TO THE KING’S MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY.—May it please Your Majesty, We, the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, convened at Inverness this 23rd day of May, 1940, desire most humbly to express to Your Majesty our unabated loyalty to Your Majesty’s person and throne, and to assure Your Majesty of our continued interest in Your Majesty’s welfare, and in that of Your Majesty’s Royal Consort and family, and of the peoples over whom, in the good providence of God, Your Majesty reigns. In common with all loyal subjects, we deeply sympathise with Your Majesty at this time in view of the heavy burden of concern which the vicissitudes of the war situation entail. In this connection, we are encouraged, as no doubt Your Majesty is, by the reflection that the cause which determined our country’s entry upon the present struggle is a just one and one which, as we are confident, will be vindicated in the end. We also feel heartened by the example Your Majesty has recently shown in commending the reading of God’s Word and in calling the nation to united prayer.
While gratefully recording these efforts on the part of Your Majesty to direct the eyes of our countrymen towards the hills from whence cometh our help, we take occasion most humbly to represent to Your Majesty the need there is, now more than ever, for the inculcation of the duties of repentance towards God and of faith towards the Lord Jesus Christ without which religious exercises otherwise are unavailing. In consideration of the latter fact, and in view of the urgency of the situation, we feel constrained to appeal to Your Majesty to use all the means and influence which Your Majesty’s exalted station commands for the setting apart as early as possible of a week-day to be observed throughout the land as a day of humiliation and confession of sin, and of fervent supplication to God in name of our Lord Jesus Christ, the only Mediator and Saviour. “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away His fierce anger, that we perish not” (Jonah III. 9).
In conclusion we pray the Lord will bless Your Majesty with all needed grace and strength to enable Your Majesty confidently to undertake and discharge the onerous duties of Your Majesty’s responsible office throughout this period of crisis and always, and that He will guide and prosper the counsels of Your Majesty’s Ministers of State and the efforts of Your Majesty’s forces and allies towards a victorious consummation for His own glory and the spiritual and temporal well-being of this nation, of the Empire, and of the world.
In name and by the authority of the Synod of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.—D. R. MacDonald, Moderator.