Scotland’s Murder Rate
A committee to investigate the Scottish crime rate has been set up by the Shadow Scottish Secretary, Mr Edward Taylor, M.P. The situation in the Strathclyde area is particularly serious where there have been as many murders in the past year as in strife-torn Ulster.
The refusal of past Governments to recognise the divinely ordered sanction of capital punishment has led to the present situation, and there is no likelihood of matters improving, but only growing worse, until the death penalty for deliberate, premeditated murder is restored. Men, in their folly, would be wiser than God, but they must learn by experience, if not be precept, that the requirements of God’s law are paramount, and that failure to uphold that law has disastrous consequences for the nation socially, morally and spiritually.
Bibles
It is reported that the United Bible Societies produced over 7 million Bibles in 1976, an increase of 12 per cent over the previous year. No doubt other Bible Societies would have experienced similar demand for the Word of God.
While it is gratifying to know that world-wide demand for the Scriptures continues, it is regrettable that that demand is being met largely by modernistic and ecumenical Bible Societies. These Bible Societies tend to be more concerned that a particular translation should be acceptable to Protestants and Roman Catholics alike than that it should be faithful to the original. We can only hope and pray that Societies, such as the Trinitarian Bible Society, which are concerned for the faithfulness of the translated Word, will be able to take an increasing share in this great and important work of sending forth the Scriptures into all lands.
State Subsidised Romanism
The aim of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Westminster is to give every Roman Catholic child a place in a Roman Catholic school by 1980. The diocese has already 46,000 children in its 178 primary schools and 37,000 children in secondary schools. In 1976 its building programme cost more than £3 million of which the Ministry of Education provided 85 per cent. In addition to this school building grant, the Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral received a £10,000 grant from the Greater London Council.
How sad and how incongruous it is that a Protestant nation should be subsidising for educational and religious purposes a system whose avowed aim is to subvert and destroy the Protestant religion on which the stability and prosperity of the nation rests. How blind we have become as a nation to the forces which are at work within our own borders for our destruction! Will the nation awaken to these dangers before our liberties are lost? The prospects do not appear bright at present of this taking place. Only a spiritual awakening throughout the country, we feel, can alert the nation to these dangers and to resist with resolute determination the encroachments of active anti-Christian forces within the nation.