Covenanter Witness Vol. 54 - Rparchives.org

still!'
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Lord of hosts. Moses warned them that serving
other gods might well be their downfall. "Take heed
to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and
ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship
them"
(Deut. 11:16).
As it turned out, Israel did worship other gods,
and this brought a real curse upon Israel. Serving
other gods was what ruined and destroyed them as a
nation serving God. And serving other gods might
ruin and destroy our Church, if we put them at the
center of our lives instead of God the Lord.
A false god is anything you love more than you
love God. Anything you put ahead of God in your
life is a false god.
There are false gods all around us, and we must
not let them get between ourselves and God. There
are the false gods of humanistic religions. Some of
these religions claim to be Christianity. They even
use the terminology of the Christian religion. The
heathen in Japan must be converted from Shintoism.
The heathen in Syria and Turkey and Africa must
be converted from the Moslem religion. The heathen
in America must be converted from liberalism and
moralism and the worship of the world. We must
not allow these false gods to get into our worship.
Sometimes sins are false gods. If we love cer
tain sins, and refuse to give them up so that we may
gods."
serve the Lord, then those sins are "other
We cannot serve God and at the same time keep on
committing sins. We cannot obey God and still do
as we please. If we are to receive God's blessing in
this Covenant, we will have to clean out our lives
and destroy our idols and make a firm decision to put
God first in our lives.
"Let us hold fast the profession of our faith
without wavering; for he is faithful that promised"
(Hebrews 10:23). There may be forty years of wan
dering in the wilderness, but in due time God will
bring us into Canaan, where we shall receive the
goodly blessings of His covenant promise.
A Champion Ploughman
By Rev. HUGH J. BLAIR, B.A.
Our sincere congratulations go to Mr. Hugh
Barr, of Ballylaggan Reformed Presbyterian Church,
for his recent success at the ploughing competition
held at Killarney, where he was acclaimed as world
champion ploughman. Mr. Barr is not only a good
ploughman, but a fine singer as well, and the story
of his achievement sent me back to a story in the
Morning Watch of a precentor who did not get first
prize in a ploughing championship
reason.
and for a good
Here is the story as Rev. J. P. Struthers told
it in 1893 in his little magazine for children:
"John Jamieson and Andrew Todd were the best
ploughmen in the county, and both so good that
Todd, who was second best, would have been easily
first anywhere else. Jamieson was our precentor.
After raising the tune he always sang the tenor
part I think I can hear him yet and our singing
was famous far and near. Todd had once been very
foolish, but had not touched drink for nearly two
years.
"The annual ploughing match in the January
I am thinking of was looked forward to with unusual
interest. The first prize was 6 and the silver
medal and, of course, the Cup to which a newcomer
to the county had added 12 lbs. of tea for the wife,
mother or sweatheart of the successful ploughman.
The second prize was 5 to which the member of
Parliament for the county had added a guinea box of
groceries, containing with other things two bottles
of whisky.
"One who has been a drunkard has often, for a
time, a terrible longing for his old sin. When Todd
heard of the contents of the box the two armies
within him joined battle. His poor wife saw the
struggle beginning, and fell to praying more earnest
ly than ever. She told her fears to Jamieson, who
had been her own and her husband's best friend.
He tried unsuccessfully to get the bottles of whiskey
omitted from the box, and then he made up his
232
mind that he would try for the second prize and let
the cup go!
"It was obvious that it was to be a neck-andneck
race between the two men, but most agreed
and in
that Jamieson would have it by very little,
deed he had never ploughed better. There were only
a few furrows to go, and the cup was as good as his.
How it happened, no one exactly noticed; yet some
thing went wrong with that furrow and the next.
Jura, the horse that walked on the land, saw it,
though Rosie, the one that went in the furrow did
n't. I was sorry for Jura, and when she turned she
gave her master a look as if to say, 'Surely you
won't disgrace us now after such a grand day's work
as this ' But the last two furrows were as bad, and
the judges, though sore again their wills, awarded
Todd first prize!
"Poor Mrs. Todd could do nothing but cry; a
great temptation had been taken from her husband
in a moment a temptation that was never to re
turn. And Jamieson smashed the bottles of whisky
as soon as he got home. Though he did not win
the Cup, it was the best day's ploughing he ever
did."
I saw a photograph of some of Mr. Barr's fur
rows in the newspaper, and there was no doubt what
ever about their straightness. And I have been told
that a skilled ploughman knows that to plough a
straight furrow he must not look behind him, but
keep looking ahead. Once a farmer lad who was
learning ploughing was instructed by the farmer,
his master, always to plough with his eyes fixed on
some object in front of him. On returning and find
ing the furrows anything but straight the farmer
said angrily to the boy: T told you, didn't I to keep
your eye fixed on an object in front of To
which the boy replied :
picked wouldn't stand
'So I did, sir ; but the cow I
That is a kind of parable. It is not possible
for any of us to plough a straight furrow through
COVENANTER WITNESS