Our attention was recently drawn to certain unfounded, impertinent and objectionable remarks on page 14 of a booklet entitled “More about the Work of the Pastor”, by William Still, Aberdeen. These remarks relate to the supposed attitude of Free Presbyterians to the Fourth Commandment and to the Decalogue as a whole. The author’s comments are by no means original or charitable, but have been frequently used by the ungodly in their attempts to slander those who love the Lord’s Day, and as a sop to their own guilty consciences. What prompts us to expose the injustice of these statements is the fact that coming from the pen of a professed minister of the gospel, they may well be received by the unwary with unsuspecting confidence. If Mr Still thinks that to caricature the children of God is part of the pastor’s work, he is not serving the Master, but the devil.
In his satirical attack, on what he ignorantly denominates ‘the early nineteenth century Free Presbyterianism of my native Scotland’, Mr Still alleges that for Free Presbyterians the whole law is summed up in the legal keeping of the Sabbath. He is allowed to go further still and reveal his own animosity to Free Presbyterians and the Sabbath, by stating that ‘you can sin as much as you like against all the other nine Commandments outwardly and inwardly, as long as you preserve twenty-four hours of the week inviolate of any constructive activity, vacuous of any creative purpose, and certainly devoid of any joy’. What an extravagant and ridiculous charge! Mr Still is evidently grossly, and we fear, wilfully ignorant of the teaching of the Free Presbyterian Church. We can assure this self-righteous critic that Free Presbyterians place a similar emphasis on all the Commandments of the Moral Law, nor were they EVER encouraged by precept or example to break any one of the Divine Commands. If the Fourth Commandment is emphasised, or more frequently referred to than the others, it is far from sound logic to infer that such teaching gives anyone liberty to play fast and loose with any of the remaining nine Commandments. Such an evil and unnecessary inference is patently the product of prejudice, and the carnal mind which is enmity against God. Surely the reason for any special stress being laid on the observance of the Fourth Commandment, quite simply arises from the fact that this Commandment, possibly more than any other, is flagrantly and openly violated by both the world and the Church.
Let Free Presbyterians in Aberdeen and elsewhere beware of ‘evangelical preachers’ who have no love nor respect for the Lord’s Day.