Forres Church Case.
At a meeting of the Presbytery of Forres held recently, Rev. John Morrison, moderator, a petition was read from seven members of the Forres congregation (Rev. A. C. Buchanan’s) calling the attention of the Presbytery to the fact that, notwithstanding the order made by the Presbytery on 27th March, 1906, enjoining the removal of the cross and lectern from the church, and which order was acquiesced in by the minister, these articles have recently been replaced in the Church. The petitioners were therefore reluctantly compelled to appeal to the Presbytery to take such steps as might be necessary to enforce their orders and remove this fresh source of dispeace in the congregation. As no one appeared in support of the petition, the Presbytery were precluded from receiving it, and the matter was therefore departed from.
Mr. Redmond’s Promises.
Mr. J. E. Redmond, M.P., has been once more promising Irish Protestants ample security, fair play, and religious liberty, should Home Rule be granted. But the question arises, what is the value of Mr. Redmond’s promises? Can Irish Protestants trust them? In a leading article, on 20th March, the Times thus deals with some promises the same gentleman made in 1898. It says:—”Mr. Redmond, it should be remembered, gave very strong pledges and assurances before the Irish Local Government Act of 1898 was passed. He proclaimed that the Nationalists would use all their power and influence to see it worked ‘in a spirit of freedom, of toleration, and of justice to all creeds and classes,’ and he promised the minority a fair and even ‘a generous share of representation on’ the new bodies. Those doubtless were his intentions, but we all know that they have remained unfulfilled. In almost every case Protestants and Unionists have been deprived of all share in local government where there is a Nationalist majority amongst the electors. In Munster there are at present just two Unionist County Councillors out of 227, and in Connaught there is one out of 143. That is an object-lesson, both in the value of Nationalist promises and in the Nationalist conception of toleration to the minority. It may be one of the facts which Mr. Redmond thinks ought not to be recalled. That is highly probable, but, after all, are not the Irish Unionists justified as men of common sense in judging the future by the past, and in inviting their British fellow-subjects to do so?” There are, it is true, a few Protestant Home Rulers elected in the Provinces of Munster and Connaught, but they are so few that they do not affect the argument of the Times.
Rome’s Advances in Britain.
We cull the following sentences from a recent letter to the Scotsman by Mr. J. Buyers Black, Glasgow:—The ominous thing is that in this country, at a time when Germany refuses the added yoke, when France has cast it off altogether, when the first acts of the new Portuguese Republic are to break the Papal chains, when Spain is struggling with desperate insistence to be free once more in order to gain its ancient place in the Councils of Europe, and to have leave to develop its immense natural resources, Britain alone is taking on the bonds of this Italian priest bit by bit as fast as the people will permit without breaking into open rebellion. We have first this Ne Temere decree inflicted on us in 1908, after it had been abrogated since 1785; then we had in 1910 the change in the Coronation Oath of the King, which a Roman Catholic Sovereign can now take with the promise of a dispensation afterwards; and finally, in 1911, the Government has made this country conspicuous by its absence in the official representation of Great Britain from the Italian national festivities on the 27th ult., held to celebrate the unification of that country and its freedom from the Papal chains. This alone were enough to make the bones of Knox and Garibaldi and Cavour stir in their graves. Rome is unchanging in its policy of aggression, and there is much in the present political situation to give pause to all true Protestants. In Scotland, which used to be regarded as the home and inner sanctum of the principles of the Reformation, the duty to unite speedily our scattered ecclesiastical forces in the face of the common foe, to whom we are as heretics to-day as much as in the day of the St. Bartholomew massacre, is now a matter of urgency.
More Roman Catholic Demands.
The Papacy cannot be at rest or satisfied whilst Britain remains a Protestant nation. The “Accession Declaration” still binds his Majesty to the promise that he will be a “Faithful Protestant”; hence Rome’s activity in bringing to the forefront some feature in her programme which has been for a time abandoned. The (R.C.) Tablet of Saturday, 11th March, 1911, in an article under the heading of “Existing Catholic Disabilities,” refers to the Emancipation Act, which declares that it is “necessary to make provision” for “the gradual suppression and final prohibition” of “Jesuits and members of other religious orders or societies of the Church of Rome, bound by religious or monastic vows,” and it proceeds to make such provision in sections 28-36, which, among other things, require all male regulars to be registered within six months from the passing of the Act; forbid any male regular to come into the kingdom after the passing of the Act, under the penalty of banishment for life; enact that anyone admitting a new member of any order shall in England be guilty of a misdemeanour, and in Scotland be punished by fine and imprisonment; make it a misdemeanour, punishable by banishment for life, to be so admitted; empower the Crown to convey out of the kingdom any person sentenced to banishment under the Act who does not depart within thirty days of such sentence; and provide that any person banished under the Act, who is found at large in the United Kingdom, without some lawful cause, three months after such sentence, shall, on conviction, be transported for life. Some of our readers, we imagine, on reading this will be inclined to rub their eyes and say: Are these Draconian provisions really part and parcel of the law of this country? Yes, they are. They have never been enforced; but they have never been repealed. They might at any moment (see section 38) be set in action at the instance of the law officers of the Crown. Nor are they practically “a dead letter,” as the phrase is. They have the serious effect of disabling religious orders of men from holding property.—Protestant Alliance Magazine.