REV. D. MACFARLANE ON MODERN METHODS OF WORSHIP.
THURSDAY, 5th December, was observed as Harvest Thanksgiving Day by the Presbyterian Churches in Dingwall. In the Free Presbyterian Church, Rev. D. Macfarlane, pastor of the congregation, officiated at the three diets of worship.
In the evening he took for his text Psalm cvii. 22. After discoursing on the object of thanksgiving, the reasons for it, the duty of it, and the manner in which that duty should be performed, he found fault with congregations that held the thanksgiving for the harvest on Sabbath instead of on a week-day, which evinced a spirit of worldliness and ingratitude to the Lord for His goodness in providence. He also deplored the fact that the signs of God’s displeasure in the wet weather which prevailed during the reaping time, instead of leading them to repentance, had a hardening effect upon some of the farmers, inasmuch that harvest work was performed on the Sabbath day. He observed from the Press that in the neighbourhood of Tain a suggestion was brought before a kirk-session that the usual Fast Day should be dispensed with, in order that harvesting operations might not be impeded, but this was opposed (to their credit be it said) by two of the members, who themselves were farmers. There were others whose mode of celebrating Harvest Thanksgiving Day was to hold an “At Home,” to feast, to play, and dance, instead of praising God for the fruits of the earth. That was a heathenish way of celebrating the thanksgiving, but it was a very common way, especially among those who, from their rank in society, were called “the upper class.” Mr. Macfarlane also made reference to the strange manner in which thanksgiving services were conducted in some congregations, not only of the Episcopal Church, but also of the so-called Presbyterian Churches. They brought flowers, fruit, and corn to their places of worship—he could not call it the house of God—and they employed either human or water-power to make the organ give expression to a song of praise, which had, it was to be feared, as much root and sincerity in that lifeless instrument as it had in the hearts of the worshippers. He denounced the action of the Town Council of Dingwall in granting the town’s water supply for such base purposes, thus prostituting the mercies of God to idolatry, and bringing, in a manner, the sin of this evil to the door of every ratepayer in the burgh.
The mongrel religion of these Ritualists consisted of a mixture of Jewish ceremonies and heathenish superstitious rites. Musical instruments in the worship of God belonged to a typical dispensation which had passed away nearly 2000 years ago, so that those who used them now were really about 2000 years behind the age. In this—twentieth—century they considered themselves men of progress, but all intelligent men who read their Bibles and Church history would see that the movement was a retrogressive and not a progressive one. Any one observing the mode of worship practised in many churches, even in some Presbyterian Churches, would be apt to think that he lived in Old Testament times, that the Messiah had not yet come, that the New Testament dispensation was a thing of the future. The “men of progress” were 2000 years behind the times. He, in the name of God, called upon them to return to the simplicity of the Gospel, to leave behind them the observation of the ceremonial law, which Christ, at His atoning death, nailed to the Cross (Col. ii. 14) and buried in His grave, never to have a resurrection—while He Himself rose victoriously to die no more for ever. Let them begin by faith in Christ, the starting-point, to run the Christian race according to the rule of the New Testament Scripture, and then they might be expected to make progress in the right direction. “Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?”—North Star.