christ down through the ages, all of whom gloried in the Cross of Christ as the only hope for a lost world. To forsake that Gospel, as the Presbytery of Glasgow has evidently done, and to resort to such methods as those adopted in the Ca’dora on Sabbath evenings is nothing other than a shameful betrayal of the Cross.
We are also persuaded that the ‘Open Door’ method is a denial of, and an insult to, the Holy Spirit of God. Those responsible for it cannot honestly say ‘The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.’ Harry Lauder and his songs, light music and community singing, eating and drinking, etc., etc., interspersed with an occasional hymn; are these not carnal? ‘They that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.’ What a lamentable display of spiritual bankruptcy is this! All the more lamentable because it brings the very name of religion into public contempt by those solemnly ordained to uphold it.
For these and other reasons we hereby enter our solemn PROTEST against this whole movement, and we earnestly appeal to you to desist from its continuance.
On behalf, and by the authority of the Southern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Gleanings by the Way.
At times one hears from the pulpit or at the Friday fellowship meetings illustrations and notes that are worthy of preservation for the benefit of a wider audience than those who first heard them. The following are examples:—
The Knife in the Mouth.—It is one thing to have saving faith; it is another to have assurance that the believer has it. He can have this faith and not know that he has it; he may have a hope which he would not give up for the whole world that he has and is closed in to Christ for Salvation and yet be afraid to express it in so many words. Rev. Peter MacRitchie when in Garrabost, Lewis, used the following illustrations which made a telling appeal to the fishermen who heard it from his own lips and which has had the same effect as often as it is heard on Fridays at the question meetings.
When hauling in the small line and especially the big line with their hundreds of hooks attached, it is necessary for the fisherman to have his knife ready for an emergency. The common practice was to hold the knife in the mouth to leave the hand free and in the excitement of pulling in a good catch the fact of the knife being in the mouth would be forgotten. The fisherman seeing that he would have to cut and leave the hook in the fish’s mouth or else get his line entangled was seen looking about for his knife, and not seeing it beside him on the seat opens his mouth to ask:—”Where is my knife?” Whereupon the article which he thinks he has not got, falls out of his mouth. “Thus it is with some Christian people,” said Mr. MacRitchie. “It is when they open their mouths that it is revealed to themselves or at least to others that they have in possession the faith they are looking for.”
Forgiveness and its Effects.—At a fellowship meeting in the days of the fathers in Ross-shire, one of the men gave this as a mark of saying grace:—”If you received forgiveness, you have never forgiven yourself.” Mr. John Macdonald, the saintly minister of Redcastle, took up the point when closing the question. “I will put the remark of him who gave this mark in this form:—”If you received forgiveness, it was steeped in Blood, and you have never forgiven yourself. And if you received forgiveness, steeped in Blood, and if you have never forgiven yourself, you value the forgiveness you have received much more than you do yourself who has received the forgiveness. Further, if you have received forgiveness steeped in Blood, and if you have never forgiven yourself, and if you value the forgiveness you have received much more than you do yourself who received the forgiveness, you value Jesus Christ, the One for whose sake you received the forgiveness, than you do even the forgiveness you got yourself.”—Malcolm Gillies.