The Present Crisis. A Voice from Scotland
Under this title an article appeared in The Missionary Record of the United Free Church, October 1910, written by the Moderator of the Assembly. He begins by alluding to the fact of the serious decrease in the last years, both in the membership of the Church and in the number of young men offering themselves for the ministry. He points out what a sad proof it is of the lack of vitality in a church, what reason it gives for humiliation before God, and what a call it is to the Church to discover the cause of the evil and its cure. In the course of his remarks he gives expression to a thought of the deepest meaning in these words: “Membership in the Church implies that the measure of Christ’s surrender for our salvation is the only true measure of our surrender to Him and His service.”
The thought is one of unspeakable solemnity. Is it really true that Christ’s devotion to God and to us in the sacrifice of the Cross is to be the measure of our devotion to Him, and to the service of His Kingdom? It must be true. And yet how few Christians there are who take time to think it out. One almost feels as if the minister who uses such an expression, and has the vision of what it means, could have no rest until he had lifted up his voice like a trumpet and called to the Church, “Awake, ye Christians, to your high calling: The measure of Christ’s surrender for you and your salvation,” let that be your study until you realise somewhat of its meaning, and then let your heart respond and say: “Nothing less, by the grace of God, shall be the measure of my surrender to the person and the service of this beloved Redeemer.”
If a thought like this could take full possession of even a small number of Christians, what power there would be in their witness to others of what Christianity really meant. What hope there then would be to rouse the Church to find out, and to confess, what the cause is that in Scotland the membership of the Church and the supply of students for the ministry is so sadly decreasing.
The article closes with an appeal to all members of Kirk-Sessions and Presbyteries, to all ministers and Church members to renew their exertions on behalf of true godliness, and to labour that the young people may be brought to the knowledge of Christ, and to such a surrender to His service as that suggested above. And have these men, then, not been doing this? There is no reason to doubt it. But what is needed is the discovery that the low spiritual life which prevails through-