Do you know?
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That the apostolic office did not continue in the Church. The apostles had no successors as such. The apostle Paul in some of his epistles mentions the names of others with his own, but does not include them in the title apostle. He gives no intimation that Timothy or Titus or any other would succeed him as an apostle. The apostolic office was an extraordinary office confirmed by extraordinary gifts bestowed by the Lord Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit upon His chosen Apostles for the establishing of the New Testament Church. With the passing of the office, and the completion of the canon of the New Testament, these extraordinary gifts ‘ceased’.
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That the following Scriptures are proofs that these extraordinary gifts were not to continue:
(a) In 1 Corinthians, Chapter XIII, we are explicitly told that Prophecies, Tongues and Knowledge are to ‘cease’ and vanish away. “Whether there be prophecies they shall fail,” i.e., be done away with. The gift shall cease to be necessary and therefore shall not be continued. “Be it tongues, etc.,” i.e., the
gift of tongues shall cease. “Be it knowledge, it shall vanish away,” i.e., cease to exist. It is the same word as that used above in reference to prophecies. It is not knowledge in the comprehensive sense of the term that is to cease, but knowledge as a gift: as one of the extraordinary endowments mentioned in Ch. XII:8-11. (Commentary on 1 Corinthians by Dr. Charles Hodge, p.271).
(b) W.E. Vine in his Commentary on 1 Corinthians, Chapter 12 and 13, says, “It is necessary to distinguish between gifts that were temporary and those that were permanent. Some were designed for the special purposes of the first period of Apostolic testimony. Certain supernatural gifts, such as healing, prophesying and tongues, were granted as a testimony especially while yet the God-breathed Scriptures, which provide ‘the faith once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 3) were not completed. The temporary character of the gifts of healing as sign-gifts (see on ‘tongues’ v.10) is shown by the fact that later on Timothy, Trophimus, Gaius and others were not healed of physical infirmities. Yet these were spirit-filled men. In the early period, too, power was imparted to raise the dead. (Acts IX:40; XX:9,10). Undeniably God does heal the sick in answer to prayer . . . but the distinction between that and the supernatural gifts here referred to, is clear from Scripture. See, too, the principles in Chapter XIII: 10, a principle which hold good wherever it applies. After the Scriptures were completed, those supernatural signs ceased. Attempts to renew them have been deceptive. The professed possession of them is attractive, and imparts a glamour to the so-called ‘Movement’ which claims these powers. Those who are led by the Holy Spirit will ever test things by the teaching of Scripture; they will prove the spirits whether they are of God, ‘because many false prophets are gone out into the world,’ and Satan even ‘fashioneth himself into an angel of light’.“
(c) Further proof of the passing away of these sign-gifts is in Hebrews II:3-4. “And how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him; God also bearing them witness both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost according to his own will.” “Now the words ‘at the first’,” observes E. Coppin, “gives the time element which governs all of these signs and miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost. These are interestingly touched upon in Acts XI:15 where Peter described the pouring out of the gifts of the Holy Ghost upon the Gentiles in the house of Cornelius. Instead of referring to it as another such happening as might have been seen time after time since Pentecost, he says, ‘And as I began to speak, the Holy Ghost fell on them as on us at the beginning.’ So, this also corroborates the perhaps otherwise plain enough fact that the signs that were to ‘follow’ (not accompany) them who believed, (Mark XVI:17-18) related to a brief period, not longer than that covered by the Acts of the Apostles and described in such a way in verses 19 and 20, ‘So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, he was received up into heaven and sat on the
right hand of God. And they went forth, and preached everywhere the Lord working with them and confirming the word with signs following. Amen.’ There is a note of finality about this two-verse description of that period.” (The Pentecostalist Spirit-Baptism, p. 20).
(d) “They shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover” (Mark XVI:18). “Many of the elders of the Church,” comments Matthew Henry, “had this power, as appears from James V:14, where as an instituted sign of this miraculous healing, they are said to anoint the sick with oil in the name of the Lord.” This anointing the sick with oil and the miraculous healing which always followed belongs to the apostolic period. “Expositors generally confine this anointing with oil to such as had the power of working miracles; and when miracles ceased, this institution ceased also.” (Mathew Henry on James V:14). “They shall take up serpents” (Mark XVI:18). Was this sign to continue in the Church? It is mentioned along with “healing” and “speaking with new tongues.” Some sects in America believe that it is to continue. Poisonous snakes are taken out of boxes and handled by ‘believers.’ Participants are sometimes bitten and die. No doubt the leaders would say that these unfortunate people did not have enough faith.
The Constitution of the Church in Scotland
by Rev. John Colquhoun, Glendale
(continued from page 308)
The Declaratory Act of 1892
On the 28th July 1893 the first Presbytery of what afterwards was called the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland met at Raasay, and was adjourned to meet in the afternoon of the same day to take on trials for license Mr John R. MacKay, M.A. The trials were sustained, and thus Mr MacKay was the first student to be licensed by the new-formed Presbytery. Others followed, and congregations were in due course supplied with ministers, so that, without accessions from other denominations, it began to spread its branches all over the country and even to foreign lands. Instead of the church becoming extinct in two years, as was prophesied, for lack of funds, the Lord showed that the silver and the gold were His, and it is very evident that He said of the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland, “Destroy it not, for there is a blessing in it.” A few years after it took up a separate position it was able to begin a Mission among the natives of Rhodesia, of which, humanly speaking, one would be ready to say, that, owing to the
smallness of the beginning and the adversities through which it passed, it would not last long. Today, it has a Presbytery, capable of exercising all the functions of that Court; and, during the years from its beginning, many of the natives have heard the Gospel as the Gospel of their salvation.
We may now ask, Why was the Free Presbyterian Church formed, and why does it continue its separate existence to this day? Briefly, it may be stated that it was because of the passing of the Declaratory Act of 1892 by the Free Church of Scotland. This, however, raises the question as to what the Declaratory Act was. As those who are conversant with the history of the Church of Scotland know, the Constitution of the Free Church of Scotland, and what it carried from the Established Church, was a whole Bible as its Supreme Standard, and the Westminster documents as its subordinate standards. These regulated the doctrine, worship, and discipline of the Free Church. In the course of time men rose in that Church who professed to have “difficulties and scruples” about signing the Confession of Faith. The truth was, however, that their “difficulties and scruples” were with the Bible on which the Westminster Standards were based, as they had imbibed the Higher Criticism which was poured forth from the Professors’ Chairs in the Universities in Germany. Men who studied in these Universities, and who became ministers in the Free Church, wanted support to proclaim these views among the people, and the only way they could do it safely was to alter the relationship of the Church to its Constitution. Thus the agitation began which resulted in the passing of the Declaratory Act. By this Act the Free Church was brought into harmony with the United Presbyterian Church and the way opened for union between the two churches.
Having touched on the origin and reasons for passing the Declaratory Act, one is naturally led to enquire as to its significance. It was passed by the Assembly of 1892 with the consent of the majority of the Presbyteries of the Church, and so became a binding law of the Church, and was adopted with the end in view of giving relief to the “difficulties and scruples” of those who could not accept the Westminster Confession of Faith, and that noble Confession was now to be understood, not as it was formerly understood, but in the light of the relief given by the Declaratory Act. This Act, however, undermines the Scriptural truths of the Confession and presents us with Arminianism instead of the robust Calvinism for which the Church of Scotland was famous in its best days. To put it otherwise, the adoption of the Declaratory Act effected a change in the Constitution for which the Constitution made no provision. Thus we are presented with a Constitution
which is different from the Constitution which the Free Church of 1843 carried over from the Established Church. Though in passing it a wrong use had been made of the Barrier Act, yet, having been sent down to Presbyteries in accordance with that Act, it became a binding law and constitution of the Free Church, and caused her, in her official capacity, to drift from her time-honoured moorings and become a different Church from what she rightly claimed to be in 1843.
This raises the question as to what was the position of her people. There were two sets of people within her pale—one class rejoiced in the liberty which the Declaratory Act gave them; the other class did not like the Declaratory Act, but they had no alternative but to submit to it. Those who rejoiced in the Declaratory Act had the power, and could exercise that power, for they were in the majority, to compel those who were against it to submit to it. According to the last clause of the Declaratory Act it is only “the substance of the Reformed faith” that is accepted by the Church, and the Church or General Assembly is to be the final judge as to what that substance is. This opens a wide door as to what is to be believed, or not believed, so that all the heresies which were, at one time or another, thrown out on the dung-heap of the church, may yet be declared to be of “the substance of the Reformed faith.” During the controversy which raged around the Declaratory Act some, unashamedly, declared that they had been preaching the doctrines of the Declaratory Act for twenty years. Now they were doing it with the support of the law of the Church on their side.
A good deal has been made by the dissenting minority of the fact that the Questions and Formula, answered and signed at an ordination and induction, had not been altered, but it has been conveniently ignored by the same protesting minority that these Questions and Formula could now be understood in a different light, and were so understood by those who favoured the Declaratory Act. This was acknowledged by Mr Johnston, the leading counsel of the minority, when he said in reference to the Declaratory Act, “I ask, what is the doctrine of this Church? It is the doctrine of this church as it has been modified by the Declaratory Acts of 1892, and as looking to the terms of the four conditions of union it may at any time by alteration of the Church come to be. Therefore you are called upon not to adhere to the Confession of Faith, but to the doctrine of this Church as, for the time being, this Church may declare it to be.” Free Church Appeals, 3rd Ed. p. 261. An Act was passed in 1894, supposed to relieve the minority of the implications of the Declara-
tory Act of 1892, but did it? The writers of the Free Church of Scotland 1843-1910 say, in reference to the results of the Declaratory Act of 1892, “A still more notable result of the recent occurrences was the new Declaratory Act which the Assembly passed this year. This second enactment was designed, for one thing, to allay the feeling of uneasiness which prevailed throughout the Church by setting forth the limits within which the Act of 1892 was intended to operate. It was declared to be purely a relieving Act, and not one imposing any new obligations on men who had no desire to avail themselves of its relief.” p. 73. They quote Dr Rainy in his resolution moving the adoption of the Act, but it leaves one questioning how the minority, or any set of men, could accept it as a Relieving Act, or was even worth the paper it was written on. It was accepted by the minority as a relieving act, but it leaves one wondering what it relieves one from. Surely not from the Declaratory Act of 1892, which, according to the minority, was not binding as the questions and formula were not altered. However, the Constitutionalists found the Declaratory Act sufficiently binding on them when they came to ordain and induct a man who stated publicly that he was taking office under the shelter given by the Declaratory Act. To put it plainly to answer the questions and sign the formula without reference to the altered view given by the Declaratory Act was a dishonest action and to a great extent compromised the position of the Constitutionalists, leaving them to say that the Declaratory Act was wrong, and at the same time accept it in their practice, showing their helplessness to mend matters owing to the strength of the prevailing majority. A more honest position would be that of the Free Presbyterian Church, which was never under the Declaratory Act in any sense of the term, and, therefore, was under no suspicion, like Caesar’s wife.
Obituary
EWAN MACRAE, RAASAY
The subject of this obituary notice was well known to the Church at large, being a member of Presbytery and Synod for many years, which he attended faithfully as long as he was able. He was born at Balachuirn, for which he cherished a life-long affection. He was Piermaster at Raasay and came into contact with the public, who had a high regard for him to the end.
The congregation built a Church and Manse for Rev. Donald MacFarlane at Holman. Then a new church and manse had to be
built at Clachan. The new manse could be said to be a memorial of Mr Macrae as he had so much to do with it. He had a store of anecdotes, and could relate them in an interesting manner, especially concerning the man of God, Mr MacFarlane, when he was deprived of his church and manse and salary by the Declaratory Act Free Church.
In latter years, when the manse was vacant, there being no minister for many years, it was Mr Macrae who entertained the ministers in his hospitable home, assisted by his amiable partner in life, Mrs Macrae. They were a very devoted couple, and their house used to be full at communion times. Many of the Lord’s people and ministers were entertained there.
As an office bearer he acted as Treasurer and elder. He was most dutiful if anything had to be done to the church or manse in the way of repairs. He had only to be spoken to once. He also took services, but latterly his eyesight was failing and he could not read. His prayers were always earnest and edifying. He was very dignified, standing at the collection plate in the church porch and some of the people called him “Eoghan grinn.” We have happy memories of our stay at Suisnish House. He is now away to the Church triumphant, but the Church militant are missing him.
May the Lord be with his widow and brother, Mr Thomas Macrae, Glasgow, and may He raise up other witnesses in Raasay of the stature of Ewan Macrae. He was a tower of strength in the Kirk Session, and his removal is a blow to the Cause of Christ in the isle of Raasay and elsewhere. To his sorrowing widow in her loneliness, we would express once more our deepest sympathy. It is now three years since the above was taken to his everlasting rest at a ripe age. D.J. Macaskill.