THE Scottish Churches Council have been engaged in a statistical inquiry concerning Scottish ecclesiastical life. Recently the results of their inquiry were published. The report states that the population of Scotland is every year becoming less Scottish in blood, tradition, and religious attachment; that the balance of its population as between the urban and rural elements is unhealthy and needs to be corrected; that there are over one million (1,100,000 is the figure given) adults in Scotland who have no religious affiliation and that there are about 150,000 children of school age who are not connected with Church or Sabbath School. Of course it is to be borne in mind that denominations like our own which did not supply statistics to the Scottish Churches Council may be included among the churchless million but making due allowance for this the fact that there is in Scotland over one million adults who have no church connection is very serious. We do not mean thereby that all that have a church connection are religious people — far from it; for thousands upon thousands who are connected with churches in Scotland are as spiritually dead as the stones in the walls of the building where they worship. Again, it is to be borne in mind that multitudes, who say they have a church connection, have it only in a nominal sense — some of them only appear at church once a Sabbath without any reasonable cause for absence; others, again, only appear occasionally while a number consider they are serving God if they appear at the communion services once or twice a year. Statistics are useful in a way but they cannot, in the nature of things, give us an idea of what place vital godliness has in the land. The numbers on communion rolls of so many of the churches in Scotland even are not an indication of the state of living religion for we need have no hesitation in saying that many of the communion rolls are like that of Uig, Lewis, when the Rev. Alexander Macleod went to the parish. As the people reached a certain age they became communicants and at the time of Mr. Macleod’s induction there were eight or nine hundred names on the roll. After a year’s faithful gospel preaching the communicants had dwindled down to six. The dead, lifeless communicants under the Spirit-blessed declaration of the truth realised that they had no right to sit at the Lord’s Table and abstained from communicating. We have no hesitation in saying that were the Holy Spirit to work as He did in the days of old at Uig the statistics gleaned from communion rolls would be materially altered. Multitudes of communicants in Scotland are only a dead weight to the congregations to which they belong.
It is when we come to the vast number in Scotland who are in no way connected with churches that the report of the Churches Council assumes such a serious aspect as to arrest our attention. Think what it means that out of a population of 4,843,000 there are 1,100,000 adults who have no connection with any church or religious denomination. The total adult population with a religious connection is given as 1,986,355. This includes Presbyterians, Scottish Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, Plymouth Brethren, Roman Catholics, Jews, Salvation Army, etc. When it is borne in mind that the churchless among Roman Catholics are proportionately not so great as among Protestants the situation is increased in its gravity. Where false doctrine is preached and discipline neglected it is the conscientious duty of all those who dread the leaven of the Sadducees and the Pharisees to give it a wide berth but how many of the churchless million are churchless because of conscientious scruples? No doubt one will find here and there persons whose native idiosyncrasies overmaster them and who live apart from their fellowmen socially and religiously but these are so few in number that they need not enter into our reckoning in dealing with the churchless million. The question naturally presents itself to one; is there a cause or are there causes for this extraordinary state of things in a country where church agencies and organisation have reached a high stage of efficiency? To this question three causes may be mentioned as operating in producing this lamentable condition of things. (1) The real root cause of it is to be found in the natural aversion of the human heart to anything that savours of religion. (2) The professing Church itself is largely to blame. (3) The spirit of the age is, if not in name, yet essentially, powerfully materialistic.
(1) Behind the landslide indicated by the above figures we need have no hesitation in asserting that the root cause is the natural aversion of the human heart to anything that savours of religion and the more real the religion the more marked is the aversion. There is a type of religion that suits worldly-minded men. Like the colonists from Babylon, Cuthah and Ava, they fear the Lord and serve their own gods (II. Kings xvii. 33) but even this is too much for some for they have cast religion behind their backs as something that is so valueless that it would be sheer waste of time on their part to give one second’s consideration to it. There is nothing in this world so utterly useless in their sight as religion. While we agree that this is true concerning every religion that is not broad-based on the rock of eternal truth the Church of the living God denies as a Satanic lie that true religion is useless. When the heart is changed we may see sinners fleeing from churches where the truth is not preached but where did one ever see a believer fleeing from a church where the gospel was proclaimed with purity. If the gospel would come with power and exercise its influence over the hearts of the churchless million the faithful preachers of the cross would have their places of worship crammed to the doors.
(2) The professing Church has, to a large extent, to bear the blame for the present condition of things. The perfection to which ecclesiastical machinery has now been brought has had the tendency of emphasising man’s efforts to the neglect of the necessity of the Holy Spirit’s work. Man may galvanise the dead so as to produce movement that may appear like life but he cannot give life to the dead. The efforts on the part of the larger Churches in Scotland in recent times have been well-meant but useless to galvanise the spiritually dead. All the effort that energised the Rededication and more recently the Forward Movement in the Church of Scotland has failed in the results aimed at and the energy expended has brought about one of the most tragic failures that the Church of Scotland has ever witnessed, though this is not so loudly trumpeted as the launching of the schemes were. The spiritually dead may be galvanised by man to a kind of activity but whenever the power ceases the dead fall back as limp and cold as ever. Movements of this kind do a vast amount of mischief to religion. In reference to the danger of these human engineered religious movements Dr. Kennedy has an impressive passage in his Hyper-Evangelism. “I have had to endure the trial,” says this Master in Israel, “of watching over a darling child, during her dying hours. Spasm, succeeding spasm, was the only movement indicating life, each one, as it came shattering the frame which it convulsed, and thus wearing out its strength. While the spasms lasted I knew there still was life, but I knew also that these must soon end in death. There was life but it was dying, and the convulsions of life soon ended in the stillness of death.” We have known cases that were living illustrations of “the room empty, swept, and garnished” to which the unclean spirit returned with seven other spirits more wicked than himself (Matt. xii. 43-45). The Saviour’s comment is that “the last state of that man is worse than the first.”
(3) Another factor producing the churchless million is the spirit of the age, which is, if not in name, yet in reality, powerfully materialistic. Materialism of the philosophic and scientific type is not so prevalent and noisy as it once was. The increase of knowledge has silenced the vain vapourings of men priding themselves in vaster stores of knowledge than their fellows and who blatantly declared on the house tops that there was no God. But, if theoretical materialism is not so widespread in certain quarters as it once was there can be no doubt but practical materialism is rampant in the land. Men live, speak, and act as if this world with its passing interests and enjoyments is all that men need have any concern about. What shall we eat, what shall we drink and wherewithal shall we be clothed is in the eyes of thousands living in this gospel land the chief end of man. Naturally to such, true religion, or religion of any kind for that matter of it, makes no appeal. They scorn the institutions of religion and show their opinion of them by utterly neglecting them. The problem of changing men of this type of mind into men who fear God does not come within the sphere of human activities. It is a divine work which is required and the sooner the professing Church recognises this the better it will be for Scotland. True, we are to make use of the means placed within our reach and to exercise diligence but we are never to forget that there is a sphere beyond our province in which all human effort is unavailing. That sphere is reserved for the omnipotent work of the Holy Spirit; into it man has no right to enter or even think of entering. The forces that meet the professing Church in Scotland are more formidable than we sometimes realise. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Ephes. vi. 12). Truly a formidable host but Asa’s God still lives and if by faith we can pray with him: “Lord it is nothing with thee to help, whether with many or them that have no power; help, us O Lord our God; for we rest on thee, and in thy name we go against this multitude. O Lord, thou art our God; let not man prevail against thee” (II. Chron. xiv. 11), then the cause is not lost.
Another serious matter touched upon in the report referred to is rural depopulation. Country congregations are being seriously affected as far as their numbers are concerned. Some are more affected than others. The people are drifting into the cities and while the city congregations are benefiting by this influx yet a considerable number of those who were regular attenders at the means of grace when in the places where they were brought up cease to be connected with any church when they come to the cities. In 1861 the rural population as contrasted with the urban was 42.3 per cent to 57.7 per cent. In 1931 the rural population was 19.9 per cent and urban 80.1 per cent. This is an extraordinary change in so short of time. And as the years pass the decrease of the rural population will show itself more and more. The prospects of country congregations are, therefore, likely to be very seriously affected in the future. This is a situation which, it is to be feared, has not received the attention it deserves. How it can be remedied it is hard to say but the schemes of our statesmen as already operating or formulated do not seem to arrest the drift of the rural population to the industrial centres. The people feel they must go where they can get work with the result the numbers in country congregations are decreasing. We have seen this very markedly within our own memory in certain congregations in the Highlands.