Thanksgiving Day.
In the United States they have a national observance called Thanksgiving Day. It occurs yearly in the month of November, and is popularly supposed to have some connection with the Declaration of Independence, which was issued in 1783 after the successful resistance made by Washington and his fellow-patriots to the armies of Britain. This supposition is, however, a mistake. The origin of Thanksgiving Day is much more religious and venerable. It dates from the year 1621, when the Pilgrim Fathers who left England for conscience sake and endured many hardships by the way had reaped their first harvest in their new country. According to the unaffected piety of the times, which acknowledged God’s hand in everything, these rightminded fathers of the American nation thought good to recognise the Divine goodness by a day of public thanksgiving. The anniversary has been observed from the year 1621 to the present time, but with varying effect in point of piety. It is now a day of dinners and orations with very little devoutness intermingled. To show what road the people of the United States have travelled since the days of the Pilgrim Fathers let us remark the lurid picture which a writer in The National Review for November, 1902, draws of the public and private morals of New York, the Metropolis of the United States:—”A cynical indifference seems to be the habit of New Yorkers in matters political. As a matter of fact New York does not take kindly to “reform.” Reform means the closing of gambling-dens and other haunts of even worse infamy. This, the average New Yorker cynically tells you, is “bad for trade.” Vice must be encouraged to exist in New York, so as to attract people from smaller places who want to be vicious, but who at home are virtuous because of their environment. They come to New York to gratify their depraved tastes. All this is supposed to be “good for trade,” because it means the spending of money in drinking-saloons, gambling-houses, and other questionable resorts. It is not a pleasant picture this of the greatest city of the continent, one of the greatest cities in the world, turned into a modern Sodom and Gomorrah because it puts dollars into the pockets of the lowest element of the community, and because certain politicians of the Devery type profit by these abominations, but it is a picture that has not been overdrawn.”
The Revival of Witchcraft.
The extinct profession of witchcraft is undergoing a revival in the twentieth century. About a dozen professed fortune-tellers advertise themselves daily in the Glasgow Evening Citizen, and these have their haunts both in the east and the west ends of the City. Thus, under the heading “Palmistry,” “Psychometry,” and “Crystal-gazing,” “the renowned Madame Lomax” announces that she consults daily from 1s. From the persistency of these announcements, it is evident that these adventurers thrive and draw in much good money. We suppose the assumed function of such pretenders is to read the character or read the future of their clients. The dictates of common-sense should avail to divert anybody’s hard-earned money from their unholy hands. However, if the people of the twentieth century turn their backs on the God of the Bible, nothing in the way of delusion and degradation of mind will be impossible to them. “And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.”
The Kensit Crusade.
This much-needed movement in the direction of withstanding the rampant Romanising of the Ritualists, has a prosperous record to report in respect of figures and operations. Twelve months before Mr. Kensit’s death the movement had 17 agents, twelve months after Mr. Kensit’s death these agents number 30. The towns visited at these respective periods number 159 and 421, and the income figures for the same two periods are £4,681 and 7,222.
The Late. Rev. Murdoch Macaskill.
We notice this month the decease of the well-known Rev. Murdoch Macaskill, Dingwall. Mr. Macaskill, who succeeded the never-to-be-forgotten Dr. Kennedy in Dingwall, was once a prominent leader in the Constitutional party of the Free Church, and wrote and spoke much against the teaching of erroneous professors and of the Declaratory Act of 1892. He declared that when the above Act would be passed “the funeral oration” of the Free Church might be pronounced. The obvious meaning was that the Declaratory Act would be the death of the Free Church, and everyone legitimately concluded from this and other utterances that Mr. Macaskill would refuse to go down into the grave with her. However, we regret to say that Mr. Macaskill continued in the body which adopted the Act, and even when a union was consummated with the U.P. Church in 1900 he did not accompany his brethren who then separated, but went into the union. There is no doubt Mr. Macaskill did much good work by his letters and speeches when he entered on a vigorous crusade against the errors of Professors Bruce and Dods and the Act referred to, but his subsequent silence and general attitude threw an unhappy shadow over his career in the opinion of faithful Presbyterians.
Mr. Macaskill was an eloquent preacher in Gaelic and English.
Romish Violence.
A Hope Trust lecturer whose theme was “The Mass and Mariolatry,” was recently howled down and maltreated at Lennoxtown. In connection therewith a correspondent writes to the Glasgow Evening Citizen:—I notice that a Protestant lecturer was mobbed out at Lennoxtown by Roman Catholics. This sort of thing has been going on all over the country for some time, London and Carlisle supplying examples causing impartial folks to wonder at Protestant apathy. But, of course, Romanists are strictly following out the instructions of their Canon Law, which affirms that heresy and Protestantism is to be forcibly suppressed when practicable.
The Free Church Law Suit.
This case, appealed from the Outer and Inner Benches of the Court of Session, has been in process before the Lords since November 19th. It will certainly be decided before our next number is issued, and the verdict in either case will be interesting and notable.
Acknowledgement of Donation.
The Treasurer, Tain, has received £1 in aid of the Church Building Fund promised by the late Mr. Hugh Ross, Cadboll Place, Tain. “I have loved the habitation of thy house and the place where thine honour dwelleth.”—Ps. xxix. 8.