A pagan is defined as one who does not worship the true God, and whose heathenish practices pertain to the worship of false gods, and although we in this country may ordinarily apply the designation “pagan” to dark and unenlightened peoples of far-off lands, yet paganism is to be met with all around us in Britain today by reason of the fact that multitudes do not indeed worship the one living and true God, but false gods, although not necessarily of wood and stone. Thousands upon thousands of our fellows are as dark spiritually as Africans in their native bush who never heard of the Bible or of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In a weekly newspaper, Rev. George W. Charlton, Church of Scotland minister in the parish of Kilmeny, Isle of Islay, is reported as saying that Islay is pagan, and as pagan as anything you will find in the foreign mission field. He gives three things as a basis for his concern, viz., the breakdown of family life, indifference to worship, and the high illegitimacy rate. At one place he began an afternoon service on Sabbath in the local school. His average congregation was seven or eight; and there was a population of over one hundred in this particular place. Rev. Mr. Charlton had other things to say regarding this island’s paganism. He came from Govan in Glasgow, where he was an assistant minister, to Islay.
In reading the account of Mr. Charlton’s strictures upon Islay, which we believe to be true and deplorable, the impression we got was that he had never met with, or observed, the obvious signs of paganism in Govan or anywhere else, in this land of the Bible, the Sabbath, and Reformers. We may be mistaken in this view, of course. The paganism is in nearly every corner and district of Scotland, where Mr. Charlton may find a church and a pastoral charge. As to Govan, his former place of activity—what of the teeming hundreds and thousands of men and women busy at their work all week, and for many of these at the end of the week, on Saturday especially, football, cinemas, dancing, drinking, and so on. But not a step is taken to the House of God or His worship on the Sabbath by thousands of these citizens of Govan; and this, of course, is applicable all over Glasgow, and in other great cities also.
Only a fraction of the people are interested in the Bible, salvation, public worship and true religion. The great majority and mass of the people are living (as we have often said from a pulpit in the North of Scotland) like the heathen in Africa, and worse than the heathen, in the light of their country’s religious history and their present privileges.
Are there not congregations in the Church of Scotland with many hundreds on the Communion Roll, and attendances at some services on the Lord’s Day are as low as thirty persons all told? Are there not hundreds of communicants all over Scotland who attend only at Communion times in their church? Are there not dances, whist drives, concerts, dramatic plays and so forth, carried on as part of church life and work in all corners of Scotland? Are not “Sunday” sensational newspapers bought and read every week by ministers, office-bearers, members and adherents of churches all over the land, and in the remotest districts as well as in the more populous places? Do not multitudes connected with churches take to the countryside and seaside in their private cars and buses on the Lord’s Day during the summer months? Is it not the case that although a Church Guild dance may be well attended on the stormiest night in winter, that yet regular week-day congregational prayer meetings are a thing of the past? Is it not the case also that in Mr. Charlton’s large denomination, hundreds of ministers do not preach the Gospel of Christ, as Paul and Peter did according to Christ’s own doctrine, and the fundamental truths set forth in the Bible? Has not Biblical teaching regarding the Fall, Redemption by the blood of Christ Jesus, the new Birth by the Holy Spirit, and such as the everlasting punishment of the ungodly and the impenitent, been largely relegated to the background by the vast majority of ministers? The answer is “Yes” to all these questions; and thus the plague of paganism in the land, not merely in Israel, arises to a great extent from worldliness or paganism in the Church.
Again may we not see paganism raising its head when professors of Christianity deny the Incarnation and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ; and discount His miracles as recorded in the four Gospels; and disbelieve the physical resurrection of our Lord, who is now at the right hand of the Father in heaven? This is paganism, when men tear away from the very fabric of the Christian faith the glorious and vital truths thereof. They, their disciples and adherents, are left with a religion no less God dishonouring and soul ruining than out-and-out paganism. That is the stark fact, and this is part of the creed of many today.
Then there are great numbers of young men and women, and also many up in days, in city and country, who have no church or religious connections at all, and never think of such a thing. They live in the great cities, the smaller towns, the larger villages, and in the country districts; and live without a Bible ever being opened in their homes from one year’s end to another. They work, play and indulge in the pleasures of their choice, and have normal family and social fellowship and contacts; but no religion. They live as if they had no soul, and “like the beasts that perish quite,” in their complete mental and outward isolation from everything that is of a religious and spiritual nature. They treat the Sabbath Day as a day in which they have relief from work and the excitement of Saturday’s pleasures; that is, if many of them are not plying their week-day work on the Sabbath Day for extra rates of pay. They never think of divine worship or of Eternity, or of the need of the Gospel of Christ and salvation. This is paganism, and it obtains throughout Scotland and England. Is it the minority, in the city or in the country district, that are thus practical pagans? Indeed no! It is the majority who are living as if there was no God and as if they had no soul, and entirely indifferent to the Christian faith and Church. These are they who also are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God. In cities some of them, in thousands, will riot against the police if not permitted to enter an already overcrowded football stadium, their crave and craze for their god of football being so overpowering. This same type of person in country districts all over the land, travels night after night, especially during dark and wintry nights to the “concert and dance,” returning home in buses and cars in the early hours of many a morning. And such have no mind and no time at all for religion of any kind. Are these not phases of paganism in the land of Christianity? Yes! And these are to be found in Govan, Islay, and the North, South, East and West of Scotland, and England.
There is the danger of concluding that because hundreds and thousands of our irreligious fellow men live in circumstances where there exists a professing Christian community, and do not openly oppose, hinder, or criticise the Christian organisation, and live amicably as law-abiding citizens with those who profess to fear and honour God, that therefore practical atheism and modern paganism does not exist among us. This is a great mistake. Men are what they think, say and do, and what they do not believe, and do not say and do not do, as tested by the plumbline of God’s Word, including the moral law.
And so when we consider the vast numbers of people of all classes and ages, who live entirely without any reference to God’s Word or interest in the gospel of Christ, in their private and public lives, on Sabbath and week-day, then we conclude that paganism prevails in all parts of the land; and it is a sad and terrible conclusion to come to, and one which many out of ignorance and false charity will be ready to challenge. But be that as it may, we shall retain our opinion of this state of affairs as existing at present. And nothing but a day of the power of the Holy Spirit will bring about a change in the hearts and conduct of all classes and ages involved, delivering them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, and to “the faith once delivered to the saints.”