De Valera’s Magnanimous Philanthropy?—According to the London Evening Standard for 23rd October, De Valera has initiated a scheme whereby tens of thousands of women and children from the bombed areas of Britain may be given sanctuary in Eire. Our Jesuitically controlled press sees here another opportunity of praising the inveterate enemy of this country. This gesture is supposed to be the outcome of De Valera’s distress over the drowning of 79 children who were being evacuated to America. This scheme, however, “is confined to women and children with relatives or friends in Eire who are willing to take them in,” and the evacuees must not become a charge on the rates in Eire. Since the above report was published there are grounds for believing that the British Government will approve of a scheme similar to that approved of for Northern Ireland, by which this country pays a billeting allowance of 5/- for the mother, 5/- for each child over fourteen years, and 3/- a week for each child under that age. This is but another example of how this country is being imposed upon by Romanists. The women and children who have relatives in Eire can be none other than Irish Roman Catholics, many of whom have been for years a charge on the rates in this country, and whose husbands and fathers are in many cases endeavouring to sow the seeds of disloyalty among the working classes of this country. It would be well for our government to realise that instead of this being a disinterested gesture on the part of Eire, it is a self-interested scheme to preserve those who are working and longing for our ruin, and that at the expense of our taxes.
The American Presidential Election.—Mr. Roosevelt has been elected for the third term as President of the United States of America. While we see in this an assurance of America’s help being continued to Britain in her fight against the forces of evil, we fear it is not for America’s good on account of the way he helped the progress of Romanism during his previous terms of office. At the same time we do not want to be understood as inferring that things would be better if the other candidate had been successful. We do not know what Mr. Wilkie’s religion is, if he has any, but we could not help drawing our own conclusions from the fact that among his chief supporters were Colonel Lindberg, who has proved himself most unfriendly to Britain; “Father” Coughlin, the sworn subject of an Italian Pope; Henry Ford, who refused to build aero engines for Britain, and John L. Lewis, who is an extreme isolationist. “Father” Coughlin has also openly proved himself unfriendly to Britain, but in this he is only walking in the steps of his Papal master, who is supposed to be neutral. The nature of that neutrality, however, is revealed in the following statement from the News Chronicle of 3rd October, “The Pope gave an audience to two hundred Italian Army Officers this morning, and said to them: ‘We bless all you who serve the beloved fatherland with fealty and love.'”
Marshall Graziani’s Unparalleled Brutality.—Of all the horrible methods of inflicting punishment upon a conquered race, that resorted to by Marshall Graziani, in Libya, against the Chiefs of the Arabs, must beat all records. According to the Evening Standard for 8th November these Chiefs are taken up in aeroplanes to a height of several thousand feet, and are then thrown out to be dashed to pieces on the rocks below. This conduct, which has earned for Graziani the designation of the “Bloody Butcher of Libya,” is typical of totalitarian ideology and may be directly traced to the religion in which he, and those who trouble Europe to-day, were brought up; the religion which invented, justified, and gloried in the infernal tortures of the Inquisition. According to letters in the Press it is generally felt in Britain that bombing of Italian possessions is very desultory, and in the face of Italian boasts of having taken part in the murderous attacks on London, Britain treats Rome as an open city. Rome’s immunity from attack, it is to be feared, will continue as long as Lord Halifax, and other Anglo-Catholics, are in the British Government, for that city is their spiritual home more than London, and it is evident that they, in common with many so-called Protestants, are looking with a blind eye on Rome and the pretensions of the Man of Sin.
“Let Glasgow Flourish.”—Recently we gave the motto on the Glasgow coat of arms as “Let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word.” We are much obliged to a friend in that city who has written us pointing out, what does not seem to be well-known, that the original motto was, “Lord! let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of the Word.” This, it will be noticed is a prayer, and, as the late Rev. N. Cameron said, shortly before he was taken away, “it was no wonder that Glasgow did flourish when those responsible for the motto had the wisdom to look to God.” The same friend enclosed a cutting from the Evening Times for 8th November where the Glasgow Corporation is advertising that four golf courses are open for play on Sabbath, 10th November. What a contrast this brings before us! One generation praying to God for prosperity by the means of His own appointment, and another generation expecting prosperity in absolute defiance of His Word. How has this come about? The citizens of Glasgow despised their privileges and forgot the source of their prosperity; they turned away their ears from the truth and “turned unto fables.” Atheists and Papists have become their leaders and representatives, and both classes do the work of the Man of Sin very well in his efforts to take away everything in this country which acted as a bulwark against Popish pretensions. Let Provost Dollan and his friends, who are so much esteemed in Glasgow to-day, beware! His Church and his Creed has deceived him that the Virgin Mary and other saints will put everything right for him at last, but he will find that he has to appear at the Judgment Seat of Christ, and that the Judge of all the earth will judge righteously. Those led by him in this mad running upon the thick bosses of Jehovah’s bucklers will not have him in high esteem that day, but will curse him as one of the instruments of their ruin.
The Bursary-Making Ministry.—One of the most evil things that ever happened in the history of the professing Christian ministry in Scotland was when the professing Church began to encourage young men of brilliant intellects and high academic attainments, but totally ignorant of supernatural conversion, to study for the sacred office of the Christian ministry. We sincerely believe that this is the main cause of the fact that to-day Scotland, like England, is, for the most part, with noble exceptions, spiritually a barren desolate waste. This is to be seen not only in the ministry of the Church of Scotland, in whose theological colleges these brilliantly-intellectual students were taught a nondescript theological mixture of Arminianism, Modernism, and, in some cases, Scoto-Catholicism, but also in the present 1900 Free Church, despite the fact that they had the advantage of more or less evangelical theological teaching. When some of their ministers must needs be at concerts, and calling for gramophones, records, and other musical instruments, it seems very evident that they never, spiritually and personally, experienced “the expulsive supernatural power of a heavenly new affection.” This is proof, if proof were needed, that mere orthodoxy, without the personal experience of a supernatural change of heart in the candidate for the ministry, will not make the future minister, when tested, any more useful in witnessing against the sins of the world than the less privileged candidate who was trained in erroneous variegated theology. “The carnal mind is enmity against God.” In each case popular public opinion is a much more dreaded tribunal than the, to them, questionable prospect of the Judgment-Seat of Christ. Let us illustrate. Free Presbyterian ministers, for instance, who may be called upon to protest against the appointment of Romanist school-teachers to the Protestant schools where they reside, need not, in the least degree, be surprised if they find the local Free Church ministers as apathetic and reluctant to take part in the Protest as the Arminian-Modernist-Scoto-Catholic ministers of the Church of Scotland. Dreading no higher tribunal than popular “broadminded” public opinion, because spiritual things, such as the Judgment-Seat of Christ, are spiritually discerned, they will act “prudently” by observing a non-committal sphinx-like attitude, while regarding the protesting activities of the Free Presbyterian ministers, in this connection, as extreme enthusiasm, if not excitable fanaticism. Personally, the present writer would expect only a small minority of Free Church ministers, in such cases, to act otherwise. Let us “please God rather than men.”
Whose Fault?—In commending the four recently published “Free Grace Tracts” by the late Rev. Jonathan R. Anderson, in the November, 1940, issue of the Free Church Monthly Record, the writer states: “The vocabulary of the spiritual life known to and readily appreciated by our fathers is, alas! a strange tongue to most of the youth—even the religious youth—of to-day. For that reason we doubt if they will serve to any large extent the gracious purpose for which they were sent out”—for distribution among men of His Majesty’s Forces. Whose fault is it that the vocabulary of the spiritual life known and appreciated by our fathers is a strange tongue even to the religious youth of our day? What kind of religious youth are these? The Holy Spirit is not the Author of confusion, contradiction, or misunderstanding, but the Spirit of truth—the truth as it is in Jesus. When He, therefore, applies the truth of Divine Revelation, which He Himself inspired, to the human understanding, conscience and heart, it produces conviction of sin, evangelical repentance, saving faith, new obedience and loyalty, and a lifelong “hungering and thirsting after righteousness.” All God’s people are supernaturally taught of Him, and they are taught line upon line, and precept upon precept, till they attain the stature of perfection in Christ Jesus. All Christ’s sheep know their Master’s voice in every age and clime, and as it is substantially the same truths they are all taught, what was understood and readily appreciated by Isaiah, Paul, Luther, and Jonathan R. Anderson, ought also to be understood and readily appreciated by the religious youth of to-day, if their religion is worthy of the name of Christianity. Ministers, more than any other men, are responsible to-day for the fact that the old-fashioned but ever-new spiritual vocabulary is unknown and unappreciated among our youth, for, as Mr. Spurgeon said, “What ceases to be proclaimed from the pulpit soon ceases to be believed in the pew.” The ministerial indiscriminate charity, that does not differentiate between Modernism, Arminianism and Calvinism is largely responsible for the prevailing confusion among our youth.