By Rev. J. P. MACQUEEN.
It has always been the duty of Free Presbyterians, worthy of the name, to render to their doctrinally-Scriptural and apostolic Church one hundred per cent. conscientious, consistent, and uncompromising loyalty, but in view of the present-day background of national backsliding and world-wide religious declension this essential, cordial, denominational loyalty needs to be especially emphasised. The young and rising people of our Church cannot be too often or too emphatically told that in our distinctive denominational Scriptural testimony, they have a heavenly spiritual deposit and birthright, which they should not forsake for anything that this deceptive world has to offer, in the way of wealth, carnal ease and comfort, power, refinement, culture, or social status. All these things are, in the light of spiritual eternal realities, evanescent, ephemeral, fading, and unsatisfying. These worldly things, however fascinating and attractive, shall perish, but the spiritual realities embodied in our distinctive denominational testimony, grasped and apprehended by a living supernatural faith, shall endure forevermore. It means life that shall never end.
Parents, therefore, who have the spiritual and eternal welfare of their children at heart, must seek first and foremost for their children, as for themselves, “the kingdom of God and His righteousness,” without in the least degree diminishing or minimising their efforts, relative to their parental duties, to equip their offspring, as the Lord enables and prospers them, with appropriate qualifications for earning an honest livelihood. This teaching and upbringing should include the faithful and emphatic admonition that as long as the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland continues uncompromisingly faithful to its Scriptural constitution and testimony, as it has hitherto done, they are duty-bound not to leave nor forsake it for worldly advantages of any kind, including a life-partner, however well-placed he, or she, may be, financially and socially. If the children disobey such faithful parental injunctions the guilt shall be upon their own heads, but if the parents acquiesce in matrimonial partnerships that involve unfaithfulness to the truth as it is in Jesus, and to our church, they shall share with their offspring the serious responsibility and guilt involved. No worldly gain can compensate for spiritual loss.
The late worthy and faithful Rev. Neil Cameron, who counted God-fearing women among the best friends he had on earth, though he was unmarried, always declared that it was the prospective husband, who insisted on taking away the Free Presbyterian life-partner to his own doctrinally-unsound church, that really tested the professed loyalty of our young women. It is only fair to add, however, that the same test has rather often proved too much for some of our young men also. A wife is not duty-bound to follow her husband into a doctrinally-corrupt church, but the reverse. “Let Caesar’s dues be ever paid to Caesar and his throne, but consciences and souls were made to be the Lord’s alone” (Cowper).
Having thus introduced our subject, let us now proceed to give practical reasons why the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland must continue its separate ecclesiastical denominational existence till better days dawn, when a copious outpouring of the Holy Spirit’s supernatural influences and operations will bring about union in the truth as it is in Jesus, as distinguished from the carnal external unions organised by graceless unconverted ministers, for the sake of mere human convenience, and with absolute disregard and indifference to doctrinal truth. If there was necessity, as there most certainly was, for the noble God-honouring stand that our denomination’s fathers made in defence of the truth, when it was fallen in the street in 1893, there is emphatically much greater reason for its undiminished continuance in these days of glaring inconsistencies, backsliding, compromising, and apostasy. Truth is eternal and immutable, and if martyrs, Reformers, Puritans, and Covenants, suffered tortures and died rather than compromise one iota of it, what guilt would be involved if our church departed in the least degree from these Scriptural doctrines. True Christianity knows no compromise, no surrender, and no change, for it is embodied in an eternally-fixed canon of Divine Revelation. The singular providence of God watched over the preservation and transmission of canonical Scripture, and shall we betray our trust for the sake of fashion?
Let us, then, first briefly examine the case of the ecclesiastical body that calls itself “The Church of Scotland.” The present writer could compile a large booklet composed of the quotations in his memory from the
infidel modernist writings of the learned ministers of that church, but a few instances must suffice, for, as the late Rev. Neil Cameron used to say, in this connection, “I do not wish to poison the minds of my hearers or readers by quoting too many of their blasphemous statements.” Some years ago, for instance, a minister of the Church of Scotland, a bachelor of divinity, wrote to the public Press stating, “I am not a Christian, and I have no intention of being a Christian, but as long as the Church of Scotland gives me £10 a week why should I not accept it.” Another of their ministers, a distinguished graduate in arts and so-called theology, declared: “The tribal god of Israel, whom Jesus called ‘His heavenly Father,’ was a blood-thirsty tyrant.” I could go on, page after page, quoting similar blasphemous statements from the books, writings, and speeches of the ministerial representatives of the so-called Church of Scotland, but the foregoing are sufficient. The two ministers referred to are still in that Church, and the reader may well wonder why they were never disciplined. The reason is clear; there is no discipline in the church referred to, where doctrinal views are concerned, so that, in this connection, it is like a city that is broken down, and without walls—the victim of every lawless invader. It is, therefore, a lawless mob, where doctrine is concerned.
Were discipline attempted, these ministers could turn round and say that their so-called theological professors taught them that the Bible was a book of myths and oriental fables, like their professor who wrote:—”I have read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation, but I found no element of the supernatural in it; nothing but mere Jewish literature, oriental fables, myths, legend, and tradition, inextricably interwoven, and told as if they were actual occurrences.” The fact of the matter is that few inside or outside Scotland realize the extent to which the so-called Church of Scotland has betrayed the Cause of Christ in our native land, in the name of modern scholarship, and through its host of godless, graceless, unconverted ministers. This, however, is in accordance with the intelligent anticipation of the saintly Rev. Lachlan Mackenzie of Lochcarron, who predicted that a generation was coming after his day in Scotland, when there would be a plague of graceless ministers, who would destroy vital godliness in his native land, as the plague of locusts in Egypt ate up all the vital vegetation. Having thus abandoned the Bible as their authoritative standard, what alternative weapon has that church against Romanism?
Why did the scholarly professor, above referred to, not find any element of the supernatural in the Bible, any more than the blind man in the dark room could see the spotlessly pure white dove that was conspicuous there? Simply because he never experienced the miracle of the new birth. With all his learning and scholarship, he could not write a simple essay, from personal experience, on the subject of the supernatural illumination of the understanding of the individual believer. He had no personal experience of the truths:—”God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (II. Cor. iv. 6). “The natural man (however capacious and disciplined intellectually) 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” (I. Cor. ii. 14). So far from being penitent and ashamed, however, the so-called Church of Scotland continues to glory in its shame, as evidenced by the recent cordial
welcome given in Edinburgh to the notorious modernist, Bishop Barnes of Birmingham, whose recently published book entitled, The Rise of Christianity, might well make avowed atheists, like Voltaire, Tom Paine, Ingersoll, and George Bernard Shaw, blush crimson to their ears. Let us now put the question to the conscience of every Free Presbyterian (as in the presence of the Most High), who, then, is acting rightly—our church in remaining uncompromisingly isolated from a professed Christian church that seeks to rob Christ of His greatest glory—His deity—and to eliminate the supernatural from His Word, while its pantheism is seeking to oust the only living, personal, and true God from His universe, or the Free Church of Scotland that boasts of its broadmindedness and tolerance in having ministerial representatives of the impenitent Church of Scotland at almost all its induction services, and speechifying there, by cordial invitation? “What part hath he that believeth with an infidel; what communion hath light with darkness?” (II. Cor. vi. 15). The baptized infidelity, prevailing in the Church of Scotland, is far worse, and more heinously deceptive, than mere naked uncircumcised atheism. Satan, as a roaring lion, has not half the deceptive capacity he can acquire as an angel of light (II. Cor. ii. 13).
What now of our continued separation from the Free Church of Scotland itself? As in the case of the Church of Scotland, the present writer could go on multiplying instances of glaring Free Church inconsistencies, but a few examples will suffice. Our object is neither heresy-hunting, nor captious criticism, nor are we actuated by ill-feeling, bitterness, or prejudice of any kind, but by a sincere, candid desire to warn the Free Church as to where it is dangerously and precariously drifting, and to let all Free Presbyterians see, more and more, the continued justification for our separate ecclesiastical position, in the absence of tokens of sincere repentance and reformation on the part of other Scottish denominations. As to the difference in our denominational origins, much has already been written. Suffice it here to say that the Declaratory Act of 1892-93 radically changed the doctrinal free-grace constitution of the historic Free Church of Scotland into an Arminian free-will constitution, while still deceitfully retaining the fictitious label, “Free Church of Scotland.” No amount of evasive sophistry can alter the historic fact, therefore, that the doctrinal identity of that historic church was lost in our native land, except as it was faithfully continued by the two ordained ministers, Rev. D. MacFarlane and Rev. D. MacDonald, who retained “the virginity of their ordination vows intact,” and the office-bearers, members, students, and adherents, who loyally supported them. Those who merely dissented only safeguarded their individual consciences from complicity in the fruits of this ecclesiastical treachery, but they did not thereby safeguard the Free Church’s historic Calvinistic constitution, as the Declaratory Act became immediately operative, as evidenced in, and at, the ordination of those who took advantage forthwith of its Arminian sophistic clauses. Mere denial does not alter facts, and sophistry is a poor substitute for truth and logic. The majority, by the Declaratory Act, separated themselves from the Calvinistic Free Church of 1843.
We are more concerned on this occasion, however, with present-day Free Church practices. During the war, for instance, the Rev. Selby Wright, “the Radio Padre,” who prays for the dead as a matter of course, preached in the Free Church on a particular Sabbath, afterwards presiding at a
Burns concert on a Sabbath evening under the auspices of that notorious Sabbath-breaker, the so-called Church of Scotland. What guarantee or assurance, therefore, can the Free Church of Scotland give to Free Presbyterians, where we have no local congregation, that this reprehensible type of preacher may not be in their pulpits to contaminate our people with doctrinal falsehoods? Thus we, on our part, have good grounds for warning our people to be careful, but the Free Church’s only reason for advising their people not to attend our pure Scripturally-doctrinal services is the unifying spirit of carnal competition. Thus Free Church ministers, generally speaking, with noble exceptions, advise their people to attend Church of Scotland services in preference to the services of our church. Is this faithfulness or loyalty to evangelical Christianity?
At the recent Free Church induction service in Dingwall, the ministerial representative of the Romanizing Episcopal Church of Scotland was present, according to invitation, and, in my view at any rate, it was a providential rebuke to the Free Church that the same minister, a few weeks afterwards, took part in the controversy in the local paper, The North Star, in which, with other three ministers of the same church, he advocated and defended the use of the Romanist chasuble and stole. He even questioned if without these Romanist vestments, relative to the Lord’s Supper, there could be a valid Christian service. Without the chasuble, the Romanist so-called “priest” cannot validly celebrate the Mass, and, without the consecrated stole, he cannot validly receive confessions. How preposterous the thought that without a certain piece of cloth there can be no valid Christian service! If this is not betraying the Cause of Christ in Scotland I fail to see what betrayal is.
There was not a scintilla of excuse for the Free Church in this connection, for on a former similar occasion at Inverness, the late Bishop MacLean, the Primus (or Primate) of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, attended, by invitation, and speechified, despite the fact, as widely reported in the daily newspapers, that he addressed a vast meeting in Perth a few weeks previously, in which he described the treacherous Romanizing Oxford Tractarian Movement as one of the holiest and most vital movements in all the annals of British ecclesiastical history. I could fill pages with similar examples of glaring inconsistencies on the part of the Free Church, that have come under my own observation in the course of the years, but these must suffice for the present. They show that the differences between ourselves and the Free Church are not merely ecclesiastical but also doctrinal, as long as there is such manifest indifference to the doctrinal position of those they worship with. When will the Free Church cease this hobnobbing with the ecclesiastics of the Modernist, Scot-Catholic, Arminian, impenitent Church of Scotland? Now or never! Are they not thereby partakers of the evil deeds of the Church of Scotland?
As regards the historic Original Secession Church, with which we were asked to co-operate, their congregational “Men’s Meetings” in Carluke and Shottsburn—at which lectures are given on the national bard, Robert Burns, and his songs sung—are considered of sufficient importance as church activities to be reported in their official monthly organ for December, 1947, and March, 1948. How are the mighty fallen! yet, while there are grey hairs here and there on this once noble church, it seems it knoweth it not. According to the Free Church minister of Strathpeffer, in a speech
he made at the recent Church of Scotland induction service at Fodderty, modern psychology is to be the great future instrument in facilitating the way for church union. According to reports of the speech in the daily Press, this modern view was loudly applauded. It is not modern psychology, but the Holy Spirit, through the Word, who alone can effect union in the truth, which He Himself inspired. As for poor Robert Burns, with all his poetic genius, and carnal popularity among the ungodly, he was himself much nearer the truth than his modern idolatrous admirers, when he deemed that the words, “misled by fancy’s meteor ray, by passion driven,” would be a suitable epitaph for his mis-spent life. In view of the foregoing instances of frivolous irresponsibility, on the part of professedly orthodox churches, why do we wonder at the Spirit’s absence?
We separated from the Lord’s Day Observance Association of Scotland because of the Modernists on its platforms, and loyalty to our church requires that we shall not now financially support that Society. No amount of transferring of modernist members from local branches, to take the place of modernists in other branches will suffice. While I cannot personally believe the accuracy of the statement, twice repeated, in the Spring—Summer, 1948, issue of that Society’s magazine, that congregations of the Free Presbyterian Church, as such, financially handsomely supported it, for I regard such a statement as sheer propaganda, yet it is sad to think that individuals, bearing the honoured name “Free Presbyterian,” would give this motley Society the least countenance, in view of our church’s advice to the contrary. We have a Sabbath Observance Committee of our own, which is doing excellent work, and I am sure its activities involve expense. Charity begins at home. “Be zealous, therefore, and repent.”
Neither let there be any among us with mental reservations regarding our church’s rule relative to vehicles run for commercial gain on the Lord’s Day, or relative to buying “Sunday” newspapers, despite Rev. Prof. R. A. Finlayson’s article on Sabbatarianism in the Sunday Express for the 23rd May, 1948. In that article in a “Sunday” newspaper, handed to me by a gentleman a few days after its appearance, Professor Finlayson condemns what he calls “a list of do’s and don’ts for ‘Sunday’ observance,” as, in his view, “it might well be a breach of Sabbath law,” while I personally regard writing articles for a “Sunday” newspaper, even on Sabbatarianism, as a glaring breach of Sabbath law. We, as a church, are only adhering, in this regulation about vehicles run for gain on Sabbath, to the principle of interpretation of the Fourth Commandment that characterised the old Free Church of Scotland, in her best days, as verified, for instance, by the article on “The Christian Sabbath,” by one of her worthy sons, the late godly and able Rev. W. MacIntyre, M.A., Sydney, Australia, reproduced in the Free Presbyterian Magazine for March, 1942, and originally written in 1879. One hundred per cent. loyalty demands this fidelity to principle, as even one Achan in the camp might cause the blessings of peace, unity, and harmony to be withheld. Our convictions and sympathies must be with our church sincerely, wholeheartedly, and unequivocally, if we are to avoid being regarded as play-acting hypocrites and deceivers. It is incumbent upon us to stand fast, and to hold fast, as we began in our denominational history, loyal to the doctrine of an inspired infallible Bible, at all times, but in a special manner when our nation and generation are drifting, with alarming swiftness, into the terrible maelstrom of neo-paganism; a troubled sea, in which Popery, and
every other false system of religion, science, and philosophy, can congenially flourish. It is also a time when nominal “Protestants are being educated to set inordinate store by what God makes of least account—formal union—at the expense of what He regards as of supreme value—doctrinal fidelity.” We are “doing a great work,” so we “cannot come down”; let our enemies beware of “the curse of Meroz.”
Of no other denomination in Scotland, since Covenanting times, is the description so true, in the language of Samuel Rutherford, as of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland:—”I have borne scorn and hatred, I have borne wrong and shame; Earth’s proud ones have reproached me, For Christ’s thrice-blessed name!” If we are to be faithful for the future, amid rapidly gathering storm-clouds of spiritual darkness, the other words of Mrs. Cousins’ poetic rendering of Samuel Rutherford’s biography must be fulfilled in our denominational history:—”I’ve wrestled on towards Heaven, ‘Gainst storm, and wind, and tide.” It is humanly impossible to conceive or calculate what sufferings, miseries, disasters, and calamities, individuals and nations would have been saved from, if from the dawn of the Christian era to the present day, all who professed the name of Christ had uncompromisingly adhered to the simple, primitive, pristine norm of apostolic Scriptural Christianity, as revealed in the Bible. It is equally true that there shall never be peace or blessing on earth till individuals and nations will have sincerely and penitently returned, by the supernatural sovereign grace of God, to this pure fountain of Christian truth. As no denomination, however orthodox, is better than the average moral and spiritual behaviour of its professing members, what manner of persons ought we to be in all practical holiness and godliness. Let us, consequently, individually seek the blessing of a gracious heart, a practically consistent godly life, unswerving loyalty to the truth as it is in Jesus, and let us constantly plead for an outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon ourselves, our nation, and our generation world-wide.
“He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah vi. 8).