The Betting and Gaming Bill introduced by the Government last November is said to have swept away all previous gaming laws. Mr. Butler, the Home Secretary, defending the Bill said it was intended to liberalise a branch of the law which had become ineffective. As we understand the matter, what before was illegal is now to be made legal with what are called safeguards to prevent excess. This is to legalise what serious Christians consider to be evil, sinful and
corrupting. Betting in any form is anti-Christian and degrading. And when we know that at least £560 million was expended on Betting in 1958, the lust for gambling in our Nation is indeed an evil cancer. Mr. Butler, conceded that the function of the law should be to prohibit what was injurious to society; yet this Bill will legalise the opening of Betting shops and make it easier for people to throw away their money in gambling. In the most of cases the money can be ill afforded. Society will certainly be still further injured. The argument for the introduction of such a Bill is that the law as it stood could not be enforced properly. The gambler appears to be a person then who had no respect for the law as it stood. Will gamblers have respect for any restrictions imposed in this new Bill? We are largely a generation of rebels against the laws of God and man, but it seems the Government are making concessions to rebels.
Madonna and Child Window in Parish Church.
Recently an elder of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Oklahoma, flew to Aberdeenshire to unveil a window depicting the Child Jesus and His mother in Moneymusk Church of Scotland, Aberdeenshire. It was a gift from the elder’s congregation. Such idolatrous ornamentation of churches is surely foreign to the religion of the Westminster divines and to the Presbyterianism of the Scottish Reformed Church. But even mature people in Churches today, in many cases, do not understand the underlying Church history when the terms “Westminster” and “Presbyterian” are used.