A SERMON BY REV. D. MACFARLANE.
ON a recent Sabbath, the Rev. D. Macfarlane, Free Presbyterian Church, Dingwall, preached to his congregation from Jeremiah 1., 4-5:—”In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah together, going and weeping; they shall go and seek the Lord their God. They shall ask the way to Zion with their faces thitherward, saying, Come and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall not be forgotten.”
Towards the conclusion of the sermon, the preacher made a brief application of the subject, with a special reference to affairs ecclesiastical in the present age. In the text, he remarked, Israel and Judah were referred to as returning together, i.e., united, to the good land from which they had been expelled on account of their sins, and particularly because of the sin of idolatry—returning together from Babylon to Zion. The two nations had been taken into captivity at different periods. Israel, owing to a succession of evil kings, was the more speedily brought under the heel of the oppressor, while Judah, though sometimes ruled by wicked sovereigns, had many good kings sitting on her throne, and hence was left in possession of the promised land considerably longer than the revolted ten tribes. In Babylon they had become united in the furnace of affliction, and by Divine interposition, through the instrumentality of the Persian conquest (under King Cyrus) of Babylon, they were now returning, after an absence of about 70 years, to Palestine. It was to be observed that the union of the two nations was not effected on the journey to their own country. The union was accomplished before they started from the scene of their captivity.
They in Scotland had heard much talk of union in recent years. There was a movement on foot in the present day for the re-union of all the various branches of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, but the way the advocates of that movement took to bring about the proposed union was not calculated to gain the approval and co-operation of those who would rejoice to see all the branches of the Presbyterian Church united on the basis of God’s word, nor was it likely to advance the cause of Christ in Scotland. The plan of those zealous advocates of union practically resolved itself into this:—”Let us remove the Scriptural foundation, and afterwards let us build upon the sand.” That principle had already been carried out by two of the largest Presbyterian Churches in Scotland, which had now appointed committees to negotiate with a view to union, viz., the United Free Church and the Established Church. The former had removed from her creed the Westminster Confession of Faith, which was founded on Scripture in all its statements, and agreeable thereto, and the latter was labouring with all her might to remove and break down that subordinate standard of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland, after which they would be prepared to say—”Come now, let us unite and be one body.” Such an amalgamation of ecclesiastical bodies could not tend to advance the cause of Christ; on the contrary, it would be directly opposed to it. It would lead Scottish Presbyterians to idolatry, and was but the first step in the programme of such welders of cold iron.
Their next move, as demonstrated by a pamphlet which had been lately sent to the speaker, was a union to embrace no less than six branches of Presbyterianism in Scotland. Those were the Church of Scotland, the United Free Church, the Reformed Presbyterian Church, the Original Secession Church, the Free Presbyterian Church, and the Free Church. Their desire was to have all these Churches in one body, and to cast overboard the bond of union adopted by Scottish Presbyterians at the abolition of Episcopacy. That bond was the Westminster Confession of Faith, which united the Presbyterians, not only of Scotland, but of England, though England did not adhere to its terms as our own country did. It was a notable fact that the Commissioners who framed the Confession of Faith were all Englishmen, with the exception of four or five Scotsmen. But the scheme of union mapped out by our modern enthusiasts did not end with the six Churches just mentioned. They had a vaster—a much more comprehensive—conglomeration in view, and what was that? Nothing short of the unification of all and every denomination—Presbyterian, Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, and Roman Catholics! A huge ecclesiastical syndicate, with the Pope of Rome as its head! Were they prepared for that?
The speaker received a pamphlet lately, entitled “The Coming of One United Church for Scotland,” and in it were embodied extracts from a sermon on “The Re-Union of Christendom,” preached three years ago by the Rev. Dr. (now Principal) Whyte, in St. George’s United Free Church, Edinburgh, in which he seemed to advocate the union of all Churches with the Roman Catholic Church. Mr. Macfarlane, to avoid being charged with misrepresenting Dr. Whyte, proceeded to quote verbatim from the pamphlet to which he referred:—”When we look, not so much at our own short history—however brilliant to our own eyes that history may be; nor so much at our own peculiar attainments and possessions as Protestants and as evangelical believers—however precious and inalienable those attainments and possessions may be; but when we look at the antiquity, and the nobility, and the grandeur, and the stateliness of those other Churches (i.e., Greek and Latin), as over against the too great provincialism and rusticity and indecorum of speech and action that have often far too much characterised ourselves; when we have humbled ourselves to admit that some other Churches have things of no small moment to teach us and to share with us, and things it will greatly enrich us to receive and to assimilate; when we are of a Christian mind enough to admit and even to welcome thoughts and views and feelings like these, then the day of a reconstructed Christendom will have begun to dawn, at least for ourselves.”
That was the Dr. Whyte whom the poor United Free Church honoured by making Principal of her College in Edinburgh. He wanted union with the Church of Rome. It was to be noted that in contrasting the Presbyterian Church with the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches, he ascribed to the Presbyterian or Protestant Church but a very short history, while he claimed for the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches “antiquity.” Dr. Whyte knew Church history better than that, but it was obvious he had an object in view when propounding his Church Union schemes, but the ignorance of Protestants was not quite so dense as to be imposed upon by the Principal’s travesty of facts. Mr. Macfarlane said that Protestantism was a scriptural doctrine, and the principle of Protestantism was as old as the Bible; whereas when one examined the historical facts of the commencement of the Romish Church, she was found to have had no existence until several centuries after the Apostolic age. Dr. Whyte’s text was Philippians ii. 1-4, where the Apostle Paul treats of love, of all being of one mind, and of each esteeming others better than themselves. Really, reading the Principal’s sermon made one feel that Dr. Whyte did not quite understand his text, for the Apostle spoke to true Christians, urging and exhorting them to love one another, and to esteem others better than themselves, but Dr. Whyte applied the text in a much wider sense, and he would have true Christians esteem heathens, infidels, atheists, and others, better than themselves. The Apostle Paul never exhorted such a thing, but Dr. Whyte, as already stated, had an object in view, and that object was to reduce Protestants to such a low state of humility that they might be ready to embrace Roman Catholicism again. The love which Dr. Whyte so eloquently advocated was a love that made no difference between truth and error, between enemies and friends, between Christianity and anti-Christianity. The speaker knew the meaning of Scripture as well as Dr. Whyte, and he defied the Principal to prove that the Apostle made such a wide application of that text as he (Dr. Whyte) did. Dr. Whyte eulogised a love and humility that would embrace Popery. The speaker did not care for such indiscriminating love and humility, and would leave them severely alone with Dr. Whyte.
In conclusion, Mr. Macfarlane solemnly warned his hearers that matters were quickly approaching a crisis. Ministers who were true messengers of Christ could not do too much in the way of educating their people in the sound doctrines of Protestantism, which were nothing but the doctrines of the Word of God, and warning them against the efforts made by nominal Protestants, such as Dr. Whyte, which tended to bring them to renounce the true faith and to embrace Roman Catholicism.—The North Star.