By Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale, Skye.
(continued from p. 310)
III. This work is a Loud Voice to Scotland.
— In the Book of the Prophet Amos it is written, “The lion hath roared, who will not fear? The Lord GOD hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” Amos 3: 8. When the Lord visits a land with His judgments there are, usually, indications beforehand of these coming judgments, and there are clear tokens of such judgments in our day. Anyone looking around him can see how low we are as far as the number of Christ’s witnesses are concerned. Seventy or eighty years ago the Lord’s people were numerous in our land, but each year has brought its own crop away to eternity, so that today the Church of Christ in Scotland has to say with Micah, “Woe is me! for I am as when they have gathered the summer fruits, as the grapegleanings of the vintage: there is no cluster to eat: my soul desired the firstripe fruit.” At the same time there is a great deal of religious profession. Men and women in their thousands are communicants in their congregations, and on Communion Sabbaths they partake of the symbols of Christ’s broken body and shed blood, sitting in their pews, without ever having examined themselves as to their knowledge to discern the Lord’s body, and of their faith to feed upon Him, and their actions, during the week, show clearly that they are unworthy communicants. The doctrines to which they listen are doctrines which are diametrically opposed to the doctrines of the Bible, and, therefore, do not give the place which rightly belong to Him, to Christ. They subvert the doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible, and substitute another salvation for that which is of free and sovereign grace. Such people have no more idea of the meaning of the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper than the Romanists have when, in their own Church, they attend the blasphemous sacrifice of the Mass. In the light of this it is no wonder though such a number, in the Church of Scotland, are so apathetic towards these courtesy visits to the Pope. The great majority of the people of Scotland are ruined by their leaders, and the heritage bequeathed to us by the Reformers, Covenanters, and others, and which came to us through a sea of the blood of the martyrs, is being cast away in the interests of a false charity which has not its foundations in the Holy Scriptures.
This shows how low we have become as a nation for we have forgotten God’s goodness to us. In this, history is repeating itself, for it is written of the children of Israel that they “were mingled among the heathen, and learned their works. And they served their idols; which were a snare unto them.” We have despised our privileges, which were numerous and precious. Our civil and religious liberties have been procured to us as a result of the Reformation, for, by it, the despotic rule of the Pope was overthrown, the superstitions of the Romish Church fled away before the light of the Gospel as the literal darkness is chased away by the light of the sun, and the persecutions of that Church ceased when she was deprived of her power through an exercise of the power of King Jesus. Again we manifest horrid ingratitude for the Lord’s goodness to us, in that we are ready again, as a nation, to enter into that worse than Egyptian bondage from which the Lord delivered us.
These matters present to us a cause of fear, for there are indications that the Lord is giving us over to blindness so that we do not know from whence we have fallen. This blindness, which is very apparent, is the result of an appalling ignorance of the letter of God’s Word, and an equally appalling ignorance of the contentions of the Church of Scotland at various periods of her history. The result of this ignorance is that many will say that one church is as good as another, that the Reformation and the Disruption were terrible mistakes, and that the many divisions among us are a reproach, conveniently ignoring the fact that it is those who introduced unscriptural innovations into the Church who are the real authors of these divisions. This blindness is manifesting itself in connection with the secret meetings between Protestant ministers and Romanist priests which have taken place of late in various places. We are told from both sides, that the aim of these meetings is the removal of misunderstandings and the promotion of Christian friendships. Strangely blinded must any Protestant be who could believe that any Church, which claims that out of it there is no salvation, would remove obstacles to a union which could be effected only on a Scriptural foundation.
There is also another loud voice to Scotland in connection with breaking down the carved work. God may be on the point of removing His candlestick from our land. Over four hundred years ago He set up His Church in Scotland which was as a candlestick holding many a bright light, and Scotland rejoiced in its light for a long season, but we have now our portion in a generation which is seeking to rejoice in another light, of which it can be said that it is darkness. Like the Israelites with the manna the gospel has become “light bread” to the great majority, and they are hankering after the flesh-pots of Egypt. The great lights in the candle-stick have been gradually removed, and, for a long time, the Lord has not been filling the places thus made vacant. To supply the deficiency men have been setting up imitation lights, polished by secular education, but destitute of the light and warmth of grace. This indicates that the Lord may be removing from us altogether, for when He takes away His people from any place in this world He has nothing there. “Now, therefore, what have I here, saith the Lord, that my people is taken away for nought?” (Isaiah 52:5).
The Holy Spirit has been grieved away from our land because of our forgetfulness of God, and our ingratitude to Him for His goodness towards us. Men do not fear to sin, and it is the sin of presumption, for God has revealed in His Word the nature of sin and its consequences. It is a running upon the thick bosses of the Almighty’s bucklers to the sinner’s hurt and confusion. Our sin as a nation is great in that, along with transgressing God’s holy Law, we are despising Christ as the only Saviour and His atoning work, completed on Calvary. For this sin of presumption there is no remedy, “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful looking form of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries.” By permitting us, as a nation, to go on in this self-destroying way, the Lord may be warning us of the consequences of our breach of covenant, and that if we do not return He will visit us with greater marks of His displeasure. The children of Israel had often been warned of the consequences of their idolatry, till, at last, their idolatry and their rebellion led them to seventy years captivity in Babylon, proving the truth of what is written, “He, that being often reprov’d hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and that without remedy.” God manifests His wonderful forbearance in the face of the great provocations of sinners, but “if he turn not, he will whet his sword; he hath bent his bow, and made it ready.”
In conclusion, it may be asked, What is our duty, as a Church when the carved work is being broken down on every hand? It has already been shown that we have a priceless heritage bequeathed to us by our Reforming forefathers. Other men have laboured and we have entered in upon their labours. They gave us what they themselves held dear, and what ought to be precious in our eyes also. We have that which was set up at the First Reformation, the doctrines of God’s Word, for which many were burnt at the stake. These were the doctrines which were reaffirmed at the Second Reformation, and for which many thousands of the Covenanters shed their blood. These same doctrines were brought again into prominence at the Disruption in 1843, when men forsook their earthly all after the long and dreary night of Moderatism, rather than that the Church of Christ in Scotland should be subjected to the civil magistrate in spiritual matters. It was in order to preserve these same doctrines for coming generations that the Rev. Donald Macfarlane tabled his Protest at the General Assembly in 1893 and separated from a Church which, by the Declaratory Act of 1892, changed its relationship to the Constitution of the once glorious Free Church of Scotland, and subsequently set up the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in its original relationship to the Constitution of the Church of Scotland in its best days. To us, as a Church, the Lord speaks loudly in the degeneracy which is so apparent in all the other Churches in Scotland, saying, as He said to the Church of Philadelphia, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly; hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.” We may be insignificant in the estimation of the vast majority, and, perhaps, become numerically smaller, but as we are not without tokens of the Lord’s favour we ought to take courage from His Word. “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.”