LOOKING back on the history of Britain one sees that in its best days it was the custom with our legislators to appoint days of humiliation and fasting in times of great national danger. For some time back a change for the worse may be noticed in this respect, while it is held by many that the reasons for appointing such days are, at least, as numerous and as weighty as ever they were. It can be truthfully said that those who, in the past, were responsible for appointing such days, and those who, in our days, are seeking that they be appointed, had in view the glory of God and the good of the nation, while those who are against appointing such days, no matter how they may boast of their patriotism, are manifestly leaving the glory of God out of account altogether.
When a nation through its legislature appoints a day of humiliation it acknowledges its belief in God, and that it is to Him that all should come, “for he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him.” Not only so but they acknowledge that there is no God like Him, “for all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord made the heavens.” He is also acknowledged by them as a God of infinite holiness, justice, goodness, wisdom, power and truth, yet a God who can be approached by unworthy men through a Mediator. Further, that He is the Ruler and Disposer of all things. Nations may cast covetous eyes on their neighbours’ possessions and use many plausible reasons for stretching equally covetous hands to these possessions. They may hold fast to the dogma that “might is right,” and in order to prove it, be the means of casting many nations into the furnace, but those who appoint, or seek to appoint a day of humiliation, are acknowledging that “the Lord sitteth upon the flood; yea, the Lord sitteth King for ever,” and that “He ruleth by his power for ever,” yea that “the wrath of man” shall praise Him, and that He will restrain “the remainder of wrath.”
On a day of national humiliation there is an acknowledgment of sins committed against God, and it is most solemn to consider that the sins which our forefathers confessed before God with sorrow, and which they considered as the causes of God’s wrath upon the nation are the very sins of which we, their posterity, are guilty of with many aggravations, revealing that, nationally, we have not profited by past experience, but rather that we have in many respects grown worse than the generations before us.
Chief among the sins of which we are guilty and which ought to humble us before God as a nation is our rejection of the Gospel. Truly, we are a land of great privileges. We had God’s Word in our midst and in our own language, and the preaching of that Word for hundreds of years. God did a great work for us at the time of the Reformation in delivering us from the yoke of Papal Rome, and Tyndale’s purpose, expressed to a polemical divine in the memorable words, “If God spare my life, I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost,” has been amply fulfilled. It is true, however, that the fruits which we have been bringing forth do not correspond to our privileges. As a nation we do not honour Christ nor regard His Word, with the result that we are coming short of the blessing contained in the words, “them that honour me I will honour.” We still boast of being a Christian nation but where are the fruits of the Gospel? Instead of a true Scriptural religion in which God gets His own place and man the place that belongs to him, there is something which ignores the attributes of God and to a great extent deifies man. Instead of a Scriptural observance of what God commands there is a bringing in of pagan rites and giving them the name of Christian, together with an endeavour to associate them with incidents in the life of our Lord on earth, thus “teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” This creature of the sin-disordered imagination of man may be said to be the national religion of Britain to-day, with the result that the Holy Spirit has to a large extent left us. Surely this is a crying reason for national humiliation.
Another reason for national humiliation is our friendly relations with the Man of Sin. Of Britain, a professedly Christian and Protestant nation, one has a right to expect better things, but alas! our expectations are doomed to disappointment. The character which the Word of God gives to the Man of Sin is that it is he “who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” His fate is equally clear in God’s Word as “that wicked . . . whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of His mouth and shall destroy with the brightness of His coming.” Our forefathers, keen observers that they were, having seen how exactly Scripture was fulfilled in the pretensions of the Papacy, and having had bitter experiences of how applicable the term, “the Wicked,” was to the Pope of Rome, had no difficulty in concluding him to be the “Man of Sin,” with the result that they endeavoured to safeguard this nation against his encroachments. Through a false charity which suffers all things but truth, many of these safeguards have been taken away while others are treated as if they did not exist, with the result that the enemy is coming in like a flood. Thus our forgetfulness of God’s mercies to us in the past and our aiding and abetting the enemies of God in our own day, by showing them far more than mere toleration, are great reasons why, nationally, we should be humbled before God.
The third and last thing that shall be noticed at present as a reason for national humiliation is our almost complete disregard of the Moral Law of God. While parts of this Moral Law are not so openly transgressed as other parts, it is true that morally we as a nation, in common with other nations, have become a moral cess-pool, the fetid odour of which is polluting the whole world, and bringing down the just judgments of God upon ourselves. For this moral degradation on a smaller scale Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by fire from heaven. As a special mark of our enmity towards the true worship of God we have singled out His command to keep the Sabbath holy. Endeavours are made to provide amusements on that day which, fifty years ago, the average Britisher would turn away from with horror, but now those who put forth these endeavours, press their demands in the high places of our land with a shamelessness and a disregard of the consequences which one could expect to find only in mad men. Alas! that these demands should have been encouraged by many members of our government, who in their public and private lives manifest an utter disregard of God’s holy day. One may be safe in concluding that their antipathy to the appointment of a day of national humiliation has its roots in this utter disregard, but that is all the greater reason why such a day should be appointed.
By appointing a day of national humiliation we would be acknowledging that God alone is our help, and the source of our confidence. Part of the blindness that has overtaken us as a nation is that we do not see our need of a continual dependence on God. We may know the strength of our fighting forces, and, perhaps also have a good idea of the strength of our enemies, and judge, rightly or wrongly, that our forces are, at least equal if not superior to his, and thus reckon that there is every prospect of success on our side. In these calculations we are leaving God out of account and forgetting that He is the disposer of all things, and thus we are provoking Him to leave us, and allow us to become a prey to our enemies. We have many instances of this in sacred history, and history very often repeats itself. When the Ark of God was taken from the Israelites by the Philistines we have no reason to believe that the children of Israel were inferior to the Philistines from the point of view of numbers or other resources. The reason was that by their sins they had provoked God to leave them, so that as the Psalmist pathetically records it, He “delivered his strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy’s hand.” Let us as a nation beware lest we provoke God to do the same thing with us. God’s purpose was to chastise the Israelites for their many sins against great privileges, and if it is God’s purpose to use Germany in order to chastise the British nation for sinning against greater privileges than Israel ever enjoyed, it ought to be very clear to us that we are helpless to avert this fearful calamity.
There is, however, one door of hope, and that is to be found in what God has revealed in His Word concerning Himself. He is described as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy,” and has demonstrated in the past, and is giving ample proof for the present, that judgment is His strange work. If we were rightly exercised as a nation this should constrain us to humble ourselves before Him, confessing our sins, and seeking forgiveness. If we did it in the right spirit there is no doubt but that God would turn from the fierceness of His anger and in the midst of wrath, show mercy. He has been our help in past ages, and, nationally, we used to acknowledge it, among other ways, by solemnly appointing days of national humiliation and fasting, and the question may reasonably be asked, Why is it that we have changed our attitude towards Him who is the Unchangeable One, so that we will not acknowledge our need of applying to him again? Does not our conduct amount to saying that we have no sin? And thus, according to the Word of God, “we deceive ourselves.” In view of God’s character and our own great sins, which have caused Him to hide His face from us, our duty is to humble ourselves before Him, taking our encouragement from what He has revealed of Himself, and say with another, “Who knoweth if he will return and repent, and leave a blessing behind him.”
That such days of solemn national humiliation are enjoined in Scripture is evident from the words, “Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land unto the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord”; and that God took notice of such humiliation is equally evident from various part of His Word. In II. Chronicles xx., we read that Jehosphat, king of Judah “proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah, and Judah gathered themselves together to ask help of the Lord.” God answered them through His prophet, saying, “Hearken ye, all Judah, and ye inhabitants of Jerusalem, and thou King Jehoshaphat, Thus saith the Lord unto you, Be not afraid nor dismayed by reason of this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s,” and the very next day He made short work of the enemies of Judah. This is but one instance out of many in past ages where God espoused the cause of those who humbled themselves before Him, and “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning.”
The question has often been debated as to which day of the week ought to be set apart as a day of humiliation. Our rulers have on some occasions, as they have done recently, appointed a Sabbath Day, but this has been objected to by many who sincerely desire that God should be solemnly and publicly acknowledged in this nation by the setting apart a day of national humiliation, on the ground that a working day ought to be chosen. We do not need to have a very minute knowledge of the Scriptures in order to show that we have no right to make choice of the Sabbath for such a purpose, for God, in giving the Fourth Commandment says, “Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God.” Therefore, in taking this day which God has reserved for Himself, we clearly manifest the proneness of our sinful nature to rob God of what belongs to Him alone. One of the objections made to the appointment of a week-day is, the amount of work that would be lost at a time of national emergency, thus placing more value on the works of our own hands than on seeking the favour of God, and betraying a spirit the very opposite of that which moved King David when he humbled himself before God at the threshing-floor of Ornan the Jebusite, “Nay,” he said to Ornan, “I will not take that which is thine for the Lord, nor offer burnt offerings without cost.” The Lord’s Day is specially set apart for the “public and private exercises of God’s worship, and, nationally, we ought to recognise that it is our duty to observe that day as holy unto the Lord. To appoint that day as a day of national humiliation is to show a serious want of sincerity for we are in effect saying to God, Thou hast given us six days of the week for our own employment, but we consider it too costly to appoint one of these days to humble ourselves and supplicate thy favour, but we will take thy day, as it will cost us nothing. Surely if men would thus deal with their fellow-creatures they would soon find out where they were standing; how much more so when men will give such a daring affront to the Majesty of Heaven.
Let us, however, beware when we are advocating for such a day to be set apart, that we will not be satisfied with one such day and think nothing further about it. God, in His Word, shows that He has no delight in such work. “Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for man to afflict his soul? Is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord?” It is clear from the Word of God that when such a day was appointed from a right spirit, the end in view was, a solemn acknowledgment of sins committed against God, an imploring of His favour, and an engagement to guard against such sins in the future. Where that duty was observed in a Scriptural manner, there was along with it a dependence on divine grace, which kept those who engaged in it sensible of their own shortcomings, and sent them often to a Throne of Grace. Thus there was a reviving of the spirit of prayer, a gracious answering on the part of the Hearer of Prayer, and a general raising of the tone of national religion, which in itself, would be a blessing that we should all seek after. This, however, is not all the blessing that God has given in the past in connection with national humiliation in this land. He has often turned the tide of affairs in such a way that almost immediately after such solemn acknowledgments of Him, the enemies of this country were put to confusion.
One plausible reason that has been brought forward against solemnly acknowledging God in this way is, that our enemies would hear of it, conclude that we were afraid, and thus be encouraged. One is reminded in this connection of an incident which took place on the eve of the Battle of Bannockburn. King Edward II. of England from some vantage point saw the whole Scottish army solemnly kneeling in prayer. He drew the attention of some one at his side to the matter and said, “These men are asking for mercy.” The reply was, “Sire, these men are asking mercy of God but not of you.” We know not how much genuine prayer was put up that evening in the Scottish army but we know that the following day it was answered. God is still a prayer-hearing God, and if we approach Him with humility and sorrow for our national sins we might be enabled yet to say with the Psalmist, “For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me. But thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame that hated us.”—J. C.