Blasphemy Against the Holy Ghost.—In the Free Church Monthly Record for February, 1941, the following editorial comment appears: “Those who know anything of the history and present-day activities of the Free Presbyterian Movement will find it hard to associate it with the Free Church of 1843, unless it be assumed that that Church stood only for disruption. For in that direction lay the activities of the Free Presbyterian movement since the day of its inception to the present hour. While this body has been a truly disruptive influence in the spiritual life of the Highlands for half a century, of recent years these disruptive powers have been more active within the communion itself than outside it, threatening it with destruction by its own hand . . . . Thus it goes the way of other bodies that have separated themselves from the main stream of Christian life and witness on the specious plea of a higher orthodoxy, and have been left to have their faith discredited by their works.” Some years ago a certain Free Church minister who is now in eternity, made the following statement to one who is still in the ministry of that Church,
“We have to confess that when the Free Presbyterian Church ‘came out’ in 1893, it took with it the cream of the Christian men and women of the Highlands of Scotland.” These men and women, deeply taught by the Spirit of God, raised a testimony on behalf of the inspiration and infallibility of the Bible, and proved to the world that they were led by God’s Spirit, for God acknowledged their work. To charge them with disruption in the evil sense in which the editor of the Monthly Record uses it is to attribute to the Devil what is manifestly the work of the Holy Spirit, and to be guilty of the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. We read that “When the enemy shall come in like a flood, the Spirit of the Lord shall lift up a standard against him.” When the Free Church received the flood of German Rationalism and Higher Criticism by the passing of the Declaratory Act, can the present-day Free Church claim to be the honoured instrument in raising that standard? They might have been but for the fact that they placed too high a value on stone and lime. To attribute the raising of that standard to the work of Satan is a serious matter, and we would not take all that this world has to offer and go to the Judgment Seat of Christ with such a lie in our right hand. When he speaks of a disruptive element in the Free Presbyterian Church during the whole course of its history he conveniently forgets that that disruptive element was confined to some of the ministers of that Church, and never on any occasion spread to its people. When the Free Church made itself a receptacle for such, and for fugitives from discipline generally, it received only those whom the Holy Spirit no longer intended to use in lifting up a standard against the enemy. That they have been a receptacle for such a disruptive influence is amply demonstrated by the fact that for a long number of years the chief positions in the Free Church College and among its congregations were occupied by ex-Free Church ministers. This, and the fact that certain prominent Free Church ministers have been on more than one occasion fishing for themselves for congregations in the troubled waters of the Free Presbyterian Church, makes further comment needless.
The Cradle of Christendom.—It is with great reluctance we criticise any action of our Prime Minister in time of War, and especially when we hold the firm conviction that Mr. Churchill is a true Britisher and an uncompromising patriot, but in all matters relating to the glory of God, and the highest interests of this nation, our duty compels us to speak. Some time ago Mr. Churchill in one of his speeches described the Vatican as “The Cradle of Christendom.” We can hardly believe that he is so ignorant of the history of the Papacy as not to know that a more appropriate name would be “Crater of Hell.” The learned Dr. Alexander Robertson of Venice, in his book on The Roman Catholic Church in Italy, quotes Desancitis as saying, “Rome is the city which surpasses all other cities of Italy in immorality; drunkenness, murder, theft, fraud, adultery, are crimes incessantly committed; but whoever commits them confesses and believes himself absolved, and immorality is not only not arrested, but by the facility of pardon at the cost of a few prayers, is committed again without scruple.” What a picture is here given us of the city which our statesmen pay such deference to, and alas! it is only a fragment of the iniquity practised there. What of the Satanic plots hatched there against Protestant Britain? Let Mr. Churchill stand as far aloof from the Vatican as he does from Berlin, and we are sure that he will see that he is as heartily hated by the one as by the other for the Church of Rome was never the friend of any British statesman who saw through its policy and took effective steps to thwart its designs. In paying such a tribute to the Vatican our Prime Minister has, we hope unintentionally, falsified past history, and endeavoured to throw a covering over the present attitude of the Roman Catholic Church to the religion of the Bible for which coming generations will not thank him. It would be well to realise that the Church of which the Vatican is the “cradle” is, according to the Word of God “The Mother of Harlots” and that name is given it because of its apostacy from true Christianity.
God’s Judgments and Men’s Madness.—The poor people
of Clydeside had a trying experience recently when on two successive nights they were bombarded from the air and many of them felt in a bitter manner the horrors of which Nazism is capable. While we would seek whole-heartedly to extend our sympathy to these victims, and to all who suffered in mind and body, it ought to have a sobering effect upon us to remember that this is part of the judgments of God upon us, and that these judgments have a close connection with our sins, and that manifestations of them usually follow daring acts of rebellion on our part against God’s Law. In our paragraph last month on the opening of theatres on Sabbath the closing sentence was, “Let all who are of a serious mind take note; God has His own way of punishing men for their obstinacy.” That sentence was written under the conviction that a good deal of sorrow was in store for us because of this flagrant breach of God’s Holy Law in which our rulers involved the nation. It is with sorrow that makes one sick at heart that we have to take note of another act of defiance against God; this time on the part of the Glasgow magistrates, in cancelling their bye-law against the opening of tennis courts on the Sabbath. This being done when the sword of God in His judgments was raised above their heads causes one to wonder if these men have ceased to be rational as well as Christian, for how otherwise could they presume to run so daringly on the thick bosses of Jehovah’s bucklers.
“The Modern Mind.”—Within comparatively recent years it has become extraordinarily fashionable in intellectual circles to speak glibly of the problem of “The Modern Mind” and its supposedly excusable difficulties in accepting the Bible and Christianity as a supernatural Divine Revelation—an inspired infallible transcription of the Mind and Will of God to man. These difficulties, supposed to be peculiar to “the modern mind,” are attributed to the special problems created by the present-day discoveries of science, philosophy, and scholarship. Hence the clamouring, in certain ecclesiastical quarters, to forsake “antediluvian obscurantism,” “to move with the times,” and to be charitable, in order that twentieth century tolerant progressive
enlightenment and liberal refinement and culture might not be hindered, and to avoid the stigma of being “behind the times,” “narrow-minded,” and “bigoted.” Thus, modern refinement and culture are enough, in these ecclesiastical circles, to excuse the most unscrupulous propagator of soul-ruining heresies and doctrines of devils, in pulpit, on platform, and by pen, and in the teeth of solemn ordination vows. “The modern mind,” however, is none other, notwithstanding protests to the contrary, than the old sin-ruined Adamic mind, “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked,” in eternal enmity, though disguised in modern habiliments, still putting its serpentine question opposite the eternal veracity of the Word of God, “has God said?”
As throwing much light on the foregoing remarks we here insert a confirming quotation from the able pen of the late scholarly Canon Dyson Hague, D.D., taken from the preface to the second edition of his book entitled: Life and Work of John Wycliffe:—
“The more I read of history, especially ecclesiastical history, the more I am impressed with the fact that it is all repeated in our present-day life. The things, the men, the problems, the controversies, the aims, the parties, the complications, the dangers, the duties are in essence, in spite of external and nominal variations, the same as in the days of Wycliffe. Rome is just as strong, just as aggressive, and its dogmas and teaching just as false and repugnant to the Word of God as ever. The poor are in just the same need; the rich in just the same danger. Human nature and the human heart are just what they were. Culture, civilization, scholarship, science—these are only on and off the surface—the man is a man for all that, a sinner guilty, a soul immortal, a sheep that has gone astray. The Gospel that Wycliffe preached, the Bible that Wycliffe published, the Christ that Wycliffe adored and loved are the only supply for the world’s needs to-day. If I have been able, in the writing of this new edition of Wycliffe, to stir up anyone to a new desire to stand up for Christ and the Truth, to take up Wycliffe’s torch and hold it high, to fight to the death all aberrations from
the Bible and the Gospel, and all falsehoods which are propagated in the name of the Church, I shall feel that I have not laboured in vain or spent my strength for nought.” Thus the well-known evangelical Protestant and learned Professor of Wycliffe College, Toronto, Canada, confirms our convictions that the supposedly recently discovered difficulties and problems of “the modern mind,” with its modern thoughts, are but the difficulties and problems, or rather impossibilities, of the natural mind confronting supernatural Divine Revelation. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The only remedy for the difficulties of “the modern mind” as of the mind of Adam immediately he fell, is the supernatural illumination, of his otherwise sin-darkened understanding, by the Holy Spirit, sent down from Heaven, giving him the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Supernatural spiritual illumination of the individual understanding is followed by saving faith.
Theatres to be Closed on Sabbath.—As we go to press we are pleased to have to notice that the Emergency Powers Act regulation to permit local authorities in England and Wales to apply for licence to open theatres and music halls on Sabbath has been cancelled by 144 votes to 136. While the margin was narrow we have to look upon it as the doing of the Most High in answer to His people’s prayers, and as a token that He has not altogether forsaken us. In opening the debate in the House of Commons. Mr. Magnay said, “During the last ten years all things that are reasonable and clean and Christian have been more or less jeered at and flouted. . . . London, as usual, leads the way in this declension. The reason is that it is a cosmopolitan city, the playground of the idle rich.” He maintained that the opening of theatres on Sabbath was not a war-time demand but one that had been promoted a long time before the war by the financiers of the theatrical world. This throws a lurid light on men’s greed for money, when they will not be satisfied with six days of the week, but they must stretch out
unholy hands to God’s holy day to profane it. Let us hope and pray that this check is only the first of a series of checks that is in store for such as think that they can take God and His day into their own hands.