AS the 11th day of November of each year comes round it has become a national custom to remember the gallant dead who laid down their lives for their country. It is now thirteen years since the dreadful carnage of the Great War ceased and there are hearts still bleeding that will feel their sorrows as long as they live. Away in quiet lonely places and in the crowded towns and cities the day comes as a reminder of those whose places are vacant. The question has been discussed as to whether it shows tenderness to the bereaved that this day should be so universally observed and many have given the answer that it should not but leaving this meantime, there are good sound reasons for objecting to the way in which the day is observed. Memorial services are invariably held at the War Memorials, speeches and addresses by ministers and others are delivered. Some very foolish sentiments are expressed by some of the speakers and it is becoming all too common to regard what happened on the battlefield in cutting short the lives of loved ones as having opened the gates of heaven to them. It is almost incredible that this Mohammedan doctrine should have found a footing in a Christian land but unfortunately there is too much evidence that it has and it is becoming so firmly entrenched that many regard it with as much authority as a truth revealed from heaven.
Then there is the natural tendency of these services to foster the spirit that craves prayer for the dead. In St. Giles we find Dr. Warr unblushingly praying for the dead at one of these services and when protests were made in the public press it is amazing how much vapid sentiment appeared in the correspondence columns expressing approval of the Dean of the Thistle’s prayer. Another incident, recorded in a northern paper, was the cutting short of a prayer when the two minutes silence was announced by the blowing of a steam whistle. We do not suppose there was much lost by the cutting short of the prayer but the incident throws a certain light on these services.
One of the most objectionable features, however, of these services is their transfer to the Lord’s Day. This is taking place in many parts of the country and in some places there were processions headed by pipe-bands, etc., from the place of worship to the War Memorial where a wreath or wreaths were laid. Anything out of the ordinary which will bring a big crowd to the Church is all that some ministers seem to care for. But if those who spend the Lord’s Day in this way are deluding themselves that they and they only are grateful for the sacrifice made by their countrymen who shall never return they are greatly mistaken. So obsessed have some who attend these functions become with this idea that they have no hesitation in blackballing those, who, for good reasons, do not attend the memorial services as if they were unpatriotic and lacking in sympathy. It is not always the men who make an outward show and march to the beat of the drum who are the most sympathetic and patriotic. These memorial services are like to do a vast deal of mischief to true religion in Scotland. They are exalting sentiment to a place of honour and dethroning true religion, to put it shortly they are putting a shadow in the place of the substance. Love of country, admirable in itself, is not to be exalted to the place which true religion ought to occupy.