Ministerial Unfaithfulness.
Another proof is afforded, if further evidence is necessary, that Satan, through human instrumentality, and especially the instrumentality of unconverted ministers, is seeking to obliterate the last vestige of the Scriptural line of demarcation between the professing visible Church and an ungodly world, and to reduce the sacred office of the Christian ministry to the lowest depths of degradation, in the worldly activities, conduct, and behaviour of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and his ecclesiastical associates. In the “News Chronicle” for 21st June, 1958, it is reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury, with the Archbishop of Central Africa, the Bishop of Lagos, the Bishop of Lahore, and the Bishop of Bendigo, staying at Canterbury for the opening of the Lambeth Conference, were guests at a “rock ‘n’ roll” session, organised by Miss Elsie Idiens, assistant director of religious education for the Canterbury Diocese. The Archbishop of Canterbury told the one thousand teenagers from all over Kent: “Now, really let yourselves go, as I want to see what this rock and roll is all about.” During intervals in the dancing each of the bishops gave a short religious talk. Yet people wonder that religion has reached such a low ebb in our day and generation in our nation. Rock and roll dancing has been described by even secular writers as a bodily movement calculated to inflame the lowest animal passions and appetites of which fallen human nature is capable, yet so-called religious talks were given at intervals in the dancing by the professed successors of the Apostles. Truly we, as a nation and generation, have fallen upon evil days, while, failing national repentance, otherwise inevitable Divine judgments are impending. I have no hesitation in stating emphatically that no ray of supernatural illumination ever entered the sin-darkened understandings of these professing Christian ministers, or a single drop of Divine love their sin-hardened hearts. What unspeakable need to pray that the Lord would thrust labourers into His harvest.
J. P. MACQUEEN.
Lambeth Conference and Bishops’ Report.
At the end of August the gathering of Anglican bishops at the Lambeth Conference published in their Report observations upon the six points raised by the Church of Scotland on what is now known as the “Bishops’ Report.” We would draw attention just now to but one of their observations. They re-assert and insist that “the Celebrant of the Eucharist should be ordained by a bishop standing in the historic succession.” And upon this view they declare that it is “impossible to envisage the establishment of fully reciprocal intercommunion in any stage short of the adoption of Episcopacy by the Churches of Presbyterian Order.”
These are very brief quotations, but are surely more than sufficient to reveal that the whole business of negotiation with the Church of England, from the Anglican point of view, is to impose upon the Scottish Church what that Church in times of Reformation cast off and disowned in no uncertain manner, that is Episcopacy. Although the Lambeth Conference is not a Church Court, its observations, when received by the Church of England officially in October, will undoubtedly be adopted. It must be both a waste of time and a betrayal of Presbyterianism without any covering, for the Scottish Church to continue to consider the question of Union to (or with) the Church of England. The people of the Church of Scotland should now, through their ministers and office-bearers, demand that their Church leaders forthwith cease their folly and negotiations with the bishops.