Presbyterians Drifting Romeward

IT would appear from a variety of circumstances that the War with its terrible events is producing no proper impression on the minds of many, high and low, in the matter of religion. We fail to see, for example, that the tenets and rites of the Roman communion are viewed with more dislike and dread by leaders in the popular Churches, or by their adherents in general, though the Papacy has played a wicked and deceitful part in the present terrible strife. In fact, the evidence is all the other way: the tendency on the part of many would seem to be to think that, as the War has brought Protestants and Roman Catholics together in Army and Navy in defence of the rights and liberties of nations, the religious differences between both parties should be lightly esteemed. This is a dangerous mistake. We yield to none in willingness to give all due credit to members of “the Church” of Rome, who have shown themselves honourable, generous, and true in any department of life—and there, no doubt, have been instances in which they have set a good example to many nominal Protestants—but we are under solemn obligation to take a decided stand against the subtle and ruinous errors of the denomination to which they belong, and nothing that is presently happening should make us resile in the least degree from this position.

What, however, are we to think of proceedings that recently took place in the city of Aberdeen? On Sabbath the 13th January, Dr. Æneas Chisholm, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Aberdeen, died suddenly in Edinburgh. His remains were taken to Aberdeen, and a few days later, the funeral took place from the R.C. Cathedral there to Blair’s College. The press notice further runs as follows:—”The funeral was preceded by Requiem Mass in the Cathedral, and was attended by a large and representative gathering. The University of Aberdeen, of which the Bishop was an honorary graduate, was represented by Principal Sir George Adam Smith, Professors Reid, Cash and Terry, and Mr. D. R. Thom, Secretary to the University Court.”

Now, we ask the question, “Under what obligation was Principal Sir G. A. Smith to attend a Requiem Mass in a Roman Catholic Cathedral?” He is one of the leading men in the United Free Church, and was recently Moderator of its General Assembly. Has this body ceased to be a Protestant denomination, and has it given up any witness worthy the name against the false doctrines and rites of the Roman Church? If we are to judge by Principal Sir G. A. Smith’s conduct, the answer must be in the affirmative. Some may argue with regard to Principal Smith’s personal action in the matter that he only attended the Mass in his capacity as a representative of the University, not as a representative of the Church, but this argument goes for nothing. Was he entitled to set aside his Christian obligations as a professed Protestant, in any capacity whatsoever? Verily, not. His action may be garnished over with the specious names of charity, toleration, and courtesy, but grievous disloyalty to Christ and His truth is the only correct description of it. To attend the Bishop’s funeral might have been permissible, but to attend the Requiem Mass was a most gratuitous and dishonourable step by way of countenance to a superstitious rite that dishonours the truth of God and the redemptive work of Christ, and has been fitly called the crowning blasphemy of the Papal system.

We all know well already that Principal Smith is one of the outstanding “higher critics” of the Bible in this country, and his present action is in some respects no surprise at all. It requires very little logic to show that the Rationalist and the Romanist are not so far apart as they seem: both tamper with the Word of God, the former taking away from, and the latter adding to, “the words of this book.” We feel, bound, however, to call the attention of the people of the United Free Church, who have any sound or Protestant sentiment left in their minds, to the incident under notice as shedding light upon the untrustworthiness of one of their most distinguished men, in matters of faith and practice. Does not his present action cast a reflex light upon his past attitude towards Bible truth, and give just reason to seriously distrust it? We have no personal animus against Principal Sir G. A. Smith, and would wish to write tenderly about him in view of his recent sad losses, but we deeply deplore such unfaithfulness to God’s truth and worship, and feel grieved at heart that a man so gifted and accomplished should be leading people astray in ruinous paths, instead of setting the good example of return to “the faith once delivered to the saints.”

But we pass on to observe that the above was not the only deplorable action by professedly Protestant Churchmen on the day of the Bishop’s funeral. At a meeting of the Aberdeen Presbytery of the Established Church, held that day, Rev. Dr. C. C. Macdonald of St. Clement’s Parish, referred to the death of Bishop Chisholm, and moved that the Presbytery record an expression of appreciation relative to the Bishop, whom he praised

as one of the best Christian ministers he had ever known. Rev. Professor Cowan, D.D., seconded the motion, and the motion was passed unanimously. Could anything be more unfaithful on the part of a Presbyterian Church Court? The Bishop might have been a moderate, amiable gentleman, and so forth. But what had ministers of the Church of Scotland in their Church capacity to do with passing resolutions commendatory of anyone who lived and died as a devoted servant of a false Church, “the man of sin,” whom Christ will yet utterly destroy? Truly we live in evil times, when “truth has fallen in the street and equity cannot enter.” Dr. C. C. Macdonald, in the course of his speech, exposed his own spiritual degeneracy to a marked degree. He said that the Bishop and he had frequently been golfing competitors, and that there it would have been difficult to find out there was any difference between them doctrinally. He added that the older he (Dr. Macdonald) grew, the less sensible he was of any great difference between the Churches. This last utterance may be correctly interpreted as implying that the older he grew, the more blind he was to the difference between truth and error—a sad state of affairs indeed. Does his utterance also indicate that the views and practices of so many clergymen in the Established Church of Scotland have become so like those in the Roman Church that he cannot see any great difference between them?

It is plain enough from the utterances and proceedings which have been reviewed that there is a dreadful departure from original truth and purity in the larger Presbyterian Churches of the country. May God, in His infinite mercy, interpose, and bring them back to “the old” but ever new paths of Apostolic and Reformation times!

LET me read His precious Word; it is the glass by which I am to examine my heart, speech, and behaviour; it is my guide in the way to glory; it is my armour to defend myself, and slay my spiritual foes; it is the food, the sincere milk, on which my soul liveth. Thrice sweet promise! how exactly suited to my case; how richly stored; how pregnant with the goodness of God; how ravishing to my heart! Where wast thou during the late circumstances of my soul? Often have I read thee, but never felt thy power as now. Sweet mystery! doctrine of God in my nature, loving, undertaking, obeying, dying, rising again, and interceding for me! it is like honey to my mouth; it penetrates to the bottom of my heart; it is “like new wine going down sweetly.” Just commandment of Heaven, how pleasantly dost thou awe my conscience, reprove my sin, direct my path, and sway my will! Say, could ten thousand years’ perusal of plays and romances, afford such pleasure to a soul, as these few lines of inspiration have done to mine? Can souls immortal feed on fancies? Surely not; except to future woe. Ye sons and daughters of pleasure, retire and read your Bibles, to be gay.—John Brown.

A Sermon.

BY THE REV. GEORGE HUTCHESON, M.A., of Edinburgh
and Irvine.

(Fourth Sermon of Series on Psalm cxxx.)

(Continued from page 216.)

“Lord, hear my voice; let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications. If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities: O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with thee: that thou mayest be feared.”—PSALMS cxxx. 2, 3, 4.

FROM the first branch of the psalmist’s wrestling and exercise, I have spoken to these three: (1) The deeps, wherewith he was put to wrestle; (2) his cries whereby he wrestles with these deeps; (3) his reflecting upon this his practice, and avowing it before God, as that which afforded him a testimony, that out of the deeps he had cried unto God.

Now, there remains the prosecution of this wrestling and his pleading for audience, in a new and doubled suit, verse 2, “Lord, hear my voice,” etc. While he pleads for the hearing of his voice, the meaning is not, that the voice is all that should be given to God. I confess we should give Him the voice when we can give Him no more, and lament that we have no more to give Him but the voice; but the voice that the psalmist would have heard here, is the voice of his crying out of the deeps, the voice of his most fervent and earnest supplication. Ye see the expressions here are doubled (as frequently in the Book of Psalms) to evidence, how earnest he was in this suit, that he is not complimenting with God, when he is seeking access and audience to his prayers. The expressions also are metaphorical, and borrowed from the carriage of a parent to a child; and upon the matter, his suit is this, “Lord, notice me when I pray,” as the parent will notice the distressed child’s cry when he is like to ruin; “and let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications;” that goes a little further. As a parent, knowing a child to be in hazard, will listen and hearken attentively if he can hear him cry, and notice and ponder that cry, and what he cries for; so he pleads with God, that He would be waiting on and attentive, to see and hear if a cry should come from him, and that He would affectionately ponder and notice it when He hears it. For this hearing of prayer, it hath so frequently occurred before, that I shall pass it and the whole verse in three words, that I may come to other things in the Psalm, which I mainly designed to speak unto, when I broke in upon it.

The first thing that ye shall mark here is, that sanctified affliction not only puts the saints to prayer, but also that they cannot rest upon the work wrought of prayer, but they must have an answer to their prayer; “I have cried out of the deeps unto

thee, O Lord; Lord, hear my voice;” he must be heard. The sensible man, when God blesses the distress he is in, to put him to prayer, he doth not rest there, but presses for a hearing, for an answer to his prayer. Two things evidence the truth of this. One is, a sensible man in trouble will find it hard to be out of speaking terms with God, hard to have anything of Saul’s case in his lot, that when he sought God in his distress, “he would not answer him, neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets” (1 Samuel xxviii. 6). When folk come into trouble, if they have any sense of feeling of their condition, they will know of what worth an intercourse with heaven is, and what it is to have a door open to them from thence, when all doors are shut upon them from earth, and, therefore, they cannot rest on prayer, but will press for audience. Another is, that as it will be hard with sensible saints to be denied audience, so they need and prize the thing they seek. It’s not for a fashion, or for a compliment, or for a trifle, that they cry out of the deeps; but their life (if I may so word it) is lying in pledge of what they would be at; there is nothing betwixt them and ruin, but the answer of their prayers, and, therefore, they cannot rest without it.

For use, it leaves a sad conviction on them, who, if they come the length to worship God, and pray to Him, their task is done; they have prayed, and that’s enough. I confess, by prayer and supplications, folks may cast many events over upon God, but yet they should bide at prayer, till they get an account of that which they are seeking (Psalms v. 3), “My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O Lord” (saith David); “in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.” It’s an evidence that folks have little pressed upon their hearts the necessity of that they are seeking, when they look not up for an answer. And hence also they have evidence, that (as it is 2 Tim. ii. 19), though they name the name of Christ, it is not their care to depart from their iniquity, that they may not bring a reproach upon prayer, nor obstruct the success of their prayer with God. This is the great fault of formal professors, they will keep up a form or fashion of prayer, but they little know, or labour to know, what it is to traffic with heaven by their prayer.

But a second word shall be this, that suppliants in distress may be exercised with delaying of the answers of their prayers; “I have cried out of the deeps unto thee, O Lord,” but he dare not say, that God hath heard him. Therefore he is put to pray over again, “Lord, hear my voice.” The sense of non-acceptation may haunt a suppliant, and he may find the thing that he is seeking is not granted; yea, suppliants may not only be exercised with delays, and seeming denials, as Job was, chapter xxx. 20, “I cry unto thee, and thou dost not hear me: I stand up, and thou regardest me not.” And Lam. iii. 44, the Church complains, “Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through.” Not only I say, may suppliants be exercised

with delays and seeming denials, but with very sad dispensations on the back of their prayers, Psalms lxxx. 4, “O Lord God of hosts, how long wilt thou be angry,” or wilt thou smoke “against the prayers of thy people?” They may have smoking wrath meeting their prayers, and that for a long time, instead of a comfortable answer, which is sad at all times, but especially in trouble. For clearing what folk should make of this, I shall only name some things that I spoke more largely to at another occasion.

1. Though the psalmist hath a testimony that he is crying indeed to God, when yet he is not heard, we should look when we are not heard, that there be nothing wrong in the supplication, Matt. xx. 22, Christ saith to some, “Ye know not what ye ask;” and Matthew xvii., when Peter roved upon the mount, it was so with him. There may be a defect in the matter, manner, or end of the supplication. James (iv. 3) says, “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, to consume it upon your lusts.”

2. When our supplications are not answered, we should look that there be not something wrong in the suppliant. Folks may be praying when there is standing unrepented of guilt, that meets them in a strait (as I may hint on the following verse); there may be some controversy, that God hath with the person, which till it be done away, He will not hear needy and pressing suits; and though the controversy may be done away, as to standing guilt, there may be an habitual ill frame, which the Lord would rectify by keeping the suppliant at his bar. They may in ordinary be formal and carnal, and have an edge in trouble, and He will not let them stick there, and therefore will keep them at the back of the door, till they learn to walk with God in ordinary.

3. When the supplication is right, and the suppliant in a right frame, there should be the exercise of faith, that God will not deny every suit that He doth not answer, or delays to answer. The exercise of faith, that He is but trying us, if we will go to another door, when He delays to answer; yea, this is the exercise of faith, to believe that many suits are not unanswered, which we think are not answered. God answers the suits of suppliants, when He accepts and approves of them (Psalms x. 17). Though He grant not the thing they seek, He answers, when He strengthens the suppliant with strength in his soul (Psalms cxxxviii. 3). And there are answers of faith, which should be read from the Word, and made use of. I have the more briefly passed from this, that this purpose occurred before on another text; and from it take two brief words, and I shall leave it. One is, that suppliants, crying to God in distress, and not coming speed, should be invited to the reflection that I spoke to in the forenoon, to see how all is, that there be nothing wrong in the supplication, nor in the suppliant, that there be no action of guilt, no controversy that must be removed, before a comfortable answer come. That should be a searching lot, when the bill of the needy suppliant is lying at the footstool without an answer. Another is, if even

supplicants may be humbled and exercised with delays, ere they get an answer to their prayers, what will become of them that pray none at all? “If this be done in the green tree, what will become of the dry?” (as Christ says, speaking of His sufferings, compared with the calamity that was to come upon the Jews).

But I proceed to a third word, and that is to clear what it is that God requires of needy and honest supplicants, when they are put to cry, and cry again in prayer, for an answer, and it is not given. Beside what I spoke before of reflection, I shall shortly from the text point at three things to be done, or that God calls for. And 1, in this case, the Lord is calling folk to pray on, “I have called to thee, O Lord,” there is prayer; “Lord, hear my voice,” there is a new prayer; “Let thine ears be attentive to my supplications,” there is a third suit. Although thy belly should cleave to the earth while thou liest in the dust, thou must continue in supplication; although thine eyes should fail in waiting for God, and His salvation, yet pray on; there is nothing formidable in a supplicant’s condition, so long as he is not driven from God’s footstool, but prays on. 2. Another direction is, that repulses or delays should promote humility in supplications and supplicants. It’s here supplications that he puts up, when he pleads for audience. Now the poor use supplications; supplications are the beggars’, are the divours¹ language. Many supplicants when they have cried long, and are not heard, may be in peril to fret, to quarrel, to repine, to bark; but that’s a wrong method to come speed with God in prayer. Thou oughtest to be the more humble, the longer thou art delayed; thou oughtest to creep the nearer the dust, and come in among the poor that speak supplications. 3. And a third direction shall be from the phrase and metaphor in the text, as I explained it in the entry, that is, that there be a believing, that the Lord hath an affectionate ear to listen unto, and hear the cry of humble supplicants. This is imported in the very terms of the prayer put up to God, as an affectionate parent, ready to notice the cry of His child, when he is in hazard, and cries for help. And this is a needful direction, when the supplicant is held at the door, that beside diligence and humility, he entertain faith, that bodes² well of God. Faith, when God was seeming to destroy Job, made him say, “These things hast thou hid in thine heart: I know that this is with thee” (Job x. 13). I know that Thou hast a kindness for Job, though Thou appear terrible to me. So must faith reckon, when answers to prayer are delayed; I know He will do me good, though I seem not to be noticed.

Now I come to the third and fourth verses, wherein we have the second branch of the psalmist’s wrestling, and that is a wrestling with guilt, that might hinder audience, and to give you a general view of these two verses, ye shall take this branch of his

¹ Bankrupts.

² Promises.

wrestling in these three: 1. Ye have a very sensible and humble acknowledgment of the desert of sin, in the most godly, verse 3, “If thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquity, O Lord, who shall stand?” That is, iniquities are so heinous a thing, that if Thou wilt mark them as judge, and, according to the covenant of works proceed with men, none would be justified.

1. Ye have the psalmist’s relief being thus humbled, in God’s pardoning mercy, on which he lays hold, in the beginning of the fourth verse, “But there is forgiveness with thee.”

2. This pardoning mercy in God is amplified from the end He hath before him in letting it forth, “That thou mayest be feared.” That is, not only in general, because Thou art a merciful and pardoning God in Christ, men have access to worship and serve Thee, who otherwise art a consuming fire; but in particular, Thy pardoning mercy will excite men to fear and worship so good a God that freely pardons iniquity, under the weight and burden of which they could not stand.

For the first of these, his sensible and humble acknowledgment of the desert of sin in the most godly, I may touch it the more cursorily now, because it will fall in, when afterward I come to speak of the right way of applying pardoning mercy, where I shall take a view of this verse, as it points out the right method of obtaining pardon, and the qualification of the pardoned sinner, calling upon God in trouble; what would I say now upon it, ye shall take up in these three.

1. Ye have the sense of sin and guilt, joined with the sense of trouble.

2. Ye have the sense of guilt meeting a godly man in the teeth, when he is sent to God by prayer in trouble.

3. Ye have guilt meeting him with a terrible aspect, that if God marked it, he nor none is able to stand.

For the first, I shall give it to you in this brief observation, that in right exercise, the sense of sin and guilt should go along with the sense of distress and trouble. The psalmist rests not on his being sensible, that he was in the deeps, but he is also lying under the sense of sin and guilt. A man that hath the mere sense of trouble without the sense of sin, he is no more than a beast that will feel a smart, and so it is a brutish thing to be howling under the sense of trouble, without the sense of sin, Hosea vii. 14, “They have not cried unto me with their heart, when they howled upon their beds.” They howled for their trouble, but they called not sincerely unto Me. And verse 16, “They return, but not to the most High: they are like a deceitful bow:” and hence Micah vi. 9, “The Lord’s voice crieth unto the city; hear ye the rod, and who hath appointed it.” There must be a hearing of the appointer of the rod, as well as the rod itself. To evince the truth of this point, I shall shortly hint at some consequences that readily follow the sense of trouble, without the sense of sin: not to stand upon this that readily they chose a new sin to an outgate, Job xxvi. 1,

“This hast thou chosen rather than affliction.” I shall name these three: 1. Where the sense of trouble is without the sense of sin, folks expect to win soon out of it; they are readily a world of conceit folk, that think they will win soon and easily out of their trouble; Judah found the weight of trouble, but not the weight of sin, and when they were going to captivity, they were filled with dreams of outgate, Jer. xii. 4, “They said, He shall not see our last end.” And Jer. ii. 25, “They said, Because I am innocent, surely his anger shall turn from me.” And when they were brought very low, that delusion did not leave them, Eztek. xi. 15, they say, “Get ye far from the Lord, unto us is this land given in possession.” And Ezek. xxxiii. 24, “They that inhabit the wastes, said, Abraham was one, and he inherited the land; but we are many, the land is given us for inheritance.” Whence it is clear, that deluded confidence is one of the woeful fruits of the sense of trouble, without sense of sin.

A second is, woeful bitterness, and carnal distempers of spirit, if not when the trouble comes on, because they trust to be soon delivered from it, yet when it continues long. How find ye that people, Jer. v. 19, and the parallel places, who are brought in, saying, “Wherefore hath the Lord our God done all these things unto us?” What’s our iniquity? And what’s our sin? And Isaiah li. 20, ye may take up the temper of such a people: “Thy sons have fainted, they lie at the head of all the streets, as a wild bull in a net; they are full of the fury of the Lord, the rebuke of thy God.” Ye will not tame a wild beast, by putting him in a net, but mad him the more; and so are they who continue long under the sense of trouble, without the sense of sin.

And a third consequence is, a woeful issue, whenever delivery out of trouble comes to folk in such a posture; and I find in this issue these two to concur. One is, their hungry starved lusts, meeting with mercies, do surfeit upon them, as the peeled Jews, when they came from the captivity, and had not quit their covetousness, they no sooner come back, but they eat up one another. And another is, when such folk are delivered out of the strait wherein they were, their delivery ordinarily hath the plague of God with it, Psalms lxxviii. 27, etc., when that people cried for flesh, “He rained flesh upon them as dust, and feathered fowl as the sand of the sea; they were filled, he gave them their desire; but while the meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, and smote down the chosen men of Israel.” This in short would put folk to it in shoring¹ times, to see what they are most affected with, whether with trouble, or with sin? If ye be going with your hands on your loins, what ails you? What affects you most? Sin or trouble? Provocation, or trouble, the fruit of your provocation? Mark it, there is much exercise in sad times, when it is not about

¹ Threatening.

sin, and the fruit of that exercise will be found wind, Isaiah xxvi. 18, “We have been with child, we have been in pain, we have as it were brought forth wind.” Sense of sin over-weighing sense of trouble, were a blest mean to cure our trouble, Isaiah xxvii. 9, “By this, therefore, shall the iniquity of Jacob be purged, and this is all the fruit to take away his sin; when he maketh all the stones of the altar as chalkstones, that are beaten in sunder, the groves and images shall not stand up.”

But the second note I proposed to be spoken to was, that sense of guilt meets him in the teeth, when he comes to God. The observation is, that guilt will readily meet the people of God, in their approaches to him under trouble. When he is crying to God out of the deeps, and is earnest for audience, God’s marking of iniquity stares him in the face, to put some stop and demur to his access and audience, and the issue he would have been at.

If time would suffer, I would deduce this point in these four. 1. A tender soul is known by many heart-smittings for sin, which David was well acquaint with in the wilderness, when he cut off the lap of Saul’s garment (1 Samuel xxiv. 5). A very innocent thing to vindicate his own integrity, yet his heart smote him; a heart-smiting for sin was no dainty to him then. I confess, when men are at ease, and are not in a tender frame, they may give way to gross sins, and their heart not smite them. What a temper is David in, when he is at ease and secure? What a wide throat hath he to swallow down adultery, and murder, and to betray a part of his army? 2 Samuel xi., “The sword devours one as well as another” (saith he); “It’s the fortune (as we call it) and the chance of war, let it not trouble thee.” That was not like David when he was tender; but however the general holds true, that heart-smiting from sense of sin is a most infallible sign and evidence of tenderness and nearness to God. O, but the skin of a conscience near God is thin! A little thing will draw blood of it. And as upon the one hand, ye should try your nearness to God by this, so upon the other hand, ye should look upon it as poor gallantry to digest sin, without a heart smiting you for it. There is a generation of men, who are called strong spirits, gallant men, and wherein doth their strength of spirit and gallantry lie? In contemning the law of God, in treading upon His authority, in defying God; they can commit all wickedness, and sleep in a sound skin, and never be troubled with it. These are our gallants, but the day will come, when that will be found poor gallantry, and that he is the brave spirit, that knows what heart-smiting for sin is, and hath tenderness in his walk.

1. There is in the second place this in particular, that when saints go to God, then their guilt readily meets them. Although they have little sense of guilt in ordinary, yet when they approach to God in earnest, their sin will muster up before them.

2. Although in ordinary addresses, they may be little sensible of sin, yet when a strait comes, and they are sent to God, then

their sin will find them out. Though they can walk in ordinary, and be little troubled with guilt, yet in a distress it cross-necks them.

And 4, although wicked men do not readily meet with guilt, because they are plagued with stupidity, yet their guilt will meet with them, and they shall find it marked by God, as if when they came to God in ordinances, they came to proclaim their iniquity.

These are the branches of the point, which now I cannot insist on, to deduce at large. Only if ye have to do with God, and be in earnest, beware of unrepented guilt. The longer it be in meeting with you, it will be the sadder when you and it meet, and the longer it be that ye lay it not to heart, to repent of it, and turn from it, it will be the more sad. God bless what ye have heard.

(To be continued.)

The late Rev. John Robertson.

MR. ROBERTSON was born in Glasgow, the 13th day of August, 1830. His parents possessed a competent portion of earthly riches, but the fact that they were truly pious was by far a greater blessing to themselves and their offspring. They held family worship each morning and evening in their house. It was at family worship on an evening, and while the words were being read, “And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly” (Luke xxii. 44), that he felt his heart melted into faith and repentance. He was about fifteen years of age at the time. He refers to that night’s experience in his Diary in the year 1899 in the following humble manner:—”Whatever be my state before God, I surely have cause to praise Him that, notwithstanding all my provocations and backslidings, He has not left me wholly unconcerned about eternal things. This concern has continued with me more or less since that night in St. Vincent Street, at No. 233, in the autumn of 1845, when the words, “And being in an agony,” struck me so forcibly that I was led to go to seek after God. If in the end I should be found a hypocrite, the hottest place in hell will be my portion. Oh, that I may be enabled to improve this concern, and never cease seeking God as long as I live; for who can tell but the Lord may return and leave a blessing behind Him.” This is another proof of the great blessing of family worship and of the folly and guilt of parents and masters who neglect it in their homes. The loss sustained by children whose parents neglect to instruct them in the fear and admonition of the Lord is indeed very great, and the last account of such parents on the day of judgment, both to the Judge and their own children, will be terrible. The Holy Spirit placed on divine record the care and diligence with which Timothy was taught by his grandmother Lois and by his mother Eunice, and how the faith that dwelt in them, and by which they laboured to instruct him in the things of God and his everlasting felicity, was not without fruit. The same thing was true in his parents’ family. A brother of John Robertson died at the age of

twelve years in the full assurance of faith, and a sister at the age of eighteen years. Our readers will remember that a part of the Diary of this sister was published in the F.P. Church Magazine several years since. Mr. Robertson spoke often to us of the two with feelings of the warmest affection, and with an assurance as to their being with Christ in everlasting happiness, while he was left groaning on account of a body of sin in this world of sorrow and sighing.

His father gave Mr. Robertson every facility to acquire the best education. This was not lost outlay, for he was a very good Greek, Latin and Hebrew scholar. His knowledge of the latter was both accurate and profound. The Lord was preparing him for his future work in the ministry of the gospel even when he had no thought of engaging in it. But when the Lord’s call to the ministry of the gospel came, he was equipped beforehand with all the university education required.

When he was eighteen years of age, his physician ordered him to take a tour to Egypt and Palestine for the benefit of his health. He left Scotland in 1848. The following entry in his journal will show the bent of his mind:—”I find already the evil and danger of travelling; for I was tempted to go to bed without prayer. Oh that the Lord would quicken me by His Holy Spirit! so that I might be enabled to keep near Himself; for oh! it is dangerous to be travelling much and arriving late at hotels. When I cannot get much time for prayer, my soul must soon become lean. Lord, be merciful to me a sinner for dear Jesus’ sake. Amen.” The above entry was written in London. At Malta he wrote:—”Tomorrow we will have, perhaps, to leave for Alexandria, which I hope may not be so; for we would thereby have to travel all Sabbath-day in a steamboat. Oh may the Lord watch over and protect and guide me in all my paths—leading me in a plain path—letting me see clearly the path of duty. Now I begin to feel what Mr. B. spoke to me about before leaving home, viz., that I am very apt to grow cold and indifferent about eternal things. Oh that the Lord would quicken me by His Holy Spirit and sanctify me through the truth! I feel I need special supply of grace now as there are so many things to call my heart away from eternal things.” After visiting some churches in Malta and observing the degrading superstition and idolatry with which the worshippers were enslaved, he wrote as follows:—”Oh how I ought to bless the Lord for His great goodness in causing me to be born in a land of gospel light! where the gospel is purely preached.” On his arrival in Egypt, he was much struck with the poverty and base condition of the poor people which prevailed everywhere in that country, and he observed how the prophecies of the Old Testament were literally fulfilled.

After staying a few weeks in Egypt, he travelled through the wilderness on his way to Palestine. He went the same way which the children of Israel travelled when they passed through

that great and terrible wilderness two thousand and three hundred years before him, and found it exactly as Moses describes it. When they reached Mount Sinai, he went to the top where it is supposed the Lord delivered in such terrible majesty the ten commandments. There he, and his companion, read the ten commandments in Hebrew. This exercise he felt to be very awe-inspiring. He wrote the following note in his journal:— “May the Lord give me a tongue to praise Him for His goodness to me in permitting me to see this once hallowed place. May He write His law upon the fleshy table of my heart, and lead me to Jesus to obtain the remission of all my many transgressions of His most holy, just and good law.” He also went to the top of Mount Hor, where Aaron died. The journey from Egypt to Hebron was accomplished in thirty-seven days. In Hebron he wrote the description given by Moses of the wilderness journey:— “He found him in a desert land and in a waste and howling wilderness. He led him about, He instructed him; He kept him as the apple of His eye” (Deut. xxx. 10). He had learned by experience that the above description of the wilderness had not changed in the least since Moses’ time, and as regards the Lord’s care, goodness and mercy towards himself, he felt that every word had been fulfilled.

He had now arrived in Palestine which, of all lands, is the most interesting to every lover of the Bible. His feelings, in visiting the places referred to in the Gospels in connection with the activities of our Lord Jesus Christ during the time of His tabernacling with men, were sublime and very tender. Knowing that he was now in a town or village in which the Lord preached, and performed miraculous cures; or on the roads on which He walked, being hungry, tired, and followed by throngs of poor people, some of them attracted by His gracious words—words of eternal life—which proceeded out of His blessed lips, others in order to be cured of their maladies, this made a very deep impression upon his mind, and caused many sad thoughts as to the awful retribution which the Jews brought upon themselves by refusing to receive Him as the Messiah promised to their fathers. The tyranny exercised by cruel Turks; the squalor, poverty and misery of the poor; and the superstition and fanaticism of the people made him conclude that it could not then be designated “The holy land.” After visiting every place of gospel interest about Jerusalem and the whole surrounding country, and spending about six weeks there, he returned home by Beyrouth, Switzerland, and Germany.

The following year (1849) he was again ordered away for the benefit of his health. This time he spent a considerable number of weeks in Egypt. He went up the Nile to the old capital of Egypt, Thebes, or No, of the Old Testament. The ruins of Thebes struck him with amazement. The colonnades, of tremendous size, broken to pieces and scattered upon the ground;

the extraordinary dimensions of the foundations of the public buildings that were once there; the multitude of idols broken and lying in the mud made this ruin a scene never to be forgotten. What struck him most as to the idols was, that each of them lay face downward in the mud with the head broken from the trunk. This reminded him of the fate of Dagon when it fell before the Ark of God. On his way back to Cairo, he visited the pyramids.

Having concluded his travelling in Egypt, he faced the wilderness the second time on his way to Palestine. When he left home this time he took with him several parts of the Old Testament in Hebrew and Arabic. On this journey through the wilderness he accidentally met an Arab. He spoke to the Arab in his own language, and asked him if he could read. The Arab answered that he could. Mr. Robertson asked him to read a part of a psalm, at the same time handing him the Book of Psalms in Arabic. He read a few lines quite correctly. Mr. Robertson asked the Arab whether he heard anything concerning a mighty king called David. He did not hear of him. But it turned out that he had heard of Abraham. Mr. Robertson then told that, notwithstanding David wrote the book he had in his hand, the great God of Heaven was the Author of it, and that it contained God’s words to men. The Arab did not hide his amazement at hearing that he had God’s word in his hand, but when Mr. Robertson told him that the book was now his own, he could not suppress his joy, but began to shout and jump and praise. Who knows what fruit this little Arabic portion of the word of God may have brought forth in that desert land? One thing we know, that His word will not return unto Him void. He spent over two months in Palestine, and returned home by Alexandria and the Mediterranean route. He concluded this journal by the remark:—”Our way has been attended with many mercies all the time since I left Palestine, for which I have much reason to praise God.”

Between the years 1849 and 1880 there does not appear to have been any diary or journal kept by Mr. Robertson. All I can say about that period is that he got married, had a large family, lost his wife, of whom he always spoke with tender affection, and emigrated to Canada in the year 1880. In August of this year, he wrote:—”I came out here with my children in June last, and I desire to record the goodness of God in watching over us and keeping us from all harm during the voyage, and also for preserving me during my long journey to P— to see my two sons there.” He was very seriously exercised this year about his interest in Christ. On the 10th December, he wrote:—”For the last two days my soul has been bowed down under a sense of sin, and it seems as though my faith in the Lord Jesus must be given up. I sought, however, to give myself up to Him and to lie at His sovereign disposal. Truly I am the chief of sinners, and it

sometimes seems impossible for the blood of Christ to wash my guilt away. But, oh! is not this unbelief? His blood cleanseth from all sin, and if not mine, this could not be the case.” This deep searching of heart originated in his having been prevailed upon to preach publicly in certain places about Kingston, Ontario. He, in 1882, entered divinity classes in Queen’s College, Kingston, was examined by the Presbytery of Kingston the 3rd day of July, 1883, and duly licensed to preach the gospel. The extract of the minute of licence lies before us as we write. A few months later he was ordained over the congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church organized by the Rev. R. M’Dowall in the year 1800 of which he continued pastor until his death in 1844. This congregation of Albany joined the Presbyterian Church, and it had been without a pastor during thirty-nine years; the Rev. John Robertson was his successor in that charge. Mr. Robertson, being a man of real integrity of conscience, would look after the spiritual concerns of his congregation with every care and diligence. He remained in Canada from 1880 till 1895. His diary during these fifteen years reveals the exercises of a mind that was taken up with the concerns of his own soul’s interest in Christ as well as that of his family and people.

He returned to Glasgow on the 18th October, 1895, and began to attend divine services on the Sabbath-days in several of the Free Churches of the City. The doctrines taught and the mode of worship were so alien to what he was accustomed to in the Free Church in earlier days that, like Noah’s dove, he could not find a standing place on solid ground. One day on the street, he met a lady whom he knew before he left for Canada, and complained to her of how the Free Churches in Glasgow had drifted from “the old paths.” She answered him that he should go to St. Jude’s and that he would find there a people clinging to the old paths. Next Lord’s day he appeared in St. Jude’s and continued to come each Sabbath after that. Not long after, he was asked to assist by preaching to the English congregation in the hall when Gaelic was preached in the church. This he agreed to do. The following entry appears in his diary:—21st January, 1896—”Last night at St. Jude’s prayer-meeting, with which I have connected myself as being altogether most congenial to me, Mr. S. gave an excellent address on Romans i. 18. I think this section of the Free Church has done right in continuing in their old ways, and I cast in my lot with them. The people and ministers seem the most serious I have met, and they are seeking to maintain the truth of God in purity.” He did not endeavour to slacken their pace in their efforts to maintain the truth of God in its purity.

At the meeting of the Synod of our Church, held at Inverness the 3rd day of July, 1900, the writer brought before the Synod the desirability of placing Rev. John Robertson’s name on the list of the ministers of the Church. The Rev. J. R. Mackay, Inverness, moved that Rev. John Robertson be received

as a retired minister of the F.P. Church. This motion was seconded by the Rev. D. Macfarlane, Dingwall, and unanimously agreed to. In the year 1902, he was unanimously appointed Moderator of the Synod. He very reluctantly, on account of his low opinion of his own suitableness for the office, accepted the Moderatorship, and performed all the duties of that office to the entire satisfaction of all the members of the Synod. He was again urged to accept the Moderatorship in 1912, but he could not be prevailed upon to accept of the office.

Mr. Robertson was a man possessed of a very meek and humble disposition. He considered himself to be far behind other ministers, both as regards qualifications for the ministry of the gospel, and the grace needful to speak the truth in love towards its Author, the souls of men, and towards the truth itself. All who had the privilege of knowing him personally, and of hearing him preach, formed a very high opinion of him as a very faithful minister of the gospel, who manifested much zeal for the glory of God and the souls of his hearers. This zeal was not without fruit. One case comes to our mind, that of a young lad who had been very careless until one Sabbath day listening to Mr. Robertson’s appeals to sinners to forsake their evil ways and to return to God through the Lord Jesus Christ, and that He would have mercy upon them. The effect on this young lad was that from that day he forsook all the ways of sinners and sin, and has been a member in full communion with our Church since several years. He has had, like the most of our young men, to join the Army. Two years ago, he lay sick in a hospital in England. A bishop of the Church of England came into the ward in which he lay and prayed. He then spoke to one and another of the sick soldiers. At last he came to his bed, and began to speak to him. The young soldier said to the bishop, “You seem to think that men will go to heaven without being born again, and without repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ. You are greatly mistaken, and I warn you to cease teaching such soul-ruining doctrines to men, for they are contrary to God’s Word.” If there were many men in our Army like this young man, there would not be so much encouragement given to chaplains who teach the vain dreams of their own deceitful hearts instead of the unerring Word of God. No one would have more delight than Mr. Robertson in hearing that his children were walking in the truth, but he was taken away to the rest that remains to the people of God before the above happened. The last day will reveal how many he was instrumental in bringing to a saving knowledge of the way of salvation, but we are certain that his faithful presentation of Christ crucified, as set forth in the gospel, has not been fruitless.

He assisted in St. Jude’s congregation during seventeen years. The real gentleman and Christian appeared combined in him from first to last. But he was not one of those who imagine that a

man must surrender and compromise truth and principle so that he may be considered a gentleman and not a bigot by men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. In maintaining the well-defined position of his Church, and in adhering firmly to the same unto the end, no man could show more zeal. The admiration in which he was held by old and young in the congregation increased from year to year. This was true very specially as regards the godly among us. The large number of our young men and women who came regularly to hear him on Sabbath manifested the profound esteem in which they held him. This was sincerely reciprocated on his part. The intense interest he had in the young, and the earnest desire he had for their salvation could hardly be surpassed. To me, it was really one of the greatest pleasures of my life to have had his private fellowship and assistance during these years, and we cannot express on paper how greatly we missed him when he was taken away. The memory of that sincere friendship will not be effaced from our heart in time. During his closing years, Mr. Robertson resided in Greenock, and at fortnightly intervals, conducted the English services there with much acceptance. His death was sincerely mourned by the friends in Greenock.

During the last year of his life he was unable through physical infirmity to attend to any public duties. His resignation to the Lord’s will was all that could be desired. Not a murmur was ever heard coming from his lips. His devoted daughter nursed him with the tenderest care and affection to the last. He passed away to be for ever with the Lord on the 21st day of December, 1914. His remains were laid to rest in the family burying place at the Glasgow Cathedral. We feel that the prayer of the prophet Isaiah should be repeated by us: “The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come. He shall enter into peace, they shall rest in their beds.”

We desire to express our sincere sympathy with each member of his family at their loss, which we feel very heartily to be ours also. Albeit that the Rev. John Robertson reached the age of 84 years, the pang of separation was very keenly felt by us all, and will continue to be felt until we will pass away. N. C.

The Vatican Peace Note and the Italian Disaster.—In an article headed “The Allies and the Vatican,” the Rome correspondent of “The Times” says:—”I was on the Italian front when the Pope’s Note was published, and for many weeks afterwards, and I know the effect it had upon some of the troops. I shall not forget the language used about the Pope by an Italian General, a good Catholic, who knew how some of his men had been shaken by the action of the Vatican. For the time being the spirit of the troops overcame the suggestions of an easy peace, but when their heroic efforts during August and September had come to an end, the poison worked again here and there.”