SCOTLAND for a number of years has been undergoing extraordinary changes religiously. One of the most favoured lands of the Gentiles, it was visited time and again with rich, refreshing showers from Heaven, and there has not been a century since the Reformation in 1560, but God has borne witness to the favour He had to Scotland by sending true revivals of religion. He sent to the Scottish people messengers who shunned not to declare the whole counsel of God, and His people were refreshed and nourished under the preaching of these messengers. But we have fallen on evil days. The religious habits of the Scottish people have been rapidly changing for many years. Non-attendance on the means of grace is almost universally prevalent. The Lord’s Day is not honoured as it used to be, and the precious Gospel of God’s grace, with its message of hope to perishing sinners, is despised. The attacks covertly made on the infallibility of God’s Word many years ago are now openly made, and it is not considered in many quarters a shameful or immoral thing for a minister to stand up in a pulpit and call in question the integrity of God’s Holy Word. Socialism, of the Communist type, too, with its irreligious sentiments, is taking hold of large masses of the labouring classes in the great industrial centres. And alongside of this there is the growing menace of Irish Roman Catholic immigration into Scotland. The invasion of central Scotland by an alien race, with lower ideals and a false religion, is something very much more serious than the migration of races, so interesting in itself, and making its special appeal to students of ethnology. Were our land favoured by the advent of a more virile race, with high ideals and a pure religion, it would be the richer and the better; but when one considers the type of immigrant that reaches these shores from Roman Catholic Ireland, it is no wonder that the matter is arousing the deepest concern in the minds of those who have given much attention to this subject. The statements made and the figures given by several speakers in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland are sufficiently startling to make one seriously ponder over the position of our beloved land. In forty years the Irish population has doubled, and in the last twenty years the increase of the Irish population was six and a-half times that of the Scottish race. The result is that this alien element has become a determining factor politically, educationally, and in municipal affairs. The figures given, and the statement made by the Rev. Duncan Cameron, Kilsyth, are worthy of quotation.—
“Under present conditions, he said, there was a great danger that the Scottish nationality would be imperilled and Scottish civilisation subverted. In 1920 the number of Scottish people leaving the Clyde for other parts was 24,719, while the number of Irishmen leaving was 341; in 1921, Scots were 20,810, and Irish 298; and in 1922, the respective numbers were 22,427 and 219. On the other hand, if they went to the clerk of the Parish Council in Glasgow they would hear that of the total numbers applying for the “dole” last year, no fewer than between 60 and 70 per cent. were Irish, though the proportion of Irish in Glasgow to the total population was between 25 and 30 per cent. Charity organisations would also tell them that no less than 70 per cent. of the applicants for relief were of Irish origin. It was time that the people of Scotland realised the situation. The complexion and the spirit of our Scottish civilisation were being altered by a large alien race in our midst, people of different ideals and faith and blood. Professor Phillimore had written that within a generation the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland would be more predominant than in the Eastern States of America—which implied that the power of that Church in the Eastern States was so great that it was impossible for any politician to do anything that might be remotely antagonistic to its people. The time might come when political parties would not touch this question, when men in positions of public authority and power would be afraid to speak, and they should have mutely, helplessly, to see this land passing into strange hands.”
The result of all this large increase of the Irish Roman Catholics in Scotland is to give them a position of undue prominence. Glasgow and Central Scotland, the very heart of industrial Scotland, are being taken possession of by this undesirable type of alien. Politically many of these are bitterly anti-British in their sentiments, and strong supporters of De Valera and his lieutenants. But from a religious standpoint, the aspect with which we are chiefly concerned here, the situation has brought about an extraordinary condition of things in Scottish Education. Owing to the well-organised political influence of the Roman Church, a clause was inserted in the Education (Scotland) Act, 1918, making it compulsory that wherever there were Voluntary (Roman Catholic and Episcopalian) Schools taken over by Education Authorities, these Authorities were bound to see to it that religious instruction, Roman Catholic or Episcopalian as the case might be, must be given. For sheer bare-faced effrontery in legislation we believe the equal of this would be hard to find. The influence of the Church of Rome surely had a tremendous effect on our legislators when they calmly allowed such an Act to be placed on the Statute Book. It is gratifying to observe that among the many other serious defects of this Act this part of it is beginning to have a little more attention paid to it.
The well-organised and active propaganda of the Roman Church, on the one hand, and the chilling indifference of nominal Protestants to the high concerns of their native country cannot but fill all true and patriotic Scotsmen with misgivings for the future. Still, if God would arise, the desolations of Scotland would become a beautiful garden to the Lord.
We long for better days for Scotland, with its religious past so rich with noble sacrifice and contentings for the truth, with its hallowed memories of days of the right hand of the Son of Man, and pray that the dark shadows which are lengthening on every hand may soon give way to the bright rays of the Sun of Righteousness. Samuel Rutherford said in reference to his own time:—”Christ is taking farewell of Scotland, but blessed be His Name, it is a lingering farewell.” And dark though things many a time appear, our prayer is that neither we nor our children will see a Scotland to which the Son of God has given a final farewell.