THE writer desires to make some remarks on this important subject. It is greatly to be feared that such a thing as a testimony for God and His anointed is scarcely to be found throughout the greater part of this once covenanted, but now backsliding and degenerate land. By this testimony is meant the maintenance in the heart and life, by faithful men, of the doctrines of the Church of Christ in Scotland, as embodied in our chief subordinate standards—the Confession of Faith, and Larger and Shorter Catechisms—which are all founded upon and agreeable to the Word of God. Few are enlightened enough to know what a testimony is, and fewer still attach any great importance to the subject. What the inspired apostle said of the known world of his day may even more emphatically be said of the generation in which we live, “All seek their own, not the things of Jesus Christ.”
It is obvious to everyone of spiritual discernment, that there is now no room for the testimony of Jesus Christ in any of the large bodies called Churches in our land. These are no doubt largely animated by one spirit, but it is not that of Christ, but of Anti-Christ. They are characterised by the same maxims, methods, and practices, but these are not such as are heavenly and spiritual, but evidently such as are carnal and worldly. However keen may be their rivalries, they present a wonderful agreement in one point, namely, hostility to the pure truth of God. As far as can be seen, the testimony is only with those who have been compelled to flee from the modern Babylon of corrupt ecclesiastical societies, and to seek after God elsewhere. These persons are marked out by this, that they fear the Lord, maintain His faithful Word, call upon His name in sincerity, strive to keep His day holy, and to worship Him in spirit and in truth. But, with the great bulk of the pulpit and the press in the hands of the enemy, with a growing and pervading taste for what is false, corrupt, and sentimental, it is becoming every year more manifest that unless, the Lord come speedily to our help the remnant of those who desire to be faithful to Christ is too few in numbers to produce any marked effect on the general mass of the community. The praying ones, who are called the salt of the earth, are rapidly being removed, and few, if any, are being raised up in their place. The signs of the times are dark and foreboding, and the time of reformation and deliverance seems far away. There is One, and only one, whose arm is strong enough to save: for to omnipotence nothing is impossible. But it is extremely unlikely that He will arise in mercy until the work of judgment is fulfilled. All the prophetic warnings of the Word, and the signs of the times, concur to render it only too probable that He, who for 1900 years has taken vengeance on the Jews for their rejection of the Messiah on His personal advent, shall visit with deserved retribution upon the Gentiles their rejection of the divine Redeemer in the higher dispensation of the Holy Spirit since the day of Pentecost.
We must beware of supposing, however, that the testimony of Jesus Christ will be totally overborne or finally destroyed. No; it cannot be. The standard of truth planted in Eden in that first promise, “The seed of the woman shall bruise the head of the serpent,” shall remain as long as the world lasts, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against it. In Old Testament times it was described as “the banner given of the Lord to them that fear him, to be displayed because of the truth,” and in the New Testament it is named as “the faith once delivered to the saints.” And those who shall escape in such dark and perilous times as ours are pointed out in the wondrous prophetic book of Revelation as those “who overcame Satan by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony.” But let it not be rashly presumed by any nation that the testimony must necessarily be continued with them. We are distinctly warned by Him who walks in the midst of the golden candlesticks that there may be, as there has undoubtedly been, such a solemn dispensation as that of a candlestick being removed out of its place. And the awful sentence which fell on the Jews may surely fall on the more guilty, because more highly favoured nations of the Gentiles. “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof.”
J. A.