What would Moncrieff’s solution be to our troubles today? More Jesus Christ. Not His glory mixed with the wisdom of men, but His power and His gifts alone being the source of our trust and hope.
In my study right next to a deer skull/antler mount is a picture of Seceder and original Marrow Man Alexander Moncrieff. He’s long been my favorite of the Gairney Six due to his doggishness and godly spirit, both as a minister and as a fighter for the truth of the Scriptures. Moncrieff was called “the Lion of the Secession” and was later appointed as the Secession Church’s Professor of Divinity and served faithfully at the Associate congregation in Abernethy near Perth. He was most well-known later in life for aligning himself with those who were against the imposition of the Burgher Oath, which sadly caused a break amongst his brethren. Yet in all these things Ebenezer Erskine was able to say of Moncrieff that he was the backbone that allowed others to stand tall in the day of trial in the difficult days of 1733.
Here recently I had the blessing to re-read a pamphlet of his entitled, The Glory of Immanuel and the Desolation of Immanuel’s Land For the Sins of Them That Dwell Therein. For these sermons he takes as his primary texts Isaiah 8:7-8 and John 1:14. In the former portion of Holy Scripture Moncrieff notes that there is a prediction made concerning the coming invasion of the Holy Land by the Assyrians. The reason given for the troubles that were afoot came because the people sought safety in Rezin and Remaliah rather than in Shiloh. The whole focus of this treatise by Moncrieff is that what had happened in Scotland is that the people rather than resting and trusting in Christ, they had instead given themselves over to idolatry and the doctrines of demons, particularly the pomp and circumstance of popery, and the false philosophy of deism.
So what is Moncrieff’s solution to the declension of the Scottish Church?
More Jesus Christ and less man.
Through the opening chapter he spends a considerable amount of space eloquently stating a deep doctrine of Christ which marks out how and why the believer brings himself to poverty each time he chooses fleshly idols rather than the sweet honey from the Rock.
Here are couple examples:
His Glory is a divine glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, He is the Son of God by an ineffable generation. And it is an encouragement to the sons of men to look to Him and be saved, that He is full of grace and truth. He is Immanuel, and His Church is called the Land of Immanuel, because in it the pure worship of God and His ordinances are observed; and because of His interest in it, He is the Lord and King of Immanuel’s Land, which is His free and independent kingdom, God having set Him as King over Zion, the Hill of His Holiness.
The word ‘Flesh’ in Scripture is often used to signify the entire human nature, consisting both of body and soul: the Word was made Flesh, that is, He took the human nature into an intimate and real union with His divine person. To what height and honor has He raised our nature by making it the Temple of the Deity, the Habitation of eternal Wisdom? By this the glorious Majesty of Heaven is become related in a surprising manner to the despicable race of man; for now both He that sanctifieth, and they who are sanctified, are all of one; for which cause He is not ashamed to call them brethren.