As another year draws to an end, we cannot look back upon it with any satisfaction as to the nation’s religion and morality; but, on the contrary, we look in vain for any sign of national repentance by way of a return from our iniquities and transgressions to God, His Word and precepts. The description that Isaiah records of Israel is sadly appropriate to our case to-day: “Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward” (Isa. i, 4). And as far as the masses of the people are concerned, we appeared throughout this past year to have been determined to continue to do what seemeth good in our own eyes and to disregard and despise the Name of God and His claims as laid down in His Word. The fear of God is not before the eyes of this generation and the Lord Jesus Christ is indeed “as a root out of dry ground” to the vast majority. Our impenitence is made obvious in manifold ways.
In the Churches of the land, men who are Christians by profession and leaders of the people, have been publicly attacking the Christian faith, with little or no opposition from the people. The land is full of false prophets who speak lies in the name of the Lord, and the people love to have it so. The house of God is still largely forsaken on Sabbath and week-days, although all classes have a mind and ample time for theatres, cinemas, dances, concerts, football matches, music festivals, drama societies and political meetings, and so on. The enthusiasm for these carnal and earthly “cisterns” is to be met with in every corner of the land; and also the irreligion that goes along with it.
The Sabbath Day, according to the commandment, is observed and regarded by but a small remnant who have a gracious and believing interest in the crucified and risen Redeemer. To the most, the Lord’s Day is either a burden or a holiday. Sabbath observance by families, Church members (in thousands of cases), and communities, is almost a thing of the past. Sabbath-breakers are not debarred from the Lord’s Table in the larger denominations, and laxity in this respect prevails elsewhere. And members of the Royal Family have been repeatedly guilty of unnecessary travelling on God’s holy day.
With all the extensive printing of Bibles, the precious Scriptures are to a great extent unknown in the homes of Britain; and daily family worship is held in but few homes throughout the land. Yet old and young have a thirst for other literature. In one County Library in Scotland during the past year, 93,977 volumes of fiction were issued over against 261 religious books. We read as a nation, but we do not read the Word of life.
Then adultery, disobedience to lawful authority by children and adults, theft, pilfering, murder, etc., are common and widespread sins, by which the land is defiled and the Name of the Lord profaned.
Another serious evidence of our low state religiously is our evident indifference to and condoning of anti-Christ, Roman Catholicism in our midst, thus revealing how much we have lost the knowledge of the glorious doctrines of the Gospel of the blessed Saviour as opposed to the deceptions and dangers of Rome. On Sabbath, the 1st of October, nearly 100,000 Roman Catholics gathered from all parts of Britain, at Wembley Stadium, to hear a broadcast from the Pope and for the celebration of the blasphemy of High Mass, in connection with the centenary of what is claimed to be the restoration of the Catholic Hierarchy of England and Wales. This public propaganda in the behalf of anti-Christ is now taken as a matter of course in Protestant Britain. Changed days!
In face of all this, the Lord has been speaking to us in the threat and possible danger of a third World War, political tension in Parliament, the war in Korea, the necessity for once more building up our armaments and national defences, involving many millions of pounds expenditure, the existence of the atomic bomb weapon with indescribable potentialities for destruction, economic difficulties, pit and air disasters, with serious loss of life, and most adverse weather during harvest time. All this has had no effect upon the national conscience and conduct. We have not heard the rod nor who hath appointed it.
By our backslidings and impenitence we have, as a nation, shown deplorable forgetfulness of Him who is the well spring of all spiritual and temporal blessings and who favoured and exalted us in former times, and who so recently, once more, preserved us from the power and oppression of our enemies. The God of providence has continued to sustain the millions in this island of ours; and yet there is no sign that the goodness of God may be leading us to repentance nationally. Our wicked ingratitude in relation to our Divine benefactor is writ large over our carnal, selfish and irreligious conduct as a nation. “… The Lord hath spoken, I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me” (Isa. i, 2).
Yet we are not unmindful of the fact that the Lord of hosts has left a godly remnant throughout our nation, who are as a dew from the Lord and for whose sakes (in part) we are not exposed to the fiery indignation of heaven, on the scale meted out to Sodom and Gomorrah. Those who love the Name of God and the nation, have been looking in vain since the close of the last war for signs of a genuine and widespread national forsaking of iniquity, and turning to God and His righteous ways. Let us not deceive ourselves, the year has shown that the times are dark and may become darker as to the religious and moral state of the nation. Yet brighter times may not be very far distant as we contemplate the future, and look upon the children of our day who may be spared until the latter part of this century. The Most High alone knows the time when He shall arise once more to favour Zion and to turn our captivity, as a nation. “Thou that dwellest between the cherubims, shine forth” (Ps. lxxx, 1).