WE are again as a nation involved in a war and no one can say what the end of it will be. “The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” In this calamity which has overtaken us we, with very good reason, blame Hitler, but we never realise that we may take a great share of the blame ourselves, for great as his power may be, and much as he may boast of his strength, he is but an instrument in the hand of the Most High and cannot move hand or foot except by His permission. He will bring about His purposes with Hitler and then, if He has not a purpose of mercy for him, He will cast him away for ever. It would appear at this time that part of God’s purpose is to punish us for our forgetfulness of His mercies in the past, our misuse of great privileges, and our fearful rebelliousness and rejection of Him as our King and Saviour.
In common with the other nations of Europe we are guilty of these great sins, but our guilt is much deeper because we have sinned against greater privileges. In Germany and Russia there is every effort put forth to blot the name of God out of the minds of the inhabitants of this earth, and other nations, though they have not yet gone to the same extreme, seem to have made great progress on the same way. Truly it is sad to have to say that Britain must be classed with other nations in this respect, and unspeakably sad when one considers that the past history of our beloved land proves that it was otherwise in a pre-eminent sense. This manifests our great need of national repentance.
In drawing a comparison between the past and present our need of repentance will become very apparent. The history of the fires of Smithfield in England is ample evidence of the warmth with which true religion was embraced in that land, and the zeal and faithfulness which many there had towards the Lord God of Israel. In Scotland, the Grassmarket and the Greyfriars Churchyard in Edinburgh, with many other hallowed spots; from shore to shore, prove that God was well-known among us as He was in Judah’s Land, while the Solemn Leagues and National Covenants of our forefathers show the seriousness with which they engaged themselves and their posterity to be the Lord’s. During these times and for a long period subsequent to them, we had many tokens that we were a land blessed by the Lord with spiritual blessings, but all this has changed, and, nationally, we are in a back-sliding condition.
God is dishonoured among us for we refuse to give Him the place that belongs to Him. Our legislators seldom make reference to the will of God, or to His glory, and this leads one to fear that among them the fear of God is not to be found. His commandments, and more especially the Fourth and the Seventh Commandments, are publicly and flagrantly transgressed, and the transgressors appear to think that they will escape with impunity. The Word of God tells us that “the wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted,” and this has been amply demonstrated in our and other lands. Among high and low morality is at a low ebb. The marriage tie is dissolved now, by the law of the land, for reasons which are not admitted as valid by the Word of God, and many take advantage of the new facilities provided for obtaining divorce, and thus we reveal how far we have gone away from God. “Shall the throne of iniquity have fellowship with thee, which frameth mischief by a law?”
Not only is our need of national repentance evidenced by the way God’s Law is violated but also by the way His Cause is despised. Men have become “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,” so that the places of amusement are filled while God’s house is practically empty, and it can be said that “The ways of Zion do mourn, because none come to the solemn feasts.” Congregations where God used to be worshipped and where His people were fed have become synagogues of Satan, and while they still retain the name of Christian congregations all their activities militate against the Cause of Christ and the furtherance of true religion. The questionable amusements of the world are fostered by them, and a false charity that will apologise for sin, is paraded as religion, but the great question, What is it that saves a soul? is never considered. In the preaching found in such congregations orthodoxy is decried as narrow-minded, bigoted and behind the times, while heterodoxy is applauded as the last word in learning.
The place Romanism gets in our midst is another indication of our great need of national repentance. The principles of God’s Word and the part of the Constitution of the Realm which deals with the safe-guarding of the Protestant religion, are openly and daringly violated. The witness made on God’s side by our forefathers, and which many of them sealed with their blood is forgotten, and the system which sought to rob them of the “faith which was once delivered unto the saints,” and against which they fought to the death, is not only tolerated, but encouraged, so that in many ways preference is given to it over true religion. In this God shall not hold us guiltless. “Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord: and shall not my soul be avenged on such a nation as this.” From the time that the Roman Catholic Emancipation Act was passed Rome has insidiously worked itself into the high places of the British Empire. The Jesuits have placed themselves in every cöign of vantage, not only in the State, but also in the professedly Protestant Church, taking note of everything that will be to their own advantage, and skilfully engineering every movement that will serve the cause of the Papacy. The barriers against Romanism have, one after another, been removed; the God-honouring and God-owned work of the Reformation has been lightly esteemed, our covenant obligations to the God of Heaven have been sinfully disregarded by us, we have been carried away by the blandishments of the Mother of Harlots, and suffered ourselves to have become “drunk with the wine of her fornication,” so that the Holy Spirit has been grieved away from among us and we have been left as a wilderness. These are crying reasons for both national and individual repentance.
We need repentance and we cannot bring it about by any efforts of our own for it is foreign to our fallen nature to repent. It is God’s work to “pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications,” and it is Christ alone whom “God exalted with His right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sin.” Oh! when will we as a nation look to Him whom we have pierced. Truly it would be well for us to be found among those who say, “Come, and let us return unto the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will heal us; He hath smitten, and He will bind us up.”—J. C.