By Rev. A. F. MacKay, M.A., Inverness
The lecture in the March issue of the Free Presbyterian Magazine on the Lord’s Care of His Church has drawn from the pen of Rev. H. Cameron, the Free Church minister of Wick, a highly critical letter which appeared in the Free Church Record for July. In particular, the letter deals with the case involving Rev. MacKinnon, at the time Free Church minister at Strathpeffer, which is referred to in the lecture, and attempts to vindicate the Free Church courts in their handling of this case. In doing so, the letter sets out to explain and in fact to justify Rev. MacKinnon and his attitude to the Sabbath, and virtually amounts to an unreserved defence of Rev. MacKinnon. The letter itself has little to contribute to this subject, discussed in the lecture, which is deserving of notice, but as repeated and extremely pointed references are made to myself, a few remarks on what the letter has to say, may not be out of place.
Distrust of Public Reports
The main drift of the writer’s arguments proceeds from a deep distrust of the public reports of the case as these were given in the newspapers. The writer admits his ignorance of the facts of the case; “What the true facts were in detail I certainly cannot profess to be sure from anything I have read or listened to. I am compelled to reserve judgment;” he must therefore, he says, rely upon “a variety of second hand reports.” Others cannot be expected to fare any better. Like himself, I too am supposed to admit that I have no clear information either, but must have had access to some “private sources.” In the writer’s view, only by attending meetings of Church courts which had this case before them, can anyone hope to obtain accurate, first-hand information, and the ridiculous conclusion is seriously advanced that before anyone can even offer an opinion on the case, he must have attended the meetings and followed in person the proceedings of the Church courts, so as to obtain completely reliable information. All this is a very convenient way to stifle criticism of what goes on in Free Church Courts. Those who have public work to do, have neither the time nor the inclination to ascertain what is happening in other parts of the country by attending personally public meetings to obtain accurate first-hand information for themselves. In the Rev. MacKinnon’s case, it would not have done much good anyway, as the important meeting of the Synod of Moray and Ross, at which the final decision was arrived at, disposing of the MacKinnon case, was held in private. Contrary to the beliefs of the writer, however, most people rely for their information on matters of public interest upon newspaper reports, and apart from those national newspapers which go in for sensationalism and have therefore to be treated with caution, usually reports, particularly in our local newspapers, are for the most part quite reliable. If Free Church affairs get a bad press and reports of her proceedings are as misleading as the writer thinks, two courses are open for them to take, either make immediate and official corrections of inaccuracies as they occur, or better still, issue in advance an authoritative, clear statement to the press. Was this done in the Rev. MacKinnon case? If so, how can the Wick minister profess such ignorance of what goes on in his own church? If this was not done, was there not here a break-down in public relations between the Free Church Courts and the Press? It seems a strange procedure for a church to allow the press a free hand to publish their own accounts of important church business without making every effort to ensure accuracy, and then complain, as the writer does throughout his letter, that the newspapers are withholding news or publishing inaccurate reports. I suspect, however, that the writer has put forward this weak argument so as to discredit and finally silence all criticism of Free Church affairs. I do not think that impartial readers will be put off with such specious arguments, but will accept press reports of this case as substantially correct, and as providing adequate material to form a clear idea of what actually took place.
“Sophistical Explanation”
Objection is also made to the use of the term “sophistical explanation,” as applied to Rev. MacKinnon’s defence before the Presbytery and Synod, when challenged to state his views on the Sabbath desecration on the Cairngorms. When the court was discussing the deplorable conduct of the nation’s youth, who flocked in their thousands to the Cairngorms on the Lord’s Day for a day’s skiing in open defiance of the Fourth Commandment, Rev. MacKinnon intervened with remarks to the effect that patience and understanding should be the proper attitude of the court to these young people, who were ignorant of the gravity of the sin of Sabbath desecration, though not of the more obvious sin of murder; they needed instruction, and people should not condemn them as they might do if it were the sin of murder, and Rev. MacKinnon added, ‘neither do I.’ This is a familiar shift, adopted by worldly men when pressed to explain their conduct, to confuse the issue by introducing a sin of greater gravity, so as to detract from the seriousness of their own sins. This is a piece of sheer sophistry, and Rev. MacKinnon made use of it, and for the Wick minister to claim that in the opinion of competent people, he defended himself “with integrity” is no more than special pleading in favour of a minister of his own church. The conduct of this minister, I consider, highly censurable, for the purpose of his remarks was deliberately to divert the attention of the court from their clear duty of condemning a particularly flagrant instance of defiant and open, public breach of the Sabbath Law by introducing something else which was quite irrelevant.
Young Ministers’ Stand
Again, exception is taken to the enquiry as to where exactly the young ministers of the present Free Church really stand in relation to the testimony and well defined standards of their own church. If one of their number could so easily, because of some dispute in his Presbytery, have thrown overboard his Free Church connection and passed over to the National Church of Scotland, which today is regarded as the half-way house to Rome, the question is a reasonable one to ask. This young minister is a son of the Free Church Manse, and received his full training for the ministry in the Free Church Divinity Hall, which was directed to qualify him for service in his own church, whose position in doctrine, government and worship he had solemnly and publicly affirmed as defining exactly his own position, when less than 5 years ago at his induction to the Strathpeffer congregation he came under solemn ordination vows. Does this event not disturb the writer, who asks so glibly for evidence of other Free Church ministers who may be preparing to follow his example? This is not “a rhetorical question,” but should be regarded as of the utmost gravity. It is sad also to see the question of discipline, as administered today in the Free Church, dismissed in the same indifferent, unquestioning fashion. If no significance can be seen in the public acclaim, the Free Church minister received from the Strathpeffer public, when he left for the Shetlands, recent events in the same Presbytery of Moray and Ross should awaken searching reflections in himself and his brethren. If the civil court passed a just sentence upon a ministerial member of that Presbytery in a case of serious misconduct, and if the same case when it came up before his own Presbytery was dismissed with a mere admonition, is it not obvious that the civil court has shown more regard for the authority of civil law which it is its duty to administer than was shown by a Free Church court for its own laws. If the Wick minister cares to consult his copy of Moncreiff, he will come across cases of deposition from the ministry for the self same sin which was dealt with so leniently by this Presbytery. In this respect, at least, the claims made so often by Free Church controversialists that the present Free Church is the direct descendant as well as the true representative of the Disruption Free Church are hard to believe.
Relations with Free Presbyterian Church
After examining the previous part of the letter, the friendly expressions in last part of the letter towards the Free Presbyterian Church, where the writer says he has many friends, are of little real value and inspire little confidence. We should help forward, he says, “good relations between the Free and Free Presbyterian Church,” “both of them recognizable children of the Disruption,” we should “advance the interests of kinship.” The Free Presbyterian Church’s official attitude to other religious bodies on the question of union, has not changed, for we are not religious isolationists, as was stated at the Synod in 1931: “Should a Church appear in Scotland holding our principles, we would join them whatever name they bore, and would receive such a church with open arms. The Free Church is not such a church”—Free Presbyterian Magazine, Vol. 36, page 91. Some years ago, I remember overtures for union containing expressions of friendship, were made by the Free Church Assembly’s Union Committee to the Free Presbyterian Church. They were met courteously by the Synod with a Statement of Differences which divided the Free Church from ourselves, a Statement which had to no effect been repeatedly brought to the attention of the Free Church authorities in previous years. We were then told: “The Free Presbyterian Church has neither a past to refer to nor a future to look to.” More recent reactions from Free Church leaders were expressed in even more extreme language: “Judicial blindness and hardness of heart which are the precursors of destruction, that we agree with many who regard the Free Presbyterian body as passing out of existence in the Nemesis of fearful retribution”; “spurious as have been its official pretensions and misguided its leadership.” These are not the words of a young, uninfluential minister of the Free Church, but were spoken by senior ministers occupying the office of Professors on the College staff. What does the young minister of Wick think of these words? He professes that his motive in taking up his pen, as expressed in the opening paragraph of his letter, is “to preserve and promote our own or our neighbour’s good name.” In the furtherance of this worthy ideal, is he prepared to petition the Free Church General Assembly and ask that these unbecoming expressions be repudiated? Or is his enthusiasm for the laudable design of his letter, as is so often the case with many of his co-religionists of the Free Church, quite proper to employ in defence of the good name of the Free Church, but of little interest when such a body as the Free Presbyterian Church is maligned?
The Sabbath’s Position Today
A greater and more fundamental question, however, than even the relations of the respective denominations of the Free and Free Presbyterian Churches is involved here—the position of the Sabbath in our nation today. The Sabbath has been attacked by legislation passed by Parliament and betrayed by professed ministers of Christ and by the National Church as well as by the widespread apathy of the people, and as a result the Sabbath has fallen from the once honoured place it had in this nation and our people deprived of the blessings which the Lord has promised would accompany a carefully observed Sabbath. The letter has done nothing to help the Sabbath. On the contrary, the unwise advocacy by the writer of this letter of the case of a minister, who disclosed in the courts of the Free Church, while he was still a minister of that Church, that his sympathies lay, not in assisting his brethren to defend the Sabbath but with the profane Sabbath breakers, and since then, revealed his contempt for Free Church principles and doctrines by going over to the Church of Scotland, will do little to help Rev. MacKinnon, but has done, I believe, great disservice to the Cause of the Sabbath.”