An Act to Amend Drunkenness.
A new Act of Parliament in the direction of sobriety and public morals came into force at the beginning of the year. At present, however, the Act only applies to England and Wales. Its main provisions are that public intoxication is made an offence even though unaccompanied by disorderliness, habitual drunkards are noted by the police, and publicans are prohibited under penalties from serving them; separations from drunken husbands or wives are made legally practicable. It remains to be seen whether a good law, as this is, will find administrators sufficiently zealous to execute it. Drunkenness is a root of bitterness incident to man’s fallen nature. No remedy short of regeneration has any real virtue in curing the evil. Nevertheless Acts of Parliament are useful to restrain gross outward exhibitions of vice, and this Habitual Drunkards Act was a measure much needed. Its scope will no doubt be extended to Scotland in due course, and it may then be possible to travel on Saturday evening without the nerve shaking experience of a drink-distracted passenger in the train. We are sternly opposed to the drink vice in all its aspects, but in fairness we must admit that under some modern conditions of life weak human nature is tempted beyond measure in that direction. The lack of elbow room and fresh air that characterises slum life in our large cities induces a low state of vitality that almost irresistibly drives the victim to the dram shop.
The following is the testimony of a London City missionary:—“What are the surroundings amid which the average working-man’s wife of London lives? Narrow streets, bad air, constant children, the struggle to find food and clothing, the ups and downs of health, and with all a forlorn desire to find some happiness somewhere or in something. Drink, such a woman thinks, holds out promise of this streak of happiness, and before she is aware of it she has become a drunkard.”
“My cities,” saith God, “through prosperity shall yet be spread abroad.” The divine ideal of a city is a populous place of broad spacious build, where men can feel the sun and the wind and view the blue heavens. The present regime of narrow streets and dingy dwellings piled skywards on the top of each other may produce dividends for speculators, but it is evidently fraught with danger to morals and life.
The Cecil Rhodes’ Scholarships.
The Roman Catholic newspaper, the Tablet, announces that the first two scholarships at Oxford granted under the terms of Mr. Rhodes’ will have just been awarded by the Government of Rhodesia. Both the new scholars are Catholics, and students of the Jesuit College in Buluwayo. In a letter announcing the nominations, Earl Grey pays a high tribute to the importance of the work which the Jesuit Fathers have done in Rhodesia among both whites and blacks.—Herald, 24th January. Mr. Rhodes was a rich man possessed with a great enthusiasm for things British. It was his last wish to establish the name and influence of this Empire through the length and breadth of Africa. He had, however, a very imperfect perception of the real roots of Britain’s greatness, and a like ignorance of the deadly schemes and intentions of our hereditary enemy, the Romish Church. As a far-seeing patriot, he ought to have secluded his benefactions from the hands of the Romanists. But the fatal misdirection of the Rhodes’ educational funds has commenced. These Jesuit recipients of the deceased millionaire’s bounty will, without doubt, use the wealth thus gained for the ultimate destruction of that Bible Protestantism which is the vital element in the past history and present pre-eminence of Britain amongst the nations of the earth. While adverting to this we may note our satisfaction that the ill-hearted traitor “Colonel” Lynch, who was tried for treason during last month, has been sentenced to penal servitude for life. He impudently offered to sit in the House of Commons as member for Galway after a career of service with the enemies’ arms in the Transvaal. However this effrontery was too much even for the slack liberal spirit of our time, and Lynch was therefore apprehended and tried for treason. He received the death sentence, but this has been commuted to penal servitude for life. This proceeding, of course, is another development of Romanism. In connection with the relations that should exist between Protestant governments and Rome, the following answer of the Emperor William of Germany (grandfather to the present monarch) should be noted with admiration. When Pius IX. wrote to him kindly informing him that all baptised persons belonged to the Pope the Emperor replied:—”The Evangelical creed, which must be known to your Holiness I, like my ancestors and the majority of my subjects, profess, does not permit us to accept in our relation to God any other mediator than the Lord Jesus Christ.”
The Beginning of the Nineteenth Century.
We have lately come across a book of reminiscences written by a Canadian clergyman of the last generation. The title is “Memories of Scottish Scenes and Sabbaths more than Eighty Years Ago.” The author, the Rev. Alex. Kennedy, was the son of an old-fashioned seceder household, and attended an old-fashioned seceder church in Old Cumnock, Ayrshire. There is truly very little of the church or household life portrayed in this book to be seen in Ayrshire at the beginning of this twentieth century. The Secession congregation of the author’s boyhood had a membership of 700 gathered out of ten parishes. Some travelled nine miles every Sabbath, and were hardly ever absent from the meeting house. The house was built in 1777 in the teeth of opposition and difficulties. There is a strange story in the book of the masons being stopped for want of building sand because the proprietors were all hostile and would allow no sand to be taken from their estates. The author relates the matter thus:—
“As much sand was got when digging the foundation as served to make mortar till the walls rose a little, perhaps a foot or two, above the level of the ground; a further supply of sand was not to be had, though in the channel of the river or stream close by, not many yards distant, a sand-bed, bared by the summer’s drought, lay as if laughing and mocking at the wants of the builders. But though quite at hand and tempting to their shovels as it must have been, yet it was legally beyond their reach. My Lord Dumfries claimed the channel of the stream and all its contents. Of course the masons had to cease operations for want of sand to manufacture mortar.
Thus the work stood for a time, but whether for a few days only or for weeks I cannot tell. However in no great time Providence supplied them with abundance of sand without putting them to any trouble or cost, not even the cost of cartage, and by means as little expected by the friends as by the foes of dissent. The Lord sent “a plenteous rain,” causing an unusually high flood—in all likelihood a “Lammas flood.” The two streams which here united overflowed their banks, covering the low walls of the deserted building. When the waters subsided it was found that a large quantity of sand brought down by the rushing stream had been deposited within and around the walls—amply sufficient, it was said, to complete the building. In this there was no miracle, but what Christian can doubt, or refuse, adoringly and gratefully to acknowledge, that the Lord in this case commissioned His ever obedient servants the elements to do a timely service to His struggling people?”
There is a characteristic chapter on “Secession Singing,” relating the methods taken to upset the time-honoured custom of reading the line, and the grief and indignant protests of the elder and solidier section of the congregation at the march of innovation.
It was customary for the precentor to preface the morning prayer by requests of distressed persons to be remembered at the throne of grace. He describes also the methodical pulpit work of the respected minister. Rev. M. Wilson, who lectured in order through a selected book of Scripture, and who always prefaced the first Psalm with a preliminary exposition of its contents. The minister kept two Bible classes—one for scholars under twelve years of age, which met fortnightly on Wednesday during the winter months, and another for more advanced scholars, which met during the summer at the close of the Sabbath services. The juvenile scholars at the close of the session always received some gift book—such as a copy of Brown’s Catechism, Solomon’s Proverbs, or the Proverbs and Psalms bound together. By this, we see the simple, uncorrupted taste both of the master and the pupils. In these times scholars must have gilded books, with spicy fictitious contents, dealt out even in the Sabbath School. We quote the following passage exhibiting the Sabbath evening order in a devout Scotch household a hundred years ago:—
“It was my inestimable privilege in youth to be a member of a family in which a goodly portion of the evening of every Sabbath was specially devoted to religious instruction. After returning from the public services of the day, and the evening meal over, every one able to read took up some suitable and congenial book, of which there was no lack either for Sabbath or week-day reading. Several of the religious magazines of the day were also available, and were greedily devoured by the elder branches of the family. Missionary intelligence, then not so ripe as now, was greatly relished. I may remark there was seldom much conversation indulged in on Sabbath in the family, and none whatever was allowed of a worldly or trifling character. Any unnecessary allusion to country news or secular matters was instantly checked and the erring one solemnly and severely reprov’d. Reading and silence usually continued till about eight o’clock, when the head of the house ordered the books to be put aside, and all the members of the family to be called. Then he put to each a question from the Assembly’s Shorter Catechism, and proceeded thus round and round till the half of the Catechism was gone over. It was an invariable rule to make the Fifth Commandment the point of division; all the questions before it on one Sabbath evening, and all after it to the end on the next Sabbath evening—so that the whole Catechism was gone over every two weeks. This exercise, chiefly of the memory, being finished, some doctrine was taken up and investigated in the light of Scripture with great minuteness and much logical acumen. These catechetical exercises on Sabbath evening were of the most instructive character, deserving and demanding the attention, and not seldom heavily taxing the reflective powers of the catechumens. There was no tolerance for inattention or indifference, and scant enough patience with those who manifested anything like obtuseness of mind. After putting a few simple questions, and tendering some good advice to the mere juveniles of the household, and hearing them repeat the Lord’s Prayer and the Creed, and the verses of the psalm and chapter committed to memory during the day the “big ha’ Bible” was taken down and opened, and family worship engaged in as usual, only, if possible, with a deeper solemnity, induced by engagement in the services of the sanctuary and the immediately preceding exercises in the family. After reading the verses of the psalm to be sung, a short prayer was offered up for Divine aid in worship—a most becoming practice, and one that I like exceedingly, though through the influence of current Christian custom, I have in general dispensed with it, but not with the entire approbation of my own mind. The Psalm on Sabbath evening was generally sung to some plaintive air, such as Coleshill, and the exercise was peculiarly sweet and solemn. The father’s manly but not unmusical voice guiding and blending with the voices of the large family God had given him,—some of them mere children, and others often men and women grown, constituted music to the mind and to the ear worth learning and remembering, and which I doubt not was graciously heard in Heaven.