Just finished recording this masterful article by Principle John Macleod (1872-1948) of the Free Church of Scotland. While it is somewhat encumbered by historical details less familiar to the American reader, it is still a fresh, perceptive, and prophetic appeal for the old adherence to full, good faith subscription to the Confession of Faith. If you’re a historic Presbyterian belonging to or respectful of the old Church of Scotland and Free Church testimonies, you owe it to yourself. The PDF of the article is below; and here is a ‘handful of purpose’:
“The Churches of Scotland were unprepared for the day that had overtaken them. In their halting uncertainty they suffered a tendency that was inimical to their historical faith to effect a lodgment in their bosom. They lost sight of the essential simplicity of the Christian position- “Heaven’s easy artless unencumbered plan.” When John tells us that he wrote his Gospel that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and that believing we might have life through His Name he thought the witness borne by his fellows and himself to be ground enough for the faith of Christians to build upon. Christian faith through the ages has responded to this claim. It was the claim not only of the Apostle but of the Holy Ghost who spoke in him. It is undoubtedly the mind of the Spirit that the evidence which He thus bore to the truth as it is in Jesus should suffice for the Church of God to the end of time and to the ends of the earth. What was thus in the Gospels claimed by the Apostles for the witness that they bore they claimed for their teaching in the Epistles. They spoke not in the words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Ghost teaches. They could say, ‘We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us.’ Such claims were in full keeping with the promises given to them in the Upper Chamber. There has been from the beginning a Holy Catholic Church -define it how we may- to whose care and keeping the New Testament books were committed and from whose hands in successive generations her children have received them as being alike in their witness and in their teaching the crystallised and perpetuated ministry of the Apostles. As many as are willing to sit at their feet, as they thus continue to bear witness and to teach, will learn to treat the Old Testament. Scriptures as the Lord and His Apostles did. Here we have the common view of Holy Writ held throughout historical Christendom. On this view the whole structure of Christian Theology is built. To maintain the superstructure we must defend the substructure.”
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