Dark Outlook for Church of Rome.—While the Church of Rome is increasing in numbers and influence in this country it is gratifying to know that things are not going so well with it in other quarters as indicated by the following extract from Evangelical Christendom (January—February): “Certainly the Church of Rome appears to be at the present time in a pitiable state. She is losing her hold upon great nations in Europe, and upon the Americas, where she has long held sway. With the progress of popular education, this loss is likely to continue. Superstition has a natural tendency to create a reaction in the direction of infidelity. Recent Popes and their counsellors are credited with conservative principles and a repressive policy. If, on the one hand, they have to lament defections, they have on the other hand to encounter the movement known as ‘Modernism’ which is quietly revolutionary. It is not possible to read the writings of such men as Loisy and Tyrrell without a measure of sympathy, although we need scarcely say we do not agree with all their critical conclusions, or with their repudiation of Protestant principles. The outlook for the Roman church is dark and gloomy indeed. It is unlikely that she can compensate her losses by gains in Protestant England, Wales, or Scotland.”
Sabbath Observance in England.—The Lord’s Day Observance Society states that if Great Britain loses as much of her Sabbath in the next twenty-five years as she has lost in the last twenty-five, she will practically have no Sabbaths at all. This, though perhaps in a lesser degree, applies to Scotland also. The Society presents the following disturbing statistics: There are 250,000 shops open in England (40,000 in London alone) on the Lord’s Day. 2,000,000 workers, or one out of every eight of the adult population, are engaged in Sabbath labour. Three public houses (fortunately public houses are closed in Scotland on the Lord’s Day) are open for every place of worship. The menace to the Sabbath is real and persistent and it behoves all who believe in the binding obligation of the Fourth Commandment to seek the preservation of God’s Holy Day. The observance of the Sabbath as founded on God’s Holy Law has always had to contend with powerful enemies. In our days, in the name of a wider liberty, the free lances of the press, the gadflies of journalism, have convinced themselves that by leering sneers they can sap imperishable foundations. They are greatly mistaken; for, after all it is not to men, who themselves are Sabbath breakers (as so many of these pressmen are), that we need look for right views on Sabbath observance any more than we would look for a sensible essay from a Peterhead convict on the keeping of laws which he has regularly broken.
Church Union Benefits Doubtful.—Letters have recently been appearing in the Scottish press in which expression is given to dissatisfaction with the 1929 Union (Church of Scotland and U.F. Church) both from a spiritual and material point of view. The policy of the Re-adjustment Committee is severely criticised; one writer says that when an adjustment for union of congregations takes place it is almost invariably the former U.F. Church which is considered redundant. Financially, the benefits, so loudly heralded by the union engineers, are not materialising, in fact there is a steady and maintained tendency since 1929 in the opposite direction. The Maintenance of the Ministry Fund is down £4414 for 1936, and the total deficiency since 1929 is £34,000. It is a fact worth observing that the same downward financial course followed the union of 1900 though it had been proclaimed on the housetops before the Union that it would help the United Church from the financial standpoint. The disputings and contentions of congregations and the three year plan device are all evidences of the unreality of the Union in many congregations.
The Flowing Flood,—The Presbyterian Churches at home and in the colonies opened their doors for the world to enter and it looks like the world will soon rule them. The following paragraph from Our Banner will throw some light on the condition of things in New South Wales, Australia: “The Church Blue Book of the Presbyterian Church of New South Wales, according to the Rev. Dr. V. C. Bell, has forbidden card parties and dances for fifty years. ‘Yet,’ he says, ‘card parties and dances have continued all through these years. As the general body of Presbyterians go to dances and play cards, I think we would be consistent in deleting this rule from the Blue Book.'” What strange reasoning from a professed minister of the gospel. Because the world has got so far into the Church therefore in the name of consistency let all the barriers to its entrance be removed! Would it not show a little more consistency if the Church held to its good rule and deleted the names of those who favoured and indulged in card playing and dances from its communion roll?
The Situation in Germany.—The condition of the Jews in Germany, says the Christian Hebrew, has not changed during the past three months. Indeed, their position is becoming more desperate each day as their relentless persecution by the Nazi Government continues. Within recent months, fresh attacks have been made upon the Bible, in order to undermine the character of the Jews, as well as the foundations of Christianity, The notorious Jew-hating professor, Dr. Von Leers, has recently published an article in a number of German newspapers containing outrageous attacks on the Biblical patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The patriarchs are set forth as pure swindlers who had nothing but a demoralizing influence upon the world. Jacob is stated to have been a gangster, and Abraham belonged to the underworld. In a new and perverted translation of the Gospel of John, Christ is presented as a non-Jew of Teuton stock.
The Tragedy of the Jews in Poland.—We are informed that the position of the three and a half million Jews in Poland is rapidly deteriorating. On all hands we get the reports that the degradation, poverty, and wretchedness of the Jews in Poland have reached an unprecedented depth. Economic pauperization and political persecution of the Polish Jews grow in extent and intensity daily. Within recent months anti-Semitism has assumed a most bestial and brutal form. The Jews in Poland have lived there for seven hundred years, and never during that period has their position been more precarious, and their fate more appalling, than to-day. Never has Jewish hatred been so deep-seated and widespread with such catastrophic results as to-day.
—Hebrew Christian.
Holy Week (so-called) and Easter Services.—There was an increased observance, says the British Weekly, of Holy Week in Scotland this year. In the Church of Scotland daily services were held not only in such central charges as St. Giles’ and St. Cuthbert’s, in Edinburgh; the Cathedral and the Barony, in Glasgow; St. Mary’s, in Dundee, and the West Church of St. Nicholas, in Aberdeen, but also in many other churches in these cities and throughout the country generally. Next year, when the tercentenary of the signing of the National Covenant will be observed, probably many of those who held these daily services will be vying with one another in praising the good work done at that time when holy days had their quietus, as far as Scotland was concerned, for a season, at least.
Protestant Missionaries in Abyssinia.—It would appear that the Church of Rome is taking full advantage under Mussolini’s protection to get rid of all rivals in that country and making it impossible for Protestant missionaries to carry on their work. Of course the prime movers in this movement are astute enough to say what is being done is for state reasons but people are not quite so stupid as to be gulled by this excuse. The question has been raised in Parliament but Mussolini has a way of snapping his fingers at Great Britain and the other nations and doing what he pleases.
Beautiful Words.—Part of the Coronation ceremony consists in handing a Bible to the King by the Archbishop of Canterbury who thus addresses the Sovereign: “Our Gracious King: We present you with this Book, the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is wisdom: this is the Royal Law: these are the lively Oracles of God. Blessed be he that readeth, and they that hear the words of this Book; that keep and do the things contained in it. For these are the words of eternal life, able to make you wise and happy in this world, nay wise in salvation and so happy forevermore, through faith which is in Christ Jesus, to whom be glory for evermore. Amen.” If the book handed to the King contains only the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments then the foregoing words are words fitly spoken “like apples of gold in pictures of silver” (Provs. xxv. 11). But if the book contains the Apocrypha its presence will act as the dead flies in the apothecary’s ointment (Eccles. x. 1) and the words will not only lose their beauty but their significance.