Burns’ Worship.
The extravagant laudation of Robert Burns at Burns’ dinners is what one would expect from worldly men but when the pulpit becomes the platform from which Scotland’s gifted but erring genius is lauded to the skies as a paragon of the virtues it is time that an emphatic protest should be made. The world will love its idols and after them it will go but one expects it would be different with the professed servants of Christ. The minister of Kelvinside Church, Glasgow, the Rev. P. D. Thomson, D.D., evidently finds the Bible so barren in biographical material that he has to betake himself to Robert Burns and in doing so links his wayward career with that of the sweet psalmist of Israel. “If Burns had known,” he says, in a paragraph with which we thoroughly agree, “that 120 years after his death his name would have been associated with honour and reverence and affection in the service of a Christian church he would be struck dumb with astonishment.” Not only so but we believe the poet would have scorned in his inmost heart the pulpit flatterers who are bent on canonizing him in face of all the teaching of their chief Guide-book, the Bible. It would have been well that his pulpit panegyrist in the Kelvinside Church had experienced a little of the same dumbness after coolly announcing to his congregation that “nothing could disguise the fact that it was a service in commemoration of Burns himself” they were holding on the Sabbath night of 25th January. Another of the Glasgow ministers (Rev. J. MacMorland, St. John’s Church (City) who finds his Bible as barren of themes for the pulpit as his Kelvinside brother lectured on “The Faith of Robert Burns” and described the poet as “a religious genius.” “Religious,” of course is a term of very wide connotation but one cannot help feeling that the devil must by this time be highly satisfied with the splendid help he is getting from many of the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland. The flood of fulsome flattery that is let loose on the country on the 25th of January of each year is bad enough on a week-day and by worldly men but is trebly so on the Sabbath when professed ministers of the Gospel join in it.
The New Zealand Earthquake.
The news of the terrible calamity which overtook the towns of Hastings and Napier in New Zealand came as a shock to the people of this country. The people who passed through this terrible ordeal are our kith and kin and it is in great measure owing to this that the calamity came nearer to us than if it had happened in another land which was not so intimately connected with us by racial ties. Earthquakes are one of the most terrifying experiences through which men pass. The suddenness of the visitation, the sense of insecurity caused by the rocking earth, the gigantic forces at work and the utter helplessness of man are all fitted to create a feeling of terror that is overwhelming. Scripture speaks of “sudden destruction” and this is certainly true of the destruction caused by the earthquake. People in the doomed towns could have made no preparation to meet the catastrophe which was to deprive so many of them of their lives and a much greater number of them of their homes. The sympathy of the people of this country goes out to their kith and kin and if financial help is required we are sure it will be forthcoming. It would be well that both the people of New Zealand and this country would listen to the solemn warning that has sounded in their ears and lay to heart that when the Lord’s judgments are in the earth the people should learn righteousness.
Irish Free State Sweepstakes.
Prof. Bowman of Glasgow University uttered a timely protest against this popular and ensnaring appeal to the gambling instincts of the people of these Islands. His protest was made in the course of a lecture delivered in St. Andrew’s Hall, Glasgow, on “Citizenship and Christianity,” and applies not only to the Irish Free State Sweepstake but to all gambling schemes of a like seductive nature. “Let me here in public,” said the Professor, “enter my protest on the infamy perpetrated in Ireland. The people who organize and promote such enterprises as these are trading upon what is the meanest and most hypocritical in our nature under the pretence of aiding charity. They are appealing to everything that is low in our character. These are the true enemies of the State. Theirs is the most subtle and most heinous form of crime.” He further added: “In so far as the State continues to dabble in these activities the Christian must be in a perpetual state of revolt. The Christian is a rebel all the time, but he does not go out with a rifle in his hand. He takes Christ as his model. His protest takes the form of non-participation.” The popular press has much to answer for in giving so much publicity to these sweepstakes even where it does not actively support and agitate for their adoption by the Government for charitable purposes. We would seriously warn our young people to shun gambling in every form as they would the plague. Its popularity and the tremendous appeal it makes to some natures have carried thousands upon thousands in these islands off their feet.
Opening of Cinemas, etc., on Sabbath.
The decision of the High Court of England that the Act of 1781 was still in force was a sore blow to promoters of a “Continental Sunday” in these Islands. The smart humourists in the Devil’s army used their small wit to ridicule the English Act and in this they were supported by the “big circulation” press. The cinema exhibitors played on the feelings of the public by pointing out how greatly the hospitals would suffer through the cinemas being closed on Sabbath. This sham sophistry of these Sabbath-breakers is too easily seen through to gull anybody but themselves. These gentlemen don’t care a snap of the finger what would become of the hospitals if the opening of the cinemas was not replenishing their own coffers. The Home Secretary has been approached by the London County Council to have legislation passed giving permission to corporations to allow places of amusement to be opened under licence. The Lord’s Day observance is putting forth a great effort so that the law may not be changed. At the time of writing the Court of Session has not given its decision on the question as to whether the opening of cinemas on the Sabbath is illegal or not according to the law of Scotland. The opening of the cinemas in Edinburgh for three Sabbaths evidently was not the success it was hoped it would be. Thousands attended, it is true, even standing in the snow in queues, but the biblical pictures shown were far too tame for the motley crowd of Sabbath-breakers that crowded the cinema houses. This is as one would expect it to be. We do not approve of Bible incidents being presented on the screen even to a serious minded audience, but they were altogether out of place to the flippant minds of the Edinburgh pleasure-seekers.
The Financial Difficulties of the Railways.
The great railway systems of this country are passing through deep financial waters. Their executive staffs are at their wit’s end and have embarked on the policy of cutting the wages of the employees whereby they hope to save a few million pounds. When the responsible officials of the railway systems launched out on a bold and determined policy to get the people of Great Britain to travel on the Sabbath by offering them tempting fares they barefacedly said that it was in order to pay dividends to their shareholders. At the time we pointed out even should they be successful in doing so there were many ways whereby their income would be like money put into a bag with holes. These worldly wise business men with their eye on this world only do not seem to realise that the Most High can baffle them at every point. It is interesting to note that Mr. Bromley, speaking for the locomotive drivers, boldly said that “Sunday trams” were not a necessity though we regret he then went on to endeavour to strike a better bargain in the wages paid to men on Sabbath duty. The Sabbath buses and steamboat companies may also find that trafficking on the Sabbath is evidence of a wrong-headed policy even for this world itself.
The Assured Results of the Higher Criticism.
The phrase “assured results” of modern scholarship has been so often used by the devotees of modernism that it seemed that nothing was so certain as the results obtained by the unbelieving scholarship of modern times. But strange things are happening in the world of research and even the “Expository Times” had recently a paragraph to this effect: “It is not so long ago since we talked complacently of the ‘assured results’ of Old Testament criticism, but any one who has been following the discussions of the last few years will be ready to admit that now a humbler and less confident mood is more befitting the facts.” We should think so and it is amazing how long it has taken the “Expository Times” to realise that the higher critical structure is a Tower of Babel that has not reached up to heaven but which has very effectively caused the greatest confusion in the professing church. Of course, the “Expository Times” is not willing to give up the composite authorship of the Pentateuch. “There is no probability, indeed no possibility, that we shall ever again be able to believe that the Pentateuch came from the Land of Moses,” it says. The cocksureness of that sentence after the immediately preceding acknowledgment is diverting. When the Tübingen school was in the ascendancy it was as certain as the modern school of Old Testament criticism that it had a monopoly of the knowledge of the authorship of the New Testament books and now to-day there is none so foolish as to do it reverence. Like other phases of unbelief it had its day and is now lying in some forgotten grave unlamented and unregretted with no hope of a resurrection. We predict the same fate for modern Old Testament criticism notwithstanding what the “Expository Times” says.