The Centenary of David Livingstone.—This famous missionary was born at Blantyre, Lanarkshire, on 18th March, 1813. Meetings are being held at present to celebrate the hundredth anniversary of his birth, and it would be well if those who take a prominent part at these meetings would truly walk in Livingstone’s footsteps. We are fully convinced that Livingstone was a genuine believer in the Bible as the Word of God, in the divinity and atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the office and work of the Holy Spirit in conviction and conversion, but it is difficult to know what many nowadays believe about these fundamental truths, who at the same time cry out loudly about missions. The records of Livingstone’s toils and travels, though otherwise most informing and fascinating reading, do not contain
a great deal of purely gospel or spiritual matter. The explorer is very much to the front. But still one gets glimpses here and there of a man who seems really taught by the Spirit of God, and earnestly seeks the salvation of his fellow-sinners. The honest, humble, and pre-eminently unselfish and self-sacrificing character of the man also proclaim him “an epistle of Christ.” Note this saying of his: “I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which He made who left His Father’s throne on high to give Himself for us.”
An E.C. Minister Speaks Out.—Rev. James Smith, B.D., St. George’s-in-the West, Aberdeen, in a New Year’s letter to his congregation thus delivers himself:—”I appeal (he says) to you at this season to put an end to all apathy about worship, this indifference to church-going, this terrible inability to go to church even once a Sunday regularly. When you who are at work go six days a week to earn your bread, because if you don’t you will starve, is your soul of less value to you than your body? Is it fair to give me the go-by while you are young and strong and well and all goes well with you, and expect me to be at your call and service when illness and trouble and sorrow and death come upon you? I tell you, frankly, I cannot longer be the minister of any of you who continue to despise the Church and neglect my ministry. Our kirk-session must strongly support me in this matter. You are not going to make me a convenience for baptisms, marriages, sick-beds, and funerals.” The Church of Scotland owes a debt to Mr. Smith for his outspokenness. It is to be feared that the same thing is true in many congregations. Thousands of people have their names on Communion rolls, who never darken the door of the Church, and it is more than time they were dealt with. Possibly Mr. Smith might have expressed himself in a more elevated manner, but he is to be congratulated on declaring the facts, and his intention to deal with them. We do not know what kind of gospel Mr. Smith ministers, but it would be good, if, when his congregation did gather, they would hear the real truth as it is in Christ.
Samuel Rutherford and his Critics.—Rev. D. Beaton in his article this month on Rutherford’s Letters quotes some of the coarse criticisms which have been passed by a certain class of religious leaders upon these wonderful Letters. Perhaps one may say by way of further explanation that such men as Principals Cunningham of St. Andrew’s (not Cunningham of Edinburgh, an entirely different man), and Story of Glasgow, were outstanding representatives of Modernism, and were entirely out of sympathy with genuine gospel truth and real godliness. You might as readily expect the blind to observe the beauties of the rose and the lily, as such men to appreciate the heavenly excellencies of Rutherford. It is the same spiritually ignorant and carnal disposition that animates those who reject “The Song of Songs” from a place among the inspired books.