The Lord has favoured His people with great and high privileges. To possess a saving knowledge of the truth is an unspeakable blessing for which the gracious soul can never be sufficiently thankful. The living soul can say: “The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup: Thou maintainest my lot. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. “May we ever be enabled to confess it, and not be ashamed of it.
In setting up His Church in the world the Lord has given to it His Word and worship and order or government. This worship and service is not of man’s devising. The Lord Himself has ordained it in all its parts. As is well known, what God has given men have not adhered to as they ought. Some Churches have strayed away on certain points of doctrine, others on some aspect of worship, while others have erred by departing from the Scriptural form of government and discipline of the Church as it was given by the glorious Head of the Church who is now in heaven. Some Churches, as the Confession of Faith points out, “have so degenerated as to become no churches of Christ, but synagogues of Satan.”
When we consider our own situation in Scotland and remember the Lord’s dealings with us as a nation, we have to acknowledge that we have been highly favoured. Some, if not all of the nations of the Continent were favoured with the blessings of the Reformation before our own nation and yet the Reformation, even where it took root in some of these lands, did not reach to the same measure of reformation of religion as it attained in Scotland. Certainly Switzerland and Holland were to have established in them a goodly measure of reform, yet it was in Scotland, to which the Reformation came so late, that the reformation of religion was to reach its highest level. In Scotland, though with considerable difficulty and opposition, the Reformation Church was set upon an unassailable basis, even the whole Word of God and the doctrine, worship and practice which that Word enjoined. No wonder that one of
Scotland’s noble reformers should say at the time of the Second Reformation when re-establishing the Church on its former basis by overthrowing the whole paraphernalia of episcopacy which had been foisted on the noble edifice erected by Knox and his fellow reformers, “We have thrown down the walls of Jericho. Let him that will build them again beware of the curse of Hiel the Bethelite.” Truly we can say, We have a goodly heritage.
Since that time many attempts have been made to destroy this heritage and rob the people of Scotland of their noble heritage. This was true in Covenanting times. It was true also at the time of the Disruption in Scotland and again at the time of the passing of the Declaratory Act in 1892. Satan’s aim then, as it has ever been, was to rob Scotland of its heritage. In this work Satan was partially successful. He robbed many of their heritage and the condition of the descendants of such is perilous indeed, left as they are ignorant of the truth of God’s Word and knowing not their right hand from their left. In such a time how necessary is it to maintain and defend that heritage where it still exists.
Bound up with our religious heritage is our civil heritage. Our Protestant Constitution has secured for us as a nation the civil and religious liberties which we enjoy, but how easily may these be lost. The failure of the Royal Family to remain aloof from the Pope of Rome and the present climate in ecumenical relations between the main Churches in Britain and the Church of Rome bode ill for our Protestant heritage and for our civil and religious liberties. May the Lord pour out His Spirit upon us as a nation and people so that we may come to see our danger and come to value those blessings and privileges which we still enjoy.
When we consider the testimony of our own Church we have reason to praise God for it. He has left us His Word and His ordinances and a clear testimony against all that would corrupt that Word and ordinances. The high privileges we enjoy do not give any occasion for self-congratulation but rather for humbling ourselves in the dust. “Be not high-minded but fear.” The Lord who has preserved to us our Protestant heritage may quickly remove it if we undervalue it either by giving us over to blindness of mind or by delivering us into the hands of our enemies. May we as a Church ever be alive to the preciousness of our heritage so that we may ever be ready to maintain and defend it as well as having a willingness of mind to share it with those not so privileged as we are. Let us hold fast in the dark day to what we possess, until the light of that millennial dawn breaks which will fill the whole earth with the light of the knowledge of the glory of God as seen in the face of Jesus Christ.