A PRIEST KIDNAPPED IN LONDON.—The Bishop of Marlborough when presiding on 7th November, at a meeting of the Highgate Auxiliary of the British and Foreign Bible Society, gave remarkable information with regard to a Romish Priest of Alsace who desired admission to the Church of England. The priest’s preparation for this purpose had been committed to him. He then found what a remarkable man that priest was. That man’s testimony was that in France and Spain there was, a few years ago, not one Bible in every thousand homes, but that things had since improved in this respect owing to the efforts of this Society. When the time, however, came for the priest’s admission to the Church he was suddenly found to be missing. It was afterwards discovered that one night when in Kensal Town, London, he was kidnapped, and eventually taken back to the place he left in France. Letters had been received from him since which showed that he still wrote under constraint. The Echo states that the priest, who is M. Gurjot to name, was induced to temporarily visit the Continent on being assured by certain Roman ecclesiastics that his sister was
dangerously ill, and desired to see him. The latest information received in London is to the effect that he is incarcerated against his will in a Trappist monastery at Delenberg, New Lutterbach, Alsace, and is suffering seriously.
THE MODERATORSHIP OF THE FREE ASSEMBLY.—This honour has been declined by Professor A. B. Davidson owing to infirm health, and the post has been conferred on Rev. Hugh M’Millan, D.D., LL.D., of Greenock.
THE SEASON IN FULL SWING.—The annual ferment among the nations is now proceeding. At Archangel, New York, Berlin, Inverness, Copenhagen, and throughout Christendom all ranks and classes are celebrating Christmas. What is Christmas? Ostensibly it is a commemoration of the Heavenly birth of Christ—really it is a carnival of feasting and frivolity, seasoned in some places and cases by religious views and emotions. To devout persons who may think that they verily ought to mark the anniversary of the Saviour’s birth by some special observance we would point out that though the custom is very old, yet it is not old enough. It does not reach back to the times of the Apostles. Paul would have said of it “We have no such custom nor the Churches of God.” And like as God by blotting out from the remembrance of man the real place of the holy sepulchre has made vain all devout pilgrimages to the spot, so by quite hiding from human research the true date of the Saviour’s birth He has signified that anniversary commemorations of the event are not His intention. Let men busy themselves in fulfilling His whole revealed will (and then they will have enough to do) without heaping up ordinances of will-worship which, however pious they may be in appearance, are yet without all warrant of the Divine wisdom.
To the promiscuous crowds of revellers throughout the Christian world who presume to associate Christ’s name with proceedings which resemble the heathen feasts to Jupiter or Bacchus, it may be fitting to say that Christ is a living King able to avenge all mockery of His name. In persons of a shrewd and cynical turn of mind it must excite very satiric thoughts to see newspaper editors, railway managers, theatre proprietors, and other individuals, who spend their whole lives breaking the Sabbath, and warring against the power of godliness—to see them suddenly seized with a fit of loyalty to Christ and crowding in with the wise men from the east to present their offerings—evergreens and congratulations. Are you indeed glad that this Grand Enemy of the works of the flesh was born in Bethlehem? What a sudden and superfluous piety is yours my friends! What a grotesque piece of new cloth on the old garment is this affectation of gladness at the birth of the king of Israel, contrasted with your well known hostility to all the main objects for which He died, and for which He now lives. Scottish Presbyterians who are beginning to dote on this Christ-
mas vanity may be reminded that the thing smells very strongly of the old cask. Christ-mass—the word sufficiently declares the origin of the thing. Scotchmen surely have become blind, they cannot see afar off, they have forgotten that at a great cost to Reformers and Covenanters was this nation purged from these vanities of a false religion. Romanists are glad to see Scottish Presbyterians dallying with their rites and ceremonies, and they shrewdly consider that falling in love with the forms and fashions of the worship of “Holy Church” will be an effectual inlet to her as yet unpopular doctrines.