Down at Clacton-on-Sea the devil was holding high carnival on the Sabbath with the able assistance of theatrical managers and public entertainers in the Town Hall of this Essex watering place for some time. The Rev. S. M. Morris, the local Baptist minister, condemned these entertainments in language that was by no means too strong and his remarks were published in the Evening Standard. The entertainers considered themselves insulted and brought an action for libel against the minister and the newspaper. Men who care nothing for God’s honour show remarkable keenness to defend their own. In doing so they could scarcely have anticipated the exposure their sinful fooling on the Lord’s Day was to get and the crushingly severe comment of the learned judge on the character of their entertainment. Mr. Morris’s words were mild in comparison with those of Mr. Justice Avory. “Having seen Mr. Morris in the witness-box,” said his lordship, as reported in the Daily Telegraph (London), “it is for you (the jury) to say whether you have ever seen a witness who was more obviously honest and straight-forward.” His lordship further characterised certain parts of these entertainments as “vulgarity and filth” . . . . calculated to deprave and appeal to all that was ignoble and base in man.” The jury returned a verdict for Mr. Morris and the newspaper. The entertainers got a well-deserved exposure, rebuke, and humiliation. The verdict in this case will not put an end to Sabbath entertainments but it will encourage those who regard them as sinful to lift up their voice against them in condemnation. [This note, with others, was written for our April issue but was crushed out].
The Bag-Pipes in the Pulpit.—
The following is reported in the press:—”A sensation was caused in Scottish church circles when the report was received from Sydney that the minister in the Scots Church there wears Highland costume and plays the bagpipes at the forenoon and evening services on ‘Sunday.’ The kilted piper parson is the Rev. Lewis A. Sutherland, of St. James’, Paisley, who has adopted the novel plan of wearing Highland costume and playing the bagpipes to attract worshippers to his church. He is now stated to be the most popular parson in Sydney, and seems to have solved the problem of how to fill empty churches.” The individual in question was at one time one of the Inverness ministers. It is unspeakably sad to see a professed minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ making sport for the Philistines as Mr. Sutherland is doing and to learn that he is gaining popularity in the estimation of the gaping crowd by such conduct.
The German Goliath.—
General Ludendorff has been reconciled with the Nazi party and has announced, according to Reuter’s correspondent that any limitation of armaments is immoral. He also delivered the following Philistine sentiments, according to the above correspondent:—”I am not merely an opponent of Christianity, but literally an anti-Christian and heathen—and proud of it. I have long since said good-bye to Christianity. According to its own words, in the gospel of St. John, Christianity aims at detaching the individual from his people, his tribe and his nation, and promises him only a heaven. Thus, in a ‘Christian’ State no firm unity of the people can arise. Christian teaching is there for only one purpose—to help the Jewish people to domination. If the British want to stay Christian, that’s their own look-out, but then they will slip farther and farther down from their former heights. Only that people can thrive which declares loyalty to racial principles. At the moment we Germans are the people which has freed itself furthest from the teachings of Christianity. Only through the complete renunciation of Christianity will the German people achieve the unity which it needs.” This is the man who is to be glorified by the German people. He has thrown down a challenge to the God who said: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel” (Ps. ii. 7-9). Poor ignorant Ludendorff! how soon he may be before that God.
Lunacy and Religion.—
A correspondent has sent us a copy of the Forres, Elgin and Nairn Gazette (Forres), 27th March, with a marked paragraph under the above heading. The paragraph purports to be remarks by a writer in a Wick paper. The medical authorities suggest that the increase of insanity in the North is due to depopulation and increasing loneliness in some measure, but this writer whose spiritual outlook is not of the sanest has something to add to this. “I would add,” he says, “to that the type of religion—gloomy and fatalistic—which has been foisted on the Highland communities. It is mostly formal and superficial, hurling anathemas at innocent enjoyment, and frowning in particular on ceilidhs and dancing. It has few contacts with the religion of Jesus. It is unduly doctrinal. It does not believe in inherited goodness, innocence and love. Do you wonder that insanity is increasing where such travesties of religion are proclaimed? It is to be hoped that the British Medical Council will examine this suggested cause of the increase of insanity in the Highlands.” There is nothing new in this charge but it betrays ignorance, prejudice, and ill-concealed hostility to a type of religion that does not fit in with that so-called expansive broad-mindedness of the writer. There was a type of religion once in the Highlands which turned sinners into saints — a religion which adorned the doctrine of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. That is the type of religion that this writer is tilting against and not the fantastic concoction of his erratic imagination as portrayed above. That type of religion is fast dying out and will soon be as non-existent in the land as it is in the soul of the paragraphist. But as it is dying out and the newer type of religion dear to the heart of the paragraphist is being introduced insanity is increasing!
Canonization of Sir Thomas More and Bishop Fisher.
— The Catholic (Dublin) for April has an interesting and instructive article on “The Peculiarities of Roman Canonization.” The writer raises the question: “Why is it that there are so few Popes and Cardinals in the Romish calendar of saints since official canonization came into vogue?” One would naturally think that the calendar of so-called “saints” would consist largely of these but it is not so. There are 85 Popes reckoned as “saints” but of these at least 81 lived before the official system came into being. Ferraris, who has devoted attention to this subject, is of opinion that the first canonization was celebrated by Leo III. in 804. The Pope, as the writer of the article points out, is discovering Irish and English “saints” in recent years though the Irish probably must have grave doubts about the discernment of the Pope in including English “saints” in his list! The Catholic concludes by saying: “It would be interesting to make an analysis of recent beatifications and canonizations. It would most probably reveal that there is a political motive behind the majority of cases. We doubt very much if More or Fisher would have been certified as entitled to practice in the Court of Heaven on behalf of their clients down on earth had their claims been of mere sanctity.” Another peculiarity of the Roman practice is that while it canonizes New Testament saints, e.g. St. Paul, etc., it denies saintship to the Old Testament saints (St. David, St. Enoch, etc., are not the Old Testament saints of that name). It is for this invidious reason and wrong distinction that all Protestants worthy of the name should renounce speaking of Saint Paul, Saint John, etc. The titles in the Authorised Version with the affixed title “Saint” are not in the original as readers acquainted with Gaelic can see from the Gaelic Version whereas the Roman Catholic Gaelic Version of the New Testament has the title “Naomh” prefixed to the name e.g. Naomh Matu.
A New Phase of Sabbath-breaking Checked.—
The question whether the manager of a lending library could be convicted for breaking the Sunday Observance Act (1677) when he lent a novel on the Sabbath Day was discussed before Lord Hewart and Justices Avory and Humphreys in a King’s Bench Division Court recently. Mr. Ralph Lee, who manages a library in Hull, supplied a borrower with a book for twopence on a Sabbath last May. In the local Police Court, he was charged that—”On a Lord’s Day, he unlawfully exercised a certain worldly business in his ordinary calling of a lending library, the same not being a work of necessity or charity contrary to Section I. of the Act of 1677.” He was fined five shillings, and now appealed. Mr. Lee’s appeal was dismissed with costs by the Court. The case is interesting as shewing that the old acts on Sabbath observance, at least some of them, are not obsolete through desuetude as is so often maintained.
Intemperate Language by Temperance Advocates.—
Recently the Scottish Christian Union of the British Women’s Temperance Association held a conference at Dunfermline. The question of unfermented wine at Communion was discussed and some of the speakers used most intemperate language. Mrs. Barton, a prominent Temperance advocate, said she had sat in a church “with the place smelling like a public-house,” while Mrs. R. J. Govan said she had been in a church that “smelled like a brewery.” One wonders what these ladies would have said if they had been present at the marriage of Cana of Galilee. We believe in temperance—in language as well as in drink—but this movement to do away with fermented wine at the Lord’s Table is not the kind of temperance inculcated in the New Testament. At the same meeting suggestions were put forward by some of the speakers that mothers should use their influence with their families to abstain altogether from going to Communion services. Those who would abstain from communicating for the above reasons would certainly be better away.