Among the significant books recently being published by the Banner of Truth Trust in Scotland is The Diary of Kenneth A. MacRae – A record of fifty years in the Christian Ministry. The over 500 page book is a selection from the diaries of a Scotch Presbyterian minister from 1912 to 1963 edited by Rev. Iain H. Murray. Especially fascinating are some of the observations made in the first chapters about what was happening in the Scotch Presbyterian churches in the earlier of these years. In later life, recalling the strength of Christian influence in the Scotland of his youth, MacRae wrote:

“Fifty years ago the Sabbath was universally observed throughout Scotland, and whatever desecration there might have been was furtive and shame-faced. This being so, church–going was the order everywhere. The writer remembers as a little boy how both sides of Earl Grey Street and Lothian Road in Edinburgh from 10:45 til 11 o’clock every Sabbath morning were thronged with a double stream of worshippers . . . converging upon their respective places of worship. Then, with the cessation of the church bells, a strange hush fell upon the city … Such an order of things may appear incredible to the city-dweller of today, but it was literally true. In the country districts a similar sight was to be seen, the roads being almost black with people as practically the whole community exercised their privilege of waiting upon God in the courts of Zion . . . In the evangelical districts of the Highlands at any rate, family religion in those days was a reality, and the daily worship of God was a permanent feature of most homes.”

Harbingers of Change

“Yet even at this period,” Murray observes, “the influences which were to bring sweeping changes across the face of Scotland were already well established. First in theological colleges, and then, more hesitantly, in traditionally Calvinistic pulpits, voices were to be heard which would in time transform both the church and the day school. It began with professors of divinity tentatively questioning the historicity of the Pentateuch, and this was coupled with theories as to the authorship of portions of the Bible which assumed errors in the Scriptures’ own testimony.” “. . . The same school of thought which urged a less ‘rigid’ view of doctrine was often equally strong in asserting that a personal experience of Christ would not be undermined by this approach. The need for an evangelical faith remained unquestioned and if the Bible required in some measure to be re-constructed it would only result, it was said, in establishing its authority on a truer and firmer basis. It is difficult today to understand how this assumption was possible, but the fact is that the new religious outlook—for the present at least—inspired enthusiasm and offered reassurance in a century which believed it saw so many proofs that ‘truth’ cannot ‘stand still.’ The claim was that with the new outlook the church would retain her credibility in the face of modern scholarship and thus extend her influence in the contemporary world” (pp. 8, 9).

The Direction of Change

At the same time, it appeared that some sensed where these trends in church thought were really leading. At the beginning of the next chapter Murray refers to a sermon of a Dr. Kennedy, preaching in 1881 on Isaiah 26:20, “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers . . .” “In applying the teaching to his own time he said that judgment was fallen upon the church in Scotland. It was a judgment with in the church and would manifest itself in five ways. (1) The Lord would remove most of his living witnesses and great blanks would be left unfilled in the church. (2) False teaching would take the place of the Gospel. (3) Spiritual discernment would leave the people, and under their darkened understanding they would swallow new teaching as a blind man would swallow a dish of water whether clean or unclean. (4) A spirit of worldliness would fill the minds of the people, and they would forsake the means of grace. Where hundreds once attended, they would soon be counted only by tens. (5) The Lord would deny to Scotland the work of the Holy Spirit. Though He promised to leave a seed t o serve Him, He did not promise that Scotland would continue to enjoy this favour. As in days of old the worldliness entering in would grieve Him and cause His Holy Spirit to be withheld and t hen His true servants and people would be few” (p. 14).

The Movement to Tolerate Higher Criticism

In this chapter our attention is directed to the controversy that arose about “the reliability of Scripture.” “In 1881 Dr. Robertson Smith, a young Free Church professor in the denomination’s theological college at Aberdeen, was—after much hesitation—removed from his post by the General Assembly for advocating opinions on the origin of the Old Testament inconsistent with its divine inspiration. But while such Higher Critical views . . . were not common in the Free Church ministry in the 1880s there was a growing readiness to believe that the Higher Critical view of the Bible did not necessarily affect the substance of the Christian Faith.” At this point a footnote refers to some “evangelical” advocates of such toleration of Higher Criticism. One of them, Alexander Whyte “could plead for a return to Puritan preaching . . . apparently unconscious that he had been a party to the removal of the foundation of such preaching.” In 1883 the General Assembly Moderator, “the aged Horatius Bonar, consider edit necessary to warn the Church that ‘Fellowship between faith and unbelief must, sooner or later, be fatal to the former.’ Others of Bonar’s contemporaries repeated the same warning. The day of the older leaders was, however, almost over, and when, in the 1890’s a charge was levied against two Free Church professors, A. B. Bruce and Marcus Dods, on the grounds that their teaching was undermining the New Testament, it was put aside by the General Assembly even though confirmation of the charge could be drawn from their writings. Speaking of Dod’s role in the Free Church, C. H. Spurgeon wrote, ‘That Church in which we all gloried as sound in the faith and full of martyrs’ spirit has entrusted the training of its future ministers to professors who hold other doctrines than those of its confession. This is the most suicidal act a Church could commit’” (p. 16).

Toleration Inspired by Unbelief, Even in Evangelizing

Probing further into the background of these developments, Murray sees that “Underlying to some degree all the above controversies was a growing unwillingness on the part of ministers to preach, and indeed to believe, the full Calvinistic theology of divine grace as set down in the Confession to which they had subscribed at their ordination. While it was not yet openly said that these doctrines hindered evangelism it was observable that the kind of evangelism which had become so popular and apparently successful since D. L. Moody’s visit to Scotland in 1874 had small doctrinal content. The ‘old school’ evangelism . . . had been firmly founded on a clearly recognizable doctrinal position; the new evangelism, in so far as it was doctrinally oriented at all, leaned more to Arminianism than to Calvinism. For the first time in Scottish Church history a comparative disinterest in doctrinal purity was found in alliance with evangelistic endeavor and this explains why men who were adopting Higher Critical views could be found engaged in evangelism alongside others who still retained the orthodox view of the Bible. The latter were still the large majority and perhaps their very numbers served to blind them to the danger. They believed that a toleration of different views of Scripture and of a modified Calvinism would do no harm to the evangelical witness of the Free Church” (pp. 16, 17).

The chapter goes on to trace these developments as they prepared the way for the Free Church to unite with the more liberal United Presbyterians and precipitated the decision of a few who could not in good conscience join the union to form a continuing Free Church.

The parallels between this Scotch Free Church history and current developments in our own traditionally Reformed circles are many. The toleration of higher critical views of the Bible even by some who do not personally hold them, the notion that they can contribute to the real “progress” of the church “and the propaganda for a doctrinally indifferent or even doctrinally subversive form of “evangelism” become commonplace among us. In calling attention to such old fallacies and their destructive consequences Iaian Murray and the Banner of Truth are offering a very important service to the wavering and confused Reformed churches of our time. Let us pray that the Lord may lead us to learn from the errors of churches in the past to identify and escape from the same errors as they reappear today.

Diary of Ketzneth A. MacRae: A Record of Fifty Years in the Christian ministry. Edited with additional biographical material by Jain H. Murray. The Banner of Truth Trust. XIV + 595pp. $16.95. U.S. address P.O. Box 621, Carlisle, PA 17013.