The opening once more of another year in the kindness of divine providence provides an appropriate reason for reviewing the Lord’s goodness to our Church in the past months, and for recalling grounds for confidence in facing the future.
Mention falls to be made first of all of the change in the conduct of the Church’s Magazine which takes place with this present issue. In relinquishing the work of editor after 20 years of faithful unremitting service Rev. R. R. Sinclair, our highly respected minister at Wick, deservedly earns the gratitude of our people throughout the Church and of the host of friends he made through the pages of the Magazine. When he was appointed by the Synod to take over the Free Presbyterian Magazine, Mr Sinclair was faced with the difficult task of maintaining the traditions and upholding the high standards, set by his two eminent predecessors, who for long successive periods held with distinction the tenure of this office, and gained for the Church Magazine of a small denomination, such as ours, a highly respected place in the religious world. His worthy father, Rev. Jas. S. Sinclair, was perhaps the ideal editor, equipped with a richly furnished mind, fine judgment, and a graceful, flowing literary style. He was succeeded by Rev. D. Beaton, whose wide acquaintance with the history and literature of the Reformed Church and scholarly presentation of his views, were well known. Mr Sinclair, nevertheless, made his mark perhaps in what he made the outstanding feature of the Magazine, during his years as editor, in the comments on current affairs. Here he showed fine discrimination and expressed himself with conciseness and vigour. He placed his finger on the moral and religious pulse of the nation with remarkable accuracy and his remarks, always apt and necessary, were often reproduced in religious journals of other countries.
Mr Sinclair’s waygoing is accompanied by the Church’s sincere thanks for all that he was able to achieve in maintaining the witness of the Free Presbyterian Church in difficult times, expounding the doctrines of the Reformed Faith, and promoting vital godliness throughout the country. As Rev. D. B. MacLeod, our minister in London, takes over control of the Church’s Magazine, we offer him our best wishes for success and the Lord’s help in carrying on the work of his three predecessors.
The times in which we live make the Church’s task very difficult. The present period of our nation’s history may well be described in the Apostle’s words as “perilous times”. The spirit of pleasure-loving is prevalent in the life of our people as seen in the pursuit of gambling in all its forms, drunkenness and drug addiction, the mania for sport which weekly attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators, and the decline in moral standards, which have earned for us the name of the “permissive society”. The outbreak of violence, instigated by a salacious literature and filthy radio and television programmes, has now overflowed into the public streets in noisy demonstrations and in ugly strike scenes at factory gates, ship yards and places of business. The rise of lawlessness has now reached the stage when the authority of the Government is being openly challenged. The increase of ungodliness in all ranks of society, and the prevalence of spurious religion are marked features of our national life. These are the signs which create profound uneasiness. The professing church has shown little evidence of possessing any wisdom in facing the moral and religious problems of our nation, but ignoring her duty of proclaiming the full doctrines of grace, pursues her way unperturbed, spending her strength and resources on the ecumenical mirage of one world wide Church. In these conditions of unsettlement and strife, the papal church is relentlessly engaged in destroying the Protestantism of the nation and recovering for the mediaeval hierarchy of Rome the ground lost at the time of the Reformation.
Our duty as a Church in the present time of deep-seated declension and ungodliness, therefore, is to hold fast the testimony handed down to us by the fathers of the Separation of 1893. The Protest and Separation which were so necessary 77 years ago are even more so today. We must never allow ourselves to become ashamed of mentioning the achievements of our worthy Church Fathers, or of re-stating, as though this were irrelevant history of the past, the cause of the formation of the Free Presbyterian Church, for the fruits of the Declaratory Act of 1892 are with us in the professing church in this country today. “Other men laboured and ye have entered into their labours”. At great suffering and sacrifice to themselves such men as Rev. D. MacFarlane and Rev. D. MacDonald especially, for they parted with manses, congregations and salaries, later joined by other early leaders of our Church, bore the malice and persecution of their enemies in order to secure a sound Gospel Church, in which we might worship God with a free conscience, and maintain a pure scriptural testimony in the midst of abounding declension. In doing so, they had particularly before them, the future generations of our people. We remember with what solemn feelings some of these noble men would give out to the congregation at public worship the first verses of Psalm 78, particularly the words:
His testimony and his law,
In Israel he did place,
And charged our father it to show
To their succeeding race.
We have inherited a responsible heritage, and we are called to hand down to our descendants, pure and unsullied, these same doctrines and practices we received from them. Better days, we believe, will yet return, but through this period “of trouble and of rebuke and of blasphemy”, let us stand fast without wavering and without change, uninfluenced by the abounding back-sliding in doctrine and practice that surrounds us. This is a responsibility we dare not neglect. “That good thing which was committed unto thee keep by the Holy Ghost which dwelleth in us” — 2 Tim. 1, verse 14.
For the present, the work of the Gospel is steadily and faithfully being carried on throughout our Church by our ministers and office-bearers, some in more populous areas and others in lonely and obscure parts of the country. The eye of the Lord is upon every part of His vineyard, to keep it day and night lest any hurt it, and to protect His cause from bitter and hostile enemies. The Holy Spirit is today largely withdrawn from our nation because of our sins, and even in His general restraining grace, He is a stranger in the land. Communion seasons become in such a time precious to His people for they may confer with one another and strengthen each other’s hands in the Lord. The great encouragement is, however, that the glorious doctrines of divine grace are fully and faithfully proclaimed on Sabbath and week-day, and for this blessing, as long as the Lord preserves peace and religious liberty to us in this land, we have great reason for thankfulness. For the future ministry of the Church, there is encouraging provision in a succession of well trained, god-fearing students, and the prospects are likewise heartening in the congregations overseas, where we have now settled ministers, in the mission field of Rhodesia, in Canada and New Zealand, as well as the scattered communities in the United States and Australia. For the coming year, therefore, we pray that the Lord may bless our Church at home and abroad, and establish her in the present grace in which she stands, and that He may hasten the glorious days when, as the dim lamp which hung in the tabernacle broke through the frail covering which surrounded it and shone to the ends of the world, the light of the Lord’s glory may cover the earth.