THE Annual Assemblies of the Established and Free Churches were opened at Edinburgh on Thursday, 20th May.
At the Established Assembly, the retiring Moderator, the Rev. Dr. Scott, Edinburgh, delivered a brief address. In the course of his remarks he said that his Moderator’s engagements during the past year had led him over a wide extent of country, and it was his happy privilege during the last twelve months to see the Church at work under a great variety of conditions. The impression that had been left on his mind was this, that the Church of Scotland was never stronger, never healthier, never worthier of respect than in this year of grace. At the conclusion of the address he named for the Assembly’s acceptance Dr. William Mair, Earlston, as the Moderator for the present Assembly, and the latter took the chair amid applause.
Dr. Scott’s address was from beginning to end confident and jubilant in tone. It is well to rejoice and take courage if sufficient cause is shown, but otherwise it is better to speak with trembling. If the Established Church was “never stronger, never healthier” than this year, it is strange that its pulpits were never more largely occupied with men of ritualistic and rationalistic principles. There is now a Broad Church Rationalistic Society as well as a High Church Ritualistic Society within her pale. The one leads to infidelity and atheism, and the other to superstition and Romanism. Between the two societies we are afraid the whole Church will be engulfed in destruction. Dr. Scott makes much of the Church’s industry, but it is worth remembering that increase of agencies and enlarged membership are no infallible tokens of true spiritual progress. These things are perfectly compatible with the utmost spiritual degeneracy. He considers the most striking note of the Church’s vitality to be “the prevailing consciousness everywhere of defects to be remedied.” Many, we know, regard the Presbyterian form of worship to be a serious defect, and therefore are making reforms in the downward direction of introducing hymns, instrumental music, reading of prayers, and other vain observances. The reference to reform reminds us of a remark made by a late esteemed elder in the north, “It is not information or reformation, but regeneration that we need.” It is regeneration in the soul of the individual that is the indispensable requisite to prosperity in the Church, and unless this important change is insisted upon, all other methods will only help to garnish a sepulchre of dead men’s bones. Nothing would give greater pleasure to those who love the prosperity of Zion than to see the Established Church returning in practice to the scriptural principles of the Reformation, but a great work has yet to be accomplished in the hearts and minds of her representatives before this will be done.
The Free Church Assembly was opened by a sermon from Principal Miller, Madras, the retiring Moderator, and by an address from Dr. Hugh Macmillan, Greenock, the new Moderator. It is significant to observe that Dr. Hutchison, Moderator, Principal Hutton, and two other leading ministers of the U.P. Church were present at these opening services.
Dr. Macmillan, in his address, took a panoramic view of the whole age since Queen Victoria sat upon the throne, and said they found that the people of this country had made more material and moral progress during these sixty years than during all the previous ages put together. We are not disposed to question the fact of material progress, but as for moral progress, we take quite a different view, and must be judging by quite a different standard from Dr. Macmillan’s. Morality, we think, is at as low an ebb in our times as it has been since the Reformation. Sabbath breaking was never at a greater height, and drunkenness is making no decrease. Profanity in public speeches and press articles presents an unblushing face, while the newspapers constantly report suits for divorce, showing that sacred conjugal ties and obligations have a very loose hold upon a considerable section of the people, both in the lower and higher grades of society. Dr. Macmillan proceeded to enlarge upon the discoveries of science and the advantages it has brought, advantages in many ways, we admit, highly useful to society. But what are we to make of the following sentence? “The scientific method has created a greater regard for truth than ever before existed in the world.” Ours has always been the impression that it is Jesus Christ, “the way, the truth, and the life,” who creates by His Word and Spirit a regard for truth in the hearts of men, and that no other person or thing can do so. The scientific method, as pursued by the greater number of the scientists of to-day, is undoubtedly not prompted by His Spirit, for instead of bringing men to acknowledge His Word as infallible, supreme, and authoritative, this method produces an undisguised contempt of it in matters of prime importance. The Bible record of the origin of life and the creation of the world is despised, and the modern absurd and irrational theory of evolution is substituted in its place. But Dr. Macmillan further states that this scientific method “has reacted beneficially on the moral world, and led to an intolerance of every form of falsehood. The scientific method is carried into theological studies, and men under its influence refuse to accept conventional or traditional evidence, and insist upon subjecting even the most sacred things to the most rigid investigation. Veracity is the passion of their life. They must verify everything, and seek truth at the bottom of every well of knowledge, and in this way the influence of recent science in some directions, and to a certain extent, has been unsettling. But upon the whole, it has been a great and permanent advantage. True religion cannot possibly suffer from the tests and methods of science properly conducted. For one truth cannot destroy another truth, any more than one sunbeam can destroy another sunbeam. Indeed, the results of true science are wonderfully helpful to religion.” Now, this manner of speech is quite familiar to us in these days, but its value is very small when carefully examined. We are told that the scientific method produces an intolerance of every form of falsehood, and yet leading men in the Free Church profess by their ordination vows to accept the account of creation as stated in the Word of God, and yet openly declare their belief in the theory of evolution which gives that Word the lie. The scientific method that doesn’t breed common honesty cannot lead to an intolerance of every form of falsehood. The introduction of this method into theological studies has produced a greater regard for everything that is contrary to truth than has been witnessed for centuries. The Bible has been treated as if it were a piece of dead matter that had received constant accretions or additions by unknown processes from time to time. The Old Testament especially has been broken into pieces, and many parts of it are declared to be the workmanship of authors other than those whose names they bear. If veracity is the life’s passion of our modern critics it is very strange that they have a passion for treating, as if they were myths and forgeries, and that on the most fanciful and unwarrantable reasons, great portions of the Word of the living God. If true religion has not suffered no thanks to the promoters of these methods. Some of us have sat under professors who applied so-called scientific methods to the Scriptures, and if we did not come away buried in blank atheism and infidelity we have cause for gratitude, not to our teachers, but to the God of truth. Many of the results of modern science are made use of not to help religion, but to destroy the reliability of the Word of God, and thus to snatch away the good seed of the kingdom, whereby alone true religion can be promoted. It is our firm and deliberate conviction, after study of the subject, that no more malicious scheme ever came from hell as an attempt to wreck morality, religion, and the Church of Christ, than the scientific method as applied to the Bible by present-day writers in the Free and other Churches.
We shall not follow Dr. Macmillan through his speech in which he speaks much about “the incalculable good” that the Free Church has done. It is a pity that so much literary skill should be wasted in lauding to the world the supposed good works of a body that has done, by legislative acts and written publications, incalculable injury to the cause of Christ.
NOTIONAL knowledge makes a man’s head giddy, but it will never make a man’s heart holy.—Dr. Thomas Goodwin.