WE are reprinting below a letter which we wrote to the Editor of The Scotsman, Edinburgh, and which appeared in that paper on the 14th April, 1955. Our reasons for doing so are that our Church people at home, and other readers, should be informed of the subtle ways in which Roman Catholic propaganda is insinuated into even publications of anything but a religious character, and also we take it for granted that only a percentage of our people have perused this letter, the terms of which are as follows:—
Sir,—There appeared in your issue of April 8 a review of the West Highland Survey, edited by Dr. F. Fraser Darling. Associated with him in this work were several specialists and four field survey officers, the latter bearing Highland names. The review is informative and lucid, and readers are told that this volume devotes much space to the modern problems of crofting, such as the decline and change in population in the crofting counties in the West Highlands.
It appears that this panel of experts on mundane matters entered the realm of religion in their Survey. The review informs us that in dealing with the effect of religion on the vitality of crofting townships they comment on the hostility of the stricter Presbyterian sects to music, song and dance, and the unwillingness of ministers to interest themselves in secular affairs. Obviously this stricture is pointed at the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland at anyrate.
As a Free Presbyterian minister, I am familiar with conditions in the West Highlands. As a Church and as ministers we are interested in the educational, economic, and general wellbeing of our Highland people, but we are obliged to concern ourselves primarily with the souls of those under our charge, and with their spiritual welfare, having in view the world to come. We conscientiously consider that the dance band, songs, and the all-night dance, and the characteristic atmosphere operate against the influence of the holy truths of the Gospel of Christ and salvation, and are inconsistent with that practice which is after godliness.