Home Discipline Needed.
At a Prison Officer’s Association Conference at Preston last May, references were made to the background of lack of discipline in the home with regard to crime among the young. A principal officer of an institution said, “Our criminal population will only tend to decrease when there is a little more discipline and training, not only in the prisons, the borstals and the approved schools, but in the ordinary educational system and in the home. Until such time as all parents take a pride in the training of their own children, particularly during the formative years up to the age of seven, the present day trend towards crime will continue. In spite of the theorists, we need more of the ‘thou shalt not’ and a greater respect for a code of morality.”
These observations are wise and touch the very foundation of a serious state of affairs. They strike at the modern view, often expressed, that “thou shalt not” is not the proper approach to conserve right behaviour by the youth of today. But “thou shalt not” occurs five times in the second part of the decalogue, the laws which God gave through Moses on Mount Sinai. Undue liberties being given to the young, beginning in the homes, are having disastrous affects. At the same conference, a member of Parliament said, “Discipline in the home is weaker than it used to be. Young people have much more money and a great many more tempting things to spend it on. These circumstances all tend to diminish that respect for authority that used to be a very sane feature of the older British Society.”
How true all this is! Yet, as has been pointed out before, homes without the Bible and its influence, cannot be expected to turn out a well-ordered society morally. God being ignored by parents and children, leads to a society in which everyone seeks to do that which is right in his own eyes, and we have arrived at this, to a great extent, throughout Britain.
The Cost of Pleasure and Demands for Increased Pay.
There appeared in the Daily Express, on 22nd May, the following statements on the cost of pleasure in relation to demands for increased pay— “The cost of living is the reason put forward by workers’ unions for every pay rise for a number of years. But is it really the cost of living that is the cause? Would it not be more truthful to blame the cost of pleasure? When we read of the millions of pounds spent on tobacco, drink, football pools and horse racing, and the money spent by the public attending sports events, is it any wonder the pay packet is blamed for any shortage in meeting the weekly budget? If workers in Britain spent 5s. less each week on this outlay on pleasure, they could afford to pay the economic rent required for council houses, thus wiping out the subsidy charged on the general rates and benefiting all ratepayers, including the subsidised houses.”
Such factual and realistic statements are enlightening and convincing to right minded people. And the Word of God substantiates the point made by the writer, as we read in Proverbs xxi. 17: “He that loveth pleasure shall be a poor man.”
Congregational Union Office-Bearers Charged with Dishonesty.
At the Annual Meeting of the Congregational Union of Scotland, at Aberdeen, in May, the Treasurer, Mr. John K. Templeton, Glasgow, said that office-bearers of some churches in the Congregational Union, were deliberately falsifying membership returns to avoid paying their full annual assessment of five shillings a member. One minister said he almost thought of giving up the ministry over this sort of conduct. This is indeed a sad exposure of the conduct of men recognised as Christians. But the fact is that the Christianity of many in the churches is a mere empty profession. And how can it be otherwise when the doctrine and reality of the “New Birth” is ignored and disowned in the teaching of the churches? The Lord alone can bring back the churches to the doctrine and practice of godliness.
Archbishop of Canterbury and Makarios.
Archbishop Makarios of the Eastern Orthodox Church of Cyprus, has been invited to attend the Lambeth Conference in July, by the Archbishop of Canterbury. This has aroused strong feelings of displeasure and opposition in varied quarters. Makarios has a bad record of conduct as to his political influence in present day Cyprus, where there has been so much bitterness and bloodshed. He has been forbidden, by the British Government, to re-enter Cyprus at present, but is now invited to enter Britain on religious grounds according to the outlook of Canterbury.
Even among Anglicans in South Africa, there is strong objection to this invitation. The Church of England in South Africa has published a statement describing the action of the Archbishop of Canterbury as “extraordinarily irresponsible.” (See English Churchman, 6th June.)
Convictions for Drunkenness.
The President of the United Kingdom Alliance, stated recently that in 1946, convictions for drunkenness were 20,000; in 1956 the figure was 60,000; and for 1957, were 67,000. He stated that young men under 21 years of age, and younger folk under 18 years of age, are being increasingly involved in this evil and ruinous conduct. Indignation against subversive liquor advertisements, drinking drivers and undesirable drinking clubs was called for. “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery . . . drunkenness, revelings and such like.” (Galatians v. 19-21.)
Australian Roman Catholics Sponsor Huge Lottery.
In a special article to The Scotsman, William Fitter deals with a recent outcry against gambling in Australia by certain Protestant Church leaders, and he reports that the Roman Catholic Church in N.S. Wales is sponsoring a huge lottery in which the first prize will be the Pacific Hotel at Manly, one of Sydney’s spectacular ocean beaches. The purpose of the lottery, said Dr. L. Rumble of the R.C. Church, was to raise money to extend the teaching college of the Christian Brothers order. Dr. Rumble further said, “It’s easy to say that gambling is evil, but it can’t be proved.” But it can be proved that it has caused, and still does so, a great deal of untold ruin to individuals, families and homes. It is a cancer and a curse to an individual in its grip and to a nation where it is a widespread practice. Of course the moral theology of Rome can argue that black is white when circumstances require.
Weakness of Religion in the Highlands.
Rev. Murdo E. MacDonald, St. George’s West Church, Edinburgh, a native of Harris, in the Western Isles of Scotland, delivered himself of some strange ideas to the Annual Meeting of the Ladies’ Highland Association, in Edinburgh, last May. He said that the idea that there was a sharp division between the sacred and the secular, and that music and sport must be swept away from religion, was one of the “tremendous heresies,” that lay behind the present weakness of religion in the Highlands. On the point of music, he said, “Will you ever get an elder in Harris to stand up and sing ‘The Eriskay Love-tilt’ in public?” We say, as far as a god-fearing, converted elder is concerned, the answer is of course, “No.”
This is the work of unconverted zealots for Gaelic concerts and worldly social gatherings. The strength of true Biblical religion in the Highlands, where it obtained, consists in part, in the god-fearing elder singing the Psalms of David, at family worship in the home and in the House of God, with grace from the heart, as unto the Lord.
The weakness of religion in the Highlands and Edinburgh, and in the manses of ministers, is the absence of daily family worship, including the singing of God’s praises. And in addition, no family prayers, but plenty of praying at funerals and at public services, to be heard of men. The Rev. Murdo MacDonald also stated as to sport, “In my experience during the war an interest in boxing was of more use in evangelising than all my training at Trinity College.”
We wonder if any of the ladies listening to Mr. MacDonald, questioned as to whether they were hearing him aright. The training he received in theology and divinity at Trinity College, Glasgow, when he was a student for the ministry, must have been of the most miserable character, when the brutal sport of boxing displaced it as a means of evangelising among the soldiers. We pause here to remark, what a terrible use of the term “evangelising!” Christian parents with boys in the army during the war would surely expect a professed minister of the gospel to have a different outlook. But therein was the awful weakness of Mr MacDonald’s religion as a chaplain. What could boxing do for the souls of men facing eternity?
Another heresy to Mr. MacDonald’s mind that ought to be destroyed, was, he said, the divorce between theology and social ethics; that is between theology and social morals. He said the gospel should be preached to people as an affair of personal social ethics or morals. And who, may we ask, has divorced scriptural theology from social ethics? As space will not permit our enlarging on this, we briefly ask the question: how was it that the Church of Scotland minister in the General Assembly last May, who rightly exposed and condemned on solid grounds, The Church of Scotland Gateway Theatre in Edinburgh, was not only not supported, but jeered at by members of the Assembly? He rightly called in question the morals of plays acted in this Theatre which is a scandalous limb of activity for any professed Christian to support.
Let Rev. Murdo MacDonald turn his attention to real heresies within his own church and in the City of Edinburgh, and with the Bible in his hand he will not be long in discovering the “tremendous heresies,” legion in number, which are behind the weakness of religion in Scotland today.