THE Holy Spirit, through the prophet Isaiah, in speaking of the rejection of the Jews for their unbelief, idolatry and hypocrisy, reveals that though as a nation they were to suffer, yet they were not to be cast off altogether. “Thus saith the Lord, As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it: so will I do for my servants’ sakes, that I may not destroy them all” (Isaiah lxv. 8). As a nation, once highly favoured, we have gone away from God, and, sad to say, the Church has led in this general apostasy, by taking into its creed and constitution Arminianism, the evolution theory and German rationalism, together with a host of other heresies contrary to the Word of God. However, as in the days of Elijah there were left seven thousand who had not bowed their knees to the image of Baal, so in our land God has a Scripturally constituted Church where Modernism has no place, and whatever may be thought or said of us, we ought to count it an honour to be members of such a Church.
This scripturally constituted Church lays no claim to perfection, but accepts the statement in the Confession of Faith, Chapter xxv. sect. 5 that “the purest churches under heaven are subject both to mixture and error.” It has been the painful experience of its members that the wheat and tares were growing together, and however vigilant its office-bearers were, roots of bitterness have appeared polluting many. As these appear, however, there is in the Church what can effectively deal with them, thus proving that its constitution is according to the Word of God.
Our enemies have looked upon us as a company of obscure creatures who have little or no influence in the land, and therefore not worthy of being taken into consideration. True it is that we have little or no influence among those whom the world delights to honour and look upon as great. Our history as a Church reveals no traces of lofty aspirations as far as the things of the world are concerned. Rather has it been with us a following of the advice of Jeremiah to Baruch, the son of Neriah, “Seekest thou great things for thyself? seek them not” (Jeremiah xlv. 5). Thus have we by the good hand of the Most High avoided a snare into which many have fallen and made themselves useless as far as rebuking sin in high places is concerned. John the Baptist might never have been beheaded if he had aspired to please Herod and connive at his sin, but he would have been unfaithful to his trust and wronged his own soul.
Our refusal to court worldly favour has caused us to avoid following the world. The great cry of ecclesiastical leaders is, that “we must move with the times,” and in suiting the action to the word they become regardless of where the “times” are leading them. This has led many churches to become so degenerate “as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan.” The aim, however, of the true Church of Christ in all ages has been to follow Christ, and to “go forth therefore to Him without the camp bearing His reproach” (Heb. xiii. 13). This has earned for them the hatred of the world, of which Christ Himself forewarns them. “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake” (Matt. xxiv. 9).
This hatred which the world shows has been a fertile ground for a great many of the trials of the Church of God in general, and of our own Church in particular. Much as the world, religious and non-religious, affects to take no notice of us yet our adherence to the Word of God and to a Scriptural practice calls down upon us the wrath of men. We are too strict or not strict enough as the whim of the individual may be, who takes upon himself to act as judge. We are hypocrites if we adhere to the Bible, and hypocrites if our judges imagine that they have detected anything in us which savours of a departure from it. Well shall it always be with the Free Presbyterian Church if it refuses to be moved by any of these things, but follows Christ, for Christ has acknowledged it throughout its history and said of it “Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it.” What that blessing is, it is now our purpose to notice.
In the Free Presbyterian Church there is an entire Bible. This cannot be said of the great majority in our beloved land. Doctors Drumond, Bruce and Rainy with the rest of the infidel Higher Critics robbed the people of Scotland of the Bible, by maintaining that there were errors in it, and have taught them to treat it with contempt. They have also robbed them of the Confession of Faith by passing a Declaratory Act in which the language of the Confession was to be understood in another way than was customary, and in another way than those who framed it intended. It is an inestimable blessing to have a whole Bible and a Confession of Faith based on it, and that blessing is in the Free Presbyterian Church for it took up its separate position in order to hand these intact to coming generations—a distinction reserved for that Church alone.
It has the blessing of a full-orbed gospel preached from its pulpits. Ruin by the Fall, Redemption by the Blood of Christ; and Regeneration by the work of the Holy Spirit, are declared with no uncertain sound. Law and Gospel each has its own place in gospel preaching, and while man’s inability is emphasised, his responsibility is by no means lost sight of when Christ is freely offered as God’s only remedy to meet with the lost and ruined condition of man. This gospel is looked upon as old-fashioned, and one would think, by the way some speak and write, that an apology ought to be made for proclaiming it. Long may this great blessing be found in the Free Presbyterian Church, that its ministers take up the attitude of the Apostle when he said, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek” (Romans i. 16).
Not the smallest of our blessings as a Church is that there are witnesses who never wavered in following Christ. It has been acknowledged by many, who were not distinguished by their love for us, that the cream of the godly in Scotland followed the Free Presbyterian Church in 1893. This noble band of men and women valued Christ and His Word, and refused to be led by men who revealed that they were enemies to the cross of Christ. In doing so they had to endure hardship, and by faith “endured, as seeing him who is invisible.” The most of these have by now gone to Mount Zion above, though a few are still with us, and they have left us a glorious example, in order that we would follow their faith, “considering the end of their conversation: Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day and forever.” The ranks of these unwavering witnesses are sadly depleted in our day, yet the few who are taking the place of those taken home cause the incense of prayer to rise day by day, and while there are faithful witnesses wrestling at a Throne of Grace, God will reveal Himself as a prayer-hearing God.
The raising up of the Free Presbyterian Church was a testimony against error, and a witness on the side of Christ in Scotland, and Christ has owned that witness in the conversion of sinners. Many heard the gospel for the first time as the gospel of their salvation in the Free Presbyterian Church, and there are some who will throughout eternity be praising Christ for this witness. He has also owned this witness in edifying the Lord’s people and building them up in their most holy faith. Another remarkable way in which He has acknowledged the witness raised is by the spread of the gospel in connection with it. It has often been pointed out that at the beginning of our Church as a separate body we had neither property nor funds, while the movement was considered by our enemies as “a storm in a tea-cup” which would soon come to an end for lack of money. To-day we are spread over the whole world, and the Lord has clearly proved to us that the silver and the gold are His. Sometimes those who professed to be our friends withheld that financial support which they were well able to give, and others may be threatening to do the same to-day. This is on a level with all the other folly that is in the heart of man, for it is a vain imagination that the resources of Christ can be bottled up, and kept from such as He has designed to bless. All is well if He says, “Destroy it not.”
Here we have His command to spare. The history of His providential dealings with His own in all ages may be summed up in the words, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm” (Psalm cv. 15); and thus they are given a holy boldness to plead with the Psalmist, “Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress” (Psalm lxxi. 3). Together with His commandment to “destroy not” He has given His promise that He would never leave them nor forsake them. When those who formed the Free Presbyterian Church went out from the Declaratory Act Church they had nothing but the promise of God but that was sufficient, yea, it may be said that there they had all things. That Church is to-day a standing witness to the value of having a covenant-keeping God, and with respect to many a trial, within and without, can join with David in singing, “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when men rose up against us: then they had swallowed us up quick, when their wrath was kindled against us” (Psalm cxxiv. 2, 3). He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, and at the end of fifty years and more we cannot do more or less than put up our Ebenezer, as an appropriate memorial of human weakness and Divine help, and say, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.”
This raises the question, What about the future? In this we must take a lesson from those who went before us. Our past had been their future and they faced it wholly depending on the promises of God. These promises are as full for our future as they were for theirs but let us remember that we must walk as they walked for it was said to others, “If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: but if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it (Isaiah i. 19, 20). While any branch of the visible church walks according to the Word of God His power will be exerted to protect it, and no enemy within or without will be permitted to do it any harm, yea, it shall be proved again, as it was often proved in the past, that the Church of God is an anvil upon which many a hammer will be broken, and any such branch of the Church which will continue faithful, Christ will continue to say, concerning it “Destroy it not; for a blessing is in it,” and, in the face of all efforts to destroy it, it will survive till the Millennium.
J. C.