The Franchise in Bad Hands.—At the West Ham (London) Revision Court held on 13th September, six Franciscan Monks put in a claim to be enrolled on the voters’ list under the lodger franchise. The revising barrister explained that he could not give them the lodger vote, as, having taken the vow of poverty, the relation of landlord and tenant could not exist between them and the Father Superior. He, however, skilfully discovered that the service franchise would meet their case because they occupied rooms in the monastery by reason of the service rendered to the monastic society, and their case he said was analogous to that of officers residing in barracks, who were given the service vote on the ground that they occupied their quarters by virtue of service. He, therefore, would put them on the list as service voters. If this decision holds good we shall soon see a fine invasion of the polling booths. Franciscans, Jesuits, &c., in the uniform of Rome will be in force there, and the work of overturning the laws and liberties of the Protestant nation will go forward more effectually. It must not be forgotten that these devotees of St. Francis are in reality the sworn agents of a foreign power whose purposes of
vengeance against Britain have not slept for three centuries. The country is an evil case when such witless wrongheaded persons as this barrister sit on seats of authority and have it in their power to grant the rights of citizenship to the worst characters on the flimsiest prettexts. The analogy which this legal gentleman made out is a preposterous one. To resemble the monks to so many military officers living in barracks at the Queen’s expense is perfectly absurd. They are more like paupers in an almshouse or lunatics in the asylum. But likely this barrister is himself a friend of the papal cause, and when he wants to do a good turn to the monks he will not spare any absurd barefaced fiction that may help out his end.
A Daughter of the King.—“One day I was reading the Acts of the General Assembly, where I found that God had honoured Scotland in making them zealous for His glorious interest and owning them in this land. I went to God with these words which Moses made use of for the Church of the Jews when the Lord seemed to be angry with them, ‘that He would remember His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.’ I thought Scotland had a good right to these promises, and I begged for Christ’s sake that He would remember our Abrahams, Isaacs, and Isaels that had entered into covenant with Him, &c.”—Mrs. Veitch’s Memoirs, A.D., 1687. We have quoted this passage from Mrs. Veitch in order to point a moral. The spectacle of this worthy lady reading the Acts of Assembly and nourishing such lofty and patriotic thoughts is surely a notable one. It is a spectacle of ripe understanding and of moral health. From the meditations of this high-souled woman of the seventeenth century to the folly and vanity of the modern miss whirling her bicycle, devouring her novel, or gloating upon the points of a new dress, what a descent is there! For reading Acts of the General Assembly or other books pertaining to the Kingdom of Heaven, the average woman of our era has long ago lost all taste. Instead of that, when it is Saturday, she seeks the circulating library, and she says to the person in charge, “Have you anything good for Sunday?” Meaning thereby any new novel of Annie S. Swan by which to divert her leisure on the morrow. We do not stay to speak of the final issues involved in the two ways of living, but for the time that now is, what a difference do we discern between them! How empty and inglorious the one life, how fruitful and illustrious the other! It will never be a good world till there be in it many mothers and daughters like Mrs. Veitch, devout and honourable women, who understand something of the sorrows and the hopes portrayed in the 102nd Psalm, and who have room in their hearts for thoughts concerning the Kingdom and Glory of Christ. “For Thy servants take pleasure in the stones of Zion, and they favour the dust thereof. So the heathen shall fear the name of the Lord, and all kings of the earth Thy glory.”
The Colquhoun Case.—The rumour of this case has no doubt reached all the remote parishes and islands where this Magazine comes. The doings of a city official who embezzled £50,000 must sooner or later come abroad. The culprit, James Colquhoun, was a Town Councillor of Glasgow, and held the honourable office of Treasurer of the city. He was the head of an important legal firm, and had acquired a reputation for sagacity and probity. His list of clients was a long one, shrewd business men and poor ignorant women alike trusted him and gave him their savings to invest. The Senate of the University conferred on him the degree of LL.D. For some months whispers and rumours of some impending scandal had pervaded the city. At last the public were startled by news of the arrest of James Colquhoun, city treasurer. His life for the last number of years proves to have been a prolonged course of criminality. To gratify a mad passion for gambling and other vices, he misappropriated many thousand pounds of his clients’ money and used all manner of dishonest devices to obtain funds. He pled guilty on 26th September, before the Sheriff, to embezzling upwards of £50,000, and he now lies in Edinburgh Jail awaiting sentence by the Lord Chief Justice. This man’s life is a comment on the text, “The prosperity of fools shall destroy them.” It is an evil omen when such ungodly men are found in positions of power and authority. A man whose heart is eaten out by degrading vices is quite incapable of fulfilling the functions of a good lawgiver. Hophni and Phinehas are bad anywhere, but planted on the forefront of civic or ecclesiastic affairs, they are sure omens of disaster. It is, therefore, a good thing that this evildoer has been detected and deposed from his seat of honour.
The Glasgow Evangelistic Campaign.—This movement for the religious improvement of the city will commence in October. The scheme as presently outlined is very great. An influential Committee of ministers and laymen have been perfecting the arrangements for months past. The city will be divided into ten districts, and in each of these one meeting, at least, will be constantly going on for the next six months. Music will be a prominent feature of the campaign, choirs having been organised in the churches where the meetings are to take place. There will also be the usual kind of preaching. We may possibly be lacking in wisdom or charity, but we deem it our duty quietly to discount the whole project. Our disbelief in the genuineness of the movement is thorough. We have observed so frequently the entire failure of such schemes that the announcement of another one, albeit on a big scale, only induces a sense of weariness and dismay. From the days of Messrs. Moody and Sankey, this evangelistic form of religion has been characterised by two main evils, viz.:—A greedy adoption of sensuous and unscriptural devices in worship, and a determined effort to ignore the power and sovereignty of the Holy Ghost in originating and carrying on
the work of conversion. Many of the teachers and disciples of this new evangelistic school have now wandered so far from the right path of scriptural worship, and from that form of doctrine which gives glory to the Third Person of the Trinity, that a believer of the old school seems to them a babbler, a setter forth of strange gods. What moral unsoundness may lurk under a busy prosecution of evangelistic work may be seen in the case of Lord Overtoun, who for years calmly permitted, or rather commanded, the breaking of Sabbath Day by the whole body of his workers, and was at last shamed into a reform by the onslaughts of a freethinker. Neither is Lord Overtoun an isolated case, he is rather the type and symptom of many such cases.
Honour to Thomas Boston.—On Sabbath, September 24th, a commemoration service was held at Simprin Parish Church in view of the 200th anniversary of Thomas Boston’s ordination. The service was conducted by ministers of the three principal presbyterian denominations. Simprin parish, in Berwickshire, was Mr. Boston’s first regular charge. A memorial tablet was unveiled in course of the proceedings. Perhaps a week day should have been chosen for a service which included such a feature as this. We are glad, however, that Thomas Boston’s name has thus been remembered and honoured. If the ministers of the three denominations could catch a little of the spirit of their hero it would be well. It is a dangerous thing to be garnishing the sepulchres of the prophets and recounting their deeds of faith and zeal, if at the same time we are lukewarm or hostile to those principles for which they lived and died. We would be glad to think that the present applause of Boston is founded on an intelligent appreciation of his character and work. Then we might expect that from admiring, the new enthusiasts would proceed to imitating. We would not demand that any of these admirers would be of the same stature as their model, but even a few diminutive Thomas Bostons in each denomination would be a great boon to Scotland.