THE Glasgow United Free Presbytery had recently before it the report of a Committee making certain recommendations so as to increase the attendance at the second service on the Lord’s Day. The Committee recommended briefer, brighter, and more popular services. What that means we may be permitted to judge by the effort made in the past of pandering as much as possible to the carnal minds of spiritually dead hearers, with a touch of a man-devised religion to suit the situation. The Committee also suggested the grouping together of a number of churches. For this group scheme a programme was outlined, the idea being that in each church the evening services during the period from September to April should be devoted to a distinctive subject, such as church history, comparative religion, problems of life, social questions, and music. The Committee would be well advised to keep to the foolishness of preaching the everlasting gospel, for man-devised schemes can never take its place, and if the hearers will have none of it, it is with God they will have to settle their account. During the discussion at the Presbytery, Mr J. Buyers Black summed up the situation that to a great extent holds true of Scotland to-day. We quote his words in reference to this, though disagreeing with him in his suggested remedy. Mr Black, in emphasising the importance of the question, said the world would never be raised out of its present mess by “Sunday joy riders.” It would, however, require the concentrated ability and powers of organisation of the Church to resist the combination of circumstances at the present day. Twenty years ago tramcars began to take people out of the city to visit friends. Then came the gramophone to interest the musical, and play dance music. Twelve years ago the bands in the parks began to become a draw for the younger people. Then came the war, and young people of both sexes were in France or elsewhere, and church-going habits were dislocated. In 1919, Sabbath motoring came with a rush, with disastrous effects to the second service. Next there arrived political meetings, with marvellous promises of a strange kind of new heaven for all who would follow the leadership, not of Christ, but of Karl Marx. And there was something much more serious in this new craze for Sabbath political meetings than appeared on the surface, for although the views of Mr Ramsay Macdonald seemed unsound, he did not follow his own Sabbatic views by himself refraining from political meetings on the Lord’s Day.
As if all this were not enough, they had now broadcasting, and parents were being urged by their young people to instal wireless, so that on a Sabbath evening they need not trouble to leave their own firesides, but “listen in” to the songs of the sirens, which allured them to abstain from assembling themselves together, and with a different appeal from that which was made to Ulysses.
There is no time of a believer’s experience in which he does not look upon sin as the greatest evil, and God as his greatest good. Even in the moment that he is so overborne by temptation as to choose the evil and refuse the good, still his judgment is not changed; and he says, “The good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would not, that I do.”—Sir Richard Hill.
The Late Mr Roderick Maclean, Missionary, Kilmorack.
WE regret to record the death of this worthy man, which took place at Balblair, on the fourth of February. He had been in failing health for some time, yet he continued to take the meetings in the Church almost to the last. Roderick was early in life made to feel the evil of sin, and the bitterness of being under the curse of a broken law, which caused him to look on his right hand; but he found none to know him till the Holy Spirit showed him Christ as the shelter from the storm, and the covert from the tempest. To him truly Christ was the chiefest among ten thousands, and altogether lovely. He, in his measure, was like Moses shining with the glory of Him, with whom he conversed on the mount. He was one of the most guileless men any one could meet, as many who had to do with him can testify. For years he supplied many in Harris with wool, and his visits to that Island were always hailed with delight. He was kind to all, and sympathetic with every one in trouble. He was truly a friend of the poor. At Communion seasons Roderick would be eagerly listened to. He had a most imaginative mind, and he illustrated what he spoke in such a way that all his hearers felt interested in what he said. We can remember well some of Roderick’s sayings for thirty years. For instance, about Daniel in the den of lions Roderick would say he might sleep as sound as ever he did, because the Lord muzzled them, and they could not touch Daniel, but their roaring would frighten him, that is the way with the Lord’s people in the world, their enemies within and without, their roaring frightens them but there is a muzzle on them so that they cannot hurt the Lord’s people. “Na creutairean truagh tha iad dha mar tha clach a shuil”—the poor creatures, they are to Him like the apple of His eye. Another subject he often would refer to when speaking to “the question,” and in prayer was the three men in Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace. One would think, listening to him, as he described them in the fire, that he was looking at them as he spoke. Shortly after 1893 Roderick, along with other two worthy men who lived at Laide, took a journey by boat to Ullapool; on the way the wind got up, and while off Ullapool their boat was swamped and one, at least, of the worthy men was drowned. Roderick went down more than once, but he got a hold of an oar, and when help arrived, he asked them to look to his companions first, saying that he could hold on for some time to the oar till the rest were saved. “The thought that was uppermost in my mind when going down,” Roderick would say, “was if the whole of us were drowned, who would keep the meeting at Laide.” Thus he showed that he was more concerned about the cause of Christ than about his own life. This visitation was often used by him to press upon his hearers the need of being ready, for we know not what an hour may bring forth. As a Gaelic precentor he excelled; possessed of a strong voice and a powerful body as he took hold of his ear and started the tune, it was a treat. We remember when we used to hear him first. We could not but admire the solemn way in which he read the line and conducted the singing. Although he looked so strong, an unkind word would upset him so much that he would have to withdraw from the company in which he would be at the time. He submitted to the hand of the Lord like a child under the hand of a parent. Shortly before he left Laide, one of his daughters, who was serving her apprenticeship as a nurse in the district asylum, died after a few days’ illness and, while her remains were being carried to rest in the Laide burying-ground, the writer overheard the following conversation between Roderick and his youngest daughter—while our driver was mending a puncture—”O! father, is this not an awful thing that has come on us?” to which the father answered:—”Dear Ann, don’t you say that, it is the dear hand of the Lord that did it, and we should kiss the rod and the Appointer of it.” Roderick had his own share of the troubles that follow sin, but he bore them all in a submissive manner. His only son died a little over a year before himself, and the night his son’s remains were brought into Inverness, to be carried next day to Laide, Roderick attended our prayer meeting, and sang, and prayed to the Lord, and praised Him for how gently He was dealing with him, like Job. We felt that truly this man was near his own eternal home, and so he was. Our congregation at Kilmorack wished him to become their missionary, although he could not engage in English. They all enjoyed his services to the last, and Roderick felt as bound to them as they were to him. The last time the writer saw him in life was about a fortnight before his death, and his words then were—”The dear people are so good to me; I would like to be a while with them yet.” But the Lord had need of him in the house not made with hands, and He called him thither, to be forever with the Lord, leaving us poorer in the church below. To his wife and family we extend our heartfelt sympathy. May the Lord, who led the husband and father, lead them to Himself, and give them the comforts, which flow from the breasts of mercy. And to the people who loved him as a child of God, we also wish peace. Lord turn our captivity as streams in the south!
E. MACQ.