A COMMITTEE, appointed by this Presbytery at a meeting held on 7th January, have drawn up the following resolutions:—
PROTEST AGAINST SPECIAL ENVOY TO THE POPE.
The Southern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland views with serious concern and grief the retrograde step taken by our King and his counsellors in having sent Sir Henry Howard as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Vatican, as they have thereby given to the Pope a status which he has not had since the Reformation in the temporal or spiritual affairs of this nation. The Presbytery would humbly remind His Majesty and his counsellors of the direful effects of such tampering with the Protestantism of this country in the seventeenth century, of the bloodshed caused thereby in the British Isles, and of the subsequent overthrow of the Stuart Dynasty on account of similar matters. The Presbytery desires to enter its strongest protest in its own name, and in that of Protestants in general, against the persistency with which our Protestant Constitution is being bartered away to please Roman Catholics and men of no religious principles, occupying high places in this nation. The Presbytery earnestly appeals to the Government to recall Sir Henry Howard from his mission, in view of the false position into which his presence at the Vatican has brought this Protestant nation.
This Protest has been forwarded to His Majesty the King and the Prime Minister.
RESOLUTION RE EXTRAORDINARY PRAYER MEETING HELD BY UNITED FREE MISSIONARY IN INDIA.
This Presbytery takes into consideration, as an extraordinary sign of the times, the account of “a remarkable prayer meeting,” held in India by a missionary of the United Free Church, reported in the U.F. Record for November—a copy of which was sent a member of the Presbytery by a respectable citizen of Glasgow. The Presbytery notes the substance of the report, as follows: “The wife of one of the Government officers” in India had suggested to said missionary “that a number of people of different
classes and religions might welcome an opportunity of meeting together for prayer in connection with the War, if it were understood that the meeting would be conducted in such a way that no one’s religious principles would be compromised.” The missionary, after overcoming some “difficulty”—apparently a slight qualm of conscience—fell in with the suggestion and held the meeting, where, according to a previously-understood arrangement, he offered up prayer to God without any reference to our Lord Jesus Christ. The meeting was attended by about a hundred people, belonging to the English, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jewish, and Parsi communities.
This Presbytery hereby desires to express its strong condemnation of such Judas-like unfaithfulness to the Person and Name of Christ, and to call attention to the incident as an example of the fatal extremes of disloyalty to which compromise and surrender of the truth for the sake of false union will lead individuals and Churches who are called by the Christian name. The Presbytery considers that any denomination which tolerates such a gathering as the above, calls in question its right to be described as a Christian Church, and that there is no advantage—but the opposite—in sending to the heathen missionaries who vainly imagine that acceptable prayer can be offered to God without reference to Christ as the “one mediator between God and men.”
The Presbytery, in conclusion, would appeal to the people of the United Free Church to awake to a realisation of the dangerous precipice towards which German Rationalism is driving them, and to turn back to God’s truth both as to doctrine and worship.
MEMORIAL MINUTE RE THE LATE REV. JOHN ROBERTSON, GREENOCK.
The Presbytery would place on record their deep sense of the loss sustained by the demise of the Rev. John Robertson, retired minister, residing in Greenock, one of the brethren of this Presbytery. They desire to express their sincere grief that one whom they regarded with profound respect as a Christian minister, endowed with eminent graces, and marked by outstanding integrity in the things that pertained to God and the souls of men, should be taken away at such a critical period in our national history. While they bow with all submission before the adorable Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ, in this dispensation of His providence, and while they rejoice that their loss has been the everlasting gain of their departed father and friend, believing as they do that those who sleep in Jesus God will bring with Him, they feel very deeply that a real and great blank has been made among the members of this Court, in the sphere of the Free Presbyterian Church and in the world at large. As to his personal character, they can bear testimony that Mr. Robertson was a man of a meek and lowly spirit who was disposed to place all men, in whom he perceived the grace of God, before himself,
but who, in spiritual matters, pertaining to the cause of Christ and the salvation of his fellow-sinners, was bold as a lion. It may be truly said of him that in asserting, maintaining and defending the integrity and infallibility of the Holy Scriptures, and in holding fast the whole doctrine of the same as embodied in the Confession of Faith, he would not compromise or surrender the least iota either for carnal peace or so-called charity’s sake. This was his character right through at an important time now past when some, who were then office-bearers in the Free Presbyterian Church, sought to bring about an accommodation with a body that did not stand faithful, in its ecclesiastical transactions, to the Bible and the Confession of Faith. Mr. Robertson held that the Lord had committed to His Church in the world His oracles, and that immediately the Church proved unfaithful to her trust, she ceased to be His witness and to be beneficial to the souls of men. No man could move him to depart from this position.
Mr. Robertson, who was English assistant in St. Jude’s for some years previous, was admitted a member of this Court in 1900, and during these years he was the embodiment of courtesy, brotherly love, and forbearance, to his brethren in the Presbytery. He was deeply interested in the welfare of all the congregations in this and the other Presbyteries of the Church. Everything, indeed, connected with the F.P. Church at home and abroad lay very near his heart. It may also be justly stated that he was a true patriot. Every departure by the State and by our cities or communities from the precepts of God’s Word caused him pain and anxiety, and he was always ready, as occasion offered, to remonstrate with high and low to turn from their evil ways. This he did, not from a censorious spirit but from love to Christ and the souls of his fellow-countrymen. The Presbytery can affirm with confidence that the nation has lost a true patriot and one of its most faithful friends, who prayed much for its genuine prosperity; while the Church has lost a man of God, a good scholar, and a sound preacher of the Word.
In conclusion, the Presbytery would earnestly pray that the Lord of the harvest would send forth labourers to His harvest in a day of blasphemy and reproach, and make the seed of divine truth fruitful in the experience of many souls unto life eternal.
The Presbytery agree to express their deepest sympathy with Mr. Robertson’s family in the great loss they have sustained, and to send a copy of this Minute to his daughter at Greenock.
WILL the wisdom of words win men to Christ? What advantage hath a wit above others, but that he hath a greater freedom to play the fool . . . Lord, let us have nothing to do with clergy, who know better how to manage farms than to wrestle with God, and deal with hardened or wounded consciences.—John Brown.