Preached at the Synod, in Glasgow, on 18th May, 1955, by
REV. JAMES MACLEOD, Greenock, Retiring Moderator.
“And when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter; should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah viii. 19, 20).
On this occasion our meditation will be on the portions read. First, we may notice, in the way of an introduction, that we may discern a similarity between the present age and the time in which the great prophet Isaiah lived, as far as the true Church of God is concerned.
Let us take special notice of what the enemies of the Church of God were saying to those who professed to be worshippers of Jehovah: “When they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter.” It was a direct challenge to the divine rule, laws, and regulations given by God to the Church. “God is a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” Truth requires no “peeping and mutterings.” When the people were advised to go to “familiar spirits” it meant a departure from the God of heaven. The word “Wizard” is the opposite of “Witch,” meaning the male. Here we are led to see more clearly that the “Wizard” meant men who set themselves apart to “peep” lies and deceive the simple. The “wizards” would be the leaders, and in a low voice to begin with would appear piously earnest to draw the people after themselves, muttering lies to deceive. That is what they had in view all the time, acting deceitfully and craftily in case any might detect their motive and object in view. The devil would come first as an angel of light, “peeping and muttering” smooth things, so gentle and considerate, that none could see his machinations but the all-seeing eye of God! “Get thee behind me, Satan.” The object of the mutterers was to draw the people away from God, His Word, and worship. This was the direct result of the fall of Adam. We see in the times of Noah
what wickedness and declensions took place long before the flood came that swept that generation away from the earth! What was the cause of it all?
Men had departed from the true worship of Jehovah. Adam began to cover himself with fig leaves. That may appear to us very foolish on the part of Adam. One would be ready to think that one that had so recently such knowledge of God, his Creator, that he would even try to hide his nakedness with fig leaves! Have we stopped to try to hide our spiritual nakedness in some way or other since the days of Adam? We have not. It is characteristic of us all that we try to hide ourselves in some way. Some may use the public house, the dance hall, Sabbath profanation, cursing, swearing, and blaspheming God; or in a false religion trying to hide ourselves from God. It is characteristic of our guilty and miserable race. When you follow up the history of men, you will find that Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities of the plain had to be destroyed because of their awful wickedness. If you follow down to the dawn of the Christian religion we find in the history of nations these terrible catastrophies, destructions, and ruin taking place such as in Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt because these nations departed from the living and true God. They had gods many, and lords many, even sacrificing their children to devils! “They sacrificed their sons and daughters unto devils.” How sin polluted the human mind! Reason is so utterly destroyed that poor sinners will bow to the lowest form of sin and vice! That could be expected of naked savages, but let us bear in mind that religious Israel fell into the lowest form of irreligion, like the rest of the heathen, although they had been given by God through Moses the clearest revelation of His mind, and the very people that “sacrificed to devils” were the custodians of the “lively oracles.” We read in the first chapter of the epistle to the Romans the state of the “civilised world” when the Apostles began their divine mission to preach the gospel to all nations.
First, I desire to bring before your notice, “Should not a people seek unto their God.” The true Church of God must watch against those who say, “Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and mutter.”
Second: Should not the living seek unto their God?
Third: The advice the Holy Spirit gives here to the Church—”To the law, and to the Testimony.”
Lastly: A warning against those who profess the same as we do, and yet do not live, and act according to the Word of God. We can have no fellowship with such societies.
First: “Should not a people seek unto their God?”
Our position as far as we are concerned as a Church, Synod and Presbyteries, Kirk Sessions and congregations is that we believe that all that is written in the Bible is given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in all its parts. We accept the Bible as God’s Word. We
have no reason to question one chapter, verse, or portion of it from Genesis to the last word in Revelation. There we stand before the Most High God! We know very well that very eminent men, some of them learned in ancient and modern history, differ from us, but this can never alter our position in holding what we know can never in this world be proven wrong. We cannot accept human opinion for facts. The Holy Spirit took good care of the Word of God down through the history of the Church to the present hour. We believe the Holy Spirit; but not even an angel from heaven if he said one word contrary to what the Holy Spirit left for us in the blessed Bible. They say “that we are not learned to challenge the conclusions of learned men.” The devil is very “learned,” evidently, in all languages, history, and no doubt he will have a good deal of knowledge of science, ancient and modern, but he will remain a liar, deceiver, and murderer.
We believe that the history of Adam is given as sure as the history, and birth, of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. That there is no difference between one part of the Bible and another. It is a complete revelation of the mind and purpose of God, and handed to us under the holy Hand of the blessed Spirit through his servants whom He used for this very end. Satan is full of malice against the Bible! Our position, therefore, is that if any man should try to turn us from that position we immediately resist and declare to the whole world that we stand upon the impregnable rock of Holy Scripture. We know that great declensions took place from the Word of God and the scriptural worship of His house in the second, third, and down to the beginning of the fourth century, and from the fifth century to the dawn of the Reformation in the early part of the 16th century. The cause of that disastrous declension in the Christian world was departing from the Word of God. In these declensions we trace the appearing of the Papal System, the Mohammedan religious system, and the Episcopal government which we find in England and Russia, which are all profoundly contrary to the Church of God in the first century of the Christian era. The gospel was preached in Asia by the Apostles, and undoubtedly the gospel was preached in some parts of Arabia, but by departing from its sublime and simple teaching the Asiatics lost the gospel, and God gave them over to the lying words of a man called Mohammed. Their “bible” is the fables of this man-called “Koran.” China is without the gospel, not but they could have it. They rejected it. The estimated population of China has been recently given at six hundred million souls! They verily listen to the mutterings of the devil’s Wizards. The same is true of India, and, we might add, all the nations of the earth to-day. Why all this blindness and gross ignorance? The Word of God is written in their own national languages. They prefer to listen to the mutterings of those who deceive them. We may add that almost the whole inhabited world is left without excuse.
There is nothing under the heavens of the Lord so great and precious in the sight of God as the Bible. His will and purpose is revealed therein for the everlasting salvation of His people. Let us value our Bibles and search them diligently and humbly seek to know His mind in His Word concerning our own salvation. When you come nearer our own times you see the terrible condition of Europe prior to the blessed Reformation. From the eighth century to the dawn of the sixteenth century gross darkness covered the people of Europe. With no law and no gospel, the people are left to die in utter ignorance, murdering and destroying each other on the field of battle, or in cold blood by the hand of the assassin. From the midst of this universal confusion and chaos God raised Martin Luther (as if from the dead literally), who was regenerated by the Holy Spirit, and began to preach to the benighted people the gospel. It was like as if the sun had risen at midnight, when the blight, curse, and darkness of Popery was at its height or, rather, at its most degraded depth. He saw clearly what was needed, and moved quickly and courageously to place the Bible in the hands of the people. Wrenched out of the hand of popery—wrenched out of the hand of the man of sin. The Satanic policy of the Pope was to keep the Word of God from the people—so like Satan! It was a considerable time after the Reformation that the Bible could be placed in the hands of the people. They had to be educated to read it and make use of it. That was the day Popery began to die a slow, painful, tortuous death. The Popes of Rome have been cursing that day to the present hour. There is no book in the world, however degraded its contents may be, that the Pope hates like the Bible. Luther, Knox, and Calvin well understood that the Bible was “a burning coal of juniper” to the guilty consciences of the Popes of Rome! The Popes directed them long and craftily to listen to his own “Wizards,” his lying priests that peeped and muttered their lying masses.
We now come to say a few words about our native land. When God raised John Knox to lead the people away from the cesspool of popery, he, too, found the miserable people illiterate, blind, and ignorant. They had no Bible, but supposing they had they could not read. Knox moved Parliament and the nobility to educate the people, open schools, appoint teachers, and call upon parents and children to learn to read. This done, the Bible was placed in their hands, and, of course, children could see that the priest and Bishops were nocturnal wolves in sheep’s clothing. Knox found the people under popery as they are to-day in Spain, illiterate and in darkness, ready to believe anything and everything the priest would tell them. The priest was the servant of the Pope, and the Pope was the servant of Satan! The Reformers saw clearly that the Bible must be placed in the hands of the people. They were for centuries listening to the “peeping and mutterings” of the priest. The priest told the people that he and the Pope had “Familiar Spirits” which could tell them about
heaven, hell, and purgatory! We see clearly the need of education so that the poor people could read the Word of God. First educate them, and then place the Bible in their hands, just as we have been endeavouring to do for near 50 years in Rhodesia. That was the work the Reformers did in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and to the Head of the Church be all praise and glory for how well they succeeded. The Reformers were the pioneers in educating the people of Scotland, and not the Modernists of the twentieth century.
The next point we shall consider is our attitude and adherence to the Bible, and the Confession of Faith, and Reformation attainments as settled at the Revolution Settlement: “Should not a people seek unto their God?” our fathers were asked and, indeed, the strongest possible persuasion and arguments used by clever but subtle minded men, to listen to the “mutterings of the Wizards” that rose in the Church to draw the godly from the Bible and Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland. First: they began to “mutter, peep,” and suggest that there were errors in the Bible. This was an attack from within the Church. It was formally from outside.
In Scotland the Church was free, more or less, from what became known as “Destructive Criticism” of the Text of Scripture until and after 1843. After that date the flood became a deluge in attacking the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. There are no signs of the flood of wicked criticism abating throughout the Protestant world. That surely was, and is, ruinous to the Protestant Church! Whatever latitudinarian practices that were in many quarters in the Church of Scotland before 1843, from that date one can trace that the discipline of the Church was from that day more or less a thing of the past. When Professor Robertson Smith introduced into the Free Church in 1863 his “destructive criticism” of the Bible, the dye was cast, and many rose in that Church who were of the same mind with Smith, and from that year the Free Church began to disintegrate, and finally went into fragments. The young men of that noble Church wrecked it. Smith was a young man, and those that supported him were also young in experience and young in years, although they were instrumental by subtle arguments to draw many of the more mature men to their side. They had the “familiar spirit” of learning, which not a few of them had imbibed in the Rationalistic Universities of Germany.
In the divine providence of God there was one man in the Assembly of the Free Church in May, 1893, the Rev. Donald MacFarlane, who rose and protested against those that corrupted and virtually destroyed all that the Reformers stood for from the time the first Reformed Assembly met in 1560. If it were not for the stand made by that man of God in defence of the Word of God, we would not be here to-night. There would be no occasion for us to be here. The most of you were not born then, and the few of you that were born were too young in
years to understand, or remember, much about it. God enjoined upon Moses, Aaron, and those that should come after them to instruct the people, how He brought them out of the land of Egypt, by His almighty hand, to give them the good land that He had promised to their fathers. This was to be done generation after generation. If this divine duty should be neglected, or ignored, or forgotten, they would suffer for it; for it was God whom they slighted and ignored. It is our precious privilege also not only to refresh our own minds on the wonderful way God in His providence has been dealing with us, and the fathers of our Church, but we have a duty to our people which, if we neglect it, we sin against God. It must be done generation after generation according to God’s command to us and to our children. When the Lord in His mercy guided and protected His servant, Rev. Donald MacFarlane, in the Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in May, 1893 (who stood in defence of the Word of God) what was the cause and object he had in his mind, and this action? The preservation of the Bible, as he vowed at his ordination to do. That is what Knox, Luther, Calvin, and all the Reformers did in their day. It was the Bible or nothing. Mr. MacFarlane preferred to suffer the deprivation of all earthly goods (which he actually did) than that he would give up a jot or tittle of the Word of God. He did not listen to the Wizards that peep and mutter. “Should not the living seek unto their God?” Where are the children, and grand-children, of those who departed from the Word of God in Scotland in 1863, 72, 92, and in 1929? Where has it landed them? The Most High only knows where they are!
It has come to this that a minister in the most of the Protestant pulpits (outside Free Presbyterian pulpits) can stand up and now say, “I don’t believe in the Bible; I do not believe that Christ was God.” They ruined the cause of God in Scotland! One of the Professors of the Church of Scotland (so-called) lauded their young ministers that they were not in the archaic position of their fathers, that they would believe such doctrines as their fathers believed—that is, of course, the “Virgin Birth,” and the physical resurrection of the Redeemer. There is where their hypocrisy and atheism landed them. My dear Free Presbyterians, “Should not a people seek unto their God?” Take a firm hold on your Bibles. Pay no attention to what the “Wizards” of Satan say against it. The cause of our separation from our fellow countrymen and women is as clear as noon-day. They do not believe the Word of God: we do in all its jots and tittles. From that position we must not move. The thanksgiving and thankoffering are to be given to the Head of the Church, the Lord Jesus Christ. The Rev. Donald MacFarlane was the last man to consider himself a “leader,” and that was equally true of the minister of this congregation—the late Rev. Neil Cameron. They were the servants of the Lord Jesus Christ. We had men of God at the head of the spiritual affairs of His Church. This Church had only one
Leader, and that only Leader is the Lord Jesus Christ. We had, and now have chief men among equals according to their age, experience, learning, and faithfulness to the Word of God and the souls of men! We recognise no leader on the face of this earth, but one and one only, in the Person of the glorious Head of His Church, the Lord Jesus. May the Lord in His mercy defend and protect this Church from such a man rising within its pale that would presumptuously arrogate to himself “lordship” over the people of God! Here we stand regarding the Headship of our adorable Saviour Jesus Christ. He is our leader; and He is our Head. He is the Head of our Church; He is the Leader of our people; and He must be the Leader in pulpit, as well as in the pew, at the family altar, as in secret prayer. Christ our Saviour, Leader, God, guide, our all! “Should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead.” The fathers who formed the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland would not bow the knee to the “familiar spirits” that attacked the Word of God from Genesis to Revelation. You young Free Presbyterians may be challenged, and the graceless enemies may say to you, “You have no learned men among you like other Churches.” In human learning, we accept the challenge, and let them produce their reasons to prove that any other Protestant denomination within the bounds of the United Kingdom can excel the Free Presbyterian Ministry on solid and Scriptural knowledge of the theology of the Church from the days of the Apostles, of the history before and after the Reformation, etc. They are cognisant of the hypocrisy of those who impose their intellectual attainments on the spiritually blind people that follow them.
As Paul said, “They compelled us to refute their deceitful claims.” If atheism, infidelity, and unfaithfulness to the Word of God, the souls of men, and to the rising generation, be considered learning, they have truly an overdose of it. When our Lord was on earth, His Bible was all that was then written from Genesis to Malachi. He preached, He taught and instructed the people from the Word of God. Do you find in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John one single suggestion that He found one error in the Scriptures of truth from Genesis to Malachi? No. He accepted, as the servant of Jehovah, all that was written in Moses, the prophets, and Psalms, which comprised all the books of the Old Testament. He saw no verse, or part, or portion out of date or missed. What a Leader to follow! How stand other leaders and scholars in relation to our glorious Leader? They are “too learned” and proud to bow the knee before the divine Head of the Church of God. Now, notice the infinite value of having such a glorious Leader over our Church, over the affairs of God’s House, as the blessed Lord Jesus. What a blessed example He set before the fishermen of Galilee, Peter, James and John. They were taught by the Holy Spirit and were mighty in His hand to bring down the strongholds of savage idolatry throughout the Roman Empire. Time will
not permit me to continue longer on these points, although I could enlarge on all of them; but that will suffice meantime.
The third point we were to consider is: The advice the Holy Spirit gives here to the Church: “To the Law and to the Testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.” The first thing we should consider is what do we understand by “Law” and by “Testimony”? I take it to mean the whole of the revelation of grace beginning with the Book of Genesis, ending with the Amen of the Book of Revelation. In the Law we see a revelation of God’s holiness, justice, righteousness, goodness, and truth in His relationship to man. He is eternally the God of law, order, wisdom; yea, in the whole revelation of God we observe laws, moral, natural, and physical governing all things, so that not even a sparrow can fall to the ground without the operation of the physical laws of God, the Creator of the sparrow, and the sustainer of His own universe. Here are laws which can be observed by the simple folk. We, therefore, conclude that the material universe was created by the God whom we seek to serve and worship.
However, we are more interested in the “Moral Law” as comprehended in the Ten Commandments and our relationship to the Moral Law. In Genesis we read of the creation of man, his work, his fall, his being driven out of the Garden of Eden, and the promise of redemption through the seed of the woman. When we study (as we ought to study) the Moral Law, like a mirror, we see our face in it, and our deformity re the requirements of the Moral Law, which is holy, just and good. “Through the Law is the knowledge of sin.” It is both solemn and painful to behold oneself as fallen, ruined and lost in the presence of this divine holy law of God. We accept the truth of God—we fell in Adam—we are lost. We have God’s testimony to the holiness, purity, and justice of that Moral Law. In the second place, we have the “Testimony” or the revelation of grace. God purposed from all eternity to save sinners fallen and lost in Adam, through the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ we have a most gracious and merciful manifestation of mercy, love and kindness from God to those that were ready to perish forever. The doctrines of grace run through the whole Bible starting with Abel and his sacrifice of blood, Noah, Abraham, Moses, to Malachi. We have the Lamb of God who was promised, who glorified God in our nature, magnified the law, and made it honourable for us, satisfied the demands of justice, crushed the head of the serpent, the devil, made reconciliation for iniquity, and brought in an everlasting righteousness. Where, then, do we find all the doctrines we preach and believe? In the Bible. For the Bible is the “Law and Testimony” for us. Our Church holds all the revealed doctrines of the Bible. We have a most excellent summary of it in the Confession of Faith; and to that most scriptural summary we do wholeheartedly adhere,
believe it, and some of us have vowed to assert, maintain, and defend it, through the grace of God, as long as we are in this life. The apostles appealed to the Word of God for their doctrines, and they had the holy example of their blessed Master—for He appealed to the Word of God from Genesis to Malachi. In our case we have not only the Scriptures of the Old Testament, but of the New. It was to the Word of God they appealed when accused by the Jews of introducing new doctrines. The Reformers of the sixteenth century did the same thing. Luther appealed to the Word of God. Knox did the same, and so did the English Reformers and martyrs. This was the substance of what they all said and testified: “To the Law, and to the Testimony.”
What an extraordinary sight the poor sinner gets of himself in the day the Holy Spirit reveals to the soul its sin in the presence of an infinite, holy, just God! Moses trembled at the sight, when God was giving them the “fiery law,” or the holy law; the people wept. Paul tells us that when the “commandment came,” “I died.” It was not the law that “died” but the sinner to all his false pretences and corrupt notions of being “good” without regeneration. No doubt, young Paul, while attending the College and the University of his own day, he would be paying close attention to the mutterings of the old Greek “Wizards.” We can also believe that Gamaliel would be laying great stress on the “traditions of the fathers.” Paul, at these seats of learning, came out blind and ignorant, like the younger men of our own day. We must bring all doctrines, worship, practice, profession, and belief to the Word of God. The law condemns the sinner and clearly convinces him of sin, guilt, and his responsibility. If he lost his ability to save his soul, he did not lose his responsibility to give an account of his conduct to God. He must be thoroughly convinced by the Holy Spirit that by the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified in the sight of God. It is in this prostrate condition, lost, hell-deserving, and naked, the curse of the law in his conscience, and the wrath of God upon his person, that he is brought to the feet of the Redeemer. He could not move a limb of his soul to save his soul. It would be madness to offer him a “decision card” to decide for Christ. That would be mockery of the most cruel kind. You might as well offer it to an irrational animal. No one can deliver his soul from the curse and grasp of the law of God, and his Judge, but the Lord Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the lost. Can he do, think, or say anything for himself? Can he will to believe in Christ? No, the will is the servant of sin, the devil, and corruption. The will is like the leper covered with sores from head to foot. It is a lost will, a diseased will, and conscience condemning the will for its former vile actions. He is cut adrift and ready to perish. He cannot make one hair black or white. God reveals to the poor guilty sinner the way of salvation. Christ is the Saviour and remedy. The satisfaction rendered by Christ is in every respect commensurate with all that holy
justice demanded of the convinced sinner in the sight of an infinite, holy, and righteous God. We read that God is just, and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. God is a witness not only to the inflexibility and holiness of law and justice, but God is a witness to the gospel, as evident as He is to the law. We read, in addressing all that will be saved of our lost race, God in the Person of the Father, saying, “This is my beloved Son: hear ye Him.” In Him the Father is delighted, in the redemption of all that shall be saved of the human race, and which Christ shall present before the eternal Majesty of heaven, when the physical heavens, earth, and all the material creation passes into everlasting nothingness. Christ shall present His Church before the Father at the great day, as a people redeemed from hell and death, curse, and wrath, through His own blood, holy and pure from sin in His own spotless garment of imputed righteousness. Christ found them out, God the Spirit called them, the Father brought them to Christ; and Christ will set them before the Father at the great day. The salvation of the soul is from the free, sovereign will of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. All of grace.
Now, “To the law and to the Testimony.” All doctrines, whether past or present, must be brought to the test of the Word of God. Will it stand there? Can it be confirmed by the Word? If it is not in accordance with the Word of God, it must be rejected. “To the Law and to the Testimony” of the Word with it, to be examined in the bright light of this divine revelation. That is what our fathers did when men brought in to the Free Church of Scotland erroneous doctrines that wrecked that Church. The Declaratory Act was brought to the test of the Word of God, but there it fell like Dagon of the Philistines on the threshold of the Word of God. This is our great and precious privilege, to bring all that we hear to the test of the Word of God, as those that went before us did. It was the Word of God that made the separation between our Church and our fellow countrymen. It was the men that acted and introduced false and erroneous doctrines into the Reformed Church that made the divisions and cleavage among the Protestants of this land. The sin of schism is a terrible sin in the sight of God. Let us be clear in our own conscience that we are not guilty of this sin before God. Are you right at heart in the sight of God within the pale of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland or have you any dubiety in your mind or doubts as to the position and relationship to the Word of God of this Church? Let each one examine his own conscience as in the sight of God that you are free of this sin. It may be lurking where least expected and showing itself within the Church in subtle ways that few can detect it. God sees it, and knows where it is in operation. Schism is first in the mind and shows itself in the conduct as opportunity offers itself to the deceitful man! For you know that we have no right in Scripture or reason to be separated from our fellow countrymen in the affairs
of God’s House if we are not bound by the Word of God to our present testimony and position and to keep separate from them.
If it was their departure that made the cleavage between us, we are clear of that sin of SCHISM. The reason must be Scriptural for our separation from them. If it is we that make the separation, and continue it, we are then guilty of Schism; if it is they by their departures from the Word of God, then they are guilty of that heinous sin, and must bear the full burden of the cause of our separation—we mean the burden of guilt. You are (at least, some of you are) eye witnesses to the fact that there were men in this Church who were not sincere and true at heart to the cause that they had professed to assert, maintain, and defend. What was in their heart revealed itself in the open, and they were spewed out as we read in Revelation. The Church could not see this until they made it manifest in their action, but God was seeing it. We therefore take it that all who fear God in this Church consider the sin of schism a grave sin in the sight of God. It introduces into the Church the spirit of division, strife, and confusion which always ends in separation, and by it the cause of the Lord is weakened in the land, family, and congregation. “To the Law and to the Testimony,” for the cause of these divisions. It was very extraordinary that at the very time the Declaratory Act was passed in May, 1892, there was at the same time a body of men in England, in the University of Oxford, who were openly attacking and traducing the work of the Reformers both in England and the Continent, who became known afterwards as the “Tractarians.” Their aim was to break up the Reformed Church of England and destroy the Reformed faith of that Church. We are not, of course, in full agreement with all that is contained in the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England, but we are in full agreement with the Protestant Church of England in her opposition to the Church of Rome.
In Scotland there was a similar movement to destroy the Westminster Confession of Faith of the Reformed Church in Scotland. The two movements were as to their aim and object almost identical—that was to destroy the blessed Reformed position of the Protestants of Great Britain and to introduce abominations which the Reformers (by the light of God’s Word) were the happy instruments to abolish from the minds of their fellow countrymen. Our fathers brought this new and serious departure to the test of the Word of God, and saw in its heavenly light that it was contrary to the “Law and Testimony” of prophets and apostles. It was not with them, what saith the “Declaratory Act” or the “Tractarians of Oxford”? But what, “saith the Lord”; and what is written in the “Law and Testimony” of the Holy Spirit to the Church of God to the end of time? We should be greatly helped and encouraged that we stand where we are this evening in the company of the Reformed divines of the past, with our inspired Bibles and with divine grace and guidance we hope to stand here to the last
breath. We are, as they were, advised to bring every form of doctrine and practices to the test of the Word of God. We may here notice one special instance of our national declension from the Word of God, the Lord’s Day. Sabbath desecration is a clear evidence of that departure throughout our beloved land. This is one (among many) that shows how the Protestants have forsaken the God of their fathers and the Word of God. When we endeavour to practice and exercise the discipline of God’s Word on those who go astray from the path of truth and morality, we meet with criticism from other Churches that ceased to exercise any discipline on their own people, however far astray they go from the truth of God on Sabbath Day or week day. When we ask those who may apply for baptism or other Church privileges if they are engaged in unlawful work on the Lord’s Day, or are not attending on the public places of worship on Sabbath, and say to them, “You cannot get such privilege from us unless you cease from your work on Sabbath (which is neither of the nature of necessity or mercy), and attend the worship of God on his holy day.” What is the attitude of some who ask for Church privileges who are engaged on unnecessary work on Sabbath? They say: “If you refuse me and my family the privilege I ask for, I can get it in another Church.” They go to the “other Church” and get all the privileges they may wish to ask for and no questions asked about their life, walk, and conversation.
The late Rev. Neil Cameron told that he kept a note of all that left his own congregation in Glasgow; and on the question of baptism alone over one hundred families left his congregation, and re Sabbath work! They would get it in the Free Church. That was breaking up the discipline of the Word of God, and the results are simply deplorable throughout our land. We have to contend with the same difficulties now as our fathers had before us. The discipline of the Word of God is necessary to the well ordered government of the Church. And we say, the Protestant Churches are rushing on the broad way of ecclesiastical suicide. We hold that the Moral Law of God is binding on every true believer while under the easy yoke of the gospel, as long as life lasts. It is the moral rule of his life. In the Church of Rome they have no regard to the “Moral Law” of God. Why? Because it condemns their infamous conduct. Are the Protestant Churches to follow in the wake of that abomination? It looks like it!
Our conclusion is: “If they will not speak according to this word (the Word of God) it is because there is no light in them.” All the education that one may attain to in any or all the Universities of Europe will not enlighten the soul of a sinner in a saving knowledge of God. All the philosophical, scientific, and modern knowledge of this age or any other age can never enlighten the soul of a sinner or convince him of his guilt and misery before God. The sinner needs the infinite power of the Holy Spirit to convince him of his
need of Christ as the only Saviour of the lost. That is what we need to-day to awaken the dead among us. We know that soul-destroying doctrines are taught in our Universities, colleges, and pulpits throughout the land. Is it not because there is no light in them?
I asked some years ago of one of the ministers of the present Church of Scotland on his way back from the General Assembly of that Church, “Why did he not protest in the Assembly against the awful utterances of Dr. Cox of Aberdeen, when he declared publicly that he did not believe in the “Virgin Birth” of Christ or in the physical resurrection of Christ, adding, ‘I am 63 years in the ministry, and I never believed it, and I know that the vast majority of the ministers of the Church of Scotland are of the same mind as I am.'” I said to this Rev. gentleman, “Cox involved the vast majority of you ministers. He made Unitarians of you.” It was no concern of his. There is no light in them! It is likely true to say that few, if any, of you are old enough to remember when D. L. Moody came to this country. Moody was out and out an Arminian, and the people flocked to hear this new presentation of the “gospel” by Mr. Moody as Arminianism suits the unregenerated minds of graceless men and women. Moody passed away to render his account to God!
Within the memory of the most of you another evangelist came from America known as Pastor Russell. He, too, had large audiences to preach his diabolical doctrines to, and left the seed of his hypocritical and soul-destroying doctrines behind him, so that you have the progeny of Pastor Russell in this country to-day—a herd known by the designation of “Jehovah’s Witnesses.” They, too, do not believe in Christ as the Saviour of the lost. There was Arminianism preached in Glasgow recently by another “American Evangelist” of the same brand as D. L. Moody—salvation by persuasion! There is nothing in it but the old theology of James Arminius, “salvation by works.” The Holy Spirit says that it is by grace sinners are saved. From a purely doctrinal standard we are Calvinists. That is to say, according to the Scriptural standard of doctrines that Calvin expounded from the Word of God. We reject Arminianism as God-dishonouring and soul destroying doctrines. How dare they, by their methods, ask poor sinners to do the impossible?
We knew of Billy Graham before he came to this country. How did Christ preach? How did His apostles preach? How did the prophets preach? If we speak not according to the Word of God, it is because there is no light in us. There must be a turning to the Word of God. Law and gospel must be preached as laid down in the Bible. The Arminian will quote Scripture and teach (at least in words) about heaven, hell, death and corruption, immorality, and may be very orderly outwardly, but he all the time holds that there is in the man himself in his natural will, if he only exercises it, that power and ability to
believe to the saving of the soul. Where, then, doth the Holy Spirit come in? “He may help a little, but man himself is the prime operator in the work.” How like the truth but how full of poison! How can a dead person operate on himself? “Dead in trespasses and sin.” Arminianism is treason against the gospel. It needs the creative power of the Holy Spirit to regenerate man, make a new creature of him in Christ Jesus. My friends, adhere faithfully to the testimony of your fathers and of the conservative divines of the blessed Reformation. Adhere honourably to the testimony of the fathers of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland. The cause of Christ is very low and weak in Scotland to-day. The irreligion and the immoral conduct of the people is a proof of that assertion. The Lord in His infinite mercy and love left this small remnant to witness on His side against error, hypocrisy, and false doctrines and false forms of worship. God is able to do the mightiest work with the few as with millions. We are not against communion and fellowship with our fellow countrymen if they turn to the Word of God and the practice of true godliness.
In conclusion, we say we cannot tolerate or associate with men who do not hold the Word of God, the discipline thereof, and the practice of godliness in their walk, life, and conversation. We are not schismatics. No arms are more extended and no hearts more open to poor sinners than the godly within the pale of our Church. Fear not what enemies may say to the contrary. May God bestow upon you all His grace, and may the Holy Spirit take possession of your hearts and minds to enable you to bring all things to the test of the Word of God, to keep you steadfast and faithful to the noble testimony of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland in your day, and hand the witness and testimony of your fathers to your children as they did to us. Bear always in mind that we must all stand at the Judgment-Seat of Christ, and all will be serious enough there when the final decision is given that shall last forever. “To the Law and to the Testimony: if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them.”