Oban Hotel Association Desires Sabbath Trains.
It appears that Oban and District Hotel and Boarding House Association has more desire for making money by encouraging others to transgress God’s holy day than they have for the honour of God and the keeping of the Christian Sabbath. At the end of January it was reported that British Railways had turned down representations by the above Association for the running of “Sunday” excursions from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Oban during the summer months. The British Railways felt that such facilities would not be justified by the demands made for them. No credit to British Railways for coming to this decision to the disappointment of the Oban Hotel Association. If there was a demand, which the railways have not been slack in trying to create everywhere, and the possibility of good cash returns, Oban would have been promised railway “Sunday” excursions during the summer, and the trains would once more pour hundreds of Scottish pagans into Oban and district and the hotels, to desecrate the Lord’s Day and further provoke the God of heaven to wrath against us as a nation. But what of the hotel and boarding-house owners? We understand that it is most difficult for passing travellers to find accommodation in Oban and district during the summer months, accommodation being fully engaged by holidaymakers. Of course the Hotel and Boarding-House Association members are out to “make hay while the sun shines,” seven days a week, without any regard to the Fourth Commandment at all. They wish the churchless, irreligious pleasure seekers of Glasgow and Edinburgh to come and help to fill their coffers on the Sabbath. What have the people of Oban to say about this renewed worldly endeavour to secularise the Sabbath in their town and district? If the railways were sure of making money the request would have been granted.
The Pope on Television.
The Pope is expected to canonise his predecessor Pius X on May the 20th, if now his health will permit.
The pompous ceremonial, to take place outside St. Peter’s Cathedral, Rome, is to be shown on television to viewers in various parts of the world. The empty, useless, futile and unscriptural ceremony of canonisation of a dead Pope is to be performed by the present Pope in jewelled robes. Jewelled robes forsooth! How completely unlike and out of harmony with the lowly circumstances of the Saviour and His Apostles. Peter had no man-made jewelled robes, and neither have the masses of poor Italians, who have enough to do to make ends meet in providence. The British Broadcasting Corporation are to take an active part in televising this ecclesiastical theatrical show of the Papacy. They recently televised the Mass from Leeds, in face of many protests. Can we wonder, when Mr. Cecil McGivern, a Roman Catholic, is controller of Television programmes. He has already left for Rome to discuss details of the canonisation business with Vatican TV authorities. This man will need to be watched and curbed, or else, true to type, he will take complete advantage of his position to further propaganda for Pope, priest and superstition.
Tremendous Cost of Billy Graham Crusade.
Who is Billy Graham? He is an American evangelist. He gets a great deal of publicity in America. His publicity agents are now working and organising hard in this country for what they call a Greater London Crusade, to be led by this Billy Graham. What is the crusade to cost in terms of cash? A Mr. Roy Cattel, secretary, in London, is reported in the English Churchman as stating, “The estimated cost of the crusade was £100,000, of which £50,000 would come from America with the balance being raised in this country.” We leave our readers to think over and pass their own judgment upon a preaching crusade from America to London which is to cost this colossal sum of money. Are there no men amid the eight million inhabitants of Greater London, who are preaching the pure doctrines of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom the millions of London sinners could hear, if they had the desire? We have quite a few more questions in mind regarding such a crusade as this, even although the English Churchman reports that “At the conclusion of the crusade the accounts would be audited by well-known auditors and made public.” When Moody and Sankey, the American evangelists, who came over to this country about 70 years ago, with their dangerous Arminian doctrine and hymn-singing appeals to the emotions of poor, ignorant sinners, money was a big question with them too. They had to be guaranteed a certain sum of money (not small) before they would promise to hold a “revival campaign” in any particular place. The simple explanation of one present-day aspect of Arminian doctrine is that Christ has done all to save sinners—sinners have nothing to do but believe, and this they are said to be capable of doing, without much (if any) reference to the Holy Spirit. The total depravity of man’s nature, his inability to do any good of himself, and the absolute need of the Holy Spirit to beget saving faith in the heart of the sinner, if preached scripturally and clearly by Billy Graham, would soon bring to an end a lot of carnal enthusiasm in his type of crusade to-day.
Lochcarron Presbytery and Lack of Elders.
On Wednesday, the 3rd of February, the Lochcarron Presbytery of the Church of Scotland, Ross-shire, at its meeting at Kyle of Lochalsh, discussed the lack of elders. Ministers cannot find men willing to accept office and are unable to form Kirk Sessions. The press report states that after the meeting one minister gave expression to his views on the situation. He mentioned the unwillingness of Church people to become communicant members, and that for generations preachers fenced the Lord’s Table with such sternness that to this day the privilege of partaking of Communion is regarded as a reward for saintliness rather than the acceptance of Christ’s invitation to believers. He also referred to what he called “the almost superstitious terror that surrounds the sacrament,” no doubt in the minds of people in the Highlands. These are sentiments with which we are becoming familiar, as the Church of Scotland ministers are becoming increasingly faced with a dearth of members and elders in the North and West. They fail to recognise that even in their denomination, broad in doctrine and practice as it is, the influence of past preachers noted for piety, soundness in the faith, and faithful and powerful preaching of the whole counsel of God, in the Highlands, still affects numbers of their own people. Such men and women no doubt feel in their consciences that they need more than a mere intellectual, formal assent to Christian doctrine in order to partake of the Lord’s Supper. That is of course all the most of Church of Scotland ministers require of adherents, to accept them as members. In the cities, and elsewhere also, members are numbered by hundreds and up to thousands in some Church of Scotland congregations. Elders are appointed by the score. Conversion of men as sinners by the work of the Holy Spirit as a spiritual necessity for fitness for the Lord’s Table, does not enter into the minds of the most of these ministers, who do not know themselves what it is to be “born again” of the Spirit of God, according to Christ’s teaching. The aforesaid minister lays the “law” down to those whom he describes as faithful believers, inferring that there ought to be no difficulty in their minds in responding to what he calls “Christ’s gracious invitation,” that is, to the Lord’s Table. True believers, that is men and women who fear God and value above all else a genuine, saving union to Christ by a living faith, have often found it difficult, on self-examination, to discover in their soul’s experience clear and assuring evidences of the possession of that faith. But the ministerial speaker of the Lochcarron Presbytery, on this question, appears to be quite oblivious to all this. Stern fencing of the Lord’s Table in the past and a superstitious terror in the present are, he thinks, keeping down the number of their members and leaving them with difficulty in obtaining men to be elders. There are plenty of theatre-going, dancing and card-playing members and elders throughout the Church of Scotland, without tirading against unconverted men and women in the Highlands who, still left with common sense, refuse to profess what they feel they are not. Now in relation to all this, we also know of feyness as to numbers of members and the great need for godly elders to serve Christ in His true cause in Scotland. But we also recognise that we are living in a dark day spiritually, and that the Holy Spirit is not working along with even the pure gospel of Christ, as in days past. Paul and Apollos could not convert men and women and make true Christians of them. The Lord did that. He gave the increase. But sections of the professing Christian Church to-day will fain make members and elders without reference at all to the fundamental teaching of the Bible. And as to the scarcity of candidates for the ministry in the Church of Scotland, a campaign has been carried on for some time now for “recruits.” Has there been any word of “conversion” and “a call from the Lord” as preparatory to entering upon the holy ministry of the gospel? We have not read of such matters being referred to. As we have noted on other occasions, there are over one million communicant members in the Church of Scotland, and their Christianity does not seem to be having any radical effect for good in Scotland commensurate with such an extraordinary number of professing Christians. Why?