To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty, may it please your Majesty, We, the Southern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, met at Glasgow on this the 5th day of September, 1939, humbly desire to express to Your Majesty our loyalty to Your Majesty’s person and throne, and to acquaint Your Majesty with our feelings of deep concern for the well-being of our beloved country at this time of national anxiety and peril.
While conscious of the dangers of the present situation, we find encouragement in the fact that the righteousness of the principles in defence of which Britain has been compelled to take up arms stands in sharply-defined contrast to the tyranny and despotism of our country’s enemies. Further, we are heartened by the display of unity which has given character to the nation’s reaction at this time, a display which must be no less gratifying to Your Majesty than it is to Your Majesty’s loyal subjects.
For such measures of encouragement as are thus afforded, we record our gratitude to the Most High. At the same time, we cannot but regard the advent of this war with the amount of suffering it has already caused and is likely to cause in the future as a national calamity significant of God’s righteous indignation on account of our sins. It appears to us that, by “terrible things in righteousness,” the Lord is now loudly and solemnly calling the nation to repentance. While pledging ourselves to urge upon all under our care the duty of responding to this call, we feel persuaded that nothing short of a nation-wide response is adequate in the circumstances. We, therefore, humbly submit to Your Majesty the urgent need there is for the observance of a national day of humiliation and confession of sins, and we most earnestly appeal to Your Majesty to use every influence and to make every endeavour, after the example of god-fearing kings in the past, to obtain such an observance. An initiative on the part of Your Majesty in leading the nation, now so happily united in its loyalty, to the discharge of what after all is a primary religious duty would, we believe, go a long way towards adjusting our relationship to the Most High and towards securing to us the enjoyment of His favour without which we cannot be assured of success. “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” II. Chr. vii. 14.
We conclude by assuring Your Majesty of our sincere sympathy in this time of trial, and we pray that God, for the sake of His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord, would bestow on Your Majesty all needed grace. We pray also that, by God’s blessing, the activities of Your Majesty’s forces on land, on sea, and in the air may be directed and prospered towards the advancement of the divine glory and the well-being of this nation and of the world.
In name and by the authority of the Southern Presbytery of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.—JAMES MACLEOD, Moderator.