Belief in an Over-ruling Providence amidst Shattering Distractions.—When President Lincoln in his noble fight for the emancipation of the slaves was overwhelmed on every hand with troubles he said: “If it were not for my belief in an over-ruling Providence, it would be difficult for me, in the midst of such complications, to keep my reason on its seat. But I am confident that the Almighty has His plans, and will work them out; and, whether we see it or not, they will be the wisest and best for us. I have always taken counsel of Him, and referred to Him my plans, and have never adopted a course of proceeding without being assured, as far as I could be, of His approbation . . . I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.
… I should be the most presumptuous blockhead upon this footstool, if I for one day thought that I could discharge the duties which have come upon me since I came into this place, without the aid and enlightenment of One who is wiser and stronger than all others.” What a blessing it would be if Britain’s rulers showed such a humble dependence on the Most High.
A Blind Leader.—In submitting the “Religion and Public Morals Report” at the Annual Synod meeting of the Original Secession Church, as reported in the June, 1941, issue of the O.S. Magazine, the Rev. Professor Francis Davidson, D.D., Principal of the Bible Training Institute, Glasgow, stated, “It cannot be doubted that whatever weight still attaches to the Papal System, the present Pope Pius XII. has thrown it into the scale of peace. His five points for the readjustment of the disordered world have been well received.” What egregious nonsense coming from such a source, and how utterly opposed to the true sentiments and convictions of a well-known Protestant layman, who declared recently:—”It is the duty of Protestants to tear aside the mask which presents the Papacy as a disinterested international institution. The ‘Points’ are defective, where they are not ordinary platitudes with which there is no possibility of disagreement, by the complete omission of reference to freedom of thought and worship, without which there is no peace at all.” Principal Davidson’s eulogy of the Pope’s so-called peace efforts reminds us of Horatio Bottomley, who during the 1914-1918 world war, wrote every year in his journal, John Bull, an article entitled “What Price Peace by Christmas?” exploiting thus the word “peace,” because he knew it represented the most natural desire and strongest sentiment in the bosoms of the vast majority of European peoples, for his own ends. He afterwards railed against the politicians, in an article entitled “We Have Been Let Down by the Politicians,” because after four-and-a-quarter years of slaughter, they agreed to the 1918 Armistice. So with the Pope’s hypocritical pose as the supreme advocate of peace, in connection with a war which his organisation has done more than any other power in the world to begin and continue. Does Principal Davidson know that
“two Italian Archbishops and forty-seven bishops petitioned Mussolini to insist that the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem be taken out of the hands of Great Britain and entrusted to the Royal House of Savoy?” Does he know that the Romanist Bishops of Germany voted for Hitler’s War, or has he heard of Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, the Rape of Albania, and the part the Pope and his agents took in them? We consider that Principal Davidson, and those who speak like him, are not fit for their positions as Protestant and Presbyterian ministers in Scotland at such a time as this. What better, however, could be expected of one who regards the present so-called Church of Scotland, with its infidel Modernism, sacerdotal Coto-Catholicism, Arminianism, and Antinomianism, as the fulfilment of the ideal of Ebenezer and Ralph Erskine.
The Christian Faith and Secondary Education.—In an age when the outlook of the majority is grossly materialistic, and an exaggerated importance is attached to mere secular education, divorced from spiritual realities, it is refreshing and edifying to find a learned and scholarly University Professor deploring the sad neglect into which Scripture teaching has fallen in modern secondary education. Professor Noble of Aberdeen University, in addressing the pupils of Inverness Royal Academy, as reported in The Northern Chronicle for 2nd July, 1941, said, “One of the things that has saddened me in secondary education is the sad neglect into which Scripture teaching has fallen. I would like to see it put on the same basis as Mathematics, Classics, and other subjects of equal status and dignity, and given the same amount of time. It is not only a valuable subject as a mental training but upon it is based our faith as Christians. We are waging a war not of territorial aggression or economic aggrandisement, but of ideals, a war of love of Christianity against paganism, of spirituality against materialism, of right against wrong, and unless we are sound in the faith, though we would win the war we would not win the peace, and we must win both this time.” This witness, regarding the neglect of Scripture teaching in modern secondary education, is emphatically true. To say the least, Scripture teaching should have the same status and dignity, and the same time allotted to it, as the most important
subjects in the curriculum of modern secondary education. Otherwise secondary education will prove a power for evil, leading to religious indifference and neo-paganism, with its grossly sensual materialistic outlook on life, and an abomination in the sight of God. Till the British nation will thus elevate the Word of God to the place that belongs to it in the curriculum of present-day secondary education, we shall not have a right to the title “a Christian nation.” Lord, let Britain flourish by the teaching of Thy Word to the rising generation, and for all future time!