Rothesay and Sabbath Cars.
There appears to be a determined effort made by a certain section that Rothesay will have Sabbath cars. Time and again the agitators have met with defeat, but they return again undaunted to attack. This year they sought to achieve their purpose under the cover of a Provisional Order, which came before the Government Commission in Glasgow, and which was promoted by the local Tramway Company. The Order had two objects in view—(1) The stabilisation of increased fares; (2) the authorisation of a Sabbath service. The Commission granted the first but refused the second. It is gratifying to report this result of the Government Commission’s decision. This, of course, will not mean that the agitators will cease, but it is something to know that there are in Rothesay Town Council men of sufficient moral backbone who are not swept away in their convictions by the pleasure-loving crowds that frequent this famous Clyde resort.
The Fall.
The Rev. N. P. Williams is the Bampton Lecturer for this year. Some excellent lectures have been delivered on this foundation, such as Canon Liddon’s “Divinity of our Lord” and Bishop Waldegrave’s “New Testament Millennialism,” but it must also be said that some very poor productions came from the lectureship. This year’s lecturer is determined to be up to date, and as a result we have the following:—”We must admit,” says the lecturer, “that the passage of the Fall-doctrine from Judaism into Christianity was involved in some obscurity; but the following appeared to be the most probable hypothesis: (a) That the earliest adherents of our Lord, being rough Galileans, and therefore destitute of Rabbinical culture, would know nothing about the ‘Yecer ha-rac,’ but would be well acquainted with the popular apocalyptic literature, and would therefore be likely, in the absence of direct Dominical instruction to the contrary, to take the pseudepigraphic theory of a Fall and Original Sin for granted, either in its ‘Angelic’ or its ‘Adamic’ form. (b) That our Lord, in accordance with His policy of assuming current Jewish theology wherever possible, tacitly acquiesced in this, and left His followers to decide for themselves between the Fall-stories of Genesis iii. and Genesis vi. (c) That at first the Watcher-story enjoyed some popularity in Jewish-Christian circles: but that St Paul’s influence eventually dispossessed it in favour of the Adam narrative, which thus became the official Fall-story of the whole Christian Church. If this was so, St. Paul would seem to have done Christianity a considerable service, in view of the unifying developments of which the angel-story from its nature was capable.” Assuming that the lecturer is correctly reported, we have here an extraordinary product of modern so-called scientific theology. The reference to our Lord is of the usual type when these learned scholars refer to Him. We quote these words not with the intention of unsettling the faith of any or shocking our readers, but merely to give them an idea what is going on in the name of modern theology.
Protests Against Sabbath Desecration.
The brazen-faced materialism of the present day is showing itself in its daring encroachment on the sanctity of the Lord’s Day. For a number of years, owing to straitened finances, trains were not run on the Highland section of the L.M.S. Railway system, but this only opened the way for motor ‘bus proprietors to seize the opportunity of making money on the Lord’s Day. As it appears to be a paying concern, these proprietors began to run motor ‘buses from Inverness to Dingwall. Naturally those who love the Lord’s Day in these northern parts were pained, and public protest meetings were held at Inverness and other places. Rev. Ewen Macqueen, who, with other ministers, took a prominent part in these proceedings, received deserved acknowledgment for his energetic efforts to arouse the community to protest against such flagrant Sabbath desecration.