IN reply to the Synod’s Resolution anent the Military Training Act, the following letter has been received by the Clerk:—THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON, S.W.1., 20th July, 1939. Sir, I am directed to refer to your letter of 30th June and to the copy of the resolution enclosed therewith and to say that similar letters addressed by you to the Prime Minister and to the Secretary of State for Scotland have been forwarded to this Department.
In reply I am to inform you that it is not intended that the Militia will carry out any training on Sundays. Chaplains of all denominations are appointed for each camp, and Divine Service is held. I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant, JOSEPH LYNN, Deputy Chaplain-General.
Flavel’s Sermon on Anathema Maranatha.
ABOUT the middle of the seventeenth Century the venerable John Flavel was settled at Dartmouth, where he preached with great acceptance and blessing. His manner was very affectionate and serious, and excited powerful emotion in his hearers.
On one occasion he preached from the text: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema maranatha,”—or cursed of God with a grievous curse. When about to pronounce the benediction, Mr. Flavel paused, and said: “How shall I bless this whole assembly, when every person in it who does not love the Lord Jesus Christ is anathema maranatha?” This solemn appeal to conscience so affected a gentleman of rank that he fell senseless on the floor.
A young lad of fifteen years of age, a native of Dartmouth, named Luke Short, was one of the congregation on that occasion. Shortly afterwards he went to America and settled there, spending the remainder of his long life in the state of Massachusetts. When he was a hundred years of age, he had bodily strength for farm work, and considerable mental activity also, but he was still quite careless about the state of his soul. One day, as he sat resting in the fields, he began to reflect on his past life, and called to mind the days of his youth, when he used to hear Mr. Flavel preach at Dartmouth. The latter’s affectionate earnestness and solemn warnings came to the old man’s mind with unusual vividness, and particularly the sermon on “Anathema maranatha.”
The blessing of God accompanied his retrospective meditations, he felt that he had never yet loved Christ, and that the curse rested on him. Conviction of sin was followed by repentance. At length the aged sinner found peace in believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, whose blood cleanseth from all sin and who is able to save to the uttermost all those who come unto God by Him. He lived to be a hundred and sixteen years of age, and to the end of his life gave evidence of the work of the Holy Spirit in his heart. Thus was the Scripture fulfilled:—
“For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth, it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it” (Isaiah, lv. 10-11).