Romish Church Aggressiveness.—Recently a Pilgrimage of Roman Catholics to the Shrine of the so-called St. Margaret, Queen of Scotland, took upon themselves—at least their priests did—to conduct a service in Dunfermline Abbey. It appears from answers given by Mr. Lansbury that permission was granted by the authorities for visiting the Abbey but once there the R. C.’s took full advantage of their opportunities. On the attention of Mr. Lansbury, the First Commissioner of Works, being directed to the matter he informed a Dunfermline correspondent who wrote him that permission had been given to the Catholic Truth Society to visit the Abbey but the official who granted this permission had no reason to believe that religious services were to be held. One can understand the anxiety of Rome to get the ancient abbeys and cathedrals in Scotland and one can only regret that those in possession of them are not showing that virile Protestantism which one would like to see in the religious leaders of Scotland. The barefaced effrontery of the Romanists caused quite a stir and may help to awaken sleeping Protestants to realise that an aggressive and vigilant enemy is at work in Scotland.
Important Decision of the High Court (England).—By a decision of the High Court cinema opening on the Lord’s Day is illegal under an Act of Parliament of 1781. As was to be expected the cinema exhibitors have been thrown into a state of consternation. Talks of appeals and new legislation are the order of the day among them and their supporters in evil. The London County Council, a conscienceless sinner in this matter, has decided to appeal against the decision of the High Court. Already at the time of writing this note a Bill has been drafted and read the first time in the House of Commons to save the cinema exhibitors from the consequences of their lawlessness. The Anti-Sabbatarian forces in the press and in the world of pleasure are out to have the Act of 1781 wiped off the Statute Book. The god of pleasure has a large following in the land and these are determined to have their way whatever pain it may give to the best, and law abiding, citizens of Britain.
Sabbath Cinemas in Edinburgh.—A large deputation of leading Scottish churchmen appeared before the Edinburgh
magistrates pleading with them to reverse their decision permitting the Cinema Exhibitors’ Association to open cinemas on any one Sabbath in aid of the funds of the Royal Infirmary Extension Appeal Fund. The magistrates refused to reverse their decision by a vote of nine to two. We do not know if the Act referred to above applies to Scotland but without professing to be expert in legal matters we have no hesitation in saying that the laws on the Scottish Statute Book on Sabbath observance are much stricter than those of England. Why are they not put in force? A stiff fine might work wonders in the minds of the Edinburgh magistrates and make them, at any rate under restraint, keep God’s law. The same salutary treatment might also indicate how much the cinema exhibitors and their clients were willing to pay for the privilege of extending the Royal Infirmary. One grieves to think that a city which at one time had so many faithful preachers of the Cross should have fallen so low in her magistracy.
A Strange Application.—At a meeting of the Fife Police Committee held at Cupar an application was made by St. Ninian’s Church, Cardenden, for permission to hold a cinema exhibition on Sabbath afternoon. Bailie Melville, Tayport, unlike his Edinburgh brethren, in protesting against the application “asked what the Church was coming to? Was it to be a place of entertainment or a place to which to go to worship God on the Sabbath day? If a minister could not find something else to raise funds for his church except a “Sunday” cinema entertainment it was high time he was sending in his resignation and giving some one else a chance.” Dr. Low, Blebo, also spoke strongly against the application. By a vote of ten to five it was refused. A similar application by Glencraig Roman Catholic Church, strange to say, was granted permission through the casting vote of the chairman. Bailie Melville said it was ridiculous to grant permission to the Roman Catholic Church while refusing it to the Parish Church. It was then discovered that burgh members had voted on both motions and were not entitled to do so. On the vote being re-taken St. Ninian’s Church application was turned down by six to four and that of the Roman Catholic Church by six to three.
Mixed Marriages.—An interesting passage at arms between the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Liverpool and Dr. David, Bishop of Liverpool, has been fought out in the columns of the “Manchester Guardian” on the attitude of Roman Catholic priests to mixed marriages. Dr. Downey, the R.C. Archbishop, denies that priests in Liverpool had said that mixed marriages were invalid and the children of such marriages illegitimate in English law. The Anglican Bishop, Dr. David, took up the challenge and says in a letter that he had sent the R.C. dignitary extracts from six letters, specifying occasions, since the time the Ne Temere Decree was promulgated in this country, on which such statements had been made. The writers of the letters were willing to allow Dr. David to give their names to Dr. Downey. Dr. David then adds:—”It is pitiable to realise the terror revealed in many letters I have received, and interviews I have held, and the extent and depth of the misery so caused. ‘My husband will lose his job.’ ‘Our windows will be broken.’ ‘He says he will put us out of salvation.’ ‘He is going to send the ghost of my mother to curse me all my life.’ ‘The priests will make my life a worse hell than ever.’ I am not surprised to hear this autumn of several cases of nervous breakdown among defenceless women (it is the women who suffer most) subjected to such a strain. It is to be noted that the Roman Church reserves this weapon of fear for the unlearned and the poor. I have recently learned of mixed marriages among the well-to-do (who are not so readily frightened) in which the parties have made their own arrangements, and the situation has been tacitly accepted by the priests, who remain on friendly terms with the family and leave it in peace. But these cases are mostly in the South of England. It is upon the industrial population in the Roman Catholic dioceses of Liverpool, Lancaster, and Glasgow that the Roman Catholics are concentrating these methods of force and fear, so alien to the mind and spirit of Christ, with a pitiless rigour which the author of the decree could never have contemplated as a result of it.”
Bishop of Liverpool’s Indictment of the Romish
Attitude to Mixed Marriages.—In continuation of the able letter referred to above Dr. David adds:—”Lastly, I have submitted to his grace quotations from documents carrying at
least some Roman authority which seem to render evidence from private conversations almost superfluous. Thus, a printed advertisement of a mission in Everton last month contains this statement: ‘How greatly in need of God’s special graces to save them from hell are . . . men and women whose life is a continual scandal . . . sometimes they start life by running to the registry office or the Protestant church to contract a mock marriage that is neither ratified in Heaven nor blessed by Jesus Christ.’ Again in a Roman Catholic magazine called ‘Stella Maris’ the editor, in answer to a correspondent who complains that a Roman Catholic had left his non-Roman Catholic wife because she would not join his Church, writes: ‘As the marriage from his point of view was no marriage, he was evidently not a married man, and not being so he was free to contract a marriage.’ And in a Catechism of Christian Doctrine, approved by the Archbishop and bishops in New Zealand the following answer (No. 313) occurs:—’A Catholic and a non-Catholic presuming to go through a form of marriage before a non-Catholic minister or before the civil registrar do not contract a valid marriage—that is to say, they are not married at all.’
Blasphemy from a Professed Minister of the Gospel.
—The Rev. H. S. McClelland, Trinity Congregational Church, Glasgow, to whom we have made reference in these Notes before is evidently out of place as a professed minister of the Gospel. In the “Glasgow Evening News” (8th December) among other foolish and daring things he says about our Lord is the following:—”Jesus was absolutely ignorant of the natural laws of the universe. He thought the sun went round the earth. Copernicus, Newton, Darwin—they all knew far more than Jesus did of the working of the universe.” We have no hesitation in saying that Mr. McClelland is “absolutely ignorant” of the “great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.” He may have a Saviour but He is not the Christ of God to whom all the prophets bore witness and to whom apostles and saints bore testimony that He was God in whom there dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. It seems almost incredible that any one professing to be a minister of Jesus Christ would dare to give utterance to such blasphemy. Were not all things created
by Him and can the greatest of His creatures claim to be on an equality in knowledge with God? Yet this professed servant of Christ says:—”Every school teacher is less ignorant than He. The world He knew was a very little world.” If this is the fruit of Modernism then it is already true of its advocates:—”Their rock is not our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter; their wine is the poison of dragons and the cruel venom of asps” (Deut. xxxii. 31-33).