Floods in Australia.
During the latter part of February unprecedented floods swept over a large area of New South Wales, Australia. People in Britain have been sympathetically affected with the news that at least 70 persons are known to have lost their lives, and many are yet unaccounted for. Hundreds of thousands of sheep have been lost, and the value of the loss and damage is calculated at two and a half million pounds. We are sure it is gratifying to the citizens of Britain that the Government has agreed to give £250,000 to assist in relief work in New South Wales. Calamities are taking place in all parts of the world. We had serious floods in Britain, with loss of life, and now in Australia. Other calamitous happenings there have been in these recent times. God who rules the rain, the snow, the floods, the wind and all else, has been indeed speaking to individuals, communities, towns, cities and nations, by way of reproof and punishment for iniquity and ungodliness, in this generation. There is no sign that people in Australia or in this country have been hearing the rod and who hath appointed. We are still conspicuously, as a generation, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God.
A Boy Portrays the Saviour on Television.
A boy named Jonathan Swift, aged 12, was chosen by the B.B.C. to play the part of Jesus as a boy in a children’s television play on March 10th. This was the first time that such was done in a B.B.C. television production. The boy said in being chosen for this part, “I have to be more solemn than I usually am, but not too solemn.” This idolatrous and blasphemous procedure was once upon a time banned and condemned in this professed Christian nation. Now the less regard we have to the honour of the Son of God, as set forth in the Gospels, the bolder some are becoming in using His divine and blessed Name for public entertainment, under the guise of religion. Violation of divine commandments shall not go unpunished.
Roman Cardinal Attends Theatre on Sabbath.
On Sabbath night of the 20th January last the R.C. Cardinal Griffin, of London, attended a theatrical show at the Adelphi Theatre, London, on his 56th birthday. The Roman Catholic Stage Guild organised this occasion for fleshly desecration of the Lord’s Day. The entertainment provided by actors and actresses went on for more than four hours and ended about midnight. The Cardinal applauded, laughed, and stayed until the end. And so this is the way “holy” clericals of Rome can conduct themselves on God’s holy Day. The true Christian would, of course, have nothing to do with such entertainment on a week night far less the Sabbath. “Come out from among them and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing,” saith the Word of God. But the Mass and carnal merriment go well together on the same day for the priests of Rome. No wonder God raised up a Martin Luther in His mercy and pity for the benefit of thousands of poor sinners.
Bowling in Glasgow Parks on Sabbath.
The Corporation of Glasgow recently sought permission of the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, Sir Robert Calver, Q.C., to amend the Corporation by-laws to permit bowling to take place on the bowling greens in Glasgow parks. Opposition was offered to this request by some religious organisations in the city without success. And so golf, tennis, and now bowling can be carried on in the public parks of Glasgow on the Lord’s Day. This is Satan’s kingdom moving forward, and the marks of it being made more plain in Glasgow as time goes on. No Sabbath, no Church, no religion according to the Bible; no God, no hope that will bring eternal life and happiness to the worldly sinners of Glasgow! What then? Masses of sinners going down the broad way to destruction. Destruction is written over Satan’s kingdom.
The Death Penalty: a Wise Decision.
During the middle of February the House of Commons debated questions connected with the infliction of the death penalty for the crime of murder. There was a motion put down and moved that the death penalty be abolished in Britain for the probationary period of five years. This was defeated by 245 to 214, a majority of 31 votes. We are truly relieved that the Government opposed this motion and that it was defeated. One line of argument and reasoning used for abolition was that the death penalty was not a deterrent. And it was questioned by some Members of Parliament if the death penalty prevented murder. But we heard nothing from this debate clarifying the fact that the death penalty is punishment for a capital crime; not, in the first instance, a deterrent to would-be murderers, but the exercising of a Scriptural and just punishment for wickedly and wilfully taking away another man’s life. To send a man to prison for ten years for robbery with violence is not, in the first instance, inflicted as a deterrent to others but as a just punishment—and so on.