20 SEPTEMBER 1946, Page 4

That stand-by of the Free Church world, The British Weekly,

has new proprietors and, what is more important, will shortly have a new editor, Dr. J. A. Hutton having retired after 21 years through age and ill-health. The paper's history divides into two distinct phases—Robertson Nicoll's British Weekly, and just The British Weekly. That is no disparagement to Nicoll's successors. He was a journalist of an order unique in religious journalism. If the new owners of the paper can unearth somewhere a man with anything approaching Nicoll's professional ability, worldly wisdom and gift of spiritual exhortation (though there were those who had their views on the mixture of the two latter), we shall see the British

Weekly standing again somewhere near where it stood 3o years ago. * *