Facts Contradicting Statements.—One hears time and again statements made which have such an air of probability that they are accepted by unthinking persons as if they were based on the solid rock of truth. But a careful examination of these statements often reveals that they are the fruit of ignorance and made by those who are greater simpletons than they get credit for. Take for instance the statement that Calvinism, because of its inculcation of the sovereignty of God, has enslaved the minds of men and destroyed the impulse of human effort. The whole facts of history give the lie to that statement for the nations that accepted Calvinistic teaching were foremost in the fight for civil and religious liberty. Again, it has been said the Bible, especially the Old Testament, because of its records of certain sins, etc., is not a suitable book to improve the morals of the people, especially, the young. Ask the missionaries faced with the awful degradations of heathenism if that monstrous lie is true and they will tell you the Bible has ever had a heavenly, uplifting effect upon those who received it. It is quite common now-a-days to say that those who seek to keep to God’s laws are intolerant. Recently an Inverness hotel keeper expressed his fear of “the monster of intolerance.” Who have been the most intolerant in the history of our country? Was it those who feared God or those who cared nothing for Him? History has answered that question with no uncertain voice. Believers in the sanctity of the Lord’s Day have been described as kill-joys, apostles of gloom, and men who are out to crush all enjoyment in life. Let the real facts speak. Who are doing most to kill real joy and crush it out of human lives? Is it not those whose chief joys are like the crackling of thorns under a pot—whose greatest joys leave only useless ashes behind? Is this the joy of those who fear the Lord and seek to keep His commandments?
The Bible.—Some time ago Lord Raglan attacked the Old Testament as a book that should not be taught as it would familiarise people with acts of cruelty and inculcate lust for blood. Dr. Neatby answered him effectively in The Christian. “Many years ago,” says Dr. Neatby, “Miss Gordon Cumming wrote a book entitled At Home in Fiji. In this she said: ‘It is only forty years since the missionaries landed, and already they have won over to the new religion of peace and love upwards of a hundred thousand ferocious cannibals.’ And what was the mighty weapon in their miracle-working hands? The Bible. Not a truncated or expurgated Bible, but the Bible. In the autobiography of Dr. John G. Paton, the Apostle of the New Hebrides, a book that may be commended to any who doubt the beneficent power of the Bible and the Christian faith, there is an unforgettable passage in which Dr. Paton describes his first communion service on Aniwa, the island that he won for Christ: ‘At the moment when I put the bread and wine into those dark hands, once stained with the blood of cannibalism, but now stretched out to receive and partake the emblems and seals of the Redeemer’s love, I had a foretaste of the joy of glory that well-nigh broke my heart to pieces.’ And the instrument of his mighty achievement in changing violent and bloody cannibals into kind and gentle Christians was the Bible, whole and undivided. Lord Raglan may make his mind easy. The Bible will do the children no harm. It will never be a will-o’-the-wisp to turn aside the rising generation into the bogs of ruthless violence and the lust of blood; but it will be, as for nineteen centuries it has been, a lamp to the feet and a light to the path, guiding them into those paths of righteous peace that shine more and more unto the perfect day.”
An Extraordinary Decision.—This decision recently announced by the Traffic Commissioners gives permission to bus companies to run excursions on the Sabbath. All the northern counties, viz., Nairn, Inverness, Ross, Sutherland and Caithness, sent in objections to the running of these buses on the Lord’s Day. It is true that Caithness weakened its position by saying that they were willing to allow local companies to run excursions on the Sabbath but they objected to outside companies invading the County with excursionists on the Lord’s Day. Mr. Riches, in announcing the decision of the Commissioners, must surely have felt the need for his apologia for the decision of the Commissioners that the services of the excursion Sabbath buses were “desirable or necessary in the public interest.” The County Councils have the right of appeal to the Minister of Transport. The decision from that quarter may be taken for granted but that, we trust, will not be the end of the matter.
A Criticism of the foregoing Decision from an Unexpected Quarter.—There are important questions involved in the decision of the Traffic Commissioners. From an unexpected quarter—the Evening News (Glasgow)—we cull the following comments: “It would be difficult to say just how far the official objections represented majority opinion among the people of these counties, but the assumption must be that the objectors did speak for the bulk of their constituents. If so, we have here a case in which an unwelcome invasion is being thrust upon a considerable section of the community by force of an alien law; one in which external opinion is backed by the force of that law; and one by which the civil law overrides scruples essentially religious. . . . The objectors may still appeal to the Minister of Transport, but the validity of the religious objection is no more likely to be recognised in that quarter than by the Commissioners on the spot. We may think what we please about what is called Sabbatarianism, but we cannot deny that the objectors are left with a grievance. The Act speaks of ‘public interest,’ but are the public interests of the five counties not as great as those of the ‘Sunday’ invaders? And must religion always bow to the law?” We quote this comment not because we regard the general attitude of the Evening News on the Sabbath question as praiseworthy but to show that in circles not recognised as strictly Sabbatarian there is the recognition that conscientious religious opinions are being over-ridden with a high hand.
Roman Catholic Population in Scotland.—The Spectator (Dec. 22, 1933) gives a conspicuous place, says the Bulwark, to an article on the Roman Church in Scotland, by T. B. Simpson. He points out that the population of Scotland to-day is about 4½ millions, and that the Roman Catholics, according to the estimate of their Archbishop Mackintosh, of Glasgow, number between 550,000 and 600,000. Scotland, of course, is predominantly Presbyterian by profession. The Church of Scotland has 1,280,514 communicants, 370,125 Sabbath School pupils, and 2720 charges. But the Romanist population in the industrial centres is growing. In all Scotland there are between 700 and 800 priests. In Glasgow and neighbourhood, the Spectator remarks, the names of priests tell their own tale, there being “numerous Bradys, Boyles, Doyles, Kellys, Murphys, Sweeneys, with O’s and Mc’s of every variety.” There are in Scotland 450 chapels, 273 missions, 88 religious houses, and 219 congregational schools. There were 13,705 confirmations in 1930, 19,249 in 1931, of which 9,341 took place in the Glasgow archiepiscopate. We trust the prophecy of the writer in the Spectator will fail of fulfilment, where he says: “In another generation it is anticipated that (Roman) Catholic voters will actually be in the majority in Glasgow.”
Scottish Protestant Ratepayers Helping the Church of Rome.—Mr. Daniel Barker, J.P., ex-Provost of Stirling, who has kept himself well informed on the Scottish Education question, has written to the Glasgow Herald (Jan. 17) on the unfairness of the Scottish Education Act of 1918. He says the Roman Catholic schools before this Act received grants from the National Exchequer which very often enabled the schools to be run practically free of cost to the Roman Catholic authorities. “I have had correspondence,” Mr. Barker writes, “with the Secretary of State for Scotland on this very point. In order to compare the expenditure made by voluntary school managers prior to the passing of the 1918 Act with the expenditure made by Education Authorities as a result of the transfer to them of the voluntary schools, I asked him to give me a note of the amount expended on teachers’ salaries (which form the largest part of educational expenditure), and this is the information I obtained:—’The total expenditure on salaries of teachers in voluntary schools conducted under the day-school code in 1918 was £335,052. It may be taken that, roughly, £300,000 will represent the proportion applicable to Roman Catholic schools. The teachers’ salary bill for the year ending March 31, 1932, for the transferred Roman Catholic schools, is estimated approximately at £822,000.’ Now, it is from these and other figures that it is ascertained that the sum of £2,500,000 is spent annually in carrying out the conditions of Section 18 of the Act. It is mounting up to such an extent that out of an annual grant of £6,000,000 the whole will soon be swallowed up by the Roman Catholic demands.” Mr. Barker says that “the Roman Catholic teachers, previous to 1918, were on starvation wages, and most of the Roman Catholic schools were in a condition of slumdom. Yet, when the Education Authorities had to purchase these schools they were compelled to pay most exorbitant prices, while huge rents had to be paid for such schools as were leased.” Section 18 of the 1918 Education Act must be repealed, Mr. Barker maintains, “if Scotland is to regain her nationality.” He adds an interesting piece of information about the Churches and the 1918 Act: “I wrote,” he says, “to the Clerks of the Assemblies in Edinburgh, asking for information as to what action the Assemblies in 1918 took regarding Section 18 when the Bill was before the country, and I received a reply stating that no action was mentioned in the Assembly records as having been taken either by the Church of Scotland or by the United Free Church of Scotland.” In 1918, of course, the Great War swallowed up other interests, but the neglect of the Churches in the matter of that Act is being smartly paid for, and to get relief now will be like removing a mountain. Nevertheless, justice and fair play demand legislative remedy.—Bulwark.