Sabbath Football
The Town of Inverness has taken another downward step in promoting Sabbath desecration. By a large majority the Town Council at a meeting last month sanctioned the opening of parks and other areas in the town for the playing of football on the Lord’s Day. An hotel in the town, Gellions, had petitioned the Council for the use of the playing fields for football on Sabbath so that they might form a league of seven or eight teams of hotel employees as they had no leisure through the week. At a meeting of the Parks and Cemeteries Committee, two weeks earlier, this was the unanimous recommendation, so that the Council’s decision was already a foregone conclusion.
A disturbing fact of this decision was the part played by a minister of religion in influencing the meeting of the Committee. Although not a member of the Committee Rev. Baxter, a retired minister of the Church of Scotland on the Council, went out of his way to lend his support to the Committee’s recommendation, suggesting the usual compromise which has now become the sop to conscience which godless Christians resort to, that the hours of play be confined to the afternoon so as not to conflict with the hours of Divine worship in the Churches. Another sad feature of this decision was the scant attention paid to the many letters of protest sent in by the local Churches and religious organisations, including the Free Presbyterian Church. It was noted by the Town Clerk that the authority appealed to in all these letters was the Fourth Commandment: “Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy”, which although dismissed so heedlessly by the Council establishes fully the guilt of this deliberate act of Sabbath desecration. The Lord’s Day has once again been put on trial and condemned before an earthly council.
In his own day, the saintly Rev. R. Murray McCheyne, in a letter of protest against the opening of the railways for traffic on the Lord’s Day, says of the action of the advocate who supported this measure: ‘You hold in your hand the two Tables of Stone, written with God’s finger, and you say we should obey this: and then you dash them on the ground, and say it is our duty, notwithstanding, to trample on and defy them’. There is much of this work going on today in Town and County Councils up and down the land. ‘O let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; but establish the just; for the righteous God trieth the hearts and reins’. — Ps. vii, 9. C.
Another Papal Myth
The notorious Turin Shroud which for centuries the Vatican has led its superstitious people to believe was the actual sheet in which the body of Christ was wrapped after it was taken down from the cross, has now proved to be a fraud. The shroud is a linen cloth with marks upon it which it is claimed were made by the body of Christ, and dates back to the time of the Crusades, when it was brought from the Holy Land. After a short stay in France, the shroud was brought by the Duke of Savoy to Italy and is now kept in the Turin Cathedral. The exiled King Umberto of Italy, being a direct descendant of the Duke of Savoy, is its present owner.
Last summer the Vatican ordered a secret examination of the shroud lasting three days, but have never published the results of this enquiry. Vatican secrecy is meant to conceal evidence which disposes of any idea that the shroud had any connection with Christ. Tradition is one of Rome’s pillars for supporting the doctrines and practices of the papacy, and the relics she produces are meant to support her Traditions. A close examination of both of these is enough to expose the faulty foundations on which the R.C. Church is built. The Protestant appeal to Scripture gives protection against the childish superstitions of Rome. The Turin Shroud must take its place beside Peter’s Chair and Peter’s Bones as another exploded papal myth. C.